All the names of God.

A younger friend was telling me about her recent collission with her grandmother about religion and specifically about God and she wanted my opinion about that.
This is what I told her:

It gets eassier once you realize that there is no male or female god, that there is no christian, islamic, hindu or buddhist god. There also is no angry god nor a loving god.The only God that does excist is the Universal One, who needs no doctrine, no churches, no bibles, no punnishing or redirecting.What I belief in is that God is no being but a way to belief in.A path to follow, like I follow the path of Buddha.If you chose a path you will find that some of us are fanatic and that they force their own will up on you, because they were drilled that way by their own parents or a tragedy in their lives who left them no other choice than to be forced into whatever path they had to follow. Once you've chosen your own path you can start with a clean bill and take the lessons given to you or you don't take them. Or just take the ones who did help make you a better/stronger/lovingly person.Seeing the world as a creation from the one and only creator makes it a little less hard to understand, because underneath the pain and sorrow of today, you will also find breathtaking beauty, awesome clever geniusses, unbelievable clemency and stunningly deep reasonings, wich you might never have guessed they were there.If you believe that God/Creator/Spirit (no matter what or who you chose to call it) is in absolutely everything arround and inside you, you can start to see the wonder or miracle that makes you you, because everything is related. Everything has a bottom or a root. Look at the atoms in your body under a microscope, watch how a butterfly slips from a cocoon after it was a completely other being first (caterpillar), or find out how a storm was born by it's own intentions, where did it come from, why did it come your way instead of going south, east, north or west? Get in deeper in everything, watch, analyse, feel and write down everything, to the details.Who made a fly have facet eyes? What makes rock turn into gold or diamonds? What makes clouds have so many different colours and shapes? What made you cry last night and what would happen if you didn't feel that way? What made your grandmother that fanatic? Go in deeper and deeper untill you get that wonderfull Eureka! moment. Because that small Aha! feeling is in fact a very tiny enlightement. And when you get one, more will come and stronger and deeper and widening everything you see, feel, hear, say or think.That is also God, because "he" is inside of you as much as you are inside of "him". Take a deep breath of fresh air, hold on a few seconds and remember that in fact you are breathing in God. You drink it, you wash in it, you write with it and you sleep on it. It is in an animal, in every element on earth, it is in the lightening, in the rain, in the waterfall in a pool in wich kids are playing. Your clothings are made from it and even what you breath out is part of it. Every single cell in your body is made of it and so is Naveen and even the films he makes and the screen you are watching/reading this on and the keyboards you use to answer me. That all is god. And he needs no name, because names are language, names are confusing, names are for different people to call their self and the things they use and the people they meet. Even the names of Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Mary, Kwannon, Saraswati, Gaia, Tara, is just a different name to the One and only, the Universal One.I started out with Jesus, then met Krishna, I read books written about Mohammed and encountered Buddha, and later I found out that I have been praying to the same god, no matter what name or how I prayed, in what language or in what building. It is all The Same Universal One. People just need something to hold on to, like an umbrella and they call their umbrella names.....

Iran — How To Start A War

Iran — How To Start A WarBy Gwynne Dyer03/30/07 "Jordan Times" -- - -“I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact,” said US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner, “but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team’s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.”Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday?“Agreed. Yes.”Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and Marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for “questioning” last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Eriik Horner’s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works together with HMS Cornwall, the British ship that the captive boarding party came from. Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of The Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn’t having much success.“The US navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence,” Horner explained. “(The British) had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?”So there they are, eight sailors and seven Marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about 30cm above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machineguns. “Defend yourself” by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machineguns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.It’s a cultural thing, at bottom. Britain has a long history of fighting wars and taking casualties, but the combat doctrines are less hairy chested. British rules of engagement “are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”, explained Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord.“Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back, and that, of course, is why our chaps were... able to be captured and taken away.”That emollient British approach is probably why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard chose to grab British troops rather than Americans. It was obviously a snatch operation: the Iranians would not normally have half-a-dozen attack boats ready to go even if some “coalition” boat checking Iraq-bound ships for contraband did stray across the invisible dividing line into Iranian waters (which the British insist they didn’t).But it was not necessarily an operation ordered from the top of Iran’s government. In fact, there is no single source of authority in Iran’s curious system of “multiple governments”, as one observer labelled the impenetrably complex division of responsibilities and powers between elected civilians and unelected mullahs. The Revolutionary Guards (who are quite different from the regular armed forces) enjoy considerable autonomy within this system.According to the US authorities in Iraq, the five Iranian diplomats arrested by US troops in a raid in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan last January were actually Revolutionary Guards, and it would seem that their colleagues want them back. Kidnapping American troops as hostages for an exchange could cause a war, so they decided to grab some Brits instead. And it will probably work, after a certain delay.In this episode, the American reputation for belligerence served US troops well, diverting Iranian attention to the British instead. In the larger scheme of things, it is a bit more problematic.A quite similar snatch operation against the equally belligerent Israelis last July led to a monthlong Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a retaliatory hail of Hizbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities. Well over a thousand people were dead by the end, although nothing was settled.Any day now, a minor clash along Iraq’s land or sea frontier with Iran could kill some American troops and give President Bush an excuse to attack Iran, if he wants one — and he certainly seems to. If the Revolutionary Guards had got it wrong last Friday and attacked an American boarding party by mistake, he would have his excuse now, and bombs might already be falling on Iran. All the pieces are in place, and the war could start at any time.The writer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

source: Information Clearinghouse.

The First Step

All first steps are the hardest, but me...I just plunge into the deep.
Hi, my name is Lizzz, yep, three x a Z because there are plenty lizz's and this one is unique as you will soon find out, so I added an extra Z. I like to stay original and as authentical as can be. I am Dutch and if I make writing or typing mistakes, please don't get angry or upset, just laugh and accept me. I am just "stumbeling" through this life, falling from amazement to wondering and wandering to get all my life-lessons done properly until this path ends and I get the change to start all over again. As a follower of Buddha I belief in re-incarnation, former lives and lives to follow.
Who am I? Just a slightly older Dutch girl, retired radio reporter, as I said a follower of Buddha, but not a stranger to the Hindu-lifestyle and even though I have never physical been there I have very strong bonds with India. That bonding started when I had this beautifull 12 years old girl called Maniyamma as a Foster Parent Child, some 19 close to 20 years ago, the eldest daughter of a poor farmer and his wife who tried to survive in Mysore. I helped Maniyamma through her teenage years, only to watch from Holland to see her getting married (arranged ofcourse) when she was barely 16 and to die in labour with her first child when she was not even 17 years old. My skin creeps even now when I say this. Fosterparent had one thing to say, if I would like to foster her three year younger brother. To find out that Maniyamma had three younger brothers who all were being sponsored/ fostered before I found her. I inclined. I have one small picture of "my" daughter, standing on a table surrounded by small buddhist and hinduïst statues, little candle lights, beautiful healing stones and other worshipping items. Yes I still love India, more then ever before.
But not in that same way.
I needed help myself and not Jesus came but Buddha and He has been my friend since then.
Next time I'll tell you more.
For now, Nanaste. May peace, love and light be always on your path too.