Photos and text by Claire Heisler (photos taken in Bhutan)
In the West, we constantly want to replace old things. Shirt has a hole? In the bag for the Salvation Army. Microwave making that funny noise again? In the garbage it goes.
Well, prayer flags don’t work that way. Continued
Daniel Chan, secretary of the Australian Chinese Buddhist Society, thinks so, and he’s planning to do just that, for this week’s record $90 million Oz Lotto draw.
“Well, why not?” he’s told Australia’s The Age. “It’s a truckload of cash.”
He’s got a point, but then, so does the thorn of a rose. Continued
Mount Wutai/ Image by Baptiste Marcel
By Jesse P. Hiltz
What has as much sublime magnitude and timeless reverence as the mountain? Mountains stand and witness the centuries as minutes, where we humans come into being and pass away, as if only in seconds. Generations upon generations of individuals look back over their shoulders and consider their accomplishments in its shadow. Yet, for the mountain, one’s heritage seems like a mere breath. Continued
Most of us gurls, ladies, sisters of the Buddhist world are always hungry for more material about Buddhist women and, here at the Shambhala Sun, we love to highlight such work. Right now, we’re pleased to take note of “Blessings,” a new documentary by Victress Hitchcock, Jampa Kalden, and Cynthia Kneen, which is about the Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns—3,000 remarkable women who practice an ancient yogic tradition in remote Tibetan nunneries and hermitages. Here is the trailer…
For more on Blessings, see MahaSangha News.
The teaching is upside down. – Zen koan
People stumble upon escape arts in the course of life. An escape art frees you to be in greater harmony with what passes for reality. One of the simplest of escape arts is to notice that every thought you have could benefit from a question mark. The upsidedownness or reversibility of everything the mind is doing is a crucial discovery. Continued
And here’s a sample of the items recently added to MahaSangha News — the site where the Buddhist world shares its news:
And, newly added events for you to check out on our Calendar:
James Gritz / © Karmapa Foundation
This week in India, Buddhists celebrated the birthday of the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje.
The head of the Kagyu lineage in Tibet—and the man who some say is likely to play an important, if not the top, role in Tibetan governmental affairs once the Dalai Lama steps down—turned 24. Continued
By Steve Silberman
This is an anecdote I’ve carried in my mind for years:
I have a Buddhist friend who was visiting monasteries in Nepal a few years ago. One day, he got a rare invitation to witness a “sky burial” — the funeral of a monk, held on a mountaintop, culminating in the dismemberment of his body and scattering of his flesh and bones to feed birds of prey and other animals. Continued
We told you the other day about filmmaker Harold Ramis’s playful deflection of the Buddhist angle on his work. But that angle is legit — even if Ramis goes out of his way to play down his connection to the dharma. And it seems that more than a couple people are interested anyway. To wit: Continued
A compromise between spirituality and pragmatism?
By Jesse P. Hiltz
I don’t practice Tai Chi myself. And, despite my yearnings to explore beyond the strict mechanistic framework of “Western medicine,” I still fall back on the monolithic “empirical test” and the direct, causal “cure” for my understanding of heath and illness; the authority of the white lab coat comforts me.
Well, it seemed like a compromise just materialized before me in my email inbox this morning.
The email was the usual “For Immediate Release” kind of press statement from World Tai Chi Day. It claimed that the Harvard Medical School has given Tai Chi “it’s most powerful affirmation as part of modern healthcare.”
I’ll let the image do the talking for a moment here:
Beautiful, ain’t it?
In case you didn’t know: it’s a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma, as rendered by the great Shepard Fairey. You know, he of the Obama “Hope” poster, the famous “Obey/Giant” campaign, and a zillion other things.
I for one feel that we’re quite fortunate that Continued
Chogyam Trungpa at the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, Colorado, 1974. Photo by James Gimian. Used by permission.
This week’s Ocean of Dharma quote, sent over email by the late Trungpa Rinpoche’s longtime editor, Carolyn Gimian:
“Seeing our pain as it is, is a tremendous help. Ordinarily, we are so wrapped up in it that we don’t even see it. We are swimming in oceans of ice water of anxiety, and we don’t even see that we are suffering….Buddhists have realized that we are suffering, that anxiety is taking place. We have understood that anxiety does exist; and because of that, we also begin to realize the possibility of salvation or deliverance from that particular pain and anxiety. According to the hinayana teachings, the fundamental teachings, you have to be very practical: you are going to do something about suffering. On a very personal level, you are going to do something about it.”
From “Recognizing the Reality of Suffering,” in THE TRUTH OF SUFFERING AND THE PATH OF LIBERATION, page 10. To find out more, visit Shambhala.com’s Ocean of Dharma section.
Soka Gakkai Buddhists Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater (who met 10 years ago through SGI International) are the big talents behind the Broadway hit musical “Spring Awakening.” Their Tony Award-winning show moves to Philadelphia this week, playing through June 28 at the Academy of Music.
Read all about this and their other collaborative efforts here, and watch a video of “Spring Awakening” here.
Stephen Prothero
By Mai Nguyen
Could you summarize each of the eight major world religions in 140 characters? Stephen Prothero can. The religion professor at the College of Arts and Science at Boston University has been “tweeting” his views on religion with an amusing and creative twist, enlightening his Twitter followers with the most compact of phrases.
Here’s a taste. This is Prothero’s condensed take on the Buddha’s Eightfold Path: “Path=let go(d).” What’s the meaning behind this tweet? Continued
by Jesse P. Hiltz
Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies… ever. Harold Ramis not only co-wrote that movie but also played the role of parapsychologist, aka ghostbuster, Dr. Egon Spengler.
Well, we were just reading Ain’t It Cool and lo and behold, Harold Ramis was being interviewed about Year One (which I haven’t seen) and he started talking about, us, The Shambhala Sun.
The interviewer says: “A friend of mine who is a long-time practicing Buddhist gave me a copy of Shambhala Sun. What a great piece. I learned a lot about you, about other things. I was not aware–maybe because I was just too young when GROUNDHOG DAY came out–that the spiritual community had embraced that film until many years later.”