BUDDHISM

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BUDDHISM
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Whats (Not) In Your Mind?

• All things come at first from MIND
• Mind creates them, mind fulfills them
• Speak or act with tainted mind,
• Youll drag around a cart of pain
• All things come at first from MIND
• Mind creates them, mind fulfills them
• Speak or act with lucid mind
• And joy will follow like your shadow.
• The Dhammapada

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• The whole aim of Eastern religion is to shift
  self-identity from the light bulb to the light
• Joseph Campbell
• Enlightenment

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Big Questions

• How can we be happy? What prevents it?
• To Hell in a Hand Basket or Heaven on Earth?
• Buddhism A Raft out of Hell?
• Did you know youre my Heros Journey?
• Whats funny bout peace, love and understanding?
• Dr. Buddha Dukkhalogist - 8-fold Path
• Whats (not) in your Mind?
• The Jewels in the What?
• WWBK What would Buddha know?

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Same Goal?

• The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is
  extended vision, the enlargement of ones
  understanding of the ultimate nature of things
  (8).
• What is the nature of things?
• What is the state of the world?
• Story Birdsnest

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Fire and Ice Robert Frost

• Some say the world will end in fire.
• Some say in ice.
• From what Ive tasted of desire,
• I hold with those who favor fire.
• But if it had to perish twice,
• I think I know enough of hate
• To say that for destruction ice
• Is also great,
• And would suffice.

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Fear and Desire The Only Way?

• The Last Flower
• Gandhi I know a way out of hell
• Story Heaven and Hell
• Buddha I teach suffering and the end of
  suffering

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The Three Poisons

• Grasping/Desire
• Aversion/Hatred/Fear
• Delusion/Ignorance
• Cause all suffering
• Reflect Personality types

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Buddhist View of Life

• A. 6 senses - Sights, Sounds, Tastes, Smells,
  Physical perceptions, Mental perceptions
• B. 6 accompanying consciousnesses
• Sight and the seeing of it, etc.
• C. 52 feeling/thought reactions/responses (26
  wise, 26 unwise) interplaying between sense
  experiences and consciousness

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Wise and Unwise Responses to Life

• Unwise/Unskillful
• Hatred
• Jealousy
• Fear
• Anger
• etc.

• Wise/Skillful
• Love
• Compassion
• Generosity
• Openness
• Tranquility
• Equanimity, etc.

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Two Ways of Living

• Unwise/Unskillful Wandering about at the whim
  of every desire, impulse, emotion, like a stick
  in a river, moody etc.
• 2. Wise/Skillful/Enlightened intentional,
  deliberate, skillful, wise, etc.
• Quick Write - Name a person from your life, from
  a story, or from history or news that you would
  describe as enlightened or wise and give
  specifics
• Repeat for someone unenlightened or unwise

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Gandhis morning prayer

• Let our first act in the morning be to resolve
  such as this
• I shall not fear anyone on earth
• I shall fear only that which is sacred
• I will not bear ill will towards anyone
• I shall not submit to injustice
• I shall conquer untruth by truth
• I shall conquer hatred by love
• And in resting in truth I shall bear all
  suffering
• And bring freedom of spirit to my own heart and
  all those that I touch

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Others

• Love your enemies Jesus
• Meet physical force with soul force MLK
• Make me an instrument of your peace St. Francis
  of Assisi
• Buddhist Quotes page 3 in packet
• Okay, but how?

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• Buddhism is a voyage across lifes river a
  transport from the common sense shore of
  ignorance, grasping and death to the further bank
  of wisdom and enlightenment (144).

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Wisdom?

• What is the wisdom weve lost in knowledge?
• Socrates poster boy for Western Wisdom what
  did he know?
• All I know is that I do not know
• Oracle at Delphi Know Thyself
• What did Buddha discover?

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Goal Mindfulness/Awareness/ Enlightenment

• The more deeply we pay attention the more deeply
  we experience that we do not exist separate from
  the sunlight or the clouds or the earthwormsTo
  the extent that we have learned to grasp and
  identify with this limited life, we suffer. The
  amount of our identification with it is our
  delusion, our suffering. Jack Kornfield

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Big Ideas

1. Its all in the MIND Consciousness/
   Awareness/Mindfulness/Enlightenment
2. Life is suffering caused by 1) Selfish Desire/
   Grasping, 2) Fear/ Aversion, and 3) Ignorance/
   Delusion
3. Empty Self thru 8fold Path, Middle Way
4. The Jewel is in the Lotus
5. Buddha nature and the Nirvanic World

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BUDDHA

• "What are you"?
• "I am Awake
• "Buddha" the Awakened, the Enlightened
• Siddhartha Gautama
• 563-483 B.C.E.
• Nepal/India
• Sakyamuni (silent sage)
• Wisdom Incarnate

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The Man Who Woke Up

• A man judged by hundreds of millions of people,
  from Ceylon Sri Lanka to Japan, and throughout
  large sections of the Asian mainland, to have
  exerted by his intellectual integrity, moral
  persuasiveness and spiritual insight, the most
  pervasive influence on the thought and life of
  the human race. Del Byron Schneider
• "The rest of us dream the dream known as the
  awakened state of human life"

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Classic Heros Journey

• I. Prince, 4 Passing Sights, Great Going Forth
  Quest, find the cause of suffering
• II. Finds Middle Way, Temptations
• Enlightenment under Bodhi Tree finds cause and
  end of suffering
• III. Returns with a mission to preach a religion
  of wisdom and compassion

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Four Passing Sights

• Journal Mindblower
• old man - aging
• sick people - disease
• corpse - death
• monk - withdrawal
• "Life is subject to age and death - where is the
  realm of life in which there is neither?"
• Fleshly pleasures lose their charm, so at 29 goes
  into forest

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The Great Going Forth

• Learns Raja Yoga w
• Hindu Gurus
• Tries austerity of ascetics - didn't work to
  bring enlightenment, but did lead him to
  principle of
• The Middle Way like a string on an instrument

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Enlightenment

• Sits under peepul/Bo tree (bodhiknowledge) Gaya
  in NE India
• Vows - Let my skin and sinews and bones become
  dry. all the flesh and blood in my body dry up,
  but never from this seat will I stir, until I
  have attained the supreme and absolute wisdom.

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Temptation

• (like Christs on the eve of his ministry)
• 1. Kama - desire - babes
• 2. Mara - death - empties finite self
• Mara challenges his right to be there - Buddha
  touches the earth to bear witness
• Lost in rapture for 7 days, tries to get up,
  overcome by waves of bliss, stays 7x7 days
• 3. Mara appeals to reason, don't go back - "How
  show what can only be found, teach what can only
  be learned? Buddha replies Some will
  understand.

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Mission

• Lives message
• Preaches 50 years - withdraws
• 6 yrs, preaches 45.
• 3 mos, preaches 9.
• 3x/day
• Dies c.483 B.C. at 80
• Last words - "Work out your own salvation with
  diligence."

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The Silent Sage

• Sakyamuni - silent sage of the Sakya Clan
• One of the greatest personalities of all time
  Smith
• Wisdom incarnate - cool head/ rational (like
  Socrates) and warm heart of infinite
  compassion(like Francis)
• transforming presence - moved among kings and
  villagers with equal ease, took no notice of
  caste

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The Rebel Saint

• Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism sprang fully formed as
  an Indian Protestantism against Hindu perversions
  
• 6 Common Elements of Religion that were corrupted
• 1.      Authority
• 2.      Ritual (People danced out their
  religion before they thought it out)
• 3.      Speculation metaphysics
• 4.      Tradition
• 5.      Grace
• 6.      Mystery
• What started was a religion almost entirely
  devoid of each of these ingredients without which
  we would suppose that religion could not take
  root.

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Original Buddhism

• Empirical - know for yourself, validate
• Scientific - cause and effect experiments
• Practical - not speculative
• Therapeutic - suffering and its end
• Psychological v. metaphysical - began with
  human problems instead of universe
• Egalitarian - women equal, caste breaking
• Individuals - Be lamps unto yourselves, work out
  your own salvation with diligence

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Numerical too and Useful

• 2 Ways of Living
• 3 Poisons
• 3 Marks of Existence
• 3 Jewels
• 4 Noble Truths
• 4 Foundations of Mindfulness
• 5 Precepts
• 5 Skandhas
• 5 Hindrances
• 6 Senses
• 6 Accompanying Consciousnesses
• 6 Moments of Dukkha
• 7 Factors of Enlightenment
• 8 Fold Path
• 52 Skillful and Unskillful Responses To Life

• "Suffering have I explained - for this is useful
• its cause, destruction and path that leads to its
  destruction.

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Kalama Sutta

• "Do not accept what you hear by report, do not
  accept tradition, do not accept a statement
  because it is found in our books, nor because it
  is in accord with your beliefs, not because it is
  the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto
  yourselves. Those who either now or after I am
  dead, still rely upon themselves only and not
  look for assistance to anyone besides themselves,
  it is they who will reach the topmost height.

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The Four Noble TruthsBuddhas First Sermon
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Dr. Buddha - Dukkhalogist

• Symptom Dukkha suffering, transitory, finite
  existence, life out of joint
• Diagnosis Tanha cause of suffering is
  desire/selfish craving based on egoism. Private
  fulfillment increases separateness. Tanha -
  always present when suffering is present, always
  absent when suffering is absent
• Prognosis To cure Dukkha, get rid of Tanha -
  release from the narrow limits of self-interest
  into vast expanse of human life How?
• Remedy/Prescription The Eightfold Path

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Mindfulness Journal Quick Writes

• 1. Who do you surround yourself with? List
  people who enlighten you, people who drag you
  down.
• 2. Write about a moment you had today when you
  felt
• Anxious, stressed, nervous, dissatisfied,
  wanting, etc. OR
• Peaceful, calm, relaxed, fulfilled, happy, etc.

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More Mindfulness Journal Quickies

• Stop and listen what are you aware of about
  yourself or your surroundings of which you
  werent aware until you paid attention?
• 4. What is most on your mind?
• 5. What are you aware of about yourself or your
  world at this point of your life of which you
  were not aware as a child?

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Dukkha life out of joint

1. Trauma of birth
2. Sickness
3. Aging
4. Fear of death
5. Being tied to what you hate
6. Being separated from what you love

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The Remedy - The Eightfold Path

• intentional living, rather than pulled and pushed
  by impulse and circumstance
• series of changes designed to release the
  individual from ignorance, impulse and Tanha
• Preliminary - Begin with Right Association - yoke
  wild elephant to tamed

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The Eightfold Path Right

1. Belief Noble Truths make up mind, then
2. Intent - Make up our hearts, dedicate
3. Speech 3 switches control us, become aware of
   what our speech reveals about us, of how many
   times and why we deviate from truth or kindness,
   of motives
4. Conduct - understand motives before trying to
   change behavior - how generous/selfless, follow 5
   Precepts
5. Livelihood - what occupies our time. Promote life
   
6. Effort Middle Way, slow and steady, like an ox
7. Mindfulness Be aware, awake, conscious
8. Concentration - Raja Yoga regeneration - change
   into a new creature who experiences the world in
   different way.

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Five Precepts

• Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments (2nd
  half)
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I
  undertake the training to abstain from
• Killing living beings
• Taking things not given
• Sexual misconduct
• False speech
• Intoxicating drinks and drugs

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All in your Mind?

• The Dhammapada "All we are is the result of
  what we have thought." "All things can be
  mastered by mindfulness.
• There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
  makes it so Hamlet
• For Buddha ignorance, not sin, is the offender -
  sin is prompted by fundamental ignorance of our
  true nature

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• Continuous self-awareness/examination -
  freedom from unconscious, robot-like existence
• See everything as it is - "If we maintain a
  steady attention to our thoughts and feelings, we
  perceive that they swim in and out of our
  awareness, and are in no way permanent parts of
  us."
• "We should witness all things non-reactively,
  especially our moods and emotions, neither
  condemning some nor holding onto others."

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Ways to practice Mindfulness

• Meditate on fearful and disgusting sights until
  they no longer bother us or repel us
• Pervade world with thoughts of loving kindness
• become aware of every action - when sleep takes
  over, whether breath is in or out
• special routine for complete withdrawal
• Packet page 17 and 18
• Mindfulness Experiment - Speech and Action

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Buddha's Insights

• 1. Every emotion, thought or image is
  accompanied by a body sensation and vice versa
• 2. Obsessive patterns arise in mind and these
  constitute misery/dukkha
• 3. Every mental and physical state is in flux,
  none is solid and enduring, even pain - each is
  comprised of series of discrete sensations that
  can suddenly change.
• 4. We have little control over our minds and
  physical sensations
• 5. There is nobody behind the mental/physical
  events
• No Self? No Observer? What up wit dat?

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3 Marks of Existence

1. Anicca - transitoriness/impermanence
2. Dukkha suffering
3. Anatta - absence of permanent identity/soul

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• All Things Must Pass by George Harrison
• Sunrise doesnt last all morning
• A cloudburst doesnt last all day
• Seems my love has up and has left you with no
  warning
• Its not always going to be this wayAll things
  must passAll things must pass away
• Sunset doesnt last all eveningA mind can blow
  those clouds awayAfter all this, my love is up
  and must be leavingIts not always going to be
  this grey

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Anicca - Impermanence

• All Things Must Pass
• Regard this world
• As a star at dawn,
• a bubble in a stream,
• a flash of lightning
• in a summer cloud,
• a flickering lamp
• a phantom - and a dream.
• This applies to the self too hence

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Anatta No Soul doctrine

• No soul/permanent self. What gets reborn?
• Bad habits Desire/Fear threads each life to
  past and future
• No spiritual substance/soul transmitted - but
  ideas, impressions, feelings, consciousness,
  memories
• Desires and dislikes influencing my mind have
  lineages
• Not bound by personal history - can break the
  chain through will

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Karma, Tanha, Samsara,

• Buddha's reincarnation differed from Hindus who
  attribute rebirth to Karma
• Buddhists to Tanha - "as long as the wish to be a
  separate self persists, that wish would be
  granted. Desire is key - it is possible to step
  permanently out of the cycle of rebirth whenever
  one wished wholeheartedly to do so."

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Nirvana?
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Nirvana

• Arhat who extinguishes all desires - reborn
  doesn't apply, not reborn doesn't apply.
• Response to disciple You ought to be bewildered
  - this is "profound, recondite, hard to
  comprehend, rare, excellent, beyond dialectic,
  subtle, only to be understood by the wise."
• Supra-sonic?
• "blow out/extinguish" boundaries of finite self,
  left w/ boundless life

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• Far transcends the power of words - individual
  awareness is eclipsed in the blazing light of
  total awareness like a star at sunrise
• "Some say the dewdrop slips into the shining sea
  - others prefer to think of the dewdrop opening
  to receive the sea itself.
• "life of the Arhat is of increasing independence
  from the causal order of nature
• Spiritual freedom brings largeness of life -
  Buddha "embodied more of reality.
• If increased freedom brings increased being,
  total freedom brings BEING itself.

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Big Raft and Little

• Schism (split) btw Mahayana Theravada
• Two Schools - both Yana - raft or ferry - both
  claim to carry people across life's shores to
  enlightenment
• Maha - great, (Mahatma - Great souled), Hina -
  little
• Mahayana - "Buddhism for the people" - Big Raft -
  linked to the Buddha's "Great Renunciation"
• Hinayana - Little Raft - Theravada - Way of the
  Elders - linked to teachings in text

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There Are Two Kinds of People?

• 1. Are people dependent or interdependent
• 2. Is the universe friendly/helpful or
  indifferent/hostile
• 3. Is the best part of a human being the head or
  the heart? -Classicists rank thoughts above
  feelings, Romantics the opposite

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Theraveda / Hinayana Mahayana
Where Sri Lank, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia China, Korea, Japan, Tibet
How Buddhas vision of society Monarchy, monastic community (Sangha), laity Grafted onto pre-existent civilizations
Focus Wisdom Compassion
Buddhas Example Entering Nirvana Great Renunciation of Nirvana to preach
The Ideal Arhat holy monk who remains in Nirvana after death Bodhisattva (wisdom being) who passes up Nirvana and vows to help all beings achieve enlightenment
Goal Attainment of Nirvana requires constant attention of monks, support of laity Religious practice is relevant to everyone

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Bodhisattva

• One whose Being (Sattva) is
• Illumination (Bodhi)
• Focus on Buddhas renunciation of Nirvana to
  teach on his compassion
• Buddha as saint

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Zen

• School of Buddhist thought and training in Japan
• Zen Japanese mispronuncing of
• Chan Chinese mispronuncing of
• Dhyana Sanskrit for contemplation
• Special transmission outside scripture
• from Buddha mind to
• Buddha mind a succession
• of teachers

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The Lotus Sermon

• Buddha holds a golden lotus understood by none
  except Mahakayapa passes down in India through
  28 patriarchs and carried to China in 520 A.D. by
  Bodhidharma

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Words, Words, Words

• like stepping through Alice's looking glass -
  topsy-turvy wonderland
• Designed to break limits of normal human
  reason/logic, (Logic is a ladder), to blast
  through limitations of language words are
  inadequate,
• Beyond words and ideas to experiences and
  realization (Enlightenment)
• Satori

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Three aspects of Zen Training

• 1. Zazen seated meditation
• 2. Koan logic-breaking riddles
• 3. Sanzen conference with master validates,
  encourages, corrects

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Koan

• shortest one night, longest 12 years.
• What is the sound of one hand clapping?
• Reason is limited, a ladder too short to reach to
  truths full heights and must be supported by
  another way of knowing
• Zen intends to upset the mind, unbalance it and
  eventually provoke revolt against limits of
  logic. Koan provokes, excites, exasperates and
  eventually exhausts the mind, reducing it to an
  impasse must count on a sudden flash of insight

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Satori - Enlightenment

• See beings amazingness
• each equally a manifestation of
• the infinite trees, leaves, _at_stick
• Life is Beautiful
• Jewel is in the Lotus, (X in O)
• Unity of Buddha nature within
• w/ Nirvanic world without
• widen the doors of perception so that the wonder
  of the Satori experience can flood the everyday
  world.

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Zens Influence on Japan

• Landscape painting
• Landscape gardening rock gardens
• Martial arts
• Tea Ceremony
• Haiku

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Haiku

• I look in a dragonflys eye
• And see the mountains Over my shoulder
•  
• The flower I saw
• Drift back to the branch
• Was a butterfly

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Conduits

• Exp. of oneness with all,
• bliss thru self-emptying, transformative
  experience of seeing world differently
• The Art of Attention
• Kobe, Curt, Caddyshack, Karate Kid
• Love, and do what you will St. Augustine
• If you cant find enlightenment in
• doing the dishes

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Tibetan Buddhism

• Mandala

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• Nirvana in single life-use all hum. energies
• Sounds, sights, motion can distract, but it
  doesnt follow that they must.
• Channel physical energies into currents that
  carry spirit forward instead of derailing it.
• Mantras convert noise and distracting chatter
  into holy formulae
• Mudras choreographed hand gestures
• Mandalas treat the eyes to icons whose holy
  beauty draws the beholder in their direction
•  

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Mantra
Prayer Flags

• Om Mane Padme Hung
• The Jewel is in the Lotus
• Also a form of the name for the Bodhisattva of
  compassion

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The Dalai Lama

• Bodhisattva not pope or god-king
• Incarnates compassion
• Uninterrupted current of spiritual influence
• As rainforests are to the earths atmosphere,
  someone has said, so are the Tibetan people to
  the human spirit in this time of its planetary
  ordeal (144).

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The Three Jewels (Vows)

1. I take refuge in the Buddha
2. I take refuge in the Dharma (8-fold path)
3. I take refuge in the Sangha (community of
   Buddhists)

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The Crossing

• After reaching the other shore leave raft, 5
  precepts, 8fold path, dukkha, karma, nirvana
  all vital to those crossing, but lose relevance
  to those who have arrived as a raft does on land.
• World is an activity of Nirvana itself not the
  slightest distinction exists between them
• good and evil disappear
• Earth is the lotus land, this body is Buddhas
• Bodhisattvas vow not to enter Nirvana until the
  grass itself be enlightened.
• River connects the banks, rather than divides
  them
• Buddhism prominent in all Asian lands except
  India, which subsumed it, Buddhism sank back into
  the stream

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Thich Nhat Hanh

• Vietnamese Zen Monk
• Nominated by MLK in 1967 for Nobel Peace Prize
  for work rebuilding villages destroyed in Vietnam
  War