Advice to the Kalamas; Egyptian Tattoos (video)

CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Dhammachotika, "Discovering Theravada Buddhism" (fozibertheravadaeng.no.sapo.pt, also in Portuguese)

The Buddha, Afghanistan/Bactria (Boonlieng/flickr)

After advising the Kalamas not to rely upon established tradition, abstract reasoning [logic based on unquestioned assumptions, personal preferences, sacred texts], or charismatic gurus, the Buddha proposes to them a teaching that is immediately visible, verifiable, and capable of laying a firm foundation for a life of virtue that purifies the heart/mind.

He shows that whether or not there are lives to come after the death of the present one, a life of virtuous restraint and of loving-kindness (metta, friendliness) and active-caring (karuna, compassion) for all living beings brings its own intrinsic rewards here and now -- a happiness and sense of inward security far superior to the unstable pleasures that can be won by violating ethical principles or indulging the mind/heart in its shortsighted craving for sensual desires.
 

The British Museum (britishmuseum.org)

For those who are not concerned to look any further, who are not prepared to adopt any convictions about a future life or existences beyond the present one, such a teaching will ensure their present welfare and their safe passage to a pleasant [human or kama-loka-deva] rebirth -- provided they do not succumb to the pernicious wrong view of denying karmic causality or any afterlife state.

 

However, for those whose vision is capable of widening to encompass the broader horizons of this present existence, the teaching given to the Kalamas points beyond its immediate implications to the very core of the Dharma.

The three states examined and questioned by the Buddha -- greed, hate, and delusion -- are not merely the basis of misconduct or defiled virtue staining the heart and obscuring the mind.

Within this teaching's framework they are the root defilements -- the primary causes of all bondage and suffering -- and the entire practice of the Dharma can be viewed as the task of uprooting these harmful factors by developing to perfection their antidotes: dispassion, kindness, and wisdom. More

• Mes Aynak Afghan Buddhist monastery

Mummies's secrets: Tattoos in ancient Egypt and Sudan, June 2014 (britishmuseum.org)

ZEN: "The Void," "Sex in the Church" (video)

Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts (alanwatts); P. Examined Life

"Thou Shalt Have Great Sex" (July/Aug 2013 issue, spiritualityhealth.com)

Brad Warner (Hardcore Zen)

British Zen Buddhist, Taoist, Episcopalian teacher Alan Watts is an inspiration to Californians, where his show continues to air on Los Angeles' Pacifica Radio (KPFA.org) thanks to Roy of Hollywood Tuckman (8:00 am Sundays, midnight Thursdays).

This video is the fourth episode of Alan Watts' 1959 KQED TV series "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life." (DVDs available at alanwatts.com/collections).

Alan Watts was an unabashed lover

A native of England, Watts attended the King's School near Canterbury Cathedral. At 14 he became fascinated with the philosophies of the Far East. By 16 he regularly attended the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met Zen scholars Christmas Humphries and D.T. Suzuki. As a speaker and contributor to the Lodge's journal, The Middle Way, he wrote a series of philosophical commentaries and published his first book on Eastern thought, The Spirit of Zen, at age 21. In the late thirties he moved to New York, and a few years later he became an Episcopalian priest. In 1942 he moved to Illinois and spent the wartime years as chaplain of Northwestern University.

• BUDDHIST RADIO: PLAY AUDIO "Sex in the Church" Part 1 (alanwatts.org)
• PLAY AUDIO "Sex in the Church" Part 2 (Sunday mornings, KPFK.org, 8:00 am, Alan Watts)

Square to hippie (ianmack.com)

In 1950 he left the church, and his life took a turn away from organized religion back toward Eastern ways and expanding horizons. After meeting author and mythologist Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in New York he headed to California and began teaching at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco.

There his popular lectures spilled over into coffehouse talks and appearances with the well-known beat writers Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. In late 1953 he began what would become the longest-running series of Sunday morning public radio talks, which continue to this day with programs from the Alan Watts Tape Archives.

• Something's Happening - A: PLAY AUDIO Alan Watts "Aldous Huxley's 'Island'" Part 4 (concluding) // Aldous Huxley, “Visionary Experience” // Shinzen Young, "Learning from the Marathon Monks" (Friday, June 20, 2014 12:00 am, somethingshappening.com)

In 1957 he published the bestselling The Way of Zen, beginning a prolific ten-year period during which he wrote Nature, Man and Woman; Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen; This Is It; Psychotherapy East and West; The Two Hands of God; The Joyous Cosmology; and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

By 1960 Watts' radio series "Way Beyond the West" on Berkeley's KPFA.org had an avid following on the West Coast, and NET TV began national broadcasts of the series "Eastern Wisdom in Modern Life." The first season, recorded in the studios of KQED, a San Francisco TV station, focused on the relevance of Buddhism, and the second on Zen and the arts.

• VIDEO: Watts' account of nirvana (Celestial Elf)
• ZEN RADIO: Alan Watts (audio)
• The Michael Slate Show (Fridays, 10:00 am) PLAY/download How should we understand the dramatic occupation of Iraq's second largest city by ISIS? What about our criminal and immoral invasion and occupation? What should we do in the face of a possible US escalation? Guests: Larry Everest, Revolution Newspaper, Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party (revcom.us), Stop Mass Incarceration Network. An army of 400 cops descended on Harlem June 4 (revcom.us).

Meeting NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman

 

Intercepting the National Spying Agency

In part two of Democracy Now's extended interview, Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald tells the inside story of meeting National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras were the journalists who first met Snowden in Hong Kong last June, going on to publish a series of disclosures in The Guardian, a venerable 190-year-old British newspaper, that exposed massive NSA surveillance to the world.

Host Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

Greenwald has just come out with a new book on the Snowden leaks and their fallout, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.

Recalling his first encounter with Snowden, Greenwald says: "The big question was: 'How are we going to know that it’s you? We know nothing about you. We don’t know how old you are, what you look like, or what your race is, or even your gender.' And [Snowden] said, 'You’ll know me because I’ll be holding in my left hand a Rubik’s cube.' And so he walked in, was holding a Rubik’s cube, came over to us, introduced himself, and that was how we met him." More

More from The Intercept

British spies face legal action over secret hacking programs

The United Kingdom’s top spy agency is facing legal action following revelations published by The Intercept about its involvement in secret efforts to hack into computers on a massive scale. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, has been accused of acting unlawfully by helping to develop National Security Agency surveillance systems capable of covertly breaking into More

• British spy chiefs begged to play in NSA’s data pools

British surveillance agency GCHQ secretly coveted the NSA’s vast troves of private communications and sought “unsupervised access” to its data as recently as last year, classified documents provided NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal.

• Der Spiegel: NSA put Merkel on list of 122 targets

Secret documents newly disclosed by the German news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday shed more light on how aggressively the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have targeted Germany for surveillance.

• Inside the NSA’s secret efforts to hunt and hack system administrators

Across the world, people who work as system administrators keep computer networks in order – and this has turned them into unwitting targets of the NSA for simply doing their jobs.

• Foreign Officials in the dark about their own spy agencies’ cooperation with NSA (Glenn Greenwald)

Top political officials in other nations have repeatedly demonstrated, or even explicitly claimed, wholesale ignorance about their nations’ cooperation with the NSA, as well as their own spying activities. Were these top officials truly unaware, or were they pretending to be?

• How the NSA plans to infect "millions" of computers with malware

Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.

• The NSA has an Advice Columnist. Seriously.

An NSA official, writing under the pen name “Zelda,” has served as a Dear Abby for spies. One of her most intriguing columns responds to an NSA staffer who complains that his (or her) boss is spying on employees.

• New details of DRONE attack on Yemeni wedding prompt more demands Obama explain assassination policy

A new report on the U.S. drone missile strike that killed 12 members of a Yemeni wedding convoy has renewed calls for the Obama administration to make public its own investigations into the incident -- and explain how such strikes are consistent with international laws of war.

• UK Court: David Miranda [Greenwald's partner] detention legal under terrorism law

A British lower court has ruled that London police acted lawfully in employing an anti-terror statute to detain and interrogate David Miranda for nearly nine hours at Heathrow Airport last summer, even while recognizing that the detention was “an indirect interference with press freedom.”

• Snowden documents reveal covert surveillance and pressure tactics aimed at WikiLeaks and its supporters

Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.

• SHOW MORE TOP STORIES

FREE Buddhist film archive (video)

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Donna Beresford (meridian-trust.org)

The CIA, Democrats, Republicans, almost everyone loves the Dalai Lama, seen here in the White House with Nancy Pelosi (left) and shaking hands with John Boehner (Newsweek.com)

In 1985 the Dalai Lama urgently asked the West, through the Meridian Trust, to preserve Tibetan culture at a time when its very existence was threatened by China.

In an effort to fulfill a promise to the Dalai Lama, it would be an accomplishment to transform a Buddhist Film Archive into a FREE online learning resource.

This would be for the benefit of all living beings on the planet. For the last 18 months, the Meridian Trust - Buddhist Film Archive has been digitizing, editing, and encoding more than 2,500 hours of rare film footage on Tibetan culture, traditions, artistic practices, and teachings. 

FREE TIBET prayer flags (komodo.co.uk)

The mission is to put this unique archive online -- fulfilling a promise made to the Trust's patron, the 14th Dalai Lama, more than 30 years ago. 

The Trust is a few days into its Kickstarter campaign with a target to raise £10,000. This is what is needed to build a Website through which all of the material can be viewed. 

More information about the Meridian Trust and this project can be seen here. Help support the effort through Kickstarter, Twitter, blogs, posts on NSA spying media, and news outlets. Share it with fans, followers, and friends. Download a banner.

 

You be nice to my Michelle and Jo Boner, and stop killing people with drones! - Mm-hmm.

Help transform Buddhist films into a FREE online learning resource making the insights of Buddhist wisdom available to all (meridian-trust.org/kickstarter.com).

Alan Watts: "Why Not Now" (video)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org); TragedyandHope (youtube.com) 

"Why Not Now" and "Dhyana: The Art of Meditation" by Alan Watts (redtelephone66.com)

 

Alan Watts in Buddhist robes, California

January, 2014 - There is a new documentary film (two DVD set) on the life and works of British-American Buddhist broadcaster Alan Watts. Each film comes with "The Animated Alan Watts" and "The Essential Alan Watts," a bonus disc of video materials that did not fit into the film.

• LISTEN: PLAY AUDIO NOW (download MP3, 10.28 MB)
• Letters and Politics, Feb. 19, 2014 - KPFA.org 10:00 am
• About the Show / Archives of Show / Playlists from Show

One 23-minute DVD includes extracts from the 1972 series "The Fine Art of Goofing Off" as well as a couple of animations produced by SouthPark creators and animators. The reel has met with joyous laughter and standing ovations at recent film showings and is not to be missed.

"Why Not Now" follows the life of one of the most inspiring philosophers of our time -- Alan Watts -- as told though none other than Alan Watts himself accessing a wealth of material and lectures that were left behind after his passing.

"Why Not Now?" was created by Alan Watts' son, Mark Watts, who has given TragedyandHope exclusive rights to create the trailer for the documentary. More (alanwatts.org)

"The Kingdom of Plants" (video)

Dev, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; David Attenborough; Jackal Safaris (video)

Plants can feel, communicate, heal, and maybe even think (Lila Daley)

Suburban school boy to Shaolin monk (video)

Amanda Cable (DailyMail.co.uk, 11-14-08); Pat Macpherson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Shaolin monk demonstrates pain tolerance by breaking bricks with his head using a sledgehammer, indicating that most of us live nowhere near our human potential (Reuters).

(Nat'l Geographic) "Myths and Logic of Shaolin Monks" (kung fu documentary, see Part 2)

 

Ahmet gave up the trappings of suburbia for the good life.

He's the ordinary north London boy who became a Chinese warrior monk. And his story is as astonishing as it is inspiring.

 

Matthew Ahmet is 20 and he's hard, very hard. His head is shaved, and his body bears the ravages of a violent life. A mark on his forehead shows where a metal bar came crashing down on his skull. His forearms have been sliced repeatedly by razor-sharp knives, and his left arm has a "punishment" burn from boiling water.

 

So when he sits down, flashes a beautiful smile and talks about spreading happiness and peace, it comes as a great surprise. Matthew left his home in Enfield, north London, at the age of 17 to become a Shaolin Buddhist monk in China. In doing so, he renounced all the worldly belongings that are the staple diet of teenage life and entered upon a grueling regime of training, sacrifice, and punishment. Each mark on his body bears testament to this new and extraordinary life. Ahmet says:

Publicity poster for Ahmet's Shaolin show

"Recently, I went to visit an old schoolfriend of mine, who is at Manchester University. I met him at the digs he shares with his friends and I was stunned. There were dirty clothes everywhere, unwashed dishes and belongings just thrown around. In China, I wash my own robes in a bucket of cold water, which I also use to bathe in. I sleep on a bunk bed with no mattress, lying directly on a plank of wood. Everything in my new life is so neat and disciplined that I can't imagine being a typical student now."

Does this earnest young man, who looks like a feral youth but who is in fact gentle and thoughtful, miss anything about his "old life"? He says with a brilliant smile, "Hot showers. When I do go home, I love the luxury of being able to have hot water running over my body." More

Guardian: Only 1% of Snowden files published

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk

Americans in D.C. protest NSA spying on us after Snowden's revelations (DN!)

The NSA illegally spies on citizens, allies, and anyone it wants to, and Obama knows it.

 

Cool, he's only published 26 of 58,000 leaks.

Mr. Rusbridger said the paper had "made very selective judgements" about what to publish.

 

Only 1% of files leaked by former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden have been published by the Guardian newspaper, its editor has told members of Parliament (MPs).

 

1984: We laugh, but this is Orwellian spying

But Mr. Alan Rusbridger told the Home Affairs Select Committee the Guardian was not a "rogue newspaper."

 

He insisted the paper's journalists were "patriots," and he hailed the UK's democracy and free press.

A government spokesman said later it still believed that publishing the material had damaged national security.

"We're not going to be put off by intimidation but nor are we going to behave recklessly” - Alan Rusbridger

I hope the ol' chaps at the NSA won't be mad

Mr. Rusbridger told MPs that senior officials in Whitehall, the US administration and the US senate's intelligence committee had told the paper "no damage" had been caused. He also said criticism about damage to national security made by intelligence chiefs at a different committee hearing last month had been "very vague and not rooted in specific stories."

 

"There are different views about this," he said. "It's impossible to assess because no one has given me specific evidence."

 

Asked by committee chairman Keith Vaz MP if he "loved this country," Mr. Rusbridger said [yes but first asserted that] he was "slightly surprised to be asked."

"We are patriots, and one of the things we are patriotic about is the nature of the democracy and the nature of a free press and the fact that one can in this country discuss and report these things," he said. More

• MPs ask MI5 to justify claim NSA leaks endangered nat'l security  
• Yahoo: "Patriot" Guardian editor defends Snowden leaks
• Telegraph: Journalists could be charged on Snowden leaks 
• Huffington Post UK" VIDEO: "Do You Love This Country?"  
• MSN UK: Guardian "will not be intimidated"

Analysis

Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News

A month ago the heads of Britain's three spy agencies used their first public appearance before parliament to launch an attack on the leaking [whistle blowing] of details about Britain and America's intelligence gathering capabilities. Today was a chance for the editor of the newspaper which published stories based on those leaked documents to make his case. More

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