Sex or Death: Robin Willams' "suicide" (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Mork; Maurice O'Connell Walshe "Buddhism and Death"

Is it funny (autoerotic asphyxiation)? Is it heavy (depression)? Sex or suicide? The loss of comedic genius, hyper-kinetic former coke-fiend and alcohol abuser Robin "Mork" Williams comes as a shock to us all. He was a funny stand up, an over-the-top Oscar-winning actor, and all around Hollywood icon. The coroner does not say he was "fully clothed" but leaves it at that, which sound erotic. But what if it was suicide?

The Great Unmentionable

(Nadeem Mayhar/flickr.com)

It is sometimes said that DEATH today has replaced SEX as "The Great Unmentionable." And certainly it is, for most people, an uncomfortable subject which they do not care to think much about.

Yet, if there is one thing that is certain in life it is that we shall all die, sooner or later. There was once a creed that declared: "Millions Now Living Will Never Die," and it had great appeal -- but all those who first heard it proclaimed are now dead. [The great appeal of New Testament Christianity is the promise of "eternal life," one of the three things living being crave and suffer over.]

So we all have to face death, whether we like it or not. And we all know it, however we may try to forget the fact. Let us, then, at least for a while, stop trying to forget it and look death straight in the face....

Death-Wish

Though there is a strong fear of death, there is, strangely enough, also a desire for it.

• [In Buddhism "craving" (tanha) refers to three things -- sensual desire, for continued being, and for annihilation, all of which lead to frustration and disappointment.]

Psychoanalysis has much to say about this, though it is perhaps not very illuminating. But the fact remains that many people show suicidal tendencies, or even actually commit suicide, whatever be the explanation.

The Buddha in fact included this "death-wish" as the third of three kinds of craving: besides desire for sense-pleasures, we find in the formula of the second of the Four Noble Truths the desire for becoming (bhava-tanha) and the desire for cessation (vibhava-tanha).

Why annihilation? Since life is -- by its very nature -- frustrating, we can never get it on our own terms; therefore, there is an urge to quit the whole thing. The fallacy, of course, lies in the fact that one will not just get off the carousel so easily. Why? Death by suicide, like any other death, is followed immediately by rebirth in some plane of existence or other -- quite possibly in one worse than this one.

The traditional Christian view is that suicide is a "mortal sin" -- with the implication that it would be a case of "out of the frying-pan and into the fire."

Some psychoanalysts speak -- ignorantly -- of the "Nirvana-principle" in connection with the death-wish. But what we are here dealing with is not in fact the urge for true liberation, but merely an escapist-reaction to disappointment, frustration, and suffering of all kinds.

Disappointment

Sign or cry, but death is no escape.

[What is this "suffering" (dukkha) Buddhism speaks so much of? The Buddha defined it as: "Now this, meditators, is the ennobling truth of suffering: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, DEATH is suffering; sorrow, lamentation (crying), pain (illness), grief, and despair (losing hope) are suffering; coming into contact with the unloved is suffering; separation from the loved is suffering; not getting what we want is suffering. In brief, the Five Aggregates that are clung to are suffering."]

Only if by insight more profound than that of the Freudians, this revulsion is followed by complete equanimity can it be turned towards the supramundane, which is the goal (nirvana) of Buddhism. This will not happen spontaneously.

It should be noted that the "death-wish" here referred to is associated in Buddhism with the "heresy of annihilationism" already mentioned.

Robin Williams reaching out to his wife in hell with appreciation and regret in this clip from 1998's modern version of Dante's Inferno, "What Dreams May Come"

[This is the belief that death brings annihilation, the wrong view of scientists and materialists that there is nothing further at death by the demise of the physical body. This is a pernicious view that leads to much suffering here and hereafter, but by holding to the wrong view that there will be no hereafter, people who hold this view do not worry about the consequences. BEFORE they die, they are sure to realize that there is more to come. Of course, by then it's really late to do or think anything about it other than regret. This is why the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths and showed the path to making an end of ALL suffering, which does not happen with simple death. Some may rejoice that we do not die, but we do in a sense because this personality, this ego, this name, body, karmic result, these relations, these abilities are all hurtling toward destruction; it will not survive. Something will but not I, me, and mine. Death is certain, and rebirth is worse as it insures that there is more suffering and disappointment to come, sometimes much worse depending on the karma, our deeds of body-speech-and-mind, we make now.]

In a somewhat aggressive form it can even serve to mask repressed fear of death. This would seem to explain the vehemence with which people like Dr. Ernest Jones assert the desirability of their anti-survivalist views. By way of curiosity, it may be mentioned that a distinguished biologist has gone on record as declaring that whether or not we believe in survival is entirely determined by our genes, which is pushing determinism pretty far. More

An American Junk-Food Tax?

Xochitl; CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; A Martinez, Alex Cohen, Take Two (SCPR.org), Nat'l Burger Day, Vow To Revive Navajo Junk-Food Tax (AP/NPR, April 22, 2014)

This mouth-watering burger is a delicious, cruelty-free vegan melt with baked fries (Vegan)

 

Don't tell anyone these are "good" as in healthy.

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona - Facing a high prevalence of diabetes, many American Indian tribes are returning to their roots with community and home gardens, cooking classes that incorporate traditional foods, and running programs to encourage healthy eating lifestyles [returning back to the Earth].

 

The latest effort on the Navajo Nation, the country's largest "reservation" [modern internment camp], is to use the tax system to spur people to ditch junk food.

 

Manzanita/Sobochesh (eattheweeds.com)

A proposed 2 percent sales tax on chips, cookies, and sodas failed Tuesday in a Tribal Council vote.

 

But the measure still has widespread support, and advocates plan to revive it, with the hope of making the tribe one of the first governments to enact a junk-food tax.

 

Elected officials across the U.S. have taken aim at sugary drinks with proposed bans, size limits, tax hikes, and warning labels, though their efforts have not gained widespread traction. In Mexico, lawmakers approved a junk food tax and a tax on soft drinks last year as part of that government's campaign to fight obesity.

• Sugars, corn like cocaine
• (Why I love cocaine)
• VIDEO: COKE cola recipe
• Coca-Cola corporation's cocaine manufacturing
• Sugar is toxic like alcohol
• Nat'l Burger Day: VaKA, SoCal
• Moosewood's Classic Veggie Tofu Burgers
• Is Kimye junk food for the mind?

Navajo President Ben Shelly earlier this year vetoed measures to establish a junk-food tax and eliminate the tax on fresh fruit and vegetables. At Tuesday's meeting, tribal lawmakers overturned the veto on the tax cut, but a vote to secure the junk-food tax fell short. Lawmakers voted 13-7 in favor of it, but the tax needed 16 votes to pass. More

3,000-year-old Egyptian PORN found (video)

Ashley Wells and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Bettany Hughes, History Channel (video)

In this modern sexualized advertisement, a scarlet woman sells fizzy, gooey soda pop (BI).

WARNING: Sex is discussed and crudely drawn, carved in stone, and scrawled as graffiti!

 

People had sex in ancient Egypt? Surely, it was only for procreative purposes! That's what we were taught in school, church, and college. Now we come to find there was *blush* something called the Turin Erotic Papyrus -- shocking pornography from Egypt. The hieroglyphs show penises, eroticism, orgies, wanton abandon, pleasure, even bestiality. Is it the "gods" (devas and asuras), royalty, or ordinary citizens and slaves? Fortunately, graffiti survives from those ancient pyramids, tunnels, and tombs.

• VIDEO: 4,000-year-old PORN found in Bible

Kama Sutra temple (uglypeople.se)

Now that we think of it, does it get any more erotic than ancient India and its temples celebrating -- and depicting -- sex manuals as temple walls? Of course, there are the ancient Greeks who are credited with inventing Western sexuality, and what the Romans were up to (think Caligula), well, who can be surprised that other countries and cultures knew about the birds, bees, and linga and yonis?

A papyrus scroll so hot, so lust inspiring, so puerile and swinger-like... How, Egypt?

David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Pornography" w/ Kristen Bell, Ed O'Neill, Ricky Jay

CENSORED: the Breasts of Mardi Gras (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; FEMEN.org

(CTFxC) Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street, New Orleans: adults play in a Dionysian display

Carnaval?

Carnal and hedonistic cravings come over one before revelers retire to a Lenten period of religious reflection and guilt, at least for practitioners of French and Roman Catholicism but maybe not so much for followers of Santeria, Voodoo/Houdou, Satanism, and/or Protestantism.

FEMEN coming to the USA

The best thing about being Catholic is that, before the penitent ascetic period of Lent, there is the wanton excess and guilty delights of Carnivale (flesh-fest, "leaving behind carne" or meat), which comes to a climax on Mardi Gras or "Fat[tening up] Tuesday," the last chance to grow obese by eating slaughtered animals (other than fish, insects, and whatever other way of cheating there is) for 40 days.

 

In ancient Christian Ethiopia, in fact, "fasting" (not eating) means eating only vegetarian food.

SlutWalk activists (adikanda.com)

In Brazil and other Catholic strongholds, the feast/fest is bigger than India's Eunuchs' Festival, a time of homosexual debauchery because they are not really eunuchs. The problem is one of translation for the odd and ill defined Buddhist term pandaka, which means something more like "pervert," sodomite, transsexual, transgender, third gender (Thai kathoey), transvestite, hermaphrodite, receptive or effeminate homosexual, rapacious pansexual, sex addict, and/or gender nonnormative individual.

 

(CJO/cdbaby.com) Boobs, booze, and exhibitionism on Bourbon St., USA

  

It is likely that pandakas rather than gays were excluded from monastic participation in accordance with the Disciplinary Code. But for the ancients, what was "gay" and what was "perverse" were different from our changing definitions. Pandaka is Sanskrit, meaning "without testicles, hermaphroditic, or homosexual."

Topless protesting is coming to the USA

Sextremism means death to patriarchy.

Femen announces the launch of a US branch of Sextremists. "I can't name enemies, as it’s strategic information that we don't share. But I can assure you sure that once American women are trained and ready to act as Femen, every place of gender injustice, every representative of patriarchal culture, will be a target of FEMEN USA. We will not leave religious institutions in peace, with their lobbying for anti-women policies. And Republican politicians will not walk the streets without worry [if they] lobby for anti-women legislation. Femen is a special troop of reaction and punishment." TO JOIN CONTACT: femen.ks@gmail.com More

Who celebrates pre-lenten festivals?

What are you staring at, sweetie? - Your pendant?

Carnivale is traditionally held in areas with a large Catholic and to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox makeup. Protestant areas usually do not have such celebrations or have modified traditions, such as the Danish Carnival or other Shrove Tuesday events. Conversely, the Philippines, although a predominantly Roman Catholic country, does not celebrate Carnival because it has been culturally influenced by neighboring Buddhist Asian nations, which do not (philstar.com).

• Pandaka: Sex Addiction and Perversion Festivals are annual events in India...a time of debauchery, cross-dressing, homosexual revelry, alcohol and drug abuse, adultery... 
• Homosexuality and Buddhism: Pandakas "The pandaka was also viewed as possessing a distinct psychological makeup.... "As for the etiology of the homosexual condition, Indian Buddhist tradition, at least as represented by Buddhaghosa... 
• "Sex Addicts" (Pandakas) in the New ...References to pandaka ("pervert"), a deviant gender category usually interpreted to... He could be renamed "Glenn Pandaka" in the Hindi/Sanskrit-dubbed Indian version of the show, although...
• Same Sex Marriages? (Vista Buddhist Temple)
• Religion and homosexuality (Wikipedia) Among the religions that originated in India, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism... References to pandaka, a deviant sex/gender category that is usually...
• Hinduism's views on homosexuality? (Quora)
• The Construction of Queer Culture in India...

• AUDIO: Killing Kitty Genovese (NPR)
• Mardi Gras in Los Angeles (Huff Post)
• Vegetarian Guide to Ethiopian Food (Jack 'n Jill)

"Invisible Young" - White, homeless kids in USA

Seth Auberon, Dev, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Steven Keller (invisibleyoung.com, differentialfilms.com); Pasadena Area Liberal Arts Center (PALAC), Throop UU Church

What I do is never shower: If I stink, I won't get raped. Hungry? Go to the dumpster; dive in.

SEATTLE, Washington, USA - Dumpsters are their cafeterias. Trash bins are their supply stores. If they're lucky they can find enough cardboard for some warmth and a temporary makeshift shelter. The homeless young in Seattle have found ways to survive.
 

I'm trying to get away from all this.

Documentarian Steven Keller has lived outside Seattle for over ten years. Like most Americans, however, he didn't really see homeless youths he encountered. They become invisible. When he did see them he asked, Why?

What did the system do to protect me?

Eighteen months later "Invisible Young" was completed. In it Keller answers the most compelling question of all, "How does a 13-year-old end up on the streets of a prosperous country?" In his film he focuses on the riveting stories of four youths who were homeless in Seattle, in the great Pacific Northwest of the USA. Synopsis

• The potheads of Denver: smoking and driving 
• Hard labor: women pregnant in the fields (Nepal)

Can you spare some change for an all-American girl, mister?

Ordinary alcohol works like gas (petrol)

Wisdom Quarterly; David Blume (alcoholcanbeagas.org)

Running cars on alcohol is better than hydrogen or non-solar electricity (ACBAG)

 

Anyone can become energy independent with alcohol fuel. Reverse global warming. Survive the end of Peak Oil. Alcohol fuel is "liquid sunshine" not controlled by trans-national corporations.
 
Anyone can produce alcohol for less than $1.00 (1 USD) a gallon using a variety of plants and waste products from algae to stale donuts. It is a much better and cleaner fuel than gasoline.

Motors were invented before gasoline (petrol) was, originally using alcohol. That is what car engines were invented to use. It can go into cars right now! No adjustments or modifications are needed. But Big Oil has scare tactics and powerful lobbyists.

Alcohol can also generate electricity. Alcohol burns so cleanly that, by law, gasoline must be added before using it in cars. It must be denatured so that people will not drink it. Brazil already uses it widely in as high as a 90% mixture. Ethanol would be added in the US, but the petrochemical industry worries about how that would affect its bottom line.

Alcohol fuel production is ecologically sustainable, revitalizes farms and communities, and creates huge new opportunities for small-scale businesses. Its byproducts are clean and valuable. Alcohol has a proud history and a vital future.  Learn more with the 5-minute video "Alcohol Fuel Overview," or view the Two-Minute Summary, and see the Alcohol Can Be a Gas! book and DVD.

Marijuana versus Alcohol (radio)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar, UprisingRadio.org

Alcoholic Homer Simpson tries a new "medicine." The moral of the story? Avoid booze, avoid pot, and learning to cope with stress is a beneficial habit to develop.

 
Which is worse, Weed or Alcohol?

Arrest photo: I'm not an alcoholic!

(Sept. 30, 2013) Uprising radio host Sonali Kolhatkar speaks to the lead author of a new book called Marijuana is Safer: So Why are We Driving People to Drink? If alcohol is worse, why are people pushed to resort to it and pressured to avoid a safer and more medicinal alternative? In the past year two states have legalized its recreational use. The financial infrastructure of legalization is in its infant stages with investors pouring in money and big banks agreeing to accept profits. Such steps were unthinkable a few years ago. Pot was thought far more dangerous as a vice than booze. The US is now closer than ever to legalizing cannabis. Even CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently changed his position on weed. Trying to overturn the legal ban on marijuana, activists and advocates have hit upon a winning formula: point out the fact that alcohol leads to far more public violence and that having the option to use marijuana instead could lead to a safer, less criminal society. Guest Steve Fox is Director of Government Relations at Marijuana Policy Project. AUDIO

Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, Mason Tvert

(AlterNet.org) A book explains how we are steering people away from cannabis and toward the use of a very harmful and deadly substance: alcohol. The following is an excerpt from the book: It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.” More

DemocracyNow.org (Sept. 30, 2013)

 

Leading the legal fight against Government Surveillance

Sonali Kolhatkar

Cubicle criminality at the offices of the NSA

When I first met Reverend Rick Hoyt he said, “You don’t have to call me Reverend; just Rick is fine.” The First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has taken a stand against the NSA surveillance program. The bespectacled and youthful pastor, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, certainly didn’t look like a conventional “man-of-God.” In fact, the Unitarian Universalist church to which Rick belongs is known for defying Christian theological convention. Rick’s home at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles also has a history of defying political convention. The church, according to Hoyt, has been a “fierce advocate for personal liberties.” Even before Edward Snowden became a household name, the First Unitarian Church of LA became a plaintiff named in a major lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) over privacy violations. Nineteen organizations have joined Hoyt’s church in an unusual coalition that includes the Marijuana legalization group, NORML, and gun rights groups like the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.

Fire Dog Lake: How Obama punishes Medical Marijuana patients

Troops swoop in on illegal growers (scpr.org)

(Aug. 22, 2013) Despite overwhelming support from the general public, significant backing from medical doctors, and even several prominent Republicans publicly acknowledging that cannabis has a legitimate medical use, the Obama administration officially insists it does not have one.The administration’s dodge when asked to explain this unpopular and scientifically unjustifiable position is to act as if it is a non-issue because they are not arresting medical marijuana patients. When Jessica Yellin asked why the administration refused to use its power to reschedule marijuana to make it legal for medical use, Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded: “the President and the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources.”

Cannabis is a safer plant? (hempsaves.net)

The administration pretends that since they are not arresting patients, rescheduling marijuana does not matter. The possibility of arrest, however, is only a small part of how legitimate medical marijuana patients are significantly punished because the Obama administration refuses to use its power to remove marijuana from Schedule I (an assignment shared by the worst drugs of abuse with no redeeming quality whatsoever). Over the years the legal tentacles of the so-called "War on Drugs" have been allowed to touch all parts of federal policy, from gun rights to education. According to Hoyt, some of these groups are not ones his church normally works with and “aren’t necessarily politically sympathetic with.” But the right to personal privacy is a Libertarian position deeply held by both ends of the political spectrum. Complete interview:

Why are we really fighting a war in Afghanistan, DRUGS? (TheRealNews.com)

• VIDEO: "Herman's House" - 42 years in solitary
• (Sept. 30, 2013) Cancer-stricken "Angola 3" prisoner Herman Wallace has been given just days to live after being in solitary confinement for 42 years His crime? Robbery then being falsely accused of participating in the killing of a Louisiana ("the incarceration capital of the world") prison guard. His actual crime was forming one of the first Black Panther chapters in prison, making him a political prisoner, which the US claims not to have. More
•  Climate Change protests heat up

  

  Host Amy Goodman

  Last week, far out in the Arctic Ocean, the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise approached a Russian oil-drilling platform and launched a nonviolent protest, with several protesters scaling the platform. They wanted to draw attention to a dangerous precedent being set. The platform, the Prirazlomnaya, owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, is the first to begin oil production in the dangerous, delicate, ice-filled waters of the Arctic.
   
  

  KPFA FM - Pacifica Radio, Berkeley

  KPFK FM - Pacifica, Los Angeles

  Alternative News Sources (endthelie.com)

Buddhism and the 12 Steps (Kevin Griffin)

Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Kevin Griffin, Heather Sundberg, Vajrapani Institute

Laughing Buddha: music steeped in African, Latin, and reggae rhythms, with versatile guitar and lyrics with Buddhist themes recorded by Kevin Griffin, portion of proceeds support American Abhayagiri and British Amaravati Buddhist monasteries (kickstarter.com)

We did drugs, we devolved, and we daily strive to come back --  here's how. Intoxicated, one becomes as much a brute as reality show "cave people" shown here.

 

The Buddha said that craving is the [proximate] cause of suffering. Twelve-Step programs work with the deepest forms of craving, our addictions. How can these two traditions, one secular the other spiritual, work together?

A unique meditation retreat combining Buddhist practices with 12-Step work is in the offing. There is still time to join. It is a four-day intensive with author Kevin Griffin (One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps, 2004, and A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery, 2010) and (Jack Kornfield's Spirit Rock/Joseph Goldstein's Insight Meditation Society) teacher Heather Sundberg.

A Burning Desire (kevingriffin.net)

Using silent insight meditation, interactive exercises, lecture, and discussion, the weekend will explore the ways that Buddhism and the Steps complement one another. Such topics as powerlessness, higher power, inventory, amends, and spiritual awakening. All recovery programs and paths are welcome.

The emphasis will be on bringing mindfulness to all our activities, whether in formal sitting meditation, walking, speaking, listening, or eating. Participants will practice Noble Silence outside of the interactive exercises and discussion periods.

Kevin Griffin is one of the leaders of the mindful recovery movement and one of the founders of the Buddhist Recovery Network. A longtime Buddhist practitioner and 12-Step participant, he teaches nationally on the synthesis of these two traditions.

(heathersundberg.com)

Heather Sundberg has combined her personal experience with meditation and 12-Step work for 20 years. She completed the four-year Spirit Rock/Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training and is also a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders program. She has studied with senior teachers in the Insight Meditation (vipassana) and Tibetan (Vajrayana) traditions and has sat 1-3 month of retreat a year for over a decade. She is a teacher for Mountain Stream Meditation Center in the Sierra Foothills and also teaches classes, daylongs, and retreats nationally.

• Vegetarian meals and dorm-style room included in $350 cost
  
• Camping is also available for a slightly lower rate.
• Small number of single rooms and cabins are also available.

Teachers and retreat manager/registrar may be offered donations for their efforts at the end of the retreat. They receive no other financial compensation. For registration and information contact Quilley: quilley@yahoo.com or (510) 682-6873.

Kevin Griffin (Berkeley, August 2013) treats us to a soulful, tasty guitar solo as he wraps up a truly wonderful gathering with friends, which included song, dance, and sweet treats in celebration of the release of his newest CD, "Laughing Buddha."

•  Why was J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye) a recluse?