Buddhism

How Mindfulness Can Overcome the Greed of the 1 Percent

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I have led mindfulness and loving-kindness meditations at Occupy Boston. Meditation is, of course, valuable as a refuge from stress. Participating in an occupation, which may involve living outdoors under threat of possible arrest and police brutality, can certainly be stressful (I myself am only a day visitor to the Occupy Boston encampment). But I believe mindfulness can actually address the core problem that the Occupy movement confronts, i.e. the greed of the wealthiest 1 percent. The thesis of my eBook, Occupy the Moment, is that greed is literally an addiction, a distortion of the brain systems that govern habits and rewards.

Culture

Photo Essay: Sacred Spaces at Occupy Oakland

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Buddhist monks in orange robes chant in one corner of the Occupy Oakland encampment. Across the plaza, a reverend in a rainbow stole reads Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Six Principles of Nonviolence.” A block away, candles burn on an unorthodox altar to the death of capitalism.

Culture

Halloween

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The wall that we think we build between life and death, between good and evil, dissolves into mist on All Hallows Eve. And the shadow of death looms large over us reminding us of our earthly mortality and our complicated selves. We wear the masks that reveal our internal Otherness. We costume ourselves in our fantasies and look our personal monsters in the face. On All Hallows Eve we see our own all too human un-holy-ness.

Education

Who Can't Afford Community College?

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What Kind of Person Can’t Afford Community College? I’m going to begin this blog like a Cassandra, but end it more positively. No one needs another blog entirely dedicated to how awful things are. So here’s the bad part:
I was talking with some moms recently and one, disparaging an acquaintance who was saving up to attend a two-year college, asked with an incredulous laugh, “What kind of a person can’t afford community college?” The remark sent a chill through my bones.

Empathy

Economic Dislocation

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I recently sold my home. It was the first home to sell in my neighborhood in 6 months. Now my realtor tells me there are amazing deals on the market, homes that are selling for 200,000 or 300,000 less than they were a couple of years ago. She tells me that virtually all the houses on the market are foreclosures and that great deals are available. It’s not quite as bad as she describes but the housing report for July shows that just over 26% of homes sold in the Bay Area were foreclosures and that nearly 20% of all the homes sold were underwater.

art

A Visible Island in the Invisible Sea

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I have just come home from an island. It is small and magical, and set 12 nautical miles out into the Atlantic, and I have been returning there in the summers since I was a teenager. I have been drunk on its landscape since I first set foot there, seasick and naive, and trailed behind my parents through the cathedral woods and stumbled onto a marsh awash in wild iris that I followed to the shore. I was hooked then. I was in sway to the place.

General News

Redefining Independence

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Yesterday was the 4th of July, a national holiday of independence in the USA. I am drawn to reflecting on the topic, and especially how it plays out in the North American culture within which I live and work. Independence is one of the highest values in this culture. Its two interweaving strands of meaning appear as a rejection of dependence, of being in need of others, at their mercy. Both interfere with conscious interdependence, the practice of collaborating with others to create outcomes that work for more and more people.

Christianity

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week: The Divine Glance

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Rev. Sarah S. Ray:
The Divine Glance
Rumi wrote of it. Christ Yahshua (Jesus) certainly experienced and shared it, when he spoke of “letting your eye be single,” and “full of light.” The Hindus and Sikhs call it Darshan. And yet, with millions of Christians in this country, it seems virtually unheard of. Even feared.

Christianity

5 Myths Atheists Believe about Religion

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Despite their emphasis on reason, evidence and a desire to see through false truth claims, many atheists hold surprisingly ill-informed beliefs about religion. Many of these myths go unquestioned simply because they serve the purpose of discrediting religion at large. They allow for the construction of a straw man i.e. a distorted and simplistic representation of religion which can be easily attacked, summarily dismissed and ridiculed. Others who genuinely believe these false claims merely have a limited understanding of the ideas involved and have never thoroughly examined them. But, myths are myths and they should be acknowledged for what they are.

Rethinking Religion

Gratitude

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One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough. –Hafiz
I am currently writing a book tentatively titled, Spirituality: What it is and Why it Matters. The book’s central idea is that the common theme of the enormous variety of traditional and contemporary spirituality is a set of virtues–habits of mind, emotion, and action–which provide long-lasting personal contentment and lead us to compassionate and generous action towards others. Here is a tiny excerpt from the working draft of Spirituality, on one of the most important of those virtues:
Gratitude plays a powerful role in spiritual life–as much in the contexts of traditional religion as in the more eclectic, less traditionally oriented spirituality of the present. Contemporary Catholic spiritual teacher David Stiendl-Rast tells us that “Gratitude is the heart of prayer.”