Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts

Friday, 11 July 2014

Obon means ghosts and remembering the dead

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Japanese-city.com; NHBT

I went into the sanctuary and could feel the ancestors around me (rpv-team/flickr).

What is Obon?
Animist, Buddhist, Pagan, and Catholic Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles may have the Day of the Dead (just after all ironic, nominal Christians celebrate Halloween).

But Japanese Buddhist and Shinto practitioners have much the same thing in this month's Obon Festival, which is being celebrated concurrently with the unrelated Lotus Festival and commencement of the annual Rains Retreat just a few miles apart.

Obon is an annual Buddhist event for commemorating one's ancestors. It is believed that each year during Obon, the ancestors' spirits return to this world in order to visit their relatives.
 
Traditionally, lanterns are hung in front of houses to guide the ancestors' spirits, Obon dances (bon odori) are performed, graves are visited, and food offerings are made at house altars and temples. 
 
At the end of Obon, floating lanterns are put into rivers, lakes and seas in order to guide the spirits back into their world. The customs followed vary strongly from region to region.

Obon is observed from the 13th to the 15th day of the 7th month of the year, which is July according to the solar calendar. However, since the 7th month of the year roughly coincides with August rather than July according to the formerly used lunar calendar, Obon is still observed in mid August in many regions of Japan, while it is observed in mid July in other regions. 
 
The Obon week in mid August is one of Japan's three major holiday seasons, accompanied by intensive domestic and international travel activities and increased accommodation rates. In recent years, travel activity in mid August.
  • Event Location: Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple
  • 815 First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
  • Obon Festival + Bon Odori Schedule: http://bit.ly/bLkTf
Japanese Obon Festival and Bon Odori Schedule
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    Monday, 24 March 2014

    The Ghost Dance (Native American Buddhism)

    Hendon Harris, Wisdom Quarterly, Xochitl, CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.)
    Native Americans are the indigenouss people of what is now the USA (thedqtimes.com)
    Lama in ritual costume and American bison mask performs ghost dance at Taer Monastery in Xining, NW China, Qinghai Province, Feb. 5, 2012. The ghost dance is performed across Tibetan regions to ward off disasters and bring luck and fortune (Zhang Hongxiang/Xinhua).
      
    Tibetan ritual, California (Sacramento Bee)
    There is a link between the Native American "Ghost Dance" (Nanissáanah), which so frightened the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the late 19th century, and the Tibetan Buddhist Ghost Dance tradition troubling China today.

    The basis for the Native American Ghost Dance, the sacred circle dance, is a traditional ritual used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times.
     
    Lakota chief (PRIR, 1899/W)
    A new form was first practiced among the Nevada Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma.
     
    Psychologist Michael Katz, in his book Tibetan Dream Yoga, writes: "The last known enactments of the Ghost Dance were held in the 1950s among the Shoshoni. A contemporary Native American leader, Mary Thunder, upon seeing the [Tibetan] Vajra Dance performed, commented on the similarity of the two dances."
     
    The Ghost Dance is a spiritual ritual to regain the tribe's pre-invasion life (thedqtimes.com).
     
    When the Tibetan Ghost Dance was performed at Taer Monastery, Chinese media reported, "The ghost dance is performed across Tibetan regions to ward off disasters and bring luck and fortune."
      
    Buffalo in Tibet? (Eadweard Muybridge)
    "According to the prophet [of peace] Jack Wilson (Wovoka)'s teachings [which prophesied a peaceful end to white expansion, while preaching goals of clean, honest living and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans], proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with the spirits of the dead and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to native peoples throughout the region" (James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee, NY: Dover Publications, 1896).

    It is characterized by a revival of many traditional beliefs and by the fervent expectation that a time of perpetual bliss was immanent (thedqtimes.com).
     
    White postmortem photography (GG)
    The call to return to the Ghost Dance was a call... [to the Native people, to the First Nations, to resist British colonial imperialism, American expansionism, displacement, and genocide. The same holds true when Tibetan Buddhist dancers perform the same ritual, frightening Chinese officials who in Tibet are the imperial forces, expansionists, and perpetrators of displacement and a cultural genocide.]

    No dance means war (Siege of New Ulm)
    The Sioux variation on the Ghost Dance tended towards millenarianism, an innovation that distinguished the Sioux interpretation from Jack Wilson's original teachings. The Caddo Nation still practices the Ghost Dance today (Phil Cross, "Caddo Songs and Dances," Caddo Legacy from Caddo People).

    Moonlight Dance: Early "Indians" of India
    Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly, Wikipedia edit
    When the Moon appears over the hills...
    Thabal Chongba is a popular ManipuriIndian folk dance associated with the Yaoshang festival. Manipuri Indians, or Meiteis, are the majority ethnic group of Manipur, India; they are made up of seven clans, who trace their written history back to 33 AD).
     
    They know our dances in ancient India? (SW)
    The literal meaning of thabal is "moonlight," and chongba means "dance" or "leap," thus "dancing in the moonlight" (Encyclopaedia of Indian Tribes, Shyam Singh Shashi, Anmol Publications, 1997). Traditionally conservative parents in Manipur, India, did not allow their daughters to go out and meet young men without their consent. Thabal Chongba therefore provided the only chance for girls to meet and talk to boys (Grapevine). In earlier times, this dance was performed in the moonlight accompanied by folk songs. The music is rhythmic beating of drums accompanied by other instruments....
     
    We need Native boy dancers (Hans Thoma)
    As soon as the Moon rises over the hills, the flute, the drums, and the cymbals start pouring out music. The boys and girls in a circle clutch each other's hands with rhythms of music slow and fast, high and low, upbeat and down. If the number is great, they may form two or three rows so everyone can participate. More
     
    "Native Chineseans" - Tibetans post-Chinese invasion, Potala Pueblo Palace, Lhasa (WQ)

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      Wednesday, 19 March 2014

      A Tongva Native American Garden (and Tibet)

      When the world was a garden: Los Angeles' original inhabitants the Tongva tribe
      Pitzer College has a hidden treasure: a Native Tongva Garden (pitzer.edu)
       
      Native American Tongva, Chumash, Anasazi (Hopi, Puebloan peoples), and in fact all indigenous people made use of all of the plants at hand.

      Berries were abundant, particularly a local favorite [alongside elderberry], the manzanita (Spanish "little apple") a.k.a. madrone. Sobochesh, as it was known to the Tongva, was useful to eat, drink, and use as natural medicine.
       
      A lotion made of leaves is an excellent treatment for treating exposure to poison oak, or they can be simmered into a tea to cure diarrhea, urinary infections, and headaches, a poultice for skin sores... The blossoms are also useful.

      Arroyo Seco Foundation (facebook), March 22
      While berries are wonderful, every plant is useful, from yucca to sagebrush to wild buckwheat to black sage and, of course, sacred white sage... Pitzer College, at the eastern extreme of modern Los Angeles County, at the base of massive Mount Baldy, has prepared a hidden treasury of plant uses and folk cures.

      Other Tongva Indians will be on hand along with Wisdom Quarterly this Saturday for the Fourth Annual Hahamongna Walkabout in JPL's front yard in Pasadena.

      Native American (Tibetan) Buddhism
      Native Wm Leclair with Buddhist brothers (BP)
      What is the Buddhist connection? Not only are the similarities between the "Indians" of India, Ladakh, Tibet, and the mountainous parts of Asia -- the Karen, for example, and other tribes in Burma, Thailand, Bhutan, and Nepal -- and the "Indians" of America patently obvious to anyone who looks, there is a historical reason for it.

      Gomari, Tibet/China (Rietje)
      Hendon Harris (Chinese Discover America) helps us understand, and Rick Fields laid it out in How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in [Ancient] America. But as early as 1885, American historian Edward P. Vining knew that a group of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan had come to the New World, that is, long before Columbus, they "discovered" America and brought the Dharma to the Native Americans. See An Inglorious Columbus about the Buddhist discovery of America.

      QUESTION
      Native dance, Hemis Gompa (Stella Peters)
      Harris, responding to Native American Buddhism and Tibet, writes in to ask: In Wisdom Quarterly's opinion is the Native American "Ghost Dance" revival movement, which started in approximately 1880 and ended violently at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in December 1890, directly related or religiously or culturally linked to the Tibetan "Ghost Dance" tradition celebrated to this very day? Please explain the reasons for your opinion.

      ANSWER: Hendon, we only know it's possible, and we wouldn't be the first to notice. We will have to consult with our non-resident expert, H.M. Harris, to see if it is probable. (We hope he reads this and sends us the answer soon).
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      Saturday, 15 February 2014

      Another real-life DEMONIC haunting (video)

      Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; (TheBlaze.com, Feb. 12, 2014)

      Another real-life demonic infestation? Ex-politician says his family waged terrifying battle against "evil entity" in home

      Yakkha Krampus, Austria (WB)
      A former Pennsylvania politician is set to release details of a story that is sure to stun -- and spook -- his former constituents.
       
      Bob Cranmer, a former Allegheny County commissioner, will release a new book later this year titled The Demon of Brownsville Road. But rather than a work of fiction, Cranmer claims the text will take readers through real-life horrors his family faced at the hands of a demonic force inside their home.

      Sakka, King of the Devas
      Cranmer told TheBlaze that his family was terrorized over a two-year period beginning at the end of 2003 and coming to a close in early 2006.
       
      But he said that there was evidence that something wasn’t "right" just weeks after he, his wife, and their four young children moved into the home back in 1988.
       
      “We were in the house for a few weeks [when] my wife and I started to experience things that were paranormal,” he said. More
       
      Do demons delight in public displays of Christian hatred or would they prefer a cover up?
       
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      Tuesday, 29 October 2013

      Our True Ghost Story (video)

      Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN TEAM

      (Dave Symes) Now, kids, obey the nice police. They're only here to protect you from expressing yourselves and saying things you might regret later. This is just like the Battle at Kruger:

      (Jason Schlosberg) Now, water buffs, obey the nice lions.
      They're only here to eat you alive.

      Gary Holt, Tom, Kerry King, Paul (LAW)
      One strange (i.e., paranormal) thing did happen at the Slayer concert! It sounds silly to recount it given that one might discuss the societal or interpersonal freak show that most any concert in Hollywood becomes.

      Standing, watching the show from the pit -- a sweaty, chaotic mass of humanity pressing in with everyone blocking the view by throwing up "Hang Ten" hand signs -- it was mesmerizing to watch it for a few seconds from the vantage point of a well placed little screen.

      The person in front was videotaping through a good quality cellphone with a good size screen. He was holding it up above the fray, so by looking up one had a good vantage point. He was focusing it on Kerry King during a quick guitar solo. We very clearly saw Jeff Hanneman playing guitar with his unmistakeable long blond hair.
       
      Not having previously thought much about who else was now playing guitar on tour with Slayer, we were standing stage right in front of the deafening speakers, 20 feet or so away from the stage where the crush of fans is not all-consuming.

      Kerry King (right) and Jeff Hanneman (Jesse Davis biography-tribute video, see below)
      Hey, Jeff, I've been waiting. - Just one more solo, Mara! (namedtranslation.co.uk)
       
      Now when the camera came down, we saw Kerry King playing guitar on our right. We rushed forward to figure out who was stage left. Were there five people up there? No. The Hanneman-replacement (Gary Holt) was on his own side of the stage, and he doesn't look anything like Hanneman. We searched and searched the stage from various angles in case someone had fallen back obstructed by the stacks playing rhythm guitar in addition to the duo, who were not interacting but just keeping to their sides.

      When the camera and arm came down, it had clearly been pointing at a bald, head-tattooed Kerry King, not a long-haired blond guitarist. They look nothing alike. We assumed that who had been in the frame must have just stepped aside, but no. The sheen of Hanneman's hair magnified and amplified, glowing as luminescent pixels on the screen, left an even greater impression, in jarring contrast to King's baldness.
      It is due to karma -- actions willed, carried out, and accumulated -- that one lives.

      Flesh eating bacteria destroy a limb (wiki)
      Then it dawned on us whose image had been on that camera screen -- that was DEAD Jeff Hanneman! (Hanneman died this year as a result of  liver failure due to years of drug and alcohol abuse and perhaps demons after a mysterious spider bite that led to him contracting a crippling case of necrotizing fasciitis, "flesh-eating disease," which almost led to the amputation of his right arm). His story is told here:

      Jeff Hanneman (1964-2013) memorial tribute by Jesse Davis

      Did the image appear as a transient interaction between an electronic device and our eyes, the camera capturing and transducing a haint, making visible for a moment what the unaided eye cannot normally see? Or was their a documented intersection of planes: Did Hanneman's image appear on the digital video that person's camera was taking? There was no one on stage who looked anything like Hanneman, certainly no one wielding a guitar. We'll have to go through our messy, poorly lit photos and footage in search of paranormal artifacts.
      Edgar Cayce, Sleeping Prophet
      But if the person who was filming finds Hanneman on it, please contact us! (Leave a comment in the Comments section with a way to contact you). Up the street at the Magic Castle, private members conduct a seance trying to contact the Great Houdini. It's been almost a century, and they have not reported any success. Here along Sunset Blvd., where a bicyclist once died right in front of the Palladium just before a Slayer show, having been driving without a helmet and being side swiped by a slow moving semi truck (a head is no match for asphalt), a deceased band member steps in, occupies, possesses his erstwhile friend and musical partner for a moment of Hollywood glory on stage together again. 

      This really happened, as hokey as it may sound. But "see is believing," and we know what we saw. Without digital evidence there is no sense in others believing. So readers can take comfort in that. Halloween is just a few days away. The Moon is round. And The Veil is thinning in this hemisphere, just as it was a few months ago for Obon in Asia on the other side of the planet. This thinning between the dimensions, the Planes of Existence (as outlined in Buddhist cosmology), allows for the interaction of the worlds here on Earth. We coexist with animals and space-devas ("shining ones") and space-others [asuras, nagas, gandharvas: celestial titans/Annunaki (as explained by Michael "Forbidden Archeologist" Cremo), reptilians/Draconians, and angelic messenger-musicians].
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