William Blake

“I was knock, knock, knocking on the door, then I discovered that I was already on the inside.”

“Those who restrain their desires do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” ~ William Blake

Tibetan Monks and Nuns Turn Their Minds Toward Science

June 30, 2009

By AMY YEE

DHARAMSALA, India — Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science.

Instead of delving into Buddhist texts on karma and emptiness, they learned about Galileo’s law of accelerated motion, chromosomes, neurons and the Big Bang, among other far-ranging topics.

Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.

To add to the challenge, some monastics have limited English and relied on Tibetan translators to absorb the four-week crash course in physics, biology, neuroscience and math and logic taught by teachers from Emory University in Atlanta.

But the monastics put morning-to-evening lectures into action. At a Buddhist college campus here in Dharamsala, the exile home of the Dalai Lama in northern India, red-robed monks and nuns experimented with pendulums, gathered plants in the foothills of the Himalayas that showed natural selection and bent their shaved heads over microscopes to view an unseen world.

Tibetan monks and nuns may spend 12 hours a day studying Buddhist philosophy and logic, reciting prayers and debating scriptures. But science has been given a special boost by the Dalai Lama, who has long advocated modern education in Tibetan monasteries and schools in exile, alongside Tibet’s traditions. India is home to at least 120,000 Tibetans, the largest population outside Tibet.

Science may seem at odds with Tibetan religious rituals. Reincarnations of high Tibetan monks are identified through dreams and auspicious signs. The Dalai Lama credits the state oracle with helping him decide to flee Tibet in 1959 as Chinese troops advanced on Lhasa.

Yet the Tibetan spiritual leader views science and Buddhism as complementary “investigative approaches with the same greater goal, of seeking the truth,” he wrote in “The Universe in a Single Atom,” his book on “how science and spirituality can serve our world.” He stresses that science is especially important for monastics who study the nature of the mind and the relationship between mind and brain.

Initial resistance from some senior monks and fears of diluting traditional studies in monasteries have gradually eased. Now the Dalai Lama hopes that, with help from Emory and other programs, science will become part of a new curriculum, with science textbooks in Tibetan and specialist translators, leading to a generation of monastic leaders that are scientifically literate.

There are other reasons for integrating science with Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetans marked the 50th anniversary of their exile this year, and a return to their homeland remains elusive. The need to keep Tibetan cultural identity alive, yet modern and relevant, has grown increasingly urgent as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama ages.

“If you remain isolated, you will disappear,” said Lhakdor, director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, in Dharamsala, who goes by one name. The Dalai Lama himself has often remarked that isolation from the world only aided Tibet’s fall to China.

Lhakdor also sees similarities rather than contradictions between science and Buddhism. Like Buddhism, “the approach of science is generally based on unbiased findings through observation, analysis and finding the truth,” he noted.

Others are more frank about the need to learn science. “The 21st century is here. Everybody is influenced by science. We want to know what it is,” said Tenzin Lhadron, a forthright 34-year-old nun enrolled in this summer’s science program.

She does not have formal schooling in spite of 19 years studying at a nunnery in Dharamsala. Math is difficult for her; fractions and percentages are completely new. “But I will try,” she promised.

The Emory Tibet Science Initiative, of which this session was part, is now in its second year. It was preceded by the “Science for Monks” program, which started in 2001 with support from Bobby Sager, a Boston philanthropist. At the behest of the Dalai Lama, the earlier program brought science teachers from various American universities to teach Tibetan monks in India.

That program has matured into the Emory-backed plan to introduce modern science into Tibetan monasteries in India within the next few years with help from the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

The Emory initiative has led to a science textbook in Tibetan and English, produced by Emory professors and translators from the library. Translation conferences yielded a science glossary that introduces words like electromagnetism, climate change and cloning into the Tibetan lexicon.

The original Science for Monks program has morphed into an annual two-week Science Leadership summer program for advanced students who are all geshes, the monastic equivalent of a Ph.D. This year it culminated in a first-ever “science fair” here from June 22 to June 24. There, monks gave presentations on sound waves, the origins of the universe and how the brain works.

Emory envisions the summer course as a five-year program with lessons becoming more advanced in successive years for the returning students.

A third program, called Science Meets Dharma, has since 2002 sent European college graduates to teach basic science courses in Tibetan monasteries in India. When some monks enroll in the intensive science programs they have already had a few years of science instruction.

Just how science will be taught in the monasteries is still in the works. Western faculty will teach to monastics for extended periods, but local Tibetan lay teachers will eventually be recruited to teach in monasteries year round. Science education already exists in the Tibetan exile school system that instructs 28,000 children and young adults in India, Nepal and Bhutan.

For the time being, university professors are needed for the summer science course. Monks and nuns may lack basic science education, but they are highly trained in other disciplines, like philosophy.

“They are sophisticated adult learners,” said Mark Risjord, professor of philosophy at Emory who taught math and logic this summer. During his weeklong unit, inquisitive monks pressed him for a method to “make deductively valid rules” and asked if different arguments can lead to the same conclusion.

Although Buddhist scriptures have their own explanations of nature, the mind and the physical world, students were unfazed about seeming contradictions between Buddhism and western science.

“There are contradictions within Buddhist philosophy itself,” pointed out Lobsang Gompo, a 27-year-old monk from Drepung monastery in south India. Tibetan Buddhists are already accustomed to analyzing multiple viewpoints, he said.

The Dalai Lama’s confidence in “critical investigation” means that “if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims,” he wrote in “The Universe in a Single Atom.”

Lhadron, the nun, added, “Buddhists believe whatever reality is there, not just what such and such a text says.”

While the Tibetan monastics come away from the program enriched, so do the Westerners. There is growing interest from the West about the relationship between the mind and body — for instance, the physical effects of meditation.

A new Emory program for undergraduates brought 14 students, mostly premed students, to Dharamsala this summer to study Buddhist thought and Tibetan medicine.

The science initiative also paves the way for Tibetan monastics to engage in future dialogue with Western scientists, another project fostered by the Dalai Lama in the form of annual conferences of the Mind and Life Institute that bring together Western researchers and monks in the United States and Dharamsala. “If monastics are not aware of scientific concepts, they can’t communicate and collaborate,” said Lobsang Negi, director of the Emory Tibet Science Initiative.

The program broadens the horizons of the Western science teachers, too, whether by teaching across cultures or thinking about science through the lens of ethics and human values as emphasized in Buddhism.

For Arri Eisen, a biology professor at Emory, teaching the monks and nuns helped him consider “how to nurture positive thinking. Western education doesn’t nurture empathy.”

Science may be far advanced in the West, but a moral vacuum exists, said Bryce Johnson, an environmental engineer who coordinates the Science for Monks program. “There’s something lost in the West,” Dr. Johnson said. The meeting of science and Buddhism is “a healthy exchange that is as much for the scientists.”

Looks Like the Island of the RedHood website is Down

Someone found my site for some stories I wrote about my days at the Island of the Red Hood.  Those were times of peanut butter by the spoonful out of the jar.  In fact, I learned that style right there in a circle of intelligent creative people.  I would never call any of the people living on that scrapple land Hippies.   In fact, I was a high achieving person with real artistic skills who chose to languish among the relaxed as an experiment in rural living community.

Richard Chalfin was following Maryhelen there because his penis directed him there.  I did not have a penis pointing at or into me the whole time I lived in a closet off the Kitchen.  My favorite memories are about the tin tub carried into the kitchen for an old western style bath.  Wish I had a special drink while I soaked in twice used warm water.  Did I ever get to be the first in the bath water?  I guess, since I came with big handfuls of real cash, from my teaching job at Girls High in Philadelphia and the Parkway program, they acquiesced to my primary bathing position so that I would go along to the store and pay for the coffee and such.

What a time that was.  People had direct contact with Owsley acid and seemed to float near the tips of the endless fields of green grass.  I got letters from around the world because I was included in a Genius group. Imagine getting the amazing stories about mind reading in a 8 x 11 heavy brown envelope!  What a treat.  Though the whole thing was right out of a comic book, I took it all in stride.  The real artists made pottery and the famous porcelain buttons.  I have in the bottom of my sewing basket a paper card with a few white with green triangles handmade buttons.  Did Mary Clair Richards make these buttons?

She was the real sophisticate in the circle.  Wherever she was, she became the timber of the place. In the subways of NY City she seemed the upper east side and in the mountain folds of Hinton West Virginia she was a total mountain girl.

There was a nanu second when I looked around for a stone smith to learn how to shape the local stone so I could build a house that the big bad wolf would not blow down.  But when some mountain men threatened my life if I wanted to learn their sacred mountain skills I thouoght twice and remembered that there were houses already built in the cradle of liberty that I called home before I took that first class red velvet train ride.

Going to the bathroom meant wrapping up and walking a while to the outhouse whose door was complete with a gibbous moon cut out.  Grand vistas of clear crystal sparkling icy bold stars dusted the space every night.  There was some important comet; I forget the name that fired across the night sky for several nights in a row. I am sure if someone was interested in knowing just which comet I saw the dates could be overlaid with the comet history.  I do not have the time or interest I would lay on the grass wrapped in my heavy wool blankets and just look up.  Serious, the most beautiful star was my favorite companion during the dreary uncoupled nights.

Whoever did the search for Island of the Red Hood did me a wondrous favor. Floods of stories have come splashing in my consciousness so there will be more scribbles.  Would you please contact me since I would love to talk about the place and those times.  Poets, painters and many sorts in between came and went in fashionable mint Saab convertibles as well as other more mountain worthy vehicles.  I was so naive that I actually thought I was part of the group but found out rather quickly I did not have the right stuff.  To this day I am marginalized by those still in semi contact with me!

Goldman Sacks:copied from rolling stone without permission

Machine: How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation
Jul 02, 2009 8:38 AM – Rolling Stone

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on “the Wall Street Bubble Mafia” – investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi’s piece is “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and a spokesman adding, “We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good.” Taibbi shot back: “Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it.” Here, now, are excerpts
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain – an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s – and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

Goldman Sachs’ Role in the Housing and Internet Busts

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren’t much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

It sounds obvious now, but what the average investor didn’t know at the time was that the banks had changed the rules of the game, making the deals look better than they actually were. They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system – one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational. While Goldman’s later pattern would be to capitalize on changes in the regulatory environment, its key innovation in the Internet years was to abandon its own industry’s standards of quality control.

Goldman’s role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren’t in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.

And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help – there were other players in the physical-commodities market – but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures – agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

Goldman Sachs Graduates in the Government

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup – which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But then, something happened. It’s hard to say what it was exactly; it might have been the fact that Goldman’s co-chairman in the early Nineties, Robert Rubin, followed Bill Clinton to the White House, where he directed the National Economic Council and eventually became Treasury secretary. While the American media fell in love with the story line of a pair of baby-boomer, Sixties-child, Fleetwood Mac yuppies nesting in the White House, it also nursed an undisguised crush on Rubin, who was hyped as without a doubt the smartest person ever to walk the face of the Earth, with Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Kant running far behind.

Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national cliché that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy – a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline the committee to save the world. And “what Rubin thought,” mostly, was that the American economy, and in particular the financial markets, were over-regulated and needed to be set free. During his tenure at Treasury, the Clinton White House made a series of moves that would have drastic consequences for the global economy – beginning with Rubin’s complete and total failure to regulate his old firm during its first mad dash for obscene short-term profits.

Goldman Sachs’ Powerful Influence

After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming – this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle.

It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers – one of Goldman’s last real competitors – collapse without intervention. (”Goldman’s superhero status was left intact,” says market analyst Eric Salzman, “and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.”) The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.

Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding – most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs – and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

Converting to a bank-holding company has other benefits as well: Goldman’s primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Friedman was technically in violation of Federal Reserve policy by remaining on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating the bank; in order to rectify the problem, he applied for, and got, a conflict-of-interest waiver from the government. Friedman was also supposed to divest himself of his Goldman stock after Goldman became a bank-holding company, but thanks to the waiver, he was allowed to go out and buy 52,000 additional shares in his old bank, leaving him $3 million richer. Friedman stepped down in May, but the man now in charge of supervising Goldman – New York Fed president William Dudley – is yet another former Goldmanite.

The collective message of all of this – the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds – is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn’t a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. “In the past it was an implicit advantage,” says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. “Now it’s more of an explicit advantage.”

Fast-forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs – its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign – sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Be A Nice Person

www.tibetanbuddhist.org/hhdl.html

or you may prefer to read below:

The Teaching on Aspirational Bodhicitta

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Tibetan Cultural Center
Bloomington, Indiana
July 27, 1996

Translator: Jeffrey Hopkins, Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Virginia

Among the many religions of the world, today I will be speaking about a religion taught by Sakyamuni Buddha. The Buddhist religion, as it has survived in Tibet, is a complete form of Buddhism in that it contains both sutra and mantra, also called tantra, and has the full teachings on all forms of the schools of tenets, both lower vehicle and greater vehicle. I will be speaking today on the perspective of the Madhyamaka, the Middle Way School.

The assumption of the generation of one’s mind toward enlightenment will be by way of the first three stanzas on the top of the page, but prior to that we’ll be doing the Seven Branches of Worship which begins about mid-way down the page.

First of all, let me identify what the altruistic intention to become enlightened is. Our kind teacher Sakyamuni Buddha, when he first taught the turning of the wheel of the Four Noble Truths, set forth a doctrine that has compassion at its root. So even in the scriptures of the so-called Hearers, like the scriptures of the Theravada , there is mention of Sakyamuni prior to being enlightened when he was in Bodh Gaya as a bodhisattva.

Then with regard to the actual practices of a bodhisattva in the scriptures of the Hearers, there is a short description within the Thirty-seven Harmonies for Enlightenment and there is a slight mention of the Six Perfections. But the real emphasis on the practice of the bodhisattvas is to be found in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. In the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras what is explicitly taught are the teachings about emptiness. But there is a hidden level of meaning of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras and these are indicated by the lists of phenomena that are empty of inherent existence, and within that one can find the stages of the path. And in the Lolitavistra Sutras, the bodhisattva deeds are talked about extensively.

In Madkaya’s Ornament for Clear Realization there is a description of the altruistic intention to be enlightened or the mind of enlightenment endowed with two aspirations. The one is the aspiration to bring about others’ welfare and that condition induces the second aspiration which is to gain enlightenment oneself. Now both of these aspirations one needs to practice. The development of the aspiration to bring about others’ enlightenment is brought about by practice in two ways. One is through considering the switching of self and other–the equality of self and other and then the switching of self and other. The other way is through reflecting on the Seven Quintessential Instructions of Cause and Effect. The essence of this process is to realize that all other sentient beings as well as yourself are very similar in that everyone wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering and in that suffering is removable. It can be removed. In addition, everyone has the right to remove suffering.

But what is the difference between self and other? Oneself is only one, whereas others are limitless in number. And from another point of view, one’s own happiness is related with others’ happiness. Thus if others are happy, automatically and naturally oneself is happy. If others suffer, one automatically and naturally suffers. For instance, if you come into a household where people are constantly arguing and they’re constantly disturbed–even for just a little while, you will notice the pervasive discomfort in the household, in the family. And if you arrive in the household of a family that is staying with some measure of contentment and happiness, living together peacefully, you yourself will have a sense of comfort shortly after arriving in their house. Thus, in this way, others’ happiness and suffering has a close relationship with your own happiness and suffering.

And then from the point of view of the Buddha’s teaching, if you have an attitude of altruism, of benefiting others, so much will you benefit yourself–so much will you accumulate merit that helps yourself. For instance, if you engage in one single practice, such as a prayer or any other type of virtuous practice, if you do this with a motivation of obtaining liberation from cyclic existence for yourself–or if you do that same activity with the motivation to obtain the omniscience of highest enlightenment in order to be of benefit to limitless sentient beings, then the difference in strength–the power–of that virtue, is very great in the sense that both sides of your motivational aim–what you’re seeking to accomplish and for whom you are seeking to accomplish it–are vastly different. Thus, when one’s field of motivation is the welfare of a limitless number of sentient beings, then the virtue accumulated through the practice is extremely vast. Thus, in the Great Vehicle when it speaks about the accumulation of huge amounts of merit, that merit is achieved through the kindness of other sentient beings.

Now if you ask, “How could it be feasible to conceive of everybody–of all sentient beings–as having this kindness when some don’t have a motivation to help others and how could it be possible that one would be conceiving them, nevertheless, to be kind? And the answer is that the valuing of other sentient beings is not dependent on their motivation.

As Shantideva says in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, among the three refuges, the actual refuges are the true cessations of the obstructions and the paths to achieving those true cessations. Now those true cessations themselves, or the path consciousnesses themselves, don’t have any motivation to help you, but they provide great protection. Thus the valuing, the having a sense of cherishing or valuing of things, does not depend upon their having the motivation to help you. Thus from the perspective of practicing the path, it is in dependence upon this value or kindness of the limitless number of sentient beings that it is possible to proceed ahead on the path. In terms of the ordinary state, also, most of our provisions–food and clothing and fame and so forth come by way of others. It is in dependence upon them in terms of the resultant state, also, that comes by way of the value or the kindness of other sentient beings. Thus it is said, that it is in dependence upon the kindness of our fellow beings that we achieve even small pleasures and so forth within ordinary life and it is in dependence upon others that the great achievement of Buddhahood and so forth is brought about. So it is through our fellow beings, it is in dependence upon them that we achieve anything. Now the problem with those who are just seeking release from cyclic existence for themselves is that their lower or smaller motivation means that they are neglecting their fellow sentient beings. Thus they are falling into a self-centered, solitary peace. Thus it is said that the childish beings–people who are immature like children–are seeking their own welfare by putting themselves first, but actually this is inducing more suffering, whereas someone like the Buddha puts others first and works for their welfare, and the result of this is the obtainment of Buddhahood. So this is the main way that one trains in the development of altruism of “otherism.

So then what is the other aspiration–the aspiration to one’s own enlightenment? And as Dajen Gyeba Singjai, the Indian pundit–an important disciple of Nagarjuna–said, enlightenment is not something given to oneself from the outside. The causes of enlightenment are not possessed by somebody else. Rather the very factors that make enlightenment possible are contained within oneself–this being the luminous and cognitive nature of the mind, and one needs to manifest this oneself and, thereby, manifest enlightenment oneself. As Nagarjuna himself said, through the extinguishment of contaminated karma, contaminated actions and affective emotions, there is liberation. So then what are contaminated actions and afflictive emotions? Contaminated actions are induced by afflictive emotions. Afflictive emotions are induced by improper mental activities . Improper mental activity is induced by the elaborations of the conception of inherent existence. Those elaborations of the conception of inherent existence are extinguished through emptiness–meaning through realizing emptiness. There is another form of the last line which says elaborations of the conception of inherent existence are extinguished in emptiness. (This means in the sphere of the reality of emptiness, the emptiness of inherent existence.) So then how is that through meditating on emptiness one can cease the elaborations of the conception of inherent existence? In order to understand this, one needs to form comprehension of the two truths and the four truths. The four truths that the Buddha originally set forth are the very foundation of his entire teaching.

In the Great Vehicle there is mention of the three phases of the teaching of the Buddha called the Turnings of the Wheel of Doctrine, the first being the teaching of the Four Noble Truths which I just mentioned. The middle wheel doctrine expands on the third of the Four Noble Truths, True Cessations, and explains in detail about True Cessations. The final wheel of the doctrine expands on the Fourth Noble Truth, True Paths, and also expands upon the third of the Four Noble Truths, True Cessations. Thus it has these two functions of speaking more about True Cessations and speaking more about the Path. With regard to the Path, it addresses emptiness. It is necessary to know a presentation of these faults of the afflictive emotions and so forth in fine detail..

All four schools of Buddhist tenets agree that ignorance is the basis from which all of the other afflictive emotions are produced. But the four schools present in great detail different opinions on just what ignorance is, and these opinions need to be known. Thus it is necessary to know in detail what the ignorance is that serves as the root of the other afflictive emotions. It is not sufficient just to think, “Oh, ignorance is the root of the afflictive emotions.” One needs to know and identify well what this ignorance is. To get a clear understanding of what ignorance is, it is important to get an idea of how phenomena actually do exist. One cannot be just satisfied with how things appear; rather, one needs to have an idea of how they actually exist. And when one has some idea of how actually things do exist, then you can understand that ignorance is a matter of conceiving phenomena to exist in the opposite way to which they actually are. Thus, it is very important to delineate how phenomena actually abide. So then within the Great Vehicle systems of tenets, there is the Cittamatra or Mind Only system and the Madyamaka or Middle Way system. In the Mind Only system, a type of reasoning is used to analyze phenomena that appear to be external objects and through that reasoning to determine that these externally appearing objects really are not made up of building blocks of external particles; rather, they are appearances within the entity of internal consciousness. Thus, they hold that the way phenomena actually abide is as of the same entity as internal mind, that they don’t exist as they appear–as external objects. Thus the Mind Only system sets forth an emptiness of a difference of entity of subject and object.

Now Chandakirti, the name of the proponent of the Madhyamaka or the Middle Way school, answers them by saying just as you have searched with reason to investigate external objects, so one should search and investigate the nature of mind, and that under such analysis one won’t find some concretely existing mind, also. Thus both external phenomena and internal phenomena are similar in that when they are analyzed in such a way they are not found, but this does not have to mean that they don’t exist. Thus Chandakirti asserts external objects.

What does this non-finding upon searching analytically indicate? It indicates that phenomena do not exist objectively in their own right. So then how do phenomena, that is to say objects and subjects, actually exist. They exist imputedly, designatedly. The source for this position is in the writings of Nagarjuna himself who said that whatever is a dependent arising is necessarily empty and there is no phenomenon that is not a dependent arising. And everything is posited in dependence upon other factors. Because phenomena are imputed in dependence upon other factors, they are neither non-existent or inherently existent, but rather they exist in a middle way, and this is the Middle Path. Thus, the true mode of abiding of phenomena, the true way that phenomena exist, the true mode of existence is that they are imputedly existent; they are dependently and designatedly existent.

However, the phenomena that we internally experience and the external phenomena that we experience, we have to admit don’t appear to be imputedly existent; they appear to be existent from their own side, in their own right. Inside our minds, we have a strong sense that these internal phenomena and external phenomena indeed exist the way they appear. Now this is what is called the misconception of inherent existence or the misconception of true existence. Thus, one should be contemplating or reflecting on the fact that it is within such a misapprehension that we are generating afflictive emotions and are being drawn into contaminated actions. What we are doing is misconceiving the nature of ourselves and others, self and others appearing to inherently exist, whereas they don’t, but we go right on along with the appearance of self and other as existing in their own right and in dependence on that generate afflictive emotions that themselves induce contaminated karmas.

Thus what is this ignorance that we keep talking about? It is the assent to the appearance of beings in the environment as if they exist the way they appear, then too, how they appear. That’s ignorance and that type of assent to this false appearance as if objects exist in their own right induces desire and hatred. That desire and hatred in turn induce contaminated actions. Thus, the ignorance that is assenting to the appearance of objects as inherently existent does not have a valid foundation, does not have a foundation certified by valid cognition; whereas the realization that phenomena do not exist this way does have a certification by valid cognition. Thus, the basis, the foundation of ignorance is not firm, no matter how powerful it has been over time, its foundation is not firm; whereas the foundation of wisdom is firm. It is in this sense that the defilements can be extinguished. And thus wisdom acts as a counteractive factor to ignorance. And it is by way of the fact that the wisdom realizing selflessness, the absence of inherent existence, is a quality of mind, that is to say, it is a quality that depends on the luminous and knowing nature of the mind that it is said that it is stable. Since it is stable, it can be familiarized with greater and greater clarity. This is the way that you can think about that line, mentioned earlier, that the afflictive emotions which depend on the conceptual elaborations of inherent existence are ceased by emptiness or are ceased in emptiness. Thus, realization of the emptiness of inherent existence is the reason why–the realization of the actual nature of phenomena–is the reason why the defilements can be removed. And once the defilements can be removed, then liberation from cyclic existence is possible. And, also, the predispositions that are established by the misconception that phenomena exist in their own right, these predispositions that cause phenomena to appear in this false aspect and prevent knowledge of all phenomena, these predispositions also are suitable for removal and can be removed. Since the mind naturally has an essence or nature of being luminous and knowing, once these obstructions are removed, then the mind can know everything. Thus one can understand that full enlightenment is possible and that it would also be possible within one’s own continuum to attain this. And this is how, by contemplating this way, you can gain the aspiration to gain your own enlightenment.

Then just as it is possible oneself to extinguish one’s own defilements in the sphere of reality through mediating on emptiness and the other obstructions that prevent omniscience, so it is true with respect to each and every other sentient being. Their defilements and obstructions are suitable to be removed, and thus they also are suitable to obtain the highest enlightenment as a Buddha. Thus with the aspiration to bring about their highest enlightenment, one has been in aspiration to bring one’s own enlightenment in order to help them. So then how is it that your own enlightenment can serve as a contributing factor to others’ enlightenment? It is said that a buddha does not wash away others’ ill deeds with water. A buddha does not remove the suffering of others’ by way of laying on hands. A buddha can not give to others that buddha’s realizations. It is by way of teaching to others those qualities of the path that Buddha developed by experience that a buddha can help others achieve enlightenment. So this is the procedure by which one develops an altruistic intention to become enlightened–Bodhicitta, the Mind of Enlightenment, endowed with the two aspirations, the aspiration to bring about others’ welfare and the aspiration to bring about one’s own enlightenment.

So now what you will be doing here today is with this formation of an understanding of these two types of aspirations– the aspiration for others’ welfare and the aspiration to one’s own enlightenment–you should be one-pointedly concentrating on achieving these two and develop the wish to achieve this altruistic enlightenment. And then to think that–to make the decision that–in all circumstances and at all times I am not going to forsake this attitude, and I’ll do this by developing further and further familiarization with the processes of altruism. And thus, today, if there is somebody who is familiar with this type of practice, you can also develop an intention never to let it slide.

So then, first of all, please recite the Seven Branches of Worship which is about a third of the way down the first page. Then, first of all you should consider, based on the image of the Buddha that is on the wall, that the actual Buddha is present. And you should consider that the great beings who have taught Buddhism in India and Tibet and so forth are also present. And then imagine that around you, spreading out around you are all sentient beings. And then think that I am going to achieve the exalted physical, verbal, and mental qualities of enlightenment for the sake of bringing help and happiness to all sentient beings, and within this motivation, this attitude, recite the Seven Branches of Worship.

Say with me: The Buddhists should put their palms together:

To all the Buddhas who traverse the three times,
To the Teaching and the spiritual community
I bow down with emanations of my body
Equal to the number of atoms in a Buddha-field.

Just as Bodhisattvas such as Manjushri
Make offerings to the Conquerors,
So I make offerings to you, Thus Gone Ones,
You, the Protectors and your offspring.

In this beginningless cyclic existence
In this life or in others
Compelled by the errors of ignorance
I needlessly engaged in misdeeds.

I urged others to commit wrongdoings
And rejoiced in others’ bad actions as well.
Having understood my faults
I confess them to the Protectors from my heart.

I rejoice with pleasure in actions helpful to beings
And in the oceans of virtue
Which increase the altruistic aspiration
And bring happiness to all.

I join my palms requesting
The Buddhas of all the directions,
“Please light the lamps of the teachings
For beings who suffer in dark confusion.”

I pray with joined palms
To the Buddhas who wish for final Nirvana,
“Please stay for innumerable eons;
Do not leave beings in this blindness.”

I have done all these in this way
And accumulated virtue;
May it remove all the miseries
Of all sentient beings.

What you have just recited–”The Seven Branches of Worship”–was drawn from Shantideva’s Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds. Then, with regard to the actual assumption of the mind directed toward enlightenment, the first two stanzas are like those that appear in many different texts. And the third one is from Shantideva’s Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds. So then recite these three stanzas slowly and carefully thinking carefully about the two aspirations: for others’ welfare and for obtaining one’s own enlightenment in order to bring about others’ welfare. And be thinking that I will not let this attitude slide. And those of you who are going to do this, will please kneel. It is not necessary to kneel on both knees–you can have the right knee down and the left knee up, and those people who have difficulty with their legs, you are exceptions.

Recite:

With the wish to free all beings
I shall always go for Refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Until the attainment of full enlightenment

Enthused by compassion and wisdom
Today in the Buddha’s Presence
I generate the Mind of Enlightenment
For the benefit of all sentient beings

As long as space endures
And as long as sentient beings remain
May I, too, abide
To dispel the miseries of the world.

Second:

With the wish to free all beings
I shall always go for Refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Until the attainment of full enlightenment

Enthused by compassion and wisdom
Today in the Buddha’s Presence
I generate the Mind of Enlightenment
For the benefit of all sentient beings

As long as space endures
And as long as sentient beings remain
May I, too, abide
To dispel the miseries of the world.

Third:

With the wish to free all beings
I shall always go for Refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Until the attainment of full enlightenment

Enthused by compassion and wisdom
Today in the Buddha’s Presence
I generate the Mind of Enlightenment
For the benefit of all sentient beings

As long as space endures
And as long as sentient beings remain
May I, too, abide
To dispel the miseries of the world.

Now sit down.

The benefit of taking this–of participating in this ritual of generating the altruistic intention to become enlightened is extremely helpful. It’s not necessary to get involved in all the pledges and so forth of the mantra system. This is very, very powerful.

(Now His Holiness spoke in English–without Jeffrey Hopkins translating)

So now that’s about today’s teaching. Whenever I perform this practice–this Bodhicitta teaching–I myself also always feel, “Oh now, I have fulfilled some purpose.” There is no danger so, therefore, I feel that it is very very important, very useful. So now this recitation, whenever you have free time, whenever your mood is good, think and mediate on it and make it familiar to oneself. Go by this way and then you see, year by year, altruistic mind gains strength–eventually it will grow. So that is the way of practice. So when we practice such as the Bodhicitta practice, we should not expect some marvelous things can be achieved within a short period That should not be expected. From my own experience, it took me–like that last sentence, “So long as space remain, I will remain.” That kind of thinking actually gives us inner strength. If your very existence become something of benefit for others, then time is in this respect. Otherwise, then we say, “I want to achieve Buddhahood in order to benefit others, but I desire to achieve Buddhahood within three years or say in six years or nine years” I think that is nonsense . I think that kind of attitude is really dangerous. So you see, the sutrayana’s explanation is counting eons, eons. That is very useful. That will help us to gaindetermination and the willpower. So think more about eons rather than hours or weeks or months.

Another thing, in following any religion, we should practice sincerely. All of the teachings should be part of our daily life. That is very important. If faith or teachings remain just mere knowledge, that won’t help. Certainly the teaching should be part of our daily life. For that we need constant effort. It is impossible without one’s own effort for some miraculous things to happen as a sort of blessing. That is impossible. That, I think, fools oneself. So must be practical and practice with effort, with determination and with patience. That is important. And then, as Buddhists, we should be good examples of Buddha’s followers. And then eventually, we can say–not in the sense of propagating Buddha Dharma–I always remain very wary of that–but at the same time in order to serve other people–in order to help other people–first yourself should be a nice person. So that is important.

So thank you very much.

Are Truly Spiritual People Playful?

If the person you love trembles when you embrace….

If the lips become ardent as cinders…

If the breath agitates and the chest pounds,

If the eyes become shiny as diamonds…

If you feel the temperature rising as you hold hands…

RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN:

IT’S THE SWINE FLU!!!

Future being written at Personal democracy Forum 2009

I don’t have a good way to say it, but there are hundreds of people here committed to make government and governance work.

I’m overwhelmed.

Check out the Twitter stream at twitter.com/#search?q=%23pdf09

or check out something new, the “twitterslurp“

The conference is at personaldemocracy.com/

Posted By: Craig Newmark (Email) | Jun 29 at 09:16 AM

Mother of Peace

Mother Peacock of Peace
(Dedicated to the 64th Birthday, June 19, 2009, of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader of the Burmese populace)

For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting, and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favor life as a whole. … The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just, and peaceful life for all.
- Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose nonviolent advocacy for democracy won her the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the world’’s most prominent political prisoners. The United Nations and many Western nations have long sought her release. Her party won Burma’s last elections in 1990, but the result was not recognized by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.
Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 13 of the last 19 years, including the past six, in detention without trial. Her home is tightly guarded by police checkpoints and barbed-wire barricades.

… O mother of peace…
Your heart is clean.
Like rays of the sun shining on the world,
Your strength is bright.

Surrounded by stars
Competing with the Moon
Her love prestigious

Spreading a pleasing aroma
Myanmar Hey Myanmar
The only one in the whole world.

Though the storm is violent
Mother Peacock will reign the world
With a flower in her hair.

Posted by Johnny Chatterton (Burma Campaign UK)

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee

Thanks for Listening in. Please Stay tuned!  Dave Holt, Editor and GGC VP
(above: Li Young Lee)

I SEE THE FACE Rumi

I SEE THE FACE

I see the face That was my home.

My loving says, I will let go of everything for that.

My soul begins to keep rhythm. As if music is playing.

My reason says, What do you call this cypress-energy that straightens

what was bent double?

All things change in this presence. Armenians and Turks no longer know which is which.

Soul keeps unfolding inward. The body leaves the body.

A wealth you cannot imagine flows through you.

Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house,

that bowl of silence.

Talking, no matter how humble-seeming, is really a kind of bragging.

Let silence be the art you practice.

Step Silently as a Comfortable Breeze on the New Grass

June  2009

Simply walk down the alley knowing you can take on anyone. I travel in the world of unkindness where people believe that they can say mean things as though there are no consequences or recoil.  Why go there? Better yet, why not avoid the alley entirely? Do not defend yourself so hard, and you just might listen and learn. Do not try to be well adjusted. Be Bland. Just like everyone in the nation and the entire world, we all must start again somewhere strong and all strength comes from Bland.  One by one friend or foe tells me daily, to walk into a room soundlessly. I must use my creative imagination to pull in my thoughts and emotions and keep them safe and close inside my body. Use this as a Pure Instincts Mantra: soundlessly walking because you can take on anyone, Virile Vajra Fire.