Shamans and Afghans (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; AFP News Agency

No shamans are allowed in Afghanistan, once a Buddhist country now overrun my militant Islamists and pessimistic Muslims that has also displaced even a trace of its mystical, Buddhist-influenced Sufi school. The Pashtun, Tajik, Kazakh, and other ethnic or tribal minorities are not the Indian (Gandharan, Indo-Greco), Iranian (Ariyan/Persian), Central Asian people who thrived in the area before and after the time of the Buddha and the birth of Buddhism.
 

(AFP) Devastated Afghans keep searching for victims' bodies after a landslide in northern Badakhshan province above Kabul that entombed a village, killing thousands of people and leaving 700 families homeless in the mountains. See Another Tragedy in Afghanistan

(AFP, May 5, 2014) There are estimated to be thousands of shamans or "spirit healers," who are called on as medicine men and women in traditional ethnic villages in China, but mass migration to cities has meant the prospects for the profession are looking bleak. Of course, those people will be back when their health deteriorates using super toxic Western (allopathic) chemicals and medicaments. 

• Doctors are third leading cause of death in US, killing...
• DEATH BY MEDICINE (by Gary Null, Ph.D.; Dr. Carolyn Dean M.D., N.D.; Dr. Martin Feldman, M.D.; Dr. Debora Rasio, M.D.; and Dorothy Smith, Ph.D.)

Shamanism

Dancing shaman (hamidsardar.com

VIDEO: A Shaman in Atheist China

Earliest known depiction of a Siberian shaman -- by Dutch explorer Nicolaes Witsen, who authored an account of his travels among Samoyedic- and Tungusic-speaking peoples in 1692.

Russian boy dies in shaman ceremony [783,936 Americans die in a year being prescribed pharmaceuticals and taking them as directed by an M.D. and no one says anything, which is called iatrogenic death]

Traditional shaman healers, who have practiced in some areas of Siberia and the Far East for thousands of years, have experienced a revival since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union ended repression by the Communist... [Their track record for healing disease and saving lives is much better than it is for Western doctors, but don't tell anyone.]

Coldest place on Earth: shaman paradise Monday's Geo Quiz is cold, cold, cold. We're looking for the name of a cold Siberian city. It's the capital of the Russian Republic of Sakha [as in Shakya? Sakka? Buddhist Kalmykia?] It has on average the coldest winter...

Training eagle and horse (hamidsardar.com)

"Be Your Own Shaman" (April 5th Party) Our friend and energetic healer Dr. Deborah King is holding an ONLINE party to celebrate the launch of her new book, Be Your Own Shaman...

VIDEO: The Shamans of Mongolia Much of our American Xmas lore comes not from Israel and Christianity but from Scandinavian shamans, like the Swedish Sami, and European Pagans. "Santa Claus" was originally a magic mushroom harvester who...

The World's oldest form of spirituality The Buddha rejected the ultimate authority of the Vedas, ritual priestcraft, and Brahmanism. He returned to the oldest form of spirituality, shamanism (as part of India's ancient Shramana Dharma Movement). By rejecting the dominant Brahmin priest mediated...
Is Shamanism a Path to Enlightenment?

Last shaman of the Oroqen (Richard Noll)

According to Harner, "The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment. It has been a path... In essence, shamanism both is and isn't a path of transformation and enlightenment. Global Medicine...
Buddhism and Shamanism Today
Modern shamans, while less formal than Buddhist shramanas or Hindu sannyasins, are not a reaction to Brahmin temple priests as Buddhism was. Nevertheless, even urban shamans are trying to directly connect with the...
Beyond Coping: The Buddha on Illness
An anthropologist once questioned an Eskimo shaman about his tribe's belief system. After putting up with the anthropologist's questions for a while, the shaman finally told him: "Look. We don't believe. We fear." In a similar...

Entangled in Darkness, Seeking the Light (Dr. Deb King)

Master healer and urban shaman [and sexual abuse survivor] Deborah King (DeborahKingCenter.com), was a successful attorney in her 20s when a diagnosis of cancer sent her on a search for truth. It radically changed her...

VIDEO: World's oldest art made by women

New research suggests that many of the first artistic masters (as well as the majority of shamans, intuitives, and "medicine men") were women, not men. Woman shaman (Elende). (IFC Films) Documentary filmmaker Werner...

Mt. Everest to close for the season (audio)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; T.J. Raphael, The World (pri.org)

Dangerous Mt. Everest (Kristoffer Erickson/news.nationalgeographic.com)

  

Yeti hunters, Everest, 1954 (dailymail.co.uk)

Sherpas -- members of a Himalayan ethnic group renowned for their skill at high-altitude climbing -- are crucial to operations on Mount Everest.

They earn a mere $3,000-5,000 risking their lives helping others scale the mountain during each two-to-three-month climbing season. They do on a regular basis what others pay to accomplish just once in a lifetime, putting their lives at great risk for affluent clients due to poverty they are never able to emerge from.
 

Last Friday, an avalanche roared down a climbing route on Everest, killing 13 Sherpa guides and leaving three others missing. When it occurred the Sherpas, who have centuries of history in Nepal's alpine region, were working at 21,000 feet, fixing ropes and preparing the path ahead of peak mountaineering season.

 

Tibet's Rongbuk Buddhist monastery with Mt. Everest in background (wiki commons)

 

Who climbs Mt. Everest without a Sherpa?

As the Sherpa community mourns the loss of family members and friends, the group is considering an unprecedented move: a strike.

On Sunday, disappointed by the Nepali government’s offer of 40,000 rupees ($408) as compensation for the families of each of the dead, some Sherpas gathered at Everest’s base camp to propose a “work stoppage” that could disrupt or cancel the 334 expeditions planned for the 2014 climbing season.

Ellen Barry, South Asia Bureau Chief for The New York Times, says while Sherpas have lived with these conditions for many years, last week's accident changed things.

"I think just the magnitude of the loss of life from Friday's accident has prompted very unusual decisions," she says. More

Big Fat Crisis: Why are we getting so fat?

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Richard D. Wolff (DemocracyAtWork.info, TruthOut.org, rddwolff.com, "Economic Update," 1-19-14, 9:00 am); Wash Post; LATimes.com

Go on. I'm listening.

Deborah Cohen wrote a book -- A Big Fat Crisis: The Hidden Forces Behind the Obesity Epidemic — and How We Can End It. Our obesity can be treated as an economic matter, explains Professor Richard D. Wolff, if we are to overcome it.

• LISTEN: PLAY NOW (Prof. Wolff, UMass, Amherst, MP3)

A Big Fat Crisis

Matthew Hutson (WashingtonPost.com, Jan. 10, 2014)

The commercial says I'm lovin it

The causes of the obesity epidemic -- a plague afflicting 150 million Americans, plus the remaining 150 million who help shoulder $150 billion in annual medical costs and must suffer colleagues and loved ones succumbing to disability and early death -- can be crystalized in one telling statistic: 

 

Around one in two hardware stores sells food. They mostly offer candy bars and other treacherous snacks near the checkout line. Thanks to an aggressive food industry, we cannot go anywhere without the temptation to make bad dietary decisions.

Besides keeping us alive, food is a nexus of many deep concerns -- philosophical, spiritual, political, sensual. We have strong feelings... More

 

Rich get thinner, POOR get fatter

Melissa Healey (latimes.com, Jan. 13, 2014); PNAS (nasonline.org)

Ma, tell the other kids not to stare at my boobies!

As in so many matters of health, obesity more seriously affects [poor] adolescents in families with lower incomes and educational attainment and, researchers say, the trend is getting worse. 

From many corners of the United States -- Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Mississippi -- recent years have brought [a little good] news about the rise in obesity among American children: 

 

Several years into a campaign to get kids to eat better and exercise more, child obesity rates have appeared to stabilize and might be poised for a reversal.

 

But a study published Monday (1/13/14) in the journal PNAS [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America] suggests that among adolescents, the hopeful signs are LIMITED to those from better-educated, more affluent families.

Among teens from poorer, less well-educated families, obesity has continued to rise. Nationally, rates of obesity among adolescents 12 to 19 did not rise between 2003-2004 and 2009-2010. But during that period, obesity rates among adolescents whose parents have no more than a high-school education rose from about 20% to 25%.

We're rich and thin.

At the same time, the teenage children of parents with a four-year college degree or more saw their obesity rates decline from 14% to about 7%.

 

"The overall trend in youth obesity rates masks a significant and growing class gap between youth from upper and lower socioeconomic status backgrounds," the authors of the latest research wrote. More

• HOW TO: More than modest proposals for fighting fat