Wisdom Quarterly: rains

Showing posts with label rains. Show all posts

Friday, November 4, 2011

Occupy Los Angeles hit by Rain and Snow

Wisdom Quarterly

In solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and its Halloween winter, Occupy Los Angeles (City Hall, Van Nuys, Pasadena, Sherman Oaks...) is drowning in a sudden storm.

The skies have been seeded with chemical spraying from the secret government's aerosol campaign (like most weeks). When the spraying meets sufficient moisture from cold fronts, there is a desert deluge.

Snow is expected at the 4,000 foot level. Snow in LA? "Los Angeles" is largely forest and wilderness. Look at a map. But no one calls our mostly burned out adjacent forest "LA." It's the Angeles National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, the Santa Monica Mountains, and so on. The snow falls up there, quickly melts, and floods our all-concrete "river."

But everyone knows LA is a "concrete jungle." That it is. And our tents and blankets are wet. Angelenos have no real winter clothes, just windbreakers, flip flops, and tees.

Bailout?
(VideoNation)

On Sept. 25th filmmaker Laura Hanna took her camera to Wall Street and captured protesters gathered to express their opposition to the proposed Wall Street bailout.

City Hall has a lawn for peaceful assemblies, but
LA mayor wants to move the movement
Occupy Los Angeles responds to mayor

That was 2008. The $700,000,000,000 (billion) bailout Bush endorsed has been widely unpopular with the public. Its lack of support reaches beyond party affiliation and ideological sympathies. But the 1 percent likes it.

No more "privatizing profits and socializing losses," declared one protester. "They live by the free market; let them die by the free market."

"Stop and frisk" in New York: #OWS says no to illegal searches!

Bangkok is drowning

Irwin Loy (TheWorld.org, Nov. 2, 2011)

Climate chaos affects all Earthlings like rescued pets in Bangkok (Irwin Loy/Theworld.org)

Some of those stranded in Thailand’s calamitous floods are family pets. A group of volunteers has been heading into flooded Bangkok neighborhoods, rescuing frantic cats and dogs. Irwin Loy went along with one pet rescue team. Comment

Monday, October 17, 2011

Thailand is drowning in climate chaos floods

Wisdom Quarterly, Los Angeles Times

Old prayer flags are replaced in the Himalayan foothills at Swayambhunath Stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal (framework.latimes.com).

Praying for climate peace in the midst of chaos is not helping Thailand, which is currently drowning in unseasonably backlogged rains. Due to chaotic climate change -- exacerbated by the US and China, solar irregularities, and the general warming of the solar system (according to some) -- there is too much rain in some places and too little in others. Parts of Africa have drought -- so we attack them. We use drones, and it does not appear in the news often enough to notice.

A man rows a boat past a giant reclining Buddha statue submerged by a flood in Ayutthaya, Thailand (framework.latimes.com).

Climatological changes spur social changes since the "Arab Spring," "American Fall," and growing occupation movements around the world have food insecurity as their primary cause. That insecurity is not due to low yields yet. That will come. Now it is all about rampant speculation, commodities trading, driving up prices to cash out. The bankers and war profiteers actually affect the planet down to the soil. Rain, human tragedy, drought followed by flooding, it is almost as if a butterfly at Monsanto, Inc. test farm caused a monsoon/cyclone over Bangkok. We really are more connected than we (as non-mystics) ever realize.

Drowning in Bangkok...before the storm (Reuters/Seattle.ibtimes.com)

Worst flooding in decades threatens Bangkok
Los Angeles Times

Bangkok residents are facing the worst monsoon flooding in decades could hit Thailand's capital. Authorities have been warning for days that water overflow from the north could combine with more rain and high tides to inundate the low-lying metropolis, which is home to 9 million people.

PHOTOS: Thailand floods

More than 280 people have been killed since a series of tropical storms began hitting the country in late July. “Bangkok may face some problems in areas that are on the outer sides of the irrigation dikes… but inner Bangkok has extremely high defenses,” she told reporters, according to Reuters. More

Contributing to the Gross National Happiness in Buddhist Bhutan

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Katina: Buddhist "Lent" ends

Wisdom Quarterly

KATINA 2011: While part of the world sinks in debt, goes up in flames, or is increasingly OCCUPIED by those unwilling to sit still while corrupt officials and corporate entities ruin life on the planet, the second most significant event on the Buddhist calendar is taking place.

The most significant event is, of course, the enlightenment-birth-passing of the Buddha, all of which are said to have occurred on the full moon day of the same month (in India called Vesakha).

Just behind this thrice blessed "Buddhist X-mas" (Vesak) is the Katina Robe Offering Ceremony following the annual Rains Retreat period of intensive monastic practice and lay study. Through the Asian rainy season, corresponding to our July-October, fully ordained monastics retreat into a period of intensive practice and teaching.

That period, sometimes referred to as "Buddhist Lent" (Katina) ends with a special sturdy robe offering. And this celebration is said to be the most meritorious offering of the year (possibly because it is done collectively to very ethical monastics who have been practicing and purifying their hearts for an entire season. Karma is such that it is not only the doer's intention but the recipient's character that determines the significance of the act).

Katina is being celebrated at Theravada temples across the US, particularly concentrated in the Los Angeles region, from cultures spanning Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Burma, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, and the American insight meditation (vipassana) tradition.

2010 Sri Lankan Katina robe offering ceremony in Texas