Were They Becoming Living Gods?

Back in 2014, online magick personality E. A. Koetting was arrested on methamphetamine and weapons charges. Koetting's "Become a Living God" online presence more recently took a huge hit after one of his fans decided to make a pact with a demon that involved him killing young women in exchange for winning the lottery. In a classic case of "that's not how any of this works," the disturbed fan did not in fact win anything and just went to prison.

Oddly enough, though, it seems that a group of Buddist monks in Thailand may have also been fans of this whole "Living God" thing. Or at least they were fans of the meth. From Vice:

A small Buddhist temple’s entire abbey of monks was defrocked, dismissed, and sent to rehab this week after every one of them tested positive for methamphetamine.

All four monks at a temple in Phetchabun province's Bung Sam Phan district, in central Thailand, were forced by police to take urine tests on Monday. All four of them, including the abbot, failed.

The monks were subsequently sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation, local official Boonlert Thintapthai told AFP, leaving the temple without holy men and raising concerns among local worshippers that they wouldn’t be able to conduct “merit-making”—that is, donating food to monks as a good deed.

It’s not clear why police targeted this particular temple, nor these particular monks, to test for drug use—but the action comes amid a broader national campaign to tackle the trafficking of illicit substances.

Personally I don't have a problem with people using substances to produce altered states of consciousness. From what I understand, though, meth is just a super-addictive stimulant without much in the way of effects that I would consider even bordering on spiritual. Anyway, my understanding is that Buddhist monks aren't even supposed to drink alcohol, so I would expect meth to be right out.

Meth apparently does make engaging in boring tasks for long periods of time easier, which maybe says something about what life at this particular temple was like. Or maybe doing it was just a lot more fun than sitting around meditating all day. Whatever the case, their "Living God" habit clearly caught up with them - like it usually does.

Nine-Tailed Fox on the Loose?

Here's an odd story out of Japan. An ancient stone that is said to have contained the spirit of a kitsume, a nine-tailed fox spirit, has cracked in half. Some have speculated that the breaking of the rock may have released the kitsume, which I guess would have then run off to do whatever nine-tailed fox things happen to be. Kitsumes are not exactly "demons" in the Western sense, but they are known to be tricksters and according to folklore this particular one is said to have attempted to kill the 12th-century Japanese emperor Toba.

A large volcanic rock said to immediately kill anyone that touches it, the Sessho-seki stone, is deeply embedded in Japanese mythology and is said to be the transformed corpse of the mythological Tamamo-no-Mae. Tamamo-no-Mae was supposedly a beautiful woman whose spirit was possessed by the nine-tailed fox, or kitsune, a demon spirit known for trickery and deception using disguise. Known to answer any question asked of her, Tamamo-no-Mae was part of a plot to seduce and kill Emperor Toba, who fell sick as a result. The fox spirit was exposed and hunted by two mythological warriors, and the spirit embedded itself into the Sessho-seki stone as a last resort, which released a poisonous gas that killed anyone who touched it.

The spirit supposedly haunted the rock, which was registered as a local historical site in 1957, until a Buddhist priest performed rituals to finally make the spirit rest. Now, it has been reported that the killing stone has split in two, likely as a result of natural erosion. According to the Guardian, the volcanic rock had been observed with cracks in several years ago, likely allowing water in, which helped erode it from the inside. That hasn’t stopped superstitions running wild, with tourists that have flocked to the demonic rock saying they "feel like they have seen something they shouldn't".

So I guess the question here would be, did they? Spirits can endure for long periods of time within objects, but without knowing more about the Buddhist ritual that put the spirit to rest it's hard to say whether it would still be present and/or dangerous. It is true that often when a object containing a spirit or spirit instance breaks the enchantment will break as well, and if this stone was truly magically containing the spirit, it might actually be on the loose. I will point out, though, that a crack through the object is usually sufficient to break the magick, so the kitsume could have in fact been released years ago when they were first noticed.

The world has been pretty messed up for the last few years. Could a thousand-year-old escaped trickster kitsune have anything to do with it?

Karma, But Not How You Think

Well, maybe not "you" personally. But definitely a lot of people.

The New Age version of karma comes from Theosophy, in which the real Eastern idea of karma got combined with the idea of "sin" from Christianity. In the United States, this is where the "pop culture" idea of karma comes from. Basically, you have a list of good actions (virtues) and bad actions (sins), just like in Christianity. But instead of being rewarded or punished in the afterlife, these actions are rewarded and punished right away. So if you do a bad thing one day, the next day something unpleasant will happen to you.

In Buddhism, karma doesn't work anything like that. It simply describes the law of cause and effect - stuff like I decide to put off going to the gas station longer than I should, and the karma of that is the risk of running out of gas. Or in social situations, if I treat someone badly they will eventually catch on and start treating me badly. The point is that in the original version of karma the outcomes are directly related to the actions taken in entirely mundane ways, whereas in the pop culture version they are mysteriously coupled by "goodness" and "badness" as defined according to an external ethical schema.

Now here's the story. Folks online are sharing this as "karma in action." I agree, but not the way they are thinking. This has nothing to do with the universe sending a fire truck to kill this person because racism is bad. I mean, racism is bad, but that has nothing to do with this accident.

A North Carolina woman who became infamous for multiple racist incidents caught on video has died after being struck by a fire truck. Rachel Dawn Ruit suffered fatal injuries after she was struck Monday by an emergency vehicle, just days after her arrest for a racist attack on a teenage girl and Muslim woman, reported WLOS-TV.

Not a Religious Facility?

Most Augoeides readers probably know the story of Pharaoh Akhenaten. For those who don't, he was the father of Tutankhamun, who is much more famous today even though he was a far less significant ancient Egyptian ruler. Akhenaten's most significant contribution to history is that he attempted to convert the nation of Egypt from polytheism to the monotheistic worship of Aten, the solar disk. After his death, the Egyptian religious establishment reasserted itself and took steps to erase Akhenaten from history.

In fact, Tutankhamun was born Tutankhaten in honor of the solar disk, and later changed his name to make peace with the priesthood of Amoun, the chief Egyptian deity prior to Akhenaten's reign. Where I'm going with this is that Akhenaten is not the first figure in history to propose a religious cult based on the worship of a single deity. Those were all over the place already. The difference was that Akhenaten invented the first religious system to employ a form of univalence - that is, "my religion is real and everybody else's is fake."

You might very well recognize that as a characteristic of religion in general if you have only studied Western religions. Both Christianity and Islam share that characteristic to one degree or another, and together they represent more than half of the world's believers. But to assume that all religions work the same way is fundamentally incorrect. Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, are not univalent.

For the latter, this has become a point of contention in the opening of a Buddhist center in Alabama. A judge ruled that because the Buddhist center would be open to members of all religions, it did not qualify as a religious facility.

An Alabama judge has upheld the City of Mobile’s decision not to grant a zoning application to the Thai Meditation Association of Alabama (TMAA). The application was denied on the grounds that the group’s meditation center does not qualify as a religious facility. The association is now considering appealing the decision.

The legal dispute goes back to 2015, when TMAA — currently located in a strip mall on a busy street — purchased a quiet and secluded property in a residential neighborhood to build a new center. The association planned to build a 2,400 square-foot meditation center, a 2,000 square foot cottage for visiting monks, a restroom facility, and parking. However, when TMAA applied to the city for approval to build its “religious facility,” the city denied the request on the grounds that the meditation center does not qualify.

Meditation Works

Last week's dramatic rescue of twelve teenage soccer players and their coach from an underground cave system in Thailand was all over the news. Not as well-reported, though, is how the coach managed to keep the boys calm throughout what must have been a pretty terrifying ordeal. As Vox reports, the coach had spent ten years at a Buddhist monastery and taught them meditation.

Rain trapped the group in the cave on June 23rd, and they were not found until July 2nd. That's eleven days during which they literally had no idea whether or not they would be found alive. The rescue effort took eight more days, and was not complete until July 10th.

“Look at how calm they were sitting there waiting. No one was crying or anything. It was astonishing,” the mother of one of the boys told the AP, referring to a widely shared video of the moment the boys were found. Turns out that their coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, who led them on a hike into the cave when it flooded on June 23, trained in meditation as a Buddhist monk for a decade before becoming a soccer coach.

According to multiple news sources, he taught the boys, ages 11 to 16, to meditate in the cave to keep them calm and preserve their energy through their two-week ordeal. And British diver Ben Reymenants, who was involved with the rescue operation, told Vox on Thursday that each of the boys did an hour of meditation with the coach before they were brought out of the cave between Sunday and Tuesday. “He could meditate up to an hour,” Ekapol’s aunt, Tham Chanthawong, told the AP. “It has definitely helped him and probably helps the boys to stay calm.”

Ekapol, 25, went to live in a monastery at age 12 after he was orphaned. According the Straits Times, he trained to be a monk for 10 years at a monastery in Mae Sai, Thailand, but left to care for a sick grandmother. He then was hired to be the assistant coach of the team, known as the Wild Boars. Coach Ake, as he is known, still maintains close contacts at the monastery. The abbot there told the Wall Street Journal he’s “a responsible young man who meditates regularly.”

As a teenager I loved caves and I still do. I dragged my parents to every cave tour on every vacation we ever took. I never have felt lost underground, or claustrophobic, or anything. But I can tell you that my high school self would have found this absolutely horrifying. Even being violently murdered is over quickly. This is sitting in the cold and damp, wondering if any future awaits you besides slowly starving or suffocating in the dark.

But meditation works. Focusing on the practice helped the boys remain as calm as possible under the circumstances, such that when rescuers arrived they seemed confused that they had been underground for as long as they had been. Keeping your attention on the present moment helps to pass the time, and helps you feel less depleted by boredom when all you can do is wait. And hey, it works great for practicing magick too!

Aibo Funerals

The Aibo, an early commercial robot developed by the Sony corporation, was the one of the first truly robotic pets. The device, fashioned to look like a small artificial dog, could follow basic voice commands and engage in fairly complex activities. In 2014 Sony terminated support for the robots, and over time they began to break and stop working. A Buddhist temple in Japan is now conducting funerals for broken Aibos that can no longer be repaired. If funerals are really for the living, this makes more sense than it seems to at first.

The firm stopped repairing malfunctioning Aibos in 2014, leaving owners whose pets were beyond repair unsure of how to dispose of their companions. Kofukuji, a 450-year-old temple in Isumi, near Tokyo, has conducted services for 800 “dead” Aibo dogs in recent years. In January, Sony released an upgraded version of Aibo that uses AI and internet connectivity to interact with its owner and surroundings. But the consumer electronics giant has resisted pressure from owners of the original Aibo to resume repairs of old models.

Instead, owners of defunct robotic dogs can send them to A Fun, a company that repairs vintage products, which passes them on to Kofukuji. After the service — which does not involve burial or cremation — the firm removes parts that can be used to fix less seriously damaged models. Many of the dogs are accompanied by notes written by their former owners. “I feel relieved to know there will be a prayer for my Aibo,” one said. Another wrote: “Please help other Aibos. My eyes filled with tears when I decided to say goodbye.”

Bungen Oi, one of the temple’s priests, said he did not see anything wrong with giving four-legged friends, albeit of the robotic variety, a proper send-off. “All things have a bit of soul,” he said.

The Aibo is basically a computer connected to some sensors and motors, so it's no more alive than a PC workstation. However, it also is true that the Aibo offered a totally new experience to its owners when it came out in 1999. You could interact with it just like you could with an animal and it would respond in a seemingly organic fashion. Even though this was all done with software and algorithms that are primitive compared to what computers can do today, it's easy to see how owners could become attached to their digital companions.

Some people out there probably see this as a move towards recognizing machines as having "souls" or something silly like that. While I think it's true that consciousness is a property of quantum information and quantum information is a property of matter, the Aibo has no more of this sort of consciousness than a modern smartphone does. And after all, it's not like we're holding funerals for dead iPhones. This is more about recognizing that humans easily become attached to machines that act as if they are alive.

Practical Magick Versus Mysticism

This article is a response to this post over on Talking About Ritual Magick, and is essentially an expanded version of my comment which you can read over there. Frater Barrabbas begins with what I think is a completely reasonable denunciation of hucksters in the occult community peddling magick as an end-all, be-all, instant panacea - to anyone who is willing to pay up. The New Age community went through that whole thing back in the 1970's, and what emerged was a culture of ten thousand dollar "become an instant shaman" weekend retreats. As serious magicians and occultists, we would be wise not to repeat that nonsense.

At the same time, though, I think the post goes a little too far in the opposite direction. Maybe it's something that I'm reading into it, but parts of it come off as a little dismissive of practical magick in general. I'll freely admit to having a bit of a chip on my shoulder regarding that perspective - I have heard it many times over the years from people who start out doing magick and get heavily into mysticism and/or meditation. Now I don't think there's anything wrong with either of those approaches, and there's also nothing wrong with deciding that practical work is not really your thing. But it is mine, and I never have understood why for some, the result of mystical work seems to be that they feel a need to denigrate the practices of others.

To be clear, I do not think that this is what Frater Barrabbas is doing. He's saying that from a non-dual perspective, practical magick is essentially pointless - and to be fair, this is entirely true. However, this is also true of striving for anything in your life, not just magick. Through meditation and mysticism it is true that you can train the mind to accept almost anything. Former OTO head Karl Germer famously relied on his mystical training to help him survive a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. And sometimes it's easier to train yourself to accept your place in the world than it is to transform your situation.

But should you? I'm convinced that the answer there is not "always," but it also is not "never." It's somewhere in between, and I have run into too many folks over the course of my life who at some point in their magical career have decided that "always" really is the best answer. I agree with the general principle that the eventual goal of magick is self-transformation and mystical attainment, but why not make your life circumstances better along the way? It also seems to me that practical work can sometimes reveal the nature of your will more simply and elegantly than meditation can. It gives you a benchmark for your practice that is objectively measurable, which is generally not the case with more subjective mystical work.

Dalai Lama Will Live 100 Years

China is not having a good year. With today's inauguration of incoming President Donald Trump, who railed against China as a "currency manipulator" and set aside years of American diplomatic policy by taking a call from the president of Taiwan, the Chinese government can't be happy. Furthermore, Trump's pledge to rein in outsourcing to Chinese firms could put a significant dent in the country's economy, should it come to pass.

And now there's this. At a festival celebrating his 80th birthday, the Dalai Lama, a longstanding thorn in the Chinese government's side, declared that he would live to be at least 100 years old. If accurate, that means he has at least twenty more years to spend advocating for a free Tibet, an issue that the Chinese government would dearly love to see just go away.

“Today, the people and deities of Tibet have made prayers for my long life. Doctors also suggest that I could live another 20 years or more. I’m 80 now; let’s plan to celebrate again when I’m 90,” His Holiness told the thousands of Tibetans and devotees, who welcomed the statement with a thunderous applause and cheers.

“Although there is no freedom in Tibet, people there too are praying for my long life, even if they can’t do so openly, but they have faith, devotion and a special connection with me. I’d like to thank you all,” His Holiness said, greeting Tibetans inside Tibet.

The grand two-day celebration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday was attended by a battery of top Indian leaders including Cabinet ministers Dr. Mahesh Sharma and Mr. Kiren Rijiju, Chief Minister Shri Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister Mr. Nabam Tuki, Ms. Viplove Thakur, Member of Parliament among others.

In fact, it was the first time in the history of Tibetan exile that a cabinet minister from the central government of India has visited Dharamshala to attend a Tibetan function. The leaders on their part also expressed their prayers for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s long life and implored him to take care of his health.

China has made some premptive moves to prepare for when the Dalai Lama finally passes away, such as writing into a law a ban on unauthorized reincarnation. Granted, it's hard to see how such a thing could be enforced, but the idea is to undermine the legitimacy of whoever is recognized as the Dalai Lama's next incarnation. Before that, they spirited away the child recognized as the next Panchen Lama, who traditionally "certifies" each of the Dalai Lama's incarnations.

Chinese government officials are likely hoping that the Dalai Lama passes away sooner rather than later, so they can put into practice these plans to undermine traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Twenty more years of the status quo will only frustrate them further, which provides a great incentive for the Dalai Lama to take care of his health and keep on living.

Fear the Mandala Coloring Books

So I can't tell if this article is a joke or not. The site I found it on appears to be serious, but if so it means that the poster is a serious idiot. Apparently "adult coloring books" are now a thing, and the poster is a Christian who is all worried because some of them contain mandalas found in the Buddhist tradition. This is a problem because, apparently, coloring a mandala is the same thing to this person as performing actual tantric Buddhist practices - which, since said person is a nut, are of course Satanic.

A mandala is that beautiful circle pattern that looks like it would be impossible to draw free hand. It is also a “spiritual and ritual symbol in Indian religions, representing the universe. In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe.” (Wikipedia).

A mandala is used in tantric Buddhism as an aid to meditation. They meditate on the image until they are saturated by it. They believe that you can merge with the deity by meditating on the mandala. “A mandala is also visualized (dhyana) by the yogin whose aim it is to merge with the deity.”

Focusing on mandalas is a spiritual practice where you merge with “deities”–this practice opens the door to demons.

The thing is, how is the devil going to get Christians to meditate on mandalas?

No Christian would put one in their house and sit and stare at it for an hour, chanting the sacred word!

But if the enemy can get a Christian to stare at a mandala because they are coloring it, he can have them absentmindedly focus their attention on the image and they will unknowingly open up their subconscious to this image in almost the same way.

There are a couple of problems with this idea. First off, I have no concept of why anyone would be interested in an "adult coloring book." I hated coloring when I was a kid and I've never really been able to see the appeal. But to each their own, I suppose. Second, tantric Buddhist practice requires empowerment from a lama, a mantra, a specific meditation technique, and a whole series of complex visualizations that I'm pretty sure nobody is going to be doing sitting at a table coloring. You have to do all of that together for it to count as spiritual practice.

So it's not the same at all, and I suspect this individual only thinks so because they don't understand Buddhist practice at all. To be fair, it sounds like in their world that understanding Buddhist practice would be the same as worshiping the Devil, and of course they can't have that. But they need to understand that mandalas aren't magic - that is, "magic" as in fantasy novel bullshit. They don't "open portals to demons" just by appearing on a page, even if they had anything to do with Christian demons in the first place.

So as I said, I hope it's a joke, but the more nonsense from these Poor Oppressed clowns I see, the less hope I hold out for much of humanity. That mandala I have at the top of this article is that of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion. If mandalas work the way this poster says they do, maybe it will somehow help just by sitting there.

Theosophical Karma as Toxic Synthesis

Moloch has a good article up discussing the concepts of karma and the "threefold law" as put forth by many Wiccans. I would expand that scope a bit, since the concept of karma he's talking about reaches much of the modern esoteric scene. For example, the vast majority of New Agers seem to subscribe to it as well, and their numbers are much larger than those of Wicca. Furthermore, a lot of modern witches eschew the concept entirely, or treat it as a guideline rather than a law.

Moloch covers how this concept of karma made its way into Western esotericism by way of Theosophy and how it doesn't actually make much sense and gets applied in silly ways. I agree with all of that. But let me be clear - I'm not writing this to denigrate the concept of karma as it actually exists in Eastern religions such as Buddhism. In fact, the Theosophical version of karma is entirely different. It's what I call a toxic synthesis, a combination of Eastern and Western ideas that results in something far worse than the principles that it combines.

In Buddhism, karma simply refers to the law of cause and effect. Buddhism teaches emptiness of phenomena as the key to avoiding attachment. But karma points out that, for example, even if you can "realize the emptiness" of a bus speeding towards you, it's still likely to kill you if you don't get out of the way. Likewise, you can "realize the emptiness" of polite social interaction, but if you treat other people badly they'll eventually decide that you're an asshole and start avoiding you. So this form of Buddhist karma is eminently practical. It has nothing to do with mysterious retribution wreaked by "the universe" for misdeeds.

That's where Theosophy comes in.

Evidence for Reincarnation?

Reincarnation is a prominent feature of both Hinduism and Buddhism, but among Western occultists it has something of a bad rap. The problem is that many New Age systems have co-opted the idea and removed it from its original context. Also, it seems like half the New Age reincarnation enthusiasts out there were all famous and powerful people in their past lives, often with many individuals latching onto the same famous identities. Even in Thelema, people claiming to be the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley have become something of a running joke because it seems like every year more of them pop up on the Internet.

Tibetan Buddhism includes detailed and technical practices related to reincarnation, as it is believed that advanced lamas called Tulkus can maintain some degree of continuous awareness as they transition to their next incarnation. A Tulku will often provide some details about where this next incarnation will be born, and monks assigned to search for the proper child will go from there. One of the best-documented of these searches was that which identified Tenzin Gyatso as the current Dalai Lama. As a small child, Gyatso was able to pick out items belonging to the previous Dalai Lama from a collection of relics with complete accuracy.

Recently a small boy in Ohio claimed to have lived a previous life as a woman whose name was Pamela.

Little Luke Ruehlman of Cincinnati, Ohio, claims to be the vessel for the reincarnated spirit of a woman named Pamela Robinson, who died in a Chicago fire in 1993—at least, that's what his mother Erika said he told her.

"I was like 'who is Pam?'" Erika Ruehlman told WJW earlier this month. "He turned to me and said, 'Well I was.' I said 'What do you mean you were?' He was like, 'Well I used to be, but I died and I went up to heaven and I saw God and eventually God pushed me back down and when I woke up I was a baby and you named me Luke.'"

Erika was skeptical, and started asking more questions. After determining all the details she could, she researched the name, location, and date. And it turned out that Pam was in fact a real person.

Mummified Monk Still Alive?

A Buddhist expert has claimed that a mummified monk found in Mongolia is still alive, in a deep state of meditation called "tudkam." The remains are about 200 years old and show a remarkable degree of preservation, though from all outward appearances the body is completely mummified and shows no signs of life.

According to the same expert, Dr. Barry Kerzin, the tudkam state is a predecessor to the attainment of the "rainbow body," a transformation in which the body is converted in some fashion to "pure light." I have heard reports of lamas entering tudkam at the moment of physical death, and apparently their bodies do not seem to cool normally even after more than a week. But of course that's not nearly as long as two centuries.

Forensic examinations are under way on the amazing remains, which are believed to be around 200 years old, having been preserved in animal skin. But one expert has insisted the human relic is actually in ‘very deep meditation’ and in a rare and very special spiritual state known as ‘tukdam’.

Over the last 50 years there are said to have been 40 such cases in India involving meditating Tibetan monks. Dr Barry Kerzin, a famous Buddhist monk and a physician to the Dalai Lama, said: ‘I had the privilege to take care of some meditators who were in a tukdam state.

‘If the person is able to remain in this state for more than three weeks – which rarely happens – his body gradually shrinks, and in the end all that remains from the person is his hair, nails, and clothes. Usually in this case, people who live next to the monk see a rainbow that glows in the sky for several days. This means that he has found a ‘rainbow body’. This is the highest state close to the state of Buddha’.

It seems to me that observation of the mummy makes for a perfect test of the "rainbow body" effect. If the monk is indeed still alive in some sense but on the way to accomplishing the transformation, perhaps we could capture it on a security camera or something. A few of these transformations allegedly took place in the last century, listed here. But as far as I know it has never been directly observed.

It can't be a matter-to-energy conversion because the mass of the body would yield energy far in excess of that produced by even hundreds of nuclear explosions and nothing of that magnitude has ever been reported. But if it's real, what else could it be? Suffice it to say that I would love to be able to study a real case and make some sort of scientific determination.

Dalai Lama Will Reincarnate, No Matter What

Chinese efforts to regulate Tibetan reincarnation have reached a new low. Last month, the 14th Dalai Lama issued a statement that it was possible he might not reincarnate, and Chinese government officials were not amused. They issued their own statement to the effect that the Dalai Lama would reincarnate whether he liked it or not, and that his next incarnation would be chosen by them.

In an interview on Sunday, the 14th Dalai Lama (born Tenzin Gyatso) was quoted by the German paper Die Welt as saying that perhaps it's best for the Dalai Lama to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. “We had a Dalai Lama for almost five centuries. The 14th Dalai Lama now is very popular. Let us then finish with a popular Dalai Lama." This quote was quickly picked up by papers around the world (though it's worth noting the Dalai Lama's camp says his quote was taken out of context).

For China, which invaded Tibet in 1951 and beat back a political uprising by Tibetans in 1958, the idea that there would be no more Dalai Lamas was a bridge too far. China has long viewed the current Dalai Lama as a dangerous political separatist, calling him at one point "a wolf in monk's clothing."

A political tussle over reincarnation may bring a smirk to the faces of some, but for Tibetans inside China and living in exile it's serious business. The title of Dalai Lama stretches back to 1391 and is believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be an unbroken line of reincarnations of the saint of compassion Avalokiteśvara. Since the 17th century until 1962, the Dalai Lama also controlled the Tibetan government, and 14th Dalai Lama remained the head of state for the Central Tibetan Administration, made up of Tibetans in exile, until formally resigning from the role in March of 2011.

It sounds ridiculous, but China has done it before. When the last Panchen Lama died, the Chinese announced that they had identified his successor as Gyaincain Norbu, while the current Dalai Lama and other Tibetan authorities instead recognized Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. Nyima went missing at the age of six, while Norbu went on to assume the office of the Panchen Lama in an official capacity in China, even though he is considered illegitimate by many Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama later clarified his statement by adding that he planned on leaving whether he would reincarnate or not up to the Tibetan people, but needless to say the Chinese were not satisfied with that either. It seems that no matter what happens or what the Tibetan people want, the Chinese will be naming their own Dalai Lama when the current one passes away, and the selection will most likely be quite controversial.

What Poor Oppressed Christians are Fighting For

If any of you have doubts about what the Poor Oppressed Christians really want, this story should settle them. Regular Christians - the vast majority of them - just want to practice their religion and be left alone. Poor Oppressed Christians, on the other hand, want to be granted special privileges so that they can feel like they're better than everyone else who doesn't conform to their faith. A judge in Louisiana recently ruled against a teacher who openly ridiculed a Buddhist student, describing his beliefs as "stupid," and included a test question that required students to profess Christian belief or be marked down.

The student, known as C.C., was asked by sixth-grade teacher Rita Roark to answer the following question on a test: “ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” When C.C. failed to respond “Lord,” Roark responded “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.” She also frequently denigrated his Buddhist faith, as well as the Hindu faith, referring to both as “stupid.”

When his parents complained to Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb, they were told that “this is the Bible belt,” so they should expect to find the Christian God in the classroom. Ebarb advised them that if they wanted an ungodly classroom, they should transfer C.C. to a school where “there are more Asians.”

Judge Elizabeth Foote of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana sided with C.C. and his parents, citing that Roark’s behavior — and the school’s decision to defend it — clearly violated “the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

It should be noted that the student in fact responded to the question with "Lord Buddha," which prompted the teacher's response. He didn't refuse to answer, he just refused to pay proper deference to the Poor Oppressed Christian God. I honestly can imagine few situations more un-American than this one, and I'm glad to see that the judge ruled against it. But this is the world the Poor Oppressed Christians want, a world in which they are recognized by all public institutions as superior and anyone who dares to suggest otherwise is attacking their civil rights.

Tibetan Buddhists Protest Dalai Lama

There's a headline you don't see every day. The Dalai Lama is one of the most respected Buddhist teachers in the world, and while members of other religions don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with him, Tibetan Buddhists generally rally behind him. However, his reign has not been without controversy, one of which is his ban on Buddhists worshipping a deity known as Dorje Shugden. Shugden practitioners see the ban as an attack on their tradition, and have been protesting the Dalai Lama's recent tour through southern California.

Among those protesters was Len Foley, a Buddhist who is also a Shugden practitioner. He was in Santa Clara on Monday morning along with others protesting the Dalai Lama for "abusing basic human rights." "The Dalai Lama is posing as a man of peace and a man of wanting to unify different cultures, but in reality he's creating vast divisions throughout the Tibetan community," Foley said.

The Dalai Lama spoke this morning about compassion and business at the Leavey Event Center Santa Clara University. He himself was a Shugden practicer, but has since banned the practice from his formal religious teachings. The Dalai Lama has stated the Shugden spirit "arose out of hostility to the great Fifth Dalai Lama and his government," according to advice posted on his website. The post also outlines the Dalai Lama's concerns that worship of the deity could create sectarianism among Tibetan Buddhists and devolve the practice into a kind of "spirit worship."

"It is not at all on the basis of a change of mind arising from a new thought that I have restricted the practice of Dolgyal Shugden," the Dalai Lama stated in a March 2006 speech to a Tibetan-dominated audience. "... Gradually I came to have many major doubts about the external, internal and secret aspects of it and about developments concerning it. Finally I looked up the works of the previous Dalai Lamas and for the first time came to realize the error in practicing Dolgyal; as a result I stopped it."

The problem is this - Dorje Shugen is seen as a "dharma protector" specific to the Dalai Lama's Gelugpa lineage, which is only one of four Tibetan Vajrayana traditions. Part of Shugden's function is to protect the Gelugpa school from "corruption" by ideas said to emerge from the Nyingma school, the oldest tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

One of the Dalai Lama's longtime goals has been to bring the four traditions into harmony with one another, which he eventually decided doesn't sit well with a practice aimed at protecting one school from the "evil teachings" of another. Shugden practitioners, on the other hand, see it differently, and claim that they have been ostracized by some members of the Tibetan community in response to the Dalai Lama's decree.

Different Religions, Same Scandals

Most of the time in the United States when a scandal emerges surrounding a religious leader, the leader in question is Christian. That's not surprising, as Christianity is by far the majority religion in America. But this story out of Thailand reminds us that corrupt religious leaders can be found in every spiritual tradition. Wirapol Sukphol, a Buddhist monk, is at the center of a scandal involving sexual misconduct, fraud, and the amassing of $32 million dollars in assets. Sound familiar?

Despite the vows he took to lead a life of celibacy and simplicity, Wirapol had a taste for luxury, police say. His excesses first came to light in June with a YouTube video that went viral. It showed the orange-robed monk in aviator sunglasses taking a private jet ride with a Louis Vuitton carry-on. The video sparked criticism of his un-monkly behavior and a stream of humorous headlines like, "Now boarding, Air Nirvana."

Since then, a long list of darker secrets has emerged – including his accumulated assets of an estimated 1 billion baht ($32 million). This week, authorities issued an arrest warrant for the disgraced monk after having him defrocked in absentia. Wirapol was in France when the scandal surfaced after leading a meditation retreat at a monastery near Provence. He is believed to have then fled to the United States but his current whereabouts are unknown.

The arrest warrant implicates him on three charges including statutory rape, embezzlement and online fraud to seek donations. He is also under investigation for money laundering, drug trafficking and manslaughter for a hit-and-run accident. Authorities are struggling to figure out how he amassed so much money.

It truly is remarkable how this scandal seems so similar to our own despite all the differences between Christian and Buddhist beliefs. It just goes to show that no matter what spiritual tradition we follow, we're all human and power has a corrupting influence on many if not most people. Whether that power is religious or political seems to matter very little.

The World's Happiest Man?

Brainwaves are at best an indirect measure of consciousness, but that fact alone does not render them useless for assessing an individual's degree of realization. Back in 1999 neuroscientist James Austin reviewed the existing studies on advanced meditators and concluded in Zen and the Brain that the intensity of brainwaves in the gamma range seemed to correlate closely with the reported quality of spiritual experiences. Brainwaves are a measure of the overall firing rate of neurons as recorded by an electroencephalograph (EEG). Researchers classify these waves into six frequency categories. Delta has a frequency of up to 4 Hz, Theta from 4-8 Hz, Alpha and Mu from 8-13 Hz, Beta from 13-30 Hz, and Gamma 30 Hz and above. The latter, therefore, represent the highest frequency waves that EEG scans have found.

Researchers have now announced that during deep meditation the brain of Matthieu Ricard, a colleague of the Dalai Lama, appears to produce the highest level of gamma waves ever measured. This prompted popular media outlets to announce that Ricard had been identified as "the world's happiest man," which is perhaps a bit of a stretch given the subjectivity happiness. Based on the previous research, though, a solid case can be made that at the very least he is one of the most realized. The EEG may not be a genuine consciousness measure, but it certainly provides a great deal of insight into the states of consciousness reached during meditation and other similar practices.

The brain scans of Matthieu Ricard, a renowned Buddhist thinker, show that his gray matter emits a quantity of gamma waves "never reported before in the neuroscience literature" when he meditates on compassion, a scientist says. Gamma waves are associated with memory, learning, attention, and consciousness.

The Saga of Nazi Space Buddha

This story has been making the rounds on the social networking sites lately, and let's face it - any headline that includes Nazis, space, and Buddha is going to get some attention. It refers to a 24 centimeter Buddhist statue of the deity Vaisravana that was taken back to Germany by the Nazis in 1939, perhaps because it depicts a swastika symbol on the figure's breastplate. Between 10 and 20 thousand years before that, though, the metal from which the figure is carved actually fell from space. The statue was in fact made from a piece of a meteorite that struck the earth along the border between Siberia and Mongolia.

More precisely, Buchner's team has managed to tie the statue to a known meteorite – the Chinga ataxite, which fell to Earth between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago near the border between Siberia and Mongolia. It fragmented as it fell, and just two pieces heavier than 10 kilograms were known before the new analysis. The "Space Buddha", as Buchner's team has dubbed the statue, is the third such piece, at 10.6 kilograms.

"Having looked at some of the published trace element data for this artifact, it looks pretty convincing to me that this is very likely originated from Chinga iron meteorite," says Meenakshi Wadhwa, director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Other venerated objects are thought to have had similar extraterrestrial origins – including the Black Stone in Mecca, Saudi Arabia – but Wadhwa says it is difficult to verify these assumptions because the objects have never been fully analysed scientifically. And none of these supposed meteorite fragments has been carved into a religious sculpture, making the Space Buddha the only one of its kind.

Regulating Reincarnation

For centuries China has been ruled by bureaucracy in one form or another. The rules and regulations put in place by the Imperial government were byzantine and exacting, and the current communist government is no different in this regard. China has one of the few governments in the world that actively censors Internet content, and in fact this article could result in Augoeides being blocked in all of China.

The communist government of China is officially atheist and is particularly harsh to religions of all sorts, from modern movements like Falun Gong to ancient systems of spiritual practice such as Tibetan Buddhism. The latest move by the Chinese against Tibetan lamas rises to the level of the ridiculous - the Chinese have recently passed laws that, in theory, regulate reincarnation.

China tells Tibet's living Buddhas to apply for reincarnation

Aside from the offensiveness of the very idea, the technician in me wonders how this could possibly work. I suppose you could construct a nationwide magical field that would be the reverse of the "butterfly net" that Aleister Crowley wrote about in Moonchild - it would only allow the incarnation of souls within its boundaries that matched certain criteria defined at a master control point. There a number of ways to set this up, but they all are pretty advanced magical operations and I'm guessing the Chinese have not in fact built such a thing.

That means that aside from political posturing guaranteed to offend Tibetan Buddhists everywhere the law is essentially pointless. Without some magical means of blocking reincarnation it seems to me that this is one of those regulations that will prove impossible to enforce. In fact, given the current political situation it surprises me that any Tibetan lama would choose to be reborn in Tibet. There are certainly less risky options in the world, considering that at least one reborn lama was simply spirited away by the Chinese never to be seen again.