So much news, moving to Kalmykia (video)

Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly

  

Kalmyk flag, white lotus on blue and gold

(RD100) Elista, the only indigenously Buddhist capital in Europe, is also the Chess Capital of the World. It is the Kalmyk Republic's main city, a multiethnic metropolis with an industrious Eurasian population.
 

Kalmyk president, Dalai Lama (phayul.com)

The Kalmyks are descendants of the Oirats and other Mongol tribes from the time of Genghis Khan. They settled near Southern Volga along the Caspian Sea and fell afoul of Stalin during the Russian revolution.
 
During the time of imperial Russia, Kalmyks joined the Russian Army with the Cossacks. Lenin was part Kalmyk but an atheist rather than a Buddhist. The maniacal dictator Stalin did not take kindly to this minority ethnic group. 
 
So while everyone else around here heads for the Himalayas, I'm aiming for Europe. All I need is a Buddhist temple, a yoga mat, and a chess board. I can take it up with a little help from the friendly space-faring devas the former president of Kalmykia traveled with.

News overload

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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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The Secret Space Program Conference (video)

Samertje; Wisdom Quarterly; Wallpapervortex.com (space photo)

(LINK) The Secret Space Program Conference, April 3, 2011, Amsterdam, Holland

• SECRET SPACE PROGRAM Conference 2011
  
  (ProjectAvalon.net) Members of European Ground Crew (groundcrews.eu) held an nternational conference in Amsterdam on Sunday April 3 2011.
  The Secret Space Program Conference (Disclose.TV)

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Topless protesters say No to Rape (video)

Femen.org; Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly UPDATED

Catholic nun joins topless protest (femen.org)

Yesterday [Oct. 15, 2012], topless FEMEN ACTIVISTS protested against the impunity of French rapists, who attack with few criminal or social consequences. A nun who happened to pass by soon joined our action. For us, the behavior of Catholic nuns has been a real eye-opener. Educated in cosmopolitan Moscow we would not have thought that there are those nuns who, at least for a while, put the ideals of female solidarity above corporate [church-state] perceptions of "morality." As it turns out, the "Dogs of the [Dominant] Lord" (Domini Canes) are much more human than wild Gundyaev. Cut down the [patriarchal] crosses and save Russia!

• Who? Russia's Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Gundyaev

Protesting Rape by Police
Guardian.co.uk
WARNING: Exposed mammary glands and defiant, attention-grabbing demonstrating!

                   

Activists from the Ukrainian protest group Femen staged a topless demonstration under the partially nude "Venus de Milo" statue inside Paris's Louvre Museum protesting rape. The nonviolent action was prompted by the case of a woman in Tunisia who was allegedly raped by police officers. Not only was she raped, to add insult to outrage she may face charges of indecency with her fiance. Source

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The Shifting Sands of Change.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Shifting Sands in the Maowusu Desert in China, by Michael Reynolds/EPA).

I was contemplating today about the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and how quickly change can occur. Day after day, month after month and year after year it seemed that Suu Kyi would be frozen in her house arrest for the rest of her life. Then, over-night the seemingly impossible occurred--she was released into the arms of her joyful supporters. It still remains to be seen what effect this will have on the greater politics of Burma, but for now it is a powerful reminder of impermanence.

The leaders of countries put on a great show of power, strength and dominance with their armies, imposing uniforms and intimidating rhetoric, but the truth is that they are just as subject to change as anyone else. I found a great example of this online. It's a presentation (below) that someone put together showing the futility of clinging to power, or anything for that matter. It shows how many times borders changed hands in Europe over the last 10 centuries.

It is compressed into 5 minutes, which shows how the mind is often tricked into thinking that time seems to drag on when one is enduring a lot of suffering. However, that time passes faster than the speed of light when measured against the life-span of the universe. Dictators come and go but the Dharma will concur all.

~Peace to all beings~

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