"Everybody dies but...

NOT everybody lives"

(Red Bull)
  

After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet or 24.26 miles) in a helium-filled balloon, daredevil "astronaut" Felix Baumgartner completed a record breaking jump for the ages. He is "the man who fell to Earth."

• Felix sky dives to Earth from space
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From the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound-barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane, Felix broke the record in a special airtight suit. He reached a maximum freefall speed of 1,342.8 km/h (833 mph) through the near vacuum of Earth's stratosphere.

Beavis & Butthead, Jackass, are teens already trying this at home?

He was later slowed down by the friction of our atmosphere during his 4:20-minute-long drop. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the record for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger, who was manning Mission Control during the jump.

 

Watch the full Recap

 
Red Bull sponsored extreme sports compilation (2012)
 
Parkour (Freerunning) in Kuwait at The Art of Motion
  

What is "Red Bull"?

Pat Macpherson, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

I'm not real, just here to sell mo' sugar.

Legend has it that a traveling toothpaste salesman was passing through Buddhist Thailand when someone offered him an energizing syrup. It worked (caffeine kick), so the salesman tracked down the elixir-concocter and said, We should sell this to the West. But first we carbonate it. 

The taste, apparently, never mattered. Is it healthy? Who cares? Do people drop dead at raves chugging it with Vodka? Maybe. So what, the maker says. That's not his problem. Red Bull gives you [corporate jingle] wings! There is no evidence that Felix Baumgartner was a drinker. But Aunt Jemima don't eat no pancakes neither. That doesn't keep a room full of mostly White male executives (at RB or General Mills, Inc.) from cashing in on their comforting brand logo/mascot. 

  

Auntie J originally came from an old timey racist minstrel show of White people in blackface promoting stereotypes. The corporation puts the best spin doctoring on its product's public face. Red Bull may not be good for human consumption, but they do sponsor great feats in extreme sports and funny commercials. If the Honey Boo Boo Thompson Family uses it to make Go-Go Juice and bring on obesity, diabetes, and gray hair, why would anybody blame the corporation that produces it? Soda doesn't help anyone do anything worthwhile, but brand affiliations might. White sugar is toxic, but the artificial sweetener Aspartame is worse.

  

 

RECIPE: How to make Go-Go Juice at home using Red Bull

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Red Bull sponsored extreme sports compilation (2011)

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Audio Dharma by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Bhikkhu Bodhi, Tricycle.com, Chaung Yen Monastery

Afghan (Gandhara) style Buddha (San Francisco Asian Museum)

  

From the wide range of meditation subjects found in the Buddha’s discourses [sutras], the ancient teachers of the Theravada tradition have selected four subjects and grouped them into a set known as “the four protective meditations”: 

1. Recollection of the Buddha
2. Loving-kindness meditation
3. Contemplating the Unattractive Nature of the Body
4. Mindfulness of Death

The four are called “protective” meditations because each offers protection from a particular unwholesome tendency and reinforces a beneficial quality essential to the path. 

  

The four can be developed either as a preparation for a more intensive type of meditation or as independent subjects.

1. Recollection of the Buddha protects against dissatisfaction and generates faith [confidence] and devotion, which in turn give rise to joy. 
2. Loving-kindness is the antidote to ill will and generates feelings of friendliness and altruistic concern.
3. Contemplating the unattractive nature of the body debilitates sensual lust and inclines the mind toward disenchantment and [liberating] dispassion. 
4. Mindfulness of death is a potent remedy for heedlessness, reminding us of the transience of everything we cherish.

Over the next four weeks [the American monk] Bhikkhu Bodhi* will explain each of these meditation subjects in turn and conduct each as a guided meditation.

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• Reading Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations and copious commentary, one clearly understands he has a dry-insight method bias [characteristic of the Theravada school of the past few centuries], to the detriment of absorption practice (jhana).
• The Appeal of Buddhism in the West
• Padmasambhava predicted that, "When the iron eagle flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered over the Earth and the Dharma will go to the land of the red man" (Westerners were considered reddish pink by Asians).

*Ven. Bodhi teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. He is currently translating the Anguttara Nikaya, The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha.

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