Greg Zwahlen: June 2009 Archives
Tuesday June 23, 2009
Categories: Arts and Media, Buddhism
In Review: Adi Shankaracharya
I recently rented "Adi Shankaracharya," the first and only movie made entirely in Sanskrit. It's a biopic of Shankara, an 8th century Hindu saint who was perhaps the most important exponent of Advaita Vedanta (a Hindu tradition).
I can't say the movie was terribly entertaining (it is 2:40 minutes long, and I watched most of it in 4X, which was still slow enough to read all of the subtitles most of the time). Nonetheless, I'd recommend it if you want to get a sense of the 8th century Indian religious milieu and the sound of spoken Sanskrit.
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Filed Under: Adi Shankaracharya, Advaida Vedanta, Buddhism, G.V. Iyer, Hinduism, India, Sanskrit, Tibet, Vajrayana
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Add to StumbleUponTuesday June 16, 2009
Norman Fischer's Plan B
Zoketsu Norman Fischer, a senior dharma teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center, has an interesting article in the latest issue of Buddhadharma magazine (a portion of which is available online). In the article he states that as a teacher, he has a "Plan A" approach in which he teaches Soto Zen "with all the usual bells and whistles," and a "Plan B" approach in which he teaches meditation in secular contexts, such as at Google, with doctors and businesspeople and so forth.
He seems to start to set up oppositions between the two (as his Plan A-B schema suggests) before backing off of them. Usually when I read someone talking about a Plan B, it implies to me they are talking about a contingency plan, what they will do if Plan A doesn't work out, not something complementary. But it seems that ultimately Fischer does see them as complimentary. Which is cool. I think they are complimentary too.
Filed Under: Buddhadharma magazine, Buddhism, Google, meditation, mindfulness, Norman Fischer, San Francisco Zen Center, The Worst Horst, Zen
Tuesday June 9, 2009
Categories: Arts and Media, Right Lifestyle
1 in 11 Americans meditates?
According to an article yesterday in USA Today, meditation, "once thought of as an esoteric, mystical pursuit . . . is going mainstream." One might argue that if it's in USA Today, it already is mainstream, but in any case. . .
The article has a few interesting bits of info.
Filed Under: Buddhism, Jon Kabat-Zinn, meditation, mindfulness based stress reduction, Rep. Tim Ryan
Tuesday June 2, 2009
Categories: Right Lifestyle
No sex during the day for Buddhists?
Buddhist academic and translator Jose Cabezon has a great article in the latest issue of Buddhadharma about some of the peculiar ideas many Buddhist traditions have about sex (about which most Western practioners are unaware), and how he reconciles those ideas with the love and esteem he feels for the textual tradition as a scholar. And he quotes Salt-N-Pepa.
You can read the beginning of the article free here, but it is totally worth buying the issue to read the whole thing.
The Buddha himself, in the early Sutra Pitika, did not attempt to micromanage anyone's sex life. As Cabezon describes it, sexual misconduct "was simply understood as adultery." However, later Indian Mahayana heavies like Asanga and Vasubandhu, through to Tibetan luminaries of all traditions such as Gampopa, Tsongkhapa, and Dza Patrul, got a lot more, er, involved when it came ot making rules for the laity. Among their lists of dos and don'ts:
Tuesday June 2, 2009
Categories: Buddhism
Finding Fearlessness in Fearful Times
This week we have a special guest post from Gaylon Ferguson, PhD, a senior teacher (acharya) in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. He has led meditation retreats for thirty-three years. As core faculty at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, he teaches Religious and Interdisciplinary Studies. His first book, Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With, has just been published by Shambhala Publications.
This morning I started a list of things I am afraid of: fall-out from the ongoing financial meltdown (was it greed? ignorance?); violence and armed aggression in the face of increasing economic uncertainty (gun sales are up); devastation from climate change (see above: the social and environmental consequences of greed, ignoring?); a runaway influenza epidemic; the threat of nuclear holocaust. I'm afraid of dying, and I'm afraid of the deaths of my friends and loved ones. I'm afraid of the power of my own deeply ingrained habits of ignoring, reacting defensively, distracting myself day and night from reality--including the reality of anxiety. It's like there's a giant billboard that screams: GOT FEAR?
The times they are a-frightening?
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