Advice to the Kalamas; Egyptian Tattoos (video)

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

The Buddha, Afghanistan/Bactria (Boonlieng/flickr)

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

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

The British Museum (britishmuseum.org)

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

 

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

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

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

• Mes Aynak Afghan Buddhist monastery

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

Making a new fake threat: CIA's "Boko Haram"

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY); BBC

Is it possible to control the weather? Can social media catch bogeymen? Some agencies already wield the power to make it rain (by cloudseeding with toxic heavy metals), "drive" hurricanes/cyclones and cause/avert catastrophic weather disasters (with HAARP). But let's pretend they are not yet doing it: the BBC investigates.

 
UPDATE: The photos of the "abducted" girls are fake

American invaders arrive to find, rape, kill...

BORNO, Nigeria (BP News) - More than 200 Christian girls Boko Haram [is said to have] kidnapped a month ago from a state school are not the same girls shown in a ransom video the ["]terrorists["] released, Nigerian relations expert Adeniyi Ojutiku told Baptist Press today (May 13).

When the Borno state government shared copies of the video with the parents of the kidnapped [CIA abducted] teenagers, none of the parents could find their children in the video, Ojutiku said he learned from the Borno government.

"They are not the same. They are not the girls abducted," said Ojutiku, a Southern Baptist in Raleigh, N.C., who receives frequent updates from members of the grassroots group Lift Up Now. He co-founded the group to address political, economic and social challenges in his homeland Nigeria. More

• Video of Boko Haram killing a girl found to be fake

Fear, fear, don't forget to be afraid! They're savages! They're monsters! Protect us, military-industrial complex, protect us! They're mean to innocent little schoolgirls and puppies! They're black! They're Muslims! And worst of all they hate "Western education" for girls!

 

First it was the Red Menace, those darn Cold War communists taking over the capitalist world like a big Dominoes game, one nation falling after another trying to set up a just economic system that does not exploit workers. Then it was Al Qaeda and the Bogeyman (Emmanuel Goldstein/Osama bin Laden). Now it's Bo Go Harm, Bogeyman II, the BOGUS black monsters of Boko Haram ("Western-style education is forbidden"). What kind of Fear of a Black Planet is this farce exploiting?

The CIA paid me to launch a media campaign

Look, they confessed! They say Allah is making them do it! Jehovah would never sell kids! Be afraid, be more afraid! Hey, let's not forget to vote to get some boots on the ground in Africa with American troops searching for Kony, too!

Who are Boko Haram?

The group that has claimed responsibility for abducting hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls has long waged a campaign of terror. BBC News takes a look at the leadership, methods, and beliefs of Boko Haram.

Boko Haram "to sell" abducted girls

Oh no! Be afraid, very afraid! The Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram says it will "sell" the hundreds of schoolgirls it abducted three weeks ago.

7 animals that are not DINOSAURS (video)

CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; SciShow (Facebook/YT/TT, May 1, 2014)

Buddhist nagas are reptilians from the view of the terrifying Crocodile Cage (wiki)

Getting most information about ancient animals from vintage cartoons? If so then it may come as a surprise that a lot of beings we think of as "dinosaurs" actually aren't. Learn the definition of true dinosaurs and the evolutionary relationships shared by the non-dino reptiles that lived on land, in the sea, and in the air on this quick excursion into the world of Western science.

Like SciShow? Support it: get things to put on walls, attach to torsos, and hold liquids by checking out the awesome products at DFTBA Records or help support by subscribing on the Subbable page. Enough of "science"; it's time to journey into Eastern mysticism.

• VIDEO: A living dinosaur in Africa today (Monster Quest)
• VIDEO: Frankenstein labs: chimera pig-human-baboons
• VIDEO: THE NEW YORK MONSTER (History.com)
  The "Monster of Whitehall" lives in upstate New York. Sightings of this 800 lb. bipedal creature culminated in several police officers encountering it. It haunts the area to this day. However, sightings of these humanoid giants go back many hundreds of years to Native American (Algonquian and Iroquois) accounts and that of French explorers in the 1600s in a wilderness that runs all the way up to the Canadian border.

The Monster of Whitehall is not a single creature but a concentration of them in upstate NY.

 
Sutra: the Reptilian Mucalinda

John D. Ireland (trans.), Mucalinda Sutra (Udana 2.1, BPS); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.)

Theropod dino egg nest discovered (news.nationalgeographic.com/Museu da Lourinha)

 

Mucalinda the naga (khanh_huynhtuan/flickr)

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha (Bhagava, the "Blessed One") was staying at Uruvela next to the river Nerañjara at the foot of the Mucalinda Tree, having just realized full enlightenment.
 
At that time he sat cross-legged for seven days experiencing the bliss of liberation. Now it happened that there occurred a great rainstorm. For seven days there was unseasonable weather with rain clouds and cold winds.
 
Then [the magical dragon] Mucalinda the Naga-King left his dwelling and with his coils encircled the Buddha's body seven times. He stood with his great [cobra] hood spread over the Buddha's head (thinking) to protect him from cold and heat, from gadflies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and the touch of creeping things.
 

At the end of seven days the Buddha emerged from that profound concentration (samma-samadhi). Then Mucalinda the Naga-King, seeing that the sky had cleared and the rain clouds dispersed, removed his coils from the Buddha's body. Transforming his appearance (shape-shifting) and assuming the appearance of a youth, Mucalinda the Naga-King stood in front of the Buddha with his hands placed together (añjali mudrā) venerating him.
 
Then realizing its significance, on that occasion, the Buddha uttered this inspired utterance, this verse of uplift:
 

Blissful is detachment for one who is content,

For one who has found Dharma [Truth] and who sees;

Blissful is non-affliction in the world,

Restraint towards all living creatures;
 

Blissful is passionlessness in the world,

The overcoming of sensual desires;

But the abandoning of the conceit "I am" —

That is truly the bliss supreme!
 

The seven are the five mentioned in the SciShow video (above), the "Monster of Whitehall" (an American Sasquatch), and the reptilian Muclinda. Mokele Mbembe is real and is a non-extinct dinosaur frequently seen in the Congo river in basin of Africa.

US plunges, Obama's "War on Whistleblowers"

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman (DemocracyNow.org)

National debt makes strange bedfellows.

There is not much freedom in the "Free World" nowadays. A new survey of press freedom around the world finds the United States has plunged 13 spots, now ranking just 46th among 180 countries. The annual survey by Reporters Without Borders also says Syria is the most dangerous country for journalists, showing a correlation between conflict zones and a low level of press freedom. Other countries that fell lower than in the previous year’s survey include the civil-war-torn Central African Republic, down 43 spots to 109, and Guatemala, where four journalists were killed last year alone. This comes as the United Nations General Assembly recently adopted its first resolution on the safety of journalists. The group has now called on the United Nations to monitor how member states meet their obligations to protect reporters. Delphine Halgand of Reporters Without Borders is  interviewed.


Russia's Pres. Putin has spent more than $50 billion on the Winter Games in Sochi, making this the most expensive Olympics in history. In the lead-up, Russia has faced worldwide criticism and calls for boycotts, especially after it passed a law in June banning the spread of so-called "gay propaganda" to children. Roundtable: Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation magazine and author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down; Samantha Retrosi, a luge athlete who competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics; historian and former U.S. Olympic soccer player, Jules Boykoff, author of Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games; and Helen Lenskyj, author of several books on the Olympics, including Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry and the forthcoming book, Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows.

• "Wounds of Waziristan" with missing anti-drone activist
• Drone on Your iPhone: Apple app tracks US drone strikes
• House GOP drops standoff over debt ceiling
• Holder calls for restoration of felons’ voting rights
• Washington State freezes death penalty
• Websites stage Global Action Against NSA Surveillance
• Appeals Court rejects halt to Guantánamo force-feeding, allows challenges to prison conditions
• New spill in West Virginia with leak from coal slurry
• Environmentalists: N.C. trying to avoid scrutiny of Duke Energy deal following toxic leak 
• 1 missing after natural gas explosion at Pennsylvania well 
• U.N. envoy calls on Russia, U.S. to help Syrian peace 
  
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (E. Kolbert) 
• How humans are causing largest die-off since Dinosaur Age

Finding the Lost Pyramids of Egypt (video)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Laurent P., Wisdom Quarterly; New Pyramids

 

(ConsciousMate) "The Pyramid Code" is a documentary that explores the unknown pyramid fields and ancient temples in Egypt as well as ancient megalithic sites around the world. In search of clues to matriarchal (mother-based) consciousness, ancient knowledge, and sophisticated technology from an ancient Golden Age. This study is based on extensive research done over 25 trips to Egypt and 51 other countries around the world by Dr. Carmen Boulter, formerly from the Graduate Division of Educational Research at the University of Calgary, Canada.

• VIDEO: CIA's Susan Lindauer tells all (CM)
• VIDEO: CIA insider blows whistle on 9-11 (Susan Lindauer, AE911Truth.org, 911Blogger.com)
  
• Domestic drones: Flying and spying on the US soon
• VIDEO: Klaus Dona reveals amazing artifacts
• Haiyan slams Phillipines as world's worst storm
• US Military sexual assaults up by almost 50%
• AUDIO: "Batman"9 Adam West on Kanye West

Symposium on lost pyramids, ancient artifacts, space alien skulls, and

other anomalous objects found around the world. Deeper analysis