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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Dreams of the Future Buddha, Maitreya, at Diskit Monastery in the Nubra Valley of the Himalayas, stands 110 feet tall (Atamvir Singh Multani as Foxbatone/flickr.com).
Fireworks will go off beginning in Tokyo, Australia, New Zealand, Dubai to ring in the New Year and drive out the old like God Saturn taking a baby. (Nashville TN, kfiam640.com/C2C)
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Beauty is truth: What we do New Year's...
An Asian girlfriend once said a very striking thing: Whatever one does on New Year's Day one will be doing the whole year. Then when others said it, well, how can one doubt something that gets repeated?
Is it true? Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. Who knows? So we asked around, and we were amazed at how many Eastern cultures share a belief in this truism:
Of course, it's self-evident, it's Ancient Chinese Wisdom (which says "It's gaay, i.e., "things not to be done, bad luck, superstitious, inauspicious").
It's the Knowledge of the Ages (like the many strictures and pieces of Old Wives Tales from the Indus Valley Civilization, Egypt, India, Greece, Sumeria, Rome, Angkor, Mesoamerica...).
It's what nearly everyone in Asia thinks and/or takes for granted. Some might go so far as to call it "common sense," more superstition or custom than controlled empirical research like we pretend forms the basis of all our beliefs.
We asked Sri Lankan monks. Ask your Italian grandmother; she probably thinks so, too.
The World Buddhist Sangha Council in English and Chinese (wbsc886.org)
Somehow we lose sight of things in the West or argue that reality must somehow accord with our theories. The data is the data, theory the theory. It is always the job of the theory to accommodate the data, never the other way around.
Well, we massaged the data for one thing.
If we start shifting the data -- the observations, the bare facts -- we'll distort things.
And we'll end up with a beautiful, internally-consistent theory that is just too gorgeous and elegant not to cling to.
But it won't be true. There's the rub. Reality is messy, fuzzy, so much bigger than we normally imagine.
A map is just a map, an outline. It can't be very detailed or it would have to be as big as the land and area it represents, in which case it would be no use lugging it around.
The finger points at the Moon. The finger is not the Moon. The sight of the Moon is not the Moon. The Moon is the Moon. Let's remember that as we meditate the new year in this year. Party by night, but visit a Buddhist temple or quiet spot for meditation in the morning of the first day of the year, Friday.
Happy New Year's from Wisdom Quarterly!
Today in History 2015...according to the Associated Press (via mail.com)
Will fireworks be enough to scare away US dogs of war and ghosts of fear? (iheart.com)
Which "Buddhism" should I practice?
Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit
Revered Hindu-Mahayana deity (L) and Theravada Buddha Shakyamuni (flickr.com)
Its founder, Secretary-General Ven. Pandita Pimbure Sorata Thera, requested that Ven. Walpola Rahula present a concise formula for the unification of all the different Buddhist traditions.
This text was then unanimously approved by the Council (Norm Phelps, 2004, The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights, Lantern Books. p. 45).
Wiki has a great portal to learn about the Buddha-Dharma in English:
The "Way" (Tao) of the Dharma runs counter to the Way of the World (Danielina-79)
What is the Tao, Zen Master? "Zen Cartoons" by Satajan (via voiceofhappiness)
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Alan Watts, the British-born teacher, philosopher, and Zen Buddhist who came to California and joined Pacifica Radio in Berkeley to make history also had a TV show, "Way Beyond the West." Pacifica Los Angeles (KPFK 90.7 FM) is now the only station that regularly carries him. Alan Watts did more than any other Westerner of his day to present authentic Eastern Philosophy to a Western audience.
Alan Watts (ianmack.com)
Watts is an inspiration to Wisdom Quarterly because few others understand that it is not only the Buddha's Dharma that gets imported when Westerners try to learn about "Buddhism." A great deal of Hinduism (particularly as it serves as the framework of populist Mahayana Buddhism), Brahmanism, Taoism, animism, shamanism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Jainism, martial arts, ancestor worship, kami- and hungry ghost-lore does, too.
Something's Happening - A: Alan Watts on the Future of Communication Part 1 along with enlightened Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young on "What to Expect After a Retreat"); Caroline Casey, "Visionary Activist Show:" Caroline hosts Osprey Orielle Lake, author of Uprising for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with the Earth on her way to Paris Talks. Friday (Thursday midnight), Nov. 13, 2015 (somethingshappening.com)
1.suffering 2.craving 3.freedom
Something's Happening - B: Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015 - Continuing David Talbot Special – The Devil's Chessboard: Alan Dulles, The CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government// The Ralph Nader Radio Hour with Historian Arno J. Mayer, author of The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions and Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel. Plus ocean conservationist David Helvarg of Blue Frontier on the latest bipartisan campaign to end offshore oil drilling called The Sea Party Coalition // The Thom Hartmann Program // KPFK Community Calendar (KPFK.org).
Something's Happening A: Alan Watts "The Future of Communication" Part 4 // Shinzen Young "Nausea, Health, Magic, Boredom, Death, etc. // Caroline Casey, "Visionary Activist Show:" Guest: Deborah Felmeth unfurling her book Syria – Remember Me
See more by searching Watts at ARCHIVE.kpfk.org. Listen live to "Buddhist Radio" on Pacifica Los Angeles (90.7 FM) or streaming worldwide online, Sunday mornings at 8:00 am and Thursday nights 11:59 pm to 5:00 am. Roy of Hollywood's show "Something's Happening" on weeknights at 12:00 am is always good. Watts called Pacifica (now a network of stations across the country) "the only truly free radio station in America." Like the night Roy featured Dave Emory, "For the Record #863 - The Muslim Brotherhood and the Earth Island Boogie Part 2"// David Talbot Special – The Devil's Chessboard: Alan Dulles, The CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government... More
2-Hour Fundraising Extravaganza featuring the
only existing Alan Watts recording when he is interviewed, Lex Hixon's "In The Spirit"
on WBAI, 1972 (Pacifica Archives program #IZ0342a).
Columbusing means "discovering something that is not
new." Jennie Garth uses colored powder the way the Indian holiday of Holi is celebrated to give LA some "color" (npr.org).
The Worst Slaughter of Indian Peoples in US History: California Marysville and Honey Lake paid whites bounties for scalps.
Shasta City offered $5 for each Indian head brought to City Hall. (L.A. paid 5 cents according to Linda Gonzales below). The California State Treasury reimbursed many of the local
governments for their expenses. There were 150,000 Indians in
California before the 49ers came. By 1870, there were fewer
than 30,000 making it the worst slaughter of Native Americans in US history.
See below for video on what Europeans found
TOVANGAR (Los Angeles), California - This documentary is about the "Tongva," the Native American people and culture that was declared extinct after invasion by Europeans who wanted to make California a faraway colony to increase their riches relative to their European peers.
The title "empire" passed from country to country, the Italians (Romans), Spanish, British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russians, Germans, Americans.
After fighting one another to occupy this land, a land of over 100 million "Indians," the First Nations people of North America:
Tongva and other local tribes like the Chumash, Acjachemen, Paiutes, Mexicas, Shoshone, Cherokee, Hopis, Anasazi, and countless others were first displaced then annihilated.
Amazing compilation of photos by Edward S. Curtis from The North American Indian (1907-1930). The Tongva, renamed "Gabrielinos" by invading oppressors, are a California Indian tribe now referred to as "The San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians" (gabrielinotribe.org).
Spanish steal then British-Americans
They were ethnically cleansed. It was the land's first genocide. Thank you, Christian white males, not that anyone would want to stereotype the terrorists, thieves, and war criminals.
The local culture of Tongva that inhabited Southern California, the Los Angeles basin and local islands, actually survived for many years in secret. Many fled to Mexico and returned to their land with their identities washed out of them. Now they were "illegals" and "migrants" in their own land.
Of course, Native Americans did not have a concept of personal ownership of land. But the invaders did -- and they had papers with writing to prove it.
Oh, well, if you have a paper that says you own this land, you must. We would ignore it, but you keep calling your military, militarized civilian police, lawyers, and courts to enforce your fancy documents. Who can trump that?
TONGVA HEADS WANTED: 5 cents each!
(Nauiocelotl) Interview with Tongva elder who remembers hidden history of annihilation of first inhabitants of place we now call L.A. as if the Spanish invaders had been the first people.
Native American Linda Gonzales talks about the Mission Era that decimated the Tongva. The Tongva were the First Nation people of Los Angeles and California.
What Europeans really found in "New" World
(RT video) After Columbusing these shores, Europeans like the Spanish and British decided to rape the land, its inhabitants, then slaughter and bury the corpses and memories of all who had been her and what they built. Finally, the truth is being exposed:
Incursion is invasion with the intent of altering the culture of the invaded to conform to the culture of the invaders.
The first contrast is that of exposure. The majority of the California Indians in their tribal nations lived in relative isolation.
So Europe, and Spain in particular [followed by a British-American invasion], did not meet with a single group of people. They met with a multiplicity of “linguistic nations.” Each linguistic nation was made up of tribal communities rather than centralized nations.
"Insurgents" - anyone the U.S. dislikes (WQ).
[United we would have stood; instead, divided we fell.] Each had its own center of power. Each fiercely defended its independence and autonomy from other tribes.
The second contrast is that of worldview. Natural barriers kept many tribal nations relatively independent and isolated. It prevented the forming of large alliances and political entities with powerful leaders to unify vast numbers of people.
California’s Native communities never envisioned a world of European conquest or foreign domination.
The world of the Tongva was “the world to the Tongva.” The idea of invading and conquering others was foreign to the Tongva as it was to all of California’s tribal First Nations. More
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Help Pariyatti reach its goal of raising $90,000 and be counted as one of Pariyatti's "plus 1,000" supporters before midnight, December 31, 2015.
"Having given this, not seeking one's own profit, not with a mind attached [to the reward], not seeking to store up for oneself, nor [with the thought], 'I'll enjoy this after death'
— nor with the thought, 'This was given in the past, done in the past, by my father and grandfather. It would not be right for me to let this family custom lapse'
— nor with the thought, 'I am well off. These [others] are not well off. It would not be right for me, being well off, not to give a gift to those who are not well off'
— nor with the thought, 'Just as there were the great sacrifices of the sages of the past...in the same way this will be my distribution of gifts [donations]'
— nor with the thought, 'When this gift of mine is given, it makes the mind [heart] serene. Gratification and joy arise'
— but with the thought, 'This is an ornament for the mind, a support for the mind'
— [Therefore] on the breakup of the body, after death, one reappears in the company of Brahma's Retinue. Then having exhausted that action (karmic force), that power, that status, that sovereignty, one is a non-returner. One does not come back to this world.
"This, Sariputra, is the cause, this is the reason why a person gives a gift of a certain sort and it does not bear great fruit and benefit, whereas another person gives a gift of the same sort and it bears great fruit and benefit."
Pariyatti is a Pali word that means "learning the [Buddha's] doctrine," the "wording of the doctrine." In the "progress of the disciple" (q.v.), three stages may be distinguished:
theory
practice
realization
These refer to (1) learning the wording of the Dharma or doctrine (pariyatti), (2) practicing it (patipatti) or "pursuing" the Buddha's teaching, as distinguished from the mere theoretical knowledge of its wording, and (3) penetrating it (pativedha) and realizing its goal [enlightenment leading to nirvana].
Prosperous Anathapindika buys land for meditation center to offer it to the Buddha.
Dāna means "almsgiving," liberality, offering, charity, donating.
"One who gives alms bestows a fourfold blessing: One helps to long life, good appearance, happiness, and strength. Therefore, long life, good appearance, happiness, and strength will be one's share, whether among celestial beings or among humans" (A.IV.57).
"Five blessings accrue to the giver of alms:
the affection of many,
noble association,
good reputation,
self-confidence, and
celestial rebirth" (see A.V.34).
Buddhas only come to be and practitioners become enlightened because others give (JH).
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Seven further blessings are talked about in A.VII.54.
Liberality, particularly the offering of robes, food (alms), and other requisites provided to Buddhist monastics -- monks, nuns, novices, and lay practitioners -- is highly praised in all Buddhist countries in Southern Asia. It is a fundamental virtue and a means of suppressing our inborn greed and egoism or self-centeredness.
But as with any other good or bad action (karma), so also with offering gifts: it is the noble intention and volition (cetana) that really counts as the action, not the mere outward deed.
Almsgiving or liberality (dāna) constitutes the first kind of meritorious activity, the two others being virtue (sīla) and meditation or mental cultivation and development (bhāvanā);seepuñña-kiriya-vatthu.
Liberality(cāga)forms one of the Ten Recollections (anussati) and almsgiving one of the Ten Perfections (pāramī).
While we say there is "no explanation," that means it is not yet confirmed and accepted as scientifically-verified fact within our consensus reality. But there is an explanation, one that is very convincing.
Here, two experts (Cremo and Pye) pursuing separate lines of research come to the same conclusion many -- including the Buddha and the ancient seers of the Vedas -- reported: This world, the living beings on it, mainly but not exclusively the humans and animals, are much, much, much older than is reported in the stories archeologists and anthropologists try to tell us.
Even the Bible -- that bestseller of an imperial Roman psy-ops campaign -- is misleading because few Christians or Jews realize that it is based on much older tales and histories handed down from Sumer (Sumerian civilization, which itself did not originate them), Egypt, Mithraic mysteries of the Near East, Lumeria, and other epochs.
The Buddha spoke of aeons (various kinds of kalpas, ordinary, great, and of indeterminate duration).
The Vedas, which come from the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished 10,000 years ago, also speak of an inconceivable number of kalpas and periods measured out in astronomical numbers. Given scientific discoveries that claim this planet Bhumi or Earth is a little more than 4.2 billion years old, we would guess that humanoid earthling life has existed on it for about 3 billion years.
But that is just this planet this time around. Cycles of world-origination, world-dissolution, and indeterminate periods in between are constantly churning. What remains true is the ability of karma. The kalpas stretch much further back, an inconceivably long time. How long is difficult to fathom or specify exactly. But the Buddha was asked, and this is how he answered:
Imagine a stone mountain made of marble one mile high, one mile wide, one mile deep, without a fissure or crack, and a bird comes and lands on top of this single great mass of rock, this monolith, and wipes its beak using a fine silk cloth from Kasi (Varanasi) once every hundred years. Well, that great mass of rock, that monolith would sooner be worn down completely and yet one great-kalpa (major aeon) would still not have elapsed.
It staggers the imagination, but that is how it is with ancient Indian reckoning, and the same may be said of ancient Mayan, Khmer, and other advanced civilizations of the past with stunning knowledge of the stars, 26,000-year cycles, and patterns they could not have developed without off-planet assistance. The fact is, we have always had otherworldly intervention, help, and information to guide life on this planet and on other planets. The galaxy and universe is FULL of life much more advanced than our own.
Forbidden Archeology
(Truth Disclosure) The Hidden Truth About History and Human Origins with Michael Cremo (Frontier World) Lloyd Pye explains at the NEXUS Conference 2003, England.
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The first person we can turn to is the Forbidden Archeologist Michael Cremo (mcremo.com) who explains life on Earth and the existence of "modern" man (Homo sapien sapien) hundreds of millions of years ago, as distinct from current accepted archeology from gatekeepers in the university who claim we are only 30,000 years old.
Cremo's numbers are based on artifacts that contradict and can in no way be accommodated using the theories being promoted by gatekeepers and others "approved" sources. One should understand that it is not that the powers that be in these fields do not know better. They do. But they have much to lose and little to gain by accepting what the data says. Their careers are more important that going against the grain of acceptability.
The other person is the late Lloyd Pye, who is in agreement with the great Zacharia Sitchin, a pioneering researcher and interpreter of ancient Sumerian, Hebrew, and other sacred texts. He is much more direct in accusing "respectable" scientists of wearing blinders and promoting the party line. Even though science is a series of corrections guided by the evidence -- wherever it takes us -- that is not the way science is actually handled. Instead, we have something that is full of implicit bias and a great deal of self-interest, the opposite of the dispassionate objectivity it claims for itself.
20,000,000 years of suppressed human history with Lloyd Pye (PART 2), (PART 3)
Author Lloyd A. Pye (1946-2013) claims a superior alien race called the Anunnaki (Sumerian "gods" who came from the sky from the planet Nibiru) incrementally terraformed and populated Earth for their own reasons.
They later returned to Earth and, through a process of genetic manipulation, produced humans [earthlings]. These ideas come from translating and interpreting ancient Sumerian texts (Anunnaki and Nibiru are names from Sumerian history). Pye argues that these alien beings are responsible for the megalithic structures around the world, the growth and advancement of Sumer, the domestication of plants and animals, and strange flaws in human DNA.
Realize that most of these ideas originate and were inspired by the claims of Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This video is for research and educational purposes only with the purpose of promoting environmental, human rights, social, economic and scientific awareness. Videos which are, or contain copyrighted material which use in accordance with US Copyright Law 17 U.S.C. Section 107 "Fair Use" is allowed for the purposes of criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, and or research and is not an infringement of copyright.
Who among us hasn’t imagined, if just for a moment, fleeing our mundane but hectic existence for a solitary plot of land in the quiet shadow of an unnamed mountain?
The feeling creeps up like an unreachable itch, something that can be scratched but never fully satisfied.
Cabin Porn: Look at this beauty! Lakeside Cabin, Kulusuk, E. Greenland (vanwinkles.com)
A room without a view is also good for the inner journey to bliss (tcrphotos.ch/flickr.com).
In our increasingly connected world, we’re assaulted with unending streams of useless information and images of other people’s lives.
So it’s a common dream to imagine skyscrapers and corner delis dissolving into bucolic countrysides and days measured by something other than steps counted on a fitness tracker or thumbs up on a photo.
A foolish infatuation with those who’ve read Walden too many times, perhaps, as the meadow is always dewier in the morning. But the fantasy nonetheless lingers.
An ode to secluded structures based on the popular blog of the same name by Zach Klein, this book contains a curated collection of beautifully photographed cabins from around the world.
Peppered throughout are musings on the solitary life, discussions of the different styles of structures and instructions on how to build your own. Together with writer Steven Leckart and photographer Noah Kalina (the pictures are so vivid you can smell the peat moss and fresh sawdust), Klein has created a coffee table book for the restless, one that might lead some to see forth their own solitary visions.
But, mostly, it provides a chance for readers to live vicariously through those who are already out there. And sometimes, that’s enough. Here are some of the spots where we’d love to lay our heads. More + PHOTOSShare on FacebookLikeTweet Pinterest
Control of the senses, contentment, restraint according to the path-to-freedom and association with noble friends who are energetic and
pure in life, these are the very basis of the pure life for the wise recluse.
The ascetic who abides in the Dharma, who delights in the Dharma,
meditates on the Dharma, and who bears the Dharma well in mind does not
fall away from the sublime Dharma. — Dhp. 375, 364
[One who protects the Dharma is protected by the Dharma.] It is rather difficult to write about ascetics' daily
lives [in the Thai Theravada forest tradition] as the conditions in which they live are so different.
However,
there are certain features of this life which are general, and these may
be taken as a basis for this outline.
The material which is presented in this and succeeding sections is
composite in origin, some of it being experience heard from others and
more again being stories told of others. Therefore, we shall speak of "the recluse" (bhikkhu) and present all of these varied
sources under this anonymous label.
Buddhist cave, S.E. Asia
While doing this, it should be borne
in mind that much of what will be said is quite common experience for
those following the forest ascetic life.
Wherever the ascetic is -- whether in a cave, forest, or
in some other solitary place -- that person's day begins early and with stirred-up
vigor.
All is quiet except perhaps for the night-sounds of some
insects and perhaps the swishings of bats. And at such a time, long
before dawn, say 2:00 or 3:00 am, conditions are excellent for the
practice of meditation. More
The Wayfaring Life
E.M. Hare (trans.) "Rhinoceros Sutra,"Sacred Books of the Buddhists series, Pali Text Society
Put by the rod for all that lives,
Nor harm thou anyone thereof;
Long not for son -- how then for friend?
Fare lonely as [sword horn] rhinoceros.
Love cometh from companionship;
In wake of love upsurges ill;
Seeing the bane that comes of love,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
In ruth for all his bosom friends,
A man, heart-chained, neglects the goal;
Seeing this fear in fellowship,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Tangled as crowding bamboo boughs
Is fond regard for sons and wife:
As the tall tops are tangle-free,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
The deer untethered roams the wild
Whithersoe'er it lists for food:
Seeing the liberty, wise man,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Casting aside the household gear,
As sheds the coral-tree its leaves,
With home-ties cut, and vigorous,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Seek for thy [noble] friend the deeply learned,
Dharma-endued, lucid and great;
Knowing the needs, expelling doubt,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
The heat and cold, and hunger, thirst,
Wind, sun-beat, sting of gadfly, snake:
Surmounting one and all of these,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Crave not for tastes, but free of greed,
Moving with measured step from house
To house, support of none, none's thrall,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Free everywhere, at odds with none,
And well content with this and that:
Enduring dangers undismayed,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Snap thou the fetters as the snare
By river denizen is broke:
As fire to waste comes back no more,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
And turn thy back on joys and pains,
Delights and sorrows known of old;
And gaining poise and calm, and cleansed,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Neglect thou not to muse apart,
'Mid things by Dharma-faring aye;
Alive to all becomings' bane,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
As lion, mighty-jawed and king
Of beasts, fares conquering, so thou,
Taking thy bed and seat remote,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Poise, amity, ruth and release
Pursue, and timely sympathy;
At odds with none in all the world,
Fare lonely as rhinoceros.
Leaving the vanities of view,
Right method won, the Way obtained:
"I know! No other is my guide!"
Fare lonely as rhinoceros. More
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Somehow we lose sight of things in the West or argue that reality must somehow accord with our theories. The data is the data, theory the theory. It is always the job of the theory to accommodate the data, never the other way around.
A map is just a map, an outline. It can't be very detailed or it would have to be as big as the land and area it represents, in which case it would be no use lugging it around.
Basic points unifying Theravāda and Mahāyāna is a very important Buddhist ecumenical statement
