Dhamma And The Sinister Way
This essay is a slight departure from what I usually write about [ONA] in that it will be a comparative break down of Buddhadhamma and parallels I personally see in the Sinister Way of the ONA. The initial reason for initiating a topic like this was because I figured that some people here and there may have some confusion as to how a person can be a Dreccian and be into Buddhadhamma at the same time.
There is a very simple answer and very long answer which I’ll go into. The very simple answer is that I am not my beliefs, religion, or ideologies. I am my own person, with my own autonomous and sovereign sense of Self. And this Self is on a quest of Self-Evolution and Self-Enlightenment. Being on such a quest, I understand that everything outside of myself – religions, philosophies, ideas, people, money, cars, hammers, wrenches – are TOOLS that may or may not help me in some way on this quest. So for me personally I use ideas, Buddhadhamma, and the Sinister Way as a MEANS to an END. The end being my own Sambuddhi: Self-Awakening, Self-Enlightenment, Self-Realization. I am not my religion, in the same way that I am not the nail file I use to fix my nails up with.
There is something very wrong with your Self-Identity if you lose your autonomous and sovereign sense of Self inside some man-made religion or if you confuse your Self for a outside tool you use. How do you give up your autonomous sense of Self and say to yourself: “I am this cluster of opinions and beliefs that some guy came up with.” This is essentially what happens in the West – due to its language structure – when a Westerner says: “I am a Christian;” “I am a Buddhist,” “I am American.” The “I am” part – To Be/Is – automatically causes the Mind to identify itself with whatever follows.
This oddness – deceptive nature – of language doesn’t exist in the language I was raised drenched inside. There is no such thing as the suffix “-ian,” “-ist,” or “-ism,” in Khmer or Thai. There is no such thing as a single word for “Christianity,” or “Buddhism.” If you wanted to say “Christianity,” you have to say: “Sasana Christ,” or “Sasana preah jesuchris.” Buddhism is: “Sasana preahput,” or “preahput Sasana.”
The word “Sasana” is usually translated as meaning “religion” in English, but this is a misunderstanding of the word. It ultimately comes from the Sanskrit root word meaning “Wise.” “Sasati” means to give an “Order,” or “Command.” “Sasana” actually means a “Government,” or set of rules to be followed that Governs something; or “Orders,” or “Instructions,” to be followed. The US Constitution, Magna Carta are “Sasana” in that they actually are sets of rules, instructions, and orders that are to be followed, which Governs or maintains the way something functions and works: For an End Purpose.
So when you want to say that you are a Buddhist you have to use the words: Jol [Go into] Sasana Peahput [Buddha]. And when you want to say that you are a naturalized citizen of France you use the words: Jol [Go into] Sas [People/Tribe] Barang [French]. In essence, you don’t become something [to be/is], you go into it. As you would go into a store. When you go into a store you don’t become the store, you maintain your Self-Identity and Self-Autonomy, it’s just that you are inside something for some reason, and you can leave [go outside] and still be the same person that walked in. There is an inner feeling or knowing that who you are and what you have gone into are two different phenomena; whereas with English, the words “I am a Buddhist” appears to only express one phenomenon: the “I” being [existing as] something called a “Buddhist.”
This deceptive nature of the English language in this context causes certain psychological reactions or problems to arise. For example when a Westerner says: “I am a Satanist,” the Mind assumes that it [“I”] exists in a state of being called “Satanist.” The inner question then comes up: Well what is a Satanist, in essence: “What then am I if I am a Satanist.” So along comes a goon who says: “I know what a Satanist is, Satanists – as I define it – is a person/entity that worships another entity named Satan.” Or whatever definition. When you hear this the Mind [“I”] says to itself: “Well, if that is what a Satanist is, then that must be what I am also: an entity that worships another entity named Satan. I am an entity that worships another entity specifically named Satan, therefore if “I” do not worship this specific Satan, that I am no longer my Self, since my existence is founded on the worship of some arbitrary Satan.”
Since we don’t use pronounce in my family or specific culture, if I wanted to say the equivalent of “I am a Buddhist” I have to say: “Chloe Jol Sasana Preahput” which literally means Chloe [me, as I know myself to already be] is inside the sasana of Buddha. Instead of becoming something, I am just inside it to shop for things. Like I was at a flea market or the swap meet looking around for things that I myself might find useful that may help me progress on my quest to Knowledge of Self, and Self-Enlightenment.
This way of perceiving oneself in context to things such as religions allows for the freedom of choice because my identity is not in anyway dependent on what I am inside. So if a monk or teacher were to come along while I am inside sasana preahbut and say to me: “I got an idea/meme to sell to you: Buddha is God, interested?” Because my Self-Identity is not founded on sasana preahput I can say: “Nah, I’m not interested in that idea, I don’t think the idea of the Buddha being God will help me progress on my quest in anyway, but thank you for offering the idea.” Which now brings us to the long version of my answer.
Comparative Studies
On an average day I personally go inside many different places. I can be at my friend’s house one moment, inside the mall, inside a grocery store, inside a bookstore, or whatever. No matter what I am inside, I’m still me: Chloe. It’s not like if I went into a outlet in the mall called “Forever 21” that I magically shapeship into a creature called Forever 21, and then when I go inside the Cheesecake Factory to eat dinner, I suddently morph into a being called The Cheesecake Factory. When people ask me: “How can you be a Buddhist and the ONA at the same time?” In my mind it’s like them asking me: “Chloe, I’m really confused, how do you go shopping at WalMart and Nordstroms in the same day and still maintain your Self-Identity, which one are you Nordstroms or WalMart?”
It actually makes no sense to me, because who I am has nothing to do with what I go into to shop. WalMart has cheap food and great deals on hair care products, but I’m not gunna walk around in public with a WalMart pair of shoes or clothes: I have an Image to maintain .
I do like this thing the West calls the “Occult,” but to me this Occult is like a 24 hour WalMart, it’s pact with cheap stuff – many of which are practical and useful – but 90% of the stuff in this Occult store is junk. I’m not gunna walk around in public with a generic Wally World Satanism shoes, McChaos Magic tee-shirt, and outdated LaVeyan accessories! I’m classy. Have you ever done a demographical study on the types of people and their state of mind that populates the colon of the Occult called Satanism online? They actually look like the types of people you would see at WalMart. Weirdos with hillbilly genes, ugly faces, fat girls, nuts – genetic bottom of the barrel of society/humanity – and they are either illiterate, their thought-process is either wack, or they lack the ability to express their mind and articulate thoughts in writing, so they use blog radios and youtube videos to yap their degenerate peasant mouths off about their Wally World memeplex.
This is not to say that Satanism is useless. It’s got some great ideas/memes. And it’s those memes that will help me on my personal quest for sambuddhi that I look for. But, most of the ideas, or memes, I find very useful in something like Satanism have parallels in Buddhadhamma, just restated in Western terms, thru a current and modern Occidental subculture. So because I do live in the West [California], because I was born and raised in this Western matrix, and because I am bombarded with Western memes and thoughts, I find certain memes in Satanism very useful as a means to shield me from being lost – losing myself – in the maze of what is the Western Paradigm and Weltanschauung of the world and reality; so that I can maintain my own Self-Autonomy and Self-Sovereignty. So before we can understand the parallels of Buddhadhamma and the ONA, we first must understand what Buddhadhamma is.
Buddhadhamma
Most people in the West apprehend Buddhism in a very lifeless manner which is how Buddhism was never intended to spread. The root of this problem was initially political. It has a lot to do with Communist China’s invasion of Tibet, the Dali Lama seeking international help, the CIA once helping the Dali Lama, so in the mix of political junk, the mundane public is today more aware of the spiritual leader of a school of Buddhism with only about 7 million adherent – via his fame and books – but they cannot name or identify the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand who is the spiritual head of a school of Buddhism with 75 million adherent. This in not to say that Buddhism spread into the West entirely because of Tibetan Buddhism streams. They key problem is: Books. Buddhism was never intended to spread from people to people via the medium of written words. Theories and ideas written on paper or in texts have no real causal connection to the living and ever changing dynamic world of experience.
You might ask: “Well so what? What’s the big deal about learning about Buddhism from a book?” Nothing really. I once took Driver’s Ed in school. In class we spent an entire semester reading drivers manuals, studying the rule of driving, and the laws associated with driving. But passing Driver’s Ed with an A+ grade and actually driving a car on a public street and freeway are two very different things. You can be an expert in one, and know nothing practical and real about the other.
A book or class can’t teach you the finer details of driving safely, nor can it teach you the extra details one learns from experience via direct experience of driving. Or to put it in another way: reading and studying about motherhood has nothing to do with actually being a mother; reading about the military has absolutely nothing to do with the life, the thoughts, the emotions, and the experiences a real soldier lives and knows as a soldier in the battlefield.
You can learn so much more about being a mother or soldier from someone who has lived, experienced, made mistakes, learned from the experience of being a mother or soldier, than from a book. My dad taught me how to actually drive the first time when I was 15 by making me drive him all the way to Las Vegas from Orange County and then back. I barely passed Driver’s Ed. I also learned how to swim from being tossed into the pool directly and being instructed by people who already knew how to swim. I’ve never read anything about swimming. And it’s the same way with Buddhism.
Buddhism began as an oral tradition, where the Buddha broke down his teachings into key words and fundamental thoughts – like “power points” in a way – which his monks and students memorized and added their own understandings to. A living Buddhist Culture has had 2500 years to refine and work out the bugs of its Buddhism, and a living person who has lived and applied Buddhadhamma in life has cultivated from direct experience the unwritten lessons that they learn from the praxis of dhamma in the real world. Such living cultures and living people pass their living tradition and living knowledge and wisdom down to each new generation. The Buddha during his time actually wanted to name his Way “Vibhajjavada,” meaning the “Principle/Doctrine of Direct Experience,” and those who walked the Way “Vibhajjavadin.
When you learn about Buddhism out of a dead book, you do gain mechanical knowledge about what Buddhism is, but you are subject to intellectualizations, misunderstandings, misinterpretations of ideas, and assumptions, such that the end product of your grasping of Buddhism ends up looking nothing like what lives in living cultures in the East. I’ve never gotten into any kind of argument or debate with another Asian Buddhist, even if they do come from Mahayana [I’m Theravada]; but I have had many arguments and debates with Western people who learned about their Buddhism from a book, the internet, or from somebody who learned of it from books or wikipedia.
When the Buddha was asked how a person follows his Way, the Buddha said that taking refuge in the Three Jewels was the core requisite for being considered one who follows Buddhadhamma. The Three Jewels are: 1) Buddha; 2) Dhamma & 3) Sangha. All three are required to be a “Buddhist.”
The Three Jewels
Each of the words of the Three Jewels have two distinct meanings. And depending on your own inner nature as a person, your own level of understanding and state of mind, your own level of Self-Progression, you will understand each word/concept of the Three Jewels as you need them to mean.
Buddha can either mean “The Buddha” as in Gautama Buddha or it can mean the actually basic meaning of the word “Buddha” which is “Mind.” For those who need a teacher, a guide, a person to hold their hand and lead them, “Buddha” is the teacher. For those who have progress on their way of Self-Evolution, such people seek and take Refuge in their own Mind. Meaning that they have come to the Realization that it is their own Mind, their own faculty of Reason, their own understanding of things that will ultimately Enlighten them, and not the thoughts and words of others.
Dhamma [Dharma in Sanskrit] can either mean the teaching of Gautama Buddha which leads one to Self-Realization and Self-Enlightenment [Sambuddhi]. Or Dhamma can mean the constitutional or constituent factor or aspects of the natural world of experience. In the regard to the second meaning Dhamma roughly means the same thing as the ancient Greek “Logos,” and the Chinese “Tao.” It is the Way of Things and the aspects of the world that makes things works. For those underdeveloped people who need to be told what to do, how to think, where to go, and what to believe, Dhamma is the doctrines and teachings of the Buddha. For those who have progressed in Mind and self development where they are able to read the living book of nature, Dhamma is the laws of nature, what we today science, natural philosophy, and learning from direct experience.
Sangha can either mean “Bhikkhusangha” which is the Order or body of Monks. Or it can mean “Ariyasangha.” Ariyasangha is a general term meaning the “Noble Order,” or “Elite Association,” which is what the body of all followers of Buddhadhamma are collectively called. In the East, because of close clan and family social structures, one’s ariyasangha is one kinfolk and close associates. So, for the underdeveloped Mind which needs to be told and guided, Sangha is the order of monks who teach and interpret Buddhism and Life for them because they have not yet developed their own ability to do so themselves. To those Minds more developed, Sangha is the living source of knowledge and wisdom: your own living culture and living people who have walked the Way and have learned from direct experience.
So, to be a Buddhist – as per the Buddha – one needs to take Refuge in all three Jewels. Although a book may contain some of the teachings of the Buddha [dhamma], a Book is not Buddha or Sangha. Learning the teachings of the Buddha in writing and agreeing with them does not make you a Buddhist.
As an underdeveloped Mind you need to acknowledge that the Buddha – real or mythos – is your primary source and guide. You need to apply the Buddha’s teachings in your own life. And you need to be connected to monks in your community, by doing binbats [giving alms of food] and going to them for answers to questions you might have. As a developed Mind, your own Mind itself is the Buddha: your teacher. Nature, its laws, the way it works is your book of wisdom and doctrine. And your own living culture and associates are your source of living wisdom.
For me, I see parallels with here with certain concepts in the ONA. One is “Pathe-Mathos,” and the other is where Reason and Natural Philosophy are very important concepts to the ONA. I also see the ONA’s “Nietzschean” concept of Self-Surmounting or Self-Evolution of the Ubermensch in Buddhism. The very word “Ubermensch” even has a literal translation in Buddhism [Pali]: “Uttama-Puriso” which basically means “Superman,” which was a title of the Buddha; or those who become Buddhas. “Uttama” meaning “Highest,” “Super,” think “Ultimate.” And “Puriso” meaning “Man,” or “Person.”
To fully appreciate this specific parallel between the Buddha as Uttamapuriso, Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch, and the ONA concept of Self-Evolution, we first need to reacquaint ourselves with the basic mythos of the Buddha’s life.
The Buddha
Not all Buddhists believe – need to believe – that the Buddha was a real person. I personally do not believe or have a need to believe that he was a real historical person. I also don’t interpret the Buddha to be an archetype of spirit person. He is symbol of the Mind, and his life’s story a mythos which reflects the Mind’s progress to developed Selfhood.
First I should briefly retell Plato’s parable of the cave, as this parable and the Buddha’s story are the same in essence. In the cave allegory you basically have a cave in which dwells a tribe of people who were all born and raised in this cave. Every evening shadows dance on the walls of this cave. The elders interpret the dancing shadows for everybody. One day somebody ventures outside the cave to figure out directly for himself what the actual cause of the shadows are. He learns from direct experience the source and cause, and realizes that everything he knew – his state of mind in the cave – was unreal, or the stories that old men make up to explain the nature of things they have no real experience of.
So in the Buddha’s story you have a kingdom. The queen is pregnant and one night she dreams of a white elephant giving her a lotus. She and her husband the king go to see an astrologer or psychic. The psychic tells the king and queen that they will have a son and that this son has two different destinies, each will be fulfilled depending on how the son is raised. The fortuneteller says that if the king locks his son up behind the walls of the kingdom, and keeps his interests in state affairs that the prince will grow to the emperor of all the known world. But if this son is exposed to the outside world and its suffering he will become a homeless beggar.
Naturally the king wanted his son to be the ruler of the world, and no mother wants their son growing up to be a bum. So the king orders a tall wall to be the palace grounds and kicks out every old person, sickly person, ugly person, so that young Buddha Boy is not exposed to such conditions of human life.
Young Buddha Boy spends 29 years of his life content and very happy inside those walls. His dad showers him with harems of the most beautiful girls in India. Besides a pile of girls to keep him special company, Buddha Boy gets whatever he wants, lots of gold jewelry, lots of expensive food stuff. But he is an idiot. He has never seen old people, sick people, or people die. He’s never even seen the outside world. He believes that the whole world is like his world and that everybody lives like him. His father is the only source he has to know about the world beyond the walls. When asked his father just quickly and dismissively says to Buddha Boy something like: “Oh, the world out there, pssh, nothing interesting really, would you like another girl in your harem son?”
But one day, after spending 29 years in the lap of luxury and a make believe world, Buddha Boy – now a young man – gets really curious about what is on the other side of his palace walls. So he sneaks out one night wearing a disguise and jumps the wall. Which is when he is exposed to the reality of reality. Not so much as him learning that humans grow old, die, suffer, or whatever; but he realizes that the world he once knew and believed to be real was not real, or was not the whole of what reality is. He runs away from home to join different sects in India in a quest to now find the answers to questions he has about life.
After a couple of years joining different sects and debating with Brahmins, he figures out that those priests and religions just don’t satisfy his curiosity about how reality really works. Because when they are asked, those priests answers with make believe stories of gods and miraculous powers. Slightly defeated the young Buddha retreats into the forest to meditate.
While meditating, the Buddha recalled the only time his father took him outside the walls of his palace when he was a small boy. He recalled watching under a tree a young man using a cow to pull a plough. The plough was breaking the ground. And at one point when a spot in the ground had been broken, he recalled noticing a little worm get unearthed which wiggled out of the ground. He then recalled a little bird that was perched on a tree fly to eat the worm. This was the point in the Buddha’s young life when he was Enlightened. He was 30 something. He has realized from that simple recollection that everything about reality and nature is interconnected, as if a single thing in fluid motion. That things in life arise from a cause. The worm was unearthed be-Cause of the breaking of the field. The worm being exposed fed the bird’s babies, and so on. This is the foundation of every other concept the Buddha had.
Such as the Four Noble Truths, or the 8 Fold Path are actually just a chain of events that are the cause and fruit of each other. Thus, the Buddha also realized that Self-Awakening [Sambuddhi] works on the same cause and fruit principle. What one has directly experienced in the past, through rational analysis of such experiences and observations, gives rise to insights born from within such that you do not have to go to Brahmins and others for wisdom and knowledge. This idea of a man having the power to enlighten himself without the middle man of Brahmins was heretical during the Buddha’s times.
This story of the Buddha is a common mythos that most people raised Buddhist will often hear. But what most Buddhists fail to consider after learning the nature of the Buddha’s enlightenment being based on the chain reaction of cause and fruition, that they completely disregard the Buddha’s first 29 years of living a sensual, amoral, hedonistic life of indulgence. You see because things have their nature of differentiation in Contrast. We know that black is black because it is not white. We know that form is form because it is not the formless background. The Buddha’s state of enlightenment, could not have come into being without the contrast of his past experiences in that palace.
Back to the cave allegory: the boy who ventured out of the cave would not have realized anything spectacular had he not first experienced life inside the cave to give contrast and the state of being enlightened. In other words, life must be apprehended as a whole single stream of events of cause and fruition. This stream of experience itself is the Self/Mind on its own natural state of self-evolution. Gautama was only called the Buddha after he had been Awakened which took place after he had experience all those years of life, both the pleasure and the suffering. The Buddha is the Mind.
This mythos is a way of telling the story of the Mind gradually awakening from direct experience, reflection of past experiences, and direct observation of life sans the middlemen. So here is where I see the parallel between the ONA’s concept of Self-Evolution and Buddhadhamma. There is in both cases a rejection of mundane established truths, facts, and beliefs. The Buddha rejected the ideas and established norms of the Brahmanism of his era. In the same sense that the Dreccian of the Sinister Way rejects the established weltanschauung, materialism, beliefs, and ideas of mundanity. There is even a word in Buddhism parallel to the ONA’s word “Mundane” which is “Anariya,” meaning the “Worldly,” the “Un-Ariya.” “Ariya,” basically meaning “Excellent,” “Noble,” “Honourable.”
The Middle Way
In the same sutta where the Buddha teaches about the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha actually first teaches his monks about the Middle Way. This is important because the Buddha here and elsewhere defines his way as being the Middle Way. Middle Way meaning both the Way between extreme opposites, and in between Dakshina Marga [Right Hand Path] and Vama Marga [Left Hand Path]. I use the Eastern understandings of “Right Hand,” and “Left Hand” paths here. To the Brahmins and the Vedic Traditions, Buddhism was defined as “Nastika” which basically means “heterodox,” and “heretical,” which also is the same word used by the Vedic Traditions to describe Vama Marga and the sramana tradition. This brief Middle Way discourse the Buddha give although it defines what Buddhism is, is most often not even paid any attention to by Westerners and even many Asian Buddhists. As the sutta goes:
“This is what I have heard. At one time the World Honored One was staying near Varanasi at Isipatana in the Deer Park. At that time the World Honored One addressed the group of five monks, saying, “Bhikkhus, there are two extremes that a monk should avoid. What are those two?
“The first is the devotion to sensual desire and pleasure resulting from sensual desire. Such devotion is base, pedestrian, worldly, ignoble, and unbeneficial. The second is devotion to harsh austerity. Such devotion is painful, ignoble, and unbeneficial. By not following either of these extremes, the Tathagata has realized the Middle Way that gives rise to seeing and understanding.” – Dhamma chakka pavattana sutta
The Buddha goes to say elsewhere that his Middle Way is the path of mindfulness, reason, and moderation. In that the Mind is not lost in, attached to, clinging to, devoted to identified with extremes of any kind. Not only in action and deeds but also in beliefs. There is in this same sutta where the Buddha explains that the Middle Way differs from the established way of the Brahmins in that it does not reject this world as being illusory and some other world beyond as being the only reality. The middle way is to rationally come to understand that both this world and the supramundane exists as reality.
This is another instance where I see a parallel between Buddhadhamma and the ONA. The ONA tries to rationally understand this causal realm or world of experience, and a supramundane one referred to as the Acausal. It does not reject either one as being more real or illusory than the other, but instead tries to rationally apprehend the nature and reality of both.
But I bring up this Middle Way between extremes for another reason: The Five Virtues – Pancha Sila – most often translated as the Five Precepts. Besides the 3 Jewels, the Buddha states that if a follower of the dhamma wants to express his following of dhamma in a deeper and more practical way, then he should take an oath to uphold the 5 virtues: 1) Not to kill; 2) Not to steal; 3) Not to practice sexual misconduct; 4) No false speech; and 5) Stay away from intoxicants.
Outside of a living Buddhist Culture such as Southeast Asia, and shared in written format, these 5 precepts look to the Western mind like the 10 commandment. In that it is assumed that if a Buddhist breaks one of these precepts that they are no longer a real Buddhist or that they are going to hell. This is a misconception, because religious and moralistic commandments don’t fit into Buddhism which is a rational way of life. The very essence of Buddhism is both the Middle Way, and the concept of Cause and Fruit.
These 5 precepts are basically only guides given to be followed under oath/vow due to their Cause and Fruit nature. Running around killing random people in public is unproductive and causes misery in you and others. You go to jail for life if you are caught in this modern world. In the Buddha’s time when clans and tribes were the norm, killing somebody from a different clan meant you start a clan feud and war. It’s like a dumb Blood killing a Crip for no reason. It’s stupid and it causes a gang war where a lot of people die for no productive reason. Thus if you are the type of rational person who desires to avoid such a life of gang wars, clan wars, prison time, it’s obvious that you should not be a serial killer.
But people in the West who learn about Buddhism from a book, and a lot of wackos in the East often forget to consider what the Middle Way means in regards to these 5 precepts and they will drift into the extreme. For example some Buddhists sects take the precept of not killing to means to be vegetarians so as to avoid harming animals. These people forget that the Buddha died eating meet, and that Buddhism became the world religion that it is today because of the efforts of kings like Ashoka. The Buddha never gave a command to any of his royal students or military students to give up their secular responsibilities for a life of a passive beggar. In fact, like any religion, Buddhism in its early era was asserted down the throats of the ignorant anariya with force [for their own good of course].
Not to engage in sexual misconduct should also be self explanatory but it isn’t to the anariya. Running around ass raping people in public, holding bukkake parties with HIV infested transsexual Thai hookers, is not smart. I mean sure you have the freedom to do so if you want, but whose fault is it when your ass gets taken to jail and you get ass raped in turn by a black guy with a really big penis, or if you get AIDS? It’s your own damn fault. And it’s this cause and fruit chain reaction that is essence of these precepts. An intelligent and rational individual will produce productive End Results in whatever she or he does. And idiot will reap idiotic results.
For example my mom last week just told me news about this one bhikkhu [monk]. For several years he had been making “holy water” to cleanse his followers with. This is not out of the ordinary. Different people at different stages of their Self-Evolution will need different things such as the mental crutch of holy water. But this one monk asked his students to wash themselves in his bathtub. Well, one day a girl was online and she saw videos of herself naked washing herself. She realized it was at this one monk’s house and reported him to the cops. The cops finds out that this one monk had installed a very small hidden camera in his restroom and had been recording girls bathing and washing themselves with his “holy water” for many years. They found a stash of home made porn, and I don’t even wanna know what he was doing with himself when he watched it with his fellow monks. He got taken to jail. This happened in a different country.
Now this monk has what you call “Dukkha,” which in English is mistranslated as “suffering.” Dukkha is the etymological opposite of Sukkha [related to the word Sugar meaning sweet] which means “Pleasant,” “Joy,” Happy,” “at peace,” and “Content.” Dukkha just means you are unhappy, experiencing something unpleasant. Which is what this so called monk is now experience, and it is his own fault. If he was a genuine Ariya – Noble and Honourable – he would have been intelligent enough to avoid the causal fruit of his actions.
This is not to say that what he did was “bad.” Buddhism is not concerned with “bad,” and “good.” The Buddha never used words meaning bad or good in the original Pali. The essence of Buddhism is Self-Progression, Self-Evolution, and Reason, such that as a rational individual who is serious about your quest to become more than what you are, taking a side step from your quest of Self Mastery in life to have decadent sex with zoo animals and masturbating to videos of girls whipping their asses in your restroom is not only unproductive and not only has nothing to do with your quest, but it makes your quest all the more harder to accomplish.
The Precept of False Speech is most often put into English as not lying. This is a simplification that generates a lot of misunderstanding. If you are a monk or Buddhist and a known house robber came up to you and asked where you live, you as someone in a way of life dedicated to the ideal of Enlightenment, should be smart enough to know that telling the robber the truth will cause you a lot of dukkha. False Speech here would be like if I were to put ads in the news paper introducing people to my new company and I went around telling people about it and selling those interested shares and stocks in this non-existent company. Doing this is not “bad” it just has the potential to be very unproductive and counterproductive when I get caught. Especially if I have a family to support. My getting caught for such False Speech would cause dukkha in my whole family.
Not to use intoxicant drinks should also be self explanatory to anybody with have a brain in regard to its abuse and causal results of such abuse. But the dumb people have a difficult time with this one too. They tend to just take the easy mental route of less rational thinking and to just say that this precept says that all Buddhists cannot drink beer or alcohol. Which is not true, nor true to the essence of rational moderation and the Middle Way. Drinking three 40 ouncers of Old English and driving isn’t very smart. Doing anything intoxicated with cars and machinery isn’t really smart. If you are in the business of avoiding dukkha, then you should understand when to drink and when not to drink and the potential causal results of abusing alcohol. I didn’t talk about stealing things because that is obvious.
Most Westerners who learn Buddhism from books or the internet also think that all Buddhists follow these 5 precepts, or that it is required that a person follow these to be a real Buddhist. This is a Christian mentality. In my culture nobody even talks about or mentions the 5 precepts but old people and the really religious.
In my culture [Khmer/Thai] taking your oath/vow to observe the Five Precepts is a religious/cultural rite that takes place at the temple or in front of a Buddha statue or monk, where you take your oath as a way of showing a deeper religious devotion to dhamma. This is called “Gan Sel,” Gan means to “Hold,” or “Keep,” and “Sel,” is our form of the word “Sila.” And you don’t Gan Sel every day. You only observe these 5 Precepts every Fridays [I think], during the Full Moon, and on certain religious days. These days are called “Ngay Sel,” which just means “Day of Sila.” If you are old [with your hair all grey] then you gan sel every day. So basically in a living Buddhist Culture, most people do not obligate themselves to uphold the five precepts. Only those who are deeply religious do.
I brought up the 5 Precepts because of the ONA’s definition of the Left Hand Path being “Amoral,” and because the concept of Culling which is an essential part of the ONA. Morality is relative. Whose morals are we talking about when we say “Amoral?” The ONA is not strictly Amoral. It does have its own ethics and morals or codes of conduct and behaviour. Are we talking about Christian Moralism? Or the Morals and Ethics of mundane social order? If so then being “amoral” in this context is not “unbuddhistic.” Because Buddhism is essentially a Way of Reason and a Middle Way where nothing is condemned, but where you should – as a self proclaimed intelligent person – indulge in Life with reason understanding that your actions wyrdfully generates causal fruit. There is nothing rational about mundane or Christian ethics or morals.
It’s bad and evil for Muslims to kill Americans, but it’s heroic and patriotic for Americans to kill Muslims? That’s not rational. It’s bad and evil to kill an unborn baby, but it’s holy and good to kill an abortion specialist? That’s not rational. It’s good and religious and ethical to practice ahimsa and to be passive as a Tibetan Buddhist to avoid causing dukkha in people? Then when Communist China subjugates your country and gradually kills your customs, ways of life, traditions, people, culture causing mass dukkha in your people, it’s good? That’s not rational.
Being passive and avoiding violence because you believe in the principle of Non-Violence is one thing. Not doing anything when somebody uses Violence to harm people around you is not following the principle of Non-Violence because you still allowed it to take place. In this regard I have more respect for Chinese and Japanese Buddhists in that they practice martial arts, and for the Theravada Sri Lankans who are using force against the oppressive Hindus for their future peace and security as a people.
As an intelligent person, you should be able to know when to use force or to cull and for what reasons and end results. The war, murder, and violence of the American and French Revolutions at the moment they were happening may be described as immoral and violent; but the causal results we now enjoy – our freedom, liberty, and self determination – is a direct fruit of such acts taken back then. The essence is Reason, and understanding aeonics and causality. Culling with the ONA does not always mean killing though. There are different forms of culling such as war, or long term selective breeding.
Brahmavihara
The Brahmavihara or the Four Sublime States of Mind are the most over looked and neglected aspects of Buddhism. A Westerner who learns about Buddhism from a dead source usually doesn’t learn about the brahmavihara because the books they read don’t talk about them. Some suttas describes the Four Sublime States as the state of Mind needed for a person to evolve or become Brahma [the ideation of a God], or the the state of Mind cultivated which results in Enlightenment.
Without considering the Four Sublime States, to a Westerner, Buddhism seems pessimistic and almost “anti-life-ish.” Like a bunch of beggars and suicidal people who thinks life is full of suffering and that it’s best to just die and not bother living life. This is because the common Westerner gets their Buddhism from a dead source which does not include or present every aspect of Buddhism.
Brahmavihara is made up of two words: “Brahma” here not meaning a literal God-Being, but the ideation of a state of godhood or supreme state of existence; and the word “Vihara” means “Abode,” “Place,” but here it means a psychological “place” or State of Mind.
The first state of Mind is Metta. This word when put into English is usually mistranslated as “Kindness,” or “Love,” or “Loving Kindness.” This really misses the essence of the word. Metta is the Pali form of the Sanskrit word “Maitri,” [which is related to the word “Mithras,”] meaning “Friendship,” “Companionship,” “Intimate Association.” It is actually a relative of the British and Commonwealth word/concept: “Mate,” meaning a friend. A better English word to capture the essence of Metta is “Fraternity,” or “Brotherly Love,” “Sisterly Love.” It describes the enduring and unconditional love and relationship between two loyal friends in life. Metta in essence is that which exists in an unspeakable way between a dog and its human companion. The word “Maitri,” by the way also shares the same root word as the word “Maituna” which means to Copulate, to Have Sex, so in this sense, Maitri is also related to the English word “to Mate.”
The second state of Mind is Karuna. In English this word is translated as “Compassion.” Which is nice and flowery, but not quite the essence of the original word. Karuna in Pali [not in Sankrit] has the quality of “Affection,” and “Tenderness,” for someone. As in the tender affection a mother has for her baby. Or the tender affection between two lovers. Or the affection between very close friends. This word is a distant relative of the English word to “Care.” When you Care for someone, you take Care of them and provide for or relieve their needs.
The third state of Mind is Mudita. In English this is rendered as “Joy.” Which is fine and generalistic, but it doesn’t quite capture the essence. Mudita is the same in Sanskrit as it is in Pali. It means “Delight,” “Pleasure,” “A Sexual Embrace.” This doesn’t mean that Mudita means Buddhist monks and nuns should go around sexually embracing people naked to be reborn as Brahma. It describes a state of Mind or attitude in life where you as a person experiences life in such a way that it gives you Mudita.
These first three together – as with the very essence of Buddhism – incorporates the concept of cause and fruit. Close companionship [maitri] gives rise to Intimate Affection [karuna] which give rise to mudita, in context to two lovers, mudita would be the sex part. These first three also goes with the rest of Buddhism in that Buddhism is essentially a communitarian way of life. You can’t be a Buddhist without the Third Jewel: Sangha.
So if you desire to put your Buddhism into practice and manifest a strong sangha – community – you learn to understand that such manifestation works causally in steps just like a relationship between lovers. It begins first as a state of Mind. It moves to established fellowship. It gets more intimate and becomes affection and the caring and providing for one another’s needs. And it consummates in close intimacy of lives where each member of the community has their needs met, are provided for so that they have no worries – dukkha – and are sukkha and thus Life becomes delightful, pleasurable, and an exultation of being, which is the Supreme Abode of Brahma.
When we understand this concept of causal effect we can then come to understand that cultivating a different state of Mind, in that you either reject others, or set yourself off as not needing others, that this state of mind thus wyrdfully gives rise to chain reactions of effects. It manifests no quality or sense of fellowship with people around you and in the West even with your own family and blood relations. There is no affection between people, or between families. Nobody cares about anybody else. Everybody is busy caring about themselves. This manifests a state of social existence when there is no community. Where a city is just a lose mixture of single cells out fending for themselves. This state of existence in turn gives rise to Dukkha: stress, worry, loneliness, sorrow, depression, distrust, antisocial behaviour, and so on. Such kinds of dukkha such as high stress – as we are now beginning to learn – kills. In essence, you have the power to kill your own self by a simple state of mind.
The forth state of Mind is one that I see a parallel in the ONA. It is Upekkha in Pali or Upaksha in Sanskrit. This word has a mess of mistranslations and different means do to mistranslations. It is sometimes translated into English as “Renunciation,” and this concept, Upekkha comes to mean the Buddhist should reject the world and be a reclusive hermit living in a cave somewhere alone. Or most of the other time this word is put into English as “Equanimity,” which is a more sensible and realistic translation more closer to the original essence of the Pali and Sanskrit, but still greatly misses the mark. Equanimity in this sense here meaning a state of Mind where you are not affected in anyway by outside circumstances and events.
Upekkha having the meaning of Equanimity is due in part to a misunderstanding of the original quality and essence of the Sanskrit word Upaksha, which has the superficial meaning of “Neglect,” or to be “Indifferent” to something. The word itself comes from two different words put together, and its when you extract the quality of these two words and put them together that you begin to get the actual essence of the word. “Upa” means “Up,” “Above,” or “Beyond.” “Aksha” means to “Look.” Together you get the concept of “Looking Beyond.” In the West, the closest word or idea to this concept of Looking Beyond is the word “Aeonics” the ONA uses. Especially in the ONA phrase “Aeonic Insight.”
To give a pragmatic example of Upekkha in this sense lets take the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. There is a group of people – mostly marine biologists – who are trying to figure out a way to kill off a species of purple star fish from the Great Reef. So, if you were to ask a mundane without the ability to sense of look beyond, they will cry out in protest and say that such an act of trying to kill off a species is not nice. If you were to ask me, I would say: “Meh, go for it, why not.” To a mundane my response seems indifferent, as if I neglect to understand that killing a species of star fish is wrong.
But from my perspective I watched an entire documentary on PBS about the threat a species of very fast breeding star fish are posing to the Great Barrier Reef and its entire ecosystem, and if something is not done about these star fish, this priceless ecosystem will die out. So I can Look Beyond the present mundane moment, input into my biological super computer the factor of killing off this species, or curbing their reproductive capabilities, then come out with a theoretical future where the Earth’s largest natural structure and its precious ecosystem is safe. Thus with my aeonic insight in this regard, I can afford to appear indifferent and not react as a mundane would react.
If you are a person seeking a Life of delight and pleasurable experience, then Upekkha is the supreme state of mind to cultivate. This is because the average Mind of the mundane/anariya is very open and prone to ideas and worrying over unsubstantiated hysteria, which is a state of dukkha. For example for thousands of years you have a race of mental idiots in Christianity worrying over the end of the world being just around the corner. Or you have these same people giving into their physical desires as a natural organism would, and then they feel guilty for fornicating and fret about going to hell.
With Upekkha, if somebody were to come up to me and say: “Ooh your going to hell, the end of the world is coming.” I would say: “So?” Or more realistically you have real people out there worried about immigration or whether or not rich people should be taxed. With Upekkha I can afford to say: “I don’t give a shit really. You’ll learn the hard way, I’m not gunna waste my breath explaining shit to you.”
Being able to see beyond current causal events and to see the future end results give you the advantage of putting things into proper aeonic perspective in such a way that the goingons and events that may arise and happen does not influence or effect your thoughts, emotions, or actions. Thus you are Master of your own Mind. Whereas with a mundane/anariya his/her thoughts, emotions, and actions are influence by outside influences: the news, urban legend, myths, hysteria, political propaganda, sectarian propaganda, spin doctors, etc. Not being Master of your own Mind – your own thoughts, and emotions – is very dangerous. How do you think people in the Middle East can be talked into strapping a bomb to themselves and blowing themselves up? How do you think concepts like racism and apartheid exists and is perpetuated where the lives of a whole race suffers dukkha, because the idiots of another race are mentally weak enough to believe the crap outside influences feeds them?
The Core Concept
The original core concept of Buddhism, or the fundamental idea of Buddhism is based on oral tradition and oral transmission. 500BC was a time when your average Punjabi [or whatever people lived in India at the time] were illiterate. The Buddha was asked by many people if they could put his teaching into Sanskrit. The Buddha always objected to the idea stating that his teaching must be transmitted in “our common language” which at the time was Pali.
At the time Sanskrit was a language jealously horded by the Brahmin elite, in the same way that the Catholic elite horded and jealously guarded Ecclesiastical Latin from the common people. You had to be a Brahmin or related to a Brahmin to be able to learn Sanskrit. At the time if you were of a lower cast and you knew Sanskrit, or learned it, you would be punished with death. Pali was the common vernacular tongue spoken by the common mass during that time. These common people who spoke Pali were illiterate. Pali actually does not have its own system of writing. That’s how illiterate they were. You used whatever alphabet you knew to write your common Pali. Pali is to Sanskrit by the way is what street grade Ebonics is to Shakespearian English. For example in vernacular Ebonics the phrase: “Wat it do ma niggas, you niggas down ta gets yo grub on?” in Ecclesiastical English is: “How art thou mine goodly gentlemen, I say, art thou interested in dining with me?”
Not having a means to transmit information in the form of writing to share dhamma to the common mass, the Buddha had to innovate the means and method of teaching his dhamma to these illiterate people. During the Buddha’s time, the dominate religion was Brahmanism, which was already at the time written down in volumes of very well written Vedas and Upanashads. Such well written books had written in them precise myths, teachings, lessons, beliefs, and so on. This format would not work with an oral transmission because the average common illiterate just does not have a photographic memory where they can memorize 24,000 pages of the Tipitakas.
To solve this problem the Buddha used two methods. The first method was to strip his teachings down to key concepts and key words, then list them numerically. This is why in Buddhism, you have things like the 2 Truths, 3 Jewels, the 4 Noble Truths, the 4 Supreme States, the 5 Aggregates, the 7 Branches, 8 Fold Way, etc. So then it becomes easy to orally teach somebody by saying to them: “Alright the 3 Jewels are: Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, got it?” Then for each key word the Buddha build around it a simple explanation. Like this: “Ok, Buddha, that’s me or Mind; Dhamma that means what I teach you, or the teachings of Nature; Sangha that’s those guys in the orange robes or our kinfolk, got it?”
So from with this first method, something cool happens. The object is Vibhajjavada – to directly experience life – and then use what you experience to learn to apprehend a deeper understanding of each of those key words and simple explanations, so that you add your own insights and understandings – born from your own Mind, Self-Evolution, and Experiences – to those key words. So in this way, nothing needs to be written down, and everything is self-evolutionary and highly personalized. The core teachings of the Buddha serves only as sign posts to show you the Middle Path to Sambuddhi [Self-Enlightenment]. In other words, if you are truly intelligent, and truly understand something, you will be able to put it into your own words and express it through your own Mind.
The second method the Buddha utilized was to incorporate brainiacs with no life called monks and nuns [bhikkhus and bhikkhunis]. In the Buddha’s times, these monks and nuns were people who actually left their homes to be bums. They wore rag, which they got from cemeteries that are discarded peaces of clothing they patched together. They would use a generic dye they made from commonly available plants and crushed rocks, which turned the rags into a muddy orange color. They hung out together and begged for food. Then they spent their whole day memorizing – word for word – the teachings of the Buddha as he taught it to them. These monks and nuns originally served the purpose as living, breathing, walking, begging references. Like wikipedia with two legs.
So if you were into the Buddha’s dhamma back then during 500BC and you were walking around memorizing your 2 Truths, 3 Jewels, and the simple meanings of the 8 Fold Path, and you could not remember what 8 Fold Path number 6, 7, and 8 were and what they meant, you walk yourself to where these monks and nuns hung out and asked them, and they would find one among them who specialized in memorizing the bit of dhamma you were asking about to recite it for you.
And this is all that these monks today actually still recite. It sounds all mystical and magical today when you hear a group of monks chant Pali stuff in these ceremonies, but if you were to actually translate what they were chanting, they would be some rather unexciting and nonmystical stuff, like a group of people with photographic memory reciting a cook book in a dead language.
So the very basic and fundamental idea in the Buddha’s method is not the making of certain classes of people [the monks] into priests or religious authorities, as Westerners would assume they were, being that they are so used to such ideas and structures in their indigenous religions. These monks serve only as an ancient kind of reference source of key words and core teachings the Buddha put together. The genuine objective is for you – the Buddhist – who is on a path to Self-Enlightenment to use those key concepts as sign posts and guides, but to add to them – build onto them – insights you yourself draw out from within and from your own direct experiences in Life. In this way, the memplex of Buddhism originally was intended to be “open source,” like remembering HTML coding so that you can design your own myspace page unique to who you are as a person, imbued with your own ideas. Self-Enlightenment by the very meaning of the term means that you yourself, by your own efforts are your own Enlightener, not a Buddha or some religion a Buddha invented.
In principle, Buddhadhamma is a cluster of concepts and ideas that helps you find your way in the Middle Path to Self-Enlightenment. In praxis – the application of the 4 Noble Truths, the procession of the 8 Fold Path, and the expression of the Four Supreme States of Mind, is a communitarian Way of Life, in which each person strives to learn to understand how the physical world works causally so that each person and the collective as a whole can use what knowledge they learn to manifest for each other and themselves a life rich with Sukkha.
So it is here that I also see several similarities with Buddhadhamma and the Sinister Way of the ONA. The ONA is Open Source and it began as an oral tradition. It comes with key concepts, and specific methodologies to be applied in the real world, like “The Seven Fold Way,” “The Sinister Dialectic,” “The Sinister Method,” “The Star Game,” “The Tree of Wyrd,” “The Law of the Sinister-Numen,” and so on. You as a Dreccian must live life directly and cultivate Pathe-Mathos, and use your own experiences, insights, and wisdom you gain from Life to evolve the Sinister Way for the next generation using those core concepts as sign posts. And this next generation learns the Sinister Way through you – a living person – and via the Kulture of the ONA.
Buddha The Adversary
There is no historical or archeological evidence that a Gautama Buddha ever existed. I personally believe the Buddha was not a real person but only a central Icon of a mythos. Unlike other religions, sasana preahput doesn’t change, doesn’t devalue in nature without a Buddha, or doesn’t it need a Buddha. People can ask: “Well, how can a religion be real or valid without its religious founder?” Because the sasana – instructions – have already been written down, or put into practice. In the very same way that the Founding Fathers of America could not have existed as real people at all and could have been the made up imaginary people of a historian, because the Constitution is already written and followed. Those founding fathers are practically irrelevant to the functionality of the Constitution.
We’re not dealing with any real dogma and myth with Buddhism that is depended on the existence of a Buddha. With something like Christianity things are different due to its nature as a dogmatic religion based on myths that are taught as literal fact. For example Jesus is the saviour of Humanity who died on the cross to wash us with his blood. If he did not exist, then the fundamental concept of salvation doesn’t make any sense. The bible also gives a lineage of Jesus where he is a direct descendant of a whole host of weird biblical characters, a King Solomon, a King David, all the way to Adam. Which means also that if Solomon and David are not historical people – there is no evidence they ever existed – then how can Jesus also exist, and in turn, how can the concept of salvation make sense?
People who are anti-christian like to spend their time attacking, debating, the existence of Jesus, of God, of Noah’s Ark, etc. because the absence of such things actually devalues Christianity and its dogmas and myths. But the same debates don’t work with Buddhism. You can’t debate that a god does not exist, because Buddhadhamma doesn’t really give two shits on the idea of a god in the first place. You can try and prove that the Buddha is fake, but it doesn’t matter because the principles have already been implanted in peoples minds who express it and live it. There is no creation story in Buddhadhamma to debate and attack. The most you can do is attack your own assumptions of your own Western apprehension of Buddhadhamma. Which does very little to the Buddhism practiced by living cultures in Asia.
Historically the first Buddhism monks were Greeks from Northern India. The first writings associated with a Buddhism were written by these monks of Greek extract. The first statues of the Buddha were based on Greek statues of Apollo. The iconic hair bun on the Buddha’s head can be found on Apollo’s head. The robe the Buddha wore and what monks wear is a Greek Toga. The concept of Dhamma in Buddhism corresponds ver closely to ancient Greek concepts of the “Logos.”
These first “Buddhists” or the engineers of “Buddhism” merged the idea of Apollo which is a god associated with Light [the Sun] with an antinomian and amoral god from the Vedas named Rudra-Shivaya. Before Gautama Buddha, Shiva as Mahayogi [Lord of Magic and Meditation] was depicted in the Lotus Asana and was even referred to as the Buddha meaning the Enlightened One. So the basic idea behind an Apollo-Shivaya cult icon is “Enlightenment and Liberation via the Adversarial and Antinomian opposition to the established order and standard norm.”
Rudra-Shivaya was as adversarial and antinomian as you can get in the Vedic Traditions. You have to remember that the Vedas and its mythos existed for literal aeons before Christianity, so they didn’t have Christian concepts and god-forms to work with. Rudra essentially means “Feral,” “Wild,” and “Untamed,” and was the God of the Hunt. In his aspect as Shiva, he was the Lord of the Asuras, which are the bad guys in Vedic mythology who populated the underworld, like demons in Christianity. His color was orange.
There are stories in the Vedic mythos of Shiva raping under aged girls, masturbating in public, having sex with other male gods, killing people, smoking bhang [cannabis], drinking concoctions made of his other sacred plant Angle Trumpet, burning cities with his third eye, etc. Shiva dislikes human arrogance and the façade of civility and civil society and its law and order we humans hide ourselves inside. He essentially destroys every source of human arrogance, vanity, and self-righteousness to Liberate such Humans from their self-imposed limitations to the greater reality that exists outside the walls of their cities and religions.
We can ask ourselves: If these engineers of Buddhism picked the closest thing to a “devil,” or adversarial archetype from the Vedas, did they then oppose the Vedic-Brahmanic Tradition? The answer is yes. Buddhism in 500BC stood in direct dialectical opposition to Brahmanism and Vedic dogma and teachings.
Nearly ever core teaching of Buddhism was a dialectically counter-teaching to the dogma and teaching of Brahmanism. Back during this time Brahmanism ruled most of India with an iron sectarian fist. Every body lives in strict castes. You were born into your caste and if you did something not associated with your caste Brahmins punished you with death. Like ancient Israel, the Brahmins taught that the only way to be saved was to sacrifice animals at temples to the gods; which the Brahmins supplied for donations. Buddhism on the other hand taught that the god does not exist, and that killing animals to invisible gods was useless and unproductive.
Brahmanism taught that each person had an “Atma,” which was this invisible spirit Self that lives somewhere inside your body. This atma was immortal and that when you die, this atma – which is the real you – leaves the dead body and goes to inhabit one of the abodes of the gods, and later it is said that this atma reincarnates in other bodies. Buddhism on the other hand says that such a concept is ridiculous. The Buddhist doctrine of “Anatta/Anatma” basically says that the atma or some invisible spirit self does not exist. That our sense of self is the end product of our mind and 5 sense.
When Brahmanism taught that Brahmin priests were essential to people’s spiritual salvation, Buddhism taught that priests are scoundrels and liars. When Brahmanism taught that religious rites and ceremonies were essential, Buddhism taught that rites, and religions altogether were deceptive, enslaving, and useless. When Brahmanism taught that the Vedic scriptures was essential to your spiritual salvation, Buddhism taught that the Vedas were a pile of useless stories that did not enlighten a person, but just filled their minds with irrational fiction.
Of course, the Brahmins and the world order of India at the time did not like Buddhism, calling it nastika – a heathen cult – and for several centuries there were mass slaughtering of Buddhists. The Vedic Tradition’s war against Buddhism went on for so long and was actually so successful that Buddhism does not exist as a major religion in its own native soil: India. It actually did not exist in India up until recently. But during this war, Buddhism did leave a victorious mark. It killed Brahmanism and forced it to evolve into what is today called “Hinduism,” which is a mixture of Vedic Tradition and restated Buddhist concepts. No Hindu is going to acknowledge this though.
When Buddhism made a sectarian exodus out of India, the first places it took root in was Sri Lanka and the Southeast Asian peninsula. At the time the native there in each respective place were Shivites and Shaktas. When Buddhism came to Southeast Asia, the Mon and Khmer there were originally devotees of Shiva and Shakti called Preah Siva and Preahme Uma. These people eventually merges their ancestral Shaivism and Shaktism with Buddhism, in the same way that the Chinese merged Buddhism with their indigenous Taoism, how Buddhism in Japan was merged with their indigenous Shintoism, and how the Tibetans merged Buddhism with their indigenous Bon.
So if you look at the temple complex at Angkor in Cambodia, you will see that it is built with both Shaivic and Buddhist elements. There are Shiva Lingas [phalluses] and Buddhas present, there are even Buddhas etched into the side of Lingas. This is also why when you go to a Khmer or Thai or Lao Buddhist wat [temple] you will most often see a Buddha seated on a tripled coiled Naga with seven heads. It is a synchronistic icon which also represents the much older Shiva [Buddha] and Shakti-Kundalini as the coiled seven headed Naga.
This ancient aspect of Buddhism is an obvious place where I see many parallels between what we now called Buddhism – more specifically Khmer/Thai Theravada Buddhism – and the ONA’s Sinister Way. The ONA has its own Mythos where it uses the adversarial archetype named “Satan,” who is also identified as Lucifer: Satan corresponding to Shivaya, and Lucifer corresponding with Apollo. The ONA refers to its archetype of the Sinister and Primal Nature as “Baphomet,” which of course corresponds to Uma-Shakti that Naga.
The ONA’s concept of the “Sinister” also has parallels with this historic aspect of Buddhism. “Sinister” here meaning the Latin for “Left” as in that which is not Right. The Right side referring to the dominant Judeo-Christian Ethos that plagues present Western matrix, in the same way that Brahmanism’s Ethos oppressed and ruled over the social order of India circa 500BC. In the very same exact sense that Buddhism dialectically taught ideas and principles adversarial to the establish Right Hand Path of Vedic Brahmanism as a means of Liberation and Enlightenment, I also believe that the Sinister Way of opposing the establish mundane order and Christian Ethos of the West is a means to Liberation and Enlightenment.
I can go on for days and pages about Buddhism, and perhaps one day I will produce a book on this subject which means a lot to me, as one thing my culture and my Buddhism teaches is that one cannot forget one’s ancestral roots. A Tree needs its roots to grow and bare fruit. One aspect of Occidental social order and Western people which I greatly dislike is that they have no sense or respect of roots, ancestry, culture, blood, and community. In this regard I also appreciate the ONA and David Myatt is trying to remedy this lack of root and foundation by reintroducing concepts of a Kollective, a Kulture, and Traditions, Tribalism, and Clans. There are many other parallels between the two Ways, if we go down to a finer level, but I am already at page 21. I think I have explained enough to get a point across.
The point is the ONA is new compared to an ancient 2500 year old Buddhism. Buddhism began simple and modest, and adversarial as an aural tradition, in the same way the ONA began. Buddhism was not very significant and was greatly looked down upon and reject by the social order of its beginning moments; but over time – as it was allowed to freely evolve – its living cultures and people produces a world religion that has inspired many countless Minds to seek self illumination. In time, if the ONA is allowed the freedom to evolve and grow through each of us Dreccians, as we pass it down to each successive generation, a new culture will emerge and one can only imagine what its Galactic Imperative will one day give birth to a thousand years from now.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
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