Compassionate Path

Wild, Wild Country

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

I am using this copyrighted opening graphic image under Fair Use to identify the documentary. The copyright is believed to belong to Netflix.

My wife, Cheryl and I have been watching the Netflix documentary series Wild, Wild, Country. It’s about the Indian Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), his assistant Ma Anand Sheela, and the community they formed in Oregon, Rajneeshpuram in the 1980s. I highly recommend this documentary and I am not alone – on Rotten Tomatoes it earned a 98% tomato rating. That’s not to say the documentary is perfect. It doesn’t address the teachings of the Bhagwan nor what his followers, the sannyasins believed. It focuses more on the cascade of bad things rather than the positive. And to accentuate that, we get a tense, ominous soundtrack.

This is a complex story. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had some good ideas and good intentions. I think the Oregon Rajneeshpuram was filled with compassionate people who were trying to live a good life. People from all walks of life left those lives to live on a commune in a desolate region of Oregon. I believe they did this to create a better life for themselves and build a better society. People from the local town of Antelope were also compassionate people who cared for their families and people in their town. But ego got in the way. The sannyasins felt they were better than the locals who in their minds were hicks. And the locals got more and more concerned as the population of Rashneeshpuram expanded into the thousands. People on both sides were getting more and more bizarre, bombs exploding, bioterrorism. Eeeks! Watching this, in the comfort of my living room, 35 years after the fact, I can see that there were many opportunities to defuse the situation, and for the local community and Rashneeshpuram to live in harmony. It is easy to see how misguided they were. And here is where my ego enters the picture. I think Those people are misguided and I would not be. I, sitting here in my living room, perpetuate the problem. You see, those people are misguided I would not be is a me vs. them thought and antithetical to buddhism. And with a little reflection I see that I share the feelings and emotions those townspeople and sannyasins felt. The sannyasins felt they were better than the townspeople and I have had feelings of being better too – and those feelings still arise. The townspeople had some fear of people different from them, and I have those fears too. We all have the potential for explosive conflict. Our path is to recognize feelings such as fear and anger as they arise in us, refuse to react out of them and respond in an enlightened way.

Cajon and Practice - Part 2

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

I started playing music when I was eight–my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to learn to play accordian. So I took lessons with my uncle, a professional accordian player in Milwaukee. My older brother had been taking according lessons from him for years and in my mind my brother was what an accordian student should sound like. But when my eight year old self tried to play, I didn’t sound as good as my brother. I wanted to sound good, but I didn’t and accordian playing ended up being a completely frustrating experience. I abandoned the accordion as quickly as I could. A year or so later I switched to another instrument. In high school I was one of the best musicians. I had great fun playing; it was relaxing not stressful; and I didn’t need to practice much. As a senior I won both music awards my high school offered. I was Mr. Hot Stuff music-wise in my tiny corner of the universe: Boys’ Tech and Trade High School in Milwaukee.

As a freshman in college majoring in music I discovered that I wasn’t so hot. There were tons of people better than me. Some phenomenally better. I thought I sucked compared to them. And as a result of this thought, I had fears before and during performing because I thought I would screw up in front of people. And because of these stresses and fears I did screw up which just confirmed those fears. I was a performance anxiety wreck. Over the next few years these fears greatly diminished. I can’t explain why that was. Maybe it was the camaraderie in the suite of practice rooms–the feeling that we were all in this together. The silly imprompteu late night jams. Finally I could once again play music for the sheer joy of it. I could feel the ecstasy in the music and feel connected to the other musicians in the band.

Years later, as an adult, I became a student in the piano studio at New Mexico State University. This required something new: playing alone on stage. And playing complex compositions from memory. Those dormant fears returned. I felt I sucked compared to the other students and I had fears of screwing up. In reflecting on that year, I can say that fear and anxiety are not good for memory. Let’s say my playing wasn’t effortless.

Kenny Werner in his book, Effortless Mastery (public library)“Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within” says “When you approach your instrument, no matter what lofty goals you say your have, wanting to sound good will predominate and render you impotent.” He mentions

For example, some horn players I’ve worked with didn’t have a rich tone. In working with them, I’ve often found that they weren’t really taking a deep breath and moving it through their horn. Doesn’t it seem odd that horn players wouldn’t take a deep breath? Why is that? Because they are afraid to commit themselves to what’s going to come out. A really deep breath is going to add tone and weight to the next phrase, but the horn player is not sure about the next phrase. His lack of confidence causes a shorter breath, and a shorter breath creates a weaker tone… The result confirms the player’s fears.

Fear takes away the strength of what you are doing. Without fear of wrong notes, you would feel the body’s craving for more air, and a new posture would emerge spontaneously. [Pianists] don’t let their arms move freely because they are afraid to play poorly. The result is anemic tone and rhythm. In this way their fears are confirmed.

A self reinforcing loop: I have a fear of playing bad. That fear and anxiety makes me play bad, which in turn reinforces my fear.

Werner then quotes from the book Zen and the Art of Archery Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel (public library) about shooting an arrow: > The right short at the right moment does not come, because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.

He adds:

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play well, but needing to play very well is the problem.

The path out of this pit is to work on accepting who you are right now and–I am hoping this next bit makes sense–to have a plan rather than a goal. Shunryu Suzuki, a famous Zen Roshi has a nice quote:

Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement.

There is a prayer that we recite at Zen services that ends

I now wholeheartedly accept who I am

Kenny Werner writes:

My four-year-old daughter can walk over to the piano and enjoy herself more than ninety-five percent of the professional pianists.

What does this have to do with Zen?

We face similar obstacles when we sit in meditation. We try to be 100% present in the moment and “just sit.” We have some idea of what a perfect meditation would be. But we end up having all sorts of thoughts in our heads. Or we might think “this meditation is not as good as the one I had last week.” Or going beyond the meditation cushion, we might have a goal of being a good person and leading a good life (however we define ‘good’), but we constantly fall short. It is frustrating both on and off the cushion. Before we even start the meditation session we might fear we are going to screw it up.

Returning to playing an instrument,

And perhaps that same four-year-old daughter can sit on the floor with the dog and be present in the moment better than ninety-five percent of Zen students.

Throughout the day a little voice in our head critiques your performance. I’m not good enough. I should concentrate on the moment more. I should meditate longer. I should have been kinder to that woman on the phone.

Hope

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Photograph of Rebecca Solnit by Sallie Dean Shatz.

This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. These quotes are from the book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (public library) by Rebecca Solnit It is also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both. The twenty-first century has seen the rise of hideous economic inequality, perhaps due to amnesia both of the working people who countenance declines in wages, working conditions, and social services, and the elites who forgot that they conceded to some of these things in the hope of avoiding revolution. Worse […] is the arrival of climate change, faster harder, and more devastating than scientists anticipated.

There are times when it seems as though not only the future but the present is dark: few recognize what a radically transformed world we live in, one that has been transformed not only by such nightmares as global warming and global capital, but by dreams of freedom and of justice — and transformed by things we could not have dreamed of… We need to hope for the realization of our own dreams, but also to recognize a world that will remain wilder than our imaginations.

The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction.

Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities. It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the twenty-first century has brought, including the movements, heroes, and shifts in consciousness that address these things now.

It is important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act.

Alan Watts reading the Story of the Farmer

Sat, 10 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Zen Service

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Image from What’s the Deal with Zen Ceremonies blog post by Brad Warner

I am happy to announce that we will be having a3rd floor, Suite 331, 217 Princess Anne Street, Fredericksburg, VA across from Carl’s Ice Cream. There is an elevator. formal Zen service on Sunday, September 11th at 2pm at our George Washington Executive Center location. This is an auspicious time because it comes at the time of a major Buddhist holiday in Japan, Ohigan (到彼岸).

This Zen service will be an annotated one meaning that I will pause the service at a number of points to explain the significance of what we are doing. It consists of chanting both in English and Sino-Japanese, zazen (seated meditation), tea and a dharma talk. It should last a little over an hour.

Introduction to Zen Buddhism (public library)

If you read any of the popular books about Zen you may be surprised that Zen has any formal ceremonies. For example, a classic book on Zen, Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki says:

Zen … is not a religion in the sense that the term is popularly understood; for Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rites to observe, … Zen is free from all these dogmatic and ‘religious’ encumbrances.

Zen is viewed as one of the most austere forms of from The Teacup and the Skullcup: Chögyam Trungpa on Zen and Tantra (public library)Buddhism devoid of ceremony. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpohe writes:

[Zen] is the accuracy of black and white. In the Zen tradition there is no gray, nor is there yellow, red, green, or blue: it is black and white. That is the paramita of meditation: dhyana practice, Zen practice, Ch’an. Dhyana, Zen, and Ch’an all mean meditation.

But Zen has plenty of ritual and ceremony. However, there is a What’s the Deal with Zen Ceremonies blog post by Brad Warnerdifference between a Zen ceremony and one from another faith. Brad Warner writes:

Although the ceremonies at Zen temples might look like the ones you see at houses of worship in other faiths, the approach we take is a little different. No one ever insists you must believe in any of the rituals and chants and suchlike in Zen. You’re not worshipping anyone. You’re not pledging your allegiance to the temple or to Buddha. You’re not heaping praise upon unseen entities.

The chanting is just chanting. The bowing is just bowing. The bells are just bells.The statues are just statues. The priests are just people. The combined activities engaged in at these ceremonies have a genuine effect that you can feel. But there is nothing supernatural about any of it.

There is a story that Peter Levitt, poet and Zen priest tells. Peter Levett is a beat poet and he tells the story of going to a 7 day meditation retreat lead by the Dalai Lama (the Dalai Lama was 27 at the time). So it was Peter and a bunch of other poets including Alan Ginsberg. One day of the retreat The Dalai Lama was teaching them to chant in Tibet with various hand motions. One of the poets goes up to Peter and says “go over to Alan and listen to him chant.”” So he goes up to Alan, and hears him intoning “Eenie Meenie Miny moe…” And Peter says “Alan, what are you doing?” To which Alan replies “Hey, it works”.

Cajon and Practice - Part 1

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

For my birthday my wife bought me a cajon (a wooden box drum). (Set aside for a moment your cognitive dissonance of the thought of a 64 yr. old Zen Buddhist Monk playing something as cool as a cajon.) Here is my current plan on learning to play.

The Plan

I am not even going to open the box until I can play the cajon. Here’s the plan. Every Sunday I am going to watch YouTube cajon videos (like the one above and this one and this one). So I will do that for at least 2 hours every Sunday. And I bought a bunch of books from Amazon about playing the cajon. Here is an excerpt from one:

There is no question about this relationship of the top arm to the level where tone is produced. If the fingers, hand, or forearm have any bearing down on their own initiative, the tone simply does not come off. They each become an integrated unit with the top arm control; they make the top arm effective in contacting tone.

I am not entirely sure what that means but it sounds important. So I will memorize it. I am going to dedicate 1 hour a day to reading these books and memorizing the material in them. So that is my plan. It is the start of June now and if I do this to mid-August that will be about 100 hours devoted to learning to play the cajon. Then I will take the cajon out of the box, unwrap it, sit down and play the cajon flawlessly.

How’s that for a plan?

Maybe you are thinking that I won’t successfully play the cajon and I bet it is that you think I am not spending enough time on my new hobby. So here is my new plan.

The Revised Plan

Basically it is the same as the first except I will spend 20 hours per week watching YouTube videos and reading books and I will not open the box until Christmas. That is 1,000 hours devoted to learning to play the cajon–10 times more than the previous plan. Won’t it be a lovely gift to my wife to wake up on Christmas morning to some virtuosic cajon beats.

I think everyone can see that this plan is totally misguided. What is missing is practice, and plenty of it. If I did deliberative practice for those 20 hours per week instead of reading and watching YouTube videos, I probably could lay down some dope beats by Christmas. In the musical realm it is quite obvious to all of us that practice is the key.

But what about our spiritual life? This blog post is nearly identical to a talk I gave years ago about this topic. Here is the YouTube link. What people view as a foolhearty plan related to the cajon, they may view as valid when related to a spiritual path. Going to Sunday service, watching inspirational YouTube videos, reading books. That sounds good. But if that is the extent of it, it is as misguided as my cajon plan. What is missing is practice and plenty of it. You may think I DO practice. I read something in a book and apply it to my everyday life. That may work for some things, but I think it is equivalent to me buying a cajon and immediately joining Santana. I will read books at night and apply what I learn to me playing on stage with Santana. But clearly, a Santana stage performance is too complex to just jump into and apply what I learned watching YouTube videos. All the band members of Santana have spent years learning to play their instruments. And the band itself practices for hours. Hiromi, a phenomenal jazz pianist says this about her band:

It requires a lot of rehearsal to play the songs. My band always tells me I better change the group’s name from Sonicbloom to Boot Camp!

Similary, life is too complex and chaotic to immediately transfer what you learn in books to everyday situations. For example, you have probably read multiple times about mindfulness, but chances are, in the middle of your work day you may not be mindful. Racing around, traffic, kids, the 101 things you need to do. You are not focused on the suggestions from a book–you are just trying to survive in the modern world. Deliberative practice, including meditation and compassion practice (tonglen), enables us to work with what we learn from books so that it naturally arises without effort in everyday situations. All of a sudden, without thinking, without effort, we have moments of mindfulness.

Hiromi says “Focus, continuous training, and love and passion for what you do, more you practice, more you can fly” and “I wanted to bring what Jackie Chan does in Kung Fu to what I do on piano.” The more you meditate, do compassion training, and other practices the more you can fly in everyday life.

In my next post I will dive into this a bit more.

Don't Know

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Zen Master Seung Sahn. Art from the website prajna-galleries

As many of you know we have been searching for a space to hold our meditation sessions and other events. We sent out a number of emails to area churches and looked at commercial office space to rent. A few times it looked like we found what we were looking for, only to discover some wrinkle that made the space either far less than ideal or unavailable. Last night I heard of the possibility of a fantastic space–better than any we have looked at so far. So the possibility of having a great meditation space may be on the horizon–or maybe not. This morning, while walking my dogs, I realized that this process of looking for a space is similar to the famous Chinese farmer story. For those unfamiliar with it it goes something like this.

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer who lost a horse–it ran away. And his neighbors came around that evening and said “That’s too bad! That is most unfortunate!” And he said “maybe.” The next day the horse came back and brought seven wild horses with him. And his neighbors came around that evening and said “Why that is fantastic, isn’t it?” And he said “maybe.” The next day his son was trying to train the wild horses and broke his leg while attempted to ride one. And, of course, the neighbors came around and said “That is awful! That’s too bad!” And the farmer said “maybe.” The following day army officers came around the village conscripting all young men into the military. They rejected the son because of this broken leg. Yet again, the neighbors came around and this time they said “Fantastic news, you must be very happy.” And the farmer said “maybe.”

So is it good news that we found a potentially wonderful meditation space? Maybe

Alan Watts said of the Chinese farmer story:

The This is from his book Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks 1960-1969 (public library)whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad—because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

I am at a truck stop in west Texas. Someone approaches me as I pump gas, tells me he has no money but he needs to get to Arkansas to stay with his brother. I give him $10. Will the consequences of that act be good or bad? I simply don’t know. Maybe good; maybe bad. We can extend this don’t know mind to everything.

Stephen Batchelor writes Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (public library)of his time in a Zen Monastery in South Korea:

All I do, hour after hour, is ask myself the question What is this? … All I did for ten hours a day for the next three months was ask myself this question. The first two weeks, when my back hurt and my mind swung between febrile daydreamsfebrile daydreams = fever-like daydreams and lethargy, and the last few days, when I strove unsuccessfully not to look forward to the retreat ending, were the hardest. Throughout the long middle period, I experienced an unprecedented contentment.

The point of this exercise, common in Zen, is to

short-circuit the brain’s answer-giving habit and leave you in a state of serene puzzlement. This doubt, or “perplexity” as I preferred to call it, then slowly starts to infuse one’s consciousness as a whole. Rather than struggling with the words of the question, one settles into a mood of quiet focused astonishment, in which one one simply waits and listens in the pregnant silence that follows the fading of words

Zen Master Seung Sahn wrote in a letterThis is from his wonderful book Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn (public library):

You must keep don’t know mind always and everywhere. This is the true practice of Zen.

The Great Way is not difficult
if you don’t make distinctions.
Only throw away likes and dislikes
and everything will be perfectly clear.

So throw away all opinions, all likes and dislikes, and only keep the mind that doesn’t know. This is very important. Don’t know mind is the mind that cuts off all thinking. When all thinking has been cut off, you become empty mind. This is before thinking. Your before thinking mind, my before thinking mind, all people’s before thinking minds are the same. This is your substance. Your substance, my substance, and the substance of the whole universe become one. So the tree, the mountain, the cloud and you become one. Then I ask you: Are the mountain and you the same or different?

The mind that becomes one with the universe is before thinking.

Valentine's Day and the opposite of loneliness

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Marina Keegan. Photo from the book The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan. Ms. Keegan died in a car crash just five days after graduating magna cum laude from Yale.

Marina Keegan–a 22 year old–wrote this a few weeks before her college commencement at Yale:

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we See the complete Opposite of Loneliness essaydid, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

We all, I think, have had similar experiences to hers. The camaraderie of a college experience, of being in the military, of a close-knit group in high school. The feeling that there are people that are in this together. Those are very intense experiences. Imagine what life would be like if we experienced that, every moment of our day. With everyone we meet or see we would have this intense feeling that we are in this together, we are on the same team, with everyone. even people who cut us off in traffic or have an opposing political view.

We would still have sufferings in our life. We might lose our job, have difficulties in a relationship, have sickness, maybe even chronic illness. But we would feel 100% supported and feel that the entire community has our back.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t feel this strong sense of community. Rather we feel loneliness and a sense of separation. Mother Teresa reportedly said: The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging Modern society with its emphasis on individualism seems to exasperate this problem by emphasizing the self. In contrast, in Buddhism we work at letting the self fall away and reducing the barriers between ourselves and the rest of the world. Buddhism strives for the opposite of loneliness.

The book we will start discussing next week, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach, presents methods that help us on this path. Please consider joining us for this book study.

Thanksgiving & Gratitude

Sat, 28 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Dr Oliver Sacks. Photo from the book On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving. As usual Cheryl and I spent our Thanksgiving with my ex-sister-in-law (long story) and her family. Eleven of us around a makeshift table talking, telling stories, laughing. It was fun and relaxing. On the day after Thanksgiving I reflected on giving thanks. There were periods in my life when I did daily gratitude practice. About ten years ago, I would do a chant-like gratitude practice while running. Then there was a period when I would write gratitudes in a journal. More recently, when I would go outside for the first time in the morning, I would look at the sky and give thanks for the new day. For some reason those practices faded.

I thought my life benefited from those practices. A belief supported by research. In a seminal study published in 2003, Dr. Robert A. Emmons and Dr. Michael E. McCullough divided 200 undergraduates into three groups. One group wrote weekly ‘gratitude’ reports. The instructions were:

There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down on the lines below up to five things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for.

Members of one of the other group wrote weekly reports about hassles in their lives (stupid people driving, and doing a favor for friend who didn’t appreciate it ) and members of the final group were asked to write about events in their lives (cleaned out my shoe closet and talked to a doctor about medical school ). After ten weeks the researchers discovered that compared to the other two groups, the gratitude group felt more positive about their lives, exercised more, and were healthier. That is quite an amazing return on just spending a few minutes a week writing down what you are grateful for!

Often our lives are focused on desires. Desires for something we want like some shiny new gizmo for Christmas (I can spend hours and hours researching shiny gizmos on the web). Desires to have something end that we don’t like–like this sprained ankle I seem to have or the world to be less violent. We spend our days focusing on desires. Thinking about the future. Gratitude practice is a good antedote for desires. It helps us focus on the present. It helps us see things clearly.

I’ve previously mentioned Maria Popova and her excellent blog brainpickings. In a review she wrote of the book thxthxthx she writes:

We live in a culture with far, far too much pessimism, cynicism and dystopianism going around. It’s easy to dismiss any inkling of positivity as self-serving Pollyannism, yet there’s plenty of evidence that recognizing our simple blessings greatly increases our well-being. I’m certainly a believer.

The book, thxthxthx, by the way, consists of 200 handwritten thank you notes by Leah Dieterich including:

Perhaps it is time, as Maria Popova suggests, to recognize ‘our simple blessings’. To acknowledge and be grateful for what we have. To be grateful for the life we do have–the good and the bad. Be grateful for, as buddhists say, the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows of life.

Oliver Sacks, in his book Gratitude writes:

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect… I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”

A Discussion on Compassion.

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now - Brad Warner, Zen Priest.

It is not enough to espouse compassion, you have to act on it to make it real - Dalai Lama.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another - Thomas Merton

We all live busy lives. We work at hard jobs often putting in more than 40 hours per week. Then there are all the other tasks that need doing: laundry, shopping, cooking, taking care of our kids or our parents. We unwind by watching a tv show or by surfing the web. Sometimes it seems that if we can live this modern life and just have a bit of happiness, that would be enough. We may be aware of compassion but don’t take time to consciously fit compassionate acts into our lives.

Just this past week I received email from a friend–a Zen priest who was ordained at the same ceremony I was. He said he was quitting his university job in Oregon and moving to Maryland with his wife and kids to live and work in a Catholic Worker intentional community that serves the homeless. That seems like a life focused on helping others. But what about the rest of us who are struggling with living, not in a monastic intentional community, but in modern urban life? Where does compassion and helping others fit in?

I would like to invite you to a discussion on Sunday 15 November at 2pm at Blackstone Coffee, 1113 Jefferson Davis Hwy (look for a ‘Zen’ sign on our table). The topics are 1) how can we be more compassionate in our daily lives and 2) what can we do as a small community to foster compassion. To seed this discussion, I have a few short videos and a few web links.

This first video (surprisingly, an insurance company advertisement) was discovered by Ted Pickett, one of our community members.

This next one is in a similar vein:

This last video is from an organization envisioned by the Dalai Lama called A Force For Good (There is a variety of information on their website and a short explanation at Daniel Goleman on the Dalai Lama’s Vision for Good)

Bernie Glassman (wikipedia article) authored a number of books about engaged buddhism. He offers three tenets:

 Entering the stream of Socially Engaged Spirituality, I vow to live a life of:
 Not-knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe
 Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world
 Doing Action arising from Not Knowing and Bearing Witness

There are some interesting short articles here, including A Day with Bernie Glassman and Bearing Witness- A Harvard Divinity School Talk (this last talk mentions a video about him which I could not find on the web).

If you have other videos or links you think relevant to the discussion please post them to our forum.

I hope to see you at the discussion!