Robert Thurman on Tibetan self-immolations: “A Cry for Freedom”
Robert Thurman on Tibetan self-immolations: “A Cry for Freedom” |
- Robert Thurman on Tibetan self-immolations: “A Cry for Freedom”
- U Gambira, Saffron Revolution leader, arrested again
- Looking for a good book to curl up with? Here are nine.
- Henry David Thoreau the Buddhist?
- Buddhist clergy inculcates noble values
- Korean Buddhist temple food to go global
- Maldives mob smashes Buddhist statues in national museum
- Mindful Eating as Food for Thought
- “Embracing Change in Your Life: What the Buddhists Teach”
| Robert Thurman on Tibetan self-immolations: “A Cry for Freedom” Posted: 10 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST  An onlooker waves a khata scarf in offering as Buddhist nun Palden Choetso burns What's happening in Tibet is daunting, complex, and hard to understand. While some might see the clash between Tibet and China as primarily a cultural one, the reality is that Tibetans have been subjected to ongoing violence and human rights abuses by the Chinese regime for years. And the situation shows no sign of improving. See for example, this CNN video report, which illustrates the latest crackdown inside Tibet. And now, it's being reported that Chinese authorities have been ordered to prepare for "a war against [Tibetan] secessionist sabotage." Because it's important also to step back and reflect on the enormity of Tibet's ongoing crisis, and — hopefully — to turn our thoughts, our practice, and our action toward helping those who are suffering, we'd like to point you to "A Cry for Freedom," Robert Thurman's commentary on the horrifying phenomenon of Tibetans self-immolating in protest of Chinese rule, from the forthcoming Spring 2012 issue of Buddhadharma. It's available online, now, in its entirety. So please click here, read it, and pass it along. Read More @ Source
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| U Gambira, Saffron Revolution leader, arrested again Posted: 10 Feb 2012 07:00 AM PST On Thursday evening, U Gambira, the Burmese monk who helped to lead 2007's Saffron Revolution — and was only just released from prison four weeks ago — was taken away by authorities in Yangon. As Thomas Fuller of the New York Times reports, "Since his release in January, Mr. Gambira has maintained a hard line against the government, telling an interviewer that Myanmar still had the 'characteristics of a dictatorship.' He has also sought to reopen a Yangon monastery that served as a center of opposition during the 2007 uprising. The monastery was shut down by the authorities after the uprising, which was crushed in a bloody crackdown. Details of Mr. Gambira's detention were slow to emerge Friday. The Associated Press quoted a Home Ministry official in Myanmar as saying the monk had been taken in for 'questioning in relation to an incident that happened after his release.'" Read the rest of Fuller's report here. Read More @ Source Praise to Buddha 
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| Looking for a good book to curl up with? Here are nine. Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:00 PM PST
Accepting Life's Struggles - Za Rinpoche 
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| Henry David Thoreau the Buddhist? Posted: 09 Feb 2012 06:00 PM PST  This quote from the great early American writer, Henry David Thoreau sounds very similar to something you'd hear said in Buddhism. Perhaps the similarity stems from Thoreau's transcendental beliefs.~I bow to the Buddha within all beings~  Death and Impermanence 
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| Buddhist clergy inculcates noble values Posted: 09 Feb 2012 04:00 PM PST by S M Wijayaratne, Kurunegala Daily News, Feb 8, 2012Colombo, Sri Lanka -- "Noble human values exist in the minds of the people because of the spiritual guidance offered by members of the Buddhist clergy. The Maha Sangha have always guided rulers to govern our country by utilizing the greatest teachings of the Buddha, whose compassion towards humanity was boundless.
The minister was speaking after laying the foundation stone for the proposed medical treatment centre for Buddhist monks to be constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 35 million. "It is a matter for us to be proud of our Buddhist scholars who spread the noble message of the Enlightened One in many foreign countries. "We live in a just society in peace and harmony today because of our Buddhist monks and the religious dignitaries of other faiths. We all should explore ways for fostering noble human values in the minds of university undergraduates and schoolchildren. Parents and teachers should take the lead in this regard and it is a task of national interest. Everybody should participate in the task of moulding the characters of youngsters," Minister Sirisena said. Most Ven Handagala Ayupala Nayaka Thera of Ihala Dolospattuwe, North Western Province Governor Tissa R Balalla, Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce Jayaratne Herath, SLFP chief organizer for Polgahawela Tikiri Adikari, former Parliamentarian Lionel Rajapaksa and the Polgahawela PS Chairman were present. Read More @ Source
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| Korean Buddhist temple food to go global Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:00 PM PST By Cho Chung-un, Horea Herald, Feb 8, 2012
Buddhist group to open temple food restaurant in Paris next year Seoul, South Korea -- A Korean Buddhist group will soon bring temple food to the world as a part of its effort to introduce the 1,700 years of Korean Buddhist culture abroad.
"Korean Buddhist temple foods have been drawing attention from the health-conscious in North America and Europe," Ven. Jihyun, director of Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism, an affiliate of Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, told The Korea Herald on Tuesday. "We will seek ways of both modernizing the recipes and also preserving the traditional style of temple food before entering the market next year." The group plans to open the first temple food restaurant on the rooftop at Galeries Lafayette in Paris next year.
A joint venture between the cultural arm of the Jogye and Galeries Lafayette, the restaurant was initially planned to open in May this year. But due to some administrative delays, the plan has been postponed to next year, he said. The temple food project will be taken to other countries too. The religious group will hold a seminar on temple food in the U.S. and also participate in ITV, an international tourism exhibition in Germany this year. To better develop temple cuisine, a team is working on collecting recipes that monks across the country have kept for hundreds of years. "It is a tremendous work. But I think it is something that has to be done in order to bring temple food, one of the greatest assets of Korean Buddhist culture, to the world," he said. Temple food can be best described as food that Buddhist monks eat. Comprised mostly of wild vegetables, roots and husks of trees cultivated in mountainous regions, seasonings are used sparingly to enhance the original taste and flavor of the main ingredients. Finding the right ingredients for temple food overseas could be a problem. "We will seek ways to modernize or localize temple food for Europeans. We will probably send the main seasonings made here to Paris, but the rest of the ingredients will be from local markets," Jihyun explained. The temple food project is the latest project to promote Korean Buddhist culture. The Jogye Order has been running Templestay, a cultural program that allows people to stay in mountainside temples and participate in Zen meditation, early-morning chanting and daily chores, since 2002. "The Templestay program has been praised by the foreign press as a good example of a theme-based tourist attraction. It is a cultural experience program designed to help visitors better understand Buddhism in Korea and it has also contributed to enhancing Korea's image abroad," he said. The number of temples offering Templestay programs across the country has surged from 33 in 2002 to 118 last year. About 1.7 million people have participated in the program so far. In 2011 alone about 190,000 people, including 25,000 foreign travelers, joined the program, officials at the group said. To celebrate the 10th anniversary, the Buddhist group will hold a series of events from May to October. It plans to focus on developing programs to embrace those having difficulties in marriage, family issues and society as a whole. "Templestay offers people a chance to look into themselves and helps them to build a life of their own by having a moment of meditation in the beautiful temples across the country," the director said. "Through Templestay program, we will keep listening to people and help them to heal their wounded soul and body." Read More @ Source
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| Maldives mob smashes Buddhist statues in national museum Posted: 09 Feb 2012 02:00 PM PST AFP, Feb 8, 2012MALE, Maldives -- Police said Wednesday a mob had stormed the Maldives national museum and smashed Buddhist statues, an act of vandalism which former president Mohamed Nasheed blamed on Islamic radicals. In an interview with AFP on Wednesday, Nasheed said a mob including Islamist hardliners had attacked the museum because they believed some of the statues inside were "idolatrous." Islam is the official religion of the Maldives and open practice of any other religion is forbidden and liable to prosecution. Nasheed's resignation came after a small band of policeman mutinied on Tuesday morning and refused to obey an order to break up an anti-government protest where demonstrators were demanding the president step down Islamist radicals had been used as part of the attack on his record in office, he said, referring to public statements alleging he was under the influence of Jews and was trying to bring Christianity to the Muslim nation. "They (the opposition) feared they had no chance in the election next year," he said. "There is no reason why people should be toppling the government." Presidential elections are scheduled for November 2013. Since the initial mutiny on Tuesday morning, Nasheed said mobs had smashed up the offices of his Maldivian Democratic Party and a party worker had been murdered. 
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| Mindful Eating as Food for Thought Posted: 09 Feb 2012 01:00 PM PST by Jennifer May, The New York Times, February 7, 2012Pine Bush, New York (USA) -- TRY this: place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn't matter what the food is, but make it something you love - let's say it's that first nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli.
Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine, because that first bite was very good and another immediately beckons. You're hungry. Today's experiment in eating, however, involves becoming aware of that reflexive urge to plow through your meal like Cookie Monster on a shortbread bender. Resist it. Leave the fork on the table. Chew slowly. Stop talking. Tune in to the texture of the pasta, the flavor of the cheese, the bright color of the sauce in the bowl, the aroma of the rising steam. Continue this way throughout the course of a meal, and you'll experience the third-eye-opening pleasures and frustrations of a practice known as mindful eating. The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel. In one common exercise, a student is given three raisins, or a tangerine, to spend 10 or 20 minutes gazing at, musing on, holding and patiently masticating.
Mindful eating is not a diet, or about giving up anything at all. It's about experiencing food more intensely - especially the pleasure of it. You can eat a cheeseburger mindfully, if you wish. You might enjoy it a lot more. Or you might decide, halfway through, that your body has had enough. Or that it really needs some salad. "This is anti-diet," said Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and meditation teacher in Oregon and the author of "Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food." "I think the fundamental problem is that we go unconscious when we eat." The last few years have brought a spate of books, blogs and videos about hyper-conscious eating. A Harvard nutritionist, Dr. Lilian Cheung, has devoted herself to studying its benefits, and is passionately encouraging corporations and health care providers to try it. At the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, Prof. Brian Wansink, the author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," has conducted scores of experiments on the psychological factors that lead to our bottomless bingeing. A mindful lunch hour recently became part of the schedule at Google, and self-help gurus like Oprah Winfrey and Kathy Freston have become cheerleaders for the practice. With the annual chow-downs of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Super Bowl Sunday behind us, and Lent coming, it's worth pondering whether mindful eating is something that the mainstream ought to be, well, more mindful of. Could a discipline pioneered by Buddhist monks and nuns help teach us how to get healthy, relieve stress and shed many of the neuroses that we've come to associate with food? Dr. Cheung is convinced that it can. Last week, she met with team members at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and asked them to spend quality time with a chocolate-covered almond. "The rhythm of life is becoming faster and faster, so we really don't have the same awareness and the same ability to check into ourselves," said Dr. Cheung, who, with the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, co-wrote "Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life." "That's why mindful eating is becoming more important. We need to be coming back to ourselves and saying: 'Does my body need this? Why am I eating this? Is it just because I'm so sad and stressed out?' " The topic has even found its way into culinary circles that tend to be more focused on Rabelaisian excess than monastic restraint. In January, Dr. Michael Finkelstein, a holistic physician who oversees SunRaven, a holistic-living center in Bedford, N.Y., gave a talk about mindful gardening and eating at the smorgasbord-friendly headquarters of the James Beard Foundation in New York City. "The question isn't what are the foods to eat, in my mind," he said in an interview. "Most people have a general sense of what the healthy foods are, but they're not eating them. What's on your mind when you're eating: that's mindful eating to me." A good place to try it is the Blue Cliff Monastery, in Pine Bush, N.Y., a Hudson Valley hamlet. At the serene refuge about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan, curious lay people can join Buddhist brothers and sisters for a free "day of mindfulness" twice a week. At a gathering in January, visitors watched a videotaped lecture by Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik-nyot-HAHN), who founded this and other monasteries around the world; they strolled methodically around the grounds as part of a walking meditation, then filed into a dining room for lunch. No one spoke, in keeping with a key principle of mindful eating. The point is simply to eat, as opposed to eating and talking, eating and watching TV, or eating and watching TV and gossiping on the phone while Tweeting and updating one's Facebook status. A long buffet table of food awaited, all of it vegan and mindfully prepared by two monks in the kitchen. There was plenty of rice, herbed chickpeas, a soup made with cubes of taro, a stew of fried tofu in tomato sauce. In silence, people piled their plates with food, added a squirt or two of condiments (eating mindfully doesn't mean forsaking the hot sauce) and sat down together with eyes closed during a Buddhist prayer for gratitude and moderation. What followed was captivating and mysterious. Surrounded by a murmur of clinking forks, spoons and chopsticks, the Blue Cliff congregation, or sangha, spent the lunch hour contemplating the enjoyment of spice, crunch, saltiness, warmth, tenderness and like-minded company. Dr. Lilian Cheung of Harvard's School of Public Health is a proponent of mindful eating. More Photos » Some were thinking, too, about the origins of the food: the thousands of farmers, truck drivers and laborers whose work had brought it here. As their jaws moved slowly, their faces took on expressions of deep focus. Every now and then came a pause within the pause: A chime would sound, and, according to the monastery's custom, all would stop moving and chewing in order to breathe and explore an even deeper level of sensory awareness. It looked peaceful, but inside some of those heads, a struggle was afoot. "It's much more challenging than we would imagine," said Carolyn Cronin, 64, who lives near the monastery and regularly attends the mindfulness days. "People are used to eating so fast. This is a practice of stopping, and we don't realize how much we're not stopping." For many people, eating fast means eating more. Mindful eating is meant to nudge us beyond what we're craving so that we wake up to why we're craving it and what factors might be stoking the habit of belly-stuffing. "As we practice this regularly, we become aware that we don't need to eat as much," said Phap Khoi, 43, a robed monk who has been stationed at Blue Cliff since it opened in 2007. "Whereas when people just gulp down food, they can eat a lot and not feel full." It's this byproduct of mindful eating - its potential as a psychological barrier to overeating - that has generated excitement among nutritionists like Dr. Cheung. "Thich Nhat Hanh often talks about our craving being like a crying baby who is trying to draw our attention," she said. "When the baby cries, the mother cradles the baby to try to calm the baby right away. By acknowledging and embracing our cravings through a few breaths, we can stop our autopilot of reaching out to the pint of ice cream or the bag of chips." The average American doesn't have the luxury of ruminating on the intense tang of sriracha sauce at a monastery. "Most of us are not going to be Buddhist monks," said Dr. Finkelstein, the holistic physician. "What I've learned is that it has to work at home." To that end, he and others suggest that people start with a few baby steps. "Don't be too hard on yourself," Dr. Cheung said. "You're not supposed to be able to switch on your mindfulness button and be able to do it 100 percent. It's a practice you keep working toward." Dr. Bays, the pediatrician, has recommendations that can sound like a return to the simple rhythms of Mayberry, if not "Little House on the Prairie." If it's impossible to eat mindfully every day, consider planning one special repast a week. Click off the TV. Sit at the table with loved ones. "How about the first five minutes we eat, we just eat in silence and really enjoy our food?" she said. "It happens step by step." Sometimes, even she is too busy to contemplate a chickpea. So there are days when Dr. Bays will take three mindful sips of tea, "and then, O.K., I've got to go do my work," she said. "Anybody can do that. Anywhere." Even scarfing down a burrito in the car offers an opportunity for insight. "Mindful eating includes mindless eating," she said. " 'I am aware that I am eating and driving.' " Few places in America are as frantically abuzz with activity as the Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., but when Thich Nhat Hanh dropped by for a day of mindfulness in September, hundreds of employees showed up. Part of the event was devoted to eating thoughtfully in silence, and the practice was so well received that an hourlong wordless vegan lunch is now a monthly observance on the Google campus. "Interestingly enough, a lot of the participants are the engineers, which pleases us very much," said Olivia Wu, an executive chef at the company. "I think it quiets the mind. I think there is a real sense of feeling restored so that they can go back to the crazy pace that they came from." It's not often, after all, that those workhorse technicians get to stop and smell the pesto. "Somebody will say, 'I ate so much less,' " Ms. Wu said. "And someone else will say, 'You know, I never noticed how spicy arugula tastes.' " And that could be the ingredient that helps mindful eating gain traction in mainstream American culture: flavor. "So many people now have found themselves in an adversarial relationship with food, which is very tragic," Dr. Bays said. "Eating should be a pleasurable activity." Consider These O.K., so you don't happen to live in a Buddhist monastery. You can still give mindful eating a spin by incorporating a few chilled-out gestures and rituals into your regular calorie intake. WHEN YOU EAT, JUST EAT. Unplug the electronica. For now, at least, focus on the food. CONSIDER SILENCE. Avoiding chatter for 30 minutes might be impossible in some families, especially with young children, but specialists suggest that greenhorns start with short periods of quiet. TRY IT WEEKLY. Sometimes there's no way to avoid wolfing down onion rings in your cubicle. But if you set aside one sit-down meal a week as an experiment in mindfulness, the insights may influence everything else you do. PLANT A GARDEN, AND COOK. Anything that reconnects you with the process of creating food will magnify your mindfulness. CHEW PATIENTLY. It's not easy, but try to slow down, aiming for 25 to 30 chews for each mouthful. USE FLOWERS AND CANDLES. Put them on the table before dinner. Rituals that create a serene environment help foster what one advocate calls "that moment of gratitude." FIND A BUDDHIST CONGREGATION where the members invite people in for a day of mindfulness. For New Yorkers, it's an easy drive to the Blue Cliff Monastery, about 90 minutes north of the city: bluecliffmonastery.org/ on the Web. Read More @ Source
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| “Embracing Change in Your Life: What the Buddhists Teach” Posted: 09 Feb 2012 10:00 AM PST
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In the new Shambhala Sun magazine, Deputy Editor Andrea Miller reviews The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, the new book by Lodro Rinzler — whose recent Shambhala SunSpace teaching "Bombarded with Coconuts of Wakefulness" can be read 
<< Ven. Jihyun, director of Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism, an affiliate of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism ( Park Hae-mook/The Korea Herald)
<< Diners wait until everyone is seated at the Blue Cliff Monastery. 
Each year the Shambhala Sun presents a summer program at the Omega Institute's Rhinebeck, NY, campus, and 2012's theme is "Embracing Change in Your Life: What the Buddhists Teach." It will feature Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Joan Sutherland, and Narayan Liebenson Grady, three great Buddhist teachers representing the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada Buddhist traditions, guiding you in embracing change through a combination of presentations, meditation, and discussion. The program will take place August 3-5 and | You are subscribed to email updates from BuddhaRocks ☸ Buddhist To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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