bodhi tree swaying

• Nirvanity n. being attached to one’s supposed spiritual attainments
• Buddhacious adj. being unconventional by dint of one’s insight and the freedom it brings
• Sangha Claus n. 1. the red bodhisattva of generosity toward children, 2. one who gives generously to the spiritual community
• Amateur dharmatics n. the act of seeking powerful “spiritual experiences” because of a lack of appreciation for the ordinary
• Skandhal n. the outrageous belief that a self can be found in the mind or body
• Bodhisattvacation n. when spiritual aspirants take a week off so that they can help more sentient beings in the long term
• mahayaya n. the periodic arising, in the most sober of Buddhists, of the desire to be a rock star (as in the phrase, “get your mahayayas out”)

From the Wall Street Journal:

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the

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It’s ironic that just as science is beginning to discover how creativity works, it is (in the US at least) in the midst of a marked decline. A Newsweek article reports that while IQ has been steadily rising, generation by generation, creativity began to decline steeply after 1990.

It’s a fascinating article (that I’m only half-way through), but in case one day you ever need to remind yourself what creativity was, here’s how it used to work:

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available

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Feelings and emotions are funny things. Emotional pain doesn’t involve any physical damage to the body, but it hurts just as much as a physical pain does. And it seems that some of the mechanisms of emotional pain may be similar to physical pain, given that recent research demonstrates that analgesics (painkillers) actually blunt feelings of being emotionally hurt.

Everyone has experienced pain and sickness at some point in their lives. For such physical ailments, one of the first things we do–or are instructed to do by medical providers–is take a pain reliever, like acetaminophen (a.k.a., Tylenol). But physical pain isn’t the only kind of pain. Our feelings can also be hurt. So researchers wondered whether acetaminophen, which acts on the central nervous system, could blunt social pain, too. In one experiment, healthy college students were randomly assigned to take acetaminophen or a placebo twice a day for three weeks. Those

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It’s long been known that children from homes that have books in them do better in school. A new study suggests that introducing books into homes produces significant educational gains. David Brooks writes:

Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.

Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the “summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.

Read

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I love this Star Trek mashup, although I’m slightly disturbed by how many scenes I instantly recognized. Signs of a misspent youth, adolescence, and adulthood?

It’s lovely it ends with a shot of Nichelle Nichols. What a beautiful woman.

A Battlestar Galactica version would be great!

This image from an EIZO medical imaging “pinup” calendar reminds me of an ancient Buddhist deconstructive technique that aims to remind us of impermanence and to lessen sexual craving.

Here’s a late example from Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara:

She … on embracing whom you experienced the highest bliss;
She is nothing but bones … why do you not willingly cuddle them and feel bliss?

This next one’s older. It’s by Rajadatta, who was a monk at the time of the Buddha. This is him describing how he became Enlightened:

I, a monk, gone to the charnel ground, saw a woman cast away, discarded there in the cemetery. Though some were disgusted, seeing her — dead, evil — lust appeared, as if I were blind to the oozings. In less time than it takes for rice to cook, I got out of that place. Mindful, alert, I sat down to one

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Above is my great grandfather, Lewis Stephen (1872-1962). He died when I was one year old, so I never knew him, but I’m told he was a lovely man.

This is my grandfather, Robert Drummond Stephen (1900-1942). He died in an accident when my dad was 9 years old.

This is my dad as a boy, with his sister, Roberta (Bertha).

This is me, with my kids, Maia and Malkias.

Yay for dads!

Last year, a week after returning from Ethiopia, I got roped into narrating a movie that was being submitted to the 48 Hour Film Festival in New Hampshire. As well as narrating, I helped brainstorm the plot and had a small onscreen role. I was asked to participate again this year, but since my wife works at weekends, when the competition takes place, I had to say no. But Newmarket is a small place…

So when the kids and I went down to Crackskulls Cafe for icecream, I bumped into the crew and was invited to be an extra. Fame! Again!

So here are two shots of my brief appearance onscreen. You really need the stills, otherwise you’d miss me!

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Sunday was the day for the monthly New Hampshire Media Makers meetup in Crackskulls Cafe and Bookstore in downtown Newmarket. Shrijnana had Maia at the inaugural young Sangha meeting at Aryaloka, so I took Malkias along with me. Considering it was a two hour meeting with lots of adult chatter, he did great. He even fell asleep for 40 minutes or so.

In the photo above, I’m sitting with the Nebula Award-winning author, James Patrick Kelly.

The guy above with the yellow t-shirt is a filmmaker, although I can’t remember his name. There are a lot of amazing people at NHMM.

Both photographs are stolen from John Herman‘s Flikr photostream.

Update: And here are three more pics from the mighty E. Christopher Clark (“Geek Force Five!“)…

This, sadly, isn’t that different from some of the stuff you’ll find attributed to the Buddha on many quotations sites.

HT to @nivarasa for this.

Seeing a Fake Buddha Quote on Twitter is pretty much a daily occurrence, but this one retweeted by a Buddhist particularly struck me this morning:

He is able who thinks he is able. #Buddha

What interests me about this one is that it’s being passed on by people who have “Buddha” or “Buddhist” as part of their Twitter usernames, and yet it strikes me as being profoundly unBuddhist. I’m always open to correction, but the Buddha didn’t strike me as being an advocate of “positive thinking.” The Buddha’s actual position seemed to be more, it doesn’t matter what you think you are, what is important is what you do.

The Buddha of course encouraged the development of ethically positive thinking, which is thinking free from greed, hatred, and delusion, and imbued with wisdom and compassion. But the idea that you can do something just because you think you can is one he’d …

Spotted on Twitter:

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
—Buddha.

It’s no doubt surprising to many people, since the terminology is a standard part of modern discussion about Buddhism, but the Buddha didn’t often talk in terms of “the present moment.” The closest I know to the quote above is a single reference in the Majjhima Nikaya (131), which says:

“You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.”

There is also however a passage where a disciple of the Buddha, Samiddhi, says the following:

“I, friend, do not reject the present moment to pursue what time will bring. I reject what time will bring to pursue the present moment.”

But …

Just spotted in the wild:

“You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself”
–Buddha

There’s nothing wrong with this — it just isn’t something the Buddha said.

I’m not really going to post one of these every day. My title is as fake as the following quote.

“When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.”

I came across this on Twitter today, tweeted by Buddha_Bones: “RT @Sharon_Phoenix “When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” ~Buddha”

This can be found in various books attributed to Jack Kornfield, the Buddha, and Shunryu Suzuki. As far as I can tell, those words first crop up in Saddhatissa’s “Before He Was Buddha: The Life of Siddhartha” (page 92) I don’t have the book and Google only offers a snippet view, so I’m not sure whether Saddhatissa puts those words into the Buddha’s mouth, or whether they are words that Saddhatissa says and someone else has mistaken them as the Buddha’s. If you have a copy of this book, please do let me know.

Like many …

These are all photographs of my grandfather, Robert Drummond Stephen (born My 10, 1900), who was a professional soldier in the The King’s Own Scottish Borderers. He was my dad’s father.

Unfortunately I never met him because he died in an accident on Aug 3, 1942, long before I was born.

The first two pictures were taken in Egypt in 1924 and 1925. I get the feeling that the young lady was not a strict adherent to Muslim morality.

There were many …

This footage is quite extraordinary and painful. The cruelty is sickening, but then you have a USDA inspector saying he doesn’t want to be told about abuses to animals because then he’d have to shut the slaughterhouse down.

The launch of the second edition of “Vegetarianism: A Buddhist View” is this Friday, November 13. By the way, you’re invited to my online launch party.

The launch of the second edition of “Vegetarianism: A Buddhist View” is on Friday, November 13 (by the way, you’re invited to my online launch party).

From the Guardian, a couple of days ago.

Eating meat could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving because of the impact it has on global warming, according to a senior authority on climate change.

Lord Stern of Brentford, former adviser to the government on the economics of climate change, said people will have to consider turning vegetarian to help reduce global carbon emissions.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better,” Stern said.

Farmed ruminant animals, including cattle and sheep, are thought to be responsible for up to a quarter of “man-made” methane emissions worldwide.

Stern, whose 2006 Stern Review

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The meal I cooked last night was so good I was moved to swear (mildly) out loud, which is most unfortunate since both kids started cursing. My two-year-old daughter liked it so much she also hugged and kissed me. So here it is — Bhara Hara Kaddoo — or baked courgettes (zucchini) stuffed with vegetarian ground meat and bulgur. The recipe is one I adapted, to make it vegan, from a book by Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Vegetarian Cooking.

(For four persons)

INGREDIENTS
4 six-inch courgettes/zucchini
1 tablespoon sunflower or safflower oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 oz bulgur (uncooked)
8 oz vegetarian ground beef
2 teaspoons madras curry powder (mild to hot depending on taste)

(For the sauce)
3 tablespoons sunflower or safflower oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1lb fresh ripe tomatoes (puréed)
salt to taste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander (that’s cilantro if you’re American.

METHOD
1. Preheat over to 350F/180C
2. Cut the courgettes in half lengthwise. Use a

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French pop music rightly has a reputation for being awful, but here’s some music in French that’s pretty good. Most of the artists aren’t French. Axelle Red is Belgian. Carli Bruni is Italian. Isabelle Boulay and Julie Dorion are Canadian. Bat For Lashes is a British band with a Pakistani singer. That leaves KYO, who are that rare thing — a French band that doesn’t totaly suck, Florent Pagny, who is one of those French singers who can’t decide whether he’s singing pop music or opera, and Francis Cabrel who is (in my humble opinion) absolutely brilliant.

Enjoy!