Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior, Zen buddhism?

I’m (re)reading a lot of Brad Warner’s books during these holidays. If you ever feel like learning about no-bullshit hardcore Zen buddhism from a punk bass player and ordained Zen master (who hates that term), I can recommend: Sit Down and Shut Up, Don’t Be a Jerk and It Came From Beyond Zen, in that order. You can also try Hardcore Zen, the original work

Brad explains Zen itself and Eihei Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō in plain English so you don’t have to spend 30 years studying classical Japanese. Dōgen was about 800 years ahead of his time, so reading him now is excellent timing

The books are short and if they pique your interest, you can always follow up with the very compact, unrelenting and and intense Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel M. Ingram.

Brad’s stuff is at http://hardcorezen.info/store, Daniel’s book is free at http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ and I’m just a fan and not affiliated with either person.

Switzerland’s own anti-Muslim campaign

The Swiss People’s Party (one of the most powerful parties in Switzerland) has recently launched a campaign against easier naturalization of third-generation foreigners. This is one of the billboards:

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People’s Party campaign, photo by Newsnetz. Note the nazi color scheme.

As a Swiss person, I am way more afraid of the old white men behind this campaign than I am of that hypothetical woman behind her niqab.

These men have in the past:

  • Weakened our education by cutting funding.
  • Managed to make the building of minarets illegal while building Christian churches and Jewish synagogues is still legal.
  • Supported not one but two new laws that undermine privacy, increase surveillance and allow remote wiretapping of Swiss citizens and others on pure suspicion, without a court order. These laws are BÜPF and NDG.
  • Are now supporting another new law that reduces taxes for large corporations while increasing them for individuals, the Corporate Tax Reform Act III.

And they are mostly men. Only 11 of their 65 seats in the national council are under the butts of women.

As a reaction to their billboards I would love to see an interview with a third-generation foreigner who likes to wear the niqab, but I’m pretty sure you won’t find one. The only person I am aware of in Switzerland who even wears a niqab is Swiss through and through: Nora Illi. On the right in this picture as you can surely guess:

Anne Will
Photo by Spiegel/WDR

But since she’s had Swiss citizenship since birth, I guess that won’t be a problem for our geniuses at the People’s Party, eh?