If you'd like a better understanding of the current problems in West Asia, then this BBC production may be a good place to start (even if its 1.5 hours long).
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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Understanding West Asia and its troubles-The History of the Turkish and Ottoman Empire | BBC Documentary
by fulltimestudent inif you'd like a better understanding of the current problems in west asia, then this bbc production may be a good place to start (even if its 1.5 hours long).. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m51_pgqa880.
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Healing the lame - with Science.
by fulltimestudent inmatthew 15:30. great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.. whether the above story has any foundation of truth cannot be demonstrated.
and while certain people claim to have had their mobility restored in our times, the fact remains that its a very hit and miss affair.
this is a good time to be alive.
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fulltimestudent
Matthew 15:30
Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.
Whether the above story has any foundation of truth cannot be demonstrated. And while certain people claim to have had their mobility restored in our times, the fact remains that its a very hit and miss affair.
This is a good time to be alive. Formerly fatal diseases are being vanquished. Fewer people are being affected by hunger and famine, and even wars (whether divine or not) are becoming fewer. Medical advances heal many diseases and an expansion of research possibilities promises even more progress in the future.
This story from Australia, shows what an understanding of how the body works can mean for the healing process.
This is the link to the story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-24/genetic-sequencing-gives-boy-right-diagnosis/6874716?WT.ac=statenews_nsw
The story is about a young boy born with a mysterious wasting disease. Doctors could find no evident cause for his illness and guessed that he suffered from a,
"degenerative mitochondrial disease, which affects the muscles and meant he might never reach adulthood."
Two years ago medical science developed to the point where doctors could pinpoint the precise problem:
Doctors had been wrong all along. Revolutionary advances in genetic sequencing proved he did not have mitochondrial disease at all.
"In recent years the capacity to read the genetic code of every single gene — all 20,000 of them in the human body — has reached a point where it is now efficient, accurate, cost-effective to be able to do this," he says.PHOTO: Paediatrician John Christodoulou gave Brandon the life-changing news that he had a genetic mutation which could be treated with medication. (Australia Wide)The new technique is called "next generation sequencing" — and where previously it took weeks or months to analyse the code of a single gene, today laboratory computers can decode all 20,000 genes in one go.
Almost immediately Westmead Children's Hospital researchers could pinpoint which one of Brandon's genes had a mutation.
Professor Christodoulou illustrates how the technique works on a chart.
"So here in the unaffected individual we have an 'A'. Here in the affected individual we have a 'G'. And that's precisely where the mistake is," he says.
Doctors using next generation sequencing discovered in fact that Brandon had congenital myasthenia — a different genetic disease which also affects the muscles.
But although incurable, it is not usually fatal and can be treated with medication.
"The name of the gene that we found the mistakes in is called COLQ, and it has a completely different role," Professor Christodoulou says.
"It has nothing to do with mitochondrial energy production.
"What it is involved in is co-ordinating the communication of nerve cells with the muscle, so that the muscle, when it receives an impulse from a nerve cell, it contracts and relaxes appropriately.
"So the problem with the COLQ mistakes is that this process couldn't be co-ordinated properly. And that's what actually led to his progressive problems."And that was a treatable problem:
A simple drug quickly restored some of his muscle strength. As quickly as he had deteriorated as a toddler, he suddenly began making huge strides.
"We noticed it straight away. By the end of that week he got up off that bed and he walked," she says, wiping away tears.Which means that we were all wrong, when, for all those years, we went house to house warning that this was the worst possible time to be alive.
Its actually a very good time to be alive.
What bloody fools we were.
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No carts in Australia?
by Festus ina friend of mine visited australia and to his surprise there were no jw carts on streets.. wonder if it was just a coincidence or is it due to media attention that arc has created?.
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fulltimestudent
There are carts in OZ, for sure. -
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And China's version of the Nobel prize goes to ... Robert Mugabe! WTF?!
by LoveUniHateExams inaccording to the guardian, the confucius peace prize has been awarded this year to one robert gabriel mugabe.
yes, you read that right.
i suppose i could've put this thread in either the entertainment section or joke section instead.
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fulltimestudent
This is a half truth. Yes, that award was made to Mugabe, but not by the Chinese government.
This is what the Diplomat magazine ( a western publication) had to say about it:
The Confucius Peace Prize was set up in 2010, after Liu received his Nobel Peace Prize. It was established by a private association of Chinese citizens based in Hong Kong, known as the Association of Chinese Indigenous Arts in the People’s Republic of China. Liu Zhiqin, a prominent businessman who originated the proposal to set up a uniquely Chinese prize, said at the time: “We should not compete, we should not confront the Nobel Prize, but we should try to set up another standard.”
Part of the misunderstanding that the Confucius Peace Prize was endowed and supported by the Chinese government had to do with the Hong Kong group’s assertions that it was working with the Chinese Ministry of Culture (which the ministry has since vehemently denied). Additionally, China’s soft-power spreading Confucius Institutes had been founded in the mid-2000s and were still spreading globally, suggesting to some that the Confucius Peace Prize was a similar push for Chinese values and soft-power.
Since its inception, the Confucius Peace Prize has been awarded roughly around the same time as the Nobel Peace Prize. Before Mugabe, Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Fidel Castro of Cuba have been recipients. Additionally, former KMT secretary-general Lien Chan of Taiwan won the inaugural edition of the prize, a development the Taiwanese government found “amusing.”
Differences in values certainly exist between China and the West, but it’s important to understand that the government of the People’s Republic of China hasn’t quite responded to perceived Western affronts with the sort of pettiness that the Confucian Peace Prize represents. So remember, while it is outrageous that Robert Mugabe would win anything called a “Peace Prize,” it’s been given to him by a private group of Chinese citizens based in Hong Kong with no affiliation with the Chinese government.So if the Diplomat report is correct, the award is made by a private group of Chinese citizens in Hongkong,.and NOT by the Chinese government in Beijing.
Its certainly true that the Chinese government maintains a relationship with Zimbabwe. The Chinese government refuses to be judgmental and play the sort of games that the US government plays, applying sanctions and excluding nations that they perceive as "enemy." For example, Iraq was demonised, but Saudi Arabia, which some may judge as worse than Iraq ever was, is allowed to be paart of the USA's club.
Reference: http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/no-china-did-not-just-give-a-peace-prize-to-mugabe/
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Asians are not necessarily governed by western concepts
by fulltimestudent inby coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a japanese buddhist temple) this shiseido tv advertisement showed up today.
see if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3db6pmq-8.
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fulltimestudent
Neither did I, though I should've guessed.
I was invited once to a party hosted by my gayxjw friend, and during the night, some femme Filipino guys showed how they make up and dress for a drag act that were doing at the time in a pub.
With really skilled guys its hard to tell.
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Asians are not necessarily governed by western concepts
by fulltimestudent inby coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a japanese buddhist temple) this shiseido tv advertisement showed up today.
see if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3db6pmq-8.
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fulltimestudent
By coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a Japanese Buddhist temple) this Shiseido TV advertisement showed up today. See if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?
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Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way
by fulltimestudent inbuddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.
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huffpost japan.
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fulltimestudent
In August 1549, the first three Catholic missionaries arrived in Japan. In the next 10 months, it is claimed, 150 Japanese accepted Catholic Christianity and were baptised. Missionary Francis Xavier wrote back to the church in Goa (India) that the Japanese were the most likely people in Asia to accept Christianity.
But, writes Tsuneo Watanabe, in an essay entitled, "Jesuit Missionaries Against the Sin of Sodom:"
"One thing, however, made the missionaries angry, (and Tsuneo quotes from various Jesuit correspondence), " The first evil we see among them is indulgence in the sins of the flesh ... The gravest of their sins is the most depraved of carnal desires, so that we many not name it.
The young men and their partners, not thinking it serious, do not hide it. They even honour each other for it and speak openly of it."That "sin" that cant be named, is of course, the sin of sodom. Which is a sad commentary on the Bible scholarship of the Catholic missionaries, for the sin of Sodom defined at Ezekiel 16:49 is:
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. (NIV)
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Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way
by fulltimestudent inbuddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.
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huffpost japan.
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fulltimestudent
It's interesting that Catholic missionaries enjoyed a lot of success at first, but in the end they were all massacred.
Two reasons can be isolated for the country turning against the Christian church so that even today, (even after the American occupation of Japan), there are only 1%-2% of the population that are Christian.
What are the two reasons? Arrogance informs both reasons. The first is the missionaries arrogant attitude to Buddhism and the second is their arrogant attitude about same sex relationships.
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Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way
by fulltimestudent inbuddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.
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huffpost japan.
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fulltimestudent
The final section of the report (not cited above) gives some background to same sex relationships in Japan.
Quote:
""The (Catholic) missionary Luís Fróis recorded that in the Warring States period, daimyo [lords] had sexual relationships with their pages. Same-sex love is depicted in the shunga [erotic] art of the Edo period, and was accepted," Kawakami said.
"This changed during [the Meiji period]. During the ‘Leave Asia, Join Europe’ phase, the definition of a 'civilized country' as a Protestant-based Western nation was blindly imported, and it came to be thought that gay love was a sin. If we look carefully at history, we can see that pre-Meiji Japan was 'gay friendly,'" he added." -
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Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way
by fulltimestudent inbuddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.
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huffpost japan.
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fulltimestudent
So what's his story:
Same-sex couples from around the world come to Kyoto to marry at Shunkoin temple
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The Huffington Post (Japan) continues his story:
(Note: I've highlighted the first sentence because that's the crux of the problem. So many Christians really have no concept of human rights.)
"We mustn't act as if it's all right to cast the LGBT community aside because they're a minority group," says priest at Japan's Shunkoin temple.
Same-sex marriages are not legal in Japan. However, there is a Japanese Buddhist templewhere lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and members of other sexual minority groups can wed: the Shunkoin temple in Hanazono, Kyoto. Same-sex couples from around the world visit the temple.
How did the Shunkoin temple start holding LGBT wedding ceremonies? HuffPost Japan posed the question to the Rev. Taka Zenryu Kawakami, deputy head priest at Shunkoin.
The priest admits he was prejudiced against the LGBT community when he was younger. "I am not gay myself, and there were no LGBT people around me when I was growing up. The old me was prejudiced against sexual minorities," he said.
Kawakami was born into a family that has produced Shunkoin chief priests for generations. After graduating from the Hanazono School (which is affiliated with Rinzai Buddhism's Myoshinji temple), he studied English at Rice University in Texas, and then enrolled at Arizona State University.
"One day I was having tea with a friend, and a person walked past who you could tell at a glance was gay. I made a discriminatory comment. My friend replied, 'I'm gay, too. Is that the way you feel about me, Taka?’” Kawakami recounted.
“When he said that, I remembered being discriminated against as an Asian person when I traveled in the South," he said. "Especially because I had been the victim of prejudice myself, I felt terrible shame, and I completely changed my position. As I changed, my friends began to open up to me about the fact that they were gay or lesbian."
Kawakami majored in religious studies and psychology at Arizona State, and lived in the U.S. for approximately eight years. In 2004, he returned to Japan to start his ascetic training at the Zuiganji temple in Miyagi prefecture, since having experience as a priest would help prepare him for graduate school.
In 2006, Kawakami finished his training and returned to Shunkoin, where he had the opportunity to give an American acquaintance zazen meditation classes in English. Word got out about the classes, and tourists started calling. In 2007, Kawakami officially became deputy head priest at Shunkoin, and started offering meditation classes to more and more English speakers.
The first person to ask about same-sex wedding ceremonies was a woman from Spain who had visited Shunkoin many times to learn about zazen meditation.
"'Can you hold wedding ceremonies here?' she asked me," Kawakami recalled. "I told her, ‘Yes, we can.' Then she said, 'I have one more question. My partner is a woman.' And I responded, 'That's fine.'"
Kawakami looked over the sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism, and confirmed that such a wedding would not contradict scripture. He expected to be criticized for holding the ceremony, but was also sure that his willingness to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies at the temple would support the LGBT cause by paving the way for more acceptance in Japanese society.
"The reasons why LGBT people are not accepted are different in the West than in Japan," Kawakami said. "In Japan, there is no religious pressure from groups like Christian conservatives. So you don’t see the same sort of strong opposition as in the West. On the other hand, in Japan, there is an underlying pressure to conform, a sense of ‘We are all the same; we are all heterosexual’ -- and that makes it hard to live as an LGBT person."
"I thought that if places such as my temple could show that we actively accept same-sex marriage, it would draw more attention to the problem," he added.
In 2010, the Spanish couple held a public wedding ceremony.
In the spring of 2014, Shunkoin partnered with Hotel Granvia Kyoto to offer Buddhist wedding package tours for LGBT couples. Five couples signed up that year. So far in 2015, eight couples have come to pledge their love, Kawakami said. Six of the couples were from abroad, and two of the couples were Japanese -- two men, and two women.
"A lot of the couples are women. This was the first year we had a couple where both individuals were Japanese, which made me happy. I hope we get even more couples like them in the future," Kawakami said.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shunkoin-temple-gay-marriage_56290990e4b0aac0b8fbeb01
