‘Fasting Buddha’ damaged during cleaning

Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Shoaib Ahmed (dawn.com, June 26, 2014)

The Ascetic Siddhartha or "Fasting Buddha," Lahore Museum (file, dawn.com)

 

LAHORE, Pakistan - The jewel of Lahore Museum, the Fasting Buddha sculpture, carries a fresh scar, the legacy of an amateur attempt at "repairing" one of its arms after an accident during cleaning.

 

The Buddha had two fingers on its right hand missing and an old crack on its left arm. The crack was opened up a couple of years ago while the staff was cleaning it, Dawn.com was told by an art lover and conservationist on Wednesday.

 

Just use this epoxy. - Really? (dawn.com)

Later investigations confirmed the "accident," and the subsequent careless repairing by staff at the museum's lab, their restoration effort failing to go beyond the application of a common adhesive that did more to damage it than to restore it. The incident happened in the Gandhara Gallery on April 4, 2012, museum sources revealed.

They say the statue was “repaired” by staff in the museum’s lab like an ordinary object instead of implementing modern scientific methods of conservation.

Gandhara Gallery Chief Muhammad Mujeeb told Dawn.com on Wednesday that the conservation laboratory staff had filled the crack in with simple epoxy. More  

• EDITORIAL: Fasting Buddha
• Sexual harassment claims rock Quaid-i-Azam Univ again
• Sri Lanka cancels on-arrival visa facility for Pakistanis
• Flights resume after deadly attack on Peshawar airport 
• Alarm greets Modi’s order for destruction of historical files
• Zarb-i-Azb: 12 suspected militants surrender, 13 killed
• Zarb-i-Azb: North Waziristan ground operation kicks off  
• First person: Eat, pray, and…love your chef 
• Do sharks eat sand?

Draft bill seeks end to forced marriages of Hindu girls Dr. Ramesh Kumar said CII Chairman Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani agreed with the contents of the draft bill.

Women Hating (#YesAllWomen)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Rebecca Solnit, Amy Goodman, Aaron Mate, Juan Gonzalez (democracynow.org)

UCSB and UCLA students mourn at candlelight vigil at UCLA on May 26. This deadly shooting rampage has sparked a conversation about gendered sexual violence in the U.S. just as the infamous bus rape did in India. Why do we tolerate the abuse of half the society? (David McNew/Getty Images/ksdk.com)

Maybe "not all men," but yes all women

Santa Barbara is grieving after a 22-year-old man [the privileged son of one of the makers of "The Hunger Games"] killed six UC Santa Barbara college students just after posting a misogynistic video online vowing to take his revenge on women purportedly for sexually rejecting him.

 

UCSB (Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images)

The massacre prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment, and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had gone viral. 

In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence that often goes ignored.

In her new book, Men Explain Things to Me, author and historian Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern," Solnit says. "Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, BUT it does have a gender." More

Yes, all women (Digital Vision/Getty Images)

(The Tennessean) Twitter users are responding by the thousands in the wake of a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California. Friday night by a man who pledged revenge on women who had rejected him. Suspected slayer [and self-proclaimed "alpha male"] Elliot Rodger killed six people before [allegedly] taking his own life. In YouTube videos and a manifesto he detailed a "war on women." More

Christian terrorist: 7 dead near UCSB (video)

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; AP, May 24th, 2014, 9:27 am, SCPR.org

Henley Gate at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Ryosuke Yagi/flickr.com)

What is at the root of our Judeo-Christian sexism? Porn, shame, Sharia law? (alarbiya.net)

(ORIGINAL VIDEO, from FurioHerovito, REMOVED. Replaced with "crazy Prozac/Zoloft eyes." 

Christian terrorist [Elliot Rodger?] talks about his planned rampage against humanity and women in particular for not paying enough attention to him as his God intended. Is God's gift to women working for the CIA's Boko Haram American chapter to keep females out of college, or is he just blowing off steam after watching cartoons and playing first-person-shooter video games and eating aspartame, processed foods, sugar, and corn syrup?
 

Christian terrorist kills, injures from car (UCSB)

Investigators are studying YouTube video after family warned police about alarming videos being made by possibly brainwashed Christian terrorist assassin. Was it made to prove all guns need to be remove from citizens? Was he on pharmaceutical antidepressants, too?

 

C'mon, man, we're just cartoons.

A drive-by shooter went on a nighttime rampage near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara [home of the biggest parties in Isla Vista, which has become a police state that will only take this tragedy as use it to amp up surveillance, policing, mass arrests, and police brutality in the name of "security"] that left seven people dead, including the attacker, and seven others wounded, authorities said Saturday.

(I'm Shmacked) WARNING: Hedonism, alcohol abuse! DelTopia, the UCSB Southern California party scene in Isla Vista. Pretty and privileged, introducing our future leaders. Woo!

 

Don't shoot! (yogasoup.com)

The gunman got into two gun battles with deputies Friday night in the beachside community of Isla Vista before crashing his black BMW into a parked car, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

 

Deputies found him dead with a gunshot wound to the head, but it wasn't immediately clear whether he was killed by gunfire or if he committed suicide, he said.

 

A semi-automatic handgun was recovered from the scene near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Investigators know the gunman's name [Elliot Rodger? as suggested by the title of the video above], but Brown said he couldn't release it pending notification of relatives.

 

"We're analyzing both written and videotaped evidence that suggests that this atrocity was a premeditated mass murder," Brown said.

 

Investigators study video following deadly drive-by shootings

A disturbing YouTube video posted that shows a young man describing plans to shoot women appears to be connected to the attack, police said. Officials would not say whether the person in the video was a suspect in the shooting. [It's probably another guy talking about shooting women.]

 

In the video, posted Friday, the man sits in a black car and looks at the camera, laughing often, and says he is going to take his revenge against humanity.

He describes loneliness and frustration because "girls have never been attracted to me," and says, at age 22, he is still a virgin. The video, which is almost seven minutes long, appears scripted. The identity of the person in the video could not be independently confirmed.

 

The shootings started around 9:30 pm in Isla Vista, a roughly half-square mile community next to UC Santa Barbara's campus and picturesque beachside cliffs. More + Updates

Juicy summer Dharma reads

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly (SUMMER READING)

"Peace is within; do not seek it without" - the Buddha (Vinita Jaynt/pinterest.com)

Juicy Dharma reads for the beach over the long Memorial Day weekend (thedailybeast.com)

 

Young, rich Prince Siddhartha (Buddha-to-be)

This weekend is the unofficial launch of summer in the U.S.

It would be fun to read some good trash with a half-hundred shades of nonsense and salacious... but that gets old fast.

Where's the substance I want? Where's the long term profit. Cheap thrills are not only not that cheap, they aren't that thrilling.

Snakes as sex symbols for Eves?

We have to wonder if the story of the Bodhisattva, when reborn as Siddhartha in the faraway frontier of ancient India, wasn't a kind of bodice ripper of its time.

Handsome, gallant prince has a harem ("dancing girls and all-female musicians and palace guards"), plays sports like archery and proto-polo (Persian chowgan or some kinder version of buzz kashi or kokspar with an un-taxidermically-treated leather "ball"), rides a white pony horse named Kanthaka, does feats of strength, learns great royal skills from Brahmin tutors, wears flowing gowns of the greatest Kasi fabric, and enjoys more riches than he can comfortably get his head around. Where?

Prince Siddhartha in the upper floors of his seasonal palace guarded by women and filled with "dancing" girls and female musicians and a surfeit of luxurious foods and other delights.

Playing with the boys in feats of strength in Central Asia -- proto-polo with a "pigskin" made of lamb, equestrian skill for warriors in need of nomadic endurance (wiki/army.mil)

    

Indus Valley Civilization and Kapilavast

Imagine a cosmopolitan crossroads on the Silk Road, travelers and magicians going from the Far East to the West and paradises beyond India and Asia.

Was that the Terai of Nepal? Not likely, but that's what the colonial British books say. Afghanistan is a better candidate, Sanskrit-speaking Gandhara and the remnants of the once great Indus Valley Civilization (romanticized "distant lands" between Egypt and India) and what remained of it. India's influence extended all the way to Iran (which later became Zoroastrian and Sufi-inspired Persia before being overtaken by Islam).

Dance, dancing girls, dance!

Worlds to the west were pre-Christian, pre-Jewish, pre-Abrahamic described in the pejorative as "pagan." Full of shamans, traders, trailblazers, and Sumerian-Egyptian-Arabian-Bedouin post-Babylonians. Life could not have been easy, after the fall of so many great empires and city-states like Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro.

The Path to Enlightenment, like the course of society as explained by the author-comedian Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio series), goes through phases or stages of sophistication. How will we survive? How shall we eat? ...What's for lunch?

Read (pinterest.com)

So reading The Aphorisms and Back-Stories (Dhammapada), The Bodhisat Fables (Buddhist Birth Stories that inspired Aesop, according to British scholar and University of London Professor Rhys Davids), or The Lists (more) may do at first, then the stories (sutras, long discourses,  and apocryphal texts), then The Analyses (vibhanga), then The Commentaries, The Higher Teachings, but eventually what we need for nourishment is The Synthesis (Bhikkhu Bodhi, Pema Chodron, Ajahn Brahm, Sharon Salzberg, Ayya Khema, Caroline Davids, Joan Halifax, Islaine B. Horner, Ayya Tathaaloka (facebook)...

• Worldly juicy readings (thedailybeast.com) 
• Thailand Coup 2014 (Chiang Mai Daily), Vice video
• VIDEO: World's greatest Indian drum solo boy
• VIDEO: Alien God to arrive from space soon 

Sexy "Obama Girls" turn on Barack (video)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Carey Wedler; Amber Lee Ettinger (RT America); Leah Kauffman; Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan (democracynow.org)

(Carey Wedler/inrogue.co/facebook) Carey speaks for us on WHY at 0:55 and 2:45

Join me as I wreck my last artifact of support for our War-Criminal-in-Chief. I figured out the fraud a while back but only recently found his shirt in my closet. 

B----, please! she said.

It’s been a couple of weeks since burning Obama’s shirt face, It got far, FAR more views than I ever expected! Technically, viral is over a million views in a week, so call it mini-viral.
 
Regardless, not only does the all-knowing Internet have me pegged for everything from a leftist anarchist to a tea party conservative. (I’m neither). It has earned me overwhelming support.

 

Tom Tomorrow (thismodernworld.com)

It is exciting and encouraging to have experienced firsthand how disappointed, disgusted, and frustrated many people are with B.S. Obama and to see how many people have dropped the fantasy of America having a two-party system. It is one party with two wing, and it serves the people in power. I’ve done some fun interviews this week. Check them out! These are full episodes, so you may need to listen to what else they have to say before you find my segment: Pete Santilli, The Big Plantation, Ed & Ethan, The Rundown. 

Before Obama became president, his message of "change" had many falling in love with the well-groomed CIA operative and Illinois senator. One busty individual, model Amber Lee Ettinger, became an instant Internet hit when she declared her "love" for the then-candidate. Ettinger's "Obama Girl" video went viral. But years of the commander-in-chief in office has her looking for a new crush. She joins RT America with more on why she has had a change of heart.

The voice behind Obama Girl, Leah Kauffman

A new Obama Girl video -- “Still Got a Crush on Obama” -- was released in 2012: If “Obama Girl” looked different but sounded exactly the same, that’s because Leah Kauffman -- the original singer and songwriter behind the 2008 “Crush on Obama” song and video -- actually stars in this one.  Last time Kauffman and partner Ben Relles, who is not involved with this new video, hired a [hot] model, Amber Lee Ettinger, to lip-synch the original song. But in 2012 Kauffman finally stepped up to take center-stage. VIDEO

Obama defends more NSA spying

China sees Obama girls, but not Xi girl

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Pres. Obama on Monday (March 24, 2014) defended U.S. surveillance programs as serving national security rather than [civil liberties or] commercial interests, in a wide-ranging meeting with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of a nuclear summit. More

• Exclusive: NSA, FBI, DIA sued over refusal to disclose U.S. role in imprisonment of Nelson Mandela
  
• Breastfeeding mom jailed for drinking, informer waitress...
• Over 300 earthquakes hit country of Chile
• Prophecy and Ukraine (Russia, Crimea, and America)
• VIDEO: Anti-Chinese sentiment as "China invades US"
• VIDEO: Ron Paul on B.S. Obama's Martial Law Plans
• Prejudice in an Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander)

Soft Dictator and new Pope
(Gwen Ifill/PBS NewsHour) Pres. Barry and Pope Francis met for the first time at Corporate Church HQ, the Vatican. The papal audience emphasized different points. Obama claims they focused on their shared interest in helping the poor, while Vatican officials emphasized areas where their views differ like birth control mandates.

Barack Obama: The Least Transparent President in History

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan (DemocracyNow.org)

Six years into the Obama administration, the president’s promise of “a new era of open government” seems just another grand promise, cynically broken. LISTEN

As colleges across the country, from Harvard to U of Mississippi, deal with (often unconscious but sometimes blatant) racism, a new film tackles the issue with comedy and satire: "Dear White People" follows a group of black students on a fictional Ivy League campus. One of the students hosts a campus radio show of the same name. It confronts racist stereotypes and dilemmas faced by students of color. Tensions come to a head when a group of mostly white students throw an African-American-themed party, wearing blackface and using watermelons and fake guns as props. More

VIDEO: Bush was bad, but Obama fooled the world

From burning bras to hot... (Int'l Women's Day)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; SCPR.org; KPFK.org

Feminists marching braless in bullet proof vests (Wisdom Quarterly/femen.org/en)

If I burn it, it's not that I'm nostalgic (#NotYourMothersFemisim); I just overdid the surgery.

From Burning Bras to Hot Debate: Is feminism doing right by women today?

Women Under [Early] Buddhism (GR)

(KPCC) Who qualifies as "feminist" nowadays? The days of bra burning may be gone, but there’s still plenty of fire around feminism now. 

 

Take the unretouched Lena Dunham and body-less Mindy Kaling fashion mag covers: Were they beautiful or boo-worthy? Or Beyoncé, a pop star so beloved by men and women alike that she's called "Queen Be": Is she all about Woman Power or just a powerful brand?

 

Even First Ladies can’t escape the heat, applied equally to matters grand and, very often, small: Are Michelle Obama’s arms and Hillary Clinton’s sags and Twitter tag praiseworthy, problematic, or something else altogether?

 

Not in my police state you don't, missy!

Heated debate over these questions plays out all over media. This isn't necessarily bad if it's leading to more conversations and awareness. But the flip side is that too many different voices make solidarity impossible and could hurt (or even doom) “the movement.”  In 2014, is there even a movement anymore? 

 

If yes, what is it now? If there’s no single, unified feminism, should there be one? Who qualifies to be feminist at all?

 

Do we take feminism for granted?

On Thursday, March 27, 2014, join Wisdom Quarterly at KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum for some lively talk about pop culture, politics, and doing/being women “right.” There will be an audio-visual show of items with the most recent media buzz. Panelists will give their insights, and audience Q&A is invited to dive into what’s going on with American feminism today. Moreover, how is it likely to play out in the future?

Men are a vital part

You're invited, Peter. Put away the toy.

Male allies, non-sexist men, enlightened guys, and precious children with a chance of being raised beyond patriarchy are vital to the world movement for gender equality. If women hate men, stay home; it only harms the cause. We are ALL upset with patriarchs, sexists, rapists, and brutes. Nowadays, most males can at least behave in a fair way. Let's make it the norm, the natural way of thinking, of feeling, of working together as one humanity. Come stand up for freedom, for sexual equality, and for fairness.

  

March 8th International Women's Day, Los Angeles: Rock, Rap, & Speakout versus Poverty, Prisons, & War -- 2:00 pm, MacArthur Park, Wilshire Bl. between Alvarado and Park View, LA 90057, Metro exit: Westlake/MacArthur Park (globalwomenstrike.net).

• To help plan March 8th events or to stay informed: (323) 276-9833 or la@allwomencount.net 

The new women of International Women's Day? (Wisdom Quarterly/dailyfiasco.com)

 

Is there a problem with feminism today?

On March 27, KPCC's Crawford Family Forum hosts a conversation on the precarious state of feminism today. Shape that event by sharing insights on the role feminism plays -- or fails to play -- in your life. Learn more about the event, RSVP free, or follow the conversation on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #notyourmothersfeminism. Everything you share will be read by journalists only [and their clandestine NSA minders], and responses are confidential unless journalists are told that they may publish them.

 

MODERATOR: Joanne Griffith: writer, journalist, host of weekly show "The Archives" on BBC Radio 5 Live - @globaljourno 

 

PANEL

USA (femen.ks@gmail.com)

Roxane Gay: writer, professor, contributor to Salon, Buzzfeed, New York Times Book Review; author of forthcoming Untamed State and Bad Feminist. - @rgay
Kristina Wong: internationally presented solo performer, writer, cultural commentator; shows include "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Going Green the Wong Way," "Wong Street Journal" (premiering in 2015). - @mskristinawong
Mona Ebrahim: multimedia professional, designer, writer; author of 101 Reasons Why I’m Glad I Wear Hijab

RISE until March 21, 2014

Lindsey Horvath: Vice President of Communication, NationBuilder; Former West Hollywood City Councilmember (2009-2011); women’s empowerment and anti-violence advocate - @LindseyPHorvath
Wendy Carrillo: journalist, POWER 106 FM "Knowledge is Power" host, politics and culture commentator - @wendycarrillo

• The Crawford Family Forum
• 474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105
• Admission FREE, RSVP required
• Thursday night, March 27, 2014
• 6:30 pm door, 7:00 pm program

• Sexually aggressive in bars? It's not because he's drunk
• The position of women in Buddhism (BuddhaNet)
• Beyoncé album reignites feminism debate
• Event: Wonder Women! Untold Story of American Superheroines
• Is it brave or even beneficial for Lena Dunham to be nude on HBO's "Girls?"
• A lesson on what it means to be a feminist, from someone born after 1990 
• NEXT: Water crisis — Survival of the wettest (March 19) 
• Latino police awarded $3.5 mil in OC discrimination case
• When Hollywood Advocates ­- Should People Listen?

Int'l Women's Day L.A., downtown MacArthur Park (KPFK.org)

Buddhist Global Relief, L.A. (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Bhikkhu Bodhi (BuddhistGlobalRelief.org)

Monastics in Theravada Burma tour by foot promoting generosity or dāna (mirror.co.uk)

  

Buddha in walking pose

Join Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Quarterly, Dharma Punx, Dharma Vijaya, Insight LA, and others for a day of compassionate action to promote food aid, sustainable farming, and education for girls and women in Asia, Africa, North America, and Haiti. Where? Santa Monica, California. When? Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. How? Check in time begins at 8:30 am and continues until the walk starts at 9:30 am. We will begin and end at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society (West), 1001a Colorado Blvd., Santa Monica 90401-2809. The distance we will cover is three miles looping through the beautiful beachside city and tourist mecca of Santa Monica (Los Angeles). Register online or donate. To give life a percentage of the proceeds will benefit the Westside Foodbank.

• Info: Tom Moritz (310) 963-0199 (tom.moritz@gmail.com)

(BGRelief) Ven. Bodhi presents the mission of Buddhist Global Relief

at Clodagh Design, New York City in November 2009.