Off On Retreat (Again)

I'm going to do another silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock for a week starting today and ending next Saturday, October 27. The teachers are Stephen Batchelor, Martine Batchelor and Sharda Rogell. I took the image of the tree above on a retreat with Joseph Goldstein this summer. Stephen Batchelor is not only a great scholar, but also a wonderful photographer.

Link

Dalai Lama Visits Washington, DC

Here's the caption for the photo above (from SFGate.com):
Members of the Tibetan community offer traditional sweet rice to welcome the Dalai Lama as he arrives at his hotel in Washington on Monday. The Dalai Lama will receive the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow, on Wednesday after being hosted at the White House by President Bush the day before. Reuters photo by Yuri Gripas

I couldn't resist putting this photo of the Dalai Lama up. I'm so happy to hear that the Chinese government (who the Dalai Lama refers to as "our friends the enemy") is upset over the U.S. honoring the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal. He genuinely deserves the honor for all of the wisdom and compassion that he spreads wherever he goes.

Here's an excerpt from an article in The Washington Post about the envoy behind the Dalai Lama receiving this honor:

The original impetus for awarding the Dalai Lama the medal came from several members of Congress who have long championed him, particularly Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Tom Lantos, both California Democrats. But legislation bestowing the medal on a recipient must be co-sponsored by two thirds of the membership of both the House of Representatives and the Senate before their respective committees will consider it. Gyari went from one legislator's office to another, trying to explain to them what the Dalai Lama does and to convince them that he is not trying to break Tibet away from China.

Chinese diplomats, Hill staffers said, pressed hard against the Dalai Lama getting the medal, and were particularly upset when Bush announced last week that he would personally present it to him. In doing so, Bush will become the first U.S. president to meet the Dalai Lama in public.

Link

Standing Up For Burma (video)

This video shows Jack Kornfield reading a statement in support of Democracy in Burma on behalf of a recent conference in Los Angeles. That's Thich Nhat Hanh ringing the bell and leaving so mindfully at the end.

Al Gore Shares Nobel Prize With U.N. Panel

Photo caption from The New York Times: The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, in Oslo, Norway, today. (Cornelius Poppe/European Pressphoto Agency)

I woke up really early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep (around 5 am), so I finally got up and went online to check The New York Times website. The above photo was the first thing I saw, with a quote from the Nobel Committee Chairman saying Al Gore was the greatest president the U.S. didn't elect, or something along those lines. Oddly enough, that part of the story is gone now from the text of the NY Times article. I do appreciate Big Al's quote though:

“We face a true planetary emergency,” Mr. Gore said in his statement. “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

Go Al, go!!! We really do need to lift the global consciousness to a much higher level. War is not the answer, and neither is greed, ignorance or delusion. I wish Al Gore would run for president again, but he's doing a lot of good outside of government, too.

Link

Into the Wild: Memories of Alaska

Last night at 8:30 I went to see Sean Penn's new film Into the Wild by myself at the Piedmont Theater in Oakland, which is close to where I live. I had read the book by Jon Krakauer back when it first came out in paperback--I even saw Krakauer give a reading from it in Seattle where I lived at the time. The odd thing about that is that it's sort of blacked out of my memory, but I went with a buddy of mine named Brad who has reminded me we were there several times.

This story really hits home with me. McCandless was from Virginia, like me, and he was just a few years younger than me. I feel like we both had many of the same instincts about life--he just managed to take his to greater extremes than I have (so far).

Like him and at about the same time, I packed all of my stuff into a car in Virginia in 1990 and just took off west by myself. Only I told my parents I was doing it, and I called them from the road a few times, but I also told them I didn't know where I was going to end up, and I took my sweet time getting across the country, even driving all the way down to New Orleans in the process. I eventually wound up sleeping on my buddy Bill Willett's couch in the Haight in San Francisco until I could afford to rent my own bed after working a few temp jobs.

But here's the weird part--in the summer of 1992 I went up to Alaska for about 6 weeks. I spent a week in Denali National Park camped at Wonder Lake, and I went through the Canadian Yukon, and down to Juneau, and back to Homer where I slept on the Homer Spit. Eventually I worked for two weeks at a salmon plant on the Kenai Peninsula, sleeping in a tent the whole time out in the forest by the fish plant. This is the exact same period of time that Chris McCandless was in Alaska, camped out at his abandoned green and white bus, slowly starving to death. We were probably looking at the same mountains at the same moment. He died around mid-August, if I understand it right. That's almost exactly the same time I up and left the salmon plant. I hitchhiked back to the Anchorage airport in three rides and flew back down to the lower 48 in one day. Suddenly I just had to get the hell out of there. I hope Chris McCandless found what he was looking for. I greatly admire the integrity of his search.

Link

Story About a Monk Who Fled Rangoon

Power of love might not be enough, says monk who fled Rangoon terror

Last week Vida was a simple monk who marched through the streets of Rangoon because he believed it would persuade the regime to be more compassionate towards Burma’s hungry poor. Yesterday he was an angry, perhaps even traumatised, man - but a determined one; his face haunted, his hands kneading constantly as he described his hatred of a military regime he is determined to help to bring down.

Vida, 48, and two comrades were among the first monks to escape from Rangoon, crossing the border into Thailand and bringing with them a tale of horror and heroism from the Saffron Revolution and a message of defiance for the world. “In a few weeks the monks will reorganise,” he said. “This is not the end.”

Vida did not want to give his first name, nor be photographed, as he intends to return to Burma soon. He said he had given up his job as a TV repairman seven years ago to become a monk and had never been interested in protest politics before this summer.

Speaking from a safe house in Mae Sot, he said: “Politics is not the concern of the monks but this time we saw the people getting poorer and poorer and their trouble get bigger and bigger. We thought the monks could negotiate between the regime and the people and show loving kindness to both sides.” The overture was met with a deadly fusillade, which Vida believes may have killed some of his comrades, although in the confusion of a panicking crowd, as he ran for his life amid teargas, screams and gunshots, he cannot be sure.

He escaped into a temple and then spent a couple of days in Rangoon staying with friends and avoiding his monastery as agents from the regime’s militia rounded up monks. He decided to try to reach Thailand to tell the world what he had seen, begging lifts from bus drivers and talking his way through police checkpoints on the road to the border.

The last few days have left their mark. His face is drained. The euphoria of protest, followed by the horror of the attack and the fear of being on the run, has left him exhausted.

The experience has also tried his Buddhist beliefs. “I hate the soldiers now,” he said through an interpreter. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do. Those who killed monks will go to the lowest depths of the Hells. They will not scare us into giving up, though. We are even more determined to continue our struggle against the military. We want peace, national reconciliation, lower prices and the release of political prisoners and Aung San Suu Kyi.

“In about three weeks, after a Buddhist festival is completed, I will return to Burma. We will return to our struggle. Plans are being drawn up.” Asked whether he was ready to die, Vida answered emphatically: “Yes”. He said he did not know whether the monks would return to street protests, or to a more long-term civil disobedience campaign. “I think there will be a different style of protest,” he said.

He described his escape from a bus station where 300 desperate monks had gathered to try to get out of Rangoon. Some had cast off their robes but they were unmistakable with their shaven heads. People were scared to help them, he said, but some managed to summon up the courage to do so, donating money for food, or beds for the night. One monastery in Thailand refused shelter to him and his two colleagues, one of whom was ill.

Other Burmese monks in Thailand have described angry arguments within monasteries in Burma over whether to join the protests, with radical young monks sometimes claiming that corrupt abbots, paid by the regime, tried to hold them back.

Fear levels are high. Siri, one of Vida’s comrades, said: “The military are so brutal. I think they might have had a lot of people shot and beaten.”

Vida added: “They will not last much longer. The monks have the power of love. But we need the international community, too.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2591921.ece

Link

San Francisco Events for the People of Burma

Upcoming San Francisco Events to Support the People of Burma

Friday, October 5
Please join our friends in the Burmese community for:
Peace for Burma: March and Prayer Vigil from 2-8 pm

2 - 5 pm: Rally and meditation at Chinese consulate, 1450
Leguna Street, San Francisco
5:00 - 5:40 pm: Peace March to United Nations Plaza Market Street
Between 7th & 8th
(Let's give democracy a voice in Burma by recreating the peaceful
protest they intended. Monks and lay persons peacefully marching with
Sassana flags reciting Metta Sutta)
6 - 8pm: Multi-religion Prayer Service at United Nations Plaza

For more info, see the website of the Burma American Democratic
Alliance: www.badasf.org or contact: nyuntthan@gmail. com

Saturday, October 6
Meditation vigil at 12 noon at the Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco
(in front of City Hall), organized by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

Please wear red or maroon, and bring a meditation cushion and/or
blanket to sit on if you'd like. This will be a mostly silent vigil,
but we will chant the Metta Sutta. Speakers include Rev. Hozan Alan
Senauke of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

The meditation will focus on lovingkindness, directed to:
* Honor the Buddhist monks and nuns who have taken leadership to
end oppression and hardship under the military dictatorship
* Honor the many who lost their lives in their acts of
courageous defiance
* Honor the hundreds who are injured, imprisoned, and tortured
* Show solidarity with the people of Burma in their noble cause
* Fill the hearts and minds of soldiers with compassion
* Free the constricted minds and hearts of the generals of
destructive greed, insecurity, and fear
* Encourage the international community, particularly those
nations that have influence with the Burmese generals, to do all in
their power to help bring about peace and democracy in Burma

For more information on the Burma situation, please visit:
http://www.bpf. org/html/ whats_now/ 2007/burma_ main.html

Link

Monday's Burma Protest March in San Francisco

These are images from the march in support of the people of Burma that took place in downtown San Francisco yesterday at noon. Jack Kornfield helped lead the march, along with members of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the San Francisco Zen Center, to name a few. Many marchers remained relatively silent throughout the march--I even overheard one woman say to her friend as we filed by, "They're so quiet." A few people clapped in support as we went down the sidewalk. The situation in Burma has not gotten better, it's simply been blacked out by the military junta there. Thousands of monks have been arrested and hauled away in trucks or detained inside their own monasteries with barbed wire. Some have been killed, many have been beaten. We must have an international outcry. There will be peaceful demonstrations on October 6 all over the world.

Link