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| Portrait of a selkie "A Mermaid" (by artist John William Waterhouse, 1900) |
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| Why are boats so mad at our kind, cutting us up with their metal teeth and racing away? |
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Manatee Appreciation Day: protecting the gentle giants of the sea
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| "The Mermaid's Rock" by Edward Matthew Hale, 1894 (thevintagenews.com) |
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| Buddhism says mermaids live under the sea |
Manatees have no natural predators [other than motorboaters swinging brutal propeller blades], which contributes to their serene demeanor. However, this does not mean they are without threats.
Human activities pose significant risks to manatee populations. Despite these challenges, manatees have shown remarkable resilience, with conservation efforts playing a crucial role in protecting them.
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| A childlike heart will yet believe even as adults scoff at ancient lore. |
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| I know what I saw! (Cristobal Columbus) |
- MERMAIDS (mythical half-female, half-fish creatures) have existed in seafaring lore at least since the time of the ancient Greeks. Typically depicted as having a woman’s head and torso, a fishtail instead of legs, and holding a mirror and comb, mermaids live in the ocean and, according to some legends, can take on a human shape and marry mortal men [as in the selkie lore of Ireland, Manx, Scotland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, the British Isles]. Mermaids are closely linked to sirens, another folkloric figure, part-woman, part-bird, who live on islands and sing seductive songs to lure sailors [like Homer's Odysseus and his crew] to their deaths. Mermaid sightings by sailors, when they weren’t made up, were most likely manatees, dugongs, or Steller’s sea cows (which became extinct by the 1760s due to cruel human over-hunting). Manatees are slow-moving aquatic mammals with human-like eyes, bulbous faces... (HISTORY*)
SUTRA: In a very strange Buddhist sutra, Great Moggallana, the male disciple declared by the Buddha as "foremost in psychic powers" mentions that at the bottom of the sea, there are indeed mermaids who dance seductively. A reference to shapeshifting space aliens living in bases below the ocean? There is worldwide awareness that at some point in the past, there really were vicious creatures who swam the seas, just as reports of harpies and others were reported by many cultures. Let's examine what one of the Buddha's four chief disciples said of these mysterious creatures from MN 50:
Psychic Maha-Mog' was dark
"In the middle of the ocean
There are mansions aeon-lasting,
Sapphire-shining, fiery-gleaming
With a clear translucent luster,
Where iridescent sea-nymphs dance
In complex, intricate rhythms"
"Mansions stand for an eon
in the middle of the sea,
The hue of beryl-stones,
brilliant, glowing, radiant;
There dance full many
nymphs in divers hues"
(Isaline Blew Horner, born 1896, translation of MN 50)
"There are mansions that last an eon
standing in the middle of a lake.
Sapphire-colored, brilliant,
they sparkle and shine.
Dancing there are nymphs
shining in all different colors."
(Bhante Sujato translation of MN 50)
Alas, no further mention of the sea-nymph mermaid selkies is made in this sutra, Is it reasonable to think the great monk was simply repeating Indian or Scythian lore? He was addressing Mara, to warn him what was to happen for bad karma of the sort this mara was accumulating. Modern people don't believe in Mara, despite the Mara Samyutta, and all those references to him by the Buddha. There's a thick translation of The Connected Discourses by American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi that includes it. So if Mara, a kind of Tempter -- Lucifer, Cupid, Eros, Devil -- figure in Buddhism could be real, are mermaids so hard to believe in, existing underwater by inhabiting vimanas ("mansions" that are USOs) so hard to swallow?
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha
with the manatee's land cousin on the cover- MN 50: Māratajjanīyasutta—Ven. Sujato (suttacentral.net)
The plight of the manatee
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| Boat strikes are a growing threat (earth.com) |
Despite legal protections against hunting, manatees continue to be poached for their meat and hides. Furthermore, their natural habitats, crucial for their survival, are being decimated by human development and intrusion.
Boat strikes are particularly alarming, leading to tragic injuries or even death for these gentle creatures. This dire situation underlines the urgency of increasing awareness so that manatees will continue to exist in the future.
Getting to know sea cows
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| Secret places, Mexico's cenotes, near Belize |
Manatees, also known as the cows of the sea [even though their closest relatives are elephants], are a marvel of marine life, characterized by their gentle nature and slow-moving grace [which caused people like Christopher Columbus to report mermaid sighting, possibly with the intention to violate them as he was planning for the gentle Indigenous humans he met].
These large, aquatic mammals belong to the order Sirenia [which is interesting because the Spanish word for "mermaid" is sirena], which also includes three species of dugongs. Vegan diet
- TEXT: Staff writer Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com, 3/27/24; Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Shauna Schwartz (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
- ART: Boat strikes were apparently a problem even in ancient times ("The Mermaid’s Rock" by Edward Matthew Hale, 1894 (thevintagenews.com).
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