Small Buddhist community practices faith in Lexington, KY home
In an office at the University Press of Kentucky, one would never expect to find the birthplace of a Buddhist community.
AFP: Nepal’s ex-Gurkhas cheer British settlement rights
KATHMANDU (AFP) — Retired British Gurkha soldiers in Nepal on Friday hailed as “historic” a British announcement that the veterans can settle in Britain.The British government said on Thursday all of the Nepalese fighters who retired before 1997 and had served at least four years with the British army could now apply for residency.
“This is a historic achievement for all Gurkhas,” Jit Bahadur Rai, treasurer of the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen?s Organisation, told AFP.
Gurkhas who retired after 1997 — when their base was moved from Hong Kong following the territory’s return to China — already had the right to settle in Britain and more than 6,000 have done so….
Dan was kind enough to comment on the Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome article I wrote some time ago. You can read the article here. I so liked the way he expressed himself on the issue of store-front detox docs, that I asked if I could use his comment:
I succumbed to the Madison-Avenue hyperbole spewed by a storefront Suboxone-peddling physician. This doc assured me that my years of opiate abuse/dependency would dissipate in a mere two weeks with this wonder drug. Granted, while on Suboxone I felt wonderfully well; afterwards, however, my spirits crumbled as I began to feel worse than I had during the peak of cold-turkey withdrawal. Of course, he dutifully advised me that I was experiencing PAWS – and for an additional $800 in cash I could enjoy another two to four weeks of Subox. I gallantly and charmingly declined.
My relapse was all but inevitable. Eights months later (after a literal drive-by intervention) I entered a medical detox facility and then was assigned to an intensive outpatient program three times per week, three hours per day for 24 sessions – attached thereafter to a one-year aftercare program. This process has been life-changing for me. And right now we are “working” on the skills and strategies to understand and soberly cope with PAWS. Who woulda thunk? The group’s facilitator is an LADC who focuses a huge amount of therapy time on helping her clients understand PAWS and its propensity for leading to relapse. Not only does she make us dig deeply to uncover our original motives for “using,” she guides us and prompts us to do the work necessary to cope during recovery.
There is hope out there. To all who now suffer, understand the pain – instead of trying to cover it. In so doing, you improve greatly the chances that your tomorrows will be improvements upon your “today.” Indeed, this, too, shall pass.
My Most Positive Thoughts to All –
Dan
Does real Buddhism exist in the West? – Brad Warner
Enlightenment is not a cool experience you have, which you then file away with all your other cool experiences. It’s not like that acid trip you took at Burning Man five years ago or that really wicked bike ride down an active volcano in Hawaii when you were in college. It’s certainly not something you can buy for less than it costs you to hire a hooker, then clean up and go get lunch. It’s also not something that someone who’s gotten can now give you.
Consider the empty monarch of mind: unknown, hidden, not understood at all. it has no shape nor form, yet it has unimaginable power. It is able to eliminate a thousand problems, and perfect ten times that many perfections. Although it has no essence, it gives guidance. It cannot be seen, but it has a voice. It is a wonderful leader of the spirit, and its abilities carry these scriptures.
As salt in water, as binding in the artist’s ink, it is there, but it remains unseen. Such is the monarch of mind. It lives inside the body. It goes in and out of the senses, it responds appropriately to other beings without hindrance. It succeeds in all that it does.
When you perceive the mind, you perceive Buddha. The mind is Buddha, and Buddha is mind. When we remain mindful of the buddha mind, the buddha mind is mindful of Buddha. If you wish to become enlightened, discipline the mind and yourself. Purify your habits and mind, and you will find that the mind itself is Buddha. This mind monarch is the only Buddha.
~ Fu Shan Hui (487-569)
Marin gives birth to a new sound – dharma music
“Dharma music is a brand new thing,” says singer-songwriter Eve Decker, a retreat manager at Spirit Rock. “Buddhism in the East has chanting, and there is lyrical music for other spiritual traditions, but dharma music as a popular form for regular folks is just being born.”
Decker, who’s 47 and grew up in Mill Valley, has recorded what is believed to be the first dharma CD, “Commentary on Perfections of the Heart,” an acoustic folk-pop album based on the 10 paramis (teachings) of Buddhism – generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness and equanimity. …
Climate change diagnosed as biggest global health threat – environment – 14 May 2009 – New Scientist
“We have been ignoring the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” This was the message – or maybe confession – spelled out in a report launched by doctors and climatologists in London on Wednesday morning.
A Roman Catholic archbishop who resigned in 2002 over a sex and financial scandal involving a man describes his struggles with being gay in an upcoming memoir.
Sex after death: The new “Body Worlds” exhibit shocks Berlin – Alan Nothnagle – Open Salon
Woody Allen once quipped to Newsweek in 1975, “The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.” Back then he might have been right, but today neither sex nor death can guarantee you privacy.Gunther von Hagens has seen to that. Once again, the famous – and infamous – German anatomist with the pale face and the black fedora has practically written his own headlines with a new “Body Worlds” exhibition in Berlin featuring two “plastinated” male and female corpses engaged in sexual intercourse….
“Unfortunately, saying or hearing negative things about others not only damages them, it can have the effect of solidifying and building up our own ego. The gratification of putting someone down, or even hearing or reading such words spoken by others, gives us the sense of being better than others and pleasure at somebody else’s expense.”
~Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi
Calexico restaurant says griddle has likeness of the Virgin Mary — chicagotribune.com
The griddle at Las Palmas Mexican restaurant has been taken off the stove and is now displayed in a room that is quickly filling up with rosaries, flowers, votive candles and other offerings….
Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal
People sometimes ask me for a blessing because they think I can heal them. Healing power — nonsense! Miracle power — nonsense. I’m just nothing. Just a human being. Just the same as you.”
Hundreds gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Dalai Lama, speaking from the seated, cross-legged position of a sage, officially opened MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values.
via Dalai Lama Opens New Center at MIT – News – Mozilla Firefox.
