California kids MEDITATE in school (audio)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Katrina Schwartz; Jello Biafra

Children who are nervous about the new school year can relax by practicing “mindfulness” during anxious moments, researchers say. Experts at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., recommend mindfulness, which is a technique borrowed from [Buddhist] meditation... More

  

Meditation is even better than I thought!

The Buddha's original teaching of mindfulness (sati and satipatthana) meditation is being used to help businesses, psychology researchers, therapy patients, prisoners, and now very young school children. The option is wonderful, but force would not be.

Punk rock legend Jello Biafra while leading the Dead Kennedys warned about then Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, who by coincidence is again the governor of California. His New Age ideas seem finally to have come true.

Gov. Brown and Linda Ronstadt (latimes.com)

"I am Governor Jerry Brown/ My aura smiles and never frowns/ Soon I will be president/ Carter power will soon go away/ I will be fuhrer one day/ I will command all of you/ Your kids will meditate in school/ California Uber Alles.../ Zen fascists will control you/ One hundred percent natural/ You will jog for the master race/ And always wear the happy face/ Close your eyes, can't happen here/ Big Bro on white horse is near..."

Lynda Jean Carter, the U.S. Wonder Woman

The Dead Kennedys, who are from the Bay Area, were very open to Eastern philosophy and religion in their day. But they were not into having a "nanny state" under Gov. Brown.

At that time Brown seemed to be attempting to legislate happiness, health, and well-intentioned progressive New Age views as he dated Latina-American pop singer Linda Ronstadt. (Interestingly, for those who did not know that Linda Ronstadt was Hispanic, it may come as a surprise that her 1970s contemporary "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter was, too. Bet You Didn't Know They Were Hispanic).

 

Using mindfulness to teach coping skills

Katrina Schwartz, California Report (Take Two, scpr.org, Feb. 11, 2014)

Richmond, CA children practicing mindfulness in school (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)

 

Finally, I'm a good role model

[The Buddha is not being credited directly but] A group of Nystrom Elementary third graders practice a "mindful minute" with a Mindful Life Project instructor. Every Nystrom class gets 20 minutes of mindfulness training per week.

 

Across California, some schools are experimenting with mindfulness training -- or meditation -- as a way to help students.

Om. Om. Om. Meditating is way cool.

Plenty of school kids deal with a world of emotional problems, but some kids have a whole host of issues greater than usual -- drug abuse in the home, incarcerated parents, or even homelessness.

Reporter Katrina Schwartz visited the Bay Area city of Richmond to find out how the new approach is working. LISTEN: PLAY AUDIO

I can be calm and ADHD-free.

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How to solve Zen koans (cartoon)

CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Gia Yesu, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly, with instructor Betsy Enduring Vow (ZCLA) and Grayson and Roshi Jeff Albrizze (PasaDharma.org)

IF koans (Zen Buddhist "riddles" from the Japanese word for "public case") are not for intellectually "solving" or "deciphering," what are they for?

ZCLA is an oasis of diversity (Obon)

We went down to the Zen Center of Los Angeles today with Roshi Albrizze (PasaDharma.org) to see Roshi Tenshin Fletcher (zmc.org) and took ZP-1 (Zen Practice, Module 1, ZCLA's intro class). 

Noah Levine (breitenbush)

Author and Theravada insight meditation (vipassana) practitioner Noah Levine, co-founder of Dharma Punx/Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, was on hand with us for basic training. We learned to sit up straight, bend down to bow fully, hold our hands with opposing thumb-tips on our laps, walk as slowly as humanly possible, and were given some insight into "working with koans." Fortunately, Noah pressed and pressed to get at the point of koan practice. The example Betsy gave was:

 

Yes I do, Joshu! We all do.

A monk asked Zen master Joshu, "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" The Zen master replied, "Moo!" (Japanese mu, negation, "not," "nonbeing").* Betsy went on to explain that this would be like the Archbishop of Los Angeles asking the Italian pope, "Is there a God?" and the pontiff answering, "Hell no!" A paradox, because surely a figurehead like the leader of the Catholic Church believes in his deity, so why would he negate the archbishop's question? Thinking will not arrive at an answer, but there is a way to find out. How does one solve it and, moreover, what would be the point of solving it?

 

*This famous question comes from a fragment of a koan (Case 1, The Gateless Gate). Paradoxically, another koan (Case 18, The Book of Serenity) presents a longer version, in which Joshu answers "yes" in response to the exact same question asked by a different monk.

Noah, did it blow your mind? It did ours, like a rake in a rock garden! (buddhistmedia)

Homer goes to hell for a day (Avici), and Flanders is the devil.

 

How to solve koans

Pick a finger (Gutei)

There is no thinking, grappling, ruminating, or pondering involved. That is surely a dead end. An answer/solution arrived at in this way, if it is good and particularly pithy, will "stink of Zen." The bell will ring, and the interviewer (for dokusan or face-to-face meeting) will yell, "Next!" 

 

Of course, "Next!" is what s/he'll yell even if the Zen practitioner gets it "right." But s/he won't do it with a twinkle in his or her eye acknowledging that you were onto something this time, and it is now appropriate to move on to the next public case.

Instead of "thinking," a koan is successfully resolved by grokking, that is, by a semi-subconscious remembrance of the case without straining to get anywhere in an effort to solve it. Rock/grok it gently like a baby at heart level. In this way, illumination dawns, an epiphany (satori) occurs, and a deep certainty arises that one has understood what the conscious mind could never have hammered out by mere reasoning.

Roshi Jeff Albrizze (PT)

So when Bart Simpson was asked, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" the answer was not to slap his digits against his palms producing a muted clap. It was, instead, a way of opening the boy up to a world of conscious possibility, an awareness or knowing beyond thought and wit and reason. 

 

"Intuition" is a name for it, but it is very misleading due to the connotations we've layered on. "A knowing that surpasseth all understanding" is a Christian translation for the phenomenon that seems to approximate the wordless experience. "Direct knowledge" unmediated and unencumbered by the thought process might be a New Age way of stating it.

Budai: Fat, Happy Homer "Buddha" Simpson statue (Kidrobot)

 

"Japanese Yosemite" (Kamikōchi), Nagano Prefecture, altitude 4,900 ft. (1,500 m). The kami or kanji 神垣内 of Kami-ko-uchi are the shapeshifting mountain monsters of Japan. This water soaked site resembles the flooding Yokoji ZMC near Idylwild, California, experienced after a wildfire annihilated the earth-retaining forest all around the center.

  

Dharma talk: Zen Mountain Center to rebuild?

Fire dragon of flames (privet.ru)

Abbot Tenshin, Yokoji Zen Mountain Center (ZMC): Tenshin's "Dharma" talk was brief and to the point: There was a fire, but a fire crew made up of convicts/volunteer firefighters, who had learned to meditate at Yokoji, refused to give up when ordered to abandon ZMC by the fire department.

 

Their heroic efforts saved the Yokoji. Proving there's no such thing as karma, or that there is such a thing as karma, but that it rarely -- as happened here -- turns around to benefit one so clearly and tangibly.

 

However, karma works in mysterious ways: What fire could not do, Nature obliged the rains to take care of: Five days of California monsoon weather (due, we think, to climate chaos and our deteriorating environment) washed down tons of muddy debris on ZMC, covering most of the site under three feet of silt and ashes. Maybe it will be dug out, maybe it won't. Trees' lives hang in the balance.

Tenshin Fletcher (zmc.org)

Although the trees are all hearty redwoods, they cannot bear to have their trunks sunk underground. Donations of time, effort, and funds would help, but Tenshin is reluctant to say so. For the one thing he has learned through all of these ordeals is that he and his family will survive. Life may be full of ups and downs, but we can remain relatively steady in the ebb and flow, wave and trough, high and low. Abbot Tenshin Fletcher -- who received helpful advice from Tassajara in Big Sur (San Francisco Zen Center), which famously survived a California forest fire -- previously lived and worked at ZCLA years ago and has remained a vibrant Dharma friend of the current ZCLA Abbess Wendy Nakao and many of the center's older and disproportionately Jewish-Buddhist (JuBu) residents.

Marijuana versus Alcohol (radio)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar, UprisingRadio.org

Alcoholic Homer Simpson tries a new "medicine." The moral of the story? Avoid booze, avoid pot, and learning to cope with stress is a beneficial habit to develop.

 
Which is worse, Weed or Alcohol?

Arrest photo: I'm not an alcoholic!

(Sept. 30, 2013) Uprising radio host Sonali Kolhatkar speaks to the lead author of a new book called Marijuana is Safer: So Why are We Driving People to Drink? If alcohol is worse, why are people pushed to resort to it and pressured to avoid a safer and more medicinal alternative? In the past year two states have legalized its recreational use. The financial infrastructure of legalization is in its infant stages with investors pouring in money and big banks agreeing to accept profits. Such steps were unthinkable a few years ago. Pot was thought far more dangerous as a vice than booze. The US is now closer than ever to legalizing cannabis. Even CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently changed his position on weed. Trying to overturn the legal ban on marijuana, activists and advocates have hit upon a winning formula: point out the fact that alcohol leads to far more public violence and that having the option to use marijuana instead could lead to a safer, less criminal society. Guest Steve Fox is Director of Government Relations at Marijuana Policy Project. AUDIO

Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, Mason Tvert

(AlterNet.org) A book explains how we are steering people away from cannabis and toward the use of a very harmful and deadly substance: alcohol. The following is an excerpt from the book: It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.” More

DemocracyNow.org (Sept. 30, 2013)

 

Leading the legal fight against Government Surveillance

Sonali Kolhatkar

Cubicle criminality at the offices of the NSA

When I first met Reverend Rick Hoyt he said, “You don’t have to call me Reverend; just Rick is fine.” The First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has taken a stand against the NSA surveillance program. The bespectacled and youthful pastor, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, certainly didn’t look like a conventional “man-of-God.” In fact, the Unitarian Universalist church to which Rick belongs is known for defying Christian theological convention. Rick’s home at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles also has a history of defying political convention. The church, according to Hoyt, has been a “fierce advocate for personal liberties.” Even before Edward Snowden became a household name, the First Unitarian Church of LA became a plaintiff named in a major lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) over privacy violations. Nineteen organizations have joined Hoyt’s church in an unusual coalition that includes the Marijuana legalization group, NORML, and gun rights groups like the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.

Fire Dog Lake: How Obama punishes Medical Marijuana patients

Troops swoop in on illegal growers (scpr.org)

(Aug. 22, 2013) Despite overwhelming support from the general public, significant backing from medical doctors, and even several prominent Republicans publicly acknowledging that cannabis has a legitimate medical use, the Obama administration officially insists it does not have one.The administration’s dodge when asked to explain this unpopular and scientifically unjustifiable position is to act as if it is a non-issue because they are not arresting medical marijuana patients. When Jessica Yellin asked why the administration refused to use its power to reschedule marijuana to make it legal for medical use, Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded: “the President and the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources.”

Cannabis is a safer plant? (hempsaves.net)

The administration pretends that since they are not arresting patients, rescheduling marijuana does not matter. The possibility of arrest, however, is only a small part of how legitimate medical marijuana patients are significantly punished because the Obama administration refuses to use its power to remove marijuana from Schedule I (an assignment shared by the worst drugs of abuse with no redeeming quality whatsoever). Over the years the legal tentacles of the so-called "War on Drugs" have been allowed to touch all parts of federal policy, from gun rights to education. According to Hoyt, some of these groups are not ones his church normally works with and “aren’t necessarily politically sympathetic with.” But the right to personal privacy is a Libertarian position deeply held by both ends of the political spectrum. Complete interview:

Why are we really fighting a war in Afghanistan, DRUGS? (TheRealNews.com)

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• (Sept. 30, 2013) Cancer-stricken "Angola 3" prisoner Herman Wallace has been given just days to live after being in solitary confinement for 42 years His crime? Robbery then being falsely accused of participating in the killing of a Louisiana ("the incarceration capital of the world") prison guard. His actual crime was forming one of the first Black Panther chapters in prison, making him a political prisoner, which the US claims not to have. More
•  Climate Change protests heat up

  

  Host Amy Goodman

  Last week, far out in the Arctic Ocean, the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise approached a Russian oil-drilling platform and launched a nonviolent protest, with several protesters scaling the platform. They wanted to draw attention to a dangerous precedent being set. The platform, the Prirazlomnaya, owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, is the first to begin oil production in the dangerous, delicate, ice-filled waters of the Arctic.
   
  

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