Cosmic winds, light, echoes (video)

Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Nadia Drake (Phenomena, NatGeo, May 5, 2014)

Light echoes act as astronomical time machines or portals to the past.

On Earth, echoes are produced when sound waves bounce around like pinballs. In space, echoes are produced when light does the bouncing.

Just as sounds can echo -- so, too, can cosmic light. But instead of ricocheting off damp cavern walls, light traveling through the universe bounces off soft, dusty clouds.

 

Sometimes, this happens after an explosive event such a supernova. On Earth, most of the light we’d see from one of these exploding stars would have come directly here. But supernovas explode in three dimensions, sending light in all directions. Not all of that light is aimed toward Earth. If the geometry is right, some of the light... More
 

SUTRA: In the Sky

Nyanaponika Thera (trans.) Akasa Sutta (1) (SN 36.12); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

"In the sky, O meditators, various kinds of [solar, cosmic, magnetic] winds are blowing: winds from the east, west, north and south, winds carrying dust and winds without dust, winds hot and cold, gentle and fierce.

• ["Wind" or vayo (prana, chi, spiritus) is regarded as the source of movement, the invisible animating principle as it were, in the body.]

"Similarly, meditators, there arise in this body various kinds of feelings: pleasant feelings arise, painful feelings arise, and neutral feelings arise."

 

Illusion of expanding dust cloud (NASA/ESA/H.E.Bond)

Just as in the sky above winds of various kinds are blowing:

Coming from the east or west, moving from the north or south,

Some carry dust and others not, cold are some and others hot,

Some are fierce and others mild -- their varied moving style.

So also in this body here, feelings of different kind arise:

The pleasant feelings and the painful and the neutral ones.

But if a meditator is vigilant and persistent

To practice mindfulness and comprehension clear,

The nature of all feelings will one understand,

And having penetrated them, one will be taint-free in this very life.

Mature in knowledge, firm in Dharma's ways,

Then once one's lifespan ends, this body breaks,

 

And all measure and concept one has transcended.

[This last line is an allusion to nirvana.]

Drake is a science journalist. Phenomena is her space to talk about space -- from other worlds to exploding stars to the fabric of time and the universe. Her work has also appeared in Science News, Nature, New Scientist, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and WIRED. She lives in beautiful, foggy San Francisco.

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• 
  Prāna (प्राण) is the Sanskrit word for "life force." In yoga, Oriental medicine, and martial arts, the term refers to a cosmic energy believed to come from the Sun (solar cosmic rays) and connecting the elements of the universe. The universal principle of energy or force, responsible for the body's movement, heat, life, and maintenance, prāna is the sum total of all [active] energy that is manifest in the universe. This life energy has been vividly invoked and described in Vedas. In Ayurveda, tantra, and Tibetan medicine "praṇā vāyu" is the basic vāyu (wind, air) from which all the other vāyus arise. It is analogous to qi or chi. More
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Discovery of 42 alien planets

Elizabeth Howell (Space.com, Jan. 12, 2013); Wisdom Quarterly on Buddhist Cosmology

A team of amateurs has discovered evidence for 42 alien planets, including a Jupiter-size world that could potentially be habitable, by sifting through data from a NASA spacecraft.
 

Forty volunteers with the crowd-sourcing Planet Hunters project discovered the new planet candidates, which include 15 potentially habitable worlds and PH2 b, a Jupiter-size planet that the team confirmed to be in the habitable zone of its parent star.
 

This is the second time Planet Hunters project, which is overseen by Zooniverse, has confirmed a new exoplanet discovery. What's more, several candidate planets found by the project may be in the habitable zones of their parent stars. These candidates are awaiting confirmation by professional astronomers.
 

The Buddha teaching in Tavatimsa, "Space World of the Thirty-Three" (mettarefuge)

  

Researchers suggested this bonanza of planets in the so-called Goldilocks zone around a star, a habitable zone in which conditions are liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface and potentially supportlife, could mean there is a "traffic jam" of worlds where life could exist, project officials said.

  

"These are planet candidates that slipped through the net, being missed by professional astronomers and rescued by volunteers in front of their web browsers,” said the University of Oxford's Chris Lintott, who helms the Zooniverse, in a statement. “It's remarkable to think that absolutely anyone can discover a planet.”

  

Life on an "Avatar"-like moon

The planet PH2 b was found using data from NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope and confirmed with 99.9 percent confidence by observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. More

The Buddha taught in Space?

Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, monks of the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

  

Yes. The Buddha and many of his monastic disciples frequently visited space. There are many such worlds described. Two spheres of planes are material, one dense and sensual the other fine and ethereal, and those worlds can be reached from here.

Not only were their various forms of conveyance (vimanas) in space (akasha, limitless sky) at the time of the Buddha, but there had been overt extraterrestrial contact many times in the ancient prehistoric past of the planet. (There are long-lived beings who visit and reside on this planet as well as on nearby sectors in space who told the Buddha of the past; however, he was capable of discerning the past independent of their reports).

Mother Maya dreams of conceiving a baby

One spectacular case of the Buddha visiting space is when he went to go visit his biological mother, Maya Devi. She died seven days after his birth and was reborn in space. As Buddhism is divided into three sections (sutras, disciplinary code, and "higher teachings") a question arises as to who formulated the ultimate-teachings known as the Abhidharma.

In the commentaries of the oldest existing Buddhist school, the Theravada ("Teaching of the first generation Elder Disciples of the Buddha"), it is held that the Abhidharma was first taught by the Buddha himself.

Other traditions argue that it was a later addition by monastic commentators systematizing the Teachings. According to legend, shortly after his great enlightenment the Buddha spent a long time in meditation. 

  

During this time he formulated the Abhidharma, a very systematic way of presenting the highest truths or ultimate realities that lead to liberation from ignorance and suffering in this very life.

He later traveled into space -- by his own means (roughly speaking by, for lack of a better term, astral projection that produces a physical counterpart body appropriate to the realm being visited) -- to teach the "heavenly" space beings dwelling there the Abhidharma. This included his deceased mother Māyā, who had been reborn as a male by the name of Maya-deva-putta (which is more description than name, "Maya born among the devas") in a higher "celestial" or akashic (space) world known as Tusita. 

Buddhist depiction of space worlds

Tradition holds that the Buddha gave daily summaries of the teachings delivered in space to his chief male disciple "foremost in wisdom," Shariputra, who then passed them on to the other monastics (Red Pine, The Heart Sutra: The Womb of the Buddhas, 2004).

The Abhidharma is presented as a pure and undiluted form of the Dharma that was usually too difficult for most (earthling) practitioners of the Buddha's time to grasp. Instead, the Buddha taught by the method related in the various sutras, giving appropriate, immediately-applicable teachings as each situation arose, rather than attempting to set forth the complete Abhidharma in all its complexity.

 

There is a similarity between the Theravada tradition of the Adhidharma and that of the later and larger Mahayana school, which also claimed to be too difficult for the people living in the Buddha's time.

Advanced Meditation Objects

Wisdom Quarterly, Ven. Nyanatiloka Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness” - Nikos Kazantzaki (Vidvas2009/Flickr).

Kasina: (possible relation to Sanskrit krtsna) "all, complete, whole"; a purely external meditation device. It serves to produce and develop concentration of mind for the attainment of the four absorptions (jhānas).

WARNING: Success will depend on proper virtue and motivation. It is essential to follow the Five Precepts and preferable to temporarily undertake the Eight Precepts. While temporary ordination is not for everyone, with the proper intention it can serve as a catalyst and provide the most conducive circumstances for quick success. Wholesome motivation -- establishing oneself in samadhi in order to succeed in insight -- is the only way to remain safe: Beings come to ruin by the pursuit of selfish ends. Concentration is not the goal. Concentration (along with bliss, serenity, happiness, and equanimity) is the means of empowering the mind for the quest. The goal is enlightenment, helping others, and final liberation from all suffering. Buddhism, after all, is the "marriage" of universal compassion and transcendent wisdom.

The meditation procedure consists of concentrating one's full and undivided attention on a single visible object for an extended period. This object is called the preparatory-image or "sign" (parikamma-nimitta). For example, it may be a colored disc or spot (large for the inattentive, smaller for the meticulously attentive), or a piece of reddish earth, or a pond or body of water at some distance, or a candle flame, and so on.

One adverts attention (the opposite of averting) bringing the mind to the object and sustaining attention on it. One does so until at last one perceives, even with the eyes closed, a mental reflex image. This sign is called the acquired-image (uggaha-nimitta).

Now, while continuing to direct one's attention to this external image, there may arise the spotless and immovable counterpart-image (paṭibhāga-nimitta). With it comes neighborhood-concentration (upacāra-samādhi), which has been reached by cleansing the mind of impurities by collecting it on the object and concentrating it like a laser.

While still persevering in the concentration on the object, one will finally reach a state of mind where all distracting sense-activity (external sights, sounds, and so on) is suspended; there is no more seeing and hearing, no more perception of bodily impression and sensation. This fully lucid and conscious state, with the mind "absorbed" in the chosen object of meditation, is the first jhāna.

It's "fault" is that it is not far from distracted states. It is easy to fall out of and needs a great deal of practice so that the mind comes to prefer it (and the profound bliss, joy, or rapture associated with it) over its ordinary distracted state of attending to many objects or jumping around with a short attention span, or simply jumping around with a "monkey mind" beset by the obstructing Five Hindrances.

• The ten kasiṇas mentioned in the sutras are: earth-kasiṇa, water, fire, wind, blue, yellow, red, white, space, and consciousness. "There are 10 kasiṇa-spheres: One sees the earth kasiṇa above, below, on all sides, undivided, and unbounded.... One sees the water-kasiṇa above, below, and so on" (Middle Length Discourses 77; Lengthy Discourses 33). See abhibhāyatana (the eight Stages of Mastery or powers obtained by means of the kasina exercises) and bhāvanā ("meditation").

For space and consciousness-kasiṇas, The Path of Purification (Vis.M. V) refers to limited space-kasiṇa (paricchinn-ākāsa-kasiṇa, a commentarial term for akasa-kasina) and light-kasiṇa (āloka-kasiṇa). For full description see Vis.M. IV-V and also Aṭṭhasālinī Tr. I, 248 (the commentary to the Dhammasangani).

Karma: the Akashic Record or Book of Life

EdgarCayceTV — The Akashic Records or Book of Life can be equated to the universe's super computer system. It is this system that acts as the central storehouse of all information for every individual who has ever lived on Earth. Learn how you are in charge of shaping your own destiny and how you can tap into the records — past lives, present experiences, and your unfolding future — to create the life you desire (edgarcayce.org)

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The Akashic Records and Buddhism

(EdgarCayceTV, Dec. 18, 2009) Join Kevin J. Todeschi, A.R.E.'s Executive Director and CEO, for the free online virtual conference presentation Edgar Cayce on the Akashic Records. Explore the mystery of the Akashic Records, the storehouse of all information for every individual who has ever lived on Earth, and the source from which famed American psychic healer Edgar Cayce received many of his remarkable insights. More>>

Buddhist Correspondence (Wisdom Quarterly)

How Cayce's mystical information corresponds to Buddhism is amazing and worthy of note. First of all, the name akashic is Buddhist. In Pali and Sanskrit akasa/akasha refers to space and sky. The beings that inhabit that region are akasa-loka devas, that is, luminous beings of the lower celestial spheres.

The "records" they keep in the akasha or astral world may in some way be related to the working out of karma. This is not carried out in the simplistic way popular Christianity uses to communicate complicated ideas. St. Peter does not open a literal paper book in front of a pearly gate and make decisions of great import on the spot. But that's as easy a way of saying what happens via complex psychological processes as most people are willing to grasp; we go wrong when we take it literally then carry it to its logical conclusions.

Older details have fallen out of favor. But devas have various functions and can be understood in terms of many mythologies. Most familiar to Americans will be the array of angels in early Christianity and demigods in Greco-Roman/Pagan pantheons. [After all, what is thought to be "Christian" today is in fact simply derivative of Sumerian, Zoroastrian, Pagan lore. Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), although thought of as "New Age," was a devout Christian who was thoroughly convinced of the Buddhist doctrine of karma.]

Karma may work as an impersonal mental process (former and present intentions ripening) bringing forth its results as opportunity allows. Nevertheless, devas are actual beings as real as humans. These "angelic beings" are, variously, guardians, watchers, aides, messengers, protectors, hearers, and so on. They are taken to be symbolic because they are not part of ordinary human experience. Yet, they are discernible through jhana-meditation (samadhi), mystical experiences, and aided altered states. Ascetics in India and shamans throughout the world have long known and spoken of their existence. Cayce, extraordinary in how ordinary he was, managed to be aware of these realities.

The vast majority of devas, like the majority of humans, probably tend to their own affairs. But legend speaks most prominently of how they intervene (or intercede) in human affairs. Famously Sakka, the "lord of lords" (Tavatimsa devas) and "king of kings" (Catumaharajika devas), keeps an eye on the world, holds back inimical forces, and attempts to keep the world moral (sila) so that the rebirth of humans will take place in the "heavens" rather than unfortunate destinations collectively known as the Downfall, which are less-than-human abodes.

It is possible that just as humans keep records on lesser creatures (animals, insects, microbes, etc.) using means incomprehensible to those creatures, some manner of more intelligent life has access to data storage that would stagger the human imagination. Karmic information is said to be carried around in one's center, aura, and mind or more holographically than any single geographic location. We are not beings limited to this visible body, although many moderns can see nothing beyond it.

In countless sutras, the Buddha does not seem to be speaking of devas and karma (information in the akashic record) in a figurative sense but as actual experience. Some say he was only employing "skillful means" (upaya) to relate to his audience: Indian culture is replete with talk of avatars, heavenly visitors, and countless "gods" (devas). For example, the Thirty-three gods were already a fixture in ancient Indian lore. Whereas meditative details are reserved almost exclusively for dense Buddhist discussions in the Abhidharma and commentaries, particularly The Path of Purification, talk of such things runs throughout the discourses. Wisdom Quarterly has access to individuals who have experienced these beings -- through meditative skill -- and can thus verify that such beings are not simply figurative. Karma really comes to fruit: actions really bear results with volition (intention) as the determining factor.

What devas (angels) and Maha Brahma (God) may look like when not in human guise

Note that the cogent argument against a belief in or literal interpretation of such beings, namely that they are described differently over time and across cultures when they should be consistent if they were true, does not hold up: These beings can manifest as humans expect to see them rather than as they usually are. Remarkably beautiful, they will adopt dense human form or more subtle, translucent form. And they have access to the karmic record recorded in individuals and in a mainframe database accessible somewhere in the sky, space, or heavens (all valid definitions of the akashic world or dimension).

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Impact of Space Junk

What is the impact of space debris on the Earth's atmosphere?
OPINION Physics Today (May 21, 2009)

Space.com: There is growing appreciation that outer space has become a trash bin, with the Earth encircled by dead or dying spacecraft, along with menacing bits of orbital clutter — some of which burns up in the planet's atmosphere.

PHOTO: depiction of tracked space debris, not to scale (ESA/AP)

But there is another line of research that needs exploring: The overall impact of human-made orbital debris, solid and liquid propellant discharges, and other space age substance abuse that winds up in a high-speed dive through Earth's atmosphere.

There's a convenient toss-away line that is in vogue: that such space refuse simply "burns up" — a kind of out of sight, out of mind declaration.

What chemistry is involved given the high heating during reentry of space leftovers made of tungsten, beryllium, aluminum, and lots of composite materials? The impact of these materials on Earth's atmosphere — top to bottom — would seem worthy of investigation. Source

Nature of Space -- Science's latest finding

Ancient Indian cosmology varying slightly in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism.

Space has boundaries, but Indian mystics regarded space (akasa) as a thing in and of itself. Abhidharma theory is not based on speculation and philosophizing. It is the exacting presentation of (replicable, personally verifiable) mystical direct experience.

Its purpose is to guide one through reality at a level finer than the atomic. This can only be accomplished by purifying the mind sufficiently that it becomes unbiased and able to directly experience the world. The external manifestation of the world (which is in the perception of this "fathom-long body") is interdependent with states of consciousness.

With the refinement of perception through meditation and gains in concentration (jhana), there are unusual powers to gain, and these "psychic" abilities enable one to discern reality down to the subatomic level of "particles" known to the ancients as kalapas. Jainism, like Buddhism, envisions a very concrete universe with dimensions and even a general shape (although this may be a byproduct of representing it than its own characteristic; nevertheless, it's geography is spoken of in very certain terms).

.

Just as the human world was described as a series of islands radiating out from a central high point at its center (mythical Mt. Meru -- corresponding perhaps to Mt. Kailash, Everest, or K2 -- and the continents), the universe is depicted with a definite shape with regions and planes as science is finding.

The shape of the universe as represented in Jain cosmology.

Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space
Jeremy Hsu (SPACE.com, 9/1/08)

A weirdly wonderful sight appeared to astronauts aboard the International Space Station this summer — thin blue clouds hovering at the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and the void. [Buddhism speaks very definitely of a Sphere of Boundless, or Infinite, Space as well as a Sphere of Nothingness, the Void, which is different; both, cosmologically, are grouped among Four Immaterial Planes of Existence.]

The noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds are at an altitude of 47 to 53 miles (76 to 85 km), where meteors and bright aurora lights are not uncommon and the atmosphere gives way to the blackness of space. The clouds remain a scientifically baffling phenomenon more than 120 years after their discovery.

"It's lovely," said Gary Thomas, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado after looking at a photo taken from the space station. "And it shows just how high these clouds really are -- at the very edge of space." The clouds form at dizzying heights where the air is one hundred million times drier than the Sahara. By contrast, the common high-altitude cirrus clouds only reach heights of 11 miles (18 km) up.

"We have a fairly good idea that the water vapor from below gets transported upwards," Thomas told SPACE.com. "That is in essence the fuel."

Part of that water vapor comes from rising air in the tropics, where a few parts per million of water escape into farthest reaches of the upper atmosphere. Another likely source of water vapor is methane oxidation. Methane concentrations have more than doubled over the past 100 years, which could explain part of the changes in the high-flying clouds over the past decades.

People first spotted the noctilucent clouds a few years after the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa super-volcano in Indonesia created spectacular sunsets from ash in the atmosphere. Robert Leslie of Southampton, England saw the clouds one evening in July 1885 and published the first observations in the journal Nature.

The clouds have since spread from the northern latitude regions such as Scandinavia, Scotland and Siberia to areas farther south. Sightings have cropped up in Washington and Oregon in the United States, as well as in Turkey and Iran.

Scientists can observe widespread instances of the clouds throughout the polar summer. Some clouds even formed after the fateful launch of the doomed space shuttle Columbia, when 400 tons of water from the shuttle exhaust drifted toward the South Pole.

The mystery only thickened after the launch of a satellite dubbed Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) in 2007, when AIM spotted a type of "stealth" noctilucent cloud made of smaller ice crystals less than 30 nanometers (a red blood cell is about 10,000 nanometers). Such clouds appear to stay in the upper atmosphere all the time.

"They're just so tiny that they don't scatter light efficiently," Thomas said. AIM has also found a strong resemblance between the noctilucent clouds and tropospheric clouds that hover near Earth's surface, which suggests that the dynamics of near-space weather may not be incredibly strange after all.

Researchers speculate that the origin and spread of the clouds is linked to patterns of climate change associated with the modern era. But they are not ruling out a host of other possible factors, including methane, carbon dioxide, the number of meteors seeding the upper atmosphere, and even the 11-year sunspot cycle.

"I think the jury's still out on that," Thomas said. "We're just trying to understand now how clouds form and how they vary."