Interest Articles
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Report sees 7.6 million global 2007 cancer deaths
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 7.6 million people will die this year worldwide from various types of cancer, with lung cancer -- heavily driven by smoking -- killing 975,000 men and 376,000 women, the American Cancer Society said on Monday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1633064920071217 -
Attack in the galaxies
A black hole in a "death star galaxy" blasts a nearby galaxy with a powerful jet of radiation.
http://www.yahoo.com/s/763188 -
Old books.
Please msg me if you are interested in these books. I can post it to you to your mailing address FREE. (Singapore POST off course)
1. All in One One in All. The Nature of Interbeing. Thich Nhat Hanh.
"This body is not me. I am not caught by this body. I am life without boundaries. I have never been born. I will never die. Look at me. Look at the stars and the moon. All of them are me, manifestations of me. So smile to me, take my hand, say goodbye that we will see each other right away after this. We will see each other in every walk of life. We will recognize each other again and again, everywhere." ~Thich Nhat Hanh~
COMPLEMENTARY COPY
ISBN 981-05-1143-4
2. Two Masters, One Message. The lives and Teachings of Gautama and Jesus. Roy C. Amore
Two Masters, One Message provides a basic foundation for Christian-Buddhist dialogue and study, complete with a bibliography of Buddhist sources for further reference.
ISBN 0-687-42751-7
3. Bertrand Russell - Why I am not a Christian.
The title essay is followed by a statement of Russell's own beliefs, discussions of immorality, the misery caused by religion and the danger of looking to it for help.
'The most robust as well as the most witty infidel since Voltaire and he cannot fail to sharpen men's sense of what is entailed both in belief and unbelief.' - The Spectator
'There is no one who uses the English language more beguilingly than Russell, no one tho smoothes the kinks and creases more artfully out of the most crumpled weave of thought.' - The Times
'What makes the book valuable is life-long uncompromising intellectual honesty.' - Times Literary Supplement
ISBN 0 04 200028 9 -
Fossils of ancient tank-like mammal found in Andes
By Will Dunham
Wed Dec 12, 4:37 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists searching for fossils high in the Andes mountains in Chile have unearthed the remains of a tank-like mammal related to armadillos that grazed 18 million years ago.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/sc_nm/armadillo_fossil1_dc;_ylt=Am42v6sAQSOVb.TR3xl4rXkPLBIF -
Importance of teaching evolution noted
By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer
Fri Jan 4, 4:54 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_go_ot/teaching_evolution;_ylt=AoKEZ4gwPCvDNVqAn.PdKnayFz4D -
Discovery Channel on Shaolin Monks playing soccer.
...an example of Buddhist Sangha struggling to retain their traditional role while remaining attractive to younger recruits, on which its survival depends.--JK
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKnunmdH79g&feature=related
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lifZ9lJr1UI&feature=related
part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F3ytLIWmxc&feature=related
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The sangha will be having difficulty recruiting for this generation on, because in the past people easily have 8~10 children and are willing to give up their children to the sangha.Originally posted by sinweiy:Discovery Channel on Shaolin Monks playing soccer.
...an example of Buddhist Sangha struggling to retain their traditional role while remaining attractive to younger recruits, on which its survival depends.--JK
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKnunmdH79g&feature=related
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lifZ9lJr1UI&feature=related
part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F3ytLIWmxc&feature=related
/\
Nowadays, people only have 1 or 2 children, sometimes no children. Those that have children will not be willing to give away their only son/daughter to the monastery. -
Scientists to discuss how global warming affects diseases
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080111/sc_afp/czechhealthclimatediseasesciencewarming -
Extracted from:
MESSAGES FROM THE NEW DISCOVERIES IN SPACE PHYSICS
By Maosen Zhong (Ph.D)
Based on latest Cosmological Physics discoveries by NASA (American's National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the World's leading research agency in aerospace and physics; and corresponding teachings by the Buddha some 3000 years ago.
Key Discoveries:
- Distance is Not Real
- Time is Illusionary
- Things can be Created out of "Nothing"
- The Origin of Universe
Albert Einstein: Nobel Prize Winner, World Famous Scientist and Humanitarian, Times Magazine's 'Man of the 21st Century'
Distance is Not Real :
derived from Albert Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity' illustrated in following equation: < Lv = Lo √ 1 - ( v²/c² ) >
Lv=length of moving object; Lo =Length of stationary object; v=velocity of moving object; c=speed of light approx 300,000 km/sec;
NASA Astronomer, Dr Sten Odenwald concludes that:
"... objects can be at many places at the same time since distance is not real..."
Infinite Life Sutra:
"...the Buddha thus come without coming from anywhere; he leaves but without going anywhere. He was neither born nor will he pass away..."
Practices and Vows of Bodhisattva Universal Worthy of the Flower Adornment Sutra:
"In each of the innumerable Buddhas' Lands, I manifested transformation bodies as numerous as the number of fine dusts in incalculable number of Buddhas' Lands"
Time is Illusionary :
derived from Albert Einstein's 'Time Dilation Effects' illustrated by Einstein's 'Twin Paradox'
NASA:
Light signal slower than absolute light speed.
Theoretically, time can be stretched out from short to long intervals without any change to yourselves and your own objects.
Infinite Life Sutra:
"Buddha possesses unfathomable wisdom. He has no obstacles. In one single instant, He can dwell in innumerable billions of eons. But his body and all sense organs do not age because the Buddha¡¯s concentration and wisdom are boundless and free of obstructions."
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas can actually enter infinite past and future at 1 single moment.
Bodhisattva Universal Worthy says in the Flower Adornment Sutra:
"I can clearly behold the state of the future and combine all coming eons into one instantaneous thought. I can also penetrate all the eons of the past, the present and the future at one single instant."
Things can be Created out of ¡°Nothing¡±::
derived from Einstein's 'Principles of Equivalence of Mass and Energy' . E: Energy; m: mass; c: speed of light; and vice versa, m=E/c²
NASA Astronomer, Dr Sten Odenwald said that:
"Nature, has over the years presented to us with many physical situations where our intuition about how things ought to behave, has been shown to be absolutely false. For example, people age differently if they are moving, space can dilate, matter can be created out of pure energy; matter can be created spontaneously out of vacuum..."
Infinite Life Sutra:
"... all the things that are needed by the people in the Pure Land will be in abundance with no lacking. All the adornment things, such as palaces and beautifully decorated clothing, the fragrant flowers, the banners and umbrellas, will come forth just as one has wished or one has needed for. If a man wishes to take food, the 7 precious bowls and containers, which contain hundred kinds of food and drinks that are of different tastes will naturally appear in front of him and are filled to the brim. After eating, the food, drinks and containers will all disappear and to appear again when it's time for lunch..."
P.S. People in the Pure Land possesses highly advanced scientific powers - so that they can create things out of energy if they need them and convert these things back to energy after they have used them.
The Origin of Universe:
NASA Astronomer, Dr Sten Odenwald said that:
"... when physicists said 'nothing', they were being playful with the English language because we often think of the vacuum as being empty or nothing. In fact, Physicists now know fully well that the vacuum is far from nothing... Before the time of formation of universe, there is even no time, space or vacuum. So, the primary state of pre-universe period is far from being the 'nothingness' we might have in mind... we don't have the full mathematical theory for describing this state yet but It was probably 'multi-dimensional'... The nothingness that gives rise to the present universe was not nothing but it was not anything like the kinds of something we can think of today. We now have no words to describe it. And the one that we borrow from the Oxford English Dictionary are based on the wrong physical insight... What this means to us may never be fully understood...'
P.S. Pre-universe state is still obscured and incomprehensible to us.
The Buddha taught that the original state of the universe, referred to as the true self nature, neither come from somewhere nor goes anywhere; It is neither continuous nor separate; it is neither dirty nor clean; it neither increases nor decreases...
The Buddha uses the terms, 'unthinkable' and 'inexpressible' to describe this state.
It can however be 'understood' through meditation and deep concentration without wandering thought. In deep concentration when there will be no obstacles. At this moment, the true nature of ourselves and universe come forth. This level is so-called the Pure State of Enlightenment.
NASA Space Scientist:
The size of a universe when it was born, is 10 to the power of -33 centimeter or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 centimeter
Using an analogy, there are therefore 1 million of trillions of trillions of particles (which form a universe per particle) across the diameter of the smallest strand of our single human hair.
The Buddha said that "... there is no difference between the infinite and the infinitesimal; incalculable number of universes can emerge from just 1 single pore..."
NASA Space Scientist:
The speed of expansion from this tiny particle to a huge universe is incredibly high: 10 to the power of 59 times bigger in every second. That is within less than 1 thousandth of a second, the particle would have growth to a size bigger than our present solar system. Formation of our universe takes only 1 instant.
The Buddha said that "... the formation and extinction of the universes take only an instant ...";
this tiny particle is actually one's smallest wandering thought rising from the Pure Mind and instantly, this wandering thought forms our entire universe..."
When asked about our universe and other universes aside from ours, NASA Astronomer, Dr Sten Odenwald said that:
" ...according to General Relativity, our universe represents everything, including all space, time and galaxies; other universes are of totally different space and time completely outside our own space and time. Those universes do not now or ever will, in the future, have any physical contact with our universe. These other universes are laterally on the other side of eternity and infinity from our perspective ..."
The Buddha said that, "... incalculable universes exist in numerous different dimensions, but we, human beings, are unable to see them because of our wandering thoughts, differentiation and attachments. These things block our vision. When we let go of our wandering thoughts, differentiation and attachments, we will be able to clearly observe the entire universe and all the other universes... " -
Mediterranean diet wards off asthma, allergy: study
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL1447232420080115 -
Ancient dinosaur fossil haul returned to China
Reuters - Tue Jan 15, 6:55 PM ET
CANBERRA (Reuters) - A 100-million-year-old haul of dinosaur eggs and fossils from China and smuggled illegally into Australia was on Tuesday headed back to Beijing.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080115/sc_nm/australia_china_fossils_dc;_ylt=Aou6B.n12AS0USgEyBzhGgcPLBIF -
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Interesting place
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Amazing Old Stars Give Birth Again
SPACE.com - Mon Jan 21, 10:15 AM ET
Two old stars appear to be gearing up for a second generation of planet formation, a phenomenon astronomers say they have never seen before.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080121/sc_space/amazingoldstarsgivebirthagain;_ylt=Apgofam8bNES2NSIaM_v.AMPLBIF -
‘Demons in the Dark’
How scientists talk about UFO sightings.
By Charles Euchner | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 18, 2008 | Updated: 3:17 p.m. ET Jan 18, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/96014 -
Ruins of 7,000-year-old city found in Egypt oasis
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080129/wl_mideast_afp/egyptarchaeology
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Poll says quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth
LONDON: Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/entertainment/view/326769/1/.html
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Astronomers photograph one of the earliest cosmic objects ever seen.
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Who is Jesus? He's three people, says Deepak Chopra
By Michelle Nichols Thu Feb 21, 3:05 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Who is Jesus? According to spiritual guru Deepak Chopra, there are three interpretations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080221/en_nm/religion_chopra_dc;_ylt=ArNHlnPFfHghvvGbf7yBUR4DW7oF
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Originally posted by concerned_man: Who is Jesus? He's three people, says Deepak Chopra
By Michelle Nichols Thu Feb 21, 3:05 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Who is Jesus? According to spiritual guru Deepak Chopra, there are three interpretations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080221/en_nm/religion_chopra_dc;_ylt=ArNHlnPFfHghvvGbf7yBUR4DW7oF
From 'The Power of Now', Eckhart Tolle
Christ: The Reality Of Your Divine Presence
Don't get attached to any one word. You can substitute "Christ" for presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence.
Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if you realize that there is no past or future in Christ. To say that Christ was or will be is a contradiction in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived two thousand years ago and realized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: "Before Abraham was, I am." He did not say: "I already existed before Abraham was born." That would have meant that he was still within. the dimension of time and form identity. The words I am used in a sentence that starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like statement of great profundity. Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through discursive thought, the meaning of presence, of self realization. He had gone beyond the consciousness dimension governed by time, into the realm of the timeless. The dimension of eternity had come into this world. Eternity, of course, does not mean endless time, but no time. Thus, the man Jesus became Christ, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God's self-definition in the Bible? Did God say "I have always been, and I always will be?" Of course not.That would have given reality to past and future. God said: "I AM THAT I AM." No time here, just presence.
The "second coming" of Christ is a transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman. If "Christ" were to return tomorrow in some externalized form, what could he or she possibly say to you other than this: "I am the Truth. I am divine presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now."
Never personalize Christ. Don't make Christ into a form identity. Avatars, divine mothers, enlightened masters, the very few that are real, are not special as persons. Without a false self to uphold, defend, and feed, they are more simple, more ordinary than the ordinary man or woman. Anyone with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant or, more likely, not see them at all.
If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another. There were many people who did not recognize Jesus or the Buddha, as there are and always have been many people who are drawn to false teachers. Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot rec-ognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don't believe that the light is outside you or that it can only come through one particular form. If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised.
Use the master's presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no "mine" or "yours" in presence. Presence is one.
Group work can also be helpful for intensifying the light of your presence. A group of people coming together in a state of presence generates a collective energy field of great intensity. It not only raises the degree of presence of each member of the group but also helps to free the collective human consciousness from its current state ofmind dominance. This will make the state of presence increasingly more accessible to individuals. However, unless at least one member of the group is already firmly established in it and thus can hold the energy frequency of that state, the egoic mind can easily reassert itself and sabotage the group's endeavors. Although group work is invaluable, it is not enough, and you must not come to depend on it. Nor must you come to depend on a teacher or a master, except during the transitional period, when you are learning the meaning and practice of presence. -
Baseball slugger Prince Fielder, no lightweight at 6 feet, 262 pounds, says no to meat and fish.
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America's Unfaithful Faithful
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1716987,00.html
A major new survey presents perhaps the most detailed picture we've yet had of which religious groups Americans belong to. And its big message is: blink and they'll change. For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths. America's religious culture, which is best known for its high participation rates, may now be equally famous (or infamous) for what the new report dubs "churn."
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Earth's Final Sunset Predicted 
By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 2008 February 26
07:00 am ET"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp.
A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun's gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not.
Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years.
"Although people have looked at these problems before, we would claim this is the best attempt that's been made to date, and probably the most reliable," said astronomer Robert Smith, emeritus reader at the U.K.'s University of Sussex, who made the new calculations with astronomer Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. "What we've done is to refine existing models and to put the best calculations we can at each point in the model."
If 7.6 billion years doesn't sound like an urgent death sentence, don't relax yet. Regardless of whether Earth will ultimately be vaporized, as the sun heats up, our planet will become too hot to live on before then.
"After a billion years or so you've got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water," Smith told SPACE.com. "The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."
Nonetheless, scientists are curious about the ultimate fate of our planet after we are gone (like all previous hominids and more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, humans will probably go extinct, and it will likely happen sooner than a billion years).
Smith's earlier studies found that Earth would narrowly escape being engorged. As the sun ages and expands into a red giant star, it will shed its outer gaseous layers, thus losing mass and weakening its gravitational pull. Previous calculations found that this let-up would allow the Earth's orbit to shift outward, enabling the planet to slip free of the smoldering sun.
But this scenario doesn't account for tidal forces, and the drag of the sun's outer layers. As the Earth orbits the sun, its smaller gravitational pull isn't completely negligible — it actually causes the side of the sun closest to our planet to hoard more mass and bulge out toward us.
"Just as the Earth is pulling on the sun's bulge, it's pulling on the Earth, and that causes the Earth to slow in its orbit," Smith said. "It will spiral back and finally end up inside the sun."
In addition, the gas that the sun expels will also drag Earth inward toward its demise.
Smith's previous calculations had ignored these effects.
"We didn't think it mattered, but it turns out it does," he said. "You might say our previous models had a gap."
There may even be hope for Earth. Some scientists have proposed a scheme for down the road to use the gravity of a passing asteroid to budge Earth out of the way of the sun toward cooler territory, assuming there is life around at the time that is intelligent enough to engineer this solution.
"It sounds like science fiction, but there's a group of people who have quite seriously suggested that it might be possible," Smith said. "If it's done right, that would just keep the Earth moving fast enough to keep it out of harm's way. Maybe life could go on for as much as 7 billion years."
Smith's findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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http://www.jenchen.org.sg/vol8no2a.htm
These three calamities of fire, water and wind will not occur simultaneously, but each will take its turn. At that time, balance in space will be lost, planets of all the worlds will leave their orbits, and looking from the earth, one will see seven suns appear in the sky at the same time. The suns' fiery heat will burn up all the worlds. The destruction will reach the farthest depths of the Hell of Ceaseless Suffering, including all the worlds of the Three Thousand Great Chilocosm World of Desires, and even the 1st Jhana of the World of Forms.
http://www.dharmaling.org/component/option,com_glossary/func,display/letter,All/page,4/catid,25/Itemid,78/
Kalpa of destruction(tib.: jik pe kal pa) In the first nineteen small kalpas of the kalpa of decline, sentient beings in the six lower worlds from hell through the world of heavenly beings gradually disappearAt the beginning of the 20th eon, the rain stops and all vegetation dies, the sun supernovas, and splits into two. Later a third sun forms, and all rivers and streams evaporate. A fourth sun forms, and large lakes dry up. A fifth sun forms, and oceans dry up. A sixth sun forms, and continents go up in smoke. A seventh sun forms, and the planet burns up, which also causes the first level of the form realm to burn up. There are other kalpas of destruction by wind or water. There are also minor destruction eons where inhabitants destroy the planet with weapons, etc.