China Readies for Olympic Tourists. Nearly every tourist going to China visits the Terracotta Army in Xian.  I'm on my way.

 

Pictured, the Terra-Cotta army of the Qin Emperor (Qin Shi Huang), Xian, China, 221 BC.

 

Penthouse Club Las Vegas.  I recently went to the Media Night at the Penthouse Gentlemen's Club at 3525 W. Russell Rd. It is the largest Penthouse Club at 46,000 square feet and beautifully designed to accommodate 750 guests!

 

Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there is several designated areas: R U 702, which is a complimentary membership for locals that includes complimentary admission, locals-only lounge, first drink free and one-year subscription to Penthouse magazine.

 

A featured package is the Penthouse All-Star Reserve table service that includes a limousine to pick up your party from any location on the Las Vegas "Strip", provides you and your party VIP entry into Penthouse, and complimentary admission.

 

Then there is the Key VIP Membership valued at $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for a corporate card. Key VIP Membership certainly has privileges!

 

 

Tonight, March 17, The Penthouse Club Las Vegas celebrates St. Patrick's Day with their "Key Girls" and AdultFriendFinder.com members. There will be complimentary Jameson Irish Whiskey drinks from 7-9PM. http://www.penthouselv.com/

 

 

Free Seminar on Buddhism. Las Vegas is truly blessed to have a major Buddhist spiritual leader, Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche (pictured), coming here at the end of the month. There will be a free seminar on Buddhism and its spiritual practices on March 28 from 6-9 p.m. and March 29 from 10 a.m. to Noon.  Admission is free and the public is welcome. 

 

Buddhist leader Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche will lead a discussion of Vajradhara, H.H. Great Dharma King Wan Ko Yeshe Norbu's teachings of spirituality. This lecture will introduce the Buddha-dharma of Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism, providing the resources of good fortune, wisdom, skills and power necessary to achieve perfect enlightenment.

 

WHERE: 6225 Foxhunt St. Las Vegas, NV 89130. Near the corner of North Rainbow Boulevard and Azure Drive.

 

Admission is free. For more information and driving directions contact Lin Brown at 702-835-2832 or Katie Hughes-Appel at 702-292-4341, or email kblmconsult@hotmail.com.

 

H.H. Great Dharma King Norbu is a Vajradhara or supreme leader of Buddhism. Based on the precise principles of the Buddha-dharma, he teaches people in every day language the compassion and wisdom obtained through spiritual development.

 

Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche has been a close disciple of the Supreme Vajradhara for nearly eight years and a practicing Buddhist since 1984.

 

She is currently one of the only disciples who lectures in English and is the Spiritual Advisor for the True Dharma Buddhist Assembly-Las Vegas.

 

Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche had already been introduced to the esoteric dharma when she met her Buddha Master Norbu. Buddha Master Norbu could communicate directly with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and had the full power of the true Buddha-dharma just like Shakyamuni Buddha. Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche had the extremely good fortune to train intensely and directly with her Buddha Master and receive many initiations and empowerments from Him. She also received teaching from Female Dharma King, Dorje Amang Nopu Pa Mu and was able to travel extensively with her to propagate the Dharma. She has lived for many years with Great Rinpoche Akou Lamo, who came from Tibet. Akou Lamo spends most of her time in the hermitage that they share practicing dharma. Great Rinpoche Akou Lamo and Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche were sent to study with His Holiness Norbu to learn the highest dharma.

 

Zhaxi Zhuoma RInpoche personally witnessed many of the holy states associated with Buddha Master Norbu. She saw the various miracles including the time when she saw her Buddha Master turn into a luminous blue manifestation. Zhaxi Zhuoma RInpoche found that her Buddha Master, His Holiness Norbu, is the highest dharma king in the world and is recognized by enlightened Buddhists in Asia and the West. This holy being says that he is "just a humble being--a most ordinary practitioner" even though dharma kings have said that Buddha Master Norbu is the greatest holy being living in the world today.

 

Moses on Drugs.  High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published last week. Religious scholars are apoplectic, but I completely support Dr. Shanon's theory. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon (pictured), a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

 

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday. Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances. "The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

 

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said. He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible." Shanon referred to the verse "And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking" in the Book of Exodus which describes the electrifying moment when Moses presented the Torah to the Children of Israel.

 

"I have no direct proof of this interpretation of ('the perceiving of voices')," he said. "But it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. Other bible stories such as the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve discovered good and evil, also mention the use of plants," Shanon said.

 

"Hypotheses connecting the beginnings of religions with psychoactive materials have been around for 20 years," Shanon says. The Israelites, he believes used wild rue, a hallucinogen used by Beduins to this day but which is not identified with any plant in the bible.

 

A potion made from a certain species of acacia wood (used to make the Ark of the Covenant) also has psychedelic properties similar to ayahuasca. Acacia trees, used by Noah to build the ark, were revered because some varieties contain the psychedelic substance dimethyltryptamine (DMT). In Shanon's opinion, the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden offered something far more tempting than an apple. "Not everyone who uses a plant like this receives the Torah," Shanon said ironically. "For that you have to be Moses." http://www.bergpublishers.com/JournalsHomepage/TimeMind/tabid/3253/Default.aspx  I've emailed Professor Shanon supporting his work and, even though he must be getting a ton of outraged emails, he generously replied. He agrees with me regarding last week's item on Nostradamus.

 

Osho. I have been reading "The Spiritual Path: Buddha, Zen, Tao Tantra" a compliation of talks by Osho. What he has said about Buddhism is riveting. When I return from China, I will delve more deeply into Osho's interpretation of Buddhism for TDH I haven't been able to stop thinking about what he wrote. Buddhism is not for sissies.

 

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh took the name Osho in 1989.

 

I have a connection to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. While at The Bihar School of Yoga, I trained alongside two American girls (renamed Prema and Asha), who left after Kriya initiations to study with Bhagwan.

 

At that time, Bhagwan did not have a center or a celebrity following. My friends would have to get rooms in town and visit him every day at his Bombay apartment. They tried to encourage me to go with them but I decided to stay and continue studying Kriya Yoga. They went on to become Bhagwan's sannyasins and eventually both returned to New York to open and run his lower Manhattan center. I visited there often.

 

Rajneesh left India in 1981, in part to escape paying a four million dollar Indian income tax bill.  As he disembarked from a 747 jetliner to take his first footsteps in the USA, Rajneesh declared that "I am the Messiah America has been waiting for."  (Hugh Milne, Bhagwan: The God That Failed).

 

On my altar I have the mala with Bhagwan's photo on it and blessed flower petals from his Poona meditation garden given to me by my friends. I would do "chaotic meditation", as it was called in the early days.   According to Wikipedia, "Due to his controversial views on sex, he came to be labelled as a "sex guru" by Indian newspapers, a sobriquet later picked up by the international press." I was often at the New York Ashram when my friends were arranging for new Rolls-Royces to be delivered to him (under less than legal circumstances). He is reported to have had over 90 Rolls-Royces. Bhagwan's disciple's later antics in Oregon, incorporated as the City of Rajneeshpuram, caused a groundswell of very bad publicity. The Oregon commune collapsed in 1985, when it was revealed that the leadership had committed a number of serious crimes, including a salmonella attack. Soon after, Osho himself was arrested and charged with immigration violations. He left the United States in accordance with a plea bargain.

 

Osho eventually returned to Pune, where he died in 1990. His ashram in Pune is today known as the Osho International Meditation Resort.

 

One Good, One Bad: Movies. "Funny Games" is pure terror. See this movie! Michael Haneke's remake of his 1997 film is pure tension. I always complain about stupid victims; here, the victims are mature and privileged. Their arrogance - bad things don't happen to people with a Long Island Sound summer mansion - infuriates the viewer. These people cannot imagine anything bad ever happening to them. It's their downfall.

 

Haneke's slow pace is frustrating and excruciating. Why are Anna (Naomi Watts) and George Farber (Tim Roth) so passive? It has got to be that certain things - like a home invasion by psychopaths in tennis whites - are not part of their reality.

 

We know it and its tough, at least in the beginning before the mayhem goes over the top, to sympathize with the couple. In fact, neither Anna nor George lift a finger to help themselves. There is no Will To Live. Why should they have to fight these intruders? They are rich! They know Handel from Mozart.

 

German director/writer Haneke presents a subtly frightening experience that American audiences haven't seen before. It's slow and deliberate. Haneke's style and the harrowing ending makes this the most chilling, best movie I've seen so far this year. 

 

We meet the Farber family, including son Georgie (Devon Gearhart), driving to their gated summer retreat on Long Island Sound. The sailing boat is hitched to the car. They are playing "guess the classical music piece."

 

They are eating quiche and drinking a vintage white wine.       

 

They pass their neighbor with two young male guests in tennis whites. The young men look highly presentable but their neighbor seems weird. George asks his neighbor to help him launch the boat. The neighbor brings over one of his "guests" Paul. The other "guest", Peter, goes to the house and tells Anna her neighbor needs to borrow some eggs. With both Peter and then Paul invading their "space" and not leaving, George makes an uncharacteristic move - he slaps Paul. Wielding one of George's prize golf clubs, Paul cripples him.

 

Game on!

 

That's a sign of what's to come, but Anna and George passively go along. The kid stays put and cries. I would have screamed, "Run, Forest, Run!"

 

Paul and Peter are not hasty psychopaths. They don't even want to mess the carpet. They are not after money. So what is George and Anna's plan? They keep begging to be let go. There are tears. There are kisses goodbye.

 

After the film, I turned to my husband and said: "I won't expect a long kiss goodbye and a vow of love. Go get help or kill the bastards! Fast!"

 

10,000 B.C. A capsule of my review. I cheered for the villains who were building a colossal civilization.

 

D'Leh's village is made up of a bunch of straw huts. A band of horse riding demon-men raid the village and take prisoners. One of the warlords immediately falls in love with D'Leh's blue-eyed girlfriend. These evil warlords have weapons!

 

The root-eating villagers are not smart enough to figure out they had been rescued.

 

When I was in Mali, West Africa I spent some time with the Tuareg (pictured). The Tuareg people are nomadic people of the Sahara desert, mostly in the northern reaches of Mali near Timbuktu and Kidal. The Tuareg still practice slavery. Anti-slavery activists allege that anywhere between 43,000 to 800,000 people live in bondage in Niger, mostly among the Tuareg and Arab communities. Slavery is an age-old custom in parts of Africa, practiced by several of its ethnic groups.

 

Today, in Timbuktu, slavery is a fact of life. I was told people often go into the desert and offer themselves for servitude, choosing slavery over starvation.

 

Not so for D'Leh's tribe.

 

The warlords need slaves to build their empire just like…oh, I forgot, the pharaohs didn't use slave labor to build their monuments - it was during the annual flooding of the fields, and local farmers had nothing else to do. Sort of like FDR's New Deal "busy work" program, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

 

The warlords are raiding villages to satisfy the building plans of some veil- wearing transvestite ruler. D'Leh slips into the city and in Spartacus fashion, liberates all the slaves. They destroy the city.  

 

The CGI mammoth stampede and the warlord's Atlantis civilization were spectacular, but the story was weak, dull, and underwritten.