China's pollution worst in the world

Asia-Pacific, Al Jazeera English (aljazeera.com); Wisdom Quarterly

Beijing smog is visible from outer space (ZMEscience.com); Great Wall grueling race

 

Residents fear the outdoors (aljazeera.com).

Residents of Beijing have been refusing to step outdoors due to fears sparked by the dangerous levels of pollutants in the air. The air quality in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday was the "worst on record."
 
This is according to an environmentalist group noting that the pollution levels in the city were at 30-45 times the safety level. The densely populated Chinese capital (Beijing) has been wrapped in thick smog since Friday, reducing visibility and disrupting traffic but the air quality reportedly improved on Sunday.

NPR‘s Louisa Lim reports from Beijing that the smog has affected more than 30 Chinese cities: “China is choking on its own development...new cars...the pollution has been exacerbated by weather patterns, combined with an unusually cold spell. ‘In the winter, we have to burn more coal to get heating,’ says Zhou Rong of Greenpeace (ZMEscience.com).

 
"This is really the worst on record not only from the official data but also from the monitoring data from the US embassy," Zhou Rong, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace said about the hazardous pollution in the city. "Some areas in (neighboring) Hebei province are even worse than Beijing." The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre said that the conditions were likely to last another two days as the heavy pollution is trapped in an area of low pressure. More

• VIDEO: Beijing pollution "worst on record" 
• PHOTOS: Pollution in Beijing

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Dec. 21, 2012: The End of Time? (video)

Xochitl, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; NPR.org; COUNTDOWN: -1

Official Countdown Clock

Marshall Masters, 2012 researcher and author, offers an in-depth look at the predictions made in a crop circled formation he calls the "2012 Star Map of Doom."

Known as Avebury 2008, it tells us that on Dec. 21, 2012, we will begin to experience the onset of a protracted global catastrophe. It will last for years and will include a pole shift, such as the one predicted by America's "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce.

For the readers of Marshall's book, Crossing the Cusp: Surviving the Edgar Cayce Pole Shift, this video offers an in-depth back story not included in the book.

Maya expert: "End of Times" is our idea, not the ancients'
Bill Chappell (The Two-Way, NPR)
It is Dec. 20, 2012 -- and citizens of Earth are panicking, consumed by the idea that the world will end [tomorrow]  Friday, something they say was predicted by Mayan astronomers. Of course, most people are not panicking, and Maya expert David Stuart says no one should. The calendar, he says, has plenty of room to go. In an interview airing on Thursday's Morning Edition, David Greene asks archaeologist Stuart, who helped translate influential ancient Mayan hieroglyphs in 1996, if he thinks the world will end on Dec. 21st. LISTEN

• PHOTO: Tourists in front of the "Gran Jaguar" Mayan pyramid temple at the Tikal archaeological site in Guatemala, where ceremonies will be held to celebrate the end of the Mayan cycle known as Baktun 13 and the start of the new Maya Era on Dec. 21.

Safe from the Apocalypse in Europe

In a French village, protection from the apocalypse

Eleanor Beardsley (UFOs and ETs on NPR.org)

Bugarach where UFO and ET conspiracies gather

Friday is the last day of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar, sparking talk about the possible end of the world. About two years ago, a rumor began circulating on the Internet that the French village of Bugarach, population 200, would be the only place to survive this apocalypse. But despite many news stories of people flocking to the village, less than two weeks before "doomsday," there was no one on the streets. Houses were shuttered against the cold.... For 40 years, [the mayor] says, people have been coming here looking for UFOs and extraterrestrials or the healing power of the mountain. "And now add this Mayan rumor and the buzz created on the Internet..." LISTEN

 

Buddhist and Mayan Time

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Mayan and Mesoamerican calendars are very sophisticated (freewebs.com).

   

Studying and calculating (lajhsslab.com)

Twenty-six hundred years ago the Buddha -- like the ancient Vedic seers of the Indus River Valley Civilization and the great Mayan Empire (part of a series of great cultures such as the Aztecs, Toltec, Olmecs, Incans, etc.) -- spoke of cycles of time. In Sanskrit these are referred to as kalpas. 

 

There are various cycles, all confusingly called kalpas. In detail, they are distinguished as great kalpas (maha kalpas), those of indeterminate length, and so on. Translated as "aeons," they break down into ages and epochs and other similar cycles.

 

In just the same way, the Mayan calendar is not simply a lunar-cycle annual timekeeper, or tzolkin with a 260-day cycle. The Mayan civilization's long-count calendar has cycles within cycles. The most important represents a recurring period of 26,000 years calculated by the precession of the equinoxes. 

 

How to read the Mayan calendar

But the baktun is perhaps the best known. All that is happening in speaking of these cycles covering immense periods is illustrating the repetition of tendencies. Things are cyclical but not circular; they spiral. Sometimes they spiral out of control, yet they right themselves in time. Things devolve and evolve again. This is the intrinsic nature of samsara, the "Wheel of Life and Death." 

 

We are now, and we will be again. However, and this is the unimaginable and unacceptable thing, it will not be us as such. Who will be came from us. It is us again, but we will not be the same. We will die, we are dying, and what we hold dear is lost here. But what we have been will come to meet us again (and again and again...).

  

Connecting with the Maya in Mexico (mexicotoday.org)

Things fall apart at every moment, and in the next moment something re-arises. What re-arises is almost the same but NOT quite identical. 

So the stream goes with everything dying, something being reborn, but it is not us. Yet, we identify with and cling to what is now just as we identify and cling with what is yet to come. 

 

Ultimately, we are not all this -- these forms, feelings, perceptions, formations, or consciousnesses -- and we will not be that either. But in the smoldering haze of ignorance it will seem that way, driven by fires of lust and the embers of fear/resentment. Far better, then, would it be to occupy ourselves with doing something about these three defiling influences -- greed, hatred, and delusion.

(Divine Cosmos) Edgar Cayce, reborn as David Wilcock, on prophecy

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The Penultimate Day: Mayan Calendar (sutra)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly, COUNTDOWN: -2

Siddhartha meets Mara under the Bodhi tree the night before the dawn of enlightenment.

"Therefore, since the world has still/Much good, but much less good than ill,/And while the sun and moon endure,/Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,/I'd face it as a wise man would,/And train for ill and not for good./But take it: if the smack is sour/The better for the embittered hour;/It will do good to heart and head..." (A.E. Housman).

 
Well, this just about does it for us in the Old Age. "Any last words, Zaphod?" "No." "Trillian?" "No."

 

"I don't have any either," Arthur Dent exclaimed. 

"We figured that, monkey man."

"You, Ford?" "Well, I find the prospect of death contracts the mind wonderfully."

Fortunately, Trillian's been meditating. So she's saved, and her eventual liberation is guaranteed. Not as much can be said for the rest of us. We did make some merit, good karma, and that's a comfort.

 

(Dhammalokasuttas, Perth, Australia) Ajahn Brahmali explains the discourse on "Fear and Dread" (Bhayabherava Sutta, Middle Length Discourses 4).

Fear not for fear weakens one. Love.

Near the end, this is the end, what to do as it ends? Shall we glance at the nice town, review its war plan, tour the mass graves? If we know there's nothing to fear but this very fear itself, how shall we dispel the fear? It is a problem as old as ancient India. At that time the Buddha dispelled fear by delivering this sutra.  

 

Study Guide: Discourse on Fear and Dread
Sati Center for Buddhist Studies Sutta Study Program 2008-2009 (edited)

Fearless mudra (samuizoom.com)

The Pali commentary to this discourse explains that if someone attaining meditative absorption (jhana) with a white disk (kasina), focusing until whiteness fills the mind, emerges from absorption unexpectedly at night then he or she might mistakenly think it is daytime. But this explanation seems forced. 

Another explanation is that a mistake was made during the [memorization, repeating, and] transmission of this part of this discourse. In other words, perhaps the text originally had something that made better sense.

This theory is supported by the fact that the Chinese version has alternative wording:

 

Abhaya gesture (mesosyn.com)

“Both day and night, some recluses do not understand the path of the Dharma.” It also has a different description of the third knowledge (Section 31). It contains no mention of the Four Noble Truths or the fourfold formula for the taints (defilements of heart/mind).

The Chinese (EA 31.1) simply has: “When my mind became composed, purified, clarified, without blemish, without defilement, grown soft and workable, fixed, and immovable, I called to mind knowledge to eliminate the taints. Then I truly knew suffering” (T125 p666c15).
 

Given the centrality of the Four Noble Truths and the importance of the Buddha’s enlightenment, it seems unlikely that this would have been dropped during transmission. It is more likely that it was added to the Pali version sometime after the original composition. Some support for this idea is found in MN 6 (Section 19), MN12 (Section 19)... More
 

Penultimate?

(Wonderlane/flickr.com)

"Next to last." That's not today. That's not even tomorrow. We're always living in the last moment, because every moment ends with a falling phase. If we could see that, we would not cling. But we do not see that, so we fear (a kind of hate). Or we desire. Or we become confused. And in our aversion-attraction-delusion, we grasp. Then we cling. And so are born all manner of troubles. Fear not. Love more. Sit in self-development to quicken the personal evolution that is trying to happen. Let the solstice, the New age, the advent of the next cycle help speed up the process.

• Mayan Calendar may not end in our 2012
• PHOTOS: Life in Labrang Monastery, Tibet
• Watch Mt. Everest melt (Himalayan heat) 
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• The art of Sam Antonio Photography
• Atheists suffer persecution

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