Why religion is dying in America, Europe

(MythVisionTV) Jesus was wrong about end of  world? Paula Fredriksen

(Cold Reason) Religion is dying

• (bonnetthoughts) Where did Christianity come from?

'Sure, I'll Join Your Cult' (Maria Bamford)

(Comedy Central) “I’d occasionally stage my own death” – Get to know Maria Bamford in nine jokes

• Get to know Maria Bamford in nine jokes about beauty standards in L.A., having a workplace nemesis and going to therapy as a child.

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult (Audible Audiobook)

Unabridged. Stand-up comedian and author Maria Bamford narrates her Simon & Schuster publication, which has garnered 4.4 out of 5 stars with 994 ratings. It is a Goodreads Choice Award nominee.

From “weird, scary, ingenious” (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, an instant New York Times bestselling, brutally honest, and “laugh-out-loud funny” (Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems — from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.

This is Not Happening: Psych Ward

Maria Bamford: Psych Ward (This Is Not Happening - Uncensored)

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has always fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.

(Laugh Society) My Mom and Ayahuasca: Maria Bamford

I'd have to be crazy to be a conservative.

In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult brings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited to: Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.

(Let's get inside the artist's head) Maria Bamford on cults

Packed with “Bamford’s brilliance, relentless humor, and insatiable instinct for survival (Library Journal), this memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it.

In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following). NOTE: Purchase of this title includes accompanying PDF in your Audible Library along with the audio. Sure, I'll Join Your Cult

• Maria Bamford, Amazon.com; Comedy Central; Laugh Society; Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Eli from Russia: solo female traveler

Solo in Russia’s most dying region: Pskov

(Eli from Russia) PSKOV, Russia (former USSR) - Hi, I’m Eli! I travel in Russia, and my goal is to visit all its many regions. So far I’ve visited 47 of them, and the next one is the Pskov region. This region is one of the most ancient Russian lands. It’s a real treasure trove of historical and cultural knowledge, with an amazing legacy and unspoiled nature. At the same time, it’s considered to be one of the most depressing regions with a record of population decline across the entire country (as everyone rushes to modernize and live in the big city, preferably crowded Moscow). Let’s explore Pskov City and the village life for which this region is famous.

TIMECODES

• 00:00 Pskov region: the most cultural or the most depressing?
• 01:15 History of Pskov city
• 03:52 Heading to Talab Islands on Pskov Lake
• 05:30 Exploring Zalita and Talabsk Island
• 07:05 Belov (Upper) Island
• 11:09 Should you visit this place?

🔸 What can you find on my channel? 👉🏻visiting different republics and regions of Russia 👉🏻travel vlogs to off-the-beaten-path and remote places of Russia, expeditions to the Far North and Russian Arctic 📍 More videos: • Visiting the Soul of Russia’s Far North - Vologda Region • Life in Russia's COLDEST CITY - Yakutsk | [Buddhist] Yakutia habits, heatwave (-35 C°) • Heading to Russia’s Extreme North Bey... - Life in Provincial Russian towns in the Far North | Murmansk region ___ 📸https://instagram.com/elibakunova?igs... - more content about Russia, traveling, and my daily life

• Eli from Russia, Nov. 30, 2024; Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Kwanzaa begins with a song (12/26)

Kwanzaa (/ˈkwɑːnzə/) is an annual celebration of African-American culture from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, culminating in a communal feast called Karamu, usually on the sixth day [1]. It was created by activist Maulana Karenga, based on African harvest festival traditions from various parts of West, East, as well as Southeast Africa, which is a continent not a country. Kwanzaa was first celebrated in 1966. Twenty-first-century estimates place the number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa between 500,000 and 2,000,000 [2]. More

Palo is an African diasporic religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th or early 20th century. It draws heavily upon the traditional Kongo religion of Central Africa, and from Catholicism and Spiritism. Central to Palo is the nganga, usually made from an iron cauldron. Many nganga are regarded as material manifestations of ancestral or nature deities known as mpungu. The nganga may contain a wide range of objects, among the most important being sticks and human remains, the latter called nfumbe. In Palo, the presence of the nfumbe means that the spirit of that dead person inhabits the nganga and serves the possessor. More

Echoes of Native Americans (video)

Echoes of the Native Americans/Ecos de los Nativos Americanos

(El DR4M4TURG0) May 19, 2016: Musical composition created by Andres Collado Rodriguez, blending ethnic sounds centered in the songs and culture of the Native American Indians. Composición musical creada por Andrés Collado Rodríguez. Mezclando sonidos étnicos centrados en los cantos y cultura de los indios nativos norteamericanos.

Ghost Dance Wounded Knee

Oldest Native American footage ever

• This is National American Indian Heritage Month, November 2024 (Wisdom Quarterly)

Oldest Native American footage ever

(Yestervid) Oct. 28, 2015: This is a rare, amazing, and heartfelt tribute to Native American tribes. This footage dates back to 1895 or 1894, with rare vintage audio recording of American Indian music.

This is forgotten American history and includes the oldest known clip of Native Americans on film, a clip of Sioux tribe members performing the "Buffalo Dance" at Thomas Edison's Black Maria Studio in New Jersey.

The "Ghost Dance" film was created on the same day, September 24, 1895. Other films featured include Hopi tribe members greeting TR and clips from the Chicago World's Fair of 1933.

It shows three Native American feature films: White Fawn's Devotion, The Invaders, and Last of the Mohicans. White Fawn's Devotion was the earliest film directed by a Native American, whose name was James Young Deer.

The old audio clip was recorded in 1895 by Alice Cunningham and Francis La Flesche. The dance song is "He'dewachi," and it is traditionally played at ceremonies that celebrate warriors.

Please enjoy and share! Philámayaye! (Lakota for "thank you"). See more great videos like this on the channel: Yestervid (yestervid.com), Facebook: yestervid, X/Twitter: yestervid.

Oldest Native American drumming video ever

 

(Afrodrumming) July 24, 2012: Old, rare footage of Native American drumming from 1894 in a tribute to our American Indian brothers and sisters.

Big thanks to all the musicians who provided their talents: The Hopi tribe of Arizona, Kerri Lake, Ephemeral Rift, and Kevin MacLeod.

For more on Afrodrumming, see: afrodrumming.com. The album African Drumming is available as a CD or for immediate download here: afrodrumming.com/store for all anyone needs to know about the djembe and African drumming.

• Xochitl, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Nat'l American Indian Heritage Month

Don't let your yesterdays eat too much of today

November is National American Heritage Month in the US, aka Native American Heritage Month, which began in with Bush in 1990.

"The President [of the USA] has authorized and requested to call upon Federal, State and local Governments, groups and organizations and the people of the United States to observe such month with appropriate programs, ceremonies and activities."

The landmark bill tribal people represented a major step in establishing this celebration.

Kachina dolls of the Hopi tribe

That struggle began in 1976 when a Cherokee/Osage Indian named Jerry C. Elliott-High Eagle authored Native American Awareness Week legislation, the first historical week of recognition in the nation for Native peoples.

This led to Pres. Reagan in 1986 proclaiming November 23–30, 1986, as "American Indian Week" [1].

This commemorative month aims to provide a platform for Native people living in the United States of America to share their:

• culture,
• traditions,
• music,
• crafts,
• dances,
• and ways and concepts of life.

LA, what say you about the White Man's oppression?

It is meant to give Native people the opportunity to resuscitate their languages and spiritual practices, natural medicines and rituals to express to the community in cities, counties, and states so that officials become aware of their concerns. In this way solutions for building bridges of understanding and friendship in local areas can be fostered.

Indians of the Valley, Tataviam, have a center

Federal agencies are encouraged to provide educational programs for their employees regarding American Indian history, rights, culture, and contemporary issues to better assist people affiliated with surviving tribe in their jobs and for overall awareness. More

I have a vision

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Southern California, and Los Angeles in particular, has the highest concentration of Indigenous people in the country. Yet, we have no "reservation," no remainder of our land not stolen by treaty and war by the Federal government. There are, however, public lands.

What if those who wanted to revive the Old Ways, keep them alive as mixed with the modern, were to have a place to live as before? I imagine somewhere in the forest above the city, in the San Gabriel Mountains, the Angeles Forest and monument.

The invaders almost made us forget

What if Natives and allies could come together to fashion a better society within the society. Now we're all spoiled and do not want to relinquish the benefits of modernity. But we do not want to be deprived of our traditions, identities, and customs.

The knowledge, language, and culture taken from us can be restored. If everyone were given title and deed to a homestead on Catalina Island, it would soon be full, our own "Hawaiian kingdom" with a queen representing us. Soon all the Channel Islands would be full of canoes and catamarans, traversing the waters of Santa Monica Bay.

If elders guide us, we might all live in peace.

What if we could all receive secure housing within the county, no need to be placed on desolate land and isolated. What if Indians got recognition?

Los Angeles is Tongva (Kizh, Gabrieleno) land, and that could be to everyone's benefit. Even Bruce's Beach eventually got recognition. We'll have to assemble in community to find a consensus.

• Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

FREE: Native Vegan Thanksgiving (11/24)

Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Jen B., Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

VIDEO: Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Thanksgiving: Native American truth

2022 Rancho Park Vegan Potluck Picnic on Thanksgiving Day | Facebook

Stacey P. takes a selfie with vegan potluck picnickers in Santa Monica (Meetup)

This is the first year Dave, one of the founders of the FREE Vegan Thanksgiving in Los Angeles tradition is not formally leading the event. Others have stepped up to continue the tradition (and word has it Dave wouldn't miss it for the world). It's a potluck of all plant-based VEGAN (no animals products of any kind, no dairy, no honey, no synthetics and artificial things, nothing that harmed an animal in the making), largely organic, and utterly compassionate (Sanskrit ahimsa or harmless) foods. We do not let perfection be the enemy of good. Foods not fitting this description, if brought by accident, are given a separate table for those still eating SAD (the Standard American Diet). Please bring a full LIST of INGREDIENTS for all homemade items or keep the label on any store-bought dish. Hundreds will be in attendance. There is art, games, performance, and a big feast for all (including animal companions). RSVP FREE:

• Dharma Buddhist Meditation (Disclosure Project)
• Dharma Buddhist Meditation (Nature Center)
• Dharma Buddhist Meditation (PasaDharma)
• 2022 Rancho Park Vegan Potluck Picnic on Thanksgiving Day | Facebook

Bringing back Native American foods

Sam Briger (Fresh Air/NPR); CBS Sunday Morning; Xochitl, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Most Mexicans are Native Americans

At the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis, diners order off a menu that's been "decolonized."

All dishes are prepared in ways that reflect Native American food cultures, using ingredients indigenous to North America prior to European colonialism and violent colonization.

This land is whose land? Our land

"We look at showcasing the amazing diversity and flavor profiles of all the different tribes across North America, all the different regions, and really celebrating that and cutting away colonial ingredients," Native American restaurant Owamni co-founder Sean Sherman says.

"We don't have things on our menu that have dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar...beef, pork, or chicken."

• TED RADIO HOUR COMICS: One Sioux Chef's attempt to reclaim Native American cuisine

You are on Native land

Known as the "Sioux Chef," Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota as a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.

Right after high school, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the northern Black Hills of South Dakota, where one of his responsibilities was learning the names and properties of different local plants.

Looking back now, he credits that job with sparking his interest in Indigenous foods.

"That connection with plants was probably one of the best ways for me to start...to see the world differently through this Indigenous perspective of realizing that all these plants around us have some kind of purpose — whether it's food, it's medicine, or crafting — and really trying to create and understand what that relationship is to me personally," he says.

Grabill: Survivors of Wounded Knee Massacre, Big Foots band - Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen

Sherman and his restaurant co-owner Dana Thompson have been working for years to bring awareness to Indigenous foods and food cultures through their nonprofit, NĀTIFS.

Sherman won the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook in 2018 for The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen. In June, Owamni was awarded the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. Sherman says the food at the restaurant is meant to paint a picture of where each dish comes from.

"We might have something with, say, wild rice or [a dead scrawny animal] or rose hips or blueberries," Sherman says. "These are all ingredients you can see just standing in the forest and glancing around."

Be not obese, Brave. This body is for greatness

Sherman emphasizes that using native ingredients doesn't mean that the food is antiquated: "We're not cooking like it's 1491. We're not a museum piece or something like that. We're trying to evolve the food into the future, using as much of the knowledge from our ancestors that we can understand and just applying it to the modern world." More

• Reservation Dogs (FX) finally have a good place to eat

Irish songs with The Bracken Band

Marian Thomas Griffin, The Bracken Band, Frosty & Heidi (KLOS); Wisdom Quarterly

Wise Eating (Weston A. Price Foundation)

WestonAPrice.org; Kelly Ani, Crystal Quintero, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

We eat traditional foods the wise way.

The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) is a great source for accurate information on nutrition and health.

WAPF is always aiming to provide the scientific validation of traditional foodways.

People seeking health today often condemn certain food groups -- such as grains, dairy foods, meat, salt, fat, sauces, sweets, and nightshade vegetables -- but the Wise Traditions Diet is inclusive, not exclusive.

 

WAPF includes nourishing traditional foods in our diet through wise choices and proper preparation techniques. The result is vibrant health in every age of life, including the next generation. More

• WISE TRADITIONS: 18th Annual Conference of The Weston A. Price Foundation (November 10-13, Minneapolis, MN (order conference recordings) 
• Help us make raw milk legal in the last seven states: We need legal access to natural raw milk in all 50 states. We're getting closer! More

Tibetan Buddhism Series: The Path (video)

Bela Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Richard Gere (onlinelearning.fpmt.org)

Lisa Simpson discovers Springfield's Buddhist Temple and meditates with Carl and Lenny

(Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition) Discovering Buddhism Module 3

This is an overview of the entire Tibetan Buddhist or Vajrayana "path to awakening." It begins with a study of the life story of the historical Buddha Gautama, known as the "Sage of the Shakya Clan" (Shakyamuni) and opens to the lam-rim or graduated path to enlightenment. If only there were some way to learn what Lisa Simpson could not when she went in search of spiritual truth beyond the borders of "religion." She found what Richard Gere, Lenny, Carl, and the Dalai Lama had already found.

 

Lisa, you can want stuff! Wisdom and all kinds of happiness here and now.

Discovering Buddhism

Learning Vajaryana/Mahayana Buddhism at home (fpmt.org)

 

Each Discovering Buddhism module consists of teachings, meditations and practices, readings, assessment questions, and a short retreat.

 

Students may do some or all of these component parts of each course, as they wish and are interested.

 

Those who complete all of the components receive a completion card for that course. When all 14 modules have been completed, students receive a certificate of full completion.

This awards the satisfaction of having completed a very comprehensive engagement with the Vajrayana/Mahayana path to enlightenment. It is symbolic of one's commitment to spiritual awakening. Rejoice deeply when you receive it!

 

The courses do not need to be completed in order, and Module 14, Special Integration Experiences should be started as early as possible in the program, as it takes some time to complete. Module 14 includes practice retreats available at many FPMT centers.

  

Each Discovering Buddhism at Home module contains audio recordings of teachings and meditations given by qualified Western teachers, and a text CD containing the course materials and written transcripts of the audio teachings. Packages are available in... More

KARMA: 10th Anniversary of US War on Iraq

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
(FPMT/New Kadampa Tradition) What are the essential facts regarding the Law of Cause and Effect? Let's explore ways of dealing with life more effectively and take control of our future!

What continues to be ignored is that the US is directly responsible for unimaginable carnage and suffering, first directly and now with lingering contamination of the country. 

As citizens of the Empire, are we complicit with our military-industrial complex for our silence, cheer leading, paying federal taxes (largely used to support war and service debt that enriches banks that engineer more wars, arms trades, and propaganda campaigns) or sending our children to kill others?

 

George Bush, Sr.

The death of more than 1,000,000 civilians, most of them Iraqi children, began with Pres. Bush I (George, Sr.) launched "sanctions," illegally blockading food and medicine to the people and causing internal strife of an unimaginable scale. Intrusions and secret operations and overt campaigns followed, setting up the Carlyle Group to ensure his Dynasty's riches, which actually began their participation with his Nazi (literally) forbear, Prescott Bush.

 

G.W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney (BBC)

Pres. Bush II (W.) intensified efforts, broke more international laws, and created more war criminals within a single administration (Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and many others) than has been seen since the US wars on peaceful Buddhist countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -- following our nuclear atrocities in Japan and the invasions we yet hope to wage on Iran and eventually China. He and many holdovers from former administrations followed in step with targeted bombing of water purification systems and civilian water supplies, deploying an underhanded biological weapon of sorts by spreading cholera and other waterborne illnesses through the population.

Pres. Bush III (Obama) not only inherited multiple wars that he promised to end, he enhanced and expanded them for the glory of empire -- and the enrichment of massive corporations like Blackwater, KBR, and other Cheney and Rumsfeld related projects. The Carlyle Group continues to grow rich. The Bush Dynasty could not have asked for a better foundling, Pygmalion-style. The munitions factories have more work than ever and, not coincidentally, more people are being killed in our name.

 

Are we complicit by our silence or bandwagon-patriotism or willful ignorance?

A "royal" bloodline of biological relatives symbolically rules America for the MIC

• VIDEO: U.S. Broadcast Exclusive - "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" on the U.S. use of Napalm-like White Phosphorus bombs affecting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians

Another Day, Another Battle

The US War on Iraq in Anbar Province was a counter-"insurgency" (a self-protective act by locals resisting military occupation by an invading foreign army) campaign in the US's Iraq War.
 
It was waged by US aggressors in the Al Anbar Governorate in western Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It was fought primarily between the United States Marine Corps and Iraqi federalis against alleged "insurgents" (invasion resisters) led by a make believe enemy the CIA and other clandestine Western agencies call Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to prop up an "enemy" for US forces to fight thereby prolonging a privately profitable (and devastatingly debt-producing) war for oil and strategic dominance in the geopolitical Middle East.
 

Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed during the war in Anbar, mostly between April 2004 and September 2007. Savage fighting occurred in the province in 2004, including the First and Second Battles of Fallujah. Though the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare, in later years agents of the US military-industrial complex focused on arming and exploiting ambushes of American and Iraqi "security" forces with improvised explosive devices.
 
US soldiers and others committed multiple human rights violations in Fallujah and Haditha. In August 2006, several tribes located near Ramadi and led by sheikh formed the Anbar Awakening and revolted against AQI. US and Iraqi tribal forces working for the US regained control of Anbar Province in 2007 and turned it over to the US occupied government in 2008. American fighters changed their titles to "advisers" in this and other Iraqi provinces on Dec. 7th, 2011. (Full article)

Time is short, Life is long: How to Meditate

Wisdom Quarterly; Jack Kornfield (spiritrock.org); FPMT, Inc. (video); COUNTDOWN: -3

A definition and purpose for meditation, how to sit, how to set up a meditation session, different meditation techniques, and how to deal with obstacles. Follow this course FREE at the FPMT Online Learning Center and learn more about Discovering Buddhism.

Time, which contracts and expands at will, is short -- whereas "life" (samsara) is long, endless on its own, except that it's always ending. But it renews again the next moment. 

Each moment divides into three sub-moments, an arising phasing, turning, and falling. This is the incessant "rise and fall" the breath mimics at a much slower speed. Moments pass too quickly to discern -- as showers of particles and mind-moments rise, turn, and fall -- just on the inhale, to say nothing of the retention phase and exhalation.

This becomes much clearer as consciousness sharpens and intensifies and the invisible becomes visible. Mind is superior to phenomena, which can be discerned directly IF only the mind were purified and serene, lucid, and made wieldy by mindful application.

Western Theravada monk explains Thai forest approach (VY)

We are here. How will we get there? Every journey begins with a footstep, every meditation with an inhalation.

Another name for nirvana is "the beyond" or more literally the beyond-beyond, the "farther shore." We are here on this shore with all its dangers and fearful states. And we look beyond the flood, the body of water, the deluge. And we see on that side a farther shore, safe, free of fear, without danger. How to go from here to there, how to "cross over"?

 

Partially-enlightened former monk current lay teacher Jack Kornfield

A strong person, the metaphor continues, might flex a stretched arm or stretch a flexed arm and be there in the twinkling of an eye. We must sit, settle, remain attentive, and thereby be transported by effort to see things just as they are.
 
The major Buddhist schools -- Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana (a large Mahayana subschool) -- have their methods. Here a Western lama in the banned New Kadampa Tradition (Tibetan Vajrayana not affiliated with the current Dalai Lama) offers advice on how to meditate.

 

The 14th Dalai Lama on developing mind (2010)

• Why is FPMT not affiliated with the Dalai Lama? 
• The Shugden controversy divides Tibetan schools