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You've Come a Long Way, Buddha


With a little help from Tiger Woods and PBS,
Buddhism may finally shake its counterculture image.

By Wen Stephenson
http://www.slate.com/id/2249958/

for important links go to the article....

My Mind Is Like My Mother Huffpost - Carter Phipps
The Asian writers and monks who write sorta old fashioned & a bit stodgy / pompous in style according to 19th century ( British ) Victorian English which pervades much of contemporary Asia, still. Please do not be put off by what might seem a 'moralizing-style' in language. Bear with it. They mean the very best for you ! ~ Akasa ______________________
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You've Come a Long Way, Buddha
With a little help from Tiger Woods and PBS,

Buddhism may finally shake its counterculture image.http://www.slate.com/id/2249958/
for important links go to the article....

By Wen Stephenson

April 6, 2010

The Buddha

When America's most famous Buddhist tees off at Augusta later this week, I'll be watching more closely for the bracelet he's promised to wear—a popular symbol of his professed faith—than for what he does to the ball. In some ways, Tiger Woods' recent and very public return to Buddhism is more interesting than his return to professional golf.

That Woods was raised Buddhist is nothing remarkable; what's striking is the down-to-earth, family-guy image of Buddhism projected in his comeback campaign. Cynical or sincere, when Tiger faced the cameras back in February, his mention of Buddhism was clearly meant to convey (Brit Hume's Christian proselytizing notwithstanding) a safe and reassuring sense of groundedness and traditional values. "I need to regain my balance and be centered," Woods intoned. Or as he told an interviewer more recently, "I quit meditating, I quit being a Buddhist, and my life changed upside down."

The image of Buddhism in America has not always been so, as they used to say, square. I can't help thinking of Hugh Grant as a very worldly art dealer in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks. Asked at a Manhattan dinner party whether he studied art in school, Grant replies: "No, I didn't. I often think I should have done. I studied literature. Then inevitably wound up as a stockbroker. Then I dropped out, went to Japan, became a Buddhist, blah, blah, blah."

That's more like it. The exquisite "blah, blah, blah" nails a certain type of cosmopolitan poseur everyone seems to know—and an attitude toward Buddhism that's all too common. Indeed, when you think of Buddhism's place in mainstream American consciousness, it's most often seen as, if not a punch line, then a fashionable cause (think Tibet), a counterculture relic (think the Beats and their psychedelic '60s followers), a marketing gimmick (think "Zen" teas and glossy yoga magazines), a quasi-spiritual travel itinerary (think generations of Western backpacker-seekers in Asia, among whom, I confess, I must count my younger self)—or some combination of the above.
For the most part, outside of religion departments and the pages of Buddhist magazines and blogs, it's rare for Buddhism to be seen squarely and simply as what it is: a vibrant global religion and spiritual practice that's been offering "balance" and "centeredness" for 2,500 years and counting.

Oddly enough, the Tiger Woods spectacle coincides with the arrival on Wednesday night of a high-profile PBS documentary, The Buddha, which sets out to do precisely that rare thing. By telling the life story of Siddhartha Gautama (aka, the Buddha)—and letting us hear directly from some very articulate Buddhists, in clear and accessible terms, what the stories mean to them—the film manages to convey something like the essence of Buddhist teaching. It's a two-hour Buddhist Sunday-school lesson for grown-ups, and perhaps their kids, as well, courtesy of public television. (Feast on that, Mr. Hume.)

Buddhism, of course, isn't exactly news to Americans. Way back in 1958, the year of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, high-tide of the Beat era, Time profiled Zen popularizer Alan Watts, who'd just published his famous essay "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen," and declared that Buddhism was "growing more chic by the minute." (In 1997 Time put "Buddhism in America" on its cover—thanks to Martin Scorsese's Kundun and Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet—and reported that it was more than a passing fad.)

By 1967, Beat icons Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder were chanting and circumambulating San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, headliners for the epochal Human Be-In along with Timothy Leary, Ram Dass (Richard Alpert), the Grateful Dead, and others—a scene painted by Don Lattin in his new book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Until the 14th Dalai Lama became the face of Buddhism to the West (with an assist from Hollywood and the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize), that Beat/counterculture image—unkempt and trippy, libertine, a little vague and undisciplined yet politically engaged—clung to Buddhism in America. Discernible traces of it still do.

Poets Ginsberg and Snyder, even more so than Kerouac, are the key figures in the history of that image. As their fascinating, 40-year-long correspondence (published in 2008) reminds us, they represent distinct sensibilities and trajectories as counterculture Buddhism merged into the mainstream. Snyder—who trained for years under Zen masters in Japan—blazed the trail, taking the more traditional and rigorous route. (His Mountains and Rivers Without End, which he calls "a kind of sutra," spans four decades of poetic and Buddhist practice.) Ginsberg's path, if no less sincere, was more eccentric, more "counter," and a lot more visible. The idea that Buddhism is more about personal liberation from oppressive social convention—call it sex, drugs, and yoga—rather than a self-disciplined practice leading, above all, to an ethics of compassion, is (deservedly or not) one of the counterculture's lasting legacies.

Now along comes The Buddha on PBS, a documentary that seems to say, ever so quietly, goodbye to all that. Filmmaker David Grubin gives us a Buddhism that's ready to be seen as just another part of the religious landscape—no longer exotic, countercultural, "New Age," or in any way sensational. (Even the film's too-predictable narrator, Richard Gere, stays out of the spotlight—tastefully offstage, heard but not seen.)

Grubin opens with women working in lush fields and the sound of Indian-inflected strings and flute, as Gere's voice gently begins what could be a bedtime story: "2,500 years ago, nestled in a fertile valley along the border between India and Nepal, a child was born who was to become the Buddha"—which, as we learn, means the "awakened one," an enlightened being. "The world is filled with pain and sorrow, the Buddha would one day teach," Gere's co-narrator Blair Brown tells us. "But I have found a serenity, he told his followers, that you can find too."

Tracing the arc of the Buddha's life—an epic physical and interior journey to enlightenment, a kind of extended parable passed down by oral tradition and eventually preserved in scripture—Grubin takes us on a pilgrimage to the four major sites of Buddhist lore. Along the way we're treated to gorgeous photography of a contemporary—and idealized—religious India. The camera moves over Buddhist art from across Asia, illustrating the narrative. It's high-class stuff. Even the playful, dreamlike animated sequences, wisely used to dramatize the mythical and supernatural elements of the ancient stories, have a classical feel.
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Wen Stephenson is a writer in Boston. In previous lives, he was editorial director of TheAtlantic.com, editor of the Boston Globe's Ideas section, and most recently, senior producer of NPR's On Point.

There's also a very interesting Buddhist/Punk community thriving in the US. A seminal figure in this scene is Noah Levine; his story, as outlined in his autobiography Dharma Punx, is excellently portrayed in the documentary "Meditate & Destroy", which is now out on DVD. www.againstthestream.org

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COMMENTS & VIEWS ~ SOME QUITE INTERESTING

Siddhartha (Mass Market Paperback)

http://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann-Hesse/dp/0553208845

I believe this book was influential in spurring a greater awareness of, or an interest in Buddhism:

And, as it ends:

“Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life.”





Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in particular, will always be countercultural as long as the dominant culture is based on the underlying assumption that we are somehow incomplete and lacking and thus need to consume, purchase, acquire, and improve the self.





Zen is a body-mind discipline, which, like anything worthwhile, requires discipline, guidance, persistence, and patience and which yields eventually to deep joy and satisfaction. Zen teaches that there is no self apart, that our fixed sense of "me" and "I" is a fiction--a necessary fiction, but incomplete. Worse than incomplete, this sense of me and mine is the root cause of war, aggression, ignorance, and greed. The realization of "no-self" is not intellectual and it's not a world-view; it's a direct experience, a way of being in the world as the world that unfolds more subtly over the years. No one knows why, but when we're not ensnared in our endless, internal heroic-burlesque narratives, wisdom and compassion replace us.





Buddhism, as its presented in its purest forms and practiced in line with its actual intention, runs so counter to Western culture in general (and especially American in particular) that if it were ever co-opted by the "mainstream", it would either be that the Buddhism being practiced were so watered down that it wouldn't really be Buddhism, or it would be completely revolutionary. For example, what are you? Nothing. What is life? A dream. Those are the actual Buddhist answers. Also, you are absolutely going to die, your emotional needs will never be met, and the aim of becoming somebody is not only completely futile, but a colossal waste of time and creates nothing but suffering. How would they be able to advertise to us if they knew we had actually realized these things?





Either way, people usually only choose to get serious about Buddhist practice in the face of loss, trauma, crisis, emotional upheaval, or because life has some unsatisfactory quality it to it that just can not be ignored. Of course people start practicing meditation when things are going fine, okay, or great, but then it's usually as a means to improve their life, not to eradicate the reactive patterns that maintain a sense of self, die to the life of those patterns (which is no small or painless task), and wake up to a life of unlimited joy, loving-kindness, equanimity, and compassion.





Buddhism will probably always be misunderstood as some exotic, esoteric religion or as a way to get high or "rise above it all".





I dunno, I've always seen Buddhism as specifically being kind of in line with Wodinism and the stoic determinism of a lot of the Scandinavian beliefs. Of course there are differences, but their feelings on death always seemed so connected.





One of the appeals of Buddhism for us westerners may be that we view it at a great distance, and therefore fail to see all the unpleasant complication that comes with any living spiritual tradition. We don't see the doctrinal infighting or any of that other stuff. If Christianity had evolved in some far off land and we'd just discovered it, we could conveniently see only it's most beautiful aspects..."love your enemy", etc, and ignore all the baggage.





Maybe I'm misinterpreting your thoughts, but it seems to me that when "at a great distance" one's immersion with a particular religion is generally the result of reading texts and other media that present the more theoretical (and often more captivating) aspects of a religion. It's much less likely that one is aware of the "doctrinal infighting" (through the institutionalization of theoretical teaching) as you suggest.





This idea reminds of Thank You and Ok!: An American Zen Failure in Japan. I think the title suggests, in part, why the book is relevant.





By that logic, the perception of Islam in America should be quite rosy, but it is quite demonized instead.





I don't know too much about Gautama, but do remember reading about Zen through Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki and Yukio Mishima and coming away with this lasting impression : Zen is the religion of no religion. Zen mind is the mind of no mind. All else is vanity.





Logic or dogma of any kind has its limits, even in science, just check out Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.





Of all the millions or billions practicing Buddhism, how many have actually succeeded in reaching the goal that the Gautama said was attainable by all?





Not many. ( NOT TRUE )





Basically, it just doesn't work.





If Buddhism is indeed a route to nirvana, practiced by multitudes, should there not be a bunch more blissful people out there?





The overt lack of a 'God' is nifty. But if the end result is the same, what is the point?





Oh nice! So now you have standards sufficient to judge who is enlightened and who is not? You've done statistical analysis on those that practice versus those that attain enlightenment? Would you care to share your findings?





Or perhaps it's more than "gaining complete and total enlightenment in this lifetime." For myself, I know that through Buddhism, I've really learned to appreciate what I have. I've felt more fortunate about my life, and it's brought me wisdom and self-restraint. I don't really pursue things that don't really matter anymore, and I recognize the nature of what makes me frustrated. That's the point.





There is no real end goal in Buddhism, and while I've not explored all its different permutations, I can't imagine that any promise 'enlightenment' from its practice. The path (or dharma) towards enlightenment is simply a roadmap, and the sights along the route are as important as any final destination.





If we can allow ourselves to move deliberately and with measured contemplation along that path, we may attain some properties of a bodhisatva (spiritual warrior). Practice hones the mind and allows greater understanding of ourselves and even of the seeds of truth within the other spiritual traditions you've mentioned. "I am a Buddhist" is short-hand for "I am curious." I, personally, am suspicious of anyone who claims enlightenment for his or her self.





Nirvana is not like heaven, a place you ascend to for eternity, it flickers in and out like the twinkling o the stars, and the more your grasp for it, the less attainable it is. Like everything, it lacks substance. It is a vapor heady with exotic perfumes, but once tasted, the nitty-gritty of the world becomes a place of repose, where our thoughts and deed engender compassion, the blinders lift to trust in basic goodness of all things, and our mind is less an indignant child, and more a helpful assistant in determining actions for the benefit of ourselves and others.





I haven't seen the documentary. Would like to. In the meantime, though, this review of the documentary and the Tiger's version of buddhism seems to focus on a sterilized and intellectualized ideal version. I wish people would take a look at the actual practices and environment of tibetan buddhism or chinese buddhism. They looks a lot less western and chic, and a lot more like another version of raw animism.





Sorry if you are already aware of it. But for anyone interested, there is a Buddhist magazine called Tricycle that's worth checking out. I haven't it read it for a few years, but many of its articles deal with aspects of Buddhism that don't get much attention in the books on the subject. Buddhism books tend to focus on the Dharma[teachings] of the Buddha and the philosophy, while Tricycle looks at some of the sociological and practical aspects as well. I remember at least one article that dealt with exactly the issue RuediG mentions- the difference between how Buddhim is practiced in the US as compared to in Asia.





Why does the "actual practice and environment" of tibetan buddhism or chinese buddhism matter in this context? Is this "sterilized and intellectualized" ideal version invalid because it's different? Couldn't it just be a strain of "Western Buddhism" or "American Buddhism"? While it's worth studying the differences between how different cultures embrace a religion (just like Catholicism is practiced in very different ways depending on whether you are in Brazil, America, or France), how does that relate to a conversation that seems to be focused on American Buddhism specifically?





I don't know if the difference matters, but it sure is an interesting topic to look into. I disagree, but some have argued that it represents a fundamental difference between Eastern and Western mindsets that makes Buddhism impossible for the Westerner to understand.





Funny how things turn out. In Singapore, where I'm from, Buddhism is the more mainstream religion. Christianity is the recent addition drawing in the crowds (churches are usually full), and in some ways is the religion of the socially mobile. Meanwhile, the head monk of a major Buddhist Temple, who himself enjoys rockstar-like status, has recently been convicted of embezzling Temple funds, including buying a condo for his young male "personal assistant". They are now having trouble soliciting donations.





Alas, any religion can be exploited by the unscrupulous. Consider Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, as another example.





Buddhism already IS mainstream in America. There are at least two widely distributed, mainstream publications devoted exclusively to Buddhist topics that you can buy in grocery stores from Texas to Alaska. Almost every American higher education institution, including community colleges, has Buddhist Studies classes, if not departments, and a ridiculously large number of schools have departments just on Tibetology--the study of the history, religion and culture of a people who number just over 6 million. You can find books on Buddhism in any library or bookstore, sometimes dozens of them. The Dalai Lama is a brand name celebrity in our country. Hell, when my baptist preacher uncle gave me a copy of Freedom in Exile for Christmas 15 years ago, Buddhism was already mainstream.





I'm really curious now, what schools have Buddhist Studies departments and Tibetology classes? The way you described it makes it seem very common, but I question that assumption.





I'm looking forward to seeing this documentary. Buddhism has long interested me, in great part because of its down-to-earth matter-of-fact outlook. Any religion figurehead who tells his followers, "Don't believe anything just because I say it; figure it out for yourselves," is all right in my book.





Another interesting little story about Buddhism:

Driven to despair by his fruitless attempts to understand the universe, the sage Devadasa finally announced in desperation, "All statements that contain the word 'God' are false."





Instantly, his least favorite disciple, Somasiri, replied, "The sentence I am now speaking contains the word 'God'. I fail to see, oh noble master, how that simple statement can be false."





Devadasa considered the matter for several poyas. Then he answered, this time with apparent satisfaction. "Only statements that do not contain the word 'God' can be true."





After a pause barely sufficient for a starving mongoose to swallow a millet seed, Somasiri replied, "If this statement applies to itself, oh venerable one, it cannot be true, because it contains the word 'God'. But if it is not true - "





At this point, Devadasa broke his begging bowl upon Somasiri's head, and should therefore be honored as the true founder of Zen.





- From a fragment of the the Kulavampsa, as yet undiscovered





-- The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke

Too much organized religion is about repression of the libido

If Christ rose from the dead, so did zombies

People don t get that Christ is a consciousness of the Highest Order of Compassion

The one writer is incorrect in dismissing Kerouac as he wrotea book on Buddha dedicated to Jesus & another whole book on Eastern religions which is well informed

Consult this Dr Myers

some say he actually channels Kerouac Ginsberg etc!





Dr Myers is MOST knowledgable about religion, lierature & the Theater

His plays are quite astounding

literary witty dramatic in-your-face

a real innovator in a time when too much playwriting seems like archaeology

He wrote

"Past Life = Jack Kerouac" "Jack Kerouac in a Provincetown Dune Shack" "Jack Kerouac:Catholic"

and "Memo from Allen Ginsberg"

a play of his opens the Howl Festival this year in Manhattan

Tuesday, April 06, 2010, 5:11:35 PM– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate Guest

Playwright LARRY MYERS' new work





"Tigers are 1/12"

deals with alot of the aforementioned

Dr Myers is Director of The Jack Kerouac Literary Group in Manhattn (authorized by Kerouac Executor/Brother in Law

He wrote 3 plays on Kerouac & one on Ginsberg





The Book of Esther is said to have been written about the time of the birth of Buddha, and I only mention that because this is how The Book of Esther starts out:





Esther 1

Queen Vashti Deposed

1 This is what happened during the time of Xerxes, [a] the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Esther+1&version=NIV

The book of Esther aside and it is a great read and worth a re-read, some authors have made a case for a Buddhist influence on Christianity and, even more persuasively, I think, on Manichaeism. I am no expert on Buddhism’s influence on Christianity, but check it out and see what you think:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_the_Roman_world





“The story of the birth of the Buddha was also known: a fragment of Archelaos of Carrha (278 CE) mentions the Buddha's virgin-birth, and Saint Jerome (4th century CE) mentions the birth of the Buddha, who he says "was born from the side of a virgin". Queen Maya came to bear the Buddha after receiving a prophetic dream in which she foresaw the descent of the Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) from the Tuṣita heaven into her womb. This story has some parallels with the story of Jesus being conceived in connection with the visitation of the Holy Spirit to the Virgin Mary.”





And it should be tempered with this:





“Some interpretations of the life story of the Buddha attribute his birth to a virgin birth. This is likely due to a specific interpretation of the prophetic dream Queen Māyā is said to have had prior to conception and is not a widely held view amongst Buddhists. As she is described to have been married to King Śuddhodhana for many years, there is no indication that she would have been a virgin at the time of Siddhārtha's conception, but the conception of the Buddha is often held to have occurred without sexual activity. Nonetheless, this interpretation has led to parallels being drawn with the birth story of Jesus.”





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Maya





There are parallels between the Buddha and Jesus which point to the idea of this kind of adaptation. The one I always think of is the story of Jesus walking on the water. A version of that story almost exactly similar in all aspects (down to what was said between the teacher and his disciples) was being told about the Buddha two hundred years before Jesus was born.





Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Buddha-Parallel-Marcus-Borg/dp/1569751218





I thought I would check out some Buddhist poetry and (since Basho seems to have been banned from Slate) this is one I enjoyed a lot.





Ame ni mo makezu by Kenji Miyazawa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ame_ni_mo_Makezu





The American approach to Buddhism is kind of a mish-mash, as the article points out, but I don't have too big a problem with it. Sometimes it bugs me that Americans seem to think that the impressions of Buddhism they've gotten through their own popular culture, and from American authors in the self-help section, define what Buddhism is for everyone. So it's not that hard to get into arguments with people who insist that "Buddhism isn't a religion" or "There aren't any gods in Buddhism".





The American understanding of Buddhism is really, really influenced by the interpretation by Americans of Japanese Zen, from the fifties on. Now Zen started out in India, but it really came together in China, and the Japanese have a take on it that's pretty different to how it was there. The next big influence is the way that got pushed through the pop-culture mill. It's a very post-modern hall-of-mirrors affair.





Not to say that there's nothing of value in it, of course. But if you pick up a book written by an American in Barnes and Noble about Zen, it's best to bear in mind how far from the original Chinese texts you've gotten. And though Zen had its periods of popularity in China long ago, and it is still strong as a regular religion in Japan (though the attitude is very different to the US), it's only a minuscule part of international Buddhism.





Americans should maybe accept their home-brewed mish-mash for what it is, rather than thinking their style is everyone's style. But then it's very common in all religions to distort or make up stuff from the past to give one's words more authority, so I guess it doesn't matter too much.





Buddhism is a religion to unsophisticated people, primarily lay people, in many Asian countries. To the educated monks, it is more of a philosophy, but a philosophy with emotions associated with religion - primarily compassion for all who suffer, and deep respect and gratitude to the generations of teachers who have passed on Buddha's teaching.





In your view, what makes a religion a "religion"? Does it require the prostelization and evangelicism and forcing one's beliefs onto others that is so typical of other religions?





Your view of Buddhism is very similar to my view of Christianity. Growing up in a non-Christian household, when I first learned about the miracles of Jesus, my first thoughts were "water into wine? walking on water? Zombie resurrection? Where are the real miracles?!" It was simply not very impressive, especially after learning about the great mythologies of the Mayan and Greek gods. Since then I've felt that Christianity was less a religion, and more a practice of cultural assimilation with a bunch of embedded parables about teaching people to be good to one another. How is that a religion?





I have asked some friends who studied Christian philosophy that very question, and the best answer they could come up with is, "Because the teachings of Jesus are the word of god". The obvious flaw of logic here is that they take the idea of Jesus to be god for granted. Well that is certainly not a good answer, but I didn't tell them that Christianity is not a religion.





You simply proved to be another example of what Mujokan state succinctly, of a person who grew up in a non-Buddhist culture, gazed and studied it from afar, and came to the conclusion that it is not a religion, because you weren't feeling "it". Are you and I any different?

Thursday, April 08, 2010, 2:38:48 PM– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate T. Dunn

It is absurd that an ancient religion (or philosophy, depending on your point of view,) that teaches self restraint, balance, moderation, compassion, and acceptance became associated with free love, mind altering drugs, and commercial products such as 'Zen' makeup. Zen is a name of a sect of Buddhism, and it literally means meditation. Would you name a line of makeup or a beverage 'Catholic', or 'Lutheran?'





Buddhist sects almost never quarrel because Buddhists think in terms of practicing as taught by a lineage - you respect your teachers and strive to learn what they teach you. You even name them, generation after generation, century by century, in chants of gratitude. The focus is on practice rather than dogma. The typical Buddhist wouldn't think of quarreling with another's practice - it would be like insulting the other person's grandparents.





Practice and teachings are thought of as a means to an end, quarreling about it would be like claiming that you can get to your destination only one way - as though you claimed that a Volkswagen would work to get you to a destination but that a Subaru wouldn't.





They do sometimes quarrel, though, e.g. the Dorje Shugden controversy. There are so many different sects these days for that reason.





Plus, like any organization made up of humans, any Buddhist sect has there own power struggles and figures abusing their authority and the dogma/dharma itself. One only needs to look at the way Japanese Buddhist leaders used Zen in the run up to WWII for evidence.





Sadly, some prominent Zen abbots did encourage war fever in Japan. In the history of Buddhists in Japan, some Zen Buddhists adhered to Bushido rather than truly Buddhist ethics. They did not make the effort to confront the inconsistency of the Kannon Sutra, chanted in every Zen Temple, with their traditional Japanese views. This is reminiscent of the failure of some Christians to struggle with the inconsistency between much of the Old and New Testaments.





However much some Meiji era Japanese Zen figures failed to live up to Buddhist teachings, there is no ambiguity in Buddhist teachings which may be used to justify their violent imperialist and chauvanistic views. They simply disregarded all Buddhist teaching.





Yes, that's a quarrel, but I wouldn't call it doctrinal, exactly. It is a disagreement about the moral judgment of a spiritual figure, rather than a difference in doctrine per se.





"It is absurd that an ancient religion (or philosophy, depending on your point of view,) that teaches self restraint, balance, moderation, compassion, and acceptance became associated with free love, mind altering drugs, and commercial products such as 'Zen' makeup."





Plenty of Asian sects of both Hinduism and Buddhism have used free love and mind altering drugs as part of their practice. A healthy dose of a good hallucinogen will certainly bring home the monkey nature of the mind as well as call into the question the assumptions we make about the world around us.





For some great reading on the subject, Tricycle Magazine came out with an issue devoted to the subject of Buddhism and psychedelics back in 1996 or so. They did a great job, soliciting reasoned and interesting positions from both sides of the aisle. I can speak from my own personal experience to say that my experiences with these drugs gave me direct insights that primed my own interest and practice of Buddhism.





As you say- don't be so quick to judge other's path up the mountain. And then there's that whole "the way is that which can't be deviated from" spiel.





Oh, really? What Buddhist sect, exactly, practiced free love and the use of psychedelic drugs for religious purposes? I do not judge your path, but I cannot call it Buddhism based on any historical precedent.





“It is absurd that an ancient religion (or philosophy, depending on your point of view,) that teaches self restraint, balance, moderation, compassion, and acceptance became associated with free love, mind altering drugs, and commercial products …..”





It is, but perhaps that is the normal course for organized religion. After all, Christianity teaches forbearance of wealth, giving to the poor, loving one’s enemies and tolerance of sinners. Yet now we see Christians preaching prosperity theology, opposing funding of social programs, advocating hawkish military policy and bitterly opposing equal treatment of people that they consider to be sinners.





I think the Christian founders were very unwise to incorporate the Old Testament in their bible. This would seem to be the source of unenlightened values found in some expressions of Christianity.


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My Mind Is Like My MotherHuffpost - Carter Phipps

I recently finished a ten-day meditation retreat, a deeply enriching experience and one full of all kinds of insights and breakthroughs. But of all the many things that struck me during those powerful days of silence and stillness, one in particular really hit home ... and left me privately chuckling behind my meditative mask. My mind is like my mother. Yes, it's true. But don't get me wrong; I'm not talking about Freud here. I don't mean that my mind is like my "superego," dictating shoulds and shouldn'ts like some disembodied parental authority in my head. No, I'm talking about something a little more mundane and yet more profound. What I mean is that the way my mind relates to the contents of my experience reminds me of the way that my mother relates to the contents of her life.

Let me explain.

When I was growing up, it was long into my adolescent years before I realized that my mother was an impressive lady. She was a smart, progressive, attractive woman, who loved life deeply and lived it fully. She was trained in the classics, Greek and Latin, taught college, raised five kids, and eventually became a clinical dietitian, pursuing a lifelong passion for understanding food and its impact on the body. And though she hid some of her talents behind a Midwestern veneer of Presbyterian plainness, I was always surprised at how deeply she seemed to understand people -- what made them tick. But it wasn't just that.

At some point I remember realizing that my mother seemed to have a theory about everyone. She always had some story about why things were the way they were and more specifically, why people were the way they were. And let me tell you; her theories were deep, well thought out, and had psychological richness and spiritual context. They might touch on science or the latest research in all kinds of areas. And they often had a nutritional component as one casual factor. Were her stories always true? Well, let's just say they always had verve if not verity.

Time and age has not diminished my mother's capacity for storytelling. Even today, if I want to know, for example, why my nephews seem to be having such a harrowing time adjusting to the rigors and demands of young adulthood, I could call my brother for an explanation. Being a wise and sympathetic father, he'll no doubt give me a few words about adolescent rebellion, or the painful process of learning how to individuate and live apart from the parents. You know, basic stuff. True? Maybe ... but absolutely boring. Now if I call my mother, it's a whole different story. She'll take me on a journey. She'll explain to me the psychologies involved, include several generations of family for context, use developmental psychology, spiritual seeking, brain development, cultural theory, integral philosophy, and she'll usually throw in a nutritional component -- maybe lack of vitamin D or some such. True? I don't know, but it's damn interesting.

So what does all of this have to do with meditation? Well, at some point during the ten days of staring at the machinations of my mental processes, I realized: my mind is just like my mother. It has a story about everything.

What do I mean? The miraculous thing about doing essentially nothing for days on end is that you begin to actually see through the spell that the mind casts over the self, and recognize that so much of what goes on in our mental world is truly meaningless. For example, over and over again, I watched as my mind took the exact psycho-emotional state that I was in at any given moment and projected it into the future. It was as if the possibilities that seemed to be real in that state of consciousness -- the hopes, fears, dreams, ideas, etc. that were connected to that particular emotional milieu -- would define my life from here to eternity. My mind would spin a story about the future based almost entirely on how I felt in the present. Sometimes it was an enlightened story, sometimes a mundane story, and sometimes a downright frightening story.
But it was just that -- a story. And it lasted about as long as the corresponding emotional state lasted, which varied greatly, but was always, I can confidently say, of finite term. Of course, if somewhere we believe that the story has power over us, then we're trapped. Then there's no way out. And that's one place where real spiritual victories are won -- in the willingness to persevere and do the work of freeing oneself from the shackles of that hall of mirrors, where the stories may be amusing, terrifying, or liberating, but they are not real. Like my mother, the mind is a wonderful storyteller. And believe me, that capacity is an important thing. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But the moment we assume it's all true, we are caught, trapped in Samsara, condemned to live inside stories not of our own choosing.

"The mind is a berry patch," Andrew Cohen, my spiritual teacher, writes in his book Enlightenment Is a Secret. "Stop the habit of compulsively eating every berry that comes into your sight. Take the time and make the effort to see whether or not the berry that you happen to be staring at is sweet, rotten or sour. Never under any circumstances allow yourself to eat a sour or rotten berry. Eat only the sweet ones and have the sense to eat them only when you are hungry." It's timeless wisdom, the kind all mothers can definitely appreciate. Don't eat rotten berries! And remember, berries are not inherently bad. In fact, they're full of antioxidants. We should eat lots of them. At least that's the story my mother tells me. And that one, I believe!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carter-phipps/my-mind-is-like-my-mother_b_204659.html

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February 20, 2009

Source: Huffington PostMeditation on the Recession
By Michael Sigman

On the 26th of January 2009, billions of Chinese and other Asians, throughout the world, will welcome the first day of its Ox Year, with much trepidation, fear of loss of jobs and changes in their life-style and wealth. Whilst their expectations are real, there is a noble way out! --Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Bhikkhu Buddha Dhatu

I hate meditating, but I do it every day.

It's boring and sometimes painful. It won't fix your problems, and it sure won't help you get a job, pay your mortgage or revive your 401K. Where it can work wonders is in mitigating the stress of any tough situation, including the economic crisis, which, let's face it, isn't going away any time soon.

Mindfulness meditation -- where all you have to do is sit still, watch your mind, and, when it wanders, go back and watch it some more -- is ideal for these frugal times. It's free, requires no travel or gear and can be practiced at any time and for any duration. There's no need to become a Buddhist, pay for a mantra or go guru-hunting.

As the financial meltdown deepens, most people and businesses are cutting spending to the bone just to stay solvent, while those lucky enough to have discretionary income scrutinize their budgets line by line to trim expenses.

Some belt-tightening is long overdue. Everyone needs to learn to pay as they go; businesses must get leaner, and individuals can get better deals on bank charges, phone and cable rates, and cool it on the heating bills. But cost-cutting can only go so far before becoming counter-productive. (That means you, LA Times.)

Of course, there's a ripple effect, where one man's spending ceiling is another man's unemployed floor: canceling Netflix, getting cheaper haircuts, going to fewer concerts, buying cheaper clothes and eating at home only makes things worse for Netflix employees, hairdressers, musicians, shop owners and waiters.

In the wake of all this, feelings of fear, confusion and anger can take on a life of their own. Where mindfulness meditation comes in is that by sitting quietly and noticing the parade of your tiny, individual thoughts and feelings, you have a front row seat to observe your mind at a granular level. Do this for a while and you'll begin to see how the mind expands moment-to-moment thoughts and impressions into complex, often tortured narratives.

Say you're meditating and a thought arises -- unbidden -- that you might lose your job. It's just a mental sensation with no solidity, but before you know it your head has you filing for bankruptcy or on the street begging for change. By bringing your mind back to its "watching" state, the nightmarish story you've spun is revealed to be as evanescent as a dream, and, perceived in that light, loses its power.

While meditating this morning, I felt a stab of pain in my right shoulder, where a bone spur has been wreaking havoc for months. The physical sensation subsided in seconds, but by then my mind had me on an operating table at Cedar's counting backwards from 10 before going under the knife. This was also pure fantasy ; no one's suggested I need surgery. But by observing this process -- gaining insight into how my mind works -- I grokked the illusory quality of the story, and soon the anxiety passed and the whole thing seemed kind of funny.

Practice a few minutes a day -- if you can work your way up to 20 minutes or more, all the better -- and, a body of scientific research that will convince even skeptics shows, odds are you'll experience subtle changes in alertness, sleep and anxiety levels.

To learn more, find a teacher, attend a class or read up. In the LA area, InsightLA (InsightLA.org), a Santa Monica-based non-profit founded by my principal teacher, Trudy Goodman, offers a world of excellent information, classes, meditation retreats and lectures. In the Bay area, check out Spirit Rock (spiritrock.org), a spectacular meditation center co-founded by the great mindfulness teacher/author Jack Kornfield. Similar resources are available in or near most major cities. Or pick up "Wherever You Go There You Are" by Jon Kabat Zinn or "A Path With Heart" by Kornfield, two of the many profound and practical books on the subject.

Meditation can be invaluable in the direst of circumstances, financial and otherwise. A close friend once told me that after she'd heard the most devastating news of her life, her first thought was, "Thank God I meditate."

Bhikku Buddha Dhatu might say she'd found a noble way out.

January 27, 2009


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What's Your Poison?By Michael Sigman

Forty years ago, two-fifths of America's 6.7 million college students defined themselves "mainly by their lack of concern about making money," according to a Fortune poll cited by Rick Perlstein in his superb book Nixonland.

Twenty-five hundred years before that, the Buddha identified three "poisons" as the causes of all human suffering: greed, aversion and delusion. We all want desperately to prolong what makes us feel good (greed) and get rid of what's painful (aversion). If you don't, you're either enlightened or delusional.

Everyone is poisoned by all three, but Buddhism maintains that each of us specializes in one more than the others. I'm more of a fear guy, though greed pokes through from time to time. As for delusion, at least I think I know that I don't know anything. Well, not really, but you get the point.

The economy, the sum of all our financial actions, also exhibits the poisons, and the dominance of one or another comes in cycles. You can chart greed's upswings through the lens of film history. Eric Von Stroheim's 1924 epic Greed (which, perhaps greedily, ran nine hours, till aversive studio execs slashed it to two). Ayn Rand is famous for her essay The Virtue of Selfishness, and her tribute to this philosophy, The Fountainhead, was released as a film starring Gary Cooper in 1949 -- just as America entered the post-WWII boom. Some believed greed reached its apotheosis in the '80s, symbolized by Gordon Gekko, the main character in Wall Street, who posited it as a moral good.

But we now know that Michael Milken and company, Gekko's real life analogs, were pikers compared to the orgy of speculative greed that ran rampant until a few months ago.
Of course, a web of delusion sustained and nurtured the greed. That so many smart people "knew" Bernie Madoff was legit was just a symptom of the ignorance that consumed the markets and the national mood.

Last fall, in the blink of an eye, fear took hold like a magnitude-10 earthquake, and now rumbles through so many of our thoughts, decisions and actions. Instead of grasping to increase their gains, people are terrified of losing their jobs, their homes and what's left of their diminished assets.

There's good reason to be scared. Things may well get worse before they get better. What might be helpful -- apart from the massive recovery plan that needs to happen ASAP -- is the recognition that delusion is never far behind. Today's doomsday scenarios -- just turn on cable news or read the front page or the financial section of any paper -- mirror the over-optimism of the recent past.

Economic greed and fear are two sides of the same coin: the overriding concern with money. Disavowed by so many boomers all those years ago, it's now become a defining characteristic of who we are, in good times and bad.

When things start getting better -- and you don't have to be a spiritual or financial guru to observe the cyclical nature of economics -- the fear will diminish. But will the preoccupation with money also abate? Or will fear simply be replaced by another cycle of greed?

The lesson of the three poisons isn't to stop pursuing pleasure or trying to avert disaster; these are normal and healthy pursuits. But if we can temper not our desires but our desperation for their fulfillment, our suffering will diminish. And that's no delusion.



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Healing & Spirituality
Take a Breath
By Nick Street,
Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2007

Meditation in schools is not a religious practice that raises any church-state issues.Los Angeles, CA (USA) --

'At quiet time we try to be as calm as we can," says Reko, a seventh-grader at Ideal Academy, a Washington, D.C., charter school that incorporates a 20-minute transcendental meditation program into each school day. "We close our eyes and think of our mantra so we can be relaxed."

'At quiet time we try to be as calm as we can," says Reko, a seventh-grader at Ideal Academy, a Washington, D.C., charter school that incorporates a 20-minute transcendental meditation program into each school day. "We close our eyes and think of our mantra so we can be relaxed."

A student at Piedmont Avenue Elementary in Oakland, Calif., practicing mindfulness meditation using a technique he learned in class (file pic)On the other side of the country, students at Emerson Elementary School in Oakland practice techniques called "mindfulness" that have been adapted from Buddhism. The children learn to follow their breath, watch their thoughts and focus their attention by listening to the tone of a Tibetan singing bowl until the sound is too faint to hear.

"Mindfulness makes me feel marvelous," says Curtis, a fifth-grader at Emerson.window.google_render_ad();Few people doubt that Reko and Curtis -- and thousands of children at charter and other public schools -- can benefit from a daily dose of mindfulness or meditation. Scientists at the University of Massachusetts established the effectiveness of meditation for reducing stress and anxiety in the 1980s. And recent studies at UCLA concluded that kids with attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders showed clear improvement in concentration and cognitive abilities after learning techniques similar to those used at the Oakland school. These studies have lent credibility to a growing movement to introduce meditation and mindfulness programs into the nation's schools. The number of such programs has jumped from just a handful five years ago to more than 100 at the start of the coming school year.

In Southern California, the David Lynch Foundation is sponsoring start-up transcendental meditation programs at two publicly funded schools -- one in Inglewood and another in Sun Valley.As the movement to bring mantras and Tibetan singing bowls to public schools gathers steam, some activists who keep an eye on church-state issues are crying foul."It's not the business of schools to lead kids to inner peace through a spiritual process," says Edward Tabash, chairman of the national legal committee for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Tabash, a self-described secular humanist, predicts an imminent court battle. "I can quite frankly see a coalition between religious fundamentalists and atheists challenging this.

"Last fall, the Pacific Justice Institute, a legal advocacy group for conservative Christian issues, launched an opening salvo. The institute took up the cause of parents who objected to a TM school program in Marin County, which prompted the Lynch Foundation to withdraw its support.The common rallying point for any anti-mindfulness coalition would be opposition to teaching practices that trace their roots to Buddhism and Hinduism in public schools. Why should mantras and meditation be allowed to slip past the formidable barrier of legal precedent that has largely kept prayer out of the schools for the last 50 years?

The short answer to that question: When they're stripped of their Eastern cultural trappings, meditation and other mindfulness techniques are not religious practices, so there's no reason to ban them in public schools. Choral music comes out of Christian church traditions, but no one objects to a school choir."What's religious about learning to follow your breath?" asks Wendi Caporicci, a devout Catholic and the principal at Oakland's Emerson Elementary. George Rutherford, the principal at Ideal Academy, takes a similar view of transcendental mediation, which he has practiced for over a decade. "I'm a Baptist, and my wife has a doctorate in Christian education," he says, adding that TM "is not a religion."

A federal district court came to a different conclusion in 1979. The court said TM couldn't be taught in publicly funded schools in New Jersey because the practice -- with its ties to a specific spiritual leader -- violated the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.But in the intervening years, the medical study of TM and Buddhist-derived mindfulness techniques has changed both the practices themselves and attitudes toward them. The new "medicalized" meditation and mindfulness programs seem more likely to pass constitutional muster.

The Supreme Court has already weighed in on what counts as a religious practice or belief. In United States vs. Seeger (1965), the court determined that a conscientious objector who justified his claim of exemption from the draft by quoting Plato, Aristotle and Spinoza couldn't be compelled to serve in the armed forces because his beliefs occupied a place in his life "parallel to that filled by God." It would be hard to argue that meditation has replaced religion for people like Rutherford and Caporicci.

None of the hallmarks of religious systems -- doctrine, cosmology, ethics, clergy, devotion to a deity or reverence for a prophetic teacher -- figure into these mindfulness and meditation programs that are beginning to raise the ire of church-state activists. More to the point, these programs teach skills -- how to pay attention and regulate the emotions -- that many parents and teachers are eager for kids to learn.Without Buddha or Brahma or bowing or incense, meditation and mindfulness are about as religious as -- well, breathing.Are you breathing right now? Just for a few seconds, can you follow your breath as it moves in and out of you? Do you feel your belly rise and fall as you inhale and exhale? As you watch yourself have this experience, do you realize that you've taken a step back from your thoughts and emotions?
Congratulations -- you've just aced the final exam for Mindfulness 101. That's it. Class dismissed.Wait -- one more question before you go. Are your dearly held beliefs still intact?It will be the burden of any anti-mindfulness coalition to prove that they're not.
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Nick Street, a Soto Zen priest, is a fellow with News21, a Carnegie-Knight initiative in journalism education at USC.
_________________________________________________________________________Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om'By Andrea R. Vaucher

The 30 or so clinicians and researchers sat cross-legged on cushions or in chairs, their eyes closed, as their teacher led them through a guided meditation.Telling them to relax their bodies and concentrate on their breathing, author and meditation instructor Sharon Salzberg urged them to overcome distractions such as sounds, thoughts and emotions by coming back to the breath each time they found their minds wandering.
The goal, she said, was to still the mind. For the participants, all from UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital Pediatric Pain Program and many unfamiliar with meditation, it was also an opportunity to observe, up close and personal, a technique being prescribed at the hospital to ease physical and emotional pain in their pediatric patients.Salzberg, 55, was teaching the group Vipassana -- or mindfulness -- meditation, a centuries-old Buddhist practice she was instrumental in bringing to the U.S. after a four-year stay in India in the early 1970s.A cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., Salzberg extols the benefits of a meditation practice, even if just for minutes a day. "It's a healing process," she said later. "A move toward integration."It appears to work. In a new study, published in October in the journal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, tracked the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The randomized, controlled clinical trial found that the 37 people who participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly greater pain acceptance and physical function than a similar size control group.
Subsequently, the control group took the same eight-week program and had similar results.
"When there is pain, the rest of the body tenses up," Salzberg said."Then you have tension plus pain. Or there's judgment: 'I shouldn't be feeling this way.' Mindfulness allows us to see what the add-ons are and discover what the actual experience is right now."
Increasingly, doctors across the country are recommending meditation to treat pain, and some of the nation's top hospitals, including Stanford, Duke and NYU Medical Center, now offer meditation programs to pain patients.Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer, the head of Children's pediatric pain program, didn't need to be convinced of meditation's benefits; she knew from her own experience as a meditator. Zeltzer organized the recent training day with Salzberg and Trudy Goodman, a psychotherapist and founder of the InsightLA meditation community, paying them out of
her own pocket and hosting it at her Encino home so her staff would be introduced to a tool she is passionate about."As a meditator, I learned the value of being present and how that allows clarity in processing our daily lives," Zeltzer said. "The clinical team sees children with chronic pain who are very difficult to treat and have been to many other specialists and feel discouraged by the time they come to us. I felt that learning to meditate would help the team feel a sense of balance and equanimity in the face of the anxiety and distress brought to them by these patients and their families."
Subject of studySCIENTISTS have studied the effects of meditation on pain for nearly three decades, ever since 1979, when MIT-trained microbiologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus and founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, used mindfulness meditation in a 10-week program to teach chronic pain patients how to cope. Kabat-Zinn's 1990 bestseller, "Full Catastrophe Living," described the technique he used -- mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR.Since then, research has suggested that meditation reduces the brain's reaction to pain and increases pain tolerance. It has an effect on chronic back pain and can be an effective palliative for pain associated with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, studies have shown.
Kabat-Zinn's original study was done at the university's Medical Center's Stress Reduction Clinic, which has since been folded into the Center for Mindfulness. The 51 patients in the study, which was published in General Hospital Psychiatry in 1982, suffered from lower back, neck, shoulder, facial, coronary and GI pain, as well as headaches. At the end of the study, about two-thirds of the patients showed a pain reduction of at least 33% and half showed a reduction of at least 50%. The number of medical symptoms also decreased."MBSR's contribution has been to bring the heart of Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism into the mainstream of Western medicine," Kabat- Zinn said. "A referral to the Stress Reduction Clinic would now be part of the natural progression for anyone who sees patients with a long- standing pain condition."Since 1979, more than 18,000 patients have come through the Stress Reduction Clinic. There are now more than 250 MBSR programs in clinics and hospitals around the world.
In Los Angeles, Zeltzer refers patients to Goodman, who taught MBSR with Kabat-Zinn in the early days of the program, and who continues to teach the technique through InsightLA. But meditation remained esoteric to many on Zeltzer's team until they could learn the basics and ask Salzberg and Goodman questions about the practice."Previously, we had talked about meditation in the abstract," Zeltzer said. "And a lot of the team members wondered how it was going to work."
Zeltzer got interested "in the relationship of mind and body and health"
during her fellowship in adolescent medicine at Los Angeles Children's Hospital in the 1970s. "What led to the differences in symptoms and suffering in adolescents who had the same disease?" she wondered at the time. "Why were some able to endure medical procedures without too much problem, while others fell apart?"Realizing that the mind has a powerful effect on the body, Zeltzer used her first NIH grant in the early 1980s to study the benefit of hypnotherapy prior to spinal tap operations. "Spending a period of time each day just sitting and 'doing nothing' was one of the most important lessons that I learned in my hypnotherapy work," Zeltzer said. This journey into silence led to an interest in meditation, which increased exponentially when Zeltzer began studying the practice with Goodman in 2002.
Now Zeltzer wants to scientifically measure the effectiveness of meditation on kids with pain.
Converts meet skepticismPEOPLE who have been helped by meditation, whether physicians or laypersons, have encouraged the use of meditation in pain management.
"It was life-changing for me," said Phoebe Larmore, an L.A.-based literary agent who represents authors Tom Robbins and Margaret Atwood.
For over two decades, Larmore was plagued with acute back pain and consulted with top specialists at medical centers such as Stanford University's and the Mayo Clinic, to no avail. At her worst, she weighed 80 pounds and was on morphine.
Then a doctor at UCLA gave her a meditation tape.
"I used it over and over and was able to have a few moments in which I was above the pain and could get my breath and hold onto hope," she recalled.
Larmore learned how to pace herself, running her business from her home.
But recently, "the sandpaper of living with chronic pain" got to her, and she enrolled in an InsightLA MBSR class taught by Goodman and German physician Chris Wolf."The eight-week program was one of the most challenging commitments I have ever made," she said. "But I found a new key that enables me to better accept, embrace and have an instrument with which to mindfully be with my pain and walk with it with more lightness."
Though anecdotal experiences about the benefits of meditation are easy to find, clinical randomized trials on meditation's effects are rare and in the early stages. And skepticism lurks in the wings of every study."When I submit articles to be reviewed, it feels like they are picked apart very carefully, and I have to work harder to prove my findings,"
said Dr. Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh who has been studying the effect of mindfulness meditation on pain in adults. "There's more intensity to the review comments than if they were about a conventional subject."
But despite resistance, Kabat-Zinn is betting on meditation playing a larger role in medicine in the future."We are headed toward development of a new kind of medicine that honors the profound dilemma of the person who presents to a doctor with suffering," he stated with no uncertainty. "Since Buddhism has a history of understanding suffering, and since nobody goes to a hospital without some kind of suffering, what better place than a hospital to be grounded in meditation?"

___________________________________________________________American Buddhism On The RiseReligion & Ethics
from the September 14, 2006

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

The Dalai Lama's recent visit spotlights the fact that, with 1.5 million adherents, both U.S. caucasian and Asian, Buddhism is America's fourth-largest religion.
Buddhism first arrived in the United States in the 1800s.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – That genial face has become familiar across the globe - almost as recognizable when it comes to religious leaders, perhaps, as Pope John Paul II. When in America, the Dalai Lama is a sought-after speaker, sharing his compassionate message and engaging aura well beyond the Buddhist community.

After inaugurating a new Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in Vancouver, B.C., the Tibetan leader this week begins a visit to several US cities for public talks, sessions with young peacemakers, scientists, university faculty, corporate executives, and a California women's conference. But he'll also sit down for teach-ins among the burgeoning American faithful.

Buddhism is growing apace in the United States, and an identifiably American Buddhism is emerging. Teaching centers and sanghas (communities of people who practice together) are spreading here as American-born leaders reframe ancient principles in contemporary Western terms.

Though the religion born in India has been in the US since the 19th century, the number of adherents rose by 170 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the American Religious Identity Survey. An ARIS estimate puts the total in 2004 at 1.5 million, while others have estimated twice that. "The 1.5 million is a low reasonable number," says Richard Seager, author of "Buddhism in America."

That makes Buddhism the country's fourth-largest religion, after Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Immigrants from Asia probably account for two-thirds of the total, and converts about one-third, says Dr. Seager, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y.

What is drawing people ( after that fascination with Zen Buddhism in the '50s and '60s )? The Dalai Lama himself has played a role, some say, and Buddhism's non-missionizing approach fits well with Americans' search for meaningful spiritual paths.

"People feel that Buddhist figures like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh of Vietnam are contributing something, not trying to convert people," says Lama Surya Das, a highly trained American lama in the Tibetan tradition. "They are not building big temples, but offering wisdom and ways of reconciliation and peacemaking, which are so much needed."

Even a larger factor, he suggests, is that Buddhism offers spiritual practices that Western religions haven't emphasized.

"People are looking for experiential practices, not just a new belief system or a new set of ethical rules which we already have, and are much the same in all religions," Surya Das says. "It's the transformative practices like 'meditation' which people are really attracted to."

At a sangha "sitting" in Cambridge, Mass., last week, some 20 devotees sat cross-legged on four rows of large burgundy-colored cushions before a small candlelit altar. A practice-leader led a quiet hour of meditation interspersed with the chanting of prayers and mantras. The group then gathered in a circle for a half hour of discussion.

Carol Marsh, an architect who served as practice-leader for the evening, had an interest in finding a spiritual path for years, but was "resistant to anything non-rationalist," she says afterward in an interview. "Then I read 'Awakening the Buddha Within,' [Surya Das's first book on 'Tibetan wisdom for the Western world'], and it spoke to me directly.... My ultimate aim is liberation."

After eight years of practicing, "I am happier, more grateful, more able to roll with whatever punches or moments of annoyance may present themselves," Ms. Marsh says.

What's so valuable to Jane Moss, who's been practicing 15 years, is learning how "to be in the present moment." And also to accept that reality involves perfection and "to view the world as good and people as basically loving." Each month, the group holds a meditation focused on love and compassion.

The Cambridge sangha has been meeting since 1991, when Surya Das opened the Dzogchen Center here after decades of training with Tibetan teachers. Before becoming a lama, he was Jeffrey Miller, raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn. An anti-Vietnam-War activist while at the University of Buffalo (N.Y.), he was stunned when his good friend Allison Krause was shot and killed by the National Guard at Kent State in 1970.

"When I graduated in 1972, I was disillusioned with radical politics - I realized fighting for peace was a contradiction in terms, and I wanted to find inner peace," he explains. Instead of graduate school, the young Miller headed off on a search that ended up in the Himalayas, where he spent the rest of the '70s and '80s learning from Buddhist teachers while teaching some of them English.

There were plenty of struggles and moments of doubt, but also illumination, he says. Following a centuries-old path to cultivate awareness, his training included two three-year retreats of intensely focused practice.

"One of the great lessons of that monastic brotherhood was learning to love even those people I didn't like," he says, speaking by phone from a retreat in Texas where he's training others.

There are many schools of Buddhism, but "everyone agrees that the purpose is the individual and collective realization of Enlightenment," Surya Das continues. "That is defined as nirvanic peace, wisdom, and selfless love. It involves a practice path that depends on meditation, ethical behavior, and developing insight and active love."

Buddha means "awakened" in Sanskrit, a language of ancient India, where Siddhartha Gautama founded the faith and an Eightfold Path some 2,500 years ago. Buddhists believe that through that path one awakens to 'What Already Is' - "The Natural Great Perfection." Buddhists do not speak of God with a big "G". Or of the human or ego-mind with a small "m," and the Buddha (awakened) Mind with a big "M." Surya Das has written. "We are all Buddhas."

One doesn't have to subscribe to a catechism or creed, or be a vegetarian. Nor do people have to give up their religion. That's why some Americans speak of being Jewish Buddhists, for instance.

The Dalai Lama, in fact, often encourages people to simply stay with the faith of their cultural upbringing, to avoid the confusion that can sometimes result from a mixing of Eastern and Western perspectives.

Yet others are going more fully into Buddhist study, particularly as the writings and training by American-born teachers increase its accessibility.

The Dzogchen Center (Dzogchen means "the innate great completeness"), which has sanghas in several states, teaches an advanced Tibetan practice; annually, it offers numerous retreats, from one-day to two-week gatherings. Surya Das - whose Tibetan teacher gave him his name, which means "follower or disciple of the light" - is the spiritual director.

Thirty devotees are currently cloistered in a 100-day retreat for advanced students at the Dzogchen retreat center outside Austin, Texas. They are in the third of a 12-year cycle of silent retreats - which will likely produce new teachers.

Several Tibetan teachers helped introduce Buddhism in the US, and one, Chogyam Trungpa, founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. But the teacher succumbed to excesses that tempt clergy of various faiths - alcoholism and sexual misconduct.

The Dalai Lama has warned, too, of some teachers who seek leadership for financial rather than spiritual reasons. The issue of students and teachers is today one of the most controversial in transmission of teaching from East to West, says Surya Das.

Still, a healthy American Buddhism with its own characteristics is emerging. It is less doctrinal and ritualistic than in the East and more meditation oriented, less hierarchical and more democratic and egalitarian. It is more lay-oriented than monastic, and more socially and ecologically engaged.

Perhaps most noticeably, "the role of women as leaders and teachers is very significant here," Seager says.

The Dalai Lama speaks of Buddhism naturally taking new forms in each culture. As he travels the globe, he also emphasizes building bridges between faiths, as well as finding nonviolent means for resolving differences. This weekend, the Nobel Peace Laureate will spend time with youths in Denver engaged in conflict-resolution projects. He'll bless the Great Stupa, the largest example of Buddhist sacred architecture in the US, located at Colorado's Shambhala Mountain Center. Next week he'll speak to 20,000 at a football stadium in Buffalo, and at the alma mater of Surya Das, who was one of his attendants for several years.

"Buddhism made me a mensch and brought me happiness," Surya Das concludes contentedly, "and helped me find my place in life and the universe."

The Four Noble Truths: According to legend, about two and a half millennia ago in what is today southern Nepal, a restless nobleman, Siddhartha Gautama, abandoned his home and family to live as a wandering religious seeker. Six years later, he claimed to have attained liberation from suffering.

Tradition says that the first sermon of this nobleman – who became known as the Buddha, or the Awakened One – was delivered to five disciples in a deer park. It described the causes of suffering and the way in which it can be eliminated. These teachings, known as the Four Noble Truths, form the foundation of Buddhism:

1) To exist is to suffer.

2) Suffering is caused by an ignorant thirsting after things that are necessarily impermanent, including youth, good health, posessions, and even one's own life.

3) Those who cease thirsting after impermanent things will cease suffering. This state of cessation is called nirvana.

4) Nirvana can be attained by following the Noble Eightfold Path, a way of living that combines wisdom, nonviolence, and mental discipline.

Source: buddhanet.net

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Jewish AND Buddhist !

J U B U

At One With Dual Devotion
By Louis Sahagun

May 02, 2006


The altar in Becca Topol's living room carries a statue of Buddha and a garden stone painted with the Hebrew word for peace, shalom.

April she celebrated Passover with a "Zen Seder" feast that opened with a modified Haggada narrative comparing Israel's exodus from Egypt to Buddha's liberation from suffering.

"I'm a Jewish Buddhist -- a JuBu," said Topol, 37. "My Buddhist practice has actually made me a stronger Jew."

While Buddhism has enriched Topol's Judaism -- giving her a deeper sense of spirituality -- it has produced confusion in fellow JuBu David Grotell. Grotell, 41, is so worried about breaking Judaism's ban against idol worship that "although I have a meditation spot in my home, as a Jew, I just can't allow myself to put a statue of Buddha there."

Grotell's conundrum and Topol's confidence show how diverse the JuBu experience can be -- even inside one Zen Buddhist center in Santa Monica. They also underline how a new, American hybrid of Buddhism is blossoming, fed by a large representation of Jewish practitioners.

No one knows for certain how many JuBus there are; the last surveys were conducted in the 1970s. A large majority of the 3 million Buddhists in the United States are Asian, but by some estimates, at least 30% of all newcomers to Buddhism are Jewish. (By comparison, U.S. Jews number 6 million.)

Alan Lew, who studied Buddhism for a decade before changing course to become a rabbi, calls the paradoxical blend of Judaism, which bows to one God, and Buddhism, which has no supreme being, "a fruitful and beautifully creative meeting of two religious streams that came together in the United States."

"Most people don't go very far into Buddhism; they just want to feel a little better," said Michael Shiffman, founder of L.A. Dharma, a nonsectarian Buddhist organization in Los Angeles. "But can you be Jewish and not believe in God? Good question."

Others, however, would say it all depends on an individual's definition of God.

Essentially, Buddhism creates a solitary and quiet path away from suffering and toward a moral life based on an all-inclusive vision of interconnectedness, wisdom and compassion. A method for achieving that awareness is daily meditation. Being nondogmatic, Buddhism does not require that adherents join anything or reject anything -- even the notion of God.

So in this regard it differs vastly from Judaism, a community-based tradition that relies on observances, laws and prayers such as the mourner's kaddish -- the prayer for the dead -- to connect adherents with a personal god.

So what is that Jews find so attractive about Buddhism?

"Suffering is at the heart of the matter," suggested David Gottlieb, whose autobiographical book "Letters to a Buddhist Jew" examines the life of a "Zen Jew" struggling to resolve his two identities. "Judaism, at its best, embraces suffering and, at its worst, enshrines it. Buddhism explicitly seeks to end suffering, and doesn't look to the past."

Lee Rosenthal, 59, of San Diego found that powerfully appealing. He'd just returned from the Vietnam War and was facing the deaths of his two children shortly after they were born, and then his wife's cancer.

"I couldn't buy into the spiritual answers I was getting from people for why my little babies passed away," he recalled. "But I picked up a book on Buddhism and it spoke to me, streetwise and honest."

"Instead of sugar-coating things, it gave me a plain explanation for why I was suffering -- life is painful and difficult," he said. "It said also you can't run away from it. Deal with it."

As the world's leading Buddhist, the Dalai Lama, likes to say: If there is a problem and there is nothing you can do about it, there's no use worrying. If there is something that can be done, there's no use worrying. And with that understanding can come contentment, even joy.

Rosenthal went on to become a Buddhist priest, which his mother, Rosalie, came to terms with a few years ago in a poignant meeting.

"My mother has Alzheimer's disease and thinks I'm a kid who lived down the street from us in the 1950s," he said. "So one day I asked her, 'Rosalie, how's your son Lee doing?' She sat up straight in her wheelchair and with a proud look in her eye said, 'He's a Buddhist priest.' "

"I got teary-eyed," he said.

Buddhism has a history of adapting to new cultures.

It was founded by Gautama Siddhartha in India about the 6th century BCE and then spread to China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. It arrived in the United States in the late 19th century, and was popularized in the 1950s and '60s by the likes of Buddhist missionary D. T. Suzuki, author Alan Watts and JuBu beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Now, American Buddhist centers long bound by a tradition of remaining politically neutral are adding priorities that reflect those of their large numbers of often liberal, educated and politically active Jewish members: family life, civil rights and programs to feed, house and educate the poor.

Zen Judaism has spawned a genre of JuBu jokes, such as: "If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?"

A majority of the board of directors of a leading Buddhist magazine, Tricycle: A Buddhist Review, are ethnic Jews. Half of the 10 Buddhist abbots to take charge of the Zen Center of San Francisco over the last 40 years were of Jewish ancestry.

Conversely, more and more synagogues are adopting Buddhist-inspired meditation programs, like the one Rabbi Lew recently co-founded in a blue wood-framed house a few doors down from the conservative Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco.

Inside, rows of meditation cushions emblazoned with the Star of David are arranged to face a framed image of the silent first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph.

"We get up from here and walk next door to the synagogue," Lew said, "where instead of reading sutras, we study Torah."

"Meditation is really catching on in the Jewish community," he added. "I have a very extensive travel schedule. And frequently when I talk about meditation techniques, synagogues set out 50 chairs and 300 people show up."

A majority of JuBus, as they call themselves, are baby boomers who were raised in loosely religious families and began to feel unfulfilled in the tumultuous and experimental 1960s and '70s. They joined the legions of other young men and women searching for spiritual nourishment, and ended up turning to Buddhism, a welcoming meditative practice devoid of the cultural stigmas contained in, say, Christianity or Islam.

And many, like Alan Senauke, now a Buddhist priest in the Bay Area, discovered the two traditions combined easily, almost on their own.

Although he no longer celebrates Jewish holy days, with the exception of Passover, Senauke said, "My Judaism and Buddhism are like vines so entangled they are not separate."

"Because of my Jewishness, I'm faulty as a Buddhist, and because of my Buddhism, I can never really be a practicing Jew," he said. With a smile, he added: "I'm comfortable with that."

"Look at it this way," said Senauke, who is also a noted bluegrass guitarist. "I've been playing Southern music for 45 years, but I'll never be a Southerner. I'm a New York Jewish boy. But this is my music, it resonates in my heart and I play it as authentically as I can."

The boom in Buddhism has left some Jewish leaders wondering how they could better serve their people.

"I'm encouraged that people want to find something more spiritual," said Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz of a group called Jews for Judaism.

"But I'm also disillusioned that they have not found it in Judaism. Maybe we haven't done a good enough job of making Jewish mysticism accessible to the masses."

But Marc Lieberman, a San Francisco ophthalmologist who helped arrange a historic dialogue between Jewish leaders and the Dalai Lama in 1989, calls the JuBu phenomenon a fine example of "good old American innovation."

"I'm a healthy mosaic of Judaism and Buddhism," Lieberman said. "Is that fair to either religion? Fair schmair! It's what I am.

"My Jewish side is a tribal sensibility; a reflexive identity with the pain and agony of my people, and the pride and glories of their traditions," he said. "But my Buddhist side asks, 'Does that exclude others in the world?' "

How all those clashing religious notions affect JuBus is illustrated in the paths taken by Lew and his lifelong chum Norman Fischer. In the 1970s, they lived in Buddhist monasteries and studied under Berkeley Zen Master Sojun Mel Weitsman, an ethnic Jew.

Their friends figured that Lew, a freewheeling intellectual, would become a Buddhist priest, and Fischer, who was always a studious rabbi's pet, would become a rabbinical scholar.

Instead, the opposite happened. But their theologically competing spiritual realms have acquired a lot of the curlicues and ambiguities that are characteristic of JuBus.

Lew, for example, said, "I don't believe one can be both Jewish and Buddhist; your central commitment should be clear. Personally, my roots are more Buddhist than Jewish, but my spiritual practice is Jewish."

He also firmly believes in God.

But Fischer, a high-ranking Buddhist priest whose first name is now Zoketsu, suggested that a "person can be a faithful Jew and practice Buddhism."

Topol would tend to agree with Fischer.

Six years of Buddhist training at the Santa Monica Zen Center, where reconciling with one's religion of origin is emphasized, has only deepened her appreciation and respect for her Jewish roots.

"I've found that Buddhism has broken apart my fixed beliefs and notions," she said, "so that I can approach Judaism with a fresh eye."

For Topol, that means viewing biblical descriptions of God's active presence in human affairs not as literal history, but as meditation tools and spiritual instructions for coping with daily life.

Rising from a meditation pillow after a Sunday morning Buddhist service, Topol said, "I even look at the writings of the Old Testament, such as Moses' conversations with God, as Zen koans; that is, as questions and statements to be used as meditation disciplines along the lines of 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' "

What happens next is anyone's guess. But some JuBus are predicting the emergence of a unique American-style Buddhism.

"Jews value education, hard work, innovation and strong commitment to family, all of which they are bringing to American Buddhism," said Charles Prebish, a professor of religious studies at Penn State University. "What you get is some kind of a hybrid.

"But ultimately, it's an ongoing story," added Prebish, who calls himself a Buddhist of Jewish ancestry. "I hope I'm still alive when a lot of this plays out."
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Reuters - July 25, 2008
Meditation slows AIDS progression: study
By : Maggie Fox

Meditation may slow the worsening of AIDS in just a few weeks, perhaps
by affecting the immune system, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
If the findings are borne out in larger studies, it could offer a
cheap and pleasant way to help people battle the incurable and often
fatal condition, the team at the University of California Los Angeles said.They tested a stress-lowering program called mindfulness meditation,
defined as practicing an open and receptive awareness of the present
moment, avoiding thinking of the past or worrying about the future.
The more often the volunteers meditated, the higher their CD4 T-cell counts
-- a standard measure of how well the immune system is fighting
the AIDS virus. The CD4 counts were measured before and after the
two-month program."This study provides the first indication that mindfulness meditation
stress-management training can have a direct impact on slowing HIVdisease progression,"

David Creswell, who led the study, said in astatement.His team tested 67 HIV-positive
adults from the Los Angeles area, 48of whom did some or all of the meditation.
Most were likely to havehighly stressful lives, Creswell said."The average participant
in the study was male, African American,homosexual, unemployed and not on ARV
(antiretroviral) medication,"they wrote in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.The meditation classes included eight weekly two-hour sessions, aday-long retreat
and daily home practice. "The people that were inthis class really responded and
just really enjoyed the program,"Creswell said."The mindfulness program is
a group-based and low-cost treatment, andif this initial finding is replicated in larger
samples, it's possiblethat such training can be used as a powerful complementary
treatmentfor HIV disease, alongside medications," he added.QUALITY OF LIFE
About 30 percent of the volunteers were taking HIV drug cocktails,which can help
suppress the virus."Even when we controlled for ARV use, we still saw these effects.
Whether you are on or off the drugs you are going to see thesebenefits," Creswell
said in a telephone interview.Creswell said it was unclear how the stress-reducing
effects ofmeditation work. It may directly boost CD4 T-cell levels, or suppressthe virus,
he said."We know that stress has direct effects on viral load," he said. Creswell said
he believes the program can help people infected with avariety of viruses and from
all walks of life. HIV patients areespecially highly stressed, he noted."These marginalized
folks typically are experiencing the higheststress levels," he said.But middle-class
workers also experience stress. "Most people doreport a lot of daily stress,"
Creswell said.And for AIDS patients, HIV drug cocktails are known to have a
variety of side effects, from weight gain to nausea."One of the main side-effects
of this particular treatment was anincrease in their quality of life," Creswell said.

Marsha Epstein, MD, MPHLA County -
Dept of Public HealthChronic Disease and Injury Prevention
695 South Vermont Avenue, South Tower - 14th floor,
Los Angeles, CA 90005
Phone: 213-738-5768 Fax: 213-252-4503

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Los Angeles Times - July 21, 2008
Compulsive Shopping: Is it a Disorder?

Desire / Grasping / Clinging / Attachment / Loss / Suffering
Adopting compulsive shopping as a diagnosis would require most insurers to cover its treatment, among other implications.

By : Melissa Healy

There is little doubt that compulsive shopping can cause severeimpairment and distress -- two key criteria for formal recognition asa mental disorder.But the rest remains up for grabs: Is compulsive shopping abiologically driven disease of the brain, a learned habit run amok, anaddiction in its own right, or a symptom of the other dysfunctions --most notably depression -- that so often accompany it? Where is theline between avid shopping (a norm widely observed in the UnitedStates) and compulsive shopping? And how, if this is an illness, is itbest treated?Compulsive buying is not currently recognized as a disorder by themental health profession's guidebook, the Diagnostic and StatisticalManual of Mental Disorders, generally called the DSM.

That may changesoon, as psychiatrists draft the next version of the DSM, due outsometime after 2010.In anticipation, researchers and academic practitioners are exploringand debating what the cause of such a condition might be, howwidespread it is, and how best to diagnose, characterize and treat it.A decision to adopt compulsive shopping as a diagnosis would requiremost private and public health insurers to cover its treatment, spurnew research on the phenomenon and very likely escalate what is now amodest search by pharmaceutical companies for drugs that could curbits symptoms.It would also raise ethical issues about the nature of "behavioraladdictions" -- a controversial catch-all term that includes Internetaddiction, hypersexuality and compulsive gambling.

Preliminaryevidence suggests that these "behavioral addictions" involvemalfunctions in many of the same brain circuits -- those involved inarousal and reward-seeking behavior, deferral of gratification andrepetition of actions that result in harm. All are expected to beconsidered for inclusion in the coming DSM.Ties to other problemsWhile experts debate how compulsive buying is related to psychiatricdisorders, there is little doubt that they often go hand in hand.Psychiatrist Timothy Fong, director of UCLA's Impulse ControlDisorders Clinic, says that probably 40% to 50% of patients intreatment at the clinic have a major psychiatric disorder accompanyingtheir out-of-control buying behavior.

A French study published in 1997found that of 119 patients hospitalized for depression, almost 32%would meet proposed standards for the diagnosis of compulsiveshopping. A pair of 1994 studies found that among subjects who metproposed standards for compulsive shopping, roughly two-thirds alsocould be diagnosed with anxiety, substance abuse or mood disorders,impulse-control disorders such as kleptomania or pyromania, or withdisorders marked by obsessive-compulsive behaviors."What's unclear," especially where depression is present, "is whichcame first," says Fong.Equally unclear is how to treat a condition with such seemingly variedand uncertain origins. Psychotherapy appears to help, and treatingother psychological problems with medication and therapy is widelyviewed as essential.

Preliminary studies have found thatantidepressants that increase the availability of the neurochemicalserotonin in the brain can ease shopping compulsion. And naltrexone, adrug that blunts the inebriating effects of alcohol, has shown modesteffectiveness in curbing the urge to shop.But Dr. Lorrin Koran, a professor of psychiatry (emeritus) atStanford, stressed that in many cases, these medications have beenscarcely more effective than placebos. That fact suggests that formany compulsive shoppers, awareness of the problem, encouragement fromothers and personal motivation might be as powerful as any drugs."Even though we don't have conclusive proof that one treatment oranother works better than another, we do know that people tend to getbetter if they seek treatment," says Koran.

Much of the cognitivebehavioral therapy that has shown promise has focused shoppers on"changing the self-talk" -- the things a compulsive shopper tellshimself or herself to justify a trip to the store or a purchase -- andfinding other ways to react to sadness, anger or frustration.Sadness and spendingThat sadness may spur excess spending was neatly demonstrated in anexperiment conducted by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, CarnegieMellon and the University of Pittsburgh and published in the Juneissue of Psychological Science.Thirty-three subjects were offered $10 to participate in a study anddivided into two groups: one that listened to a sad story and wrote anintrospective essay about it and another that listened to anemotionally neutral story, then detailed their day's activities.

Afterward, subjects in each group were offered the chance to buy asporty insulated water bottle using some of their $10 payment, andasked to state the price they would be willing to pay to buy it. Thedifference -- by all appearances dictated solely by differingemotional states -- was startling: Subjects in the sad-story groupwere prepared to pay almost four times as much to acquire the snappywater bottle as those who had entered the market in a neutralemotional state.In short, misery appears to make people less miserly, not more, theauthors concluded -- especially when the miserable were very focusedon their feelings of sadness. Sad consumers, they suggested, arelikely to think less of themselves, and thus may be more motivated toboost their self-image with a pricey purchase.



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The Purpose of Self-Inquiry ( the 'Vichara' )
The purpose of the 'Vichara' is to settle the issue of identity.
It is not to find out what you are, but to be finished with the idea that you must find out what you are. You are, after all, identity itself. You are that which bestows identity on everything else. You are the source of identity.- John Sherman"There are a lot of theories about the cause of human misery and the solution to that problem that have been around for quite a while, and they all have something in common, which is that it is in the way in which the life unfolds, the way the life looks (your mind, your thoughts, your desires, your intentions, your understanding or lack of undertanding, the way you relate to your life and to one another) that the problem and the solution to the problem are to be found. It seems to be the unanimous opinion of those who have reflected upon and spoken about these matters that the nature and characteristics of a life are the source of all the problem. The things that we do or that are done to us are the cause of our confusion, misery, self-hatred and hatred of others, and the general miasma of craziness that human life seems to be for all of us.

And it is the opinion of almost everyone, and the assumption of all of us, based on the fact that this is what we have heard and this is the only way we have to speak about it, that the life itself is the problem that needs to be corrected. For instance, it is our ignorance that makes us unhappy, or the sickness of the body, or our aggressiveness. And it is our understanding, our ability to change our relationship to the life and to each other, and our opinion about things that can solve that problem for us. There is a kind if tautology in all this: We will be happy if we are happy. We will be peaceful if we are peaceful. Of course, this is not the only point of view that has appeared in the last thousands of years of attempting to solve the problem of being a human being, but it is certainly the one that has held sway among all of us for all that time: What I have to do is fix the way I think about things, or rid myself of my desire for things, or my separation from things, I have to come to a deeper understanding, I have to be more loving, compassionate and less attached." - John Sherman

"Even if you've been with me for a very long time, or even if you've heard podcasts, seen video clips or have read things on the web pertaining to what I have to say, I ask you now to forget about all of that. Let's see if we can't start from scratch. There are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, it's always good to start from scratch, because that's where we are. We're just here. And secondly, although I have to say that I see things very clearly, my ability to communicate what I see and to offer it to you changes over time. So, let's start from scratch. Let's pretend we've never seen one another, and go from there."

If you would be finished, once and for all, with wanting what you do not have, with wanting to rid yourself of what you do not want and the endless misery of trying to tell the difference, just look at yourself whenever it occurs to you to do so. Once the issue of identity is settled, all else follows.- John ShermanThe root cause of all human suffering, misery, aggression, hatred and self-betrayal everywhere is a false belief about what I am. The only solution for this problem is the truth.- John Sherman"Over time, we have had the opportunity to see more and more reports from people on the effects of this method on their own lives, on their sense of themselves, their sense of being in this life, and it becomes more and more obvious to us that the specific effect of this business of looking at oneself is pretty much unpredictable. There is no direct one-on-one correlation between the diminishment of fearfulness and anxiety within the person and the look of the life as it unfolds and presents itself and as it is seen from both the inside and from the outside. "

March 15, 2008 "Welcome, I am happy to be here with all of you. One of the things I want to talk about today is the role of words, understanding and speech in the consideration of reality and the possibility of the realization of freedom, and actually the role of words and ideas and understandings in the whole arena of what we call self-realization. When I first heard the term "self-realization," I remember I thought it was a lot better than "enlightenment." I liked it a lot better, it seemed to have a more esoteric, and highfalutin sound to it, it seemed to have an aura of special knowledge to it. Therefore, I invested that word with a kind of magical component, which of course is what we always do with words anyway. We have this inclination, that comes God knows from where, to think of words as the gateway to understanding and clarity and, in the spiritual arena, the gateway to self-realization, a state we imagine to be outside of and apart from normal human experience and normal human state - at least that was the case with me."

."We are not seeking here to burn up ego, we are not seeking to get rid of negative ideas, and we are not here to get rid of wrong desires. All we are seeking here is to get a glimpse of the reality that we are." John Sherman"The purpose of life is to see, to look. The purpose of life has nothing to do with becoming anything, with forming any particular identity. It has nothing to do with gaining enlightenment. It has nothing to do with gaining redemption, transformation, transcendence, or any of that. It has nothing to do with stopping time, or eliminating the certainty of the grave at the end of life. You are not going to that grave, you are here. You are here."

"Most of the questions I receive are about phenomena arising in the mind. None of that needs to be addressed; nothing needs to be done about the mind. All that's needed is to move the beam of your attention to the certainty that you exist as often as possible. Once you start looking for the reality of you, you will come back to this looking, again and again. And it is the looking that does all the work." John ShermanThe reason we meet is to consider together how best to enact the amazing way of life that is the vichara, to watch together as the deep, driving conviction that our being is at stake in these lives, along with the misery that that conviction gives rise to, evaporates in the light of the truth that is the actual reality of what we are, and to explore together the wonder of human life seen clearly in this light. -

"There is no point in making an effort to establish a connection between the spiritual terminology and the reality that you already see. Once you enter the vichara consciously, in time, you simply lose interest in all of that. No matter how true and inspiring the spiritual and religious discourse may have been, it has not done you much good. There are many things that can provide you with some passing comfort and clarity, but none of them works to put an end to the idea that life is suffering, and that you are in danger here. The only thing that works is to look at you -- ordinary, everyday you."

"I have come to see that there is little practical usefulness in approaching the issue of human suffering from the standpoint of the traditional, ancient teachings about the nature of reality, and our relationship to it, and about what we can do to actually reap the fruits of the promise that life seems to hold for us. These teachings, beautiful, wondrous and powerful as they may be, have proven to hold little or no help for us in these matters.

"It has been clear to me for some time that the whole cloud of spiritual understanding and spiritual insights from the past is of no consequence in the actual possibility of being free of fear, misery, and suffering in one's own life. I mean the whole cloud of the sutras, the shastras, the Upanishads, the sweet insights, and the more recent writings by Wei Wu Wei, for example, whom I have loved inordinately. I just mention him because that is a much more modern example of what I am talking about, and it seems to speak more directly and clearly to the modern sensibility than do the Upanishads, the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra."

The reason we meet is to consider together how best to enact the amazing way of life that is the vichara, to watch together as the deep, driving conviction that our being is at stake in these lives, along with the misery that that conviction gives rise to, evaporates in the light of the truth that is the actual reality of what we are, and to explore together the wonder of human life seen clearly in this light.

"The problem is not your life. The problem is this worm of an inferential belief that appears at the moment of the awakening of personal consciousness, which says, I don't know what is going on here, but I know that I am profoundly and fundamentally in danger here. The only solution to this fundamental mistake has nothing to do with taking on a new understanding or a new belief. All that needs to be done is to look at yourself. All of our beliefs, all of our conviction that we are in danger, and at stake, and unworthy here come from this one false inferential thought-form. That thought-form is entirely about identity and it leads us to the insanity of identity-worship which is the cause of all our desperate effort to try to become what we think we need to be. Since this mistake is entirely about identity, the only thing that can be done to rid you of that is to look at you. Not your true self, just at you, because you are the subject of that thought form. And if you look at you as often as it occurs to you to do so, without regard to anything else you are doing in your life, that false inference will go away over time. If you look at the subject of that inference, which is you, reality will certainly snuff out that thought-form, whereupon the whole enthusiastic, energetic, and desperate interest in the way in which life is unfolding; the whole conversation regarding the nature of life and of your relationship to it will just vanish, along with the belief that you are at stake here. All this comes not from finding yourself, but from looking at yourself, looking at the subject of this false inference."

"The only thing that is certain is you, but nothing can be said that is at all helpful in describing you or explaining you, or even pointing to you. You are here. The only certainty there is, is that of your presence. I am not speaking of the sense of self, although the focusing of attention on the the sense of self, or the I am, or beingness, or by whatever name it may be called, will in fact result in the vanishing of this sensational experience that is the sense of self. In the moment of its vanishing, what remains is you. That's the incredible value and utility of Ramana's suggestion that we look at ego and grab it by the throat. In so doing, that experience vanishes and what remains is you. You, face to face with you."

"It has been clear to me for some time that the whole cloud of spiritual understanding and spiritual insights from the past is of no consequence in the actual possibility of being free of fear, misery, and suffering in one's own life. I mean the whole cloud of the sutras, the shastras, the Upanishads, the sweet insights, and the more recent writings by Wei Wu Wei, for example, whom I have loved inordinately. I just mention him because that is a much more modern example of what I am talking about, and it seems to speak more directly and clearly to the modern sensibility than do the Upanishads, the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra."

"There is no boundary to your mind; there is no place where your mind is not. There is no distance between you and me, although there is separation between you and me, and that separation is the greatest gift of all. When we become involved in spiritual practices, we come to the idea that all is one and separation is bad. But that is childish. All is one, and separation is part of it. Without separation, we would not have this capacity to speak to each other."

The only problem anywhere to be found is the false belief that you are in danger here and at the mercy of your life. The only solution is the truth, which is everywhere and always present and self-evident. Ridding oneself of the false is as easy as repeatedly looking at the truth of being here, unmovingly, unchangingly here. This repeated looking directly at oneself is the infallible method of the vichara. -

The reason we meet together in a retreat like this is to consider together how best to enact the amazing way of life that is self-inquiry and self-seeing. We gather to watch together as the deep, driving conviction that our being is at stake in these lives evaporates in the light of the truth, which is the actual reality of what we are, along with the misery that that conviction gives rise to. And to explore together the wonder of human life seen clearly in this light.

"The vichara, which is sometimes called self-inquiry, has nothing to do with any spiritual practice or spiritual understanding. It is not a new version, or a new approach to add to, augment or replace all the other approaches and practices that we have so painstakingly developed and built up over our lifetime to create and maintain this personal structure that we imagine will protect us from what we imagine to be the furious, fierce danger of life. The vichara is a way of life. The vichara is life itself."

"The purpose of the vichara is to settle the issue of identity. It is not to find out what you are, but to be finished with the idea that you must find out what we are. You are, after all, identity itself. You are that which bestows identity on everything else. You are the source of identity."

"Look at yourself as often as you can, because it is the seeing that does all the work. All of the activities of the mind in trying to understand how to do it, what to do, where to go, what it feels like, what it should be, what you should be, what it's going to mean to your life, what it does to your body, and so forth, all of these things are after the fact. Just look at yourself. The seeing does the work. None of the commentary, or the confusion, or the efforts to understand do any work at all, except to the extent that they provide some comfort to the mind."

You Are As Awake As You Will Ever Be - "let me tell you in a nutshell what I have to say about this business of awakeningand enlightenmentyou areright nowin this momentas awake as you will ever be"

"You need not devote every waking moment of your life to the vichara. If that were so, the vichara must fail. Only look at yourself from time to time, when it occurs to you. You will be shocked to see what comes of that."

"To look at yourself, to look at yourself just once, and then again, and then again, is to move from the endless work of self-definition to the endless adventure of self-discovery. Which is the vichara."
~ John Sherman

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needs paragraphing...
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479 ---------


"In the Depths of Religious Atheism"by the Rev. Richard W. Kelley
November 5, 2000,
at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Southern MarylandIn America, everybody believes in God! Right?? "In God we Trust!" -- it's right there on the money. "One nation under God" -- we say it every time we repeat the Pledge of Allegiance. So, all Americans are "religious!" Right??No! The truth is belief in God does not automatically make you "religious," any more than non-belief thereby makes you "irreligious." Religious living is not so easily come by -- a fact that most clergy readily recognize, Yet again and again, the casual assumption is that "God" and "religion" are synonymous. It's assumed that God is the cornerstone of all religion, and that without deity, religious faith and spiritual living are simply impossible. But this merely reflects an ignorance of the religious history of the world, as well as of the religious realities of contemporary world cultures. Years ago, the Princeton philosopher, Walter Kaufman, in a book entitled A Critique of Religion and Philosophy, (p. 137f) pointed out that there are really "three kinds of religion" that have characterized human life throughout the ages. All three kinds are extremely ancient. All carry with them a rich history of myth and ritual, of custom and theological teaching. All three kinds still exist today, and draw many adherents to them. The first is the belief in many gods. Of course, this was typical of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece and India. It's a very ancient belief, perhaps dating back to a kind of pre-historic, primitive animism which ascribed conscious life to all material objects: plants and animals, trees, rocks and mountains, ... as well as to women and men. Probably from this grew the belief that many of the forces of nature were symbolized by deities possessed of personality and a separate, "divine" life. Such polytheism is likewise true of many peoples of the earth today. It typifies many of the more primitive areas of the world where natives are firmly convinced of the presence of many deities, peopling the rocks and streams, overseeing their daily lives. And of course, certain branches of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as Shintoism, offer much more sophisticated versions of the "religion of many gods."
The second kind of religions is belief in one God only. Naturally, this is the type of religion with which we are most familiar. Monotheism in the West has two historic sources. The first is with Ikhnaton, the ancient Pharaoh of Egypt, who undertook to establish a monotheistic religion around the sun god in the 14th century BC. Of course, the other source is with the Hebrews and their worship of Jehovah, or Yahweh, as the one true God. Upon closer examination of the records and other historical materials, many Biblical critics find that Yahweh started out with the Hebrews as a polytheistic god -- originally a "mountain god," as the old story about Moses and Mt. Sinai would suggest. And down through the years, this special tribal god of the Hebrews tended to take over all the attributes of other gods, slowly extending his powers in Hebrew thinking until at last he was THE God, ... the only true one, ruler of the heavens and the earth. Other scholars suggest some linkage to Ikhnaton's Egyptian religion, perhaps picked up during the Hebrews' long captivity in that land. In any case, Judaism stands out as the first really successful, permanent Western religion to be monotheistic in nature. Naturally, Christianity with its monotheistic attitude sprang from this background. And a little later, the Muslim faith emerged from the same source, with its strict devotion of the one God, Allah. Together, these three -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- represent the continuing world tradition of faith in "one God." Now, ... it is customary to believe that with polytheism and monotheism, you have thereby exhausted the broad, general forms which traditional religion has taken in the world. Such is the delusion of many Western writers -- and most of the American public! But the fact is there is quite clearly a third kind of historic religion. Logically, as Walter Kaufmann pointed out, after you've gone through "many gods" and "one god," the third kind is one that does not believe in any god. Quite bluntly put, this is "godless, atheistic religion!" Many Western religionists will tell you that "godless religion" is a complete contradiction in terms -- an oxymoron, a theological impossibility! Those who do recognize the existence of this kind of godless religion are fond of saying that it is confined to two men who lived in the north of India in the 6th century B.C., and only them. Such is grossly unfair and inaccurate! Actually it is embodied in five major religious movements, centered in both India and China, and radiating out into many other lands over the centuries. Together they represent the "atheistic religious tradition," extending back almost three thousand years. It's a religious tradition that stands behind any contemporary religious humanist who attempts today to find answers to religious living without resorting to the idea of God. Of these five, one is the tradition represented by the writers of The Upanishads within the Hindu religion. Another is Hinayana Buddhism which lays claim to being the original form of Buddhism. The others are Jainism, found mostly in India, and Taoism and Confucianism in China. Interestingly enough, all five seem to have begun as "reform" movements. That is, they began as attempts to free their people from superstition, ignorance and fear. At least some of them arose out of a background of widespread polytheism, ... a religious climate wherein the masses of people were beset by the imaginary demands of innumerable gods or goddesses, ... or more accurately, by the demands of the priesthoods who represented these many deities. Into this environment came the "godless religions," intent upon freeing their fellow human beings from the terror of capricious gods and the exploitation of avaricious priests. They sought to establish a more progressive, enlightened view of humanity's role in the world. Their founders and chief exponents included some of the most profound and impressive religious persons of all time. Their followers numbered amongst them some of the most devoutly religious persons of history. Their adherents today comprise perhaps a sixth of the world's population. But, ... obviously, whether large or small, religious movements are not built upon "non-belief," whether that non-belief is about God, or some other aspect of religious thought. Religions do not survive as "negative" ventures, .. any more than men and women live solely by their "negative" opinions. And when I speak of "godless" or "atheistic" religions, I'm not suggesting that any of them bear as a vital, major tenant the denial of God. Instead, they all represent rather positive approaches to the questions and problems of religious living. But, they are approaches that do not include a belief in a God, or in many gods, as their primary dynamic. Rather they seek another basis for religion or "spirituality," instead of God. So, let's take a quick look at these five traditional "godless" religions. Here, very briefly, we'll try to see just what it was that each used in place of the God assumption in order to formulate a viable religion. We'll look at how they used their results in the lives of their adherents. Oldest by far is the religious thought embodied in the Hindu writings called The Upanishads. The creative philosophers of The Upanishads made their appearance in India around 800 B.C. The Hindu religion at that time was already perhaps twelve hundred years old, dating back to a time prior to its entrance into India. Over those twelve centuries, it had evolved a rather elaborate mythology about the external universe, peopling it with all manner of deities and supernatural forces. And this outside world was controlled by highly complicated rituals of sacrifice and priestly devotionals. The thinkers of The Upanishads did not attack directly this much older religion that was the exclusive monopoly of a very powerful priestly caste. Instead, they simply turned their backs on the external universe -- on the realm interpreted by the ancient myths and controlled by ritual sacrifice. They turned their backs on it because they had discovered something more interesting. They had found the "interior world," the inward universe of the human person, and within that, the mystery of the Self. With this change in orientation, a whole new era in religious thought and experience was opened up for them. It was a continually deepening insight into humanity's unconscious, interior life, ... a search for an understanding of the life force within human life itself. From this grew an entirely new system of thought, wherein various states of human consciousness were described, and numerous "principles of spiritual life" were delineated. From this there arose the splendored concept of an eternally enduring Self -- an immense, underlying unity of all life -- that embraced all the lesser "sparks" of individual life in a single kindred substance. A whole new realm of "interior" existence was built up within the thinking of The Upanishads, one in which deity had no part! Today, many of us are apt to look upon all this metaphysical reasoning with a rather skeptical eye. And I would not suggest that such holds an answer for any of you personally. Not necessarily, though it may! But I would ask that you recognize what a tremendous advance this was for its time -- that is, for the time of 800 B.C. For one thing, it freed human beings from their superstitious fears about the external world, from their dread of the gods and demons that populated the cosmos. For another, it pointed to their significance as individuals, as human beings who possessed within themselves a realm of infinite worth and importance, who partook of the universal substance of all life. And thirdly, it set them out upon the road that led to great self-understanding and self-knowledge. But, as you may guess, the Upanishadic religion was not one apt to have great appeal to teamsters and hod-carriers and the great mass of humanity. For the common working folk, it demanded entirely too much intellectuality, as well as much too much leisure time for introspection and self-examination. So, with the passing of the great Upanishadic teachers, religion in India tended to return to its old superstitions and customs, except for a privileged few who still retained the fascination with the Self. Three hundred years passed! Then, in the 6th century B.C., two more attempts at "reform" were made in India, ... attempts that were somewhat more successful. The first was founded by Mahavira, and is known as Jainism. Jainism denied the authority of the older Hindu traditions, and so became a completely separate religion. It set up a system of complete materialism. In its view, the universe is a living organism, animated throughout by "life-crystals" which are eternal and deathless. Among those life-crystals were the monads that were people. Since the life-crystals are eternal, existence is an endless round of rebirths, of return to the suffering world of existence. The human creature, by its actions, "stains" itself with the world. By so doing, it accumulates "karma," or bondage, and links itself ever more strongly to the world of suffering. However, a Jaina -- by asceticism, and self-renunciation, and careful living -- a Jaina may achieve release for oneself. In other words, Jainism represents a means whereby you may achieve your own salvation, for yourself, without outside intervention. In fact, according to the Jaina, such is the only way you may do so: by your own deeds, by your own living. And such a road is a long, hard one, but one that any human being may undertake. Even today, some continue to undertake this Jaina path of what could indeed be called: "godless, materialistic religion." The other "reform" movement in India at this time was vastly more successful, in a worldwide, evangelical sense. This was the one started by Siddhartha Gautama, called "The Buddha." Perhaps, his teachings are best typified today -- in Southeast Asia, at least -- by that branch of Buddhism that goes by the name of Hinayana Buddhism. The Buddha did not break with traditional Hinduism, nor with the teachings of The Upanishads. Nor did he adopt any such elaborate metaphysical worldview as the Jaina. Instead, he simply dismissed much that traditional Hinduism taught. He dismissed it as irrelevant to the basic religious problems of human life. Having done so, he then undertook what might be called a "purely psychological" approach to religion. The Buddha argued that the basic religious problem for humanity is that all life is suffering, and that humanity is eternally involved in life! Humanity's involvement in life arises from its cravings and desires, and it clinging to life at all costs. These, in turn, arise out of humanity's blindness and ignorance of its true condition in the world. However, the Buddha said, such ignorance and blindness may be overcome, and so one may find enlightenment and release from the suffering of this world. But such is possible only through discipline. So, to this end, the Buddha outlined the so-called "Eight-fold Path," ... a set of personal, life-disciplines that struck a middle road between self-indulgence, on the one hand, and the severe asceticism, such as Jainism advocated, on the other. In his teachings he endeavored to make clear what he meant by each one of the eight steps on the Path. Here was a religion that offered a way that was possible for many. Its disciplines neither required great intellectual understanding, nor a withdrawal from active life. Not an "easy" religion by any means, yet still one capable of being undertaken by the average person, regardless of her or his position in life. Moreover, it was one that you could undertake for yourself. It made you dependent upon no other power save your own efforts. It demanded no belief in any deity, nor in any theological or metaphysical assumptions. It asked only your own devotion to the venture of freeing yourself. These, then, are the three strains of "godless religion" that had their origin in India. The other two arise out of the Chinese culture. And strangely enough, they too make their appearance during this amazingly fertile religious period around the 6th century B.C. The first of these is the religion of Confucius. It is often said that Confucianism is China! Without it, Chinese culture as we think of it would not exist. Because, after the time of Confucius, his teachings came to pervade the total thinking of the society. They became the foundation of the entire Chinese system of living until the recent advent of Communism. Confucianism is a purely humanistic religion. Deity enters into it only in a ceremonial sense, much as deity enters into our Pledge of Allegiance or on our money. But the message of Confucianism, simply put, is that the fulfillment of a human being is found within the matrix of human society, rather than through any relationship to outside forces. The "good life" lies in finding one's place within the properly ordered world of human relationships, ... of maintaining that position, ... and by aiding in the maintenance of "right relations" throughout the society. Through his teachings, Confucius outlined the proper relationships that he believed should exist between human beings, and between human institutions. It was a matter of everyone and everything having its proper place. The evils of life arose, he said, out of improper "relations" within the society, and could be corrected by bringing things back into their proper order. His is a religion of "human orderliness," par excellent. Or to put it another way, it is a purely ethical religion, when ethics are understood to be the duties and obligations one bears toward one's fellow human beings. However, Confucius' contemporary, Lao-Tze, has a somewhat different view of religion. Where Confucius is pragmatic, Lao-Tze is mystical. While Confucius' center is humanistic, Lao-Tze's is naturalistic. Taoism, which is the religion based on Lao-Tze's supposed teachings, sometimes poses a problem for Western religionists. Usually they avoid it by simply ignoring the religion entirely, since in recent times it has degenerated into magic and superstition. Others attempt to handle it by pushing it into the Western theistic mold. But it seldom fits well! Because Lao-Tze speaks of the "Tao" or the "Way," some have tried to suggest that he thereby believes in a God. Actually, if you read Lao-Tze's primary writings carefully, you realize that nothing like this is being implied. What Taoism teaches is that humanity is a part of nature, not separated from it, or ruler over it. Instead, we are an integrated part of that larger whole which is Nature. Nor is that "Nature" a static condition. Rather it moves, unfolds and flows along carrying everything with it in its unfolding. The "Tao" or the "Way" consists of a person's intuitive understanding of how he or she fits into the natural rhythms and movements of the world. It represents one's ability to conform to the flux and flow of Nature. Lao-Tze insists that if you learn how to so accommodate yourself to Nature, then it in turn supports and carries you along, effortlessly, as a mighty river carries a frail boat without destroying it. The evils of life, according to Lao-Tze, arise from your efforts to fight Nature, from your presumption that you may command and alter the natural order to fit your whim. The mysticism of Taoism arises from the fact that the Tao represents an "intuitive," rather than a reasoned, understanding of humanity's relationship to the natural processes. A person finds the "Tao" not through intellectualizing about life, nor through a scientific examination of Nature. Rather, it is found through "intuitive insights" into the unfolding of life. Hence, Lao-Tze always seems to view the work of Confucius as nothing more than empty "ceremonialism," a slavish obedience to dead forms. Because Lao-Tze could never believe that the ways of Nature could be confined within the words and maxims of human beings. On the other hand, Taoism's intuitive approach to Nature does not suggest any communication with a supernatural deity. Taoism is essentially a "godless" nature religion. Over the centuries, Taoism has indeed degenerated into little more that magic, largely practiced by rural magicians. It's significance lies more in its influences of other religious movements. It is said that nothing passes into or through China without being stamped with the Chinese culture. So it is that as Buddhism entered China it took on some of the teachings of Taoism, becoming known as Chan Buddhism. And in turn, as that faith passed over into Japan, it took with it some of the Taoist flavor and became known as Zen Buddhism. So that Taoism has spread its influences far and wide, ... through other faiths. These five religions, then, represent the primary "atheistic tradition" in the religious world. None agree completely with any other as to the proper approach to the problems of religious living. Nor would I suggest than any one of them is adequate to meet the problems and questions of religion today. But they do indicate the historical depth to which the roots of this kind of religion extend. They reach back almost three thousand years! It seems to me that any thoughtful person who undertakes the religious search for meaning and purpose -- without recourse to a belief in God -- has behind her or him a long and honored tradition, ... a tradition which has sustained and encouraged literally millions of people down through the ages. Such a religious atheist is in truth a participant in the third great religious stream flowing down through human history. Such persons ought to look with inspiration and pride upon this ancient and honorable past, realizing they too are part of humanity's spiritual quest. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Religious Orientation, Identity, and the Quest for Meaning in Ethics Within an Ideological Surround P. J. Watson, Ronald J. Morris, Ralph W. Hood, Jr., J. Trevor Milliron, and Nancy L. Stutz Psychology Department University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Controversies in the religious orientation literature may reflect the unavoidable influences of ideology in the psychology of religion. Support for this possibility was observed when religious intrinsicness was associated with the idealism and antirelativism of an absolutist ethical position. Quest Scales, in contrast, were incompatible with this absolutist search for meaning in ethics. Quest Scales also predicted identity confusion, were associated with a disinterest in religion, and included items that were evaluated as antireligious by individuals with an intrinsic religious commitment. In short, intrinsicness defined an idealistic and antirelativistic religious identity, whereas Quest pointed toward other ethical and antireligious ideologies that were more vulnerable to identity confusion. Overall, these data confirmed once again that ideological factors may play a crucial role in the contemporary social scientific study of religion. In clarifying the psychosocial consequences of religion, found it necessary to differentiate between what he first called immature and mature and then later described as extrinsic and intrinsic forms of religious commitment. An immature or extrinsic religious orientation, he argued, represents a maladjusted use of religion for selfish ends. A mature or intrinsic religiousness operates instead as a sincere and adaptive 'master motive' in a believer's life. of religion--are seen instead to be the products of traditions and their associated forms of social life. Second, a disinterest in religion could emerge out of deeper motivations that are essentially religious. "a kind of heroism of unbelief, the deep spiritual satisfaction of knowing that one has confronted the truth of things, however bleak and unconsoling" ______________________________________________________________



03 May 2009 08:39 am
Up From Buddhism ~

Controversy Stretches You . . .
From 2003, John Horgan explains why he gave up on Buddhism:

...what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation. Buddha’s first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual.

From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped. ( It's ALL a mater of degrees !! Only when you're karma is ripened, ready for the next degree ! ~ Akasa )Daniel Florien ( who's not ready yet ) adds:
I’ve never found Eastern religions attractive, even when I went through my anti-Western culture phase. Doctrines of reincarnation, detachment, karma and the like have always struck me as ridiculous or wishful/dreadful thinking.
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04 May 2009 02:44 pm
Up From Buddhism,
Part II LET'S RUMBLE !
This post provoked an inbox deluge. It probably wasn't the best way to back into a discussion of Buddhism - and it's worth restating that I post lots of material on this blog for the purposes of stimulating conversation, rather than endorsement. A reader writes:
I found your post on Buddhism a bit odd. The main thesis of the Slate article to which you link is that Buddhism, though it appears to be compatible with a scientific understanding of the world, is in fact no better than Catholicism, and so should be rejected. Is this an argument that you can afford to endorse? Is the move from Catholicism to agnosticism a move up?

In fact Horgan does not seem to be aware of the diversity of Buddhism, nor of the resources it has available to answer a critique like his. Karma, for example, doesn't require a divine being to enforce rewards and punishments. It's a psychological process through which our actions leave psychological traces that evolve into results that we experience. If we harm others, we perceive others as dangerous and hostile; others perceive us the same way. If we steal, we see the world as a harsh place in which we are poor and nothing is good enough. The process of karma is something we can see as it unfolds in this lifetime, if we know where and how to look.

Do you think that Horgan's critique of monasticism, which you appear to endorse, applies to Catholic monasticism in the same way? In fact, Buddhist practices, especially in the Mahayana forms of the religion, aren't aimed at escaping from the world. The main goal of meditation is to enable us to experience everything in our lives as it is, so that we can both savor life's beauty and be present with its pain, free from evasion or self-deception. Many people have discovered that meditation makes our lives far richer, while enabling us to bear life's inevitable disappointments. And there is an increasing body of scientific work, carried out by researchers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard Davidson, that is bringing to light more and more aspects of how meditation works and the many benefits it can bring.
Moreover, the doctrine of no self (anatta) definitely shouldn't be dismissed as cavalierly as Horgan does. Mental processes may well be emergent; that does not prove that there is a substance, the self, that is your essence, who you truly are. Many of the most important thinkers of our time, including leading analytic philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and Derek Parfit, psychologists such as Thomas Metzinger, and Continental philosophers too numerous to mention, have come to the conclusion that belief in a substantial self is a serious mistake. What Buddhism does is to give us practices by which we can, after much effort over a long time, come to see the truth of this conclusion in our own experience.

Finally, what proportion of American Buddhists do you think would support torturing terror suspects? Though I have no poll data to back me up, my personal experience with members of my spiritual community and other Buddhist friends suggests that almost all of us are cheering you on in your efforts to end torture and bring to light the truth about its perpetrators. Buddhism and Christianity both contain some wonderful ethical teachings about nonviolence, universal love and compassion. But given how totally some Christians seem to disregard those teachings, perhaps a dose of Buddhist ethics could help counteract some of the worst tendencies of our current culture.

Another reader adds:
There is so much wrong with John Horgan's assertions about Buddhism, I don't even know where to begin. I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist of the Soto sect and my reality of Buddhist practice is far removed from that of Horgan's perceptions after a few classes, books, and conversations. If I tried to make a list of everything wrong, it would take forever, and I sure as shit am no ombudsman. What I will say is that Zen is far from dogmatic and theistic.

Christianity has commandments, we have precepts. We don't tell people what right and wrong is. We say people who commit right actions tend to have these things in common, and this is what you should aim for, knowing full well that we often fall short of it. The most compassionate people I have ever met were Buddhist. When I say compassionate, I don't mean coddling, either. There were no false platitudes of love and understanding. Meeting a Zen Buddhist, you quickly get the sense that this person makes no judgments of you whatsoever. No matter who you are, you belong as much as the man next to you.

Buddhism doesn't promise false hope or enlightenment (any real Buddhist will tell you that Enlightenment is a load of crap, and nothing you should concern yourself with). All Buddhism tries to do is make it so that by the end of your life, you're just a little bit better than how you start it.For some very different perceptions of what Buddhism is, I recommend Roshi Brad Warner, author of "Hardcore Zen," and "Sit Down and Shut Up."

Yet another:
I have to confess that your post "Up From Buddhism" caught me off guard. In the past you had always struck me as a respectful Catholic, one whose only real beef was with fundamentalism. Yet, "Up From Buddhism"? Buddhism is lower than what?

To compound matters, the two writings that you quote -- one from John Horgan and the other from Daniel Florien -- betray a lamentable but all too common ignorance of Buddhism. Neither of them has come "up" from Buddhism simply because neither of them seem to have had a coherent understanding of Buddhism in the first place.
There are hundreds of schools of Buddhism. Rather than a single scripture, there are hundreds of Buddhist scriptures, with the English translation of the Flower Garland Sutra alone comprising some 1500 pages of text. Some of Asia's greatest minds of the past 2000 years have been engaged in the study and elaboration of Buddhist philosophy -- Nagarjuna, Shantideva, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti, Asanga, Atisha, Gorampa, Tsongkhapa, etc. Why do Horgan and Florien somehow think that they have uncovered some deep and heretofore unseen flaws in Buddhism after perusing a few books and practicing a bit of meditation? This would be like going to mass a few times, reading a book or two about the pope, and assuming that Catholics never bothered to develop a coherent theological underpinning for their beliefs and practices.

For example, Horgan's assessment that Buddhism "turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood" is simply not true. His Holiness the Sakya Trizin, the head of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism and one of the highest ranking spiritual authorities in Tibetan Buddhism, is not a monastic; one of his sons is a monastic, but the other (an important figure himself) has just celebrated the birth of his first daughter. Furthermore, those schools of Buddhism that include the methods of tantra are full of sexual imagery and see the skillful use of sexuality and other sensual pleasures as very powerful methods for positive spiritual development when properly channeled. Even Zen Buddhism is far more earthy and engaged with the daily aspects of living than is, for example, Catholicism. Why on Earth was Horgan ignorant of this aspect of Buddhism?

I was also struck by Horgan's mention of a conversation that he had with renowned neurobiologist Francisco Varela. In that paragraph Horgan equates the conception of anatta (no-self) with simple "nonexistence". Wrong. The notion of anatta as well as the related concept of shunyata do not mean that nothing exists -- why Horgan would assume that Buddhists believe this is beyond me. (Ironically, this is a regular trope of 19th-century Christian missionaries who sought to discredit the "nihilistic" religion of Buddhism.) These notions simply mean that nothing arises except in dependence on causes and conditions, and when those causes and conditions cease, so does the phenomenon. In other words, nothing has an independent, unchanging, permanent existence -- much like there is no such thing as an "automobile" apart from its constituent parts, and those parts depend on their constituent elements, etc. That doesn't mean that I can't go take a ride in my car; it just means that my car is not an independently-existing entity and, as such, it will cease when its constituent parts cease. That's why we have mechanics.
So, when Horgan writes "all that cognitive science has revealed is that the mind is an emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain or predict in terms of its parts; few scientists would equate the property of emergence with nonexistence, as anatta does," he is quite correct, but only because "anatta" does not mean simple "nonexistence." In fact, if cognitive science has revealed that the mind is an "emergent phenomenon" that has "parts" -- that is, a phenomenon in a constant process of arising and dissolution based on causes and conditions, with no permanent, independent, indivisible and unchanging core -- that would fit the very definition of anatta.

Why Horgan would imagine himself better informed than Varela on this point strikes me as arrogant in the extreme. Perhaps Varela is wrong; but if one of the more influential neurobiologists of the past three decades makes a claim about neurobiology that strikes you as odd, it is probably best to start out with the assumption that you know less than he does, have thought it over less than he has, and that it would be wise to do a little research before dismissing his assertions.

Similarly, when Horgan writes "All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests," he is simply wrong.

First, Buddhists do not believe that the universe "was created" by any higher power, much less that it was brought into existence "for our benefit." That Horgan does not seem to have understood this is strange indeed. In fact, Buddhists start out with a much simpler set of issues: Does the universe exist? Are there beings within the universe that are conscious of their own existence? What is the nature of their existence? This strikes me as far, far less "narcissistic" than imagining that some higher being created the universe with humans at the center. In fact, it really is not very different at all from the scientific view that Horgan describes, but with the very important distinction that Buddhists consider consciousness to be an intrinsic element of the universe.

Daniel Florien fares no better in this. You cite him as writing "Doctrines of reincarnation, detachment, karma and the like have always struck me as ridiculous or wishful/dreadful thinking." The notion of "karma" is really just cause-and-effect; no phenomena emerge without causes, and no phenomena emerge without creating an effect. This strikes me as significantly less "ridiculous" than the notion that things can appear out of nowhere and for no reason.

Reincarnation, I will grant, is more complicated. Yet, it certainly is not without its justification, and it is not an article of mere faith. The argument is really quite simple: if no phenomena emerge without cause, and if each effect is directly related to and resembles its immediate causes, how do we explain consciousness? Buddhist argue that each moment of consciousness can only come from a previous moment of consciousness, meaning that one's first moment of consciousness in this body must have come from a previous moment of consciousness elsewhere -- and so on, back through beginningless time. The idea that consciousness has no beginning and no end is surely no more "ridiculous" than the notion that there is an omniscient being that has no beginning and no end, or that consciousness emerges from and is reducible to an electrochemical process.

In short, these writers do not seem to have come "up from Buddhism" at all -- they never seriously got down with it in the first place.I'm more with these readers than the piece, which I ran, as I often do, not because I agreed with it but because it was a stimulating read. I have a reverence for Buddhism, went through a serious phase of studying it a decade or so ago, and continue to find its insights spiritually valuable.


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Buddha's Life Story



Friends on The Compassionately Fearless Wayless Way ~

Buddha's Story passed down in The Pali Canon

The Buddha Shakyamuni ~
Siddhartha Gautama of The Shakya Tribe in IndiaThe princely son of a north Indian feudal Maharaja, Siddhartha Gautama leads an extravagant but over-protected, golden 'hostage' life-style through early adulthood till age 29. He could not leave the palace due to a prophecy his father was terrified of - that his son would become a great but impoverished monk instead of a powerful king like himself. Siddhartha Gautama's mind aches in search of deeper spiritual understanding - when he tires of the meaningless entertainments of a royal bourgeois life-style and the dogmatic Brahmin faith-based religiosity of his day.

The genuine essence of an 'Adventure' is that one just really doesn't know the outcome. The essence of a 'spiritual' adventure is that one shouldn't need to know the outcome. One shouldn't know the outcome . and one absolutely can't know the outcome!And there really aren't any 'outcomes'. ~ author Alexander Carpenter

On a very forbidden outing outside the palace walls, the prince encounters a decrepit old man, a very sickly man, a cold corpse of a man, and a wandering but very serene wandering monk. Being a totally naive prince, he never ever saw these things before! "Does degeneration happen to everyone?" Obsessively his father had always banned all the aged and sick people from the palace - he even sweeps up and hides dead fallen leaves from the manor house gardens. Only fresh blooming flowers were allowed to be seen! Like all Hindus of his day, Gautama sort of believes in the good deed teachings of 'reincarnation' and simplistic heavenly salvation - but is now becoming convinced that the end of 'suffering' lay in the ending of all thoughts and actions that repeat continued 'existences'. (we in the uninformed West are awesomely 'fascinated' by the idea of continual reincarnation - "Wow, we get to go on!" - but Gautama's Asian culture has had millennia of it. He was ready to give it up. All thoughts that lead to a karma-creating trail. He senses that even the lofty gods and goddesses themselves in 'heaven' fail, fall and suffer. The gaps where the 'self' could hide or where gods could hide were rapidly being used up in his mind.

"Not just only is there suffering in existence, but 'Existence' itself in any form, is eventual suffering." This was the beginning of a very "Existential Chaos Theory" for him. Everything chaffs & rubs & bangs against everything else. This is a big statement that makes our own sincere Buddhist practice - even now, for most contemporary people - a highly difficult challenge. We all want something to have faith in. We yearn for the possibility of an 'escape' from Nature's relentless processes by means of some outside intelligent Diety with divine interventions, paradise, plans and powers. That is 'desire' that leads to 'craving' that leads to 'attachment'. He realizes there is just no 'escape'. It's ALL just 'appearances' in the mind. Gross or subtle 'stories' created by a 'self' that absolutely craves to continue. Siddhartha finally then asks "Escape from what ? - an illusion?"

"What's accepted by the majority of people - doesn't mean it's Real" ~ Buddha

"Sure, our Buddhist practice at times leaves you pretty damn empty - dispossessed & disenchanted - very disappointed. This practicing 'Emptiness' thing. That's why many people just don't come back for more doses of Emptiness... Before you can 'permanently' cut the root of this 'Suffering of Impermanence' - you have to sit the meditation practice through and gradually cultivate a place in your heart-mind for a brave, strong, resilient tolerance threshold that can openly bear the discomfort - and that's crystal clear in observing/experiencing that emotional 'dissatisfaction' and see through it to the absolutely empty center of a peeled onion. Layer by layer. At times that in itself is very painful. Fashionable Bliss-Yogas can only be a 'replacement' method or just a spiritually distracted denial. The ego-self is still there. Head on, sitting quietly facing the storm is what Buddha taught. Experiencing true peace in the simple elegance of 'emptiness' - rather than the 'fullness' of the divine distraction of a guru's grace - takes much less obsessive 'religious' practice to handle. Lower maintenance costs. It's just YOU sitting meditation there, eventually without a head full of spiritual props. Can you tolerate seeing all that you hold onto in your mind is really Empty? It's the cultivation of your individual simple 'emptiness' that will now leave lots of authentic spacious room for the possibility of a whole lot of genuine empathy and love which is truly un-definable and truly un-possessable. ~ Akasa Levi

"One common mistake is to think that 'your' reality is THE reality. You must always be prepared to leave your reality for a greater one." ~ Mother Meera

Prince Siddhartha Gautama cuts off his long luxuriant hair, gives away his heavy gold earrings, jewels and pedigree horse, trades his fine clothes for an ascetic's loin cloth and patched blanket, renounces his princely life and becomes a homeless monk. He feels rather naked. At first he cannot accept that this is actually happening to him. The Brahmin Hindu scriptures, along with most other religions, say you forcefully deprive yourself of all worldly amenities as the means of comprehending the higher truth of the illusory 'world' around you - and because you now 'have' none of it, you can simply take leave of it. So he goes to stay with the ascetic master spiritual teachers of his day and he masters every intense ascetic purification and comatose Samadhi meditations, just because his teachers say that's the way.

Gautama collapses from starvation. He is not convinced stoic suppressive 'religion' is the way to get free of suffering. Nor that a faith based belief system unquestionably accepted is either. Nor practices that preach 'controlling' the mind. Maybe you can not 'control' the mind, he thinks. 'Control' is about still living very much in one's own illusory 'world'. As long as 'you' are in "control", 'think' you are in 'control', you aren't free! Not really - you are always trying to maintain 'control' and that's a full time job.

Buddha replaces notions of 'control' or 'surrender' with gradually honed skills of 'mindful bare attention', just 'observation' and 'investigation' - that lead to personal wisdom and understanding. Just like the Greek philosophers of the same Golden Age time period - 6th century BC - Buddha was a champion of precise knowledge, rather than mysticism, as the path to overcoming mental pain and attaining a caring, contented life.

Buddha's experiences and realizations simply serve as a 'guiding model' for our own practice - not to be taken as 'belief in' or in 'faith' -- otherwise your 'realizations would not be your very own.There are no papal 'infallibles' here... you have to experience it for yourself. You are the one meditating, you're sitting there totally meditating on your own - even in a group. No god by your side. No deity or religions or promises or miraculous interventions are involved whatsoever. Buddha eventually became a totally liberated person entirely through his own singular efforts.

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified true by all things. ~ Dogen Zenji

When Siddhartha recovers he decides that it is best to practice a more reasonable Middle Way - he knows he has to return to the everyday 'world' for one never really leaves it. And return for the sake of all other feeling-beings that suffer in an uninformed, blind or naïve way. He 'creates' a modest, reasonable spiritual life-style somewhere appropriate between luxury and poverty. Meditating on just 'what is'. Not spiritual fairy-tales that satisfy and soothe the ever-craving self. He is determined to accept nothing which he had not observed and investigated fully for himself and genuinely knows by his own direct experience. No 'beliefs' in anything! - a core concept of traditional Buddhism. Question everything. You either know or you don't. No 'beliefs'. A great spiritual revolutionary awakened! His teachings have lasted 2500 years so far. Happy birthday!

Now 35 years old, the culmination of Gautama's search comes while now decently fed and peacefully meditating beneath a Bodhi tree - just as he had simply done as an uninstructed child under a rose apple tree on his father's estate. He finally understands how to be free from 'self-induced suffering', and ultimately, to achieve total psychological liberation. A state called Nirvana - the complete release from blind 'attachment' to human desires - the 'thing' is not the problem - 'attachment' to it is - and from the karmic-repetition or 'reincarnation' of compulsive-wanting.

He has a series of ultimate epiphanies on unarguable 'impermanence' (simply argue with this fact of 'impermanence' & you suffer) and realization of the total absence of any indwelling 'self', 'soul', 'source' - or even a 'creator-god'. No reliance on any 'forms' whatsoever. He sees that there is no such thing as "I am". Nothing holds up as it's very 'own' thing. There is just 'nothing' there! Just thought-energy happening in the mind. We just 'experience' the sophisticated, virtual illusion of 'existences' in the middle of non-existence". A 'thing' is just another 'thought' experienced in the mind! Reflected 'illlusions' creating more 'illusions'.

Gautama is then known as the Buddha, meaning the "Fully Awakened One." He begins teaching others how to cultivate through dedicated meditation this 'Unbinding' realization-state based on a compassionate Wisdom-Understanding of suffering - an everyday humanistic empathy, not by any Divine Intelligence. That a sympathetic clarity of 'understanding' itself is what get's you Un-hooked. In the simple stillness of an observation-meditation practice you can see that all the more clearly. The Buddha then spends the remainder of his life slowly journeying around India with his many monks and nuns, teaching very motivated people to find their own 'self-awakening' (enlightenment) through the Dharma of Empty Realities that had informed his own mind during that momentous full moon May night under that renown Bodhi tree.

c. excerpt Akasa Levi 2005
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"If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do for any fellow being -- let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I may not pass this way again."
~ William Penn
A miracle is not the suspension of natural law, but the operation of a higher law in the realms of a 'love-based' consciousness.

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FACTOID: The next Buddha (Maitreya Buddha) will appear when the teachings of this present Buddha (Gautama Buddha) and his Dharma on Reality is totally forgotten by all of human-kind. Gautama Buddha himself has completely passed on, never to be 'reincarnated' or come back again. ( 563-483 B.C.) He's done. His teachings are alive and well. How fortunate to have them here, right now, what he taught back then. Probably still quite uncorrupted. Actually, Buddha was a true atheist / non-theist without any reliance on any god(s) whatsoever. The Buddha is not a 'messiah'. Merely a highly-evolved teacher. In Buddhism, which is an ultra 'humanistic' teaching, there is no 'salvation', as there is just nothing to save.

We apologize: We can be prickly on the deep 'no-self' stuff. Hopefully, some of you will 'get' what we offer - as there is really, truly nothing to 'get'. Getting out-dated religious influences, Western self-created home-grown notions of what's 'spiritual' out of your head, out of the way is a lot of what this is about. Some people will depart disappointed. They still need more 'filling up'. The emotional wounds inflicted in our culture are heartbreakingly immense. Emptying out may be too pre-mature. We are into emptying out at Laughing Buddha. It's so, so much easier and simpler than just believing in 'fuzzy notions' of God. Lower maintenance & much less to remember."Gods come and go but prayer is forever." ~ Paul Woodruff (Bill Moyer's "NOW" on PBS)

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When Still EnoughMark Nepo
a poem that speaks to what opens when we are still enoughBuddha-awareness hovers in our mind
the way a cloud appears in waterthat has given up.
This will last till some hunger breaks surface like a fish,
or a storm churns us up. This is devotion:
to keep stilling the lake of mind so it can receive the cloud of Buddha.
___________________________Jay Michaelson
Columnist for the Forward newspaper, and author of three booksPosted:
May 18, 2009What It's Like to Spend Five Months in Silence I have been a law professor, magazine editor, and the director of national nonprofit organization. I went to Yale Law School, founded a successful dot-com software company, and have written three books and 200 articles. My childhood nickname was "Chatterduck." But last year, I decided to spend five months on silent meditation retreat, mostly in Nepal.

What, my friends have asked (at least the ones who didn't think I'd lost my mind), is it like to spend five months without talking, writing, or even updating my facebook status? Short answer: not what you'd expect, but more powerful.

First of all, not talking is the easy part. You don't go crazy, and you don't forget how to speak. (The silence was never absolute, either; I had a ten-minute interview with my teacher every day.) There's just not that much to say anyway, when all you're doing is sitting and walking, and noticing the moment-to-moment sensations of whatever is going on. Eventually, the silence becomes second nature -- even for someone like me.

Much harder than not talking, though, is not thinking. In the form of Buddhist meditation I practiced, vipassana, or "insight," meditation, the objective is neither to indulge thought nor to suppress it, but simply to let it be, along with everything else. Thoughts arise, thoughts pass, and the job of the meditator is just to notice them and move on. In this way, it's possible to gradually unlearn the habitual tendency to grab onto pleasant perceptions, thoughts, and feelings and push away bad ones. The Buddha, my teachers, and I have found that some measure of liberation eventually results.

Easier said than done, of course. In practice, it's just about impossible to stop thinking. This, itself, is an important lesson: that the mind is not under our control. Nor does it naturally stay on lofty topics like the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I often daydreamed of utterly meaningless drivel -- I must've rehashed the plots of the Star Wars saga a hundred times over the five months of retreat, for reasons which still escape me. (I think it had something to do with meditation training being a lot like Jedi training, but who knows.) All this without any intention from me.

It's at this point in the story that most of my friends usually roll their eyes and say that the whole thing sounds crazy. However, having emerged from five months of silence, I can safely say that it was among the sanest things I've ever done. Not the easiest, to be sure, but infinitely more balanced, awake, and instructive than the chatter-filled world I live in most of the time.
Eventually, you see, the noise really did subside, and the mind started to relax. This is the trick: that in meditation, every goal is achieved by giving up on it. The more force one applies, the more resistance arises in response. On the other hand, the more letting-go, the more letting-be -- the more peacefulness, clarity, and awareness.

Once again, this is easier said than done, because for several billion years, we've evolved the basic instinct to hold onto the pleasant and push away the unpleasant. If we didn't do this, we wouldn't eat, run away from predators, fight when necessary, or reproduce. Natural selection does not favor Buddhism. So while "letting go" may sound pleasant and relaxing, it runs against aeons of biological conditioning.

But it is possible. For example, many times on retreat I would taste a delicious food, and be able just to notice the many sensations of chewing, tasting, and swallowing; the knowledge that the taste was pleasant; and the desire to have more of the food. Or, I would experience great hunger -- in this particular Buddhist tradition, no food is eaten after noon -- and being able simply to notice, without judging or acting out, the physical sensations of hunger, the emotional effects that came with it, and the multitude of thoughts that arose as well (why am I doing this, I'd really like a granola bar, etc.).

What's the point of noting all these mundane sensations, feelings, and thoughts? Well, enlightenment, of course, which comes as a result of seeing directly and in one's own experience that perceptions arise and pass of their own accord, that none of them ever really satisfies, and that there's no self or soul separate from the sensations, feelings, and thoughts themselves. Consciousness just happens, and the interiority of our experience is an illusion. There's no there, here.

The trouble with "spiritual" truths such as these is that they are often banal when conveyed secondhand. But when seen directly, in one's own experience, even the simplest of bumper-sticker bromides has the power to change one's life. For example, just knowing that you are perfectly okay without that car, house, success, lover -- and with that backache, mortgage, conflict, and envy -- can be moving to the point of tears, even though, intellectually, it's pretty lightweight stuff. I can't really explain why this is so, but I have seen that it is so. What to a busy mind is just another spiritual throwaway may, to a quiet mind, be the gateway to liberation.
Thus even extremely mundane perceptions of eating, breathing, and walking around are grist for the mill of awakening.

In other words, when it comes to insight, it's not the "what," it's the "how." There weren't many weird mystical fireworks that shot off during my months of silence -- just a lot of time to see the ordinary very, very clearly. This is true in everyday experience, too. It's not like most of us don't know what's good for us; we do. We're just too busy chasing the next pleasant experience to live up to our own ideals. Sure, what really matters is timeless and free -- but the timeless and free is also boring. So we get back on the hamster wheel and start spinning.

Five months of silence is long enough for the wheel to slow down, and real progress to be made along the path of insight. According to the tradition in which I practiced, the mind really does relearn some of those basic instincts, growing a little wiser and a little less obsessed with itself, and those new lessons don't disappear, even as noise and distraction return. Well, easier said than done.
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The Formal Pali-language OutlinesThe 8-Fold Path of Practice." What has been obtained
by this conquest of Dharma
creates true affection."The greatest barrier to enlightenment, Bhante said, is caring only about one's own happiness. We need to "lessen our clinging to ourselves," he said."If you really want to be happy," he said, "help others."
He spoke at length about meditating on the love from one's own mother and extending that love to families, friends, community and the world. He also spoke about looking at others who may not have had that loving experience and to see the result, generating compassion for them.
If someone becomes angry, he said, try to understand that the anger is not that person, but rather an emotion of that person.

"Grow inwardly," he said, so as not to be overpowered by our emotions, and gain "a deeper understanding of the situation at hand."
While it is easy to get angry, it takes time and patience to cultivate love and compassion, he said.
Even just meditating for five minutes every morning will help, he said. "Train and tame our minds," he said.
Through spiritual education in the noble eight fold path of Sila (morality), Samadhi, Panna (insight or wisdom), man becomes liberated from ignorance, craving and sorrow. He achieves supreme enlightenment (Samma-Sambodhi) and transcends his separate limited individuality and overcome the sounds of birth and death and gets the supreme silence.SiraSamma Vaca - Right SpeechSamma Kammanta - Right action and conduct
Samma Ajina - Right means of livelihood
Samma Vayama - Right effort and endeavour
SamadhiSamma Sati - Right Mindfulness
Samma Samadhi - Right Concentration
Samma Dithi - Right understanding and view
Samma Sankappa - Right intention and thought
In short what is Right speech? -
Abstaining from lying, tale bearing, harsh language and vain talks.Right action: Abstaining from stealing, unlawful sexual passions,
killing either physically, verbally or mentally.Every action should be to understand reality.Right Livelihood: Honest earning without giving least trouble
to any in any manner. Serving and earning is to give happiness
and peace to others and not to demand or take anything from others,
live with complete renunciation.
Right effort: All our efforts should be to expel all evil thoughts, speech
and actions, endure all kinds of sorrows, sufferings without grumbling,
efforts to keep all our senses under check, develop equanimity and tranquility
and to realize the supreme.
Right mindfulness: The way that leads to the attainment of purity in thought,
word and deed which helps to overcome all our pains and griefs, sorrows
and lamentations. By this we can develop tranquility (Samatha bhavana)
and insight (Vipissana bhavana) and important meditative exercise -
the mindfulness of melting (Dnapava sati).
Right concentration: It is one pointedness of mind, fixing the mind to
a single point of object which leads to trance.

The concentration is four fold:

1. The mind is secluded and is free from passions and evil thoughts,
accompanied by reasoning and investigation, finds joy.

2. When the cause ceases, automatically effects stop functioning.
Only at that time the individual can realize the real silence....

The mind fixed with internal serenity becomes free from all reasoning and investigation.

3. The mind dwells with equanimity and mindfully happy - self possessed.
It is a state where intellect becomes intuitional.

4. The mind is beyond the dualities of pleasure and pain, elation and depression,
purity, equanimity and awareness, reigns in the supreme.

Right understanding: One should rightly understand the cause of Sukkha-Dukkha.
Rightly understand what kind of karma he should execute to extinguish the desires,
craving and wanting.He should rightly understand to lead a holy life and possess
the right silence.More than any earthly power More than all the joys of heaven
More than rule O'er all the worldIs the entrance to the stream (Dhammapada 178 )

Right thought: Thoughts free from lust, ill will, cruelty, cheat, corrupt thoughts, ready
to renounce the worldly pleasure and venture to realize the reality.

Law of causation: Buddha approached the problems of life in a realistic and
rational manner. He saw sufferings dominating. His main aim was to remove sufferings
and make man free from it. He believed in the law of causation.
Without a cause nothing can exist.
What we enjoy as pain or pleasure are only the effect of a previous cause.
There can never be any effect without a cause and a cause without any effect.
This chain of cause, and effect is unbreakable. This in fact is the law which
keeps the cosmos eternally going.

Thereby he traced the cause for all sufferings as cravings and desires.
As long as there exists a trace of desire and attachment in the mind,
the result would be birth, suffering, decay and death.

The whole attempt of Buddha was to eliminate all kinds of desires in every form
and shape from one's mind.The achievements depend upon the extent of will power
one possesses to eliminate sufferings, pain as well as the pleasures to get peace,
and the supreme silence.
When the cause ceases, automatically effects stop functioning.
Only at that time the individual can realize the real silence.article by M.Ram Mohan

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Who's WHAT ?
Unusual celebrity religions
June 26, 7:11 PM This week, the world lost three celebrities. Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show sidekick, passed away after becoming increasing ill in the last month. Ed was a lifelong Roman Catholic. Farrah Fawcett's unfloundering faith assisted her in her valient battle against cancer, to which she succombed on Thursday. She was born and raised a Catholic and at the end of her life kept a rosary in her bed so that she could pray. Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest on Thursday afternoon. He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness but recently converted to Islam in November 2008. The deaths of these three religious cultural icons have raised interest in the faith of famous people on TV, in the movies and in newspapers and magazines.

Most celebrities are members of Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam or Hinduism. They are too numerous to mention in this column at this time. However, today we will examine the less common faiths that some celebrities have embraced.

Buddhism: Richard Gere is well-known to be an adherent to Tibetan Buddhism. Many other well-known celebrities are also followers of the Buddha: Uma Thurman, Kate Bosworth, Orlando Bloom, Goldie Hawn, Jennifer Lopez, Keanu Reeves, rocker Patti Smith, filmmaker Oliver Stone, singer Tina Turner and rocker David Bowie, just to name a few.

Scientology: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have discussed their faith in Scientology in the media. Other followers include Kirstie Alley, Beck, Erika Christensen, Jenna Elfman, the late Isaac Hayes, Juliette Lewis, Lisa Marie Presley, Kelly Preston, Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith, and John Travolta.

Hare Krishna: Rick Allen of Def Leppard is a member of this Hindu sect. Hare Krishna is a very musical religion and Allen says he loses himself while drumming and chanting.

Quakers: Dame Judi Dench and Ben Kingsley are both adherents of the Quaker faith.

Baha'i: Carole Lombard was a second generation Baha'i follower. Other famous followers include Dizzy Gillespie, Vic Damone and Rainn Wilson.

Sikhism: The actress Parminder Nagra is a practicing Sikh.

Zoroastrianism: Conductor Zubin Mehta and Queen's Freddie Mercury practiced Zoroastrianism.

Christian Science: Christian Science boasts lots of "Old Hollywood" followers, including Mary Pickford, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Doris Day, Alfre Woodard, Milton Berle, Henry Fonda, Rober Duvall, Jean Stapleton and Georgia Engel.

Seventh Day Adventists: Joan Lunden, Magic Johnson and Art Buchwald have this faith in common.

Jehovah's Witnesses: It was well known that most of the Jackson family is of this faith. Other followers include Serena and Venus Williams, Selena, Prince, Geri Halliwell and Mickey Spillane.

Nazarenes: Debbie Reynolds, Deborah Norville and Gary Hart follow the Nazarene faith.

Unitarianism: Christopher Reeve became a Unitarian when he turned 50 years lold.

Combination of Faiths: There are many celebrities who follow more than one faith due to intermarriage or other reasons. This list includes George Lucas, who considers himself to be a Buddhist Methodist. Angelina Jolie and J.D. Salinger practice(d) ecclectic spirituality.

Jewish: Don't bother to count !

For more information:http://www.religionfacts.com/celebrities/religions_of_celebrities.htm
http://www.adherents.com/adh_fam.html

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Freedom From Religion:
Buddhism Wins Best Religion in the World Award
Wednesday July 15, 2009 Categories: Buddhism, Merit/Demerit BadgeIn light of the ongoing Freedom From Religion Foundation case, I found this news item interesting.

Linda Moulin 15.07.2009 16:55 Tribune de Geneve

In advance of their annual Leading Figure award to a religious figure who has done the most to advance the cause of humanism and peace, the Geneva-based International Coalition for the Advancement of Religious and Spirituality (ICARUS) has chosen to bestow a special award this year on the Buddhist Community. "We typically prefer an under-the-radar approach for the organization, as we try to embody the spirit of modesty found in the greatest traditions," said ICARUS director Hans Groehlichen in a phone conference Monday. "But with organized religion increasingly used as a tool to separate and inflame rather than bring together, we felt we had to take the unusual step of creating a "Best Religion in the World" award and making a bit of a stir, to inspire other religious leaders to see what is possible when you practice compassion."

Groehlichen said the award was voted on by an international roundtable of more than 200 religious leaders from every part of the spiritual spectrum. "It was interesting to note that once we supplied the criteria, many religious leaders voted for Buddhism rather than their own religion," said Groehlichen. "Buddhists actually make up a tiny minority of our membership, so it was fascinating but quite exciting that they won."

Criteria included factors such as promoting personal and community peace, increasing compassion and a sense of connection, and encouraging preservation of the natural environment. Groehlichen continued "The biggest factor for us is that ICARUS was founded by spiritual and religious people to bring the concepts of non-violence to prominence in society. One of the key questions in our voting process was which religion actually practices non-violence."

When presenting the information to the voting members, ICARUS researched each of the 38 religions on the ballot extensively, offering background, philosophy, and the religions role in government and warfare. Jonna Hult, Director of Research for ICARUS said "It wasn't a surprise to me that Buddhism won Best Religion in the World, because we could find literally not one single instance of a war fought in the name of Buddhism, in contrast to every other religion that seems to keep a gun in the closet just in case God makes a mistake. We were hard pressed to even find a Buddhist that had ever been in an army. These people practice what they preach to an extent we simply could not document with any other spiritual tradition."

At least one Catholic priest spoke out on behalf of Buddhism. Father Ted O'Shaughnessy said from Belfast, "As much as I love the Catholic Church, it has always bothered me to no end that we preach love in our scripture yet then claim to know God's will when it comes to killing other humans. For that reason, I did have to cast my vote for the Buddhists." And Muslim Cleric Tal Bin Wassad agreed from Pakistan via his translator. "While I am a devout Muslim, I can see how much anger and bloodshed is channeled into religious expression rather than dealt with on a personal level. The Buddhists have that figured out." Bin Wassad, the ICARUS voting member for Pakistan's Muslim community continued, "In fact, some of my best friends are Buddhist." And Rabbi Shmuel Wasserstein said from Jerusalem, "Of course, I love Judaism, and I think it's the greatest religion in the world. But to be honest, I've been practicing Vipassana meditation every day before minyan (daily Jewish prayer) since 1993. So I get it."

Groehlichen said that the plan was for the award to Buddhism for "Best Religion in the World" to be given to leaders from the various lineages in the Buddhist community. However, there was one snag. "Basically we can't find anyone to give it to," said Groehlichen in a followup call late Tuesday. "All the Buddhists we call keep saying they don't want the award." Groehlichen explained the strange behavior, saying "Basically they are all saying they are a philosophical tradition, not a religion. But that doesn't change the fact that with this award we acknowledge their philosophy of personal responsibility and personal transformation to be the best in the world and the most important for the challenges facing every individual and all living beings in the coming centuries."

When asked why the Burmese Buddhist community refused the award, Buddhist monk Bhante Ghurata Hanta said from Burma, "We are grateful for the acknowledgement, but we give this award to all humanity, for Buddha nature lies within each of us." Groehlichen went on to say "We're going to keep calling around until we find a Buddhist who will accept it. We'll let you know when we do."-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Either way,Buddhism IS the best religion in the world except it's NOT a religion.

The idea that Buddhism has never been involved in war is an urban myth. Read Trevor Ling's "Buddhism, Imperialism and War" or Brian Victoria's "Zen at War" and you'll soon realise that it just ain't so.

Stephen Schettini July 15, 2009 6:35 PMhttp://www.schettini.com/Buddhism isn't a religion? That may be how we'd like to see it, but first you should visit some Buddhist communities in Asia. Forget about the Buddha's fine teachings; the institutions of Buddhism are religious. See my memoir The Novice, about my eight years as a monk with the Tibetans, at: http://www.schettini.com/
Still, while there are some buddhist nuts, there aren't that many.
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Secularizing Buddhism--
Making it Accessible or Stripping the Roots?
by Vince Horn of Buddhist Geeks (Full Bio Below).
Tuesday August 11, 2009

A Guest Post for the One City Blog
It's a very common and hip thing today to want to make Buddhism secular. Many very worthwhile organizations and movements have this as their guiding premise. One need only look at the work that Mind and Life Institute is doing to make meditation mainstream in the sciences, or the work that Jon Kabat-Zinn has done with the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction technique, to see the far-reaching impact of making Buddhism secular.

In fact, I've had many great conversations, for the Buddhist Geeks Podcast, with some of the leaders in this movement, including the founder of the Mind & Life Institute, Adam Engle and Zen priest Norman Fischer. Each of them has extremely good reasons for making dharma secular, and so it's hard not to appreciate the work that they are doing. But still, I find there is something limited about that being the only or even main approach that we take toward transmitting Dharma to the West.
But let me be clear about what I mean when I say, "making Buddhism secular." I mean, specifically, the attempt to strip away the cultural trappings of the tradition, while preserving and re-packaging the "essence" of the tradition (which usually has something to do with meditation practice). In the process the religious language is jettisoned and new "less religious" language is used instead. Phrases like, "Buddhism is more a science than a religion" or "The core technology of Buddhism is meditation" are indicators of the secular impulse. The problem is that Buddhism is a religion. And it's a science. And it's more besides...Secularization is Sexy
Before I get into some of the problems I've noticing with the assumptions behind secularizing Buddhism, I'd like to acknowledge the very beneficial results of this movement. The main one seems to be that some of the wonderful meditation practices and perhaps some inkling of the models behind them, are able to enter more "mainstream culture". I'll get into why assuming that mainstream Western culture is secular is a problem in a moment, but for the now let's just assume that there are many people who are being exposed with these secular Buddhist practices who otherwise wouldn't. That is a wonderful thing.

Connected with that we see the field of "contemplative science" beginning to be validated, and a whole host of scientists making their careers out of that intersection. There are also many ways in which Buddhist-based meditation practices are making their way into educational contexts. So, it must be acknowledged that there are very real benefits coming online from some of these movements, and those should continue.Is the West Really Secular?

And now, some of my larger concerns. One is that we assume that mainstream Western culture really is secular. Has anyone noticed that in fact, we have an incredibly Religious culture? It's a little less so in some parts of Europe, but in America nearly %85 people self-identify with a religious tradition. Does that make us a secular society or a highly religious one?

And let's not confuse the separation of Church in our political process--which incidentally was designed to support evangelical Christians who were being persecuted, not atheists who were afraid of religion corrupting the government--with having a secular society. We have a governmental process that tries its best not to be influenced by one particular religious tradition, but we have a country full of religious people who actively participate in governance.

And then there's this strange idea that there really exists a strong dichotomy between science and religion, and that for something to be scientific it can't possibly be religious (and vice versa). But is that actually the case, and do we really need to strip anything that resembles "religion" out of Buddhism for our culture to be able to tolerate it?Ouch, Those Are My Roots!

The other problem with the secular approach is that it often, in an attempt to distance itself from "Buddhism as a religion", strips away the historical significance of the Buddhist tradition. If you've spent anytime studying the history of Buddhism, you'd see pretty quickly that it is an ancient and constantly evolving religious tradition. It has a series of both practices and beliefs that have spread and mixed with many other influences. Buddhism as it entered Tibet from India melded and mixed with the Shamanistic Bon tradition there. As it entered China it mixed with Confusionist and Taoist influences, and now as it enters America it is mixing with our scientific culture and strange beliefs about the extreme difference between religion and science.

The problem with not seeing how Buddhism has evolved, and in not seeing ourselves as a part of Buddhism's evolution, is that we can believe we are somehow the holders of the "essence" of Buddhism. But what is the essence stripped from the practices, realizations, models, and people who have contributed to this living tradition? Is there really such a thing? Could it be that the whole idea of there being an essence to Buddhism that is distinct from it's extraneous forms--those forms that are so irrelevant that we can simply ignore them or dump them--is coming from a set of cultural assumptions that exist here in this place and time? We need to recognize that possibility, and see that there is a kind of violence in trying to strip something from its historical roots, and also a kind of arrogance in thinking that we can even do that successfully.Some Questions Moving Forward

Some questions that I would ask myself and all those who consider themselves influenced by the Buddhist tradition: Are we so embarrassed by certain components of Buddhism--the adherence to strict moral codes, the magical and mythical pantheon of Buddhist cosmology, the metaphysics of enlightenment, etc.--that we feel the need to throw them all out without further discourse? Or, can we hold the pain of knowing that all the amazing teachings that come out of the Buddhist tradition also come with things that we might not like or understand? And if we acknowledge that, might it mean that each of us has to grapple with the past, present, and future of Buddhism and its relationship to our lives? Can we really trust that things like the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction movement are carrying the full potential of the Buddhist tradition forward? Is it that by secularizing Buddhism we are running the very real potential of losing something of incredible importance, while trying to ditch what we consider the "non-essential"?
These are questions that I continue to ponder, being both a lover of the wisdom that's carried through the Buddhist tradition and a lover of innovation and the new forms by which that wisdom can be carried. My intuition is that both can be honored-- tradition and innovation--but not if either one is valued at the expense of the other. And certainly not if we don't ask ourselves these hard questions.
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Vince Horn lives as a modern monk. He spends part of his year in silence, meditating, introspecting, and developing spiritually. The rest of the time he spends engaged in the world, where he produces and hosts the popular show, Buddhist Geeks, works in the production department of the spiritual publishing company Sounds True, and writes for various publications--including on his personal blog Numinous Nonsense--and enjoys living in Boulder, Colorado with his wife Emily.
Filed Under: Buddhism, Buddhist Geeks, Buddhist Geeks Podcast, Dalai Lama, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mind and Life Institute, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Vince Horn
August 12, 2009 6:00 PM
@ evelyn
"When Christianity moved into... say... Africa there were no such discussions. It was simply picked up and stamped on a new place wholesale, like it or not. I think the mere fact that we're having the discussion is a good start"
really?
what about all the sects, denominations, reformations,heresies, schisms and pagan borrowings of christianity? its not a monolith. give our christians ancestors more credit than that.

Mitsu Hadeishi
August 12, 2009 6:01 PM
@Vince I don't doubt that many in the "secular" Buddhist movement (if one could call it that) buy into this binary as much as many others. It's a persistent meme in Western civilization which is why I think it's a bit too easy to dismiss it as Mu does, though I agree with him that the binary is ultimately bogus. However, the fact that it is bogus doesn't mean that it doesn't hold sway, have power, etc., in the minds of people, and to the extent it does, it can have a needless distorting influence on theory and practice. Ultimately I believe this whole debate is a historical holdover from the Cartesian bargain: let the Church have matters of the soul, and leave matters of the physical world to science. This Cartesian bargain, which stems fundamentally from mind-body dualism, is not operable within Buddhism and Eastern civilization in general.
I recall my father (who was born in Japan) telling me that he was watching a Japanese pundit show in which the commentators were discussing some current event in the United States surrounding the issue of creationism. The pundits were saying to each other, incredulously, "apparently these people don't believe in evolution!" which caused the entire panel to break out in laughter. The whole notion that religion ought to occupy a special place outside of ordinary rational thought, to the point that a well-established theory such as evolution could be seen by large numbers of people to be at odds with their religious faith, was thought to be simply bizarre to these Japanese commentators. Yet Japanese are not particularly "secular" in the sense that they exclude religion or spirituality from the domain of serious discourse. It's simply seen to be all of a piece.
In other words I tend to think that some of what we Westerners project onto Buddhism and other Eastern religions is a bit artificial, as I noted above (I call myself a Westerner since I was born and raised here, despite my Japanese ancestry). Are siddhis real? I actually think the answer to this is yes, almost certainly, not only from my own personal experience but observing this phenomenon in many others, especially my teachers, but also in myself. Is reincarnation real? Well, I doubt, if it does have basis in reality, it operates quite as people traditionally believe --- but if siddhis are possible then why not some sort of resonance between past lives and present lives. The gods? The six realms? Even many traditional Buddhist teachers would express these as metaphors for principles of the universe rather than literal beings --- but this isn't to say certain hidden principles of the universe may not have some reality in some sense (but whatever reality they may have is likely to be extremely hard to verbalize).
But I still believe all these phenomena ought not to be separated off into a "religious" category. To the extent they are real they are simply phenomena, to be examined as critically and skeptically as theories of electromagnetism or gravity. What makes them seem special, "religious", or whatever is simply a Western dualistic cultural overlay, in my view. I agree that to the extent we throw this stuff out because we identify it as "religious" that is a shame --- but to the extent we revere it or reify it that is also a shame. It's just phenomena, all worthy of open-minded investigation but none of it worthy of blind "belief" qua belief, just because it has been handed down in some tradition or other.

Ming
August 12, 2009 6:16 PM
Today is the 182th anniversary of William Blake's death, so let me first quote what Blake said about Jesus Christ, "He is the only God ... and so am I, and so are you." I don't think Buddha would have cared what his teaching is being called, religion, secularism, or some hybrid of both. The water, no matter held in what kind of vessel, is still water, and all names, methods, approaches, and emphases point at the same thing that is being & Being. What else can they point at? The world is big enough for both religion and secularism as well as their variegated permutations.
The fact that Buddhism has been continuously absorbed and assimilated into the host cultures the world over is a testimony to its enduring strength. While Western secularism, mainstream cultures and spiritual communities adapt elements of Buddhism by altering its looks and practices to suit their needs, they are in turned altered by Buddhism -- interdependence means give and take, mutually evolving. A person who would never call himself a Buddhist has no less Buddha nature than a person with impeccable Buddhist learning or aspiration does. The wisdom of Buddhism is its ability to be shaped into any form and practice by whatever mold it meets.
Secularism may turn into a new religion with its aim to convert, its faith in all things secular, its institutionalized influences, its dogmas and normative practices. Religion can become secularized with its inclusiveness, its practice of rational discourse and its willingness to engage the secular world. Buddhism has deep traditional roots but its purpose is to serve the world as it is now and in the Western world it means to become fearlessly Westernized and "secularized" in certain aspects in order to blossom within the local soil. Christ, as Blake understood him, is a great creative teacher first and foremost, and Christianity is a creative force unbeholden to the Church and the devotional ardor of the purists. Buddhism isn't attached to what it's being called, religion or otherwise. The spiritual path is an individual one and in its myriad ways to creatively address the question of being & Being lies the relevance of Buddhism in a world forever changing.

Evelyn
August 12, 2009 6:38 PM
@your name
Admittedly, I was at work at the time and so I probably didn't state that as well as I could have. When Christianity came in and converted other cultures (ie Africa, North America) it *was* stamped on top of whatever was there. There may have been some eventual melding of cultures and practices but this was not done with the sorts of discussions you see going on in western Buddhism. Unlike the situation we have here, the Christian tradition was forced onto other cultures with little to no discussion. We have a unique opportunity here in that we're choosing our own religious path and converting by our own will. That was my point and I may not have made it particularly well.
I have much respect for Christianity but it is a sad truth that many millions of people were not converted of their own will. I took a class on African colonization in college and remember vividly the images of Africans wearing long Catholic robes in the rain forest heat and humidity and trying to practice a religion with which they had little cultural history without much adaptation to their way of life. I know very well that there are indigenous sects of Christianity in Africa that are much more varied.
With all due respect, my ancestors weren't native Christians, they were Africans who also had a tradition forced upon them. They eventually made it their own and now many of us get a lot of fulfillment and comfort from it. I don't want this to detract from the discussion here so I leave it there.
Gassho
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What is so alarming aboutthose who practice Buddhism?
August 14, 2009
http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090814/OPINION03/908140321

In response to: Curren's "faith an election issue" (June 21, 2009)
Tracy Pyles expresses concern that people will not vote for Erik Curren because he is a Buddhist. Your front page shows Curren in the traditional meditation posture.

I keep thinking about this article. Is it non-mainstream (in America) religious interests Mr. Pyles objects to — or specific tenets of Buddhism? Or is it visions of swamis and chanting dervishes? Does front page coverage say it bears public scrutiny?

First, notice who's in the White House. What of President Barack Obama's "hybrid" religious background? Second, our nation's Constitution provides us with the right to believe as we choose. Personal religion is personal and constitutionally protected.

Is the objection to meditating? I can understand anxiety about how "acceptable" practicing yoga and meditation might be. I included yoga and meditation alongside Bible study in my home school curriculum. Would the public school superintendent approve my plans? Legal research on religion and education put this worry to rest. The Ohio State Supreme Court stated that no one has the right to question a person's religious values. Nor does anyone have the right to prevent a person from living those values.

The more I read my Bible, the less concern I felt. The Bible "talks" about meditation. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance has 20 references to meditation. My favorite description of meditation is "dwelling in the House of the Lord."Since the Kingdom of Heaven is within, holding our attention (dwelling) on the place (House) where God resides is meditation. Dwelling fills more than two pages in my concordance. Also, a simple definition of meditation is "listening to God."

I have had anxiety about meditation. But, scientific research on its benefits has piled up: inner peace, better concentration, spiritual growth and emotional healing. Benefits we all want! Let's encourage all public officials to meditate!

K.S. MITCHELL Staunton

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Zen & The Art of DC's "The Great Ten"
by Jeffrey Renaud, Staff Writer
When DC announced the project on The Source, you were quoted as saying you really got into Eastern philosophy when you were in college. How much of those teachings will play into the series and have you been doing additional research on the subject matter since you landed the gig?

Well, I was raised Catholic, but as I left home I began reading all sorts of books, exploring different points of view regarding religion and philosophy. I think one of the first reads to shake up my worldview was the “Don Juan” books of Carlos Castañeda. Also, I was influenced by Denny O’Neil’s “The Question” series, which featured a “recommended reading” section on the letters page. Remember those? I read a lot of those books, learning about the history and thinking behind kung fu, tai chi chuan, etc. This led to the books of D.T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, the “Wandering Taoist” trilogy by Deng Ming Dao, “The Tao of Pooh,” “Zen and the Art of Archery,” and other wonderful books that opened up a whole new world for me.

I think maybe I was open to all this stuff because of my childhood spent moving from one completely different culture to the next. I was born in Puerto Rico, moved to the Philippines when I was five, and then to Atlanta when I was 10. Each move was a jarring shift that exposed me to very different ways of life and different views of the world. The Philippines especially had a big impact on me and left me with a deep appreciation for East Asian cultures. I also got to visit Japan and Thailand. I may have been very young, but I still came away with the lasting firsthand knowledge that there’s a whole wide world out there beyond our shores. And because I didn’t live in the States until I was 10, I also got to experience and appreciate America in a way you might not if you were born here. I got to see it all with fresh eyes.

All of this informs how I’m writing “The Great Ten,” how I’m trying to give each character his own worldview, and how in the end they are a team that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
"The Great Ten" art by Scott McDaniel
What is it about Eastern philosophy that fascinates you?
I just remember reading up on Taoism and Buddhism and thinking, “Wow. This stuff really makes sense!” It’s not take-it-or-leave-it dogma, but a very practical way to approach life and to look at the world, and it directly addressed a lot of the anxiety and discord in my personal life. In a way, Taoism and Buddhism are more psychological systems than religions in the sense that we’re used to. Taoism is about living in tune with the way of the world. Buddhism is about letting go of frustrated desires and materialism to achieve inner peace. They are systems for living a calm, happy life. But I should point out that I don’t find them incompatible with Christianity. Like the old saying goes, “There are many paths to the mountain top. The differences disappear at the summit.” After lapsing for 20-odd years, I’m back to Catholicism and even teach Sunday school, but Taoism and Buddhism still color my view of the world.

Do you think your obvious passion for the subject matter will translate through to comic readers?
Well, it may help me to flesh out these characters and understand the mythologies behind them, but “The Great Ten” is not going to read like a comparative religions class, nor will it be a political treatise. It’s a fast-moving adventure story, and any cultural or philosophical stuff is just there to service the story and give depth to the characters. As with anything I work on, my main intent is to make this a fun read.

Have you ever traveled to China?
No. My folks went to Hong Kong and Taipei while we lived in the Philippines, but I didn’t get to go on those trips. This was back in the early seventies, which I suspect was an era when visiting China was a little tougher than it is now. I’d love to go some day, though.

Scott McDaniel was one of the artists tasked with illustrating the co-features in “Trinity” so he’s no stranger to big, epic tales. What do you feel he brings to the series?

Oh, I can’t say enough good things about Scott. I first fell in love with his work back when he was on “Nightwing.” The way he bends and twists perspective to imbue every panel with movement and life is incredible. More recently, I was lucky enough to do a “JSA Classified” two-parter and an issue of “Birds of Prey” with him, and I would jump at the chance to work with him again. So when “Great Ten” editor Mike Siglain told me Scott might be available, I was more than ready to team up. But Scott had some reservations of his own before taking the job. He wasn’t that familiar with the characters, his Chinese reference was sparse, and he wanted to be sure I wasn’t going in a direction thematically that he might not be comfortable with. So we got on the phone to talk it over, ended up talking for nearly two hours about ourselves, our religious and political differences, and though we certainly don’t share the same views, it was a terrific conversation.

I really think we came away from that with mutual respect, and a feeling that our differences will actually yield a more interesting story. Anyhow, Scott signed on, and I couldn’t be more pleased with what he’s doing. This is a different sort of project for him, but in a good way. If you think you know his work, think again. This is new territory for both of us, and we’re really having a ball with it. The way he’s updated the look of the traditional Chinese gods is brilliant – it’s like how Kirby remade the Norse gods, but it’s all McDaniel. Despite his initial reservations, this project has turned out to be a great fit for him, and I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else.

“The Great Ten”#1 hits shelves on November 4 featuring art by Scott McDaniel and covers by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau.

Keywords: dc comics, the great ten, tony bedard, scott mcdaniel

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Entry: Reply to Franklin Miller 1: Buddhism.Posted/Updated: 08/10/2009 08:41 PM

Terry Wenner -
I don't disagree with you, Stuka. The Buddha's reply to those who wanted answers to metaphysical and theological questions was, "I teach one thing... suffering and the end of suffering." When we use the word, "God" we invite argument from anyone who has ideas related to the word. Buddha's teachings neither affirm nor deny God, and are thus available without restriction or conflict to those who have chosen a theological belief. I use the phrase, 'God and the universe' as a widely understood reference to all of the cosmos that we can experience plus the great mysterious 'whatever' which I cannot perceive and cannot define, and which may give rise in me a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude. In your variety of Buddhism, is there that reverence, awe and gratitude?

Reply to Terry Wenner 1:
Buddhism. If the Buddha neither affirmed nor denied god, then are you asserting that Buddhism is not a religion, in the normal sense of the word? Thank you for your comments and discussion with others of Buddhism; your comments are providing some valuable insight.
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Buddhist Retreat -
.By John Horgan Posted Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2003

Buddha: a pragamatist focused on reducing suffering. For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its surging popularity here in America. Over the last 15 years, the number of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled, to well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees, according to one survey. Recently, convergences between science and Buddhism have been explored in a slew of books—including Zen and the Brain and The Psychology of Awakening—and scholarly meetings. Next fall Harvard will host a colloquium titled "Investigating the Mind," where leading cognitive scientists will swap theories with the Dalai Lama. Just the other week the New York Times hailed the "rapprochement between modern science and ancient
Four years ago, I joined a Buddhist meditation class and began talking to (and reading books by) intellectuals sympathetic to Buddhism. Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth; Buddhism's moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science—or, more generally, with modern humanistic values.
For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism "rejects the theological impulse," the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.
Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements, insisting that Buddhism isn't so much a religion as a practical method for achieving happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who eschewed metaphysical speculation and focused on reducing human suffering. As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is an "inner science," an empirical discipline for fulfilling our minds' potential. The ultimate goal is the state of preternatural bliss, wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called enlightenment—Buddhism's version of heaven, except that you don't have to die to get there.

The major vehicle for achieving enlightenment is meditation, touted by both Buddhists and alternative-medicine gurus as a potent way to calm and comprehend our minds. The trouble is, decades of research have shown meditation's effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting still does. Meditation can even exacerbate depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions in certain people.

The insights imputed to meditation are questionable, too. Meditation, the brain researcher Francisco Varela told me before he died in 2001, confirms the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, which holds that the self is an illusion. Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated by cognitive science, which has discovered that our perception of our minds as discrete, unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by our clever brains. In fact, all that cognitive science has revealed is that the mind is an emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain or predict in terms of its parts; few scientists would equate the property of emergence with nonexistence, as anatta does.

Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate. Ideally, as the British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan Blackmore writes in The Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential selflessness, "guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor." But most people are distressed by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation.

Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements, insisting that Buddhism isn't so much a religion as a practical method for achieving happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who eschewed metaphysical speculation and focused on reducing human suffering. As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is an "inner science," an empirical discipline for fulfilling our minds' potential. The ultimate goal is the state of preternatural bliss, wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called enlightenment—Buddhism's version of heaven, except that you don't have to die to get there. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.

What's worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, but more so. Even the otherwise sensible James Austin perpetuates this insidious notion. " 'Wrong' actions won't arise," he writes, "when a brain continues truly to express the self-nature intrinsic to its [transcendent] experiences." Buddhists infected with this belief can easily excuse their teachers' abusive acts as hallmarks of a "crazy wisdom" that the unenlightened cannot fathom.

But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation. Buddha's first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.

Some Western Buddhists have argued that principles such as reincarnation, anatta, and enlightenment are not essential to Buddhism. In Buddhism Without Beliefs and The Faith To Doubt, the British teacher Stephen Batchelor eloquently describes his practice as a method for confronting—rather than transcending—the often painful mystery of life. But Batchelor seems to have arrived at what he calls an "agnostic" perspective in spite of his Buddhist training—not because of it. When I asked him why he didn't just call himself an agnostic, Batchelor shrugged and said he sometimes wondered himself.

All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can.
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Technology:
Science and religion are not mutually exclusiveBy Peter McKnight, Vancouver SunSeptember 25, 2009

A first glance at Buddhism — and most Westerners have had at most a quick glance at this ancient religion — suggests that it has little in common with science.
For example, we most frequently hear the Dalai Lama preach about the importance of love and compassion. These subjects, while not at odds with science, concern how the world ought to be, not how the world is, and are therefore not the proper subjects of scientific study.
Given the different interests of scientists and Buddhists, then, it might be surprising to learn that some practising scientists are also practising Buddhists, and that the Dalai Lama himself has a longstanding interest in science.

Consequently, with the support of His Holiness, a series of “Mind and Life” dialogues between scientists and Buddhists began in 1987. This led to the development of the Mind and Life Institute in 1990, under the initial direction of neuroscientist and Buddhist practitioner Francisco Varela.
Varela died in 2001, but the Institute and the dialogues live on, with world-renowned scientists and Buddhist monks meeting regularly at conferences in Dharamsala, India, the residence of the Tibetan government in exile.

In the recently released book, Mind and Life: Discussions with the Dalai Lama on the Nature of Reality, University of Rome biologist Pier Luigi Luisi recounts the details of one conference, which probed deeply into physics, among other subjects.
In so doing, the conference illuminated much about the current scientific understanding of the nature of the material world, as well as Buddhism’s conception of this aspect of reality. And while it revealed that Buddhism and science are not always in agreement — largely as a result of philosophical, rather than scientific assumptions — it also revealed that science and Buddhism have much in common.

But perhaps more than anything, the conference’s discussions reveal how one’s world view — that is, how one understands the world — often deeply influences one’s views on how the world ought to be — that is, how we ought to act. In fact, the Tibetan Buddhist view of the physical world directly informs its commitment to love and compassion.

To see this, let us look at Luisi’s recounting of the discussions at the Mind and Life Conference.
Luisi begins by detailing the address given by Steven Chu, the Nobel Laureate physicist at Stanford University. It was Chu’s job to explain our current understanding of the nature of matter — no easy task, particularly given that the address had to be translated into Tibetan for the benefit of the monks in attendance.

And indeed, the monks didn’t seem altogether comfortable with the discussion, though their objections weren’t simply a matter of problems with translation. Two areas of controversy in particular help us to understand both the nature of matter and the nature of Buddhism.
First, Chu discussed the nature of elementary particles — indivisible particles that are not made of other particles — such as electrons and quarks. Almost immediately, an apparent paradox arose. While we can bounce electrons off each other, which suggests they have size, Chu also said that electrons have no spatial dimension, no size: “They are just points. The particle becomes the field.”
This is the wave-particle duality familiar to physics and chemistry students — the idea that matter displays both wave-like and particle-like properties — and a problem various interpretations of quantum mechanics have sought to explain.
Needless to say, the monks were none too comfortable with the paradox either. And the Dalai Lama noticed another problem.

Referencing the fourth-century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, His Holiness argued that indivisible, dimensionless particles can’t possibly be the building blocks of the universe. After all, an aggregate of points is still a point, and hence we can never build the matter of everyday life by amassing a bunch of points.

The second problem arose when Chu discussed the properties all electrons have in common: charge, mass, and spin angular momentum. The monks, clearly more interested in theory than experiment, immediately asked about the reality of the electron apart from these properties.
In other words, the Buddhists were asking whether scientists believed that there is something — which we call an electron — that actually possesses these properties, or whether scientists just use the term “electron” to describe these properties that they measure.

As an experimental scientist, Chu replied that this is not a question he asks. But it happens to be of fundamental importance to Buddhists since they reject the notion of “intrinsic” properties. The Dalai Lama put it this way: “Things and their properties are mutually dependent ... one can speak of an entity only in relation to attributes, and one can speak of attributes only in relation to an entity. Once you have conceptually removed all the attributes, it is nonsensical to speak of what remains.”
These two difficulties — the impossibility of constructing the world out of indivisible particles and the questionable existence of things apart from their properties, or of intrinsic properties — led some Buddhists in history to deny the reality of matter (some say Buddha himself denied the reality of matter.)

This thoroughgoing “anti-realism” — which says our theories don’t really refer to anything since there is nothing to refer to — is in stark contrast to the “realism” of most scientists, who believe their theories do refer to real objects in the world. And this suggests a fundamental discord between science and Buddhism.

But there is a third alternative to realism and anti-realism, one discussed at the conference by Michel Bitbol, a physician with a doctorate in physics and training in philosophy. According to this view, commonly known as “instrumentalism,” theories are seen as ways of explaining, predicting and controlling phenomena, and concepts like electrons are viewed as constructs that help us to make predictions and control nature.

Instrumentalism therefore doesn’t deny reality. If it did, there would be no chance of making accurate predictions because there would be nothing to predict and nothing to control. Rather, instrumentalism merely says that our scientific theories don’t get to the ultimate truth about reality. But they work, and that’s what’s important.

The majority of scientists reject this instrumentalist philosophy, convinced as they are that their theories refer to real objects in the real world. But some eminent scientists, including celebrated Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, do espouse instrumentalist ideas.
And there is good reason for this, since as Bitbol explained, when physicists “talk about particles as little bricks of matter, [it] is only a way of speaking that is used to allow some connection between physics and everyday forms of thought.”

Indeed, the “stuff” of the world seems exceptionally strange, nothing like the way non-physicists typically conceive of it: We already mentioned the wave-particle duality, and to this Bitbol adds that particles “are only fleeting phenomena that emerge in the context of an interaction with” an experimental apparatus. (Bitbol was here referring to the “observer effect,” which states that the act of observing a particle will have an effect on the particle. This is a simplified way of stating Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.)

In other words, how we define the objects of our knowledge — in this case, particles — depends on the capacity we have to know about them. This instrumentalist view has a deeply Kantian flavour: Kant taught that our knowledge of phenomena is a product of the relation between things and our ways of knowing about them, rather than about things themselves.

This emphasis on relations also bears more than a passing resemblance to the Buddhist perspective. We saw earlier that the Dalai Lama rejected the notion of intrinsic properties, as he maintained that things and their properties are mutually dependent — that is, we can speak of a thing only in relation to its attributes and vice versa. In effect, His Holiness was saying that everything is relational.

Matthieu Ricard, who completed a doctorate in cellular genetics before becoming a Buddhist monk, suggested the wave-particle duality buttresses this relational view — since neither the wave-like property nor the particle-like property can be taken as intrinsic — and then concluded, in Kantian fashion:

“All properties, all observable phenomena, appear in relationship with each other and dependent on each other. This view of interdependence — one thing arising in dependence on another, and their relationship — actually defines what appear to us as objects. So relations and interdependence are the basic fabric of reality. We participate in that interdependence with our consciousness; we crystallize some aspect of it that appears to us as objects.”

While this perspective wouldn’t likely gain the allegiance of most scientists, Luisi did offer a quote from Neils Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, which suggests he would have had considerable sympathy for this position: “In our description of nature, the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena, but only to track down, as far as possible, relations between manifold aspects of our experience.”

Suffice it to say, then, that the Buddhist view is not entirely antithetical to science, and is closely related to the views of some scientists, even if it would be rejected by the majority. But whatever its scientific merit, the Buddhist world view — as one of relations and interdependence — is crucially important for Buddhist ethics. In effect, for Buddhists, how the world is, or at least how it is understood, bears directly on how we ought to behave.

In support of this idea, Alan Wallace, who received a doctorate in religious studies from Stanford, trained as a Buddhist monk and is now president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, reiterated the Buddhist disbelief in intrinsic properties and emphasized the fact that everything is constantly in flux, constantly changing.

Despite this, Wallace noted that people tend ascribe intrinsic properties to things, to see things as constant and discrete, rather than to recognize “the intimate interdependence of constantly changing phenomena.” The consequence of this, Wallace said, is that people see themselves as separate from the world, and develop attractions or revulsions toward things or people.
This inevitably leads to toxic mental states, including pride, jealousy and animosity, and people lose sight of what it takes to make themselves or other happy. Ultimately, said Wallace, this leads to suffering because the world can’t match our desires, “so there is a very close relationship between our first misapprehension of the nature of phenomena — finding solid, intrinsic properties in an increasingly fragmented vision of the world — and suffering.”

The Buddhist prescription for this malady is, of course, to see things the other way around. Wallace maintained that if we perceive interdependence and impermanence, we can recognize that enemies can become friends, and that we ourselves are constantly changing.

In fact, there is no “we” or “me” to speak of. Perceiving things in a Buddhist fashion means literally losing yourself, but Wallace insisted this is a good thing, since you are merely losing that which ties you to suffering, which allows for the infiltration of toxic mental states.
More importantly, Wallace noted that recognition of interdependence leads to — indeed, is essential to — compassion, because you realize that your happiness is dependent on the happiness of others. And it means you can never attain lasting happiness by causing the suffering of others.

Wallace summed up his talk by emphasizing just how important is the relationship between the Buddhist understanding of the world and Buddhist ethics:
“[A] correct understanding of reality — the absence of any intrinsic nature of phenomena, and their interdependence — is said to be the ultimate view of the Buddhist teachings, referred to as wisdom. And that is intimately linked with compassion, love and altruism, which are the expression of this understanding and the quintessence of Buddhist ethics or behaviour. ... We have to keep wisdom and compassion in union all the time, from beginning to end, uniting understanding with ethical thoughts, words and actions.”

According to Luisi, Wallace’s final words resulted in a spontaneous ovation from the monks and scientists in Dharamsala. At last there was complete agreement.
Was this because everyone agreed on the importance of love and compassion? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was because whether religious or secular, monk or scientist, Eastern and Western, all could agree on a deep truth — that understanding the world is the first step toward changing it.http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Technology+Science+religion+mutually+exclusive/2035713/story.html

pmcknight@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun


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What is Rains-Retreat? Annual Robe Offering Ceremony Buddhist Community Celebrates Pavarana Purnima by offering special Puja

Pavarana Purnima is Buddhist holy day celebrated on the Full Moon of the eleventh lunar month. It marks the conclusion of Barsha Brata (Vassa / Rains Retreat), sometimes "Buddhist Lent" This day marks the end of the rainy season in Asian countries as well as in Bangladesh, where Theravada Buddhism is practiced. Barsha Brata (Vassa / Rains Retreat) starts at Ashari Purnima and ends at Pavarana Purnima. On This day, each monk (Pali: Bhikkhu) must come before the community of monks ( Sangha ) and atone for the offense he may have committed during the Barsha Brata.In India, where Buddhism began, there is a three-month-long rainy season. According to the Vinaya (Mahavagga, Fourth Khandhaka, section I), in the time of the Buddha, once during this rainy season, a group of normally wandering monks sought shelter by co-habitating in a residence. In order to minimize potential inter-personal strife while co-habitating, the monks agreed to remain silent for the entire three months and agreed upon a non-verbal means for sharing alms.After this rains retreat, when the Buddha learned of the monks' silence, he described such a measure as "foolish." Instead, the Buddha instituted the Pavarana Ceremony as a means for dealing with potential conflict and breaches of disciplinary rules (Patimokkha) during the vassa season. The Buddha said: 'I prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that the Bhikkhus, when they have finished their Vassa residence, hold Pavâranâ with each other in these three ways: by what [offence] has been seen, or by what has been heard, or by what is suspected. Hence it will result that you live in accord with each other that you atone for the offences (you have committed), and that you keep the rules of discipline before your eyes.'
During this Barsha Brata (Vassa / Rains Retreat) for Monastic, these are often days of more intensive reflection and meditation along with their "Ten Precepts". In many monasteries physical labor (construction projects, repairs etc) is curtailed.

Lay people observe the "Eight Precepts" on Uposatha days, as a support for meditation practice and as a way to re-energize commitment to the Dhamma. Whenever possible, lay people use these days as an opportunity to visit the local monastery in order to make special offerings to the Sangha( Monks).This whole program come to the conclusion after Kathina Ceremony (Robe offering ceremony)which is held on any convenient date within one month of the conclusion of the Vassa Retreat, which is the three month rains retreat season (Vassa) for the monastic order. It is the time of the year when new robes and other requisites may be offered by the laity to the monks.
Photos & Text - Adnan/DrikNEWS

more .... The delegation is being led by Thailand’s former Foreign Minister, Mr. Saroj Chavanaviraj which will comprise of some five other members from the Thai Foreign Ministry and the Bureau of the Royal Household of Thai Kingdom, it is learnt from the Thai embassy in Kathmandu, today, October 7, 2009.


The Thai delegation is arriving Nepal on October 9 and will be in Nepal until 12th of this month.
The Thai delegation will, during its brief Nepal sojourn, offer the Royal KATHINA Robes bestowed by His Majesty the King of Thailand to the Muni Vihar Monastery, Bhaktapur on 11 October, 2009.

KATHINA, today, is celebrated as the largest alms giving festival by the followers of Buddhism across the world.

The tradition of collecting clothes at the end of the rains Retreat continues till now. From the time the Vassa comes to an end to the four weeks that follows, willing supporters can make an offering of clothes to the Sangha and the Sangha themselves can’t go about asking for clothes and thus the offering has to come from the people who are willing to donate clothes.

The KATHINA celebration takes place during the months of October and November.
This festival is taken as an important event by the Burmese, Sri Lankans, and the Thai Theravada Buddhists.


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Not a cult about nothingness



S. PANNEERSELVAM

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An interesting study of Buddhism in the context of contemporary western thinkers

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THE CULT OF NOTHINGNESS:

By Roger-Pol Droit, Translated by David Streight and Pamela Vohnson; Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., PB No 5715, 54, Rani Jhansi Road, New Delhi-110055. Rs. 750.

This book , originally published in French in 1997, is an interesting study of Buddhism in the context of contemporary western thinkers. Buddhism, which has contributed to the world culture, has influenced the philosophy of religion of India and also Asia in general. It was the Buddha who first suggested the dialectic method, long before Zeno did in the West. During the 19th century, he was a veritable nightmare for Europe and Buddhism was identified with nothingness. For a very long time, it was misconstrued as a religion of annihilation. That perception has since changed and it has come to be seen, correctly, as a religion that preaches compassion, tolerance, and non-violence.

How this change took place is explained by the author, who discusses a number of thinkers including Cousin, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Buddhism, he says, is both therapeutic and pragmatic in its approach. In the 18th century, the Buddha was considered as one of the elements of the primitive world and identified with Mercury of Europe, Thot of the Egypt, and Hermes of the Greek. In France, Buddou was recognised as a philosopher for the first time by Michel-Jean-Francois in 1817.

Significance

The author contends that both Hegel and Schopenhauer understood what Buddhism was after reading the research article of Francis Buchman. Later, in 1829, the French Newspaper Le Globe published an article on Buddhism. It was during this period that Buddhism was seen as a “cult of nothingness.” In the subsequent years, the West began to discuss the identity of Buddha, an area that had remained completely neglected until then.

The works of Jacob Schmidt, Henry Thomas Colebrooke and others have brought out the significance of Buddhism. During 1822-23, Hegel in his course on the ‘Philosophy of History’ dealt with Buddhism and attributed nothingness to it. The author is of the view that Hegel had changed many of his views on India after reading Colebrooke. In 1863, the polemic cult of nothingness reached its peak in France, England, and Germany. In France, Cousin coined the expression “cult of nothingness” to refer to Buddhism. While appreciating the richness and vastness of Indian Philosophy, he pointed out that it was here that all philosophical systems of the world met. In Germany, Schopenhauer, who was influenced by Buddhism, believed in the principles of renunciation, compassion, and negation of the will to live. The view that nothingness is the culmination of true philosophy is expressed in his book, The World as Will and Representation.

Acceptable

Nietzsche, in his The Birth of Tragedy, said that “tragedy should save us from Buddhism.” Instead of considering Buddhism to be a possible resource, he saw in it a threat, a danger, and a future that western civilisation ought to attempt to escape. Nietzsche realised that the religion was steadily gaining acceptability across Europe and was thus no longer terrifying to the western mind. In the early 1890s, Buddhism was no longer considered to be a religion of nothingness. The cult of nothingness thus was ending. The author concludes the book by explaining how the cult of nothingness was confused with that of a century that was leading to the time of world wars and the totalitarian barbarity. The book has an exhaustive bibliography of works on Buddhism published in the West during 1638-1890. The author needs to be commended for his excellent analysis and detailed notes and references and the book is certainly a significant contribution to the knowledge on Buddhism.

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Five spiritual trends with staying power


The intersection of Eastern and Western religious beliefs is no longer just a topic for intellectuals

By Douglas Todd, Vancouver SunJanuary 9, 2010

A year ago I wrote about five religious trends to watch for in 2009. I suggested what will happen to the religious right, the religious left, religion-based terrorism, Eastern spirituality and all those people who like to say they're spiritual but not religious.
With the dawn of our new decade, I'm coming to the conclusion the five trends have real staying power, which could see them sticking with us to 2020 and beyond.

Here are the five religious and spiritual shifts I predicted, plus my analysis of what's happened in the past year or more to indicate they could be long-lasting:

1. Eastern spirituality will flower

The days are gone when just a few intellectuals discussed the intersection of Eastern and Western thought. Now, instead of D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Masao Abe and John Cobb taking part in East-West dialogues, Asian spirituality has gone mainstream in the West.

Nova Scotia-based Buddhist monk Pema Chodron is being profiled in mass circulation women's magazines, teaching the controversial idea of living with "no hope." And small spiritual armies of young Buddhists, calling themselves Dharma Punx, are spreading around North America.

It's not only whites jumping on the Eastern spirituality train. Inspired by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and Thailand's Sulak Sivaraksa, more Asians are transforming Eastern spiritual traditions--making them less quietistic. They're committed to "engaged Buddhism," which is putting them on the non-violent frontlines of justice.

The Taiwan-based Chu Tzi movement, which has millions of followers in 40 countries, including Canada, down-plays religious rites and zealously emphasizes international charity projects.

Meanwhile, instead of having scholars highlight the atheistic philosophy of Buddhism, scholar Jeff Wilson has discovered, droves of North American converts and ethnic Buddhists (especially women)are increasingly being drawn to more supernatural reverence of the Chinese figure, Kuan Yin.

2. Religious terrorism will be the new normal

The recent failed attempts by extremist Muslims to kill a Danish cartoonist and blow up a plane to Detroit have broken a long quiet spell in terrorist activity on European and North American soil. A Pew Forum survey found in December that religion-rooted hostility is widespread around the world, though not necessarily growing. Nine per cent of countries are experiencing some form, however minor, of terrorism -- not only from Muslims, but from Christians, Hindus, atheistic leaders and others.

With North Americans keeping their attention mostly on Muslim terrorism, global surveys are showing Islamic anger is based largely on a sense that brothers and sisters in the faith are being vilified and oppressed by Western financial, political and military powers.

Unlike in the days of George W. Bush, virtually all Western observers, including U.S. President Barack Obama, maintain it takes more than military might to stop terrorism, as the dubious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are proving. It takes intelligence-gathering, multilateralism, interfaith dialogue and negotiation.

The anti-terror campaign, perhaps surprisingly, includes "terrorist rehabilitation," according to Religion Watch magazine. Government officials are offering psychological and spiritual counselling to thousands of jailed suspected terrorists to counter their militant ideology.

3. Religious liberals will build on advances

Momentum is rising among spiritual searchers yearning for an alternative to conservative versions of Western religion. They're finding it in progressive Christian, Jewish and Islamic writers. Marcus Borg, Donna Butler Bass, Jim Wallis, Michael Lerner, Tariq Ramadan and Canada's Ron Rolheiser have in recent years become major public intellectuals and hugely successful authors.

Polls are showing liberal religious people are not as partisan and aggressive as evangelicals, but they're making waves in public policy. Even though Obama didn't win any more white evangelical Christian supporters than previous Democrat presidential candidates, he is retaining solid support from black Protestants, mainline Protestants, white and Hispanic Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, not to mention the religiously unaffiliated. Since achieving office, Obama also has been raising the profile of one of his favourite Christian theologians, the late Reinhold Niebuhr.

If black civil rights, South African apartheid and the Vietnam War brought together religious progressives in the '60s and '70s, possible environmental disaster now galvanizes them. That was illustrated by the way Christians pressed government leaders to make a dramatic commitment against global warming at December's Copenhagen climate summit.

4. Religious right will regroup

The religious right has been hit with some body blows -- particularly with the rise of Obama, the failure of the war they backed in Iraq and the defeat of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In addition, more U.S. states have recently been legalizing same-sex unions.

But the religious right retains its passion, anger, money, followers, political connections (including with Stephen Harper's Conservative party) and influence on major media outlets, particularly through hugely popular talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck, a Mormon.

Even though Palin is an embarrassment to many women and some of her fellow evangelicals (especially in Canada), she remains a bigger name than ever since resigning last year as Alaska's governor, promoting her autobiography and prodding the Republican party in her Pentecostal direction.

The religious right was reinvigorated by last year's no-holds-barred crusade against Democrats' attempts to bring in universal health insurance. Zoning in on laws that ban federal funding of abortion, conservative religious activists mobilized against the U.S., adopting even a pale imitation of Canada's medicare system. They called Obama a "socialist" and likened him to Adolf Hitler. Palin called the health plan "downright evil."

5. Secular spirituality will strengthen

The populist mantra taking us into the next decade is: "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual."

It's commonplace for people now to oppose religious organizations, while embracing a host of spiritual practices and beliefs. This "secular spirituality" manifests itself in mainstream publishing, widespread nature reverence and pop culture figures such as Oprah, Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra.

"Secular spirituality" is also making a rare foray into academia. Hundreds of university based researchers are studying the scientific benefits of "mindfulness" and various forms of meditation and contemplation, which have been practised for centuries by Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Jews, not to mention artists, musicians and poets.

With polls showing more people are becoming "spiritual tinkerers" who mix and match an often dizzying variety of beliefs and practices, secular spirituality is also making its way into movies, including the newly released 2012 and Avatar.

Filmed in Vancouver, apocalyptic 2012 warns of environmental cataclysm. The movie ties into a New Age belief that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts that the year 2012 marks either the end of the world or the beginning of a new and glorious spiritual era.

Canadian director James Cameron's blockbuster movie, Avatar, also develops an eco-spiritual theme. The heroes are humanoids, known as Na'vi, who practise a powerful indigenous form of nature spirituality that holds the potential to heal the universe.

In line with the current trend to treat global culture as if it were a vast spiritual smorgasbord, Cameron took the title of his movie from Indian religion. An "avatar" is an incarnation of a Hindu god.

Read Douglas Todd's blog at www.vancouversun.com/thesearch

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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What is the most essential you that is present regardless of thought or emotion? Who or what has been present for all of your life experience? How does this spirit of constancy touch your life?  Questions and answers pointing directly to the true nature of Self.


"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom" ~ Victor Frankl



Meditation and the False Lure of Zoning Out

Why meditation does not make you
a self-involved, zoned-out bliss-ninny.

Published on January 21, 2010

Here's the polite version of a question I received recently about my support of mindfulness meditation as a practice for well-being in relationships:

Why are you encouraging people to zone out? Sitting around pretending they're above it all, and avoiding real feelings? Who wants to be in a relationship with a self-involved bliss-ninny?

Wow.

There are an awful lot of misconceptions about mindfulness meditation. This one, about how people who meditate are just using it as a place to "hide out" by just getting zoned, escaping into some blissed-out, checked-out place, is why a lot of people mistakenly decide that meditation is useless, or worse.

There are some merits to asking the question, though, because it's true that some people who meditate use it in ways which aren't beneficial, sometimes making them pretty obnoxious to spend time with.

The place from which I look at the benefits of mindfulness meditation is in my work with people who want to create more meaningful lives, including better, healthier, more satisfying relationships. I'm a clinical psychologist who believes that being emotionally present and authentic is the cornerstone of emotional well-being. I'm also trained as a neuropsychologist, who knows that the better integrated a brain is, the better it works. It's a bit like needing the left hand to know what the right one is doing in order to get anything done. (I don't just use that phrase lightly - in cases of damage to the corpus callosum, the brain's bridge between the right and left hemispheres, one hand quite literally doesn't know what the other is doing, with one buttoning up the shirt and the other following behind, unbuttoning it.)

So from that stance, let's take a look at the notion that mindfulness meditation leads to people becoming zoned-out, self-involved bliss-ninnies.

"Don't people use meditation just to escape?"

Is it possible for people to hide out in meditation? Yes. People who "use" meditation to escape, just like using drugs or alcohol to escape, can closely resemble the "kindly, calm pod person" that Judith Warner wrote about in a New York Times blog post. The added "benefit" of using meditation as your drug of choice is that, unlike zoning out on alcohol or drugs (or TV, surfing the web, and so on), you can also adopt a "more enlightened than thou" stance that some meditators have been known to take, much to the annoyance of those around them.

Even Jack Kornfield, PhD, one of the pioneers and great teachers in the use of mindfulness meditation in the West (and also a psychologist), points out that "[m]editation and spiritual practice can easily be used to suppress and avoid feeling or to escape from difficult areas of our lives." He goes on to say that "the sitting practice itself... often provide[s] a way to hide, a way to actually separate the mind from difficult areas of heart and body."

Obviously, this isn't the approach to mindfulness meditation which I advocate either. This will become more clear as we go on.

"The people I know who meditate just ended up being more self-involved."

This can happen, too. In one variation of this, sometimes people who meditate profess that their practice is making them "more present" when in fact they're just more self-involved. Judith Warner again:

[P]eople who are embarked on this particular 'journey of self-exploration,' as [Mary] Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot. But what they don't realize - because they're so in the moment, caught in the wonder and fascination and totality of their self-experience - is that their stories are like dream sequences in movies, or college students' journal entries, or the excited accounts your children bring you of absolutely hilarious moments in cartoons - you really do have to be the one who's been there to tolerate it.

For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it's stultifyingly boring.

What she's describing (okay, complaining about) is not "real" mindfulness, though. Mindfulness isn't about droning on and on about your own inner exploration, ignoring the feelings of others (or your own), or gushing your newfound love for all of humanity. Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

That last sentence is vital: Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

empathic = being able to see things from another's point of view, getting a sense of their intentions, and being able to imagine what something "means" to another person

attuned = allowing our internal state to resonate with the inner world of another, to "get" someone else's inner state, allowing us to feel connected

contingent = responding to another in a way which is informed by what we sense in them, not just what we think or feel

(These definitions as presented here are largely influenced by Dan Siegel, whose latest book, Mindsight,I highly recommend.)

A thumbnail sketch of what this looks like: You talk to me, and I listen with an open heart and an open mind, tuned in to you while also being aware of my own internal state. And my response to you, if I'm being mindful, is contingent on what you're saying and feeling and communicating - not just my own internal experience. When I talk, I'm speaking with mindful awareness of my internal state as well as being attuned to you, and I pay attention to shifts in myself and in you while I speak, to be able to remain connected, attuned and empathic.

That would be a far cry from being self-involved.

"Seems to me that people who meditate aren't dealing with their real problems."

It's also true that many who meditate may need additional help. As Jack Kornfield put it in his essay, "Even The Best Meditators Have Old Wounds To Heal":

There are many areas of growth (grief and other unfinished business, communication and maturing of relationships, sexuality and intimacy, career and work issues, certain fears and phobias, early wounds, and more) where good Western therapy is on the whole much quicker and more successful than meditation.... Meditation can help in these areas. But if, after sitting for a while, you discover that you still have work to do, find a good therapist or some other way to effectively address these issues.

Jack, in his honest wisdom, goes on to say that many American vipassana (mindfulness meditation) teachers who have gotten stuck in disconnection, fear, or other unconscious places, have sought out psychotherapy.

(As a brief aside, I would say that the same seeking of good psychotherapy should be true of anyone leading others in a quest to better understand themselves, or to heal emotionally. That includes psychotherapists. It's my strong opinion that good psychotherapists have done (and continue to do) work in their own psychotherapy, and need to have the capacity for empathic, attuned, contingent communication.)

So, mindfulness meditation isn't a one-size-fits-all cure for everything that ails you. It is, however, powerfully helpful, whether on its own, or in conjunction with psychotherapy.

I've had people come into my practice who have been meditating for years, who have found that they've resolved much but can't seem to crack the core of the issue, and their meditation practice serves them well in the psychotherapeutic work.

I've also worked with people who have been in psychotherapy on and off for years with different therapists, benefitting from it but with the next level of growth seemingly out of reach. When we've added mindfulness meditation to the mix, they've begun to make some remarkable progress which they hadn't been able to before.

"Can meditation really change people for the better?"

Nothing is a "build it and they will come" guarantee when it comes to personal change. A joke in psychotherapy is, "How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change." That's not just true of psychotherapy, but of any endeavor we take on to create better, healthier, more meaningful lives, and that would include meditation. (As George Carlin said, "Ya gotta wanna.")

Mindfulness meditation is being shown in a growing mountain of well-done, peer-reviewed scientific research to make demonstrable changes in how your brain is wired -- which in turn changes how you perceive the world, how you respond to it, and how you behave.

Meditation isn't a magic wand that creates enlightenment, but it does have what can look like almost magical effects on connections in the brain -- including synaptogenesis (the creation of new connections between neurons), and even neurogenesis (the creation of brand-new neurons in the brain-- an ability which neuroscience has only accepted as a real phenomenon in the last 15 years or so).

What I see in people who practice regular mindfulness meditation is that they're more integrated in how they relate to the world, including themselves. (This is more true of people who are practice developing their mindfulness at all times, not just when they're formally meditating.)

They haven't found a magic way to hit the "bliss" button - not if they're being really truthful with themselves. They might experience bliss more often and more fully, but it's likely that they're also experiencing all of their emotions more often, and more fully. What they've found is a way to be more whole, more integrated, to not just listen to their rational intellectual side "versus" their non-rational, emotional side.

I see a lot of very bright, high-functioning people in my psychotherapy practice who are so far one-sided or the other -- over-reliant on the rational, or hyper-attuned to the emotional -- that they can't get a handle on what their "real" problem is. Mindfulness meditation helps them see a more integrated picture, warts and all, and then they're also better equipped to deal with it in an honest, authentic, insightful way.

Let's take a look at how that applies to a relationship problem. If you use only your rational brain, and ignore your feelings and those of your significant other, it's unlikely to go well (in fact, you'll probably make things worse). On the other hand, if you lead solely with your emotions, you could similarly end up never solving the problem (and blowing things up). It's much like the right-hand-buttoning, left-hand-unbuttoning dilemma.

But: If you are able to integrate both your intellect and your emotions -- and be attuned to your significant other's feelings and thoughts as well (in a real way, not the way that Judith Warner described) -- you can be positively brilliant in dealing with the issue.

"Yeah, but is there any real change?"

Yes -- "real" as in "measurable by scientific methods". This is what the research in neuroscience is pointing to. Researchers have been looking at the structure and activity in the brains of those who practice regular mindfulness meditation, and they see changes and benefits.

Which of those findings excite me the most, as someone who works to help people create more meaningful lives and relationships?

How about this: Increased activity, connectivity -- even size -- in brain areas (most especially, an area called the middle prefrontal cortex) known to support the integration of the rational, problem-solving areas (e.g., the frontal cortex) and those known to be centers for emotions (e.g., the amygdala).

The brains of people who practice mindfulness meditation appear to be more integrated, and the clinical evidence supports these changes as well, such as the nine benefits of mindfulness meditation I discussed in a previous post.

If your brain is better integrated, you're neither ignoring the facts nor discounting emotions. You're better able to know what's true for you, and to be better attuned to the person you're with. You can evaluate more clearly what you're feeling, rather than having knee-jerk reactions or jumping to conclusions. While it doesn't mean you always do, you're more likely to be able to stay present with whatever's going on.

So, does that sound like a zoned-out, self-involved bliss-ninny?

Marsha Lucas, PhD is a psychologist / neuropsychologist in Washington, DC. Learn more about rewiring your brain at ReWireYourBrainForLove.com, where she offers a free mindfulness meditation download and a monthly e-newsletter with meditation tips. You can also follow @DrMarsha on Twitter, and join her on her Facebook page.
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Hey, It's ALL 'METAPHOR' !


All about Google search basics: Here's Basic Help.

"Challenges of Search" as it's now called...

"Search" is simple: just type whatever comes to mind in the search box, hit Enter or click on the Google Search button, and Google will search the web for pages that are relevant to your query.



THIS REPRINT ON "SEARCH" IS SIMPLY HERE AS A BIG 'METAPHOR' FOR THE WHOLE 'SEARCH' YOU MAY BE ON 'SPIRITUALLY' - AND YOUR ABILITY TO REFINE THAT SEARCH. IT IS ALSO VERY USEFUL INFORMATION.



Some basic facts

Every word matters. Generally, all the words you put in the query will be used. There are some exceptions.

Search is always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ].

With some exceptions, punctuation is ignored -- EXCEPT "QUOTE marks" around words will keep those words together, but will also limit ( or cut down, trim down ) on the search. It may add to the accuracy of what you're looking for.

Guidelines for better search

Keep it simple. If you're looking for a particular company, just enter its name, or as much of its name as you can recall. If you're looking for a particular concept, place, or product, start with its name. If you're looking for a pizza restaurant, just enter pizza and the name of your town or your zip code. Most queries do not require advanced operators or unusual syntax. Simple is good.

Think how the page you are looking for will be written. Use the words that are most likely to appear on their page. For example, instead of saying [ my head hurts ], say [ headache ], because that's the term a medical page will use. The query [ in what country are bats considered an omen of good luck? ] is very clear to a person, but the document that gives the answer may not have those words. Instead, use the query [just [ bats good luck ], because that is probably what the right page will say.

Choose descriptive words. The more unique the word is the more likely you are to get relevant results. Like 'Buddhist'.Words that are not very descriptive, like 'document,' 'website,' 'company,' or 'info,' are usually not needed. Keep in mind, however, that even if the word has the correct meaning but it is not the one most people use, it may not match the pages you need. For example, [ celebrity ringtones ] is more descriptive and specific than [ celebrity sounds ].

The title: The first line of any search result is usually the title of the webpage.

The snippet: A description of or an excerpt from the webpage.

Cached link: A link to an earlier version of this page. Click here if the page you wanted isn't available. This is a good way to OPEN UP a page that might not easily open.

The title is what the author of the page designated as the best short description of the site.



"Hey... It's ALL in the Search, Guys !

search your mind search your heart search your world."

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end



Meditation on the Recession
By Michael Sigman

What's Your Poison?
By Michael Sigman

Healing & Spirituality Take a BreathBy Nick Street,

Doctor's Orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om'
By Andrea R. Vaucher

American Buddhism On The Rise Religion & Ethics
from the September 14, 2006
Jewish AND Buddhist !
J U B U
At One With Dual DevotionBy Louis Sahagun Reuters - July 25, 2008

Meditation slows AIDS progression: study
By : Maggie Fox
Compulsive Shopping: Is it a Disorder?
Desire / Grasping / Clinging / Attachment / Loss / Suffering
Adopting compulsive shopping as a diagnosiswould require most insurers to cover its treatment, among other implications.
By : Melissa Healy

The Purpose of Self-Inquiry ( the 'Vichara' ) by John Sherman
The purpose of the 'Vichara' is to settle the issue of identity. by John Sherman

needs paragraphing... excellent !!!"In the Depths of Religious Atheism"by the Rev. Richard W. Kelley
Up From Buddhism ~
Controversy Stretches You . . .From 2003, John Horgan explains why he gave up on Buddhism:

Up From Buddhism, Part II LET'S RUMBLE !
Buddha's Life Story by Akasa LeviFriends on The Compassionately Fearless Wayless Way ~
Buddha's Story passed down in The Pali Canon
The Buddha Shakyamuni ~ Siddhartha Gautama of The Shakya Tribe in India

When Still EnoughMark Nepo
a poem that speaks to what Opens when we are still enough

Jay Michaelson Columnist for the Forward newspaper, May 18, 2009
What It's Like to Spend Five Months in Silence
The Formal Pali-language Outlines the 8-Fold Path of Practice.
" What has been obtained by this conquest of Dharma creates true affection."
The greatest barrier to enlightenment, Bhante said, is caring only about one's own happiness. We need to "lessen our clinging to ourselves," he said. "If you really want to be happy," he said, "help others."
Who's WHAT ?
Unusual celebrity religions

Freedom From Religion: Buddhism Wins Best Religion in the World AwardWednesday July 15, 2009 Categories: Buddhism, Merit/Demerit Badge

Secularizing Buddhism-- Making it Accessible or Stripping the Roots?by Vince Horn of Buddhist Geeks
What is so alarming about those who practice Buddhism? August 14, 2009
In response to: Curren's "faith an election issue" (June 21, 2009)

Zen & The Art of DC's "The Great Ten"
Comics by Jeffrey Renaud, Staff Writer

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There is NO 'bookmarked' directory/menu of the articles below
the GREEN Line YET, you'll need to patiently scroll down manually
thru the various pieces to find what you may be interested in ...
... have fun on the search !
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Please NOTE: In the articles you'll find two basic styles of writing: The Western writers are good thinkers & everything from professionally elegant - to the news-media writers that tend towards being 'cavalier' in their written 'attitude' towards 'Buddhism' or 'Religion' in general etc.. ( Americans - and the world - are critically "religion-wounded" cultures of mistrustful people ). That's a whole 'issue' of why 'spirituality' doesn't work on many of us... a big topic of discussion for another time... anyway...