Sounds and images of the Bodhisattva of Absolution, Vajrasattva, who represents the highest state of the enlightened mind

As described by the video's producer, Euterpe Jones, this is a "[s]hort Tibetan Buddhist meditation video based on the Hundred Syllable Mantra of Vajrasattva. I realize its inclusion may be objectionable to some, based on the controversy caused by Google's deal with China. I say, all the more reason why this video should be here. This video shows various Thangkas of Vajrasattva while we hear the venerable Hundred Syllable Mantra of Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva grants absolution to the penitent, and a fully enlightened mind to the sincere aspirant."

This video is the mantra of Vajrasattva sung by Dechen Shak-Dagsa

THERE'S A 20% CHANCE WE ARE ALL JUST A VIRTUAL SIMULATION

Victory in Iraq is at hand? I don't buy it.

Hacking Democracy

George Carlin: You Have to Be Asleep to Believe in the American Dream

George Carlin: Shoppin' and Eatin'

Democratically Controlled Congress Stands on the Brink of Irrelevance on Iraq

Democratically Controlled Congress Stands on the Brink of Irrelevance on Iraq
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on September 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/61506/

Next week, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and General David Petraeus, the army's counter-insurgency guru, will brief Congress on the Bush administration's claims of progress in Iraq. At stake is not only the upper hand in the political debate over the continuing occupation, but an enormous amount of money -- $147 billion -- that was supposedly conditioned on tangible measures of progress, specifically 18 "benchmarks" attached to the 2007 supplemental spending bill.

According to a report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), only three of those benchmarks have been met, and those were among the minor ones (The White House has promised to "water down" the GAO's findings). In addition to rampant insecurity throughout much of the country, Iraq's political situation is, objectively, a disaster, and most Iraqis agree that U.S. troops cause more violence than they prevent.

But despite the reality on the ground, the administration last week threw a Hail-Mary pass, announcing that it would ask for another $50 billion for war-fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan through next Spring. That's in addition to $147 billion already requested for the two countries.

There's no reason to believe the administration won't get it -- consider how many times congressional Democrats have uttered some variant of "It's time we stopped giving Bush a blank check for Iraq" as they signed a series of blank checks for Iraq. Bush has proved that he can continue moving the goalposts again and again without being called on it by the media, and Congress has shown that it will let him, even eight months after the Democratic take-over of Capitol Hill.

It has become a game. The reality is that there is no $50 billion supplemental, and there won't be for several weeks (if at all this year). The stories about the new funding request are White House "plants," announced on the eve of the much-anticipated Iraq progress report in order to show confidence in the face of waning public support for the occupation and, more importantly, to divert the national conversation from the failure of the troop escalation -- a failure that should lead to a debate about how to exit Iraq with the minimum of damage -- to a new debate about whether higher troop levels should remain until next spring. You don't have to look too hard to see the goalposts moving.

It's much like the surge itself, a stop-gap measure that nobody seriously believed had a chance of changing the ugly situation in Iraq. It was, however, spectacularly successful in distracting the country from its post-election discourse about ending the occupation, focusing instead on the now-familiar argument that war opponents should wait until September's progress report. At that point, the tacit understanding was that Congress would rise up and demand an end to the war if the 18 benchmarks weren't met. Now that September is here, we're supposed to focus on the next shiny object.

The Democrats are reacting to this charade by conceding the battle before it begins, with Michigan's Carl Levin offering to remove a deadline from the amendment he and Jack Reed, D-R.I., co-sponsored (the deadline was already riddled with loopholes) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offering to "compromise" with Senate Republicans by dropping his already watered-down demand for a spring "withdrawal."

As Dick Durbin, the senate majority whip, told the Chicago Tribune, "When it comes to the budget, I face a dilemma that some of my colleagues do." He opposes the war, but "felt that I should always provide the resources for the troops in the field."

That mean throwing good money (and lives) after bad. Here's the reality of the "surge":

Iraqi civilian and U.S. and Iraqi military and police deaths are up

The Iraqi government is tottering, and there is credible talk of an impending coup

The Iraqi people, still without regular electricity and water and fearing for their lives whenever they go out to buy groceries, want the United States out

40 percent of the middle class has fled the country
For more details, see "A Preview to General Petraeus' DC Dog-and-Pony Show" in AlterNet's War on Iraq special coverage.

What all this means is that unless the Democratic majority makes a dramatic turnaround and stops playing along with the White House -- a risky move, but one that's within their Constitutional authority -- they, along with the entire institution, will no longer be relevant voices in the debate over Iraq.

Consider, after all, that the "Petraeus" report is being prepared by the White House; that Petraeus is a reliable partisan who's inspired talk of a GOP presidential run and who wrote an op-ed on the eve of the 2004 elections in which he promised that the momentum was shifting in Iraq and said that local security forces were improving every day; that Petraeus has said that he "softened" the intelligence community's assessment of the security situation in Baghdad, while he's told people privately that he needs ten years to put down the insurgency.

That Congress is treating the report as a serious and impartial analysis of the situation in Iraq is essentially an acknowledgment that the Republicans have a working majority on issues of war and peace, regardless of the fact that the Democrats control the agenda. Significant majorities of Democrats have voted to end the occupation (to one degree or another) on different occasions so far, and each time one or two dozen "Bush Dog" Democrats crossed the aisle to kill the efforts to get out of Dodge.

We're seeing a caucus that is controlled by fear -- fear that the hawks who were responsible for the disaster in Iraq will shift the blame their way; fear that arguing against U.S. militarism will make them look like wimps, or traitors, in the eyes of voters; fear that they'll be proven disastrously wrong and be held responsible for the often fancifully exaggerated consequences of ending the occupation that the hawks whisper about in excited tones; terror that the wrong move could cost them the electoral advantage that everyone agrees they'll have in 2008 or, worse, prompt a right-wing backlash like that which ushered in the Reagan/Bush era after Vietnam.

But calling out the Democrats for their feckless support of the occupation isn't enough. Opponents of the war face a perfect political storm in DC that transcends party politics.

The backdrop is a presidential race in which the leading Democrats appear to be intent on proving that they can match their opponents' mindless belligerence, and the leading Republicans feel that they have no choice but to embrace Bush's war or face the wrath of GOP primary voters.

The debate has also been influenced by a massive propaganda campaign that's allowed the White House and its backers to claim success in Iraq out of thin air. As Greg Sargeant pointed out in a must-read item, if one looks at "the totality of media's performance this summer on the Iraq debate, it becomes a good deal clearer just how awful it's all been -- and just how complicit these failings were in helping to shift the debate" on the Iraq "surge."

CBS Evening News' anchor Katie Couric said this week of Iraq: "We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability." The contrast between Couric's bubbly credulity and Walter Cronkite's famous 1968 broadcast in which he concluded of the Vietnam war that the US was "mired in stalemate" couldn't be more pronounced.

At the end of the day, Washington's strategic class is frozen, unable to concede defeat because to admit that the U.S. project in Iraq has failed is to admit that in the 21st century, the most powerful country in the history of humanity can be humbled by a small dysfunctional state whose armed forces it destroyed more than a decade earlier, a country that it spent 12 years slowly and leisurely strangling under some of the harshest sanctions in history before shocking and awing it a second time, dismantling its government and hanging its erstwhile dictator in the process.

To admit that is to beg the question of whether maintaining all that costly hard power is really worth it in the first place. Leaving Iraq means begging the question of whether America is comfortable with its neocolonial policies, and that's a debate that Bush -- like every imperial-minded U.S. president since Thomas Jefferson -- wants desperately to avoid.

Ultimately, while Congress is sidelining itself on the most important issue of our time, it will be the Iraqis -- Iraqis from across the country's political spectrum -- who will eventually force a U.S. withdrawal, either by negotiation or by violence, just as they kicked out the Brits before us and the Turkmen, Ottomans and Safavids before them. The tragedy is that a little bit of courage on the part of our own law-makers could go a long way towards making that inevitable withdrawal a lot less painful than it is likely to be.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/61506/

Dept. of Justice Report: Sexual Violence On the Rise in US Prisons

Sexual Violence On the Rise in US Prisons
By Liliana Segura
Posted on August 17, 2007, Printed on August 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/liliana/60064/

More bad news out of the Justice Department. While the Bush administration reveled in its successful conviction of "dirty bomber"/torture victim Jose Padilla yesterday, the DOJ quietly released a report on sexual violence in American prisons. The findings in a nutshell: It's on the rise.

According to the report, 6,528 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2006 (and those are just the reported cases), which is a 21 percent jump from 2004, the year such data started being officially collected. In more than half the cases, prison guards were the perpetrators.

It's hard to get people riled up about prison rape. Rampant though it may be, it's widely treated as little more than a cultural punchline; the subtext being that most prisoners probably deserve it. But with the US prison population the largest in the world, a spike in sexual violence behind prison walls means the cesspit that passes for our criminal justice system is getting even worse. And while feeble efforts have been made in recent years to legislate solutions, the root problem lies with outdated policies that have led to the prison boom--and the politics that keep them in place.

This past spring, for example, an LA-based human rights group called Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) released a study linking the ineffectual (yet enduring) farce known as the War on Drugs with the rise in sexual violence in prisons. "The War on Drugs has had a profound impact," SPR's directors wrote earlier this year. "just not the impact that was intended."

"Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the U.S. today, more than 500,000 are imprisoned on drug charges, with hundreds of thousands more convicted of drug-motivated crimes.

...Studies show that as many as 20 percent of male prisoners have been pressured or coerced into sex, and 10 percent have been raped. While any detainee can become the victim of prisoner rape, people serving drug sentences, many of whom are young, unschooled in the ways of prison life, and non-violent, are among those at greatest risk.

With little or no institutional protection, prisoner rape survivors are left with physical injuries, are impregnated against their will, contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and suffer severe psychological harm."

Once upon a time, prisons functioned on the quaint ideal that jail time should be about rehabilitation. Few such pretensions exist anymore (although California did recently tack on the word to its Department of Corrections; an apparent attempt to re-brand the most overcrowded prison system in the country.) If Secret Prisons are to the War on Terror what US prisons are to the War on Drugs, whether it's rape or waterboarding, there are a lot of tortured prisoners out there. And unlike Jose Padilla, few people know their names.

Liliana Segura is a writer and activist living in New York

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/liliana/60064/

War Psychiatry and Iraq Atrocities: How Killing Becomes a Reflex

War Psychiatry and Iraq Atrocities: How Killing Becomes a Reflex
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on August 22, 2007, Printed on August 22, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/60297/

In 1971, Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the massacre of some 500 civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. In response to Calley's conviction, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) convened the "Winter Soldier Investigation." Over a three-day period, more than a hundred veterans testified to atrocities they had witnessed committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese civilians. Their expressed intention was to demonstrate that My Lai was not unique, that it was instead the inevitable result of U.S. policy. It was a travesty of justice, they claimed, to focus blame on the soldiers when it was the policy makers, McNamara, Bundy, Rostow, Johnson, LeMay, Nixon and the others who were truly responsible for the war crimes that had been committed.

In 2004, the release of the Abu Grahib photographs broke the unforgivable silence in the mainstream press about atrocities committed by American soldiers in Iraq. Haditha followed, then Mahmoudiyah, Ishaqi, and at this writing, countless other instances of savage, homicidal violence directed at civilians have been reported. The July 30 issue of the Nation included an article, "The Other War," by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, which used interviews with 50 combat veterans to make the case that American soldiers are using indiscriminate and often lethal force in their dealings with Iraqi civilians. These veterans, the authors report, have "returned home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the war and the way it is portrayed by the U.S. government and American media." I would wager that they are more deeply disturbed by the reality itself than the way the media reports it, but certainly government and media distortions are another layer of betrayal. In a letter protesting that article, Paul Rieckhoff, president of the anti-war organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, made an argument parallel to that of VVAW, namely that "(a)nyone who wants to write a serious piece about the ethical lapses of the U.S. troops should start and end the article by putting blame where it belongs -- on the politicians who sent our troops to war unprepared and without a clear mission" (the Nation, 7/13/07).

I'm not suggesting that American soldiers take no responsibility for their actions. Like Rieckhoff, I would argue that we must balance outrage at criminal and sadistic acts with the insistence that we "guard against blaming this new generation of veterans for the terrible and tragic circumstances" that led to those acts. And I agree that, once again, the architects have been given a free pass and that the soldiers, who are doing exactly what they have been trained to do, are taking the blame. But I want to focus on an aspect of the situation that is never addressed in the mainstream media, and not often enough elsewhere: specifically that American troops are trained to act in criminal and sadistic ways.

Military training has been part of the experience of millions of young American men since the Revolutionary War. Prior to the Vietnam era, however, that training consisted largely of practicing military skills and learning to manage military equipment. It is only in the last half century that training has evolved into an entirely new phenomenon that makes use of the principles of operant conditioning to overcome what studies done over the last century have consistently demonstrated, namely, that healthy human beings have an inherent aversion to killing others of their own species.

Operant conditioning holds that organisms, including human beings, move through their environment rather haphazardly until they encounter a reinforcing stimulus. The experience of that stimulus becomes associated in memory with the behavior that immediately preceded it. In other words, a behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence, reward or punishment, modifies the organism's tendency to repeat the behavior. Today's recruits are intentionally and methodically subjected to a training regimen that is explicitly designed to turn them into reflexive killers. And it is very effective. It is also carefully concealed. The military would prefer to keep their methods out of sight because of the moral and ethical discussions, not to mention the legal restraints, which public scrutiny and constitutional debate might impose. Or so I would like to believe.

War Psychiatry, the army's textbook on combat trauma, notes that "pseudospeciation, the ability of humans and some other primates to classify certain members of their own species as 'other,' can neutralize the threshold of inhibition so they can kill conspecifics." Modern military training has developed carefully sequenced and choreographed elements of what many would call brainwashing to disconnect recruits from their civilian identities. The values, standards and behaviors they have absorbed over a lifetime from their families, schools, religions and communities are scorned and punished. Using cruelty, humiliation, degradation and cognitive disorientation, recruits are reprogrammed with an entirely new set of learned responses. Every aspect of combat behavior is rehearsed until response becomes reflexive. Operant conditioning has vastly improved the efficacy of American soldiers, at least by military standards. It has proven to be a reliable way to turn off the switch that controls a soldier's inherent aversion to killing. American soldiers do kill more often and more efficiently. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, calls this form of training "psychological warfare, [but] psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops."

The psychological warfare that is being conducted on today's recruits is a truly disturbing indication of the worldview of our leadership, both military and political. The group identity they are drilling into these kids, the "insider" identity, is based on explicit contempt not only for the declared enemy of the week, but for the entire civilian population, with a special emphasis on women and homosexuals. In an army that is now 15 percent female and who knows (don't ask, don't tell) what percentage gay, drill instructors still rely on labels like "girl" or "pussy," "lady" or "fairy" to humiliate, degrade and ultimately exact conformity. Recruits are drilled with marching chants that privilege their relationships with their weapons over their relationships with women ("you used to be my beauty queen, now I love my M-16"), or that overtly conflate sex and violence ("this is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun."). Aside from teaching these kids to quash their innate feelings about killing in general, they are being programmed with a distorted version of not only what it means to be a man, but of what it means to be a citizen. To ascend to the warrior class, one must learn to despise and distrust all that is not military. Chaim Shatan, a psychiatrist who worked with Vietnam-era veterans, described this transformative process as deliberate, as opposed to capricious, sadism, "whose purpose is to inculcate obedience to command."

There are any number of ways that modern training methods both support violence, aggression and obedience and help to disconnect a reflex action from its moral, ethical, spiritual or social implications, but one of the best illustrations of this process is the marching chants, or "jodies," as they are known in the services. "Jody" is the derivative of an African-American work song about Joe de Grinder, a devilish ladies' man who is at home making time with the soldier's girlfriend while the soldier is stuck in the war ("ain't no use in going home; Jody's on your telephone"). According to the military, jodies build morale while distracting attention from monotonous, often strenuous, exertion. The following, originally a product of the Vietnam era, has been resurrected for training purposes in every war since and is an example of the kind of morale building that has been judged appropriate to the formation of an American soldier:

Shell the town and kill the people.
Drop the napalm in the square.
Do it on a Sunday morning
While they're on their way to prayer.

Aim your missiles at the schoolhouse.
See the teacher ring the bell.
See the children's smiling faces
As their schoolhouse burns to hell

Throw some candy to the children.
Wait till they all gather round.
Then you take your M-16 now
And mow the little fuckers down.

Thankfully, the brainwashing has not yet been developed that will override the humanity of most American soldiers. According to the troops interviewed in the Nation, the kind of psychotic brutality described in the marching cadence above is indulged by only a minority. Still, they described atrocities committed against civilians as "common" -- and almost never punished. As multiple deployments become the norm, however, and as more scrambled psyches are sent back into combat instead of into treatment, it is frightening to consider that the brainwashing may yet prevail. Given the training to which these soldiers have been subjected and the chaotic conditions in which they find themselves, it is inevitable that more will succumb to fear and rage and frustration. They will inevitably be overwhelmed by cumulative doses of horror, and they will lose control of their judgment and their compassion. Thirty-six years ago, American veterans tried to cut through the smoke and mirrors of the official response to civilian atrocities, the version that scapegoated soldiers and ignored those who gave the orders. As then Lt. John Kerry put it, "We could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel (that it is) not reds, and not redcoats (that threaten this country), but the crimes which we are committing." The soldiers who, following orders, have run over children in the road rather than slow down their convoy will never be the same again, regardless of whether government and the media tell the truth. Nor will the soldiers manning checkpoints who shoot, as ordered, and kill entire families who failed to stop, only to learn later that no one had bothered to share with them that the American signal to stop -- a hand held up, palm towards the oncoming vehicle -- to an Iraqi means, "Hello, come here." I have heard a number of the men cited in the Nation article speak about their combat experiences, and they are tormented by what they saw and did. They want to tell their stories, not because they are looking for absolution, but because they want to believe that Americans want to know. But neither are they willing to take the blame.

They have already carried home the psychic wounds and the dangerous reflexive habits of violence that will always diminish their lives and their relationships. In return, they are hoping we will listen to them this time when they ask us to look a little harder, dig a little deeper, use a little more discernment. Or have we already arrived at a point in our collective moral development when, as Shatan predicted, "Like Eichmann, we … consider evil to be banal and routine?"

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/60297/

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die (The Onion)

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

EPA Warns Human Beings No Longer Biodegradable (The Onion)

EPA Warns Human Beings No Longer Biodegradable

WASHINGTON, DC—The Environmental Protection Agency issued a bulletin Tuesday warning the bodies of American citizens, with their large...

Excerpt from "Song of Myself"

I know I have the best of time and space - and that I was never measured and never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a staff cut from the woods;
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy;
I lead no man to a dinner-table or library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooks you round the waist,
My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far....it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth;
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;
For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions, and I hear you;
I answer that I cannot answer....you must find out for yourself.

Sit awhile wayfarer,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes I will certainly kiss you with my goodbye kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own right,
Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts,
First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,
Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that keep out of the sun.

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour;
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;
It is you talking just as much as myself....I act as the tongue of you,
It was tied in your mouth....in mine it begins to be loosened.

~~Walt Whitman, excerpted from SONG OF MYSELF, 1855 A.C.E.

thanks to birdSong at tribespeople.net for the inspiration

An abundance of instruction on the Medicine Buddha and the practice of his mantra

Click here for more information on the Medicine Buddha in Wikipedia.

This is the short version of the Medicine Buddha Mantra, which is known as the Medicine Budddha Heart Mantra:

(Tadyathā) Om Bhaishajye Bhaishajye Mahābhaishajye Bhaishajye Bhaishajye Rāja Samudgate Svāhā

When pronounced by Tibetan buddhists, it sounds like:

(Tah-yah-tah) OM, beck-and-zay beck-and-zay, mah-hah beck-and-zay beck-and-zay, rod-zah sah-moo-gah-tay, so-hah!


Here's Lama Zopa on the recitation of the Medicine Buddha mantra:

"The Medicine Buddha mantra is recited for success. Since we have many problems and want to succeed we need to recite the Medicine Buddha mantra every day. It can help us eliminate the problems, unhappiness and suffering we don’t want and gain the success, happiness, inner growth and realizations of the path that we do.

"Lord Buddha told his attendant Ananda that even animals who hear the Medicine Buddha mantra will never be reborn in the lower realms. The highly attained Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche, who has completed the entire path to enlightenment, said recently that if you recite the Medicine Buddha mantra at the time of death you will be reborn in the pure land. Therefore, it is to be recited not only for healing but also to benefit people and animals all the time, whether they’re living or dying.

"If you recite the Medicine Buddha mantra every day you will purify your negative karma and this will help you never to be reborn in the lower realms. If you don’t purify your negative karma, then when you die you will be reborn in the lower realms as a hell being, hungry ghost or animal and will have to suffer again and again without end. Therefore you need to purify your negative karma right now. If you cannot bear even the present suffering of the human realm—which is blissful joy compared to that of the lower realms—how will you be able to bear the intense suffering of the lower realms, which is unimaginably unbearable, lasts for an incredible length of time and a billion times worse than all the human sufferings put together.

"Since reciting the Medicine Buddha mantra saves you from all these sufferings it is much more precious than skies of gold, diamonds, wish-fulfilling jewels and zillions and zillions of dollars. Material wealth counts for nothing because it can’t purify negative karma. Even if you possessed that much wealth, simply reciting or even hearing the Medicine Buddha mantra just once would be far more precious because it would leave an imprint of the entire path to enlightenment on your mind, help you gain realizations of the path, eradicate all your gross and subtle defilements and cause you to achieve enlightenment.

"The Medicine Buddha mantra can help you liberate numberless sentient beings from the vast oceans of suffering and bring them to enlightenment, so you should recite it with absolute trust in the Medicine Buddha, knowing that he will completely take care of your life and heal you in every way and that he is always with you—in your heart, on your crown and right there in front of you. There is not one second that the Medicine Buddha does not see or have compassion for you.

Click here for more information on Lama Zopa Rinpoche and the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.

Click here to download a teaching on the Medicine Buddha.

The Nechung Kuten, Venerable Thupten Ngodup (Medium of the State Oracle of Tibet)

The Venerable Thupten Ngodup was in Los Angeles this weekend. I was present at two of the events. One involved a cross-discussion with a Messenger of the Mayan Nation. The other was a Long Life White Tara initiation and empowerment.

This easily is and will remain one of my most significant life experiences! Thanks, Nechung Kuten!



The Medium of the Oracle of Tibet is in the United States RIGHT NOW!

The Diamond Sutra (Recited)

Just to play and listen to the audio of the Diamond Sutra (i.e., teaching) is to accumulate inconceivable, immeasurable merit for the pacification of one's karma and one's enlightenment. As well, to play and listen to the audio of the Diamond Sutra is to accumulate inconceivable, immeasurable merit for the pacification of the karma of all sentient beings and their enlightenment. This audio makes for an excellent meditation. It is 38 minutes long.

This sutra has a distinct Zen flavor and is a favorite sutra among Zen Buddhists.

"The Diamond Sutra" in Wikipedia

The Revolution Is Being Televised (Here)

Power back to Americans!

"If you want to be free, be free; if you want to be you, be you"

The trailer from "Harold and Maude"


I copied these videos from "C'est Moi"

The Song of the Bodhisattva Ratnapani

Ratnapani, the Bodhisattva and Spiritual
Emanation of the Buddha Ratnasambhava

The musicality of being is the harmonious wind of a warm evening
It is the jewel of contentment, the shining light of happiness.
Like children playing on a seashore, in the fresh summer air,
So do I shine with the joy of sharing, and the wealth of peace

One may strive forever, never satisfied or happy
Struggling, toiling, never at rest
Or he may realize that all which he may possibly want
Awaits him within, and all around him
His vision is swelled, for it is all beautiful
And his heart is radiant

I am the way station of fertile land in the desert
The golden treasure that bids man to stay,
The sunlight which drives away storms
I hold the promise of a warm dinner or a lazy afternoon
A long embrace beneath lilacs
A cat dozing underneath the porch
A long stretch upon awakening

There is no need for violence and vicious refusal
Nor of endless waste and suffering
Call upon me, and I give you the gift
Of peace and satisfaction, and clear smiles
Do not slash yourselves with razors, that only what you like this week may remain
Nor freeze and burn, kill others or yourself
Why take a thousand miserable ways to Emptiness
When my way is full and pleasant, without strife?

Rest and relax, give and receive
Share and be renewed, while the problems of old
Drop as dry leaves in the spring.

"Pentagon Tries to Make a 'Gay Bomb'" (Video)

I wish we lived in an alternative universe and that this was just a bad (albeit incredulously offensive) joke. I keep thinking this video is a spoof, that it must be. What incredibly stupid, homophobic and sad military leadership!

I keep praying that the reasons NOT to be ashamed of being an American will cease! This country is fucked if John Edwards isn't the next President of the United States! Fuck Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They'll come up with a bomb to kill the American left!