Actor George Clooney emerged from an Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama Monday night to say the White House will appoint an envoy to Darfur, the Sudanese region ravaged by war and famine.
via Clooney: W.H. to appoint Darfur envoy – Carol E. Lee – POLITICO.com.
See George: that’s called “Presidential, compassionate and diplomatic.”
• Sit in formal meditation for 20 minutes each day.
• Listen to one dharma talk each week on tricycle.com.
• Study Dogen’s Genjokoan, the text selected for the period.
• Commit to the sixteen bodhisattva precepts.
• Practice with others at tricycle.com or at a local meditation center.
• Begin when you like. Tricycle’s staff will begin February 23.
Between 2003 and 2007 — as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.
One day in spring 2007, the phone rang in the little Buddhist center in Long Beach that has been the focus of the Venerable Tenzin Kacho’s life since she was ordained a nun by the Dalai Lama.
On the other end of the line was her brother, Robert Kiyosaki, a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam who crashed three times and went on to become a globe-trotting entrepreneur and author of a best-selling book on personal finance, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”
He was calling from his publisher’s office in New York. There were some pleasantries, then Kiyosaki cut to the chase: “I’ve got a great idea for you. We’re going to write a book together.”
The book, he said, would be an inspirational blend of Eastern religion and business acumen told through their own experiences and conclusions about what is ultimately meaningful in life.
Mindful Work
If you have a “work altar,” send a picture along and I’ll publish it along with any information you care to include.
bill at digital-dharma.net
Malaria claims more than a million lives and sickens hundreds of millions of people each year, and more than 75% of malaria victims are African children under the age of five. Many of these children die from malaria-related hypoglycemia before they can reach a clinic capable of administering an intravenous dose of glucose, but one researcher believes he has found the solution—sugar. Researchers found that giving patients a teaspoon of moistened sugar under their tongues every 20 minutes is as effective as the standard therapy of intravenous glucose.
BEIJING, Feb. 18 — The county of Lithang in Sichuan province was under lockdown this week after Tibetan monks, laypeople and nomads clashed with Chinese security forces Sunday and Monday, according to residents.
via Chinese County in Lockdown After Pro-Tibet Protests – washingtonpost.com.
In Vienna on Monday, 10 Austrian bishops convened a crisis session to deal with the fallout. Erich Leitenberger, a spokesman for the Vienna Archdiocese, said church officials around the country had been inundated with letters, phone calls and e-mail messages, including from parishioners saying they were leaving the church.
Austria, a majority-Catholic country with a complicated Nazi past, had been reeling from the pope’s revocation of the excommunication of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers as well as the scale and genocidal intent of the Holocaust.
While that firestorm was still raging, Benedict ignited another by appointing the Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, known for [saying that Kartina was punishment for the sins of the people of New Orleans] and for saying that homosexuality was curable, as the auxiliary bishop of Linz.
via Amid Scandals, Questions of Where the Pope’s Focus Lies – NYTimes.com.
…away from the polarizing rhetoric of a campaign, what do researchers know about people like Fakhrid-Deen? Do the children fare better or worse than those with heterosexual parents? Are they, as social conservatives assert, more apt to experience harmful effects and confusion about their sexuality?
At least 4 million U.S. children have one or both parents who identify themselves as homosexual, said Gary Gates of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, but long-term studies are still limited.
Sociologists Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz published an analysis in 2001 in the American Sociological Review of 21 studies of children raised by homosexual parents and found that, overall, they were no more likely to suffer from psychological problems than kids raised in conventional homes.
“There was a very strong consensus that kids turned out about the same,” Stacey said.
via Gay parents rights: Gay parents rights issue divides U.S., not families — chicagotribune.com.
At the National Institutes of Health, officials have started drafting guidelines they will need to start funding human embryonic stem cell research that has been off-limits for nearly eight years.
At the University of California at San Francisco, scientists are poised to dismantle the cumbersome bureaucracy they created to segregate experiments that were acceptable under the federal restrictions from studies that were not.
At the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Mass., graduate students and other scientists paid with federal grants are eagerly awaiting the day when they can contribute their eureka moments to projects that are forbidden under the current policy.
But in the month since Inauguration Day, the moment they have been awaiting has not come, prompting some to ask: When will President Obama deliver on his campaign promise to lift one of the most contentious policies imposed by his predecessor?
“Everyone is waiting with bated breath,” said George Daley, a leading stem cell scientist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “We’re all waiting to breathe a huge sigh of relief.”
via Scientists Await Action on Stem Cells – washingtonpost.com.
China’s Communist Party tightly regulates religious activity, especially the banned Falun Gong sect, but allows wide latitude for many law-abiding Catholics and Protestants who meet in unofficial house churches. Tibetan Buddhists however, are in a different category.
Their spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing blames for stoking the deadly riots in Lhasa last March. Although he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the Dalai Lama is routinely described in official state media reports as a wolf in monk’s clothing, an evil and dangerous separatist. In December, China stunned European leaders by canceling a summit on the economic crisis because the E.U. president had planned to meet the Dalai Lama the same week.
For now, most Chinese who practice Tibetan Buddhism are able to worship under the radar because their numbers remain comparatively small and their movement is not organized. Followers meet in private homes to recite sutras and compare knowledge or gather in apartments where wealthy benefactors have set up elaborate shrines. Many appear to be unaware of regulations intended to restrict their worship.
via In China, A Different Brand of Buddhism – washingtonpost.com.
Lab-on-a-Chip the Latest Weapon Against Pollution
Israeli scientists have developed a tiny laboratory, complete with a microscopic workbench, to measure water quality in real time. This lab-on-a-chip can detect pollutants and pathogens, and the Pentagon hopes it may detect the intrusion of a biological weapon into a U.S. water supply.
The Environmental Food Crisis: A Crisis of Waste
Over half of the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain, finds a new study by the United Nations Environment Programme released today.
Obama Shifts U.S. Policy to Back Global Mercury Control Treaty
The Obama administration has reversed the former U.S. position on limiting mercury pollution worldwide. Before astonished environment ministers attending the United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council opening session in Nairobi today, the U.S. delegation endorsed negotiations for a new global treaty to control mercury pollution, to begin this year.The Bush administration had opposed legally binding measures to control mercury, despite broad support among a majority of countries in the UNEP Governing Council.
Marine Life Explorers Find Same Species at Both Poles
Gray whales are one of at least 235 species that live in both polar seas despite a distance of more than 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) between them, Census of Marine Life explorers said today.
Climate Could Cross Critical Threshold by 2100, Expert Warns
Without decisive action by governments, corporations and individuals, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Doctors Fight Planned Corpus Christi Coke-Fired Power Plant
Coastal Bend medical doctors, health care professionals, and others from all walks of life are seeking a contested case hearing as a part of their fight against the Las Brisas coke-fired power plant proposed for the Gulf coast port city of Corpus Christi.
Appeals Court Reverses Limits on Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
In a victory for the coal industry, a panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers erred in his March 2007 decision that required full consideration of the environmental effects of mountaintop removal and slowed the issuing of new permits.
Trying to heal your depression with spiritual practice alone can make the condition chronic and prone to relapse, says a new study. Physicians and long-term meditators Roger Walsh, Robin Bitner, Bruce Victor, and Lorena Hillman explain why both antidepressants and meditation have an important role to play in treating depression.
In short, spiritual practice turned out to be far more complex and demanding than advertised. True, there were many gifts and graces, and some awe-inspiring glimpses of our spiritual potentials along the way. But covering up these potentials were often layer upon layer of difficult emotions, compulsive conditioning, and countless old wounds, fears, and phobias. And ironically, spiritual practice frequently makes these challenges more painfully obvious.
