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?

Spiritual is Ordinary (football)

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

(MT) FOX NFL Sunday, Part D'oh -- the historic intersection between The Simpsons and FOX NFL

Sylvia Boorstein (OB)

A few years ago I was teaching in another city, and the person who was to be my host telephoned me in advance to see if I had any special food requirements. I appreciated his concern and explained my eating preferences. I also mentioned that I don't normally eat much for breakfast but that I do like coffee in the morning.

He replied, in a very surprised voice, "You drink coffee?" I realized I had just made a heretical confession. I needed to do some fast mind scrambling to find a graceful way to explain to my host (without losing my spiritual stature) that I do, indeed, drink coffee.

"You drink coffee?" (funny-pics.co)

There are some peculiar notions about what constitutes "being spiritual." I have a cartoon on the wall of my office that shows two people having dinner in a restaurant. One of them is saying to the other, "It's such a relief to meet someone who isn't on a spiritual question." I agree. There is an enormous possibility of getting sidetracked into self-conscious holiness, of putting energy into acting the part of a "spiritual person."

Outside of the US, football doesn't matter. But futbol (soccer) means the world.
 

Ball games keep us fit for war (theworld.org)

A dear friend of mine, as he has become more and more established as a meditation teacher, has become less and less hesitant about telling people he loves football games. He even admits he gets very excited about the games, cheering at his television set as if he were sitting in the stadium.
 

No dispassionate attitude of "May the best man win" for him! I know he has a wonderful level of understanding, and he behaves like a regular person in a regular world. Being a meditator and developing equanimity do not mean becoming weird.

I think I chose the title for this book long before the book itself was written. Indeed, I was motivated to write largely because I wanted to tell people that spiritual living does not need to be a big deal. More

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

(Smithsonian) Video games can become an obsessive distraction.

Loving Kindness with Sylvia Boorstein (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Trent Gilliss (OnBeing.org, May 7, 2011)

Extending love (metta) to all quarters of the universe? The Dark Universe exhibition displays works that use light and sound to explore the boundaries of awareness (Rene Passet/flickr)

Accomplished Buddhist meditation teach Sylvia Boorstein speaks with Krista Tippett

 

Boorstein (Trent Gilliss/onbeing.org)

In February, On Being partnered with WDET to hold a live event in a quaint suburban village outside of Detroit, USA. The topic was "raising children in complex times."

Host Krista Tippett’s conversation with Sylvia Boorstein was rolling along nicely: Stories were being told, approaches to child-rearing were being shared...

 

Then, unexpectedly, Boorstein (a Jewish Buddhist teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center near San Francisco, California) offered to lead a loving-kindness, or metta, meditation for a crowd of more than 300.

 

How would the crowd react, whose members may never have attended a meditation or mindfulness retreat of any kind? What to expect? What resulted was a magical experience in which the audience fully participated in this unannounced moment of reflection.

If readers are game, On Being offers this video to use as a guided meditation. Will this live experience translate into a fruitful online experience?

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