Summer 2012 begins!

Surya the Sun (CBS)

Earth as a 121-megapixel snapshot from 22,369 miles up (Russian satellite Electro-L No. 1)

   
Amazing Earth!

(Mashable) We’ve seen Earth, but we’ve never seen it like this. Suomi NPP, NASA’s newest Earth-watching satellite, has taken a high-res image of the third planet from the Sun... And it’s available at a resolution of 8000×8000 pixels.
  
The World's Final Summer
Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Not having been... once having been...

Notice that according to the calendar, the "end of the world" is a Friday night? People will party like it's 1999, except it'll be Year 0 - 1 (year zero minus one), final day, zero hour. Midnight will hit. People will hold their breath. And suddenly, with lots of warning, it will be December 22, 2012. The ancestral Maya will say, "It's what we've been trying to tell you! All the hubbub was nothing more than speculative calculations and interpretations by non-Mayans. After all, the Mayan Calendar has ended lots of times." And with that, people will sleep. And things will carry on. So with all that excitement in the offing, it's time to make the most of summer break. Climb a mountain, read a sutra, notice a nimitta. For as many arhats have figured out, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." They? Phenomena, things, composite entities (animate and inanimate), even those closest to us -- the constituents of being (becoming). Everything is hurtling towards destruction. Is that not reason enough to strive for real safety, namely, nirvana?

• A very Buddhist summer
• Forests depend on large mammals 
• When Noam Chomsky wept
• Mila Kunis: I don't think I'm attractive

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Venus transiting across the Sun

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Barring interference by carcinogenic chemical irritants, Venus will visibly travel across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth today. Protect the eyes with special viewers; anything else will cause harm and not allow viewing.

TransitOfVenus.org explains how to watch Venus moving through heaven (i.e., space) safely. The Sun is so bright and Venus, the second planet from Sol, is so small that it is not visible to unprotected eyes. Sunglasses are a good way to go blind or at least do great damage to the retina's rods and cones that lace pain receptors to alert us that damage is being done. Viewers can ascend the hills behind Hollywood and get help from amateur-experts at the Griffith Observatory. But most any school will do.

• Southland gets rare chance to see Venus move

This has been a strange 2012 with many more sky anomalies than an average year. Moons, eclipses, strange lights, alignments... could the Maya have been onto something? And who told them of the heavens from the viewpoint of incoming craft rather than primates looking up from the tops of pyramids?
  
There are strange bird people (suparnas, garudas), avian-human hybrids, and there are feathered serpents (nagas), reptilian-human hybrids. With plant-helpers, they told the indigenous Amazon Jivaro and neo-shaman anthropologist Michael Harner that they were the "true gods" of this world. What did they mean?
  
There is more to this world, beings seen and unseen, than meets our two ordinary eyes. An extraordinary "third eye" -- or what the Buddha called the dibba cakkhu and other supernormal powers -- is needed sometimes.
  
A meditator near Boston, at Barre's Insight Meditation Society, told Wisdom Quarterly of developing the absorptions then turning attention toward designated areas and seeing the "unseen beings" there. There were devas above the trees, suffering beings beneath the ground, ghosts cowering, and humanoid beings in space. This was our first hint that what the Buddha taught about cosmology and cosmography is personally verifiable. It may not be very important or pertinent to serenity-and-insight. But if it verifiable, it is not something taken on faith.

“I began to open my eyes, which led to a terrible tendency to question authority because authority that cannot be questioned is tyranny, and I will not accept tyranny -- any tyranny -- even that of heaven.”

- Terry Pratchett

There are natural born "seers" who, knowing nothing of Buddhism, describe the same sort of beings. This plane is full of them. Could it be the planets have titular entities associated with them: Surya (Sun), Chandra (Moon), Bhumi (Earth, Gaia), and Shukra (Venus). The world is much stranger and wonderful than most of us ever imagine.
 
According to the world's only functioning "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (a.k.a. Wikipedia), Venus is Shukra and the titular entity for the first planet from the Sun is Budha. Astrology and horoscopes used to be powerful tools before the information was suppressed and turned into an inane pastime and ludicrous endeavor.
 
(13Orcun) Conductor Gustav Holst may be most famous for his "The Planets." But he arguably created a much greater and profound work he called the "Hymns from the Rig Veda." That is, he understood the links between the Sanskrit Vedas ("Books of Knowledge") and proto-European languages and mythologies/astrology. Sir David Willcocks, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

 

Venus as a Boy

Shukra represents the planet Venus. It is a Sanskrit word for "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness." It is the name the son of Bhrigu and Ushana, and preceptor of the Daityas, and the guru of the Asuras, identified with the planet Venus  (with honorific, शुक्राचार्य Shukracharya). He presides over "Shukra-var" or Friday. He is rajas in nature and represents wealth, pleasure, and reproduction.
 
In Astrology, there is a dasha or planetary period known as Shukra Dasha which remains active in a person's horoscope for 20 years. This dasha is believed to give more wealth, fortune, and luxury to one's living if a person has Shukra positioned well in his or her horoscope as well as Shukra being an important beneficent planet in her or his horoscope.

Bjork's "Venus as a Boy" live with Indian influences

Budha (Mercury)

Budha is the deva (literally, "shining one" or "god") associated with the planet Mercury, the son of Chandra (our Moon) with Tara. He is the "saint" or "god of merchandise" and protector of merchants. He is of Rajas Guna and represents Communication. Budha presides over "Budh-var" or Wednesday. In modern Hindi and other Indian languages, Wednesday is called Budhvar; in Tamil and Malayalam it is Budhan.

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