Samsarictravelling Blog

Friday, 28 June 2019

39.2.21 Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #39. Buddhism, post #22: supernatural powers

Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #39. Buddhism, post #22 (39.2.21):

Supernatural powers:

Just one reply post out of a few reply posts I made on the general subject of 'supernatural powers' in a discussion someone else started, on a video of a guy allegedly levitating above ground while sitting cross-legged, at the 'Dhamma Wheel' message board:
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=34682

Re: Levitation during meditation

Quote

by samsarictravelling » Fri Jun 28, 2019 3:48 pm

budo wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:16 pm
The video in OP looks very fake.

From my understanding, it's the mind made body that levitates and moves unimpeded, not the actual body.

My personal theory is that most lay people didn't meet the Buddha's actual body, but his mind made body. Hence when the serial killer chased him he couldn't catch him. The Buddha was probably meditating in a cave while that was happening.

I disagree.

Do you think disappearing in one location, then reappearing in another location is more wonderous than levitation? (And if someone can do that disappearing in one place and reappearing at some other location, then levitation would seem to be a simpler supernatural occurrence?)

In the MahaParinibbana Sutta the Buddha (as well as his retinue of monks, in one version, is also explicitly said to) does just that: he disappears on one side of the river, and reappears on the other side.

Here it is, from two different sources (I boldface the sentence that describes it):

Then the Blessed One, early in the morning, adjusted his lower robe and—taking his bowl & outer robe—went together with the Saṅgha of monks to the rest-house of Sunidha & Vassakāra, the chief ministers of Magadha. On arrival, he sat down on the seat laid out. Sunidha & Vassakāra, with their own hands, served & satisfied the Saṅgha of monks, with the Buddha at its head, with exquisite staple & non-staple food. Then, when the Blessed One had finished his meal and withdrawn his hand from the bowl, Sunidha & Vassakāra, taking a low seat, sat to one side. As they were sitting there, the Blessed One gave his approval with these verses:

In whatever place

a wise person makes his dwelling,

—there providing food

for the virtuous,

the restrained,

leaders of the holy life—

he should dedicate that offering

to the devas there.

They, receiving honor, will honor him;

being respected, will show him respect.

As a result, they will feel sympathy for him,

like that of a mother for her child, her son.

A person with whom the devas sympathize

always meets with auspicious things.

Then the Blessed One, having given his approval to Sunidha & Vassakāra with these verses, got up from his seat and left. And on that occasion, Sunidha & Vassakāra followed right after the Blessed One, (thinking,) “By whichever gate Gotama the contemplative departs today, that will be called the Gotama Gate. And by whichever ford he crosses over the Ganges River, that will be called the Gotama Ford.”

So the gate by which the Blessed One departed was called the Gotama Gate. Then he went to the Ganges River. Now on that occasion the Ganges River was full up to the banks, so that a crow could drink from it. Some people were searching for boats; some were searching for floats; some were binding rafts in hopes of going from this shore to the other. So the Blessed One—just as a strong man might extend his flexed arm or flex his extended arm—disappeared from the near bank of the Ganges River and reappeared on the far bank together with the Saṅgha of monks. He saw that some people were searching for boats; some were searching for floats; some were binding rafts in hopes of going from this shore to the other.

Then, on realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed:

Those

who cross the foaming flood,

having made a bridge, avoiding the swamps

—while people are binding rafts—

intelligent people

have already crossed.

Source: The Great Total Unbinding Discourse/Mahā Parinibbāna Sutta (DN 16). Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN16.html

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33. But when the Blessed One came to the river Ganges, it was full to the brim, so that crows could drink from it. And some people went in search of a boat or float, while others tied up a raft, because they desired to get across. But the Blessed One, as quickly as a strong man might stretch out his bent arm or draw in his outstretched arm, vanished from this side of the river Ganges, and came to stand on the yonder side.

Source: DN 16/Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha, translated from the Pali by Sister Vajira & Francis Story.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitak ... .vaji.html

Please excuse me if I do not reply to any more replies from anyone.

samsarictravelling

Wednesday, 26 June 2019

38.2.20 Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #38. Buddhism, post #21: From a 'Dhamma Wheel' message board discussion: My reply to the question 'Where is iddhi?'

Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #38. Buddhism, post #21 (38.2.20):

From a 'Dhamma Wheel' message board discussion: My reply to the question 'Where is iddhi?'.
URL to that discussion: https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=34673

Re: Where is iddhi?

Quote

by samsarictravelling » Wed Jun 26, 2019 10:38 pm

Antaradhana wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 26, 2019 4:36 pm
From the Canon, as well as from non-Buddhist (Hindu) sources, numerous evidences of iddhi can be seen. Numerous ascetics who followed various teachings demonstrated iddhi earlier. Has anyone seen iddhi in our time? Maybe humanity was crushed in mental strength, degraded in this area?

I give three sources for examples of supernatural happenings:

1) I remember it has one example of (alleged) reading of mind, as well as other supernatural stuff:

Venerable Acariya Mun Bhuridatta Thera – Spiritual Biography, by Ajahn Maha Boowa Nyanasampanno

https://www.amaravati.org/dhamma-books/ ... biography/

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2) Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo's autobiography:

The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo (Phra Suddhidhammaransi Gambhiramedhacariya), translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Translator’s Foreword

...
Some readers will be taken aback by the amount of space Ajaan Lee gives to signs,
portents, and other supranatural events. Things of this sort tend to be downplayed in the
laundered versions of Theravada Buddhism usually presented in the West—in which the
Buddha often comes off as a Bertrand Russell or Fritz Perls in robes—and admittedly they
are not the essence of what the Buddha had to teach. Still, they are an area that many people
encounter when they explore the mind and where they often go astray for lack of reliable
guidance. Ajaan Lee had a great deal of experience in this area and many useful lessons to
teach. He shows by example which sorts of experiences to treat simply as curiosities, which
to take seriously, and how to test the experiences that seem to have important messages.
...

Thanissaro Bhikkhu
(Geoffrey DeGraff)

----------------------

An example from the autobiography of a supernatural happening on page 42:

After a moment or so there was a rustling sound up in the top of the tree. I looked up
and saw that a nest of large red ants had broken open. This was because there was a vine
wrapped around the nest. I had sat down on the base of the vine, and so now red ants were
spilling out onto my mat, swarming all over me, biting in earnest.
I sat right up. They were all over my legs. I made up my mind to spread thoughts of good
will, dedicating the merit to all living beings and making a vow: ‘Since becoming ordained,
I’ve never even thought of killing or harming a living being. If in a previous lifetime I’ve ever
eaten or harmed any of you all, then go ahead and bite me until you’ve had your fill. But if
I’ve never harmed you, then let’s call an end to this. Don’t bite me at all.’
Having made my vow, I sat in meditation. My mind was still—absolutely silent. The
rustling sound of the ants disappeared. Not a one of them bit me. I really felt amazed at the
Dhamma. Opening my eyes, I found them swarming in huge numbers in a line around the
edge of the mat.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/index.html

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3)The Hindu yogi Paramhansa Yogananda's autobiography has many instances of supernatural happenings:

Autobiography of a Yogi

http://www.yoganandafortheworld.com/ori ... of-a-yogi/

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Please excuse me if I do not reply to any reply.

samsarictravelling

Tuesday, 25 June 2019

THE RONETTES - BE MY BABY (RARE VIDEO 1963)

37.5.1.1 Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #37. Things of the world, post #2.1: More Ronettes stuff.

My first post of information from articles on the Ronettes is found here:
https://samsarictravelling.blogspot.com/2019/06/3051-wisdom-and-knowledge-series-post_85.html

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Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #37. Things of the world, post #2.1 (37.5.1.1):

More Ronettes stuff (my second post on information from articles on the Ronettes):

Veronica Yvette Bennett was born in Spanish Harlem in 1943 to an Irish father and half African-American, half Cherokee mother with an enormous extended family.

She remembers being eight and singing in the lobby of her grandmother’s building, whose high ceilings produced a gratifying echo. More gratifying, though, was the response from her cousins.

“They were going insane – ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, you’re the one, you’ve got it!’ And I did have it. But my parents couldn’t afford to send me to singing lessons.”

Instead, she’d go home from school and play records – Frankie Lymon, Frankie Valli, The Schoolboys – and learn them in their entirety. When her parents realised she was doing this every night rather than any homework her mother struck a deal.

“She said, ‘I’m going to put you at the Apollo. And then we’ll see how good you are.’ ”

The legendary Harlem music hall was owned by Frank Schiffman, whose son, Bobby, happened to have a crush on her mother who worked as a waitress in a café next door. Through him, she was able to get Ronnie, her sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra a slot.

Apollo audiences were notoriously unforgiving – egg hurling was de rigueur. Not that night, though. They loved Ronnie’s voice and, as she says: “That was my key – I knew I was good.”

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/10676805/Ronnie-Spector-interview-The-more-Phil-tried-to-destroy-me-the-stronger-I-got.html

Veronica Bennett was born in New York in 1943 to an Irish father and a mother who was part black and part Cherokee; Ronnie's great‑grandfather was Chinese. She was raised in Spanish Harlem, where, she says, her different looks ‑ light skin and long lush hair ‑ got her beat up regularly. Petite and not much of a fighter, she spent much of her time in the safety of her grandmother's apartment, in the company of her sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra ‑ both future Ronettes.
...
I grew up in a family of different races. And I loved my look, even though I got beat up a lot and my braids were cut off in school. I loved being different. And when I got with the Ronettes, we didn't do like the Supremes. Our hair would be up in these big beehives, with intentions for it to fall down during the show. I always made sure the pin wasn't tight. I loved getting messy.
Now, my eyes are a little Chinese. I wanted them all the way out. The three of us would sit in the mirror and see whose eyes would get out the longest with the eyeliner.

If, as you say, your grandmother kept you inside and so strictly supervised, how did you end up with such a tough street look ‑ all those slit skirts and that cigarette‑flicking motion you did onstage?

I got all my ideas from looking out of my grandmother's window on Amsterdam Avenue, seeing all the Spanish girls with cigarettes and big hair. I loved that tough look; that's what I wanted. [At our first gig] I remember walking out and the place going berserk because they had never seen a girl group look like this - they were used to little cocktail dresses. We walked out like, "Hey! We're here!"

Why do you think so many people consider "Be My Baby" to be the perfect pop record?

[Laughing] I think it was my voice. Of course it's the production and everything, too. But if you don't have that lead singer's voice ... I was very innocent, you know, and I think it's in the voice there.
I remember when Ellie [Greenwich], Jeff [Barry] and Phil were writing "Be My Baby." They were at Phil's penthouse, at 62nd Street and York Avenue. I was there, but Phil didn't want anybody to know. He needed my presence to get the feel of the song. I put my ear to the wall, and I'm hearing them discuss me: "She's so innocent, she's from Spanish Harlem, she has a grandmother who won't let her go out on the roof." So they were actually writing about this girl… "Ev'ry kiss you give me, I'll give you three" ‑ but on the cheek, you know. I didn't know about sex. It was so special and great 'cause I knew they were writing for me. Oh, and it made me feel like a queen. It made me want to sing it greater because I could hear them in there.

Source: http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/rolling%20stone/920S-000-043.html

Do you remember the first time?
I went to the amateur night at the Apollo when I was 13. I was scared to death. So we got my cousin Ira to sing. Ira walks out onstage, he opens his mouth and nothing comes out! I took the microphone and I started, "Why do birds siiing, so gay...", the audience went crazy. I was a hit! They loved it.
...
Who do you think you are?
I'm nobody. I'm not better, I'm just different. My hair is different, the way I perform onstage. I just look at the way all these performers are on stage. I'm just different. My great-grandfather was Chinese, my dad was Irish, my mother is part Cherokee and black. So I've got all this stuff in me, to please everybody.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/sep/20/comedy.comedy

One of Ronnie Spector's most rock and roll vocal choices was all about taking up space. She spent three days recording her vocals for "Be My Baby," and her shyness as well as her sense of sound quality influenced her preparation: "I'd do all my vocal rehearsals in the studio's ladies room," she says in her memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (1990), "because I loved the sound I got in there. People talk about how great the echo chamber was in Gold Star, but they never heard the sound in the ladies room."

Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/12/590891692/its-time-to-recognize-the-ronettes-as-rock-and-roll-pioneers

One later listener of Phil Spector’s productions, and an awe-struck discoverer of Ronnie Bennet’s voice, was Michael Enright, who later became a Time magazine correspondent, offering this description of Ronnie Bennett’s voice:

“…Ronnie had a weird natural vibrato — almost a tremolo, really — that modulated her little-girl timbre into something that penetrated the Wall of Sound like a nail gun. It is an uncanny instrument. Sitting on a ragged couch in my railroad flat, I could hear her through all the arguments on the street, the car alarms, the sirens. She floated above the sound of New York while also being a part of it — …stomping her foot on the sidewalk and insisting on being heard.”

Source: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/ronettes-be-my-baby/

In 1963, American Bandstand, the popular Philadelphia-based TV dance show with Dick Clark, was still going strong, having been broadcast nationally since August 1957.
...
Then, in September 1963, ABC moved Bandstand to Saturdays-only for one hour.
...

September 1963
(Saturday shows begin)

Sep 7: Neil Sedaka- “The Dreamer”
Sep 7: The Jaynetts- “Sally Go…Roses”
Sep 14: Dion- “Donna the Prima Donna”
Sep 14: Major Lance- “Monkey Time”
Sep 21: Skt. Davis- “Can’t Stay Mad…”
Sep 21: Garnett Mimms- “Cry Baby”
Sep 28: B. Rydell- “Let’s Make Love…”
Sep 28: The Ronettes- “Be My Baby”

Source: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/the-ronettes-american-bandstand/

Ronnie Spector can be found on facebook:

American Bandstand was the Ronettes first national TV show. I was so nervous to meet Dick Clark I was hiding behind the other two Ronettes. I thought I was going to faint, my knees were shaking so hard, I remember it like yesterday. When we toured with Dick's Caravan of Stars, he did not let anyone but the performers travel on the two buses, but he let my mother go to keep the guys away from us. That was Dick, so nice, sleeping on the bus, and he would always make sure all the artists were happy. On an off day he would take us all out for dinner and dancing. He loved doing what he did. I'll miss my friend Dick, and New Years Eve won't be the same to me.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/ronniespector/posts/american-bandstand-was-the-ronettes-first-national-tv-show-i-was-so-nervous-to-m/10150960733542786/

The Ronettes - Be My Baby [American Bandstand 1963]

Monday, 24 June 2019

Blog stats

My fourth blog stats (previous stats):

https://samsarictravelling.blogspot.com/2019/05/blog-stats-as-of-friday-may-24-2019.html

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This is my fifth blog stats:

As always, I would think almost all, or most, of the pageviews from Canada are my own. And I was just moments ago editing my 'World of Tanks memories' posts and these 'Blog stats' posts by putting links to connect them, so you see many views of those posts in the most recent stats because of it.

Now (23 Jun 2019 20:24 – 23 Jun 2019 22:23):