Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Twin Ear Cleaning That Will Make You Tingle 150%. [Enjoy 22 minutes of this as recorded with my special ASMR mic sr3d.co.uk pro version].
Crazy Tingling
ASMR stands for "autonomous sensory meridian response." It is an experience characterized by a static cling or tingling sensation on the skin.
It typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia.
ASMR signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin."
It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control. More
How could whispering change one's life? Andrea Seigel tells this story about finding out that she is undeniably not alone. She’s a novelist with several books including Like the Red Panda.
Heartbreak hurts so much, so very much. This disappointment/pain is called dukkha in Buddhism, a word that covers the range of unpleasant sensation:
grief, lamentation, despair, distress, woe, ill, misery, off-kilter, unsatisfactoriness, or the catchall "suffering."
Dukkha (the opposite of the Buddhist word sukha that covers the range of pleasant sensations or "happiness") refers to painful feeling, which may be bodily or mental. (The Buddhist word for "feeling" is vedanā).
The term is not limited to painful experience as under, but refers to the unsatisfactory (dissatisfying, unsatisfactory) nature and the general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena. Such phenomena are things dependent for their existence on constituents or conditions.
On account of their impermanence, all are liable to result in disappointment/suffering. The shocking thing is that this includes pleasurable experiences.
So "unsatisfactoriness" -- which refers to all the things "liable to result in suffering" -- is a more adequate rendering than "suffering." Let's go with "disappointment."
The first noble truth does not deny the existence of happiness, joy, or pleasurable experiences, as is often wrongly assumed. This is illustrated by the following sutra excerpts when the Buddha said:
Sutra
"Seeking SATISFACTION in the world, meditators, I had pursued my way. That satisfaction in the world I found. Insofar as satisfaction exists in the world, I have well perceived it by wisdom.
"Seeking for MISERY in the world, meditators, I had pursued my way. That misery in the world I found. Insofar as misery exists in the world, I have well perceived it by wisdom.
"Seeking for the ESCAPE from the world, meditators, I had pursued my way. That escape from the world I found. Insofar as an escape from the world exists, I have well perceived it by wisdom" (A.iii.105).
"If there were no satisfaction [pleasure, joy, happiness] to be found in the world, beings would not be attached to the world....
"If there were no misery to be found in the world, beings would not be repelled by the world....
"If there were no escape from the world, beings could not escape from the world" (A.iii.106).
For Buddhist texts on the noble truth of suffering, see The Word of the Buddha and The Path to Deliverance by Ven. Nyanatiloka (BPS.lk)
See The Three Basic Facts of Existence, II: Suffering (BPS.lk, Wheel #191/193)
Inside the 23-Dimensional World of A Car’s Paint Job
Painter Coco Gonzalez (Christie Hemm Klok)
Hue.
Saturation. Luminance. Sparkle. Fixing a door ding is about way more
than color. (Also: Why the sky is blue and clouds are white).
Adalberto Gonzalez may well
be one of the best painters of cars in Northern California.
He doesn’t
work in the eye-popping sparkle-and-shine mode of Cali low-rider
culture, and he only rarely finds himself refinishing an Italian exotic.
Gonzalez, who goes by the nickname Coco, runs the paint room at Alameda
Collision Repair, a high-quality shop that fixes slightly more than 13
cars every day, six days a week.
Painting a panel, from a simple ding
to something much, much worse is the last stop in a car repair, which
makes it a bottleneck.
What makes Gonzalez so good is that he's fast. He
is an artist at uncorking the bottleneck. But unlike most artists, if
you can perceive even the faintest hint of his work, he has made a
mistake.
You’re thinking, big whoop. A car comes in, a 2015 Toyota Camry, let's say, in Ruby Flare Pearl
(that’s red) needing a bashed-in door Bondo’d and sanded. You just go
to a shelf and take down 2015 Toyota Ruby Flare Pearl, click a canister
into an airgun, and swoosh, you’re back on the road, right?
Nope.
Car companies have put 50,000 to 60,000 car colors on the road, but
even a big body shop like Alameda Collision Repair has just 70 or 80
colors on its shelves. Turns out Gonzalez isn't just a fast painter,
he’s a fast matcher. “I get the closest one,” he says, “and then I match the color.” More
The Round of Rebirth: Samsara "Which is greater, the tears we've shed while wandering and being reborn this
long time -- crying and weeping, meeting with suffering...
Samsara Divided by Zero The goal of Buddhist practice, nirvana, is totally uncaused. And right
there is a paradox.
Alissa Nelson, aka the "Black Metal Yogi," teaching a class in Los Angeles (J Matt/LAW)
Black Metal Yoga and Black Metal Brunch
Black [brutal and Satanic] metal has long held a reputation for being the most abrasive and proudly underground corner of the heavy metal spectrum.
Those with even a passing knowledge of the genre may be familiar with the sordid tales of ’90s Norwegian acts such as Mayhem. The modern grouping of bands that are considered black metal is much more expansive, with dozens of acts adding layers of progressive musicianship and atmospheric shoegaze to the existing genre blueprint.
That said, there is still a sizable contingent of black-metal musicians and fans who are hesitant to see the genre expand and gain attention from outside its small, exclusive bubble.
Black heavy metal and yoga? Okay.
But on Saturday, August 11, two separate events -- Black Metal Yoga and Black Metal Brunch (DTLA) -- will drag black metal kicking and screaming into the lifestyle-events arena.
On a surface level the harshness of black-metal music and the calming therapeutic leanings of yoga seem incongruous. But for yoga instructor Alissa Nelson, aka “the Black Metal Yogi,” the combination is more than complementary.
“Yoga is about putting yourself in uncomfortable positions,” Nelson says during our conversation on a sunny Saturday morning in Torrance's El Prado Park.
“Listening to black metal is absolutely perfect for yoga, because both are based on small changes in tone over time. The message for each is that you have to be okay with confronting things that are difficult, challenging, messy, and painful to get to a place where you are not experiencing suffering.” Nelson has been teaching yoga for... More
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Twin Ear Cleaning That Will Make You Tingle 150%. [Enjoy 22 minutes of this as recorded with my special ASMR mic sr3d.co.uk pro version].
ASMR stands for "autonomous sensory meridian response." It is an experience characterized by a static cling or tingling sensation on the skin.
