The Lost Lands of Buddhist Belief

Renuka Narayanan, Hindustan Times, Nov. 17, 2012; Wisdom Quarterly

French archaeological team on top of giant 4th century Buddhist stupa cut into mountain in Samangan province, Afghanistan, 2006. A historic site to the south and east is Mes Aynak now at risk from mining (John Moore/Getty Images).

 

Gandhara became Pakistan and Afghanistan

In today's religiously riven landscape, it's hard to imagine how Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, and Christianity took turns to water the land, each to its own degree. Of these, perhaps we know the least about Buddhism, because it originated so very long ago.

But around CE (Common Era) 406, it was recorded that there were 3,000 monastics of the Theravada school in Bannu at the Northwest Frontier of India [modern Afghanistan/Pakistan, ancient Gandhara]. 

 

In Peshawar, the grand pagoda built by Kanishka was so impressive that the opinion was, "Of the various pagodas in the inhabited world, this one takes the highest rank."

 

In the Punjab proper, across the river Indus, lay a region called Bhida where Buddhism flourished. 

 

The local people were very touched to see foreign Buddhists [from the West] and looked after them with great care and affection as the Buddha himself would have wished. Across the Land of Five Rivers, there were many monasteries with nearly 10,000 monks and nuns.

• Saving the Buddhas of Mes Aynak, Afghanistan

In Vrajamandal at Mathura, there were 20 monasteries on the banks of the Yamuna river. It was also observed that, "All the kings of the countries to the west of the desert [where the Buddha was born] are firm believers."

Buddhism began in India but Siddhartha came from the northwestern frontier (pakistaniat)

 

While everyday people gave utmost respect to Buddhist monastics, the monastics occupied themselves with "benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies, or sitting in meditation."

When wandering monastics arrived, they were welcomed at these monasteries with water, oil, and "the liquid food allowed after hours" and given rooms to rest in. More

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Mayan Prophecies and Crop Circles (video)

UFOTVstudios; Pat Macpherson, Xochitl, Wisdom Quarterly MAYAN 2012 WATCH

(UFOTV.com) The film MAYAN PROPHECIES AND CROP CIRCLES is a sensation. Why are people talking it? New night time surveillance footage of a crop circle formation appearing in a matter of seconds is one reason. 

 

Discover the stunning connection between the crop circles and Mayan prophecies that go back thousands of years. 

Special issue on the Maya

Wait. Everyone knows crops circles are hoaxed using a string and a few paddle boards to bend and break crops grasses that continue to appear in farmlands in the English countryside. Right? 

No, real crop circles are much stranger: The grasses have not been bent and have not broken. They metamorphose, knot, and suddenly grow sideways to reveal a formation usually visible only from the air. Other anomalies exist in the area after forming, which are rarely mentioned.

Viewers speak. Scholars and researchers have discovered an extraordinary connection between 6,000-year-old Sumerian symbols, symbols from the mysterious Mayan calendar, and a group of amazing signs found among crop circle formations believed to be of extraterrestrial origin.
  

Maya (archaeology.org)

What are these symbols collectively trying to say? Scientists believe we are looking at a great symbolic message system, covering vast expanses of time and space.

However, only now with the aid of advanced code-breaking technology and the work of brilliant researchers have we been able to connect the dots of antiquity. The unlocked result reveals a detailed set of messages that foretell a great prophecy about the time to come on our planet and confirmation of humanity's extraterrestrial origins as recorded in sacred spiritual texts from all over the world.

• Now on DVD in a Special 2-Part Double Feature, Cat. #U690.
• Three-time award winner: International UFO Congress EBE Awards, Best Documentary, Best Historical Documentary, and Peoples' Choice Award.

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Massive Black Hole found, Mercury has ice

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly

According to the Buddha there are countless inhabited worlds and world-systems (galaxies)

 

What we have been told about space, the akasha deva loka, is largely false, misleading, and isolating. We are not alone. We get information from "Others." We are not bound to this planet but are currently traveling far in outer space. When that will be revealed officially is difficult to say. Disclosure is at hand.

 

Bhutan temple shaped like space (Peterwescarey)

Currently our government and the unelected "movers and shakers" of the military-industrial complex (MIC) that runs this and other world powers is deadly serious about maintaining secrecy far above top secret. Yet pieces of the puzzle leak or are planted in the news to facilitate or thwart disclosure and the fact that our view of nearly everything in science has been distorted. 

 

Meanwhile, most of what the world's spiritual traditions say is relegated to the realm of "myth." Mars and the Moon are inhabited or in any case were in the past, so let's move there. Planets travel independent of solar systems. And inhospitable Mercury, so near our Sun, has ice, it was revealed today.

• Super-giant Black Hole baffles scientists

Buddha planet crystals (Evoljo/flickr.com)

Mars, far from being a lifeless mass with too little atmosphere or gravity to support human life, once had a rich atmosphere, water, methane-producing microbes, civilizations, and even today has enormous trees and ravenous beasts. One would do well talking to Richard C. Hoagland, Stewart Swerdlow, and Dr. Steven Greer... rather than relying on the US military, the civilian government, or NASA and its propaganda arm aided and abetted by the money-obsessed mainstream media.

• AP Exclusive: Burma verifying Muslim citizenship
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• Animated breaking news alert scares Fox News host
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Palestine wins; WikiLeaks' Manning speaks!

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, E. Landau, Wisdom Quarterly

Don't you dare criticize Israel, and god help you if you say the US backs war crimes!

  

The world has spoken, through the UN, recognizing unconscionable Israeli war crimes. It runs the largest open-air prison called Gaza and the West Bank, holding a 1.2 million-plus stateless population hostage without a means of support, sufficient food or means of providing for itself, without freedom to govern itself, to control its own borders, airspace, or access to the sea.

The population is systematically dislocated (forced relocation), bombed, terrorized, given a collective case of PTSD, told to fight back and secretly supported to do so so that it can then illegally be collectively retaliated against. Where is the American military-government? Behind Israel. Where are fundamentalist Christians? Behind Israeli atrocities in the name of God and the Bible. Where is Obama and many presidents before them? Where else could they be? Israel is worth ten CIAs.

But now the UN has spoken and given Palestine "observer state" status, thereby recognizing it as a state, its population as citizens, and a providing a rare first step toward survival against Israel's genocidal activities (mass killings, blockades, arrests, indefinite detentions, etc.)

The UN voted in favor of Palestinians regardless of the threats and blow back already being imposed on member states. The US objects, but more telling is Israel's declaration that this will not change anything: Israel won't let it, announcing 3,000 illegal settlements being built on more stolen land. It does so with impunity, with US backing, and with the whole world becoming aware of what has been going on as these two actors manipulate the UN Security Council.

Why does the MIC (military-industrial complex) continue to allow the US to be brought down by Israel? Is it because its objectives are aligned in the region against human rights or the long-term survival of either country? The US has a fiscal cliff to fall off of and a currency to finish destroying. So it can't really be bothered with answering allegations of joint crimes against humanity. We've got great lawyers to work out a deal. And poor Obama has dictators to appease and entertain.

UN vote recognizes Palestine; US objects

Edith M. Lederer (Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2012)

The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize a Palestinian state, a victory decades in the making for the Palestinians after years of occupation and war. It was a sharp rebuke for Israel and the United States. More

• The Jerusalem Fund on DemocracyNow.org
• Afghan Women's Mission (California non-profit) 
• Wikileaks' Bradley Manning eloquent, emotional at hearing

Selma James coming to The Last Bookstore, LA

The new Freedom of Information Act

Saturday, Dec. 1, see noted women’s activist Selma James talk about grassroots efforts to eliminate child poverty in the Age of Obama and to stress the importance of caregiving.

Meanwhile, the US keeps torturing accused Army whistle blower Pfc. Bradley Manning (after Obama extra-judicially convicted him in the court of public opinion because, like, who needs due process?) and makes certain Julian Assange, author of a new book, remains a embassy-captive political prisoner...
 

WikiLeak's Manning speaks for first time

Luis Martinez, ABC, Nov. 29, 2012

Hero imprisoned, tortured for whistle blowing

FORT MEADE, Maryland - Private First Class Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified and confidential military and diplomatic documents [showing US complicity in war crimes and their concealment as well as the day to day activity of diplomats kept illegally secret by abusing the classification process marking even mundane items "top secret" to avoid transparency and/or judicial review] to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, took the stand in a military court today to make his first public statements since his arrest in 2010. Manning appeared confident and animated at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in... More

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CIA drone destroy homes in Indianapolis

Vice.com, Motherboard; Wisdom Quarterly

Life during wartime, living in a police state, and most of us won't look up to notice

 

Every drone is a war crime. And they're coming.

The theories swirling around a mysterious, deadly explosion in Indianapolis over the weekend sound like the recipe for a futuristic Tom Clancy thriller or a dystopian video game.

  

“It was just mass chaos,” Dan Able, a Southside Indianapolis resident, told the Indianapolis Star. “You can’t even imagine how bad it was.” Dan wasn’t the only one who witnessed the destruction from the mysterious explosion that officials are still struggling to explain. The horrific event left at least two dead, obliterated two homes, damaged 18 others, rendered another 27 temporarily uninhabitable, and briefly displaced some 200 residents.

  

At first, the explosion looked like... Now the Internet is lighting up with rumors that the nighttime blast was the work of a CIA Predator drone that for unclear reasons had been programmed to take out two Indianapolis-based US military resource and payroll offices. Only the drone’s missiles deviated from their flight courses, striking the homes off of Fieldfare Way, instead. More

• Man (demon?) bites dog, eats it, high on Spice (Bath Salts)

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Super Mario is a Buddhist (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; GodSlayerNES; Dr. Jane McGonigal (BuddhistGeeks.com); Dan Milano (ABC)

A short film about two Buddhist moments in Mario and Zelda for the NES.

  

Super Mario is a Buddhist

Dr. McGonigal and Mario, 1st BG Conference

(WQ) Prof. Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., is a game designer at Stanford Univ. who wants to change the world through gaming. She delivered a riveting presentation with her twin sister, also a Stanford professor (different hairdo), at the first Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011 at the Univ. of the West. She detailed the benefits of multiple-player games where people are going into the world and using gamer virtues for real-life good. From better community organizing, to solutions for regional famines, to possible treatments for cancer, McGonigal and her gamers are changing the world one epic win at a time.

• VIDEO: Who is Mario? (Trivia by WatchMojo)
• (Sept. 13, 2012) This high-jumping overall-wearing Italian is the world’s most beloved video game mascot. Join WatchMojo to explore ten pieces of trivia about The Super Mario Bros.
• Will gaming save the world?

New Super Mario Bros. U features five players

Dan Milano  (ABC News, Nov. 25, 2012)

Mario in high definition. That sounds like something Nintendo fans should be scrambling over each other to get their hands on. The issue is, with the release of "New Super Mario Bros. U" for the Wii U, this visual update is six years too late. Xbox and Playstation games have been wowing us visually for that time and in 2012, the "HD" angle is pretty, but old hat. So what else is new?

  

Tanooki suit folklore (nintendolife)

Well, for one, Mario is flung southwest from Princess Peach's castle at the start of the game, technically landing him in a new area of the Mushroom Kingdom. There are a handful of new baddies mixed with classic foes, with a new power-up or two to compliment the always-flawless level design. The stages are presented with an over-arching map that you can zoom in and out of, very much akin to the world map in "Super Mario World."
 
While there are some new elements at play, most of it equates to the same old platformer as far as gameplay is concerned. Some levels are indistinguishable from zones in previous "New Super Mario Bros." titles.

 

The Wii U's big new thing is the touch-screen GamePad controller, which is used most creatively in this game's co-op mode. Up to five players can... More

• Wii U Game Review: "Nintendo Land"
• Nintendo's Era of Censorship 
• Games Radar: New Mario
• SOURCES: FilibusterCartoons.com; Ksitigarbha; Swastika as Buddhist symbol; Shigeru Miyamoto; North American video game crash of 1983; Tanuki; Best-selling franchises

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The Great Pyramid in Alaska (audio)

Linda Moulton Howe (EarthFiles.com); Coast to Coast AM; Wisdom Quarterly

The Alaska Pyramid is Real

DiscussionRadio, Sept. 14, 2012

Secret underground Alaskan power generating center (tumblr.com)

  
On August 10, 2012 Linda Moulton Howe first reported on a "high strangeness" finding in Alaska: a massive buried pyramid about 50 miles from Mt. McKinley. She has followed up on this story, and the explosive results can be heard in a riveting witness interview on this edition of Dreamland.

 

Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu (V.M-W)

The pyramid is larger than the Pyramid of Cheops and is completely buried. [Like all of the others, it was built with extraterrestrial instruction and technology for purposes little understood today; they transform, generate power, and serve as beacons and power centers on multiple dimensions.]

It's exact coordinates have been found, and the witness Moulton Howe interviews this week provides much more detail about what has been going on there in recent years.

[It is not operated by the US military but by an armed militia that seems to be of private origin or a black ops army. One civilian engineer reports that he worked at the site taking an elevator down into it and coming to understand that it is still mysteriously generating an enormous amount of electricity, enough to power Alaska apparently but utilizing free energy.]

(EarthWeAreOne, 07-26-12) C2C host George Noory with guests Linda Moulton Howe, Dr. John McDougall. Investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe shares the latest Earthfiles.com news on US heat, drought, and fires, the electric universe, and a mysterious pyramid structure in Alaska.

The structure is very old, built and buried by unknown entities. It is believed by the witness to have something to do with power generation and transmission. As there are so many very ancient pyramids in the world, it can be conjectured that there may once have been an advanced power grid on Earth, constructed and also hidden in the distant past. 

During the cold war era, the site was apparently off-limits, no doubt because it was in a militarily sensitive area. It may have been used as a power source. There is no indication that it is classified now but rather abandoned.

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A most improbable world: Buddhist Kalmykia

Sandji Buvaev (kalmykia.eu),  Tomas Van Houtryve; edited by Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Girls in Soviet era uniforms, Victory Day celebrations in the capital. Lenin was part Kalmyk, but that didn’t save Russia from the Communist Party’s wrath. Stalin ordered the entire Kalmyk population loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Siberia after WW II.

 
(Russian version) In 2010 I visited one of the most improbable places on Earth, the little-known European Republic of Kalmykia, a former Soviet state. 

Gilded Buddha, Mes Aynak, Afghanistan (CNN)

[Most people are hard pressed to believe that Buddhism made it to Afghanistan, in Central Asia. But Siddhartha Gautama, who became the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, was probably born there 26 centuries ago when it was the northwestern frontier of India called Gandhara, near the portion of the Himalayan range known as the Hindu Kush. Buddhism did not come West to "reach" Afghanistan. 
 

"Hey, it's Seagal!" (kalmykia.eu)

Rather it rather co-originated there, as the recent discovery of the enormous 2,600-year-old Buddhist temple complex archeological site "Copper Well" (Mes Aynak) indicates, along with the maverick archeological research of historian Dr. Ranajit Pal, and the stunning Greek-Buddhist blended treasures, monastic caves, and the world's oldest oil painting art of Bamiyan.]

Located on the arid steppe region south of Volgograd along the Caspian Sea, Kalmykia is Europe’s only Buddhist republic.

 

Modern suburb surrounding the World Chess Federation building, Elista, Kalmykia

 

Nyusha concert (kalmykia.eu)

It is also billed as a Mecca for chess players with the headquarters of the World Chess Federation (FIDE, whose current president is the former president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov). An American-style suburb has been built near the capital, Elista, expressly for the purpose of holding tournaments and offering vacation homes to former champions.

  

The game -- which was invented by Buddhist monks averse to war but keen on peaceful expressions of strategy and wit -- is mandatory for all Kalmyk school children.

"We are not alone." Many are contacted by space ("heavens") dwelling humans.

 

Tea girl at car rally (kalmykia.eu)

Oddly, the man behind all of this, billionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, claims to have been abducted by aliens (devas). He says that “chess came to Earth from outer space [in the akasha deva loka or plane of 'shining ones'].” 

Men play open air chess on a massive board in Lenin Square, women do yoga in the main Buddhist temple in front of the Golden Buddha -- whose Western features are not due to Greek artistic influence, as has long been the speculation by Eastern Buddhists but because Siddhartha was from the northwest with a mother who came from even further west in what is now the geopolitical Middle East in or around Iran (Persia, Seistan-Balochistan, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal) -- and time seems to stand still in this arctic region of the Buddhist world.

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Europe's Buddhist Kalmykia to get Bodhi tree

Kalmykia.eu; Amber Dorrian, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Russia Today

(Kalmykia Tour) Gold Temple of the Buddha Shakyamuni. Хурул Золотой храм в городе Элиста. Калмыкия Европа. Буддийский храм "Золотая обитель Будды Шакьямуни".

 

The Golden Temple, Kalmyk capital, Elista

Kalmykia is an indigenously European Buddhist region in southwestern Russia. It practices Vajrayana Buddhism, an esoteric form of the Dharma blended with Siberian shamanism, establishing a long but little known history of the Dharma on the Continent.. Mongolian and Himalayan Buddhist kingdoms have apparently had a heavy influence its style of practice.

The Buddhist Dead Sea, Europe (kalmykia.eu)

HISTORY: The Kalmyks originate from Central Asia. Their ancestors -- the Oirats -- belonged to the western branch of Mongolian peoples. They represented a very powerful alliance of tribes, formations of the early feudal state under the dominion Mongolia found itself in during the first half of XV сentury. Consequently inter-regional conflicts and a number of military misfortunes caused the reduction of the Oirat Empire. More

Golden Buddha in Gold Temple abode

BODHI TREE: (Sandji Buvaev) On Nov. 27, 2012 the former president of the Republic of Kalmykia, billionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, reported that he met with a Buddhist delegation from Sri Lanka.
 
It was agreed during that in the spring of 2013, a seed or cutting will be brought from the direct descendant of the world's oldest documented tree (the sacred fig or Ficus religiosa), under which the historical Buddha attained enlightenment. It will be planted in the European  Buddhist Republic of Kalmykia, according to KalmykiaNews. Recall that in 2011, the former Kalmyk president... More

• Buddhism in Europe: Girls of Kalmykia (kalmykia.eu)
• American actor Steven Seagal visits Kalmykia
• Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander (RanajitPal.com)

Buddhism traveled West out of India (TSO)

Life in Siberia
The coldest place on Earth is not Himalayan Ladakh, Nepal, Tibet, or distant Bhutan, some of the highest inhabited places. It is the Russian republic of Yakutia, which makes up a fifth of Russia's land.

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The only Buddhist republic in Europe (video)

Russia Today; New.BBC.co.uk; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Northwestern climes for Central Asian Buddhists

Kalmykia is in the steppe region in the south of European Russia. It is the only indigenous European Buddhist republic. A 2011 international Buddhist festival took place in a magnificent temple in Kalmykia's capital, Elista. Vajrayana monks, practicing in a Tibetan-Bhutanese-Mongolian style, are preparing a sand mandala.

Ethnic Kalmyks are traditionally Buddhist (BBC)

The monastery is a palace that may serve as a temporary abode for a semi-enlightened deity. Colored marble sand is applied to the canvas through a cone-shaped tube. Follow the monks' path on RT.  Buddhists came to Europe long ago, traveling from its origins in Afghanistan and ancient India along the Silk Road.

Moving up through Central Asia from Bamiyan (possibly in the vicinity of the real Kapilavastu, Siddhartha's hometown, a great center of Buddhism with its towering mountainside statues after the conversion of the Sage's extended family, the Shakyas), Buddhism came to Tajikistan, and into Europe.

Buddhism traveled West out of India through Central Asia and geopolitical Middle East (TSO)

  

Central Asia or the -istan region (BBC)

The area was Buddhist as it first established itself in the West, partly as portions of Greek and Persian and Bactrian empires, prior to reaching the Great Walled empire of civilized China. The Czarist Russian empire extended down to Afghanistan, the roadblock in its imperial dreams as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The -istans replaced allegiance to Moscow. But the industrious bands of merchants traveling up and down the Caucasus mountains dividing the Eurasian continent, socially separating Europe and Asia. Siberian shamanism blended with Esoteric Buddhism, establishing a long history of the Dharma on the continent.

• Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander (RanajitPal.com)
• Buddhist activity in pre-Islamic Persia (Transoxiana.org)

Chan Khoon San visited Tajikistan's National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe in 2011 to view the famous terracotta Buddha statue, discovered in the 1960s among the ruins of a temple called Ajina Tepa at Kurgan Tube, about 100 km south of Dushanbe. The reclining figure is the Buddha entering final nirvana. It dates back to the 6th or 7th century AD and measures 12.8 m long and 2.7 m high. Because of its immensity and fragile condition, it was cut into 92 pieces before being transported to Dushanbe. The restoration of the sculpture was long and difficult but completed in time for the opening of the National Museum in 2001 during the course of Tajikistan's 10th anniversary of independence celebrations.

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Apes have "mid-life crises," humans too

Wisdom Quarterly

Balding, flabby, and testosterone-poisoned, that's the crisis at mid-life (WQ)

 
Yet again proving that we humans are simply the most spiritually and intellectually (albeit not necessarily the most socially or emotionally) evolved of the apes, we aren't the only ones to go through a mid-life crisis.

Everything we do, perhaps short of moral reasoning, exists in the animal world: tool-making, language (all animals communicate and some, without adequate voice boxes, manage to mimic our linguistic sounds, e.g. parrots, Mina birds, Beluga whales, howling dogs), promiscuity (bonobos), planned violence, murder, cannibalism, self-injury (most animals in captivity), anorexia (dolphins chuck), bipedalism (all birds walk on two legs in addition to a better way of traveling), smoke (monkey in Tobacco Company studies), drink (under fermenting fruit trees in desert oases), pleasure themselves... The great Noam Chomsky declared chimps could never use abstract language, until Nim Chimpsky proved him wrong.

(NewsyScience) Noc can talk. But marine biologists
discovered whales' human voices back in 1984.

 
Even apes have "midlife crises," study finds

Youth in a tube (cartoonstock.com)

(FOX News) Chimpanzees in a midlife crisis? It sounds like a setup for a joke. But there it is, in the title of a report published Monday in a scientific journal: "Evidence for a midlife crisis in great apes."

  

So what do these apes do? Buy red Ferraris? Leave their mates for some cute young bonobos? Uh, no. "I believe no ape has ever purchased a sports car," said Andrew Oswald, an author of the study. But researchers report that captive chimps and orangutans do show the same low ebb in emotional well-being at midlife that some studies find in people.

• Bigfoot is part human, study finds - Giants - 11 most mystifying Bigfoot sightings - Atom smasher creates new matter - Phantom island found on Google Earth - Ancient life lives in Antarctic lake - Alibaba: The new Facebook?
  

That suggests the human tendency toward midlife discontent may have been passed on through evolution, rather than resulting just from the hassles of modern life, said Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England who presented his work Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A second study in the journal looks at a younger age group and finds that happiness in youth can lead to higher income a few years down the road. More on that later. Let's get back to those apes. Several studies have concluded that... More

"This is one of the great patterns of human life.

We're all going to slide along this U for good or ill."

- Study author Andrew Oswald

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