The Great Pyramid of Titicaca, Bolivia

Crystal Quintero, Xochitl, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly;  "Lost Temples: Mystery of the Akapana Pyramid" (NationalGeographic.com, NatGeo)

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, with Andes mountains in the distance (Anthony Lacoste)

LAKE TITICACA, Bolivia - Titicaca (in the hispanicized spelling) or Titiqaqa is a lake in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia. By volume of water, it is the largest lake in South America. Lake Maracaibo has a larger surface area, but it is considered to be a large brackish bay due to its direct connection with the sea. Titicaca is often called the highest navigable lake in the world, with a surface elevation of 12,507 feet (3,812 m)... Bolivia has a mystery beyond the lake, that of Akapana. Scientists decode the life-giving riddle of Bolivia's great Akapana pyramid.

• Maya Pyramids of Chichen Itza
• Lost City of Buddhism's Angkor Wat

Litha 2014: Pagans welcome Summer Solstice

CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Antonia Blumberg (HuffingtonPost.com, June 21, 2014, AP)

The summer solstice arrives in the northern hemisphere on June 21 at 6:51 am EDT, bringing us the longest day in the year -- which means lots of extra sunlight for festivities. The day is also considered to be sacred by many pagans and Wiccans around the world who celebrate the solstice among their other yearly holidays.

Some refer to the summer solstice as "Litha," a term that may derive from 8th century monk Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Bede names "Litha" as the Latin name for both June and July in ancient times.

 

The summer solstice is one of four solar holidays, along with the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. The other major pagan holidays are Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh.

 

 

Observers celebrate the solstice in myriad ways, including festivals, parades, bonfires, feasts and more. As one member of the Amesbury and Stonehenge Druids explains, "What you're celebrating on a mystical level is that you're looking at light at its strongest. It represents things like the triumph of the king, the power of light over darkness, and just life -- life at its fullest."

 

 

Celebrations for the summer solstice take place around the world, and not all are pagan-affiliated. One of the biggest pagan celebrations occurs at Stonehenge in England, but others take place among indigenous Latin and South American communities, and in Russia, Spain, and other countries.

 

 

As the official first day of summer, the solstice is a time of celebration. Cities around the world will mark the day with spiritual and secular celebrations, like this yoga festival in New York's Times Square, expected to draw thousands for some mid-city, summer realignment. More (PHOTOS)

I'm a Mexican-American Buddhist

Crystal Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval; Amber Larson, Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; LA Times

Mexican-Americans and other Latinos wandering around the City of Angels (latimes.com)

Latino celebs like Chicana Selena Gomez on the streets of L.A. (PeopleEnEspanol.com)

Los Angeles' favorite soccer/futbol team, like its favorite cuisine, comes from Mexico (AP)

 

It's all about directly experiencing the Truth

Q: If you were a "Mexican Buddhist," wouldn't you live in L.A.?

A: I guess that's true. I don't live in Latin America. I must be a Mexican-American Buddhist because I live in Los Angeles.

Buddhist temples here are very welcoming to people who speak Spanish or Spanglish. They try to be very accommodating to explain the Dharma or offer meditation instruction.

La Virgen de Guadalupe as Latin Guan Yin

Beyond Chino Hills, far to the east near the massive Hindu mandir which is larger than the Malibu forest mandir, there is a large Thai Buddhist temple that tried to get a permit from the city to build a golden stupa. The city said it was too big. So they cut it down to size and set it in the parking lot. That temple has a little guest house dedicated to Native Americans, who were once the locals before colonization and incorporation. When one asks the monks why it's there, they explain that it's out of reverence for the people who originally settled that land.

Ancient Mexico in Mesoamerica was partially usurped to form the United States. Mesoamerica included North and Central America, including California, where the people remember the Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, and Olmec empires (wiki)

 

Reality check: El Pueblo de L.A.

Going West (Hsi Lai) temple-complex in Hacienda Heights on the border with Orange County is very welcoming, too. They are a Taiwanese Mahayana missionary movement, so one expects it. One does not expect to be so warmly treated in about 100 much smaller temples that dot Latin neighborhoods all over L.A. County.

Q: And what Dharma message do you like best?

Jessica Alba, mom, Beverly Hills

A: The message of independent thinking. The Dharma is not about faith or priestly authority. It is about free inquiry and a sangha, a community, that includes the people who practice the Path. The Kalama Sutra tells us so, as do so many teachings of the Buddha.

Like the original Protestant movement opposing corrupt Catholic institutions, Buddhism says we don't need an intermediary between us and the Truth, us and reality, us and enlightenment (seeing things as they really are), seeing the end-of-suffering (nirvana).

Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) loves Lucy

We don't need idols, Gods, or heroes. They're all well and good. What we need is practice and insight. And that's up to us. No one gets anywhere without help, but no one can help us so much that they are doing it for us. No one can do it for us. I think Mexican-Americans can really relate to this. Maybe all Americans in our diversity can, like disaffected Presbyterians and languishing Lutherans [Editor: Like my dad, you mean?] What did people want but a direct experience of sacred knowledge, liberating enlightenment, of the divine, of the entheogenic (godhood-within) experience.

Speaking of diversity, before there was America there was Mexico. And Mexico was the place for diversity. It still is! The Los Angeles Times recently (hardcopy June 13, online June 12, 2014) had a front page story titled "Mestizo Nation: Mexican DNA reveals a staggering range of diversity"! Mestizo means "mixed" (miscegenation, which was illegal in the U.S. until the 1950s, but has been and is now one of the most popular things Anglos and Latinos do, like Sofia Vergara and "Al Bundy" on Modern Family as the new Lucy and her Hispanic hubby).

Afghan, Chinese Buddhist missionaries to Cali

"Mexico," it seems, gets its name from one Indian tribe, the Mexica or Mēxihcatls, who were Aztecs. Mexicans again became the majority group in sunny California in 2013, but now we're Mexican-Americans, and many of us are interested in Buddhism. After all, what few know is that Buddhism arrived in Mexico and California LONG before Europeans, Columbus, or Christianity.

 

Mestizo Nation 
Geoffrey Mohan (Science: latimes.com)
Mexico boasts a staggering genetic diversity, study shows

Writers, artists, and historians have long pondered what it means to be Mexican. Now science has offered its answer, and it could change how medicine uses racial and ethnic categories to assess disease risk, testing, and treatment.

• California no longer has a white majority (Think Progress) 
• Hospital to train barbers in black areas to test for hypertension
• Teaching Through Trauma: How poverty affects kids' brains

I'm a Mexican Buddhist...in LA/LA Land (video)

Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (Part 2)

"LA/LA"? Welcome to LA LA Land: Los Angeles, Latin America (sweetnrawme.com)

If I were Frieda Kahlo

LOS ANGELES, Latin America - The Getty is preparing to launch an art exhibit that accentuates the embarrassment of artistic riches we have in Los Angeles, which not everyone realizes is in Latin America.

It is for a lot of reasons. Not only did it used to be Mexico until European Invaders during U.S. War on the Spanish annexed it like Ukraine, it is again predominantly Latin American.

Buddhists discovered America before Columbus

Although Asians are the fastest growing ethnicity in the U.S., more Latinas and Latinos live in California than any other group.

Most are not Mexican Buddhists anymore, but a lot are. And it's amazing to find out that there is a connection between the Native Americans, First Nations people, and Mexicans (Aztecs, Maya or Mayans, Toltecs, Olmecs, Incas, and many others) from neighboring Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Central America.
 

The famous "Mayan Calendar" is Aztec

It will be a long time before that information goes mainstream.

But it takes awhile for the truth to surface. In 1885 Edward P. Vining published the facts about inglorious Columbus and the Afghan Buddhist missionaries, led by the Chinese Buddhist monk Hwui Shan (Hui Shen), who arrived in America in the 5th century. America is the Fusang they discovered. So everyone will have to settle for the Getty's Pacific Standard Time 2017.

• Buddhism arrived in Mexico before Christianity
• The 1%: London has the most billionaires followed by Moscow and NY
• L.A. makes list of richest cities behind San Francisco
• The Chinese discovered America (Hendon Harris)

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

Getty Foundation (getty.edu)

TheGetty and the Getty Foundation: Art and Art History in Los Angeles (getty.edu)

If I were a leftist Aztec warrior marching through the streets of Los Angeles (latimes.com)

 
In the fall of 2011 Los Angeles celebrated the launch of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, an unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California joining together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.
 

If I were Irish-Mexican like Peter (as Che)*

Yet it was 230 years earlier, in 1781, that the city of Los Angeles itself was born when El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles [de Porciúncula] was founded as part of New Spain. [A pueblo like that of the Puebloan Buddhists!]

Thus, while Los Angeles [the "City of Angels"] often represents the vanguard of contemporary culture in the United States, it is at the same time a Latin American city of long duration.

 

If I went to BofA or KA

Today, nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America, contributing to Southern California as a lively center of artistic production and a natural nexus of cultural creativity between North and South. 

 

In recent years a number of exhibitions in the Americas and Europe have offered an introduction to the original and varied heritage of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora.

Now there is an opportunity for a broader and deeper examination of this art through a renewed collaboration by the Pacific Standard Time partners. In the process, Southern California will play a significant role in the research and presentation of Latin American art. More

Buddhism was in Mexico before Christianity (PRI video)

• Awake the Nation: United We Stand across USA
• *VIDEO: Peter Griffin is Mexican ("Family Guy")
• CARTOON: "Family Guy" addresses U.S. racism
• RADIO LAB: The best show on public radio
• Ontario police kill man, Mother's Day party surprise
• We either execute them or send them to prison for life
• Winds cause flight problems at Los Angeles airport
• Warm, windy Mother's Day preview of SoCal weather to come
• VIDEO: Shelly Sterling will 'absolutely' fight to keep Clippers

Cinco de Mayo means Latin culture in USA

Pfc. Sandoval, Mexican Buddhist Irma Quintero, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

No one celebrates it in Mexico, but we sure love it in the US. What is Cinco de Mayo? The "Fifth of May" commemorates a time when Mexico rebuffed and repelled French imperial troops who were sent in to collect banking debts. They were defeated and turned away (but returned a year later and succeeded).

Brentwood, L.A. (Lalo Alacaraz/GoComics)

No one in Mexico would think to celebrate the fiasco, choosing instead to commemorate the September 16th "Mexican Independence Day" revolution that overthrew Spanish imperial rule. Long after Buddhism arrived, Spain came to Mexico and wiped out millions in waves of genocides that introduced chattel slavery, disease, mass rape, incarceration, the death penalty, corporate business, and deadly forms of Christianity -- mostly, but not exclusively, Holy Roman Imperial Catholicism.

Of course, the day is now debased in a 4th of July-style Beer and BBQ fest. Why drink Bud when you can have a Corona and enrich corporations on both sides of the border? Viva la revolución!

Satirist/Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz is a Pacifica Radio co-host in Los Angeles (KPFK FM)

• VIDEO: I'm a Mexican Buddhist
• Native American Buddhism: How Swans Came to the Lake

Happy Lu New Year 2014! (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; TetFestival.org ASIAN LUNAR NEW YEAR 2014

(Ttinova) 2014 Lu New Year festivities are exotic and integrating into America

 

Tet parade, Orange County (magnumasi.com)

Each year Americans of Vietnamese descent celebrate the coming lunar year with Tết Nguyên Đán, the most celebrated and significant holiday on the traditional lunar calendar, which also marks the beginning of spring.

The Fung Brothers and Priscilla Liang joke and rap about the 626 (predominantly Asian and Mexican San Gabriel Valley) in suburban L.A. to "Thriftshop" by Macklemore.

  

The Year of the Horse (buddhistedu.org)

The community is proud and honored to present annually the largest Tết Festival in the entire world, attracting over 100,000 patrons from throughout the country and abroad. Visitors are immersed with a vibrant array of traditional foods, live entertainment, festive games, and customs celebrating the new year. This year is the Year of the Horse (Năm Giáp Ngọ).

 

Enter the Horse and exit the Dragon, it's spring and a brand new year!

 

By now the country's largest China town is not in San Francisco or Downtown Los Angeles but in the San Gabriel Valley (area code 626) with its massive mainland Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Filipino, Latin American, and Indian communities.

(SoCalUVSA) A recap of 2013 Lu New Year celebrations in Southern California

That Tet Festival was held between Feb. 8-10, the Year of the [NSA] Snake.

 

2014 (latetfest.com)

VNCSC Tet Festival 2014

A three-day festival organized by the Vietnamese Community of Southern California at Garden Grove Park starting January 31st 2014 and running until February 2nd. 

San Diego Tết Festival

This year there are 11 beautiful contestants each competing for the grand prize of $2,000 and the title of Miss Vietnam San Diego 2014! Come to the festival... 

2014 Tet Festival moves to OC Fairgrounds

The 2014 Tet Festival is NOT going to be in Garden Grove this year.

Tet Festival - Costa Mesa, California (Facebook)

Famous Tet festival heading to Orange County fairgrounds

Organizers of the largest Tet Festival in the U.S. -- an event long linked... Negotiations between the two sides for the 2014 celebration... 

Holidays and observances in Vietnam in 2014

Garden Grove's popular Tet festival is back on 

(OCRegister.com) Garden Grove gets new operator for Tet festival 

2014 Tet Festival Event, L.A. Tet Festival

(TetFest.net) Event: The tenth annual LA Tet Festival 2014

Orange County fails to convict its killer cops

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Chase Madar (PW)

"Ask Mister Republican Man" (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

Pro-Kelly Thomas demonstration (AmberJamie)

As further proof that police cannot be held accountable by our biased (in)justice system: Two of the gang of five murderous Orange County officers who assaulted, threatened, held down, repeatedly beat, Tasered, and finally murdered a helpless, white, mentally disabled, homeless man (Kelly Thomas) were acquitted today.

• Verdict: Not guilty in Kelly Thomas case The verdicts came after two years of hearings, recalled Fullerton city council members, a Police Department roiled by protests and firings. 
• OC jury: Cops who fatally beat Thomas not guilty (LAist)
• PHOTOS: KFI (right wing talk) AM radio

Jay Cicinelli and Manuel Ramo (OCR)

Plans to try a third officer involved in the gang killing are being aborted. Former Fullerton PD Officer Manuel Ramos was the first active duty officer to ever be charged with murder in the line of duty. With his acquittal -- even after many protests by concerned citizens and the victim's father, Ron Thomas, a former police officer who advocated for his dead son. Were it not for the father's advocacy, the case would have likely been swept under the rug. It is likely no charges would have ever been brought against him or fellow killers (former Officer Jay Cicinelli and Officer Joseph Wolfe) beyond the Office of Internal Affairs in the Department (where they were slapped on the backs in the locker room and called macho by fellow cops for killing a hapless, schizophrenic "bum").
 

Kelly Thomas after police gang beating (FF)

Even right wing radio hosts thought this beating and murder was excessive by their pro-police standards of vigilante justice. This is to say nothing of the police killings of Latins around Disneyland and other ongoing abuses in Anahiemstan, like police shootings at Occupy sites.

Welcome to Anaheimstan: the police state around "the Happiest Place on Earth"

 

Equality before the cops?

Chase Madar ("Afraid in America," PasadenaWeekly.com, 12-17-13)

 Anaheim, Orange County protests over police killings spark unrest

 
It will surprise no one that Americans are treated unequally by the police. Law enforcement picks on kids more than adults, the gay more than the straight, Muslims more than Methodists (a lot more than Methodists), antiwar activists more than cowering conformists.

Above all, our punitive police state targets the poor more than the wealthy and blacks and Latinos more than white people.

A case in point: After the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, a police presence -- including surveillance cameras and metal detectors -- was ratcheted up at schools around the country, particularly in urban areas with largely working-class black and Latin students. It was all to “protect” the kids, it was said.

But at Columbine itself, no metal detector was installed and no heavy police presence intruded on students, no lock downs, no extra guards. The reason was simple. At that high school in the Colorado suburb of Littleton, the mostly well-heeled white families did not want their kids treated like potential felons.

 
And they had the status and political power to get their way and protect the civil rights of their children. But communities without such clout were less able protect their children from police, less able to push back against the encroachments of police state powers-that-be and their plans. More

Power of SEDUCTION in daily life (video)

Chen Lizra (TEDx Talks, Vancouver, 2013), CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

With nearly a decade of experience in the animation industry -- working on projects for MTV, TVA, Alliance Atlantis, Mainframe Entertainment, and Radical Entertainment -- Chen Lizra's intellect, imagination, and creative thinking evolved her into a branding expert. 

[Think of the mark placed on cattle, slaves, or the shamed.]
 

Boys love to show off. Charming?

In 2009 and 2012 Chen was nominated as one of the "YWCA Women of Distinction in Vancouver" and was recently honored by the Australian government with a Distinguished Talent Permanent Visa for her international achievements in the arts.
 

As the international author of My Seductive Cuba, a UniqueTravel Guide, Chen has won two awards in the US, including the prestigious IPPY Book Award. With a passion for dance and creative movement, Lizra offers students "seduction workshops" and focused lectures and seminars about the art of seduction in our everyday lives.

  

• Secret History: How Cuba helped end S. Africa's apartheid 
• WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange calls on computer hackers to unite against NSA surveillance 
• Mayor takes aim at NYC’s iequality in inaugural address
• Civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart free out of compassion
• Colorado retailers begin legal recreational marijuana sales 
• Judge strikes down welfare drug tests in Florida
• Federal judge upholds electronics searches at U.S. border

TEDx: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Peruvian Buddhism, oldest in South America

Ashley Wells, Xochitl, Wisdom Quarterly; Annie Murphy, The World (PRI.org/BBC)

Peru is a land of ancient mysteries and Japanese Zen immigrants (apoturperu.org)

 

Buddhist meditation in Peru (pri.org)

A small group of people from the Japanese community recently gathered at the temple in Lima to chant and make offerings to their deceased relatives.

On the altar were plates of sandwiches and cakes, even a bag of Lay’s potato chips.
 
One of the unintended consequences of Peru’s booming economy is that life in the capital is becoming more stressful. Lima is covered in construction sites, competition for the best jobs, and housing is brutal, and traffic is horrendous. Still, people there are finding creative ways to relax in the midst of all that. Some of them are turning to Buddhist meditation.

• AUDIO: popout LISTEN NOW
• Download  segment

In 1903, Zen Buddhism arrived (SZ)

The oldest Buddhist temple in South America is just outside Lima, in a town called Cañete. It’s one large room with tile floors that feel cool under bare feet. The enormous altar is filled with incense, flowers, and small wooden statues that represent members of Japanese families that started migrating here in the early 1900s. Some families have also chosen to leave actual remains, in urns wrapped in knotted bundles of white cotton.

“Those urns contain remains of the first immigrants who came to Peru,” says Carmen Toledo, the temple caretaker, pointing to a few urns on the highest shelf.

She tells me that after Brazil, Peru has the second largest Japanese population outside of Japan. They hung onto a lot of traditions, Toledo says, building this temple and also incorporating Japanese food into Peruvian cuisine. More

Two suicide bombings kill at least 31 people in Volgograd

• Buddhism came to America 1,000 years ago, research reveals: How the Swans Came to the Lake
• Buddhist temple in Peru custodian of waning custom
• 110th anniversary of Soto Zen in South America 
• The first Buddhist missionaries in Peru
• Why Peruvians lock public streets, pay to use public parks 
• Dodging Molotov cocktails to protect Peru's ancient sites
• Peru: Book writing as spectator sport, writer combat
• Ballerina turns at-risk kids in Peru into pro dancers
• New interest in Mormonmission around the world 
• Theosophy: Peru "A Land of Mystery" Mdme. Blavatsky
  There, all along the coast of Peru, all over the Isthmus and North America, in the... as to the splendour of the temples, palaces, and cities of Mexico and Peru,.... modern ruins, and the images of Buddha and of some deities [devas], not to mention our.... existence of the largest and most ancient forests growing on the buried cities.

Buddhism arrived very early