We have so far had about 50 requests from prisoners passed on to us, for various types of books. Trade paperback thrillers are the standard, along with westerns. If anyone has westerns they could donate, it would be greatly appreciated.
Some of the letters are quite moving. For instance, this:
I'm asking if you have some Books on lucid dreaming? or a dream dictionary or any Books by Anne Besant or C.W. Leadbeater. Astral Projection or out of body experiences. Anything in this matter would be highly appreciated, Sir.
Thanks for all that you can do for me,
Your Friend,
L-
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Server Overload?
The true server of this blog is your truly, and I have quite deliberately been leaving my computer at school to get out of the dreaded news/baseball/work cycle. It has been quite nice, actually, and I am trying to refit a posting schedule to school hours only. I should have it worked out by next week.
Meanwhile, courtesy of a listserv I subscribe to, peruse this article on psychotropic medication and meditation practice.
...[M]any of us who have practiced meditation and undertaken a spiritual path for an extended period have questioned whether there are other methods we can draw upon in trying to optimize our individual and collective healing and awakening—methods that don’t come from the spiritual traditions themselves. And as the number of spiritual, psychological, medical, and other healing practices continues to multiply, this becomes an increasingly perplexing—and ever-more relevant—question. We need a significant and disciplined evaluation of how best to combine dharma and diverse therapeutic disciplines, including the most controversial of all therapies: medication.
In fact, such an evaluation has already begun. It’s in its early stages, but it is indeed underway.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Welcome, Monday!
Yesterday the Times ran a very interesting piece in the Sunday Magazine about an accomplished American Zen master whose childhood neglect and abuse finally caught up with him. His therapist was a psychoanalyst with deep ties to Zen practice, and who suggested that in this case the Zen practice was an escape from his difficulties, not a confrontation of them. It is an excellent case study of both the limits of Zen practice in western culture and the potentials for synthesizing eastern and western modes of insight.
"You need a self to lose the self" is a very important bit of advice. In the Times' article, Mitsunen, the Zen Master, seems to have been running away from his own core experience of self, for fear of what is "really" there. Zen came relatively easy to him, and off he went, into the virtuoso practice, in full avoidance mode.
I think of my own practice. It is so choppy, so up and down, that sometimes it seems hardly a practice at all. But there is no doubt that it has grounded me. Yesterday, I had quite a bit of time alone in the woods and fields, and I felt I was able to just be there, slow down the chatter, and enjoy the frog music, the waves of heat, the earthsmells, the little creek. If that is all I ever get out of this discipline, it is enough.
One reason why I rarely speak to my students of "no self" is that teenagers too easily slide into nihilism. They have so little experience, or what experience they do have thoroughly defines them, that the self is both rigid and underformed. Nor are they able to focus effectively from the point of view of "watching the watcher" or other such stances one can take during meditation. That is likely a function of development.
Rather, I usually just note that the nature of things is constant change. Some kids pick up on the implications of this for the self. Others just use it to get through tough moments. To emphasize no-self, is I think, a grave mistake at this age. At least in our culture.
"You need a self to lose the self" is a very important bit of advice. In the Times' article, Mitsunen, the Zen Master, seems to have been running away from his own core experience of self, for fear of what is "really" there. Zen came relatively easy to him, and off he went, into the virtuoso practice, in full avoidance mode.
I think of my own practice. It is so choppy, so up and down, that sometimes it seems hardly a practice at all. But there is no doubt that it has grounded me. Yesterday, I had quite a bit of time alone in the woods and fields, and I felt I was able to just be there, slow down the chatter, and enjoy the frog music, the waves of heat, the earthsmells, the little creek. If that is all I ever get out of this discipline, it is enough.
One reason why I rarely speak to my students of "no self" is that teenagers too easily slide into nihilism. They have so little experience, or what experience they do have thoroughly defines them, that the self is both rigid and underformed. Nor are they able to focus effectively from the point of view of "watching the watcher" or other such stances one can take during meditation. That is likely a function of development.
Rather, I usually just note that the nature of things is constant change. Some kids pick up on the implications of this for the self. Others just use it to get through tough moments. To emphasize no-self, is I think, a grave mistake at this age. At least in our culture.
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