Who's really enlightened? (Doug's Dharma)

Interview: Kamala 'Word Salad' H. & Walz

(Sky News Australia) ‘Kamala News Network’: CNN under fire for interview

• VIDEO: Spin for the nominal left (MeidasTouch)
• VIDEO: More pro-Kamala spin (Brian Tyler Cohen)

Vote Kamala no matter what

(As long as the person's blue, it doesn't matter who)

Is this Trump's worst interview ever?

(David Pakman Show) Aug. 28, 2024: Failed candidate Pres. Don John Trump gave what might be his worst interview ever to a [kiss up named] Shawn Ryan. #davidpakmanshow #trump #interview

Mean comedy: Awaken with JP (low blows)

She’s not Indian anymore! Interview with the best candidate ever

C'mon, JP, vote for me. *Wink*

(AwakenWithJP) JP gives a hard hitting interview not holding back on the innuendo. Poor Gov. Willy Brown. How many pats on the back can one man take? (Rumors are Kamala F'd her way to the top on Willy's wee bed, with possible help from Black talk show star Montel Williams, two of the few Black men she's known apart from her father, from whom she was estranged and did not know very well, much to the chagrin of the many Black men she over-prosecuted, kept in jail to profit California when she was attorney general and the people she hid evidence. Get Awaken CBD at awakencbd.com. Get Freedom Merch here: awakenwithjp.com/shop. Upcoming LIVE shows: awakenwithjp.com/pages/tour. Join JP for an exclusive interview with the best presidential candidate ever!!!

Trump releases 'brutal' ad of Kamala 'debating herself' and losing

(Sky News Australia) Aug. 26, 2024: Social media users are reacting to a new Trump campaign ad that features Harris "debating" herself, not doing well, and losing to Kamala, using her past comments on the economy under her and Biden's leadership.

You go, Girl! - I intend to, believe me.

"New Trump ad shows Kamala Harris "debating" herself with her previous comments on the economy under her leadership with Biden," user @CollinRugg wrote on X. It comes as former US president Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw from a scheduled presidential debate against Kamala Harris.

The two campaigns are at odds on certain rules, including whether or not the microphone should be muted when a candidate is not speaking. VP Harris’ team believes the microphones should be on at ALL times (to hear what DJ is mumbling as he's grumbling and interrupting), while the former president wants the rules that were previously agreed on (because he can't control himself and keep quiet and this gives him a way to vent without paying the price for it).

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign said in a post to X: “Trump should honor his commitment to debate VP Harris on ABC on September 10, and he should reject his handlers’ attempts to muzzle him via a muted microphone.

“The VP is ready to debate Trump live and uncensored. Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

• Jimmy Dore (jimmydore.com, 8/31/24); CNN, Aug. 29, 2024; Sky News Australia, 8/29/24; Awaken with JP, Aug. 2, 2024; David Pakman Show; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Jesus on consciousness (Lost Gospel of Thomas)

Quazi Johir, Jan. 24, 2023; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Jesus in India (Holger Kersten)

There's another Jesus, one we are introduced to in the old Gnostic "Lost Gospels" (discovered in the Nag Hammadi Library and Dead Sea Scrolls, unedited, unabridged books, and the equally old historical book of Hemis Buddhist Monastery in Ladakh/Tibet, where Yeshua is called "Issa" in Buddhism and Islam, as rediscovered by the Westerner Nicolas Notovitch). Unlike the modern and censored/edited versions of the Bible, the New Testament and the reinterpreted Old Testament, these texts give us a clearer view. It seems odd that any real Christian wouldn't crave to read the apocrypha, all the books left out of the "official" books of the Bible. Who would choose comforting ignorance over concealed knowledge?

• The 18 unknown years of Jesus
• Holy site: Hoard of Roman coins found when hiker stumbles on lost ancient site (msn.com)

Jesus' lost teachings on consciousness finally uncovered

(Quazi Johir) Entrepreneurs and professionals wanting to work closer with me and my team to create your reality, apply: realitycreator.com/application. Access short movie and free resources on mastering reality creatio: realitycreator.com/movie. Connect on socials: Instagram: @quaz_quaz, Twitter: @quazijohir, tiktok: @quazijohir.

"Earthlings" revisited, Vegan Spirituality (8/9)

Wm Melton (Compassion Consortium); Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

We should go vegan or at least vegetarian, don't you think, Tenzin? - I already am.

.

Animals feel. (Betty White)

On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 8:00 pm (Eastern Time), for the Compassion Consortium has its Film Night, featuring a retrospective on the ground-breaking 2005 film Earthlings, with special guest writer, Director, and Producer of the film Shaun Monson.

Earthlings is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix and features the music of Moby. Additional information is available at compassionconsortium.org.

COMPASSION CONSORTIUM Meetup

Shaun Monson is an American film director and producer and animal rights and environmental activist. He is best known for writing, directing, and producing the documentary Earthlings, which covers animal rights issues within the pet, food, fashion, entertainment, and animal testing industries.

I am a conscious, sentient (feeling) being.

Monson is a founding partner of Nation Earth, the production company responsible for Earthlings. He made a 2015 follow-up film called Unity, which explores the unifying force of consciousness found in humans, animals, and nature.

ABOUT: Earthlings premiered in 2005 at the Artivist Film Festival where it won best documentary feature. It won the Best Content Award at the Boston International Film Festival, and at the San Diego Film Festival it won Best Documentary Film. The Humanitarian Award went to Phoenix for his work on the film.

The documentary is based on the three sectors of life on earth: nature, animals (other than humans), and humankind. It doesn't take long to see that most of the problems faced by all three sectors can be traced back to the third one.

Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices at some of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Then parallels are drawn between speciesism and racism, sexism, and other oppression.

This film is ground-breaking and had a profound impact on human treatment of and interaction with non-human animals. It was a breakthrough event on our long road to compassion for all living beings.

This Meetup wants to celebrate the film for its tremendous impact and also discuss with Shaun Monson where things stand now. It seems that so much has changed, yet so much has not.

Issues to be explored in discussion with Producer Monson:

• His life as fulltime animal rights frontliner
• The role of documentary films in animal liberation
• How Earthlings has impacted the animal rights movement
• What has changed in the 17 years since the film was released
• How can those of us who care about animals work more efficiently on their behalf
• Where we've made the most progress for animals and which areas are lagging behind
• What gives Shaun Monson the most hope
• A teaser of the film that will start filming days from now

The hour will include scheduled time for Q & A, so all will have this rare opportunity to converse with this gifted filmmaker and humanitarian.

Please share widely about this event and be sure that friends who care about animals and the future of the planet have the chance to experience this discussion. It's not likely to come around again anytime soon. More

ADVISORY: This film contains graphic scenes of violence to nonhuman beings (earthlings) and can be difficult to view. It is not for children, very empathic people, or anyone suffering from PTSD or related disorders. Many people will not want to see the film, and it is in not necessary to view it in order to enjoy, appreciate, and be inspired by this evening's retrospective.

However, if you have not seen the film and would like to, it is available to watch at many places on the Internet. Simply Google “watch Earthlings film” and see the many options. Check out the trailer (with nothing terribly graphic) here.

Full Frontal: "Green New Deal" (comedy)

Sam Bee, TBS, 2/13/19; Crystal Q., Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Green New Deal (Full Frontal on TBS, Act I)

The "Green New Deal" has sparked a second red scare among the typically Christmas-loving Fox News crowd as they race to batten down their cows and protect their private jets. Watch Full Frontal with Samantha Bee all new on Wednesdays at 10:30/9:30c on TBS. youtube, twitter, facebook...

Save the trees! - Earth Liberation Front (video)

OscopeLabs; Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

This is the official trailer from Oscilloscope Laboratories of If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

On December 7th, 2005, U.S. federal agents conducted a nationwide sweep of "radical environmentalists" involved with the Earth Liberation Front — an organization the FBI has called America's "number one domestic terrorism threat."

How trees talk to each other (Suzanne Simard)

If a Tree Falls is a remarkable story about the group's rise and fall, told through the transformation and radicalization of one of its members, Daniel McGowan.

Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a chronicle of McGowan facing life in prison for his environmental activism with a dramatic investigation of the events that led to his involvement with the Earth Liberation Front or ELF.

FULL MOVIE: If a Tree Falls

Using never-before-seen archival footage and intimate interviews — with cell members and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them — If a Tree Falls asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way the FBI defines "terrorism" as against citizens but not the corporations who profit from the real terror. More: oscilloscope.net

The Buddhist Attitude Towards Nature

(AccesstoInsight.org) A person shakes the branch of a wood-apple tree and all the fruit falls, ripe as well as unripe. That person would collect only what is wanted and walk away leaving the rest to rot. Such a wasteful attitude is deplored in Buddhism as not only anti-social but criminal. The excessive exploitation of nature...

• VIDEO: "Kedi" the love of cats in Turkey (KEDI)
• ART: "Naked Woman on a Table" by John Currin

Super speed cameras may one day see particles

Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex at 1 million FPS (Tom Guilmette)

The smallest unit of material in Buddhist physics is the kalapa. These particles of perception are so far visible only to highly trained and concentrated meditators. Most people will never see them even with a meditation practice. It takes specialized training, such as that provided by Pa Auk Sayadaw and the few teachers he has trained. But it is vital to see them to discern mind (citta) and matter, also called consciousness and materiality. Will a camera like the Phantom Flex one day be able to reach the speed and sophistication to prove the Buddha's teachings on physics empirically? Probably not. But while it tries, it is possible for a purified and well trained mind to see ultimate reality, discern it, and be freed from the illusion that composite things are either permanent (from one moment to the next), able to satisfy, or in any way personal (part of an abiding "self" we cling to as our own).

“Understanding Virtue” Cal Tech lectures

Virtue (arete, "excellence") personified as a goddess. The most articulated value in Greek culture is areté. The word means something closer to "being the best you can be" or "reaching your highest human potential" (Wikipedia/Celsus Library, Turkey).

Fuller, Caltech lecture series “Understanding Virtue”

What causes a person to do “good”? To act kindly, generously, heroically? Does special brain activity contribute to virtuous behavior in some people?

Fuller Seminary's Travis Research Institute and CalTech are partnering in a two-day lecture series to better understand the mysteries and nature of virtue through the twin lenses of neuroscience and philosophy.

• Talk: “Why Habit Matters: The Bodily Character of the Virtues"
• Prof. Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School
• Thursday, May 19, 7:30-9:30 pm
• Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Dr. Hauerwas holds a joint appointment in Duke's Law School and Divinity School, is a noted ethicist, peacemaker, and writer, and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time Magazine in 2001.

CalTech Prof. Steven R. Quartz (Philosophy), leader of the Brain, Mind and Society Ph.D. Program will respond, drawing on his research on fundamental problems of the mind -- how the mind emerges from the developing brain and how we make decisions, including those with moral dimensions.

• Talk: "The Vicarious Brain: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy"
• Prof. Christian Keysers (Social Brain, Univ. of Groningen, Netherlands)
• Friday, May 20, 7:30-9:30 pm
• Beckman Auditorium on the CalTech campus

Dr. Keysers will describe how vicarious brain activity is strong in empathic individuals and reduced in sociopaths, suggesting that vicarious brain activity plays a role in the normal development of virtue.

Prof. Nancey Murphy (Christian Philosophy, Fuller Seminary) will respond, speaking from her research on the relationships between theology, neuroscience, and philosophy of the mind.

• FREE lectures, open to the public, are part of a major conference funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The conference brings together scientists, philosophers, ethicists, and theologians for a discussion of interdisciplinary perspectives on the neuroscience of moral action.

Pasadena Presbyterian Church: 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena 91101
CalTech’s Beckman Auditorium: 332 S. Michigan Ave. (south of Del Mar), Pasadena 91106.

• INFO: Fred Messick, Associate VP of Public Affairs, Fuller Seminary, fmessick@fuller.edu, (626) 584-5367
• Deborah Williams-Hedges, Interim Director of Media Relations, CalTech, debwms@caltech.edu (626) 395-3227

JHANA: Directly Seeing Realms of Existence

The Buddha teaching forest monks to meditate (buddhachannel.tv)

[The 31 Planes of Existence in Buddhist cosmology are literal worlds, not theoretical. They are all directly visible to the person who becomes proficient in serenity meditation -- the jhanas.] The attainment of any [of the eight] jhanas ["meditative absorptions"] comes about through a twofold process of development. On one side the states obstructive to it, called its factors of abandonment, have to be eliminated. On the other hand the states composing it, called its factors of possession, have to be acquired.

In the case of the first jhana, the factors of abandonment are the Five Hindrances, and the factors of possession are the five basic jhana factors. Both are alluded to in the standard formula for the first jhana. The opening phrase refers to the abandonment of the hindrances and the subsequent portion enumerates the jhana factors:

"Quite secluded from sense pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states of mind, one enters and dwells in the first absorption, which is accompanied by applied thought and sustained [attention] with rapture and happiness born of seclusion" (M.i,1818; Vbh.245).

This chapter will first discuss the Five Hindrances and their abandonment then investigate the factors of absorption both individually and by way of their combined contribution to the attainment of the first jhana. The chapter closes with some remarks on the ways of perfecting the first absorption, a necessary preparation for the further development of concentration.... More>>

THE FULL TEACHING

1. Introduction

The Doctrinal Context of Jhana

Etymology of Jhana

Jhana and Samadhi

2. The Preparation for Jhana

The Moral Foundation for Jhana

The Good Friend and the Subject of Meditation

Choosing a Suitable Dwelling

3. The First Jhana and its Factors

The Abandoning of the Hindrances

The Factors of the First Jhana

Perfecting the First Jhana

4. The Higher Jhanas

The Higher Fine-material Jhanas

The Immaterial Jhanas

The Jhanas and Rebirth

5. Jhanas and the Supramundane

The Way of Wisdom

The Two Vehicles

Supramundane Jhana

The Jhanic Level of the Path and Fruit

6. Jhana and the Noble Disciples

Seven Types of Disciples

Jhana and the Arahant ["enlightened person"]

• Source: Ven. Henepola Gunaratana from Wheel Publication No. 351/353 (Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 1988) -- an abridged version of The Path of Serenity and Insight: An Explanation of the Buddhist Jhanas (© 1985 Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi). Published in the Wheel series by arrangement with publisher (© 1988 BPS). Republished for free distribution.