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dharmasun is hosting a video of dzongsar khyentse rinpoche discussing the origins and categories of buddhism. He is one of my favorite tibetan teachers; he’s brilliant and funny. i really recommend watching the video or just a few moments to see what i mean. it’s in english past the very short introduction in tibetan.
he jokes about how having a mobile phone is important to buddhism, and uses that as an example, as one example of his silliness.
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jamie wheal, an executive management consultant, released an interesting set of slides under creative commons, called Free Your Ass, and your Mind will Follow. he advocates mental and physical training - including bio-feedback games and other mental skills exercises - as something that all business leaders should pursue. he cites the military and nasa as examples where this kind of training is being used effectively.
like him it really surprises me that mental exercise like meditation and mental training is not more commonplace. especially after neuroplasticity studies are finding that mental training at all ages actually reshapes the brain in positive ways.
colloquially, games like cross word puzzles, sudoku, riddles, card games, board games, and the like are all probably performing this function for people; as is work itself. but research is finding meditation beneficial in many areas, and games designed specifically for the task do much better at growing new brain cells than common puzzles.
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it’s difficult to explain the buddhist notion of emptiness to people. sounds quite nihilistic. how can it describe the ultimate nature of reality, are they saying that it is a complete void? early buddhist translations made this even worse, when they translated the sanskrit word shunyata as voidness. but it’s really quite the opposite of that, it’s about the interdependence of all things.
this quote by sogyal rinpoche just came by my email inbox:
Nothing has any inherent existence of its own when you really look at it, and this absence of independent existence is what we call “emptiness.” Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object; and on a certain level it is. But when you look more closely at the tree, you will see that ultimately it has no independent existence.
When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretches across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it, all the seasons and the weather, moonlight and starlight and sunlight—all form part of this tree.
As you begin to think more and more about the tree, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is; that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else; and that at every moment its nature is subtly changing. This is what we mean when we say things are empty, that they have no independent existence.
this is true of trees and everything really, but what’s even more amazing, it’s true of us too.
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usa today is plugging one of my lineage’s retreat centers, shambhala mountain center, as a top ten place to get away from the hubbub for awhile.
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lieutenant shin is starting the new year with a discussion of historical warrior buddhists, on her buddhist chaplain blog, and not just about shaulin monks and samurai. can’t wait for the next post.
sitting monkey is place where