Reading for March 31

Brief Instructions for Sitting Meditation
from “The Issue at Hand” by Gil Fronsdal
Take a comfortable and alert posture, either on the floor or on a chair. Gently close your eyes and establish a sense of presence within your body. It is often helpful to start a period of meditation with two or three deep breaths to [...]

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Tibetan Monk Protests Reflect Growing Buddhist Activism

BANGKOK, Thailand – Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar’s military, can strike jarring notes.These scenes run counter to Buddhism’s philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies – something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.
But political activism and occasional eruptions [...]

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Stephen and Ondrea Levine Need Help

An Open Letter from Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg
Dear Friends,
We are writing to ask your support for two beloved friends of ours, Stephen and Ondrea Levine. They are currently facing significant difficulty. After a life-time of giving, they are now at a time to receive from those of us whose lives have been [...]

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One Human Race: Nashville Joins the Global Movement for TIBETAN FREEDOM

Nashville, Tenn. This Sunday, March 30, 2008, at 1 p.m., Nashville-area activists will converge at the Metro Courthouse for the city’s first-ever rally dedicated to Tibet. The rally, entitled “One Human Race,” is a response to recent reports of violence in Tibet that began on March 10th – a day known to Tibetans [...]

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Reading for March 24

Overview

Excerpted from One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein
Although we might desire to order the differentiation and growth of the traditions with precise historical benchmarks, it was, in fact, an organic and intricate unfolding that happened gradually and incrementally over centuries. We go from the One Dharma of Gautama Buddha to the proliferation of schools in [...]

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David Loy lecture at Vanderbilt

For those who missed, myself included, Buddhist scholar David Loy’s lecture at Vanderbilt on Tuesday evening, the lecture is available on video here.
Loy’s lecture is titled: “Healing Ecology: A ‘New’ Spiritual Perspective on the Challenge of Consumerism”

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The Tibet situation

An article on remarks by the Dalai Lama on Sunday regarding the protests in Tibet

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Curbs on Protest in Tibet Lashed by Dalai Lama

DHARAMSALA, India — The Dalai Lama accused China on Sunday of waging “cultural genocide” against his followers in Tibet and called for an international inquiry into the suppression of [...]

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Monk’s protests in Tibet continue for a second day

clipped from www.reuters.com

China fires tear gas on monks protesting in Tibet

BEIJING (Reuters) – Thousands of Chinese security personnel fired tear gas to try to disperse more than 600 monks taking part in a second day of rare street protests in Tibet, a source and Radio Free Asia said on Wednesday.

“The police were armed with electric [...]

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In Buddhist news

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk

Monks under siege in monasteries as protest ends in a hail of gunfire

Paramilitary police have surrounded Tibet’s most important monasteries after
hundreds of monks shouting “Long live the Dalai Lama” defied Beijing in the
biggest protest in the Himalayan region for almost 20 years.
Witnesses described violent clashes between monks and police on the outskirts
of Lhasa [...]

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Reading for March 17

Starting Monday, March 24th, we will begin a discussion series that will explore the three main Buddhist traditions of Theravada, Zen and Tibetan. We will look at their origins, similarities, differences and seeming contradictions, and we will explore some specific practices of each tradition. I thought this week’s reading, by Joseph Goldstein, would be a [...]

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