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Asoka

The wise king

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Saturday, 26 Feb 2022, 19:19

COVID is absolutely horrendous. I have never had anything quite like this before. It is fecking horrible.

It certainly puts one to the test does sickness, it is quite tiring remembering to try and see the dhamma (four noble truths) in each moment and to disengage from the pain and not suffer, only to wish it would stop the next moment, then remembering dhamma again. I don’t know how advanced practioners do it, how they manage to not suffer when in pain, but I really respect and admire them. Sickness definitely humbles one.

Still I feel an odd peace, my life has not been wasted. I have grown spiritually and that’s all that matters in the end. The true wealth is within. I may be poor and considered a loser by the standards of the material world, but spiritually I feel like I have been very fortunate and the thought occured to me if I die now I don’t mind at all, I feel I can go with some peace and dignity and no regrets.

There’s a story in the suttas about a wise king who answered the Buddha skillfully when he asked him what he would do if armies where coming for him in all directions crushing everything in their path, and the king answered he would practise generosity.

I am not wealthy like the king, but generosity doesn’t have to be just about money. One can be generous in all sorts of ways. Even in poverty and lieing in bed sick one can still practise generosity by sending metta (loving-kindness) energy to others. And a mind imbued with loving-kindness is an excellent state of mind to be in when sick and also at the moment of death.

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Asoka

Strange virus

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 23 Feb 2022, 21:57

I am feeling better today, but my son is still unwell with COVID. He is seventeen, so am suprised he has had it much worse than I have being middle-aged. It is a strange virus how it affects everyone differently.

I read that the USA has been developing a chimera version of COVID by mixing it with the original SARS, to create a more deadly and aggressive form of the virus. In fact they may already have created it. The reasons for doing so are not very clear. Apparently it is dual-purpose, but I suspect one of the purposes is for the military. Madness. Such research should be banned worldwide, as if it isn't bad enough we have nuclear weapons of mass-destruction, now we are creating biological weapons of mass destruction. We really are doomed as a species if we carry on the way we are.

I also read an article about how the so-called 'Life sciences' are creating technologies to kill off entire species of animals and plants that are considered pests. I thought the Nazis had been defeated, but it seems they are still alive and well and still playing with science. I wonder if this is a consequence of operation paperclip, where Nazi scientists where whisked away to the US, Britain and Russia. Given new identities and amnesty if they worked for those governments. Some went on to occupy high positions in NASA and the CIA, and God knows where else in society. Quite a chilling thought as many of them where insane unpleasant people.

I don't think using life science to wipe out entire species that we consider a nuisance is a good idea. The Chinese tried to get rid of sparrows believing them to be a pest that was damaging their crops. So they wiped out loads of them, but an unexpected thing happened, they made things worse, and the harvest got ruined by caterpillars that the sparrows had been eating.

This looming future with our new Life science technology is something that gives me the creeps, honestly the amount of arrogance and ignorance we humans show to nature and the other beings and eco-systems around us is going to be the end of us as a species I think. We are like kids playing with loaded guns, no, we are kids playing with weapons and technology of mass destruction. We have not evolved much in terms of the mind whilst playing with science that could destroy everything on the planet.

We are even in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event and still we are creating weapons of mass destruction and technology that has the potential to make things worse. We are building more nuclear power stations while we are still clueless about what to do with the nuclear waste.

We talk about war, but our biggest threat is the mass extinction event happening around us.

War is like two humans who have jumped off a cliff and are shooting at each other as they fall to their deaths.

This human world is madness.

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Darren Menachem Drapkin, Thursday, 24 Feb 2022, 12:02)
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Asoka

Endemica

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Friday, 24 Dec 2021, 23:03

Sadly I think we are going to have to cancel our Christmas plans of travelling down South. As I don't want to risk getting stranded or use public transport if they suddenly announce lockdowns. I also don't fancy wearing a facemask for six hours on the train. Plus Scotland is getting increasingly uncertain about what sort of restrictions might be coming, and it is possible it might be difficult getting over the border.

They should just let omicron go endemic and become the dominant strain as it is fairly mild. And also constantly vaccinating everyone means the virus will be more likely to mutate to evade the vaccines and then there's a risk of it becoming more deadly because of excessive vaccination. Apparently this has happened in the past with vaccines. Honestly, the unvaxxed are heroes and are doing everyone a favour if they catch COVID, as natural immunity is much better protection for the herd. Not that I am criticising anyone for getting vaccinated. I respect other people's decisions, I wish they would respect mine and not believe all the hype. People should have the right not to play a game of chance with their health or lives by being forced to have an experimental medical procedure. I firmly believe this. And I will be standing my ground on that, even when the Nazis of the Fourth Reich come knocking on my door to take me away to a concentration camp, just kidding, or am I?  

The truth seems to be that Big pharma doesn't want to lose the huge profits it's making from these vaccines. And all this stuff about protecting the NHS is bollocks. It's the government who are to blame for problems with the NHS, they have been systematically undermining and destroying the NHS for years, a planned demolitian job; there's now 50% less hospital beds than there was in the 1980s, and a much larger UK population in 2021. So don't believe what the government are saying, and don't blame the unvaxxed for the over-stretched health service, it isn't their fault. If you need to point a finger at someone, point it at Westminster.

Here's a not so fun fact: a third of hospital beds in the UK are currently being taken up by old people who no longer need to be in hospital but have nowhere to go due to lack of social care available for them. And also there are more vaccinated patients in hospital just now than unvaccinated. So the government and media is full of shit. It is just pointing the finger at the unvaxxed because they make an easy scapegoat at the moment. It is an old tactic, governments have always used scapegoats to distract, divide and conquer; and sadly much of the public seems quite happy to go along with it, almost everyone likes to have someone to point the finger at and blame for their problems, someone to hate. It is a political tactic as old as human civilization.

Anyway I am still standing my ground in this corner of the world, and will continue to do so. And if like me you are declining the vaccine and sometimes get a bit of flack (for what inmho is a sensible decision) and need a good factual counter-argument, then read this letter written by a law firm who have written to the government with proof the jabs are causing harm and are seeking an injunction. 

https://pjhlaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/letterMHRA.pdf 

The unvaxxed are well within their rights to decline these experimental injections, and in doing so are no threat to anyone whatsoever, in fact they are doing society a huge favour if they catch COVID as natural immunity to COVID has better and longer lasting protection than these experimental vaccines that you have to keep having boosters of. Those who have acquired natural immunity to COVID don't need booster jabs. And over-vaccinating the population can increase the risk that the virus will be forced to mutate faster to evade the regular boosters and as a result potentially become something more deadly. So unlike what the media and politicians tell you, the unvaxxed, (or refuseniks as the media likes to call them) are actually the unsung heroes in this pandemic. Hats off to them I say.

What threat exactly are the unvaccinated to society? 


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Asoka

What threat exactly are the unvaccinated to the vaccinated?

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Saturday, 11 Dec 2021, 23:59

This is very interesting, well worth a listen if you can spare five minutes.

'In a population of what 68 million, what threat exactly are the 5 million who choose not to be vaccinated going to be? Bearing in mind that two thirds of those who are unvaccinated will have already caught COVID and have acquired natural immunity, which is superior to any vaccine and lasts much longer, (for example, people who caught SARS still have immunity to it 17 years later, and SARS has gone now) so if you have already caught COVID and have natural immunity you are actually doing the population a favour not getting vaccinated, as natural immunity is a stronger protection and a bigger help towards herd immunity as it lasts for much longer than a jab you have to keep having a booster of every 3 months. And lets not pretend that there aren't people in hospital being treated for vaccine injuries, because there are, however much we would like to brush that under the carpet. There are also double-jabbed people catching COVID and passing it on to other people who are double-jabbed. There is also evidence that the side effects of the vaccine are worse if you have already caught COVID. So why on Earth would someone who has acquired a natural immunity to COVID still need to be vaccinated? It makes no sense. The idea of mandating a vaccine that hasn't been licensed is bizarre.'

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Asoka

Re-Break

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Friday, 24 Dec 2021, 23:04

Feel a distinct lack of anything today. Feel a bit dead inside. Although I did start the day with a fair bit of anger this morning, and yes it did upgrade itself to hatred for a moment, I even expressed my hatred out loud to the universe (as if it gave a shit, lol), I confess I felt pure hatred, but now that tempest of a storm has passed and frozen me into an ice king. Can't feel much love, joy, pleasure, compassion, empathy, can't feel much of anything really. Just an apathetic sludge of dispassion. I guess that is the punishment for not abandoning hatred when it arose in the mind. Still there's an assignment to do, and I am struggling with it, but intend to get it completed by the deadline. 

I hear fresh calls on the media to go after the unvaxxed and punish them for not wanting to take a chance on an experimental medical procedure, one that offers no compensation if you get injured by it or die. And let me repeat, if I get seriously ill I won't bother the healthcare system whatsoever, so the media can fck off with its guilt trips, harking on about how the refuseniks should be punished because they will overstretch the health service and make it unavailable for the holier-than-thou vaxxed. I promise you if I get seriously ill with covid I will not bother the NHS whatsoever, I will of course quarantine myself for 14 days so I don't pass it on to anyone else. 

 They should just let omicron go endemic, it will become the dominant strain then, and seen as it is being reported in different parts of the world as mild and harmless, it seems the most logical thing to do. Lockdowns and restrictions may no longer be necessary. I even heard (Singapore I think) saying they were considering letting it go endemic due to how harmless this new strain seems to be. Omicron could be a gift that puts an end to this pandemic. I don't understand why the government are so pushy with the vaccine, especially with kids and young adults who are more at risk of harm from the vaccine than the virus. Natural immunity is much better. And the covid vaccines don't prevent one transmitting the virus to others anyway. The vaccines are just there for people to protect themselves if they choose to, but the vaxxed can still catch and spread covid. I feel like a broken record though, I have written about my views on this before, so won't bore any readers with it again. Other than think for yourselves, and don't trust the mainstream media or any government, they have lied to us before about many things in the past, nothing is what it seems. Look at who is making the money, the big bucks. I imagine a mandatory regular booster may be a huge kerching! for someone out there (cough.. big pharma.. cough).

The thought of mandatory vaccines gives me the creeps. There's a reason the Geneva convention protects our human right to decline a medical procedure, as such things can be abused by dodgy governments, don't forget WWII and the horror of the Nazis, because if we aint careful we may end up sleep-walking into the fourth reich. Our human rights should always be protected.

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Asoka

Sour times

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 8 Dec 2021, 16:40

It is a horrible experience being alive. One is just born in a body with whatever genes one is given, and this body just grows by itself and life gets increasingly more complicated and one is stuck with whatever personality and DNA they are born with and expected to just get on with living in a cold and often cruel world. Noone gets to choose who they will be, what they will be good at, what kind of body they will get. No-one can help being who they are; and yet we get judged for it and made to feel guilty if we aren't up to the task of fitting into this bloody difficult world. Being a human sucks. Being any being on this planet sucks. Being alive sucks.

 I can only seem to meditate when I feel good. Meditation when depressed is not helpful at all. It just makes me feel worse. I am trying my best, but I keep failing catastrophically. I can't generate any joy at the moment, I am trying but it is like an engine that has run out of fuel and won't kickstart. 

I am also feeling broken hearted as well. Particularly for the local wildlife. So much life has disappeared at the local beach. Tangled up in the seaweed are the bones of seabirds that have starved to death from lack of food. The beach here used to be teeming with life of all different kinds, it was magical, but now it is like a watery graveyard, an oceanic desert. The sea here is dying and nobody else seems to notice or care. I read that now one in four species of bird in the UK are on the endangered list, and insects have been steadily disappearing, every summer there's fewer and fewer.

 Then there's refugees drowning at sea escaping all kinds of different horrors in the world caused by the greed, hatred, and delusion of the West; while the super rich just compete to be the first to reach outer-space so they can colonise dead planets, their rockets like penis extensions, ignorant of the poverty and environmental destruction their greed has caused. 

And the government is determined to vaccinate everyone, is obsessed with it; but if they really cared about saving people's lives why don't they help those who are now homeless in the freezing cold of Winter after been kicked out of their houses by banks who repossessed their homes after lockdowns destroyed their incomes. And why don't the government help the old people abandoned and dying alone in care homes and hospitals? I thought all this pandemic and vaxxing was to save their lives, but it seems to be more about destroying them.

I am sorry for the rant dear reader. I feel so unhappy just now, sometimes writing it out of my system is the only relief I get. (Albeit temporary.) I wish I could feel hope and write something uplifting, but I feel there is something terribly wrong with the world just now.

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Asoka

Strange times

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Tuesday, 30 Nov 2021, 18:03

When a friend went to get her jab, she was given a medical consent form to sign, which had a box she had to tick saying she understood that the vaccine was an experimental medical procedure and if there are any adverse effects, neither the people administering the jab, nor anyone else will be held liable for any damage caused.  

So basically, if one does have an adverse reaction, which many people have (check out the data on the yellow card scheme), one is on their own, with no compensation and no-one who can be held accountable for any injury caused by the vaccine. 

So I think people are well within their rights to refuse these experimental COVID vaccines and shouldn't be made to feel bad for declining. All this mass pressure and coercion to get vaxxed is wrong. 

The new COVID variant: Omicron, which sounds like a transformer, (maybe it's a decepticon). The scientist credited with discovering it Dr. Angelique Coetzeep was speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio about omicron, and said:

“Patients I’ve seen with it had mild symptoms and recovered. None were admitted and no oxygen was needed. The hype makes no sense to me at all.”

So why are the media and government hyping it up?

Is there something fishy going on? If I question it, I just get labelled a conspiracy theorist, ridiculed or made to feel bad for practising some critical thinking. 

Bad governments like to have a war on something, it is a classic way to distract the people, used throughout history.

 By choosing to be unvaccinated I am harming noone. And if I do get seriously ill from catching COVID I will accept it, I won't put any pressure on the NHS and won't go to the hospital for treatment. And if I die I won't feel any regret for declining the jab, I have done nothing wrong, it is my choice. I am not a bad person for doing this.

 I am no threat at all. 

The vaccine does not stop a person catching or transmitting the virus. These vaccines only protect the person who has been vaccinated not anybody else. The viral load for a vaccinated person is pretty much the same as the viral load for someone who is unvaccinated. Being vaccinated does not stop the spread of the virus or protect those who are vulnerable, (other people can still catch COVID off you, even if you're triple-vaxxed). There is absolutely no need to vaccinate everyone, especially young people who get COVID mild. In fact children are at greater risk of harm from the vaccine than from the virus. It makes no sense to me, it is very strange and illogical, and the media is full of double-speak and misinformation at the moment. 

I also heard on the radio that many people in care homes have died, something that isn't been talked about much. They didn't say what the cause of death was but hinted it could be due to lack of staff.

Maybe there's not much use to writing my thoughts on this. I have no power to change what is happening in the world, it is outside my control. And I certainly don't want to divide people with my words, just merely offer my thoughts for whatever they're worth. The only control I have really is the choices I make for myself. We will all have to wait and see how this plays out in the end - time will tell.

 All my Buddhist friends have been fully-vaccinated, and they don't agree with my stance but they also don't judge me. 

It can be lonely being someone who stands on the edge and doesn't follow the herd. But sometimes I think people like that are necessary.


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Asoka

To vax or not to vax

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Friday, 21 Jan 2022, 21:36
I will continue to stand my ground on refusing the vaccine, even if it means I get fined and imprisoned like the government have decided to do to the unvaccinated in Austria. I will not be forced into having an experimental medical procedure with no data on any possible long term side effects. I have a right to do so under the Geneva convention, which was set up after WWII to prevent a repeat of the appalling medical experiments done by Nazi scientists. 

 I also have a strong intuitive feeling not to have the covid vaccine, and I have had dreams warning me not to have the vaccine. I trust my intuition more than I trust the government and the propaganda machine of the mainstream media. I don't trust them, they're liars. They manipulate us with fear and have been caught out lying to us over and over in the past. Don't believe the hype. The reason hospitals are struggling is because the Tory government have been practising austerity for over a decade now, leaving the NHS seriously underfunded and at breaking point well before the pandemic started.

 If this vaccine is so great why do you need three doses? And why are fully vaxxed people filling up the hospitals? And the argument that the vaccine stops you infecting others is bullshit. If you are vaccinated you can still catch and infect others with the virus. So vaxxing kids is completely unnecessary, the vaccine is actually more harmful to children than the virus itself. There's something fishy going on with these vaccines I feel. I don't trust it.

I also disagree with testing on animals, all synthetic medicine is tested on animals, and that doesn't rest easy on my mind. Every  being values their life, and other animals don't want to be experimented on, but they don't get a choice, humans just bully, exploit and abuse them. They are living beings that suffer and feel pain, what right do we have to treat them the way we do? This idea that some lives are more valuable than others is the root of all that is wrong with this world.

Anyway, what I write here makes no difference to what is happening in the world. I am just a tiny insignificant part of the population and governments are getting heavier on the unvaccinated and I imagine I will be increasingly ostrasized by society for refusing to play ball. But I won't be co-erced, and when things get heavier, I plan to turn my back on the world and disappear into the wilderness. I feel alone anyway. 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Gill Burrell, Saturday, 20 Nov 2021, 18:05)
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