January 20th, 2008 Comments Off
This photo was taken on top of a hill (3,800 meters up) outside a small Tibetan town called Ganzi. I often look at it and wonder about how simple it would be to live there and just mediate each day.
Most people say my life is already a dream. That I live in some kind of god realm and if life got much simpler (quieter) than it already is, then I might as well be dead. I suppose, in comparison to most people I don’t do a lot. I work and I travel and I read and I blog, occasionally. But I still find life to be tad hectic (grin) and so I also meditate. I’m not a fanatic and I’m not sure that I’m even that spiritual, but I like to go to a Vipassana meditation centre 2-3 times a year and I try to put my bum on a cushion most mornings for at least 20 minutes.
Do I recommend meditation? The answer is unequivocally yes. For me, there is nothing that helps me live easier, better, happier, than meditation. I like the simplicity of mindfulness (insight) meditation. I like the teachings of S.N. Goenka and also people like Jon Kabat-Zinn. I also like the teachings of Suzuki Roshi and Shinzen Young.
July 21st, 2007 Comments Off
by Sylvia Boorstein
If you pay attention for just five minutes, you know some very fundamental dharma: things change, nothing stays comfortable, sensations come and go quite impersonally, according to conditions, but not because of anything that you do or think you do. Changes come and go quite by themselves. In the first five minutes of paying attention, you learn that pleasant sensations lead to the desire that these sensations will stay and that unpleasant sensations lead to the hope that they will go away. And both the attraction and the aversion amount to tension in the mind. Both are uncomfortable. So in the first minutes, you get a big lesson about suffering: wanting things to be other than they are. Such a tremendous amount of truth to be learned just closing your eyes and paying attention to bodily sensations.
Extract from Tricycle
February 11th, 2007 Comments Off
I like to meditate. I haven’t been doing much lately, but seeing the person in this snapshot, sitting on a rock looking out to sea, kinda suggested to me that he was meditating and that I aught to get back on my butt and start again.
January 28th, 2007 Comments Off
When you travel you meet people. That’s part of the deal, part of the excitement. On this trip, mainly because I stayed-put for three weeks in Sarnath, a place full of academics, I met, well, lots of academics. Strangely enough a number of them were Vipassana mediators who follow the teachings of SN Goenka.
One of these, a nice guy who I met over breakfast, was Forrest Fleischman a Fulbright scholar and the son of Dr Paul Fleischman. Paul Fleischman is a psychiatrist and a teacher of vipassana meditation in the tradition of SN Goenka. He is the author of many publications but the one I want to refer you to is called ‘Why I Sit’. The article is well written and provides an interesting insight into his thoughts about vipassana.
Here is a link to Dhamma Chakka the Sarnath Vipassana Centre. A nice place to do a 10-day retreat.
January 16th, 2007 Comments Off
flash fiction by John Holman
His head newly shaven, he walks to the temple with a slow, regal demeanour. Each stride measured, each footfall quiet on the fine gravel path. His hands are soft and warm. His fingers entwined like tender lovers resting in some quiet ritual togetherness.
A misty rain falls. Feather-like droplets touch his ageing face but he is unconcerned with rain. He stops as he sees the temple rooftop appear above the trees — bright terracotta and angular, cutting the grey mist with waves of orange and specks of gold.
He hears the low rhythmic chanting of monks at prayer, a drumbeat and a frog whose call has a sadness that seems to match his own. And in the distance, he hears the faint step of a sandalled monk approach.
March had been cold and April even colder. No snow, just cold wind and a rain that had seeped inside of him, filling his lungs and his heart.
“Welcome home, Master.”
He smiles and bows his head but does not reply, preferring to hold back, to enjoy his silence a moment longer. He waits, listening as the monk’s tread slowly fades.
» Read the rest of this entry «
December 11th, 2006 Comments Off
I leave in a few days and thought I would write a note on some of the places I’ll be visiting over the next month. My destinations are — Delhi, Varanasi, Sarnath and Bodh Gaya in India and then Kathmandu Valley (Kathmandu, Patan, Bhaktapur) in Nepal.
Known as Uruvela in the Buddha’s time, the city of Bodh Gaya (or Bodhgaya) is now a village of about 30,000 permanent residents. Bodh Gaya is situated in NE India, in the state of Bihar and is famous for being the place where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha attained enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi tree.
The state of Bihar has the reputation of being India’s most notorious and lawless state. It is one of India’s poorest areas and is racked by violent clashes between different caste and political groups. Link
For Buddhists, Bodh Gaya is probably the most important pilgrimage location in the world and in 2002 its 2,500 year old Mahabodhi Temple took on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site status. Next to the Mahabodhi Temple stands the Bodhi tree. This tree is a sapling of the Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka, itself a sapling of the original Bodhi tree.
I will be staying in Bodh Gaya for about a week and intend visiting most of the monasteries and temples in the area. I’ll also be visiting the Vipassana Meditation Centre and am hoping they’ll allow an old student to join their ten day course and to sit for a while.
A Tibetan Prayer Festival called a Monlam will also be happening while I’m there and while looking-up Monlam on the Net I found that His Holiness the Karmapa will be teaching in Bodh Gaya at the same time — which is probably why I’m having trouble finding a room.
Next to Tibetan New Year, these Monlam Prayer Festivals are probably the most important festivals on the Tibetan calender. Each silo (school) of Tibetan Buddhism gathers at different times in Bodh Gaya and I have coincided my trip with the Kagyu Monlam.
The three other main schools on Tibetan Buddhism are Nyingma, Sakya and Geluk, the Dalai Lama’s school.
From Bodh Gaya I’ll return to Varanasi for one night and then fly to Kathmandu, Nepal.
September 24th, 2006 Comments Off
a quiet walk
a solitary bench –
alone at last
maybe not a Haiku by John Holman
