Time to visit Death Valley's new lake (video)

Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Death Valley's no high-altitude Peruvian lake, and its light snow is not avalanche material

• Kayakers flock to Death Valley after severe rain creates ‘extremely rare’ lake | The Guardian
• VIDEO: Death Valley’s temporary lake is so deep, one can kayak on it — and some have. See it

It is now possible to boat in Death Valley's Badwater Basin, and many are flocking to kayak

Careful! It's shallow, no diving, and very saline.

A "desert" is not really a "hot, dry place." It just seems that way because of all of the famous examples of deserts, like the great Sahara in Africa, the Gobi in China, and the Mojave in California.

A desert is a place of temperature extremes.

So it does get very hot in the day, but with so little moisture (humidity) in the air, nights can be frigid, freezing, and more deadly than the day. In the day, get in the shade? At night? Find a crevice, pull out a Bedouin tent, dig into the sand, ball up, make a fire, run from wild nocturnal animals?

What if rain could pool up in the mountains when it pours rain or when the snow melts?

.

Those strangers said go this way.

That extreme swing of temperature dries out the environment. When rain finally comes, it tends to be torrential, a deluge, cold, quickly draining or evaporating like it never happened.

Why? The sand, gravel, and loamy ground is hardly "soil" -- clay minerals mixed with decomposing organic material, like leaves, enriching the ground with water retaining recycled nutrients -- but rather terrain that drains too quickly.

The atmospheric river keeps coming to Cali

Local plants -- some of which bloom like a brightly colored carpet -- have evolved amazing ways of surviving, and wet feet (roots) annoy them. They fare far better in dry conditions with a little moisture from dew, humidity, an underground aquifer, or occasional sprinkles.

• Historical pluvial Lake Manly, Death Valley
• Are there FISH in the lake? YES: Death Valley pupfish

Death Valley is a mineral basin, an inhospitable gravel pit, more quarry than anything recognizable on the planet as habitable for humans. There's too much salt and borax, calcium and granite, lime and compressed silt.

It's so bad that it can be used for fake surface of Mars probe photos for NASA to manipulate.

It's a desert, the hottest, dryest place in the world, bar none, worse than the Dead Sea

.

We get by with a long dormant stage, waiting.

There must certainly be secret watering holes or underground networks of water, or nothing could live other than sparse chapparal and the occasional bristlecone pine and yucca tree, ice plants, or lichen. Even these would be rare. It's all bleak wilderness haunted by djinn (genies) at night.

Drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco without taking the scenic Pacific Coast Highway. Try the 5 Freeway to the 365, and for stretches you'll be driving through a harsh desert while staring up at the California "Alps" topped with snow all the way to Mammoth Mountain ski resort.

Where does the runoff go as the ice melts? It seeps right through or forms washes, gulches, gulleys, and arroyos that are soon seco (dry, as dry as if snow never happened). Return in the summer, and it's the Gobi, impossible to imagine water much less snow.

• List of world's great deserts by area

Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert

Look at the ground and see why. It's all permeable, in need of remediation and de-desertification by dumping decomposing organic matter everywhere to hold the moisture for plants to sprout in the abundant sunshine.

When you get to Independence, make a hard right, into Death Valley, destination Pahrump then Las Vegas. In the meantime, bring a kayak or a dingy.

SUTRA: Crossing the Wilderness

The wise proceed with care.

Once upon a time, long long ago, the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be) was reborn a merchant who was wise and careful. He wanted to take his wares to market through the desert, but it was too dry, so he waited.

A brash rival merchant [a young and foolish Devadatta in a former birth], not wishing to wait and dreaming of setting the price, went forward into that dry wilderness, until food ran out and water stores were almost down to nothing.

A genie (yakkha, shapeshifting ogre, ghoul), wishing to deceive him, transformed into a fellow traveler soaked in water with water plants strewn on him and his cart, coming from the other direction. The merchant was overjoyed to see him wet and asked, "Is there water in that direction?"

Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales

"There's so much water, friend! Empty out your water pots to lighten your load and get there more quickly. There is water enough to drink, bathe in, and supply your animals."

"Thank you, friend!" he said and did so, coming to ruin and death when there was no such water.

But the Bodhisatta, being wise and careful, waited for the right season to travel, when herbs for curry were growing and there was sufficient water and plants for the draft animals to eat along the way, reached market in safety and was a business success (Apannaka Jataka, Jat 1). SEE FULL SUTRA

Humanimals marveling at the new lake covering miles of Death Valley, California

This is like, but not quite, Mono Lake beneath Yosemite National Park, a super salty lake.

Not an ephemeral phenomenon? Why ancient DV Lake that reemerged will stick around

• Evacuation warnings and flooding concerns as storm hits Los Angeles (cbsnews.com)
• New storm brings flood watches, wind advisories and high surf warnings (YouTube)
• It's National Whistleblower Day today. Hooray for Chelsea B. Manning and Julian Assange!
• 8 ways to explore Glacier National Park in Montana (Kidventurous)
• Book family cabins, Glacier National Park (allcabins.com)

No man is an island...except Nazi Barbie

Bart Barker; Jon Gardocki (YourDIY); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I had to be "Ukraine hot," which meant becoming the Human Barbie doll (yourdiy.com)

I'm human Barbie from Ukraine with Nazi tendencies but not "Taylor Swift" Barbie.

Taylor Swift shakes off nude bodysuit shaming '...Ready for It?' (yahoo.com)

Taylor Swift goes nude for her first ever cover for GQ Magazine (Mirror Online)

I'm not a member of the Gestapo, I just dress like it on stage for my concerts. - Tay Tay

Camille Paglia once coined a cute and devastating nickname for Taylor Swift (thecut.com)

I don't own the whole island! Inside Taylor Swift's Rhode Island mansion (Biz Insider)

Celebrities who bought their own islands

Don't call me Nazi Barbie!

Many celebrities have enough money to purchases some of the most ridiculous things available on the human plane. Some go all out on an extravagant mansion in the Hollywood Hills or invest in several multi-million-dollar homes across the world.

Some purchase ridiculous exotic animals (here’s looking at you, Mike Tyson), while others are known to spend over $30,000 a month on fermented grape juice (ahem, Johnny Depp). Then there are those who invest in their own private island.

• PHOTOS: I have other houses! Take a look at Taylor Swift's stunning $81m property portfolio | loveproperty.com
• PHOTOS: Taylor Swift's wild summer party (IG)
• Taylor Swift's July 4th party (businessinsider.com)

Taylor Swift before and after: from 2006 to 2022 (The Skincare Edit)

It's more a castle in the sun on the beach, waterfront property, a mansion or private estate.

Inside Taylor Swift's $17 Million Rhode Island Mansion (businessinsider.com)

The Queen Bee and her unsightly man, Jay-Z, won't be outdone by Nazi Barbie (yourdiy.com)

We want all the privacy in the world...until we get it. Then we yearn for good company.

.

The braggart King Dick Branson, Necker Isle

That’s right, there are celebrity islands! Surprisingly, some of these islands, often in the warm waters of the Bahamas or Caribbean, are actually quite cheap, at just over a million dollars, whereas some are over $10 million.

Don't call me a witch!

Regardless, celebrities owning whole islands make most of us unbelievably jealous, or is that envious?

It's not that we don't want them to have one; we just want to get in on the action and have one of our own to escape to when the world gets to be too much.

• The Buddha's advice: "Be an island/lamp unto yourself"
• Be an Island Unto Yourself (sutra)
• SUTRA: "Parable of the Raft" (MN 22)
• Maybe I should teach immersive meditation instead (go.guidedmeditationframework.com)
• Taylor Swift an 'obnoxious Nazi Barbie,' writes Camille Paglia (The Guardian)

This makes up for all the attention, popularity, and love I didn't get in high school.

White supremacist Americans love them their pop-country singer Taylor "Nazi Barbie" Swift

SUTRA: To be islands unto ourselves

Maurice O'Connell Walshe (trans.), Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly, Attadipa Sutra, "An Island to Oneself" from the Pali Text Society's Feer edition (SN 22.43)

"Meditators, be islands unto yourselves [1]; be your own guide, having no other.

• 1. Atta-dipa: Atta = "self." Dipa (Sanskrit dvipa) = "island" and "lamp." "Island" is well-established in this context, and "self" is the pronoun "oneself" (cf. SN 3.8, n. 1).

"Let the Dharma be an island and a guide to you, having no other.

"Those who are islands unto themselves... investigate to the very heart of things [2]:

2. It is necessary to withdraw, to be "an island to unto oneself," at least for a time (as any meditator knows), not because it is "selfish" but precisely to make a profound introspective investigation. Buddhists in another sense would, of course, agree with John Donne that "No man is an island."

"'What is the source [origin] of disappointment, lamenting, pain, grief, and despair? How do they arise?'

"Here, meditators, the ordinary uninstructed worldling… [continued as in SN 22.7].

"I would be an island unto myself!" (Karana).

"Change occurs in this person's body (form), and it becomes different. On account of this change and difference, disappointment, crying, pain, grief, and despair arise.

[The same with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, which with form are the Five Aggregates clung to as self].

"But seeing [3] the body's impermanence, its changeability, its waning [4], its ceasing, one says, 'Formerly, as now, all bodies were impermanent and unsatisfactory and subject to change.'

3. Woodward remarks (in the Book of the Kindred Sayings, the PTS translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. III, 1924) that one would expect to find here the words he inserts in the text: "The well-taught [noble] disciple," as in many passages. For if one in fact directly sees these things and reflects on them as stated in the text, one will cease to be an ordinary uninstructed "worldling" and become a noble (any person in the stages of enlightenment) disciple.

4. Viraga, "dispassion" (SN 12.16, n. 2), is waning.

California's remote San Nicolas Island

"Thus, seeing this as it really is, with full insight, one abandons all disappointment, lamenting, pain, grief, and despair.

"One is not worried at their abandonment, but unworried lives at ease, and thus living at ease one is said to be 'assuredly delivered'" [5]. [The same with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness].

5. Tadanganibbuto means rather more than Woodward's "one who is rid of all that."

The greatest country state in the world also has its own chain of Channel Islands (wiki).

The Simile of the Raft (sutra)

Ven. Nyanaponika Thera (trans.), Alagaddupama Sutra: The Snake [and Raft] Simile (MN 22); Dhr. Seven, Ellie Askew, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I must make it to the further shore of safety using my own body to get there!

.

13. "I shall show you, meditators, Buddhism's (the Buddha's Teaching's) similarity to a raft: It has the purpose of crossing over, not the purpose of clinging to.

"Listen, meditators, and heed well what is said." — "Yes, venerable sir," replied the monastics. And the Blessed One said:

"Suppose, meditators, there were a person journeying on a road and that person sees a vast expanse of water of which this shore is dangerous and fearful, while the other shore is safe and free of fear. But there is no boat for crossing over, nor is there a bridge for going over from this side to that.

"So the person thinks: 'This is a vast expanse of water, and this shore is dangerous and fearful, while the other shore is safe and free of fear. However, there is no boat here for crossing over, nor a bridge for going over from this side to that. Suppose I were to gather branches, reeds, sticks, and foliage to bind them into a raft.'

"Now that person collects branches, reeds, sticks, and foliage and binds them into a raft. Carried by that raft, laboring with one's own hands and feet, that person safely crosses over to the further shore.

"Having crossed over and arrived at the further shore, that person thinks: 'Indeed, this raft has been very helpful! Carried by it, laboring with my own hands and feet, I made it safely across to this further shore. Should I not lift this raft atop my head or put it on my shoulders and go wherever I like?'

"What do you think, O meditators? Will this person acting thus do what ought to be done with a raft?" — "No, venerable sir!" — "How then, meditators, would one be doing what ought to be done with a raft?

"Here, meditators, having made it across and arrived at the furher shore, the person thinks: 'Indeed, this raft has been very helpful! Carried by it, laboring with my own hands and feet, I made it safely across to this further shore.

"Therefore, should I not strand it on dry land or let it float away into the water, and then go as I please?' By acting thus, meditators, would that person do what ought to be done with a raft.

"In the same way, meditators, have I shown to you Buddhism's (this Teaching's) similarity to a raft: It has the purpose of crossing over, not the purpose of clinging to.

14. "You, O meditators, who understand Buddhism's similarity to a raft should let go even of Dharmas (good teachings),* how much more of non-Dharmas (false teachings)!

Commentary to this sutra

 
*COMMENTARY: "The Teachings" (Dharmas) are serenity (samatha) and insight (vipassana). The Buddha, indeed, enjoins us to abandon craving and clinging (chanda-raga) concerning serenity and insight. Where, then, has he enjoined the abandonment of craving and clinging in the case of serenity? He did so in the following saying:

"Therefore, Udayi, do I teach the abandoning even of the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Do you see , Udayi, any fetter, fine or coarse, that I did not tell you to let go of and discard?" (MN 66).

And in the case of insight (vipassana), the abandoning was enjoined by the Buddha as follows: "And to that view thus purified and cleansed, you should not be attached, should not be enamored of it, should not treasure it."

But here, in this present text, he enjoined the abandoning of craving and attachment concerning both (serenity and insight), by saying: "You should let go even of Dharmas [good teachings], how much more of non-Dharmas [false teachings]!"

The meaning is this: "I teach, O meditators, the abandoning of craving and clinging even for such peaceful and sublime states (as serenity and insight). How much more so in regard to that ignoble, low, contemptible, coarse, and impure thing in which this foolish person Arittha does not see any harm, saying that craving and clinging (desire and attachment) for the five sense-objects is not necessarily an obstruction!

"But you, O meditators, unlike that Arittha, should not fling mud and refuse into my dispensation [Teaching, Dharma]!" In this way, the Blessed One again rebuked Arittha by this admonition.

The Way to the Beyond (Raft Sutra)

Ancient-Buddhist-Texts.net via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew; Alagaddupama Sutra: "The Snake and Raft Similes" (MN 22), Ven. Thanissaro (trans.), edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

I need my sensual pleasures!

“Looking to nothingness, and being mindful, depending on nothing, cross over the flood.

“Having laid aside [craving and clinging to] sense pleasures [as one's only source of happiness], abstaining from talk, day and night one must seek the end of suffering.”

“As a flame overthrown by the force of the wind goes to rest and can no longer be discerned, just so the sage free from the mental body goes to rest and can no longer be discerned.”

“There is no measure of the one who has come to rest. There is nothing by which they may speak of one. When everything has been completely removed, all the pathways for speech are also completely removed.” More

The Raft Simile

"Meditators, I will teach you the Dharma -- comparing it to a raft, used for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of clinging to. Listen, pay close attention, and I will speak."

"As you say, venerable sir," the monastics responded to the Blessed One (the Buddha).

The Blessed One said: "Suppose a person were traveling along a path. That person might see a great expanse of water, with a near shore that is dangerous and risky and a further shore that is safe and risk-free, but with neither a ferry nor a bridge to go over from this shore to the other.

"The thought might occur, 'Here is this great expanse of water, with a near and further shore but with neither a ferry nor a bridge to go from one shore to the other. So what if I were to gather branches, grass, twigs, and leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore depending on the raft, making a vigorous effort with my own hands and feet?'

"Then that person, having gathered branchesm grass, twigs, and leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the further shore depending on that raft, making a vigorous effort with one's own hands and feet.

• [Note 7: According to SN 35.197, "The great expanse of water stands for the Fourfold Flood: the flood of sensuality, the flood of becoming, the flood of views, and the flood of ignorance. The near shore, dangerous and risky, stands for self-identity (self-view). The further shore, safe and risk-free, stands for nirvana. The raft stands for the Noble Eightfold Path: right view...right concentration. Making an effort with one's own hands and feet stands for the arousing of persistent effort."]

There is a beyond the beyond. Ahhh.

"Having crossed over to the further shore, one might think, 'How useful this raft has been! For it was by depending on this raft that, making an effort with my own hands and feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, hoisting it up and carrying it on my head or back, go wherever I like?'

"What do you think, meditators? Would that person in doing so be doing what ought to be done with that raft?"

"No, venerable sir."

"What should that person do in order to do what ought to be done with that raft?

"There is the case of a person, having crossed over, thinking: 'How useful this raft has been! For it was by depending on it that, making an effort with my own hands and feet, I have crossed over to safety on this further shore.

"'So why don't I, having dragged this raft onto land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing so, that person would be doing what ought to be done with that raft.

"In the same way, meditators, I have taught the Dharma comparing it to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of clinging to.

"Understanding the Dharma as taught comparing it to a raft, [a wise person] would let go even of beneficial things (dharmas), to say nothing of harmful ones (non-dharmas)." More