From The Under 35 Project: “Revulsion Inversion”
From The Under 35 Project: “Revulsion Inversion” |
- From The Under 35 Project: “Revulsion Inversion”
- Update: Daeung Sunim’s possessions stolen in Toronto
- Celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday with this live webcast
- Time Shares on Buddha Mountain
- New bio of John Cage explores how his interest in Zen Meditation influenced his pioneering music
- Vainglory
- Japanese Buddhists’ Increasing Involvement in Anti-Nuclear Activism
- Science can save Tibet: Dalai Lama
| From The Under 35 Project: “Revulsion Inversion” Posted: 06 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT
"Revulsion Inversion" Revulsion is the foot of meditation, as is taught by the singing ancients. By now I have been formally introduced to techniques of meditation for 9 years. I have practiced. And the practice has worked on me, slowly, passionately, in bursts, or sneakily. It has sunk into me to the point that I cannot un-know the practice, nor the insight I have gained. Meditation has provided a path connection to basic goodness—upon glimpsing, profound heart change, basic inspiration imprint reflected in truth fractals. Now I can sense my life in terms of degrees of awareness of this goodness. In some precious moments I am so close to the vibrating dot on the spot that I am becoming a collection of blurred edges, soaring ever exponentially closer, and made only of infinitely enlightening potential, grateful. In some equally precious moments I am bored, lazy, pacing around my studio looking at my meditation cushion, eating potato chips and masturbating and surfing the internet on my Droid. About two months ago I stopped meditating. A couple weeks later I noticed it was literally gathering dust. I would like to be able to say that it is always some joyful inspiring thing that brings me back to my meditation practice. But it is not. I check in with my meditation instructor. I beg for some sort of enlightening inspiration. I'm an inspiration junkie. Always so excited to begin new projects, excited to get somewhere. "Well, sometimes it is helpful to connect with sangha. And sometimes it is inspiring to read some dharma material, connect with vision. And other times, you just have to keep wandering. Keep busy. Keep not practicing and wait and watch and see. And you may have to hit bottom, and feel such a sense of disgust that you reconnect with why your practice is helpful." I shall sink down deep to the dark depths of busy un-practice… Reconnect with beginner's mind. Revulsion is the foot of meditation as is taught… I allow myself to observe what is going on, just casually. Not formally. Just, what am I doing exactly? Gross. Gross out mind. Sticky, sweaty, fat, pig mind. Revulsion is the foot of meditation as is taught. Noshing on another bag of processed crap, ingredients: self-doubt, laziness, a long laundry list of "shoulds" and refined sugar. (Yes, I've noticed that when I eat a lot of sugar, I really don't give a crap about much except TV. And more sugar. But that's me.) Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Cycle. Cycle. Cycle. Meditation is boring. Study is boring. Partying is boring. Friends are boring. Eugh, my amazing life and amazing lovers and amazing art projects and amazing community are boring. Lonely lonely boredom. Lonely lonely boredom. Effed-up, run-away mind trains. I catch myself slouching before my apartment door, holding a bag of groceries. Something about my posture belies my youth. I could be 40 or 50, or a cute little 70-year old woman bringing her groceries home. So happy and content and cute standing there. Holy shit. I'm 26 and if I don't watch, I am going to be that cute little 70-year old, if I even make it that far. Fuck. Precious life. Precious, precious life. If I don't want to miss my life, I remember to meditate. When I have too much to do, and I want to cry because I am so nauseated with my listlessness, I remember to meditate. When I get so disgusted with another frozen TV dinner tray of thoughts, standard addictive American diet of negative thinking, impoverished greed, anxiety, and overwhelm, I have to look closer. I must examine what I am really feeling. I must look, sideways and then full-on until all the details of my lazy, boredom stand out in high relief, clear as though a painted brush stroke across a blank canvas, because I have to see. I have to see the carnage of wasted time. Look at it written on my face, and in my body, look at it strewn about my apartment, catch myself when I jack off again instead of working on my art. And see. And be repelled. Feel the disgust wash over. And yes, sometimes I must become sick with it to feel true revulsion of the ego, of the causes of suffering. The actions that lead to suffering. Revulsion is the foot of meditation… It is a tender heartbreak that finally washes over me, that brings me back to practice. When I finally see myself suffering. Tender and broken-hearted love. And then there is gratitude. I think some people call it grace. It feels like cooling nectar pouring down from my crown, bathing me and washing me clean. I feel an unfurling, a release of tension. And when I remember gratitude that fills my heart again, I am renewed, realigned. I feel myself at the beginning again, brilliant and awake and ready and awed. When I am grateful, it is precious to notice my breath, connect with the simplicity of being. Inhale and exhale. Sweet gift. It's a sweet moment coming back to my practice, back to the ground of simplicity, of noticing sentience. I can feel. I feel. Basic. Precious. Delicate. Impermanent. Being.
To see the rest of our Under 35 Project posts, click here. And to learn how you can get involved, visit the project's website. Read More @ Source
|
| Update: Daeung Sunim’s possessions stolen in Toronto Posted: 06 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT
Sunim was touring Toronto with his host when the thief (or thieves) smashed in the window of his host's parked car and took the bag, which apparently was in view. The Toronto Star reported Thursday that Sunim bought new gadgets, though Dave Pope, who runs the Facebook page, says he's hoping to set up a fundraiser help replenish Sunim's emergency fund. Read More @ Source
|
| Celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday with this live webcast Posted: 05 Jul 2012 03:00 PM PDT  Photo: OHHDL His Holiness the Dalai Lama turns 77 tomorrow, July 6, and his birthday festivities in Dharamsala, India, will be broadcast live online. There will be speeches in English and Tibetan starting at 9:00 a.m. Indian Standard time, which is 11:30 p.m. today in Eastern Time, and 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time. You can tune into the livestream here. That's not the only way you can celebrate His Holiness' birthday, though. In his honor, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition has designated July 6 as Compassion Day. There are three main parts to Compassion Day: Rejoicing, Compassion in Action, and Meditation. You can celebrate at an FPMT center, if there's one near you, or at home. For more information about how you can observe Compassion Day, visit the Compassion Day website and/or the day's Facebook page. And in honor of Compassion Day, Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive will offer free copies of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's books Bodhisattva Attitude and Joy of Compassion. Just place your order on Compassion Day, July 6th and get the books with free shipping anywhere in North America. Read More @ Source
|
| Time Shares on Buddha Mountain Posted: 05 Jul 2012 02:00 PM PDT The Chinese real estate market is hot, hot, hot. Meditation is hot, hot, hot. Why not combine the two and make a financial killing? Investors can now buy shares of sacred Buddhist mountains in China. These have been incorporated and … Continue reading →  Read More @ Source 
|
| New bio of John Cage explores how his interest in Zen Meditation influenced his pioneering music Posted: 05 Jul 2012 01:00 PM PDT By: Ann Levin, The Associated Press, July 6, 2012
"Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Meditation, and the Inner Life of Artists" (Penguin Press), by Kay Larson San Francisco, CA (USA) -- In August 1952 in a barn-turned-concert-venue in Woodstock, N.Y., a man sat at a piano and studied a score. He opened and closed the keyboard lid three times — but didn't play a sound. After 4 minutes and 33 seconds, the performer walked off the stage. Outrage ensued.
In a new biography of this pioneering artist, art critic Kay Larson links Cage's daring presentation of "the sound of no sound" to his growing interest in Eastern religion, particularly Zen Meditation, at a time of personal crisis in the 1940s and '50s. According to Larson, who is herself a devout Buddhist, Cage was frustrated that audiences weren't responding to his difficult, avant-garde music. He was starting to think that music that expressed a composer's emotions was pointless since no one understood it anyway. His religious studies were leading him to believe that the true purpose of music was to quiet the mind, as in Buddhist meditation, and awaken the heart to the glorious reality of the present. The son of an inventor, Cage seems to have been born with a radically open and questioning mind. By the time he wrote the "silent piece," he had already placed rods, bolts and other objects on and between piano strings — the prepared piano — to alter the sound.
For a couple years in the 1930s, he studied composition in Los Angeles with the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg but ultimately rejected his rule-driven 12-tone method of composition. Cage preferred the revolutionary ideas of the Italian futurist composer Luigi Russolo, whose manifesto "The Art of Noises" declared that ordinary noise — from the clang of the factory to the rumble of the street — was the true music of the modern age. For much of his life, like a Zen disciple, Cage sought to make art that honoured the transitory sounds and events of everyday life. His rule-breaking forays into what became known as installation, performance and conceptual art paved the way to the avant-garde movements that still perplex audiences today. Consider his friends and followers: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman and his longtime partner Merce Cunningham, to name a few. Larson convincingly argues that they walked on a shining path blazed by Cage. Read More @ Source
|
| Posted: 05 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT Warning!! This post is a call to faith. If you have a problem with that term try replacing it with trust and leave out a subject or object of trust. See how you do with that. And read on or not as you feel is good.  Buttercup field under a looming sky In an email just now I wrote of the vainglory of the future and then wondered if I'd used the term appropriately. This quote seems to fit my usage.
It fits my usage rather well in actual fact since I was talking to somebody who was, with very good reason, curious about the future and had been doing a goodly bit of on-line research. We all want to be able to predict outcome especially when the outcome does not look so rosy. A potential outcome that is dark. But need that stop us doing our research? I think not. The test is whether or not one is able to then set aside what one has found. Put it on the altar of our hearts, or our physical altar for that matter. This can be done and if on the way to ones altar there are low moments, desperately low moments, then so be it. The light on the altar never goes out no matter what. And can be always found, or even rediscovered, because of that eternal light. I was talking to somebody yesterday about placing a life situation close to her on the altar and she said, I don't think there is any more room! Which turned the conversation towards pondering on fundamental emptiness or immaculacy. You could say the fundamental enlightened nature of all existence. There being nothing to add nor taken away from anyone or anything at any time. However to hear that teaching is unlikely to help anybody when they hurt, badly. Not at the time anyway. When the storms are past is more likely to be the time when this teaching and others become true and known deep down. But as our conversation continued on the phone yesterday I asked, You know that non of this can harm you, the fundamental part of you, don't you. A knowing Yes. Was the response. Yes, our fundamental enlightenment is not a secret kept from us until such time when we get it. Nope not at all. Projecting into the future is vainglory because it misses the shining moment. But don't let's allow time back into the equation! Read More @ Source
|
| Japanese Buddhists’ Increasing Involvement in Anti-Nuclear Activism Posted: 05 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT by Jonathan S. Watts, International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC), July 2, 2012Yokohama, Japan -- The massive, by Japanese standards, protest against the restart of the Oi nuclear reactors which took place Friday night (June 29) in downtown Tokyo in front of the parliament building and the official residence of the prime minister felt different, historic even, and perhaps a watershed in Japan's now two decade struggle to find a new post-industrial social paradigm.
What was different that stood out was: A marked increase in diversity of the participants Most of the demonstrations I have attended since April of 2011, shortly after the Fukushima incident happened, have been dominated by long time social activists over the age of 50, often representing labor groups but also including the wide variety of citizens groups that have arisen over the last 15 years in Japan. Demonstrations that have been held in the western parts of Tokyo near trendy centers of youth such as Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku have often been well attended by the increasing numbers of furita/freeter. These are young Japanese in their 20s and 30s who have dropped out of mainstream employment in companies and are developing various types of alternative lifestyles. Their numbers are estimated somewhere between 4 and 8 million people. However, within minutes of arriving at the protest site last Friday, I noticed a greater diversity, especially young working professionals who have generally kept quite a distance from previous demonstrations.
Real spontaneity and civil disobedience For foreigners, especially Europeans accustomed to taking the streets about social issues, participating in a demonstration in Japan feels like a shocking mockery of the very concept of public protest and civil disobedience. Almost all demonstrations in Japan are planned in advance with the consent of the police. While providing assistance and tacit protection against small groups of right-wing fanatics, they also ensure that the demonstrations follow their prescribed routes and do not inconvenience the normal flow of traffic or public life in the streets. The demonstration on June 29 was my first experience counter to this. As the numbers continued to swell from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, the protest could not be contained on the sidewalks or even one lane into the street. By 7:00 there was a dual push by the now massive crowd, probably in the neighborhood of 40,000 though estimates vary from 17,000 to 150,000. One group at the top of the hill surged into the road in front of the prime minister's residence forcing the police to move armored buses across it to block them. Meanwhile a second surge occurred at the bottom of the hill in front of the parliament building. And suddenly the entire street of some 400 meters in length had been taken over by the crowd, cutting off all traffic and leaving the police relatively helpless to re-establish order. While the protest did end in a timely manner at 8:00 with the typical civility of both police and protesters, there was some anger amongst the demonstrators themselves towards the organizers who cooperated with the police and used their loudspeakers to tell everyone to go home. Their reasoning was so that future protests would not be forbidden. However, many felt with the restart of the Oi reactors only 48 hours away that the future was right now and voiced their displeasure to these organizers. A coordinated Buddhist presence From this writer's own personal interest, this demonstration was the first at which a coordinated group of Buddhists participated beyond the regular activism of the small Nipponzan Myohoji order. A small but not insignificant group of 8 Buddhist priests and at least 5 lay followers representing AYUS (a Japanese Buddhist development NGO increasingly involved in the nuclear issue) and the Japan Network of Engaged Buddhists (JNEB) gathered amidst the crowd and, holding high the Buddhist flag, maintained a presence throughout the demonstration. From the moment I arrived at the site at 5:30, I quickly found a small group of Nipponzan Myohoji priests and lay followers through the sound of their drums. As a way of orienting myself to the situation, I followed them through the streets as we chanted the daimoku, refuge to the Lotus Sutra. After connecting up with our other Buddhist friends, we camped out for an hour on the corner of Roppongi Avenue, the entrance to the street on which the parliament building and the prime minister's residence is located. Spontaneously connecting with a group of furita, we engaged, as did the entire crowd, in chants of "Against the Start Up", with one of our members Rev. Kobo Inoue, a Jodo Pure Land priest, grabbing a bullhorn and leading the crowd. By 7:00 we began to move up the hill and take part in the push to take over the entire street in front of the parliament building. Along the way, we met up with Rev. Hidehito Okochi, a Jodo Pure Land priest and longtime anti-nuclear activist and NGO leader, carrying his banner expressing the incompatibility of the Pure Land and nuclear weapons and energy. As we moved up the hill to the demonstration's peaked conclusion in front of the armored buses at the entrance to the Prime Minister's residence, I kept running into followers of the Nipponzan Myohoji and their endless chanting and drumming of refuge in the Lotus Sutra. While our numbers may have seemed insignificant, our coordinated presence was symbolic of the Japanese Buddhist world's increased interest and activism in the nuclear issue. It took over 6 months for any Buddhist denomination to make a public declaration on the Fukushima incident and nuclear power in Japan. Subsequently, the Japan Buddhist Federation, representing all the traditional sects, made an official anti-nuclear statement on December 6, 2011. Since then, the monastic congresses of numerous Buddhist denominations (such as Soto Zen and Jodo Shin Otani Pure Land) made critical declarations in February of this year on the future use of nuclear power in Japan and also adopted platforms and specific regulations on the use of alternative energies within their own denominations. Jodo Shin Otani, one of the three largest traditional Buddhist denominations in Japan, also made a public appeal to Prime Minister Noda on June 12th to not allow the restart of the Oi reactors. Rev. Taitsu Kono—the present Chief Priest of the Myoshin-ji sect of the Rinzai Zen denomination and recently retired President of the Japan Buddhist Federation - has also become an increasingly popular figure in the media for his connecting the complicity of Japanese Buddhists in World War II to their complicity with nuclear power. All these actions are very much in the wake of the leadership shown by the small Inter Faith Forum for the Review of National Nuclear Policy, of which the aforementioned Rev. Okochi is a leader. The Forum has brought together Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian priests to grapple with the nuclear issue since 1993. In mid-April, they held a major three day symposium in Fukushima bringing together citizens, local activists, and Buddhist priests all working to cope with the ongoing crisis there. They also responded to the increased effort of the Noda administration to restart the Oi reactors by creating an ecumenical rally of 100 religious leaders at the Fukui prefectural offices on May 30 to petition the local government to reject Tokyo's push for the restart. This event was well covered by the mass media, which has a tendency to ignore the social efforts of religious groups. Conclusions Whether the protest of June 29 becomes a watershed or not is still not easy to discern as the conservative center of Japanese society continues to appear unmoveable. However, now more than a year after the events of 3/11, the nuclear issue has not faded away. Despite an inconsistent civil protest movement since that time, there appears to be a continually growing sentiment against nuclear power, as seen in two-thirds of Japanese polled as against the restart of the Oi reactors. This sentiment is very symbolic of a much larger trend in Japan—a kind of social awakening, perhaps not seen since the mass disillusionment with the government at the end of the World War II. A young housewife and mother at the June 29th demonstration was quoted as saying, "Japanese have not spoken out against the national government. Now, we have to speak out, or the government will endanger us all." (New York Times, June 29) For some four decades, Japanese have thought nuclear power was safe, because the government and the big companies—standards of this nation and its people—were operating it. This long held sentiment that the government and the big companies were looking out for the best interest of the people has been deteriorating over the last decade of economic failure and structural readjustment. Since the Fukushima incident, the public exposure of the nuclear village—the collusive alliance of government, big business, scientists and academics, and media—has seen this sentiment hit a new low. With or without its government, the people of Japan seem to be ready, and perhaps even eager, to move forward into a new future that not only ensures environmental integrity but also the lifestyle integrity and psycho-spiritual integrity that have been sacrificed over the last half century drive for industrial modernism. A final image of this nascent new age was the live U-stream feed last night (Sunday July 1) from in front of the Oi nuclear complex as it began its restart. Hundreds of anti-nuclear protesters drummed, danced, and shouted, "Against the Start Up"! Who were these people? Yes, some appeared to be those old leftist activists, but for the most part they were furita. Not worried about being at work at 9:00 the next morning, they danced and drummed and shouted well beyond midnight. Will this growing number of "drop-outs" be given the space to help build the new Japan or will they just grab it instead? Visit JNEB: http://jneb.jp/english/japan/nihonzan Read More @ Source
|
| Science can save Tibet: Dalai Lama Posted: 05 Jul 2012 10:00 AM PDT by TIM SULLIVAN, Associated Press, July 6, 2012
India Tibet Monastic Science Dhramsala, India -- THE shouts of more than a dozen Tibetan monks echo through the small classroom. Fingers are pointed. Voices collide. When an important point is made, the men smack their hands together and stomp the floor, their robes billowing around them.
It's the way Tibetan Buddhist scholars have traded ideas for centuries. Among them, the debate-as-shouting match is a discipline and a joy. But this is something different. Evolutionary theory is mentioned - loudly. One monk invokes Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Another shouts about the subatomic nature of neutrinos. In an educational complex perched on the edge of a small river valley, in a place where the Himalayan foothills descend into the Indian plains, a group of about 65 Tibetan monks and nuns are working with American scientists to tie their ancient culture to the modern world.
If that seems a modest goal, it reflects an immense change in Tibetan culture, where change has traditionally come at a glacial pace. Isolated for centuries atop the high Himalayan plateau, and refusing entry to nearly all outsiders, Tibet long saw little of value in modernity. Education was almost completely limited to monastic schools. Magic and mysticism were - and are - important parts of life to many people. New technologies were something to be feared: eyeglasses were largely forbidden until well into the 20th century. No longer. Pushed by the Dalai Lama, a fierce proponent of modern schooling, a series of programs were created in exile to teach scientific education to monks, the traditional core of Tibetan culture. At the forefront is an intensive summer program, stretched over five years, that brings professors from Emory University in Atlanta. For six days a week, six hours a day, the professors teach everything from basic math to advanced neuroscience. ``The Buddhist religion has a deep concept of the mind that goes back thousands of years,'' said Larry Young, an Emory psychiatry professor and prominent neuroscientist. ``Now they're learning something different about the mind: the mind-body interface, how the brain controls the body.'' The first group from the Emory program - 26 monks and two nuns - have just finished their five years of summer classes. While they earned no degrees, they are expected to help introduce a science curriculum into the monastic academies, and will take with them Tibetan-language science textbooks the program has developed. The Dalai Lama realises that ``preservation of the culture will occur through change,'' said Carol Worthman, a professor of anthropology in Emory's Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology. ``You have to change to stay in place.'' But change is a complicated thing. Particularly with a culture like this one. The monks and nuns in the Emory program are ``the best and the brightest,'' Worthman said, brought to the Sarah complex from monasteries and convents across India and Nepal. While most are in their 20s or 30s, some are far older and long ago earned high-level degrees in Buddhist philosophy. Still, few learned anything but basic maths before the Emory program. Because of the way they study - focusing on debates and the memorising long written passages, but doing comparatively little writing - few are able to take notes during classroom lectures. Many were raised to see magic as an integral part of the world around them.? To watch them in class, though, is astonishing. No one yawns. No one dozes. Since almost no one takes notes, it's easy to think they're not paying attention.? But then a monk or a nun in a red robe calls out a question about brain chemistry - or cell biology or logic - that can leave their teachers stunned. Though most studied only religious subjects after eighth grade, they regularly traverse highly complex concepts: ``They really understand how neurocircuits work at a level that's comparable to what we see at an undergraduate neuroscience classroom in the US,'' said Dr Young, the neuroscientist. For most of the monastics, though, the challenges are not in the academic rigor. They see nothing astonishing about their ability to process vast amounts of information without taking notes, or to remain attentive for hours on end. It is how they have been trained. For them, the challenges lie in weaving modern science with traditional beliefs.? The science program ``was sort of like a culture shock for me,'' said Choegyal, who is based at a monastery in southern India. While Tibetan Buddhism puts a high value on scepticism, conclusions are reached through philosophical analysis - not through clinical research and reams of scientific data. So it was difficult, at first, for many of the students. And the questions ranged across science and philosophy: Are bacteria sentient beings? How does science know that brain chemistry affects emotions? Are Tibetan beliefs in mysticism provable through science? At times, the program can seem incongruous, given the widespread belief in magic. Such beliefs go all the way to the top: The Dalai Lama still consults the official state oracle, a monk who divines the future from a temple complex not far from here. But after five years, Choegyal says he has managed to hold onto his core beliefs while delving deeply into science.? "Buddhism basically talks about truth, or reality, and science really supports that," he said. Questions that science cannot address, like the belief in reincarnation, he brushes aside as "subtle issues." Instead, he mostly finds echoes across the two cultures.? He points to karma, the ancient Buddhist belief in a cycle of cause and effect, and how it plays into reincarnation. Then he points to the similarities with evolutionary theory. "Everything evolves, or it changes," he said, whether in evolution or in reincarnation. "So it's pretty similar, except some sort of reasoning? Read More @ Source
|
Here's the latest installment of The Under 35 Project, by Caitlin Bargenquast. It's the first post on July's theme, "Starting and Deepening Your Meditation Practice."
Today many of us recognize the piece described above as 4'33" by legendary composer John Cage — now considered one of the major musical works of the 20th century.
<< Rev. Kobo Inoue leads the call "Against the Start Up"!
<< A Tibetan Buddhist monk answers a question during a class at an educational complex in Sarah, India. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri) Source: AP| You are subscribed to email updates from BuddhaRocks ☸ Buddhist To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
