Love? It's Ultraviolence! (sutra)

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

Lana-of-the-King, when did he stop treating you like a princess?

(BBC, June 28, 2014) Devi Lana Del Rey performs "Ultraviolence" at Glastonbury 2014. For more exclusive videos and photos from the show, go to BBC.co.uk/glastonbury.

 

(Psst, Lana, the Lorde says your music sucks and is bad for girls to listen to, like, a bad influence keeping them waiting for some "Prince Charming"). 

"He used to call me DN/ That stood for Deadly Nightshade/ Cause I was filled with poison/ But blessed with beauty and rage/ Jim told me that./ He hit me, and it felt like a kiss./ Jim brought me back/ Reminded me of when we were kids/ With his Ultraviolence Ultraviolence Ultraviolence Ultraviolence/ I can hear sirens, sirens/ He hit me, and it felt like a kiss/ I can hear violins, violins/ Give me all of that Ultraviolence/ He used to call me poison/ Like I was poison ivy/ I could have died right there/ Cause he was right beside me/ Jim raised me up/ He hurt me, but it felt like true love/ Jim taught me that/ Loving him was never enough/

(Clockwork Orange) England, Germany, USA, Israel, the "West"

loves killing on an industrial scale. It's ultra-violence.

Zombies: abused learn to abuse.

We could go back to New York/ Loving you was really hard/ We could go back to Woodstock/ Where they don't know who we are/ Heaven is on Earth/ I would do anything for you, babe/ Blessed is this union/ Crying tears of gold like lemonade/ I love you the first time/ I love you the last time/ Yo soy la princesa, comprende mis white lies/ Cause I'm your jazz singer/ And you're my cult leader/ I love you forever/ I love you forever/ With his Ultraviolence (Lay me down tonight)/ Ultraviolence (In my linen and curls)/ Ultraviolence (Lay me down tonight)/ Ultraviolence (Riviera Girls)/ I can hear sirens, sirens/ He hit me, and it felt like a kiss/ I can hear violins, violins/ Give me all of that Ultraviolence...

(Korn/"Thoughtless") Thumbing through the pages of my fantasies/ Pushing all the mercy down, down, down/ I wanna see you try to take a swing at me/ Come on, gonna put you on the ground, ground, ground/ Why are you trying to make fun of me?/ You think it's funny?/ What the 'uck do you think it's doing to me?/ You take your turn lashing out at me/ I want you crying with your dirty a-s in front of me/ All of my hate cannot be found/ I will not be drowned by your thoughtless scheming/ So you can try to tear me down/ Beat me to the ground/ I will see you screaming/ Thumbing through the pages of my fantasies/ I'm above you, smiling at you, drown, drown, drown/ I wanna kill and 'ape you the way you 'aped me/ And I'll pull the trigger/ And you're down, down, down// All of my friends are gone, they died (Gonna take you down)/ They all screamed and cried (Gonna take you down)/ I've got my body, got my body back against the wall/ I've got my body, got my body back against the wall/ Gonna take you down...

(Evanesence/"Thoughtless" live at Rock am Ring (Germany)

Maybe in the future women won't stand or fall for it? So long as the mainstream media defines our "feminist" or "progressive" views, the status quo is likely to remain largely unchanged. The TV is not our friend. We have to think and question and search for answers. They rarely come prepackaged with nice bows on top.

(Diamante) Hey, Jim, you got a kiss for me? I'll "Bite Your Kiss"!

Sutra: The Abusive Brahmin Husband
Acharya Buddharakkhita edited by Wisdom Quarterly from Positive Response: How to Meet Evil With Good, Akkosa Sutta (SN VII.2)

Hey, you bald-pated offspring of..!

Thus have I heard. Once the Buddha was staying in a sylvan grove nestled in the foothills surrounding Magadha's capital city of Rajagaha (modern Rajgir). This royal pleasure garden just outside of the gated city, known as the Bamboo Grove (Veluvana), was offered to the Buddha by his great patron, King Bimbisara, who was delighted to have such a remarkable sage nearby.

The king built a monastic residence just outside of the gate -- equipping it with a large number of meditation huts, where at least 1,250 monastics stayed and countless more lay devotees, spending their time in meditation, hearing the Dharma, and intense spiritual endeavor. The Bamboo Grove was neither too far nor too near the city, but at just the right distance from it for the large number of devotees who flocked there every morning and evening to pay homage to the Enlightened One.

Practicing leads to mind/heart's freedom!

A certain Brahmin (India's high caste, priestly class, social elites) belonging to the Bharadvaja clan had a great prejudice against the Buddha since he thought a member of the nobility (warrior caste, kshatriya) had claimed to be a saint.

Yet as it happened, the Brahmin's wife was a great devotee of the Buddha. On a certain festival day when everybody, including his wife, had gone to the Bamboo Grove hermitage to hear a discourse (sutra), the Brahmin, coming to know of it, became furious.

Fuming with rage, he rushed to the Bamboo Grove to give both his wife and the Buddha a piece of his mind. He forced his way through the crowd and began shouting foul abuse. He headed straight to where the Buddha was seated. People were aghast. Even the presence of the king, nobles, and ministers did not deter the enraged Brahmin from reviling the Buddha to his face.

When the Buddha remained completely undisturbed, radiating powerful feelings/thoughts of loving-kindness, the Brahmin stopped abusing him. But he was still aggrieved.

Then the Buddha asked him in a kind and gentle voice full of friendliness: "Friend, if somebody visits you, and you offer food which that person declines, who gets that food?"

"If the visitor does not accept what I offer, I will get it back because I offered it."

Then the Buddha came to his point: "If I do not accept your abuse, to whom will it return?"

The Brahmin was so moved by the tremendous implication of this analogy that he fell at the feet of the Buddha and sought to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. Soon after his ordination, depending on the Buddha's instruction for his path-of-practice, the Brahmin attained full enlightenment. The Buddha had transformed him by his positive approach. More

What is Nirvana? Complete freedom!

Bhikkhu Bodhi (beyondthenet.net); Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha says that he teaches only two things, disappointment (dukkha, suffering) and the end-of-disappointment (nirvana).

That is, he only finds two kinds of questions important. "What is suffering?" and "How do we achieve the end of suffering?"

In the First Noble Truth the Buddha deals with the problem of disappointment. But this truth is the first word, not the final word, of the Buddha's Teaching, the Dharma.

It is the starting point. Here the Buddha begins by talking about the unpleasant, the miserable, which many of us might feel is hopeless or pessimistic.

Yoga Rave (artoflivingla.org)


• "Hey cheer up, Buddha, and party with us -- not that you would know anything about 'partying' having spent 29 years as a prince living in three massive party palaces full of dancing girls, fabulous food and drink, musicians, minstrels, and the surfeit of princely trappings. It was a right royal rave in your private kingdom somewhere between Egypt and India. Never mind about that then. Hey, Buddha, teach us! We want to be free! We want to be liberated from this lack-of-fulfillment, this misery without end. Show us the way!"

The Buddha begins with suffering because Buddhism is designed to bring about an end to ALL suffering. The Dharma, the Teaching, leads those who practice it to liberation.

Hey, A, please no Buddha selfies (AK)

In order to get us there, the Buddha gives a reason for seeking freedom. For example, if a person does not know that the roof is on fire, one lives in that house enjoying oneself, playing, joking, and laughing. To get someone to come out, that person must first become aware that the house is burning, a dangerous smoldering mass soon to collapse and engulf everyone inside.

In the same way, the Buddha announces that our lives are burning. They are burning with rebirth, old age (decay), sickness, and death -- full of loss, separation, weeping, doing anything we can to never think about it, to divert ourselves with addictive sensual delights which we lose, which are hard to come by, and which we are often willing to kill for, to steal, to engage in misconduct, to lie, and to become intoxicated to get. We find temporary relief through them but never gain release.

 

Meditation Barbie: breatharian Amatue

Our hearts/minds are aflame with greed (craving), hatred (fear and aversion), and delusion (confusion). It is only when we become aware of these perils that we have any chance of beginning to seek a way to release and freedom.

In the Second Noble Truth, the Enlightened One points out that we can do something about one of the causes of suffering and thereby undo all suffering. This weak link we can undermine is our craving, which we have been depending on for relief like drug addicts do their drug of choice.

Novices full of devotion (Dietmar Temps)

It is our insatiable desire for a world of sights, sounds, fragrances, flavors, touch sensations, and ideas. Since one of the causes of disappointment is craving (along with aversion and delusion, spelling out as the key in the 12 links of the dependent origination of suffering), the key to reaching the end of disappointment is to undermine this very painful craving.

In the Third Noble Truth the Buddha, therefore, explains nirvana (nibbana) as the extinction of craving because it results in enlightenment and the end of suffering. [To break the chain of dependently arisen suffering only takes breaking one link, and the Buddha saw that it was here with this link, this obsessive craving, that we could make a complete end of suffering].

In the Fourth Noble Truth, the Buddha explains how, namely, the Noble Eightfold Path.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, what is Nirvana? What is the end-of-all-suffering? (Angelina K)

• Psychological Dimension of Nirvana
• Philosophical Dimension of Nirvana
• Nirvana is an existing reality
• Is Nirvana conditioned by its path
• Is Nirvana mere annihilation ?
• The story of the Turtle and the Fish
• Two elements of Nirvana
• Experience of an Enlightened Person
• State of an enlightened person after passing away
• Mind Stilled

"Little Buddhist monks" - child novices (photos)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Dietmar Temps (dietmartemps.com, DeepBlue66/flickr.com)

Novitiate initiation in Pagan, Burma (Bagan, Myanmar)

Dressed like Prince Rahula

For a boy in Burma it is customary to enter a Buddhist monastery as a novice (samanera, "little ascetic") between the ages of 7-20.
 
One has his head shaven and vows to adhere to ten precepts (rather than the monks' 227 rules) for at least a week.

The renunciation ceremony

Sometimes the boys are even younger, in rare cases only 5 or 6 years old. For Burmese people, the novitiate initiation is a very important ceremony and a big event for the family.

The temporary ordination ceremony is called Shinbyu in Burmese. The practice is not limited to Theravada Buddhists in Southeast Asia but is practiced throughout the Buddhist world except in Sri Lanka where temporary ordination is not done. The first Buddhist novice was the Buddha's son, Prince Rahula, who became a monastic at age 7.

The first novice

Rahula, his father the Buddha, and Ananda

Rāhula (who lived at least 25 centuries ago) was the only son of Prince Siddhartha Gautama (who later became the ascetic Siddhartha and then the Buddha) and his wife Bimba-devi (who is known to the world as Princess Yasodharā then the Buddhist nun Ven. Bhaddakaccānā). He was the first child to become a Buddhist novice (samanera) at his father's behest. One account of his life is given in the Pāli language canon. More

Bang the gong not the tympani, venerable. I'll ring the bell, handle the vajra. You guys chant.

Vajrayana child novices enjoy temporary ordination throughout the Himalayas -- in India (Ladakh, Dharmsala, AP, HP, Sikkim...), Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China (dietmartemps.com)

Dietmar Temps is a world class photographer who travels the globe to bring to light cultures and kids rapidly fading into memory due to Western hegemony and the homogenization of the planet (dietmartemps.com).