American meditation master Leigh Brasington (LeighB.com, a successful lay student of German Jewish Theravada Buddhist nun Ayya Khema) and the famous Thai Theravada Buddhist monk Ven. Buddhadasa (meditation center: suanmokkh.org). He has been practicing meditation for decades and is one of the most prominent American teachers of the jhanas (meditative absorptions).
The jhanas are a set of altered states of consciousness associated with profound amounts of bliss, glee, joy (piti), happiness (sukha), and ecstasy (rapture).
Entering jhana is done through meditating with intense "concentration" (stillness, focus, sustained attention, singlemindedness), and it's considered a controversial topic by some [misguided thinkers] in the Buddhist world.
Can regular people access the jhanas? Are they even real?
I was really happy then the mind paid attention.
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If there's one thing I know about my country, it's that we don't do good deeds unless there's something in it for us. We're war profiteers. Not us the citizens of the United States, but our government, our leaders, our military, Pentagon officials, CIA paper pushers in cubicles filling the world with propaganda and running operations of every description to make us the inheritors of Nazism's ideals, like deposing governments unfriendly to our side (with the audacity to uphold democratic principles like one person, one vote) while propping up dictators we like such as Netanyahu.COMMENTARY CONTINUED BELOW
US military completes temporary pier off Gaza; aid deliveries to begin within days
(ABC News) May 16, 2024: The U.S. military completed the installation of a temporary pier to facilitate the transportation of "humanitarian" aid into Gaza, Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea [in spite of Israel's blockade, which in the past has seen the IDF fire on US flagged military boats], U.S. Central Command said.
Bibi, I got your back. - I know, Joe, I know.
Now the corporate mainstream media is doing a report that puts Israel, Israel's American-funded military, its corrupt and genocidal prime minister, and its Mossad (CIA) in a bad light? That's hard to believe.
"What's in it for us [the US]? It gives us both the carrot and the stick? We will both be able to fund this genocide with weapons to enrich US arms dealers AND we will be able to turn the food spigot on and off (use strategic humanitarian aid as a soft weapon) to stem the famine we and our partner Israel has been imposing on the Palestinians for the past 17 years?
(Prior to Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the terrorizing, murder, and forced relocation of civilians and the setting up of more and more illegal Jewish occupation sites in the West Bank, the "state" of Israel rationed the food allowed into the Gaza Strip. The strip is the largest open-air prison in the world. Israel made it so there were only enough calories to keep the oppressed population from dying of famine but so few calories they could not remain well -- under the distress and humiliation inflicted on them daily -- or grow and certainly not thrive or stay healthy.)
Ironically, calorie restriction is one of the few scientifically-proven longevity extenders.
Get back to the reservation. No one's listening
If Israel really wanted to exterminate the Natives more humanely, it would follow the USA's lead. Here, the US federal government starved American-Indians by feeding them ultra-processed food and other junk and surplus commodities it buys to manipulate demand and stabilize prices for the manufacturers, who are part of the donor class that accepts and demands corporate welfare from the people allowed to rule as elected politicians.
Rather than starve the Indians, the government overfed them by stating, in a purported act of goodwill, that federal money could only be used on supply a sound diet of the FDA's Four Food Groups.
We may as well have put a gun to their heads and injected them with white sugar, acrylamides, preservatives, chemical flavor enhancers, MSG, neurotoxins, and other carcinogens.
Does Israel bribe US politicians for support?
Since this diet was never proven to be anything but a giveaway cobbled together by lobbyists working for the greed of the corporations that make up its components: Big Agra demanding carbs, vegetables, and sugar-swollen fruit be the base of the Food Pyramid, that pus-filled allergenic dairy, eggs, slaughtered birds and livestock mammals (in generously contaminated flesh) for protein, and that sugars and sweets be added at the very top for dessert purposes.
No one in America was eating that way by their own sense. But at least one group was forced to endure it: Native Americans trapped on reservations.
HC: Just eat the damn food, it's fine.
So what did they do with (the dead food for the dead) their ration of bleached white flour? They mixed it with milk and took the toxic oil they were given to create an Indian staple now called "Frybread," which just happened to be delicious because it was full of addictive comfort chemicals like carcinogenic acrylamides, fast burning carbs (high glycemic), empty calories, and rancid oils.
Even if the plasticized vegetable oils had been properly extracted and stored, they would still be utterly ruined by the high temperature burning/cooking that reduced them to carcinogens in the frying process.
Well, what happened? Where have all the Indians gone? The way of the Palestinians. America's slow genocide of its indigenous peoples has succeeded, but it has done so by erasing them, addicting them to the SAD (Standard American Diet), destroying them from within and disappearing them by whitewashing them, imprisoning them, addicting them to drugs, driving them crazy, psychologizing them, medicating them, and incarcerating them.
Only American citizens trapped in the US prison system and US welfare recipients (who are limited in the use of food stamps to purchase the same FDA-approved items) get it as bad because these are the same things as are pumped into US concentration camps (aka Indian reservations).
No one fares worse than Indians, prisoners, and welfare recipients. In all three cases, no one is starving, but no one is more susceptible to malnourishment, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, dementia, and all the "modern diseases" brought on by our for-profit food industry aided and abetted by our allopathic medical industry.
Is there anything for Israel to learn from this example? When asked, How could it get any worse? One idea was to allow EBT funds to be spent on fast food (junk food, sugar soda, sugary flavored drinks, burgers, fries, candy, and any other garbage) not fit for anyone one wants to survive in remain in good health. The medical field reaps the riches of our unenlightened self-interest.
Enlightened self-interest would mean taking care of how people eat so they wouldn't need the medical field to poison them back to health with overpriced pharmaceutical, radioactive, and surgical interventions and procedures. But the medical field isn't complaining.
Read all about it (Roxanne D-O)
So American Indians have become just like their oppressors, suffering all the same degenerative illnesses only more quickly and with worse outcomes: diminishing average lifespans and higher rates of addiction, cancer rates, morbidity and mortality rates in general.
Only no one can figure out why. "It's a darn mystery!" The US government couldn't possibly have known they were trying to kill the Indians and erase them.
And Israel can't possibly follow suit, using the same game plan the German Nazis borrowed from the US (eugenics, concentration camps/missions, Christian white supremacy, and other ideas for Dr. Mengele and Mr. Hitler to implement for the eradication of their "surplus" population of undesirables).
Pi is important for math. Memorize it (3.14...) or use a Base 9 system and there's no need for it.
This recipe covers two days, Pi and Nat'l Pie
It's amazing what can be made into a vegan pie. Anything the American palette is used to is covered and already being done. There's no need to reinvent the compassion wheel. Just follow along on YouTube or on the websites of many vegan chefs and test kitchens. It's fun. And it's delicious. The animals thank you, and always remember EAT BEANS, NOT BEINGS.
There are plenty of alternatives to soy or wheat gluten, now more digestible, easier to assimilate, and gas and bloating are eliminated. Take with vegan digestive enzymes (and products like Beano and activated charcoal). Eat them sprouted, or soaked, drained, and prepared in a pressure cooker the way Dr. Steven Gundry recommends.
Vegan Shepherd's Pie | Chef Jamie Oliver
(Jamie Oliver) This vegan shepherd's pie is part of Chef Jamie's new, free, budget-friendly meal plan. It's a delicious meal designed to be good on the wallet without sacrificing any flavor. With sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, chickpeas, and lentils it's bound to be a favorite vegan hearty meal; perfect to warm up in the colder months.
Ten Percent Happier, 6/13/23; Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Med), Jen (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Bodies? We don't want to live forever. We want to die young as late as possible.
Can a Buddhist want a "beach bod"?
Does this bikini make me look too human?
(Ten Percent Happier) Listen to Dan Harris go behind the scenes with Ten Percent Happier (TPH) Producer DJ Cashmere.
TPH is launching a six-part series talking to a vast array of experts on longevity, exercise, and proper diet — calling it "Get Fit Sanely."
Author Dan Harris
To kick off the series, Harris wanted to have Senior Producer DJ Cashmere on the show. He’s the architect behind the getting fit project.
Hear Cashmere get really personal about how these issues have affected his own psychology.
Hear a very thoughtful person talk about what he’s taken away from the months of research he’s done on these subjects. And get a taste of what it’s like behind the scenes at Ten Percent Happier.
10% Happier touches millions of lives already - through our meditation app, best-selling books, and top-ranked podcast.
At its core meditation is a simple, secular, scientifically
validated exercise for our minds. Like running in the 70s, or yoga in
the 90s, meditation is now poised to become the next big public health
revolution.
Join the team that’s accelerating this revolution. 10%
Happier is backed by extraordinary investors, co-founded by #1 New York
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As a Meditation Producer, work collaboratively with our team
(including guiding teachers Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg and 10%
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Help people make the most of their minds, while challenging yours along the way.
Note: This role is all about working with 10% Happier teachers to
create content in their voice, not about creating meditation content in your voice (even though you may be a qualified teacher!)
Despite the anxieties of these times, happiness has been on the rise around the world in recent years, a new survey finds. The upbeat outlook is attributed to economic growth in previously poor countries, democratization of others, and rising social tolerance for women and minority groups.
"It's a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It's widely believed that it's almost impossible to raise an entire country's happiness level." Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.) The United States ranks 16th.
The results of the survey, going back an average of 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people, will be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Researchers have asked the same two questions over the years: "Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?" And, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?" A Happiness Index created from the answers rose in 40 countries between 1981 and 2007, and it fell in the other 12.
Scientists had thought happiness is stable over time when looking at entire societies. "Most previous research suggests that people and nations are stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill,'" Inglehart said. "The belief has been that no matter what happens or what we do, basic happiness levels are stable and don't really change." So Inglehart's team was surprised that happiness "rose substantially." They speculate reasons for the sunny outlooks include societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.
Previous research has found that happiness is partly inherited and that money doesn't buy much of it. Yet the new survey finds people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries. And controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others. "The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives," Inglehart said.
A survey released last week found one reason America doesn't top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the "wrong track." The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question. The World Values Surveys, led by Inglehart, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish and Netherlands Foreign Ministries, and other institutions.
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