bodhi tree swaying

I found this interesting snippet in the Boston Globe. Apparently the promise of heaven is a greater motivator than the threat of hell. This is of relevance to Buddhists, even though we tend to think less in terms of heaven and hell and more in terms of the sufferings of samsara and the end of suffering in the attainment of nirvana.

Many religious sects incorporate belief in some kind of heaven or hell. The former is a reward for good behavior; the latter is punishment for bad behavior. From a social science point of view, then, a question one might ask is which – heaven or hell – is better at motivating religious practice. One study does just that by analyzing data from an international survey of tens of thousands of people. Both heaven and hell motivated people to attend church and to pray, but the effect was three

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Stumbled across this very witty spoof iPhone ad on BoingBoing.

Peter Clothier has a neat idea for motivating people to push for a public health insurance option. Here is what he wrote:

Step 1: I handwrite a brief letter to my Senators. “Dear Senator …, I voted for you. I have placed my trust in you. I hereby respectfully request that you unequivocally INSIST on the inclusion of a public option or its equivalent in any health care bill that goes to President Obama. Yours truly, (signature.)”

(Find your senators’ addresses here)

Step 2: I place my letters in sealed, stamped envelopes, marked in bright, unmistakable letters on the outside: PO/PO (for Public Option/Post Office) in order to identify it as a part of this effort.

Step 3: IMPORTANT! On Tuesday, September 1 at precisely NOON o’clock, I drive, ride or walk to my nearest United States Post Office and silently place my letters in the outgoing mailbox. Suppose I were to

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Another of the pictures I took yesterday of a dead dragonfly’s wing.

I like this one too. I cropped it so you can see more of the detail.

I couldn’t resist playing with the macro function on my camera this evening after finding a dead dragonfly on the back porch. The picture came out rather well, I thought.

This is a story about waking up from the dream of the self. It’s my story.

For a while now I’ve been having little insights into non-self, or anatta.

For example, I’d be driving along the road, working on being mindful and rooted in sensory experience (rather than drifting off into daydreaming) and I’d notice, in my peripheral awareness, how my hands were jiggling from side to side to move the steering wheel. And I’d realize that my conscious mind was completely uninvolved with these movements. It was as if someone else was in charge of my hands and in charge of keeping the car in its lane. And I’d think — “That’s interesting. Who’s driving? Doesn’t seem like it’s me.”

I’d have similar experiences realizing that the breath is flowing in and out of the body without reference to my conscious mind. Who’s breathing?

Then I started having insights into non-self that …

Naseem Khan comments unfavorably in the Guardian on a piece Norman fisher had in the New York Times a few days ago. “What is the point of an idyllic retreat,” she asks, “if we lose all we have learned back in the noisy distractions of the city?”

It’s not surprising that Norman Fischer – Zen master though he is – got up some people’s noses. His recent piece in the New York Times described his retreat on Puget Sound in such lyrical terms – blue herons, swallows, spectacular sunsets etc – as to evoke the Buddhist hindrance (“sin” is out) of envy. But more than that – as a number of bloggers immediately pointed out – it led to questioning the point of idyllic retreats in general. If William Blake could find heaven in a grain of sand, then shouldn’t we look for it in a thrown-away tube ticket

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Here are just a few bullet point updates on what has had my attention over the last few days:

• Most important has been a spiritual breakthrough that I want to write about in a more expanded form. I just don’t have time to do it justice right now. The short version, though, is that I realized that I don’t have a self. This has been very liberating. More later.
• I’ve been working on research for my book on the Six Elements. Currently I’m on the Space element, and I’m doing some background reading on various theories of what space is. Loop Quantum Gravity is the most interesting theory. It suggests that space is quantized — that is, there are smallest units of space, just as there are smallest units of water. And just as there is no water between the molecules in water, there

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My friend Greg asked me to officiate at his wedding a few weeks ago — just the second one I’ve done. It was a small, informal, and very enjoyable affair. Greg just told me today that there’s a YouTube slideshow of the event. I’m in just a few pics, and one time it’s just the hairy backs of my hands as I sign on the dotted line to make it all official.

Enjoy the show:

I’ve been struggling to articulate an insight that’s been erratically making its way into my life recently. The best I can put it is that “nothing’s personal.” I touched on a theme related to this in the last part of this blog post, and wrote about how it manifests in my parenting on a blog post on Wildmind called The play of causes and conditions. In that post I wrote:

But the most profound thing I’ve been learning is to accept the truth of impermanence and not-self (anatta) when I’m dealing with [my 2-year-old daughter]. I’ve been reflecting a lot on these topics as part of my researches for a book I’m working on. Sometimes, when she’s frustrated, my daughter will try to strike me or will do something like spit at me (honestly, she’s a very sweet kid — it’s just a phase she’s going through and it

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I recently received this email from the Rev. Danny Fisher, Coordinator of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Program at University of the West in Rosemead, CA.

I just recorded a video post for my blog in which I read the Metta Sutta as a show of solidarity with the monks and nuns of Burma, who were recently forbidden from reciting the text at one large monastery and allegedly elsewhere throughout the country. (This is presumably because the text was chanted by monks and nuns participating in 2007’s “Saffron Revolution.”)

http://chaplaindanny.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-and-call-to-action.html

As I say in the video and the post, it occurred to me that this might be a great, easy way for lots of people (especially Buddhist/religious/spiritual bloggers) to show support for the monastics and people of Burma. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m hoping to start a little video campaign of people reciting the Metta Sutta as a

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The Globe had a very interesting article last summer about the creative potential of daydreaming. It came as no surprise to me that there are two different kinds of daydreaming — with or without mindfulness. With a degree of background mindfulness, daydreamers can allow the mind to wander around a subject and notice creative insights. Without mindfulness the mind just wanders all over the place. I often employ "mindful daydreaming" when I’m preparing to teach, because in a relaxed and creative state I tend to come up with better ideas.

A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning – and may even be essential

By Jonah Lehrer  |  August 31, 2008

ON A SUNDAY morning in 1974, Arthur Fry sat in the front pews of a Presbyterian church in north St. Paul, Minn. An engineer at 3M, Fry was also a singer in the church choir. He had gotten into

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Rachel Maddow’s piece is very sobering and shows how right-wing lobbying firms set on derailing health insurance reform are attempting to use thuggish behavior to intimidate legislators.

For some reason the Maddow video doesn’t display unless you visit the post — click on the title above if you can’t see it.

Stewart’s piece is lighter, but does a good job of showing how Fox News helps by endlessly recycling its own talking points (which themselves come from the Republican Party).

There’s an interesting article today in the Boston Globe about the Malleus Maleficarum – "The Hammer of Witches."

"The lengthy tome was medieval Europe’s definitive guide to recognizing and prosecuting witchcraft, the justification for a wave of burnings-at-the-stake — largely of peasant women — that took place from the late 1400s to about 1520. And it helped spread the paranoid notion of a vast satanic conspiracy: a world where demons roamed freely, enticing women to cast spells, kill babies, interfere with procreation, and try to delay the fast-approaching End Times. (At the time, many thought the Earth’s sell-by date was 1535.)

"Written largely by a Dominican friar from Germany named Henricus Institoris, republished broadly in its day, the Malleus was last translated from Latin to English in the 1920s. This month Cambridge University Press published a modern translation in a one-volume

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Again, I’m probably the last person on the planet to see Arj Barker’s "The Sickest Buddhist," which is a very amusing take on spiritual materialism.

It contains some truly hilarious lines, like, "I’m so Zen, I make the power of now look like the power of then," and "My instructor just told us to do a 45 minute meditation; I nailed it in 10."