MandoV/buddhism

From the page: "Listen up!
You dweller-in-distraction.

For ages now you've been
Beguiled, entranced, and fooled by appearances.
Are you aware of that? Are you?


Right this very instant, when you're
Under the spell of mistaken perception
You've got to watch out.
Don't let yourself get carried away by this fake and empty life.

Your mind is spinning around
About carrying out a lot of useless projects:
It's a waste! Give it up!


Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You're completely distracted
By all these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don't be a fool: for once, just sit tight.

Listening to the teachings, you've already heard hundreds of teachings,
But when you haven't grasped the meaning of even one teaching,
What's the point of more listening? "

In 1976, Robert Temple made news with a Sirius B mystery of another sort. In his book, The Sirius Mystery, he speculated that Earth had been visited a few thousand years ago by amphibious beings from a planet around Sirius. His evidence for this incredible assertion came from a report by French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, who in the 1930s and 1940s had studied the traditions and mythology of the Dogon, a remote West African tribe located about 300 kilometers south of Timbuktu in Republic of Mali.


For example, according to Griaule and Dieterlen, the Dogon believed that the Earth and other planets rotate on their axes and orbit the Sun, that Jupiter has four moons, and that Saturn has a ring around it.



If the Dogon astronomical/mythological story had stopped there, it would have been remarkable, but it probably would not have warranted a detailed critique by a media superstar such as Sagan.

The cause of all the commotion was the claim that the Dogon believed that Sirius has a dark, invisible companion with a 50-year orbit. The companion is very heavy and made of a special metal which is not found on Earth!

This is an accurate description of our knowledge of Sirius B, after it was observed with powerful telescopes, and described by scientists using the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity.

How did the Dogon come by this knowledge?"