Receding water levels of China's Yangtze reveal ancient Buddhist statues

The Watercooler
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Alas, they were in relative quiet solitude…

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I saw that the other day. That river looks like it must usually be quite deep to cover that up!

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Yes, and not get damaged by the heavy river traffic.

I just thought it looked like an apt reminder from nature, emerging from the depths, on understanding impermanence!

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In Germany these kind of stones are known as hunger stones. One was recently seen in the Czech town Decin through which the Elb river flows. The German inscription reads, If you see me, cry!

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And in the Danube, waters have sunk so low they’ve revealed long-hidden nazi ships.

By strange coincidence, in the US, the political culture has sunk so low, it’s revealed long-hidden actual nazis.

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Connection between breath and spirit, and the statues in the river would have been a support for breath meditation. Animism also relates to the internal/external mentioned in the Satipatthana sutta:

"Animism (from Latin: anima, ‘breath, spirit, life’)[1][2] is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.[3][4][5][6] Potentially, animism perceives all things — animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words — as animated and alive. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion, as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples,[7] especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions.[8] Animism focuses on the metaphysical universe, with specific focus on the concept of the immaterial soul.[9]>

“Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and that soul, spirit, or sentience exists not only in humans, but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment” —Wikipedia

Animism on the rise in Cambodia, and it can be seen how this support is used by Cambodians to calm the mind: