Practice, Practice, Practice
Zataod of Zen and the Art of Dreaming dreams of winning multi-megamillions in the lotto. His fantasies end up being very tame – more Buddhist than hedonist. “The more I think about it,” he writes, “the more that I realize there won't be a lot of changes due to this newfound wealth.”
Meditation thickens the brain in delightful ways, we are told. Several blogs picked up on this interesting story, originating in the November issue of NeuroReport. Writes eeksypeeksy for Zen Filter, "Brain imaging of regular working folks who meditate regularly revealed increased thickness in cortical regions related to sensory, auditory and visual perception, as well as internal perception -- the automatic monitoring of heart rate or breathing, for example." Amadeus of Dharma Vision quotes a co-author of the study: "The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day. You don't have to be a monk."
"Buddhists and Hot Sex" is the title of a post over at Woodmoor Village. No, it's not the annual invitation to Nacho's orgy on the grounds of the zendo, though Nacho does appear to be feeling a little randy. What the post is is a Thought Train that cho-chos through some blogs, some TV watching and a high school auditorium.
Another good one from the intoxicating whiskey river:
"We (that indivisible divinity that operates in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it as enduring, mysterious, visible, omnipresent in space and stable in time; but we have consented to tenuous and eternal intervals of illogicalness in its architecture that we might know it is false."John of My Zen Life is going to keep a zabuton and zafu handy in his car. “What is it going to take to change my life such that I can allow zazen to be the root of all my daily actions?” he writes.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions
This in a The Buddhist Blog post by James called "The Ocean of Delusion":
If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion. ~Lin-ChiCliff Jones of This is this is soooo Buddhist. He is more than a little self-conscious just in saying hello.
Heady Stuff
An Xiao Mina is thinking about death, for several reason: a book, a cemetery, a loved one at death’s door. In her blog That Was Zen, This Is Tao: A Journey in Haiblog, she writes, “We begin, we end, we continue, we do not, and all is the same and yet distinct. …Waves rise, waves fall, and we crash upon the rocky shores and sandy beaches before becoming waves once more.”
Justin Whitaker of American Buddhist Perspective has a three-pronged series of posts on the meaning of the combo ‘Postmodernity [qv] and Buddhism’ [See I & II & III]. Here’s one thing Justin wrote:
The Buddha, and Buddhism itself (as its own grand narrative) is not the foundation of Truth (though we often cling to each as if they were) in Buddhism. Yet Buddhism does provide the grand narrative and the Buddha as exemplar, because the Dhamma alone is pretty vague for us normal folk. With these we are moved toward ever more abstract notions of truth, the 8-fold path, the 3 marks of existence, etc. Somewhere along the way we quit grasping to these as if they are true, as if everything else is false. We now see the truth and potential falsehood in everything, including the Buddha's teachings.Jeb of Wondering on the Way gets into the whys and hows and makes some wise points about how how and why, a pair often confused as near-identical twins, differ. “For the lack of why, we must descend into a graspable ‘how.’” he writes. Why is there suffering? becomes How does suffering arise?
William Harryman of Integral Options Café looks through the prism of Spiral Dynamics to address his personal 'meme vs. meme' battle in a two-post series, with a third post as an addendum. William explains things so well, readers can follow what is written without a grounding in the SD scheme. [But if it helps, think of a Blue Meme person as someone like Bush and a Green Meme person as being someone like the average American lay Buddhist.]
In a long, rich post, Will Buckingham of thinkBuddha.org tackles ahimsa, the Buddhist view of non-violence, and the question of what needs to be done to counter powerful, cruel dictators like Hitler or Saddam. He writes, "A true pacifism would deal not only with crises, but also with the systems that lead to them, systems that are already a part of the logic and machinery of war. "
Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land continues thoughts on the conflict between Science and Spirituality in a new, long, idea-rich post. Here’s the concluding paragraph:
So the impasse is superficial. We’re arguing over beliefs, which are, in themselves, nothing more than concepts defined by words. It’s language, really, and it’s inane. Does God exist? I don’t know. What does “God” mean? What does “know” mean? Let’s discuss but let’s not argue. And then, when we’re all done, let’s go back and do something real. Let’s redefine what it means to be “beyond belief.”
Lefty Politico Musings
James of Genius of Insanity puts forward what must be the week’s most important piece about the Bush Administration: An article in the Washington Post shows that Bush’s Veterans’ Day-speech assertions that “Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence” are not wholly accurate. Per usual, the Bushies take facts and twist 'em.
Mumon of Notes in Samsara likes the idea of seeing Bruce Springsteen in the Senate and shows how this is truly a slight possibility. Jon Corzine, elected New Jersey governor last Tuesday, has to pick his own replacement to fill out the remainder of his term in the senate. Mumon links to a Daily Kos post, which links to a Philadelphia Daily News blog entry. The idea is making the rounds. In another post, Mumon finds, in a New York Times report, evidence that the Republican Party is ripe for disintegration. Maybe Springsteen will be part of a Democrat-majority Senate that can prevent the complete disintegration of Roe, should Bush get a third Court appointment in 2007 or 2008.
Via Negativa’s Dave Bonta writes of “Seven things that make me happy right now.” Dave passes through the pristine arctic wilderness and Dover, Pennsylvania, and bedazzles us with marvels and wonders, and then – like the Twelve Days of Christmas – ends up in a pear tree.
Blog Harvests
There is just one Buddhist blog recommendation over at Zen Filter this week. M’s words re tinythinker’s peaceful turmoil are quick and direct: “Another nice Buddhist blog worth visiting.”
Nacho of Woodmoor Village Zendo is effusive in rambling praise for Haiku’s This Zen Life. Here’s a snippet:
Reading This Zen Life is truly like participating in dharma discussions in a sangha: the space is open, people bow in and say here's where I find myself in my practice, it challenges me this way, or it brings me joy in this other way, sometimes both. That's the feeling I get.
