Thursday, January 12, 2006

Song of the Day

Turn Turn Turn by the Byrds

The lyrics a quotation from...Ecclesiastes? To everything there is a season etc. This song has resonated with me since I was an earnest Catlic spool boy. Now it resonates because I'm an earnest Buddhist acolight...the song's a collection of dualities. It also happens to be a masterfully constructed pop song.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's neat how we can shift interpretation, understanding, as we gain new perspectives. Yeah,I can see the Old Testament verses as Buddhist.

Verses / versus. There's no "versus", just verses. No Christianity versus Buddhism, etc., etc. Too bad that didn't always apply, huh? To other religious traditions that always butt heads.

Larry Keiler said...

Something I heard on the radio yesterday which I didn't know before: the practice of any religion other than Islam is illegal in Saudi Arabia.

In Iraq we bomb the hell out of civilians because their former leader was a bad man. But President Bush has no problem holding the Saudi king's hand. One suspects that the civil rights situation is only marginally better (if at all) than it was in Iraq. What's the difference then?

Saudi Arabia is willing to sell us lots of oil. Iraq was not.

It's interesting that Buddhism has often suffered at the hands of Islam. Practically exterminated in India, the land of its origin, by Muslim persecution. It's really only since the influx of Tibetan refugees that Indian Buddhism has begun to rise again.

Someday we may look upon the Chinese aggression in Tibet as a blessing in disguise. It forced the lamas out of their insularity and propelled the spread of Dharma in the west.

By the same token, the Chinese may someday realize they made a serious strategic error...all for the sake of some big mountains.

Anonymous said...

Well yes, I think of the bombardment/ destruction of the buddhas in the sides of the mountains in Afghanistan by the Taliban... I wonder why Islam has such trouble with Buddhism... which arguably isn't a religion at all...

Who knows what shifts in thinking China will make, since they've made so many in the economic/marketplace field. But I'm afraid these might not happen during the lifetime of the present Dalai Lama, although I think that is his wish, and where he heads with his attempts at communication and summits.

Jordan is not Saudi Arabia, of course, but perhaps I will get around to reading Queen Noor's autobiography. She is the one who has just published one, or am I mixed up? And she is from Jordan? I wonder if she comments on any of this...

Help! I've written and I can't get up!