Inedible

It sounds to me like you are making it a bit too complicated. As long as you take good care of your pets it will be good for you and them both. Freedom is more than just the ability to walk away; it is having options. Being supplied with food, water, love, and protection is better than having to be out in the wild where so much time and energy must be spent on getting the basic needs met. Being around people can help animals develop higher emotions like love, gratitude, and appreciation. Being able to hear a "Hare Krishna" or two is even better.

It is like with waking life. Either way, some experiences can be very profound and most of them won't seem like they were worth remembering anyway. You have the option of living more fully if you want to increase the odds. I don't know if they were really them or if it was "only" imagination. Either way it sounds like something to be happy about.

Personally I'd rather not hear about any of it, but that doesn't seem to be an option for me. It just happens that Israel and China are the countries I hear about most at home. My opinion is that my best option is to fix myself first, then help my family and community second. It isn't that I don't value a whole world perspective. It is just that my reach and my ability to affect change are limited, so I want to start where I can actually do something.

I wish I could introduce you to my wife. It would be so much easier if I could sit back, drink whiskey, and watch the two of you talk politics. It is hard for me to keep up with her. My education is severely limited. I don't even know how I can educate myself on history, politics, and economics. Usually I feel too hopeless about it to even try. You wouldn't believe some of the things my teachers taught me when I was in school.

We've just increased the amount of money we are giving to Israel by $30 billion over the next 10 years.

My problem with that is that it seems to be a fill-in-the-blank thing. Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Cosmic, whatever. Flavor-of-the-day Consciousness. If you can imagine it you can immerse yourself in it whether it is real or not. All you are going to have to show for it is that there are other people who share your preference for a label.

I will still say that an atheist has beliefs, because until you die you can't know what will follow. An atheist believes that there is nothing out there. A negative cannot be proven. An atheist can only feel that certain beliefs are correct. It is the same way with a religious person.

Even being an atheist requires having a belief system. It sounds like you went from one belief system that your family gave you to another and neither worked for you so you are considering a third belief system. You are asking us to sell you Krishna. What I would like to suggest is taking some time out from beliefs and just see how not knowing feels for a while first. It will definitely be uncomfortable. If you can do it for a month or two and then you decide to go with Krishna, though, you won't have to wonder if you jumped into it too quickly and maybe some other belief system out there may have been more to your liking.

It was far more popular before Islam moved in. http://www.buddhist-temples.com/bihar/nalanda.html http://www.nalandaopenuniversity.com/

Recently I read that switching to eating oats not only lowers your cholesterol, but because they aren't being used for bio-fuels, will save you money.

Good question. A long time ago I read that some guy name Brahma is asleep and dreaming the universe, and that when Brahma wakes up the universe will disappear. We are all just characters in his dream. It is just a matter of scale. When you go to sleep at night the characters in your dreams don't need saving from anything, do they?

Really? My first reaction was "Where can I sign up?" (just kidding) (the sales pitch really isn't bad, though ... maybe I'm only half joking)

Krishna may be strangely silent, but it is easy to get a response from people here.

Cows aren't the only sources of milk. You can buy goat milk and goat cheese and you won't be messing with the cows.

The point I was trying to make was that you can claim Buddhism is not really its own separate religion, but in so doing you might offend a lot of people. (I am not one of those people who would take offense.)

People are addicted to their labels. I have met a lot of Buddhists who look down on Hindus as being unintelligent. I have also met some Hindus who think Buddhists are stupid. Not only was Buddha a Hindu, but he may even have been an incarnation of Vishnu depending on who you ask.

Better yet, what kinds of flowers do you prefer to have around? Your own enjoyment is what you are offering, rather than the actual flowers. Unless Lord Narasimha shows up in person to tell you otherwise, of course, and if he does then using the wrong flowers was well worth it.

Usually I have been told that it is necessary to be a religious person in order to gain a prize of some sort like enlightenment, heaven, oneness with God, or something else that is really good. The nature of the prize is usually a little vague, but it amounts to being a lot happier either when you are really old or really dead. In order to be a religious person so you can claim your prize, you have to act religious. In order to act religious, you have to suppress tendencies that are a bit too animal or too human. There is always a list of sins which must be avoided; some religions are more strict than others about these things. The usual method is "fake it 'till you make it" meaning that if you pretend hard enough you will stop being a sinner and finally be that religious person and you will gain your prize. Naturally, having chosen a religion, there are other people out there who are doing the same thing you are doing - and you can't really see how successful they are because these things are usually fairly private. If they are doing a decent job of faking it, you will tend to assume that you are the only one who is just pretending and falling quite short of the goal. Or so I have been told many times over. Guilt is an essential part of any religion. Everyone else can do this but I can't.

Bummer. He looks like such a nice guy even if he was having a bad day when the picture was taken. I'd put him on TV, too. He looks like the kind of guy I'd invite over for coffee, but he is too good to actually show up. Let me go tell a Jewish friend or two that eating beef is right up there with the holocaust and I'll get back with you on the results. Seriously. I would have figured him for a 1950s movie star.

Okay. I don't understand German and I don't recognize the guy in the picture. Could you please spell it out for me? I know I'm being insulted for acting contrary just for the sake of being contrary and I'm sure this is a brilliant response ... but without some commentary it is just going too far over my head to mean anything.

Burger King actually sells veggie burgers. Are there a lot of Brahmanas around that it would be convenient to kill one? Does having sex with someone's husband count or is it just wives?

I don't know. Are you planning a really long journey? It is enough to know that you won't live long enough to get to the edge if there is an outer limit.

Do you have a personal reason for asking or is this theoretical for you? The reason for asking is because if this is theory then you probably don't need to answer it. I saw a bumper sticker on the back of someone's car a few years ago saying "If you don't like abortion get a vasectomy". They do it by poking holes in the back of the scrotum and cutting both of the vas deferens, the tubes which take sperm away from the testicles. The ends of the tubes are cauterized and pushed away from each other and separated by other tissue to eliminate the possibility of the ends reconnecting. It takes about three months to be certain that there is not still viable sperm in the system, and condoms or some other form of birth control is still advised during this time. After that, though, the possibility of causing an unwanted pregnancy is very slim. Sperm is still produced, but it dies and is absorbed back into the body. It is possible that antibodies will form to kill the sperm faster, so that even if the vasectomy is reversed - if the ends of the vas deferens are reconnected - then infertility will persist.

Sinus irrigation is an option. Put a 1 teaspoon of salt in 1 quart of water and bring it to a boil. Allow it to cool almost to room temperature. Tilt your head forward, down, and to one side. Pour the water slowly in one nostril and allow it to come out the other after passing through your sinuses. One nostril is usually more congested than the other; pour the water into the more congested side so it doesn't back up and run down your throat. There are all sorts of descriptions of the process on the web under the name sinus irrigation and on yoga web sites it is a purification technique called neti. In general I find drinking a lot of water and avoiding junk food helps as well.

With words that are 3 letters long or less, it isn't possible to keep the first and last letters in place and have something to scramble.