The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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500 Nations: The Story of Indian Americans (Part 1)
Recent estimates indicate that the population may have been in excess of 100 million people spanning from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America. In Pre-Colombian North America (north of Mesoamerica), and in Pre-Canada, most people lived along the coast and along major rivers.
Native America before European colonization: By the time the corrupt conqueror Columbus came to enslave people in the Caribbean Islands in 1492, unknown to him and majority of the Eastern Hemisphere, he landed on islands located in the middle of two huge continents now known has North and South America. Both were teaming with huge civilizations that rivaled any in the world at the time and thousands of smaller First Nations, clans, and tribes.
American Nomads: Wanderlust(Gnostic Warrior/GnosticWarrior.com) BBC documentary about Americans in the Southwest who roam around living free from the bonds, dust, and chains of ordinary workaday life. (See the "Buddhist" at 4:45).
Les Stroud, the "Survivor Man," builds a life off the grid where his family can be less dependent on city living (PrepareUK/facebook)
The Gazette headlines of April 5, 1909 document the reality of these unbelievably astounding finds, some of the greatest US archeological discoveries ever. Why were they covered up?
In the vast Grand Canyon of Arizona, USA, there is an Egyptian-style tomb full of Buddhist art showing that Asians migrated to America and brought the Dharma and advanced technology to Native Americans in the distant past. It is similar to the Valley of Kings in Luxor, Egypt. While this will be too fantastic for most readers to believe, the trail of evidence begins with an article published on the front page of the Arizona Gazette on April 5, 1909. It claims that just such a rock-cut cavern temple full of Buddhist, Vedic, and Egyptian art and architecture, hieroglyphs, and mummies -- an almost incomprehensible wealth of archaeological treasures -- was discovered.
Marble Canyon, Grand Canyon Nat'l Park
"According to the story related to the Gazette by Mr. Kinkaid, the archaeologists of the Smithsonian Institute, which is financing the expeditions, have made discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rock by human hands, was of oriental origin..." - Arizona Gazette, April 5, 1909
"First, I would impress that the cavern is nearly inaccessible. The entrance is 1,486 feet down the sheer canyon wall" - G.E. Kincaid, 1909
Was the carved "installation" in the Grand Canyon an ancient Buddhist temple?
Mt. Hengshan, China, near Datong, Shanxi Province
Photos show how ancient Chinese Buddhist monks went out of there way to carve their temples in cliff faces in remote and inaccessible cliff-lined river canyons.
Other clues to the speculation that the installation may have been used for such a purpose are broken swords and cups and other items, often used ceremonially in ancient Chinese Buddhist temples, were found in the cave in 1909. The cave lies in Marble Canyon (above photo), which is a steep limestone wall-lined canyon. It it is similar to the Hanging or Mid-Air temples on Mount Hengshan, China, southeast of Datong, Shanxi Province.
They cling precariously to the cliff face and illustrate determined isolation of the early Buddhist communities in China.
Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves (left) high on the cliffs of the west Mutou Valley under the Flaming Mountains, 27 miles (45 km) east of Turpan near Shanshan in Western China's Uygur Autonomous Region, northeast of Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang. The caves feature ancient Buddhist monasteries carved into cliffs dating from ~400 AD to 1,300 AD. More
"Approximately 70 km. (45 miles) east of Turfan lie the Buddhist cave-cliff temples of Bezeklik, most of which were originally built in the open and joined by wooden porches.
Grand Canyon Egyptian finds (lightworkers.org)
"Others were carved into the living rock in the manner of cave temples. The height of activity at Bezeklik, on the evidence of surviving wall paintings, was the Tang Dynasty, when Silk Road trade brought travelers, merchants, and missionaries to the temples in search of sanctuary and spiritual comfort.
Today they are still difficult to reach, for the monks endeavored, even here in the desert wastelands of Chinese Central Asia, to build their temples as far away as possible from the real and profane world" (Ibid.)
Mai-Chi caves, Chinling range, China (Magnificant China, Hong Kong, Hua Hsia Publ., 1972)
Indian Legend
Burmese cave temple (Nadia Isakova/flickr)
It is notable that among the Hopis, the tradition is told that their ancestors once lived in an underworld in the Grand Canyon.
This went on until dissension arose between the good and the bad, the people of one heart, the people of two hearts.
(Manchoto), who was their chief, counseled them to leave the underworld, but there was no way out. The chief then caused a tree to grow up and pierce the roof of the underworld, and then the people of one heart climbed out.
They tarried by Palsiaval (Red River), which is the Colorado river, and grew grain and corn. They sent out a message to the Temple of the Sun, asking for blessings of peace, goodwill, and rain for the people of one heart.
That messenger never returned, but today at the Hopi village at sundown can be seen the old men of the tribe out on the housetops gazing towards the Sun, looking for the messenger. When he returns, their land and ancient dwelling place will be restored to them. That is the tradition.More
"The Unknown Known" is based on 33 hours of
interviews with former U.S. Defense Secretary [apparent madman and unrepentant "war criminal," who trained his assistant, the young Dick Cheney] Donald Rumsfeld, who once lost 2.3 trillion dollars. That was the day before 9/11 distracted everyone's attention, and it's still missing.
Errol Morris, an Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker (executive producer of the fantastic Oscar-nominated film "The Act of Killing"), visited Democracy Now! today to
talk about his newest film. The title
refers to an infamous press briefing in 2002 when Rumsfeld faced
questions from reporters about the lack of evidence of Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction.
We loved Don "Rummy" Rumsfeld in his first movie, "Get
"The Unknown Known" is Morris’ tenth documentary
feature. He won a Best Documentary Oscar for his film "The Fog of War:
Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." His other films
include "Standard Operating Procedure," about alleged U.S. torture of
terror suspects in Abu Ghraib Prison, and "The Thin Blue Line," about
the wrongful conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas
policeman.
The release of "The Unknown Known" comes in a month marking
11 years since the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq (as Russia's Pres. Putin reminds us and Pres. Obama does a bad job revisiting and lying about). The U.S. military-industrial complex left an estimated half a
million Iraqis dead (in addition to the million children starved by the U.S. through crushing sanctions that did nothing to former Dictator-Friendly-to-the-West Saddam Hussein), along with the needless death of at least 4,400 American troops. More
Errol Morris, director of the documentary "The Unknown Known," won an Oscar for Best Documentary for his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. His other films include Standard Operating Procedure and The Thin Blue Line, executive co-producer of the Oscar-nominated "The Act of Killing." He is a regular contributor to The New York Times opinion pages, where he is currently in the middle of a four-part series, "The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld."
archeologist and author David Hatcher Childress discussed his research into Buddhist, Hindu (Vedic), and Egyptian artifacts found in the Grand Canyon, USA.
Did Egyptians visit North America thousands of years ago? Childress reveals his investigation into the history of the Olmecs in the south (Mesoamerica) -- with a great pyramid at La Venta, Mexico -- and the amazing technologies they possessed.
"The more and more I've looked into it over the years, what I've concluded is that, Yes, there is something to it," Childress says of the famous 1909 American media story: At that time a Smithsonian-sponsored expedition into the Grand Canyon found and collected Egyptian and Buddhist artifacts.
Childress is off to the American Southwest, traversing the region's deserts, mountains, and forests investigating archeological mysteries. He starts in northern Mexico and searches for the lost mines of the Aztecs and continues north to west Texas, delving into the mysteries of Big Bend, including mysterious Phoenician tablets discovered there and the strange lights of Marfa. He continues northward into New Mexico, where he stumbles upon a hollow mountain with gold bars hidden inside! In Arizona he investigates tales of Egyptian catacombs in the Grand Canyon... In Nevada and California Childress checks out mummified giants and weird tunnels in Death Valley, plus he searches the Mohave Desert for the mysterious remains of ancient dwellers alongside lakes that dried up tens of thousands of years ago...
He shares one confounding piece of evidence to mainstream history which claims that Native Americans did not practice mummification. "The Thing," a Southwestern roadside attraction, shows that mummies were found in the "New" World.
This odd mummy of a woman and child together was "privately purchased in 1910," according to his sources. Childress theorized that it "may well be one of the artifacts from the caves." Speculating on why this information has been shrouded in secrecy, Childress speculated that "today, history is politically correct, not what happened, but what they want to have happened."
He refutes the mainstream belief that ancient peoples were fairly isolated, asserting that "Oceans were highways, not barriers." To support this idea, he points out that the Egyptians, Romans, and Phoenicians had ships bigger than those used by Columbus.
By the third hour of the interview, Childress got into his work exploring the ancient and mysterious Olmec culture of ancient Mexico, which was only discovered in the 1940s. He points out that the Olmecs were a unique looking people who may have been responsible for many works ascribed to the Mayans (Maya), such as very precise and famous cosmic calendar, which share a Buddhist/Vedic view of time measured in epochs and aeons.
Regarding fantastic ancient technologies, Childress discussed the discovery of an old Indian book about the ancient spacecraft, which are called vimanasin ancient India. The Olmecs described metal crafts using mercury as fuel. [This form of propulsion, which is based on manipulating gravity by swirling the mercury within the craft, was detailed in Popular Mechanicsand elsewhere decades ago.] More
Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Elizabeth Aguilera (KPCC Health Reporter), host Larry Mantle, AirTalk (scpr.org); Seth Macfarlane (Family Guy, American Dad)
Drain bramage, schmrain damage, if a man can get a DUI, I want one, too! (cracked.com)
Drunk without a real-friend's protection (see sutra below). Oh, alcohol! (cracked.com)
Women are drinking more despite the risks
Yum, it's liquid ignorance.
Women in the U.S. are consuming more alcohol than they have in decades past, and they face greater health risks for doing so.
For one, a woman's body has fewer enzymes for breaking down alcohol [a poison from the fermentation (i.e., decomposition) process] and less water weight to diffuse its effects. This means women are at greater risk for liver damage and disease.
(Quagmire/Family Guy) "OMG, but you know you love it," your friends will say. And you have to wonder why you keep "dating" the same types of guys. No one has sympathy for a lush.
To self-sabotage! (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP)
Researchers also say drinking increases a woman's chances of getting breast cancer, as studies have shown that alcohol can raise estrogen levels. They also say that the way women are drinking today -- binge drinking, foregoing meals -- is cause for medical concern.
Experts say the rise in "risky drinking" is due to increased social acceptability [from shows like "Sex and the City"], gender "equality" [or the illusion of striving for it], culture and even a preference for hard liquor over beer.
WARNING: Potential trigger as Carrie & Co. do another "Ladies' Night"!
Women are also being arrested [and being sent to prison which, after all, is "equality," too] at an increasing rate for driving under the influence.
A recent report by KPCCanalyzing 20 years of California DMV records shows a significant increase in the number of women being arrested for driving under the influence.
The DMV reports that women made up about 24 percent of DUI arrests statewide in 2011, the last year statistics are available. That's an increase over the 11 percent of DUI arrests in 1989.
WARNING: Sexually suggestive with cartoonish alcohol consumption!
What's behind this increase in alcohol consumption among women? Should more be done to educate women [who are already highly educated and at some level well aware of the hazards and pitfalls] about the dangers of alcohol?
I didn't mean for that to happen. - Another drink?
[Or, like other successful campaigns, do emotions have to be brought into play with emotional appeals, better behavioral models and ideas of what's "cool" and acceptable. Are you a mom, do you drink and drive? Are you single, do you have sex with people you would not have otherwise? Are you a student, do you see a future vomiting in a toilet? Yum! Party on!] LISTEN (16:37)
In the Advice to Householders Discourse (Sigalovada Sutra, DN 31), the Buddha explains the "Six Channels for Dissipating Wealth."
These include drinking alcohol (indulging in intoxicants which occasion heedlessness), roaming the streets at all hours, bad diversions, gambling, associating with the foolish, and idleness.
The Buddha goes further to explain why these lead to ruin. Each has six miserable consequences. Alcohol leads to: (1) loss of wealth, (2) increase in quarrels, (3) susceptibility to disease, (4) loss of reputation, (5) indecent exposure, and (6) weakened intellect.
When roaming the streets at all hours (usually due to drinking), we are: unprotected and unguarded, as is our family and property, and we are suspected of crimes, subject to false rumors, and we encounter many troubles.
What's wrong with "unsavory shows"? We remain restless and agitated, wondering: Where is there dancing, singing, music, recitals, and this and that distraction? We never find inner peace or enlightenment -- even though that's what we say we're searching for. (Entertainment is not wrong in and of itself, only that it takes us away from our quest and leads to financial ruin).
Let's go underage drink! If it's good enough for adults...
What's wrong with gambling? Isn't it just a pleasant pastime to help Las Vegas' economy? The Buddha explains in detail, but here is the biggest one: associating with "the foolish." Any gambler, any wastrel, any drunkard, any cheater, any swindler, any violent person -- in brief,, any "fool" (bala) -- is one's associate and comp. And with friends like that, who needs enemies?
"Idle hands are the devil's helper," grandma says: Addiction to laying around (with the hangover blues) means we are not inclined to put forth effort to get anything done, instead making excuses: "It’s too cold! It’s too hot! It’s too late! It’s too early! I’m too hungry! I’m too full!" Living like this, we leave many (karmically) profitable things left undone. Wealth is left unacquired, and savings dwindle away.
These are just some of the ways of losing money and losing our health the Buddha explained and warned about 25 centuries ago. More
The first stop is Turkey's underground city of Derinkkuyu in Cappadocia. Then onto the origins of U.S. DUMBS (Deep Underground Military Bases) in the American Southwest (and elsewhere), built by aliens and once inhabited by various Puebloan and other Native peoples or "Indians." See Minute 9:45 for the Native Americans and civilizations in the Southwestern United States: Navajo, Zuni, Pueblo, Hopi, and Apache tribes. These First Nations people all share a common creation "myth" of emerging from the ground rather than coming across the Bering Straits and down from Alaska as modern anthropologist try to explain. By their own account, they got help from the "Snake People" (nagas) and "Ant People" -- subterranean humanoid dwellers.
The CIA, Democrats, Republicans, almost everyone loves the Dalai Lama, seen here in the White House with Nancy Pelosi (left) and shaking hands with John Boehner (Newsweek.com)
In 1985 the Dalai Lama urgently asked the West, through the Meridian
Trust, to preserve Tibetan culture at a time when its very existence was
threatened by China.
In an effort to fulfill a promise to the Dalai Lama, it would be an accomplishment to transform a Buddhist Film Archive
into a FREE online learning resource.
This would be for the benefit of all living beings on the planet.
For the last 18 months, the Meridian Trust - Buddhist Film
Archive has been digitizing, editing, and encoding more than 2,500
hours of rare film footage on Tibetan culture, traditions, artistic
practices, and teachings.
The mission is to put this unique archive
online -- fulfilling a promise made to the Trust's patron, the 14th
Dalai Lama, more than 30 years ago.
The Trust is a few days into its Kickstarter campaign with a target to raise £10,000. This is what is needed to build a Website
through which all of the material can be viewed.
More information about the Meridian Trust and this project can be seen here.
Help support the effort through Kickstarter, Twitter, blogs, posts on NSA spying media, and news outlets. Share it with fans, followers, and friends. Download a banner.
You be nice to my Michelle and Jo Boner, and stop killing people with drones! - Mm-hmm.
Help transform Buddhist films into a FREE online learning resource making the insights of Buddhist wisdom available to all(meridian-trust.org/kickstarter.com).
The California Native Plant Society works hard to protect California's native plant heritage and preserve it for future generations. Our nearly 10,000 members promote native plant appreciation, research, education, and conservation through our five statewide programs and 34 regional chapters in California. More
Think of seven generations.
The California Native Plant Wiki is an information resource created by the Foundation to help gardeners with California native plants. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use and understanding of California's extraordinary flora. Consider becoming a member or donating to support this service.
Invasives displace native plants and wildlife, increase wildfires and floods, consume valuable water, degrade recreational opportunities, and destroy productive range and timber lands. Cal-IPC works with land managers, researchers, policy makers, and concerned citizens to protect the state from invasive plants. More
Native Sanctuary expresses Orchid Black’s vision of a restored web of life in California starting with unique plants, which are among the most beautiful and ignored features of the Golden State. As a garden designer offering native plant consulting, habitat creation, and sustainable design services in the greater Los Angeles area, Orchid Black writes and lectures about native plants, water-saving strategies, and sustainable gardening.
Of course, this world -- this Eden -- is not just a garden. It is made of more than mycelium, flowers, plants, vines, and trees. This is the karmic playground of humans, faeries (bhumi-devas), giants (yakkhas), trolls (kumbhandas), ghouls (petas), many visitors (akasha-devas), and worse (maras).
So we have to learn to get along, even if there was a genocide, and no one is saying there was, except maybe historians.
Those poor cowboys were almost wiped out as the trickster Injuns tried to cross their barb wired properties -- for which they had papers saying the land suddenly belonged to them. Maybe it was the way Redskins got in the way when red-blooded British expats, now calling this land their land, started a mass slaughter of the buffalo, replacing hearty, well adapted bison with needy bovines and scavenging porcines. Or who can forget the way they gave us those free blankets that time?
Expanse of rugged California flowers: desert senna and chaparral yucca in Western Mojave Desert (Amber Swanson/cnps.org)
We can dream
Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, James Valby (trans.), Dr. Michael Katz (ed.)
It has been nearly a decade since the publication of the first edition of Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light. Recently, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu proposed we enhance the original version with additional material from a profound and personal Dzogchen book he has been writing for years. It is a great honor to edit this material since no part of the new manuscript has previously been made public.
Pertinent material drawn from it has been translated by James Valby from the original Tibetan. It expands and deepens the first edition’s emphasis on specific exercises to develop awareness within the dream and sleep states.
In the manuscript Chogyal Namkhai Norbu has included specific methods for training, transforming, dissolving, disordering, stabilizing, essentializing, holding, and reversing dreams. In addition, he has presented practices for maintaining one’s practice throughout all moments of the day and night. The revision also includes a practice to develop the illusory body, methods for transference of consciousness at the time of death, and profound clear light practices for developing contemplation. More
