YYoga Movie (trailer)

(YYogaMovie)

Filmmaker Arthur Klein examines the philosophy and reality of yoga in a compelling documentary. After becoming a devotee of the ancient art in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, Klein traveled the world to explore how yoga has affected others. From a charter school in South Central Los Angeles to wrestler Diamond Dallas Page's yoga class for American soldiers in Iraq, Klein reveals how this ancient practice continues to bring harmony to the world.

• YYogaMovie.com
  

Shift Happens, so SHINE! (video)

Seven (Co-Editor, Wisdom Quarterly)
(GR8quotes/Facebook)

The Real Meaning of "Metta"

The exclusively Buddhist language Pali has a word being incorporated into English: Mettā. This term (Sanskrit, maitri) is very much like the English meta.

Although it is usually translated as (altruistic-) love, kindness, loving-kindness, or friendliness, it has more in common with meta, which means "beyond." It is an "active interest in others" that takes us beyond ourselves.

Selfishness, self-interest, and self-absorption are the problem; the sense of love that grows so powerful it becomes compassion is part of the solution along with liberating wisdom.

Metta goes beyond. It transcends. It is universal and eventually boundless. One extends it first to loved ones, respected teachers, one's own tribe or the constellation one navigates. But with the same fervor a mother shows for a beloved child, that same concern extends to everyone without exception -- even the monsters, betrayers, Hitlers, devils, or anyone considered "other."

Of course, there's ONE horrible, almost unforgivable creature who also deserves our loving-kindness. Most find this being so odious that they just cannot bear to forgive it. Compared to this one, Adolf Hitler is easy. But it is necessary to do so. It may even be necessary to forgive this one first:

You can travel the whole universe and yet never find anyone more deserving of your loving-kindness than yourself.

According to Gary Sanders: The founder of Against the Stream, (Dharma Punx author) Noah Levine had so much trouble loving Levine that he set up a picture of himself as a child on an altar. Following Jack Kornfield's advice, he developed loving-kindness towards that child for a year. When we are able to love ourselves, loving everyone else somehow becomes possible. And we can finally go beyond.

Shift happens, like an accident or job loss. But foul shytza becomes fine soil. For it is capable of fertilizing many great things. It is fundamental to our meta-morphosis into loving, empathic beings.

Meta Futures (metaphorics.co.uk)

(GR8quotes/Facebook)

"Day of the Dead" (Dia De Los Muertos)

Wisdom Quarterly, HollywoodForever.com

(Britphoto) The 11th Annual Dia De los Muertos ("Day of the Dead") festival filmed (and edited) by Karl Polverino at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Oct. 30, 2010.

Hollywood Forever is a cemetery like no other. One of the world’s most fascinating landmarks, it is the final resting place to more of Hollywood’s founders and stars than any place on Earth. Founded in 1899, this graveyard was an integral part of the growth of early Hollywood. Paramount Studios was built on the back half of the original site, where it still operates today. It is the choice resting place for most of the founders of Hollywood’s great studios, as well as its writers, directors, and performers.

The cemetery is now listed on the National Register of Historic Sites. Visitors come from all over the world to pay respects to Johnny Ramone, Cecil B. DeMille, Jayne Mansfield, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and hundreds of Hollywood’s greatest stars. But mostly they come to celebrate a Latin holiday quickly catching on. It is the new Cinco de Mayo ("Fifth of May") for Los Angeles's indigenous ethnicity.

After all, not long ago California belonged to Mexico. Los Angeles ("The Angels") was settled by celebrants of a culture that remembered its ancestors and set aside this special day (traditionally Nov. 1st) to care for them after their passing. Not coincidentally, almost a world away, Europe chose the same day. But it is the eve of that day that became most famous as All Hallow's Eve.

The veils separating the human, ghost (preta), animal, monster (asura, yakkha, naga, kumbandha), and hellion planes seems to thin at this time, perhaps allowing lower planes to again savor the wondrous but largely taken for granted opportunity of existence as a human, the last fortunate destination in Buddhist cosmology.

Remembering Mara (maranasati) on LA's Day of the Dead

Mindfulness of Death
Wisdom Quarterly translation Maranassati Sutra (AN 6.20)
Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was residing at Nadika, in the Brick Monastery, where he addressed the recluses, "Recluses!"

"Yes, venerable sir," they replied.

"Mindfulness of death when developed and made much of is of great fruit, of great benefit. It leads to the deathless [nirvana], has the deathless as its final end. Therefore, one should develop mindfulness of death."

When this was said a certain disciple addressed the Buddha: "I already develop mindfulness of death."

"How do you develop mindfulness of death?" the Buddha replied.

"I think, 'Oh, if I were to live for a day and night and attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal!' This is how I develop it."

Another disciple added, "I, too, already develop mindfulness of death."

"How do you develop mindfulness of death?"

"I think, 'Oh, if I were to live for a day and attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal!' This is how I develop it."

Then another added, "I, too, develop mindfulness of death... I think, 'Oh, if I were to live for the interval it takes to eat a meal and were to attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal.' This is how...."

Then another added, "...I think, 'Oh, if I were to live for the interval it takes to swallow four chewed up morsels of food and were to attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal.' This is how...."

Then another added, "...I think, 'Oh, if I were to live for the interval it takes to swallow one chewed up morsel of food..."

Then another added, "I...think, 'Oh, if I were to live for the interval it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out..."

When all this was said, the Buddha addressed them. "Whoever develops mindfulness of death thinking, 'Oh, if I were to live for a day and night... a day... the interval it takes to eat a meal... swallow four morsels of food and were to attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal!' -- such practitioners are said to dwell heedlessly. They develop mindfulness of death slowly for the sake of ending the defilements.

"But whoever develops mindfulness of death thinking, 'Oh, if I were to live for the interval it takes to swallow one morsel of food... for the interval it takes to breathe out after breathing in or to breathe in after breathing out and were to attend to the Blessed One's instructions, I will have accomplished a great deal!' -- such practitioners are said to dwell heeding my advice. They develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the defilements.

"Therefore should you train yourselves: 'We will dwell heedfully. We will develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the defilements.' That is how you should train yourselves."

That is what the Buddha said. And the recluses delighted in his words.

Living (Uncut) Flower Essences

Pure Potential™ Pure Potential is a new FlorAlive® product. Every patient and client health professionals see can benefit from it. It is an energetic shield. The kinesiology test phrase to check for is, "I am free from the influence of negative forces and fields directed at me." It energetically manifests that reality. Remember to ask for our free test sample. floralive.com/pure-potenti

Gisele Bündchen gets a year older

Gisele Bündchen -- Bündchen was one of Victoria's Secret Angels from 2000 until 2006. Since 2004, she has been the highest-paid model in the world and the 16th richest woman in the entertainment industry with an estimated $150 million fortune. Models Claudia Shiffer and Naomi Campbell have argued that Bündchen is the only true remaining "supermodel." And according to Forbes, she may become the first ever billionaire supermodel. And for all that, has she overcome suffering or all that can upset? Is age treating her more harshly as she sees her beauty fade and realizes that she is no closer to liberation?

Gisele Caroline Nonnenmacher Bündchen was born on July 20, 1980 in Tres de Maio, Brazil. Her parents are Vania Nonnenmacher, a bank clerk, and Valdir Bundchen, a university professor. She grew up in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, with her 5 sisters including Patricia, who is Gisele’s identical twin. The part of Southern Brazil where Gisele is from has a large population of Brazilians of German descent.

Earthbound Spirits (Mary Ann Winkowski)

Earthbound Spirits Full Moon Friday (Coast to Coast, July 15, 2011)

Ghost whisperer/ghostbuster Mary Ann Winkowski explains her lifelong interaction with "earthbound spirits" (devas, the dead, demons, maras, ghosts, pretas, trolls, yakkhas, gremlins, energy vampires, portal travelers, guardians, entities, and angels).

Do you have ghosts in your house?

• When Ghosts Speak
• The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files
• The Ice Cradle: A Novel from the Ghost Files
• MaryAnnWinkowski.com

How to find out if your house is haunted

Tree Fairies ("devas") in Buddhism

Simone Gaulier, Groningen Univ., Buddhism in Afghanistan and Central Asia (Vol. 2)

DRYADS (Tree Devas)

The theme of the tree spirit (dryad) inherited from nature genii found in the Vedas and Vedic Brahmanism in ancient India was inherited by early Buddhism. Such a theme had already been adopted to represent Maya, Siddhartha's mother, during the birth of the Bodhisat (buddha-to-be).

She became a Sal tree spirit (Salabhanjika), as Wisdom Quarterly has demonstrated. These themes from around the area the Shakyans [the Buddha's family clan] ruled, in modern Pakistan and Afghanistan in the ancient Northwest Indian frontier, grew in Gandharan art.

The devas became incorporated in various depictions of Buddhist legends. In Afghanistan (e.g., Shotorak), these supple figures surround bas relief images of Maitreya (the future Buddha or "Messiah") and Siddhartha (the historical Buddha) enthroned.

They were discreetly presented in one of the final nirvana scenes on the same site, appearing down to the waist in the Sal (Sala) trees. The same dryad (female tree spirit or bhummi devi) can be found by the end of the 6th century in Kyzyl as the Buddha is passing into nirvana. Her bust emerges from a flowering Sal tree, casting a shower of petals on the body of the Buddha.

Gandharvas and Apsaras

The Gandharvas are music-playing genii (devas) ruled by Dhrtarastra, the Great King of the Eastern Sky. The flying Apsaras are celestial figures forming one of the eight categories of supernatural beings in Buddhist cosmology developed in its iconography. The most famous is perhaps Pancaskikha, the harp playing companion and charioteer for Sakra (Indra).

Variations of these graceful figures filled the transcendent scenes of the Buddhist legends with increasing frequency. But they already seem to have served in the early Buddhist sects to express the superhuman destiny of the Buddha. In Bamiyan [former Afghan site of the largest Buddha statues in the world], for example, they contributed to an atmosphere of celestial glory.

Richly adorned and wearing sophisticated princely garments, the Gandharvas have generally been given masculine features, while the Apsaras assumed a feminine appearance despite the indeterminate sex of such supernatural creatures.

"Angelic" figures (in Miran), garland bearers (Yotkan), crown bearers (Fondukistan and Kyzyl), the bearers of baskets filled with flowers (Kumtura), revolving in the air (Kyzyl), or appearing on the balcony of celestial palaces (Shotorak and Kyzyl), this subtle and elegant throng was to provide later Mahayana Buddhism with the heavenly orchestras of its Pure Lands. [And these elements were later incorporated into the religions of the Near East, most notably Christianity.]

Lokapalas ("Four Great Kings")

The "guardians of the four directions" (Lokapalas) appear in the art of Gandhara (ancient northwest India, now Pakistan and Afghanistan) in the course of one of the episodes in the life of the Buddha -- "the offering of the four bowls." The Buddha has his first meal after enlightenment.

Four neutral devas (literally, "shining ones," fairies, elemental, nature spirits) later took on a militant character in Central Asia, around Khotan. Aurel Stein discovered statues of them at the gate of a burial mound reliquary (stupa) in Rawak. They are the "four great kings" of the sky -- Vaisarvana of the North tramples a demon. A prince in armor with pointed ears heralds the celestial kings as depicted in Asian caves (Tun-huang, Turfan, and Bezeklik, etc.)

They seem to be advanced space aliens in helmets, military dress, protected by breast-plates -- Dhrtarastra (East), Virudhaka (south), and Viupaksa (West) bearing swords and spears.

On Earth there are not only fairies but ogres (yakshas) -- "Pan" like nature men, wolf men, abominable snowmen, men of the mountain, intelligent bipedal hominids who at best were only half human. Like the reptilians (nagas, dragons, serpents, vipers, tyrant rulers) they were derived from Vedic mythology. The tree spirits were sometimes celestial, sometimes earthbound nature beings -- bhummi devas -- in early Buddhism.

Trees are life-sustaining along the Himalayan foothills from Afghanistan to India (fullstopindia.com).

The World's "Second Oldest Profession"
The Getty and many other top American museums are part of a long history of illicit art trade. Looted art has been trafficked for as long as art has been in existence, and Frammolino says this is due to the overpowering effects of antiquity. Aprodite is the stone goddess (pictured above), from Felch and Frammolino's new book: Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum [the Getty].

From Afghanistan with Love (rawa.org)
Afghanistan has world's oldest oil paintings

Majority in U.S. say leave Afghanistan
German troops intensify attacks on Afghan civilians

Blasts kill 20 in Afghan flashpoints
Afghanistan to be handed over to gangsters
“Iran caught 10 times trying to send arms to terrorists”
Deadly attack on Afghan wedding party
In Kabul, air pollution a bigger killer than war
Afghanistan tackles sex abuse of kids within police
15-year-old Afghan girl gang-raped in Takhar
MPs’ brother, friends held with drugs
Two girls killed, one survives strangulation
US spends two billion a week in Afghanistan
Afghan taxes squeezing poorest
AFGHANISTAN: Clashes displace 12,000 in Faryab

Most Australians sick of the Afghanistan cost, saying we are fighting a losing battle

Wedded to the warlords: NATO’s unholy Afghan alliance
Report: Billions in U.S. aid wasted in Iraq, Afghanistan
With friends like these, who needs the Taliban?
Afghanistan: A Heritage in Ruins
Afghan judge whips man for drinking alcohol
IDP situation concerning, UNHCR
Afghanistan remains dangerous for children: UN
Teenage girl raped in Sar-i-Pul
Nato airstrike kills 14 women and children in Afghanistan
Kabul gold rush: western billions bear fruit
Girls’ schools closed in Logar after Taliban threats
112 killed in Nuristan airstrike: governor
Afghanistan emerges as worst violence-hit state
Foreign troops kill civilians in Maidan Wardak
Militants hack off Afghan’s nose, ears
Taliban kill head of Afghan girls’ school
Aid workers fight secret war against HIV on Kabul’s backstreets
Police collecting opium tax in Uruzgan
Iran executes Afghans in violation of agreement
Why US can’t combat Afghan corruption

The Buddha's Forest Tradition

Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha lovingly bundled beholding the Himalayas from behind, Ladakh, India

The wonderful thing about Buddhism originally (the Dharma as taught by the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama) is that it was a forest tradition.

Siddhartha left Kapilavastu, the territory of his family, cut off his hair, discarded his fine clothes, crossed the river in a simple garment and went in search of yogis in the wilderness.

He found Alara Kalama and then Uddaka Ramaputra, wandering ascetics who taught him to meditate in the tradition of mental serenity. This led to a great accomplishment -- self control and a clear heart/mind.

But he left it behind as well because he realized that serenity in itself -- even to the tranquil depths of full absorption -- did not lead to final and complete liberation (moksha).

India had found many routes to the heavens. And many seers could see no further than this. Uddaka Ramaputra's teacher, Rama, had reached the zenith of worlds beyond form. But even that was not outside of samsara, the interminable Round of Rebirths.

Leaving behind these great teachers, Siddhartha plunged himself into the forest to practice austerities. Everyone understood that this had to be the way to break free of sensuality, the body, and all its temptations and bonds.

What the Buddha realized is what "everybody" knows now: The body is not to blame, but rather attachment and clinging, which are defilements of the mind/heart. Insight brought Siddhartha to this realization. And that realization made him the Buddha.

Siddhartha did his striving almost exclusively in the quiet and nurturing atmosphere of the forest, attaining buddhahood in a grove of Bo trees (Bodh Gaya).

Legend has it, that on becoming a supremely enligthened teacher (samma-sam-buddha) he remained in the forest, in the vicinity of the Bodhi tree (the sacred and sheltering fig tree), staring at unblinkingly in admiration.

Woodland sprites (fairies, earthbound-devas) had offered to save his life when his fasting had becoming so extreme that he looked dead. "He's dead," one said. The other explained, "No, this is how ascetics behave." "We should feed him deva food through his pores," they concluded.

"No," Siddhartha aware of their conversation said to them, "that won't be necessary. People think that I am fasting, and were I to be living on subtle deva nourishment, it would be deceiving them." But this encouraged Siddhartha to nourish his body with human food.

He came to understand that it was not by rejecting the world and such facts as the constraints of materiality (e.g., the need for nutrition) that one finds freedom. Instead, it is by practicing serenity-and-insight, Zen and Vipassana one can say. The first prepares the mind/heart through concentration (calm, collectedness, intensification, and focus). The other aims the laser singularity of consciousness on mindful contemplation of four things that lead to freedom here and now.

They lead the heart to realize nirvana and the complete end of suffering.

Realizing it and deciding to teach others the path of purification, the path to freedom, he walked to another forest in Sarnath, in a deer park outside of the famous ancient Indian city of Varanasi. There he instructed the first Five Disciples, who had formerly practiced austerities with him trying to reach liberation.

Siddhartha returns to the Five Ascetics as the Buddha and sets rolling in motion the Wheel of the Dharma by teaching them the path to enlightenment (History of Buddhism).

When the Five Ascetics reached enlightenment by hearing the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutra ("Turning the Wheel of Dharma"), the Buddha began a forest tradition of recluses. Whether lay people came to him or wanderers on a quest for enlightenment, the Buddha's essential advice was the same:

"Here in this Dharma (this Teaching), a meditator who has gone to the forest, or to the foot of a tree, or to an empty place, sits down cross legged, holding the back sustainably erect [not too stiff, not too lax], arousing mindfulness in front."

Of course, before there can be real insight into those four things mentioned before, there must be serenity. Mindfulness is not thinking. There is contemplation and reflection and reviewing (anussati), but that occurs as one emerges from the purifying absorptions (jhanas, zens, ch'ans as it were).

To gain concentration (samadhi) to the level of full-absorption one needs mindfulness, which simply means constant-bare-awareness, nonjudgmental attention, non-evaluative holding in consciousness. One avoids two extremes, rigidity and laxity, and balances in the blissful middle, awake but serene.

The Buddha often taught lay people and rulers outside of cities, villages, and hamlets while residing in groves and orchards.

Then the Buddha moved from grove to grove -- bamboo, mango... -- from glade to glade, staying outdoors, enjoying the freedom of the left-home life. He developed a great following. He said the home life was constricted and dusty, but renunciation (which need not mean getting rid of anything but simply letting go of the attachment to everything) was open and free:

• "Household life is crowded, constricting, and dusty! A life gone forth is wide open. While living at home, it is not easy to carry out this noble life utterly perfect and pure as [the milky luminous lustre of a] polished conch shell... But suppose I cut off my hair and beard, don a saffron robe, and go forth from home into homelessness? What if I leave behind my fortune, small or large, leave behind my circle of family and friends, small or large? Then doing so out of verifiable-confidence (saddha) in this Teacher or this Teaching or these well-taught disciples, after past lives of accumulating the right conditions for attaining the expeditious state of a recluse in the Buddha's lineage, surely one has found the surest means of winning the stream that runs towards and merges with the deathless nirvana!"

Before monasteries were built, the Buddha sent his disciples into the forest to live, in no way harming nature, taking their ceramic bowls with them to gather alms food which delighted the people of India to give in a longstanding tradition of dana. After monasteries were built, the Buddha sent his disciples into the forest to practice. Even at the end of his days before his final passing into nirvana without remainder outdoors in a grove between twin Sal trees, he advised his deva and human disciples who had gathered in the tens of thousands (mostly devas):

The Buddha in a bamboo grove, Malaysia(Esani/Flickr.com)

If you would maintain in purity the [monastic] precepts, you should not give yourselves over to buying... You should not covet fields or buildings, nor accumulate servants, attendants, or animals. You should flee from all sorts of property and wealth as you would avoid a fire or a pit. You should not cut down grass or trees, neither break new soil, nor plough the earth. ...All of these are things which are improper (for a recluse).

• The Buddha's Last Bequest (compiled from the Chinese Tripitaka)
• Meditation on Breathing - the First Foundation of Mindfulness (the Body)
• The Absorptions in Buddhist Meditation (Leigh Brasington)
• Intellectualizing the Meditative Absorptions (Bhante G)

The Devas' Deathbed Advice to Citta (sutra)

Maurice O'Connell Walshe, translator, Gilanadassanam Sutra (SN 41.10)

Fairies (devas, "shining ones," both seen and unseen, exist.

At that time Citta the householder was a sick man, suffering from a serious illness. Then a number of devas [elemental spirits, fairies, woodland sprites] who dwell in gardens, forests, and trees, the devas of healing herbs and of great trees in the forest, gathered together and said to Citta the householder [Note 1]:

"Make a resolve, householder: 'In some future time may I be a king, a world-ruler!'" [2]

To this Citta replied... "That is something impermanent, something to be rejected and passed over."

Now Citta's friends, colleagues, and blood-relatives heard him say this, and they said to him: "Sir! [3] Set up mindfulness. Don't ramble!"

"What have I said that makes you tell me to set up mindfulness and not to ramble?"

"Why, sir, you just said: 'That is something impermanent, something to be rejected and passed over.'"

"Yes, but I said that to the devas who dwell in gardens... who bade me make a resolve that in some future time I might be a king, a world-ruler."

"Sir, what purpose did those devas have in mind in urging you to make such a resolve?"

"This is what those devas thought: 'This householder Citta is a virtuous man, of noble disposition. If he makes a resolve that in some future time he may be a king, a world-ruler, this will be profitable to that virtuous man, having made such a resolve with a pure heart, and will bring the just man a just and great reward...' So then I replied, 'That is something impermanent, something to be rejected and passed over.'"

[Citta then instructs them to practice generosity and have perfectly verifiable-faith in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha and passes away as follows:] "Thus should you train yourselves: We will be endowed with verifiable confidence in the Buddha:

• Indeed, the Blessed One is worthy and fully awakened, perfect knowledge and conduct, well-gone and welcome, an expert with regard to the world, the unexcelled trainer of those fit to be tamed, the teacher of devas and human beings, awakened, blessed.
• We will be endowed with verifiable confidence in the Dharma: This Path/Practice is well-expounded by the Blessed One, verifiable here and now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be realized by the wise for themselves.
• We will be possessed of verified confidence in the Sangha: The Sangha of the Blessed One's disciples who have practiced well... who have practiced rightly... who have practiced methodically... who have practiced masterfully -- in other words, the four pairs, the eight types of noble individuals -- the community of the Blessed One's instructed disciples: worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of respect, an incomparable field of merit for the world.
• Whatever there may be in our family that can be given away, all that will be shared unstintingly with these virtuous ones who are of admirable character. Thus should you train yourselves."

NOTES
1. A whole Samyutta (SN 41) is devoted to this householder (see also Vol. II, No. 23), who is held up as a model layperson in SN 17.23 (not translated here). His name is not the same as citta "mind," but means "bright, shining" [which is interesting because the mind is said to be luminous in its original, undefiled nature].
2. Cakkavatti or Chakravartin (literally, "a wheel-turning monarch," the Indian term for a universal ruler. This was what Siddhartha Gautama could have become if he had not become a buddha. The devas are aware of Citta's great virtues (though they possibly exaggerate in thinking he could become a world-ruler), but are not wise enough to think of his spiritual progress (cf. SN 1.20, n. 4).
3. Ayyaputta = Ariyaputta, literally "son of the Ariyans," not a racial epithet but rather the follower (instructed disciple) of the Noble Ones (cf. SN 22.7, n. 1).

Meeting the Devas

Wisdom Quarterly (TRAVEL JOURNAL)

Two of us, two WoQies, went deep into forbidden Asia in search of an enlightened Buddhist teacher. Two Americans wandering in Orwellian dystopia searching for satori.

I was looking for the answer, the key, that would unlock enlightenment (as if I only needed that one ineffable "answer"); she was following her bliss, trusting that I was onto something, not wanting to be left behind in spiritual vacuum of Southern California. We were in Burma under the current regime, slowly on our way to India to sit where the Buddha sat.

It was a cheap hotel, a converted tenement flat, in the city center -- our old copy of Lonely Planet recommended it as a cheap stay for shoestring backpackers. Across the street sits a golden stupa complex that seems to mark the exact center of Rangoon, at that time the capital (now it's the secret city of Naypyidaw), not far from a five-star hotel full of older European adventure travelers dashing through this blacklisted country. They'd wear their passport stamps like badges so their dinner party guests might gasp, "You took a truncheon to the head to take some photos?"

There were roaches, rats, and worst of all mosquitoes. Only the fans kept them at bay. But the periodic brown outs meant those fans went off more than half the time. The Burmese are lovely and kind, walking like shadows compared to their neighbors that over-the-top kindness of northern Thailand.

She became sick, bed ridden. With mosquitoes attacking, all we could do was light 20 incense sticks at at time or retreat to the office, where somehow an air conditioner, TV, and one angry clerk counted stacks of kyat (Burmese dollars). We were preparing to make our way to Mandalay then onto our goal in the south, what I called the "Malabar Front" from Nineteen Eighty-Four. The British author George Orwell lived here, and he was in fact describing the British/Burmese government when he coined the term "Big Brother."

There is no computer access, except in secret, very irregularly, constantly skirting censors and government blocks. We were lucky to get MSN or Hotmail to work.

Her mystery illness worsened: she wouldn't drink but sweat constantly, she was sleepy all the time, but never rested, she was not hungry, but whether she ate or not, she would never go to the restroom. What to do? She would surely die, and of course I would be to blame. I brought her, but I told her not to come, to stay back in Thailand until I returned from the this Quest, and we moved on to India.

There are no hospitals in Burma (a police state now called Myanmar) and no doctors, just little pharmacies with long lines. She's very intuitive. So I asked her what she wanted to do. She was only sure that she wanted to stay when I was recommending the inevitable -- by evacuated like a Vietnam soldier all the way back to California to recover in a nice clean PPO corporation-run hospital. It would mean failure, going to the embassy and explaining what we were doing here, paying $50,000 for the arrangements, and somehow explaining to everyone back home what had happened.

As I worried and found no easy answer weighing everything, asking her what was wrong with her, it happened. In a darkened room with no windows, with incense wafting thickly in the air, with more water bottles being chugged and a pile of plastic building up in the corner of the room, bhumma devas (Earth or elemental fairies) came.

She said they looked beautiful. I swallowed hard, "So you're dying and they're welcoming you to the other side?" She ignored the implication and smiled broadly talking to them. She was no more delirious than she had been in the past three days, which meant not at all. She was better than normal. Serene, accepting, as if she was eager to go. "This is how it ends? At 21, in a foreign land? You want your body shipped back to the States because I might as well stay in Asia.

She said they were saying it was all going to be okay. She said they said to trust me because I was good or at least good for her. Neither of those seemed the case, and I'm sure the embassy would argue that I was the worst travel partner ever for coming to one of the most dangerous countries in the world with a tall blond in tow.

And I asked, because I'm a stupid Westerner and this is how we think after college: "You say you see them, so what do they look like?" Her mouth contorted,"Hmmm," stymied, then explained that she didn't "see" them, as such. Her eyes were open and she was lucid and speaking perfectly clearly: She sensed them, knew them to be there, could feel them, could know them, could hear them... saw them in that sense. That is, the mind's eye must fill in what is perfectly clear to the other senses. I tried to ask about them, but my intellectualizing was harming matters. They were there, they were communicating, they were bringing good news. And I had bad news to break.

It had come to me, an inspiration. If I could get to a Black Market Internet connection, put in the symptoms, which was no easy doing because the system was down throughout the city. When I found a way, there it was -- deadly cholera. The cure? Ciprofloxin (ah, Cipro, what didn't it cure before overuse made germs resistant?) The answer? It turns out those "pharmacies" are their hospitals with no red tape. I bought cheap Indian (Roxy brand) Cipro, which as inexpensive as it was came with a free session with a doctor to discuss it. I told him about her symptoms, and how I thought it was cholera, he agreed, and sent me running with instructions before it was too late. I had been doing things correctly. There was nowhere to bring her to and no other way to go other than to leave the country, an option we had that they didn't.

I explained it to her, and asked her if she wanted to try the "medicine" (we don't believe in Western chemicals), but antibiotics are a little different. Even our herbs serve the same function some times. She smiled and said she trusted me. I asked why, and said it was because the devas said so and were sure. (I thought both her and those devas a little loopy for trusting me because, again, it seemed all my fault for getting her into this mess of an adventure).

She recovered fully. And later on a plane, I asked if she remembered the devas. She looked at me strangely as if I had asked the most foolish question ever, and after a long pause holding me in a fixed gaze, she answered: "Of course." Me, too. I don't know why I ever doubted that devas are real and right here particularly in natural settings. It's perfectly clear they are. It was then.

REBIRTH - What might not be clear is that the reason they came to receive, comfort, and advise her then was that not long ago, she had been one of them. She could recognize it in other people. It's just like our own Western mythology tells children, and I've asked many children for confirmation. They see them, they know what the traits are and can see that in some people, but they soon are taught to forget and deny what they know. The rest are branded "witches and weirdoes" so they stay quiet. But it's well known so long as we don't say it to anyone bent on not believing.