The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Who's playing this year? Suprise guests Olivia Rodrigo (with No Doubt), Billie Eilish (with Lana Del Rey), Shakira (with Bizzarap), Childish Gambino (aka Daniel Glover with Tyler, The Creator), Busta Rhymes (with YG Marley's or the remnants of the Fugees), Doja Cat, Bebe Rexha, Ludmilla, Kesha (with Renee Rapp), Young Mikos, Grimes (Mrs. Elon Musk), J Balvin, Sublime, Deftones, Clown Core, Thuy (first Vietnamese solo artist), Blur (who are not the Gorillaz), Peso Pluma, Lil Uzi Vert, Jon Batiste, Lil Yachty, Ice Spice, Jhene Aiko, DJ Snake... and too many more to list. See Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (coachella.com/lineup) for full details. See all SIX stages below (live and rebroadcast).
Sonora: youtube.com...
feat. late night drive home, The Beths, Eartheater, Narrow Head, Black Country, New Road, Clown Core (Clown Core!), & Son Rompe Pera.
Poet and Peace Activist Mandy Kahn and friends created a poetry series at PRS (the Philosophical Research Society).
Deep Dive Poetry
Thursday, April 25, 7:30 PM
The PRS Mansion Hollywood
3910 Los Feliz Bl., Los Angeles
FREE or donate to support PRS
It’s a space for writers to share works that take a “deep dive” —
Host and PRS Peace Teacher Mandy Kahn
poems that consider a philosophical or spiritual dimension to life, poems that plumb the depths of “self,” poems that consider the natural world, or poems that feel contemplative.
Deep is a personal designation, as individual writers see it. Above all, it’s a prompt for poets to pose the question, “In which poems am I focused most deeply?”
This is National Poetry Month. And these are the featured readers:
Inside the PRS (Philosophical Research Society) library of world religions (Manly P. Hall)
Monthly Deep Dive Poetry Series: April's featured poet Katie Ford (poetryfoundation.org)
Featured poet Katie Ford
I.
The Lord Is a Man of War
The Lord is a man of war
I read by window and wick
and for once I believed
the book of Exodus true
the origin of our points sharpened
with fire our axes bows our pikes
and finally I could see
the cooling lava pits of their eyes
their giant gingko ears
their bellows of desert pain
how elephants became elephantry
how the woman who fevered with pox
became after death a weapon
a contagion to catapult over fortified walls
and finally I knew
why in this theater
the missiles are named
Savage Sinner Scapegoat
Peacekeeper and Goblet
Herren er en stridsmann
my descent is of the Vikings so
man is a Lord of war.
II.
Far Desert Region
Comes August, comes December,
then April thinned of its birds.
Again August, ten times.
Fathers forage the bombed chemical plant
for barrels to carry water
from the lime-bright pools to houses
leaning inside hot wind.
To think a war might give a gift:
a pool, a clean bucket.
III.
The Day-Shift Sleeps,
the night-war wakes:
Torturers button their canvas shirts.
They straighten their cots.
They bite their toast.
They tidy their folders.
They smoke their smokes.
They tidy their blank, blank folders.
All the little chores
before going on a trip,
theirs is the zeal of children.
IV.
[Does the war want
us to unstitch its side and climb in, to become
its good surgeon?
Stupid poet, a war can’t know
what it wants.]
Katie Ford is author of Deposition and Colosseum (Graywolf Press), and of the chapbook Storm (Marick Press). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poets & Writers, and The New Yorker.
Can Trump get any grosser - SMELLS worse, more orange! (w/Adam Kinzinger) | Bulwark Podcast Clip
(The Bulwark) April 9, 2024: Republicans Adam Kinzinger and Tim Miller discuss Trump's very foul odor. [Could it be his rotten denture breath the hot feces 💩 in his adult diaper and dripping down his pant leg?] What about his cowardice of whining, complaining, and constantly playing the victim like fellow narcissists Taylor Swift and Israel's leaders? Are these signs of weakness or the way to get to the top of popularity but with a backlash?
'Man lights himself on fire' outside Donald Trump's 'hush money payments' trial in NYC
Was it this man? His self-applied makeup has gone from mango to bronze to tar. Ooh, that smell!
(The Sun) Started streaming Friday to a British audience of gawkers. A man [being called a "conspiracy theorist" threw pamphlets into the air revealing shocking truths and then to punctuate their importance] has reportedly lit himself on fire near the courthouse where [ex-Pres. Trump's criminal trial is taking place, charging him with serious felonies that could lead to a sentence of four years in prison for each conviction]. The horrifying scene unfolded on Friday afternoon moments after jury selection wrapped up in Trump's hush money trial in downtown Manhattan. More: the-sun.com/news/11135909...#thesun #donaldtrump #usanews
Donald Trump and Melania: Couples Therapy Ep. 1 (FUN with AI)
(scaredketchup) Feb. 2024 and May 4, 2023: As many know, SK is 90% fan-funded and very grateful for all support. Paypal is the best way to drop him a lil' cheddar: paypal.me/scaredketchup... OR buy him a Covfefe: buymeacoffee.com/scaredke... Get Scared Ketchup Merch here: etsy.com/shop/ScaredKetch... Actors Ben Campbell and Whitney Rice as Trump and Melania. Their look was enhanced using AI technology not a deepfake video.
Taylor ‘Nazi Barbie’Swift drops clues for new Tortured Poets Department album
Who's Ms. Swift? She's a US royal like Meghan
(TODAY) April 18, 2024: Travis Kelce's lucky charm Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, is set to be released Friday (right at midnight on Thursday night) and speculation continues to grow over music industry public relations and marketing department clues for lyrics, song titles, and the album’s first music video. An alleged leak of the new project prompted many Swifties to ask fellow fans not to disrespect her work by being greedy but to instead wait for the official release so Taylor can make the most money and control her own narrative and corporate branding. NBC’s Emilie Ikeda reports for TODAY. #TaylorSwift#Music
Are you serious, Mom? I prefer Olivia's music.
For lesbians, mother-daughter incest survivors, and women with dogs who hump their leg, the Swift Corporation is putting out a new album in vinyl to make a killing at Target or Walmart or some big box retailer with a lucrative exclusive contract.
Buy the store version and get extra tracks of "Nazi Barbie" passing wind, burping, struggling like only tortured poets struggle (to come up with AI-quality songs for the masses) with just a touch of narcissism, juvenile pettiness, self-aggrandizing "Ah shucks, I'm just a country girl and pro-LGBTQIA+ Biden-voting, Christian on the right side of history," and a je ne sais quoi, or maybe an"oh 🙄 brother" factor.
Seacrest's so excited he sent Sisanie to promote it
But for dyed in the polyester fans, tune in to Los Angeles' "Swift FM" (KISS 102.7 FM) right at midnight tonight to hear cuts from the album curated by Miss TrayLor herself, Taylor Swift. It will be replayed tomorrow and then for the rest of our lives like a bad Madonna or Milquetoast release. Never has so much been done by so many for so little.
I'm still a child at head. I never grew up.
Song 1, "Fortnight," features Post Malone to help her sell the Lana Del Rey sound-rip off. As the first track, it should be the first single on the record. Is that how it works? Or will it be Post Malone's fans wanting to see what he did (which ain't much) that'll drive sales? "It's very fatalistic," Taylor claims, because it's about fatalism (the anti-karma idea that everything that happens is fixed in advance by fate).
Song 2, "Tortured Poet's Department," is the same gaar-bahge, complaining, talking about things a highschooler would be getting over by graduation at the latest. Are any college coeds aware of her? They like Miley Cyrus, but Swift seems like it's composed by AI for children, nothing much catchy about it like that "sick fat beat" song.
Song 3 is a metaphor, whining about relationships. She's a one trick pony going on about denial and toxicity: "My Boy Only Breaks His Toys." This song is more promising, with a "whoa whoa whoa" refrain and a new drum machine setting, some inflection in the singing, lacking emotional depth or a hook but good confection, instantly forgettable. Eight-year-olds are bound to like it.
Song 4, "Down Bad," is another metaphor, about alien abduction from the time she was "love bombed" by a narcissist then dumped. She's crying, talking about being a suicidal teen too depressed to get out of bed if the ETs won't come back for her. She sure must've gotten her heart broken a lot to whine about it song after song. Female country music singers must hate her. "What if I was in love?" she asks and has no one to tell her to use the subjunctive: "What if I were in love?" She dumbs it down for the kids and the Heartland maybe?
Song 5, "So Long London," is a dreamy kind of Lana Del Rey tremolo talker. Who taught her rhyme? Teach her more. Rhyming couplets of pining, longing, yearning, and being pathetic and clingy but indignant and hot and I will survive, it's a tragedy. Are Lana's attorney's tuned in? This song seems actionable. Big artists have gotten in trouble for less. How hard can it be to write one catchy tune?
Song 6, "But Daddy I Love Him," a string of facile rhymes, end of the world love lost with some emotion but "precocious" "tendrils"? It's like how Shakira had her thesaurus out to help her translate from Spanish to English for Laundry Service. What's Tay Tay's excuse? There are ten more of these junk heap discards pulled out, dusted off, and assembled into "sanctimonious" "soliloquies"? This is the least bad one so far.
Song 7, "Fresh Out the Slammer," is a metaphor of being in jail or prison and getting out to run to a sweetheart with more lameitude in rhyme, as if she finds herself clever and listening to so much Lana that she's drenched in the talent of a single-minded vision and not getting it in any dimension but one, superficial.
Song 8, "Florida," featuring Florence and the Machine, about reinventing herself after heartbreak (again). Where would anyone go to blend in and reinvent oneself? America's dangling participle peeing in the Gulf, right, T-Swift? Florence adds some verve at least and so meta. "Is that a bad thing to say in a song?" "Florida is one hell of a drug," and we drink -- and here the rhyming problem comes up again (yet again), just taking a bunch of rhyming words and say them close to each other like a rapper in the flow just pulling anything in to fill space. Short and sweet. If Lana doesn't sue, this is a good one. Taylor has found the secret, feature Ice Spice, Florence, Post Malone, or anyone to extend her range.
The craze behind tall blonde beauty | Harvard lecture, $64 bil in concert revenue | All About Taylor Swift
(LASSI Studio) March 1, 2024: A lecture called "Taylor Swift and Her World" opened at Harvard. Taylor's concerts generated a $63.5 billion economic impact, also known as "Swiftonomics." She has won the Grammy for Album of the Year three times. This is a video on the ultimate [AI] songstress.
Song 9, "Guilty As Sin," is about crying, whining about a boy, using big words ("paradox"), and having no success in relationships. Is this causing all the bad relationships in the country, or are there so many bad relationships that Taylor is "the voice of an unhappy generation"?
Song 10, "Just Hold Me" (?), a sad song asking, "Who's afraid of little old me? You should be!" The way she makes everything so obvious an pat, the name of this song must be "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" because she repeats, so emo and slightly goth with imagery of death, drugs, and depression. There's something here; I can see how this one could be included in 1980s flashbacks or retro emo song lists with what sounds like a live drummer.
Song 11, "I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can," more complaining about a man she loves ("He's my man... I can fix him, no, really, I can.") This is Lana gone West, a real song, a rip off. Does no one else listen to enough Lana to see it? How could the Eras Tour stand having three hours of this pissant urine?
Song 12, "LMNL" (?), more complaining about a bad man she loves against her will, and she adores him, and she criticizes him, and oy vey, does she never stop complaining? This is cr*p, but kids love cr*p, so it will be interesting which of her masterpieces the focus groups will tell the corporate stations to put on rotation and overplay.
Song 13, "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart," almost danceable at the crying party, when we go to comfort Patty who got dumped by Brad. "You're better than him, Patty! Get out of bed and shake him off. C'mon let's go dance and celebrate our broken hearts. It's all a test. You're a tough kid." Wow, it's Sweet Valley High for every song, the weak sauce, celebrating the miserable. At least it's almost over.
Song 14, "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived," about a Jehovah Witness suit wearing guy who tries to buy some pills from her drug dealing friends, complaining and complaining, calling a man small, with venom and anger become more depression and resentment. This song is dangerous because it's really a crying complaint...
Song 15, "The Alchemy," is about a boy she is not happy with and is telling him she'll get over him and recover and be better than ever for the bad experience. Whew, what a slog. Were there 100 songs like this, and these are the winners? One has to feel what one sings for the singing to sound good. So does she feel this way all the time, year after year, track after track, or is it an act and what the fans want? It's odd to see someone with such a fixation. When Lana does it, singing about dark love all the time, she finds a way to make it interesting. Hooray, it's over, just one more to go:
Song 16, "Clara Beau," is about a girl she's comparing herself to, a remarkable Clara Beau, bringing back themes of dazzling, sparking, rusting as a kind of theme, shining, eclipsing, dying, exaggerating, New York and a small town girl. Taylor in the big city. "You look like Taylor Swift in this life," she says. Could that be right? She's so full of herself that Clara Beau is Tailor Slow? It's SO deep. What was the two theme all the buildup hinted at? We'll leave that to the kiddies on TikTok to figure that out. Is this the world we've come to, violent Kelce with fainting waif Taylor, American royalty? Bleh. 🤢🤮
The first song to be played following all of the others is "Florida" (feat. Florence) and some interesting kind of drumming or bass tapping. Yes, this is one of the better ones with its big bang drumming and Lana theme.
Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly; Sisanie (from the Ryan Seacrest Morning Show on KISS 102.7 FM) with fellow iheart.com DJ from the Tim Conway Show, 4/18/24
There's justice because KARMA (the regularity or law of the universe that unskillful actions motivated -- those motivated by greed, hatred, or delusion -- and skillful ones motivated by nongreed, nonhatred, or nondelusion) brings about appropriate resultants.
When a farmer plants rice, it's no use to pray for mangoes to come up. Having been planted, rice will come up. How could it be otherwise? There is no need to pray for rice (though that may help), and there's no need to wish for mangoes. Plant sweet fruit if sweet fruit is wished for. Mango seeds are always available to us if we only knew it.
It is so fun and funny to watch "instant justice" videos. It seems to "prove" that karma is true. But these videos do no such thing. Moreover, they mislead us about what karma means.
We are all interdependent. So what shall I DO?
Karma means "action," and what kind of action it is is determined by the intention behind it. Stabbing someone is a good example. What is the karma being made? We do not know. Let's ask a psychic or seer (rishi). What is that stabber's motive when she raised that knife and brought it down on that man in the dark alley?
Psychic says, "She was trying to save his life because he could not breathe, so she thought she would make an opening in his throat like she saw on NCIS one time, and she did, and it worked, and he's alive and not at all mad about the little scar that saved his life." Ahh.
Psychic, what about that doctor in the operating room whose patient ended up dead during surgery? "That man is a murderer. He did not make a mistake with his scalpel, but thinking that the patient was cheating with his wife, he nicked an artery and made it appear like an 'accident,' which everyone believed, and he got away with it. But, like an all-knowing god, Karma knew."
How does Karma know when we humans, who stand in judgment in courtrooms every day, get it so wrong so often?
Tell us something we don't know! - Of course.
The answer is found in the Abhidhamma (Sanskrit Abhidharma, English "Higher Doctrine" or more precisely the Teaching of the Buddha in Ultimate Terms"), a body of literature on Buddhist psychology and physics that explains mental and physical phenomena in incredible detail.
Very briefly, when an act (a karma), a deed, a doing is being planned, it has a motivation that ordinarily people cannot see from the outside. With practice, the doer may be able to see it from the inside. (And there are psychics and seers, light beings and other types of beings who might be able to see it from the outside).
Easy Abhidhamma (Susila and Seven)
This motivation or intention (cetana) colors the deed as it is laid down in impulsions (javanas) and mind-moments (cittas) with attendant mental concomitants (cetasikas). It is as if there were only two kinds of cows, reds ones and black ones, but they were all white.
The upshot is these mind-moments lay down a track (plant a seed) capable of coming to fruition later. There are trillions of such moments, so even a slight misdeed has the potential to produce many unpleasant results. "It's not fair!" we'll complain. One skillful deed has the power to produce many pleasant and welcome results. Others may say, "It's not fair" as we enjoy ourselves. Dharma is the best thing for beings, so Wisdom Quarterly exists to give dhamma-dana.
Huh? White cows in a pen, having only two exits available to them, either tread through red paint or black paint. One need not see which way a cow exited or why, yet one can immediately know which exist it was by simply looking at the cow. Is it stained red or black?
The Bible speaks of knowing people by their actions (reaping as they have sown), which are imperfect indicators of character. Why?
We all have mixed karma. And though a person is mostly good, it is no surprise that such a person is not perfectly good all the time. Likewise, though a person is mostly bad, it is no surprise that such a person is not perfectly bad all the time.
We judge by a preponderance ("know them by their fruits"), and it does not do us much good to judge. We may want to avoid certain people and not surround ourselves with unskillful friends, companions, or associates. We may want to associate with the wise. That is wise. And we will become wiser for doing it if it rubs off on us (that is, if we absorb their good influence and not if we don't. It's hard not to, but many of us are slow on the uptake).
So, okay, who cares: What's the harm in enjoying these instant justice videos or concluding that that's how karma works?
There's one great harm, and that is to come to believe that that is how karma works. And we very clearly can see all around us that that is NOT how karma usually works. It might never work that way, John Lennon's "Instant Karma" notwithstanding.
If one were to believe that this is how karma works, what is one to determine after a thousand times seeing something shabby going on with no apparent comeuppance, result, reward, or consequence. I saw, and have you never seen:
A woman with a kind heard gave a dog some food, then it bit her. (After all, it is a truism in our society that "no good deed goes unpunished").
Some guys robbed a bank and now have all this extra money to show for it.
The drug dealer at our high school never got caught, and he drove a really nice car.
Trump is not rotting in jail -- and neither are Biden, Bush, the Other Bush, Obi Won Jabroni, Tricky Dick Nixon, Johnson who helped in the killing of JFK, Dick Cheney, et al. ad nauseum.
I was asked my opinion on the size of a butt by a person about to go out and, wishing to warn that person that her butt looked ginormous in those pants and she would be the victim of ridicule and laughter, I said so. The blowback was tremendous. (Okay, that one's on me. When asked or told anything on the topic of fashion by a significant other looking for a little boost, the only correct reply can be, "Yes, Dear" or a very enthusiastic, "No, those pants don't make your butt look too big" while never adding, "It's mostly your butt making those pants look too small." *Rimshot*
Karma does not need your help. Let it go. Trust.
The point is, there is something called "poetic justice," and what's poetic about is that it is idealistic, wishful thinking, true in a perfect world, would be true if we didn't have such a backlog of karma to clear.
Finally, it's wrong because "karma" NEVER means the result. Remember, karma means "deed" or "action." It's the doing. What results is called phala (fruit) and vipaka (resultant). It's unclear what the difference is, but it seems it used to be the distinction between the physical fruits and the mental resultants. It doesn't seem to mean that anymore.
It seems it used to mean that consequent emotions, feelings, or more immediate worrying and scruples, say, of being caught and the very definite circumstances one later found oneself in.
Skillful actions, or what we call "good," certainly do not immediately produce a ripened result. Fruit does not sprout overnight, or even years later, or even lifetimes later. It could be a while, quite a while.
Does Dr. Bruce Goldberg understand karma?
If one were to conclude that nothing wished for, pleasing, or profitable comes from sharing, giving, helping, offering, sacrificing (our own benefit for the benefit of others), gratitude, serving our parents, repaying our friends and beneficiaries, and so on, who would recommend doing it, and who would do it?
It's exactly because what we do seems to have no impact on the world -- or at least no "fair" one -- that a buddha arises, makes known the Dharma, and leads others to abandon and renounce what leads to harm and to cultivate and develop what leads to contentment, prosperity, sufficiency, and pleasing results.
These are of two kinds, the here-and-now and the hereafter. Given that many modern people cannot bring themselves to believe or have confidence that there will be a hereafter, a tomorrow, a world (and many worlds) to come, results of actions, pleasing and unpleasing results of our deeds, how can anyone tell them otherwise?
Many people did not believe the Buddha, and one has to imagine he was pretty convincing and charming and oozing with compassion as he spoke. He knew these things directly, whereas we only have our limited life experience, our warped and misshapen views, the opinions and preferences we cling to, and minds so tainted by our experience and identifying with the things that happen that we have hardly even begun to purify our view, our minds, our hearts, or our conceptual grasp of the reality around us.
This reality is like a house of mirrors to us, and we are like blind judges trying to describe an elephant by our limited touch to someone who has neither seen nor touched it. Whatever we touch, we will make much of that in our description. What we have not seen, we will likely neglect to mention (even if someone else touching that part tells us to mention it).
We form our concepts then, due to our limited experience, the recency bias, and other distortions (perversions, vipallasa), we report that when asked.
We must know our chances of knowing are very limited. Then, not having read the Kalama Sutra or the sacred scriptures of our spiritual tradition nor asked the wise to explain them or give guidance on how to purify our third eye to see things directly, we give faulty opinions. Preferring our own views, our own traditions, our own teachers, we refuse to give ear to others. So we neither grasp our own teachings nor theirs.
Hollywood, to be popular, will frequently give us poetic justice (to feed us what we do not get in real life). The "evil" landlord coming to evict a poor, hardworking family down on their luck gets hit by a flood on the way. (It's as if the God of the gaps steps in).
The white hat shoots the gun out of the black hat's hand so as to disarm that agent while not becoming the sort of person who shoots people. When the robotic Stormtroopers attack, the "good guys" shoot'em up. No one in the audience is alarmed because "they have no feelings," "they're not actually human," "they deserve it," "they're evil," "they're minions" "they work for the empire..."
This is all well and good on screen with a gob full of popcorn, but try to take that out into the real world, and we get endless war, closed off opinion, us versus them thinking, black and white thinking, Hollywood-influenced fantasizing, and lots of delusions and rationalizations to justify our positions.
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