In the Vedas, Satyakāma Jābāli is a Vedic sage, who first appears in the fourth prapāṭhaka (chapter) of the ancient Vedic text, the Chāndogya Upanishad[1].
As a boy, in order to become brahmachārī(celibate Brahmin student), Satyakāma enquires about his father and his family from his mother Jabālā. His mother tells him that she went about many places in her youth attending to different people devoted to their service and did not know his lineage.
Therefore, she tells him that in this world, all that she has is him and vice versa, so he is called Satyakāma Jābāla.
Eager for knowledge, he goes to the sage Haridrumata Gautama, requesting the sage's permission to live in his school for to be a Brahmacharya. The teacher asks, "My dear child, what family do you come from?"
Satyakāma replies that he is of uncertain lineage because his mother does not know who his father is. He tells the sage that as to his lineage, his mother named him Satyakāma Jābāla.
Seeing his innocence and his strong wish to learn, the sage declares that the boy's honesty is the mark of a "Brahmin (brāhmaṇa), a true seeker of the knowledge of Brahman" and accepts him as a student in his school [2, 3].
The Buddha redefined the label "Brahmin" from a biological lineage -- as the Brahmins taught of their own descent from God's mouth -- to a meritocracy, stating that one is not a Brahmin (high caste) from birth because of one's parents but because of one's own actions (karma, "deeds").
The sage sends Satyakāma to tend to 400 sickly cows and to come back when they multiply into 1,000 [3].
The symbolic legend or allegory then presents Satyakāma's conversation with a bull, a fire, a swan (Haṃsa, हंस), and a diver bird (Madgu, मद्गु), which respectively symbolize Vāyu, Agni, Āditya, and Prāṇa [1].
Satyakāma thereby learns from these creatures that the form of Brahman is in all of the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), world-bodies (earth, atmosphere, sky, ocean), sources of light (fire, sun, moon, lightning), and in humans (breath, eye, ear, and mind) [2].
Aummmm, the cosmic sound of the universe
Satyakāma returns to his teacher with 1,000 cows and humbly learns the rest: the nature of Brahman (the ultimate, metaphysical reality behind all of the illusions of maya).
Satyakāma graduates and becomes a celebrated sage, according to the Hindu tradition.
A Vedic school is named after him, as is the influential ancient text Jābāla Upanishad – a treatise on Sannyāsa (a Hindu sannyasin or renunciate's life) [4].
Upakosala Kamalayana was a student of Satyakama Jabala, whose story is also presented in the Chhāndogya Upanishad [5]. In the end, Satyakāma Jābāla's teacher the Sage Gautama gives him the name Patan. More
Maybe human beauty standards are being skewed by the impossible-to-achieve hybridization with devis and devas (female and male "shining ones") that seems to be concentrated in particular parts of the world like Scandinavia (Sapmi, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark), and the quasi-Scandinavian Estonia, Germany, Russia, and parts of Northern Europe and their happy and enlightened societies.
The Swedish UFO wave and a scary recording from a hypnosis session
(Stories Lost) Stories Lost. Spring 1974: A town in Sweden (Vallentuna) becomes the epicenter of remarkable UFO (Buddhist vimana) sightings and eerie encounters that stretched across 40 extraordinary days.
Who was the medium Maria Oršić [62]? According to the Vril Project, Maria Oršić from Zagreb (Croatia) was involved in the founding of the "Vril Society" and also established the spiritualist contact with the Aldebarans. More
Guru Barbie (Val Lukyanova) is an instructor at the School of Out-of-Body Travel [18] described as "an international school in which our instructors show students how to leave their physical body and travel in their spiritual body" [18]. Her spiritual name is Amatue. More
Stories Lost, March 7, 2025; Valeria "Amatue" Lukyanova; Kelly Ani, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Real-life samurai Sasaki Rui (佐々木 累), or Rui-San, was a Japanese swordswoman, Onna-musha and kenjutsu expert of the early Edo period (mid-17th century). She was known as the "Strangely Dressed Female Sword Master" [1, 2, 3].
Life of Sasaki Rui
Sasaki was born in Koga domain, located in Shimōsa province (modern-day Koga, Ibaraki), exact birthdate unknown. Her father Sasaki Uōto was a member of a clan of kenjutsu masters in service to Doi Toshikatsu and was thoroughly versed in the martial arts.
Since Rui-San had no brothers and her attempts to take a husband ended in divorce, upon her father's death from illness the Sasaki clan name became extinct [1, 2, 3].
Rui-San went to Edo, where she rented a house in present-day Asakusa and began teaching the martial arts.
At the same time that her teaching was becoming well-known, she began to be famous for her unusual dress:
She would leave the house wearing a black silk crepe haori (a man's garment at the time) emblazoned with the Sasaki family crest, her hair done up in an indoor style with hairpins, and wearing the samurai's long and short swords [1, 2, 3].
At that time, the ruffians known as kabukimono or hatamoto yakko were running rampant in Edo, and Rui-San began fighting with the "Shiroe" gang, among other groups [1, 2]. More
Various samurai clans struggled for power during the Kamakura shogunate. Zen Buddhismspread among the samurai in the 13th century and helped shape their standards of conduct, particularly in overcoming the fear of death and [the wrongdoing of] killing. Among the general populace devotional Pure Land Buddhism was favored however. More
Samurai had arranged marriages, which were engineered by a go-between of the same or higher rank. While for those samurai in the upper ranks this was a necessity (as most had few opportunities to ever meet women), this was a formality for lower-ranked samurai.
Most samurai married women from a samurai family, but for lower-ranked samurai, marriages with commoners were permitted. In these marriages a dowry was brought by the woman and was used to set up the couple's new household.
A samurai could take concubines, but their backgrounds were checked by higher-ranked samurai. In many cases, taking a concubine was akin to a marriage. Kidnapping a concubine, although common in fiction, would have been shameful, if not criminal. More
(SciShow) July 27, 2024: There's an oft-quoted statistic that something like 5% of people are related to Genghis Khan. The guy (raping and pillaging from Japan to Eastern Europe) did have a lot of kids. But the truth is more complicated. Here's how science uses Y chromosome analysis and small groups of genetic mutations to see how we are all related to each other.
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What the cartoonist (Dan Piraro) doesn't realize is that the Buddha did set down such a rule.
Great teachers of world's religions (Where's Mo?)
Christianity (particularly imperialist universalist Catholicism and hegemonical American Protestant Evangelism) is closer to Hinduism than Buddhism is, for all of their apparent similarities. The historical Buddha did not teach what Jesus or Krishna (avatars of a God like Vishnu), Brahma or Shiva taught.
All of these, we are told promoted devotional practices as the best that could be done by most humans during the Dark Age or Kali Yuga. Hinduism, to be more popular and tolerant, accepts other religions enough to swallow them and call them part of its own Eternal Teaching or Sanatan Dharma.
Hindu holy man, sadhu,sannyasin, ganja smoker
If Brahmin priests could not rid themselves of pesky wandering ascetic or shramanic traditions like Buddhism and Jainism, it simply dealt with them by incorporating them into its own structure and pantheon just as it did the ancient Vedas ("Knowledge Books") of proto-India and the Indus Valley Civilization, extending Hinduism (which was systematized and established by Adi Shankara a few centuries ago by coordinating and getting major points of agreement for many and diverse "religions" around the Indus River, thus resulting in the name of one conglomerate religion of Indus-ism where previously people did not live with the modern idea of being in a "religion" or doing anything more than practicing spiritual things as part and parcel of daily life).
The British imposed the idea that one must name "spiritual" practices and/or superstitions and beliefs a "religion" and that those practicing in accordance or adhering to such beliefs must be "members" of that religion. The ancients in India, proto-India, Egypt, and elsewhere simply did not have this belief but simply went along when told by the dominant and oppressive colonizing culture. One has to imagine that pre-Christian pagans in Europe did not think they had a "religion" but were just living their cultural life and holding popular beliefs about how the world (with its spirits and mysteries) works.
Amitabha Cosmic Buddha
While Early Buddhism, just like Jainism, rejected the Vedas and gods as ultimate sources of wisdom or liberation, later (Mahayana) Buddhism was co-opted by the Brahmin priests and turned into a kind of Hinduism by other names. While there are certainly many devotional practices in modern Theravada Buddhism, a back-to-basics movement to preserve the historical Buddha's Teachings, many Mahayana traditions and practices went overboard to devote themselves to anyone but the historical Buddha.
Kwan Yin (female Avalokiteshvara)
That Buddha is respected but then quickly disregarded, forgotten, or shunned for "better" Mahayana Buddhist figures like the Cosmic Buddhas Amitabha (and His promise of praying to Him to be reborn in His heavenly Western Paradise, the Pure Land, where one can make efforts to reach enlightenment and liberation without bothering to do anything toward that here other than praying and devoting oneself to Him here and now) and Vairocana, or the ever-popular Virgin Mary figure Kwan Yin (Guanyin, Kwannon, Chenrézik, or Avalokiteshvara, the Goddess of Compassion, who like many other Mahayana figures is actually a bodhisattva, a person striving for Buddhahood, not a buddha at all) and Kṣitigarbha, who saves beings from the hells, which they fall into on account of their own deeds and views.
Pals Jesus, Budai, and Krishna with a cow
This devotional bent of Mahayana Buddhism has gotten so severe that who "the Buddha" is is often blurred, with most of the world mistaking him for the Mahayana figure Budai/Putai/Hotei the "Fat Happy Bodhisattva," the obese guy revered in Chinese restaurants around the world. Moreover, a distinction at one point had to be made between what Western elucidator of Buddhism Alan Watts points out in the Japanese Buddhist terms jiriki versus tariki-- enlightenment by one's own efforts or by outside help.
Jiriki (自力, "one's own strength" [1]) is the Japanese Buddhist term for "self-power," the ability to achieve enlightenment and liberation (in other words, to reach bodhi and nirvana) through one's own efforts, whereas tariki (他力, "other power," "outside help") is the belief that it cannot be done on one's own. These two terms in Japanese Buddhist schools classify how one becomes spiritually awakened [2]. The first is commonly practiced in Zen Buddhism, whereas the much more popular Pure Land Buddhism refers to the power of Amitābha Buddha to "save" beings who merely have faith, believe, and worship an outside force like the mythological Amitabha [3].
Does Christianity teach Christians and Catholics that they can save themselves, awaken themselves, enlighten themselves, or even get into heaven (which is viewed as final salvation) by their own efforts? Certainly not. Most modern Christian schools teach that it is ONLY by "grace" (God's underserved gift or His whimsical feeling like it) and never by "works" (one's own efforts) that anyone can be saved.
All three religions (Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism) believe in karma (the power of deeds to bring about a result, but Christians insist everything is either God's will or not and nothing we can do can change that, other than perhaps groveling, begging, bargaining, self-abnegation, and absolute devotion and throwing ourselves on His mercy can save us.
For Christians killing isn't so bad compared to not loving the God enough because that God can erase that karmic debt and sin, wipe it away in an instant of devotion, obedience, adherence, and voluntary slavery, whereas not killing in the first, who cares? That's not a big deal to most Christians or apologists. Of course, Hinduism now talks about karma a lot, but it is said that the Buddha was the first sage to go around telling ordinary people about the importance of their deeds.
Up until then it was more or less a secret among Brahmin priests and preservers of the Vedas, who were not keen on telling anyone other than Brahmins. The Buddha, who was regarded as a Karmavadin (Teacher of the efficacy of actions) not as a Buddhist (which came later with the Western idea that things have to be a "religion"), went around telling everyone, emphasizing karma to everyone as a principle, a fixed law, an orderliness to the universe we live in, be it a simulation or a real place.
One has to eventually put forward the endeavor and effort to awaken oneself; it simply cannot be "given" or gained by devotion. It does not belong to anyone to give, not even "God," who Himself, Herself, Itself is not enlightened nor liberated but rapt in this samsara.
So while it is beautiful that we can all be Hindus now, all go back to a time when there was just one universal religion everyone had to follow, a worldwide belief system with an all-attractive cult figure like Krishna, Christ, Thor, Zeus, Sophia, Aphrodite, Brahma, Mithras, Ahura Mazda, Allah (or His Prophet), the Great Spaghetti Monster, Odin, or countless other astrotheological figures, Buddhism does not need the Buddha to be an "incarnation of Vishnu."
The great thing is, of course, that "Hinduism" is not really a religion even now when it is treated like one because it has always meant a collection of disparate views, practices, belief, and preferred central gods (one choice in picking any incarnation of an essential Brahman, or "reality behind all illusion") presenting itself as an avatar or aspect of the One True God(hood). The yogis have their way, as do the Shaivites and Vaishnavites, agnostics, atheists, Kali worshippers, devotees of the Goddess Saraswati, Ma Durga, Radha (Krishna's partner), Krishna, or 100,000 others.
In fact, it is insulting as it shows a severe lack of understanding by Brahmins and Hindus that such things could even happen. A buddha is an arhat (fully enlightened being), who therefore by that supreme enlightenment is never again reborn, does not incarnate, does not reappear or rearise. Of course, there will be other buddhas, like Mahayana Buddhism's second favorite buddha of all time, the Buddha-to-come, the Future Buddha, Maitreya.
But that being will not be the last one (Siddhartha Gautama Buddha) coming again. It will be a new one, just as there have been ones in the ancient past and in the distant future. It is never the same being returning to teach beings how to make an end of all suffering and all rebirth after realizing the too-subtle unique teachings of Dependent Origination and anatta (the impersonal nature of all existence) or egolessness.
The Lord's Prayer (Medieval English)
Text by Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
Tibetan Buddhist, plant spirit healer, and shamanic teacher Emma Fitchett is a lineage holder of the White Serpent teachings of the British Isle of Manx and the Pacific Island of Vanuatu, who has been initiated into ancient magical practices.
CIA madman Cleve Backster
How did she gain her powers? They were opened or vivified for her by Iboga, a psychoactive root from Gabon, she claims. The plant spirit sensitized her to our innate human gifts to see and sense beyond the ordinary five senses.
Appearing on Coast to Coast on April 2, 2024, she discusses how to access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants as well as the work of CIA mad scientist Cleve Backster, who gets credit for pioneering the measurement of how plants perceive human consciousness.
Such credit in fact belongs to Indian scientist in England
Emma Farrell (aka Fitchett), with a foreword by Pam Montgomery, has 4.4 out of 5 stars with 34 ratings.
This is a guide to communicating and working with plant and tree spirits for personal development, spiritual connection, inner peace, and healing.
It presents meditation journeys with specific plant and tree spirits, such as Mugwort (dreams), Rosemary (cleansing), Dandelion (liver), Yew (poison), Elder (healing), and Wormwood (artemisia).
Find details on how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse your energy field, and connect with your heart in preparation for meditating with the plants.
It includes a progressive series of introductory meditations, adapted from wisdom traditions, to lay the foundation for working with plant spirits.
In this book, Emma Farrell explains how to take your connection and relationship with nature to a deeper level and access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants.
Exploring the nature of plant consciousness and how plants perceive, she details how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse our energy field, and connect with our heart in preparation for meditating with plants and trees, showing how the plants can support us not only in the cleansing process but also in teaching us how to sense what is in our energy field.
Offering a progressive series of preparatory meditations adapted from shamanic and indigenous wisdom traditions, the author reveals how to lay the foundation for working, communicating, and developing relationships with plant and tree spirits -- for personal development, spiritual connection, and inner peace.
(Podcast: The Future is Beautiful with Amisha Ghadiali) How do we work with plant medicines in a meaningful and respectful way? In this episode, Amisha talks with Shaman Emma Fitchett, a plant spirit healer, teacher, and author initiated into and trained in indigenous healing and magical lineages of the British Isles and the Ecuadorian Amazon, who is also a Yew Mysteries initiate and a holder of the lineage of the White Serpent from Manx and Vanuatu. This conversation illuminates how we can grow our spiritual sovereignty and balance our inner and outer worlds in co-creation with nature’s medicines. It is a gift for all of those who want to explore more in relation to plant medicines, want to know how, and want to explore to reveal the truth of our existence in this living (animistic) world.
She then presents meditation journeys with specific plant spirits, focusing on the frequencies within the plant’s bio-resonance that will assist us.
For example, the meditation with Mugwort works with the plant spirit’s qualities of alignment and self-awareness to assist us with grounding and developing inner vision, while the meditation with Dandelion helps us break old habits by working with the plant’s qualities of release, reconnection, and fearlessness.
What do forest tradition Buddhist monks know?
Revealing how each plant is an expression of the soul force of Mother Nature and carries a unique blend of her medicine and wisdom, this book details step-by-step how to effectively work with plant spirits for emotional and spiritual healing, enabling us to awaken the eternal spirit, or soul, to become truly multidimensional and whole. More
British Emma Fitchett, with buffoonish host G-Man Noory, Coast to Coast AM com, 4/3/24; Dhr. Seven, Kelly Ani, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Robert Sepehr (Atlantean Gardens, 6/30/18); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Rh Negative Bloodlines in History
Each person’s blood is one of four major types: A, B, AB, or O. Blood types are determined by the types of antigens on the blood cells. Antigens are proteins on the surface of blood cells that can cause a response from the immune system. The Rh factor is a type of protein on the surface of red blood cells. Most people who have the Rh factor are Rh-positive. Those who do not have the Rh factor are Rh-negative. If one is Rh-negative, s/he may develop antibodies to a Rh-positive baby. If a small amount of the baby’s blood mixes with one's blood, which often happens, the body may respond as if it were allergic to the baby. The body may make antibodies to the Rh antigens in the baby’s blood. This means one has become sensitized and the antibodies can cross the placenta and attack the baby’s blood. Species with Amnesia: Our Forgotten History. Robert Sepehr is an author, producer, and anthropologist. (Thank you for your support: patreon.com).
There are 31 Planes of Existence, broad categories of worlds, one might be reborn in.
Buddhist Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales
The 31 Planes of Existence
This translation of the Buddha's Jatakas, the Buddhist inspiration for the famous Aesop's Fables, includes a commentarial introduction entitled "The Story of the Lineage" (Nidanakatha).
It is translated from V. Fausböll's edition of the original Pali language text by early British scholar T.W. Rhys Davids. This is the new and revised edition by his Buddhist scholar wife, Mrs. Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids.
The Jātaka Tales are a body of literature from India and Central Asia about the past lives of the historical Gautama Buddha as the Bodhisatta ("Buddha-to-be").
These stories relate some previous lives of the Buddha as a human, deva, and animal form. The Bodhisatta, as the Buddha refers to himself prior to gaining enlightenment, reappears in various births as a
king, merchant, outcast, deva, elephant, and so on—but, in whatever form, something happens then that mirrors what is happening now, and many of the people he is with in life he has met before with them often repeating a situation or habit.
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