oxymoron
oxymoron's JournalWhen Your Guru Calls Shotgun
Margaret Riegel
By NOA JONES
Published: May 18, 2012
BY the time we reached the first rest stop, a Burger King in Cle Elum, in central Washington State, I was suffering two anxieties: That I would kill the guru, and that if I didn’t, he would ignore me for the next 3,000 miles.
He’d been as quiet as a statue for the two hours since we left Seattle. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “Oh, look, chicken sandwiches, only $1.05.”
People who haven’t spent time with a spiritual master might think that being in their presence has a calming affect, that wisdom drips from their lips like nectar. But in my experience, masters of meditation and miracles are not so easy to be around.
I have known this particular guru for about 14 years; he is a yogi, a brilliant meditation master and an award-winning filmmaker from the Kingdom of Bhutan. I call him Rinpoche (RIM-po-shay), an honorific akin to reverend or rabbi. And when I’m in his presence for any extended period of time, it’s as if I become invisible.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/travel/a-cross-country-drive-with-a-guru.html?ref=meditation
7 Practices That Restored My Buddhist Faith
Starting in my early 20s, I immersed myself in the study of Soto Zen, first with my Japanese root teacher, and after his death with his American successor. I lived in monastic or semi-monastic settings for a total of 15 years. Early on I was ordained as a priest; at some point I became a teacher myself. During that time, Buddhism was my whole life.
Then, after 15 years my faith in this practice, once so strong, turned to doubt. I began asking myself: What do I really know that is true? Who and what can I really trust? I also asked: What has become of Lew, the person I used to be so many years before?
I felt I needed to re-examine everything. I took off my robes, left my teaching position and my residential community. I rented a house in town, got a job, and set about living an ordinary life with my wife and 9-year-old son. I began taking apart the "carburetor" of who I was and painstakingly re-assembling it, piece by piece. Each time I picked up a piece, I had to ask, what is this? Can I trust it? Out of this lengthy period of self-examination I came up with seven foundational practices in Buddhism that I felt I could really trust, that were solid, trustworthy and effective. These were: Sitting, Walking, Chanting, Bowing, Precepts, Robe and Sutra.
I can't say that all seven are universal to every school of Buddhism, but many of them are, and all of them are common to the meditation schools of the three vehicles -- Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana.
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-richmond/buddhist-practices-that-restored-my-buddhist-faith_b_1548090.html?ref=religion&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008
‘Buddha’ goes to the hospital: A convergence of science, history and art
By Emi Kolawole, Published: March 22 | Updated: Friday, March 23, 5:00 AM
The hospital admissions sheet simply read: “Name: Buddha; DOB: 1662.”
The 350-year-old patient’s visit started with a routine x-ray in the summer of 2008. But doctors discovered there were signs of an unknown mass inside his head and yet another inside his stomach – objects that his new caretakers were intent on identifying and extracting if at all possible. The x-ray wasn’t detailed enough to make a proper diagnosis, so doctors at Shands at the University of Florida in Gainesville cleared the schedule and ordered a CAT scan.
After a trip through the scanner, receiving a radiation dose higher than any human could endure, doctors and “Buddha’s” caretakers were a step closer to identifying the mysterious masses.
But why stop there when they could get more detail?
An endoscopy was scheduled roughly two weeks later at North Florida Regional Medical Center in Gainesville. And, after three scans at two medical centers, doctors, with the help of Buddha’s caretakers, were able to identify the mysterious masses: rare religious texts.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/buddha-goes-to-the-hospital-medical-scans-reveal-rare-documents-inside-17th-century-sculpture/2012/03/22/gIQADq96TS_story.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
Profile Information
Member since: Sun Oct 19, 2003, 10:41 PMNumber of posts: 4,053
