That movie is Back to the Future. And welcome to the world of the mystic, we know almost nothing, well except what we find in the world we find ourselves in.

How often does someone call the police to tell them that they know that someone is raping children, and then it's just left at that?

The cops were already looking into Epstein, when the alleged phone call was made. Someone must have tipped Trump off and he called the Sheriff and tried to make out that it was he who was informing the Sheriff’s office that Epstein was a pedo’.
While prior to that Epstein was frequenting Mara Lago, presumably supplying girls (adult girls) for his party’s.

Well, what can I say? You’re just not paying attention. The difference is real, and it matters

Yes, there is a difference, but for whom does it matter? The only person I can think of who would be very concerned about it is Putin. Meanwhile, European and Ukrainian leaders have been meeting frequently. There is increased military integration and support between the militaries of European countries and Ukraine forces. Alliances which have been developed since 2014*. This is all going on quietly behind the scenes, without the inevitable reaction from Putin that there would be if formal NATO status for Ukraine was being negotiated.

*following the invasion of Crimea.

Who is the person Carney’s wife is talking to in these photos back in 2013?

https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/set%3a2798828

There is a photo of some children being trafficked in a toy cart. So it might be damning evidence after all.

lightening is responsible in so far as it is a physical force occurring within an arena of interacting physical forces. Animals are the same, but with an additional (evolved) group activity of adaptation to the physical forces within an arena (including other living entities). Humans are like the animals, but with an additional intellectual component enabling them to act independent of the forces and adaptive forces in the arena. So it is only the humans in this picture who have true moral agency. The animals are just acting out evolved instinctive behaviours, although, they have some limited group moral agency, as seen for example in dolphins and killer whales, or ants.

I just assume that in religious discourse a moral agent is confined to contemplation of human individuals. Although if there is talk of people reincarnating as ants, or rabbits, I’ve never been quite sure how that is supposed to work.

The article spells out NATO membership in all but name. So after another 10years or so after the war has finished, it will be formally recognised.

The article agrees with my assessment (which I made at the beginning of the thread) that there will be a new iron curtain;

NATO allies have to recognize that their new frontier—the Iron Curtain, the inner German border, the East-West divide—runs from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and along the border between Ukraine and Russia.

Even if it’s agreed that everything Russia has occupied becomes part of Russia, it’s still extremely unlikely that the western parts become NATO members. NATO membership is dead for Ukraine— there’s no way around it.

As I say, a member in all but name, which is pretty much what has pertained since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Even if the U.S. pulls out of support for Ukraine, Europe will step into the breach and finish the job.

Not really.

It would require trust and integrity from both sides of the buffer state. The trust might have been there at the point of the signing of the Budapest Memorandum. Once this agreement had been broken by either side, the inevitable outcome would be a new iron curtain. Which is where we are heading.

How is occupying part of Ukraine going to prevent Ukraine joining NATO?

He’s very little like Stalin, actually.

I mean in the level of control. We don’t know if new gulags have been built yet. Putin will want to maintain the impression of normality as long as possible. So it will be done slowly and quietly.

Yes Ukraine as a buffer zone makes sense, if one believes something that Putin says. But Putin’s actions worked against this becoming a possibility. Culminating in Russia invading Crimea 2014. Any reasonable prospect of this working was long over by that point. Alternatively perhaps Putin is planning to prevent Ukraine joining NATO by either occupying part of Ukraine, or installing a Putin friendly government in Kiev. But this won’t work either because he would have to occupy all of Ukraine to prevent the parts he doesn’t control then joining NATO after the war has ended. Also there still wouldn’t be a buffer zone. Infact there isn’t going to be any buffer zone.
So everything has, or is failing, apart from one thing. Putin is cementing his dictator status in Russia on a par with Stalin and he will crush, or destroy his own people and country to maintain his position.

The "immaterial" components persist.

Well Buddhists do a very good job of not mentioning this. Is this one of the things they don’t give an answer to? Also is this how a person’s Karmic record is linked to their next incarnation?

In Buddhism? What you say sounds like Hinduism.
A permanent self in Buddhism? Where did you hear that?

I’m no Buddhist scholar, but it seems to me from what I’ve heard and read over the years that Buddhism does include pretty much all the cosmogony of Hinduism, but behaves as though it doesn’t exist. Is silent on the issue and assumes a spiritual, or divine ground, while sometimes denying there is one, or refusing to discuss it.

The first thing to ask is, "What is the self?"
Also, "What is a living being?"

I presume that if you had a definitive answer to this question, you wouldn't be here. Secondly, the Buddha goes into great lengths to define what the self is not or what is not fit to be regarded as the self.

In a nutshell the self is an embodied, individuated expression of divinity.
A living being in a biological entity, as a part of a biosphere, or ecosystem. Although, this is not the whole story as it embodies a self as just defined.

Do you mean this in a sense that enlightenment is inevitable, a given, just a matter of time?

Well I read, that some people upon enlightenment remain at the doorway, or portal to nirvana. Or return into the world, as enlightened beings, refusing to go through the door until the last person has reached that point and would go through behind them.
I go back to the analogy of the plant, the plant naturally grows with the aim of flowering. Some seed lands on poor ground and die, or fail to mature into a plant that can produce a flower. Most will produce a flower.

Then what's the use of assuming you have Buddha nature"?

I didn’t, I don’t assume anything (not entirely everything), these are just hypothesis.

Sure. But currently, we suffer, our molars rot, and dishes and laundry pile up.

Yes, we are in a world, embodied. It’s a bit like a contract, I suppose you pay a fee, some suffering and in return have the opportunity to experience being in a world, embodied. Personally I think, I’ve got a good deal. I am aware though, that some have a poor deal and how human behaviour has resulted in that, or exacerbated it. This awareness and helplessness is part of the suffering too.

Really? How do humility and faith help you find the right spiritual teacher? And how do you know he's the right one, given that you're still under the veil of ignorance?

Im not talking about an external spiritual teacher, but a development within one’s self. Remember Buddha nature, there is an inviolable bit of one’s self. That is the teacher, or intuition*.A school in the external world and a life in the world are necessary and for most a mentor is required. It is a dance, a journey, with many roots in the path to trip up on.

*I’m aware of the guidance around Buddha nature in the link you provided.

Keir Starmer is having his share of the scandal with the British ambassador having been a close member of the Epstein-circle. (The ex-Prince is already yesterday's news.)

That’s why Mandelson was made ambassador in January 2025, so he could smooth talk a better tariff deal for the U.K., it worked. The trouble is it nearly brought down the U.K. Prime Minister yesterday morning.
And Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was also forwarding market sensitive information to Epstein. While he was a UK trade envoy. There will be a lot more to come out, as he made lots of shady friends who wanted to touch royalty.

Exactly— you assume he’s insane. Which is so ridiculous it’s unbelievable it’s seriously argued.

I don’t assume he’s insane, I’m considering it, because his actions appear to be the actions of someone with questionable sanity. I mean to say repeatedly for over a decade that NATO (a defensive alliance) is encroaching upon Russia. Leaving him no alternative but to invade a province of Ukraine, precipitating Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Alienating the Ukrainian people for generations to come which will push them into the arms of Europe and leave them with no alternative but to join NATO. To galvanise Europe into re-arming, following the post war settlement and ending the lucrative oil and gas deals with European countries.

Either he is insane, or he has another agenda. Like an agenda to cling onto power in Russia by claiming Russia is under attack, requiring the imposition of martial law and mass conscription. This requires an actual war to sustain, so he invades a Ukrainian province. The Russian people become powerless to oppose him, because the young men of Russia are being forcibly sent to the front lines to be killed in a war of attrition. A strategy rather like Assad’s regime in Syria, to literally destroy your own country to maintain power.

Either way, the sensible thing for Ukraine to do is fight and defeat the Russian invasion and ask Europe for assistance. While building alliances with Europe with the aim of becoming a EU member and joining the NATO alliance. Any alternative would be to throw the Ukrainian people to the wolves. Weaken Europe and encourage Putin to push his agenda further afield.

But you are assuming Putin is sane, what he has done is insane. Certainly if Putin’s goal was to increase Russia’s security, what has resulted is the opposite. Not the moves of a smart, or sane man.

I don’t want to be part of a pile on, so I’ll leave it at that for now. I’ll just say what I said to Tzeentch, yes Putin has secured most of the Donbas, but at what cost?

Do these words count, or should they be ignored?

Those words were spoken at the start of the invasion, the aim being to pacify any response. Along with threats of nuclear Armageddon to any nato forces who were going to help the Ukrainian army defend their territory. Just a few days previously the Russians emphatically denied they were not going to invade. What they say changes from day to day. And when interlocutors say, but you said something different previously. They laugh and say, ahh but it’s not an invasion, it’s a special military operation. And when the Nazi’s don’t seem to be there to fight back, the whole reason for the invasion. They say it’s little green men and laugh again. As I say, the Ukrainians have got the measure of Putin’s regime.

I’m familiar with the arguments, from the sources you cite. We mustn’t lose site of what Putin is thinking and saying and the pattern of invasions and influence in former Russian colonies since the early 1990’s. And of course what the citizens of those countries say and wan’t, filtering out the Russian propaganda.

I read the thread at the time. What you are suggesting is an alternative interpretation of what happened on the ground and what Putin’s motives were. Which is fine and it can be debated, I’m not looking to get into a discussion of those issue here. That will be for historians to argue over.
If Putin’s aim was to secure the Dombass, well he does seem to have managed that, but at what cost? And what of his grand ambitions, which he spoke about at length before the invasion?

So why was a military Column marching on Kiev at the beginning of the invasion?

And if the plan was to bed down in bunkers in the Dombass, why did a column march on Kiev?

The Russian casualties are large, even if the numbers are disputed.

distinguishes three types of aspects of the 'soul': vegetative, animal (perceptive) and rational and saw the process of physical growth both in the womb and in the physical growth process as a gradual fulfillment of the first two aspects. The third is cultivated through virtue. However, this process is completed in the afterlife.

Yes, this makes sense to me, that it is a living development, or growth. The plant cannot flower until the plant has grown, the bud formed and the right season has arrived. Then it flowers in tune with nature, the ecosystem which sustains it. The religious, of spiritual life is about tending to the plant that it grows healthy and straight, is not blighted. The culmination of this process is the transfiguration of the being, the flower representing the thousand petalled lotus of the crown chakra. This transfigured being would walk in another world, having sloughed off, discarded, the physical world.

This to me makes sense even from a purely 'religious neutral' point of view: when we, say, grow from childhood to adolescense and then adulthood we might conceptualize the process of growth as a succession of metaphorical 'deaths' and 'rebirths' and resisting to these 'deaths' is actually detrimental to our spiritual health even if they can be quite scary. I'm not surprised therefore that 'dying to oneself' or similar expressions are used as a positive sign for spiritual development.

Yes, growing pains, or initiations, represented by the stations of the cross, or the trials and tribulations, the four sights of the Buddha, before he found the middle way. These are also important of stages of development of the person, or being, towards a life of selfless service to fellow beings and the ecosystem, rather than dwelling on the animal passions. Likewise for the follower on the path, there are a series of initiations in which they see, or step forward into, the world (for them) to come. These crises shatter, or break the casing of the bud, that it can open, so to speak.

I believe that generally Buddhists would assert that all the enlightened minds share the same nature of mind but not the same mind. Just like, say, all fires are instance of 'fire' doesn't imply that all fires are manifestation of a cosmic fire.

Yes, I will not dwell on this, because if it works for Buddhists, then that’s fine and any differences between different traditions, are part of how the tradition developed and are not important.

Notice that they’ve never said they wanted to conquer Ukraine and, unsurprisingly, never tried to.

Putin lies about his actions, the Ukrainians know this. They see him for what he is.
The special military operation started with an assault on Kiev, the plan being to overthrow the governmental control quickly, control Kiev. Then install a puppet government and convince the Ukrainians and the world that it was necessary because the Ukraine state had been taken over by Nazi’s. The de-Nazification narrative, which then became the little green man narrative.
The plan went wrong and what we have now is the result of repeated failures by Russia to take control of Ukriane. Resulting in trench warfare, or a meat grinder which they throw young healthy Russian men in their hundreds of thousands. Who are dying in their thousands with only metres of ground being won at any one time.

Now Putin is retreating into his bunker as his country slowly sinks economically. He can’t agree a ceasefire of any kind of truce without losing face and endangering his dictatorship. He is terrified and will sacrifice his country to save his skin.

This works in the West’s favour as Russia had become too strong on oil and gas revenues. Which Europe had become dependent on. Even with a lunatic in the Whitehouse and Europe lacking resources to support Ukraine, Russia can’t make any significant ground. Currently Russia is bleeding out and Europe is rearming. Ukraine may be badly damaged after the war ends, but they will have their freedom and will be helped to rebuild by Europe. Russia will go back into the deep freeze.

I’m aware of your geopolitics, but this is not really a geopolitical story, it’s more a spy and espionage novel. Now who is the evil mastermind in this story? Can you think of any names that fit the bill.

I think the best way to see 'moral teachings' of religions is to try to see them as a way to cultivate our own nature. While a 'legalistic' way of seeing them has perhaps its purpose, the deepest way to see them is IMO to see them as aiming to our education and assist our (spiritual) growth.

Very much so. Presumably that is why we are here, to educate us in our spiritual growth?

I mean, any concept of 'moral responsibility' that I find coherent assumes that the agent of an action and the bearer of moral responsibility of that action is the same person.

This is where my thinking differs from Buddhist theology and I move back to the Hindu tradition. I find the dissolution of the individual upon death as incoherent in the way it is generally presented. I am aware of the explanation for it, but see it as part of an apology for the wholesale rejection of atman and a presence of the divine world in our world.
I am unsure about the identity of the Bodhisattvas and enlightened beings. Also there does seem to be some equivocation around this point. There is a universal consciousness, but each individual is one drop of water in an ocean of water drops. There is a denial of a permanent self, or identity, but a permanent self, a universal self is smuggled in and plays the same role.

Hinduism is saying the same thing, but in atman the individual retains some individuation ( not the Jungian definition) while similarly being a drop of atman in the sea of atman.

There seems to be equivocation around Karma too, that it shapes one’s next life, while denying that the individual remains after death. And how can the karmic debt be repaid, when the agent who took out the karmic debt does not any more exist. Again, I understand there is a explanation given, but it comes across as apologetics again.

In Hinduism, the divine world is here with us, walking alongside, interacting with us and the theology delineates it’s presence.

Ooh ooh, I must have hit a nerve.

It is well known that the CIA, MI6 and Mossad do the same. Your point?

My point is that Russia had become a friend, you know, even Putin was asking to join NATO at one point. The spies let their guard down. Meanwhile Putin was planning full scale hybrid war and funding his Oligarchs to hob nob and make friends with influential people in the West. Ripe for the picking. By this point Russia was Putin, Putin was Russia. On the other side, the CIA wasn’t the U.S., the U.S. and Europe particularly the Germans and the British had become complacent.

And the US just so happened to be at the absolute peak of its power, while Russia was at its low point.

Where were the U.S. and the U.K., why weren’t they infiltrating Russia, getting ready for hybrid warfare? They were asleep at the wheel.

The Americans are the good guys after all!

Straw.

We were talking about state involvement. It is well known that the Russian state will use blackmail and death threats to recruit agents in other countries. When these connections were made, Russia was a friend of the west (mid 90’s for the next decade), allowing Russian influence to spread in the West. Now that Russia is again the enemy, that influence is being exercised. The obvious example of this is Trump himself.

Yes there would have been many Russian escort women looking to take advantage of the opportunity.
There is talk of Epstein using Sergei Belyakov, then Deputy Minister of Economic Development in Russia to procure the women.

Belyakov is a graduate of the FSB Academy which prepares Russian intelligence officers. As the Dossier Center discovered, he helped Epstein to deal with a Russian model who was blackmailing American businessmen, as well as proposing to arrange meetings with Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and Central Bank Deputy Chairman Alexei Simanovsky. For his part, Epstein advised Belyakov on saving the Russian economy amid imposed sanctions, while also recruiting high-profile guests for SPIEF.

https://dossier.center/jeffreyepsteinrusconnect-en/

Christopher Steele an ex MI6 operative stated yesterday on LBC radio;

My sources in America tell me that the American government, the American intelligence services assessment was that Epstein was recruited as early as the 1970s by Russian organised crime figures in New York and that his information was being used, his operational techniques were being used from that point onwards.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/christopher-steele-epstein-trump-russia-5HjdRrM_2/

But the prospect of getting something on a member of the Royal family would be gold dust for the Russian intelligence. Why would the U.S. state be getting into bed (the same bed) with both Russia and the Royal family?

Why would Epstein be trafficking Russian escorts to royal palaces in the U.K. if it was a U.S. state operation?

But with a caveat. The concept of Buddha nature can be taken to mean that all one needs to do is get to some primeval, pure state, and that's that.

Yes, I was not implying this when I introduced the idea that brought up Buddha nature. I was simply pointing out that the nature is within us.

I would suggest though that the process of achieving enlightenment may well be an entirely natural process and that a participant would naturally go through the mental struggles, or adaptation in a form concomitant with their circumstances. For example a shaman in a community of forest dwellers. Or a Stone Age person.

The 'ordinary' state of human beings* is a state in which our nature is, in some sense, 'wounded', we are born in a condition of weakness, tendency to do what is actually harmful to us and so on (we might use the expression 'original sin' for this feature).

Yes, the birth of independent, or transcendent agency*. Quite a responsibility, hence the requirement for us to act responsibly. Indeed religions might well have sprung up as a way to corral our new found agency. To head off our new found powers inevitably being used destructively.

*The fall is a mystery, about what happens when new powers are given to a being. Some characteristics of that being, which were useful in the life of the being prior to the fall. When exercised with the new powers become destructive for a period, while the being is learning to adapt and use the new powers wisely. The powers provided by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge are great and so the destructive potential is great.

If there is no continuity of memory, then there is no continuity of "interesting threads". On the other hand what if, as Kastrup believes, nothing is lost but all experience is taken up by the universal mind or God, contributing to its evolution? I'm not saying I believe that, but it dispenses with the need for individual rebirth.

Well the idea as I understand it is that it is a process of the development and refinement of beings. Such that a refined being is taken up into the presence of God (I don’t hold to the idea of one universal God as such) and continues again to develop into a God. A being as a God, a God who is/was a being.

Regarding the continuity of the threads, there is a memory in the being, not the mind. Perhaps in a similar way that karma would be remembered.

It is beginning to look as though it became a Russian operation. This also ties in with election interference in the 2016 elections in the U.S. and Brexit in the U.K. followed by a blackmail operationto control all the clients drawn in by Epstein. Including kompromat on Trump.

There seem to be a lot of Russian escort women moving around the place including one being trafficked into the U.K. for the use of Prince Andrew. Which the police are looking into.

Possible Russian involvement here;

https://dossier.center/jeffreyepsteinrusconnect-en/

What a twisted mind he has

It’s shameful.
When he claimed the files don’t incriminate him, he squirms and then claims that Epstein conducted a conspiracy to frame him. He looks worried.

what does the US have then?

Guns.

I don't know about you guys, but the more I read the more I realize the US is f*cked.

Yep, they’re propped up on an AI bubble right now with the administration enabling corruption on a grand scale. What could possibly go wrong?

As @baker remarked, the idea is quite explicit in some strands of Mahayana with the concept of 'Buddha nature'. However, it can be said that it is implied by the fact that the Buddhist practice is seen as a way to purify the mind, i.e. removing all the 'impurities'. So, rather than a transformation into something 'alien', the Buddhist path actually seems to have been presented as a way to bring the mind-stream to its 'purity'.
This idea is IMO recurrent in ancient religious and philosophical traditions. You can find analogous idea in Christianity, for instance, when sins are depicted as an impurity or an illness that 'stain' the purity (yes, there is original sin but as you probably know the interpretation of that concept wasn't the same among all Christian traditions... and, anyway, there is the idea that all God's creations are originally good and, therefore, evil is a corruption that came about later).

Yes, so my intuition is actually an acceptance (or realisation) of a deeper understanding underlying these religions. That they are playing a role in a process of purification of the self. That the self is not required, to go anywhere, to do anything, achieve anything in reconciling (becoming liberated from) their incarnation. But rather to relinquish, to lay down the trappings of our incarnate selves.

This ventures into some concepts more native to some schools of Hinduism, with the veil being the "veil of Maya".

Yes, my position is more on the Hinduism side of the issue (via Theosophy)

The problem with assuming defaults, innate essences (such as "all beings have Buddha nature") is that they bog one down.

Assumed for the purpose of discursive discussion.

If you have Buddha nature, then why are you here, suffering, instead of being happy and enlightened?

One is going through a process, there may be many other things going on (behind the veil), or of which we are a small part. Which entail what is going on here. One of the first things that occur to us as individuals as a young child is the realisation of our individuality and therefore questions arise about our circumstances, what is going on here, where is this, why am I here? I remember this realisation in my life, I must have been about 3yrs old. These questions have not been answered, even though I have searched long and hard for an answer. As such there cannot be an answer for your question, because the circumstances relating to it have not been established.

If you suffer now, despite having/being Buddha nature, and later become enlightened, then where's the guarantee that you won't lose your enligtenment and suffer again?

Again this can’t be answered, as above. However, presumably, one would have sufficient agency to prevent the onset of suffering. Although I would suggest that there is likely an exalted state equivalent to suffering within that exalted realm. On the cosmic scale, there may be imperfect gods, or greater processes beyond our understanding going on.

If you are now covered by the veil of Maya, how can you possibly trust your choice of spiritual guidance?

Through humility and faith. This would necessarily require living a relatively simple and stress free life.

Thus assuming some kind of innate natrure, an essence, implies, among other things, that you are ultimately helpless against that veil of Maya, helpless against suffering.

I’m not quite sure where the implication lies here. But never the less, when one thinks about our circumstances, we are as individuals helpless. We rely entirely on our community for almost everything. When it comes to salvation, we might think that we personally somehow achieve something, but what is more likely is that circumstances bestow it upon us. As we are playing a small part in a greater process. A process which given we are talking about “supernatural” states like nirvana, will likely entail transcendent realities beyond our comprehension.

It's how the outlook of innate nature is demoralizing, unless, of course, one has a grand enough ego to compensate for it.

Or perhaps it is an acceptance in humility of a reality. Presumably, by this point one would have deflated and reconciled one’s ego.

I actually find both rebirth and reincarnation entirely plausible.

I also find the Hindu explanation plausible according to which Vishnu/Krishna incarnates himself as a buddha/the Buddha.
Having studied a bit of both Buddhism and Hindusim, I find there is a peculiar fit between the two.

Likewise.

Yes, that’s it. It can also be approached from the opposite direction, as I see it, i.e. nirvana would inevitably pervade all of existence. Thus would pervade all incarnate beings and worlds. I would take it further that all is nirvana and that it is a specific impediment that veils it from us.

In many religions/philosophies there is the idea that we have an innermost desire/implicit knowledge of the 'highest good'.

Yes, or that there is an inner most part of* us which is in some way present in nirvana. Perhaps like a seed.

Going back to what I was saying about the idea that we are already in nirvana, but are blind to it. Is there an idea like this in Buddhism? as it’s an important idea for me. I can’t really remember where it came from.

* I’m thinking of the idea of a part of our being, which is not physical, or mental, but an aspect of a living being.

But perhaps you meant something different.

I was probably continuing the thought in my head following my reply to Wayfarer. Namely that we don’t know whom experiences nirvana, but in a sense, we do, as it is within us. But we don’t know that, or what we know.
It follows on perhaps from the idea that we are already in nirvana if we could but see it. We are blind to it.

I think people are still digesting what was released last week. Also there are sources you can go to find out all this stuff. But I wouldn’t start going on about that here, I would probably be painting myself as a conspiracy theorist. I would agree with what you’re suggesting here and I can understand why Epstein (of someone else) put a rope around his neck.
The Rothschild connection sounds interesting, do you have a link?