lotusinthemud

the fourth noble truth - part two

To discuss this series of videos, please join Friends of Amida, and then, the Feeling Buddha group

the fourth noble truth - part one

the third noble truth: nirodha, part two

the third noble truth: nirodha

the second noble truth: part two

the second noble truth: part one

the first noble truth: part two

the first noble truth: part one

The first of the talks Dharmavidya gave at the Feeling Buddha retreat last weekend:

introduction to the four noble truths

the joy of less

By Pico Iyer

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least)....

::continue reading

dharmavidya - refuge talk 4: buddha refuge

dharmavidya - refuge talk 3: other power refuge

dharmavidya - refuge talk 2: self power refuge

dharmavidya - refuge talk 1: latent refuge

help protect tibetans and their sacred mountain

Tibetans in Tibet are appealing for help to stop a Chinese company from mining a sacred mountain.

Since May 16th, hundreds of Tibetans have been peacefully blockading the main road leading to Ser Ngul Lo Mountain in Markham County. Tibetans in the region believe mining is poisoning water sources, leading to the deaths of both people and cattle. More than 300 armed security forces have been deployed to the area, and the situation on the ground is reported to be incredibly tense.

Under Chinese occupation, Tibetans are routinely denied the right to determine the use of their own land and resources. Any Tibetan who dares to oppose mining operations is at great risk of arrest, imprisonment, and even torture.

Help protect Tibetans in Markham and their sacred mountain. Let the Chinese government know the world is watching.

1) If you are in the U.S., fax a letter to China's Ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzhong http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/stopminingaction

2) If you are living outside of the U.S., fax a letter to China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Zhang Yesui http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/markham

To learn more, go to: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/stopminingaction/explanation

you've got to find what you love

Inspirational words from Steve Jobs:

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

::continue reading here

don't fall prey

The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

free aung san suu kyi - 62nd birthday action

Free Aung San Suu Kyi - 62nd Birthday Action

'unconditional love': an evening with dharmavidya, 20th may 2009

'Living in the Light of Unconditional Love'

Rev Dharmavidya David Brazier is the Spiritual Teacher and Head of the Amida Order, a Socially Engaged Pureland Buddhist School. He is the acclaimed author of a number of books including The Feeling Buddha, Zen Therapy, Who Loves Dies Well and The New Buddhism.

Donations  welcome  suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Date: Wednesday 20th May, 2009

Time: 7 - 9 pm

Venue: Northumbria University Chaplaincy

Room 116, Wynne Jones Building (1st floor - there is disabled access)

Northumbria University

Ellison Place

Newcastle upon Tyne

NE1 8ST

no 17 on the Campus map

Donations welcome: Suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Contact: Reverend Sujatin Johnson, Buddhist Chaplain - sujatin[at]gmail[dot]com

Hosted by the Buddhist Chaplaincy at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities

This is an open meeting - All Welcome!

'Living in the Light of Unconditional Love'

Rev Dharmavidya David Brazier is the Spiritual Teacher and Head of the Amida Order, a Socially Engaged Pureland Buddhist School. He is the acclaimed author of a number of books including The Feeling Buddha, Zen Therapy, Who Loves Dies Well and The New Buddhism.

Donations  welcome  suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Date: Wednesday 20th May, 2009

Time: 7 - 9 pm

Venue: Northumbria University Chaplaincy

Room 116, Wynne Jones Building (1st floor - there is disabled access)

Northumbria University

Ellison Place

Newcastle upon Tyne

NE1 8ST

no 17 on the Campus map

Donations welcome: Suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Contact: Reverend Sujatin Johnson, Buddhist Chaplain - sujatin[at]gmail[dot]com

Hosted by the Buddhist Chaplaincy at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities

This is an open meeting - All Welcome!

beyond guilt - an evening with caroline brazier, 19th may 2009

Spend an evening with psychotherapy trainer and author, Caroline Brazier, on her return visit to the N.E., where she lived for over 20 years. Her talk will be based on the subject matter of her latest book ‘Guilt, an Exploration’: ‘a journey into areas of life which both fascinate and repel us. Weaving together an account of a group of young people, fine grained analysis of the emotional and ethical basis of guilt, and illustrations draw from a variety of life circumstances, she examines the complexity of a subject which troubles many people in the modern world. She deals sensitively with some of the most challenging areas of human experience, while retaining a joy in life. At times both humorous and emotive, her book reveals the beauty of the everyday and the pathos of the ordinary.’

Book review ::here and ::here

Date: Tuesday 19th May 2009

Time: 7 - 9 pm

Venue: Northumbria University Chaplaincy

Room 116, Wynne Jones Building (1st floor - there is disabled access)

Northumbria University

Ellison Place

Newcastle upon Tyne

NE1 8ST

no 17 on the Campus map

Donations welcome: Suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Contact: Reverend Sujatin Johnson, Buddhist Chaplain - sujatin[at]gmail[dot]com

Hosted by the Buddhist Chaplaincy at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities

All Welcome!

Spend an evening with psychotherapy trainer and author, Caroline Brazier, on her return visit to the N.E., where she lived for over 20 years. Her talk will be based on the subject matter of her latest book ‘Guilt, an Exploration’: ‘a journey into areas of life which both fascinate and repel us. Weaving together an account of a group of young people, fine grained analysis of the emotional and ethical basis of guilt, and illustrations draw from a variety of life circumstances, she examines the complexity of a subject which troubles many people in the modern world. She deals sensitively with some of the most challenging areas of human experience, while retaining a joy in life. At times both humorous and emotive, her book reveals the beauty of the everyday and the pathos of the ordinary.’

Book review ::here and ::here

Date: Tuesday 19th May 2009

Time: 7 - 9 pm

Venue: Northumbria University Chaplaincy

Room 116, Wynne Jones Building (1st floor - there is disabled access)

Northumbria University

Ellison Place

Newcastle upon Tyne

NE1 8ST

no 17 on the Campus map

Donations welcome: Suggested amount £5/£3 students, unwaged, retired

Contact: Reverend Sujatin Johnson, Buddhist Chaplain - sujatin[at]gmail[dot]com

Hosted by the Buddhist Chaplaincy at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities

All Welcome!

the reason we don't let go of our thoughts

Sometimes we find that we like our thoughts so much that we don’t want to let them go.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

tibet protest monks receive hero’s welcome in dharamsala

Dharamsala, May 12: Five Tibetan monks, who staged protests against Chinese rule last year in Amdo Labrang and later managed to escape Tibet, arrived to a hero’s welcome in Dharamsala on Sunday.

Tibetan exiles, including representatives of Tibetan organisations, bearing Tibetan National Flag and Khata (ceremonial scarves) greeted the monks as they arrived here early morning by bus from Delhi.

::continue reading here

guidelines for cats

And, if you are owned by a cat, you will recognise these:

Doors
Do not allow closed doors in any room. To get door opened, stand on hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. After you have ordered an "outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season. Swinging doors are to be avoided at all costs.

Chairs and Rugs
If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug. If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so that it is as long as the human's bare foot.

Bathrooms
Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything . . . just sit and stare.

::and much more, from James S. Huggins' Refrigerator Door

buddhist inmate wins religious lawsuit

A Buddhist prison inmate in Texas has won a lawsuit over rules for religious practice.

The prison system requires religious services to be performed by a chaplain or approved religious volunteers. Muslims were allowed to hold religious meetings, but chaplains had declined to lead Buddhist services because of lack of knowledge or because it conflicts with their own beliefs, according to Kelly Shackleford, chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute.

A federal appeals court stands by the Buddhist inmate.

"Basically what the court said is, 'Look, you've got to give people the same rights' -- that you can't say that there are some faiths that have a right to meet together and pray together and other faiths don't have that right," he notes.

::link to article

how are we ever going to change anything?

How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? In a potentially violent encounter, how do I communicate so that neither of us becomes increasingly furious and aggressive? How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen?

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.

~ Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart : Heart Advice for Difficult Times

nothing is static or fixed

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything - every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

confusion

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

~ Pema Chodron

be soft in your practice

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you....

~ Rev Master Sheng-yen

spiritual practice is your life

There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day.

~ Pema Chodron

taming what was wild

As I left my daytime resting place on Vulture Peak,
I saw an elephant
come up on the riverbank after its bath.

A man took a hook and said to the elephant,
Give me your foot.
The elephant stretched out its foot; the man mounted.

Seeing what was wild before
gone tame under human hands,
I went into the forest
and concentrated my mind.

~ Dantika, in Susan Murcotts The First Buddhist Women from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

this very body....with its aches and its pleasures....is exactly what we need

It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting right here right now... with its aches and it pleasures... is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.

~ Pema Chodron

towards a buddhist manifesto

Dharmavidya writes:

Assume, if you will, that Buddhists have come to power. The election is over; the new president, Mrs Karuna Prajna, has taken office. Her prime minister, Mr Ananda Navamarga, has selected his cabinet. The PLC (Pure Land Congress) Party has a working majority. The opposition socialist, conservative, nationalist and liberal parties are, for the moment, in eclipse. The hopeful population waits in anticipation.

# What kind of society or culture does the new government want to bring about?
# What kind of actions in the world do they want the nation to undertake?
# What measures might they introduce, and what are the pros and cons of those measures?
# What transitional problems will they face?

Let us assume that the country has a developed economy with the same kind of levels of prosperity and technological sophistication as one sees in Western Europe or North America. Let us also assume that while the population has a fair measure of goodwill for the new government, Mr and Mrs Average have not turned into St Francis and Mother Teresa overnight.

The invitation here is for us to brainstorm what such a government might do.

::join in here, first ::join Friends of Amida

the dalai lama on america

 FNC

His Holiness the Dalai Lama poses with his FOX News mug after an interview.

The Dalai Lama praised American democracy and said he thinks President Obama is realistic and open, in an exclusive interview with FOX News during his five-city tour of the United States.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, in addition to discussing the value of kindness and compassion, spoke of his admiration for the United States.

"I think basically America is a champion of freedom, democracy, liberty," he said before a series of lectures at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Occasionally the administration neglects these principles, but overall, I think these principles are very much alive in this country."

It still is unclear whether he will have an opportunity to meet with President Obama this fall when he visits Washington D.C.

"He seems, I think, very realistic, very open," the Dalai Lama said, "and he always reaches out to other people, even though some people create some problems. He always reaches out. That's, I think, wonderful. Very good."

::read more

what does the dalai lama do all day?

My day starts at 3.30am.

I recite an inspirational stanza in praise of Buddha Shakyamuni.

It reads: “Enthused by great compassion/You taught the immaculate teaching./To dispel all perverted views/To you, the Buddha, I bow.” I recite that with prayers in prostration. After that, analytical meditation. What is Buddha? What is self? I reflect on emptiness — the ultimate reality — and altruism. All human beings are the same: we all want happiness and we do not want suffering. Then the treadmill, jogging for 40 minutes. If you hold the rail firmly you can recite a prayer and meditate too. But you must take care or you might fall off!

dharamsala: forging tibetans’ future

by david hayes

The attitude of the authorities in the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the Dalai Lama and exiled Tibetans is reminiscent of the response of Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator was advised to avoid conflict with the Catholic church: "How many divisions does the pope have?"

Beijing's routine contempt is echoed in Unhappy China, a bestselling work by a group of self-styled spokespersons for Chinese nationalism. One of the authors says that China has no need to argue with the west about whether Tibet was part of China historically or is part of present-day China legitimately: China just needs to make the fact clear that China occupied Tibet in 1959. What can the west do? The case for brutal realism and "hard power", in which actual control matters more than any moral or historical justifications, reveals a significant current of thought in contemporary China (see Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Huang Jisu, Song Qiang & Liu Yang, Unhappy China [Jiangsu, People's Press, 2009]). Temtsel H! ao is a journalist based in London

The answer to the updated version of Joseph Stalin's question is clear from a visit to Dharamsala in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile have been based since their flight from Tibet fifty years ago. Tibet's spiritual leader has not a single division, except for some (unarmed) bodyguards in his residence. Along the mountain road leading to Dharamsala, a visitor can see many soldiers - but they are Gurkha, and belong to Indian army garrisons stationed nearby. Indeed, many come here precisely because Dharamsala represents the values preached by the Dalai Lama and embodied by the Tibetan exile communities: the harmony of Tibetan and Indian cultures, the quiet inspiration of the spirit, "soft power".

beyond the clouds the sun is always shining

(T)his enlightenment of the Buddha's was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds. Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we can't see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also. The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughts - including very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patterns - there is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible.

~ Samuel Bercholz, Entering the Stream

seeing its transparency

I always say that there's a kind of implicit mindfulness and wisdom in metta practice. The very process of letting go of a distraction implies in some way seeing its transparency, not freaking out over it, not being angry about it, not getting involved with it, not identifying with it. You may not consciously say to yourself, "Oh, look, this moment is changing," but you can't let go of the distraction unless you are actually seeing that. You would be trying to push it away from anger rather than actually letting go. So to do the metta practice, you actually bring forth that level of wisdom.

~ Sharon Salzberg, in Spirit Rock Meditation Center Newsletter, 1997

now is the time

Do you live as though you have all the time in the world? Having all the time in the world is an illusion. You never know what might happen - an accident, an illness, or a disaster. If you only had moments to live, would you change your priorities? What would you do? Where would you go? How you would interact with your family, friends, loved ones - even strangers? But truly: Why are you not doing these things now?

~ Arnie Kozak, from Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants (Wisdom) Timely question!

practice!

51. As a beautiful flower that is full of hue but lacks fragrance, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it.

~ The Dhammapada, in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught

according to the place, the occasion and the situation

Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.

~ H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama