Minimalism & Creative Activities

I’ve started to become interested in minimalism. Just being content with having as few items as possible becomes somewhat freeing. It is therapuetic, because now I don’t care about my stuff, theres no attachment to any item I possess. It comes back to buddhism and the concept of desire and attachment, your not even attached to the items you possess. There is no item you can not easily replace, and so you feel better about what you possess.
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Chinese Tea

I have been getting more and more interested in trying different types of Chinese teas. I bought some in the flavors of Black Tea, Oolong, and Jasmine. They are loose and you just take 3 grams and boil them. I was able to buy some at a Chinese grocery store for a reasonable price. You can use them more than once to get more value out of them. At first I was drinking them with sugar, but I have decided to start drinking them without sugar because its decent without sugar.
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The Angel Gabriel, John, Jesus, and Muhammad

This post is mainly about the Angel Gabriel, and the confusion that the revelations cause in interpreting the Abrahamic faiths: Gabriel first appears to John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias, preparing Zacharias for the arrival of John, from the womb of Mary’s cousin Elisabeth 10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. 11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
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Four Arts

The four arts, or the four arts of the Chinese scholar, were the four main academic and artistic talents required of the aristocratic ancient Chinese scholar-gentlemen. They were the mastery of the qin (the guqin, a stringed instrument), qi (the strategy game of Go), shu (Chinese calligraphy), and hua (Chinese painting), and are also referred to by listing all four, 琴棋書畫; qínqíshūhuà. — “Four Arts”, wikipedia
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Noble Eight-Fold Path

These are the eight noble truths in Buddhism: Right View: our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. The Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld/hell). Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when “insight” became central to Buddhist soteriology, especially in Theravada Buddhism.
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