https://angrybuddha.buzzsprout.com/276373/1022818-welcome-to-angry-buddha-podcast
(This content is intended for entertainment only. All other inferences are self-imposed.)
This is Angry Buddha, inviting you to swallow discomfort and discover the non-violent dark side of authentic love:
You may be wondering why we're targeting uncomfortable ideas. The ideas in this entertainment journal may be correctly described, from some perspectives, as offensive, hurtful, unnecessary, or just wrong. Fortunately, we have free insurance against this for everybody, and it's called the just don't listen insurance. So we guarantee that if you just don't listen, you'll never hear anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. So God blessed the free world for that, as long as it exists. So why would someone choose to listen to Angry Buddha? We enjoy perceiving the mind, much like a muscle throughout the rest of the body. We believe in today's western culture and in much of the world that we're in, what's been called the postmodern era, and that this postmodern era is ripe with commonly accepted mental illnesses and philosophical errors. To discuss these patterns in today's culture, we'll have to risk sounding judgmental.
The judgmental tone could be cushioned with lots of fluffy linguistic pillows to accommodate excessively delicate sensibilities. And there's truth in saying that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. But if people are the flies in this analogy, it's also true that we've been binging on honey to the point of becoming fat, soft, slow, and easily consumed by superior predators, like frogs, that can devour a fly faster than it can reexamine it's own life. So let's talk quickly about an example of postmodernism. A value that's formed in postmodernism is one that says, at least subconsciously, "I have the right to feel mentally comfortable at all times. And if anyone says or does anything that makes me feel mentally uncomfortable, then there's something wrong with them!" And of course, it's true, you have the right to not be made to feel mentally uncomfortable as the result of credible threats like someone yelling fire in a movie theater that's crowded when there is no fire, or threatening directly you directly with a weapon. And we've got all sorts of nuanced laws in place to recognize these kinds of credible threats. But beyond these obviously illegal threats of violence, this postmodern right to mental comfort has become the excessive burden under which the postmodern society is now crumbling. The great comedian Dave Chappelle recently used the phrase "brittle spirits" to describe some of what we're talking about here. And a primary problem with these mentally soft, brittle spirits, is that they're kind of like veal. Ya know? Those young calves that we tragically lock up in a pin and then...you know...slaughter for veal. Well, these mentally brittle spirits are like shackled, insulated, fed, soft and clueless that they're being kept soft so that they can be devoured by the very hand that's feeding them. In this example though, the devouring of these brittle spirits is the devouring of their life's potential as free, strong, beautiful individual humans.
These easy-to-control brittle spirits unknowingly do the bidding of their masters, which is partly to identify, control, and purge the strong and independently minded. This is because the independently minded are much more difficult to control. And the Dalai Lama is correct in saying that it's uncompassionate to forcefully confront people with frightening ideas they're not ready for. And it's also true to say it's not compassionate to insulate the soft-minded into mindless zombies who only live to feed on the healthy. The primary sense making mechanisms of the postmodern mind seems to be to ask themselves, "Does this idea feel good inside myself? Or does it feel bad inside myself? If it feels good inside myself, then I'll accept it as true! But if it feels bad inside myself, all rejected as wrong!" This comes from the mistaken belief that all opinions are equal and therefore we hear many to quickly say things like, "I disagree" and "That's just your opinion!" When what they're really saying is, "I don't like what you're saying and I'm going to purge it without any further thought."
Here at an Angry Buddha, we're not saviors, we're not martyrs and we're not right. We're just offering the most uncomfortable approximations of truth that we can for you to engage for your own betterment. We encourage everyone to swallow discomfort into the pit of their stomachs. We encourage everyone to soften their hearts into a juicy sponge. We encourage everyone to sharpen their mind like a diamond so that it can cut through the nonsense so that you can know why you agree, when you agree, and you can know why you disagree when you disagree. Then you'll have the courage to not be offended and you'll have the health to contribute to creating a more perfect union of humanity. And always remember, physical violence is never the answer unless in self defense and mental violence just doesn't exist so long as the body is free to move as it pleases. Thank you for listening. Let's make this next era of humanity as great as we all know. It can be.