Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The only Buddhist republic in Europe (video)

; New.BBC.co.uk; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly


Northwestern climes for Central Asian Buddhists
Kalmykia is in the steppe region in the south of European Russia. It is the only indigenous European Buddhist republic. A 2011 international Buddhist festival took place in a magnificent temple in Kalmykia's capital, Elista. Vajrayana monks, practicing in a Tibetan-Bhutanese-Mongolian style, are preparing a sand mandala.

Ethnic Kalmyks are traditionally Buddhist (BBC)
The monastery is a palace that may serve as a temporary abode for a semi-enlightened deity. Colored marble sand is applied to the canvas through a cone-shaped tube. Follow the monks' path on RT.  Buddhists came to Europe long ago, traveling from its origins in Afghanistan and ancient India along the Silk Road.

Moving up through Central Asia from Bamiyan (possibly in the vicinity of the real Kapilavastu, Siddhartha's hometown, a great center of Buddhism with its towering mountainside statues after the conversion of the Sage's extended family, the Shakyas), Buddhism came to Tajikistan, and into Europe.

Buddhism traveled West out of India through Central Asia and geopolitical Middle East (TSO)
  
Central Asia or the -istan region (BBC)
The area was Buddhist as it first established itself in the West, partly as portions of Greek and Persian and Bactrian empires, prior to reaching the Great Walled empire of civilized China. The Czarist Russian empire extended down to Afghanistan, the roadblock in its imperial dreams as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The -istans replaced allegiance to Moscow. But the industrious bands of merchants traveling up and down the Caucasus mountains dividing the Eurasian continent, socially separating Europe and Asia. Siberian shamanism blended with Esoteric Buddhism, establishing a long history of the Dharma on the continent.
visited Tajikistan's National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe in 2011 to view the famous terracotta Buddha statue, discovered in the 1960s among the ruins of a temple called Ajina Tepa at Kurgan Tube, about 100 km south of Dushanbe. The reclining figure is the Buddha entering final nirvana. It dates back to the 6th or 7th century AD and measures 12.8 m long and 2.7 m high. Because of its immensity and fragile condition, it was cut into 92 pieces before being transported to Dushanbe. The restoration of the sculpture was long and difficult but completed in time for the opening of the National Museum in 2001 during the course of Tajikistan's 10th anniversary of independence celebrations.

Apes have "mid-life crises," humans too

Wisdom Quarterly
Balding, flabby, and testosterone-poisoned, that's the crisis at mid-life (WQ)
 
Yet again proving that we humans are simply the most spiritually and intellectually (albeit not necessarily the most socially or emotionally) evolved of the apes, we aren't the only ones to go through a mid-life crisis.

Everything we do, perhaps short of moral reasoning, exists in the animal world: tool-making, language (all animals communicate and some, without adequate voice boxes, manage to mimic our linguistic sounds, e.g. parrots, Mina birds, Beluga whales, howling dogs), promiscuity (bonobos), planned violence, murder, cannibalism, self-injury (most animals in captivity), anorexia (dolphins chuck), bipedalism (all birds walk on two legs in addition to a better way of traveling), smoke (monkey in Tobacco Company studies), drink (under fermenting fruit trees in desert oases), pleasure themselves... The great Noam Chomsky declared chimps could never use abstract language, until Nim Chimpsky proved him wrong.

() Noc can talk. But marine biologists
discovered whales' human voices back in 1984.
 
Even apes have "midlife crises," study finds
Youth in a tube (cartoonstock.com)
(FOX News) Chimpanzees in a midlife crisis? It sounds like a setup for a joke. But there it is, in the title of a report published Monday in a scientific journal: "Evidence for a midlife crisis in great apes."
  
So what do these apes do? Buy red Ferraris? Leave their mates for some cute young bonobos? Uh, no. "I believe no ape has ever purchased a sports car," said Andrew Oswald, an author of the study. But researchers report that captive chimps and orangutans do show the same low ebb in emotional well-being at midlife that some studies find in people.
That suggests the human tendency toward midlife discontent may have been passed on through evolution, rather than resulting just from the hassles of modern life, said Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England who presented his work Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A second study in the journal looks at a younger age group and finds that happiness in youth can lead to higher income a few years down the road. More on that later. Let's get back to those apes. Several studies have concluded that... More

"This is one of the great patterns of human life.
We're all going to slide along this U for good or ill."
- Study author Andrew Oswald

JFK conspiracy redux: Judyth Vary Baker

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
Alvie (Woody Allen) explains the inconsistencies of the Warren Commission in "Annie Hall." Common sense has always known the US gov't is covering up what really happened and why.
  • JFK ASSASSINATION RE-EXAMINED 
  • with JUDYTH VARY BAKER, author of Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love & Lose Lee Harvey Oswald
  • Wednesday, Nov. 28th, 7:30-10:00 pm
  • The Canal Club, Venice Beach, CA
  • 2025 Pacific Ave., Venice, 90291 (310) 823-3878
    More info Gerry Fialka: (310) 306-7330
  • FREE admission! (meandlee.com/itinerary)
JFK, Zapruder film still, the blood mistake (assassinationscience.com)

Tour details (groundzeromedia.org)
Judyth Vary Baker, author of Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love & Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, will appear in person and discuss her book. Baker's explosive story brings new insight to the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK assassination. She is a living witness to events that changed America. She knew Lee Harvey Oswald intimately as well as other key players in the fateful November, 1963 events.

The Beauty and Patsy for the MIC (veteranstoday.com)
Former Governor Jesse Ventura calls Baker's book "stunning" and ranked it among his six favorite conspiracy reads. New York Times best-selling author Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, recommends "the impassioned, unflinching voice of Judyth Vary Baker" to hear what our government will not tell us.

In 1963, Ms. Baker attended Univ. of Florida and was involved in advanced cancer research involving radiation and human melanoma cells, focused on evaluating the effects of the cancerous SV-40 virus contained in early polio vaccines.

In the Spring of 1963, Baker was contacted by Dr. Alton Ochsner, former President of the American Cancer Society and founder of the Ochsner Medical Clinic, to work on a summer project in New Orleans involving the transference of cancer via vaccine and its possible cure. During the course of this internship, Ms. Baker meets Lee Harvey Oswald, who becomes her constant companion, and
eventually, her lover.

Oswald is also associated with the Oschner project. The cancer research Ms. Baker is working on, she soon learns, is tied to efforts to kill Cuba's President Fidel Castro, possibly by a tainted cancer-inducing vaccine. Dr. Oschner is a supporter of anti-Communist activities.

Although Ms. Baker eventually returns to Florida, she remained in phone contact with Lee Oswald until Nov. 20, 1963, just two days before the JFK assassination. Her book, Me and Lee, recounts the events of 1963 and the words of her final conversation with Oswald.

During her US tour, Ms. Baker will be speaking at the Roxy Theater in San Francisco on Nov. 22, the 49th anniversary of the JFK assassination, which falls on Thanksgiving this year. She appears in North Hollywood on Nov. 26, and at the LA PRESS CLUB on Nov. 27 at 10:30 am. Details: Kris Millegan publisher@ (800) 556-2012

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Scientists find brain's "moral compass"

DailyMail.co.uk (March 30, 2010); Wisdom Quarterly
[MIT] scientists have discovered a real-life "moral compass" in the brain that controls how we judge other people's behavior.

The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people's misdemeanors or good works.

Morality is a better guide than parents, gods
In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral.

The study highlights how our sense of right and wrong isn't just based on upbringing, religion, or philosophy -- but by the biology of our brains.

Dr. Liane Young, who led the study, said: "You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior. To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."

Red does not indicate the compass (mit.edu)
The moral compass lies in a part of the brain called the right temporo-parietal junction. It lies near the surface of the brain, just behind the right ear.

The researchers at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a non-invasive technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the area of the brain.

The technique generates a magnetic field on a small part of the skull which creates weak electric currents in the brain. These currents interfere with nearby brain cells and prevent them from firing normally.

In the first experiment, 12 volunteers were exposed to the magnetic field for 25 minutes before they were given a series of "moral maze" style scenarios.

Religion is a problem: Advice to Kalamas
For each of the 192 scenarios, they were asked to make a judgment about the character's actions on a scale of 1 for "absolutely forbidden" to 7 for "absolutely permissible."

In the second experiment, the magnetic field was applied to their heads at the time they were asked to weigh the behavior of the characters in the scenario.

In both experiments, the magnetic field made the volunteers less moral. More
 
How can anyone tell anyone else what's right or wrong? 
Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY) 
Has U.S. lost its moral compass?
Debating "right" and "wrong" is futile. Buddhism speaks not in this simplistic way but rather of skillful (kusala) and unskillful (akusala) behavior: what acts lead to suffering, when they come to fruition, and which do not. We do not make decisions based on rational bases, reasoning, calculating, and arriving at some objective plan. We depend on emotions and our "guts" (the sources of many neurons and most of the body's serotonin). To follow our bliss we first have to be mindful enough to notice it. It is a subtle joy one feels, not a logic one deduces. One never feels happier, more buoyant, more relieved, more effervescent than when entering the early absorptions, meditative jhanas, based on virtue, concentration as the mind/heart begins to cohere, and ease. Piti and sukkha, joy and happiness are the natural result. In daily life, little contentment, bliss, or joy occur spontaneous to flood the body; likewise little moral dread (otappa) occurs when we engage in behaviors (breaking precepts) that are sure to bring unwelcome, unwanted misery.  
 
The Buddha said "come and see" not "believe!"
Killing, stealing, sexual harm, perjury, intoxication occasioning heedlessness cannot lead to happiness but, clearly, someone who steals can enjoy ill-gotten gains. Why? The act (karma) has not matured and borne its result. When it does it will surely be experienced as misery. This is what the Buddha taught and what made him a karmavadin, a teacher of actions with moral consequences. If it were not so, we would not say so. Who wouldn't rather do whatever s/he wanted? Mystics teach what they see as seers (rishis) not what will make them popular and lauded in their day. Truth is true whether anyone sees it or not. Fortunately, all that the Buddha said is personally verifiable in this very life. The Buddha taught the path to that knowledge and vision.  
 
There is no blind faith in Buddhism to act as beacon. Ironically, as Americans, most of us prefer Zen under the mistaken assumption that it's a DIY religion of no religion, a rebel stance, an anachronistic hodgepodge of senseless koans, blunts, and aphorisms no one really understands. In fact, "zen" means jhana, which is almost synonymous with moral blamelessness. Without virtue, the heart/mind remains uneasy, full of misgivings, worried about things done (unskillful karma) and left undone (skillful karma), and unconcentrated. And it is exactly a calm, cool, collected and therefore intensely concentrated (samadhi) mind/heart that leads to zen (meditation), that is Zen, that bears the fruits of the path: virtue --> concentration --> wisdom.

By ourselves is good/evil done
Or left undone.
By ourselves are we
purified or defiled.
   
No one saves us but ourselves;
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path;
Buddhas only point the way!   

The Secret Space Program Conference (video)

; Wisdom Quarterly; Wallpapervortex.com (space photo)
(LINK) The Secret Space Program Conference, April 3, 2011, Amsterdam, Holland

"My Brother, Buddhist Monk" (film)

; Wisdom Quarterly
"My Brother, Buddhist Monk" 2012 documentary from Finland in Finnish with English subtitles

This approximately 26-minute film covers the spiritual adventure of a 26-year-old Finnish guy who is leaving the household life and his home country to become a Buddhist monk in an ancient Theravada school offshoot known as the "Forest Tradition," as inspired by Ajahn Chah and other prominent teachers many of whom were made famous by Jack Kornfield's Living Buddhist Masters, in the mountainous jungles of south central Thailand at a hermitage named Wat Map Chan. The journey was documented by the protagonist's sister. She provides the narration and video footage at the monastery and with their Scandinavian family. She spent a month in a Buddhist monastery. More at International Wanderings:

Monday, November 26, 2012

News of the Day: Spiritual movies (video)

Seven, Pat Macpherson, Irma Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly, News of the Day, Nov. 2012
Calming prints on the streets of Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city (WeGoTwo/flickr.com)
Happiness
Happiness in Teen Years linked to Higher Income later
Happy Samurai Girl (imdb.com)
(HuffPo) Gloomy teens, take heed -- your more happy-go-lucky classmates will likely earn more than you, according to new research. Researchers followed more than 10,000 U.S. adolescents over a decade and found that happiness during the teen years and young adulthood was linked with income at age 29.
Life Lessons I Learned from my Baby
Declines in Quality of Life of all EU states, alarming
Declines of over 20% in levels of optimism and happiness are reported in some countries across the EU and over a third of people indicate a... 
The top motivating factors for Malaysians aged 18-35 are happiness, success, family, and ambition -- according to the latest Generation-Asia...
Led Zeppelin movie released: "Celebration Day"
(Yale Daily News) Hundreds of students flooded into LC 101 last night to hear a panel of professors discuss happiness. The talk, hosted by Vita Bella ["Good Life"]... 
To complement this study, The Wall Street Journal examined the role that happiness has in workplace productivity, and how both employees... 
(Herald Sun, Nov. 25, 2012) Workers now happiest they have been in ages, finds study... Happiness among their workers also is up by 40 per cent as they too enjoy better... 
(MSN NZ News, Nov. 26, 2012) A study claiming porn actresses are happier in their sexuality and self-image than other women has been discredited by an Australian expert.
  
"Travelers and Magicians"
In Bhutan, the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom, dreaming of coming to Buddhist America
  
A Bhutanese fable [available for DVD rental] about lives in transition will be shown Monday at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. "Travelers and Magicians" tells the story about Dondup, who wants to leave Bhutan for America, and a monk who tries to talk him out of it. To do this, the monk tells the story of another man restless and dissatisfied, whose story does not end well. It is the first movie shot entirely in Bhutan, and is in the Bhutanese language, Dzonghka, with subtitles. More

Bollywood's Sherlyn Chopra to star in Kama Sutra in 3D
Kashmir: Canada and India's new relationship
LA Yoga: Ayurveda and Health (Magazine)

iJAN helps FREE Palestine: The WorldSocial Forum Free Palestine (WSF FP) is approaching. More than 10,000 Palestinian and solidarity activists from 36 countries will converge on Porto Alegre to learn from each other and together organize to build a strong movement to confront Israel and Zionism and the broader injustices they represent and support. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and activists in the US, Canada, and around the world are building a joint struggleframework to the WSF FP.  More

Filling US prisons with "modern slaves" for profit
The North America Bigfoot Search (Paulides)
UFO sightings warm up on Australia's Gold Coast
Research in Open and Distance Learning  (Journal)
China dissident Ai Weiwei basks in his relative liberty
PHOTO GALLERY: Buddhist beauty in China (wow)
PHOTOS: TraceLUX's trip to Tibet
Bhutan gives cold shoulder to Nepal
Rooftop news: The Himalayan Times 
English eBooks (Tusita Hermitage)

"Life of Pi"
(LINK) Director Ang Lee ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") recruits an actual trained Bengal tiger to create a groundbreaking movie about a young man who survives a tragic disaster at sea. He is hurtled on an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship's only other survivor, the tiger. WARNING: Many viewers say the movie tries to inspire wonder and awe and a belief in GOD.
 
"Cloud Atlas"
 (LINK) The most "Buddhist" movie of the year?
 
This Wachowski film features handsome Halle Berry and America's very own sweetheart Tom Hanks with Buddhist themes reminiscent of "Looper." Except this is without a time-travel conceit to make the karmic connection perfectly clear. "Cloud Atlas" is an exploration of how the actions (karma) of individual lives impact one another. This happens in the past, present, and future. One living being, in the course of becoming, is shaped from a killer into a hero. And a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.
  
Not since Hanks nearly ruined "Cast Away" have we been so torn between wanting to watch a film for thematic reasons and being kept away by its male lead. In that epic adventure, Hanks' character is adrift on a raft ("Life of Pi"-style) with no one to talk to but a soccer ball. He draws eyes on it, places a wig atop it, and constantly whines: "Wilson, will I ever get home? Wilson, does my wife still love me? Wilson, what are we going to do?!!" Later in a hallucination, the ball answers him: "My name is Voit, dumb@ss!" Wait, that pay-off only came much later in a "Family Guy" cutaway:



"Cloud Atlas" might be bearable with the help of co-stars Susan Sarandon, Zhou Xun, Hugo Weaving, Doona Rae, Jim Sturgess, James D'Arcy, Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent, Keith David, David Mitchell, David Gyasi... because if the worst thing one has to say about a prospective film is that Tom Hanks is in it, that is probably one great film.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Bigfoot is a kind of "human," DNA shows

DNA moves in an aqueous environment (istockphoto.com/rustycloud/esciencecommons)
 
"Bigfoot" DNA sequenced in genetics study
Five-Year genome study at DNA Diagnostics yields evidence of Homo sapiens/unknown hominin hybrid species in North America.
 
DNA wall (John Goode/Flickr/Wired.com)
DALLAS, Texas (PRWEB, Nov. 24, 2012) - A team of scientists can verify that their five-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin [not hominid] hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” [by European invaders and east coast migrants] or “Sasquatch” [by Native American groups], living in North America. 
 
Researchers’ extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative who arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species. 

Dr. Ketchum (DNAdiagnostics.com)
[It is not a Neanderthal. It has been determined to be human, as Native Americans have always maintained. These creatures possess their own language and culture, which is the Buddhist position, which recognizes these nature and mountain protecting Abominable Snowmen and Yetis as yakkhas (Sanskrit, yakshas, female yakshis) and rakshasas, "ogres."]
  
The study was conducted by a team of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging, and pathology, led by Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, TX. In response to recent interest in the study, Dr. Ketchum can confirm that her team has sequenced three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and has determined that the species is a human hybrid:

Synthetic DNA/RNA (ZME Science)
“Our study has sequenced 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and utilized next generation sequencing to obtain three whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species. Our data indicate that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens. 

Not a monkey? Half "angel/demon" DNA?
[Like the biblical nephilim hybrids and half-human yakshas in ancient Sanskrit Vedic texts, these ogres frequently abduct human females, taking them as "wives" according to lore. They do so because they are powerful humanoids with honed senses that might be labelled psychic, supernormal, or preternatural. Homo sapiens are capable of the same feats, but we seem to have dulled our six natural senses to the point that we find it difficult simply surviving in nature like our cave-dwelling forbears. Their existence and reports of sightings have often occurred in connection with UFO sightings -- such as the case of "crazy bears" dropped off by a UFO referred to as a small moon. They descended from above, come up from underground genetics labs, and they are also said to enter this plane trans-dimensionally through portals. This should not come as a surprise; governments around the world have long known and confirmed for themselves that these humanoid hybrid creatures exist. Russia, for example, held a public conference last year (2011) to bring together scientists and researchers. The same may be said of those extraterrestrials not covered in hair, but that has yet to be disclosed by official confirmation. After all, it's not true until The Man says it's okay to believe, for such is our colonized mindset.]
 
“Hominins are members of the taxonomic grouping Hominini, which includes all members of the genus Homo. Genetic testing has already ruled out Homo neanderthalis and the Denisova hominin as contributors to Sasquatch mtDNA or nuDNA.
 
Yeti shrines (wdwforgrownups)
“The male progenitor [who] contributed the unknown sequence to this hybrid is unique as its DNA is more distantly removed from humans than other recently discovered hominins like the Denisovan individual,” explains Ketchum.
 
“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence. Further study is needed and is ongoing to better characterize and understand Sasquatch nuclear DNA.” More
The Buddha and Bigfoot: the Yakkha Alavaka

Vegans in Space (NASA)

(finedininglovers.com, July 24, 2012); Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Worlds in space/sky (Sanskrit, akasha) are best visited by vegans (wallpapervortex.com). Below Mars image from Shutterstock engineers at NASA’s Synthetic Biology Initiative using life to create building blocks of life instead of shipping them (via inhabitat.com).


Mars is really more hospitable than trip there
We have Buddhists in space, Buddhists from space, Buddhists sending messages from space, so why not smart, compassionate, green (environmentally-conscious) vegans? 
 
The next time NASA sends astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, they will not be eating synthetic capsules, freeze-dried food, or liquid meals. That's so last millenium.
  
On their mission to Mars, NASA astronauts will eat 100% vegan meals complete with fresh fruits and vegetables grown on the spaceship.
  
How is this possible? [A better question is, Why? Could it be that even mainstream scientists know full well that a vegan diet is the healthiest for humans particularly those under the strains and stresses of space travel, while the fiction is maintained that here on Earth we need junk food and flesh?]

It is all thanks to the research being done by NASA's Advanced Food Technology (AFT) project. 

V is for Vegan tees (OnOurSleeve.com)
Since Mars has some gravity, the AFT researchers believe astronauts will be able to chop and cook vegetables and even grow their own plants with hydroponics using recycled water.
 
The six to eight astronauts who will participate in the Mars mission will require enough food for three years. Mars is so far away that NASA will not be able to send food every six months like they do for the International Space Station. Neither will they be able to preserve meat or dairy for such a long period, according to senior research scientist Maya Cooper. 
 
That is why Cooper and her team have come up with a menu of 100 vegan recipes. According to this video, NASA is still working to ensure the astronauts have healthy and varied meals.It is not clear how talented a chef will be onboard to prepare these recipes, but if this animated 3D short film is any indication, the astronauts are in for years of treats. AP/FDL VIDEO

(GoVeg.com)
 
Inhabitat:
  • NASA harnessing the power of microbes to create building bricks on Mars
  • How "soft infrastructure," like wetlands and green roofs, could save NYC
  • Our World: giant pixelated LEGO map built from 1 million bricks!
  • London’s Earth creature is super adobe dome by city’s smallest architects
  • INTERVIEW: Architecture for Humanity’s Co-Founder Kate Stohr 
  • "World’s Most Sustainable Gas Station" in the Netherlands
  • UK scientists developing autonomous flying honey bee robots!