Current mood

 

Eagerly awaiting the full moon... 

Sweet sixteen

 

Kurukulla is a Tibetan Buddhist goddess who combines the traits of two rather different Hindu goddesses: Lalita Tripura Sundari and Kali. A link to a slightly apologetic article below. Some quotes follow...

>>>More than any other figure in the Buddhist pantheon, Kurukulla becomes the Buddhist goddess of love and sex, corresponding to the Western gooddesses Aphrodite and Venus. She is depicted as a voluptuous and seductive nude sixteen year old girl. Among the attributes she holds in her four hands, four arms being her most common manifestation, are the flower-entwined bow and arrow, reminiscent of the Western Eros and Cupid, although as the goddess of witchcraft, she is more akin to Diana.

>>>It may appear strange and ironic to us that Buddhism, originally the religion of celibate monks, should give birth to this attractive and seductive sex goddess.

>>>According to the texts, Kurukulla is sixteen years old because sixteen is the ideal number that signifies perfection, four times four. Her face is beautiful and her body voluptuous and alluring, as well as being red in color, because of her magical function of enchantment and magnetism.

>>>She wears a necklace of fifty freshly severed human heads dripping blood because she vanquishes the fifty negative emotions. She is dancing because she is active and energetic, her compassionate activity manifesting in both Samsara and Nirvana. She dances, treading upon a male human corpse because she enchants and subjugates the demon of ego. 

>>>She displays her fangs; she has three eyes and round breasts, being like a maiden sixteen years of age. Her tawny hair streams upward. She is adorned with five dried skulls (as her tiara), she has a long necklace of fifty freshly severed heads. She is adorned with ornaments of human bone and has a tiger skin across her thighs. She stands in ardhaparyanka dance position, with her left leg extended, upon a human corpse whose face shows to her left, amidst red rays of light and blazing masses of fire. 

Kurukulla: The dakini of magic and enchantments

Alcohol, thy name is Woman

 

In Greek mythology, the deity associated with wine is Dionysus. In other words, a male god. In Hinduism, by contrast, the deity associated with really strong forms of liquor and intoxication is...a goddess?! 

Varuni is sometimes said to be the wife of the Vedic god Varuna, sometimes his daughter. Apparently, Varuni was "demoted" to an asura (an anti-god or titan) when Indian civilization became more skeptical of heavy drinking! 

The picture above is Gemini´s very "civilized" take on Varuni. Link below to Wikipedia. 

Varuni

Reality the Beautiful

 

Friday again, here is a somewhat fanciful Hindu Goddess picture!

I aint no Doreen Virtue, dude

 

Three years ago, I took a short Religious Typology Quiz from the Pew Research Center and got the (surprising) result that I´m "Spiritually Awake", which apparently means that I was close to liberal female New Age believers?! Ahem...

Here is the summary definition from the quiz: "All Spiritually Awake Americans hold at least some New Age beliefs (views rejected by most of the Relaxed Religious) and believe in God or some higher power, though many do not believe in the biblical God and relatively few attend religious services on a weekly basis."

Here is another take: "For purposes of this report, the term “New Age” includes belief in psychics, astrology, reincarnation, and the belief that spiritual energy can be contained in physical objects like trees, mountains and crystals".

So I recently took the quiz again, and guess what? I´m *still* a darn Spiritually Awake person!

I don´t know, man. That category feels wrong, somehow. I just can´t see myself putting on the discarded New Age mantle of Doreen Virtue...  

Chant for luck

 

- Yo, where all my bhaktas at?

Edgy Thursday

 

 Craiyon doesn´t censor swastikas...

Chant and be happy

 

A funny picture of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra in a Swedish summer landscape! 

Dead as a fish tail

 

Overheard on the interwebs: "Fish aren’t really alive. They’re just less dead.”

Full spectrum bullshit?

 

Credit: Skalle-Per Hedenhös (sic)

Richard Carrier on the attack...again. An atheist-materialist take on consciousness, et cetera. 

Note the claim that some robots and smart cars may be (somewhat) conscious. Insects, on the other hand, aren´t conscious. Neither are octopi. Fish probably aren´t either: "They aren´t really alive, they´re just less dead". And if you´re not conscious, you can´t really feel anything either. So ants don´t feel anything when we dispose of them them using poison. The tuna didn´t feel anything when it was hooked and killed. Pigs do feel and experience things, but since they aren´t self-aware, their lives have no actual value to them. Like pigs to the slaughter! Human babies are more advanced than pigs (this is a veiled polemic against Peter Singer, methinks).

The "existential" consequences of the above are...interesting. So entire *civilizations* can be created simply on the basis of subconscious computation by non-sentient life-forms? I´m thinking of social insects such as ants, termites and honeybees. Where does that leave us in a wholly materialist universe? Note also that robots could (presumably) be made fully self-conscious. Finally, note that consciousness requires "modeling", which seems to imply that consciousness can only ever be "indirectly realist". Are ants direct realists?

OK, here is the link: 

Distinguishing Awareness, Intelligence and Consciousness