I went to a Buddhist retreat needing something to happen; nothing happened.
My friend, a regular American woman into yoga, also went but not expecting anything, hoping for anything, "needing" anything; something happened.
I asked, "How?! How is this happening? What did you do differently?"
She claims she didn't "do" anything. She just sat. She just attended to the present moment with bare awareness, almost like that R.E.M. song, "Stand in the Place Where You Are." She didn't say that. She mentioned thinking about the song "Just Breathe" for inspiration sometimes.
I asked, "You're thinking about music?"
She answered, "No, but intrusive thoughts come and go. Sometimes by habit I engage them before mindfully-remembering and then letting them go, letting them cross like clouds in a vast open sky." And she mentioned visualizing the in-and-out breath as steam in a steam room or a small whirligig (windspinner) at her nose turning as the breath moved.
I asked, "You spend your time visualizing?"
She answered, "No, but sometimes to focus, I imagine some indicator of the breath just to help get focused."
I asked, "How do you stay energized and focused for so many hours of the retreat schedule day?"
She surprised by answering that she used a little peppermint under her nose.
I asked, "You spend your time huffing essential oils?"
She answered, "No but it's a nice pick me up in the morning, and it's good to feel a chill on the spot above the lip where I place my calm attention."
I started to see the pattern. Everything I asked and conceived was about getting and gaining.
And everything she answered was about letting go, relaxing, and staying aware without "thinking" (i.e., ruminating, perseverating, proliferating, drifting away on a tide of discursive thinking).
A Buddhist retreat, like a Christian church service, is not somewhere to go to gain. It is a place to go to lay down the burden and let go a little, release, share, give, abandon, listen, allow with radical acceptance of what is. Imagine only ever going to church (mass, temple, the sabbath ritual) with a laundry list of wishes for the God. How well was that ever going to work? But a person with a purer heart goes just to receive the Word or the Spirit or advice embedded in the sermon to give more donations to the church or whatever nonsense most sermons are on nowadays. Surely that purer person would get more out of the experience than the person with the list treating the God of that church like a restaurant, ATM, or the lap of Saint Santa Claus (Nicholas).
So let us follow in the example of the woman who "succeeded" in getting what everybody else on that retreat was after. About three other women got it, too, including Buddhist meditation teachers Shaila Catherine (Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight) and Dr. Nikki (The Persian Buddhist: Dr. Nikki).
Oddly, strangely (coincidentally?), these three women are all from California, but the long retreat was on the east coast at IMS with a rare enlightened master. I do not now recall if there was a male among the very small group of retreatants/meditators who "succeeded" in getting somewhere very deep with their meditation. But it was impossible to overlook the fact that even if there were, it was still 75% women who succeeded. So I asked her about this.
She answered, "I did notice, and I asked the Teacher, and he explained, 'It's easier for women.'"
I asked, "Why in the world would it be easier for women? Surely, they have it harder than men in this world, which after all we are told is 'a man's world.'"
She agreed, and she mentioned that she asked him the same question, and the great master, a successful scholar-practitioner not teaching only from theory but having a great deal of direct practical personal experience with the historical Buddha's Path, answered. He explained that it is how women are (by nature at this time) and how they are treated now (by injustice). Their way, as anyone can see in terms of American sex-role stereotyping and gender asymmetries (that they are treated less than, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, disregarded, and all that) actually gives them an advantage in meditation and spiritual progress.
I said, "Why? Why would that be?"
She answered, as it came right back around to slap me in the face and punch me in the gut, that it is because women, generally, are NOT striving, struggling, needing, demanding, insisting, interfering, pushing, muscling, and all the "wrong" (disadvantageous, self-defeating, dysfunctional) things we men generally do.
I asked, "Well, isn't everyone there -- having paid and taken time off work and putting in all those hours of silence, getting up early, eating only in the morning, detoxing from technology, giving up their cell phones, social media, and email accounts -- doing EXACTLY that?!
She answered, "Yes, except for the four of us, for some reason. It's not like we knew each other or knew what the others were doing. We were each just minding our business, not socializing, not looking around, not taking walks, not arguing, not demanding, not all of that stuff that everyone else [being American] were in the habit of doing."
I said, "Oh, I see! It's exactly all that grasping, needing, struggling, striving, and kicking @$$ that is getting in everyone's (well nearly everyone's) way!
She answered, "It would seem so."
Then I realized I was pushing her for these answers, and she was kind enough, because we had known each other for so long and been such friends, and because I encouraged her and made sure she got to this retreat, that she tolerated this interrogation of sorts. I was startled by what she was saying, and she was saying precious little unless I pushed. I realized anyone with common sense and common decency would never push like this or ask pointed questions. But this is how I pressed that very teacher to answered and explain things, which he did as he kindly inquired about my practice and how I was doing and why I was so worried or interested in what anybody else was doing. (I didn't have enough sense to trust in him that when I was ready, I would learn all these things directly and not need to be so bullheaded in asking). But because I had not made progress, I'd been left to wonder what I was doing wrong, aside from everything. It was only my luck, my precious good karma, that I had the good fortune of knowing more than one person who had done it right (or was currently doing it "right" in the sense of the eight path factors of "right mindfulness, right effort, and so on) that I could see by comparison where I veered off. I already knew about my veering off. What I needed to know, for myself and Wisdom Quarterly readers was, What's the right road, the right path, the right practice? Now I was getting a dose of it. I had only been "a little" off but that little had grown to a complete derailing and going off the road, as a boat traveling a long distance -- with course correcting along the way -- would end up way off track like a wayward Columbus. I was stressed out in asking all these things.
She answered without stress, gently smiling at my silliness, manliness, foolishness, and blindness.
But there is an extraordinary thing I realized/remembered as I was talking to her about these things (Dhamma), these matters so rare in the universe that only someone with a real kalyana-mitta can ever hope to hear, and it came when I formulated a preface to a question like a lawyer would, establishing common ground, being on the same page. I wanted to ask her about her level of attainment and that of the others. But to do so, I needed to establish that she was ahead of all the others on the retreat, or was it the case that the elder and much more experienced meditator and teacher Shaila Catherine was ahead, and where was Nikki Mighafori in the ranking, and for that matter, at what level was the teacher?
She answered no answer, just a perplexed look, a series of sounds and utterances that gave me to believe we were not sharing common ground and not on the same page.
I pushed, "Look, regular people are 'uninstructed ordinary worldlings,' right?"
She answered, "Okay?" as if confused by my very lowest common denominator question.
And I kept pushing, and any Aryan (any "noble" disciple, any attained person of whatever ever rank, stage, or level) is greater than that, right?
She answered more perplexed, "Okay??"
I pushed to the point of breaking, "What? You won't give me that? There are ordinary people and there are attained people, and they're not the same because of a 'change-of-lineage' (gotrabhu), riiiiight? The Buddha said as much! It's foundational to the whole Teaching in this school of Buddhism. This is not hard. This is not a trick question..."
She responded, "And why are you asking?"
I, exasperated, kept pushing through, as if I were doing a set of heavy weights at the gym and just needed to get a certain number of reps in even if it hurt, "I'm trying to establish that there's a difference. There are ordinary people there and extraordinary. And among the latter group, there are gradients..."
She looked puzzled, dismissive, not catching on, "Okay???"
I barked, "Well, come on! There's that, right? And this is when she blew my mind. Did you, dear reader, know that enlightened people (in the specific Buddhist sense of the word bodhi and not what other traditions, religions, or systems think or mean when they use the exact same word) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as better than anyone? Sure, you did. Anyone can figure that out. They know there's no ego; they go lording it around over anyone's head. BUT, did you know, enlightened people (of whatever stage or level) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as worse than anyone? Sure, come on, that can be deduced by anyone who gives it a little thought. "Saints" (Aryans, the noble ones) are nice. Here's the mindblower: Reader, did you know that enlightened people DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as equal to anyone? 🤯 (See the Pali canon sutta "With Khema" AN 6.49: Khema Sutta—translated by Bhikkhu Sujato for suttacentral.net) And this is what was happening here. We were getting snagged and tangled up on the very first presupposition of stages and levels. It's not that she didn't know or had forgotten that there were levels, but what had happened is that she had DIRECTLY REALIZED that in reality she is no better, no worse, and not equal to others. These Aryans just don't think that way. It doesn't occur to them. They don't frame things that way anymore. And they may not even remember ever having done so, or so it would seem as I tried to remind her that this is how the whole world thought, including the Buddha, if we can deduce this from his teaching that there were levels of attainment and therefore it is possible to designate someone as higher, lower, or equal to someone else, anyone else.
She just looked at, as if remembering, then came back to herself, "And????" leading me to make my point, whatever my point was originally going to be. I didn't remember, and there was no sense in asking if we could not agree on that much for starters. This was a nonstarter.
"Wow," I thought, the things in the ancient sacred texts are really true: Aryans are this way or that, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether it fits our frames, whether we agree or would have it otherwise. Buddhism (the Buddha Dharma), what the Buddha taught, was not "hammered out by mere reasoning." The Buddha directly saw these things, knew these things, taught a path-and-practice for others to be able to DIRECTLY know and see these things. I bowed to her and left it at that for the moment. There are some things we are not meant to know before we are ready to know it. And all of this, it seems, was none of my business. It would become my business when I directly experienced these things and became one who knows-and-sees. This is a teaching for the wise, after all, not for those sunk in worldliness, distraction, delusion, resentment, aversion, fear, greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or all manner of wrong view arising from ignorance, delusion, and holding views.
And now I realize that one way to talk about all this might be through the Taoist video at the top of this article. Maybe on this path we are becoming what we always were and have been -- nobody. Certainly, nobody special. Not better, not worse, not equal. The worldly mind will completely reject this out of hand. It's preposterous! This is a patriarchy founded on a hierarchy as taught by the oligarchy and a lineage of worldly rulers all the way up to the first heaven. And we must submit to them because that's the way God wants it. 🙄 That's ludicrous and preposterous, but it just might be closer to the truth than the way we've been carrying on here in the world IF "the God" we are talking about is the Monad (the One in Gnosticism, the Brahman not Brahma in Buddhism, possibly even the Tao in Taoism). That GOD doesn't want or not want, doesn't look on needing it to be one way or another. In that sense, there is just being. We can just be (though technically there is no "being," only becoming, this ceaseless impersonal process of radical impermanence as everything falls apart and rebuilds all the time, marked by three universal characteristics the Buddha taught again and again, implicitly and explicitly: All things are radically impermanent, utter unable to ever fulfill us, and impersonal whether we imagine there to be a stable "self" or not. That's reality. Here we are over here never really in touch with what's real due to all the distractions, talking, ruminating, thinking, and everything else coming at us all at once. If we slow down, let things be, allow, accept, welcome experience as it is without needing to change or "improve" it, we can quite possibly make quick progress to the end of all suffering and the arising of liberating-insight, the wisdom that has gone beyond, that which we set as our goal when setting off on a spiritual path. So "be nobody." After all, that's what really are already, and the sooner we get right with it, the happier we are likely to be so we can see things sa they really are and always have been.
(TRT World) Why would anyone hate these peace-loving [white] people just returning to their homeland to claim it and expel or exterminate (ethnically cleanse) anyone living there since they claim to have left centuries ago?
How Democrats could disqualify Trum if the Supreme Court doesn't (The Atlantic)
What could he have said? Please, Judge, please! I've got cash flow problems right now. I'm trying to get back in the White House. My wife hates me and won't touch me. My kids just want an inheritance. My daughter will no longer date me. For the love of Money, give me a break!
NEW YORK, New York - Former President Donald John Trump has asked the judge in his civil business fraud trial to delay the penalties attached to the damages he owes [which amount to between $355 and $454.5 million when back dated interest is included].
But the New York attorney general insists it shouldn't happen.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump and his legal team filed a request for a judge to delay penalties attached to damages he owes in his New York fraud trial.
According to ABC News, Trump's attorneys submitted the request on Wednesday for Judge Engoron to delay the enforcement of penalties by 30 days, citing the "magnitude" of the ruling on the trial as presenting a need for an "orderly post-judgment process."
"The Attorney General has not filed any motion on notice, nor moved to settle the proposed Judgment," the filing states regarding New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has led the case. More:
Trump’s mad at Jimmy AGAIN, right wing’s nuttiest Republicans gather, and MyPillow Mike falling apart
Order! This court will come to order! There's nothing funny about this deluded man's fine.
.
(Jimmy Kimmel Live) Feb. 22, 2024: Our worst and dimmest gathered for the annual CPAC convention in Washington DC, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara (nepotistic wife of Eric) was the bigly speaker today, there were a bunch of crazy seminars run by the best in the business, Donald gave Jimmy a shoutout on Truth Social, blundering dotard Pres. Biden touched down in San Francisco today, according to CNN his German shepherd dog "Commander" was involved in far more biting incidents than was previously reported, MyPillow Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay 5 million for the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” which he lost when he was proven wrong about election interference, and Mike’s out there promoting fellow election deniers like Blake Masters who is running for Congress in Arizona. #Kimmel
(Ken Pruitt) Gordon Gekko (Oliver Stone's Wall Street) unknowingly describes the problems facing today's private sector (industry), while blasting the bureaucracy (governance) responsible for said problems in the first place. This is classic speech, both the in film and in economic thought. This is for people who think Saipan is a free market.
This is a famous pro-capitalist speech. Buddhism says the root of all unskillful action (unwholesome karma) and misery is due to three things: greed, hatred (and fear), and delusion.
This, of course, is a rough translation of what the Buddha taught since he used the terms lobha, dosa (bhava), and moha. These technical terms in Pali and Sanskrit have much broader definitions than our translated English words. Better words might have been avarice, aversion (cowardice), and nescience. But who knows what those mean? All the attraction and liking are subsumed in lobha. Dosa refers to all forms of aversion and disliking, which includes fear. And moha is ignorance of all kinds.
We say greed, hatred (fear), and delusion because it makes it more obvious in English that these things are bad. Then Gordon comes around and glorifies "greed." Greed is somewhat good, in a way, at least in the way Gordon is using it. How? Well, consider what we in English mean by "good." It's not always a moral judgment.
But, Buddha, c'mon, it's so much cash money!
Sometimes it's a functional assessment with one test -- getting what we want. If something gets us what we want, we accurately call that "good." I want to kill myself, I say. I tell Dr. Kevorkian that I'm thinking of using a 45. And he says, "That's good," meaning "that will work." He might add, "That's overkill. Why not just use my poison contraption?" Why, I ask him. "Because that's better," he answers. How so, I say. And the Doctor of Death explains that not everyone dies from a shot to the head, which is news to me. Some blow off their jaw, others get brain damage and deafness on one side. Others get a facelift and become paraplegics. He starts making a lot of sense, and his death device IS "good" in that it always works and never fails, and if I really want to kill myself (which is bad and a mistake) his way is "good." That's normal English.
Think about it. You say, "I want to get rich. I'm thinking of going to an Ivy League school, majoring in business, and stealing it from a company I raid by pumping and dumping its stock, screwing over all the other workers and investors there." And I say, That's good. I'm not making a moral judgment, and you know that. All I'm doing is saying, That'll work. Right? There's a better way, but your parents have their heart set on you going to an Ivy, so you and Gordon and Wall Street bankers can all have a great time with other lowlifes in New York. And you say, "What, you have a better idea?"
And I say, Yes. Try Buddhist business. "What in the world is that," and I talk about the Sigala Sutta (DN 31) and the Buddha's business advice to young householder Sigala. I mean, imagine it. What if there were a way to grow rich, enjoy it, experience all the sensuality and worldliness you want, and it wouldn't lead to regret hereafter. And there will be a hereafter, no matter how much you drink and blot out that possibility, sinking yourself in science books and ignoring all the evidence that there's more, much more, to this life than what we see and touch and can remember.
But then in what sense is "greed" good? There is the possibility of translating other Buddhist terms as "greed." It's a stretch, but it is possible in the larger sense. All desire is disappointing, unsatisfactory, suffering. Why, how? When a craving, yearning, pining, desire, inclination, lust arises, immediately with the arising of it, we suffer (are discomfited, are pained, thirst, hunger, pine, long, yearn, agonize) in the absence of it. One way to get rid of this pain is to get the thing we want; another way is to stop wanting it, but that is not nearly as easy to do. Any desire results in this kind of "suffering" (dukkha, which is a very broad term encompassing everything from agitation to agony). But, of course, we desire enlightenment/awakening (bodhi), reality/an end to suffering (nirvana), liberation (moksha), and so on. We want the bliss of the meditative absorptions. We want magical powers (iddhi, abhinna). We want wisdom (prajna, panna), happiness (sukha). We want to meditate and so on. We desire purification (visuddhi). We want deliverance (vimokkha). These kinds of desires are desires -- and they will result in distress as soon as they arise -- but they are not called craving (tanha) to distinguish them from commonplace sensual desires. These are called by other terms -- resolve, determination, zeal, intention, or will. The term used is chanda.
Chanda: intention, desire, will. 1. As an ethically neutral psychological term, in the sense of "intention," it is a general mental factor (cetasika, q.v. Tab. II) taught in the Abhidhamma, the Dharma in Ultimate Terms, the moral quality of which is determined by the character of the volition (cetanā) associated with it. The Commentary explains chanda as "a wish to do" (kattu-kamyatā-chanda). If intensified, it acts also as a "predominance condition" (see paccaya 3). 2. As an unwholesome quality, it has the meaning of "desire" and is frequently coupled with terms for "sensuality," "greed," etc., for instance: kāma-cchanda, "sensual desire," one of the Five Hindrances (see nīvarana); chanda-rāga, "lustful desire" (see kāma). Chanda is one of the four wrong paths (see agati). 3. As a wholesome quality, it is a righteous will or zeal (dhamma-chanda) and occurs, e.g. in the formula of the Four Right Efforts (see padhāna): "The meditator rouses will (chandam janeti)...." If intensified, it is one of the Four Roads to Power (see iddhippada). (Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines).
So in that sense "greed" (chanda) is good, but it's terrible and misleading to say so because it is a matter of semantics. "Greed" is always bad as we understand the word in English, but "will" is not necessarily bad in the larger sense while still being bad (if we define "bad" as "whatever leads to suffering"). An apparent paradox arises that good things can lead to suffering, and the resolution is this: Some things lead to suffering now and much happiness later, so they are "good." Some things lead to a little respite from suffering now and much suffering later, so they are bad. For example, striving in meditation can hurt, be boring, be frustrating, be painful, can seem fruitless, and so on, but when successful we will be glad we went through all that for what it yielded. Taking a break and enjoying sensual pleasures can seem a harmless pastime, something we deserve for working so hard, but our never ending addiction to them, the danger inherent in them, the fact that they can never by their nature bring us to satisfaction, fulfillment, satiation but always instead demand more and more, greater and greater diversity (papanca, proliferation), urge us on in samsara, the endless wandering in search of satisfaction, and this is the antithesis of nirvana (release, the highest happiness, the end of all suffering, ultimate reality.
Tate McRae on "Greedy," SNL, and why trying to write a TikTok hit is "the death of art"
I could be bigger than Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Doja Cat, Nikki Minaj, and all the biznathces.
.
(Q with Tom Power) Dec. 8, 2023: Tate McRae’s wildest dreams are coming true. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter from Calgary, Canada, recently performed her viral hit "Greedy" at the Billboard Music Awards as well as on Saturday Night Live, and she's just released her sophomore album, Think Later.
Who wrote it? My alter ego Tatiana
She joins Q's Tom Power to talk about this pivotal time in her career, why she never wants to write a song with the intention of it being a success on TikTok, and why "Greedy" initially terrified her.
00:00 - Intro
01:05 - Saturday Night Live
09:02 - Greedy
12:46 - Making music in the TikTok era
17:42 - Writing a song in under 2 hours
21:12 - Grave
ABOUT: Q with Tom Power is a daily conversation with the artists, writers, actors, and musicians who define this cultural moment in time. The conversation is informal, wide-ranging, playful, and allows artists to explore their art and the contexts that have shaped them through their career. Visit cbc.ca/Q for more. Follow on Instagram: cbcq or Twitter: qwithtompower or Facebook: qwithtompower. Follow and subscribe to podcast (link.chtbl.com/JIWpRCGR).
What's karma got to do with it?
Is Taylor Swift the happiest?
WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF FAME (influence), riches, beauty, talent, longevity, and a pleasurable rebirth? The historical Buddha (Shakyamuni) answered in general and in specific. The cause is karma (deeds, actions, intentionally motivated acts, that which is performed and stored up in a moral dimension with the power to subsequently bear fruit). For each of these six things, which are wished for and desired by the majority of human beings and devas ("shining ones," light beings of different classes), the Buddha gave a specific kind of action that was performed and stored up in the past to ripen fortuitously when it gets the opportunity, because the strange thing about karma is that it ripens exponentially, over and over again.
"Karma: It's everywhere you're going to be."
If we would be happy enjoying the results of good karma (given our heavy load of bad karma) all the time, as we wish to, we might take one piece of advice:
When there is salt dissolved into our water, making it bitter and hard to bear or hold down for drinking, what are we to do? Take salt out? Not likely. But we could add more water to dilute that salt. We could perform so many skillful deeds (kusala karma), so much merit (punya), that it washes out the unskillful, unwholesome (akusala karma) ones, leaving us with much pleasant water to enjoy.
I'm the happiest person in the world and the least sad, yes? No! Why didn't fame work!?
Let us look at the case of young, healthy, sexy Tate McRae, skyrocketing to fame with a knack for composing hit songs. She's got it all: youth, beauty, talent, fame, riches, and an enviable future. Well, not happiness. Paradoxically, happiness comes from something other than just getting what we want. Yes, we want things, and getting them makes us happy in the getting, but we do not arrive at happiness by them. We try. We look up to stars, like singers and actors, thinking they MUST be happy because they've gotten the things we still want. But, look. They're not happy. They're still craving away, yearning, wishing, hoping, striving...craving. They're miserable, happier than us perhaps, but miserable and soon addicted to drugs and attention. What we wouldn't give for all that.
It's the same voice: Tate's influence on Melanie Martinez ("Void")
(LatinHype) June 15, 2023: Melanie Martinez may be an insecure nut hiding behind an alter ego from a neighboring dimension of shapeshifting gnomes, elves, sidhe, devis, kumbhandas, pixies, fairies, or yakkhas, but her catchy song "VOID" really broke through and caught on. Descargar: Apoyo Melanie Martinez: littlebodybigheart/melanielbbhmelaniemartinezmusic.com#MelanieMartinez#Void#Lyrics
TRIGGER WARNING: Not everyone reacts well to offensive jokes even when meant in jest; they still promote old stereotypes, whether they are accurate or not. See how Family Guy on Blacks.
Jew reacts to *offensive" Family Guy jokes
(Jewboi) What if a Jewish person were to notice and infer offense from certain Family Guy cutaway clips, gags, and Jewish stereotype jokes prevalent in American culture, while have a loud, loud voice, overcompensating and saying how much he was not offended? Let's find out.
Don't click please (bit.ly/3D6M7rJ), Instagram: notjewboi, Discord: discord,
Twitter: notjewboi, made this because Jewish Family Guy is entertaining. Transcript
(follow along using the YouTube transcript). Jewboi
National Israel is NOT God's people (Philippians 3:3)
(Berean Bible Church) Streamed live on Oct. 22, 2023: Do we have a duty to support National Israel? NO! Is biblical prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes? Should Christians side with Israel no matter what they do, what crimes they commit, what people they torment and kill?
Join LIVE Sunday morning at 11:00 am Eastern for streamed message and engage with other viewers as well as ask questions live. Find on Livestream at https://new.livestream.com/accounts/1.... Smart TV with Roku or similar device, download the Livestream app and watch on TV. Subscribe through Livestream to keep up to date on future streams. Visit on: Facebook: bereanbiblechurch, Twitter: bereanlive, Web: http://www.bereanbiblechurch.org, Livestream: https://new.livestream.com/accounts/1...
Are the Jews in Israel not real Jews? - The Rothschilds and Khazars
(Rise On Fire Ministries) Oct. 20, 2023: The war by and for Israel has sparked big questions:
1. Did the Rothschilds banking family create the modern "State of Israel," a move of man instead of a prophetic move of God?
2. Who is living in Israel today? Are the [Ashkenazi, Ukrainian, Eastern European Levites] Jews in Israel not real [pre-diaspora] Jews? Some say they are the "Khazars'" instead.
Should Christians be supportive of these phony Jewish convert people?
Join PD in this in-depth study of the origin and validity of these theories, to get to the truth of the matter.
Video captures 'flash mob' of burglars swarming Nordstrom in Southern California mall
(KTLA 5) Aug. 12, 2023: Video captured a mob of thieves swarming a Nordstrom for high end bags in Canoga Park as they cleared out the store during a destructive robbery on Saturday.
Chaos ensued as a large group of masked and hooded thieves clad in dark clothing scrambled around the store, grabbing armfuls of designer clothing, purses, accessories, and more.
Los Angeles police (LAPD) received reports of the mass robbery at the Westfield Topanga Mall around 4:00 pm.
Police said anywhere between 20-50 suspects are believed to be involved and estimated around $60,000 to $100,000 worth of merchandise was taken.
KTLA's Jennifer McGraw reports on August 12, 2023.
Details: ktla.com/news/local-news/vide...
KTLA 5 News, keeping Southern Californians informed since 1947.
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
