Apech

Ok - I just like to lighten the mood occasionally - nothing personal.

Have you read “Harry Potter and the Old3bob of Doom”?

Let me read up a bit more and start a new thread.

We have a family of Ukrainian Russian speakers in the village. Everyday I try to say something in Russian to them ( cos they don’t speak the local lingo). Privet, kak dela? Is getting bit old now- so what are some easy phrases/ normal pleasantries one might say in Russian. oh and please transliterate from Cyrillic cos I can’t read that 😎 thanks

Sad face. Maybe you could look it up and we could discuss it? If you have the time?

I’m half way there by knowing I’m not enlightened.

Do you know a lot about the Greco Bactrian invasion of north India after the fall of the Mauryan empire?

Is it possible to train bears to repeat texts?

It’s odd to think that the Brits were still pushing their weight around less than 100 years ago. When you look at us now you have to wonder how that was even possible. Shows how mighty empires come crashing down - quite quickly and easily (a warning for America). I used to have a landlady who was besotted by a Georgian boy and used to go there to go ‘walking’ with him. He threw her over for a very young ‘doll like’ girl with whom he planned to have many children. She was devastated and her behavior became increasingly erratic. She is a fairly famous playwright and has a wiki page so I won’t mention her name. Looking at the map (in a very superficial assessment) Georgia, Armenian and Azerbaijan look like a fault line between the great powers of Iran, Turkey and the Russian empire. So probably not a restful place I would guess. My neighbour is quite fond of Putin by the way - so I guess he likes a bit of a strong man in charge.

If I understood him correctly he was full of praise for the USSR and how he could move from Baku to Ukraine. I have to admit a certain vagueness about the Caspian Sea, Georgia, Armenian, Ngoro Karabash (?) etc. I don’t think the British empire penetrated thus far - or was it part of the Great Game, not sure. I should brush up on my history. After all weren’t the Proto Indo-Europeans supposed to originate somewhere around there?

salam nechusum or something

Just found out the Ukrainian Russian I was trying to talk to is from Baku, Azerbaijan !

Mod action: thread locked as it was heading into political territory.

To all American Bums. 🇬🇧💂💂🇬🇧

Welcome

Yes, let us celebrate as only the mystery schools of Alexandria knew how. Cucumber sandwiches cut into Gnostic triangles and served on the best china. With a pot of tea shared between us. Perhaps a few biscuits or scones with cream and jam. While we speak in Pythagorean verse and draw signs in the air with our forefingers. And curse the demiurge and the fallen star of Lucifer. Then summon a sweeter muse that arrives on a gentle breeze and shakes the hibiscus bloom.

Said the man from Mexico.

Nope - we just sit and think about the rest of the world which we conquered. 😂😂😂

They say what sounds like zharka for hot … is that a regional accent?

Fake science.

Hello and welcome.

Bodhi-cheating The art work of early Buddhism shows what early Buddhism and the Buddha was like. He is not depicted but represented by a pair and sandals, or an empty cushion and so on. He is surrounded by dancing and singing, by nature spirits including voluptuous female nature spirits, and naga serpents. This is a shamanistic scene. Buddha was a shaman who imparted knowledge. A few centuries after his death the great king/emperor Ashoka appropriated Buddhism because it gave a chance of a way out of the otherwise inevitable consequences of the wide-scale slaughter he had perpetrated as part of his empire building. He felt sorry for this - sorry for himself in fact and wanted to save himself from the hell realms. The state subsidised Buddhism he introduced was, unlike the original Buddhism both scholastic and monastic. Early Buddhism had no written texts but under the new Buddhism the collections of texts became everything - where liberation came from listening to the text being read, thinking about them, meditating on them and so on. State funding institutionalised Buddhism into monasteries and universities - much as Constantine did to Christianity - and created a new form of Buddhism which emphasised intellectual learning and religious hierarchies. Early Buddhist monks wandered in groups no larger than three, lived and worshipped in close connection with the local communities on whom they depended for food and supplied services such as healing and spells for good harvests and so on. But for the monastics the text became everything in a kind of 'sola scriptora' approach. Attempts by modern Buddhists to re-find 'early Buddhism' fall into the trap of trying to abstract ideas from the texts and end up with a kind of desiccated secular mental exercise. Oddly to us moderns the closest thing to early Buddhism would be vajrayana even though it has much later historical roots. And it is the main criticism of vajrayana that it introduces magical, yogic and deity practices which places it much closer to what the Buddha was actually like.

Welcome bobelroz - tell us a bit about yourself.

Every time a Daobum stops remembering an Apech dies.

TM has no manager!