Roundup for Dec 19 - Jan 14 [Part 3 of 4]

This is part three of a four-part sequence, highlighting some of the best Buddhist-flavored blog posts during the period Dec. 19, 2005 - Jan. 14, 2006. Mmmm, more good stuff -- but we begin with a little pain ...

Pain

Beesucker of Authentic Personality writes about what Buddha teaches regarding pain, “It seems that when we have pain or sickness there are two feelings - the physical discomfort, and then the feeling that we wish we were not feeling bad. … It seems that this second type of feeling is unnecessary - we can approach our physical problems with equanimity (I think that’s a better word than detachment). We can do this through a thorough understanding and acceptance of impermanence - knowing that all things are subject to change and growth and finally decay, including our body.”

Sit

In a gonzo post titled “fear and loathing,” the girl of auspicious coincidence writes, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate everything that I’ve ever written, including everything I’ve ever written that I love. … I’ve noticed that the best things that I’ve written have usually been written around a lot of heavy duty sitting practice. I need to get my ass to a dathun and just sit and then get my ass home and just write.”

Robert of Beginner’s Mind writes about the day before when the wheels came off and he and his poor dog had a rough time. In conclusion, he writes, “… I'm still uncomfortable about my mind state yesterday. I was about as far from mindful as you can possibly get without breaking the law. I suppose everyone has ‘those days’ now and then. But, Oh Boy! I need more time on the cushion.”

William of thinkBuddha.org tells us about [and shows us] the spiffy meditation space he recently set up for himself. “I suspect that anything that makes my meditation space a bit simpler and tidier can’t be a bad thing; and a single cushion is so much better than a huge pile of folded pillows.” he writes. “Of course, having said all this, it’s only a cushion. Back in the day, they’d just use a pile of grass heaped up, or simply sit on the bare earth, at the foot of a tree…”

Dave of Dharma Crumbs writes, after being away from bloggery for seven weeks. He looks back wistfully at a retreat in 2001 in the Santa Cruz mountains:

Totally not knowing what was going on in the rest of the world I spent each day doing meditation in a brambly field, down by a small pond. Sitting under a sapling on a rock, I would do meditation. … My attention was mostly occupied by the hundreds of dragonflies as they dipped to the water and danced to avoid the fish. They mated in the air, zoomed jaggedly, a multi-colored frenzy of bio-helicopters. Day after day for three weeks, I watched this miniature world of flight and color birth and death, mating and being eaten, fighting over mates, being plucked from the air by birds. Now wherever I go, hiking, kayaking, I look for water and dragon flies who magically delight me.

whiskey river put up a delicious quote about sitting (and other things) on Jan. 14. Here 'tis:

If you can sit quietly after difficult news, if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm, if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy, if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill, if you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog.
-- Jack Kornfield

MLK

This was posted on MLK Monday, a couple days past the roundup range of this Blogmandu entry, but I can’t resist. Grand good words by F. Kwan in foot before foot: the photoblog [formerly, Fogdux & F. Kwan & foot before foot]. I should inform the uninitiated that F. Kwan is writing about her three former selves and her current manifestation of self where she mentions four individuals in the last sentence of this quote:

Dr. King's dream was not ridiculous. We have a long way to go, however, from the mountaintop to the promised land. All our brothers and sisters of whatever hue and f/stop are equal to share in poverty and the reduced opportunity that is early twenty-first century Third World America. I wish I could write something hopeful and encouraging, but that person, along with the obese individual and the aspiring spiritual leader, have disappeared, leaving only the scrawny, bitchy photographer, who can do nothing but cough due to a lingering cold.

Rave

Jayarava writes a rave [i.e., posts to his blog The Jayarava Rave] that begins by looking at the nexis of creativity and mental illness and takes us through an experience of his, imagining he was coming to blows with a dharma teacher. “One of the ways the Dharma works is by getting us to look into our habits of thinking. We habitually see ourselves as this sort of person, and not that. We like these things, but not those. These kind of people, but not those. These are just mental habits acquired over the years. One of my mental habits is to imagine the worst, to imagine that I will come into conflict with people and that they will try to hurt me. Once upon a time this was in fact true, but it is not true now. By looking into these habits, and seeing the consequences of them I have begun the process of gaining a choice in how I imagine the world. It is quite clear that how I imagine the world is critical to how I experience the world.”

By Chance -- Avalanche

Both Bill of Eternal Peace in a post titled “The Swinging Door,” and James of The Buddhist Blog in a post titled “‘I’ is just the Swinging Door that Moves” put up this quote of Shunryu Suzuki:

If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

The quote was recently posted in Beliefnet and comes originally from Suzuki’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Writes Bill, “I am sure that I speak for many when I say that this book was my first, glorious introduction to Buddhist practice. It was 1976. I was living in a beach house working minimum wage. A housemate was a guitarist. His girlfriend gave him the book and he passed it on to me. A small stone dislodged by chance -- avalanche.”

Silly Heart

Clarity, scribe of Clarity’s blog, writes from Cologne, Germany, where he’s to present at a teachers’ training conference and he’s nervous as hell. “The words of Cheri Huber's teacher kept coming to my mind as I was preparing: ‘You will do for others, what you would never do for yourself.’ I would've quit a thousand times if it were not for this silly heart that I carry that wants to offer itself to others.”

Truth and Consequences

Two Davids, Chalmers of fragments of consciousness and Bonta of Via Negativa, join the fray, and write about the fray and frayed reputations of truth-challenged writers.

Chalmers’s main interest is J. T. Leroy and the meaning of the term “J. T. Leroy” if, as is suspected, the person who we have been led to believe is J. T. Leroy does not exist. There are novels attributed to Leroy, so, clearly, in a sense, Leroy DOES exist. Writes Chalmers,

There are] descriptive as well as causal constraints on reference: for example, it might be required that for someone to qualify as the referent of 'J.T. Leroy', they have to fit Leroy's purported life-story well enough, and no-one does. Of course this is tricky: no-one says that James Frey did not exist, because his purported life-story was greatly exaggerated. And even with the largely fabricated life-story of Helen Demidenko, people are inclined to say that Helen Demidenko is Helen Darville. If the Leroy case were more like these cases, then presumably we would say that J.T. Leroy exists and wrote the novels, but that Leroy did not do most of the things that he/she claims to have done.

Bonta begins his post, mostly about James Frey, with this provocative comment:

In response to people who wonder why an anarchist would refuse to shoplift, I'm fond of saying that no one demonstrates greater subservience to the concept of private property than a thief. In fact, I agree with Proudhon that, in a certain sense, all property is theft - but never mind that now. I'm more interested in a parallel insight suggested by the James Frey case: that no one depends more upon the strict adherence to a literal concept of truth telling than a liar.

Switching off the light

Dorian has ended Electric Blue Moodiness abruptly after 16 months. Left as a concluding message, an interesting quote by the enigmatic author of Catcher in the Rye:

Many have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to. Just as someday if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
-- J.D. Salinger

Do other things for now, O Dorian. Then, return.

Roundup for Dec 19 - Jan 14 [Part 2 of 4]

This is part two of a four-part sequence, highlighting some of the best Buddhist-flavored blog posts during the period Dec. 19, 2005 - Jan. 14, 2006.

Stronger than Bridge Cables

Chica of Van Gogh Chica has been putting up some thoughtful posts lately. Her post “Solitary” is particularly poignant, a small masterpiece, reflecting on the limits of what she is able to do for others when caring for herself requires effort and when, for the time being, at least, there seem to be limits to what her system of sensibilities can put up with dealing with the problems and mayhem others present.

These issues are ones Buddhists tend to avoid in various psychologically dodgy ways, but Chica tackles ‘em head-on. Here is a central paragraph:

I care for some who are on a self guided path to harm and after many efforts at an intervention, I have pulled away because it was draining me with frustration and worry and their denial was stronger than bridge cables. I constantly re-check my thinking on this as I do not want to confuse giving them their freedom and respect of their choices to rescuing attempts -- which I do feel they need. It is hard to watch and do nothing. But I cannot do anything to change another's world view and experience. Only be there, love them; which is actually tremendous. But it does not feel that way to my friends in crisis or self misery. They are blind to it. But I remain there in my heart and try to not absorb it. It is real hard. It gets to me a lot.

Introducing Blangha.com

Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land writes that he has put up a new [and exciting] website: Blangha.com [ www.Blangha.com ]. Sean notes that the word “blangha,” meaning the sangha of Buddhist bloggers, was first coined by Nacho of the Woodmoor Village Zendo blog [and has gained some currency from a widening circle of use on the internet.] Writes Sean re the new website…

I created Blangha.com because I thought it would be nice to have just one site to visit and see all that’s going on in the blangha in a single glance. I also wanted a place that made it easy to find new and inspiring information or resources. The creation process was relatively simple, but please note that this is only the first version. …

Comments, questions and suggestions for improvement or additional features are always welcome.

The Blangha’s Energizer Bunny

INTELLIGENT DESIGN is surely the Energizer Bunny of the Buddhist blogosphere. It keeps going and going and going and going as a frequent posting topic, mostly because it is a favorite of Woodmoor Village Zendo's Nacho, who is to the ID issue what Voltaire is to France. A “Goog It!” of the woodmoorvillage.org website, which is almost wholly used for the blog, turns up an awesome 512 hits for the phrase “Intelligent Design.” Yowza!

It the past month, Ajahn Punnadhammo of Bhikkhu’s Blog has rushed in, showing bravery and compassion, to parry and thrust with Nacho, across the blog transom, regarding the ID issue and others associated with evolution and the nature of life.

In a Dec 23 post, titled “One More on Intelligent Design” in Bhikkhu’s Blog [you’ll have to scroll down to find the post; Bhikkhu’s Blog has no permalinks], Punnadhammo, the abbott of Arrow River Forest Hermitage [btw: located ~ 20miles west of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada], explains his December 2 Toronto Star column on ID and rebuts Nacho's Dec 15 WVZ post “Creation Debate Not Irrelevant to Buddhism.”

Here’s a snippet from early on in the Dec 23 post:

“I do agree with [Nacho] that the Intelligent Design issue shouldn't be irrelevant to Buddhists from a public policy perspective. … But is the issue of creation vs. evolution relevant to Buddhism philosophically? In one sense no; the Buddha himself said we can never know the ultimate origin of things and that speculation about them is fruitless. In another sense yes, because the debate as it is currently formulated in most venues is one between two opposing miccha-ditthis (false views or heresies) specifically called such by the Buddha in the Brahmajala sutta and elsewhere.”

On Dec 27, with a post in WVZ titled “A Reply to the Bhikkhu – Synopsis,” Nacho, an assistant professor of rhetoric and ethics at Willemette University in Oregon, says quite a bit. [Not synoptic, this!] Here’s a piece of it:

The Bhikkhu notes that there is at least another unacknowledged alternative besides the usual perspectives of Creationism/Intelligent Design and the Scientific theory of evolution. He identifies a position grounded on a Buddhist understanding of dependent origination, one that still safeguards a telos, a purpose in life: “There seems to be a teleology in evolution that is unaccounted for.” In his reply he states his inclination to believe this “unaccounted for” teleology, but he does not provide any solid support for it. He primarily relies on arguments for the complexity of consciousness to support his assertion of an evident teleology.

On Dec 30 in his Bhikkhu’s Blog, Punnadhammo posted “The Ongoing I.D. Controversy” [You will need to scroll down to find this post; Bhikkhu’s Blog has no permalinks.]. Here’s a snip:

…[F]or the record, I definitely do not hold that there is any intelligent design, much less a designer. However, that does not mean that I subscribe to the idea that the observed data can be entirely explained by a mechanistic evolution either. … I accept the claim that natural selection is one factor driving evolution; I am very doubtful that it is the only factor. … Instead, my idea is that mind ought to be recognized as a separate class of natural phenomenon with a formative power over matter.

On Dec 28, in a WVZ post titled, “A Reply to the Bhikkhu, II,” Nacho retorts. Here’s a piece of it:

I think the Bhikkhu wants us to, at the very least recognize, that there is uncertainty. To that I will subscribe. As he tells us the Buddha stated, we might never know the ultimate causes, or origins of things. I think that is probably correct. There will be more to find out, there will be mystery, there will be uncertainty, there will be incompleteness and non-trivial questions that theoretical accounts cannot satisfy. I think Godel put it rather succinctly, all complex logical systems are inherently incomplete. My commitment is to remain with a scientific worldview as we continue to make sense of much of our experience. I am inclined to believe that there are other ways of knowing in the world, but I do not admit to supernatural ones.

On Jan 6, Ajahn Punnadhammo posted a couple of entries, the last before he took a break until February for a meeting he is attending in Thailand. In one of the Jan 6 entries in Bhikkhu's Blog, he addressed a subissue in the ID & life discussion he is having with Nacho [and with others of his readers] re celebacy and its impact on evolution. [I won’t go into all of that, here in Blogmandu.] His other, last entry before his break is titled “Buddhism and the Philosophy of Mind.” Here, the bhikkhu steps back from the ID or evolution or life or meaning discussion and sets things in context of Buddhism. He writes that both physicalism [mechanistic evolution] and the duality of the 'ghost in the machine' are conceptual mistakes, so far as Buddhist teachings are concerned.

Here is bit of the essay, the full text of which you can find in Bhikkhu's Blog if you scroll to Jan 6:

… I firmly believe that any attempt to base a Buddhist philosophy and practise on materialism or physicalism is going to be a practise without fruit, or at least the highest fruit. The Third Noble Truth promises an end of suffering, and this is only to be had by realization of the Unconditioned. This is impossible if one holds that only Matter is real; how could there be an Unconditioned in such a universe? We can see that skeptical Buddhists always perforce redefine the goal from transcending samsara to reconciling with it.

Meantime, the great Dave Bonta offers his views on the ID debate with a long rich post titled "Defending Creation from the Creationists" in Via Negativa. Dave writes of his annoyance with the Christian Right crowd that disengenuously promotes Intelligent Design masking their clear, real purpose to inject study of Christian beliefs into the ciriculum of schools. Dave then uses information in a recent issue of Christian Century to make several cogent points. Writes Dave,

the advocates of ID limit the realm of the sacred to whatever lies beyond human comprehension or rational explanation. Worldwide, few truly religious people from any tradition would make such an elementary mistake. ID advocates are as reductionist as the scientists they critique.

The Magic of 3

Justin of American Buddhist Perspective wrote an ambitious three-post series on “The Magic of Three.” Here are introductory words from the first post of the three:

There is something magical about the number '3'. We all know of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) of Catholicism and the Three Refuges (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) in Buddhism. But also in Philosophy this '3' comes up in The True, the Good, and the Beautiful. What is it about '3' that holds us all in its grasp?

Roundup for Dec 19 - Jan 14 [Part 1 of 4]

Oop. Got behind in my roundups, so I'm putting up a series of posts this MLK extended weekend covering the prior holidays period and a little beyond! So there may be a few recent memories in these batches of oatmeal-cookie-like roundups -- strands of tinsel in your lover's hair, memories of New Year's grogginess -- but the postings are still as fresh as a whiff of morning air.

Bowled over ...

Robert of Beginner’s Mind leads us to the paragraph that follows, in a post titled “Weight I,” in Soen Joon’s One Robe, One Bowl:

Everyone says it: pain is not our natural state. Pain is present in life, and especially for the small self that wants so much to be a part of life. But that small self is not natural, either. The pain is a warning that we're moving closer to a central silence, where the small self has no relevance--and so no life. It's like magpies and their nests. The closer you come to the nest, the more the magpies scream. They're trying to distract you, and yet they're simultaneously telling you you're right where you need to be to find the nest. Just don't get distracted.

Be aware the essay isn't centrally about only pain and silence, but books, writing and the ineffable, too.

The War on Christmas, SOLVED

Speaking of Beginner’s Mind's Robert, he solved the ‘Happy Holidays’ v ‘Merry Christmas’ imbroglio. He writes,

… I propose that people use the phrase associated with their personal religion to everyone they meet. The recipient, understanding that the utterer is being kind, would then reply with the appropriate phrase from their tradition.So, when a Christian says to a Buddhist, "Merry Christmas!" the Buddhist might respond by bowing, or with the term "Namaste." There, is that so hard?

Coolbuddha of Bringing Buddhism to the Masses observes the war during Christmastime in the UK. A snippet from late in Cool’s cool essay:

let's not be afraid to mark Christmas. Although the backsides of some of the PC brigade can be quite large, we don't have to disappear up there yet. But, let's have less hype, and, PLEASE, can a few more shops be allowed to open on Christmas day?

Penises

The genius of Dave Bonta, scribe of Via Negativa, never fails to amaze. His set of penis poems [there are a lucky seven of them] are delightful, insightful and a scream. And they are gathering a comments stream of praise (and bad puns) longer than, well, something. Here’s a PG-rated snip from the first poem:

I bent to kiss my reflection in her silver toenail polish.

It was 2:00 in the afternoon. I traveled her spine's high ridge with the eyes of a newt, looking for a stream in which to molt.

The hard nuggets of her name slowly melted as I rolled them back & forth across the hollow left by my missing tooth.

We're Shrinking! Shriiink - ing! Oh, what a world! What a world!

Bill Gardner of Eternal Peace travels and reads and has observed that the Buddhism section of bookstores everywhere is shrinking! Bill offers up a four-point list on the situation, the first of which could’ve been, but is not, Book availability is suffering. Bill does not offer an 8-point plan on how to right the situation. Here’s one of Bill’s hypotheses on why Buddhism might be losing it: “The Christian section has grown (particularly the Christian-themed novels).” Yeah, yeah. Blame the infidels.

In an effort to check on Bill's assertion, I visited the Barnes & no-longer-quite-so Noble in the city of Citrus Heights. It was alarming how few Buddhism books they now carry.

It is in my nature ...

Douglas Eye of Hundred Mountain Journal gets grim two days before Christmas, quoting the Dalai Lama and linking to TNH and adding his own words to a skullful Death Meditation. Here are HH’s words that Doogie quotes:

...it is in my nature to grow sick,
I have not gone beyond sickness.
It is in my nature to grow old,
I have not gone beyond old age.
It is in my nature to die, I have not
gone beyond death.

One's passions are enlightenment

Peaceful Turmoil’s Tinythinker, much impressed by a post in Chalip’s Zen Under the Skin, delved further into Maitreya Buddhist Seminary page of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. Tiny reposted the thoughtful eight-item list of Everyday Admonitions for Dharma Students found at the website that is also posted at Zen Under the Skin. Tiny also posted the society’s stark list of what it thinks are the five major pronouncement of Mahayana teachings. One or two items, I think, are a tad controversial, perhaps, but it is worthy of much consideration, in any case:

1. All sentient beings are buddhas.
2. Samsara is Nirvana.
3. One's passions are enlightenment.
4. We are an interrelated whole.
5. Everyday life is the Way.

Writes Tinythinker with respect to the above list, "The idea that Affliction is Bodhi ["One's passions are enlightenment"] ... made sense as my effort to understand the riddle of mind came to a minor fruition. Just as a lotus blooms in the mud, Bodhi blooms in afflication. Bodhi isn't the absence of pain or emotion, as some seem to believe."

Good Michael's Health

Michael of One Foot in Front of the Other suffers from parathyroid cancer, a troubling, challenging, damnable condition that he cites as incurable in the subheading of his blog. But his most recent post heralds an opportunity to combat the disease.

A visitor to my blog took note of my medical condition, and mentioned it recently to a friend of hers, a medical researcher at a major U.S. university.It turns out that this researcher developed an experimental drug that may be helpful for people like me …

The blog visitor gave me the researcher's e-mail address and we began a correspondence. The drug is now being tested in clinical trials at four hospitals in the United States, one of them the hospital where I'm being treated. …

Is all this a coincidence?
I don't think so.
Everything happens for a reason. Everything is interconnected. I don't think there's anything mysterious or magical about it.

A couple of weeks ago, Michael learned of an interesting good omen: “A co-worker and friend of mine is a nut for anagrams. He has a gift for analyzing names and all their possible letter permutations. Tonight, on a whim, he came up with an anagram for my first and last names: HEALTH MIRACLE.”

Good health to you, kind Michael.

Roundup for Dec 12 - 18, 2005

It was a week rich with interesting posts in the blangha.

The Stream . . .

William of Integral Options Café writes about “memes” – rhymes with dreams, defined as "a package of several ideas that can be passed onto others" – a useful word and complex and variated concept. Meantime, Jayarava of Bricolage writes about blangha – a portmanteau [blog + sangha], coined by Nacho of Woodmoor Village Zendo last September, and defined as “the online community of Buddhist bloggers” – and about meta-blog, “a blog that only blogs other blogs.” Blogmandu, then, is a meta-blog of the blangha. In the blangha post, Jayarava links to a piece about blangha in Will's thinkBuddha.org. In the piece, Will also writes about meeting and having lunch with his crosstown neighbor, Gareth of Green Clouds. Smallish, wordy world, this -- online and off!

Nick of The Lotus and the Magnolia weaves together Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Buddhism’s insight about our interconnectedness for an interesting essay that pulls the threads of 'topics of knowledge' together into a glorious tapestry.

After hearing a passage of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Old Path White Clouds read at his sangha, James of The Buddhist Blog, is eager to get the book. His post sparks a stream of comments in support of the book and with suggestions on what to snack on while turning its pages.

Muan writes of the importance and meaning of “Other Power” in Beneath the Clouds. “Rennyo Shonin refers to this overturning of our self-centred consciousness or our awakening to Other Power faith as the ‘oneness of the heart of the Buddha and the heart of an ordinary being.’”

John in My Zen Life tells us that ordinary mindfulness isn’t good enough. He writes of the point in a quote that is provided, “prajna must permeate our mindfulness throughout the day in order for us all to live in harmony.”

Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land offer sage advise of how to live life, providing us with a 9-item list of things he's learned in 2005. The items are all thoughtful, useful and off the well-worn path. Here's one: “From awareness follows action. But an intellectual awareness — what I call a shallow awareness — is insufficient to inspire action. The reality of the awareness must be felt.”

Kimberly of this zen life writes about issues related to interconnectedness and the victims and perpetrators of atrocities: “i always have had a strong identification with the victim, whatever species. and i nearly always struggle with intense anger, sometimes even rage, at the perpetrators. so, one of the interesting and challenging issues that arose in that discussion was the idea of oneness. as a buddhist trying to live the truth of nonself, how is it that i can create a sharp distinction between me and the perpetrator, while professing a oneness with the victim?”

Time constraints and other pressures have F. Kwan of foot before foot examining her commitment to blogging in a post titled “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.” While, by the end of her post, she seems not to have decided what she’ll need to do, one sentence seems starkly determinant: “I no longer can write about what I wish without it adversely affecting someone, so this has outlived its usefulness.” Cycling Sam of sam i am has already hung up his old blogging shoes, moving shop to MySpace, which is where you must now go to "know what is up in the world of Sam." While the human once known as Andi, who months ago ditched her Ditch the Raft blog to go to South Korea and become a nun, has started a new blog as Soen Joon haeng-ja, One Robe, One Bowl. Here is her welcoming post: “Brush and Inkstone.” [Thanks, Dave, for the heads up re Soen Joon haeng-ja!]

Justin of American Buddhist Perspective, Tyson of tysonwilliams.com and Mark of Writing to Reach You all wrote about attending the Dalai Lama’s teachings a few months or weeks ago. Justin and Tyson were each in Arizona to see HH at different times last September. Tyson quotes Snow Lion newsletter: “His Holiness is sitting on a dais in front of an unusual black thangka depicting a Buddha floating above what appears to be an Arizona mountain. Tall pink flowers lean out of vases arrayed across the stage, rather like indiscrete desert flamingos.”

Justin quotes from his journal, stating his reactions to his private teaching. Here are a few lines from poetically rendered remarks:

It is death
the feathery clouds
dimly illuminated by the city below
which draws one's eyes and wonder.

For death is none other than life itself
with its awesome beauty and devastating tragedy.

And I thought to myself last night
"that's it
I'm a changed man
I get it."

But I was wrong.

Mark writes in a post titled “The Wisdom of Forgiveness,” “Seeing the Dalai Lama some weeks back and being [physically near] to him has done something to me. I'm not saying I'm suddenly some perfect being cum superhero, but I'm noticing changes in myself.”

Via Negativa's Dave links to a lengthy must-read article in the NY Times about a generation gap in Tibet. The younger Tibetans favor resistance against the Chinese government and continual efforts to integrate the plateau. The older Tibetan leaders are staunchly committed to non-violence. Dave's assessment: "I tend to side with H.H. and Samdhong Rinpoche about nonviolence and nationalism, the need to include all ethnicities in any future Tibetan state or autonomous region, etc. But I don't understand why, if they truly accept the possibility of a generations-long exile as they say, they continue to scale back their demands for sovereignty."

Dagme of auspicious coincidence uses advice from Pema Chadron on how to handle an insult. "Basically, the instruction was to simply say, 'Thank you very much for your concern.'”

Fame: You’re gonna live forever …

In recent weeks, many blagha members have achievements they cannot help but be proud of: Moose, The Contemporary Taoist, had an article published in Living Now magazine. Foguiera of foot before foot began the month with news that she is beginning to get work published. Trev of the Sound of Diesel Musing has openned the doors of trevdiesel.com. "The Parachute" EP is coming out in January. Trev would like you to swing by and sample some audio.

fragments of consciousness's David Chalmers gave a paper/presentation on “Ontological Indeterminancy” at a meeting of the Australasian Association of Philosophy. Justin of ABP will be giving a presentation in January at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, titled “Buddhist Ethics: A Kantian Analysis.” He will also be on the panel for a 'Philosophy Topic Area' discussion.

More ID, Less Ego and Superego

Ajahn Punnadhammo’s Dec 3 column in the Toronto Star newspaper, mention in Blogmandu last week, got more attention this week. [The monk, who writes Bhikkhu’s Blog, cites an article, "Teaching alternatives to evolution: How to distinguish the Buddhist 'Infinite Causes' and Christian 'Intelligent Design' theories", that could enliven the discussion.]

Amadeus cites PunnaDhammo's Star article in his blog, dharma::vision, endorsing the idea that the ID debate is not relevant to Buddhists. Contrariwise, Woodmoor Village's Nacho thinks the issue is one of great importance: “It is indeed very relevant to our public lives, to the nature and future of public education, to how we understand constitutional separation issues, to continued animosity or amicability between opposing sides, to significant questions for liberal democratic notions of civic virtue, to the value of Buddhism in helping us make sense of these dilemmas, and more.”

Greg of The Roost weighs in on the ID matter with a recommendation that his readers hear an audio snippet from NPR that “is a really good look at ID.”

Holiday Fun

It’s holiday time, and we are all kids at heart [well, I am, anyway]. Here is some online fun stuff the Buddhist blogosphere has kicked up recently.

• Play the Game of Rebirth found on the links page at the Arrow River Forest website where Ajahn Punnadhammo’s Bhikkhu Blog is found.
• Dorian of Electric Blue Moodiness and Justin of American Buddhist Perspective have been making pictures on Lite Brite. Justin thinks his picture can't be beat.
• A poll by Ryan of Integral Awakening asks “Have you been in the presence of enlightened, awakened, etc. individual? If so, how did you know?”
• Robert of Beginner's Mind links us to SwarmSketch where anyone who wants to contributes a bit to a collective work of online art.

The Massive Light Weight of Insight

Atlas-like Gareth of Green Clouds writes about “Carrying the Universe.” “Rather than trying to generate a specific state of mind, I use the time to practice intimacy, a very careful mindfulness, and Samadhi. It comes and goes, and as soon as I begin to label the practice it falters.”

Michael of one foot in front of the other tells us he has had a flash of insight, a breakthrough. Finally, a mindmeld between he and his karate instructor has been achieved. And this direct connection set the conditions for a second thunderclap. Writes Michael, “A former karate instructor of mine who is still a mentor and one of my dearest friends used to tell me that insight can happen in an instant, like a bolt of lightning. Neat description, I thought. But now I truly feel what he was telling me.”

Roundup for Dec 5 - 11, 2005

The blogmandu -- that is, the Buddhist blogsophere -- is posting hot and heavy on these cold wintry days. Topics of interest include the tug-of-war between "holiday" and "Christmas" as the proper word to describe this season's shopping and the season's decorated trees; Bodhi Day; "real" Buddhism; Intelligent Design; an article about Western Buddhism in National Geographic; "Can you prove you love your wife?"; a Buddhist Miss Manners; focused topic discussions; and peckerwoods.

This Week's Spiffy Blog Posts :

Morgannels of the eponymous blog, didn’t like John Lennon’s song Imagine, but puts up a quick post on the day this week that is the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s death. Scott of Scott Wichmann Online posted a very straightforward Buddhist tribute to Lennon: A picture and lyrics to Instant Karma. "Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on Earth are you there? When you're everywhere ..."

Ruby of lotusmedia 2.0 targets Target this week, wanting a guarantee that their pharmacists "will fill all prescriptions for birth control” including emergency contraception.

William of Integral Options Café is lobbying for votes for Bono. While it’s too late to get him the Noble Peace Prize, Beliefnet’s “most inspiring person of 2005” was, as of Dec 8, still to be had from a vote of its readers. In a post two days later, William tells us that Bono lost the Beliefnet vote, but U2 won the Amnesty International's 2005 Ambassador of Conscience Award.

Beesucker of Authentic Personality lets us know of a new website, www.dalailama.com, The Official Website of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. It was launched on Dec. 10, "the 16th anniversary of the conferment of the Nobel Peace prize on the Dalai Lama." According to the story at The Buddhist Channel Beesucker links to, "The website features information on the Dalai Lama's teaching dates, speeches, meetings with dignitaries, life in exile, photo gallery, contact details and news."

Justin of American Buddhist Perspective, Morgannels of the same-name blog and Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land praise [as morgannels deems it] “a great article about Buddhism” in the latest issue of National Geographic. All three bloggers link to a multimedia show at the Nat’l Geo website. Justin writes of the web show, “[It] gives a good impression on why Buddhism is picking up here [in the West] these days, and a tiny bit of what it is that goes on in meditation.” Morgannels spots his classmates, pictured in the spread, and says, “it’s odd for me to see them dressed up.”

Sean’s post is peripherally about the magazine article; it is mostly about Rohatsu [which, he tells us, means 'December 8' in Japanese], traditionally, the anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment. The Buddhist Blog celebrates Bodhi Day or Enlightenment Day [aka Rohatsu]. Says keyboarder James, “Bodhi Day is a great opportunity for us to be a part of the holiday season.” Shokai of Water Dissolves Water put up a “Happy Bodhi Day” post, wishing well those of his Zen Center who will be sitting all night.

A short, kind “Happy Bodhi Day” post was also written by Corax of Ow, My Blog. Corax is back to blogging after an unannounced hiatus of a couple months. In another post this week, Corax reminds us of a great post in Ow from a year ago, “The Scrooge Sutra.” Amy of Beliefnet’s Chattering Mind blog caught the post and, upon reading “The Scrooge Sutra,” deemed it brilliant, lavishing praise and posting a long quote from it in her blog. [Full disclosure: Your Blogmandu reporter, loving “The Scrooge Sutra,” posted a version of it in Zen Unbound eMag a year ago.]

Dave Bonta of Via Negativa goes off into the Big Woody Woody in pursuit of peckerwoods – aka, “the Holy F***ing Shit Bird.”

James of Genius of Insanity gathers information on how unwanted the American soldiers are by the Iraqi citizenry.

Nick of The Lotus & the Magnolia has questions about Buddhist etiquette: “i certainly don't want to DIS anyone, especially the Buddha or my teacher, but if no one tells me how to behave, i won't know what's good or bad.” … “is there a buddhist Miss Manners anywhere?!?”

After beginning with the startling question “Can you prove you love your wife?” The Roost’s Greg cleves the universe into its subjective, objective and real aspects. In the comment thread to his post, Greg/tsychoduk writes, “If you allow your feelings, hope and faith to rule you, then they are in fact more real then the rest of the Universe.”

In a pretty much a day-and-a-half-in-the-life post by Brad Warner of Hardcore Zen he rehearses with two bands, gives an interview about his movie, does a book signing, writes his blog post, all the while focusing on telling us about zazen, what it’s done for him – and oh yeah – it is “Jesus God Almighty COLD in Ohio.”

In Woodmoor Village Zendo, Nacho discusses the “war on Christmas” at length, coming down hard on the Christian Right. He writes, “There is a certain chauvinism in believing that one holds special rights to the celebration of this season. This certainly applies to Christian Conservatives that see ‘their’ Christmas under attack.” Paper Frog's Kit weighs in on the topic to say that Christmas is under attack, yes, but it's from the end-of-the-year consumer frenzy. Dave of Via Negativa takes off the woolly mittens and puts on the brass knuckles in his post on the same topic, “To hell with Christmas.” Blending cutting humor with damning evidence, he writes, “Who killed Christmas? … it was you - all you so-called Christians, masters of the pious shell game…”

But WVZ’s Nacho gets his dander up and borrows Dave's brass knuckles for a second holiday-shopping post, regarding the American Family Association which, by threatening a boycott, has succeeded in getting Ford Motors to cease creating advertising directed toward gay and lesbian consumers for its domestically made products.

Kimberly [now using her ‘real’ name, having abandoned the psuedonym ‘haiku’] of this zen life writes of our consumerist culture – with special attention placed on shopping for Zen – in a post called “last night at the zendo.”

Atanu Dey is hard on organized religion this week in a post that discusses Marx and the Opium Wars. He agrees with words of Karl Marx regarding the clutch of religion on the poor: “The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” Later, Atanu writes, “Spirituality, on the other hand, arises within people only when they are freed from a miserable existence and have the luxury to search for truth and meaning in [an] attempt to fully comprehend their own selves.”

Will of thinkBuddha.org cuts to the heart in a post called “Legitimacy” that asks “Who are the real Buddhists?” and then questions the need for the question. “If you look hard enough into the texts of most schools you can find more or less virulent and vituperative condemnations of other fellow-Buddhists who do things differently.” he writes. Later in his post, he concludes, “perhaps the best thing is to dispense with the chimerical myth of ‘real Buddhism’ altogether.”

Fudo, the ScurrilousMonk, writes a long, open, blunt letter with this central message: “what ever is in front of you is your practice”

Jeb of Wondering on the Way looks at the variety of blogs and considers something different “for expressing and discussing ideas” involving “focused topic discussions.” Thoughts on how to do this get further expression in the comments section of the post.

A post on Intelligent Design on Dec. 2 gets extended discussion with 29 comments to date in Justin’s American Buddhist Perspective. WVZ’s Nacho, yours truly and Justin look at many aspects of why ID is and is not legitimate as part of teaching evolution to children. In the process of all this, Nacho, who has posted about the topic twenty times in his blog, WoodMoor Village Zendo, cites an October post of his that has some good exchanges on the topic; Yours Truly, starts a new blog, Thoughts Chase Thoughts, that begins with an ID entry; and Justin cites a recent opinion piece in the Toronto Star by Punnashammo Bhikkhu that says for Buddhism, the ID issue is “pretty much irrelevant.”

Here’s a snatch of what Justin wrote in the long comment thread of his 12/2 post: “ID doesn't present anything like 'evidence' that would let it be 'in contrast to evolution'. That's my qualm about it: when you examine ID (as pushed by the Discovery Institute) you find empty rhetoric about complexity and statistical improbability. These issues are addressed in the teaching of evolution (as I know it) and 'alternatives' need not be introduced.”

Greg of The Roost also posts on ID, taking interest in ID's proponents who think "in all the billions of earth-like planets out there - and possibly billions of universes" we are somehow special. Writes Greg, "To claim humanity's specialness because the universe is so suited for us is to have it backwards. We are suited for the universe."

After five weeks of no posts, the Blog Heaven-honored Paper Frog came back big, with three posts in one day, including these two, about Access to Insight’s 2006 Uposatha Calendar and news about a book, Hungry Planet, which looks at what earthlings eat. Says a review of the book that blogger Kit cites: “…we are rushing headlong toward an economy … in which we identify a piece of food by its logo rather than by its biology.”

Mumon in Notes in Samsara writes about the Catholic League taking offense from this week’s episode of “South Park.” In the episode, a Virgin Mary statue is spraying blood. “The program in question actually was more a righteous bashing of the ‘powerlessness’ philosophy of those in AA and the denial of the necessity of ‘discipline.’” writes Mumon. “That message outweighs any faux outrage coming from bleeding statues and locker-room humor. Yes, bash Buddhism [too] if you want; ... Cultivation of discipline, and being skillful is more important than sacred cows - or statues.”

Nirodha of Steps along the path posts a statement that links to his revision of the Ahara Sutta [Food for the Factors of Awakening]. This very readable and flowing revision uses Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s original translation and Jhanananda’s revision as bases. Writes Nirodha, “The text basically … deals with the fourth frame of mindfulness (Sati), mental states/phenomena, as listed in the Magga-vibhanga Sutta (Analysis of the Path).”

The great, sexy & cute Chalip of Zen Under the Skin put up two posts on Whining this week. Don't be repulsed by the subject matter, Chalip makes some good points about this shameless practice and doesn’t whine … much. In “Stop Whining,” she writes, “It’s not sexy. It’s not even cute. I’m getting to the point where I can see my whining mind and just notice it… being present to the fact that I am having an internal tantrum.” In her second post, “It Could be Worse,” she uses a technique that may be controversial: taking things that bug you, and then thinking about how what's merely awful could be worse.