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At this critical juncture in world history, let me remind readers of some history with the help of AI tool Perplexity. The following prose (non-italicised) is entirely credited to Perplexity:

Western powers committed several major historical injustices against China during the “Century of Humiliation” (1839–1949). Key events include:

• Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860): Britain forced China to import opium, leading to widespread addiction and societal harm. After military defeats, China ceded Hong Kong and signed unequal treaties granting foreign powers extraterritorial privileges.

• Unequal Treaties: These treaties opened Chinese ports to foreign trade, ceded territories (e.g., Hong Kong, Taiwan), and imposed heavy indemnities. They undermined China’s sovereignty.

• Sacking of the Old Summer Palace (1860): Anglo-French forces looted and burned this cultural treasure during the Second Opium War.

• Eight-Nation Alliance (1900): Western powers suppressed the Boxer Rebellion, imposing massive reparations through the Boxer Protocol. [Author’s note: The United States of America was one…

道深圆觉

回光返照

空相皆知

无心自醒

常醒道悟

独为基督

A rock is still a rock

Hard, cold, unfeeling

No water flows forth.

Why be fixed on a rock?

Rock-like upon rock

Only more suffering.

Arminian theology espouses the central role of humanity’s free will in cooperation with God’s grace for justification and salvation. Roman Catholics and some Protestants like the Methodists subscribe to this notion.

Arminianism is based on the assumption that human beings have “free will.” We only think and believe that we do, a probable result of neurological hijacking of the mind spewing forth a self-comforting delusion for evolutionary purposes. But this “free will” assumption lacks empirical evidence. Modern neuroscience debunks the myth of a central processing agent in our neurobiological machinery that makes free choices, controls, and executes all of our cognitive, sensory, affective, volitional, and behavioural activities.

In other words, there is no central controlling self or agent. Hence, no free will. Everything that comes out of this human organism is predetermined or at best habituated by past activities. Humans at the very most have conditioned will that is totally…

God’s kingdom is an “upside-down” countercultural one, a kingdom conformed to the Triune community of love led by the one true King.

It is not the empire of busy egomania and self-driven achievement. Thus, gospel values are in a radical sense antithetical to those of predatory capitalism, where ego, achievement, acquisition, power, profit, greed, and instrumentalism are its values and tragically our idols, promoted by leaders and propped up by social institutions alike. Bad religion often legitimizes and serves as nutritional supplement to the capitalistic empire.

Gospel values dovetail with Zen values rooted in the Dhamma. Gotama and Jesus have much in common. They resist and subvert mammon, be it overturning the tables of hustling greed or tearing down the divisive walls of casteism and ethnic tribalism.

In light of this, let us rethink how we see and do “useless” activities. What the world considers as useless — activities such…

回六祖

~~~

菩提称是树

明镜称是镜

若心空自觉

虚尘无所住

In this essay, I would like to articulate my thoughts on the Trinitarian God of historic Christianity in light of Buddhist and Tantric paradigms and conceptions of the divine, or what can also be termed ultimate reality. In this movement of ideas, I seek to reconcile and integrate seemingly divergent points of view into a coherent philosophical theology of the Triune God that embraces the strengths and positive contributions of the Christian Biblical, Asian Buddhist, and Indian Tantric intellectual and wisdom traditions. Through this dialogical fusion of multiple horizons in a spirit of hospitable inclusive interspirituality without indiscriminate bland syncretism, I hope to evince an integral cosmotheandric theology of the Trinity that can be faithful to the earliest historical creedal confessions of Christianity while open to fresh thinking stemming from Asian ontological and epistemological perspectives. As a result, my hope is that new impetus and possibilities for reinvigorated engagement with…

In this essay, I attempt to outline my view on the existential status of God. Not in terms of whether God exists or not, but in terms of how God would exist if he indeed exists. In others words, I aim to explicate my understanding at least provisionally of the mode of existence of God. This is thus a reflection on "theo-ontology" or a study on the mode of existence of God.

Elsewhere, I have explained my preference for a non-substantialist, non-essentialist view of God as opposed to the traditionally dominant substantialist or essentialist view upheld by classical monotheism. I will not repeat my arguments against such substantialism/essentialism here. Suffice to say that it is my position that unless we adopt a non-substantialist, non-essentialist view of God, we end up in the quagmire of tri-theism or the notion of three Gods in logical terms instead of the triune God as…

This essay reflects on the conception of center versus periphery particularly with regards to faith institutions and missions. But first, I want to differentiate my argument from the real and present demarcation between claims to historic faith dogma versus deviant teachings claiming to be so but which are in fact unorthodox at best if not heretical in real substantive terms. This essay pertains to missiological perspectives and approaches, not church orthodoxy. In relation to the missional ministry of Awarezen, I make no claim to its dogmatic orthodoxy or admission into mainline historic Christian faith institutions.

Awarezen is not a Christian church in the common religious sense nor does it pretend to set itself up as one. Awarezen is an alternative missiological imaginary, a grassroots initiative that reaches out to diverse peoples with the gospel of Jesus Christ in highly contextualised if not inreligionised ways. Interfaith sensibility and interspirituality are thus…