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

There are times, living in the US, that I miss my native Britain’s robust consumer protection legislation.

From the BBC:

A Christian group has been banned from claiming that God can heal illnesses on its website and in leaflets.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had concluded that the adverts by Healing on the Streets (HOTS) – Bath, were misleading.

It said a leaflet available to download from the group’s website said: “Need Healing? God can heal today!”

The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.

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[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.

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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 »

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I know the Pentagon was keen on creating artificial telepathy, so that soldiers on the battlefield could compose and send messages by means of pure thought — and that prospect is closer now, as you can tell from this video, where the decoded thoughts are almost understandable.

Of course the thoughts that were translated were recorded with probes inserted into the brains of people undergoing neurosurgery, and it’s not likely many of us will be queueing up to have electrodes implanted so that we can text while driving, but it’s obvious that the technology is moving in the direction of our actually being able to “read” thoughts. Here’s the full New Scientist article.

But I would like to be able to write without typing

The clip below, which did the rounds a few months ago, and which you’ve probably seen, is in a way even more amazing:

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There’s a minimalist version here, which is hypnotically entrancing.

I stayed up until midnight so that I could buy the album on the first day it went on sale.

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And people may also regard Obama as a political genius to have sneaked this past the GOP.

The End of Health Insurance Companies Accountable care organizations will shift the focus of medicine away from treating sickness and toward keeping patients healthy.

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