This work of pure comedic genius began as a BBC Radio play by Douglas Adams (who was the first to think to combine science fiction and comedy), the audio of which is presented here: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It became so popular that it became a book then a sequel then a series then a trilogy with additional installments that made calling it a "trilogy" more and more misleading. It is perhaps the single funniest piece of work we have ever heard, a masterpiece.
I was trying to read the Heart Sutra to chant it in Sanskrit. But it doesn't make any sense translated into English. At least it didn't until Wisdom Quarterly's Dharma editor explained it.* Now it's clear. Now I know why "enlightenment" eludes me. Now I know what to study and put into practice to know-and-see. Thanks, WQ!
one is called a noble disciple who is a stream-winner, no longer liable to ever fall into subhuman states of woe [1], assured of full and final enlightenment."
NOTE: 1.
The "stream-winner" (sotapanna) is sure to become fully enlightened (an arahant) within seven rebirths and will not be reborn more than seven more times, and such a person will never again be reborn in any state lower than the human plane.
the one "with seven rebirths at the utmost" (sattakkhattu-parama) ["one with only seven further rebirths at the utmost," is one of the three kinds of stream-winners (sotāpannas).
the one "passing from one noble family to another" (kolankola),
the one "germinating only once more" (eka-bījī, lit. "one seed" or perhaps "at most once more seeded").]
(1) "If a person, after the disappearance of the three lower fetters (personality-belief, skeptical doubt, attachment to rites and rituals), see samyojana), has entered the stream [that leads inevitably to nirvana], that person is no longer subject to any rebirth in the lower worlds [anywhere below the human plane], is firmly established, destined to reach full enlightenment. After having passed among celestial beings (deva) and human beings (manussya) only at most seven times more through the Round of Rebirths, one puts an end to all suffering. Such a person is called "one with seven rebirths at the utmost" (sattakkhattu-parama).
I continued to practice to make an end of all ill.
(2) "If a person, after the disappearance of the three fetters.... is destined to reach full enlightenment, that person, after having passed among noble families two or three times through the round of rebirths, makes an end of all suffering. Such a person is called "one passing from one noble family to another" (kolankola).
(3) "If a person, after the disappearance of the three fetters...is destined to full enlightenment, one, after having only once more returned to the human plane, makes an end of all suffering. Such a person is called "one germinating only once more" (eka-bījī).
7. This is an encouraging message for many! Compare it to the end of MN 22 and also the charming image of the newborn calf in MN 34. The Commentary (MA) to MN 22 says such people are termed "lesser stream-winners" (cula-sota-panna). This term is discussed in The Path of Purification (VM XIX, 27). [This term is more fully explained in The Path of Freedom (Vimuttimagga).] The stress laid here on the importance of faith (actually saddha, "confidence," "conviction," the trust sufficient to investigate that precedes personal verification) is interesting in view of later developments such as the Pure Land schools (e.g., Jodo-Shinshu or "Shin-Buddhism" in Japan).
(SN 22.109 PTS: S iii 160 CDB i 9650)
Maurice O'Connell Walshe (trans.), Sotapanno Sutta: The Sotapanna, "The Stream-Winner" Pali title based on PTS (Feer) edition; Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
(Eyewitness News ABC7NY) Dec. 12, 2025: The legendary actor continues to be an endless fountain of charm, grace, and chutzpah. Check out more Eyewitness News: abc7ny.com. #entertainment #news #nyc
(Spiritual Quest) The mystery of consciousness! Let's explore the enigma of why matter, seemingly unconscious, experiences awareness. Discover the "hard problem of consciousness," insights from philosophers like David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel, and groundbreaking theories from neuroscientists such as Anil Seth and Giulio Tononi. #Consciousness #Philosophy #Neuroscience #Meditation #Mindfulness #AI #Panpsychism
00:00:00 - The fundamental mystery of consciousness
00:01:48 - What is consciousness? (and why it’s hard to define)
00:03:38 - The problem of detecting consciousness
00:05:30 - The illusion of conscious control
00:07:26 - The future of consciousness science
Is consciousness everything?
All-seeing Great Brahma has multiple faces.
Pantheism says "God" is everywhere in everything. What if that actually refers to Consciousness, which seems to be everywhere in everything?
Asangoham made a video on the Brahma Sutras talking about Hinduism that touches on this point, everything originating from Brahma (the "Supremo") who out of boredom created Maya (the illusory world around us), who immediately wanted to play (lila) a game, a divine drama, a diversion.
First, create the universe then get lost in it, forgetting yourself, then play hide-and-seek to find yourself. It's an old New Age belief. It seems to be what Alan Watts believes.
If Everything is conscious then we can know everything by tapping into Source and connecting, merging, uniting with it. It's like tuning into a frequency, as a radio does.
If you’re feeling brave, sit and look — and I mean really look — at a plant on your windowsill as it bends toward the light.
Why are they growing, Son? - Looking for Sun!
It seems simple, but stare at it long enough and you may find yourself doubting everything you thought you knew about your own mind. Sooner or later you’ll ask yourself, "Why, exactly, is that plant stretching toward the sun?"
Sure, you can look it up and find out there’s a thing called phototropism, which involves cells in a plant elongating to chase the sun. But that’s not really much of an answer. The question is, Why does the plant do that?
Is its movement just a mechanistic response with no feeling [or reflexive awareness] behind it? Or does the plant want that delicious, warm light? To many kids, it’s obvious: The plant wants the light!
Yet as adults, at least in the West, we’re supposed to be embarrassed by that kind of language. Modern science warns us against anthropomorphizing [treating nonhuman things as if they're human] — and not just when it comes to plants.
Nobody goes to the desert to get all voyeuristic, except these people in a long line to get in.
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What kind of world do we want?
First of all, what is an "Orgy Dome"? That's kind of hard to explain. It's sort of like this dome, a tent, with an orgy inside, and by orgy we mean a consensual communal experience with probably more sand and grit than anyone would ideally want to be present at a time like this. Bring wipes. Maybe Diddly brand coconut oil, too. No, no, no oil, but water-based lube. And be very MINDFUL. There are Ten Principles to follow in general and special safe practices, consenting obligations, and lots of checking in to make sure everyone is all right and enjoying it.
What happed to the Orgy Dome? The wind at the beginning blew it over, scattered, and destroyed it. The site has an Instagram. Orgy Dome 🌈💜✨ (@orgydome) • Instagram. But Billboard's Instagram states: Burning Man’s infamous Orgy Dome won’t be opening this year [2025] after hurricane-force winds tore the structure apart over the opening weekend. 🌪️ Organizers say they’re safe but unable to repair the dome in time, though they still plan to host smaller workshops on the playa. The storm also destroyed major installations like Ukraine’s 50-foot Black Cloud, marking yet another year of extreme weather challenges at the Nevada summer desert festival. More details on the Dome and other installations that were damaged by heavy winds are at the link in bio. More TMZ confirms it.
Day 3: Trapped in the mud at Burning Man 2025 – Daily Vlog
(Escaping Normal Life) Aug. 27, 2025: Day 3 at Burning Man 2025 turned into pure muddy survival. A massive rainstorm hit the playa, flooding everything and turning Black Rock City into deep, sticky clay mud. I was trapped inside my tent for hours, unable to move my bike or even walk through the sludge.
In this daily vlog, I share what it was really like being stuck in the rain and mud, how I managed to stay (somewhat) dry, and the chaos happening all around camp.
This is what Burning Man 2025 looks like when the weather shuts everything down. If you’re preparing for Burning Man or curious about the real, unfiltered experience of surviving the playa during a storm, this vlog shows the raw reality of what happens when the desert turns to mud.
Venmo: venmo.com/u/escaping_normal_life. Found this video helpful? Consider donating. I currently do not have a Patreon or a YouTube Member page because they take a percentage. Also, Super Thanks takes a percentage on YouTube. So I do have a Venmo that is 100% donated to me. These donations go straight to my channel to purchase better camera gear to make better content.
We're filming a video in front of the mural, Sunday, 5:30-8:00 pm. Wear white shirt to participate in the filming of a music video for local artist Honore's song "Haven"
Up the mountain that is Lake Avenue in Pasadena into Altadena (north of Colorado Blvd. and over the 134/210 Freeway junction) is a magical mural. We painted it under the visionary direction of Impact ArtistEkaterina Sky (Instagram). It has a secret purpose. It is a giant golden disc (kasina) surrounded by shooting beams of red, white, and maroon lines that produce a pulsating, stroboscopic effect. One takes a meditative seat in front of it on a yoga mat or towel, under the shade tree of what remains of Oh Happy Days Vegan Cafe and the city's main post office parking lot.
DIRECTIONS: Travel north on Lake Ave. just past the Grocery Outlet. Turn left on Mendocino St. Turn left down first driveway after Jack in the Box. The mural is on the right behind the former site of the post office.
Don't "try" to try; just do it. It's as easy as that.
Using the brilliant gold disc as a Buddhist kasina (disc) or Vedic Hindu mandala(or yantra-chakra), the lines producing a sensation of entering the disc, blurring then erasing the line between subject and object. It is a kind of nondual (advaita) experience of "oneness" in the sense of a Beholder blending with the Beheld.
Can't "concentrate" (unify the mind, gather the faculties to stay on one thing)? Use binaural beats with headphones while softly viewing the disc and doing nothing else.
I hear Chicago's "Colour My World" when I start to sit
Does the world suck, Winston?
In the West we say, "Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder." And so it is. Or at least it can be. Surely, when we feel happy, the whole world seems sunny and sweet. When we're afraid, it may seem cold and grey, dingy like the world did to Winston Smith in George Orwell's dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four. Is the world this way or that?
Who knows! It might be a utopia. We never see it objectively; we are always looking at it subjectively. So removing the difference between the two and becoming ONE with it, even for a moment, is very instructive for how the world and our experience of it has really been working.
The secret to meditative absorption, what the Buddha called jhana (Sanskrit dhyana), which literally translates as "meditation," is happiness. There is no "way to happiness," some wit once said. Why? It is because happiness is the way! Happiness and singlepointed attention on certain objects leads to piti, a blissful welling up of joy from within. It isn't that the world has changed and given us permission to be happy. It is that our cultivated happiness has all of a sudden bloomed and blossomed, sprouted and shot up. It is a kind of rapture, or better to say an effortless effervescence.
If stared at long enough, with a soft focus not tightness, it moves on its own.
Artist a work play.
Recently someone on Wisdom Quarterly called it a very pleasant "body buzz" (Michael Taft). The whole body tingles and seems to levitate or at least become very light when we take ourselves lightly. It IS possible to feel that floaty feeling when we no longer take things so seriously and instead just let them be. That's what McCarthy said to do in that Beatles' song. "Mother Mary [Magdelene] comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: 'Let it be.'"
I can't "do" it! No, you can't. But it (jhana) can happen when we set up the circumstances for it to arise by itself, like gardening. No one can garden, that is, no one can make a plant grow. But anyone can set up the circumstances for a seed to sprout and a plant to come into being. Bhavana, often translated as "meditation," means "cultivation" and literally "bringing into being." Leigh Brasington tells Dan Harris it's deceptively simple. Stop "doing." Just attend to the object.
Samadhi is a super-conscious, coherent unification of mind accompanied by profound attention and stillness.
However things are, that's okay. Let 'em be. They have to be just as they are because we are allowing not opposing, accepting not fighting, seeing clearly rather than distorting or trying to make them some other way. The Buddha's Path to Freedom, the path to mental purification, starts with this level of absorption that is employed in "clear-seeing" (vipassana). There isn't one or the other; there's both. There is no pyramid peak without a solid foundation.
Oh, I see it now, at my third eye.
Absorption (blissful sustained attention) is that base. The peak is insight, clearly seeing. Vayānupassanā means "contemplation of vanishing" and is one of the 18 chief kinds of insight (vipassāna). So whatever we can do to still the mind and turn it into a laser beam of attention rather than the scattered, weak, diffused, dingy, and easily distracted fluorescence of our dull glow is a good thing to be doing -- Ashtanga (Eight Limbs of Yoga) and the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path.
(Why do they call it "noble"? The word is Aryan, and it literally means "Enlightening," so we should call it the Ennobling Eightfold Path, the practice of which brings us to bodhi and nirvana, awakening and the ultimatetruth).
Altered States (trailer)
(Sierra Fotuhi) Who would ever make a song about little ol' Altadena?
We are going to return soon to film a music video with the mural. Then we are going to move it. It's portable. So this free meditation is a limited-time offer. At the next stop it will have its QR code to listen to the prayers embedded behind the gold. Do you know what alta means in Spanish? "High." Not because it's above Pasadena, but because it's a place for a natural altered state.
It's maya, an illusion, but it follows rules this samsara, wheel of life and death, rebirth and suffering. It is as real as a dream. Are we the divine play of Brahman, GOD,
Alan Watts: Understanding Buddhism, Concepts Explained
(Equanimity) Alan Watts (alanwatts.org) explores and contemplates the difference between Hinduism, Buddhism, and beliefs in Western civilization. Listen in and contemplate these various perspectives on reality. From "Alan Watts: Metaphysics Philosophy vs. Psychologists."
ABOUT: AUSTRALIA. Equanimity promotes all aspects of positive mental health and perspectives that have inspired and motivated humans for thousands of years. We seek to create our own interpretations and new perspectives from ancient wisdom based on our 21st century outlook on life. These philosophical perspectives are covered under YouTube's creative commons license. Aug. 13, 2024. #philosophy #alanwatts #psychology
Guests gathered surrounded by greenery in the hills of Los Angeles near Mulholland Drive, ordering dinner plates for Chef Rawsheed's vegan creations. The DJs arrived to set up, but first Vanessa led us in a yoga class as most people looked on and socialized, eating fresh fruits spread all around and sipping cold drinks.
The shocking announcement was made after introductions by Paige for Samantha about the goals and aims of Plant Based Treaty. Justine covered the Campaign for Banning the Retail Sale of Animals in L.A. The shock was that Vanessa is moving to the south of France to start a vegan commune (intentional community) around a chateau, where she will then run for mayor and create a vegan city. First she writes a book on fairies, loses her health clinic (ElloraWellness.com) in the Eaton Fire, and decides to uproot and resettle in Europe. But she will travel between here and there and is still leading a tour to the ancient Mayan archeological sites in Mexico in 2025 (after a successful trip to Egypt). Post party we made plans to eat Thai vegan food at THE VEGAN JOINT, 980 S. San Pedro St., DTLA
Vanessa Marsot and Annie Vitality launch their new book, Dreams of a Dragonfly, and sign copies of this vegan fantasy story on Saturday, July 12th, poolside in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California. Enjoy mindfulness meditation, Native American land acknowledgement, yoga, vegan food, swimming and splashing, socializing, fun and games, a literary launch, and a summer night under the full moon.
Chef Rawsheed is preparing a special vegan meal, including fresh juice, appetizers, salad, raw and cooked pizzas and desserts (menu subject to change).
🎟️ TICKETS include:
Chef Rawsheed’s enchanted vegan meal (magical dinner) 🦜
Sign: "Do not be deceived. You are headed for Hell! [for wearing skimpy swimwear, heathens]"
What is there to eat on this green planet?
No ticket purchase is necessary to attend! However, for magical dinner, individual tickets are only $20. Please note in your RSVP "No Ticket" if planning to opt out of dinner. That way we have an accurate count for supplies.
Time to play in the pool under the Cali sun
FOOD ABUNDANCE: Guests are welcome to bring fruit and vegan snacks and drinks to share.
Guests are encouraged to bring a swimsuit, towel, lawn chairs, and outdoor or pool games.
Prepare to dance, sing karaoke, swim and play.
Dreams of a Dragonfly
O, Buddha, do dragonflies dream and, if they do, what about?
SYNOPSIS: What happens when a girl dreams of becoming a fairy so hard that she gets her wish and enters the magical world of animals and learns some of their secrets?
Join her on this fantastical adventure and you, too, could learn their secrets and how to advocate for them. More
CO-HOSTS
Vanessa Marsot, Annie Vitality, Justine Block, Kim Delgado, Paige Parsons Roache in coordination with:
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