bodhi-devotee

[bodhi-devotee]

once again lovely addition! especially to anyone reading this who is looking to start diving into buddhist scriptures or anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by the different schools (like me maybe LOL) :)))

Hi!! I'm also a hellenic polytheist, and I'm beginning to syncretize with Buddhism. Which tradition/ school do you follow? Do you have any advice? Also I love your account!!! Have a lovely day :)))

i’m sorry it took me so long to get to this ask! i’ve been nervous to talk about what schools/teachings i follow considering how eclectic my practice is. i even hesitated to call myself a buddhist for a while. but every day i wake up and think of the Four Noble Truths and the middle way, and every day i pray to the Awakened One and ask for guidance. i take refuge in the dharma and read my sutras, and to me that’s enough. i hope this was an alright answer, and i promise any further questions about my buddhism will be answered much faster 💞💞💞

when i first turned to buddhism, my focus was actually secular buddhism— the idea that, reincarnation and Mara and all ‘mythology’ of buddhism aside, the Buddha’s teachings can lead to true happiness. this is where i learned the Four Nobel Truths, and started practicing the Eight-Fold path. though it was in a much more casual, introductory way than i do now. when my religious interest was piqued, i started learning about zen practices. when i really started diving into the suttas i found myself enjoying the pali canon and theravada teachings.

however, in combining my greek paganism i’ve been starting to veer towards the mahayana teachings. the mahayana teachings, from what i’ve gathered, are more welcoming to the idea of praying to deities, such as or similar to brahmas, buddhas, and devas. i personally consider most of the Theoi to be devas, if not brahmas, and i’ve found mahayana theology to… have more space for this theory? if that makes sense? so as i’ve merged my deity worship with buddhism, ive found my interest turning toward the sect of buddhism that gives room for the Theoi (once again, very much UPG and personal opinion). i hope this helps!

[bodhi-devotee]

what an amazing way to put it! buddhism doesn’t have one central canon, like christianity does with the bible. when i started to focus on specific schools of teaching, it was mainly to find a group of sutras or texts to focus my studying/reading attention. ty for the addition!

Hi!! I'm also a hellenic polytheist, and I'm beginning to syncretize with Buddhism. Which tradition/ school do you follow? Do you have any advice? Also I love your account!!! Have a lovely day :)))

i’m sorry it took me so long to get to this ask! i’ve been nervous to talk about what schools/teachings i follow considering how eclectic my practice is. i even hesitated to call myself a buddhist for a while. but every day i wake up and think of the Four Noble Truths and the middle way, and every day i pray to the Awakened One and ask for guidance. i take refuge in the dharma and read my sutras, and to me that’s enough. i hope this was an alright answer, and i promise any further questions about my buddhism will be answered much faster 💞💞💞

when i first turned to buddhism, my focus was actually secular buddhism— the idea that, reincarnation and Mara and all ‘mythology’ of buddhism aside, the Buddha’s teachings can lead to true happiness. this is where i learned the Four Nobel Truths, and started practicing the Eight-Fold path. though it was in a much more casual, introductory way than i do now. when my religious interest was piqued, i started learning about zen practices. when i really started diving into the suttas i found myself enjoying the pali canon and theravada teachings.

however, in combining my greek paganism i’ve been starting to veer towards the mahayana teachings. the mahayana teachings, from what i’ve gathered, are more welcoming to the idea of praying to deities, such as or similar to brahmas, buddhas, and devas. i personally consider most of the Theoi to be devas, if not brahmas, and i’ve found mahayana theology to… have more space for this theory? if that makes sense? so as i’ve merged my deity worship with buddhism, ive found my interest turning toward the sect of buddhism that gives room for the Theoi (once again, very much UPG and personal opinion). i hope this helps!

[bodhi-devotee]

You are one of the truly most interesting and captivating people on this website on a sense of your knowledge and practice very interesting to me (since its quite different from my own, but I mean it with love (?))

ALSO YOU AND YOUR WIFE ARE CUTE AF

before answering this i wanna save you some stress! and let you know the weird pressure against your forehead you felt just now is nothing to be concerned about— i sent you a metaphysical forehead kiss!

real shit this was such a sweet message thank you omg. it made my wife smile :P

[bodhi-devotee]

Hi!! I'm also a hellenic polytheist, and I'm beginning to syncretize with Buddhism. Which tradition/ school do you follow? Do you have any advice? Also I love your account!!! Have a lovely day :)))

i’m sorry it took me so long to get to this ask! i’ve been nervous to talk about what schools/teachings i follow considering how eclectic my practice is. i even hesitated to call myself a buddhist for a while. but every day i wake up and think of the Four Noble Truths and the middle way, and every day i pray to the Awakened One and ask for guidance. i take refuge in the dharma and read my sutras, and to me that’s enough. i hope this was an alright answer, and i promise any further questions about my buddhism will be answered much faster 💞💞💞

when i first turned to buddhism, my focus was actually secular buddhism— the idea that, reincarnation and Mara and all ‘mythology’ of buddhism aside, the Buddha’s teachings can lead to true happiness. this is where i learned the Four Nobel Truths, and started practicing the Eight-Fold path. though it was in a much more casual, introductory way than i do now. when my religious interest was piqued, i started learning about zen practices. when i really started diving into the suttas i found myself enjoying the pali canon and theravada teachings.

however, in combining my greek paganism i’ve been starting to veer towards the mahayana teachings. the mahayana teachings, from what i’ve gathered, are more welcoming to the idea of praying to deities, such as or similar to brahmas, buddhas, and devas. i personally consider most of the Theoi to be devas, if not brahmas, and i’ve found mahayana theology to… have more space for this theory? if that makes sense? so as i’ve merged my deity worship with buddhism, ive found my interest turning toward the sect of buddhism that gives room for the Theoi (once again, very much UPG and personal opinion). i hope this helps!

[bodhi-devotee]

Andrea Velez, a US citizen, was arrested in the time it took her mother to drive less than a block. She was on her way to work. She’s Latina. It appears that was enough. Tuesday morning, Andrea Velez’s mom and sister dropped her off near her workplace. She’s a production coordinator at Top Pick Global. Andrea graduated with a degree in fashion from Cal Poly Pomona. Near Andrea’s work, an ICE raid was taking place. In fact, someone had called the LAPD to say a “kidnapping” was taking place. The LAPD showed up, saw it was an immigration raid — LAPD is not permitted to assist ICE in immigration raids — and immediately switched to crowd control, making sure people weren’t in the street and so on. As Andrea walked toward her place of employment, she says she looked up and saw an ICE agent barreling toward her. In the flash of thoughts that went through her mind, she thought maybe she was being targeted for the color of her skin, that maybe he thought she was not a US citizen. She instinctively held up her bag and the agent bowled into her. Her mother — they hadn’t even made it a block away yet — looked in the rear view mirror and saw the plainclothes ICE agents standing over her daughter and putting her in cuffs. “They’re kidnapping your sister,” she said. Andrea tried to get the LAPD to help, and so did her mother and sister. According to her mother and other witnesses, no one ever asked Andrea for ID or asked about her status. The police didn’t help, even when Andrea’s mother was screaming she was a US citizen. In fact, according to some witnesses, they moved to stand around Andrea to make it more difficult to film what was happening. For the first 24 hours, her family couldn’t find Andrea. They didn’t know where she had been taken or what was happening. They hired lawyers who managed to find her, but no one would tell them what she was being charged with, only that she would likely face federal charges. DHS publicly said she would be charged with “assaulting an officer.” When they got to court yesterday, ICE lawyers downgraded that to “obstructing” an officer. An ICE officer claimed that Andrea purposely stepped in his way and raised both of her arms to stop him from going after someone he was trying to arrest. Witnesses tell the story the way Andrea does: an ICE agent approached her, knocked her down, then arrested her without asking any questions about her status or identity. Andrea, her lawyer, her mother and sister all have the same theory: during an ICE raid an ICE agent saw a Latina and scooped her up because of the color of her skin, and had to invent another reason once it was discovered she was a US citizen, born and raised in Los Angeles. Andrea was released on a 5k bond yesterday.

Immigration officers have recently taken to arresting Latino and Hispanic US citizens on raids and claiming obstruction or assault, only to release them a few days later, sometimes without charges. On June 12th, for instance, Brian Gavidia walked outside his work and saw immigration officers. He told them he was a US citizen and showed them his Real ID. They pushed him up against a fence and started asking him questions like “What hospital were you born in.” DHS later said he had “assaulted an officer” -- video evidence does not back this up -- but they didn’t charge him. Or return his ID. (A common pattern: DHS will say something like this on social media, but not in court. It appears to be a PR stunt, not any attempt at communicating something true or legally actionable.) When CNN reached out to DHS on this one they added that Brian “attempted to flee” as well, which is remarkable given that he’s a US citizen who literally just stepped outside his place of work. Adrian Martinez, 20, had a run-in with Border Patrol on his break at WalMart. It sounds like — this is unclear — he tried to obstruct a BP vehicle that held one of his friends from work. Border Patrol agents grabbed him and claim that he punched one of them. Of course, a nearby bystander was recording and there is no evidence of a punch. And Border Patrol went on to say that Adrian was a “hostile group” of men, which is weird because he’s one guy… unless they are counting Oscar Preciado, the delivery driver who stood nearby and videoed the whole thing. Neither Oscar’s video nor surveillance cameras that caught the entire event show a punch. Border Patrol says that the complete videos “are missing critical moments and don’t tell the whole story.” But after holding Adrian for THREE DAYS they also dropped the assault charge. Because, as Adrian’s lawyer said, “He didn’t assault anyone.” They’re now charging him with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” which his lawyer calls “trumped up” charges. ICE has claimed that upwards of 70% of those they arrest are “serious criminals” but their own statistics tell a different story. In the most recent ICE stats publicly released:

75% of people in ICE private prisons have nothing more than an immigration related issue or a traffic violation

47% of those being held by ICE have no criminal conviction at all… no criminal immigration violation, traffic violation, or criminal charge of any kind.

Would you like to guess the percentage of “serious criminals” who are being held by ICE? We’ve been told over and over that we’re after the “worst of the worst” so I suspect it must be an impressive number. And that number is: NINE PERCENT. It certainly appears that the enormous daily quota for arrests is encouraging quantity arrests rather than quality arrests. Arresting a US citizen, even if you have to release them a few days later, counts toward the arrest. Arresting a tourist at the border rather than refusing them entry counts toward the quota. Arresting people at their green card interviews, tricking immigrants without lawyers into giving up their asylum claims and immediately arresting them once they agree, these all count toward the quota. Some key takeaways:

Don’t call the police expecting help during an immigration raid. Even in states like California, where they are not legally allow to assist federal immigration forces, they also are unlikely to step in and help US citizens or others being abused. Best case scenario: they do some crowd control.

ICE and other immigration forces are not afraid to arrest US citizens (and others) on trumped up charges, hold people, and release them later. There’s literally no consequences for them as individuals or corporately.

It is ICE policy to lie. This is not an exaggeration. They call it a “ruse.” ICE agents aren’t just allowed to lie, they are encouraged to do so and trained to do so. ICE agents are trained to trick and confuse people. Andrea Velez, a US citizen, was arrested in the time it took her mother to drive less than a block. She was on her way to work. She’s Latina. It appears that was enough. (x)

[bodhi-devotee]

Big fan of Father Zeus. Love Father Zeus immensely

[bodhi-devotee]

actually emotional LOLLL

It’s okay big guy! We will get you patched up

[bodhi-devotee]

[bodhi-devotee]

“oh it’s storming bad! Zeus and Hera must be fighting aga—” WRONG! they are FUCKING, narsty style!

[bodhi-devotee]

“The Muses were goddesses of poetry, but poetry itself encompassed a very wide domain. Many of the pre-Socratic philosophers (Parmenides, Xenophanes, Empedocles) expressed their thoughts in poetry, and Empedocles, at least, invokes the Muses for their aid. […] Empedocles’ use of the figure of the Muse should remind us of the range of the Muses’ functions in the culture of early Greece: not only are they givers of pleasure who soothe cares and immortalize the deeds of men in song, as daughters of Mnemosyne they know everything about the past and the unseen world of the gods, and they are also authorities on ethical matters and wisdom generally.”

— Penelope Murray, “The Muses and their Arts”

[bodhi-devotee]

[bodhi-devotee]

The waxing and waning of spiritual feelings

I'd like to address an experience that is widespread in polytheism (and probably other spiritual traditions) yet isn't talked about very often; the experience of oscillating between periods intense religious fervor then switching to having almost no religious feelings at all.

When this first happened to me years ago at the beginning of my practice I thought I must be doing something wrong. Have the gods abandoned me? Am I unworthy? Were my previous feelings all just a delusion and now it's wearing off? It was vexing and I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Now that I've been doing this for a few years I know what it is and can set aside my worries; I'm not doing anything wrong, the gods haven't abandoned me, the simple fact is that religious feelings wax and wane in intensity just like the seasons or the cycles of the moon.

I'll have a month or two where I can't stop thinking about the gods. I'm listening to religious music, I'm reading religious books and in all of my rituals I feel a deep connection to the divine, then suddenly it's like the total opposite; I'm not thinking about it at all and I feel like I have to force myself to do the bare minimum in my rituals.

For me it seems to be highly correlated to the changing of the seasons; I tend to feel much more religiously enthusiastic when spring is changing to summer, when the leaves first fall or when winter is setting in, then I get my spiritual lows at the peak of summer and winter. It makes sense to me that times of change inspire feelings of religious devotion in me, I can see the action of the gods more clearly in these times of year.

If you've experienced this I only have this advice: don't be hard on yourself, try to just do your basic rituals as a matter of habit even if you aren't feeling it and rest assured that your feelings will return, the gods haven't gone anywhere. Before too long you'll be able to feel them again.

From speaking to other polytheists I've gathered that this is a common if not ubiquitous experience.

[bodhi-devotee]

Louise Glück, from a poem titled "October," featured in Averno: Poems, originally published in 2006

[bodhi-devotee]

go man go!!!!!!!!

lol get reckt, 小熊维尼

Though, on a more serious note, when Tibetan Buddhist religious succession issues come up, I always think about the poor six-year-old whom the Dalai Lama identified as the successor to the previous Panchen Lama. Beijing wasn’t having any of that and took the kid as what was probably the youngest political prisoner in the world and then they appointed their own Panchen Lama.

Now the Dalai Lama says that, when his reincarnation happens, that successor will be born “in the free world”—so not in China and therefore not a Beijing puppet. But, the current Dalai Lama dies, I hope whichever Tibetans are doing the selection also take steps to make sure another child doesn’t get kidnapped.

Anyway, the Dalai Lama sure is a scamp:

“It is totally inappropriate for Chinese Communists, who explicitly reject religion, including the idea of past and future lives, to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the dalai lama,” [the Dalai Lama] writes in “Voice for the Voiceless.”

With his characteristic wit and playful sense of humor, he adds: “Before Communist China gets involved in the business of recognizing the reincarnation of lamas, including the dalai lama, it should first recognize the reincarnations of its past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping!”

[bodhi-devotee]

Try to find and make your own experiences with the gods, and look at what works for you and them.

I truly think that one of the best things you can do with your polytheistic practise is to stop listening to random people on the internet.

Don’t listen to the people who tell you that the gods don’t care about or love you. Don’t listen to the people who tell you an offering of water is not good enough. Don’t listen to the people who say it’s a requirement for show of devotion to have expensive items strewn across your altar. Don’t listen to people who tell you that you should have an altar even if you can’t. Don’t listen to people who suggest your disability makes you worthless to the gods because you can’t do what others can.

Try to find and make your own experiences with the gods, and look at what works for you and them. Please don’t let some random post on the internet stress you out and make you think you are doing something wrong (chances are, you’re not, especially if it’s absurd statements like the above).

[bodhi-devotee]

ancient greek word of the day: ἀστράρχη (astrarchē), queen of stars, epithet of the moon

[bodhi-devotee]

Your local infertile HelPol is here to remind you:

Abortion is healthcare!! The gods will never hate you for seeking out healthcare!!

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, the gods are with you.

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Asklepios is with you

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Apollon is with you

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Demeter is with you

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Hera is with you

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Hekate is with you

When you are considering or receiving an abortion, Dionysos is with you

The gods are with you when you make the best choices for yourself and your family. They love you. They are guiding you. They are so proud of you for seeking healthcare