The Stream
Gareth of smart and compassionate Green Clouds is in rehearsals on a new play he is directing. He is finding that his Zen is informing his work. He writes, “A few days ago I’d been wondering how to ground my directing in my practice, now I know the answer: Get out of the way.”
In an long post with lots of interesting comments, Mike Cross of The Middle Way tells us about the F.M. Alexander Technique for meditation. Valuable stuff to consider, O Meditators. One great comment by our friend Gareth who blogs Green Clouds relates the technique to acting, which draws a terrific response from Mike.
A great post tells a personal story in Mark’s Writing to Reach You. I don’t want to spoil it, so I will only say it begins with this delicious sentence: “Sometimes when we probe reality, it's a greater teacher than we think.” And ends with these words: “… today has been a fundamental turning point in my personal and spiritual development in this lifetime.”
Cliff of this is this likes the words mullosk, pink, time, stand, whimsy and steep – but tells us this only to set up a long diatribe on the word he doesn’t like in a post titled “A Word I Don’t Like.” His complaints seem valid, albeit moot since ‘the word’ still comes in handy from time to time. [Ha, ha, ha. I crack myself up.]
Shokai in Water Dissolves Water confronts the mortality of a loved one vacationing in Hawaii. One hell of a vacation, eh? Nirvana is nowhere. Nirvana is everywhere. And in a nameless post – yes, it’s titled ‘’ – Shokai shows us yin yang in many varieties, including stovetop.
It is always satisfying to get in on a good thing at its launch. Dan, a thirtysomething Taoist and Zen student, has just begun Notes From Along The Way. You will immediately be impressed by the amazing design and by his good, kind welcoming words. His first official post is an assessment of Bush’s address to the nation.. Says Dan, “It was like eating re-re-heated leftovers. A cut-and-paste of SOTU speeches past. Well, with one glaring exception - not nearly as much swagger.”
Justin’s highly intelligent Ordinary Extraordinary is a new find for me. This week the blog lives up to its name. There is a post about Dogen; followed by a post about Nagarjuna; and then comes the truly troubling medical condition of Sausage the fish. It is a post about Justin’s Zen retreat weekend that delighted the most. His teacher, Godo Guy Mercier, seems wonderful in all respects. An account of Mercier’s of “the personal history of an individual human being” that Justin paraphrases as a seven-item list is profound and a bit of a crack up. It starts off Genesis-like with “in the beginning there was emptiness.”
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Terry of More Coffee, less dukkha says his workday mornings are challenges, but by the p.m., he's coastin'.
Political Memes
William of Integral Options Café posts a three-part series, “WHO OWNS GOD?,” which is a terrific introduction-plus to the memes of Spiral Dynamics and Integral Politics. Part I discusses the American political divide and introduces the memes used in Spiral Dynamics and Integral Psychology. Part II dives into the memes, further explaining each and how they interact in political terms. In Part III William talks about what is really going on in America’s culture wars and how the conflict can be healed. The graphics provided in each part are wonderful and helpful.
Bill Clinton is One of Us!
Both Vincent in his Numinous Nonsense (until recently named VincentHorn.com) in a post titled “Bill Clinton and Integral Consciousness” and coolmel in his multiple-Vinny-awards-winning blog www.coolmel.com, in a post titled “Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum” wrote with vigor and excitement about Bill Clinton's words at the World Economic Conference in Switzerland at the end of January. Here are two key lines, included in quotes of Clinton posted at both blogs:
if I can use a kind of touchy-feely word, that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about, called A Theory of Everything. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us.This is very exciting for all of us interested in Integral Psychology, including the many of us who consider ourselves Integral Buddhists. Hopefully one day soon, in time to save the world, the rubric ‘touchy-feely’ will not deter world leaders while they are in power from utilizing the high wisdom of our day [and the ages] to find peace.
Visit Vincent’s and/or coolmel’s posts for their excited assessments, links to the World Economic Forum webspace, and to text and video of Clinton’s words. Coolmel links, also, to Ken Wilber’s prime website and his book Clinton mentioned, A Theory of Everything, at amazon.com. Vincent and Coolmel disagree in one aspect of their assessments: Coolmel said it was all “Very Fluffy,” while Vincent held back, giving it “fluffy potential.” Your Blogmandu reporter does not know the meaning of the Integral street slang word “fluffy,” but in context it has to mean something akin to “Far Out!.” [2/13/06 UPDATE: Fluffy defined.]
The bhikkhu's back
Ajahn Punnadhammo of Bhikkhu Blog [You can find it HERE.] is back from his World Abbot’s Meeting in Thailand and he tells us about his experience in a post called “Thailand Trip.” He also continues his sterling defense of consciousness as not being an evolution-concocted computer of some sort in a post titled “Consciousness and Intelligence.” [Note: Bhikkhu Blog has no permalinks, so you will have to scroll down in the center frame to find posts.]
In his third post, “Posting Policy,” he instructs readers about feedback sent to him for posting in a sidebar.
Please refrain from using non-ascii standard characters such as "curly quotes" and non-breaking spaces, long hyphens etc. Most browsers don't handle these silly things well and it's a real pain to search for and delete them. In future, I may just ignore posts that don't have the courtesy to come in a web-friendly format. Remember the old saying - real men don't use curly quotes.I think the kind bhikkhu is a little behind the times. But then the kind bhikkhu has a blog without permalinks, a comments function, linkbacks, trackbacks, an RSS feed, archives, a blogroll, tags, a tag-emphasis graphic or a Tuesday self-portrait regimen. As for his last sentence, I could swear I saw curly quotes in the postcards Jack and Ennis exchanged, so it’s wrong, too. [Wait a minute... The bhikkhu’s joshing us, you think?]
Z rebuts Physicalism
In his post, “Mainly Propaganda,” Zenmar of Dark Zen in his blog The Buddhist quotes a college textbook in current use that describes Buddhism in physicalist terms. Z rebuts this notion with evidence, including citing the Mahaparinirvana Sutra where the final teaching of the Buddha is described as the ‘great atman’ which is synonymous with Buddha-nature.
