In my previous post regarding the Dark Warrior, Huyền Vũ 1: The Black Tortoise, I detailed my search for this mythical hero. I bounced around from historic materials, to mythology, to star charts, and I was able to determine a couple of things concretely. 257 BCE was the initial point in time when we Viets … Continue reading Huyền Vũ 2: The King, the Dark Warrior, and the Demon of Thất Diệu Mountain
(Continued from Human Fruits, the Karmic Harvest of Nhân Quả) Some people think karma is like cash. You do good deeds, accumulate good karma for a rainy day. When you need it, then you can redeem some bad deeds and not be in the negative and have to deal with the bad fall-out of karmic … Continue reading Karma 3: Karmic Monetary Funds
Human Fruits sounds rather strange. It conjures up images of human-shaped squashes hanging on vines, but Human Fruits, or Nhân Quả, is simply what we Viets call Karma, which is Sanskrit for Deeds. Human Fruit conjures up the idea that anything we do, we receive in kind, the ripening of our own fruits, be they sweet or […]
So. I'm not sure if I told you guys, but I do have a Chinese name. The character is thus: 美 It means beautiful in Mandarin. It also means the good ole USA, but that's just because it is a homonym for my country's name (I am a citizen of the US, so it is … Continue reading 美
(Continued from The Original Asian Zodiac 5: The Twelve Earth Branches) Ten Heavenly Stems I have to state for the record that this subject is an exhausting subject to dig into. I kept running into a few issues, and although they are not huge issues, they exhaust me. Firstly, all the words are not modern. … Continue reading The Original Asian Zodiac 6: The Ten Heavenly Stems
The Twelve Earthly branches 2020 is the year of the Metal Rat on top of the earthen wall. Sounds quite amazing doesn't it? That's the power of the Can Chi working together to give you the whole picture. Out of everything that has to do with the Asian Calendar, the twelve Earthly Branches take the … Continue reading The Original Asian Zodiac 5: The Twelve Earth Branches
Lunisolar Calendar It's been awhile, but I remember playing my music on one of these cassettes as a very young girl. Nowadays, you can't even find these ribbon cassettes anymore. Give it a few more decades and nobody will know what they were used for. In the relatively short time that it took for a … Continue reading The Original Asian Zodiac 4: The Lunisolar Calendar
(Continued from The Original Asian Zodiac 2: The Moon Calendar) Lunar Calendar Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein said time was a relative construct of mankind. Certainly, if we talk about a calendar system, that is the truth. The current Asian Calendar (I call it Asian because it is spread throughout the Asian continent) used […]
(Continued from The Original Asian Zodiac) In my previous post, The Original Asian Zodiac, I did promise that I would talk about the calendar system we Viets use, which is a sexagenary cycle that lasts 60 years. Of course, since there were much more interesting things to talk about (ghosts and demons and such) I … Continue reading The Original Asian Zodiac 2: The Moon Calendar
Now that thousands and thousands of Taoist and Buddhist temples have been boarded up, condemned, or razed to the ground, the plights of the monks and the temple members are quite clear. Most monks, stripped of their rights to wear the cà sa--monk robes--must don regular clothes and meld into mainstream society. The people carry … Continue reading Hungry Ghosts 5: Yes, China’s Hungry Ghosts Have Been Roaming
