20 May 2010
To speak is only human, so we all have our problems with Right Speech. For some, the challenge is resisting the urge to gossip. Other people shade the truth all day long, dramatizing every memory in the retelling, or padding every anecdote of accomplishment. Some people use words to harm their enemies, while others use [...]
23 Jul 2009
“That abominable and sensual act called reading the newspaper, thanks to which all the misfortunes and cataclysms in the universe over the last twenty-four hours, the battles which cost the lives of fifty thousand men, the murders, the strikes, the bankruptcies, the fires, the poisonings, the suicides, the divorces, the cruel emotions of statesmen and actors, are transformed for us, [...]
23 Jul 2009
“The press really has a hard time telling you why what the Dalai Lama is doing and what Jimmy Swaggart is doing are different. It doesn’t really understand that. And that’s one of the most astonishing disasters we are facing.” — Ken Wilber
20 Jul 2009
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice what a natural Buddhist Cesar Milan — AKA “The Dog Whisperer” on the National Geographic TV Channel — stunningly, beautifully, is. On each episode, Cesar, a dog trainer, meets with the owners of dogs that are hyper-aggressive, hyper-anxious, or hyper-fearful. He interviews the owners for a while, and then he meets [...]
20 Jul 2009
Here are some of Cesar’s Buddhist-flavored axioms for rehabilitating dogs and training people: “Send the brain to a calm, assertive state, and walk. Even if you take only one step, that is an accomplishment. This is all you have to do.” “You can’t live in the past or future if you want to help a dog.” “You must [...]
6 Feb 2009
Four paragraphs by a speech given by the author Karen Armstrong in 2007 pinpoints the problem that is the focus of this blog and proposes a logical solution (my underlines): “The modernity that gave us the freedoms we celebrate today has also been spectacularly violent, because our technology has enabled us to kill each other with greater [...]
22 Jan 2009
I’ve been reading Gil Fronsdal’s wonderful book, “The Issue at Hand.”Time after time I get to a sentence, I read it, and I need to put the book down to let the idea sink in for a while, even for a day or two, before I start reading again. It’s a terrific book — and free from Gil’s web site. [...]
21 Jan 2009
Students in my undergraduate journalism class at Carleton College would never imagine, I’ll bet, that I sincerely regard each one of them as being ethically spotless, all-knowing, absolutely perfect human beings who at one point in the cosmic past was my dear mother. Being a Buddhist carries along with it lots of interesting implications for [...]
3 Sep 2008
ROCHESTER, MN — Jim Reynolds began his 40-minute talk to a group of Mayo Clinic physicians and health care workers last week by closing his eyes, putting his palms together and intoning an ancient chant in a dead language. "I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging; I am of [...]
20 Feb 2008
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — There is an old interviewing trick journalists use to get people to say things far more intimate than they planned to reveal. The trick works when the journalist, instead of asking a follow-up question during the silence that follows an answer, instead stays silent. The compulsion to fill conversational vacuums is [...]