Does meditation work? Here’s some “Living Proof”

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• Does meditation work? Here’s some “Living Proof”
• The Trap, a movie by Lina Verchery
• Ice Fever - Country In Mourning
• A Preface for the Buddhists
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu visits His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India

Does meditation work? Here’s some “Living Proof” Posted: 11 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST The cover of our current issue — you can see it there in the upper right hand corner of your screen — asks, "Does meditation work?" Of course, the magazine takes a sharp look at what science has to say about meditation's effects in our lives, but also important is the experience of meditators themselves. For example, take Isabel Adon, a social worker from the Bronx. (That's her there, to the left.)  Thought she was apprehensive about going on her first meditation retreat, it turns out that Isabel and meditation get along quite nicely. As she tells Margot Sammurtok in "Living Proof," from our current issue, "Meditation practice has been a transformative experience — expanding into my work, my life with my partner, my life in all aspects." Read more about Isabel's transformative experience here, in this excerpt from our current issue. Then see the magazine for more examples of "Living Proof" including prolific author Tim Parks, media activist Lyssette Horne, and plane crash survivor Julia Ferganchick. (And then, if you're looking for a little guidance to add to your inspiration, don't miss Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's "A Meditation Instruction" on page 71.) Read More @ Source

The Trap, a movie by Lina Verchery Posted: 11 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST In a Cape Breton village, Buddhist monks and nuns pray in their abbey, while French-speaking fishermen put out to sea to haul in their lobster traps. Seemingly divided by language, culture and religion, these people share more than meets the eye. The film delicately weaves a connection between the beliefs of the two groups, both regarding life as a cycle. Once a year, the Buddhist monks and nuns buy the fishermen's last lobster catch and release it back into the sea, believing that these lobsters could be reincarnated in the cycle leading to enlightenment. The fishermen too regard existence as a natural cycle. They preserve life by delicately putting back in the water female lobsters carrying eggs, which will hatch into the lobsters the men's descendants will fish. The film considers mutual respect and tolerance. This documentary short was produced as part of the Tremplin program, which enables young Francophone filmmakers to make a first production in a professional context. 2007, 19 min 25 s The movie is available on DVD from the National Film Board of Canada. A French version is also available. More information at this link: http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=56141 Lina Verchery is a doctoral student in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, where she is a Frank Knox Fellow and a Fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center. Before writing and directing La Trappe (The Trap) for the National Film Board of Canada, which won for Best French-Canadian Short Film at the 2008 Festival International du Cinéma Francophone en Acadie (FICFA), Lina co-wrote and co-directed De Midi à Minuit, a documentary short about cab drivers in Montréal which won first prize in the Alliance Française's Concours Senghor and a trip to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Lina has fifteen years of professional performance experience in film, television, radio, theatre and dance, working both in North America and Asia. Read More @ Source Kingdom of Lo part 3.wmv "Kingdom of Lo" is a movie about a distant, little-known land in northern Nepal, Buddhist Kingdom of Lo, showing the raw beauty of nature and difference in a rich, ancient culture of the Loba tribe living in small villages in the Kali Gandaki River valley. The land of Lo is one of the last places in the Himalayas where the traditional Tibetan lifestyle and zealous faith have not been eradicated, but survived intact, isolated from the outside world Video Rating: 5 / 5 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Ice Fever - Country In Mourning Posted: 10 Feb 2012 04:00 PM PST Normans_chair.jpg" /> Not Norman's chair We are in the grips of snow and ice in Britain and in The Netherlands the entire population is in the grips of Ice Fever. Or were until yesterday. My Dutch correspondent reports: Yesterday evening the complete national press gathered at the venue the Ice-Masters board meeting where a decision was being made....finally the chair people emerged with a press release; it is not going through, there is not enough ice and the temperature in the coming days is rising. The rest of the evening and night (in the media) was spent on the aftermath: the country is in mourning. Dutch airline KLM had announced it would not charge for cancellation of tickets and had been in the process of arranging extra inbound flights to get people back to the country in time, but alas. Today weather forecast bulletins are starting to go back to normal proportions instead of hours and hours of speculations about every possible scenario. BUT, computer models show the possibility of low temperatures end of next week, in the history of the tour it has happened that the preparations were canceled twice and the third time it was on, so this is by no means the end of the ice-fever. And all to do with the national obsession with ice skating. Innocent enough. I just makes me smile inwardly to hear news of an entire population mobilise by something which is just plain fun. That's to skate 124 miles, touching on eleven cities, on their frozen canal system, if the ice is thick enough. For long enough. Just that. In the mean time here in Britain we are caught in the iron like grip of icy blasts, deadly roads and multiple pile-ups. Just in the county of Cumbria there were around 100 road accidents between 5.00 am and 11.00 am. That was yesterday when we had freezing rain and the dreaded black ice. What we Britain's mobalise around is the weather itself. What ever the weather, we have something to say. We converse with total strangers on the street about it. We complain, bitterly. We are just MAD about the weather especially when it's life threatening. The worse the better. We mobalise around adversity. Almost a national past-time. It will pass and life will return ho hum - rain. This is for a good friend who slipped in snow and ice the day before yesterday. She fractured her fibular. Let's be careful out there folks. Read More @ Source

A Preface for the Buddhists Posted: 10 Feb 2012 03:00 PM PST I have written a very long rebuttal to the piece that Chris Hedges presented Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy. His article is deeply disturbing on many levels, not only because it contains a huge host of inaccuracies and outright mistakes.  My response is on my political website Chris Hedges WTF are You Thinking?  I [...] Read More @ Source Mindfulness - timeless presence Mindfulness is an invitation to slow down and shift from the Doing to the Being mode. Allowing yourself to be in a place without pressure supported by Stephan Pende. Together we explore how to rest in the very nature of your being, in what is sometimes called the natural state, original mind, pure awareness, no mind, or simply emptiness. Stephan Wormland, born 1965 in Germany, MA in clinical psychology and trained in Gestalt therapy. He has studied and practiced meditation in multible Buddhist traditions for over 25 years. Stephan was a monk in the Tibetan tradition for 11 years and teaches meditation in Buddhist centers in Europe. Since 2009 he has studied Radiant Mind with Peter Fenner and attended his nondual teacher training. Video Rating: 0 / 5 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Archbishop Desmond Tutu visits His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India Posted: 10 Feb 2012 11:00 AM PST The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town,visited Dharamsala, India, Friday to meet with his friend and fellow Nobel Peace laureate, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. His Holiness was invited to Archbishop Tutu's eightieth birthday celebrations in Pretoria late last year, but denied a visa by the South African government (whom Archbishop Tutu then accused of cowing to the Chinese government). You can find out more about Archbishop Tutu's visit — and also download photos, video, and recordings from it — at www.dalailama.com. Read More @ Source Karmapa. His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje was invited as the Chief Guest Honor by the Buddhist Society of India to a Buddhist symposium at Datia, Madhya Pradesh on 11TH September 2011. Accompanying His Holiness tour were the General Secretary Ven. Lodreu Rabsel Rinpoche; the Vajra Master Ven. Nendo Rinpoche and the monks. The symposium was attended by thousands of lay devotees and the sangha community. His Holiness compassionately granted blessing to the devotees at the end of the symposium. Video Rating: 5 / 5 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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