The Thirty-one Planes of Existence
Scattered throughout the suttas are references to as many as thirty-one distinct "planes" or "realms" of existence into which beings can be reborn during their long wandering through samsara. These range from the extraordinarily grim and painful hell realms all the way up to the most exquisitely refined and blissful heaven realms. Existence in every realm is temporary; in Buddhist cosmology there is no eternal heaven or hell. Beings are born into a particular realm according to their past kamma. When they pass away, they take rebirth once again elsewhere according to the quality of their kamma: wholesome actions bring about a favorable rebirth, while unwholesome actions lead to an unfavorable one.
The realms of existence are customarily divided into three distinct "worlds" (loka), listed here in descending order of refinement:
The realms of existence are customarily divided into three distinct "worlds" (loka), listed here in descending order of refinement:
1. The Immaterial World (arupa-loka).
Consists of four realms that are accessible to those who pass away while meditating in the formless jhanas.
2. The Fine-Material World (rupa-loka).
Consists of sixteen realms whose inhabitants (the devas) experience extremely refined degrees of mental pleasure. These realms are accessible to those who have attained at least some level of jhana and who have thereby managed to (temporarily) suppress hatred and ill will. They are said to possess extremely refined bodies of pure light. The highest of these realms, the Pure Abodes, are accessible only to those who have attained to "non-returning," the third stage of Awakening. The Fine-Material World and the Immaterial World together constitute the "heavens" (sagga).
3. The Sensuous World (kama-loka).
Consists of eleven realms in which experience — both pleasurable and not — is dominated by the five senses. Seven of these realms are favorable destinations, and include our own human realm as well as several realms occupied by devas.
The lowest realms are the four "bad" destinations, which include the animal and hell realms.
I. The Immaterial World (arupa-loka)
Realm Comments Cause of rebirth here
(31) Neither-perception-nor-non-perception (nevasaññanasaññayatanupaga deva)
(30) Nothingness (akiñcaññayatanupaga deva)
(29) Infinite Consciousness (viññanañcayatanupaga deva)
(28) Infinite Space (akasanañcayatanupaga deva)
The inhabitants of these realms are possessed entirely of mind.
Having no physical body, they are unable to hear Dhamma teachings.
II. The Fine-Material World (rupa-loka)
(27) Peerless devas (akanittha deva) These are the five Pure Abodes (suddhavasa), which are accessible only to non-returners (anagami) and arahants. Beings who become non-returners in other planes are reborn here, where they attain arahantship.
Among its inhabitants is Brahma Sahampati, who begs the Buddha to teach Dhamma to the world (
(26) Clear-sighted devas (sudassi deva)
(25) Beautiful devas (sudassa deva)
(24) Untroubled devas (atappa deva)
(23) Devas not Falling Away (aviha deva)
(22) Unconscious beings (asaññasatta)
Only body is present; no mind.
(21) Very Fruitful devas (vehapphala deva)
Beings in these planes enjoy varying degrees of jhanic bliss.
(20) Devas of Refulgent Glory (subhakinna deva)
(19) Devas of Unbounded Glory (appamanasubha deva)
(18) Devas of Limited Glory (parittasubha deva)
(17) Devas of Streaming Radiance (abhassara deva)
(16) Devas of Unbounded Radiance (appamanabha deva)
(15) Devas of Limited Radiance (parittabha deva)
(14) Great Brahmas (Maha brahma)
One of this realm's most famous inhabitants is the Great Brahma, a deity whose delusion leads him to regard himself as the all-powerful, all-seeing creator of the universe
(13) Ministers of Brahma (brahma-purohita deva)
Beings in these planes enjoy varying degrees of jhanic bliss.
(12) Retinue of Brahma (brahma-parisajja deva)
III. The Sensuous World (kama-loka)
Happy Destinations (sugati)
(11) Devas Wielding Power over the Creation of Others (paranimmita-vasavatti deva)
These devas enjoy sense pleasures created by others for them.
Mara, the personification of delusion and desire, lives here.
(10) Devas Delighting in Creation (nimmanarati deva)
These devas delight in the sense objects of their own creation.
(9) Contented devas (tusita deva)
A realm of pure delight and gaiety.
Bodhisattas abide here prior to their final human birth.
This is where the bodhisatta Maitreya (Metteya), the next Buddha, is said to dwell.
(8) Yama devas (yama deva)
These devas live in the air, free of all difficulties.
(7) The Thirty-three Gods (tavatimsa deva)
Sakka, a devotee of the Buddha, presides over this realm.
Many devas dwelling here live in mansions in the air.
(6) Devas of the Four Great Kings (catumaharajika deva)
Home of the gandhabbas, the celestial musicians, and the yakkhas, tree spirits of varying degrees of ethical purity. The latter are analogous to the goblins, trolls, and fairies of Western fairy tales.
(5) Human beings (manussa loka)
Rebirth as a human being is extraordinarily rare.
It is also extraordinarily precious, as its unique balance of pleasure and pain facilitates the development of virtue and wisdom to the degree necessary to set one free from the entire cycle of rebirths.
The development of virtue and wisdom
The attainment of stream-entry (sotapatti) guarantees that all future rebirths will be in the human or higher realms.
States of Deprivation (apaya)
(4) Asuras (asura)
The demons — "titans" — that dwell here are engaged in relentless conflict with each other.
(3) Hungry Shades/Ghosts (peta loka)
Ghosts and unhappy spirits wander hopelessly about this realm, searching in vain for sensual fulfillment.
(2) Animals (tiracchana yoni)
This realm includes all the non-human forms of life that are visible to us under ordinary circumstances: animals, insects, fish, birds, worms, etc.
(1) Hell (niraya)
These are realms of unimaginable suffering and anguish.
Should not be confused with the eternal hell found in other religious traditions, since one's time here is — as it is in every realm — temporary.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Thirty-one Planes of Existence
Rarity of Humanoids
Human beings (manussa loka)
The assumption here is there are only 5 types of humanoids in only five planets.
Below is a reproduction of various types of beings in the universe or galaxies
The Thirty-one Planes of Existence
Scattered throughout the suttas are references to as many as thirty-one distinct "planes" or "realms" of existence into which beings can be reborn during their long wandering through samsara. These range from the extraordinarily grim and painful hell realms all the way up to the most exquisitely refined and blissful heaven realms. Existence in every realm is temporary; in Buddhist cosmology there is no eternal heaven or hell. Beings are born into a particular realm according to their past kamma. When they pass away, they take rebirth once again elsewhere according to the quality of their kamma: wholesome actions bring about a favorable rebirth, while unwholesome actions lead to an unfavorable one.
The realms of existence are customarily divided into three distinct "worlds" (loka), listed here in descending order of refinement:
The realms of existence are customarily divided into three distinct "worlds" (loka), listed here in descending order of refinement:
1. The Immaterial World (arupa-loka).
Consists of four realms that are accessible to those who pass away while meditating in the formless jhanas.
2. The Fine-Material World (rupa-loka).
Consists of sixteen realms whose inhabitants (the devas) experience extremely refined degrees of mental pleasure. These realms are accessible to those who have attained at least some level of jhana and who have thereby managed to (temporarily) suppress hatred and ill will. They are said to possess extremely refined bodies of pure light. The highest of these realms, the Pure Abodes, are accessible only to those who have attained to "non-returning," the third stage of Awakening. The Fine-Material World and the Immaterial World together constitute the "heavens" (sagga).
3. The Sensuous World (kama-loka).
Consists of eleven realms in which experience — both pleasurable and not — is dominated by the five senses. Seven of these realms are favorable destinations, and include our own human realm as well as several realms occupied by devas.
The lowest realms are the four "bad" destinations, which include the animal and hell realms.
I. The Immaterial World (arupa-loka)
Realm Comments Cause of rebirth here
(31) Neither-perception-nor-non-perception (nevasaññanasaññayatanupaga deva)
(30) Nothingness (akiñcaññayatanupaga deva)
(29) Infinite Consciousness (viññanañcayatanupaga deva)
(28) Infinite Space (akasanañcayatanupaga deva)
The inhabitants of these realms are possessed entirely of mind.
Having no physical body, they are unable to hear Dhamma teachings.
II. The Fine-Material World (rupa-loka)
(27) Peerless devas (akanittha deva) These are the five Pure Abodes (suddhavasa), which are accessible only to non-returners (anagami) and arahants. Beings who become non-returners in other planes are reborn here, where they attain arahantship.
Among its inhabitants is Brahma Sahampati, who begs the Buddha to teach Dhamma to the world (
(26) Clear-sighted devas (sudassi deva)
(25) Beautiful devas (sudassa deva)
(24) Untroubled devas (atappa deva)
(23) Devas not Falling Away (aviha deva)
(22) Unconscious beings (asaññasatta)
Only body is present; no mind.
(21) Very Fruitful devas (vehapphala deva)
Beings in these planes enjoy varying degrees of jhanic bliss.
(20) Devas of Refulgent Glory (subhakinna deva)
(19) Devas of Unbounded Glory (appamanasubha deva)
(18) Devas of Limited Glory (parittasubha deva)
(17) Devas of Streaming Radiance (abhassara deva)
(16) Devas of Unbounded Radiance (appamanabha deva)
(15) Devas of Limited Radiance (parittabha deva)
(14) Great Brahmas (Maha brahma)
One of this realm's most famous inhabitants is the Great Brahma, a deity whose delusion leads him to regard himself as the all-powerful, all-seeing creator of the universe
(13) Ministers of Brahma (brahma-purohita deva)
Beings in these planes enjoy varying degrees of jhanic bliss.
(12) Retinue of Brahma (brahma-parisajja deva)
III. The Sensuous World (kama-loka)
Happy Destinations (sugati)
(11) Devas Wielding Power over the Creation of Others (paranimmita-vasavatti deva)
These devas enjoy sense pleasures created by others for them.
Mara, the personification of delusion and desire, lives here.
(10) Devas Delighting in Creation (nimmanarati deva)
These devas delight in the sense objects of their own creation.
(9) Contented devas (tusita deva)
A realm of pure delight and gaiety.
Bodhisattas abide here prior to their final human birth.
This is where the bodhisatta Maitreya (Metteya), the next Buddha, is said to dwell.
(8) Yama devas (yama deva)
These devas live in the air, free of all difficulties.
(7) The Thirty-three Gods (tavatimsa deva)
Sakka, a devotee of the Buddha, presides over this realm.
Many devas dwelling here live in mansions in the air.
(6) Devas of the Four Great Kings (catumaharajika deva)
Home of the gandhabbas, the celestial musicians, and the yakkhas, tree spirits of varying degrees of ethical purity. The latter are analogous to the goblins, trolls, and fairies of Western fairy tales.
(5) Human beings (manussa loka)
Rebirth as a human being is extraordinarily rare.
It is also extraordinarily precious, as its unique balance of pleasure and pain facilitates the development of virtue and wisdom to the degree necessary to set one free from the entire cycle of rebirths.
The development of virtue and wisdom
The attainment of stream-entry (sotapatti) guarantees that all future rebirths will be in the human or higher realms.
States of Deprivation (apaya)
(4) Asuras (asura)
The demons — "titans" — that dwell here are engaged in relentless conflict with each other.
(3) Hungry Shades/Ghosts (peta loka)
Ghosts and unhappy spirits wander hopelessly about this realm, searching in vain for sensual fulfillment.
(2) Animals (tiracchana yoni)
This realm includes all the non-human forms of life that are visible to us under ordinary circumstances: animals, insects, fish, birds, worms, etc.
(1) Hell (niraya)
These are realms of unimaginable suffering and anguish.
Should not be confused with the eternal hell found in other religious traditions, since one's time here is — as it is in every realm — temporary.
Heaven
In Buddhist cosmology, the heaven realms are blissful abodes whose present inhabitants (the devas) gained rebirth there through the power of their past meritorious actions. Like all beings still caught in samsara, however, these deities eventually succumb to aging, illness, and death, and must eventually take rebirth in other realms — pleasant or otherwise — according to the quality and strength of their past kamma. The devas are not always especially knowledgeable or spiritually mature — in fact many are quite intoxicated by their sensual indulgences — and none are considered worthy of veneration or worship.
Nevertheless, the devas and their happy realms stand as important reminders to us both of the happy benefits that ensue from the performance of skillful and meritorious deeds and, finally, of the ultimate shortcomings of sensuality.
History Repeats-Iran
History Repeats-Iran
On Feb. 14, 1979, less than one month after the shah of Iran’s exile, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants.
Within hours, it was returned to U.S. hands. Now on notice that our diplomats were stationed on a vulnerable outpost in a sea of anti-Americanism, the Carter administration considered, but rejected, closing the embassy. In October, President Carter permitted the shah – despised by Iranians and the regime that replaced his – to enter the United States. Days later, Iranians climbed the embassy gates again, took the Americans there hostage and demanded the shah’s return, beginning a 444-day crisis.
There are no do-overs in history, but there are lessons.
The 1979 hostage crisis should have taught us the importance of proactively responding to obvious threats and removing vulnerable targets — a lesson that should be applied now if there are U.S. nuclear weapons based in Turkey.
On Feb. 14, 1979, less than one month after the shah of Iran’s exile, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants.
Within hours, it was returned to U.S. hands. Now on notice that our diplomats were stationed on a vulnerable outpost in a sea of anti-Americanism, the Carter administration considered, but rejected, closing the embassy. In October, President Carter permitted the shah – despised by Iranians and the regime that replaced his – to enter the United States.
Days later, Iranians climbed the embassy gates again, took the Americans there hostage and demanded the shah’s return, beginning a 444-day crisis.
There are no do-overs in history, but there are lessons.
The 1979 hostage crisis should have taught us the importance of proactively responding to obvious threats and removing vulnerable targets — a lesson that should be applied now if there are U.S. nuclear weapons based in Turkey.
After a faction within the Turkish military tried to overthrow the Turkish government last month, one of the many arrested for his alleged role in the attempted coup was a commanding officer at the Incirlik Air Base. That base — according to numerous media reports — is a major NATO installation hosting one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in Europe.
What if the Turkish base commander at Incirlik had ordered his troops surrounding the perimeter of the base to turn their guns on the U.S. soldiers that reportedly guard U.S. nuclear storage bunkers there?
What if anti-American Turkish protesters, believing the U.S. was behind the coup plot and that it was harboring the coup’s leader (ominously reminiscent of how Iranians felt about America and the shah 37 years ago) decided to march on Incirlik chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans (as has actually happened) and taken over the base?
Leaving aside the coup, what if Islamic State were to attack Incirlik?
In March, the Pentagon reportedly ordered military families out of southern Turkey, primarily from Incirlik, due to terrorism-related security concerns.
While we’ve avoided disaster so far, we have ample evidence that the security of U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey can change literally overnight.
Now fully aware of the dangers, the Obama administration should remove any remaining nuclear weapons from Turkey – and the next president should remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe.
We are in for a long stretch of political uncertainty in Turkey, exacerbated by growing anti-Americanism.
Granted, as one American analyst has pointed out, any U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey “would be defended by ferociously well-trained and well-equipped American troops.
Maintaining control of the weapons would be the top priority if seizure was ever threatened, with all of America’s military power put to the task.”
Well, if that’s the case being made to President Obama, he should ask:
Why would I or any American president take that risk?
We are in for a long stretch of political uncertainty in Turkey, exacerbated by growing anti-Americanism.
Any U.S. nuclear weapons stored there are more likely to complicate than to improve the domestic political currents in play. The U.S. will (and should) remain a strong ally and friend of Turkey, and Turkey will (and should) remain in NATO.
It is shared interests, not nuclear sharing, that will keep us together.
Nuclear deterrence does not require the U.S. to store nuclear bombs in Turkey, or elsewhere in Europe.
The U.S. has long-range “strategic” nuclear weapons to ward off hostile powers and guarantee the security of all NATO allies.
But since the end of the Cold War, most military leaders believe that our short-range “tactical” nuclear weapons based in Europe have virtually no utility, for the simple reason that no U.S. president is likely to use them.
Some may argue that we should not remove nuclear weapons from Turkey because we don’t want to signal lack of confidence in Turkey’s stability; or that we need tactical weapons throughout Europe because we need to bolster NATO members who are worried about Russia.
Now weigh those arguments against the fact that storing tactical nuclear weapons in Turkey and in other NATO nations comes with the increasing risk of vulnerability to an evolving and more deadly terrorist threat, or to domestic unrest. In the wake of an incident at a nuclear storage site — for which the U.S. would be held accountable and suffer long-term consequences with allies — it would be difficult to explain that vulnerable targets were left in place due to a perceived need to reassure our allies.
As was the case in 1979, the warning bells are ringing.
Steve Andreasen was the director for defense policy and arms control on the White House National Security Council staff from 1993 to 2001. He is a consultant to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C., and teaches at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
After a faction within the Turkish military tried to overthrow the Turkish government last month, one of the many arrested for his alleged role in the attempted coup was a commanding officer at the Incirlik Air Base.
That base — according to numerous media reports — is a major NATO installation hosting one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in Europe.
What if the Turkish base commander at Incirlik had ordered his troops surrounding the perimeter of the base to turn their guns on the U.S. soldiers that reportedly guard U.S. nuclear storage bunkers there?
What if anti-American Turkish protesters, believing the U.S. was behind the coup plot and that it was harboring the coup’s leader (ominously reminiscent of how Iranians felt about America and the shah 37 years ago) decided to march on Incirlik chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans (as has actually happened) and taken over the base?
Leaving aside the coup, what if Islamic State were to attack Incirlik? In March, the Pentagon reportedly ordered military families out of southern Turkey, primarily from Incirlik, due to terrorism-related security concerns.
While we’ve avoided disaster so far, we have ample evidence that the security of U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey can change literally overnight. Now fully aware of the dangers, the Obama administration should remove any remaining nuclear weapons from Turkey – and the next president should remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe.
We are in for a long stretch of political uncertainty in Turkey, exacerbated by growing anti-Americanism.
Granted, as one American analyst has pointed out, any U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey “would be defended by ferociously well-trained and well-equipped American troops. Maintaining control of the weapons would be the top priority if seizure was ever threatened, with all of America’s military power put to the task.” Well, if that’s the case being made to President Obama, he should ask:
Why would I or any American president take that risk?
We are in for a long stretch of political uncertainty in Turkey, exacerbated by growing anti-Americanism.
Any U.S. nuclear weapons stored there are more likely to complicate than to improve the domestic political currents in play.
The U.S. will (and should) remain a strong ally and friend of Turkey, and Turkey will (and should) remain in NATO.
It is shared interests, not nuclear sharing, that will keep us together.
Nuclear deterrence does not require the U.S. to store nuclear bombs in Turkey, or elsewhere in Europe.
The U.S. has long-range “strategic” nuclear weapons to ward off hostile powers and guarantee the security of all NATO allies. But since the end of the Cold War, most military leaders believe that our short-range “tactical” nuclear weapons based in Europe have virtually no utility, for the simple reason that no U.S. president is likely to use them.
Some may argue that we should not remove nuclear weapons from Turkey because we don’t want to signal lack of confidence in Turkey’s stability; or that we need tactical weapons throughout Europe because we need to bolster NATO members who are worried about Russia.
Now weigh those arguments against the fact that storing tactical nuclear weapons in Turkey and in other NATO nations comes with the increasing risk of vulnerability to an evolving and more deadly terrorist threat, or to domestic unrest. In the wake of an incident at a nuclear storage site — for which the U.S. would be held accountable and suffer long-term consequences with allies — it would be difficult to explain that vulnerable targets were left in place due to a perceived need to reassure our allies.
As was the case in 1979, the warning bells are ringing.
Steve Andreasen was the director for defense policy and arms control on the White House National Security Council staff from 1993 to 2001. He is a consultant to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C., and teaches at the University of Minnesota.
Why Russians Never Landed a Human on Moon?
Following hypotheses of mine are outrageous but nevertheless needs probing.
I am not going to include them in my new book.
Human conspiracy is in their genes, and outlining them is an uphill task.
I am scrapping only the surface.
I do not intend to reveal all of them and waste rest of my life on a failed endeavor.
I have better things to do in my life.
Coming to my pondering of Russian actions.
1. Russia did not have the technology.
This may not be true, they were well ahead of America.
2. Russia did not have the money.
Probable but cannot be substantiated.
3. Russia was prudent not to waste their scared resources.
This is true in a communist but relatively poor country.
4.Russia did not want to sacrifice the life of their trained astronauts for an ego exercise.
This is my bone of contention.
They are more useful in defense strategies.
5. None of the above.
More likely scenario.
Now let me take the American attitude.
1. American public are generally stupid (mind you not all) and are mostly afflicted by an incurable ego problem.
This is true.
2. They want to be the first in scientific advances and pay or hijack (Germans after World War II) for personnel.
Similar to above ego mentality.
3. They had enough resources but wasted them on putative communist war.
True.
4. They had a powerful secret service and did not want politicians to take credit.
Yes.
5. JFK was assassinated to channel money (not for space program) to CIA projects.
Yes.
6. America never send any astronauts to moon (to save money for covert operations) but choreographed either by holography or actual photography on earth.
This is my belief even though there is no proof available.
I am human and have the freedom for skepticism.
7. America did not have a correct sense and directive with so many lobbies to contend with.
Really!
8.They had to satisfy Vatican.
Most likely overtly or covertly.
9. None of the above.
Most likely scenario.
Now my revelation hypothesis.
1. Russia and USA are toying the same line in their defense policy.
2. They do not want conflicts to throttle their own programs.
3. They are in contact with aliens and using their technology (without the knowledge of the public0.
4. Russia, America and Aliens already have an advanced interplanetary mission.
5. America (CIA) is using drug money for these clandestine black projects since the legislative Assemblies are very slow to authorize them of veto them.
Henry Steel Colonel Olcott
Henry Steel Colonel Olcott
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (2 August 1832 – 17 February 1907) was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer and the co-founder and first President of the Theosophical Society.
Olcott was the first well-known American of European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism. His subsequent actions as president of the Theosophical Society helped create a renaissance in the study of Buddhism. Olcott is considered a Buddhist modernist for his efforts in interpreting Buddhism through a Westernized lens.
Olcott was a major revivalist of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and he is still honored in Sri Lanka for these efforts. Olcott has been called by Sri Lankans "one of the heroes in the struggle of our independence and a pioneer of the present religious, national and cultural revival".
Theosophical Society
From 1874 on, Olcott's spiritual growth and development with Blavatsky and other spiritual leaders would lead to the founding of the Theosophical Society. In 1875, Olcott, Blavatsky, and others, notably William Quan Judge, formed the Theosophical Society in New York City, USA. Olcott financially supported the earliest years of the Theosophical Society and was acting President while Blavatsky served as the Society's Secretary.
In December 1878 they left New York in order to move the headquarters of the Society to India. They landed at Bombay on February 16, 1879. Olcott set out to experience the native country of his spiritual leader, the Buddha. The headquarters of the Society were established at Adyar, Chennai as the Theosophical Society Adyar, starting also the Adyar Library and Research Centre within the headquarters.
I forget the exact motives of Olcott and I believe his outlook was much broader but with resurgence of Buddhist revival in Ceylon, his original ideas metamorphosed to a single theme.
His broader inquiry stretched into to religion, philosophy and science, not spirituality alone.But his followers in Ceylon put fullstops to science and philosophy.
Looking for absolute truth
I never joined a club or secret society in my entire life.
Club mentality was an alien theme to me, for the simple reason of confining myself to a narrow segment of free inquiry closes all avenues for new emerging knowledge,especially science.
Having returned from united Kingdom with lot of new ideas, I was invited to a symposium organized by a spiritual organization. I grabbed the opportunity and said it should include all three disciplines, philosophy, religion and science (no politics by conviction).
I took the responsibility of organizing it but did not have a clue how to approach the philosophy theme.
Luckily, I knew Monte Gopallawa, mostly indirectly (my sisters batch) who had read philosophy in his undergraduate studies. He was the Governor of the Central Province and was easy to approach. Through his offices I managed an introduction to Professor
A.D.P Kalansuriya.
We decided to have a “short weekly discussion” in the University of Peradeniya and invited few guys and girls. In the first discussion we had about 10 and in one of the subsequent discussions, one guy (I did not know) in a national dress, who came from the Buddhist background, started arguing on a flimsy point slanted towards Buddhism, off the track of professors theme by many a mile.
Professor in his inimitable way, tried to put him on the track with very short doses of philosophy. This idiot went on in circles and after waiting awhile, annoyed to the brim, I blasted this guy and told him, we came to listen to philosophy not Buddhism (this idiot’s interpretation, not Buddha’s) and you better get out of this room or I will throw you out physically.
I got up from my seat and showed him, I meant what I said.
He with few of his followers left the room and there was one other guy (may be my very young brother in law) beside me left in the room.
Professor had a bright smile in his face and after a pause said these guys cannot understand a simple term in philosophy.
That is the problem I am faced with.
We continued to have the discussion as planned and in subsequent discussion I was the only guy left.
Prof ADP Kalansooriya
The above incident brought us together and he had few medical problems (he never sought any advice from me) that made our encounters more frequent.
He was probably the last true philosopher we had. His thesis in UK was accepted without a hitch, in early sixties, not in any way slanted to Buddhism.
I was lucky to have receive a free copy of his last book, related to language games in philosophy.
It was very heavy stuff in content and English terms, which I had to refer the dictionary to grasp his thoughts.
That was the only book in my life I read one chapter at a time (several times) and never proceeded to next chapter without getting hold of his dialectical and eclectically themes.
Listening to him over six to ten close door sessions made me well prepared.
One of his attempts was to get us out of the rigid often prejudiced views. He said philosophers are also trapped in this same dilemma.
He encouraged us to think “out of the box” and showed us the way out of a dogma.
I am very thankful to him and he is no more.
He sucumbed to a medical misadventure just like Monte Gopallawa, his only and the last student (he died before him).
Coming back to "Looking for absolute truth", I organized symposium and invited him for short introduction to philosophy in Sinhala.
I of course dished out the science theme and after a few introductory remarks made into "a question and short answers".
That was the last time I addressed a public lecture 15 years ago.
I try my level best to avoid any.
Simply because the general public want to be inside the box.
Getting them out is difficult philosophically.
All Americans are not Bad
This is about Americans.
Not all Americans are bad.
There are lot of good Americans.
What I am against are the American Scientists who conspire for the last 70 years.
It is time I should say good about Americans.
Unlike British Americans are fabulously rich and spend time and money to explore the unknown, including UFOs.
Whereas the British will hold onto their prejudices in their entire life.
Even though, yesteryear British scholars had revived and reviewed Buddhist scriptures (Francis Story and Rhys Davies) after the visit of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott to Ceylon, there is none in this country and UK now..
I believe he was sent here by the Church to discredit Dhamma (Buddhism) but he was enthralled and enlightened by studying the scriptures.
Rhys Davies
Thomas William Rhys Davids was born in England, at Colchester in Essex, the eldest son of a Congregational clergyman from Wales, who was affectionately referred to as the Bishop of Essex.
His mother, who died at the age of 37 following childbirth, had run the Sunday school at his father's church.
Thomas William Rhys Davids, FBA (12 May 1843 – 27 December 1922) was a British scholar of the Pāli language and founder of the Pali Text Society.
He took an active part in founding the British Academy and London School for Oriental Studies.
He studied for the bar and briefly practiced law, though he continued to publish articles about Sri Lankan inscriptions and translations, notably in Max Müller's (he was a French Scholar) monumental Sacred Books of the East.
From 1882 to 1904 Rhys Davids was Professor of Pali at the University of London, a post which carried no fixed salary other than lecture fees.
In 1905 he took up the Chair of Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester.
Rhys Davids attempted to promote Theravada Buddhism and Pāli scholarship in Britain.
He actively lobbied the government (in co-operation with the Asiatic Society of Great Britain) to expand funding for the study of Indian languages and literature, using numerous arguments over how this might strengthen the British hold on India. He gave "Historical Lectures" and wrote papers advancing a racial theory of a common "Aryan" ethnicity amongst the peoples of Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Buddha's own clan in ancient times. These were comparable to the racial theories of Max Müller, but were used to a different purpose.
Rhys Davids claimed that Britons had a natural, "racial" affinity with Buddhist doctrine.
This part of Rhys Davids' career is controversial.
His scholarly enterprise was terminated by a bogus investigation by the British.
British Conspiracy
He never renunciate his faith but promoted study of Buddhism. That was his downfall.
Rhys Davids' civil service career and his residence in Sri Lanka came to an abrupt end.
Personal differences with his superior, C. W. Twynham, caused a formal investigation, resulting a tribunal and Rhys Davids' dismissal for misconduct. A number of minor offences had been discovered, as well as grievances concerning fines improperly exacted both from Rhys Davids' subjects and his employees.
With his death study of Buddhism ended in Great Britain.
Unlike, the British, the American continue to study Buddhism up to this date.
Unlike in Britain, America there is considerable number of Americans who practice Buddhist Way of Life without enunciating their own faith (for political reasons).
Buddhism is thriving in America!
They have contributed a lot silently.
I have met few of them and they come here for meditation practices.
I was busy then but I directed them to the proper academics and mediation masters, with my connection in the University.
Unfortunately most of the erudite with knowledge in English are all gone and rare to find now.
How come a man who is comparatively small has to consume large amount of animal protein for survival?
This was written in 15th of February, 2009 and was hidden in one of my old computers inadvertently.
If YOU believe in American Food advice, not only You become Obese,
You will have Gout, Heart Disease,Hypertension, Arthritis and Diabetes, all are disabilities, if they do not kill you prematurely in WAR.
How come a man who is comparatively small has to consume large amount of animal protein for survival?
Majestic elephants are vegetarians and they consume all their proteins from plants.
How come a man who is comparatively small has to consume large amount of animal protein for survival?
This is where the WHO has committed a global crime of promoting animal food which wastes over 50 to 75% of grain material that could be better used for human consumption.
8 Kg (grain) for 1Kg of meat!
They first started the myth with nominating the egg as a reference protein, since it contains all the essential amino acids.
Next logical nexus WHO struck was to equate all staple food including rice as inferior in quality in reference to egg protein and then to destroy the Asian Rice cultivation.
I will prove that rice is much superior and non-allergenic to all other staple foods in a minute but bear with me for excesses and the excuses.
At the same time with the American help they started promoting the second myth that wheat as the best alternative to rice since its relative quantity of lysine was higher when compared to rice.
Now with the American help Western Food Industry got a kick start diminishing the Asian wisdom to the back garden.
With this deliberate ploy to destroy the Rice Industry and all the rice varieties except Uncles Sam's rice which became a house hold name in America.
IMF made the previous government of Ceylon to experiment bread making with rice flour mixture knowing very well it would be a failure.
Wheat flour has the bread making capability because of its gluten content and rice cannot supplement this allergenic food protein.
That is why rice is recommended for infants instead of wheat flour.
There was some always a sinister campaign to implicate rice as a poor quality staple food.
Say this to Japanese they are the only people in this planet who do not believe American propaganda.
Now it is time for some facts and a bombshell.
African Rice variety has the best Quality Protein comparative to all staple foods including Asian Rice.
Thanks to Japan this information is coming from JICA experts and Japan's Genome Project on Rice.
Before I go back to Single Cell Protein from fungi / algae here are some more facts.
It is true that the content of protein in rice is 2% less than wheat which is 10%.
In African rice the protein content is as high as 15%.
As a reference protein of egg is numbered arbitrarily as 100.
Please note no animal survives only on eggs.
Animals including humans eat a mixture of foods.
When the food is mixed the correct amino acid balance is achieved automatically.
Rice has 65 amino acid reference value which is more than twice as corn.
Wheat has 40 and corn has 30.
The quality is actually better for rice.
When rice is eaten with other grains (mung and dhal) it makes up 100 without the addition of any animal products.
If this is supplemented with milk one gets all the ingredients including calcium without the allergic properties of gluten which causes Coeliac Disease.
If rice meal is supplemented with some ripe banana one gets all what is essential.
If the rice is supplemented with soya one has an excellent combination.
It is necessary to mentioned that when WHO published the protein (vary with age and pregnancy) requirement some decades ago, they made some serious mistakes of doing the study on carbohydrate deficient diet that over estimated the protein requirement (this is called the specific dynamic action of food- where protein is wasted as energy).
They had to revise their estimates several times since then and when we were students we were given the wrong information (I of course never believed their estimates) and I never became a beef eater to supplement rice.
How the poor supplemented their diet (as Asians) was to eat more rice (provided the energy which spared the good quality protein and gave power and energy for work) or several meals of rice which made good the sufficient amino acid including the lysine.
However, supplementing with another grain and plant material was the easy choice for me.
My point here is different.
I am writing this here to illustrate that we can produce good quality protein from a single plant cell.
Even though we cannot utilize the cellulose we can very well use the plant protein for food.
In fact these experiments were done by oil companies using cheap oil as a substitute some years ago.
But they never took off the commercial scale due to pressure from beef industry and soya industry.
There was enough lobbying to object this Single Cell Protein production on safety grounds.
I do not intent to go into politics in detail but suffice is to say that these Single Cell Protein were never marketed as human food but only as animal food.
Keeping Pet Fish 01
I will list few of my priorities.
1. No kids under 12 at home.
2. It is one man job and no delegation unless absolutely necessary (on holiday or on a meditation course).
3. Minimum intervention, that you never but your finger to see whether water is too warm.
4. No smoking!
5. No cats or dogs (one item is enough, why you make your house a zoo).
6. One should have several simple thermometers in your household.
Find the coolest room not freezing dungeon!
Fish can tolerate cool weather better than very warm summers.
7. Adequate light either natural or artificial.
No point keeping them in a dark corner.
How can you see their beautiful colours?
8. No artificial chemical sprayers at all, including personal perfumes.
9. Adequate ventilation to the room and a minimum of one air pump (compressor) and a spare in case the working one goes bust in the night.
10. If you do not have 5 minutes in the morning and
10 minutes in the evening to spare, please do not think of starting this exotic hobby.
When I was in the United Kingdom (we did not have all the fancy stuff coming from China now in Ceylon then), I bought all the stuff except a glass tank and never started this hobby while there.
No sooner I was back in Ceylon, I was in full swing.
One thing good about British stuff was they would last 10 years (unlike the Chinese stuff) solid no leaking, no electric shocks and basically no complaints (this 1980s).
Good solid equipment and a firm stand to place the heavy tank is of utmost importance.
Now I will tell you why the above priorities.
No fish should die under my care except for old age and born invalid.
I have kept a gold (I called it the Clown Fish) without air bladder and several blind ones (one left currently).
My best advice is do not start, if you love your freedom.
Children lose interest within six weeks.
Just do not blame them that is there simple nature.
Do not make your kid to do the dirty work.
Let them be free too.
Keeping Pet Fish-02
Keeping Pet Fish-02
1. I said do not put your finger into the fish tank.
Why?
Our hands are the dirtiest possible (as far as the fish is considered).
Fish does not have an advanced immune system.
They do not have neutrophils to kill bacteria.
If there are leftover food and if we introduce our nasty pathogenic bacteria into the fish tank, the fish are dead within 24 to 48 hours.
2. You should not touch the food with fingers especially to grind them to tiny pieces (to feed young fish). Every time you do that one adds a unhealthy dose of bacteria to the food. Use a tiny spoon and put some silica gel into the fish food container.
3. Buy only good quality food and in small quantities, perhaps to last two to three weeks. Do not buy them in bulk. Cheap food are always contaminated and processed badly.
Check to see whether the food has not gone stale, every time you feed.
4. Have lot of water plants including floating plants with roots. The fish would eat the leaves and the plants support a lot of infusoria (one cannot see with the naked eye) as they grow.
Infusoria
These are very small organisms that are ideal for feeding newly hatched egg laying species.
5. Leave fish without food for at least one day in 7-10 day period.
Why?
Fish store part of their fats as brown fat (that have high energy content) in their tissues for use during long periods of starvation. This fat is not used when the fish is well fed (like gold fish who become bloated and ugly).
Brown fat is especially abundant in newborns and in hibernating mammals. It is also present and metabolically active in adult humans, but its prevalence decreases as humans age.
Its primary function is thermoregulation.
Brown fat produces heat by non-shivering thermogenesis.
6. Healthy fish can last two weeks without food if they have sufficient amount of brown fat. Unfortunately not all of your fish will have adequate stores to last your vacation.
7. When changing water one must make sure there is no chlorine in water.
The chlorine will kill your fish within 20 minutes.
One must leave water for at least three days for the chlorine to escape.
My recommendation is minimum of 10 days.
How do you do that.
8. Have a separate water tank which can hold three times your requirement for one change.
9. When changing water each tank should have separate tubing (do not interchange) to tug into the main pipe that comes from your storage tank.
10. Do not use soap or detergent to clean hands or utilities.
Detergent affects the gills of fish and their breathing.
Detergents can have poisonous effects in all types of aquatic life if they are present in sufficient quantities, and this includes the biodegradable detergents.
All detergents destroy the external mucus layers that protect the fish from bacteria and parasites; plus they can cause severe damage to the gills.
Most fish will die when detergent concentrations approach 15 parts per million. Detergent concentrations as low as 5 ppm will kill fish eggs.
Surfactant detergents are implicated in decreasing the breeding ability of aquatic organisms.
World with many Views but Mind Neglected
Intention
There is an attempt to use meaning of Dhamma for political needs (Constitution) in Ceylon.
This is in perspective of an apprentice meditator in mind.
Advanced meditator won't get involved in academic exercises.
However, I need to get the core idea across and work on purifying the Mind (not get involved in phenomenology or the mechanics).
Dhamma
The word Dhamma in perspective of an apprentice in meditation found wanting.
It needs total detachment of academic exercise.
In that sense some qualifying tenets are attempted.
Dhamma has no parallels in philosophy, politics or science.
It is boundless and timeless and permeate all human mental activity.
It is not an institution in a religious sense.
It does not belong to a particular country or race or a constitution or an individual.
It belongs to the human mental capacity untapped.
Having said that it does not disregard existence of the right of other living beings.
It accepts the presence of extraterrestrial beings of higher or lower order to human beings.
It is a way of life with special attention to mental purity (getting rid of defilements).
It has a very simple moral code of self realization even though, self as an all abiding entity is precluded.
It has no rigid rules and bylaws but focuses on attention depending on the individuals intelligent capacity.
Above all it is open to Question or Inquiry (but not at global sense) but at Individual Level while working through the mental cultivation of purity of thinking.
That is why it should not be taken as religious practice but as a simple way of 'life experience' for every individual with an iota of intelligence.
However, It does not exclude the mentally weak and that is why it emphasizes the “Sardha” or the Devotion and reverence to the exalted one for absorbing the core mental culture.
If all all the above qualifications are taken into consideration, it should be "Above of All the World Constitutions" and not within a structured articles of intent, (be that it may be United States or Ceylon).
Constitution
Constitution in brief is a piece of paper article to govern weak subjects by supposed to be powerful and the elite by coercion or rigidity of laws and bylaws.
It took almost 2500 years for the Human Rights Charter to be declared (only on paper but violated left, right and center depending on the declared sovereignty of a state or government).
We cannot do without a constitution even though a few countries have no written constitution.
It is the political will of a set or group or collection of people.
It got to be simple to interpret.
It should have a practical value.
It should have the political will to harness harmony and disengage discrimination.
On all the above grounds it cannot be called a perfect article of faith.
It is a near enough document but since it is not perfect it should be scrutinized, restructured, revised on a regular basis.
Dhamma does not need any of the above revisions and that is why it should be kept above all constitutions.
By putting Dhamma on paper called constitution won’t achieve any objective, except some a cosmetic value.
The above said won’t apply to Christianity and Muslim religions since they are invariably bound by power, politics, commerce, money and may be even conspiracies to cover up corruption.
In exalted ones and the ones who are on the path of Dhamma are completely detached from power, money and corruptions, conspiracies of all kinds.
Dhamma is for the Mind and not for an Institution.
That is why Buddha did not appoint a successor and let the boundless Dhamma takes it own course.
It does not mean Dhamma could survive on its own since there is always room for distortion within and from without.
That is the very reason these thoughts are penned down here to save its status of universality.
Dhamma is boundless and timeless.
It permeates all reams and universes (There is no one world but many worlds).
Four abodes of the enlightenment or the sublime states are;
Metta (Loving Kindness)
Karuna (Kindness)
Muditha (Sympathetic Joy)
Upekka (Equanimity)
Way forward is Meditation either;
Samatha Bhavana-Concentration or Focused Attention to the Present
Samatha Bhavana, the development of mental tranquility with concentration, is accompanied by three benefits; it gives happiness in the present life, a favorable rebirth, and the freedom from mental defilements which is a prerequisite for attainment of insight.
Vipassana Bhavana-Insight Meditation
Vipassana bhavana is realization of the three signs of being, anicca, dukkha, and anatta.
The focus of attention be given to Metta Meditation and Moment Meditation,too.
At 18 years old, he donated a kidney. Now, he regrets it.
At 18 years old, he donated a kidney. Now, he regrets it.
Reproduction
One should read this fully.
His claim that he was not "fully informed" is a chilling tale.
I wish him all the luck in this world and his Metta would protect him in this life and the next.
He is a brave guy and he will become a good physician one day.
My only advice is do not regret and believe in his mum who was a great lady producing a kid like him.
At 18 years old, he donated a kidney. Now, he regrets it.
When I was 18, my stepfather’s brother had been on dialysis for just over a year. He was thin, he exercised regularly and he seemingly was in perfect health, but inexplicably his kidneys began to fail him. Although I was just about to leave for college, I’d heard enough about the misery of dialysis to decide to get tested as a possible donor. In the back of my mind, I knew that the chances of our compatibility were incredibly low because we were not related by blood. Perhaps that made it easy for me to decide to get tested.
When we received the results, I was stunned to find out that he and I were a match. The transplant team gave me plenty of opportunities to back out of the donation, and it put me through countless evaluations, physical and psychological. Much of my family was steadfast against my becoming a donor. Looking back, who could blame them? Their son-grandson-nephew was going to undergo a major operation with no benefit to himself.
However, I continued to be confident in my choice. I relied on the one fact that would be repeated to me many times: “The rate of kidney failure in kidney donors is the same as the general population.” Why wouldn’t everyone donate a kidney, I wondered.
[New approach to organ transport: Instead of ice, a little warmth]
My mother was the only one to — reluctantly — support my decision. She accompanied me to San Francisco, where the surgery took place, and we settled in for the weeks that I would spend recovering. On the day of the surgery, anesthesia flowed into my arm and the world swiftly slipped away. Then, just as quickly, it seemed, I awoke, nauseated and confused. So much preparation for such a short nap. The anxiety I’d felt about the surgery was now gone — as was one of my kidneys.
Michael Poulson regrets giving that kidney away. (University Photo)
An uneventful recovery came and went. I returned to college and resumed a normal life. Likewise, my step-uncle did very well and is living a full and healthy life, as is my donated kidney.
Five years after the surgery, when I was 23 and getting ready to go to medical school, I began working in a research lab that was looking at kidney donors who had gone on to develop kidney failure. For that research, I talked to more than 100 such donors. In some cases, the remaining kidneys failed; in others, the organ became injured or developed cancer. The more I learned, the more nervous I became about the logic of my decision at age 18 to donate.
Content from JaguarAfter these rogue moments nothing was the same again
Journey through the moments in time that shaped the way we live our lives now.
And then in 2014, a study looking at long-term risks for kidney donors found that they had a greater risk of developing end-stage renal disease. Another study that same year raised the possibility that they may face a heightened risk of dying of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality (although this point remains controversial).
Other studies and surveys, though, suggest that the risk, while greater, is still fairly small.
The truth is, it is hard to get good numbers about what happens to donors. Hospitals are required to follow them for only two years post-donation, which does not catch such long-term complications as chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular issues or psychiatric issues. There is no national registry for kidney donors or other large-scale means of tracking long-term outcomes.
[So many people are dying of drug overdoses that they’re easing the donated organ shortage]
The result is that we know neither the denominator (the total number of kidney transplants that have occurred over the decades) nor the numerator (the number of donors who have gone into kidney failure). And what we do know is incomplete. Yet the need for donors remains great, as the number of Americans needing a kidney transplant has steadily increased — to more than 120,000 — while the number of transplants performed has remained relatively steady — at about 30,000 per year.
Donors are lauded for their altruism and bravery for what is promoted as a benign procedure with low long-term risk. We are told about neither the reality of donation risks nor the scarcity of data that’s available.
As a medical student and soon-to-be physician, I’ve come to better understand the imperfections in the idea of informed consent. We work with the data we have, and patients aren’t always told that it may not be that solid. At the time of my surgery, I thought the system was designed to protect me as a donor. Yet, now, more than eight years later, I am angry that I was never fully informed of the lack of research or the unknown long-term health implications for me.
Mostly I’ve come to terms with the increased risks of being a kidney donor. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t get anxious about it. I feel vulnerable. Sometimes I can think of nothing but my remaining kidney. I’ll feel pressure on my ribs, and I think, “Is that my kidney acting up, or simply back tension?” Or I’ll wonder: “Should I be feeling this lump? Am I going into kidney failure?”
Being a kidney donor has become a part of my identity. Some people — particularly in medical school — have put me on a pedestal for my altruism and bravery. But often I find myself hiding the fact that I donated, which I’d like to think of as an act of modesty. The sad and difficult truth is this: Knowing what I know now, I regret donating in the first place.
Read more:
Here’s what would happen if Americans were paid to donate their kidneys
Popular heartburn medicine linked to chronic kidney disease
Kidney disease? I was only 33 years old, and I felt fine.
Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States
Currently there are over 120,000 people in need of a kidney transplant; 3,000 are added to that list every month. Yet in 2014 there were only 17,000 kidney transplants performed with a third coming from living donors. The need is real, as is the push to attract more living kidney donors.
Zebra Fish Breeding
Zebra Fish Breeding
Zebra Fish Breeding
Nature has lot of surprises for you and me.
I was trying to raise a Guppy fish with swordtail for ages.
It was easy in good old days when the brood was wild.
They did not have the present sailtail (Sary Guppy) then.
But with the breeding of exotic and the emergence of the sail-tail or sari-tail varieties of guppies one cannot find guppies with the narrow short dorsal end of the tail with a broader and longer ventral end.
I have been screening the tails of guppies and found one with the suggestion of a swordtail and I mixed that one with the wild (not really wild) looking with light featured female guppies but have no success yet.
They breed less in the glass tanks.
I am waiting for a miracle to happen.
But toady, I was doing my daily routine of mixing different batches of guppies to interbreed and quite casually looked at the fortuitous zebra breeding tank to see whether the water quality was OK.
This plastic kitchen sink type of container was designed to put zebras to lay eggs and in my opinion it was not ready yet to put the adults. But as a conditioning routine I load it with the first portion of outlet water bucket from my main tank with zebras. Idea was to build the infusoria for the young ones, if they lay eggs by any chance. These eggs are very small and not visible to the naked eye. Most of it is eaten by the adult males and adult males are necessary for the fertilization of eggs. They lay over 400 to 1000 eggs but rarely a few survives in the tank. By removing water at the bottom by siphoning, I expect few eggs by chance to remain trapped with fortuitous black fungus (which appear like a tuft of leaves when fully grown).
Fish do not eat this black fungus probably it has nasty taste or alelopathic chemical.Then in the main tank to clown fish do the cleaning up of the eggs no sooner they are laid. I have been doing this religiously for the last one year but without any luck.
My first batch of zebra (breeding) was discovered accidentally in a bucket with water plants left to nature.
I had about 20 odd young ones and introduced 16 to the main tank leaving behind only four in the original bucket. That was a shear intelligent decision the ones introduced to the tank (fairly big) were eaten by the adult in one night.
They are very good at population control of their kind.
I wonder how they survive in the nature.
Probably the adult die soon after breeding with endemic parasitic diseases.
To my surprise there were six young one in the plastic container that survived the natural population control. Now I cannot put siphoned water to this tank for at least six months since they (young zebras) will eat all the eggs. I have to leave them in series of buckets and I have no room in my rooftop garden for any more buckets. So my zebra breeding will have to be done on makeshift containers. I cannot put the six young zebra fish to the main tank with zebras (they will be eaten) or to the other tank with live bearers. Young zebras will eat all the live-bearers’ young ones.
It is a paradox and reproducing nature is only an ad hoc experiment.
In a different note, I have a fabricated rainfall detector (modified fish tank) and it recorded half an inch of rain for the last one week. That I think is 25% of the usual rainfall and my predictions are we will have a drought by next April.
Cleaning Hands
Cleaning Hands
Please DO NOT Burn Your Hands, following the technique stated here.
This was a comment I placed below an article.
Following is an extension of my blog activity.
One does not have to go paranoid about keeping clean hands.
Your hands are never sterile of bacteria.
Hands get colonized with bacteria every half an hour from your own "domesticated" or resident non pathogenic bacteria living on the surface and the root of the hairs.
They actually protect your hands from pathogenic bacteria invading and colonizing.
By wearing gloves one eliminates the risk of contaminating of a wound from your own possible carrier pathogens.
Ideally even a surgeon has to change gloves every half to one hour while operating.
By washing and scrubbing one gets rid of the foreign bacteria that are present in the contaminated food.
So the bottom line is to make sure one buys them from hygienic sources.
Other is to cook them before eating.
Fresh food (uncooked) is never free of bacteria one does not have to cook your hands;
instead cook the food.
I never get involved in cooking since, with fish tanks and the dog my hands are never free of possible contamination.
If I have to handle food that day is off for the fish and the dog.
I consider the fridge-freezers are the most contaminated articles in your house if it is jammed pack.
Minimum food in it cooked or uncooked is the safety valve.
I let my wife do the honours and bring fast food as a supplement.
Before I buy fast food I do a survey of how the food is handled and dished out and if I see any wrong practices, I never visit that place.
Food handling is a special art for the hospitality trade.
It is the job of the Public Health Inspectors to visit them regularly but our guys/girls visit them to take bribes from the vendors.
To get rid of hepatitis virus one has to boil for minimum of half an our.
HIV virus is inactivated by simple soap and water but kissing can transmit it apart from SEX whatever one's orientation is.
There was article stating to use HOT Water (temperature is immaterial) clean hands which is wrong.
Both hot water and very cold water can BURN your hands which is a serious injury for children and adults.
40 years ago there wasn't a single place one could buy clean food in Ceylon.
Over the years we became immune to all the bugs.
I have no solution to this problem of "proper washing of hands (or any other article or body part").
I have to thank both Professor Barkumarakulasuriya and Professor Aluvihare for training as Medical Students and the etiquette of theater practice.
Bar Kum wanted me to take surgical photographs of his cases, which I enjoyed very much.
APR (Athe Paya Rudawa after Surgery or Per Rectal Anjuna we renamed him no sooner he returned from UK) had S.I.C.U. for his critical cases.
S.I.C.U, was a new concept only Colombo General had a Unit then.
Renal Unit was not established.
The technique I learned was useful when I started doing Neonatal Work in UK.
Then I realized I would be spending my time washing hands most of my waking life instead of sleeping like a log.
I decided to give up both surgery and Neonatology (We we the pioneers of Ventilators in UK then, starting with Baby Bellings and more sophisticated ventilators later).
Back at home under "Sirimawo and NM", I used to do postmortems with bare hands since even, if I wore two pairs of Cheap Chinese gloves, body fluids (no oozing blood but clotted blood in cadavers) would seep through them and stain my nails specially both index fingers.
I thought this was not a joke with Cholera was endemic in Jaffna then (brought from India).
I developed my own technique using surgical instruments properly sterilized under my Only pharmacist's scrutiny. Nobody had ever used them before me in the District Hospital I worked.
Hospital was known as a punishment station (unfortunately my first appointment) and was occupied by J.V.P in 1970/71.
Within a month only other medical man left to get married, (Thankfully I had a RMP who loved PP by the side which I encouraged to offload my patients) and I was all alone in three-man station.
Within five months I was the most unwanted man in the district since I was catching one by one all the Sinhala Buddhist clerk, food supplier, chief attendant, security guard and rogue nurses.
I could trust only three out of over 100 staff, the midwife, the pharmacist and the R.M.P. the last two were Tamil gentlemen.
I made an easy exist to the Department Pathology, University (That was intended as a punishment, since I begged the Deputy Director, never to send me to Pathology under Professor Tennakoon) from where I started climbing UP.
If I did not play that trick never to send me to Pathology, D.H.S. would have never released me.
I had working relationship with my professor (who wanted me to do renal biopsies with only one Siverman Biopsy Needle) and one day watching me doing the dissection of the left overs (he never gave the Heart and the Kidneys) without gloves;
"What the Hell You Do, without gloves with Hepatitis B (Australia Antigen and Hepatitis B were current news then) epidemic".
I told him my reasons (Cheap Quality Chinese Gloves) and he made sure all our gloves for the department were imported from UK.
His final say was "Never Mind, you use your Own technique But wear gloves in my department".
Within a year he treated me better than his sons.
The sons Only got distinction in English.
My sons are lazy, he used to tell me.
He had three heart attacks and the reason was heavy smoking (last two were after he quit smoking).
I stop smoking having seen him in critical care, latter stages of his life.
He wanted only books to read, that also detective ones.
He used to hit the films, the first day.
Both in reading (especially critical scientific articles) and films, I am was no different to him.
Thanks to him, I stopped smoking on my own volition, the day I stepped foot on United Kingdom.
I smoked only once on the day of my father's (not my mother) funeral.
Mind you he was a heavy smoker and I changed him to good cigars (he had multiple strokes) over time brought from UK.
Tibet, China and Human Rights
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Tibet, China and Human Rights
Tibet, China and Human Rights
Over one million Tibetans died due to Chinese invasion of Tibet.
Dalai Lama was chased out and in exile now.
Tibetans does not hurt worms (any life) even.
Does peaceful means have a say in the modern World?
U.N.O is the largest hypocrisy of the modern World.
Why they (UNO) take offensive action on smaller nation like Ceylon?
Does precise little to Tibetans?
Why smaller nation (Ceylon) ask ill-gotten wealth of Chinese for their development?
China is buying things that they cannot invade.
Why India that created the LTTE for their offensive action to influence Ceylonese politics does not react to Chinese offensive in Tibet?
Human race is selfish, India, China and USA included.
They will soon forget the atrocities of even Hitler.
That is the very reason aliens (if they do visit us) do not trust humans and may be producing hybrids to destroy the human lust.
History repeats itself in unkindness not kindness.
It was calculated that when India and China fought war and each country killed one opposite soldier every second, it takes more than eleven years to end the war.
This calculation would be 22 years now with population expansion.
But a nuclear bomb can do that in few seconds.
Either one Indian or one Chinese will be left.
I prefer an Indian left instead of a Chinese.
Why?
Indians have a very short memory whereas Chinese have a very grand design as shown by invading Tibet.
What is Trump going to contribute to this scenario?
Will you eat it, if it is in a dish?
Will you eat it, if it is in a dish?
Will you eat it, if it is in a dish?
Posted on June 17, 2011 on asokaplus
If it has got four legs
And it is not a chair
Will you eat it?
Americans will eat it
If it has got two wings
And it flies
But is not an aeroplane,
Will you eat it?
British will eat it in full
If it swims
And it is not a submarine,
Will you eat it?
Africans will eat it
Even if not hungry
It has no legs
And wiggles
But not a stick
Or a broom stick
Will you eat it?
Yes the Chinese will eat it
Like noodles
But a poor
Cantonese
Or an Indian
Or a Bangladeshi
Cook has to cook it
Before it is dished out
In a royal plate
It looks as if
Even a modern
Buddhist of Colombo
Or a Buddhist Monk
From Anuradhapura
Would not say
No
If it is dished out
Not in royal
But
At a Presidential Buffet
In Colombo
Modified from Prince Phillip’s Visit and
His Uttering in Royal Language
Rice Crisis in Nigeria
I wrote a blog post “Do not throw away rice to birds"”
Why I say so, I will enumerate in a list form later but let me take on the Nigerian initiative to grow rice as a staple.
First two headlines
News 1
On Tuesday, the Nigerian Custom Service said it intercepted 102 bags of a brand called Best Tomato Rice after the recipient of a gift of rice alerted authorities. The health ministry released a statement on Friday urging Nigerians to remain calm after preliminary findings found no evidence that the rice was plastic or consisted of toxic chemical substances. Yet, the country's National Agency for Food Drug Administration Control has not released their investigative report.
The health minister's statement contradicts earlier reports from customs officials.
Mamudu Haruna, comptroller of the Federal Operations Unit, called it "plastic" rice at a press briefing in Lagos Thursday. "We have done the preliminary analysis on the plastic rice. After boiling, it was sticky and only God knows what would have happened if people consumed it."
Haruna described the importers of the fake rice as "economy saboteurs" seeking to capitalize off of Nigerians looking for bargains during the Christmas and New Year holiday season.
It is unclear where the shipment of rice originated. "A consultant said he was given 221 bags to distribute," Jerry Attah, the public relations officer for the assistant superintendent of customs, told CNN.
This rice is probably from China!
Ceylon is the next likely candidate.
News 2
A number of outbreaks of food poisoning attributed to Bacillus cereus have been reported recently and all have been associated with cooked rice usually from Chinese restaurants and `take-away' shops.
The decision to grow rice in Nigeria is their purgative but let me list a few (ten or more reasons in reality) why one should not eat rice.
It is very unhealthy very rich in starch lacking in few amino acids that causes protein (Kwarshikor) calorie malnutrition in both children and adults, unless supplemented by vegetable proteins as gram or dhal or animal protein like sprats, fish or meat.
Adding gram and dhal add more starch and calories.
Please note what I say here does not apply to growing children but ADULTS.
That is why our teachers teaching hygiene is so FAT.
Our generation in Ceylon in mid 1970s did adequate research and produced what is called “Thriposha” and I am glad to say one of our current business pioneers (after 40 years) has made a snack called 4G (meaning four grains) which is an excellent snack for children.
Our Thriposha Program was a failure since we could not produce it in a commercially viable package and what was produced was contaminated and full of “rice bugs”.
Mind you “Jevani” or Rehydration Salt Packet for all diarrhea's including Cholera came from the Formulary Notes, dating back to Professor Senaka Bible’s time.
Unfortunately there is delay of 40 years for the knowledge to hit the supermarkets but with it we created a another problem which I am a subject now and I cannot eat rice.
I have survived without rice and celebrating its fourth anniversary soon.
Below are few of the pests that harm rice in storage.
Granary, rice, and maize weevils (Sitophilus spp.) are slender insects with a conspicuous snout projecting forward from the head. They are dark brown, sometimes with four orange spots on the wing covers. They are less than 3/16 inch long. Larvae are white, legless, and looked wrinkled and are only found inside whole kernels or seeds. These weevils attack only whole grains or seeds, leaving small round exit holes in infested kernels. They rarely are found in nuts, dried fruits, macaroni, and caked or crusted milled products such as flour. (A different, larger species of weevil can be found in homes during the fall due to emergence from acorns or hickory nuts collected and stored inside).
Sawtoothed grain beetles (Oryzaephilus surinamensis) are about 1/10 inch long, slender, flattened, and brownish-red to almost black in color. They are easily identified by the saw-like teeth on each side of the thorax. Larvae are cream-colored, slender, and about 1/8 inch long, although they are rarely noticed by residents. Saw-toothed grain beetles are found in many different food items, including dried fruit, cereals, nuts, dried meat, macaroni, and seeds.
My problem
My problem was over 7 years or more.
Mind you I ate only one rice meal unlike an average Ceylonese.
I used to suffer after a rice meal and I contributed it to something in the meal including Coca Cola.
I dropped Coca Cola first, then one by one every curry including dhal.
Finally, I ended up with Milk Rice.
Even that did not help me.
So I finally said Good Bye to rice and within 24 hours I was OK.
Problem was I did not have a substitute since I hated bread.
I became a Milk, Chocolates and Cookie man.
So my conclusion was that there was /were something in the rice (most likely a chemical in significant quantity that cooking does not inactivate) that I was reacting to.
Sort of an allergic reaction to rice based chemical not rice.
I still do not know what the poison is?
It is the Rice industrialists’ TOP SECRET.
1. Is it the fertilizer remnant?
2. Is it the insecticide remnant?
3. Is it a chemical remnant that is added (parboiling included) during milling?
4. Is it a chemical remnant that is added during storage?
Now I do not CARE.
I stopped eating RICE.
We have the highest number of Chronic Kidney Diseases in the farmers of the Dry Zone.
The answer is blowing in the wind.
From mid 1960s from the time of C.P. De Silva, our obsession was not traditional rice farming but American Tradition of using chemicals to increase the yield.
We borrowed the American RRI techniques in Manila.
They were poisoning us with DDT during Malaria and it decimated our biodiversity.
Now it is in rice farming.
Ceylon was the testing ground (Guinea Pigs) and not the battle ground.
Poisoning the masses was their ulterior motive.
My point here is it is not the Cholera cereus that is killing us.
The chemical contamination is over 50 years including the soil and the rivers and with it the water.
What British did with the tea in the rain forest American did it in our watersheds.
We were a STUPID nation.
We killed our fellow beings for a loaf of bread in 1970s.
So we have to import American wheat to feed our nation with equally bad refined flour.
Now we have diabetes, hypertension, obesity which was not heard 60 years ago.
I had only one diabetic patient (clerking) during my entire medical student days and not a single in my internship.
I did not know how to use Insulin which I learned in UK where even children have diabetes.
Now we have to buy all these American drugs to survive.
We were part of a grand western conspiracy.
It is time to understand it at least now.
Why Birds should not be offered cooked rice?
1. First reason is animals not domesticated (except perhaps cats and dogs-even that I may be wrong) eat raw food or ripened fruits.
2. There digestive enzymes are able to deal with grains unlike ours.
3. Birds scatter seeds (not rice) helping the ecosystem.
4. Cooked rice get contaminated with bacteria because of the high content of water.
5. One of the nasty bacteria called Bacillus cereus (means coming from cereals).
It causes under 24 hour illnesses (within 2 hours vomiting or food poisoning or after 8 hours infection with diarrhea).
6. Infectious one was named Cholera cereus decades ago why they gave a respectable name, I am puzzled.
7. The toxins are heat resistant and mild heating does not destroy them.
8. They form endospores which are also heat resistant.
9. Cooling and reheating encourage spore formation and these spores can contaminate other food items in the fridge/freezer.
Rice uncooked can be preserved in dry condition for ages.
Cooked rice can be kept only for two hours the most.
So eat your rice and do not throw away the rice to rot and then expects the birds to eat.
Bird do not eat the stale rice but the ant do take them and store.
10. You have more ants in your pantry or back garden.
My advice is to cook only the desired amount of rice or if you are lazy buy a rice packet.
11. Birds prefer the seeds and better still watch them split the husk before eating.
House sparrows (extinct species) were very clever at that.
Their bills are built for that purpose and for building nests.
If you watch how a parrot takes the bean out of the pods one by one, you will never throw rice at them.
The bottom line is, the stale rice is very unpleasant sight and awful.
Why do want your pantry smelling?
12. Mind you our gecko loves cooked rice (apart from all the insects) and they grow in numbers and are very active at dusk.
I hate gecko specially their smelly droppings but not so much the cockroaches.
There is a nasty venomous snake that love geckos as food.
Otherwise we can never exterminate them.
You may have to breed the deadly snake (Thel karawala or the Ceylon krait) instead.
Below is a American lady’s experience with rice.
Yes Americans do eat rice.
Hope they eat a lot like us and get poisoned by their own marketed chemicals.
Reproduction
4 Signs Your Cooked Rice Has Gone Bad
Rice is one of those pantry staples that seems to have an indefinite shelf life. And while this is mostly true with uncooked rice (the exception being brown rice), cooked rice has a limit to how long it will last. You've done the sniff test, but are you still not sure? Maybe you can't remember how long it's been in the fridge? Here's how to make the call on when to toss it.
As for how long cooked rice lasts, it can vary, and it largely depends on how the rice is cooled and stored. But it's generally a good idea to call it quits if you've had it for three to four days.
Most foods offer telltale signs that they've gone bad, but with rice it's not always quite so obvious. You also need to rely on other (less obvious) signs that your rice has gone bad.
1. It's super hard and dry.
This is your visual clue that the cooked rice in your fridge has reached the end of its days. Leftover rice will dry out more each day it sits in the fridge. But once the grains have become super hard, dry, or even crunchy, chances are that it's been in the fridge well over a few days. Rice is best when eaten a few days from when it's cooked. Any more than that and it's safest to just toss it. Maximize the shelf life of cooked rice by storing it in an airtight container.
2. It was left unrefrigerated for too long.
It's best to minimize the time cooked rice is left at room temperature. The moisture-rich environment offers ideal conditions for bacterial growth. And while refrigeration doesn't stop that growth altogether, it certainly slows it down.
Uncooked rice can contain spores of a bacterium known as Bacillus cereus. Even after cooking, these spores can still survive. When the cooked rice isn't handled, cooled, stored, or reheated properly, the bacteria can cause food poisoning.
So, if you left cooked rice sitting at room temperature for more than two hours before stashing it in the fridge, it might be better to cut your losses and toss it in the compost or trash.
3. It's been cooled and reheated multiple times.
It's best to minimize the number of times rice (and most foods, for that matter) are cooled and reheated. This presents an ideal environment for bacteria to grow. A good rule of thumb is to reheat leftover rice no more than once. After that it's safest to toss any additional leftovers.
Instead, if you find yourself with more rice than you can eat in a meal or two, go ahead and freeze the leftovers for another time.
4. It has an unpleasant smell.
If there's an unpleasant smell coming from your rice, it's a clear sign that it's time to toss it immediately. By this time that rice has certainly been in the fridge for more than four days, and it's no longer safe to eat.
Food for All and Food for Thought
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Food for All and Food for Thought
The search for solution for algal bloom finally ended up with me realizing that all is not bad with algae. Algae are in fact a potential source of proteins when properly extracted.
I was brought up with the primitive knowledge that eating Mediterranean cockles in hot summers leads to food poisoning due to algae. This was attributed to the fact that in hot summers the cockles are contaminated with toxic algae. In fact these cockles eat these algae without a problem and when humans who eat cockles raw along with algae are poisoned by chance, because human liver does not posses the detoxifying mechanism (hence the poisoning).
This were a recurrent problem in UK including Listeria monocytogenes, campylobacter infection which were not properly investigated when I was working in UK.
So my primitive conviction and knowledge of all algae were bad and poisonous.
This was further strengthened by the simple observation that my fish die in hot summers when algal bloom invade the ponds. The death of the fish was not actually due to toxins produced by algae but due to deprivation of oxygen.
Without second thought we associate this to toxins from algae disregarding the water pollution from industrial and agricultural waste.
In actual sense, water plants (including algae) actually mop up most of these pollutants including heavy metals and leave the water relatively free of contaminants for us, the humans to drink. In actual fact, this detoxifying process is designed to free us from poisons. We should better know which to consume by correct scientific investigation than to blame the plant or animal product we eat.
The second point of relevance is the chemicals produced by various plants are called allelochemicals that give relative advantage to some plants while inhibiting algal growth.
The third point we take it for granted is that since we do not have cellulase to digest the plant cell walls the plant material are of no use as food for humans.
This is an exaggeration of biochemical knowledge without scientific reasoning.
This is where the medical and biological myths are propagated to help the meat industry.
The myth originates from the premise;
It is essential and necessary to eat animal meat to survive.
I come to that point later.
Majestic elephants are vegetarians and they consume all their proteins from plants.
How come a man who is comparatively small has to consume large amount of animal protein for survival?
This is where the WHO has committed a global crime of promoting animal food which wastes over 50 to 75% of grain material that could be better used for human consumption.
One has to use at least 6 to 8 Kilo grams to produce 1 Kilo gram of meat.
It is a staggering wastage of grains which can be better processed and packed as the Ceylonese “4G or Samaposha” Brand.
They first started the myth with nominating the egg as a reference protein, since it contains all the essential amino acids. Next logical nexus WHO struck was to equate all staple food including rice as inferior in quality in reference to egg protein and then to destroy the Asian rice cultivation.
I will prove that rice is much superior and non-allergenic to all other staple foods in a minute but bear with me for excesses and the excuses.
At the same time with the American help they started promoting the second myth that wheat as the best alternative to rice since its relative quantity of lysine was higher when compared to rice. Now with the American help Western Food Industry got a kick start diminishing the Asian wisdom to the back garden.
With this deliberate ploy to destroy the Rice Industry and all the rice varieties except Uncles Sam's rice which became a house hold name in America.
IMF made the previous government of Ceylon to experiment bread making with rice flour mixture knowing very well it would be a failure. Wheat flour has the bread making capability because of its gluten content and rice cannot supplement this allergenic food protein.
That is why rice is recommended for infants instead of wheat flour.
There was always a sinister campaign to implicate rice as a poor quality staple food. Say this to Japanese they are the only people in this planet who do not believe American propaganda.
Now it is time for some facts and a bombshell.
This part Nigerian Rice Indutry should read carefully.
African Rice variety has the best Quality Protein comparative to all staple foods including Asian Rice.
Thanks to Japan this information is coming from JICA experts and Japan's Genome Project on rice.
Before I go back to Single Cell Protein from fungi / algae here are some more facts.
It is true that the content of protein is rice 2% less than wheat which is 10%.
African rice the protein content is as high as 15%.
As a reference protein of egg is numbered arbitrarily as 100.
Please note no animal survive only on eggs.
Animals including humans eat a mixture of foods.
When the food is mixed the correct amino acids balance is achieved automatically.
Rice has 65 amino acid reference value which is more than twice as corn.
Wheat has 40 and corn has 30.
The quality is actually better for rice.
When rice is eaten with other grains (mung and dhal) it makes up 100 without the addition of any animal products.
If this is supplemented with milk one gets all the ingredients including calcium without the allergic properties of gluten which causes Coeliac Disease.
If rice meal is supplemented with some ripe banana one gets all what is essential.
If the rice is supplemented with soya one has an excellent combination.
It is necessary to mentioned here that when WHO published the protein (vary with age and pregnancy) requirement some decades ago, they made some serious mistakes of doing the study on carbohydrate deficient diet that over estimated the protein requirement (this is called the specific dynamic action of food- where protein is wasted as energy).
This is another American conspiracy, food in this case.
They had to revise their estimates several times since then and when we were students we were given the wrong information (I of course never believed their estimates) and I never became a beef eater to supplement rice.
How the poor supplemented their diet (as Asians) was to eat more rice (provided the energy which spared -by pass the specific dynamic action-the good quality protein) or several meals of rice which made good the sufficient amino acid including the lysine.
However, supplementing with another grain and plant material was the easiest choice by far.
My point of writing this here is to highlight that we can produce good quality protein from a single plant cell.
Even, though we cannot utilize the cellulose we can very well use the plant protein for food.
In fact these experiments were done by oil companies using cheap oil as a substitute some years ago. But they never took off the commercial scale due to pressure from beef industry and soya industry.
There was enough lobbying to block this Single Cell Protein production on safety grounds and chemical contamination. I do not intent to go into politics in detail but suffice is to say that these Single Cell Protein were never marketed as human food but only as animal food.
My question is, if these proteins (SCP) have safety issues, how come eating the animal meat fed on these proteins becomes safe?
This question can be dispensed easily as puritan in the WHO circles and conferences.
For completeness sake I should mention that SCP protein contain high concentration of nucleic acids. Humans are unable to breakdown nucleic acid bases adenine and guanine beyond the production of uric acid.
Excess uric acid causes gout.
However, pigs posses the enzyme, cattle in their gut flora which convert uric acid to more soluble allantoin.
So argument for animal feed was very plausible for the beef industry. But the excess nucleic acids can be separated (purified) by industrial means.
SCP of course is an industrial product in any case and introducing this step in the purification is a minor matter. That argument does not hold water because of the artificially augmented cost in the analysis (for our consumption) by the industrial experts.
But in the same vein, this argument is a loose currency when producing antibiotics and alcohol from single cells.
It was Pasteur who showed intense aeration of yeast culture stimulated yeast growth and halted alcohol production and it could be extended to Single Cell Protein production which should be investigated with all the available single cells in the tropics (since we have enough sunshine which is wasted even without producing solar energy) including algae.
This is where our biologists should spend time on instead of following only the Western Model.
I should wind up with some ancient history.
Tangled clumps of vegetation (algae) were netted by the ancient Aztecs from Lake Texcoco (Mexico) sun dried and made into biscuits / bread with cheesy flavour.
The single cell plant is Spirulina maxima now used as animal food.
In African Continent Kananbou people extract green algae from Lake Chad and make a biscuit called dihie.
The cell source is Spirulina platensis.
These are the only recorded instances in history.
There must be many more waiting to be investigated in the Tropics.
It is high time we should investigate this with vigour.
Some investment on allelopathy and allelochemicals is welcome when food prices including animal meat is high.
A country claimed to be majority of Buddhist we must go back to our roots and Asian ways.
We cannot expect India and China to do that since they are engulfing fast the Western roots.
In year 2025 the projected population is 8 billion.
The space available for food cultivation is shrinking and microscopic scale is warranted before it is too late.