Remember the Brightness
Why do we so often overlook what is good and life-enhancing, and continue to get captured by the negative? That habit comes from ancient biological survival mechanisms. Scouting for the bad takes top brain priority because survival is a primary need. We have to scan constantly for what could snuff out life in a heartbeat. Goodness is nice, but badness is important. And if we find no threat, then we become suspicious. What is hiding out there to overtake us by surprise? So, how do we keep the alertness without it overwhelming us? How can we loosen the tightness of focus on the negative to...
read morePerfecting Wisdom for Your Review
The Dalai Lama teaching on the Heart Sutra was live-stream broadcast on the internet and taped for later viewing. You can find all 3 teaching sections – each one well over 2 hours – on-line at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6858067 Session 1 has a no-sound glitch for the first 12 minutes. You get to “watch me talk” as I introduce the Dalai Lama and the program. (Test out your ninja lip-reading skills!) In Session 1 at around the 20 minute mark, my voice comes on and I introduce the Dalai Lama after the Michael Fitzpatrick musical piece. There are links on that web page...
read moreHow I Failed My Yellow & Black Belt Test
I failed my second belt test in the martial arts. That was back in the mid-1960s. I was a teenager. I trained harder and more diligently than most every other member of the class. I was good, maybe very good. To qualify for my second belt (what would be Yellow & Black Belt in what I teach now), I had learned a set of 3 sequences of power punching and kicking techniques. I had drilled those sets over and over. I knew 1-2-3 so well I did not even have to think about them. I stepped in front of the belt testing board of judges. They called out, “Set One” in an Asian language. I...
read moreWhat Do We Adjust?
I just got home from a meditation retreat hosted by a senior Tibetan teacher. While there, we participants spent hours each day tucked in side by side on Asian style meditation cushion seats on the floor. At one point I looked around at my fellow American participants and noticed an odd unstated discomfort. People did their best to wiggle around and find needed space. Check this out the next time you have an opportunity: Look at the size of the standard Japanese or Tibetan meditation cushion seat. Look at the size of the typical older generation Asian person’s bottom and leg...
read moreSecret Technology East and West
One of my friends at the Sakya Pema Ts’al Monastic Institute, just outside Pokhara, Nepal, sent me some photos of senior students of the shedra (monk college) in their computer training class. As from a description of meditation for beginners, they sit in perfect upright posture, focused in unswerving meditative concentration, letting go of the previous moment’s self and becoming yet a new and expanded version of themselves. Right there in front of the tiny screen. These are my monk friends who live south of the forbidden Tibet border at the foot of the Himalayas. They and their...
read morePalden Sakya Lamas in Dayton
My dear friends Lama Pema Wangdak of New York Palden Sakya Centers, and Lama Kunga Dhondup, ritual master of Pema Ts’al School in Pokhara, Nepal, joined us in Dayton for an initiation and teaching in the spiritual practice of White Tara longevity meditation. SKH Quest Center instructors travelled from as far away as Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina to be a part of the illumination in...
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