What it takes to be a Buddha

In the beginning is the heart.

The heart manifests nature.

Nature is the primal manifestation of the heart.

The heart radiates nirvana.

Nirvana is the primal radiation of the heart.

Nature and nirvana suffer from separation.

Nature and nirvana give birth to the person.

Nature and nirvana exist within the person.

Nature and nirvana exist in separation within the person.

The person suffers from the separation of nature and nirvana.

The person lacks wholeness. The person lacks health.

The person starts to evolve within nature.

Evolution is love.

Evolution is the love of nature expressed by the person.

Evolution is the integration of the person.

Evolution is the integration of nature and nirvana, as the person.

The destiny of the person is to heal the separation of nature and nirvana,

and thus to heal the person.

The destiny of the person is to love nature.

(The love of nature attracts nirvana.

Nature and nirvana in union is the culmination of evolution.)

Love of nature is necessary for the wholeness of the person.

Love of nature is necessary for the healing of the person.

To heal is to make whole.

To make whole is to save.

That which saves is a savior.

Love of nature makes whole.

Love of nature heals.

Love of nature saves.

Love of nature is a healer.

Love of nature is the healer.

Love of nature is a savior.

Love of nature is the savior.

Love of nature heals the person.

A healed person is a buddha.

The union of nature and nirvana exists within and as a buddha.

A buddha is a consummate lover of nature.

No love of nature? No buddha.

No buddha? No love of nature.

Among God's Primates

Dr. Zaius: What I know of man was written long ago,
set down by the greatest ape of all,
our lawgiver. Cornelius, come here.
Reach into my pocket.
Read to him the 29th scroll, 6th verse.

Cornelius: "Beware the beast man,
for he is the devil's pawn.
Alone among God's primates,
he kills for sport or lust or greed.
Yea, he will murder his brother
to possess his brother's land.
Let him not breed in great numbers,
for he will make a desert
of his home and yours.
Shun him.
Drive him back into his jungle lair.
For he is the harbinger of death."

Dr. Zaius: I found nothing in the cave
to alter that conception of man, and I still live by its injunction.

Thank God for Evolution!

'Creatheist' reconciles evolution, religion

Northwest Florida Daily News

The Rev. Michael Dowd says science can prove other stories correct NICEVILLE — The Rev. Michael Dowd is on a mission to reconcile science and religion. “Who would let a first-century dentist fill our children’s teeth?” Dowd asked Tuesday. “But we’re letting first-century theologians fill our children’s head every day.” A self-proclaimed evolutionary evangelist, Dowd recently released “Thank God for Evolution!”, which states that understanding evolution can actually enhance faith.

See the good reverend's website.

The First Couple

There's a lot hidden within the pages of Bereishith (also known by its Greek-derived name, "the book of Genesis"), not immediately apparent to the first perusal. The rabbis have only scratched the surface, and the Kabbalah guides one to the gate that each must open for each-self.

Take the story of the creation of Adam and Eve. Layers upon layers exist within that set of narratives. Let's just take one layer, the production of Eve from the rib of Adam. The first true human had not-quite-yet-human ("NQYH") parents. The NQYH couple initially responsible for the first true humans mingled gametes and the fertilized egg resided within the female of the couple. Usually, when the first true member of a species appears, it appears in the form of one particular individual. In the first true human case, something else happened, something you don't see very often. The female member of the NQYH couple came from a long line of females who inherited a particular genetic predisposition: the tendency to ovulate two eggs simultaneously. On the day that the first true human experienced conception, the NQYH female had ovulated doubly, in the manner of her own female ancestors. Both eggs, once fertilized with two different sperm from the NQYH male, developed into embryos, then fetuses: one fully human male fetus and one fully human female fetus. When these dizygotic twins (or "non-identical twins") breached, the male one appeared first, then the female followed, an event that eventually gave rise to the story of HaShem creating Adam before He created Eve.

God and Evolution

During the second half of the nineteenth century, it became common to speak of a war between science and religion. But over the course of the twentieth century, that hostility gradually subsided. Following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate established a commission to review and correct the condemnation of Galileo at his trial of 1633. In 1983 he held a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, at which he remarked that the experience of the Galileo case had led the Church “to a more mature attitude and a more accurate grasp of the authority proper to her,” enabling her better to distinguish between “essentials of the faith” and the “scientific systems of a given age.”

From September 21 to 26, 1987, the pope sponsored a week of study on science and religion at Castel Gandolfo. On June 1, 1988, reflecting on the results of his conference, he sent a positive and encouraging letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, steering a middle course between a separation and a fusion of the disciplines. He recommended a program of dialogue and interaction, in which science and religion would seek neither to supplant each other nor to ignore each other. They should search together for a more thorough understanding of one another’s competencies and limitations, and they should look especially for common ground. Science should not try to become religion, nor should religion seek to take the place of science. Science can purify religion from error and superstition, while religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each discipline should therefore retain its integrity and yet be open to the insights and discoveries of the other....

-- Avery Cardinal Dulles

Pledge of Biological Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to evolution
of the biological diversity on earth,
and to the theistic guidance from which it evolved,
one DNA under God, cellularly divisible,
with allopatric speciation and adenine triphosphate for all.