Students participating in the class are required to observe disciplines drawn from various monastic traditions, including refraining from using any technology other than electric lighting, quitting coffee and alcohol, avoiding physical contact and prolonged eye contact, and eating only unprocessed foods.

Students also have to follow a dress code, with males wearing black shirts and females wearing white shirts, and males and females have to sit on opposite sides of the classroom.

That’s not all.

No makeup, jewelry or hair products. Laptops are prohibited; notes can be taken only with paper and pen. And don’t even think of checking your cellphone for texts or email.

The disciplines are introduced gradually, but there is a full month of intensive restrictions that begins in mid-March:

Students can only eat food in its natural form; nothing processed. They can’t eat when it’s dark, nor speak to anyone while they eat. They must be celibate, foregoing even hugs, handshakes and extended eye contact. No technology except for electric light. They can read for other classes, but news from the outside world is forbidden.

Students are required to confess and acknowledge any transgressions of the rules in their class journals.

There are no exams for the class, which is graded entirely on the basis of participation and personal integrity.

Students see many personal benefits flowing from participation in the class.

As a nursing major at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, [sophomore Madelyn] Keyser [20, of Castro Valley, California] said she hopes the class will help her become more observant and a better listener to her patients.

Students also have to write in a journal every 30 minutes during their waking hours. And required course research cannot be done online — students must consult books and librarians, or have conversations with religious leaders.

Freshman Rachel Eisenberg said she enrolled because it’s important “to figure out yourself before you can really help other people.”

“It would give me a chance to really listen to myself and focus on my needs and feelings,” said Eisenberg, 18, of Miami.

There were 100 applicants for the course, but this was whittled down to 17 students.

McDaniel’s course sounds like a fascinating way for students to learn about themselves.

via the Houston Chronicle

From Salon.com:

If you have never heard of the Green Lama … he was an American pulp magazine hero of the 1940s whose superpower was imparted by, of all things, Buddhism. Om mani padme hum: such is the mantra of billionaire playboy Jethro Dumont (best billionaire playboy superhero name ever) when he wants to magically turn into his crime-fighting alter ego, the Green Lama. With his trusty sidekick Tsarong, Dumont/Lama battles evildoers like Willie the Sleeper and the Mad Magi.

Salon’s article discusses an exhibit on the Green Lama, among other comic book heroes with a Tibet connection, at the Rubin Museum of Art.

It’s clear, though, when you look at the Buddha’s teachings, that he encouraged us to make effort in meditation, and in our lives generally. His last words, in fact, were “With diligence, strive on.”

And in my own meditation I find I have to make effort all the time. I have to let go of compulsive thinking, steer my awareness back to the body and the breathing, correct my posture, adjust my attitudes.

One section of the Eightfold Path — one of the Buddha’s key teachings — is “Right Effort.” Right effort is counted as being part of the meditation (samadhi) section of the path.

Right Effort, in the context of the eightfold path, is seen as one of three pivotal aspects of practice, along with Right View and Right Mindfulness. Every aspect of practice depends upon effort, mindfulness, and view.

Effort, mindfulness, and view are described as three states that “run around and circle” all other practices. For example, if you want to practice Right Speech, you first have to be mindful of your speech. Without mindfulness, there is no possibility of any practice. You also have to have a discriminating awareness (or view) of which speech activities are unskillful and cause suffering, and which are skillful and lead us away from suffering. And then you actually need to make effort to abandon unskillful speech and to cultivate skillful speech. So on every step of the path, effort is involved, along with mindfulness and view.

Right Effort is usually defined in terms of the Four Right Efforts, or Exertions. These are:

1. The effort to prevent the arising of unskillful qualities that have not yet arisen.
2. The effort to abandon unskillful qualities that have already arisen.
3. The effort to cultivate skillful qualities that have not yet arisen.
4. The effort to maintain and increase to fruition skillful qualities that have arisen

Of course we can make either too much or too little effort. There once was a monk called Sona, who was considering giving up monastic life because his efforts weren’t paying off. Just as he was wondering whether he should return to his family, the Buddha appeared to Sona. (This was described as the Buddha “magically” appearing, but I think we could take this as the image of the Buddha appearing in Sona’s mind as he debated with himself.) The (imagined) Buddha asked Sona:

“Before, when you were a house-dweller, were you skilled at playing the lute?”

Sona of course replied that he had.

The (imagined) Buddha went on:

“And what do you think: when the strings of your lute were too taut, was your lute in tune and playable?”

“No, lord,” replied Sona.

“And what do you think: when the strings of your lute were too loose, was your lute in tune and playable?”

“No, lord.”

“And what do you think: when the strings of your lute were neither too taut nor too loose, but tuned to be right on pitch, was your lute in tune and playable? … In the same way, Sona, over-aroused persistence leads to restlessness, overly slack persistence leads to laziness. Thus you should find the right pitch for your energy, attune the pitch of your faculties, and thus begin your reflections.”

How do we know when, like Sona, we’re making too much or too little effort? The thing is that for our effort to be “right” effort it needs to be combined with mindfulness and right view. Mindfulness allows us to notice what the results of our efforts are, which right view lets us know whether those efforts are helpful or unhelpful, and whether we’re making the right kind of effort.

For example, if your mind lacks mindfulness, and you’re simply drifting, lost in thought, then you’re not exerting enough effort. If you’re feeling a sense of despair about your practice, then you also probably don’t have enough effort. If you’re getting tense and uptight, then you’re making too much effort. If you’re in a state of elation and aren’t very sensitive and kind to others, then you’re probably making too much effort. If you’re giving yourself a hard time, you’re trying too hard. It’s our mindfulness and our “view” that let us know what’s going on and whether it’s helpful.

You need to keep noticing what’s happening around your effort; what’s happening as a result of your effort. When we do that, our effort is more likely to be balanced.

The word “effort” and the related word “work” sometimes give the wrong idea. We can think of work and effort as being joyless activities. So when I talk about working in meditation, and putting effort into our practice, I like to flank the words “work” or “effort” with the terms “rest” and “play.” There needs to be a relaxation of any unnecessary effort — the effort that goes into making the body tense, or that goes into endless thinking, for example. So around our effort there needs to be an attitude of restful, mindful, expansive awareness. And the effort we make should ideally not be forced or unnatural, but light and playful. Meditation can become a joyful exploration: “Where can I go today?”

Yes, there may be times when we have to struggle (to stay awake for example) or have to forcefully restrain ourselves from doing something that we think is grossly unhelpful (for example when we repress the urge to say something unkind) but these should increasingly be unnecessary as we retrain the mind.

Now, it is possible to get to a point in our meditation practice where we don’t need to make any effort. The mind clears and becomes still, joy arises, and we’re simply present to our experience as it unfolds. The positive factors we’ve been developing in the mind reach a kind of critical mass and establish themselves stably. It seems that you’re not meditating — that your meditation is simply doing itself. It doesn’t seem that “you” are doing anything. But to get to that point we need to first put in some effort — usually a lot of effort. On the way to effortlessness in meditation, we find that we generally have to use a subtler and subtler kind of effort. We start to realize that any effort we make creates a kind of disturbance in the mind, and so we refine our effort. One image I love is of catching a feather on a fan; we have to make effort to catch the feather, but if you move too quickly you’ll blow the feather away. But we still have to make an effort — at least for a while.

As Shunryu Suzuki said, “Strictly speaking, any effort we make is not good for our practice because it creates waves in our mind. It is impossible, however, to attain absolute calmness of our mind without any effort.”

It’s not really possible to short-cut this process, and jump straight to effortless meditation. Eventually we get to the point in meditation where effort is in fact unnecessary, but to get there we need to use an effort that is balanced, mindful, and, where possible, playful.

On this weekend led by Bodhipaksa, through study, discussion, personal exploration, and meditation, we’ll explore the Buddha’s teaching on attaining the sorrowless state and get in touch with the spiritual rebel within.

Bodhipaksa has been a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order since 1993 and a practicing Buddhist since 1982.

Where? Aryaloka Buddhist Center, Newmarket NH 03857
When? 7PM Friday, March 30, 2012 — 2PM Sunday, April 1, 2012
How to book? Visit the registration page for the event.
Why? Because you want to take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

[Click on the image for a larger version.]

This Buddha statue reclines gracefully on the ledge of one of the windows in the “yoga room” (it’s called that, although there’s hardly ever any yoga done there) below the shrineroom at Aryaloka Buddhist Center in Newmarket, NH.

A large stone Buddha head I photographed while I was leading a workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.

[Click on the image for an embiggened version.]

I thought it would be an interesting project to paste the entire text of the Dhammapada into Wordle in order to see what language the Buddha (or at least that text, which is generally reckoned to be one of the older Buddhist suttas) used.

I used Buddharakkhita’s translation from Access to Insight.

The size of the word depends on how frequently it’s used, so this is a reflection of certain emphases of the Buddha’s language.

The language strikes me as being predominantly positive and humanistic. “One” here is mainly the personal pronoun plus phrases like “Wise One.” “Man” is the main subject. “Wise,” “holy,” and “good” are the main adjectives. “Like” is common because the Buddha used a lot of similes, so this is “like” as in “fortifying this mind like a well-fortified city” not as in “I like ice cream.”

Of course Pali is constructed differently from English, and so the word that has most prominent — the personal pronoun “one” — is only implied in the original.

“Evil” is a prominent topic, as are “craving” and “suffering.”

“Mind” and “monk” are common terms, speaking to both the sociological and psychological leanings of Buddhism.

“Samsara” doesn’t make the cut.

See the graphic on Wordle.

Related posts:

1. The weasel word, “Misspoke”
2. The endless round of fake Buddha quotes
3. A handy Microsoft Word trick

An Australia palliative nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

In Buddhism there’s a list of five reflections, which are, basically, that I’m going to get old, get sick, die, be separated from all that’s dear to me, and (and here’s the kicker) that I’m responsible for everything I do and for the consequences of those things. Basically this amounts to reflecting on the fact that we’re going to die, so that we choose to act with that in mind. Most people, when they reflect on death, realize that what they thought was important (working harder, spending more time in the office) isn’t the most important thing after all. It’s delusion and anxiety that tell us these things are vital. In the long run it’s integrity, joy, and love that are important.

Read the original article »

Related posts:

1. Greater than 1 in 7 chance of McCain dying in next four years
2. My top five email pet peeves
3. The top ten random but deep and meaningful things I did today

Millions of children take drugs to help them pay attention — but do they really help?