Mouth ulcers — also known as canker sores — are a sign of vitamin B12 deficiency
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1816- post tambora
In China there was a massive famine. Floods destroyed many remaining crops. The monsoon season was disrupted, resulting in overwhelming floods in the Yangtze Valley. In India, the delayed summer monsoon caused late torrential rains that aggravated the spread of cholera from a region near the Ganges in Bengal to as far as Moscow.[7] Fort Shuangcheng, now in Heilongjiang, reported fields disrupted by frost and conscripts deserting as a result. Summer snowfall or otherwise mixed precipitation was reported in various locations in Jiangxi and Anhui, located at around 30°N. In Taiwan, which has a tropical climate, snow was reported in Hsinchu and Miaoli, and frost was reported in Changhua.[8] In Japan, which was still exercising caution after the cold-weather-related Great Tenmei famine of 1782–1788, the cold damaged crops, but no crop failures were reported, and there were no adverse effects on population.
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ky
That’s a darn good question, and it deserves a totally honest answer.
The answer is: Any kind of ‘enlightenment’ that is revered by spiritual communities and traditions, the kind those communities/traditions promise can be ‘attained’ and ‘experienced’ by an ‘individual,’ is not enlightenment. It’s just an idea of enlightenment, a memory of enlightenment, of some kind of ‘permanent bliss.’ It’s just the concept of enlightenment. All traditions, scriptures, and communities that form around them are just more concepts, not actual enlightenment.
The event that so many of those spiritual communities and traditions promise is not true enlightenment, but simply happiness, permanent peace, the end of suffering. Everybody, everybody, wants permanent peace and an end to their suffering, so we are all highly attracted to any teachings, traditions and masters who say they, or their community, can deliver that. That is why we tend to revere them above all others promises life has to offer. We’ll revere anything that promises permanent bliss:-) We all want permanent happiness, but that kind of happiness is just an idea in the limited, impermanent mind. Reverence itself is just a misplaced mental concept based on the illusion that someone or something is higher, superior or more enlightened than You.
Actual enlightenment has nothing to do with solving your life’s problems or bestowing you with permanent happiness. It’s so ordinary - it really is just What Is - no one would ever revere it. “What? You mean enlightenment won’t give me, personally, an experience of constant cosmic bliss or solve all my problems? It’s just Being, just being in the flow of the Being, being with everything just As It Is? Screw that, I’ll pass!”
Some will insist the early reverence we feel for a scripture, guru or spiritual community, something outside of ourselves that we hold as “special” and promises peace & liberation, is a necessary portal until we discover that there is nothing outside of our Self and nothing to attain. That’s fine, as long as we eventually revere the True One Self and True Enlightenment as much as we revere these outer concepts…and then let go of all reverence, all traditions, all mental concepts, and all ego-mind desire for anything to be other than It Is.
You can ‘start’ your ‘non-journey’ for enlightenment in a tradition or a spiritual community, but if you ever want to reveal the Supreme Enlightenment that is already Yours, You must be utterly, irretrievably alone. There is only the Self, and it is already ‘enlightened.’ So “who” is to ‘arrive’ at some cosmic, permanent-bliss event, and how, if all there is, is The Self?
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Not really.
Enlightenment is the clarity of thought-free, reaction-free consciousness.
Ramana Maharshi used to say what he has is available right now, for all.
He didn’t experience himself as different from anyone else.
But he didn’t deny that he’d realized the Self.
He would put his finger in front of his eye and say:
See how this little finger obscures a whole mountain!
The personal mind obscures infinite bliss.
If you put your finger in front of your eye, it won’t harm your eyesight.
But the fact that your eyesight is unimpaired doesn’t mean you’re seeing the mountain.
Those who have removed their finger are just being honest when they describe the horizon.
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Diet is a big factor. If you eat very little sugar, little processed food, and mostly a very simple diet of roti, dal, some fruits and nuts, etc., like most sadhus/babas/yogis do, insects are much less attracted to your body. You smell and taste different. This has been widely reported by many people practicing “primitive” diets and the like. It takes a while to cause this change though.
This is also one reason why many of them rub their bodies with ashes. Mosquitoes and most other insects hate the scent of ash, associating it with dangerous forest fires and the like, and are repelled by it. Even better, sit near an actual burning fire, as many sadhus do.
Also, as Mita Shah correctly says in his answer, there are various herbal remedies that they use to protect themselves from insect bites and stings. Some of these are given in the Atharva Veda, in the Sanhitas of Ayurveda, and in various other Shastras, and many more are passed down orally.
Once you start getting into a deep Yogic state, your body’s metabolic functioning shifts. You sweat less, breathe less, emanate less body heat, etc. - all the ways that mosquitoes locate hosts. And if such an advanced yogi does get an occasional bite, it won’t bother them.
If you just want to practice meditation in the forest, go ahead and wear clothes and use natural bug spray. You don’t have to emulate these intensely dedicated specialists. They didn’t just walk into the forest and start doing what they’re doing now; they learned from a Guru, slowly, over many years.
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jk
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GUBLOC
The mind lives in a building with no windows, and it spends all its days rearranging the furniture.
In other words, the mind cannot see the world as it is.
Everything the mind sees it interprets in terms of what it has experienced or thought before.
To use another metaphor, the mind is like a library.
It’s the accumulation of all our thoughts and beliefs, and whenever something new comes up, its default approach is to go to the library to find some concept or idea that might work.
As such, the mind is forever backwards looking. It is unable to see anything without the contamination of the past.
In this way, the mind is a mechanical way to approach and live life.
So if the mind can’t see out of windows, what can?
Awareness.
Only awareness can see things fresh and anew.
When the mind doesn’t contaminate the experience, we are able to perceive it more deeply and intimately - without the division of life into me and the world, good and bad, or known and unknown.
Only awareness can ever be aware.
The mind exists in awareness, but it itself is not aware and often works to obscure the very awareness it’s made of.
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In 1901, Sivaprakasam Pillai approached Ramana Maharshi and asked him an excellent question:
“Who am I?”
Sri Ramana was delighted that he’d asked such a fundamental question.
“Sat-Chit-Ananda,” he replied.
This means: Being, Consciousness, or Bliss.
All three terms equally describe what we actually are.
We exist; we know we exist, and the very nature of our existence is happiness.
This is the core of Sri Ramana’s teaching:
We are the happiness we seek.
We are as inseparable from happiness as water is from wet.
We feel separate only because we are temporarily distracted.
His advice is to turn inward and examine the nature of the one who seeks happiness.
You’ve been looking everywhere for the diamond in your pocket.
If this sounds intellectual, try it this way:
Another word for turn inward is surrender.
“Enlightened” people have surrendered the story of unenlightenment to the eternal reality of infinite light.
It’s not a sacrifice to give up what doesn’t exist.
“Happiness is your true nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”
- Ramana Maharshi
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And so you sit. Standing has received a blow. Lying down is to sink into oblivion. You sit. And breathe. And watch breath come & go, go & come. This dual unity, coming & going. Arising & departing. And as you watch mind calms, mind storms fade away.
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animal x neophilia neophobia
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