This documentary corrects the way we think about the Bible and the history of humanity's origin. What implications does it have for us today? In his book Escaping from Eden (UK), author Paul Wallis documents the pre-biblical Sumerian creation story.
The word Annunaki means “Those who came from the heavens to earth,” a term that makes clear their extraterrestrial origins.
Many of the world’s mythologies claim that governance over human society began with dominance over human beings being established by superior beings that were not but came to be called “gods.” Then the job of ruling got handed over to human governors, regents, and kings at a later stage.
The origin of the Judeo-Christian Bible is the ancient Sumerian text. The very same story is found in both accounts, only the Sumerian is much older. It predates the biblical account by thousands of years.
Ancient Aliens
The Sumerian story begins with rulers coming down from the skies/heavens. The glyph for these rulers is a symbol pointing to the sky. Those who came from the sky, the Annunaki, claimed to be from the heavens. They were sky people.
It can be a lot to take in, but suddenly many things become clear.
The familiar stories of the biblical Book of Genesis affirm that a God created the universe, earth, and humans.
However, various anomalies in the text clue us in to the fact that we are reading unoriginal versions of these stories.
Where are the original stories, and what do they say about who we are and where we came from?
What was the earlier documented narrative of human origins that was nearly obliterated from the Hebrew scriptures in the 6th century BC and suppressed in Christian writings of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD?
The answers are in the earlier Sumerian texts and cylinders, which talk about the extraterrestrials or "powerful ones" we came to call "gods."
Escaping from Eden takes us on a journey around the world into the mythologies of ancient Sumer, Mesoamerica, India, Africa, and Greece to reveal a profound secret hidden in plain sight in the texts of the Bible.
Far reaching and deeply controversial, this book points to truths about ourselves -- our history and potential -- that we may have suspected but not dared to speak.More
"A courageous service...a new perspective on the creation and engineering of man[kind]."
Practice is therefore the most important thing. In my own practice [walking the path to enlightenment], I didn't spend all my time studying the theoretical descriptions of the mind and mental factors.
I watched "that which knows." When the mind had thoughts of aversion I asked, "Why is there aversion?" If there was attraction I asked, "Why is there attraction?" This is the way to practice.
I didn't know all the finer points of theory or go into a detailed analytical breakdown of the mind and mental factors. I just kept prodding at that one point in the mind, until I was able to settle the whole issue of aversion and attraction and make it completely vanish.
Whatever happened, if I could bring my mind to the point where it stopped liking and disliking, it had gone, gone beyond suffering. It had reached the point where it could remain at ease, whatever it was experiencing.
There was no craving or attachment (clinging)… it had stopped. This [release, liberation, letting go] is what you're aiming for in the practice.
Do you learn to know the Truth or to debate?
If other people want to talk a lot about the theory, that's their business. In the end, however much you talk about it, the practice has to come back to this point. Even if you don't talk much about it, the practice still comes back to this point.
Deer, when you're hungry, eat. When you're...
Whether you [mentally] proliferate a lot or a little, it all comes back to this. If there is rebirth, it comes from this. If there is extinction [of ignorance, craving, and aversion], this is where the extinction occurs.
However much the mind proliferates, it doesn't make any difference. The Buddha called this [the heart] place "that which knows."
It has the function of knowing according to the truth of the way things are. Once you have really discerned the truth, you automatically know the way the mind and mental factors are.
This first Insight Myanmar interview is an autobiography of a famous living monk, a Burmese-Chinese Sayadaw. The text is a sample of his teaching, a transcript of a live Q&A session from L.A.
Wait, was is he saying? Is he speaking?
QUESTION: So nothing exists?
ANSWER (Thabarwa Sayadaw): No, no, no, not nothing. We can use the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, the mind. We can use the scene, the sound, the smell, the taste of the food. We can touch hardness, softness, cold, hot. We can also use politics, economics, education.
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Insight Myanmar (podcasts starting 2020)
The real problem is concerned with the mind not with this or that life, this or that person, black or white, male or female, young or old, educated or uneducated, rich or poor, Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim. All of these are unreal problems.
All of these are not real, not true. Accepting this is the practice of detachment. If we cannot accept this, we are using [impersonal things] with attachment.
Jason: What Sayadaw means is just like he said.
As a human being, I was taught that human beings are more intelligent than other animals, that the knowledge of human beings is right, and that we should rely on the knowledge or intelligence of human beings over the other animals.
This is what I was taught since I was young. This theory is incomplete.
Most human beings are using this theory. Humans are intelligent. That’s why we rely on scientists or doctors or politicians. This theory and practice is incomplete. The intelligence of the living beings is just a creation, not real. We all are using created intelligence, created life, created mind. We are living in the created world.
But what's he saying? Is it Maha-Thera-yana?
That’s why people in society are busy creating new products, new technology, and preserving the old products, buildings, and technology. That’s why we are all tired.
We are feeling stress and disappointment (dukkha), doubt and confusion and not knowing what is right or what is wrong (avijja).
We can be rich, we can be educated, we can be well-known throughout the world, we can have a long life, but the mind will still remain unstable and impure [and therefore unhappy].
The mind will not be healthy or wealthy even if we are rich, educated, or well-known, because we are using ignorance and attachment [clinging] in the mind.
Ignorance is wrong view, misunderstanding. Attachment is when we don’t want to let go of the idea of something or someone [given that things are empty, shunyata, and therefore impersonal, anatta], mine or yours. That is attachment. Do you agree with this theory?
THABARWA SAYADAWhas had a meteoric rise in Burma (Myanmar). After weathering a series of crises that threatened the very existence of his urban meditation center, Rangoon, the Burmese monastic’s mission is now expanding at an unprecedented rate across the country and the world. Then there is his monastic center itself, which is redefining the role of monasticism and the shape of Burmese Buddhism in the 21st century. In this inaugural interview, Thabarwa Sayadaw (a title meaning "Teacher at the Nature Center") shares autobiographical details of his journey from layperson to monastic, as well as the early start of his first meditation centers. He began the same sort of center in Baldwin Park, L.A.
This is NOT a picture of Australia burning but an artist's rendition of areas already affected by fire.
Australia fires: Misleading pictures go viral
(BBC News, 1/8/20) Maps and pictures of Australia's unprecedented bushfires are being spread widely on social media. Users post them to raise awareness of the devastating fires, but some of the viral maps are misleading. They are spreading disinformation about the crisis. One image shared widely by Twitter users, including the famous singer Rihanna, was interpreted as a map showing the live extent of fire spread, with large sections of the Australian coastline molten-red and fiery. But it is actually artist Anthony Hearsey's visualization of one month of data of locations where fire was detected, collected by NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System. Australia is fighting one of its worst bushfire seasons, fueled by record-breaking temperatures and months of severe drought [weather modification, dam water mismanagement]. Since September at least 25 people have died and thousands have been made homeless. More than 15.6 million acres (63,000 sq kms, 6.3 million hectares) have been burned so far. One hectare, by the way, is roughly the size of a sports field.
Rife could see all viruses and eliminate them.
First, this corona virus scare. They want us to be scared, very scared. They did it with SARS, swine flu, AIDS, sarin gas, anything they can sell toxic vaccines to countries for, which get forced into citizens because other citizens are terrified, and so on ad nauseum.
Tim Conway Jr., who likes to fan the fires of frenzy for ratings and because he's becoming a germophobe, noticed a shocking inconsistency on Friday, Jan. 31, 2020. He was spraying down the radio booth with an old can of Lysol. It kills 99.9% of germs, the label reads, and it lists some. China said it just caught on to this new virus.
(CBC) Nurse in Wuhan, China says China is lying about outrbeak severity
Then the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) claimed it had never heard of corona virus until two months ago. That means that not until late November of 2019 had the leading agency on health been aware of this thing called the corona virus, so called because of the dots around the virus under a microscope. Conway read the Lysol can, which said it was manufactured in late 2017, and it says itdisinfects corona virus. So Lysol heard of corona virus before W.H.O.? Or is it all more government conspiracy fearmongering? Be afraid, and scare everyone else until they're more afraid than you are.
Eucalyptus forest brush: ready for bush fire.
Dr. Joel Wallach, Ph.D. figured out why Australia is having two problems. The first problem is the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, as the coral dies due to rising acidity and ocean warming, except warm ocean wouldn't kill the coral were it not for the acidity that eats it away. Why in Australian waters? It turns out that due to the foolish and shortsighted building of many dams, the alkaline silt which normally would run out into the ocean to balance the acidity is no longer there. Solution?
Dr. Joel Wallach begins the show today discussing his plan to save the dying coral reefs. Asserting that since dams were put on major waterways, silt is being prevented from reaching the oceans. He contends that bacteria need the minerals in silt, and algae feed on those bacteria. Algae moves up the food chain, and without algae reefs are dying. Youngevity is poised to help save the earth.More
Flush the dams. Release the silt. Keep the alkalizing salts (base minerals) flowing the waters around the Great Barrier Reef. The shock news of the day are the fires raging in Australia, polluting the air and killing billions of animals (at least half a billion to a billion big, important, lovable animals like koala bears, kangaroos, and other things they make into plush dolls, but many more creatures no one cares much about, which do not even come into the count). Dr. Wallach says this is due to flammable air, which means industrially polluted air.
Gondowan forest cover of Australia (wiki)
Moreover, on Friday, Jan. 31st, the famous Western Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm, who lives in Perth, far western Australia, explained that when it gets very hot, and it has been very hot, and the fires approach, volatile organic compounds in eucalyptus and other trees combust in the air, and the trees explode like bombs (Ajahn Brahm, BSWA). There's no way to stop these fires once they get going.
Global warming or local warming, industry needs to stop polluting the polluting the planet and blaming it on citizens and carbon. Carbon good, more carbon better. It feeds plants and greens the world.
Carbon is not the problem we are told it is. Be seem willing to accept Carbon Markets due to our fear, as if selling "pollution credits" for something that is not a pollutant were an answer. Earth likes carbon, whereas it does not like toxic pollution. Let's reduce deadly things rather than our carbon footprint. We have been sold a bill of goods. Sorry, Greta Thunberg. We love you. Your message is being exploited as you are being glorified. Every corporation, stop polluting for profit. Let's stop letting heavy industry off the hook.
Let's get to planting a trillion trees, or how many ever it is companies have destroyed to sell the rich resources which are our birthright. We didn't get a check, like they get in Alaska for pumping the oil they should be leaving in the ground. California pumps plenty of oil, and we are legally entitled to compensation as citizens of the state, but we've never gotten our checks.
The first Westerner to be ordained as a Buddhist monk also became a hero in Asia for his radical anti-imperialist campaigning. He was an Irishman [not the Englishman Allan Bennet, aka Ven. Ananda Metteya, who usually gets the credit].
Yet, we’ve never heard of him. John Daly met filmmaker Ian Lawton, who is going to rectify that.
Irishman Lawrence Carroll (,or Laurence Carroll, Laurence O'Rourke, William Colvin), aka Venerable U Dhammaloka, led a colorful life in every sense.
A 19th century Dubliner born with wanderlust in his bones became an alcoholic hobo and spiritual free-thinker, who travelled the world by steam ship and cattle car, only to transform into U Dhammaloka — the world’s first Westerner to don the saffron robes of a fully ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.
A hero to millions for his outspoken political stance against the yoke of European colonialism across Asia during the late 1800s, Carroll’s extraordinary life story is all the more remarkable for being virtually unknown until relatively recently.
Born around 1850, he spent much of his youth in a transitory existence as a “tramp, shepherd, truckman, and tally clerk” across Europe and the USA, visiting California, before signing on as a stevedore on a steamer bound for China. More
(UnitedNaturesMedia.com) The documentary Spiritually Incorrect features the former Western Burmese Buddhist monk Alan Clements (worlddharma.com). Due for release in 2020, it is directed by Peter Charles Downey with music by Sacred Earth (sacredearthmusic.com).
Western monks are treated like royalty in Burma.
The question is, Who's Alan Clements? If only they made a movie about this author, social activist, war journalist, stand up artist, and former Buddhist monk. He was one of the first Westerners to go from America to Burma to ordain since the very first Westerner to become a Theravada Buddhist monk -- Irishman Laurence Carroll or U Dhammaloka (The Dharma Bum).
Alan Clements dropped out of the University of Virginia, went East, and became one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Burma, where he lived at Mahasi Sayadaw's Mindfulness Meditation Center, Rangoon, for nearly five years.
He trained in the practice and teaching of mindfulness insight (vipassana) meditation and Buddhist psychology (Abhidharma), under the guidance of his preceptor Mahasi Sayadaw and his successor Sayadaw U Pandita.
In 1984 he was forced to leave the monastery by Burma’s military authorities with no reason given. So Clements returned to the West and was invited to lecture widely on the “wisdom of mindfulness.”
In addition to leading numerous mindfulness-based meditation retreats and trainings throughout the U.S., Australia, and Canada. This included assisting in a three-month mindfulness teacher training with Sayadaw U Pandita at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts.
In 1988 he integrated his classical Buddhist training and his political awareness of global human rights, environmental sanity, democracy, and the preciousness of everyday freedom. His efforts working on behalf of oppressed peoples has led a former director of Amnesty International to call Clements “one of the most important and compelling voices of our times.”
As an investigative journalist he has lived in some of the world's most volatile areas. In the jungles of Burma in 1990, he was one of the first eyewitnesses to document the mass oppression of ethnic minorities by Burma’s military, which resulted in his first book, Burma: The Next Killing Fields?, which includes a foreword by the Dalai Lama. More
Insight Myanmar podcast are longform interviews discussing the heart of Dhamma practice.
Burma Dhamma the blog by Joah McGee all about the Dharma in Myanmar
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Insight Myanmar (podcasts starting Jan. 2020)
Insight Myanmar is proud to present the inaugural episode of the Insight Myanmar podcast! Host Joah McGee (Burma Dhamma) gives a brief introduction about the podcast’s mission and background, followed by short previews of each of the first seven interviews conducted so far.
The full-length podcasts will air weekly and feature (in order of appearance on the trailer):
Alan Clements, an American yogi, activist, and author, who describes his time as a Buddhist monk during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Burma;
Sayalay Piyadassi, a European (Lithuanian) Buddhist nun, who discusses her early years as a nun in Burma and her joy in simplicity practicing in Europe, particularly in Spain;
Thabarwa Sayadaw (Ashin Ottamathara), a youthful leading Burmese abbot, who shares the stressful early years of trying to establish his urban meditation center in tumultuous Rangoon and the crises they faced;
Thabarwa Sayadaw, Part II;
Ashin Chanda, a Bangladeshi Buddhist monk, who tells how the early heartbreak of losing his mother set him on a path in search of inner peace that ultimately led to his ordination;
Sebestien Le Normand, a French meditator, who reflects on a special visit to International Meditation Center (IMC);
Ashin Sarana, a Czech Buddhist monk, who describes why he is so concerned with the problem of Burmese monks touching money.
Rate, review, and share, as every little bit helps. Subscribe to the Insight Myanmar podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher... Or listen and download right off the Web at insightmyanmar.captivate.fm.
If there is any trouble in finding the feed on any podcast player, please let Insight Myanmar know, and they will ensure it can be offered there.
Insight Myanmar thanks everyone who made this podcast possible, especially its two sound engineers, Martijn Comes and Thar Nge, content collaborator and part time co-host Zach Hessler, Michael Alahouzos, who assisted in fundraising efforts, and Ken Pransky, who helped with editing, immense gratitude to the donors who make this entire thing possible.
The opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the host or other podcast contributors.
Acharya Buddharakkhita (trans.) via accesstoinsight.org edited by Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (Dhammapada X, 129-145, Dandavagga: Section on Violence)
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129. All tremble at violence; all fear [being killed]. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.
130. All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.
131. One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter.
132. One who, while himself seeking happiness, does not oppress with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will find happiness hereafter.
133. Speak not harshly to anyone, for those thus spoken to might retort. Indeed, angry speech hurts, and retaliation may overtake you.
134. If, like a broken gong, you silence yourself, you have approached nirvana, for vindictiveness is no longer in you.
135. Just as a cowherd drives the cattle to pasture with a staff, so do old age and death drive the life force of beings (from rebirth to rebirth).
136. When the fool commits harmful deeds, the fool does not realize (their harmful nature). The witless person is tormented by one's own deeds, like one burned by fire.
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137. One who inflicts violence on those who are unarmed, and offends those who are inoffensive, will soon come upon one of these ten states:
138-140 Sharp pain, or disaster, bodily injury, serious illness, or derangement of mind, trouble from the government, or grave charges, loss of relatives, or loss of wealth, or houses destroyed by ravaging fire; upon dissolution of the body that ignorant person is reborn in hell.
141. Neither going about naked, nor matted locks, nor filth, nor fasting, nor lying on the ground, nor smearing oneself with ashes and dust, nor sitting on the heels (as penance) can purify a mortal who has not overcome doubt.
142. Even though one is well-attired, yet if one is poised, calm, controlled, and established in the pure life, having set aside violence towards all beings — that person, truly, is a holy person, a renunciate, a monastic (wandering ascetic).
143. Only rarely is there a person in this world who, restrained by modesty, avoids reproach, as a thoroughbred horse avoids the whip.
144. Like a thoroughbred horse touched by the whip, be strenuous, be filled with spiritual yearning. By confidence and virtuous purity, by effort and meditation, by keen investigation of the truth, by being rich in knowledge and virtue, and by being mindful, destroy this unlimited suffering.
145. Irrigators regulate the waters, fletchers straighten arrow shafts, carpenters shape wood, and the good control themselves.More
SUTRA: "Arming Oneself"
Andrew Olendzki, Attadanda Sutra (Sn 4.15, excerpt) edited by Wisdom Quarterly
...Fear is born from arming oneself.
Just see how many people fight!
I will tell about a dreadful fear
that caused me to shake all over:
Seeing creatures flopping around,
Like fish in water too shallow,
So hostile to one another!
— Seeing this, I became afraid.
This world completely lacks essence;
It trembles in all directions.
I longed to find myself a place
Unscathed — but I could not see it.
Seeing people locked in conflict,
I became completely distraught.
But then I discerned here a thorn —
Hard to see — lodged deep in the heart.
It's only when pierced by this thorn
That one runs in all directions.
So if that thorn is taken out —
one does not run but settles down....
Who here has crossed over desires,
the world's bond, so hard to get past,
one does not grieve, one does not mourn.
One's stream is cut, one will be nirvanered.
What went before — let go of that!
All that's to come — have none of it!
Don't hold on to what's in between,
And you'll wander fully at peace.
For whom there is no "I-making"
All throughout the body and mind,
And who grieves not for what is not
Is undefeated in all the world.
For whom there is no "this is mine"
Nor anything like "that is theirs"
Not even finding "self-ness," one
Does not grieve at "I have nothing."...
Buddhist translator Andrew Olendzki: Back to the Beginning (Sarah Schorr/tricycle.org)
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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: There is something particularly moving about this poem, perhaps because it is composed by the Buddha in the first person and appears to reveal the process through he himself came to understanding. Perhaps it is because of the vulnerability expressed in the opening stanzas, where he admits his fear and sense of dread over the nature of the human condition. Or maybe it is just the utter simplicity of the:
problem (people hurting each other)
cause (basic human selfishness, driven by craving)
solution (letting go of egotistical attachments).
How easy the Buddha can so often make it all sound! More
Fiann Ó Nualláin (IrishExaminer.com; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Today is February 1st. To some that means Lá Fhéile Bríde or a Christianized "Saint Brigid’s Day," and to others it is Imbolg.
To everyone in Ireland it is the first day of spring. Don’t throw the woolly hat away just yet, but instead do tip it to the start of rejuvenation and warmer days ahead.
Brexit: What's Europe (EU) and what UK?
Not having succumbed to Roman invasion, Ireland kept its birth of spring with the impending lambs and the lush green rushes as cues, and not the thawing of the iced-up passes in the Alps and a return to war or resupply of the military outposts — the reason March is named after Mars, the Roman god of war.
Yes, Irish ancestors preferred spring to be about rebirth and growth and not about reconquest and decimation.
And later on in Irish history, not having adopted all of Romanized Britain's customs either, Ireland maintained its uniqueness in the world as celebrating spring a month in advance of everywhere else on the planet — and boy, do I love us for it.
It’s not a stubborn streak, it’s much more character-defining than that. Long before the shamrock met with a certain Christian’s fingers [Padraig], three was a sacred manifestation in Ireland -- from the other trefoil spirals carved on ancient boundary rocks and at sacred sites to poetic and wisdom-invoking triads, to triple deities, and so on.
So it is fitting that the first sacred day of renewal has a facet of three. Let’s look at the three aspects of today’s date and how they may pertain to the art of gardening.More
Today we begin our exploration ofCONCENTRATION with something you’ve known how to do all of your life: breathe. This practice entails paying attention to each in-and-out breath, and when your mind wanders (and it will because, that’s natural), noticing whatever has captured your attention, then letting go of the thoughts or feelings [by smiling] without berating yourself for having wandered.
You then begin again: return to focusing on your breathing. In this way, the meditation trains us to stay in the present moment in front of us instead of reliving the past or worrying about the future. It also teaches us how to be gentle with ourselves and others, to forgive our lapses and move on by coming back to the present. [Smile.] More + AUDIO
TIP: It can be very supportive to establish a physical space that you can use every day for your practice. This meditation corner could be in your bedroom or office; in the basement or on the porch. Wherever you practice, pick a place where you can be relatively undisturbed during your meditation sessions.
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Real Happiness?
Hey, look at that. You're doing it, happily.
“[This book is] an inviting gateway to the interior territory of profound well-being and wisdom.”
—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are
Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer in the field of meditation and world-renowned teacher acclaimed for her down-to-earth style, wrote Real Happiness, a complete guide to starting and maintaining a meditation practice.
Beginning with the simplest breathing and sitting techniques, and based on three key skills — concentration, mindfulness, and lovingkindness — it’s a practice everyone can do that can transform our lives by bringing us greater resiliency, creativity, peace, clarity, and balance.More
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This documentary corrects the way we think about the Bible and the history of humanity's origin. What implications does it have for us today? In his book Escaping from Eden (UK), author Paul Wallis documents the pre-biblical Sumerian creation story.
