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Three Means to Peace |
| A central question confronting spiritual life today
is how we can best respond to the tremendous conflicts and uncertainties
of these times. The war on terror, the seemingly intractable violence
of the Middle East, poverty and disease, racism, the degradation
of the environment, and the problems in our own personal lives,
all call us to ask: What is the source of this great mass of suffering?
What are the forces in the world that drive intolerance, violence
and injustice? Are there forces that hold the promise of peace?
Do we really understand the nature of fear and hatred, envy and
greed? Do we know how to cultivate love and kindness, energy and
wisdom? The great discovery of the meditative journey is that all the forces for good and for harm playing out in the world are also right here in our own minds. If we want to understand the world, we need to understand ourselves. Can we do this? Read more in Shambhala Sun |
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Celibacy and the Awareness of Sexuality |
| If I look at the experiences that have reappeared
in my journey, I can see that over the years there have been times
of intense pleasure, strong energy, deep pain, suffering, profound
fear, transcendent joy and the stillness of a peaceful heart. These
experiences have been both the gateway for and the result of much
learning. This entire range has also been part of my experience
of sexuality, which is the theme I'd like to explore. In particular,
I want to discuss the connection between the experience of sexuality
with aggression, on the one hand, and loving-kindness on the other.
We need to understand both these aspects of sexuality, whether we
are celibate or not, as part of our endeavor to awaken to the full
human condition. For more than twenty years most of my dhamma teachers have been men. Occasionally, there have been some very bold, insightful, sensitive dhamma teachers who have talked about sexuality in language that I have been able to relate to and understand. I've felt grateful for their courage and compassion in bringing light and clarity into these deep waters. But when I was a laywoman I also heard dhamma talks describing sexuality in ways that I could not relate to; that is, describing sexuality as dominance, objectification and raw attraction to physical attributes driven by a desire for gratification-all devoid of affection and genuine respect. For me, the most familiar expression of sexuality was one accompanied by tenderness and care, spaciousness, joy, and an opening of body and mind as the sense of self is released through giving and sharing with another. To hear sexuality described emphasizing the instinctual component of desire, the raw drive for physical gratification involving the dynamics of power and aggression, sounded demeaning and foreign. However, years later, I came to realize that what these teachers described was in fact within me. Read more in Buddha Dharma |
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Radical Conviviality And The Gospel Jesus |
| Some people think of Jesus as a holy and insightful ethical teacher,
something like Socrates. Others think of him as the literal son
of God, who worked miracles, rose from the dead, and physically
ascended to the place known as heaven. Neither approach, in my view,
does Jesus justice. Most religions and spiritual traditions involve some strong mode of reflection that keeps the teachings from being too literal or too metaphorical, too emotional or too rational. The Zen master devotes considerable attention to keeping his students from reducing Zen to something known and circumscribed, or making too much of the founder. "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him," the Zen master says. But has anyone said that about Jesus, and does it apply? Read more in Tikkun |
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Fully Alive: A peak experience with a modern mystic |
| "Taste God in your mashed potatoes," Brother David encouraged
those who were on retreat with him near the Benedictine Grange in
Connecticut where he was living as a hermit. This presented a challenge
for most of us, since the idea of experiencing God through our senses
had not been a part of our religious instruction. But then, Brother
David has a way of challenging people to experience traditional
truths in new ways. We spoke with Brother David during his recent residency at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Kate Olson: Why is experience so important? Brother David: Things do not mean anything to us until we have experienced them. That is why people can study a subject for a long time, but it only really comes home to them when they have an experience of whatever they're studying. You could read all the books about swimming, but unless you get wet, it won't help you. What we are talking about in spirituality is the basic awareness of being one with all. No matter how much you read about that, unless you have an experience in which you become personally aware of it, it's not a reality for you. Read more in Spirituality & Health |
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Reality Shifts |
| Most of us make changes in the world by finding something
we can physically DO since we understand how our actions affect
the world. When we feel a burning need to transcend our physical
limitations, we pray...hoping to shift reality with our thoughts
and prayers. But how does prayer work? How can we change the world
without lifting a finger? A closer look at physics helps us understand
how our thoughts and feelings can change the world. Classical scientists laid the foundation for our western view of reality when they proposed four fundamental assumptions as the basis for science in the seventeenth century. These four assumptions (causality, locality, material monism, and objectivity) seemed inviolable until recent quantum physics experiments showed their inaccuracy in the realm of the very small. At the quantum level, there is no such thing as an objective, uninvolved observer. Every measurement we take affects the behavior of what we observe. This means that it's not possible to separate us from the quantum particles we observe. Each time we observe a quantum particle, all possibilities for its momentum and position collapse into a particle we can see and measure. Read more in Magical Blend |
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Book Review |
| The beauty of an object marred from love and use, a lopsided bowl or a crooked nose. This is wabi-sabi - "a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete; a beauty of things modest and humble; a beauty of things unconventional." In Wabi-Sabi, Leonard Koren offers a cure for the a-spiritual and environmentally unfriendly aesthetic of modernism, an "antidote to sleek corporate style." Finding resonance with the anti-aesthetics of the beat, grunge and punk movements, wabi-sabi emphatically resists faith in progress, future orientation and the romancing of technology inherent in modernism. Instead, it reminds us of our mortality, our role in nature, connection to the earth and the ability to appreciate every encounter. Through an introduction to the history, spiritual, and cultural implications of this ancient aesthetic and a variety of photographs illustrating the aesthetic in action, Koren leads the reader to an intuitive understanding of wabi-sabi. True to the aesthetic itself, there is no set definition because of its basic transitory and incomplete nature. Perhaps wabi-sabi is best understood through our own experiences with the concept of yin and yang, as wabi-sabi objects seem to exist on the very edge of transforming into their opposite. A place Koren reminds us where ugliness gives birth to beauty and hope emerges from nothingness. It is at this threshold that we gain glimpses of the ultimate nature of existence. |
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| Table of Contents |
 Three
Means to Peace |
| Celibacy
and Awareness |
| Radical
Conviviality |
| Fully
Alive |
| Reality
Shifts |
| Book
Review: Art and Fear |
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| Beautiful. Serene. The country setting of Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville
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