sitting monkey is place where
david evans
writes about meditation, buddhism, and related topics.
yay, i found a buddhist cartoon about dharma the cat.
i’m sitting on my meditation pillow as I type this, and my adopted kitten has been sitting on it as well just behind me all afternoon.
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max just sent me this interesting article in the christian science monitor about law enforcement officers going on a meditation retreat. The message of the retreat: the futility of meeting violence with violence.
and cheryl sent me this nice quote from His Holiness:
At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?”
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete you know. “
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back… but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”
on a related note, Israeli fighter pilots recently refused to bomb targets in the West Bank and Gaza on moral grounds.
i took a class this weekend called “the art of being human”, sounds easy right? it was tough, myself and sixty other students sat in meditation for hours and hours. i usually don’t have trouble sitting for long stretches but my knees were killing me by the end.
this was a restart for me. i took this class once before, fifteen years ago. that was my first retreat in this lineage, but i feel a much stronger connection to it now. jesse miller taught the class. he was a student of chogyam trungpa rinpoche, one of my favorite buddhist teachers.
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last night I went to see Lama Surya Das speak. he just started a tour for his latest book. i know him because i’ve been curious about dzogchen tibetan meditation for awhile and I listened to his book on tape about it. he teaches that, lucid dreaming practice, and other things around the US. you can visit his web site for more details.
the talk was short but very sweet. he’s hilarious. a long island accent, super dry delivery, and a zinger every minute. he does a great stand up comic version of ancient tibetan philosophy… he encourages us all to lighten up as we enlighten up, and take things less seriously. i certainly can use that advice.
last friday I attend a lecture from his holiness the fourteenth dalai lama, tenzin gyatso. i was lucky to see him two years ago when he taught a class on the heart sutra. i felt really fortunate to see him a second time. (photo to right by jeff miller - 1998) he just started a tour of the US with a talk titled “a human approach to world peace”.