Sylvia Boorstein on Enlightenment (video)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Buddhist meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein (Spirit Rock), It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

Marriage ceremony in Phuket, Thailand (Ted Richardson, Esq./flickr/thaiembassy.com)

 

Fischel's wife was a devi glowing in the dark (WQ)

When I started to practice meditation in the early seventies it was hip. Everybody was meditating; every weekend you could take a workshop in another form of meditation. The advertisements for the workshops usually suggested that at the end of the weekend you'd be totally enlightened.

I remember once going to a party that looked like a regular party -- people talking, visiting, and laughing -- and in the middle sat a woman with a strange look on her face, eyes closed, face serene, totally tuned out from the whole scene.

Somebody leaned over to me and said, "Look at her, she's enlightened," and I thought to myself, "If that's what enlightenment is, I don't want it."
 

Meditation for levitation (Ruwan_W/flickr)

What I did want, at least for a while, were exotic powers. I heard extraordinary stories of people who could bilocate or levitate. Sometimes, as I sat on my cushion and experienced an unusual lightness in my body, I imagined I was about to levitate. I hoped I would. I thought it would be a far-out thing, rising up off my cushion and floating in the air.

I think I was also influenced by a story my grandfather told about my grandmother -- a woman who died when I was nine years old. I knew here as a sickly old woman, but my grandfather remembered her as the very beautiful woman he had married when she was 18 years old. He told me she was so beautiful that "she glowed in the dark." I asked him if he really meant that, and he said, "Yes, she really did." 

He said, "At my nephew Murray Fox's wedding, the hall was lit with gaslight because it was before electricity, so it was quite dark, and everyone said, 'Look at Fischel's wife, she shines in the dark!'" I held that as a wonderful, luminous memory and as an ideal. What I wanted to achieve from my meditation practice was to shine in the dark. I think a lot of us in the early days wanted magic.

My Buddhist meditation teachers, whom I met in 1977, talked about enlightenment but not about magic. They talked about "seeing clearly" and how it could mean happiness and the end of suffering. That sounded like the kind of magic I wanted most. More

• It's Easier Than You Think (sylviaboorstein.com)
• Quotes: It's Easier Than You Think (Goodreads.com)

The Avatars Are Coming?

Semjase space devi

(NYC812) Odd narrator speculates that the sun is affecting human DNA causing the emergence of human-star-people hybrids. They are incarnating into avatar bodies birthed by ordinary terrestrial parents. Why? A mother who gives birth to such a baby will love her child no matter how different that child is. In this way, extraterrestrials arrive integrated into the fabric of the existing society. So if a black couple gives birth to a blond, blue-eyed, classically Eurocentric "angel" baby, that baby will be loved. Who can explained such children being born to Asian couples? "The wife cheated" is the rational if harsh conclusion. But then an Egyptian couple has twins, one white one not. How could beautiful, non-albino children be so white they practically glow in the dark?

The Other F-Word (faith)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Joseph Goldstein (IMS); Wikipedia edit saddha; Ben Griggs (Happy Science Temple, Japan)

(SoundsTrue) Insight Meditation, Tape 10, a talk on faith and wisdom with Joseph Goldstein

Buddha, Gandhara style

FAITH IN BUDDHISM (Pāli saddhā, "to place one's heart on") is an important constituent element of the teachings of the historical Buddha within all Buddhist traditions, although the kind and nature of "faith," confidence, conviction, or devotion varies in different schools.

According to the tradition using the exclusively Buddhist-language of Pali, some of the first words uttered by the Buddha after resolving to teach to the world the Dharma he had rediscovered were: "Wide open is the door of the Deathless to all who have ears to hear! Let them send forth faith [confidence in the enlightenment of the teacher, the teaching, and those successfully taught] to meet it!" (Mahavagga, I, 5,11; Vinaya Texts, T.W. Rhys Davids, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1996, p.88).

 

Treasure, faculty, power of faith

Richard Gere and Lisa Simpson meditate

The Pāli discourses (suttas, sutras) list confidence/faith as one of Seven Treasures (dhanas) (e.g., Collection of Long Discourses III.163, Estlin Carpenter J. (ed.), The Dīgha Nikāya, Pali Text Society, London 1976, p. 163), one of Five Spiritual Faculties (indriyas), one of four "streams of merit," and one of the Five Spiritual Powers (balas).

Gyatrul (b. 1924), in a commentary on the 17th century work of Chagmé, rendered into English by B. Alan Wallace states [Karma Chagmé (author, compiler), Gyatrul Rinpoche (commentary) and B. Alan Wallace (translator), 1998. A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga. Ithaca, New York, USA: Snow Lion Publications):

Tibetan lamas, India (Laura Murphy)

By the power of faith, we are able to eliminate the two types of obscurations [i.e., the "obscuration of conflicting emotions" (Sanskrit kleśa-varaṇa) and the "obscuration concerning the knowable" (Sanskrit jñeyāvaraṇa), Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje (Dudjom Rinpoche, author), translated and edited by Gyurme Dorje and Matthew Kapstein (1991). The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History. Boston, USA: Wisdom Publications, p.107]. Through the power of faith both ontological and phenomenological knowledge arises. It is also by the power of faith that both the common and uncommon siddhis [psychic/supernormal powers] arise. More

(Ben Griggs) Happy Science, Japan, international retreat, spring

2011:  Koan seminar exploring "faith," interviews participants.

Tibetan and Theravada Buddhism (On Being)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Krista Tippett (OnBeing.org, Oct. 31, 2013), Robert Thurman (tibethouse.us), Sharon Salzberg (IMS, InsightLA.org)

The horrific suffering of a deep spa treatment at Mahasukha ("Great Pleasure") at Menla: deep relaxation, Tibetan bell meditation, and *gasp* massage! (tibethouse.us)

  

Krista Tippett (princeton.edu)

On "On Being" this week, congenial host Krista Tippett talks with Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman on "Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering." These two legendary American teachers shine a Buddhist light on a classic Christian teaching: love of enemies. Thurman and Salzberg are working together on how we relate to that which makes us feel embattled from without as well, and more importantly, from within. [Why is within more important? What we express is what is inside of us. So when we change our mind, our body and speech follow.]
 

Embracing our enemies?

Sharon Salzberg (Dharma.org)

Sharon Salzberg is a Theravada Buddhist meditation teacher and the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She is the co-author, with Robert Thurman, of Love Your Enemies. [Who are our "real" enemies? Surely not people and fellow living beings. Rather, if we look underneath the surface to the root of things, the radical (from the Latin, radix, "root") understanding is that it is defilements of the heart/mind like greed, hatred/fear, and delusion that are our real enemies.] Salzberg's other books include Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation, and the forthcoming Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace.

Salzberg, a pioneering Buddhist teacher of meditation in the US, answers On Being's in-house "wannabe" mindfulness practitioner's questions: techniques and focus, the balance of new technologies with human connection.
 

Robert Thurman (TibetHouse.us)

Robert Thurman, a close personal friend and supporter of the 14th Dalai Lama, is professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. He is also the president of Tibet House US. [But his most celebrated accomplishment may be his co-creation of actress Uma Thurman.] He is the co-author of Love Your Enemies. His other books include Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within, and Inner Revolution. More  LISTEN:

• AUDIO: this show/podcast (learn)

• Every Journey is a Pilgrimage (Bob Thurman)
• VIDEO: Lovingkindness (Metta) Meditation with Sylvia Boorstein The Buddhist author -- co-teacher and long time friend of Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein -- once offered to lead a meditation for 350 folks during a live "On Being" event. The result? It was a magical experience! Try it.
  
• Beyond "Chinatown," 100 years of the L.A. Aqueduct
• LAX shooting to be used as pretext to beef up TSA "security"

KPCC FM, Pasadena (scpr.org) presents comedian David Sedaris

It's Easier Than You Think!

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Sylvia Boorstein (It's Easier Than You Think)

IMS: a retreat monastery for lay people in rural Massachusetts (Dharma.org)

 

Waking Up is Nonsectarian

FREE. Narrated by author (audible.com)

Every religious tradition I know talks about waking up to the truth. Every path I know promises that the direct experience of truth sets us free, brings us peace, compels us to compassionate action in the world. Knowing the truth brings happiness.

Practicing mindfulness and metta (loving-kindness) is not religiously challenging. This makes them accessible tools for meditators in all traditions. Awareness, clarity, compassion, generosity, understanding -- these are in the middle of everyone's spiritual road.

SCENARIO: In my early retreat experience I was part of a large group, perhaps 100 people, doing intensive mindfulness practice in a monastery in Barre, Massachusetts. Retreats are held in silence, so apart from costume differences, you can't tell who anyone is.

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana with artistic license, Bangkok (Clay/Mud Boy/flickr)

 

Days passed as we lived and practiced together in silence. I saw Theravadan monks in orange robes, Zen people in traditional Zen clothing, and Tibetan monks and nuns.

 

There were women in rose colored sari-style robes, and I guessed they were part of a Hindu traditional practice. Some people wore red clothes and beads, which meant they were followers of a certain Hindu teacher. One man wore a Franciscan monk habit. I liked passing near him because the long beads and crucifix that hung from his belt made a pleasant clicking sound as he walked.

 

On Friday evening, I entered the dining room and saw that someone had lit two candles on a small table in the corner of this communal room. Next to the candles was a sign that said, "These are Sabbath candles. Please do not blow them out. They will burn down by themselves, and I'll remove them tomorrow after sunset."

I looked around and thought, "Here we all are! Our vegetarian diet presents no religious challenges, so everyone can be here. We have a liturgy of silence, so everyone can be here. Each of us, in whatever religious context we live our lives, is trying to wake up. Practicing mindfulness -- we can do it together."

The maps in this book are definitely Buddhist maps. They are clear and useful and nonparochial. Truth is truth. Mind-tangles and suffering are universal, and the desire for happiness and the end of suffering is also universal. More

Insight Meditation Society (East Coast)

Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, Insight Meditation Society (Dharma.org); BCBSdharma.org

Insight Meditation Society (IMS) is a Buddhist meditation center (open to all people of all traditions).

 

On Valentines Day in 1976 a small group of young Buddhist meditation teachers (including Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield (West Coast), and Sharon Salzberg, all friends back from Asia) and dedicated staff opened a retreat center outside of Boston.

They found an ideal place in an old, stately mansion in idyllic Barre, Massachusetts. Armed with few resources and imperfect operational knowledge, but passionate about the Buddha’s teachings, they set about creating an environment where the Dharma could flourish and take root in the West. 

Teachers at IMS like Myoshin Kelly, Sharon Salzberg, and Leigh Brasington (Dharma.org)

 

And so began IMS, now a large and successful short-term Retreat Center with a Forest Refuge center for instensives.

Over its history, IMS has become a spiritual home to thousands of practitioners. It is now regarded as one of the Western world’s most respected centers for learning and deepening meditation practice.

 

The organization operates two meditation retreat facilities and also promotes a growing school, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Two are set on about 200 secluded acres in the quiet woods of central Massachusetts, and the third is right next door. More