Showing posts with label spiritual quest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiritual quest. Show all posts

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Finland: 'My Brother, Buddhist Monk'

(TH) By hitting the CC (close caption) icon, English subtitles become visible for non-Finnish speakers

My Brother, Buddhist Monk | short documentary

We have an ancient Scandinavian Helgo Buddha
(Dhamma Source) This cinematic short covers a 26-year-old Finnish man who is leaving his frigid Scandinavian home country to become a Theravada Buddhist monk in the southcentral Thailand, at a Thai Forest Tradition hermitage called Wat Map Jap (aka Wat Marp Jan). This documentary was filmed by his sister, who includes the narration as she videos his departure and arrival at the faraway Asian monastery and their family's reaction to his decision to lead a pure monastic life, striving for enlightenment in this very life.
  • Dhamma Source, Aug. 1, 2023; Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Saturday, August 31, 2024

To be the Goddess, Planet Wild's bear cub


We can save the world or at least this planet.
One needn't be a girl or a goddess to be a nurturer, a steward of Planet Earth, the Goddess Gaia (Bhumi, Tierra, Terra, Urth). Planet Wild is doing it by human power. As much as people think Buddhism is atheistic because it does not bow to some "creator God," it is actually nontheistic and polytheistic. There are many gods (devas), Gods (brahmas) and 
Great Brahma, and GOD (the impersonal/transpersonal Brahman) or "godhead" like the Vedic religion of old or modern Hinduism talk about. The celestial bodies are all deified (likely because ET visitors said they were from there or were rulers of those places visible in the night sky).

Countless worlds on 31 planes
In the Jataka (Rebirth) Tales of the Buddha, a kind of collection of Aesop Fables (with a strong moral to each story, which always seems to be the same moral -- what the person did in this life that person did in a previous life/lives), he recounts being reborn as the deity of the Moon (Soma) and Sun (Surya) multiple times, as were others close to him. Did he mean he was the ruler there, the embodiment, or a deity (deva) from there named after that world? It seems that when Dr. Steven Greer, MD of Disclosure Project, Sirius Disclosure, and Gaia TV, says that "Earth" is
literally a female deity, he is onto something. He has some reason for believing it and saying so other than others having said so. If we can be reborn as devas (shining ones, light beings), and we can, we can theoretically be born into the role of Mother Earth, the Goddess Gaia, Bhumi, or Tierra, just as Sakka King of the Devas was reborn as the king of the World of the Thirty-Three and the Realm of the Four Great Sky Kings, the two worlds immediately above the human plane.
If I were Goddess Terra, I'd be Mother Nature.
Saving animals like this cute baby sun bear?
 Yes! Here's one way to bring back our charismatic megafauna: Learn about "Planet Wild." What is PW?

Planet Wild is a nature protection organization, building a global community of people that care deeply about the planet and want to give back to nature and save the animals like the sun bear.

Monthly rewilding missions
Hindu Bhumi Devi (LACMA)
Planet Wild is bringing back endangered species, cleaning up our oceans from plastic debris, and rewilding entire forests to give them back to nature.

On the ground with pioneers
Planet Wild partners with the most impactful environmental initiatives around the globe to create real impact.

100% video documented
Every mission is documented for full transparency of the impact achieved. More: planetwild.com

Can we regain our US goddess?
Titular Goddess of the United States of [Columbia, as in District of Columbia]. Her Uncle Sam?

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Incense, peppermints? The 4 Noble Truths


LYRICS: "Incense and Pepermints"
(The Strawberry Alarm Clock)
Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind/ Dead kings, many things I can't define/ Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind/ Incense and peppermints, the color of time// CHORUS: Who cares what games we choose?/ Little to win, but nothin' to lose// Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns/ Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around/ Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, girl/ Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, girl, yeah, yeah// To divide the cockeyed world in two/ Throw your pride to one side,/ it's the least you can do/ Beatniks and politics, nothin' is new/ A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view.

One may ask why Wisdom Quarterly is "all over the map, talking about this and talking about that." It's a good question, and the answers rests largely on the Buddhist Publication Society (bps.lk) and in particular this small book written by Francis Story. One picks it up to read about something as direct and easy as the Four Noble Truths, and what one gets instead is all over the map, no topic untouchable. It liberated us to think we could talk about anything. And we can. It all relates. For a pure treatment limited to Buddhism and Buddhism alone, see Wisdom Stringently. 😏

Foundations of Buddhism: Four Noble Truths
Francis Story (Wheel 34/35, Buddhist Publication Society) edited by Wisdom Quarterly 2024
Are you a wave, Sis? - No, Bro, I'm a particle waving, a wavicle. - Groovy! Hang ten.
.
Humankind, pondering and disputing, has been engaged for so long in trying to find an answer to the enigma of existence, and so many first-class minds have been devoted to the task, that had the problem been open to solution by the intellect alone, we should certainly have been furnished with the definitive blueprint of our being, beyond all doubt or conjecture, many centuries ago.

From the time when prehistoric myth became merged into an attempt to give a rational account of the universe the questions, "What is life? How did it originate? Has it a purpose, and if so, what is it?" have haunted the imagination; yet, still for most people they remain unanswered.

Reason has offered a wide range of ingenious possibilities from the speculations of the Eleatics down to the more sophisticated theories of the modern epiphenomenalists, but so far reason has failed to provide any reasonable explanation that is not open to equally reasonable objections.

While reason has failed, its alternative, supernatural revelation, has shown itself equally contradictory and inconclusive, and it has suffered an even worse defeat. Its historical record has weighed heavily against it because of the disastrous influence it has often exerted in human affairs.

The private revelations of mystics, by their exclusively subjective nature, can never offer more than an insecure foothold for faith in those who have not directly shared them, and a doubtful faith is the father of fanaticism.

The record of human speculative thought down the centuries has come to resemble a maze of tracks in a boundless desert. The tracks can be identified by their characteristics; they are the tracks of religion, of philosophy, and obliterating many of these, the more recent tracks of science.

For the most part the tracks of religion go round in circles. Beginning as myth they continue as myth hardened into dogma, and so they go over the same ground in endless repetition.

Other tracks wander along aimlessly, drawn in this direction and that by new theories, new discoveries and new contacts, their path as variable as the wind. These are the tracks of philosophy, the imprints of humanity's restless and inquiring mind — a mind which, despite its courage and adventurousness, has only the old material to work over and so is reduced to combining ideas in endless permutations, seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable and always failing to reach an end.

Then, superimposed on these there are the imprints of scientific thought, which has invaded philosophy to an ever-increasing extent, but which at the same time discourages any concern with ultimate issues or with questions of value and purpose.

Time and again the older tracks of philosophy and religion are seen to have crossed one another, and where they met there are signs of a scuffle. Too often, there is blood on the sands of history. So it has been ever since humans emerged as a kind of animal capable of abstract thinking.

Now we have entered a phase in which supernaturalism has given way almost entirely to scientific knowledge, and the approach to the problem is somewhat different. Yet, science has not brought us any nearer to the answers.

The tracks of thought still remain indecisive, their beginning a mystery, their end a mark of interrogation. Present-day knowledge with its unprecedented accumulation of facts concerning the physical universe and the constitution of living organisms has provided philosophers with a vast stock of new material to take into account, but so far the result has only been to give the mind more than it can handle.

Far from clarifying the general picture, the effect has been to overcrowd the canvas. To correlate the various specialized branches of knowledge is a stupendous task, one that is further complicated by the areas of uncertainty in each of them.

The non-specialist is seldom in a position to be able to separate conjecture from established fact in the scientific disciplines, and this is particularly so in the case of those which relate to the life processes, such as genetics and biochemistry, and are therefore the most relevant to the inquiry.

Besides this, the facts that science presents often seem to point to opposite conclusions. Despite the great advances that have been made in physics, technology is still working to a great extent with factors that are not completely understood or even satisfactorily defined.

There are, for example, certain radiations forming the basic structure of the universe that appear both (depending on the observer) as waves and as particles, although logically they cannot be both at the same time.

It is not even certain whether the expression "at the same time" has any meaning in a universe where events can hardly be said to be simultaneous at all and where the image of a star seen from a distance of many thousands of light years may be nothing more than the ghost of something that ceased to exist in space before humans appeared on earth.

Expanding knowledge tends to cut us adrift from the apparent security of empirical facts, and in many ways the nature of thought itself has been brought into question. There are people who entertain the hope that at some time in the not-too-distant future we may be able to get final answers to questions that have tormented men for generations by feeding all the relevant data into an electronic brain. (An AI robot named Hal?)

But that hope is founded on two very large assumptions. The first is that all the necessary data will eventually become available, and secondly that humans (or ETs) can devise a machine more capable than that machine's creator.

So far, the most advanced electronic computer has not been able to do more in the field of mathematics than a human mind can do. It only does it more quickly. Even there it adds nothing new; there have been abnormal human brains that could extract cube roots with the same speed and accuracy.

If a new and basically different mode of thinking is needed, it must be sought for elsewhere than in electronic machines. Does this mean that we shall never know any more about the ultimate things than we do now?

The conclusions to which science moves at present are, in regard to the older beliefs, chiefly negative. They tell us what is no longer believable, but do not suggest alternatives or encourage any positive inferences. Yet, in the quest for truth science contributes something of greater value than the facts it provides.

It offers a method of inquiry, a disciplined use of the facts at hand, which is more productive than the pursuit of random theories. It indicates a method by which the data of experience, no matter how limited they may be, can be taken as starting points for a journey into unknown territory and how from a few observed facts a general principle can be deduced.

Furthermore, it includes as an important part of its method the readiness to discard whatever theory is found to be in disagreement with the observed phenomena. And this iconoclastic function of science points to a truth of the highest significance, namely, that in the search for reality what is most essential is not the gathering and tabulating of facts, but the understanding of those facts in their true relation to one another.

The preliminary stripping away of hitherto accepted ideas until we are left with nothing more than the bare bones of experience is needed to get at the experience of the most fundamental and universal kind.


Science works on theories, certainly, but is prepared to abandon them when they fall flat; it does not build model cosmologies from selected materials. This method, which has been responsible for everything we can claim to have derived from our knowledge of the physical universe, is the only profitable one to follow when we seek to enlarge our understanding beyond the world of immediate sensory perception.

And it is towards the possibility of such an extension that the psychological sciences are now turning. There is an increasing recognition of the truth that the world of external phenomena is only a part — and by no means the most important part — of humanity’s total experience.

What goes on within us, in our psychological responses and motivations, and also on the intuitive levels of the mind, is being given the same analytical scrutiny as that which is turned on the objective features of the universe.

For the first time, scientists are making a serious study of the mental processes, conscious and unconscious. They are giving equal attention to the paranormal aspects of the mind, such as the phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, and the recollection of previous lives.

From this may develop an entirely new approach to the problem of being -- a new one, that is, so far as the West is concerned. But nothing in mental science or in philosophy is really new.

More than six centuries before the Christian era, the tracks of speculative thought had reached a stage of the utmost complexity in India. There we find the familiar arguments of mysticism versus rationalism, of empiricism, pragmatism, logical positivism, the opposing views of "eternalism" and "annihilationism" [the view that we live forever or live now but are annihilated at death] and of so many intermediate doctrines that it can be safely said that later philosophers have been able to produce nothing that was not a duplication or variant of one or the other of them.

When we examine the 62 views (diṭṭhis or theories) regarding the nature of life and the universe that were current in the time of the Buddha and described by him in "The Net of All-Embracing Views" (the Brahmajāla Sutta of the Long Discourses), we find there the seeds of all later thought, the archetype of every idea that has appeared in philosophy between Plotinus and Kierkegaard.

That some of them were the doctrines of established schools which had been in existence long before the birth of the Buddha is evident from the accounts of the Buddha’s own search for enlightenment, for on renouncing the world the prince who became a wandering ascetic, Siddhattha Gotama, first placed himself under two yogi teachers from among the many sects that were already laying claim to ultimate knowledge.

Let's teach Sid the way our teachers taught us

Those teachers, Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, were not logicians but exponents of yoga. As such they had their philosophy, but its final vindication was to be sought in the subjective realm through meditation, in an intensified perception outside the scope of formal reasoning.

By the practice of meditative absorption (jhāna), they had in fact succeeded in raising consciousness to a higher power. But great as were the achievements of these two eminent yogis, the wandering ascetic Gotama did not find the full enlightenment he sought within their meditative systems. Neither did he reach it by way of the extreme asceticism to which he later turned when he left them.

He found, on the contrary, that an entirely new mode of approach was needed if he were to break through the thicket of views and tangle of conceptual thinking on the one hand, and sublimated consciousness on the other.

By traditional yogic methods, he had gone beyond the world of forms but not beyond that of ideas or the mere suspension of ideas. He found that the degree of illumination these methods gave was far from that of absolute knowledge and spiritual liberation.

Thrown back on his own resources, with no longer any guiding principle except what he might find within himself, he returned in thought to the original impulse of his quest.

Its beginning, significantly, lay in a very early experience he had known, which was of an intuitive kind.

When he was 7 years old, he had been sitting watching his father, King Suddhodana, carrying out the ritual of the spring festival's first ploughing. His attention had been caught and held by the flocks of birds that followed in the wake of the plough; they were eagerly scratching in the newly-turned furrows for worms and insects.

Driven by hunger, the all-demanding craving that is ever present in nature, and excited by the sight of their living prey, birds of all kinds were quarrelling and fighting one another, a noisy, turbulent mass of feathered bodies, mercilessly striking and tearing with beak and claw. More

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Meditating or Mass Organizing? (video)

Ajahn Brahm (BSWA); Lisa Fithian, Jim Dore; Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

A Fierce, Loving Resistance
Shut It Down is a veteran activist's guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change.

Lisa Fithian’s work as an advocate for civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action has for decades put her on the frontlines of change. Described by Mother Jones as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant,” Fithian has supported countless movements including the Battle of Seattle in 1999, rebuilding and defending communities following Hurricane Katrina, Occupy Wall Street, and the uprisings at Standing Rock, and anti-racism in Ferguson.

For anyone who wants to become more active in resistance or is just feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, Shut It Down offers strategies and actions we can take right now to promote justice and incite change in our own community. More

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

A day in the life of a Buddhist monk (video)

Johnathan Green, TrueTube, May 26, 2020; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The life of a wandering ascetic (Buddhist monk) includes going on alms round, England.



Say hello to Venerable Manapo. He’s a Buddhist monk or bhikkhu in Warwickshire, England. TrueTube's cameras followed him around to find out what he does all day. What does any Buddhist nun or monk do all day?

The Forest Hermitage, Warwickshire, UK
What's the point of doing it? This wandering ascetic is on a spiritual mission, the same one Siddhartha was on, a quest for enlightenment, awakening from all the painful illusions of life, the marriage of compassion and wisdom, escaping to reality. This is a short film by Jonathan Green.

    Tuesday, June 23, 2020

    Remembering Past Lives (video)

    Real Families, Real Life Reincarnation, 7/11/19; Crystal Q., Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


    These children remember their past lives
    What we say matters to old souls in new bodies
    (Real Families) Do anyone believe in reincarnation or, more correctly, rebirth? Follow the journeys of young children recounting their past lives -- and the people willing to connect them to the truth.

    REAL FAMILIES: The Good, the Bad, and the Messy – the Real Families channel features documentaries and shows about stories of modern parenting. Through a mixture of original and archived content, it explores a range of captivating subjects, education styles, complex relationships, food habits, and the challenges of large families. Want more insightful and wholesome content? Subscribe. Facebook.com/RealFamillies, instagram.com/realfamilies. Content licensed by DRG to Little Dot Studios. For any queries, contact: owned-enquiries@littledotstudios.com.

    Wednesday, February 12, 2014

    Life of the Buddha (video)



    The Four Signs (smith.edu)
    The Buddha (the "Enlightened or Awakened One") was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama, future king of the Shakyas. He is also known as Shakyamuni, the "Sage (muni) from the Shakya Clan."
     
    He was born approximately 2,600 years ago into a royal family. Where is disputed, likely in what is now Afghanistan, on the northwest border of Gandhara, India. But earlier British archeological work determined it was Nepal, just north of India, and the controversy has been on ever since.  (See ranajitpal.com).

    Prince Siddhartha lived a protected and carefree life of luxury, until one day he came face to face with the harsh realities of life he had always been protected from seeing: old age, sickness, and death. (The fourth sign was the sight of renunciation offering a possibility of escape from certain suffering). It is believed that the devas (fairies) contrived it all, ensuring that he would eventually see these four momentous signs.
     
    The Buddha, wandering teacher (WQ)
    The four sights or signs changed the course of Siddhartha's life. Rather than becoming king as he had been raised, he embarked on a spiritual QUEST on behalf of all beings to find liberation from the suffering of the world.

    He would eventually discover the truth of suffering (disappointment) and how to bring about its end. He achieved enlightenment, a profound and irreversible awakening, under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India.

    And from that moment on he was known by the title "the Buddha." (See also the BBC documentary Life of the Buddha, which tells the story very well in less than 50 minutes. Here is a condensed collage version set to music that takes even less time).

    Thursday, May 2, 2013

    Achilles' spiritual Quest (video)

    Wisdom Quarterly; James Patrick and Bobby Plant, "Achilles Last Stand"
    Thetis takes Achilles from the Centaur Chiron (Batoni Pompeo/oceansbridge.com)
      
    Ouch, my heel! (WHP)
    Bob and Jim were very good and talented friends from Albion. They dreamed of a Quest to take them to the ends of the Earth -- at least as far as exotic Morocco -- in search of answers and possibly deliverance. They famously made it to Kashmir, India but are best remembered for their attempt to reach the celestial spheres by walking up a long flight of gradually ascending floorboards. To no avail, they realized the houses of the holy were reclusive abodes in strange places. By the end of their first run, they wrote the following:

    It was an April morning when they told us we should go. As I turned to you, you smiled at me. How could we say no?  With all the fun to have, to live the dreams we always had. Oh, the songs to sing when we at last return again!
     
    Thetis confiding the education of Achilles to Chiron (Batoni Pompeo, 1760)
    Sending off a glancing kiss to those who claim they know. Below the streets that steam and hiss; the devil's in his hole. Oh, to sail away to sandy lands and other days! Oh, to touch the dream that hides inside and is never seen. 
     
    Into the Sun, the south, the north, at last the birds have flown. The shackles of commitment fell in pieces on the ground. Oh to ride the wind, to tread the air above the din! Oh, to laugh aloud, dancing as we fought the crowd!
     
    To seek the man whose pointing hand the giant step unfolds with guidance from the curving path that churns up into stone.
     
    Fury of Achilles (Charles Antoine Coypel/artclon.com)
    If one bell should ring, a celebration for a king. So fast the heart should beat, as proud the head with heavy feet!
     
    Days went by when you and I bathed in eternal summer's glow. As far away and distant our mutual child did grow. Oh, the sweet refrain soothes the soul and calms the pain. Oh, Albion remains sleeping now to rise again.

    Wandering and wandering, what place to rest the search? The mighty arms of Atlas hold the heavens from the Earth! The mighty arms of Atlas hold the heavens from the Earth -- from the Earth.
     
    I know the way, know the way, know the way. I know the way, know the way, know the way. Oh!
     
    Oh, the mighty arms of Atlas hold the heavens from the Earth.


    Of course, some things make much more sense when sung. Here are Robert and Jimmy as children (played by Alex Desimine, 13, and Chris Greatti, 13) performing what would one day become nearly their swan song at the Pennington YMCA with drummer Kaleen Reading, 14, bassist Tom Phillips, 14, and rhythm guitarist Tom Levecchi, 16, of Burnside.

    Sunday, March 11, 2012

    Siddhartha the Buddha (the movie)

    Wisdom Quarterly
    () Light of Asia Foundation presents the upcoming epic motion picture "SIDDHARTHA THE BUDDHA."


    Not Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha" by Conrad Rooks, a Hindu
    tale about another Siddhartha who meets the Buddha


    Nor Keanu Reeves as "Little Buddha" by Bernardo Bertolucci
    a Tibetan tale about an American tulku (reincarnated lama)
    PBS made a wonderful documentary, by filmmaker David Grubin and narrated by Richard Gere, telling the story of the Buddha’s life, a journey especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of the world’s greatest artists and sculptors who have depicted the Buddha’s life in art rich in beauty and complexity. Insightful with a modern narrative by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and the 14th Dalai Lama. But this is a different undertaking altogether.



    Sri Lanka was once a Buddhist country, as it remains officially in spite of its growing minority British Christian, Portuguese and Dutch Catholic, and Tamil Hindu populations. It felt the need to present the life of the Light of Asia, the Buddha. It aims to remain closer to the ancient texts, the Pali Canon, to tell the story with an ancient Theravada twist. Previous movies have focused on Tibetan, Indian, and Mahayana perspectives with or without realizing it. SIDDHARTHA THE BUDDHA has become a national endeavor as Buddhism turns 2,600 years old (officially counting from the time of Siddhartha's mahabodhi or "great enlightenment").

    Thursday, January 19, 2012

    Can Marijuana be medicinal or spiritual?

    Wisdom Quarterly; Caroline Casey; Harborside Health Center (composed March 20, 2010)












    (Harborside Health) Harborside Health Center is a professional cannabis dispensary. This video was shown at the THC Expo, June 13-14, 2009 in LA.

    OAKLAND, California - We must face it. Most marijuana use is neither medicinal nor spiritual. It is engaged in as an addictive activity that is harmful to users. It is less harmful than alcohol and other substances, but it is still harmful. The question is, Must it be that way?

    What if there were a way to make cannabis use not only medicinal -- with varieties of the plant prescribed for a variety of specific conditions -- but even spiritual? High levels of THC have now been bred into most strains at the expense of a more important substance, CBD (cannabidol).


    This radio broadcast is an interview by Caroline Casey (a woman who only sounds like a man) and Harborside Health Center. As use becomes legal and ever more widespread, it is important to explore whether cannabis can have any positive use, be of any assistance in meditation or spiritual development, and whether or not it can legitimately be taken as a "medicine" without violating Buddhism's fifth precept. The Harborside approach seems to suggest that it can.

    Friday, January 13, 2012

    Lessons from Julia Butterfly Hill (video)

    Wisdom Quarterly; Julia Butterfly Hill; Circle of Life Foundation; What's Your Tree?
    () Inspiration for "resolutionaries"

    Julia Butterfly Hill climbed a 1,000+ year old redwood named "Luna" in Northern California and lived in her branches for over 2 years to save it from the chainsaws of a logging company. Her first winter she was nearly killed as a terrible storm raged through her tiny perch. Butterfly describes the fear, the breakthrough, and the life lessons of those early months.


    ()

    Vegan, nature activist Julia Butterfly Hill is known for climbing a giant redwood tree in 1997 when she was 23 years old and remaining there without touching the ground for two years. This was part of a successful effort to call worldwide attention to the destruction of California's ancient redwoods. Since then she has addressed the U.N., lobbied Congress, and continued to stand on the front lines of environmental and social justice issues all over the world. She is the author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods and One Makes the Difference: Inspiring Actions That Change Our World.

    What's YOUR tree?
    () Years after her historic tree-sit she's still inspiring others to pursue their passions with her "What's Your Tree?" project.
    Protesters demanding the closure of Guantanamo
    A totem pole being carved
    Nuclear cooling towers


    Speaking in San Francisco remembering Mumia Abu Jamal