First look inside King Tut's tomb (BBC)

The excavation of Tutankhamun’s mummy | King Tut in Color

(National Geographic) After three years Howard Carter and his team finally get to excavate the lost tomb of child King Tutankhamun. Using colorization technology, NatGeo is able to see this discovery as Carter and his team would have.

ABOUT: King Tut In Color looks, a century after the world’s most sensational archaeological find, at the tomb of Tutankhamun. Now witness the dramatic scenes of its discovery and marvel at its extraordinary treasures, exactly as they were seen then, in color. It’s all thanks to the latest colorization techniques which use detailed historical research to bring the Egypt of discoverer Howard Carter back to life. ➡ NatGeo subscription #NationalGeographic #KingTutInColor

• Immersive: Discovering King Tut’s Tomb (vegas.com)

The first ever view inside Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt | BBC Global

I am the greatest god-human hybrid ruler!

(BBC Global) July 18, 2024: In 1922, expert photographer Harry Burton joined archaeologist Howard Carter's team as they uncovered the tomb of ancient Egyptian child King Tutankhamun. Ten years later and with over 5,000 objects from the site documented, Burton had amassed an incredible record of photographs from that world-famous discovery. One iconic photo from Burton's collection recreates the first view Carter had as he broke through the final door into the tomb itself. #BBC #Egypt #archeology

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Is the Buddha's "photograph" a fake?

Maya, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; WQ reader Nyanatusita; Borsheimarts.com; Rex Harris (sheepdog_rex/flickr.com)

A touched up photograph of a painting so lifelike that some thought it was a photo of the ghostly energetic trace of the Buddha Shakyamuni, the "Sage of the Shakya Clan." Next they'll be saying the Shroud of Turin is fake or that the Cloak of Trier, Jesus' famous garment on the cross is the wrong size for a skinny African/Egyptian/Palestinian Jew who just got back from travels in Buddhist India and Tibet (WQ).

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He does look a li'l Spanish (RB)

Stop the presses! This just in! The mysterious photograph of the Buddha, which we took as further evidence that he was Central Asian from west of Gandhara (i.e., Indo-Scythia) is apparently a fake, informs us WQ reader Nyanatusita today: 

The “curious image of the historical Buddha” that “subsequently appeared on the film [roll of a foreign tourist photographing around Bodh Gaya, India, presumably the place of the Buddha's "Great Enlightenment," Siddhartha Gautama's Maha Bodhi]” is [actually] a touched up photograph of the Buddha on the oil canvas painting called “Buddha's Temptations.”

The ascetic Siddhartha or the accomplished Buddha under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, ancient India, being tempted by sexy sylvan devas and Mara's daughters (Rex Harris).

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[It is] by the Spanish artist Eduardo Chicharro Aguera (1873-1949) finished in 1921 [and is now hanging] in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. [Evidence, need evidence? See The Buddha's Temptations, Madrid Museum by Rex Harris/sheepdog_rex/flickr.com) and Borsheimarts.com (News, 04-2014, Madrid). Yours, Nyanatusita."

Reaction

It made us hopelessly skeptical.

Thank you, (venerable) friend! You have done us a great service by bringing out the truth. If one wanted to cling to the notion that this is a "Photograph" of the Buddha one could say that since the and hand and halo are exactly the same, maybe the art Aguera was using the photo as his model. But hope springs eternal, and we would rather not push it. Let us say that the "photo" story was a hoax using this artistic rendering as its basis until such time as other evidence surfaces.

We have no need of clinging to superstitions or any beliefs because the Buddha's message, the essential Dharma, becomes self-evident to the meditator who realizes the truth and thereby becomes independent of any teacher, authority, or external source. And that essence -- enlightenment and glimpsing/touching nirvana and seeing the paths and fruits, the magga-phalas -- is why being a Buddhist is worthwhile whatever else one does or does not do, believes or does not believe. All the Buddha said was, "the Dharma is inviting." "Come and see for yourself. The truth is open for one to investigate directly."

The "Buddha's Temptations"
Borsheimarts.com

There is something about this large painted canvas "Buddha's Temptations" by Eduardo Chicharro Aguera that does not appeal to me. Perhaps it is the colors. However, the idea and the mythology does interest me (and who does not enjoy women with large cats?) I share again what the museum card said: 

Eduardo Chicharro Aguera, Madrid, 1873-1949, "Buddha's Temptations" 1921, Oil on Canvas, 2.90 x 3.66 meters. Signed and dated E. Chicharro 1921.

Detail: gorgeous, feline distractions and nagas

While serving as director of the Spanish Fine Arts Academy in Rome, Chicharro achieved his most ambitious painting, after many preparatory drawings and sketches. [It was probably one of these early sketches that served as the basis of the photo hoax rather than someone working backward for this finished oil on canvas.]

He spent five years on the canvas itself. The name Buddha means Illuminated [from the root budh or budhi, awakened, enlightened]: this young prince has wandered for years seeking the light and now receives it under a ficus [Ficus religiosa, the Sacred Fig], the sacred tree of Buddhism. Motionless and absorbed [in jhana, dhyana, samadhi], he ignores the Apsaras [sylphs, angelic celestial space or woodland maidens], daughters of Evil [Mara, the Tempter and Obstructor], who try to seduce him:
 

O, great prince, go back to Scythia and rule!

Flattery and her sister Adulation, Lust with a panther body, Tenderness [Laziness, Regret], lying at his feet, Voluptuousness on a rich red drapery....
 
Lakshmi [like the famed Buddhist nun Ven. Uppalavanna], India's answer to Venus, appears riding an elephant. Another wicked Apsara, with a many-hued veil, takes on the figure of the beautiful young wife [29-year-old Princess Bimba, known to the world as Yasodhara, who later became the famous Buddhist nun and fierce disputant Ven. Bhaddhakaccana] this prince has left behind.
 
This work was awarded the Honors Medal at the 1922 Spanish National Exhibition, and the same year Chicharro was elected a member of the San Fernando Royal Academy. Purchased in 2001 with the Giutarte Bequest. More

UFOs are common: How to see them (video)

Spielberg's hit movie centers around kids who film something that changes their lives.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." We live in a time of dissonance: we actually have to work hard not to see what is going on all around us. Meditation can be this way. We miss the forest for the trees. But we are alone in there. And it's not easy to "let things happen." Surely there is something we should be doing.

How to capture UFOs on camera

Out here among everyone, it should be a lot easier. But when we are all in denial, all unaware of what is looming and lurking, it becomes easier to abide in denial. If the dogs were barking and people were scurrying, there would be no resting. With everyone staring at their phones, on drugs, exhausted, distracted, and hungry for stimulation and connection, what chance is there to look up in the sky and see what is right there?

How can I see a UFO?

Anyone who wants to see alien craft can go to Dr. Stephen Greer, Richard C. Hoagland, or Ed Grimsley and literally SEE the forms that are there to be seen. "Seeing is believing," we say, but it is not true. Many who have seen still come away "nonbelievers."

Believing has nothing to do with certainty; why "believe" something one has seen? It is and needs no believing. By the same token, once we know, if we do not act or change on account of it, it is as if we had chosen to carry on, to compartmentalize that knowledge. Once the consensus reality catches us and permits us, then we will be at the forefront saying, "Oh, sure, I knew that."

See it to Believe it

Ed Grimsley (edgrimsley.com/skywatch) researches and videotapes UFOs using night vision technology. He has successfully filmed what he has experience, many unidentified flying objects that do not behave like conventional aircraft. They seem to be battling one another, which goes a long way towards explaining the need for chemtrails and better radar technology. His organization is called Skywatch.

Witnesses with Grimsley see and videotape saucer-shaped craft using binoculars with night vision technology. Naysayers explain away the videos more easily than they do the sightings, saying they are merely birds, bats, bugs, bits of dust, or "artifacts" in the binoculars. Never mind that this runs counter to the experience of those making the sightings. How can we deny what we are seeing if we will not even bother to look firsthand?

The objects are flying, and they are unidentified, and that would make them UFOs by definition. But we all know a UFO is more than an anomaly. We mean aliens in alien spacecraft. Many of these vehicles are secret military technology that, whistle blowers claim, were captured and reverse engineered. These intelligently operated objects are more than flukes. And they seem to be engaged in something important that we are not being told.

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Someone was killed, but not Bin Laden

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Obama has consistently repeated that Bin Laden was captured then killed

The US military has not been looking for Osama bin Laden. The Bush and Obama administrations are well aware Bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11. (The FBI says it has no hard evidence linking "Usama" to 9/11).

For a decade, OBL has been used as a fall guy, a pretext for US foreign wars of aggression -- "We're protecting ourselves from possible trouble by making other countries fear and hate us" -- domestic spying, and the loss of civil rights.

He is a bogeyman just as any "Emmanuel Goldstein" is used by totalitarian-style regimes. The "Patriotic Act" confirmed that our government is interested in that level of domestic social control and spying. Thanks to Bin Laden, Bush (a.k.a., Dick Cheney and Colin Powell) had a pretext to invade a country they had plans to invade long before 9/11.

The administration's inner circle goes way back, even before Bush, Sr. was president; when he was Ronald Reagan's vice president, Donald Rumsfeld was their envoy. That Reagan/Bush administration felt betrayed their former friend and ally Saddam Hussein. As a result, they began to draw up plans to depose Saddam, invade, and extract Iraq's petroleum resources.

Obama -- with many key figures and almost all of its policies held over from Bush, Jr's administration -- decided to approve the killing of someone. After assassinating that someone in Abbotabad, Pakistan in the hopes that it was multi-millionaire Bin Laden, the administration realized its mistake. There was no way it was going to admit that. Why would it? Osama bin Laden has been dead for a long time.

The CIA and others have been using his mysterious "recordings" and threats to promote an agenda of increased domestic spying and tyranny. Worse than that, the entire Al Qaeda/Brotherhood (1984) myth has been promoted to justify all of it illegal wars and activities.

Realizing the man they killed was no more Bin Laden than it was Stewie Griffin, Obama had a choice -- admit it and be taunted as a failure or claim credit, pretend to dump the body in the Arabian sea, and leak the lie in decades to come.

It's not difficult to falsify forensic evidence, for instance using blood from his sons, CIA-created "facial recognition" software, and a dolled up photo it doesn't feel like releasing since their forensics document-Photoshop Team couldn't even do a convincing job on the long form birth certificate.

Colin Powell, people will remember, went in and altered CIA analysts' reports to make the 9/11 connection with gruesome consequences:

• making everyone afraid of Osama Bin Laden as the ultimate enemy (just like "Emmanuel Goldstein")
• raiding Afghanistan as punishment for the Taliban allegedly being hospitable to Bin Laden
• justifying pre-emptive war in Iraq, taking our rights
• setting up dictators in Arab countries while pretending to want nothing but democracy for them
• funding new US spying agencies like the Homeland Security Administration in addition to our many other secret agencies (NSA, NSC, CIA, Secret Service, Pentagon cells, FBI, ad nauseum), secret CIA prisons abroad, torture chambers...

Osama bin Laden: death photos

WARNING: You may be viewing a CIA/Pentagon doctored photo. (Image source: newsrealblog.com). See "officially released" gore from Reuters. Notice similar speckled floor.

Is this the "too gruesome" photo to be released by the US government to "prove" Osama bin Laden was shot in the head by a proud Navy Seal Team 6 assassin in Pakistan two days ago?

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”
- Jessica Dovey

Osama death photo release debate helping conspiracy theorists

Business & Law

The raging debate over whether the death photos of Osama bin Laden should be released or not to quell rumors has unknowingly only managed to strengthen the voice of conspiracy theorists. Top White House officials and lawmakers are divided... The "gruesome" and "morbid" photos allegedly show a bloodied face of bin Laden with a part of his head blown off and brain exposed. Osama bin Laden was allegedly shot in the forehead and chest.

• TIME Magazine: 5 mistakes Obama made
  
• Dead and buried at sea - conspiracy theory or true?

India and Buddhism (photos)

Text: Seven Jaini (Wisdom Quarterly) / India photos: Dr. Bounthanh Sinavong


While India is a majority Hindu nation (which regards the Buddha and Buddhism as a part of that tradition) and the "largest democracy in the world," it also has a sizable Muslim population of more than 100 million. And it was the Muslims who built the iconic Taj Mahal as a dedication of love from an emperor to his deceased beloved. The amazing architecture mimics an Islamic vision of [a] heaven. This effect is hard to appreciate unless one visits and does so in the morning before it opens. The area frequently experiences a morning fog, giving the glimmering appearance of the minarets and dome at first light the illusion of floating on a cloud. This special effect would not seem to be an accident and may explain why it was built in out of the way Agra. It is a world heritage site and is equally impressive seen from above and due to its interior.

The stupa of the Great Enlightenment (Maha-bodhi) in Buddhagaya (Bodhgaya), budh and bodh both referring to the great "awakening" that took place here.

(Paranormal photograph of the Buddha at Bodhgaya) The site is a reconstruction of many disparate artifacts found by British archaeologists and may not be the exact site at all, having been consume by the forest in the ensuing centuries and obscured by Muslim invasions (which killed the original Bodhi tree, except that its descendant survives in Sri Lanka, having been taken there as a sapling and recognized by science as the oldest authenticated tree in existence. Of course there are trees thought to be older, such as the bristle cone pines of California, but they are not historically documented. The original tree's descendant was then replanted at this site, then speculated to be the original site of the enlightenment. So while the site may have been lost, the original tree was in a sense preserved.

• Voyage to India (sinavong.com)

India's greatest contribution to the world is the Buddha's message (Dharma), which could not have arisen elsewhere. Like many of the seers (rishis), meditating ascetics (yogis), and inspired teachers -- mystics and scholars alike -- the Buddha arose at a time that made his message possible. He was born in greater-India (called Bharat), an expanding empire of allied kingdoms and republics that included parts of the Near East. The established consensus-history is convoluted enough, but Dr. Ranajit Pal alleges a great of historical fraud by Europeans and reveals a more sensible history that has yet to gain acceptance (ranajitpal.com).

Although it is not on the "Buddhist circuit" as a main site, Rajgir (Rajagriha/Rājagṛha, "royal city" or fortress) is a magic place ringed by seven hills on the Gangetic plain. It is the setting for many sutras. Particularly notable is Vulture's Peak (Griddhkuta), misleadingly named since there were never any vultures there but merely rocks that in certain light look like the gangly scavengers. It is a wonderful peak atop which to meditate, as these monks are seen doing.

Rajgir, which Vulture's Peak looks down on, is where "Buddhism" officially began. Whereas the Buddha's message (Dharma) was set forth in Sarnath with the Turning of the Wheel Sutra, near the famous holy city of Varanasi (ancient Benares), the established conventions of a religion were established with the First Council. And that took place on a nearby hill seen in the distance, near where the great elder Maha Kassapa had a cave (Pipphali). This hill, just to the right of the entrance to the ring of seven hills of Rajgir proper, has a cave called Saptparni where a great number of enlightened elders gathered to codify the tradition. Outside of the entrance to the city is the famous Bamboo Grove (Veluvana) monastery.

Jainism: an extreme Buddhist school?

This was King Bimbisara's capital, and it is equally important to the Jains, whose tradition parallels Buddhism to such a degree that some scholars suggest it is an offshoot or early school of Buddhism, distinct in adhering to severe austerities and nonharming (ahimsa). Indeed, the story of its founder has so many similarities to the Buddha's that one is hard pressed to imagine it all coincidental. (For instance, the Buddha hasn't always been popularly called "the Buddha." It's a title, and there have been many others applied to him, including "Great Hero," or Mahavira, which just happens to be the name of Jainism's founder). Rather, it's as if some early Buddhists were trying to reinvent the Dharma in more Brahminical/Hindu-friendly terms -- idolizing the yogic ideals of asceticism, complete renunciation, ahimsa, vegetarianism, equality (Jainism allegedly had nuns before Buddhism did) and utter detachment (non-possessiveness). It is telling that ancient Jain texts do not mention the Buddhists, whereas Buddhist texts do mention the Jains, referred to as Niganthas or "non-possessors."

Jainism is an examples of one of the extremes the Middle Path avoids -- self-mortification and completely abandoning the world. Refusal to be in the world while not of it means an uneasy coexistence, not coming to terms with the world. This is most evident in that orthodox (Digambara) Jain monks famously go about in the nude, refusing to possess even robes. And it is this uncompromising allegiance to extremes that has meant that unless one takes a religious studies class in college, one has probably never heard of Jainism outside of India.

Every Buddhist pilgrim to India should see Rajgir with its ancient hot springs and modern gondola that climbs up to a Japanese temple high on a neighboring hill. (And what trip to India would be complete without seeing the jewel of Islam that is the Taj Mahal and the site of the Buddha's enlightenment?) After all throughout Asia, India, not Israel, is the "holy land." The historical Buddha spent a great deal of time in Rajgir meditating, preaching, and establishing the Dharma far from his ancestral kingdom of the Shakya Clan, just as other buddhas (and, interestingly, other mahaviras) had done in the distant past. MORE PHOTOS

• Buddhist Circuit map (adventures.worldnomads.com)

"Photograph" of the Buddha?

In Search Of (Part I) Spirit Photography?

There exists a curious image of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. It was reputedly taken or at least discovered in Bodhgaya, India, in 1980. A devotee, it is said, was photographing the site of Shakyamuni's ("Sage of the Shakyas") great enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. The image, not seen at the time of photographing, subsequently appeared on the film.

It is an image of a very comely young meditator with a top knot, robe, and almost cosmetic details. The photograph has not been widely circulated. It may inspire the faithful or arouse doubt. One copy hangs at the Bhavana Society, a Theravadan monastery/nunnery in West Virginia, for all to see.

Photos taken in Bodh Gaya showed this image when developed.

How would a recent "photograph" of an ancient figure be possible? Leonard Nimoy offers a fascinating explanation of the phenomenon.

In Search Of (Part II) Deva Hoax in England?

In Search Of (Part III) Man makes photographs with his mind in controlled experiments

Rangoon photo gets journalist Pulitzer

Pulitzer for journalist for Rangoon photograph
(Reuters; SajaForum.org; Mizzima News, 4/7/08)

Chiang Mai, Thailand -- The photojournalist who snapped pictures of a Japanese video cameraman being shot to death by a Burmese soldier during the Saffron Revolution has won the Pulitzer Prize for his work.

Kenji Nagai of APF tries to take photographs as he lies injured after police and military officials fired upon and then charged at protesters in Yangon's city center September 27, 2007. Nagai, 50, a Japanese video journalist, was shot by soldiers as they fired to disperse the crowd. Nagai later died (REUTERS/Adrees Latif).

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Reuters News Agency photographer Adrees Latif on Monday for his photograph of the Japanese sprawled on the pavement, after being fatally shot during the uprising by Buddhist monks and Burmese people against the authroitarian military junta in September of 2007.

Saffron Revolution, Burma 2007 (fortwaynesaffron)

According to Reuters, Adrees Latif entered Yangon on September, 23, 2007. "Two minutes later, the shooting started. My eye caught a person flying backwards through the air. Instinctively, I started photographing, capturing four frames of the man on his back," Reuters quoted Latif as saying.

Saffron Revolution (US Campaign for Burma.org)

"The entry point of the bullet is clear in the first frame, with a soldier in flip flops standing over the man and pointing a rifle. In the second frame, the man is reaching over to try and film." The photographs of the killing taken by some local and foreign photojournalists were spread across the world media.