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Old April 23rd, 2006 #1
Aryan Lord
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Default The Blue Eyes of the Lord Buddha

http://www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/L...bluelotus.html

Chuan Zhi Shakya
Ancient Wisdom: The Blue Lotus
by Chuan Zhi Shakya, OHY

The countenance of the Buddha is like the clear full moon,
Or again, like a thousand suns releasing their splendour.
His eyes are pure, as large and as broad as a blue lotus.
His teeth are white, even and close, as snowy as white jade.

- from the Suvarnaprabhasa (Suvarnabhasottama) Sutra

Something may strike us odd about these lines of scripture. Anyone who has been to China or India is familiar with lotus flowers: they are white or pink or cream or rose colored …but they are not blue.
The Blue Lotus
Dated fossil remains of the Blue Lotus, Nymphea caerulea savigny, tell us that it has undergone little change in 160 million years. At the first rays of morning sun it opens revealing intricate lancet-shaped petals then, at noon, it closes to a bud and sinks into the water not to reappear until the following day. Its beauty and medicinal properties have been immortalized in art and myth for millennia.

We’re all prepared to visualize the Buddha’s blue eyes. He was an Aryan, of European descent, a nobleman in a societal caste system that did not ‘officially’ intermarry with native populations. The rigidity of the system can be seen even in further generations. Nearly a thousand years later, Bodhidharma, another Aryan descendant, was called The Blue Eyed Demon by the Chinese.

Also, in recent years we’ve witnessed the startling discoveries of three thousand year-old blond and red haired Caucasian mummies in the Takla Makan area of western China. We know beyond question that Aryans were indeed present in the Orient long before the Christian era; but Nymphea caerulea savigny, the blue lotus, was not. The plant had disappeared from the entire region during the Ice Age over ten thousand years ago.

In this Egyptian cup from approximately 800 BC, we see the blue lotus motif common in Ancient Egyptian art. Above the distinctly triangular pointed petals are relief scenes showing the plant's marshy habitat.

What was it that made the blue lotus so significant, so revered in memory or legend that scripture selected it to describe the color of the Buddha’s eyes? Many objects could have served as blue referents. Even the sky would have sufficed. Yet a virtually unknown flower was chosen.

We Buddhists are left wondering why centuries have passed without anyone wondering just what qualities the blue lotus possessed that it should have been selected to represent such an important feature: the wide open eyes of the Awakened One.

Scholars have long noted the peculiar and ubiquitous presence of the blue lotus in Egyptian art. And everywhere that it appears in tomb or temple it is a potent and benevolent symbol: a face is gently pressed against the flower to inhale its pollen or to savor its scent; a goblet of wine receives an infusion of crushed lotus flowers, the better somehow to enjoy
Egyptian hieroglyph depicting rebirth of the spirit from the center of a blue lotus.
the drink; bouquets are offered to pharaohs just as pharaohs offer them to other gods, reverently and with the certain knowledge that these flowers, rather than jewels, are fit offerings to divinity; a newborn Sun god emerges from a huge blue lotus which floats on the surface of the Nun, the pre-primordial Waters of infinite space and infinite time from which the Universe was born.

Scholars considered the lotus and concluded that as the Easter lily symbolized the Resurrection, and Poinsettia the Nativity, and a variety of plants represented sacred persons, qualities, or events, the blue lotus merely symbolized well-being and long life to the ancient Egyptians, possibly even the act of creation itself. And that was all there was to it.

And the Buddha’s eyes? Scholars looked at modern Indians and found the idea absurd. Blue was dismissed as a misreading of the word “clear” which simply indicated that his eyes were not bloodshot or jaundiced or, more abstractly, that they were capable of great, celestial
Looking into the Universe we see nothing but other galaxies in a vast void of space. The ancients would not have been able to discriminate stars from galaxies since they all look like points of light to the naked eye, yet myths and ancient art, many involving the blue lotus, tell us they had a knowledge of infinite space and infinite time - a knowledge that modern cosmologists are still grappling to understand.
discernment. Often the scriptural line was considered another fanciful exaggeration of the Thirty-Two Marks of a Superman. Usually, however, racial and ethnic prejudices were invoked, either to validate the traditional image of an Asian Buddha or to support Teutonic requirements for an acceptable deity, one that bore a swastika on its chest and was the founder of the Aryan Path. Peacemakers challenged all disputes, finding the Buddha’s eye color absolutely irrelevant. Nobody wondered about the blue lotus itself. The flower’s intrinsic nature was ignored.

But there was indeed a cryptic message in that choice of blue referents, and it was only recently that anyone tried to decipher it.

Scientists at the University of Manchester, England, asked the question that we should have been asking all along: What was there about the blue lotus that made it so noteworthy?

They tested living samples of the flower and then compared these results to flowers that had been removed from ancient Egyptian sarcophagi. The results indicated that the flower’s properties were identical: the living blue lotus was the same flower that the ancients had revered; and the chemical properties of that flower were those of such popular remedies as ginseng and gingo biloba and that famous blue pill, Viagra.

Nuciferine, a constituent of the Blue Lotus, is now known to have vasodilaing, hypotensive, and anti-arrhythmic properties.

We know today that the blue lotus contains nuciferine, a hypnotic compound known to relax smooth muscle tissue and to have vasodilating, hypotensive, and anti-arrhythmic properties. When the plants’ crushed seeds or concentrates are mixed with wine, a powerful sexual stimulant is produced.

More than just the “feel good” drug of the New Kingdom, the blue lotus would have been the drug of choice for treating migraine headaches, Alzheimer’s disease, heart conditions, and a variety of sexual maladies that were also alleviated by improved blood flow. Especially considering the diseases and parasitic infestations that afflicted all our ancestors, and are still with us today, this versatile plant would truly have been a godsend. Yet by inserting our foolish prejudice into the interpretation of scripture and art we deprived ourselves of centuries of benefit.

A painted carving found in the corridor of Tutankhamun's tomb shows the head of a young boy in a representation of the infant sun god, Nefertem, arising from the blue lotus which, itself, grew out of the primordial ocean.

Prejudice blinds and stultifies. It was never a question of lacking the resources for investigation. We wouldn't have had to use mass spectroscopy or any other sophisticated equipment to discover the properties of the blue lotus. We could simply have gathered the flowers, sniffed, ingested, or concentrated their essence and, following the instructions illustrated on temple walls, mixed the concentrate with wine. The first person to do this would likely have solved the mystery.

We now realize that the blue lotus possessed such extraordinary abilities that its qualities became legendary; and word of its cultural significance spread across vast continents, lending importance to other lotus species that did not possess the blue lotus' chemical constituents..

The art and folklore of India and the rest of Asia do not speak of blue lotuses, but they do speak of creation myths unusually similar to those of ancient Egypt. For example, in ancient India, the Hiranya Garbha Gayatri was chanted in devotion to the Heavenly Lotus, the egg or womb of gold, from which Brahma the infinite source of time, space, and causation emerges:

Om Premathmaanaya Vidmahe
Hiranya Garbhaaya Dheemahi
Thannah Sathya Prachodayaath

In China and other parts of East Asia, where we find native pink and white lotus varieties in much Buddhist artwork; we find that just like the Egyptian's infant sun god, a Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or another celestial deity sits or stands upon an open flower as if the flower itself were giving birth to a great Cosmic Principle.

Ancient creation myths do, however, speak of the blue lotus, and it is these myths that were evidently known to Aryans long before Cleopatra or Alexander, in the distant lands of India where the flower did not grow.

Guan Yin (Kannon) gazing upon a patch of pink lotus blossoms. The pink lotus is ubiquitous in Asian art and usually depicted with a celestial saviour, an archetypal symbol of the infinite and eternal. Illustration courtesy of Xin Dé Shakya, of Hong Fa temple, Shen Zhen, China.

We know that there was trade between Europe and China in antiquity. Chinese artifacts have been found deep in the ruins of Troy. And, as Claude Björk, an Archeologist at Stockholm University, asserts, the presence in Europe of ancient materials, “especially of obsidian, jade, bronze and silk” indicates that there was indeed contact between West and East as long ago as 2000 BC. The blonde mummies of Urumchi in the Takla Makan also show that Europeans were traveling to ancient China during this period and that they carried European textiles, wheat and other commodities with them. Knowledge of the blue lotus’ reputation could easily have spread globally for centuries before the Silk Road was to become the world’s first major conduit for commerce between East and West.

The irony is that the knowledge of the plant’s salutary qualities was there ‘right in front of our eyes’ for centuries; yet we ignored it. Most of us embraced modern pharmacology and laughed condescendingly at Folk Medicine’s herbal remedies, remedies which constituted our entire pharmacopoeia less than a century ago. Surely, we thought, anything we needed we could invent. For centuries there was a need for Viagra and other blood-vessel dilators, but that need went unfulfilled. Only now, when we have finally raised those Bamboo and Iron Curtains that had divided whole continents for more than half a century, have we discovered the evidence of international commerce that existed five thousand years ago. We also begin to understand that medical knowledge was more advanced than we ever imagined.

Though we do not usually trust the intuitions of our distant ancestors, there are times when their insights astonish us. It is, for example, remarkable to see how modern physicists’ theories of the origins of the universe are reflected in the symbols of creation myths passed down through generations for thousands of years. Many physicists have pondered the shape of the early universe. Mathematical models of possible energy-density and space-time structures in many ways remind us of the manner in which a flower opens its petals.

Physicists model the topology of the universe in intriguing ways. A universe with negative curvature, as represented by the temporal energy-flux hyperboloid on the left represents an open universe; one in which space expands forever in time. A universe with zero, or positive curvature, on the other hand, is represented by a sphere and depicts a closed universe: one in which space and time are finite. While scientists are still uncertain whether we live in an open or closed universe, Buddhist theology favors the infinite, flower-shaped, model; for our Buddha Amitabha, has a second name Amitayus - the former meaning infinite light, and the latter, infinite time. (Illustrations courtesy of The Official String Theory Website)

There are countless examples of our ancestors’ insights: skeletal remains from 5000 BC demonstrate knowledge of brain surgery and use of antibiotics as long ago as 4500 BC; birch bark was also used to preserve food during this time because of its anti-microbial properties and, by 3300 BC, European travelers were chewing it and carrying it along with other antibiotics in medical kits. There is also evidence from the discovery of the Tyrolean Iceman who lived during this time that acupuncture may have originated in Europe and may have been carried to Asia by travelers. Genetic Engineering may have begun with Neolithic farmers who successfully modified and cultivated maize. Even the computer has ancient origins. The “Antikythera mechanism” was found in a shipwreck dated to 100 BC: it was made from epicyclic and differential gears, and included dials and inscriptions for operating instructions.

Often we fail to look at our ancestors with sufficient awe and gratitude for the fortitude and wisdom that brought us to the place we are today. Usually, we prefer to imagine that we are superior to our ancestors. We disguise our condemnation of religious or cultural practices that are alien to our own by calling them remnants of a barbaric past. We assume that the cruelties of the Roman Coliseum or the Spanish Inquisition are representative of a primitive stage from which we have greatly evolved. We boast about the technological sophistication of the 20th century: nuclear energy, moon visits, the Internet; but we blind ourselves to the false pride and religious prejudice that have also, in that same century, brought us the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanjing, the killing fields of Cambodia, and other atrocities of such scale and variety that no human heart can bear to describe or enumerate them.

The "Antikythera mechanism" is the oldest known computer. It was discovered in the wreckage of a ship from the first century BC off Antikythera, near Crete, and was used for navigation. Made of bronze, it utilized many principals of mathematics and physics that, until this discovery, were attributed to the last few hundred years of the second millennium. Illustrations: top left: one of several artifacts of the Antikythera mechanism found in the wreckage; top right: schematic of original apparatus after x-ray analysis of the artifact; bottom left and right: two views of a modern reproduction of the navigational device, fabricated by John Gleave of the United Kingdom. The unit stands approximately 12 inches high.

Today we suffer needlessly at the hands of technology, not because of technology, but because of our relationship to it. Just as we ignored the actual nature of the lotus and the uses to which it was put, substituting facile opinion for serious investigation, we worship technological innovations using new devices without considering the purpose and quality of their use. That we are able to accomplish a task becomes a sufficient reason to perform it, and we value technology for technology’s sake alone. We have computers, cell phones, beepers, televisions with hundreds of channels but what about the quality of those communications? Our email is littered with junk advertisements, idiotic ‘chain’ letters, and pornography. Our phones ring incessantly with solicitations. Our bank account dwindles as we purchase a vast array of gadgets that promise to make our lives better. But they don’t fulfill that promise. We are neither better nor happier human beings for all the jingles, beeps and chirps. We are stressed by our fast pace of life, tired from lack of sleep, and angry because we are denied the opportunity for “peace and quiet” - the solitude we all require.

Our attitude toward life has become trivialized. Recognizable images of human life are eliminated from art; and along with this omission, human values dissapear. We produce prettier computers but no Davids or Sistine ceilings. As our poetry increases in abstract prolixity, it declines in simple emotional expression.

15,000 years ago these bison were sculpted from clay in the cave Le Tuc d'Audoubert, France.

Yet we still recognize the Human Spirit when we encounter it in the remnants of our past. When we read the works of Plato or see ancient Greek statues we are touched; and when we see the artistic depth and beauty of the Lascaux cave art from civilizations that existed thousands of years before the Ice Age, we are more than touched. We are astonished.

Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha taught that what is Real is inherently unchanging and is therefore outside of time. The art portrayed by the ancients of Lascaux seems to radiate that timeless quality about which the Buddha preached. Could we, today, improve upon these ancient artists’ works?

Art from our ancestors 31,000 years ago is well preserved in the caves of Lascaux, France. That these ancients lived in an advanced culture is clear not only from the stories told by the clear depictions of animals, but by the fact that organized community effort was needed to penetrate the deep dark caverns.

All that makes us human continues; yet, while we are the technological superiors of the ancients, we are in no way their superiors in poetry, drama, art, music, and philosophy, or in any spiritual expression. And we are not their superiors in decency and integrity.

Zen requires that we maintain our sense of awe and wonder, that pure curiosity about the things we see and experience, that search for meaning and significance that is so apparent in the works of ancient man. We cannot allow technology to dull our awe and jade our curiosity about the meaning of life. We cannot look upon our ancient past as if it were our gestational period, a pre-sentient phase of existence. We need to be aware always of the spirit of inquiry. If we had brought scientific integrity to the images we saw in Egyptian tombs and to the question of why the blue lotus was used to describe the Buddha’s eyes, we might have learned that not only did this flower symbolize long life, good health, and even sexual pleasure, it actually provided these benefits.

"Enter the Path! There spring the healing streams
Quenching all thirsts! There bloom the immortal flowers
Carpeting all the way with Joy! There throng
Swiftest and sweetest hours."

The Buddha, from Sir Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia

We don't know which “immortal flowers” the Buddha was referring to, but if it was the blue lotus, we have allowed our modern arrogance to obscure an important clue.
 
Old April 23rd, 2006 #2
Aryan Lord
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Default Distinguishing Marks of Lord Buddha

http://buddhism.about.com/library/blbud32marks.htm

In India before the time of the Buddha, tradition had it there were thirty-two 'marks' of the 'Great Man'. These came to be applied to the Buddha and some of them feature in Buddhist art.

These thirty-two marks are:

1. he places his foot evenly on the floor

2. the soles of his feet are imprinted with wheels

3. he has projecting heels

4. he has long fingers and toes

5. he has soft and tender hands and feet

6. he has webbed hands and feet

7. he has arched feet

8. he has legs like an antelope

9. when he stands upright his hands reach down to his knees

10. his male organ is covered with a sheath

11. his complexion has a golden sheen

12. his skin is so smooth that no dust clings to it

13. each hair on his skin grows from a single pore

14. the hair on his skin is blue-black, curly and turns at the end to the right

15. his limbs are straight like those of a god

16. there are seven convex surfaces on his body - four behind his limbs, two behind his shoulders and one behind his trunk

17. his torso is like that of a lion

18. the furrow between his shoulders is absent

19. his body is perfectly proportioned - the span of his arms is the same as his height

20. his neck and shoulders are evenly proportioned

21. his taste is exceptionally sensitive

22. his jaws are like those of a lion's

23. he has forty teeth

24. his teeth are even

25. there are no gaps in his teeth

26. his teeth are white and shining

27. he has a long tongue

28. he has a divine voice

29. he has deep blue eyes

30. he has eyelashes like those of an ox

31. he has soft white hair growing between his eyebrows

32. his head is shaped like a turban
 
Old April 23rd, 2006 #3
Aryan Lord
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Default Secondary Characteristics of Lord Buddha

http://www.answers.com/topic/physica...-of-the-buddha

The 80 secondary characteristics
Prince Siddhartha Gautama as a bodhisattva, before becoming a Buddha.
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Prince Siddhartha Gautama as a bodhisattva, before becoming a Buddha.

There are also 80 secondary characteristics (Pali: Anubyanjana):

1. He has beautiful fingers and toes.
2. He has well-proportioned fingers and toes.
3. He has tube-shaped fingers and toes.
4. His fingernails and toenails have a rosy tint.
5. His fingernails and toenails are slightly upturned at the tip.
6. His fingernails and toenails are smooth and rounded without ridges.
7. His ankles and wrists are rounded and undinted.
8. His both feet are equal length.
9. He has a beautiful gait, like that of a king-elephant.
10. He has a stately gait, like that of a king-lion.
11. He has a beautiful gait, like that of a swan.
12. He has a majestic gait, like that of a royal ox.
13. His right foot leads when walking.
14. His knees have no protruding kneecaps.
15. He has the demeanour of a great man.
16. His navel is without blemish.
17. He has a deep-shaped abdomen.
18. He has clockwise marks on the abdomen.
19. His thighs are rounded like banana sheafs.
20. His two arms are shaped like an elephant's trunk.
21. The lines on the palms of his hands have a rosy tint.
22. His skin is thick or thin as it should be.
23. His skin is unwrinkled.
24. His body is spotless and without lumps.
25. His body is unblemished above and below.
26. His body is absolutely free of impurities.
27. He has the strength of 1,000 crore elephants or 100,000 crore men. Note: A crore is equal to 10 millions.
28. He has a protruding nose.
29. His nose is well proportioned.
30. His upper and lower lips are equal in size and have a rosy tint.
31. His teeth are unblemished and with no plaque.
32. His teeth are long like polished conches.
33. His teeth are smooth and without ridges.
34. His five sense-organs are unblemished.
35. His four canine teeth are crystal and rounded.
36. His face is long and beautiful.
37. His cheeks are radiant.
38. The lines on his palms are deep.
39. The lines on his palms are long.
40. The lines on his palms are straight.
41. The lines on his palms have a rosy tint.
42. His body emanates a halo of light extending around him for two meters.
43. His cheek cavities are fully rounded and smooth.
44.
Seated Buddha, Gandhara, 1st-2nd century CE. Tokyo National Museum.
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Seated Buddha, Gandhara, 1st-2nd century CE. Tokyo National Museum.
His eyelids are well proportioned.
45. The five nerves of his eyes are unblemished.
46. The tips of his bodily hair are neither curved nor bent.
47. He has a rounded tongue.
48. His tongue is soft and has a rosy-tint.
49. His ears are long like lotus petals.
50. His earholes are beautifully rounded.
51. His sinews and tendons don't stick out.
52. His sinews and tendons are deeply embedded in the flesh.
53. His topknot is like a crown.
54. His forehead is well-proportioned in length and breadth.
55. His forehead is rounded and beautiful.
56. His eyebrows are arched like a bow.
57. The hair of his eyebrows is fine.
58. The hair of his eyebrows lies flat.
59. He has large brows.
60. His brows reach the outward corner of his eyes.
61. His skin is fine throughout his body.
62. His whole body has abundant signs of good fortune.
63. His body is always radiant.
64. His body is always refreshed like a lotus flower.
65. His body is exquisitely sensitive to touch.
66. His body has the scent of sandalwood.
67. His body hair is consistent in length.
68. He has fine bodily hair.
69. His breath is always fine.
70. His mouth always has a beautiful smile.
71. His mouth has the scent of a lotus flower.
72. His hair has the colour of a dark shadow.
73. His hair is strongly scented.
74. His hair has the scent of a white lotus.
75. He has curled hair.
76. His hair does not turn grey.
77. He has fine hair.
78. His hair is untangled.
79. His hair has long curls.
80. He has a topknot as if crowned with a flower garland.
 
Old April 23rd, 2006 #4
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Default The Aryan Buddhahood

 
Old July 19th, 2007 #5
Aniketos
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Also check out this statue:



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For a whiter brighter Russia.
 
Old October 25th, 2008 #6
Mike Jahn
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Buddha being a Nordic? Looks like an urban legend to me.
 
Old October 25th, 2008 #7
Mark Kerpolt
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Buddhism has Indo-European (Aryan) roots, look it up. So there's a very good chance.
 
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