Entrance to the tomb of Harkuf, buried over 4,000 years agoThe oldest gods (I know of) are of the sun, wind, and rain. The weather. Beneath all the verbiage and mathmatage around climate change, that’s who we’re fucking with. They’re obviously going to fuck with us harder.No one since the even more ancient gods of cyanobacteria have ever even had ...
From The Dark Crystal, 1982. Honestly not that different from electromagnetismFor all the innovation of science, we still fundamentally depend on magic potions and rocks. Fossil fuels are the magic potions brewed deep in the earth, and magnets, uranium, and rare earth minerals are the magic rocks. We can cast incantations over these ingredients and the incantations work, but we ...
The Princess of Kelaniya, taking one for the teamIn the old days, in the old Kelaniya kingdom, the ocean rose up and swallowed villages and families whole. The gods were obviously angry. In sacrifice the king placed his beloved daughter on a rudderless boat and set her off to sea, to placate the devas of the depths. That princess Viharamahadevi, ...
a brain floating in a body of water with connections streaming out from it in Salvador Dali styleNo man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… John DonneNo brain is an island, entwined only with itself; every human is a piece of the network, a part of the ...
‘Vesak’ poya, the day of the full moon of the lunar month vēsakha, which usually falls in May, is of great significance for millions of Buddhists around the world. Vesak marks three important milestones of the life of Gautam Buddha; The birth of Prince Siddhartha, the enlightenment of the Ascetic Gautama and the passing away or Parinibbana of Buddha. Marking ...
Early Buddhists avoided depicted the Buddha’s self at all, showing instead symbols or his feet, but that faded away quickly. (Via the Buddhist heritage of Pakistan)In what the late Mark Fisher called ‘the privatization of stress’, entire industries of mental health, wellness, and self-help have been built around the concept of self. This is really because our illusory ‘selves’ have ...
The Gangaramaya Temple in ColomboThe Buddhist concept Anattā is both easy and impossible to understand. It’s roughly translated at not self. You could also say no self, though the concept lives on the philosophical edge where zero and infinity are equivalently incomprehensible. You both don’t exist and exist everywhere all at once. It doesn’t fit into words, but why would ...
Buddhism has a holistic view of the environment, recognizing the interconnectedness of all things. Buddhists believe that everything in the natural world is interdependent and that our actions have a direct impact on the environment. This view is reflected in the teachings of Buddhism, which emphasize the importance of living in harmony with nature and taking responsibility for our actions. ...
Vishnu’s avatars broadly evolve from fish to tortoise to boar to man-lion to small man to man to Rama to Buddha and Kalki, anon. Fascinating how they broadly follow the path of evolution.What should an individual do in the face of collapse? Broadly, your dharma, but what is that? The most common example of dharma is from the Mahabharata. In ...
Divine Thru, by Muvindu BinoyAs much as I decry life under Capitalism, we also don’t live under Capitalism. This contradiction is important to understand. Lived life is full of contradictions and to make sense of anything you have to understand this fact, and the relative nature of facts themselves. You have to hold more than two perspectives in your head ...
The church I was wed in, in the shadow of luxury condos and covered in bank advertisingInReligion In Human Evolution, Robert Bellah says “Religion is a system of beliefs and practices relative to the sacred that unite those who adhere to them in a moral community.” Modern, ‘educated’, consumers don’t live in such a religious community, but we still live ...
The Sony Ericcson P800, now fit for a museumWhen I took out a smartphone at a baseball game in 2002, I was the only one in the whole stadium. I looked weird as hell to my friends, chatting to someone in the UK over GPRS. Now everyone has a smartphone. Any stadium can instantly turn into a festival of flashes. ...
"How the Earth was Regarded in Old times", The Popular Science Monthly, March 1877This book should be 95% black, 5% gibberish, and just a question mark at the end. But such scrupulous truth is boring. Let's stay in the realm of stories, as I begin to tell mine...There was really only one moment of creation. Everything since has been recreational. ...
