Lake's 'Buddhist Nuns of Lotus Abbey'

More sacred than Lake Titicaca in the Americas is the biggest lake in all of Tibet and China

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(TRACKS - Travel Documentaries) Explore the mysterious island at the heart of Tibet/China’s largest lake (Qinghai Lake), where very few outsiders have ever been before. Here (at the Holy Mountain at the Heart of the Lake Island, home of Jetsun Tara_(Buddhism), "Mother of all the Buddhas"), the Buddhist nuns of the convent Lotus Abbey reside, devoting their life to meditation -- far from the outside world. Taken from the series "Lakes on the Roof of the World."

• Lake Rakshastal: Yeti (Ogre) Salt Lake
• TRACKS, Jan. 10, 2018; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Come to Mt. Everest base camp from LA

Meetup.com EverestDreams.com (EverestDreams EBC Trek E); Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Los Angeles-Everest Base Camp Trek 2024: Customer knowledge session

DETAILS: We are hosting a FREE customer knowledge sharing session on a trip to the Everest Base Camp for the 2024 season.

Ever want to make it to the top? It starts with this trek to the camp at the base of the world's largest mountain (which some books say is really K2 in Pakistan).

Tour itinerary and day breakup, physical fitness, preparation, food and medical preparation, packaging, cost and budgeting, culture orientation -- we'll cover it all.

• Visit: EverestDreams.com
• Google Meet: meet.google.com/puc-sqgv-cqq
• Meetup: Los Angeles-Everest Base Camp Trek 2024 - ONLINE customer knowledge session, Sun, Jan. 21, 2024, 2:15 PM

Mountaineer loses Guinness world record

Will Taylor (@WillTaylor_news) LBC, 9/26/23; CC Liu, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

This is Bull Scheiße!

Legendary mountain climber stripped of Guinness World Records after map enthusiast claims he stopped 5 meters short of real summit. Westerner Reinhold Messner has been stripped of his Guinness World Records.

The famed mountaineer who believed he had scaled the 14 highest peaks on the planet is furious after he was stripped of his Guinness World Records when a map enthusiast said he stopped five meters short of the true summit on one of those climbs, namely, Annapurna.

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  Annapurna mountain, Nepal (Alamy)

  [However, Buddhist Sherpa guides and porters did make it to the top of the highest mountains and have been doing so for a long time without the glory. Without them, no Westerner would be making it to the top of Mt. Everest, Annapurna, or K-2, allegedly the highest summit in the world, even taller than Everest.]

Reinhold Messner mad at Guinness Book folks

Reinhold Messner was recognized as having been the first man to climb the world's 8,000-meter summits. But Eberhard Jurgalski, after using German space agency imagery, has said he fell just short of reaching the actual peak of Annapurna in the Himalayas when he climbed it in 1985.

After a decade of work, Jurgalski believes he stopped five meters away, and that mountaineers failed to properly complete the summits on three different peaks. More

High above Los Angeles: Forgotten Highway

It's smoggy because Los Angeles is a basin.

May gray has given way to June gloom in the City of Lost Angels. It's been a stint of Seattle/London weather, misty, foggy, drizzly, and a bit on the cool side. The mushrooms must love it, the tourists not so much. SoCal is famous for its sun, sand, and suffering. But the sun has become undependable. Recently, the massive snows have left the hills with more moisture than usual. Most of that has melted away. But there's a giant forest behind the smoggy County of LA, as most maps show. All that green space is mostly chaparral covered mountains with rocky soil only the dwindling population of bighorn sheep and rugged hikers love. When one gets to the top of the highway, there's a gate that never opens. What's behind it? Let's find out.

Exploring California's Highway 39, closed for over 40 years

(Sidetrack Adventures) May 31, 2023. California State Route 39 heads into the mountains of the Angeles National Forest above the megalopolis of Los Angeles, north of the little City of Azusa. It has been called California's "Forbidden Highway" or "Forgotten Highway."

The last four and a half miles of it have been closed since 1978, preventing it from connecting with State Route 2. Because of the closure and dead end, the road sees very little traffic, despite being only miles from the second largest city in the United States.

This video shows a drive up the forest highway through the Angeles National Forest, which is the same road used in the Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Let's check out what there is to see along the way.

Then let's explore the section of road that has been closed for over 40 years, a road that was once considered one of the most scenic in California.

For another look at Highway 39, check out this video on the road by Roaming Benji: • California's Forg... ○ Gear used: amazon.com/shop/sidetrack... ► Subscribe for weekly updates showcasing some  adventures: @sidetrackadventures

Lamp vs. Laser: Brain enhancements of CIA

Lamp vs. Laser: Brain enhancement techniques listed in a CIA document

(Video Advice, May 12, 2022) The report entitled "Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process" was penned in 1983 by U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M. McDonnell.

McDonnell described the Gateway Experience as "a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus, and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space."

In simpler terms, the Gateway Experience uses sound to manipulate brainwaves with the goal of creating an altered state of consciousness in which a person can interact with nonphysical aspects of reality.

"Practical uses of the technique, according to the CIA report, include manifesting goals, converting energy to heal one's body, and even traveling across space and time to access new information."

• CIA loves to kill: Zawahiri appeared on his balcony. The CIA was watching — and ready to kill him (msn.com)

👉🏼For more info on this topic, visit The Monroe Institute website: monroeinstitute.org

• 0:00 Approved for Release 2003/09/10
• 1:11 1. Introduction
• 2:01 5. Gateway and Hemi-Sync
• 4:03 Sample of the Hemi-Sync Tape
• 4:41 6. Lamp vs. Laser
• 6:28 7. Frequency Following Response (FFR)
• 9:01 8. Role of Resonance
• 11:11 9. Brain Stimulation
• 13:47 10. Energy Entrainment

Footage: Videoblocks and Artgrid Music: Epidemic Sound and Audiojungle Voice over by Video Advice References used under Fair Use Law

📩 For any concerns or business inquiries, please contact us at: videoadvice@yahoo.ro

✅ AUDIO PROGRAMS: bit.ly/3w7mRjt

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: There are a few links in this description that, at no cost to viewers, will earn a commission if clicked and purchased. Don’t worry. Video Advice only recommends products it knows and trusts.

"Peak oil" lie: gas market crashes (video)

Mike Maloney; Dylan Ratigan; Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Dylan Ratigan explains the fall of oil and collapse of the US economy.

 
Oil Armageddon: What will it mean?

Mike Maloney has a best-selling book (free at pages.goldsilver.com/freebook). Today, the world changed. In this special report he explains what "Oil Armageddon" means for the world, country, family, and your future. Buckle up. And thank you for sharing this video far and wide. Free newsletter? Go to goldsilver.com.

What is peak oil?

"Peak oil" is the theorized point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of toxic petroleum is reached, after which it is expected to enter terminal decline.

As of 2020, peak oil forecasts range from the early 2020s to the 2040s, depending on economics and how governments respond to global warming alarmism. It is often confused with oil depletion.

However, whereas depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply, PEAK OIL refers to the point of maximum production.

The concept of peak oil is often credited to geologist M. King Hubbert, whose 1956 paper first presented a formal theory. Peak oil occurs when the cost of oil extraction exceeds the price consumers will pay.

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  What's it called when, after the lie of scarcity is revealed, oil production outpaces consumer demand, consumption, or even ability to store the stuff out of the ground? Let's leave it in the ground. Of course, it's not our choice, is it? Corporations rule the world.

Most early analyses concentrated on increasing costs of extraction and assumed that demand would drive costs higher. More recent analyses concentrate on drop in demand as alternatives to oil become more attractive. More

Climbing Mt. Baldy in snowy L.A. (video)

Cris Hazzard (hikingguy.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, S. Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What it's like when the summit looks like the pate of a bald eagle (hikingguy.com).

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Mt. Baldy Zen Center zendo (LinSu/flickr)

Los Angeles' highest point, "Mt. Baldy," is actually named Mount San Antonio. It's a popular alpine hike up using the Devil's Backbone from Manker Flats.

• [AMATEUR TIP: take the gondola/ski lift all the way up the mountain.]

Roshi leads monastics through Mt. Baldy snow.

This 11 mile hike to Mt. Baldy brings one to the highest point in Los Angeles. at 10,064 feet [and to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center]. With almost 4,000 feet of climbing, it’s a tough yet popular hike and well worth the effort. You can see from the Pacific Ocean to the Mojave Desert on a clear day. There are a few ways to hike Mt Baldy, and this is the most popular route.

Leonard Cohen meditates, Mt. Baldy Zen Center

Do the Mt. Baldy hike as early in the morning as possible to avoid crowds. It’s one of the most popular hikes in L.A. Leave at sunrise. The later one leaves, the tougher it is to park at Manker Flats. Do the hike on a weekday for less crowding. If you’re starting later in the day, don’t forget to note the sunset time. Getting caught on the trail after dark is a recipe for bad times or mindfulness of death.

Is there snow on Mt. Baldy trail?

Nature lovers will enjoy convenience of the mechanical chair up Thunder Mountain (ETG).

What it's like at the top of L.A., a county with a big northern forest (hikingguy.com)

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Yes, it really does snow on Mt. Baldy (FD).

There’s no official way to know if there’s snow at the summit of Mt. Baldy. Sometimes you can see it all over the mountain. There are some roundabout ways to find out. In the summer months, say late May to October, the chances are it’s clear.

When I want to check for snow and bad conditions, I do a couple of things. First, I check the ski report for Mt. Baldy Notch. If there’s snow here, there’s snow higher up. I also check out some webcams that show Mt. Baldy in the distance.

Most of the year, it's hot and dry and rugged.

Then I check the Mt. Baldy summit weather. These forecasts are a favorite because you can see the high and low temperatures and winds.

If there are high winds or very low temperatures at the summit, conditions are not great to hike. [Take the chair.]

I did it, and you can, too! (hikingguy.com)

Here are tips on checking for snow on the trail. If there’s snow or bad weather, hike Mt. Baldy on another day. People have died on these trails in bad and wintery weather. Again – hikers die every winter on Mt. Baldy. It’s real, so take it seriously, and wait until summer if you don’t have mountaineering experience. More

L.A. a BASIN with a Mediterranean climate, not a desert, with snowy Mt. Baldy behind it.

Avicii, EDM star DJ, DEAD at 28 (video)

Dev, Crystal Quintero, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Avicii Mexico, doc, April 2, 2018

Coachella sighs. Avicii, top electronic dance music artist, found dead at 28 One of the world's biggest dance music stars has died today, his representatives say. Swedish rave sensation Avicii, electronic dance music DJ, found dead (usatoday.com). The Swedish EDM (electronic dance music) DJ Avicii, 28, died this afternoon in Oman, according to a statement from his representative. Avicii Dead: Musicians, Celebrities React (variety.com). Following news of the death of DJ Tim Bergling, a.k.a. Avicii [the name of worst place in Buddhist cosmology, the lowest and most miserable hell, "the waveless," which is what Bergling called his final release AVI CI], on Friday, celebrities expressed their condolences on social media.

Avicii dead: Swedish DJ and musician passes away aged 28 (independent.co.uk). The Swedish-born producer and DJ known as Avicii has been found dead in Oman. The musician -- born Tim Bergling -- was 28. Avicii's publicist Diana Baron confirmed the news in a statement that the DJ was in Muscat, Oman when he passed away. Avicii: Swedish DJ dead at 28 (cnn.com).

Tim Bergling, the Grammy-nominated Swedish DJ better known as Avicii, died Friday, his publicist confirmed to CNN. Avicii was in Muscat, Oman, according to a representative. Avicii, electronic dance music producer and DJ, is dead at 28 (nytimes.com) Tim Bergling, who worked with pop stars like Madonna and Coldplay under the stage name Avicii, was found dead in Muscat, Oman. What is Avicii's cause of death? Swedish DJ found dead (newsweek.com).

Why does anyone care? Avicii had hundreds of millions of views.

Sherpas to climb Mt. Everest after avalanches

Danielle Preiss (Weekend Edition Saturday, npr.org, 5-14-16); Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
David Sharp was at the center of the most controversial climbing season in Everest history.

Everest: view from Camp III at 24,000 feet on the mountain's Lhotse Face (Alan Arnette/AP)

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This week, nine Sherpas became the first to climb Mt. Everest [possibly the  highest peak in the world unless it's K2] since a deadly avalanche in 2014 and a massive earthquake last year. For economic reasons, the guides hope more climbers will return to the slopes.

• AUDIO: LISTEN - download

The real tallest mountain is?
(BBC Earth Unplugged) Maddie Moate investigates: Is Mt. Everest really the tallest? Many other mountains like K2 have been living in the shadow of Everest and deserve recognition.

• How can anyone think K2 is higher than Everest?

High on Everest, climbers clash with Sherpas

(April 29, 2013) An argument between three climbers and Sherpa guides on Mt. Everest devolved into a fistfight on the mountain, close to Camp III, at 24,500 feet. The Nepali Times calls it "the highest brawl in world history" as well as evidence of a culture clash.

Mount Everest is constantly shrouded by clouds and beset by storms (/npr.org)

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Government will try to persuade Sherpas to stay on Mt. Everest  Some guides have reportedly packed up to leave. Shaken by the deaths in 2014 of 16 Sherpas, many do not want to climb this year. Negotiators are headed to Mt. Everest's base camp. More

 

On Mt. Everest, Sherpa guides bear brunt of danger

Sherpa with Buddhist prayer wand (npr.org)

Sherpa guides are 10 times more likely to die than commercial fishermen, the most dangerous, nonmilitary occupation in the U.S. But they're offered little financial protection by companies who charge Western climbers thousands of dollars for a single trip up the mountain. More

• Fear for Sherpas' future grows with each climbing tragedy Sherpas have a great reputation as the world's best climbers, so when something goes wrong up there, it affects the small Buddhist ethnic group and its communities around the world.
• Female Sherpa makes record climbs Few can say they've reached the summit of Mt. Everest. Even fewer can say they've done it twice. Only one woman can say she's done it twice in one month.

Revisiting doomed on quest for "The Summit"

NPR, October 6, 2013

Harder than Everest (Robbie Ryan/IFC Films)

The documentary tells the story of the August 2008 disaster on K2, the Earth's second-highest mountain, in which 11 climbers died. NPR's Rachel Martin spoke with the film's director, Nick Ryan, and Pemba Gyalje Sherpa, one of the climbers who made it off the mountain alive. More

Mt. Everest was originally measured at 29,000 feet (8,839m), but is now 29,029 (8,848m), whereas Denali (Alaska), which was previously known as Mt. McKinley, is 19,357 feet (5,900m), and Mauna Kea (Hawaii) is 6.3 miles (10,130m)...What about K2?

A Buddhist View of Romantic Love

Wisdom Quarterly; Leonard Price (Ven. Nyanasobhano), "Nothing Higher to Live For"

If it is possible to live with a purpose, What should that purpose be?

A purpose might be a guiding principle, a philosophy, or a value of sovereign importance that informs and directs our activities and thoughts. To have one is to live seriously -- though not necessarily wisely -- following some track, believing in a hub to the wheeling universe, or a sea toward which we flow, or an end before which all the hubbub of civilization subsides. 

 

What is our purpose, or what should it be?

Perhaps most of us do not come to a clear conclusion on the matter. But this does not mean we have no purpose, only that we do not recognize it, or admit it, or even choose it for ourselves.

In the unhappiest case, nature simply takes its course, which is a turbid meandering through the swamps of desire. 

If life means nothing then only pleasure is worthwhile. Or if life has meaning and we cannot get at it then still only enjoyment matters -- such is the view of brutes and even some sophisticated philosophers.

It slips into the unconscious by default when we hold no other, but we are reluctant to entertain it and would rather, if we think about it, take as our purpose: support of family, search for beauty, improvement of society, fame, self-expression, development of talent, and so on. 

But it might be fair to say that apart from these or beneath these the fundamental purpose of many of us is the search for love, particularly romantic love. [Or at least sex.]

The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. 

It is held to be solid when nothing else is. And although it frequently gives way and dumps us into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability. 

No matter that this reputation is illogical -- it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in a book. 

Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity.

 

What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching? The search for love -- the sublime, the nebulous, the [all] consuming -- remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred.

 

When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with [perverts] bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love. 

With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love -- or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for. More

RAVE: An Anthem for War (video)

[Mystic Wisdom] Quarterly

(GowlerMusic) Electroacoustic piece of music set to the poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by the late British poet-soldier Wilfred Salter Owen.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
  
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
  
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Owen died on the battlefield in WW I after writing "Dulce Et Decorum Est" (ironically "It is Sweet and Fitting [to Die for Patriotism]"). He was a great loss to humanity in light of what Europe might have produced if the youth of that generation had not been sacrificed.

HardFest HARD Day Of The Dead, Nov. 3rd, 2012, LA State Historic Park. Tickets (harddayofthedead.com)

Day of the Dead

Dev and Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Candy Eye (lilminx16/deviantart.net)

While the world is at war, promoted and prosecuted by the US military-industrial complex like MLK Jr. recognized, all I can do is dance to EDM. And the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (the Latin American Halloween) is being celebrated with a rave.

  

Next to the old Occupy Wall Street encampment under the occupied Los Angeles skyline, next to China Town, we will gather as in years before. I'm still in search of a peak experience worthy of a Buddhist monastic or the Buddha himself. When the lights are going off and the DJ is dropping a big fat beat, I'm almost there. Almost.

  

Back in the day

If I leave my body, will I see the larger Spirit World, the realm of devas.? If I dance so hard I can no longer feel my feet, will I elevate into spatial dimensions beyond our limiting atmosphere? In meditation, I close my eyes and see subtle light. I feel the unseen and touch emptiness. Sometimes Buddhism is the only thing that make sense, you know?

  

The Day of the Dead, when ancestors are honored and there is time to reassess and appreciate current relations, we will be with all our brothers and sisters under the Moon. But somewhere I know war is being fought for corporations and nothing else, no national security, no higher ideals. They're monsters, my brother among them. What can I do but dance, celebrating the Five Precepts while others are negligent, holding my head under a twice-colored cloud and focusing my mind.

The Buddha said, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What was he talking about? Everything, all conditioned-things. There is that Farther Shore beyond the beyond. We wish the killing would stop and the loving start so we could all arrive there. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O, what an awakening, yes!"

"Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi swaha!" is the epitome of the Heart Sutra.

• Spirituality: Compassion can't be lost in translation

Journey behind Mt. Everest (video)

Amber Dorrian, Seven, CC, Anand, Darius, Lindsey, Wisdom Quarterly 

(GeoBeats) The road to Buddhist India on the "rooftop of the world" is mystical and cold.

 

The Goddess Tara (Jamyang190)

The Western Buddhist world needs an adventure. Come on a fantastic voyage. Travel writing takes us there -- until we gather the gumption and go.

• UPDATE: Cleaning the Himalayas, "Green Odyssey"
• Clean up of bodies, rubbish on Mt. Everest

From the plains of the Ganges, in the remnants of the Indus River Civilization, rise the great Himalayas. What is behind them?

There, a disputed Indian state called J+K is replete with summer wonders. The K is for Kashmir, a lush valley sung into legend by Led Zeppelin.

Dal Lake and ornate wooden houseboat hotels, surrounded by war and spiritual pilgrims, neo-hippie backpackers and Muslims menaced by India's military, all overwhelm the senses. Jesus (St. Issa) is buried nearby. Giant weeds grow nine feet all, and it's weed (Cannabis sativa). No one cares. Addicts sell their passports and drift along in miserable underworlds for worse substances.

 

But overland and faraway awaits the real wonder -- Leh, Ladakh, and the marvel that is the Shanti Stupa. It is very hard to find authentic "Tibet." It may no longer exist in Tibet. China has undermined it and set up a Han Disneyland in its place, with noodle stands all around Lhasa.
 

(HM) Ladakh is India's northernmost state between the Kunlun and main

Himalayan range. It is a sparsely populated area in Kashmir and one of
the few remaining Buddhist regions. Video by Ananda S. Nadadur.

  
(Maybe Mustang, Mt. Kailash, or Shangri la and Shangri-La have traces, but the Potala Palace was ransacked and never reconstituted). "Tibet" substitutes can be found in Ladakh, Dharamsala, Bhutan, and Nepal in micro-cultures so influenced by the once great Himalayan imperial seat that it's like being there again.

The road to Leh, Ladakh, Buddhist India (PiotrHalka/Flickr.com)

 
Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a region of Jammu+Kashmir state in Himalayan India. Ladakh is the home of Hemis Gompa, where Notovitch found written records of Jesus Christ's sojourn as a Jewish-Buddhist bodhisattva-style teacher. Kashmir, according to historians Elmar Gruber and Holger Kersten, was a Jewish trading post along the Silk Route linked to Egypt and Jerusalem in those days.
 

Leh, Ladakh, India (Piotr Halka)

But the road to Leh is almost as amazing. It is the highest passable highway in the world. Ladakh is the rooftop of the world. It is a desert since very little moisture can hurdle Mt. Everest and the Himalayan range. There is snow melt in green rivulets where hamlets spring up. And below in the gully there is  a grand emerald "Colorado River" feeding the great rivers of India.
 
The fume soaked bus lurches at a yak's pace. It's impossible to sleep bouncing on old springs. Honking is constant as vehicles meet on the precipice of a one-lane sky way constantly subject to landslides and being washed out. It is maintained by hand poured tar and gravel. "Speed up," "slow down," what to shout?

 

Look to the right, out the window, and see the vehicles that didn't make it. The only rules of the road in this lawless land are honk and get out of the way. Did anyone survive; are the bodies still inside? 

• ADVICE: Take a cab, hitch on a truck, book a plane, or meditate and astral travel; anything is better than the bus, which grinds on for two days.

The strangest difference traveling from Indo-Muslim Kashmir to Indo-Buddhist Leh is how much quieter, gentler, and kinder it gets. It is awe inspiring. There are no "FREE TIBET" stickers seen; they have been replaced by "SAVE LADAKH FROM KASHMIR." Many brash, culturally Middle Eastern businessmen come to Leh to set up shop, drive hard bargains, and ruin the local culture. TO BE CONTINUED