Tag: Buddhist Practice

Pope Leo declares his first miracle after divine intervention in Rhode Island

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Pope Leo XIV has officially declared his first miracle as pontiff, crediting the 2007 recovery of a dying newborn in Rhode Island to divine intervention following a physician’s desperate prayer.

The Vatican announced last month that the ailing child, Tyquan Hall, who was born prematurely via emergency cesarean section and left with no detectable pulse, made a full recovery after a doctor invoked the name of a long-forgotten 19th-century Spanish priest. 

The declaration elevates not just a miraculous story of life snatched from the jaws of death but also the potential sainthood of the humble cleric whose name was called in a moment of need.

‘We are thrilled that this recognition will move the cause of beatification and canonization forward for Venerable Servant of God Salvador Valera Parra,’ said Rev. Timothy Reilly of the Diocese of Providence, calling the papal pronouncement a blessing for Rhode Island and beyond.

The miracle marks the first to be authenticated under Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected American pontiff, and it may set in motion the canonization of Father Valera Parra, a priest who died in Spain in 1889 and had no known miracles to his name, until now.

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I am filing this under ‘Buddhism’ as well as ‘religion’ because many Buddhists, including me, also believe in miracles and paranormal phenomena.

All words, concepts and religions have overlapping meanings and describe overlapping realities.

Buddhism, as I understand it, is very open to this side of human thought and existence.

Philosophically, the Buddhist term emptiness does not at all mean ‘nothingness’ or ‘you don’t exist’.

It means all sensory and mental data is transient, like lightning, like dew, and may be wondered over, admired, even sought, but is not nailable to any wall of definite meaning. ABN

Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

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Abstract

A single dose of psilocybin, a psychedelic that acutely causes distortions of space–time perception and ego dissolution, produces rapid and persistent therapeutic effects in human clinical trials1,2,3,4. In animal models, psilocybin induces neuroplasticity in cortex and hippocampus5,6,7,8. It remains unclear how human brain network changes relate to subjective and lasting effects of psychedelics. Here we tracked individual-specific brain changes with longitudinal precision functional mapping (roughly 18 magnetic resonance imaging visits per participant). Healthy adults were tracked before, during and for 3 weeks after high-dose psilocybin (25 mg) and methylphenidate (40 mg), and brought back for an additional psilocybin dose 6–12 months later. Psilocybin massively disrupted functional connectivity (FC) in cortex and subcortex, acutely causing more than threefold greater change than methylphenidate. These FC changes were driven by brain desynchronization across spatial scales (areal, global), which dissolved network distinctions by reducing correlations within and anticorrelations between networks. Psilocybin-driven FC changes were strongest in the default mode network, which is connected to the anterior hippocampus and is thought to create our sense of space, time and self. Individual differences in FC changes were strongly linked to the subjective psychedelic experience. Performing a perceptual task reduced psilocybin-driven FC changes. Psilocybin caused persistent decrease in FC between the anterior hippocampus and default mode network, lasting for weeks. Persistent reduction of hippocampal-default mode network connectivity may represent a neuroanatomical and mechanistic correlate of the proplasticity and therapeutic effects of psychedelics.

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It is my understanding that the Buddha and/or the Buddhist tradition was and always has been well aware of psilocybin and probably other psychedelics and herbal drugs, like opium and cannabis.

In light of this, it is significant that the Fifth Precept for lay Buddhists proscribes only alcohol, and it does this very specifically by mentioning two types of alcoholic beverages (fermented and distilled) and nothing else. The Fifth Precept does not mention any other drugs.

As modern Buddhists, we can see that this conforms with what many of us have experienced with psychedelics and cannabis, among other ‘recreational’ drugs. Of course those drugs can be harmful but they can also do people a lot of good. Alcohol use, on the other hand, too often leads to very dangerous and spiritually stultifying mental conditions that do no one any good.

I have no problem with Buddhist teachers extrapolating the meaning of the Fifth Precept to include other drugs and sensory indulgences, but also believe that paying attention to the original meaning and its socio-environmental context (when people knew lots about plants) is important to keep in mind.

For more on this see: Are We Misunderstanding the Fifth Precept? ABN

Thai woman ‘filmed secret sex with Buddhist monks in blackmail plot that made her MILLIONS’

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A woman has been charged with extortion in Thailand after allegedly recording herself having sex with Buddhist monks and then demanding money to support her lifestyle.

Wilawan Emsawat, 35, known as Sika Golf, is accused of blackmailing senior monks at popular temples in several provinces, as well as money laundering and receiving stolen goods, the Bangkok Post reports.

Police said they had uncovered a cache of some 80,000 sexually explicit pictures and videos involving multiple senior monks at various temples across the country after sweeping devices found at her home.

One video shared by police shows a monk reclining on Emsawat on a sofa before she slaps him on the head.

Five mobile devices were said to contain clips and stills of her engaged in sexual acts with several monks, some of whom were still wearing their traditional orange robes, according to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB).

Emsawat was arrested on Tuesday at her home in Nonthaburi province.

The case has rocked Thailand and brought into focus perceived corruption within the temples.

Prayut Prathetsena, vice-president of the Dharma Army Lawyers Foundation, told Thai PBS that many temples are rich in cash and assets, managed by senior monks.

Monks earn money for leading private Buddhist ceremonies, she explained, and do not pay taxes on their earnings, ‘so their wealth simply accumulates’. Temples receive state funding, and some monks earn fortunes from selling temple amulets.

She explained that ‘it is not unusual for a senior monk to have 50 million baht (£1,147,958) in his personal account’ – in a country where the average wage is around 16,000 baht (£367.35) per month.

‘Neither the donors nor the monks are really at fault. The blame mostly lies with the system,’ Prathetsena told the outlet.

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Wise compassion is to encourage illegal migrants to leave, discourage them from staying

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McAurthur Park in LA

UPDATE: Wise compassion is a Buddhist concept. In our current situation firmly forcing illegal aliens to leave USA with a chance to return legally is wise and compassionate, both toward the illegals and established citizens of USA.

The left has been using illegals to grow their constituent numbers and to steal elections by using them to vote illegally. It is neither wise nor compassionate to allow this or to reward it by doing nothing.

In situations like this, the superiority of thoughtful Buddhist morality over dubious textual Christian morality is very clear.

The Christian maxims Love your neighbor or welcome the stranger should not be carried so far they destroy your country and the reasons the strangers came in the first place. ABN

Psychophysics gains a new law of sensory perception that also sheds light on subjective perception

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First we have to understand Weber’s Law:

Weber’s law, also called Weber-Fechner law, historically important psychological law quantifying the perception of change in a given stimulus. The law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus. It has been shown not to hold for extremes of stimulation. (Weber’s Law)

Hang in with this, it’s interesting.

About 200 years ago, the German physician Ernst Heinrich Weber made a seemingly innocuous observation which led to the birth of the discipline of Psychophysics – the science relating physical stimuli in the world and the sensations they evoke in the mind of a subject. Weber asked subjects to say which of two slightly different weights was heavier. From these experiments , he discovered that the probability that a subject will make the right choice only depends on the ratio between the weights.

For instance, if a subject is correct 75% of the time when comparing a weight of 1 Kg and a weight of 1.1 Kg, then she will also be correct 75% of the time when comparing two weights of 2 and 2.2 Kg – or, in general, any pair of weights where one is 10% heavier than the other. This simple but precise rule opened the door to the quantification of behavior in terms of mathematical ‘laws’. (NEUROSCIENTISTS MAKE MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN 200-YEAR-OLD PUZZLE)

What’s new today is Time–Intensity Equivalence in Discrimination (TIED):

We investigated Weber’s law by training rats to discriminate the relative intensity of sounds at the two ears at various absolute levels. These experiments revealed the existence of a psychophysical regularity, which we term time–intensity equivalence in discrimination (TIED), describing how reaction times change as a function of absolute level. (The mechanistic foundation of Weber’s law)

Simply stated TIED says that the intensity of the stimulus determines the time it takes to “just notice” a change in it and that that scales linearaly as intensity changes up or down. For example, changes in louder sounds are noticed quicker than proportionally equal changes in quieter sounds and this can be scaled mathematically.

TIED is a new theory and needs more research, but whether it works out perfectly or not, I think it shows something very important about our individual and shared subjective perceptions of words, gestures, meanings, intentions, implications, and so on including all semiotics.

At present, we do not have machines that can measure our subjective perceptions, but we can surely feel them. And with training, we can also decently calibrate them.

Most of us can already vaguely talk about our subjective perceptions of each other, but few of us know how to do that with the precision of Weber’s Law or TIED. This is because we are all unique and we all react uniquely to each other. On top of that, few are able to employ language efficiently enough to capture significant detail when describing subjective responses or impressions.

FIML provides a very useful method for isolating and calibrating individual, idiosyncratic subjective perceptions.

Consistent, repeated use of FIML gradually recalibrates and reorganizes the entire psychologies of both partners.

FIML has virtually no content.. FIML is a method, and as such it allows partners to gradually identify, isolate, measure, and reorganize their entire body of psychological data, however they construe it.

Statement Affirming the Continuation of the Institution of Dalai Lama, July 2, 2025

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(Translated from the original Tibetan)

On 24 September 2011, at a meeting of the heads of Tibetan spiritual traditions, I made a statement to fellow Tibetans in and outside Tibet, followers of Tibetan Buddhism, and those who have a connection with Tibet and Tibetans, regarding whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue. I stated, “As far back as 1969, I made clear that concerned people should decide whether the Dalai Lama’s reincarnations should continue in the future.”

I also said, “When I am about ninety I will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, to re-evaluate whether or not the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue.”

Although I have had no public discussions on this issue, over the last 14 years leaders of Tibet’s spiritual traditions, members of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, participants in a Special General Body Meeting, members of the Central Tibetan Administration, NGOs, Buddhists from the Himalayan region, Mongolia, Buddhist republics of the Russian Federation and Buddhists in Asia including mainland China, have written to me with reasons, earnestly requesting that the institution of the Dalai Lama continue. In particular, I have received messages through various channels from Tibetans in Tibet making the same appeal. In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue.

The process by which a future Dalai Lama is to be recognized has been clearly established in the 24 September 2011 statement which states that responsibility for doing so will rest exclusively with members of the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound Dharma Protectors who are linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. They should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition.

I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognize the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter.

Dalai Lama

Dharamshala
21 May 2025

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‘I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue’ — Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Reincarnation of the Dalai Lama

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THE DALAI LAMA has said that the 600-year-old Tibetan spiritual institution will continue after his death, and that his office will have the sole responsibility of naming his successor.

The announcement came on Wednesday through a video message at the start of a religious leaders’ meeting in the Indian Himalayan town where he has lived for decades.

“In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” he said, according to an official translation. The Dalai Lama also said he had received multiple appeals over the past 14 years from Tibetans in exile, Buddhists across the Himalayan region, Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China urging him to ensure the continuation of the institution.

“In particular, I have received messages through various channels from Tibetans in Tibet making the same appeal,” he added.

The announcement comes ahead of his 90th birthday on July 6.

The announcement of the institution’s continuation was welcomed by many Tibetans. Jigme Taydeh, a civil servant with the Tibetan government-in-exile, said, “Whilst we rejoice at this confirmation of its continuation, we stringently object to China’s interference and plans to install a puppet Dalai Lama. Neither the Tibetans nor the world would recognise such mischief.”

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Why we use the term semiotics

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The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question is best described as raw semiotics.

That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question.

This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on.

When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness, or intermingles with it, and gives rise to its states.

Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do.

It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only.

The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself.

In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy.

Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity. ABN

Who will be the next Dalai Lama? As he turns 90, the leader is making plans

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Having lived in exile since 1959, the Tibetan leader believes his successor must come from the scattered community living outside repressive Chinese rule

Tucked away behind a small green gate off a bustling street in Dharamshala, a former British hill station in northern India, schoolchildren in pristine blazers play in the intermittent monsoon rains. They may not know it, but it’s possible that one of them might be the future spiritual leader of a six million-strong community of Tibetans.

Outside, the city is buzzing. Next Sunday, July 6, the 14th Dalai Lama will turn 90. Along with his celebrations he will also address, after 88 years as the figurehead of the Tibetan people, the question of his succession. He is expected to announce that when he dies a living successor will take up his mantle; probably a young child just like he was when he was chosen.

“It would be best if he stays longer, until 113,” says nine-year-old Tenzin Wangmo, at the TCV school for Tibetan children. Her classmates are preparing to perform traditional guitar and dancing for next week’s celebrations.

Any one of them, part of Tibet’s second-largest community in exile based in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, could potentially be chosen as the next Dalai Lama. As could any of the thousands of Tibetan children living in India, some of them smuggled here and left behind by their families.

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