[sentient]

Originally Posted by Gem

There are many stories about the creation from different cultures, like The Dreamtime creation in Australia, where ancestor spirits made the natural features of the world and sky. It is a cohesive story in which all things are connected, for example, a flowering shrub marks the migration of a fish or the dark emu marks the emu's breeding cycle. Hence, unlike modern science, one can tell the details of ecological systems by looking at the sky or indeed, by looking closely at any one part of the ecology one can know the ecology as a whole.

In Oz you really have to know when to eat bush foods. Birds are not poisonous, but at certain times some birds eat berries that are poisonous to humans - so those are the times when their meat is inedible.


In Northern Hemisphere the best time to cut down pine trees to get quality timber is the time when the X-Mas tree is cut (at a certain moon phase).

This also parallels the myth when the Great Oak Tree was cut.

The oak sprouts in midsummer in the "Middle World", from where it grows and reaches into the skies and the "Upper Realm" above. In midwinter the oak's branches have spread darkness over the whole world (i.e. Northern Hemisphere). Then when the tree is felled light returns bringing forth the spring.

This Oak myth may have been an old European hunter-gatherer symbol for the Milky Way which can look like a fallen tree.

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I equate the Tibetan Buddhist Mandala with the Word Pole.

Kyilkor
The Tibetan word for mandala is "kyilkor," which means "center and fringe." Therefore we're talking about a circle, a center and circumference, which establishes a complete world. At the center of the mandala is always a central deity. This deity is the buddha principle, i.e., it stands for nothing, the emptiness that pervades the mandala. It says, in effect, nothing is at the center, and this then is the central gateway into the absolute buddha mind.

The word mandala literally means "association," "society." The Tibetan word for mandala is kyilkhor. Kyil means "center," khor means "fringe," "gestalt," "area around." It is a way of looking at situations in terms of relativity: if that exists, this exists; if this exists, that exists. Things exist interdependently, and that interdependent existence of things happens in the fashion of orderly chaos.

World pole:
http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...10&postcount=3

Our world was seen as a huge tent, supported in the middle with the World Pillar as if by a tent pole.
Movements of the celestial bodies were caused by the sky dome rotating around its axis fixed on North Star.
Some believed that the sky dome was made out of skins stretched up and sewn together and where there were holes in the seams – the light of the celestial beyond shone through (forming the stars).
Sometimes Gods would take a peek to see what is happening on Earth, and that is when you would see a shooting star. (Light along the seam).

But practically this was to orient your awareness by the neutral, impersonal, empty (of self) Space-Point-of-View i.e. to indeed see in the sacred manner and the Centre of Space is everywhere.

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