I had joined the Peacemaker Institute’s Bearing Witness Retreat, a five-day session held at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps, now a memorial museum, as a way to gain a deeper understanding of suffering and one’s own reaction to it…
We walked the grounds, sat in barracks, sat on the tracks, and had evening discussions in order to try to synthesize the intense emotions that inevitably arise. My worst nightmare was that just seeing the wooden watch towers, the barbed wire fences and the sadly iconic brick gateway through which trainloads of doomed prisoners passed would cause me unbearable suffering. I feared sitting cross-legged on those infamous tracks, silently meditating in the Soto Zen tradition in bitter cold winds slapping my face under a monotonic gray sky… The nightmare was realized. And then some.
the bbc show about the life of the buddha is posted on youtube now (50 minutes):
this version is a little different from the others i’ve heard, but they’re each basically the same. it starts:
“500 years before christ, a young prince set out on a journey. he would travel through pain and suffering to reach nirvana, the everlasting bliss we all dream about. (his holiness the dalai lama adds: ’symbol of peace. symbol of compassion. symbol of non-violence’). he was the buddha, he grew up in a palace surrounded by luxury. in his teens, his privilege afforded him every indulgence. but he gave all this up to gain ultimate wisdom.
he would travel the darkest corridors of his mind to come face to face with the devil inside him. he founded the first world religion followed today by over 400 million people. a religion where meditation is used to reach a state of complete peace and happiness. (his holiness: ‘our own potential, our own effort: to know the ultimate reality’) and the events of his life make up one of the greatest stories ever told, and the buddha one of world’s most enduring icons.”
lifehack is running a cute, short article about how the brain distorts perceptions based on expected mental models. this kind of cognitive error is i think exactly what buddhism is trying to discover in meditation practice, and correct through conscious awareness of the process. though meditation tends to put more weight on emotions arising, and the cognition of self. but i’m increasingly thinking of meditation practice in terms of correction of cognitive errors and distortions.
sitting monkey is place where