Images

Escaping the illusion of hell by Bec

Near Bangkok Thailand 

In LA at a Thai temple 

Swayambhunath Statue, Nepal

Babylon

You can have a boob flash movie in which ultimate lesson is that Babylon wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. I just watched Babylon, all 3 hours of it, including the Tree of Life hallucinatory ending.

Babylon in the Bible: "Noah’s great-grandson, Nimrod, was the first mighty man of the Bible (Genesis 10:10), and the Bible says Babel was one of the towns that encompassed the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom in the land of Shinar." (source) 

Tangent, have you ever seen that documentary about a high school basketball team called Nimrod Nation?

"The people who erected the Tower of Babel decided to make a name for themselves in opposition to God, and they proceeded with outright disdain for God’s rule. That in and of itself was enough to make them evil because they clearly defied the Lord. Babylon’s god was Marduk, one they considered the supreme deity over all others."

In Buddhism Mara is the great distractor from the goal of the path. You could say just about everyone but a few monks are on the path, some pay respects, and it's fashionable to be mindful at work now, and everyone else ignores. You don't need to make a lot of bogeymen, cities and nations against enlightenment, because they're literally everywhere, including forces and instincts inside you. The inner Babylon of the heart. 

Random Buddhist Link:

Great article by BBC on Nalanda University: "In the more-than seven centuries that Nalanda flourished, there was nothing else like it in the world. The monastic university predates the University of Oxford and Europe's oldest university, Bologna, by more than 500 years. What's more, Nalanda's enlightened approach to philosophy and religion would help shape the culture of Asia long after the university ceased to exist."

Random poem:

In Defense of Nothing

By Peter Gizzi

I guess these trailers lined up in the lot off the highway will do.
I guess that crooked eucalyptus tree also.
I guess this highway will have to do and the cars
and the people in them on their way.
The present is always coming up to us, surrounding us.
It’s hard to imagine atoms, hard to imagine
hydrogen & oxygen binding, it’ll have to do.
This sky with its macular clouds also
and that electric tower to the left, one line broken free.

Biases

“By & large, Kaccāna, this cosmos is in bondage to attachments, clingings/sustenances, & biases. But one such as this does not get involved with or cling to these attachments, clingings, fixations of awareness, biases, or obsessions; nor is he resolved on ‘my self.’ He has no uncertainty or doubt that mere stress, when arising, is arising; stress, when passing away, is passing away. In this, his knowledge is independent of others. It’s to this extent, Kaccāna, that there is right view.” -SN 12:15

Meme