Showing posts with label petas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label petas. 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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    Friday, 27 June 2014

    News of the World: Earth Changes (video)

    Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Crystal Quintero, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; CBS
    Summer 2014: All concerts free and open to the public (levittla.org/KPFK.org)
    (LIP TV) Documentary of "Code Black" about the first modern emergency room, C Booth, a trauma bay concept invented in Los Angeles' County-USC Medical Center, our "General Hospital"
      
    New
    Taking meds to feel normal?
    LOS ANGELES, California - A notorious trauma bay in an inner-city ER earns its keep as the "hurt locker of medicine" as new, idealistic, and adrenaline-seeking doctors train in an environment akin to a war-zone.

    When the hospital moves to a swank, new building the rush fades, and a bad bureaucracy gridlocks the state-of-the-art facility.

    The doctors are faced with the unexpected realities of life and death in a safety-net health care system at the brink of overload. Now playing. Don't worry. "Nothing Bad Can Happen"...and if it does, there's always C Booth:

    "Christian torture porn" from Germany, now showing in L.A.
    There are no such things as UFOs
    (JUN 2014): New Rule Leaves Drivers Furious & Shocked!Google Earth Map catches image of UFO with passenger
    Don't forget to watch the soccer/football match! But first take a shower, Hattiesburg, to wipe the stench of near-defeat off you as we were ready to rejoice.
     
    EARTH FILES (@ earthfiles.com)

    Moon (Chandra) seen from atop Earth (Bhumi)
    Subscribe to Real X-Files and Archive - Books and DVDsConferences: Earthfiles' Linda Moulton Howe speaking about 12,000-year-old Gobekli Tepe, Turkey, and whistleblowers' leaks about ET self-activating technologies at MUFON Int'l. Conference (July 18-20, 2014), Cherry Hills, New Jersey. Contact in the Desert (August 8-10, 2014), Joshua Tree Retreat Center, California
    • AUDIO: Most of the water on Earth not in oceans but in mantle rocks 400 miles below crust (MP3) See lab-grown crystals of ringwoodite contain 1st% of H2O (Steve Jacobsen, Ph.D., Geophysicist, Northwestern University)
    • AUDIO: Eerie metallic scraping sounds heard from Michigan to Alaska: “If you had a snowplow going down a dry street and you had this loud sound of scraping metal against concrete, almost like a squealing as it's scraping.” - Pattie, Resident, Ann Arbor, MI, sound heard June 18, 2014. “All of a sudden I heard an extremely loud screeching noise. It sounded like a 10,000-gallon steel drum being drug over a bed or rocks.” - Gordon, Construction, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska 2011
    • AUDIO: Another “Dragonfly Drone” Sighting and Isaac Whistleblower, but the Year Was 1981. One of a dozen photos of dragonfly drone taken in Big Basin, Redwoods State Park northwest of Santa Cruz, California, on June 5, 2007. See 061707 Earthfiles.
    • CIA's “Anonymous Kewper” briefed Eisenhower and Nixon in 1959 About UFOs, Human Abductions and Animal Mutilations. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, with his VP Richard Nixon in White House. “Anonymous Kewper Stein” briefed them both in Washington, D.C., along with his CIA boss, Anthony, about German discs, extraterrestrial craft, human abductions and animal mutilations in 1959.
    • June 21, 2014 - Summer Solstice: Today at 6:51 AM EDT, the Sun was shining directly above the Tropic of Cancer marking this as the longest day of 2014 for the Northern Hemisphere and beginning of summer. This same day marks the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere where winter begins. These seasons happen because Earth is tilted on its axis at a 23.5-degree angle.
    • June 20, 2014 - Earth's Core Changes Are Changing Magnetic Fields. Swarm satellite (ESA) measurements made the last 6 months show a dramatic decline over North and South America with a strengthening of the Earth's magnetic field over the southern Indian Ocean. June 2014 image by ESA's Swarm Satellite. Magnetic North continues to move towards Siberia where a large magma rise under the crust has been occurring for the past three decades. This new picture reinforces the concept that the Earth's magnetic poles are building up to a switch. Over the last 200 years, the magnetic field has weakened by about 15%. Over the last 20 million years, the poles have reversed on average about every 200,000 to 300,000 years. But the last pole reversal was 780,000 years ago, so Earth is long overdue for a pole change. What exactly happens to Earth life at such pole reversals is unknown. See 020111 Earthfiles.
    • June 20, 2014 - Labyrinth Crop Formation in Celle, France. See: video and ground shots, Cropcircleconnector. First reported on June 12, 2014. Aerial © 2014 by Yannick Pezeu. High altitude aerial of wheat labyrinth near Celle and Savigny-sur-Braye, Loir-et-Cher, France. Wheat pattern reported June 12, 2014. Vendome is 108 miles southwest of Paris, France, and only 19 miles east of Besse-sur-Braye and Celle, Loir-et-Cher, France.
    • June 17, 2014 - Puzzling Swarm of 5.7 Magnitude Quakes in Alaska since April 18th. “At this point, we don't really understand the nature of these earthquakes.” - Natasha Ruppert, Seismologist, Alaska Earthquake Center. Monday, June 16, 2014, at 4:01 AM, the fifth 5.7 magnitude earthquake since April 18th in same Alaska region northeast of Noatak, an Eskimo village of 560. Residents are not used to having the ground shake. There are no active faults in the region. The earth keeps moving miles below the Earth's surface, so human activities such as surface mining are ruled out as the cause. See: Alaska Earthquake Center.
    • June 15, 2014 - 1953 to 1981: Project AQUARIUS — 16 Volumes About UFOs and IACs. Click for Real X-File. “In the 1976 MJ3 report, it was estimated the Alien's technology was many thousands of years ahead of United States technology.” - Alleged historic MJ12 TOP SECRET Executive Briefing
    • June 12, 2014 - AUDIO: The Unexplained - Interview UK broadcaster Howard Hughes with Linda Moulton Howe. Bizarre MH370 disappearance; phenomenal Human-E.T. hybrids
    • June 10, 2014 - Illinois Is First State to Ban Microbeads. Click for report. “I'm optimistic that we've started a nationwide movement to protect not just the Great Lakes, but other bodies of water with high concentrations of microbeads.” - Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago), Bill Co-Sponsor.
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    Thursday, 15 May 2014

    What is "art"? (cartoons, illusions...)

    Amber Larson, CC Liu, and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; the artist Saara (Arkiharha)
    Saara (Arkiharha) pondering art and free expression in Finland (Weekday-Illusion)
     
    The fun Finnish cartoonist, devi, and graphic artist noticed our coverage. Saara is an obscure but prolific talent. We love her work, which can be found at many outlets like such as Arkiharha and such as Weekday-Illusion (our nod to awkward beauty pageant contestant Miss South Carolina).
     
    She is expressing herself in her work and in a letter to us:
     
    "Susse" (Saara/Arkiharha/flickr)
    "Wow, it's crazy to find a post full of my pictures and comics! Nice analysis, too. Maybe I kinda succeeded to pass on my thoughts in a visual way, because you get the idea from most of them -- even when they are written in Finnish!"
     
    See Wisdom Quarterly coverage here: My cartoon ART is your perception

    REPLY: Saara, send in art you are eager for the world to see, like your beautiful sketches of the Buddha. We would be overjoyed to feature more.
     
    Comic vignettes as art "Kuva" (Saara/Arkiharha/flickr)
    If you have "class" you know a bottle of "fine" wine and classical string instruments like a Stratavarious are the only things to sip or listen to. But you're wrong. Science says you're wrong. So surely when you add that only oil on canvas can be art and not no people pleasing cartoony comics, you're wrong, too. Don't tell us. We like classical. Tell it to science:
     
    The way to get people to better enjoy craapy fermented grape juice that sells for thousands of dollars is to say it sells for more. Just a better bottle and a price change, or serving it with an elegant story of its venerable origins, its pedigree, is enough to make it "taste" better. How classy of study participants.

    Can comics and webcam colors be called art?
    fMRI scans prove bad alcohol actually tastes better when it's two-buck-chuck krup is said to be something more expensive and classy. Expensive wine tastes better. Let's call it "neuromarketing." Marketers have known about this effect for years regarding other foods. Before they started loading fruit juices with added flavorants (cynically called "natural flavors" not because they're natural but because they synthetically mimic something "natural" rather than something artificial) and artificial colorants.

    My doggy, my doggy...oh, you've come back! "Sarjis 12.8"  (Saara/Arkiharha/flickr)
     
    Vegan Food Fest, Los Angeles
    Flavorless red colors make things taste better. Blindfolded we might not be able to tell a difference or say which drink is what fruit. We use color as a clue, and it works. The flavor of dull tasting juice is brightened just by brightening its color. Such is the illusion we live in and the hypnotic states we fall into every other moment.

    If we would meditate, we could emerge and be dehypnotized.

    Hungry ghost, psychic ("Bobb")
    But we love our illusions, delusions, and dreams. And we would directly-personally-verifiably find that we are (w)holistic beings, not mind (intangible processes)/body (senses) possessing spirits like it seems.
     
    Today a study is making headlines saying that an old Stradavarius violin sounds no better than a modern one. In fact, if one believes this study, the modern one sounds better. More musicians prefer it. (But maybe they are voting for the one they think is the Strad which is the one they fear the study would find inferior?)

    The Distortions
    It's all how we look at the world we are creating each and every without realizing what we're choosing. Art can sensitize and teach us as we clear our mental perception of the distortions/perversions (Wisdom Quarterly). "Hiljattain päivitetty" (Saara/Arkiharha).

    Audio Test: Can we tell the difference between expensive and overpriced instruments?
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    Monday, 27 January 2014

    Everyone loves a good ghost story

    Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Roger Clarke (Telegraph.co.uk)
    I don't see anything because I'm not looking to the left. OH NO! Shapeshifter!
    Ghosts/phantoms permeate European culture through and through (telegraph.co.uk)
     
    "Hungry ghosts" (pretas) depicted in Asia
    It’s the time of year [the dead of winter] -- a little before that other time of year -- when many people’s minds turn to spooks and ghost stories. Once, the parish bells rang out on Hallowe’en to scare away such prowling phantoms and demons speeding forth from what M.R. James, the Victorian ghost-story writer, would call “sequestered places.”

    But now, a commercialized Hallowe’en presents itself, imported from the United States, which in turn took its antecedents from an Irish Catholic celebration of seasonal misrule.
     
    Ghosts are real. Just ask Dr. Gabor Mate.
    Up to the 19th century, it was often said in rural England that none but a “Popish priest” could lay -- or exorcise -- a ghost, and much of traditional English belief in ghosts comes from the unquiet spirit of hidden Catholic traditions. 
     
    In earlier centuries, for example, to say you believed in ghosts was to identify yourself as a Catholic, or at the very least a religious dissident, since early Methodists believed in the same thing also.
     
    The infamous Cock Lane ghost that so convulsed London in 1762 was very much gingered up by a parish priest with Methodist inclinations; all of society, including Horace Walpole (who wrote the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto), flocked to a house in Smithfields to hear the ghost that scratched out pronouncements on the living and dead. 
     
    Ghosts can cook (M.A. Winkowski)
    The founder of the Methodist faith, John Wesley, came from a haunted family. The account of the Epworth Poltergeist in 1716 is one of the classic ghost stories in the canon, and it took place in the Lincolnshire rectory while 14-year-old Wesley was away from home. In letters to John’s brother Sam, his mother detailed how the arrival of two new servants at Martinmas (the feast of St. Martin on Nov. 11) was the beginning of... a whole panoply of terrifying sounds, groans and crashes that not even a sceptical father could explain. John Wesley’s father, a bad-tempered man who was constantly at war with his own parishioners, finally decided that these sounds came from Old Nick himself. More

    Real "ghosts" (shadows, poltergeists)
     (COMMENTARY)
    Seance faked hand image (Museum archive 1920)
    Ghosts (Sanskrit pretas, Pali petas) are real, though mostly harmless. They are unfortunate "spirits" (with subtle physical forms and often the power to appear in various shapes and guises). All of them lived before -- like all beings everywhere, just revolving and revolving in endless cycles of samsara.
     
    It is rebirth that can be brought to an end and, with it, all suffering (dukkha, disappointment) once and for all. But people are not interested in that. We're interested in trying to get ahead on this plane of existence. Just below us are the animals suffering terribly. No one cares. The ghosts have it even worse, though not nearly as bad as the ogres (yakkhas), cruel titans (asuras, "demons") and hellions (narakas).

    Shapeshifting "Old Hag" ghosts
    Just the other night I was accosted by "ghosts" due to the "Old Hag Syndrome." The female ghosts (not old, not hags) held my hands down against my will while I was conscious, upset, awake, and struggling. Because there was sleep paralysis, people will say d'uh it was "sleep" and therefore a dream. While dreamlike, it is not semiconscious, closed eye sleep. We can trigger paralysis through deep relaxation without actually being in a sleep state. The struggle to come out of paralysis lasted for what felt like ten minutes.

    (paranormal.about)
    Of course, it couldn't have helped that Mesmerist/hypnotist Rick Collingwood (mindmotivations.com) was on Coast to Coast talking about Hypnosis and Evil Spirits. He was not a believer until he hypnotically exorcised a "speed spirit" (a possession resulting from the use of speed such as meth or cocaine), which so weakens a person as to make him/her susceptible to entities seeking to attach or to behave parasitically as energy vampires).
     
    The fireplace will keep them away
    As usual, these usually-unseen beings seemed more mischievous than malevolent. But they are very happy to scare a person, as if to feed on the distress. If there are shining beings on the Abhasvara Plane who feed on joy, why not miserable eaters who zap energy away? So I cultivate compassion and annoyance rather than fear or actual malice ready to banish them with positive and protective energy.
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