Happy Mother's Day, Buddha (video)

WARNING: Who is your mother? It is your current mother. The others were past mother so are not your mother. Do not cling even to your current, beneficial, wonderful mother. How much less to the others. Not every daughter will be a mother, but every mother was a daughter. Love your parents. Be grateful. Repay them with Dharma. Or (like, you know, if they were horrible) leave them be. This is what is best for you. Let them be what they will be. You don't own them. They don't own you. Do you owe them? Yes, very likely. If you refuse to repay them, okay then let them be. You are missing out on a rare chance because no ordinary karma is so powerful as what we do to or for our parents. They are like the Buddha for us, so valuable and extra-meaningful is what we do to and for them. That is how karma is. This is part of right view as the Buddha defined it. And because of wrong view, we suffer much. To not suffer, let us have confidence and believe the Buddha. Above all karmas is one karma: making an end of karma. And how do we do that? Awaken, know-and-see, and touch nirvana.

The Buddha's mothers (Mother's Day Special)

(Alan Peto) UNITED STATES. Mother's Day is a popular holiday, but is there a Buddhist equivalent? Did the Buddha ever speak of "mothers"? Yes, often! In addition to past lives, karma (actions) supporting his parents, he helped one of his closest disciples in a practice to help his mother who was reborn as a hungry ghost (preta). This became so popular among laypersons that there is a festival for it. We can also practice loving-kindness, compassion, and generosity for mothers right here and now. These are foundational Buddhist values that are perfect for Mother's Day (and every day).

Contact Alan Peto:  alanpeto.com/contact. Video disclaimer:  alanpeto.com/legal/video-disc...

Is the first video mockery? Whether said in jest or semi-seriously, it is nevertheless profoundly true. How long is samsara? That's easy to answer but, first, What exactly is samsara?

• Samsara is the "Endless Cycle of Rebirth," the spinning "Wheel of Life and Death," the "Revolving in the Ocean of Death, Suffering, and Rebirth" because every time one dies, one meets with rebirth -- and this has been going on since the beginningless past and will go on into the unforeseeable future.

Ah, in that case, who knows? A billion years?

Buddhist Mother's Day

(single_cell) Happy Mother's Day to all moms from the Buddha's moms (Maya and Pajapati) to God's wife, Asherah, to Jesus' mom Mary (Miriam) [both at one time or another being called the "Queen of Heaven"], to our mom, Eve of Eden (and the first female in the Agganna Sutta, the "Discourse on Beginnings [of Life on Earth]" (a.k.a. "A Buddhist Genesis") to the progenitor mother in science, also called Eve.

Beautiful Scythians/Shakyians of Central Asia

Hooray for moms! Can we agree that when we first began as a single cell, we were already composed of two halves embedded in a mother (or petri dish), cared for by a mother (or lab workers), and someone somewhere was a father, participating or not. Parents are very important because parenthood is karma. We are fortunate in having parents, but this fortune is not for nothing. We, too, have been mothers.

And samsara is so long, has been going on for so many billions of years and far longer than that, for aeons (kalpa) without discernible beginning, which is not to say there was no beginning but only to say that no beginning is visible, apparent, or sensible to our logic and assumptions about its nature. What is the nature of an answer that would fit the question? It must satisfy the question based on our other assumptions. So if we ask, "When did it all begin?" we are in no way prepared for the real answer. We're only hitting our head against a paradox of our own making.

• Single_cell, May 13, 2012; Alan Peto, May 7, 2022; Dhr. Seven (text), Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fast food's fast but not food (Daily Show)

Jon Stewart devours the fast-food industry | The Daily Show

(The Daily Show) May 3, 2024: #dailyshow #Comedy Jon Stewart takes a bite out of the fast-food industry from McDonald's' promise to use chicken anuses [for McNuggets] without antibiotics, Chick-fil-A’s Appreciation Day protests, and Pizza Hut’s pork belly and hot dog-lined pizza. #dailyshow #Comedy

California chicks finally hatch in LA

What about my babies?! Who in their right mind still puts lead and DDT into the environment?

Cute California chick hatches at L.A. Zoo, a boost to endangered species (KTLA)

This hideous turducken-like chick is a beautiful endangered species just born in LA (KTLA)

Endangered California Condor Chicks Hatch At LA Zoo | Los Angeles, CA Patch

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The California condor is a Mexican immigrant

Those bald eagles are totally unreliable, possibly due to DDT contamination of the environment by humans that reaches LA's neighboring forest and waterways at Big Bear Lake, next to Mt. Baldy, which is not named after its nesting eagles.

There are legends of this great bird.

Eaglets are cute and beautiful but, as stated, unreliable. Everyone had their eyes trained on the Eagle Cam. And for what? Nothing but disappointment. Thanks for nothing, corporate polluters, who hurl heavy metals and other contaminants into the atmosphere, landing on bodies of water to poison the fish and selling pellets that kill rodents and poison the birds and mountain lions.

Imagine taking van into the woods to see nature

But good news: the Los Angeles Zoo has succeeded in birthing five critically endangered condors, the majestic vultures of California and other parts of Mexico. (California is, after all, part of Mexico, now divided in two parts, Alta and Baja, but no one has told the birds, who are illegally crossing over into American airspace all the time). There are only approximately 350 condors left in the wild. There are soon to be five more.

Alas, these chicks are not nearly as cute as their hoary cousins of the north. But their mothers and many others may love them all the more for it.

In other cute baby animals born today news: Adorable but deadly fluff balls, better known as pygmy slow lorises, born at the Smithsonian's National Zoo

• Endangered California condors born at Los Angeles Zoo (KTLA)
• 5 California condor chicks hatched at Los Angeles Zoo (NBC Los Angeles)
• VIDEO: LA Zoo celebrates 5 California condor hatchlings, with more to come (ABC7 Los Angeles)
• 5 endangered California condors born at L.A. Zoo (Yahoo)
• Want to see a California 'superbloom'? Go to LAX airport

Condors

California Condor - Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens (lazoo.org)

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I understand you've been exterminating us

(LA Zoo) California condors have soared in the skies of North America (mostly in Mexico) for some 11,000 years, since the Pleistocene era. Their range once extended across the southern half of North America and along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

With a nine-and-a-half-foot wingspan, these ancient birds can fly more than 100 miles each day in search of carcasses to feed on.

Condors roost on rocky ledges and in treetops, where they can easily launch into the warm air rising in morning thermals.

These vultures are highly intelligent, inquisitive, and social birds. By 1982, the wild population had dwindled down to 22 birds due to human contamination of the environment.

Humans did this largely through lead poisoning from bullets aimed at murdering and injuring living beings, which were left in the carrion (dead beings) the birds consume to survive as they clean up the environment.

In 1987, the last condor was removed from the wild. With a population of just 27 captive birds, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in collaboration with Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo began an intensive breeding and reintroduction program.

It eventually increased the population to more than 500 birds. The release of condors bred in captivity with human care began in 1992. So far about 300 California condors have been re-introduced into the wild. More

How a chicken can fly: path to enlightenment

Gary Larson (art); Dhr. Seven (poem), Ashley Wells, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

A flood? Why didn't you fly? - I lost the balloon.

"Oh, how sad, Chicken Bob, to see you try.

They call you Fryer, but you're meant to fly."

He muttered, I thought, asked, "Hey, what the cluck?"

I sat and I pondered: What could be up?

My eyes lifted as thought-balloon drifted.

Wide pupils shifted, reading, it's scripted:

How bright the idea that balloon brought!

Better the bulb than the darkness of thought.

Now what if he rows as I provide lift?

I get him to float, won't he flap his wings?

Now "what if" is no way to live a life.

For what if I ask, and he but denies?

So sinched at the waist, a string through his strut,

Seatbelt fitted in haste, he levitates up!

The helium balloon wafted him high.

I said, "Daft bird, see, it's better to try!"

Analysis

What is at the very heart of wisdom?

-So, Seven, you're saying, through symbolism and Gary Larson's comic strip, that we should figure out a novel solution and try it?

Poetry is not symbolic. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't. Then with a little help he could. It's like when I try to meditate, I can't. But with a little help, who knows. Once my teacher applied peppermint essential oil to my upper lip to keep my attention at the breath as it goes in and out (anapanasati bhavana). It worked. It was subtle, but peppermint is brightening and kept me awake and vigorous, yet not too excited as green tea might do. I would never have thought of that. "Plant helpers" can go a long way to bring us to the verge of samadhi and insight. But without a deva to point that out, it's hard for a fledging sitter or an old bird set in his ways to make progress.

O, hail, Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion!

-Ingenius! So you're saying everyone should try peppermint to advance their sitting practice.

I'm saying no such thing. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.

-Is he "Chicken Little," symbolically?

No, he's Chicken Bob.

-Ah, and is "flying" meditation?

No, meditation is meditation, generally of two kinds, initial calming and subsequently systematic practice with a purified mind to know-and-see.

-Know-and-see what?

Ultimate materiality (kalapas) and mentality (cittas).

-What does that mean?

There are particles of perception, and discreet mind-moments that form the stream of consciousness we take to be one thing when it's really part of an impersonal PROCESS going on. We take this process to be a "self," and we cling to it.

-Isn't it a "self"?

Heart of Perfect Wisdom (Prajna Paramita)

No, it's not-self. The Heart Sutra makes this clear: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are the Five Aggregates or "Heaps" clung to as self. But they are not self.

• Isn't it a self that clings to self? 
• -No, a "self" doesn't cling; ultimately speaking, form clings to form, feeling to feeling, perception to perception, mental formations to mental formations, and consciousness clings to consciousness. The whole entanglement is ignorance, avidya, and snapping out of it to wisdom, knowing-and-seeing, and right view is "awakening" or bodhi).

-What ARE they then?

They are impermanent, disappointing, impersonal (empty) phenomena arising and passing away. When we see that directly, we can let go.

-If we let go, is that flying?

Letting go is freedom. Enlightenment is possible in this very life, right here right now, because there's only now, right?

-The past is not real? The future is not real?

One is a memory, one is a dream, and all that's real is right now. This present moment is real and it's all that's ever been real. Forget the rest. Be at your best RIGHT NOW.

-Is that what Ram Dass (Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert) was saying when he famously said, "Be here now"?

I don't know. But it's good advice. Be. Here. NOW.

-Isn't that Eckhart Tolle's advice?

I think it might be Byron Katie's advice. Do The Work, asking the Four Questions. That'll bring you into the present moment, that is this NOW.

-Then who needs help?

Sometimes we need help. People weren't just spontaneously awakening until the Buddha arose and pointed the Way, revealed the Path, gave step-by-step instructions to make an end of all suffering right now.

-Those instructions still exist?

Yes, they do. Each teacher might put a spin on them unique to each individual's capacity and unique experience, but the fundamentals are right there in the ancient texts.

-Which texts?

The Pali canon is pretty reliable. Pa Auk Sayadaw has renewed their vitality and cleared the cobwebs and so has awakened students like Beth Upton, Ven. Dhammadipa, Sayalay Susila, Sayalay Dipankara, Tina Rasmussen, Stephen Snyder, and my own erstwhile teacher. Even Ayya Khema and her student Leigh Brasington, with the help of a Sri Lankan meditating monk, made it back to the original right-stillness (samma-samadhi) practices for calm. Vipassana is a little more involved.

-But the Heart Sutra is in Sanskrit not Pali!

It is, and isn't it amazing that it is the mostly widely read "discourse" in Mahayana Buddhism, yet no one gets what it's about?

-What's it about?

Ven. Sariputra, foremost in wisdom

"Emptiness" (shunyata). The mark of things is that they are all impersonal. All composite "things" (dharmas) are anatta, "not self." The "perfection of wisdom" is the direct realization that all things are impersonal -- particularly those five things clung to as a "self": form (body) [arrangements of the Four Elements or characteristics of materiality]; feeling (sensation), perception (all we perceive), mental formations (all the other psychological stuff), and the hat trick consciousness (awareness) [the four characteristics of mentality].

-And that made you think up a bird poem?!

No, there's no symbolism. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.

Some breeds of chicken CAN fly (video)

Feathers to Flight: Do Chickens Have the Power to Soar?

Go vegan for freedom! Chickens are living beings

(The Happy Chicken Coop) Ever wonder about the gravity-defying capabilities of our feathered friends?

This video asks, "Can chickens fly?"

In the sequel, I kill chickens.

It delves into the flight abilities of chickens (hens and cockerels), challenging common myths and uncovering the truth about these amazing birds.

We explore how their wing structure, weight, and breed play a role in their flying ability. We also share some fascinating facts about how chickens have adapted their "flight" for survival and routine activities.

Why did the chicken cross the road? (Suicide bid)

So are backyard chickens earthbound, or can they take to the skies? Let's ruffle some feathers and find out together.

The Happy Chicken Coop is the place for more insightful poultry content. Stay clucky, Mothercluckers! And whatever you don't imprison or abuse chickens. Let them be free.