Posted in All Posts, In Media on 22 June, 2008 | No Comments »
Imagine living your life in such a way that in the same sentence as your death is announced, the New York Times includes mention of your ‘arrogance and greed’ :
Leona Helmsley, the self-styled hotel queen whose prison term for income tax evasion and fraud was greeted with uncommon approval by a public who regarded her [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media on 31 May, 2008 | 2 Comments »
This week Actress Sharon Stone made some unplanned comments about the disaster in China; apparently suggesting that maybe the events are the Chinese Karma for their bad treatment of the Tibetans. Or so the media would have the world believe. The real story is the underlying tendency to indignation and scapegoating complicit between the public [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media on 29 May, 2008 | No Comments »
What makes a religion?
What makes a belief system a religion, and what makes it a sect? Sometimes the distinction is clear, and sometimes it is a grey area - even Buddhism has its groups with sect like tendencies. Most people cannot say what exactly makes a cult, but feel it is just something they know [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media on 27 May, 2008 | No Comments »
The disasters in China and Burma cannot have escaped anyone’s attention this month. Life really is so uncertain … No wonder we are told to ‘put forth energy and effort, and strive relentlessly for the Goal’.
While it is right to think of the victims of the disasters, and to try and help in what ways [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media on 3 May, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Yet another ‘religion is bunk’ claim with a so called ’scientific’ foundation, forms the basis of a recent news article in abc news. Such generalisations add nothing to science, nor to society, and miss the central point of Buddhism altogether - that the Path is verifiable.
***
Humans alone practice religion because they’re the only creatures to [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media, Psychology & Dhamma on 28 April, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Much of meditation is learning to put your attention where you want to put it.
This way you can govern your perceptions, see the way you create suffering by grasping, and take back some control putting wisdom ahead of the unruly mind. Secondly you can deliberately focus attention on certain perceptions that foster wisdom and good [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media on 26 April, 2008 | No Comments »
[Story from Ananova 'Quirkies' - Ballet school turns out to have exotic dancers]
Priest blesses strip clubA Russian priest was left cursing after he was tricked into giving a sacred blessing to a strip bar.
Father Nickolai blessed the Studio 74 strip club in the city of Chelyabinsk after he was told it was a ballet school.
The [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media, tagged Buddhist news, Burma, monk's protest on 15 October, 2007 | No Comments »
The Buddhist Channel has set up a special front page for the Monk’s protest information and news :
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?protest_news
While on the topic, it is disturbing how the Thai Sangha has had no response. That I have seen there have not even been the feeble ’statements’ that are the usual bare minimum. The Sangha Council itself has [...]
Posted in All Posts, In Media, Member's Blogs, tagged Burma, mahasi, Protests on 14 October, 2007 | No Comments »
If the calendar is kind to us, in November we will have Canadian monk U Vamsa to give a talk or two for us. He has been a follower of the burmese Mahasi tradition for a long time, culminating in his ordination five years ago. Inevitably I asked him about Burma, where he no longer [...]
