The Anger-Eating Demon

Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, retelling of ancient Buddhist story from the Sakka Samyutta (SN 22)

The hot demon Kim Kardashian absorbs our hate and grows stronger (animalnewyork.com)

 

Once there lived a demon who had a peculiar diet: He fed on the anger of others. And as his feeding ground was the human world, there was no lack of food. He found it quite easy to provoke a family quarrel, or national and racial hatred, fanning the fire of racist hatred.
 
Even to stir up a war was not very difficult for him. And whenever he succeeded in bringing about a war, he could gorge himself. After all, once a war starts, hate multiplies exponentially by its own momentum and affects even normally kind, compassionate, and friendly people.
 

The demon!

The demon's food supply became so rich that he sometimes had to keep himself from overeating, being content with nibbling just a small piece of resentment found close by.
 
But as often happens with successful people, he became overbearing. One day, feeling bored, he thought, "Shouldn't I try it with the devas?" On reflection he chose the space world of the Thirty-Three, ruled by Sakka, King of the Devas (literally, "shining ones").

He knew that only a few of these devas had entirely eliminated the fetters of ill-will and aversion and fear, even though they were far above petty and selfish quarrels. So by magic power he transferred himself from Earth to that nearby celestial realm. He was lucky enough to arrive at a time when Sakka the divine king was absent.

There was none in the large audience hall, and soon the demon seated himself on Sakka's empty throne, waiting quietly for things to happen, which he hoped would bring him a tasty feast.

Soon some of the devas came to the hall. First they could hardly believe their divine eyes when they saw the ugly demon sitting on the throne, squat and grinning. Having recovered from their shock, they started to shout and lament: "Oh, ugly demon, how can you dare sit on the throne of our king? What gall! What disrespect! What a crime! You should be thrown headlong into some hell, straight into a boiling cauldron of oil! You should be quartered alive! Get out! Get out!"
 
While the devas grew more and more angry and incensed, the demon was pleased: From moment to moment he grew in size, in strength, and in power -- gorging on their hate. The anger he absorbed into his system started to ooze from his body as a smoky red-glowing mist. And this evil aura kept the devas at a distance, and due to their own anger, their own natural radiance dimmed.
 
Suddenly a bright glow appeared at the other end of the hall, and it grew into a dazzling light from which Sakka, the King of Devas, emerged. As a stream enterer (one entered upon the first stage of enlightenment), the undeflectible stream that leads to nirvana, was unshaken by what he saw.

The smoke-screen created by the devas' anger parted when Sakka slowly and politely approached the demon on his throne. "Welcome, friend! Please, stay seated. I can use another seat. May I offer you a drink of hospitality? Our Amrita nectar is good. Or do you prefer a stronger brew, some Soma perhaps?"
 
While Sakka spoke these kind and friendly words, the demon rapidly began to shrink to a diminutive size and finally disappeared, trailing behind a whiff of malodorous smoke which soon dissolved.

The New Hate (Goldwag)

The gist of this story dates back to the discourses of the Buddha. But even now over 2,600 years later, our world looks as if large hordes of Anger-Eating Demons were haunting it. And we are keeping them well nourished all over the Earth. Fires of hatred, greed, delusion, intolerance, and wide-traveling waves of violence threaten to engulf humankind. 

The grass roots of society are poisoned by conflict and discord, manifesting in angry thoughts and words and in violent deeds. There was a time to end our self-destructive slavery to our habitual impulses of hate and aggression. They better serve demonic forces than us.

The story reveals how these demons of hate can be exorcised -- not by more hate but by the power of gentleness and love, compassion and equanimity. If this power of loving-kindness can be developed and displayed at a grass-root level, in the widely spread net of our personal relationships, nations at large, and world at large, we will all be benefited by it.

• Israel/CIA won't stop killing indigenous Palestinians
• A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Yunnan, China, kills at least 589 people and injures more than 2,400 others. 
• U.S. launches new airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq 
• Israel fighting resumes on Gaza after truce ends; 10-year-pld Palestinian child murdered 
• W.H.O. declares Ebola outbreak a global public health emergency
• U.S. Sec'y of State Kerry seeks resolution to fixed Afghan election 
• Report: German firm helped Bahrain spy on pro-democracy activists  
• Obama signs bill to address VA healthcare crisis
• Argentina seeks to sue U.S. at The Hague over debt dispute
• Uri Avnery on Gaza crisis, his time in a Zionist "terrorist group," becoming a peace activist

KARMA: The 10 Courses of Action

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth) UPDATED AN D EXPANDED by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu

 

Mental-karma is important as are deeds.

"Karma" refers to deeds able to produce results in the future.

 

"Courses of Action" (karma-patha) are a little different. This is a name for a group of ten kinds of karmic actions -- either unwholesome or wholesome -- the Buddha taught as particularly important to living beings.

 

The Buddha was not known as the Buddha, one of his many epithets, in ancient India. Nor was he "Buddhist," a "god" (deva), or a Brahmin (priest). He was known as a karma-vadin ("teacher of karma," teacher of the efficacy of deeds to produce results).

 

The Buddha's teaching concerning karma is that deeds have the efficacy to produce corresponding actions, effects, consequences, results. This is not cause-and-effect, however, if only because the results are usually exponentially larger than the original deed. One "killing" does not produce one "being killed" later on.

 

How well the Buddha knew! (xiangjiaocao)

That is because the seed, potentially, or karma laid down in the mind/heart is a citta, of which there are countless millions in a moment. Cittas have the potential to act as death-proximate karmas leading to rebirth, and when they serve this function, the result is very bad. Similarly, all skillful karma produces disproportionate results as well, which is beneficial and welcome by living beings experiencing the result.

 

Not all karmas can serve as death-proximate karmas (the thought-moment passing through the mind at the exact moment of passing from one life to yet another life), but "courses of action" (karma-pathas) can. That is why they are called "courses." Like corridors or pathways, they can lead to a consequence, welcome or unwelcome, directly.

 

There are three kinds of deeds -- those of body, speech, and mind -- be they unskillful or skillful:

 

I. Ten Unwholesome Courses of Action

• There are 3 bodily actions: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct;
  
• 4 verbal actions: perjury, slandering, harsh speech, babble;
  
• 3 mental actions: covetousness, ill-will, wrong views.
  

Unwholesome mental courses of action comprise only extreme forms of defiled thought: The greedy (rapacious) wish to appropriate others' property, the hateful (antagonistic) thought of harming others, and the holding or clinging to pernicious wrong-views.

While milder forms of mental defilement are also unwholesome, they do not constitute "courses of action."

 

Karma "courses"

Karma is following us everywhere we go. It's everywhere we're going to be.

 

The American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi -- the most famous translator of large collections of Buddhist sutras -- explains (in "Rebirth and Karma," from Recording 5 of The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is) that these ten are called "courses" of action rather than ordinary karma.

 

As mentioned above, this is because they have the power, in and of themselves, to lead to rebirth. They are courses or corridors leading to particularly unfortunate or fortunate future states.

For example, even a relatively minor good intentional-action can lead -- IF it serves as the death-proximate karma -- has the power to get one into a heaven. There are many heavens, and not a single one of them is eternal, so rebirth in a heaven is not the goal of Buddhism. But it is a welcome rebirth, a fortunate destination, while cycling through samsara. Samsara is the ongoing Wheel of Rebirth and endless disappointment.

II. Ten Wholesome Courses of Action

• There are 3 bodily actions: avoiding killing, stealing, sexual misconduct (or preserving life, protecting what belongs to others, avoiding harm);
  
• 4 verbal actions: avoiding perjury, slandering, harsh speech, foolish babble (or honest, reconciling, gentle, and wise speech);
  
• 3 mental actions: unselfishness, goodwill, right views.
  

Both lists repeatedly occur in the texts (e.g., in AN X.28, 176; MN 9), and they are explained in detail in MN 114 and in the Commentary to MN 9 (R. Und., p. 14), Atthasālini Tr. I, 126ff.

Ven. Saint Sivali

Ven. Sivali: shining example of good karma

An enlightened monastic from the time of the Buddha, Venerable Sivali, is remembered and venerated as having unbelievably good karma -- a store of "merit" (punya) that benefited many and for everyone to emulate.

 

There is no reason to "envy" Ven. Sivali his good fortune because he created it, and we ourselves can also create it. We can accrue a vast store of merit by good mental, verbal, and physical deeds, actions that benefit ourselves and others. Such deed will follow us through this life and future lives, redounding with welcome results whatever we are doing almost anywhere we find ourselves, until we realize enlightenment. They also help in this realization. Karma, it's everywhere you want to be (and it will even be there helping everywhere you don't want to be).

 

We are always generating karma, albeit we are rarely doing it consciously or with any appreciation of what we are doing and what the result will be when our deeds come to fruition for us.

 

And we are always passing away and being reborn. But a rebirth as a human is extraordinarily rare. It is a precious opportunity to make merit with reverberating with pleasant, pleasurable, and welcome karmic-results and effects (vipaka and phala).

 

"King of the 'Gods'"

Sakka is St. Michael (saintmichaelwarrior)

Sakka, the king of the devas, also made incredibly good karma -- sufficient not only to be reborn in a celestial world in space (one of the many "heavens") but as king of it and king of the four kings in the celestial world just below his world. In his world, he is lord of lords, the "lords" being the 33 deva rulers he oversees as chief among more or less equals.

 

Wisdom Quarterly has often shown that Sakka's fame extends around the Earth, a terrestial world in space which he protects from titans and nagas and other inimical forces. Why does he visit Earth, assign the regents of the Catumaharajika-deva-loka to guard, and get updates on human progress every fortnight?

 

It is because Sakka is a stream enterer devoted to the Buddha and the protection of the Dharma in the world for as long as possible. In Christendom he is known as Saint or Archangel Michael, in India as Indra (in fact the name "India" may derive from Indo, one of Sakka epithets), in Taoism as the Jade Emperor, in the Yarsanism (Islam) religion of Iraq and Iran Pir Dawud the deva (called Yazidis or Yezidis)...

Israel keeps killing kids with impunity (video)

Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Mo Omer, Aaron Mate, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, Aug. 4, 2014)

As Israel's kill toll in Gaza tops 1,800, Dr. Mona El-Farra mourns loss of 9 innocent relatives in Israeli strike

• Thousands of Americans protest U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza in Washington, D.C.

Israel kills dozens more in Rafah

The United States [minus our shadow government reveling in profits for the military-industrial complex] and the United Nations have condemned Israel after an airstrike killed 10 people near the entrance of a U.N. school sheltering Palestinian civilians.

The school was reportedly being used as a shelter for about 3,000 people, most of them terrified children. It was the second illegal targeting of a U.N. school by Israel in less than a week. It tried to pin its first attack on Hamas to deflect international criticism but was conclusively shown to be the culprit, making Israel a "terrorist state" once again. And it was the seventh such crime against humanity over the course of Israel’s offensive war on Gaza.

Music for Judeo-Christian soldiers

Jewish American youth aspire to go to Israel to kill Palestinians, fly safe missions as glorious, state-sponsored Air Force terrorists, defend their other country from the unruly natives. It has in just 50 years packed the indigenous population into two teeming camps in which they are concentrated, open air prisons, non-Jewish neighborhoods, ghettos called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where they are fish in a barrel to be shot at. Wonder what they listen to on their iPads as they kill, Florida's Cannibal Corpse maybe? "They think they know who I am/ All they know is I love to kill/ Face down, dead on the ground/ Find me before another is found/ I come alive in the darkness [night raids]/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects.../ They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]... It felt so good to kill/ I took their lives away/ Seven dead, lying rotten/ Unburied victims their naked bodies putrefy [and get eaten by animals]/... They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]/ I come alive in the darkness/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects..."

US, we deserve protection not US bombs

The coordinates of the school were reportedly communicated to the Israel "Defense" Force no fewer than 33 times, the last time just an hour before the shelling. That is, there is no way Israel did not know exactly what they were targeting and shelling in violation of international law and Geneva Conventions. 

 

Shortly after Israel’s attack on Sunday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying: "The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon characterized the attack as "a moral outrage and a criminal act." [Will PM Netanyahu be dragged to the Hague? Not if U.S. politicians and CIA officials can help it.] 

DN! gets an update from Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) for Palestine Refugees. More

Israel's new policy: Kill Everything That Moves: "Everything that moves in Rafah is a target": Israel continues shelling civilians in Gaza during short "pause" [that serves mostly to draw out more human targets as relative try to gather corpses and body parts for dignified burials] 

 

The number of Palestinians murdered by Israel in Gaza has topped 1,800 as the Israeli offensive enters its 28th day. On yesterday [Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014], at least 10 people were killed when Israel illegally shelled another U.N. school shelter for Palestinian civilians.

 

Why kill Gazans when you can kill Gaia?

The U.S. has officially called the attack "disgraceful," while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned it as a "moral outrage and a criminal act." It was the seventh U.N. school hit since Israel’s offensive began. The U.N., meanwhile, is warning of a "rapidly unfolding" health crisis in Gaza as large parts of the territory had their power and running water taken out by targeted Israeli strikes, and around 400,000 are now displaced by Israel's war of aggression on its segregated indigenous population.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed since a 72-hour ceasefire collapsed on Friday [Aug. 1, 2014]. Over the weekend, the Israeli government admitted that a soldier it had used as war propaganda by reporting him [Hadar Goldin] as "captured and taken hostage by Hamas" was actually killed in a battle as he attacked badly outgunned Hamas resisters.

Earlier today, Israel announced a unilateral seven-hour truce ("pause") in most of the Gaza Strip, except for Rafah, where Israel has concentrated its bombardment. Palestinians have already accused Israel of breaking its own ceasefire by launching deadly attacks on the Shati refugee camp, another crime against humanity. DN! goes live to Gaza City to speak with its correspondent Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who has family in Rafah. More

 

"Disgraceful," "criminal act [aka war crime]": Israel is condemned as 10 die in another of its strikes on U.N. shelters in Gaza

 

Likely solution for a lasting ceasefire was on the table before Israeli assault & over 1,800 dead

CIA's other spy scandal: Agency spied on emails between Congress & whistleblowing officials

Part 2: Weapons expert Theodore Postol asks, Is Israel’s Iron Dome really an Iron Sieve?

Part two of  interview with acclaimed MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who says there is no evidence Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system is actually working. Prof. Postol estimates that the Iron Dome, which is partially built by U.S. corporate war-profiteers Raytheon, intercepts just 5 percent of rockets fired at Israel.

• Part I: Iron Dome or Iron Sieve? Evidence says...

• Palestinian death toll tops 1,800; UN condemns "criminal" Israeli shelling of another school for displaced
• U.N. warns of "rapidly unfolding" Gaza health crisis [Communicable diseased will spike due to Israel's war crimes targeting water, power, sanitation -- killing more civilians than its thousands of tons dropped on their homes, streets, and U.N. shelters.] 
• Israel breaks unilateral "pause" with new illegal airstrike
• Obama floats executive action after Congress fails to pass immigration bills
• Pres. Obama backs extreme right-wing CIA Director after Senate spying prompts resignation calls [over felonies he committed by perjury]
• U.S. Pres. Obama admits "We tortured some folks" — and that not all Bush-era methods are banned
• Ebola death in West Africa toll tops 820
• Over 400,000 under water ban in Ohio; toxic [chemtrails and/or] algae bloom linked to Climate Chaos, industrial-scale Big Agra farming
• Suspicious [HAARP?] earthquake kills around 400 in Chinese province
• Report: USAID staged civic programs to destabilize Cuban gov’t
• Choking-killing of civilian Eric Garner by NYPD brutality ruled a "homicide"
• Israel kills over 200 after another phony ceasefire collapses; claim of captured soldier [which was a lie] retracted
• Hundreds protest record number of deportations outside White House
• 2 Americans return to U.S. for Ebola treatment

Why we love the LORD who hates (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Lorde; Clevver.com, Clevver News; Shalom Auslander

What do Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, Britney Spears, and Amanda Bynes have in common? Aside from losing their childhood innocence to fame, money, illegal drugs, and the Illuminati? They have all been bashed by pop superstar Lorde! 

G-d d-mn, I hate filthy sinners!

You think Lorde is bad? What about "the Lord"? The Lord is a name for the many Gods of the Judeo-Christian Bible -- Yahweh, El, Elohim, Adonai, and many other titles and personal names, many of them plural, even as we all pretend it's a monotheistic "there's only one God" faith that somehow emerged from a rich polytheistic history.

Hope you're not tracking my sins, God.

The Bible was not rewritten to make it monotheistic, just translated in ways to cover up its polytheism. But no one covers up how angry their "angry God" is. So more honest readers, or those familiar with more than one biblical language -- Greek, Coptic (Egyptian), Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and so on -- say, "There's only one true God" as if all the other ones in the Bible are fake. And "God is love...but don't read the Old Testament because that was the old deal; here's the new deal."

Who's even keeping score? - Come on, dad.

Why does this angry, jealous, proud God, this GROUP of Gods, constantly referring to themselves in chapter after chapter of their bestseller in the plural, HATE so much?

"God is love"? Many Christian fundamentalists and Jews say different: Who can argue with Shalom Auslander's many points? Has any Christian read the Book of Judges (Sefer Shoftim, ספר שופטים, is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible), the Old Testament where the Christian Gods (the Lord) revel in war, command killings, and order other atrocities?

Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander on reading the Bible as history and realizing what it means to be a punishing God's "chosen people."

The Bible is dangerous reading.

Is it any wonder that Christians may be the world's most formidable terrorists, crusaders, invaders, rapists, conquistadors, (hypocrites?), enslavers, sexists, patriarchs... The God(s) of the Bible revel in cruelty, revenge, destruction, punishment, smiting, scaring, threatening. And yet we love it/him/them. It must be Stockholm Syndrome at work deep in our earthling psyches.

Christian forgeries?

"The Old Testament doesn't count!" Come on, we're modern people. God only became love in the New Testament? Angry dad, happy son, no mother, mysterious dove -- this is the "Holy Family"? What about giving Asherah, prana (the real "holy spirit," the subtle-breath full of chi), Mary, and direct mystical experience their due? The Catholics (and Buddhists) give Mary (as Guan Yin) plenty of attention, and we don't know who Asherah is.

God wants us to stone, kill, rampage

• [God's wife] Asherah, Tree of Life, Snakes Tree of Life (date palm), Asherah [wife], and the God of the Bible. The snake eats the plant of eternal life, from the Huluppu Tree, in the Gilgamesh Epic...
• God's wife "Asherah" edited out of the Bible Was God's wife edited out of the Bible? Atheist claims the Almighty had partner known as Asherah (Daily Mail, March 19, 2011).
• God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost

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"

The Seven Obsessions

Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Terms and Doctrines

Obsession destroys (tasithoughts.com)

The seven obsessions or anusayas (proclivities, inclinations, tendencies) are:

1. sensuous greed (kāma-rāga, see fetters),
2. resentment (aversion, anger, patigha),
3. speculative views (wrong views, opinions, ditthi),
4. skeptical doubt (vicikicchā),
5. conceit (māna),
6. craving for continued states of existence (bhava-rāga),
7. ignorance (avijjā) (D.33; A.VII.11-12).

"These things are called obsessions or proclivities because, as a consequence of their pertinacity, they again and again tend to become the conditions for the arising of ever new sensuous greed, [aversion, and delusion]'' (Path of Purification, Vis.M. XXII, 60).

 

Yam. VII first determines in which beings such and such obsessions exist, and which obsessions, and with regard to what, and in which sphere of existence [Sensual, Fine Material, or Immaterial]. Thereafter it gives an explanation concerning their overcoming, their penetration, and so on. Cf. Guide VI (vii).

 

According to Kath. several ancient Buddhist schools erroneously held the wrong view (opinion) that the anusayas, as such, meant merely latent -- and therefore karmically neutral qualities -- which however contradicts the Theravāda school conception. Cf. Guide V, 88, 108, 139.

• Four Dangers of Living a Simple Life (MN 67)

Obsession – When it Turns Destructive

Tasithoughts 

What causes people to fixate on someone [or something] so much that it takes over their being and wipes out whatever common sense and self-esteem they have for themselves?

Recently I have seen this in a few individuals who have basically thrown their self-respect out the window by going uber crazy over someone they initially had a crush on that turned into a full on -- almost Fatal Attraction -- kind of situation. 

The irrational behavior reaches fever pitch when they are rejected by the object of their affection.  Their feelings of  ultra-attachment turn into hurt and open bitterness.  It becomes a frenzy of texting,  calling, and harassing the person who scorned them.

In one instance, I have seen it become violent.... because they have attached their egos and their self-esteem so much to their object of affection...

• The Downward Spiral of Vengeance (anger)
• Can anger ever be good?
• Masks (depression)