A spirit house is a shrine to the protective spirit of a place that is found in the Southeast Asian Buddhist countries of Thailand (Siam), Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia (Khmer Kingdom), Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. They are normally in the form of small, roofed structure mounted on a pillar or a dais. They can range in size from small platforms to houses large enough for people to enter. Spirit houses are intended to provide a shelter for spirits that could cause problems for the people if not appeased. More
The nats (နတ်) are spirits, deities, god-like ancestors, poltergeists, unseen (invisible) beings venerated in Burma (aka Myanmar) and neighboring Southeast Asian Buddhist countries in conjunction with Theravada Buddhism.
Nats are divided between the 37 Great Nats, who were given that status by King Anawrahta when he formalized the official list of nats. Most of the 37 Great Nats were human beings who met violent deaths [1].
There are two types of nats in Burmese belief, nat sein (နတ်စိမ်း), which are humans who were deified after their deaths, and all other nats, which are spirits of nature (like the kami of Japan, elementals, spirits of water, trees, etc.)
Much like sainthood, nats can be designated for a variety of reasons, including those only known in certain regions in Burma. Nat worship is less common in urban areas than in rural areas and is practiced among ethnic minorities of Burma as well as in mainstream Bamar society.
However, it is among the Theravada Buddhist Bamar that the most highly developed form of ceremony and ritual is seen [2]. More: Nat (deity)
Folk Magic, Mahayana Buddhism, and Chinese Taoist syncretism
(Benebell Wen) Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism in Asian Folk Magic and Religion explained
I am thy Emperor in the Sky, the Demiurge, thy Jealous and vengeful Lord of all Worlds!
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Behold! The Way, the Truth, and the Light!
(MorgueOfficial) I discovered the REAL God | Why the Monad[the One, as taught in the varied traditions we collectively call Gnosticism] was too dangerous to teach.
So that even the Goddess of Wisdom (Sophia) as exemplified by Apostle Mary Magdalene (the closest and brightest apostle, the real intended successor of Jesus, not dogmatic Peter/Petra, an emissary of Sophia, Barbelo, the true GOD or godhead) had to denigrated and erased.
It's why Jesus the Anointed One (the Christed) had to be repurposed by imperial powers, misquoted, and made to work for the state (Emperor Constantine's Roman Empire and subsequent Christendom), and inverted until what the church says he said is nearly the opposite of what he was teaching.
Pistis Sophia (Koine Greek Πίστις Σοφία) is a Gnostic text discovered in 1773, possibly written between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. The existing manuscript, which some scholars place in the late 4th century, relates one Gnostic group's teachings of the transfigured Jesus to the assembled disciples, including his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha. (In this context, "transfigured" refers to Jesus after his death and resurrection, not the event during his life where he spoke to appearances of Moses and Elijah on a mountain). In this text, the risen Jesus had spent 11 years speaking with his disciples, teaching them only the lower mysteries. After 11 years, he receives his true garment and is able to reveal the higher mysteries [entheogens] revered by this group. The prized mysteries relate to complex cosmologies and knowledge necessary for the soul to reach the highest divine realms. More
Why become a follower following in the footsteps of the guru to know what the guru knows when you can just pay lip service to the guru, praise, worship, sing about, and never actually follow anything he taught, pat yourself on the back for being a good "follower" (a pious Christian hypocrite), and call it a day?
Heaven awaits for all kiss-ups who never bothered to read, investigate, study, or experience what the Teacher taught. They just let child molesting intermediaries interpret it for them so they could be sure to get a good seat to the afterlife. God would be so proud!
So all true believers get into heaven?
It's interesting that many modern Christians, contradicting their own official sacred texts (council-approved books of The Book), believe in and speak of a God that sounds an awful lot like the Monad Jesus was really talking about.
The ancient Vedas, Brahmin priests (Brahmanism), and modern Hindus also speak of such a GOD (Brahman, not Brahma) that is not a being in the sky, not an old, bearded man on a cloud throne but rather "the absolute or ultimate reality behind all of the illusion" (the maya or simulation or the ever-revolving samsara). That GOD is called Brahman even in a polytheistic, henotheistic, sometimes pantheistic tradition with so much variety and complexity (because it's an amalgam of all the beliefs and practices found in India by the occupying British who could not understand it until they lumped the diversity into one big pile and called it a "thing," a "religion," of which ancient Indians had no concept, because like most people of the world, spirituality and daily life were not treated as separate).
BRAHMAN: In the Old Vedic and subsequent Hindu religions, Brahman (Sanskrit ब्रह्मन्) has a "variety of meanings," but in the Upanishads and later Indian philosophies it connotes "That" from which all existence proceeds, and to which everything returns [1, a], [the Source,] the origin and cause of all that exists [2, 3, 4]. In contemporary Hindu metaphysics, Brahman is the highest universal principle, the Ultimate Reality of the universe behind all the hide-and-seek "divine play" (lila), complexity, and confusion of maya (illusion). [The nondual of Advaita Vedanta.] More
That's what I've been trying to say: we're all divine
This Monad (ONE) is Brahman (GOD), and it probably the TAO, the Great Spirit of Native American lore, and it is likely the "Father" Jesus (Gnostic Jesus, Y'shua, Yeshua, Joshua, Isa, Saint Issa) was really talking about in an anionic (timeless/eternal now) Kingdom, not a heavenly rebirth but a timeless ("eternal") reality right now, for those [mystery cult] initiates ready and able to undergo purification and ego-death (loss of self to gain the kingdom of heaven) and be raised up in a rapture (bliss, unburdening, realization, union) of understanding (comprehension) and gnosis (actual experience) before passing away from this world.
The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of "making sacred"—whereby God [or GOD] becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God.
This creative activity of the Divine is calledlila, the play [or drama] of God, and the world is seen as the stage [platform] of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour.
Brahman is the great magician who transforms [it]self into the world and then performs this feat with [its] "magic creative power," which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda.
The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play [the actors or audience lost in the play].
As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya....
The Tao of Physics (Fritjof Capra)
In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play.
The dynamic force of the play is karma [act, action, deed, doing, intention], an important concept of Indian thought. Karma means "action." It is the active principle of the play [the acting], the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else.
In the words of the [Bhagavad] Gita, Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life.
(Primeval Archives) The Buddha ("Awakened One") and the Gnostic Jesus ("Anointed One") were teaching the same escape route they somehow both knew. Who took it from whom?
Answer
*Irony* Well, clearly Buddhism, which existed five or six centuries before Jesus was born, must have stolen the idea from Christianity by somehow finding a way to time travel centuries into the future, seeing how popular Christianism would get then absconding like a time bandit with Gnostic papyri under his arm back to South and Central Asia (India and Afghanistan). Wait, is there time travel yet? When will that arrive?
So Jesus Christ must have heard the teaching, seen the Buddha's finger pointing at the path (as preserved in the Buddha-Dharma and the Sangha, the Teachings of the Buddha and the monastic institution the Buddha set up to preserve and practice those Teachings so that the world would never be bereft of path or enlightened disciples, who are the unexcelled source of merit for the world).
Primeval Archives does such a great job presenting the case then falls on his A.I. face by claiming that all the evidence that Jesus spent the missing 18 years of his life between the time he was a teen then a teacher traveling to India, Tibet, and the mystic East. All the evidence in the world wouldn't convince someone who has already made up his or her or their mind.
Is there evidence? Because if there is, then the question answers itself about who borrowed from whom. The BBC says that Jesus was a Buddhist monk during a part of those "missing years," which did not really go missing at all, but rather were buried and erased by the institution. Churches, councils, Vatican, clerical organizations, they never heard it, just as they ignore the Apocrypha, a wondrous source of Christian and pre-Christian knowledge. The lost Gnostic Gospels cannot now be ignored, nor could the parallels between what may spiritual traditions seem to be trying to say in their own way.
Nicolas Notovitch, Russian Christian, found written documentation of Jesus (St. Issa) in Tibetan monastery Hemis Gompa, Ladakh
He returned to West, was met with shock and doubt. Then someone claimed to go ask at the monastery, which denied knowing anything about a book documenting Jesus (St. Issa) training there then returning to Palestine (ancient Israel) before getting in trouble again, getting crucified, cut down and released by bribed Roman guards, and returning to India to live out his life till the age of 80 in Kashmir, where he is buried in the Jewish style
Indian Swami Abhedananda heard about this, traveled to Ladakh, was shown the book (because he was not a Westerner who would steal it like others were likely to do), corroborating all that Notovitch had claimed
Truth is truth, and no one is owner of it. What the Buddha, the Awakened One, realized he shared with the world like an openhanded teacher. Jesus may have had a much smaller circle of special disciples (Apostles), but he certainly tried to tell people of his visions, realizations, and setting forth a way of following in his footsteps. It's a terrible pity the official Church took that, stripped it of its vital call for real gnosis (direct personal experience, shamanic realization, seeing to believe) and replaced it was a pitiful shell of obedience to authority, mindless learning by rote, and blind faith.
We are responsible for our own actions, which is our karma (deeds). We reap what we sow, which is to say we harvest what we plant. As is said in Buddhism, "No one saves us but ourselves; no one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path; buddhas [awakened teachers] only point the way."
Primeval Archives (video); BBC (documentary); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY
Candi temples: A candi (from Kawi caṇḍi [1]) is a Hindu or Buddhist temple in Indonesia, mostly built during the Zaman Hindu-Buddha or "Hindu-Buddhist period" between the 4th and 15th centuries.
Does the Indonesian yakkhaor "Bigfoot"(Orang Pendek) live in these jungles protecting natural resources?
While sounding like a madman at first, the great Krishnamurti actually has a point to make about "efforting," muscling, struggling, and striving to gain or win enlightenment. Buddhist awakening (bodhi) is far more about letting go of delusion, confusion, and illusion and instead gently cultivating allowing, radical acceptance of what is, and dispassionate (disinterested, unbiased) viewing like some kind of Taoist, being the watcher rather than the striver or go-getter.
Of course, Krishnamurti was more a Hindu than a Buddhist, having escaped the clutches of the Western Theosophists who found him, saw his potential, raised and nurtured their new Messiah (Maitreya) in hopes that he would become a "Buddha" or "World Teacher" for our time (like the promised Buddha Boy decades later).
But he burned them and instead taught a whole kind of Zen nondoing, nothing special, there's nothing to achieve approach to spirituality and spiritual (un)accomplishments. The Theosophists were not happy, so Krishnamurti went off on his own, not aligning himself with any religion but sort of incorporating them all into a syncretism.
He's a subtle speaker and thinker, along the lines of Bhagwan Shree Rajnessh (Osho) and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, both alleged to be frauds immersed in sex and money scandals. We would not want to misrepresent Krishnamurti's views, if he holds any, as he can quite well speak for himself. Like the great Mahavira (Vardhamāna, the founder of Jainism, called the NiganthaNattaputta in Buddhist texts), Krishnamurti must have some good qualities that he is still remembered and listened to.
Yeshe Tsogyal (circa 757 or 777–817 CE) [1] is also known as "Victorious Ocean of Knowledge," "Knowledge Lake Empress" (Wylie ye shes mtsho rgyal, ཡེ་ཤེས་མཚོ་རྒྱལ) or by her Sanskrit name Jñānasāgarā "Knowledge Ocean," or by her clan name "Lady Kharchen" [2].
She attained enlightenment in her lifetime and is considered the Mother of Tibetan Buddhism. Yeshe Tsogyal is the highest woman in the Nyingma Vajrayana lineage.
Some sources say she, as princess of Kharchen, was either a co-wife or consort of Emperor Tri Songdetsen (Trisong Detsen) of Tibet [3] when she began studying Buddhism withPadmasambhava, who became her main karmamudrā consort.
EMANATIONS: Yeshe Tsogyal is considered a manifestation of the Bodhisattva Tara. She is also considered an emanation of Prajnaparamita, Samantabhadrī, and Vajrayogini [16]. In the Life of Yeshe Tsogyel, Padmasambhava predicted that Yeshe Tsogyel would be reborn as Machig Labdrön; her consort Atsara Sale [2] would become Topabhadra, Machig’s husband; her assistant and another of Padmasambhava’s consorts, Tashi Khyidren, would be reborn as Machig’s only daughter, and so on. All of the important figures in Yeshe Tsogyel’s life were to be reborn in the life of Machig Labdron, including Padmasambhava himself, who would become Dampa Sangye [17].
Padmasambhava is a founder-figure of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and is considered a second "buddha" of our era [4] [which at least one other tradition, sticking to the original texts, would say is impossible, given that the historical Buddha often pointed out how rare the arising of a buddha is and how few there have ever been, with only one in any epoch.]
She is known to have revealed terma ("hidden treasure") with Padmasambhava and was also the main scribe for these terma. Later, Yeshe Tsogyal hid many of Padmasambhava's terma on her own, under the instructions of Padmasambhava for future generations [2].
Born a princess in the region of Kharchen, Tibet, in about 777 CE, she fled from arranged marriages until captured for Emperor Tri Songdetsen.
Yeshe Tsogyal lived for approximately 99 years and is a preeminent figure in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and a role model for contemporary spiritual practitioners.
Although often referred to as being Padamasambhava's main "consort," Yeshe Tsogyal was primarily a spiritual master and teacher in her own right.
Based on her spiritual accomplishments, the Nyingma and Karma Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism recognize Yeshe Tsogyal as a female buddha.
The translators of Lady of the Lotus-Born, the namtar or spiritual biography that Yeshe Tsogyal left as a terma/hidden treasure, observe:
"As Dodrup Tenpai Nyima makes clear, beings able to reveal Termas must have at least the realization of the Perfection Stage practices. On the other hand, the one who originates the Treasures must have the supreme attainment of Buddhahood. Lady of the Lotus-Born is thus a testimony of Yeshe Tsogyal's enlightenment" [5]. More
Tara (Sanskrit तारा, tārā, Standard Tibetan སྒྲོལ་མ, dölma), Ārya Tārā ("Noble Tara") is also known as Jetsün Dölma (Tibetan rje btsun sgrol ma, "Venerable Mother of Liberation"). She is an important female buddha in Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism.
Our reading of Mahayana Buddhism, of which Vajrayana is a sub-school, suggests that the MOST powerful Buddhist goddess is actually Kwan Yin (Guanyin, a female manifestation of Avalokiteśvara) Bodhisattva. She is queen or in any case certainly the most powerful, for she looks on and hears the cries of the world with utmost compassion, a kind of Virg Yin Mary(not Jewish or Essene Miriam so much as the ultimate goddess in Gnostic Christianity, Mary Magdalene).
If Theravada Buddhism made much of personifying qualities through transcendent goddesses (devis), our vote for the Ultimate Goddess right alongside Kwan Yin (Guanyin) would certainly be the glorious Prajnaparamita of Java, Gnostic Sophia, the personification of the Perfection of Wisdom. And we wouldn't stop there. Maha Pajapati Gotami, Yasodhara (aka Bimba Devi, Rahulamata, Bhaddha Kaccana, Sundari Kaccana, etc.), Khema Theri, Uppalavanna Theri, and Queen of [Tusita] Heaven Maya would serve as the raw basis for building up goddesses, venerable enlightened Buddhist women in history.
[Earlier traditions hold to the view, one of five niyamas, that while females are of course equally capable of arahantship, full enlightenment, as well as many other accomplishments, literal buddhas only arise as males. Why this would be, or why any of the niyamas are true in and of themselves, is not explained. 5. dhamma-niyāma "the constraint of dhammas (things, phenomena)," namely, such events as the quaking of the 10,000 world-systems at the conception of a bodhisatta conception in his mother's womb and again at his birth (partition from that womb). At the end of the discussion Sumaṅgalavilāsinī passage, the Commentary states that dhamma-niyāma explains the term dhammatā in the text of the Mahāpadāna Sutta (DN ii.12) (Cf. S 12.20 for a discussion of the use of the word dhamma-niyamatā in the Pali canon sutras.
It should always be borne in mind that no individual is an actual sex but fluid because one can be reborn as any of the three genders -- male, female, pandaka. How many genders are there? The answer could easily be more than three because pandaka can be variously defined as pervert, eunuch (pansexual as the word is understood in the East not as we use it in the West), hermaphrodite, bi, gay, asexual, intersex, transgender, transsexual, crossdresser, etc.)
The Dalai Lama, who is Tibetan Vajrayana joked about this in one of his PR movies, declaring something like: "Of course a woman can become a buddha...she just has to be reborn as a man first" then laughing. People popularly regard him as the "Pope of Vajrayana Buddhism," though he is not; he's not even the pope of Tibetan Buddhism because the non-Gelug schools do not regard him as the pontiff but rather a useful political leader, a kind of temporal king who made it to the world stage with more than a little help from the CIA. This topic of gender should be questioned, debated, and explored as it seems awfully unfair and denigrating to femalehood, but might it be the case, as a Hindu priest once told our college Comparative Religion class that the reason a being, a gandhabba seeking rebirth in a human body, is reborn as a female rather than a male at any given rebirth is due to the level of attachment, affection, and clinging present in that relinking moment. If that is the case, we have all been and will all be females, so placing femininity one down from masculinity is a bad strategy that will turn around and bite us. Likewise, all females reborn as humans, as rare and difficult as it is to ever secure a human rebirth, will also experience what it's like to be a male. And we say with no confusion, it's not all it's cracked up to be.]
Humans love to carve ideal attributes in stone.
She may appear as a female bodhisattva (a "being bent on full or supreme enlightenment," the two not being the same thing, one being an arhat, the other a buddha) in Mahayana Buddhism [1].
In Vajrayana Buddhism, Green Tara is a female buddha who is a consort of the Cosmic Buddha Amoghasiddhi.
Tārā is also known as a savioress who hears the cries of beings in saṃsāra (the interminable round of rebirth and suffering) and saves them from worldly and spiritual danger [2].
In Vajrayana, she is considered to be a buddha, and the Tārā Tantra describes her as "a mother who gives birth to the buddhas of the three times [past, present, and future]" who is also "beyond saṃsāra and nirvāṇa" [3].
Earlier tradition distinguishes nirvana as being nothing like samsara, and since all we have ever known is the latter, anything else could be considered nirvana. Some do not like this definition as it seems to define nirvana, which many feel is ineffable, indescribable, and incomparable even though the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama did indeed define and describe it.
Tārā is one of the most important female deities in Vajrayana (Esoteric Buddhism) and is found in apocryphal sources like the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa and the Guhyasamāja Tantra [4].
Key Indic Vajrayana texts that focus on Tārā include the Tantra Which Is the Source for All the Functions of Tārā, Mother of All the Tathagatas (Sanskrit Sarva-tathāgata-mātṛtārā-viśva-karma-bhavanāma-tantra) and Tārā's Fundamental Ritual Text (Tārāmūlakalpa) [5, 3].
Both Green and White Tārā remain popular meditation deities or yidams in Tibetan Buddhism, and Tara is also revered in Newar Buddhism.
Tārā is considered to take on many forms or emanations, while Green Tara emanates 21 Tārās, each with different attributes—colors, implements, and activities such as pacifying (śānti), increasing (pauṣṭika), enthralling (vaśīkaraṇa), and wrathful (abhicāra) [2].
Green Tara (or "blue-green," Sanskrit Samayatara or śyāmatārā) remains the most important form of the deity in Tibetan Buddhism [6, 7].
A practice text entitled Praises to the 21 Taras is a well known text on Tara in Tibetan Buddhism within Tibet, recited by children and adults, and is the textual source for the 21 forms of Green Tārā.
The main Tārā mantra is the same for Buddhists and Hindus: oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. It is uttered by Tibetans and Buddhists who follow Tibetan culture as oṃ tāre tu tāre ture soha. The literal translation would be "Oṃ O Tārā, I pray O Tārā, O Swift One, So Be It!" More
These are the "Gods" of faith-based Mahayana, Vajrayana, Jodo Shinshu, Nicheren, Shingon...rather than the much smaller (10%) back-to-basics Theravada Buddhist tradition, which recognizes countless brahmas and devas, particularly Great Brahma and Sakka (Sakra, Indra), King of the Devas, but neither worships them nor regards them as "Gods" in the Western sense.
So much of what people call "Zen" (capitalized as opposed to zen or jhana/dhyana) sounds more like Taoism (with a stiff dose of Confucianism) than Buddhism, and here's why. It was all picked up in translation. So what was lost? Those may be beautiful spiritual/temporal traditions with which to blend, but what is obscured is the historical Buddha's message until it is almost completely lost and replaced by Hinduism (with its Tantra, yoga, and magic that gave rise to another branch Vajrayana/Shingon attached) to a new religion that came to be called Mahayana, far from the Buddha's Dhamma.
Everything Zen
We silly Westerners have no idea! We think we know
"Zen" is a silly word, carrying so much meaning in American English. Goodness knows what it means in Japan or China nowadays, a dying religious sect taking sides in the jiriki versus tariki battle?
We aim to find out on Thursdays in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Zen Sangha. There is a path. What is it? If one were to ask the average American Zen practitioner, then everything likely to be heard in response would be some derivation of Taoism, not Buddhism or any relation to relation to the Doctrine of the historical Buddha.
Lao Tzu (Laozi) was not a Buddhist. He was possibly a celestial (deva), descended to Earth to philosophize and guide the Chinese.
For all that, on "Buddhist Radio" (Alan Watts - KPFK 90.7 FM, 8:00 am, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026) Alan Watts explained Zen in 18-minutes.
His brief talk lays bare the root of every misconception. Moreover, Buddha's Wisdom (in the video displayed above) does much to add context and clarify. Zen can be grasped.
Watts says the problem with understanding Zen is that unless one were raised Japanese -- very punctilious, rigid, formal, ritualistic, deadly afraid of a faux pas, losing face, or doing things incorrectly -- one will not be able to appreciate what Zen (Taoism) offers as relief.
Zen promotes spontaneity, naturalness, flow, being at ease, comfort, and relaxing into a kind of "just being" present and mindful (of the moment) without so much thinking (premeditation).
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