Meditating-in the New Year (video)

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Buddha under a fiery Bodhi tree as Mara and yakkhas attack (manicksorcar.com)

Buddhist New Year's celebration with shamans in Far East Russian Buryatia (Sky News)
   

Bye-bye 2012 mudra

To meditate or ring in the New Year? Dating a person from Asia, I learned a momentous thing: I was assured that it is a well known and ancient belief that what one does on New Year's Day that is what one will be doing for the year. It makes sense.

 

We're always trying to be happy. So we try to be happiest on New Year's eve. But what we think is happy is sometimes nothing more than excess and avoiding. What if there were a way to meditate-in the New Year?

Bangkok (torchrelay.beijing2008.cn)

There is. Los Angeles has three specific opportunities and an uncounted number of US temples that will be visited tonight and tomorrow morning.

SHAMBHALA will hold an open sit from 4:00 pm to midnight. It's not eight hours of straight sitting. There's a celebratory dinner, a video by the "Sakyan" (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's son and heir), walking, and lots of socializing.

AGAINST THE STREAM is following tradition with its New Year's eve "Intention Setting" ceremony. It begins in Santa Monica, ends early, and is repeated in Hollywood on Melrose, which goes into the New Year. There are helicopters, gunfire, fireworks, and a humorous stream of intentions said aloud as candles are lit and Noah Levine gives an encouraging talk.

SELF REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP also holds its annual welcoming the New Year meditation in Glendale in honor of founder Pramahansa Yogananda, Babajii, and the saints of all religions.

• Transformational Speakers (Season 8, The Aware Show)

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Native American Star Knowledge Conference

StarKnowledgeConference.com; Xochitl, Wisdom Quarterly

Star Knowledge Conferences and Gatherings,  going on since 1996, have been providing an avenue for all people to share their visions, dreams, and messages with the world, particularly in regard to the Wicahpi Oyate or “Star Nations.” All are invited to share their journey as we learn to walk with Mother Earth in a heartfelt, sustainable way that creates a beautiful world for generations to come. More

 

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Amitabha: the lovable "Buddha"

Nitin Kumar, ExoticIndiaArt.com; edited and expanded by Wisdom Quarterly

Amitabha (Tibetan, Opame), the gentle, lovable "Buddha"

AMITABHA is undoubtedly the most well known and popular of the Five Meditating "Buddhas." He is red in color, which in Tibetan Buddhism is the color of love, compassion, and emotional energy.

  

His direction is the west, where the sun sets. Indeed, he is envisioned as the red setting sun. Sunset is when the sun is gentle; we can look directly into its awesome power without being harmed. As it disappears into the west, the sun is like a proud and fierce king, who at the end of a hard day of rigid protocol turns gentle and jovial and allows anyone to approach him. 

  

Amitabha is thus the supreme power and energy of nature on this earthly plain, accessible to all. It is no wonder this aspect of the Buddha is the most popular of the Five Meditating Buddhas.

His unique emblem is the lotus, the attributes of which he is associated: gentleness, openness, and purity.

Amitabha’s mount (vimana, platform, spaceship) is the peacock, which is capable of swallowing poisonous snakes (nagas) without coming to any harm.

• [This ability is reminiscent of a shaman healing technique practiced by the Jivaro Indians of the Amazon, as mentioned by The Sound of Rushing Water.]

Amitabha (dawaarts.com)

In fact, the peacock is believed to derive its rich plumage from the poison of the serpents on which it feeds. The symbolism of being open even to poison -- transmuting it into beauty -- gives a sense of the purifying and transforming power of Amitabha. For ordinary uninstructed worldlings, it signifies that even our darkest and most venomous aspects can be transformed by meditating on his image

Amitabha’s image has both a simplicity and archetypal quality to it. His demeanor is totally relaxed and his hands are in the dhyana mudra, the gesture of absorption (jhana, dhyana, zen) meditation.

According to tradition, this mudra derives from the one assumed by the historical Buddha Shakyamuni when he was meditating under the Bodhi tree in pursuit of enlightenment.

 

In conformity with his hand pose, the essential message of Amitabha is that of meditation. His association with the setting sun suggests withdrawal of external sense perceptions inwards, into higher states of meditative absorption. Elevating ourselves to such a spiritual level has the ultimate objective of uniting us with that ineffable transcendental universal consciousness, which although intangible pervades all tangible reality.

  

Amitabha provides the archetype of infinite wisdom that helps us transmute the negative trait of obsessive attachment into a discerning awareness that we are all made up of the same primitive substratum.

By contemplating in this way, one is able to realize that the objective we crave is not separate from us but already as much a part of "self" as one is of it.

 

Many of these ideas display very Hindu ideas about reality -- mounts, mudras, meditations, devotion (bhakti), transcendental consciousness, and so on. They reveal the inordinate influence Brahmin priests and Brahmanism had on the development of the later Mahayana Buddhist school, which became established in the north (Ladakh, Tibet, Bhutan) and the Far East (Korea, China, Japan).

• PHOTOS: The Buddha and Saints in Burma

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"Buddhism for Vampires" (Halloween)

David Chapman (Buddhism-for-Vampires.com); Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES
COMING SOON, BREAKING NEWS: Peaceful Buddhists go on murderous rampage.

European vampires were killed and given a special postmortem meal -- a stake. Here a female had a brick placed in her mouth to prevent her from feasting on blood (Daily Mail).

WQ has been sitting on this Bon/Black Magic exposé. For Halloween, we introduce B.F.V.

  

Cheater and Sap vamps (Life&Style)

“Buddhism for vampires? That’s silly. Buddhism and vampires don’t have anything to do with each other -- or do they?”

Surprisingly, vampires have played a significant role in Buddhism in Asia for centuries. They are not a Western invention.

Contemporary vampire fiction -- “preternatural romance” -- provides tools for presenting aspects of Buddhism that are otherwise difficult to communicate.

  

Vampires in Buddhist history

Vomiting blood (Buddhism-for-vampires.com)

There is extensive vampire lore [that preceded and was incorporated] within traditional Buddhism. This has been summarized in “The Tibetan Book of the Undead.” Apart from its intrinsic interest, this history makes it clear that one cannot dismiss “Buddhism for vampires” as bogus.

  

...No one can say this is an illegitimate topic or some kind of Western commercial distortion. One can combine Buddhism and vampires as a cheap gimmick -- but I believe it is possible to explain Buddhism accurately in the language of the undead. In fact, I believe some aspects of Buddhism are best explained that way.

Vampires, ambiguity, and paradox

Vajrayana is a mix of Bon and Buddhism

Buddhism, at root, is a method for facing the paradoxes of life and death with curiosity, appreciation, generosity, and joy. Its starting point is the experience of ambiguity. The natural tendency is to polarize: to say “this is this and that is that; I love this and hate that.” But experience is unavoidably undefinable.
  
Reality refuses to fit into categories; it is always in flux. When “this” inexplicably turns into “that,” and you love or hate the “wrong” thing: that is paradox. Rejecting ambiguity is, according to Buddhism, the primordial error, and source of all unhappiness. Paradox is resolved through non-duality: allowing the horns of a dilemma to co-exist.

   

"China accuses me of being devil" (Dalai Lama)

What has this to do with vampires? Consider the basic paradox of the undead. To paraphrase the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, they are not alive, nor dead, nor both, nor neither. The undead are, as contemporary Buddhist philosopher Stephen T. Asma puts it, “liminal beings.”
  

China really dislikes Dalai Lama and Buddhism

“Liminal” means “on the threshold”; a defining feature of monsters is that they are neither one thing nor another. This is just the fundamental Buddhist paradox of emptiness and form, reflected in a pool of blood. More

• Halloween STORM likely to kill everyone on East Coast
• Meet the real-life US vampires (Smithsonian)
• "Vampire" skeletons found (Discovery News) 
• National Geographic finds real vampires
• China warns: Some paths are bad and evil!
• Evils of Communist Khmer Rouge in Buddhist Cambodia
• Lama sex abuse calls Buddhist taboos into question
• Name-calling in China: Hitler, Devil, HHDL
• Tibetans self-immolate, Americans use guns
• VIDEO: CIA's CNN dismisses the Kentucky UFO
• PBS: The investigative reporting crisis in America
• PHOTOS: Monster (yakkha) temple protectors
• China on Buddhism: Brainwashed with evils
• SCARY: 14-year-old student punished by Buddhist monk for refusing to learn Buddhism

"But who's more Gothic and Vampiric than us?"

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