By: Khenpo Gurudas Śunyatananda
One has to wonder when the people of the United States will wake up to what’s happening in this country today. And perhaps nowhere in the country is as good a “wake-up call” as the state I once called my home — Arizona.
The first time I set foot in Arizona, in 1992, I experienced something I’d never experienced before. I somehow knew my way around, knew where certain old buildings were, and even knew their history (although these were certainly not “historic” buildings by any means). Friends who lived there were pretty amazed that I felt like I had lived there all my life. I felt like I was “home”.
And so it broke my heart to read that the State of Arizona, quickly becoming as intolerant, sectarian, and prejudiced as Sarah Palin or Tenzin Gyatso, recently overstepped the separation of Church and State in a most aggregious manner.
Arizona House Bill 2582, co-sponsored by Republicans (what a surprise!) – Senator Russell Pearce and Representative Judy Burges – would ban several spiritual traditions’ “religious laws”, including Catholic and Anglican Canon Law, Muslim Sharia Law, Jewish Halacha, and… wait for it… the “law” of Karma!
(We’ll get to that in a moment!)
The proposed HB 2582 prohibits a court from using, implementing, referring to or incorporating into any decision, finding or opinion a tenet of any body of religious sectarian law or any case law or statute from another county or a foreign body or jurisdiction that is outside of the United State.
So far, it sounds reasonable, and would even appear to be moving toward a separation of Church and State, right? And within its provisions, the bill defines religious sectarian law as “any statute, tenet or body of law evolving within and binding a specific religious sect or tribe, including Sharia law, Canon Law, Halacha and Karma…”
But then comes the catch…
The bill excludes “(a)ny law of the United States or the individual states or the individual states based on Anglo-American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded.”
This allows those lawmakers to rely on the popular misconception that this country was founded upon “Christian principles” and the superstitious belief in a personal god. So really, it only outlaws everything except Protestant ideology, and even then, still discriminates against the Episcopal Church, which is governed by Canon Law.
And of course, it also exempts from what would have been a fair and reasonable attempt to keep the theocrats from continuing to marginalise and disparage those whose beliefs were inconsistent with their own. It protects religious persecution and marginalisation of LGBTI persons, for example, exempting from its prescriptions: “The recognition of a traditional marriage between a man and a woman as officiated by the clergy or a secular official of the couple’s choice.”
So no worries, Fundie McNuggets®… your whole homophobic agenda remains intact in its effort to prevent equal access to marriage.
Now, aside from this horrific example of political doublespeak, and an attempt, in my humble opinion, for the theocrats to further cement their stranglehold on Arizona, let’s look at the absurdity of their ignorant inclusion of karma as a “religious law”!
Karma is not a written set of “laws”, like Canon Law or Sharia Law, etc. It is simply the ancient Sanskrit term for the Law of Cause & Effect. It very likely originated in the Indic Shramana, or wandering-ascetic monastic tradition, from which Buddhism and Jainism proceeded.
More accurately, karma is the “seed” or cause (any action that will result in a particular outcome/effect (which is called vipaka in Sanskrit). However, in the modern vernacular, karma refers to the overall concept of the Law of Cause & Effect.
Therefore, it is not even remotely relative to the man-made prescriptions of Canon Law, Halacha, Sharia and such. And that only serves to further illustrate how pathetically ignorant the people are, who have been elected and entrusted with the laws of the State of Arizona.
One has to wonder if the final version of the law will also include Newton’s Law, the New Age “Law of Attraction” and the Law of Equivalent Exchange as well!
And they wonder why I refer to Republicans and Republitards!
Namasté
khenpo gurudas sunyatananda
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Drawing on the essential teachings of the great spiritual teachers, philosophers and freethinkers throughout time, Khenpo Gurudas Śunyatananda (retired Archbishop Francis-Maria Salvato, O.C.) has been regarded as a provocative, revolutionary “voice of reason” within the field of religion and spirituality, since 1983. Having the distinction of being one of the few openly non-theistic, openly-gay and post-denominational thinkers ever to serve as Bishop-Exarch and spiritual leader of the autocephalic Eastern Catholic Franciscans in North America, Gurudas is the author of more than 600 articles, eight books and currently serves as the spiritual advisor for a non-theistic, intentional spiritual community, The Spiritus Project. He can be reached at: http://dharmadudeunplugged.com/
Copyright ©2010, Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda (The Most Reverend Dr. F. Francis-Maria G. Salvato, M.Sc., O.C.). All rights reserved. This material may be reproduced, blogged, quoted or distributed, provided the entire copyright including contact information remain intact. It may NOT be altered in any way, without express written permission.”
I’m a little surprised at the short attention span we have for issues in the United States. Okay, no, I’m not surprised, it’s to be expected after all we have a whole generation in grammer schools right now whose parents couldn’t slow down and read books to them so they learned to “read” on Leappads.
But I digress. This was big news a few months ago and yet we are on to the next big photo-op, this time in Wisconsin and as of this morning, across the nation’s capitols where better groomed individuals turned out for leisurly saturday morning marches in supposed support of Wisconsin. WI and what’s going on there is important, no doubt, however nothing was ever settled in Arizona and as this points out Arizona only had to wait for the next big thing to happen before it continued its agenda to marginalize everyone.
Arizon is simply practicing what Charlie Sheen has known for years, you can get away with abusing people because there will always be a new and exciting story that outshines your tedious ongoing one. We need to be careful and aware and not forgetful.
You touched on one of my biggest rants; the colonial viewpoint. The ironic part of these sons and daughters of revolution is that they make up a very small minority. The average person’s European ancestor is just a few generations into the past. Nor did all the early colonialists actively engage in protest against the English government. Some were English sympathizers. Some joined the Native American communities whose opinion was the English couldn’t be any worse than the colonialists. Because there were so few colonialists in the beginning, many of them married into Native American tribes rather than risk marrying a relative. The chances of anyone who claims a “pure” Colonial heritage without intermarriage are pretty slim.
Apart from this fallacy in Colonial purity, i find the entire concept obnoxious. It amounts to ancestral worship, which stagnates the growth of true democratic decision making. It hinders the broader perspective of global unity and prosperity through understanding and communications. It inhibits awareness, intellectual enlightenment and academic accomplishment. Not to mention, white colonialism is a minority view. When you combine the populations of non-fundamental Christians, alternative religions, and racial distinctions, you find an extremely large population whose sole aim is equal representation. A replication of Arizona’s discriminate policies would carry us back into the stone age. American influence is already dwindling as a progressive voice for diplomacy. If we continue on our reckless course into special interest propaganda, we will be left far behind as a country not worthy of intelligent, problem solving consideration.
Agreed on all counts, my friends! Each day, my plans to live in Costa Rica become more firmly planted in the soil of disgust with what this country has become.