{"id":185536,"date":"2014-10-20T18:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/20\/the-universal-nature-of-humanity\/"},"modified":"2014-10-20T18:10:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T23:10:00","slug":"the-universal-nature-of-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/20\/the-universal-nature-of-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Universal Nature of Humanity*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can think of nothing that unites us more than the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailymash.co.uk\/news\/society\/dalai-lama-goes-off-on-one-about-sales-calls-2012051627242\">even the Dalai Lama is pissed off about telemarketers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Tibet\u2019s spiritual leader has delivered an extraordinary rant about the things that do his head in.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Dalai Lama\u2019s rare display of belligerent human frailty occurred in London, during an acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for \u2018affirming life\u2019s spiritual dimension\u2019.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">He said: \u201cI am not a special person. I spend my days mostly in quiet contemplation.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIt is during these moments, when I am tantalisingly close to nirvana, that the phone always rings.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201c\u2018Hello,\u2019 says the voice on the line, \u2018can I speak to Mr D Lama?\u2019<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201c\u2018He\u2019s not in,\u2019 I always reply, because it is fine to lie in these situations, \u2018and if he was he wouldn\u2019t be interested.\u2019<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cThen they go, \u2018surely he\u2019d be interested on saving 25% on his monthly heating bills with double glazing\u2019. For Zen\u2019s sake!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, everyone link hands, and start singing, <i>All we are saying, is telemarketers suck<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Yes. I know. It&#8217;s a parody site, and this is fake news, but it really <b>should<\/b> be real.&nbsp; After all, who amongst us does not hate phone sales calls?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can think of nothing that unites us more than the fact that even the Dalai Lama is pissed off about telemarketers: Tibet\u2019s spiritual leader has delivered an extraordinary rant about the things that do his head in.The Dalai Lama\u2019s rare display of belligerent human frailty occurred in London, during an acceptance speech for the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,1048,1003,1050],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-humor","category-philosophy","category-snark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}