Love: Suicidal Summer Sadness (video)

Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Lana Del Rey

Beach Bum Dharma: reading Buddhism instead of practicing it? Both are needed (TDB).

.

Get a tan, take a swim, and meditate.

When I read, I imagine the world is one way.

But it's really another.

In my head, sandals and cold drinks are dancing. There's sand everywhere, and the mighty sea crunches into the sand, churns it up, and exhales. Then it all rushes out and happens again, like a body breathing.

But summer around here, far from the beach, far from the shoreline, inland where most people live, is green, muddy, and the water doesn't breathe much.

The devas' hollow, far from the madding crowd (SatoriNihon/flickr.com)

 

Where do the devas (shining ones) go? Isn't it exactly these wilderness haunts, pleasant groves unspoiled by human noise and destruction?

East Coast

We thought "West Coast" was the best song Lana Del Rey created for "Ultraviolence," but that might actually be "Brooklyn Baby."

Since the album is at No. 1 on Billboard, readers might have heard the whole thing by now. (After all, isn't that what YouTube is for?)

You never liked the way I said it/ If you don't get it then forget it/ So I don't have to f'ing...

LYRICS: "They say I'm too young to love you/ [that] I don't know what I need/ They think I don't understand/ The freedom land of the seventies/ I think I'm too cool to know ya/ You say I'm like the ice I freeze/ I'm churning out novels like/ Beat poetry on amphetamines/ I say, I say// CHORUS: Well my boyfriend's in a band/ He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed /I've got feathers in my hair/ I get down to Beat poetry/ And my jazz collection's rare/ I can play most anything/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/ I'm a Brooklyn baby// They say I'm too young to love you/ They say I'm too dumb to see/ They judge me like a picture book/ By the colors, like they forgot to read/ I think we're like fire and water/ I think we're like the wind and sea/ You're burning up, I'm cooling down/ You're up, I'm down/ You're blind, I see/ But I'm free, I'm free// CHORUS// I'm talking about my generation/ Talking about that newer nation/ And if you don't like it/ You can beat it/ Beat it, baby/ You never liked the way I said it/ If you don't get it then forget it/ So I don't have to *ucking explain it/ And my boyfriend's in a band/ He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed/ I've got feathers in my hair/ I get high on hydroponic weed/ And my jazz collection's rare/ I get down to Beat poetry/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/  Yeah, my boyfriend's pretty cool/ But he's not as cool as me/ Cause I'm a Brooklyn baby."

According to HollyscoopTV, "She also recently told the New York Times, 'I love the idea that it'll all be over. It's just a relief really. I'm scared to die, but I want to die.'"

I was born to die, and I want to die already.

Maybe Lana's great because she's so troubled and depressed. Imagine being that famous, that talented, that successful, that beautiful, that young -- and wanting to die. It can all be explained in terms of what the Buddha says about disappointment.

We translate the Sanskrit word dukkha as "suffering." But it is a rich word that means "there's no fulfillment here, no satisfaction, no satiation." In other words, it's disappointing. What's disappointing? Everything but nirvana. Everything else is "off center, askew, and hard to bear."

There are forms of dukkha as subtle as annoyance, as enduring as longing, as severe as anguish. Wanting to kill oneself is painful. It is an unwholesome desire based on wrong views and an expression of aversion (frustration, revulsion, anger, depression, hate, fear).

I wish I were dead! I'm scared to die, but I want it all to be over.

Death is pretty, says la Llorona

Why do we get depressed or put off or upset? We say: "I want this. So long as I don't have this, I'll be unhappy" as if the world were out to make us happy.

But not getting what one wants is dukkha. Getting what one does not-want is dukkha. Rebirth, aging, sickness, and death are dukkha. But this is the worst dukkha, and Lana knows it:

Getting exactly what one wants, what one had wished for, what one had yearned for, AND still not be happy! Why? It didn't fulfill me. It lied or somebody lied telling me this would satisfy me, satiate me, fulfill me.

What did it do instead -- any of it, whether it was hot sensual pleasures or cool spiritual experiences? It disappointed me! Therefore, I want to die. What's the point of going on?

"Summertime Sadness" (Acapella)

 

I'm thrilled and feel a surge of love chemicals

Maybe someone will argue, "Lana just needs to find the right partner and settle down." Nope. Depending on someone else for her happiness, she's already doing that; she's been in "love" and engaged for a while.

Know what Lana really needs? God. The god is the answer to all problems. Not so much, because she's already got that. The god's son and his special mojo? The god's human wife or his son's mother with her special dispensation? Pact with Satan? More expensive shoes? Drugs? Lots of sex? Money! Attention? Our approval? More accolades (like having the No. 1 album in the country isn't enough)? More awards? More magazine interviews and interest? Bigger ratings than Lady Gaga? Her own show? How about if we elect her "Emperess of the Planet" and all send her tribute due on April 15th of each year?

(The Ryon Show) WARNING: Mild cussing, gender confusion, suicidal story. Lana Del Rey LIVE in Los Angeles, 2014, talking to fans before her recent Shrine Auditorium show. More

"Suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism" is humor?

It all sounds good, but with wisdom, with right view, and often with painful experience, one sees that these would never fulfill one, never satiate one, never solve the real problem(s).

They lead to more desires and more disappointments. If they led to the end of suffering, we would recommend them and the Buddha would have recommended them; we would all be hedonists. But they don't work, as you will all find out.

(Why? Because we know that that's what our horrible Judeo-Christian corporate capitalist mentality/society is promoting, not only to us but also exporting to the entire world).

Annihilationism is a basic wrong view

Look at Judaism, the root of Christianity; it's all about, "Live it up now, for tomorrow it's sheol for everyone," a very harmful wrong view.

Look at Christianity, which does more to promote "sin" (unskillful karma) than to dissuade anyone from it. How? It does so by hammering and pontificating, by being full of loud hypocrites, sophists, and apologists. How bad the world is with it. How much worse would the world be without it? It would likely be better because this is the world with it, and this world is not working for the good. But it sure is working for inimical forces, seen and unseen.

If one gets depressed and starts believing it's all hopeless -- and we know that what one had done to bear it only made it worse -- made more bad karma -- then it's no surprise one starts talking about suicide. Suicide? Who said anything about suicide? She used to pout, but she's happy now.

• AUDIO: Lana gets interviewed (Amp Radio)

"Feeling super, super, super suicidal" (Lana Del Rey)

Are you calling me the next la Llorona?

How wise was the Buddha, knowing-and-seeing things as they really are. There are only three roots of all unhappiness, three sources of all unwholesome karma, three problems with life/existence. What are they? They are:

1. greed (lobha, which actually means craving, desire, liking, or preferring and is NOT limited to selfish voraciousness as some people reading Buddhism only in English come to conclude),
2. hatred (dosa, which means all forms of aversion, especially wrath and fear, which we don't normally take to have the same root), and the biggest problem of all, which serves as the root of the other two,
3. delusion (moha, wrong view, unknowing, confusion, doubt, uncertainty, ignorance).

*If greed, hatred, and delusion are poor translations, why does everyone use them? Sometimes a poor translation is still the best possible translation because each of these words represents a range (each is a multivalent term). They represent their categories well.

Root-condition (Pali, hetu-paccaya) is a basis that resembles the root of a tree. Just as trees rest on roots and remain alive only as long as those roots are not destroyed, all karmically wholesome and unwholesome mental states are entirely dependent on the presence of their roots: greed, hatred, delusion or, conversely, greedlessness,hatelessness, undeludedness.

• For definitions of these six roots, see mūla.

"The roots are a condition by way of root for the (mental) phenomena associated with a root and for the corporeal phenomena produced thereby (e.g., for bodily expression)" -- from the Patthāna ("Conditional Relations").
 

(Lana Del Rey) The superstar spectacle of Coachella 2014 performing "National Anthem"

Climate chaos continues: Polar vortex (sutra)

Ven. Piyadassi Thera (translator), edited by Wisdom Quarterly (Suriya Sutta, SN 2.10)

Geoengineering the world's weather is new to the MIC and its HAARP. Give them time.

Oh, Surya (Sol), please come back! We liked global warming better than this new Ice Age.

 

Yogic Sun salutation (worldiniowa.com)

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living near the city of Savatthi at Jetavana in Anathapindika's hermitage.

At that time Suriya (Surya) the Sun deva was seized by Rahu lord of titans (asuras). Thereupon, calling to mind the Blessed One, Suriya the Sun deva recited this stanza:
 

"O Buddha, Hero, wholly free of all defilements, honor to thee. I have fallen into distress! Guide me."
 

Thereupon, the Blessed One responded by addressing a stanza to Rahu lord of titans on behalf of Suriya:
 

"O Rahu, Suriya has gone for guidance to the Tathagata, the Noble One. Release Suriya. The buddhas radiate compassion on the world (of beings).
 
"O Rahu, do not swallow the dispeller of darkness, the shining one, the radiant and effulgent traveler of the sky. Rahu, release Suriya."
 

Thereupon, Rahu lord of titans released Suriya and immediately came to the presence of Vepacitti lord of titans and stood beside him trembling in fear with hair standing on end. Then Vepacitti addressed Rahu in this stanza:
 

Indian mythology describes astronomy.

"Rahu, why did you suddenly release Suriya? Why have you come trembling, and why are you standing here terrified?"

"I have been spoken to by the Buddha in a stanza (requesting me to release Suriya). If I had not released Suriya, my head would have split into seven pieces [a common Indian idiom frequently met with in the sutras]. While I yet lived, I would have had no happiness. (Therefore, I released Suriya)."

The asura Rahu is mentioned explicitly in a pair of sutras from the Connected Discourses of the Pali Canon. In the Candima Sutta and the Suriya Sutta, Rahu attacks Chandra the moon deity and Suriya the sun deity before being compelled to release them by their recitation of a brief stanza conveying their reverence for the Buddha. The Buddha responds by enjoining Rahu to release them, which Rahu does rather than have his "head split into seven pieces." The verses recited by the two celestial deities and the Buddha have since been incorporated into Buddhist as protective chants (parittas) recited by monastics as kind of post-Vedic mantras.

Supernatural Iceland (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; AnimusAeternus

Viking Up Helly Aa (Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images/theatlantic.com)

"Elves, Ghosts, Sea Monsters, and ETs in Iceland -- Investigation into the Invisible World"

Nagas, devas, dragons, and fairies (M9)

"Enquête Sur le Monde Invisible" is a documentary by French director Jean-Michel Roux. In Icelandic towns like Hafnarfjörður and Reykjavik, a large percentage of the population believe in devas (subtle unseen beings), elves, ghosts of the dearly departed, and other paranormal entities. In fact, many claim to have seen and interacted with them. And some even claim to engage in frequent contact with them. This rare documentary is the first outside look at the strange but seemingly common events that take place on this small and remote island country. Note the similarity with mysterious island nation Ireland and its wee people and extraterrestrials. Irish slaves, in fact, were brought to Iceland.

Sylvia Boorstein on Enlightenment (video)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Buddhist meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein (Spirit Rock), It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

Marriage ceremony in Phuket, Thailand (Ted Richardson, Esq./flickr/thaiembassy.com)

 

Fischel's wife was a devi glowing in the dark (WQ)

When I started to practice meditation in the early seventies it was hip. Everybody was meditating; every weekend you could take a workshop in another form of meditation. The advertisements for the workshops usually suggested that at the end of the weekend you'd be totally enlightened.

I remember once going to a party that looked like a regular party -- people talking, visiting, and laughing -- and in the middle sat a woman with a strange look on her face, eyes closed, face serene, totally tuned out from the whole scene.

Somebody leaned over to me and said, "Look at her, she's enlightened," and I thought to myself, "If that's what enlightenment is, I don't want it."
 

Meditation for levitation (Ruwan_W/flickr)

What I did want, at least for a while, were exotic powers. I heard extraordinary stories of people who could bilocate or levitate. Sometimes, as I sat on my cushion and experienced an unusual lightness in my body, I imagined I was about to levitate. I hoped I would. I thought it would be a far-out thing, rising up off my cushion and floating in the air.

I think I was also influenced by a story my grandfather told about my grandmother -- a woman who died when I was nine years old. I knew here as a sickly old woman, but my grandfather remembered her as the very beautiful woman he had married when she was 18 years old. He told me she was so beautiful that "she glowed in the dark." I asked him if he really meant that, and he said, "Yes, she really did." 

He said, "At my nephew Murray Fox's wedding, the hall was lit with gaslight because it was before electricity, so it was quite dark, and everyone said, 'Look at Fischel's wife, she shines in the dark!'" I held that as a wonderful, luminous memory and as an ideal. What I wanted to achieve from my meditation practice was to shine in the dark. I think a lot of us in the early days wanted magic.

My Buddhist meditation teachers, whom I met in 1977, talked about enlightenment but not about magic. They talked about "seeing clearly" and how it could mean happiness and the end of suffering. That sounded like the kind of magic I wanted most. More

• It's Easier Than You Think (sylviaboorstein.com)
• Quotes: It's Easier Than You Think (Goodreads.com)

The Avatars Are Coming?

Semjase space devi

(NYC812) Odd narrator speculates that the sun is affecting human DNA causing the emergence of human-star-people hybrids. They are incarnating into avatar bodies birthed by ordinary terrestrial parents. Why? A mother who gives birth to such a baby will love her child no matter how different that child is. In this way, extraterrestrials arrive integrated into the fabric of the existing society. So if a black couple gives birth to a blond, blue-eyed, classically Eurocentric "angel" baby, that baby will be loved. Who can explained such children being born to Asian couples? "The wife cheated" is the rational if harsh conclusion. But then an Egyptian couple has twins, one white one not. How could beautiful, non-albino children be so white they practically glow in the dark?

Mystic planets and brain frequencies (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; David Sereda (lightstreamtechnologies.com); CoastToCoastAM.com

Egyptian Pyramid and Sphinx, wonders of the world from amazing Africa (trekearth.com)

(David Sereda) original fundraising trailer for David Sereda's new film, "Quantum Pyramid"

Meditator David Sereda, Sedona

Mystic, scientist, ecologist, filmmaker David Sereda experimented with frequencies -- the universal language of the universe -- and their relation to human brainwaves.

Our coils of DNA act as transponders (coil transmitter-receivers, electronic inductors) tuning into frequencies of the planets in the solar system.

The nine planets emit unique frequencies, transmitting waves our DNA can tune into when acting as a receiver. These waves are the frequencies they are in most of the time, particularly in deep meditation (theta, alpha, delta, beta, etc.) Sereda moved from a subjective experience of this to objective measures by developing simple tuning technology. This led him to the realization that the pyramids, found everywhere around the planet, amplify the effect enabling transport and communication between realms.

Who is there? Devas ("shining ones"), tall luminous humanoid beings! As difficult as it is to believe, many of the world's mythologies and pantheons correspond to reality. And now anyone can experience quantum communication with the planets, their subtle form inhabitants, and distant star systems like the Pleiades.
 

Live from Sedona, Arizona: meditation, space sciences, mystical experiences, math,

body healing, frequency coding, brainwave mapping, bliss, out of body experiences,

meeting teachers, finding portals, space travel, compassion for Earth and environment.

It all began in Berkeley, California (David Sereda, Coast to Coast AM, Nov. 13, 2013)

Sereda's technology also has the ability to heal, offering a potential solution to the problem created by the worsening Fukushima nuclear disaster. By facilitating astral and, with the aid of giant pyramids, physical projection, there is no need for discussion and theorizing. The process is experiential and replicable. Sereda has himself traveled and communicated with Jupiter, by tuning into its exact frequency.

Reverse engineering technology (altoego)

There he encountered eight-foot tall beings with lightning bolts flashing between their chests. (Imagine Thor the God of Thunder's planet in the original Marvel movie). Calculating electromagnetic frequencies has been the key. NASA already does this very accurately.

Studying the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, as measured in Egyptian inches, Sereda determined that it acts as an enormous crystal oscillator, serving as a stargate which the priests and priestesses of old utilized for interplanetary communication and travel. The "gods" of the hieroglyphs (just like those of the ancient Greeks and Romans) are real and made visible with this technology.

• LightStreamTechnologies.com
• Differentials, The Hidden Harmonic Codes of the Universe
• voiceentertainment.net
• Singularity

 

(Just Energy Radio) New Age physicist and meditator David Sereda joins Dr. Rita Louise to discuss LightStream technology crystals. Sereda has planted over 1.3 million trees in Canada, spoken in front of Congress for clean fusion power (1993), marketed sustainable housing, made breakthroughs in oil spill clean up, and developed vibrational and green technology.

Reaching "heaven" on a private flight (video)

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; LiveScience.com; AccessToInsight.org

Dragon (naga) and fairy (lesser deva) in European conception (mobile9.com)

(Virgin Galactic) Footage from the tail camera onboard SpaceShipTwo during Virgin Galactic's second rocket-powered test flight

 

The Happiest Country

Tia Ghose, LiveScience.com, Sept. 9, 2013

The happiest people in the world may live in [deva-visited] Scandinavia, a new study suggests.  That's according to the United Nations General Assembly's second World Happiness Report...

• Life found beneath ice-covered Antarctic lake
• NASA spacecraft cruising to Moon with novel design

Buddhist Heavens in Space

Warrior deva takes a stand (Charest)

In Buddhist cosmology, the heavenly or celestial (akasha) realms are blissful abodes whose present inhabitants (devas, lit. "shining ones") gained rebirth there through the power of their past meritorious karma (actions). 

 

Like all of the living beings still caught in the Cycle of Rebirth (samsara), however, these "deities," "angels," or advanced humanoids eventually succumb to old age, illness, and death. They eventually take rebirth in other realms -- pleasant or otherwise -- according to their deeds (karma). 

 

The devas, light beings, are NOT always especially knowledgeable or spiritually mature. In fact, many are quite intoxicated by their sensual indulgences, finer than human enjoyments but still rooted in sensuality. The devas are not considered worthy of veneration.

 

Nevertheless, the devas and their happy realms stand as important reminders to humans both of the happy benefits that ensue from the performance of meritorious skillful deeds and, finally, of the ultimate shortcomings of sensuality.

A Rare Rebirth

Blinded in this world [kama loka, "sensual sphere"] -- how few here see clearly! Just as birds who escape from a net cast to ensnare them are few, few also are the [number of] people who make it to heaven. — Dhp 174

Seeing for Oneself

"I have seen beings who -- endowed with beneficial bodily, verbal, and mental good conduct, who refrained from reviling noble ones (self-purified beings along the stages of enlightenment), who held right views, and undertook actions under the influence of right views -- at the break up of the body, after death, have reappeared in good destinations, even in the [lower sensual] heavenly world.

"It is not from having heard this from other ascetics and Brahmins that I tell you that I have seen such beings who...at the break up of the body, after death, have reappeared in good destinations, even in the heavenly world.

"Rather, it is from having known it myself, seen it myself, realized it myself that I tell you that I have seen such beings who...held right views and undertook actions under the influence of right views -- at the break up of the body, after death, have reappeared in good destinations, even in the heavenly world." — Iti 71 

Recollecting the Devas

Figurines in China (Jass Xia/jasspierxia/flickr)

"Furthermore, one ought to recollect the devas: 'There are the devas of the [realm of the] Four Great Kings, the devas of the Thirty-Three, the devas of the Hours, the Contented Devas, the devas who delight in creating, the devas who have power over the creations of others, the devas of Brahma's retinue, and the [many] devas beyond them.

"Whatever confidence (conviction, faith, view) they were endowed with when falling away from this life that led them to re-arise there -- the same sort of confidence is present in me!

 

Whatever virtue they were endowed with that when falling away from this life lead them to re-arise there -- the same sort of virtue is present in me!

 

Whatever learning (suta) they were endowed with when falling away from this life leading them to re-arise there -- the same sort of learning is present in me as well. 

 

Whatever generosity they were endowed with when falling away from this life that led them to re-arise there -- the same sort of generosity is present in me.

 

All human beings are potential devas or "light beings" (centraxis)

 

Whatever wisdom they were endowed with when falling away from this life that led them to rearise there -- the same sort of wisdom is present in me!'

 

At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting the confidence, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom found both in oneself and the devas, one's mind is not overcome with passion (greed), not overcome with aversion (hate), not overcome with delusion (e.g., wrong views). 

 

One's mind heads straight, based on the [qualities of the] devas. And when the mind is headed straight, the disciple of the noble ones gains a sense of the goal, gains a sense of the Dharma, gains joy connected with the Dharma.

 

In one who is joyful, rapture (piti) arises. In one who is full of rapture, the body grows calm. One whose body is calm experiences ease. In one at ease, the mind becomes concentrated." — AN 11.12

 More 

Mini Brain Grown from Human Stem Cells
LiveScience.com

(Infographic/LiveScience.com)