Cundī (Sanskrit, Chinese 準提, Pinyin Zhǔntí, Japanese Juntei, Tibetan ལྷ་མོ་སྐུལ་བྱེད་མ།, Wylie lha mo skul byed ma, THL lha-mo kül-jé-ma) or Cundā (Chinese 羅馬化) is a female Indian Buddhist deity who remains popular in East Asian Buddhism.
In Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, she is associated with the practice of the well-known Cundī dharani, which is performed along with a specific mudra (hand gesture), as well as the use of a circular mirror [1, 2].
She is considered to be able to purify negative karma, provide protection, support spiritual practice that allows one to quickly attain Buddhahood [3].
This deity is also called by various other names and epithets, including:
Some depictions of Cundī share many iconographic and symbolic elements with another female Buddhist deity, PrajñāpāramitāDevi [Buddhism's Sophia, the anthropomorphic representation of the "Perfection of Wisdom" as a female deva].
As such, some images of these goddesses are difficult to identify [4, 5]. In Tibetan Buddhism she is known by the name Lhamo Cunda, Chunde, or Cundi ("Lhamo" in Tibetan is devi in Sanskrit, a term of veneration meaning "goddess") [6, 7]. More
(Buddha's Wisdom) Transgendering the deva (shining one, god) Avalokiteshvara "who hears the cries of the world" into the Chinese devi (goddess) of compassion Kwan Yin (Guanyin Bodhisattva)
(Asangoham) Discover evidence that Christianity erased a Goddess from its origins. What if everything we think we know about biblical monotheism is incomplete?
Recent discoveries have shattered our understanding of ancient Israelite religion, revealing that Yahweh [Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge in Gnosticism] -- the God of the Bible -- was once worshipped alongside a divine feminine consort [his wife] named Asherah for nearly 600 years.
In 1975, archeologists discovered pottery inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai Peninsula that shouldn't exist according to traditional biblical history.
Written in ancient Hebrew and dating to the 8th century BCE, the inscriptions read: "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah." His Asherah. That possessive pronoun changed everything.
Additional discoveries at Khirbet el-Qom confirmed what biblical editors had tried to erase: Israel's God had a wife, and she was worshipped in Solomon's Temple itself until King Josiah violently purged her cult around 622 BCE.
But Asherah's erasure was only the beginning. This documentary explores how the divine feminine was systematically removed from Christianity across seven critical chapters:
Chapter 1: The Vanished Feminine
The Divine Feminine (Holy Goddesses)
Before Christianity, the Mediterranean ["Middle Earth" aka "Center of World"] world overflowed with goddess worship:
Isis in Egypt,
Ishtar in Mesopotamia,
Artemis in Ephesus,
Cybele in Rome.
Then something changed. As Christianity spread, the Goddess disappeared from official theology, her temples destroyed [Asherah poles chopped down], her images smashed, her names forbidden.
Chapter 2: Asherah and the Forgotten Consort of Yahweh
The Queen of Heaven before Mary
Archeological evidence from ancient Israel reveals the explosive truth: Yahweh's divine consort was worshipped for centuries before reformers violently erased her.
The Bible itself preserves evidence of her destruction. We can examine pottery shards, temple artifacts, and biblical texts to prove that monotheism wasn't always so mono. [In fact, it is clear the whole area and the Jews in particular were polytheists.]
The divine feminine refused to stay buried. She resurfaces in the Hebrew Bible as Hokmah (Wisdom), speaking as God's first creation and master craftsman. In Gnostic Christianity, Sophia becomes central to cosmic drama.
The Nag Hammadi texts discovered in 1945 show early Christian communities who understood Christ's mission as fundamentally connected to the restoration of the divine feminine.
Holiest disciple: Mary Magdalene?
Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom
Buddhist Prajnaparamita
The Thunder, Perfect Mind presents a feminine divine voice declaring: "I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one." #Christianity #Sophia#MaryMagdalene
Script: Sid. Edit: Felix Sutanto. Voiceover: Rohit Dave. Original score: @asangvani
Father Sky, Mother Earth?
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An amazing Buddhist spectacle unfolded at the World Peace Gathering in a fancy hotel across from Disneyland in downtown Anaheim on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025. From 4:00 to 9:00 pm floors of the Anaheim Convention Center were transformed into a kind of Mahayana Buddhist Pure Land, with 300 monastics from all traditions and countries in the Southland and 1,700 or so lay participants.
We filed into a color filled hall in the diagonal, our bodies forming a mandala (sacred geometrical pattern in the Mahayana/Vedic Hindu sense) for a kind of Catholic-style repentance ceremony, inviting peace and countless light beings (devas, brahmas, bodhisattvas, mahasattvas, and buddhas).
No photography or video footage was allowed by participants, though there were official cameras on the perimeter and some people couldn't help but pull out their cellphones for a quick snap or two. However, here is old footage of this event from 2013 and 2018 before it evolved into the spectacle we experienced for Earth Day 2025.
World Peace Gathering 2013: Mandala Ceremony (2 of 4)
(CompaSS) Jan. 6, 2014: This Mandala Ceremony was held on Dec. 22nd, 2013, at the Long Beach Convention Center during Compassionate Service Society's 5th Annual World Peace Gathering. Approximately 1,500 people attended this mandala.
What happened in 2025?
Wisdom Quarterly 2025
It started off as a normal convention of Buddhists at a convention center in OC. But it became profound with Vedic/Brahminical magic -- mantras and mudras, intentions and emotions. It made an impression.
First, everything was color coded. There are Sanskrit letter, bija mantras or "seed sounds" we were uttering once in formation. When 1,700 get in a room with 300 monastics, whatever happens is bound to be special.
There is the Soka Gakkai Buddhist cult, and they have that chant for material manifestation that may encourage greed in the name of "spirituality." One could understand how nice it might be to chant a repetitive set of meaningful sounds one doesn't know the meaning of. Somethings are only meant to be vibrational utterances, not sensible concepts. But there were translations, too. It was not mindless.
One would have wished to be videotaping the goings on so the outside world could see it. Once, at the Lu Mountain Chan Monastery in Rosemead, San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, California, there was the ordinary sermon by Chan Master, as he had us call him. Then a short meditation. Then a great vegan meal of homemade Vietnamese delicacies by elderly expert cooks in the temple kitchen. Then socializing and talking, people hanging around and eventually dispersing.
Wanting to get some real meditation in, something silent and unguided, free of visualizations and interruptions, I went into the empty meditation hall and took a seat. To my surprise, people came back in dressed in robes, the same people from the morning sit. But there was no special occasion announced.
They began to chant and do hand movements (mudras) with a secret book they had, turning the pages. It went on and on. I remained still and silent, going unnoticed. That was their mistake, which they tried to play off when I began to ask questions afterward. I had seen the secret ceremony, the ritual Hindu-influenced Mahayana practices that really aided their Chan ("Zen") and samadhi, surrounded by countless alleged sariras (sacred relic beads and crematory remains). This was like that, and it may go on in every Vietnamese Zen temple in the county. The OC is full of them, particularly in the small city of Westminster.
I picked up a color diagram explaining the five elemental colors (white at the perimeter, yellow, blue, red, green, and white at the center). There is a siddham or character that looks like a four (4) in Japanese/Chinese script interpreting Sanskrit. A Vietnamese speaker is needed to decipher the explanation: Quan he giua pham tru ca the va tap the khi tu tap phap Lien Hoa Thu Nhan va Mandala Lien Hoa, which may not make sense without the diacritical marks.
The magic spells (mantras)
A color booklet with pictures of lotuses titled So tay Lien Hoa Bo Tat ("Lotus Bodhisattva Handbook"), Ban Cap Nhat 2025, on the cover also came to hand.
(MorgueOfficial)
Started streaming March 10, 2025 (during Women's History Month) Dawn of the New Earth (The Neogenian Dawn). Ancient texts speak of a mysterious, powerful figure — a female Messiah — whose wisdom was hidden, suppressed, and nearly lost. Was she the true Christ (Kristos, "Annointed One," drugged with entheogens or venoms in the mystery school, according to Dr. Ammon Hillman)?
The Gospel of Mary, attributed to Mary Magdalene, offers a unique perspective on salvation through self-knowledge and inner exploration. Contrary to traditional Christian teachings, this ancient text challenges the concept of sin, framing it as an illusion tied to the physical body. It reveals a vision of spiritual authority where wisdom is accessible beyond institutional limits. Rooted in Gnosticism, this work highlights the diverse landscape of early Christianity, advocating for a personal connection with the divine.
Is there a Buddhist Messiah? Is it Maitreya?
I'd better flatter women so that they'll know they're loved (statustown.com)
Who will it be, who will rescue the humans and gods (devas) from the blights of greed, hatred, and delusion? The world sleeps under the pall of delusion, and it is high time we awaken. But we can't rouse ourselves. Someone arrives to help. This special being was predicted long ago and named "Friend" or maitri. ThisMaitreya or Metteyya may be the origin of the Western world's "Messiah"). Might it be a woman? Ancient tradition seems to have been altered to exclude women in a worldwide sexist push that erased much of their contributions, leaving half the population as a sidenote. Indeed, there have been powerful women.
In Buddhist lore there is the great Prajna Paramita, a goddess personification of the "Perfection of Wisdom" and the Goddess of Compassion Kuan Yin, a Mother Mary figure for the worldwide Mahayana tradition, which accounts for 90 per cent of Buddhists today. In the past, in Early Buddhism, there was great recognition of the female enlightened ones:
Now the Teachings have been construed to say no in Theravada and Vajrayana traditions, but Mahayana holds out that there are many powerful female deities, the Taras, the dakinis,protectors (lokapala) and wrathful guardian spirits, and though no "Cosmic Buddha" like Amitabha or Vairocana are ever depicted as female, the caveat is always that a being determining to become a supremely awakened (samma-sam) buddha will transform into a male before achieving that ambition.
So many females and males take bodhisattva vows with the stated goal of delaying their own liberation (nirvana) to save all other sentient beings, as messiahs are won't to do. It may be a useful mindset if not an achievable goal.
But as the Dalai Lama once joked, "Any woman can become a buddha...so long as she becomes a man first." Why he thought this was funny, that we may never know. (Endemic sexism and androcentrism in an all-boys monastic club in the imperial Potala Palace?)
Nevertheless, none of us are really male or female but have the potential to express the best qualities of both. In the derivative Catholic/Christian faith, there may still be hope or recovering the Mother Goddess (Queen of HeavenAsherah, God’s Forgotten Wife, or Miriam, the Son-God's mother, a restored and reappointed Eve or Mary Magdalene. We can all see how openminded the God of those Abrahamic traditions is, so amenable to being talked into things like the divine rapport emphasized in Judaism, but we won't be holding our breath).
In this book the author describes "Ancestors’ Ceremonies" as practiced in the Taiwanese Catholic Church. The author’s point is to demonstrate how the Chinese symbolic universe made a deep translation of the "new" symbolic system represented by Catholic doctrine. At the same time the effort of the Catholic Church in order to adapt the Gospels’ message to the local situation built up a particular phenomenon that the author defined as cultural dialogue. It is this dialogic relationship the process that the author defines as Culture.
...[The] most usual and popular representation of this Goddess is a beautiful and gracious woman, who holds a child in her arms [Maya and Siddhartha rather than Mary and Jesus] and wears a rosary [mala] around her neck. This iconography has been reused in order to paint the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary at a point where it is hard sometimes to distinguish between the two figures (Figures 3a and 3b).
My point is not that Catholic people consider the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Christian reference of Guanyin [Kwan Yin, the Mahayana Buddhist "Goddess of Compassion"], but I want to stress that, when honoring the "new" supernatural figure, Taiwanese Catholics still maintain the forms they learned through their involvement in popular religious practices from an early age, which are linked to the cultural system they inhabit. God Jesus and the Ancestors: An Ethnography of the Ancestors’ Rites in the Taiwanese Catholic Church
The priest recommended a sexy movie, The Substance, for its lesson on beauty, ashes, and dust.
Improving Catholic Jesus, nicer and whiter
Vibhuti is valuable. It must be. People will go to great lengths to get it, even if it's just a smudge or cross over the third eye. How does one turn common ash into a sacred object of veneration? Bless it.
It was a rainy Ash Wednesday in the City of Lost Angels. But we went on an adventure anyway. (No one walks in LA, and during the rain, no one remembers how to drive). The rain ruined it the big open house event at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center (MD, "Mother of Suffering" Catholic monastery situated next to burnt out Altadena high atop the idyllic town of Sierra Madre, Los Angeles).
The male gaze and absurd beauty standards
MD changed its whole schedule: No mass at 8:00 am or 6:00 pm as promised, and the "open house" (the first time the popular retreat center nestled in the green foothills after the Eaton Fire, which is right next door and partly burned the place, making it susceptible to mudslides and flooding. The volunteers did not have much information, even on the current condition of the pope. One would think they would be on top of it, but the pope seems not nearly as important as when the pope was John Paul.
I'm so pretty, and I'm getting ready for church.
The day was nothing, no tour, but one could walk down a hall to visit the "Stations of the Cross" by looking at very dark pictures of the great Roman Crucifixion of a troublemaker called "Christ."
He suffered for his sins against the state, but having no sins his suffering has been transferred to cover the Passionists who populate the place, Catholics in specific, and everyone in general. That means us, confirmed "sinners." And you better feel bad about it or else.
The glories of the Holy Roman Empire today
Joe Rogan and British comedian Jimmy Carr
Abstain from MEAT EATING for Lent or life or at least on Fridays, like Jesus wants (Christspiracy)
LA is a paradise from the air (Echo Park Lake)
The center has such a nice main building full of meditation rooms with their own showers. It's almost haunted in its kind of sterile monasticism with lots of Carmelite brown and old-style hotel. One is reminded of Self Realization Fellowship's Mother Center on top of Mt. Washington in neighboring Mt. Washington, overlooking the LA skyline. Now that's a place to visit, all syncretic Hindu-Christian, where Paramhansa Yogananda slept. One can visit his room with its tiny bed once a year on his birthday.
But this place, a kind multiroom mansion is dreary with devotion, austere penitence (tapas), and a priest from India who knows nothing about Jesus' time in India or all of the scholarship behind that century-old discovery.
See Nicolas Notovitch, Holger Kersten, Swami Abedananda, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the BBC, and others: Unknown years of Jesus
There's a written record of where Jesus was?
Holy cow. It has a nice gift shop and lots of things to sell. There were ashes for the asking, but very little else. It used to be that to get a communion wafer and wine (gluten cracker and grape juice) from a communal cup with saliva wiped off by a handkerchief, one had to have gone to confession or gotten right with the Priest/Lord/Church Official, or Holy Ghosts.
But not for this token? Anyone could go up and be smudged (not in the good way using Indigenous sage or Salvia apiana, but rather here using the burnt offerings of palms that were prayed over).
Two priests, one from India the other from the Philippines, did not inspire us -- noncommittal, inoffensive, diffident, and reticent with little to no knowledge of anything about Jesus in India or anything else that is not Chruch-approved and Vatican-sanctioned. That's the way to stay out of trouble, one could suppose. But how is it that a priest of this religion, so emphasizing the Stations of the Cross, doesn't seem to know about the face of the lord (God's son or devaputra) appearing on a cloth used to wipe his bleeding facade during his ordeal or "passion"? That cloth should be at least as famous as the Shroud of Turin and Jesus' tunic. There's a whole station about it, and in the middle of this month the holy relic goes on tour through Southern California from wherever it's kept the rest of the time (under lock and key in a temperature-controlled vault somewhere in Europe.
Jesus Christ lived in India?
Who had ever heard of such a thing? Jesus' face on another cloth and no one has anything to say? If it's coming on tour in the neighboring cities, but the Indian priest didn't know? He did know of a mysterious relic in his hometown in India. There a wax figure of Jesus under glass grows a beard not made of hair but of some fibrous substance. Another miracle yet this very same priest had never heard of the Christian saint's blood in a vile that has remained liquid for centuries. It was almost a shame to tell him about it, or anything else, because he didn't believe it. Did the Church say so? seemed to be his whole position on everything. What kind of kissing up is that, following a religion and never questioning it? The smart kind, the kind that keeps one in good graces with the higher ups, the "let's not upset things and get me in any kind of trouble or scandal"? What is he up to that he would so fear any potentially unflattering attention or appearance of impropriety in believing or admitting to knowing about anything unorthodox?
Let's get out of this place, exquisite grounds without a sense of holiness
The Church knew where I had been and deleted it.
From there we left, driving in the rain to find a better mass, something of a more popular nature. Every Catholic church in the country celebrates it. They are standardized and not allowed to deviate.
We found a giant ash mass at St. Andrew's Catholic Church (Pasadena, California), the one with the clock tower visible from the 134 Freeway, where it splits from the 210. It has some of the most beautiful Roman Italian (and life-like brown skinned mural art) and alabaster white statuary with giant imported marble columns and a big picture of the "God" right up front looking down, with impossibly high ceilings, which may be 100 or more feet up.
St. Andrew's Church campanile
There was a big crowd of penitents, half of them Anglos, half of them Latinos, with a sprinkling of Asians, gathering even as it drizzled and threatened to rain. There was a Spanish service going on in the St. Andrew Catholic School hall with a purple draped cross, the cloth representing the figure usually found on it. The Spanish version seemed more spirited, as accords with Chicano gatherings, full of heart and warmth.
The priest said an amazing thing we'd never heard before. If it were a trope, they'd all be saying it and wed've heard it a million times. The sign of the cross has two motions. The first spells "I" top to bottom, and the second, which sweeps from side to side, cancels it out. It's self-abnegation for God (a tip of the hat to Buddhism's selflessness).
Sign of the cross in six steps: I and Not I.
It was odd sitting there watching the giant church fill up. Most Catholics only go to church or "mass" three times a year -- Easter, Ash Wednesday, and Xmas. It seems like enough. The words of the priest were odd to hear: words full of guilt, sin, pleading for forgiveness, as if it were a given that everyone had and was going to sin.
Apparently, we are all sinners, and we have to sin, and there's no way not to sin, so be sure to feel guilty about it, and come to church for indulgences to stay on His good side in case you die midweek. Just keep coming, and that'll keep you in His good graces? (Who thoughtlessly accepts such empty promises, or is it that having nothing else, because they were never allowed to investigate anything, there is no choice? Just accept it all or reject it all, and since we can't reject it all, we have no choice but to accept it all?)
The Substance
You are not your body. - What?! But I...
The multilingual priest conducting the mass gave a good sermon when he deviated from the standard text and told a story about watching the Oscars and being surprised to see The Substance getting attention. To hear this Father tell it, he saw the film or at least part of it. In one scene a woman (Demi Moore), fearing she's getting to look too old and is losing the interest of her husband, goes in for a beauty treatment. It will make her look 20 years younger with porcelain skin (think filter but in real life). She does, but it has a side effect of inflammation and looking worse before it gets better. So she takes a walk and dives into a Catholic church to sit in the back and just reflect as she waits for her new face. It happens to be Ash Wednesday, and the preacher is yelling, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," not singing a song by Bowie but quoting the Bible. She's shocked to realize that after all her efforts to beautify her body, it remains ashes and dust (though better preserved looking now and less rotty).
This religion seems to have been better in the past. Or was it always like this? How is the spell not broken, the stench of hypocrisy of child molesting priests not enough to wake people up that the Vatican runs too tight a ship, here to take in taxes (rebranding them as tithes) for this arm of the Holy Roman Empire?
The rules for Lent
LENTEN REGULATIONS: The Holy Season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. This year it falls on March 5th. During Lent, all Catholics engage in various penitential practices. Of those, the most important and obligatory are the regulations on fasting and penitence.
Abstinence from meat is to be observed by all Catholics 14 years old and older on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays of Lent. Abstinence means refraining from eating all meats including beef, poultry, pork, etc. [slaughtered cows, birds, pigs, and so on]. Seafood [dead fish] is permitted.
Fasting is to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday by all Catholics who are 18 years of age but not yet 60. Those who are bound by this may take only one full meal. [That's quite a fast.] Two smaller meals (that do not equal one full meal) are permitted. [Will it be enough, will people starve?]
The special Paschal fast and abstinence are obligatory [mandatory] for Good Friday and encouraged for Holy Saturday. By the threefold discipline of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer the Church keeps Lent from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday.
All the faithful and the catechumens should undertake serious practice of these three traditions. Failure to observe any penitential days at all or a substantial number of such days must be considered serious.
Abortion? What's so special about a tiny egg?
Taken verbatim from the St. Andrew Church Bulletin, Old Pasadena, March 2, 2025
Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center is excited to announce that it is fully reopening and invites the public to a special homecoming event on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 2:00–5:00 PM. No reservations needed. Come get ashes, pray the Stations of the Cross, and take a guided tour of the grounds [cancelled due to rain but moved indoors for a self-guided review of some pictures]. Development Director Melanie Goodyear at MGoodyear@MaterDolorosa.org and (626) 355-7188 x 103.
Team Recovering Catholics (accompanied by a real diehard old timey Catholic to ask questions), Wisdom Quarterly, March 5, 2025
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