Peaceful Buddhists on murderous rampage?

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Abbot Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D., Bodhi Vihara

In this anti-Buddhist propaganda photo suggesting Buddhists monks (Tibetan lamas) are up to no good standing among corpses, what is really happening is quite the opposite. Lamas were brought in to bless and comfort victims after a massive Himalayan landslide in Tibet -- in this inflammatory, undated photo tagged with a url link to a video reporting atrocities committed against Burma's minority Muslim Rohingyas, which the world seems to be ignoring: tinyurl.com/93hqzme.

    

UPDATE: The editors of Wisdom Quarterly are not apologists (defenders the faith ready to explain any and every negative thing away). If monastics or  nominal lay "Buddhists" harm others, we report it. Reports have reached us that Buddhists did NOT go on murderous rampages. They might have, but there is a more plausible explanation. Rohingyas are in a tense stand off with their coompatriot neighbors, Burmese Buddhist villagers and co-religionist Muslims in nearby Bangladesh. Buddhists are angry about a sensational rape of a Buddhist female by Rohingya boys, ongoing drug dealing, and general anti-social behavior. But it is alleged that Rohingyas set fire to their own villages using gun powder provided to them from some outside source agitating for change. Rohingyas want to have their plight recognized, so they had to do something to get sympathy and vital humanitarian relief from either the world in general or Bangladeshi officials in particular.

  

Burma has a history of massacring minorities.

The worldwide MIC (transnational military-industrial complex) has succeeded in sucking in some Buddhists, tragically pitting some poor Burmese villagers against their fellow countrymen, an ethnic minority known as the Rohingya. Neighboring Muslim Bangladesh has refused to help save lives and prevent this nascent genocide by admitting Rohingyas attempting to flee the violence, which goes both ways with Rohingyas attacking minority Bangladeshi Buddhist temples and villagers and majority Burmese Buddhists retaliating.

But this is not a simple case of neighbor-on-neighbor violence. Pres. Thien Sein of Burma has admitted that the monstrous Myanmar military -- which in 2007 attacked, imprisoned, and slaughtered uncounted Buddhist monks and pro-democracy protesters in the ongoing Saffron Revolution -- has been systematically executing Rohingya. The military junta headed by Burmese dictator Gen. Than Shwe have ruthlessly attacked and waged war against many of Burma's ethnic minorities, including Buddhists along the its mountainous borders with Thailand and China.

• Why are the Buddhists killing Muslims in Burma?
• The plight of the Rohingya
• Why is the world ignoring Myanmar's Rohingya?

What is going on?

Stop! Consider the consequences of shortsighted action (karma)! Hatred will never cease by hatred. Every gain will mean even more loss (Ahsanul Bari).

  
We go to Bangladeshi Buddhist abbot and scholar Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D. for comment. 

WQ: "Venerable sir, Buddhists are killing Muslims?"

VK: "Villagers are fighting, but this has absolutely nothing to do with religion. This is not a religious crusade or anything Buddhist monastics sponsor. Rohingya attacked Buddhists in Bangladesh; Buddhists in Burma are attacking Rohingya."

WQ: "Where is Hillary Clinton in all this?"

VK: "That is a good question."

WQ: "Worse yet, where is our heroine Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?"

VK: "This is a very delicate matter, very tragic."

There is a dictum in Buddhism that any person who attacks another is wrong to do so, but a person who retaliates is worse. Revenge is NOT justified in Buddhism, contrary to Western conceptions of God and Jewish-Christian ideals of vengeance, following a tribal God(s) into war against neighbors.

  

Fortunately, New Testament Christians speak of a new ideal (forgiveness) and a new God (Issa/Jesus) replacing the warring eye-for-any-eye mentality attributed to YHWH.

But many Christians in the West (US, UK, EU, and the Holy See) do not distinguish Old and New Testament Gods when it comes to such things as revenge, war, imperial-crusades, and ethnic-genocides. Conducting war in the name of One God (peruse the Christian Bible's Book of Judges if there's any doubt) and world domination is a mainstay in the Far West and, sadly, the Middle East as well.

  

The CIA can't make all this war without some help from a minority of Muslims bent on upholding the eye-for-an-eye mentality of monotheistic tradition. But to whom are we to attribute most of the violence in the world today?

Who does what?

(americanbedu.com)

Photographer Kombizz Kashani rhetorically asks: "Who started the first world war? Muslims?? Who started the second world war? Muslims?? Who killed ten million aborigines in Australia? Muslims?? Who dropped nuclear bombs on civilian [non-combatants] in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Muslims?? Who killed more than 100 million Native American-Indians in North America? Muslims?? Who killed more than 50 million indigenous-Indians in South America? Muslims?? Who trafficked ~180 million Africans as slaves with 88% of them dying or being thrown into the Atlantic?? Muslims??"

No, they weren't Muslims! They were mostly [nominal] Christians.

Let's define "terrorism." If a non-Muslim does something untoward, it's a "crime." But if a Muslim commits the exact same misdeed, it's "terrorism." We first have to disabuse ourselves of this biased double-standard.

• RohingyaSocietyInMalaysia.org

Buddhist Halloween with Ven. Thanasanti

Wisdom Quarterly

Theravada nun Ven. Thanasanti, Halloween Dharma Punx, Hollywood (Wisdom Quarterly)

Against the Stream welcomed American Theravada Buddhist nun Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni for an extended teaching visit. There are several chances to meditate and hear her teach, ask questions, and share community (sangha) building in simple conversation. Scheduled events from Halloween to Nov. 5, 2012 include:

• Oct 31: Halloween night, 7:30-9:30, Melrose Center. Come in costume, take some candy, listen to the Dharma from a California native in robes for 22 years. This even was recorded by Wisdom Quarterly for those trick-or-treating elsewhere for Samhain.
• Nov 3: Living on the Razor's Edge: Amma and JoAnna Harper team to spend a day investigating desire and renunciation. 10-4 at Melrose - a dana only day.
• Nov 4: Picnic and Games on the Beach in Malibu. Join Amma and the ATS sangha for some meditation and a relaxed gathering Sunday morning from 10:30 till... Bring a dish or something to share.
• Nov 5: Monday night meditation. Amma closes out her time with us by teaching the Monday evening class at Dharma Punx, Santa Monica.

  

(HeyItsWilliam/flickr.com)

Ven. Thanasanti began meditating over 30 years ago and has been a Buddhist nun for over 20 years. After two decades in monasteries associated with [Thai tradition] Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, she returned to the US and founded Awakening Truth (awakeningtruth.org), an organization whose mission to support a nun's (bhikkhuni) training monastery and a new interface between monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners in the modern world. Amma's work spans Dharma teachings, non-dual meditation, depth psychology, subtle body somatics, and the Divine Feminine. She teaches meditation as an art and skill, integrating body, heart, and mind to experience our natural state of wisdom, love, and peace. She has taught meditation internationally for over 15 years. Currently she resides at Shakti Vihara Hermitage in Colorado Springs.

• Take a moment to read Sitting with a Monastic for information on interacting with nuns and monks in the Theravada tradition.
• For schedule and times, visit againstthestream.org or awakeningtruth.org

• VIDEO: Meat the Truth, A Most Inconvenient Truth
• PHOTOS: Pagan (Bagan) Burma's Buddhist past

"Buddhism for Vampires" (Halloween)

David Chapman (Buddhism-for-Vampires.com); Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES
COMING SOON, BREAKING NEWS: Peaceful Buddhists go on murderous rampage.

European vampires were killed and given a special postmortem meal -- a stake. Here a female had a brick placed in her mouth to prevent her from feasting on blood (Daily Mail).

WQ has been sitting on this Bon/Black Magic exposé. For Halloween, we introduce B.F.V.

  

Cheater and Sap vamps (Life&Style)

“Buddhism for vampires? That’s silly. Buddhism and vampires don’t have anything to do with each other -- or do they?”

Surprisingly, vampires have played a significant role in Buddhism in Asia for centuries. They are not a Western invention.

Contemporary vampire fiction -- “preternatural romance” -- provides tools for presenting aspects of Buddhism that are otherwise difficult to communicate.

  

Vampires in Buddhist history

Vomiting blood (Buddhism-for-vampires.com)

There is extensive vampire lore [that preceded and was incorporated] within traditional Buddhism. This has been summarized in “The Tibetan Book of the Undead.” Apart from its intrinsic interest, this history makes it clear that one cannot dismiss “Buddhism for vampires” as bogus.

  

...No one can say this is an illegitimate topic or some kind of Western commercial distortion. One can combine Buddhism and vampires as a cheap gimmick -- but I believe it is possible to explain Buddhism accurately in the language of the undead. In fact, I believe some aspects of Buddhism are best explained that way.

Vampires, ambiguity, and paradox

Vajrayana is a mix of Bon and Buddhism

Buddhism, at root, is a method for facing the paradoxes of life and death with curiosity, appreciation, generosity, and joy. Its starting point is the experience of ambiguity. The natural tendency is to polarize: to say “this is this and that is that; I love this and hate that.” But experience is unavoidably undefinable.
  
Reality refuses to fit into categories; it is always in flux. When “this” inexplicably turns into “that,” and you love or hate the “wrong” thing: that is paradox. Rejecting ambiguity is, according to Buddhism, the primordial error, and source of all unhappiness. Paradox is resolved through non-duality: allowing the horns of a dilemma to co-exist.

   

"China accuses me of being devil" (Dalai Lama)

What has this to do with vampires? Consider the basic paradox of the undead. To paraphrase the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, they are not alive, nor dead, nor both, nor neither. The undead are, as contemporary Buddhist philosopher Stephen T. Asma puts it, “liminal beings.”
  

China really dislikes Dalai Lama and Buddhism

“Liminal” means “on the threshold”; a defining feature of monsters is that they are neither one thing nor another. This is just the fundamental Buddhist paradox of emptiness and form, reflected in a pool of blood. More

• Halloween STORM likely to kill everyone on East Coast
• Meet the real-life US vampires (Smithsonian)
• "Vampire" skeletons found (Discovery News) 
• National Geographic finds real vampires
• China warns: Some paths are bad and evil!
• Evils of Communist Khmer Rouge in Buddhist Cambodia
• Lama sex abuse calls Buddhist taboos into question
• Name-calling in China: Hitler, Devil, HHDL
• Tibetans self-immolate, Americans use guns
• VIDEO: CIA's CNN dismisses the Kentucky UFO
• PBS: The investigative reporting crisis in America
• PHOTOS: Monster (yakkha) temple protectors
• China on Buddhism: Brainwashed with evils
• SCARY: 14-year-old student punished by Buddhist monk for refusing to learn Buddhism

"But who's more Gothic and Vampiric than us?"

3,154

China: "Buddhism has a 'devil' as its 'Pope'"

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

China thinks this humble CIA operative/asset (not "agent") -- spiritual leader and former head of state, Tibetan "God-King" or Vajrayana "Pope" -- is the devil (AP/Examiner.com).

  

Bon is the  pre-Buddhist black magic infused shamanism of Tibet and Bhutan. It blended with the missionary religion of peace and enlightenment from the subcontinent below.
  
But Buddhism did not displace Himalayan superstitions, necrcomancy, talk of spirits, banshees, and Abominable Snowmen. Wise old wives' tales remain and the necessity of doing something to ward off disgruntled ghosts, vile demons, and other unseen inimical forces.
  
The Shugden controversy is related to the worship of forces the current Dalai Lama believes resulted in the invasion of ancient Tibet by imperial atheistic-communist China.
  
In the exquisite photo above the 14th Dalai Lama uses his hands as horns speculating on the Chinese government's views of his freedom-fighting efforts. "His Holiness" has just completed 50 years in exile from Tibet, from which he was able to escape with the help of CIA agents out to subvert China and its expansionist Cultural Revolution.
  

China is a ruthless police state opposing Tibet.

In spite of their violent invasion, he (Tenzin Gyatso) remains remains compassionate, forgiving, and jovial about the situation -- one worsened by multiple self-immolations protesting Chinese police state tyranny. He hopes to return to Tibet, even if it remains a part of China, but the current Chinese government will not stand for it. The Dalai Lama frequently visits Washington DC and tours the US, drawing sell out crowds in massive arenas wherever he appears. Calling him "the devil" is an interesting commentary to confer on him. For no matter how he is attacked, he remains a leader in the campaign against injustice toward all living beings. (See official Website).

Dharamsala, India's Tibetan exiles hold candlelit vigil after Tamdrin Dorjee's demonstration-suicide in Tsoe Monastery, Gansu province, 10-13-12 (AP/Ashwini Bhatia).

   

Tibetan nun sets herself ablaze in China (AFP).

BEIJING -- Two Tibetan cousins set fire to themselves in their village to protest Chinese rule, bringing the total number of self-immolations this week to seven, the highest since the protests began last year, a rights group said Saturday.

  

The London-based group Free Tibet said cousins Tsepo, 20, and Tenzin, 25, called for independence for Tibet as they set themselves ablaze Thursday in front of a government building in their village in Biru county north of Lhasa, Tibet's main city.

  

Tsepo reportedly died and Tenzin's condition was unknown after he was taken away by authorities, Free Tibet said. 

Dozens of ethnic Tibetans have set themselves on fire in heavily Tibetan regions since March 2011 to protest what activists say is Beijing's heavy-handed rule in the region. Many have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader.

  

The protests have intensified as Beijing nears a once-a-decade power transfer in early November. More

Real vampire arrested in Texas, USA

What we think we become [because "Mind/heart is the forerunner of all conditions" (Dhp. 1)]. This means that it is important to think of ourselves in the best possible way. For as it is said since the days of Dale Carnegie's friendly-and-influential-popularity, "If we can conceive it and believe it, we can achieve it" (Napoleon Hill). It works to our detriment as well, wallowing in our depression, self-pity, "evil," or perceived shortcomings. We are without limits and capable of achieving anything -- even heavenly splendor, full enlightenment in this very life, even the ability to teach as a perfectly awakened buddha.

•  AUDIO: Mind is the Forerunner of all?

Shambhala: Save on all Buddhist titles

Shambhala Publications; Wisdom Quarterly

Save 30% and get free shipping (by 3-31-13 when using the code BCAL12 at checkout, U.S. Media Mail only) on Shambhala's entire Buddhist catalogue now including Snow Lion. Want a sneak peek of the catalogue? Check it out online to find: new books and audio, special offers and discounts, excerpts and author interviews, articles and more!

Canada seeks to restrict religious freedom

Barbara Lamb; Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Anyone can be imprisoned, tormented, and deprived of humanity (ULC/themonastery.org)

  
As Buddhist practitioners some of us volunteer serving a prison community (mutually supportive sangha). We have seen how spiritual practice can transform lives and lead to real rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, the Canadian Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, is cancelling the contracts of all part-time, non-Christian chaplains in federal penitentiaries -- with the expectation that the spiritual guidance of prisoners of all faiths will be provided by full-time chaplains, who are predominantly Christian. 

  

Overcrowding (Paul Holt Ministries)

This means that thousands of prisoners will be denied spiritual support grounded in their own tradition and practice. Please consider signing the following petition, which calls on Vic Toews and Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reverse the decision and uphold the rights of citizens behind bars.

Please forward this petition through social networks (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Help make this issue visible to many more who believe religious freedom is one cornerstone of a democratic society. PETITION

• Freedom of Religions for Canadian Prisoners (upaya.org)
• Does Canada have a problem with non-Christian chaplains?

Art Beyond Reason (video)

Art by Octavio Ocampo, RasMarley/Flickr.com (photographs); Wisdom Quarterly

"Buddha" by Ocatvio Ocampo

  

"Woman and Mountains Shiva"

The artist Octavio Ocampo was born in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. He studied art from early childhood. In high school, Ocampo painted murals for the Preparatory School and the City Hall of Celaya. 

  

Ruth Rivera, daughter of artist and muralist Diego Rivera, and Maria Luisa Mendoza encouraged him to attend the School of Painting and Sculpture of the National Fine Art Institute. Later in art school, he constructed papier mache figures for floats, altars, and ornaments used in carnival parades and festivals.

  
Ocampo's talents are not limited to painting and sculpture; they also extend to acting and dancing. At the Art Institute of San Francisco, he studied all of these disciplines then pursued both a film and theater career. But in 1976 he began to devote himself solely to painting and sculpture. Octavio Ocampo is one of Mexico's most prolific artists.
  
He now works primarily in the metamorphic style -- using a technique of superimposing and juxtaposing realistic and figurative details within the images he creates.
 

   
Metamorphic Style
Ocampo is known for several famous works in his sometimes wryly sardonic, sometimes evocative paintings.
  
Detailed images are intricately woven together to create larger images. The optical illusions fade back and pop forward as one studies the pieces, notices the details, and finally recognizes the large scale intention. This is what he terms "metamorphic."
  
The Visions Fine Art Gallery in Sedona, Arizona, represents Octavio Ocampo in the US.
  
Several collections in Mexico contain his work, and individual works of his have been commissioned for Pres. Jimmy Carter (as a gift from Pres. José López Portillo of Mexico), Jane Fonda, Cher (for the front and back covers of her "Heart of Stone" album), and César Chávez.

HAARP: Storm "Sandy" smashing US (live)

GoHarrison.com (USTREAM); Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY) UPDATED 11-11-12

H.A.A.R.P. can steer storms, guide them like "smart bombs," averting disaster or bringing it on. It is currently being brought on with super-storm Sandy. This once-in-a-thousand-year storm has gotten help from climate chaos. It is not a "natural" disaster.
   

  

(CLIP, 7:27 mins) It is well known -- with documentaries on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, BBC, Stanford Research Inst., AP, Reuters, Bloomberg,  as confessed to by Ben "Weather Weapons" Livingston -- and admitted that the government and Bill Gates can control weather. Yet they are not steering it out to sea. Instead, it is being driven in. The military-industrial complex (MIC) is transnational and not interested in preserving the USA as such. Katrina was planned to make money, ruining property then buying it up cheap to re-purpose it. The levees were detonated as reported on the day of the event and subsequently.

(LINK) See Minute 19:24. 

  

Alarmist Alex Jones covers the retraction issued by eugenicist and TV magnate Ted Turner, who said it was a good thing that US soldiers are committing suicide in record numbers. Also covered are the "tsunami of filth" following pedophile revelations about the criminal life of the late British TV presenter Sir Jimmy Savile surface, the US elections, and Hurricane Sandy as it moves ominously toward the east coast.

 

• InfoWars.com: FOX (GOP) TV's Chris Matthews hails hurricane Sandy, the Snoreastercaine (super Noreaster hurricaine), for aiding Obama's re-election.
• VIDEO: More analysis from Alex Jones

RAP Fest "Cali X-mas" to rock L.A. (video)

Power106.com; Seth Auberon, Boo and Tee, Wisdom Quarterly

(CNN's Kyunh Lah reports on Buddhist monk "Mr. Happiness" (Ven. Koncho Tagai)

   

Boo can't wait to bounce!

LOS ANGELES, California - KWPR (105.9 FM) announced the lineup for "Cali Christmas" today -- an enormous night of hip hop and gangster rap music.

 

Pre-sale tickets will be offered (ensuring an instant sell-out when tickets are released to the public) on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. But buyers have to sign up and log in to get a secret password first!

It's easy: Sign in or register for the pre-sale password before they go on sale Friday, Nov. 2. Li'l Wayne may be dying in planes to avoid court. But many of the artists featured in Can RAP Music Fans be Buddhists?, Buddhist Rap Music Fan? Yes!, and What Do Hip Hop and Islam have in common? will be performing.
 

Cali Christmas hits the Gibson Amphitheatre on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 featuring live performances by: Ca$h Out, 2 Chainz, Clyde Carson, The Weeknd, Rick Ross, Meek Mill, Big Sean, and Kendrick Lamar. Wisdom Quarterly is contacting morning zoo "Big Boy's Neighborhood" to try to get the Rapping bar MONKS of Japan (as seen on TV and WQ) or comedian Arj Barker a hip hop slot on the show. (Buddhism's Beastie Boys were not available).
  

Don't just listen, be heard! (GetLit.org)

Join PowerPoints Club without Facebook

Nagas in the News: The Killing Fields

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Tamjty (historical photo). HALLOWEEN SERIES

Prisoner portraits during atheist-Maoist-communist takeover of Buddhist Cambodia by Pol Pot and the NAGAS' own Khmer Rouge ("Red Army"). What followed in terms of police state war crimes and genocide of its own citizens is referred to as "Killing Fields."

Murder on an unimaginable scale: Killing Fields

(Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) Upon arrival at the secret prison, victims were first photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning at childhood and ending with arrest. They were then forced to strip to their underwear, and all of their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to cells.

Those taken to the smaller cubicles were shackled to the walls or concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass blocks were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads facing opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mosquito nets, mattresses, mats, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other. More 

• Thinking About Museums: revisiting genocide (PHOTOS)

The SCIENCE of Monsters and Ghosts

Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

Too bad most of us do not believe in science. If we did, we'd believe in ghosts. What will happen when science dictates there is enough evidence for disembodied phenomena? Frightening thought. Science-lovers run out of haunted dwellings as quickly as ignoramuses. Why? The body knows what the brain cannot yet accept. What? Seen and unseen monstrosities roam about and among us. Wisdom Quarterly is only interested in the real-life ones in history and today.

• Buddhist Ghosts? Stories of the Departed
• Could dragons (nagas) have been real?

  The Science of Monsters
Matt Kaplan, The Science of Monsters (ScienceFriday.com, Oct. 26, 2012)

At their most basic level, monsters represent fears held by society, fears associated with dangers perceived in the surrounding world.

  

The Science of Monsters (Matt Kaplan)

These fears have a powerful evolutionary history by encouraging people to flee instead of fighting suicidal battles. When ancient hunters encountered a saber-toothed tiger by accident, they ran. When the human ancestor Homo erectus caught angry cave bears by surprise, it ran. When chimpanzees and [our sexy cousins the] bonobos, the nearest genetic relatives to modern humans, encounter large predators in the wild, they run.

  

While Hollywood heroes have made running away distinctly unpopular on the silver screen, every single actor who has ever portrayed a hero/heroine who stood his or her ground against some abominable terror comes from a long genetic lineage of cowards who fled in the face of danger.

  

Real life sea serpents: sturgeon (naga)

That is why they are here to act today. If their ancestors had fought against monsters far more powerful than themselves, as Hollywood heroes do all the time, their lineage would have been destroyed by predators long ago. Fear, in short, keeps people alive. But fear can also go too far.

  

Recent work in animal behavior has revealed something fascinating: There are personality types in animals. Among fish in a single species, there are adventurous individuals, ready and willing to take risks, and there are more cautious and timid individuals, fearful of doing anything that could put them in danger.
  

Yeti's bones, Tibet (factfictionandconjecture.ca)

Similar variations in personality are starting to be found in birds and mammals too. A recent study led by Kathryn Arnold at the University of York revealed... Being courageous or curious undoubtedly presents serious dangers. Ongoing studies indicate that fish with more daring personalities are...

  

Whether some humans are genetically predisposed to be more adventurous than others remains to be determined, but there clearly are some people who ultimately are more willing to take risks. Make no mistake, the instinct to flee from danger is still deeply rooted in every person’s brain, but some of us are more willing than others to go to places associated with danger....
  

LISTEN: Science of Monsters (Science Friday, NPR)
Parapsychology: Scary science (Coast to Coast AM) 
 
Like lion cubs play-fighting in the safety of their den, monsters may be allowing threats to be toyed with in the safe sandbox of the imagination.

  
So if monsters are present in society for both pleasure and mental practice for future frightening interactions, what happens when our fears are overcome? What then?
   

Camera catches real ghost (angelsghosts.com)

To a certain extent, danger should function as the life essence of monsters... Fears have changed a lot since the dawn of humanity, and with these changes have come alterations in the pantheon of monsters that lurk in our world.
  
The Minotaur is no longer with us, but aliens are. In a sense, monsters, while strictly the stuff of fantasy, experience evolution at a rate that is in stride with the pace of human understanding of the surrounding world. Science, the empirical testing and exploration of the world, which is about as seemingly unrelated to monsters as can be... [actually only denies their existence because of acceptability-filters not because of an absence of evidence.]

  
[Excerpted from Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite:  The Science of Monsters (Scribner). Copyright © 2012 by Matt Kaplan. Kaplan is a science journalist and a regular contributor to The Economist. He has also written for National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Science, BBC Wildlife, and The New York Times. When not chained to a desk, he travels the wilds of the world as part of a London expedition group. He lives in London.]