Lamasuryadas PowerPoint PPT Presentations

I've just sent a letter inviting the Dalai Lama to Kansas City to help with interfaith peace and reconciliation dialogue, which is being hand-carried along with others by a Missouri delegation to Dharamsala, India, where he lives. Seems to me that public discussion about body cameras and technology ain't gonna quite do it regarding endemic racism and brutality in our system, conditioned by fear, aggression, and inequality.

We should not be taken in by the intensity of our latest spiritual epiphany while losing sight of the endless journey yet to be unfolded. I diagnose this seeker’s disease as “premature immaculation”, and it does crop up on this shore today: thinking we are there before we actually are. We may actually have gone far; and yet, there is still far to go.

What we seek, we are. We are all Buddhas by nature, temporarily obscured by adventitious emotions and illusions. We only have to awaken to that fact. All that we seek is available within. And not just within ourselves but within each other, each relationship, and encounter, each moment. Let’s exploit our own innate natural resources for a change, and give our exterior resources a rest. This would truly be Mindful Environmentalism and planetary stewardship. This world is my body, all beings my heart-mind.

“Still Alice” is a moving and beautifully acted (by Julianne Moore and Kristen Stuart) film and it keeps reverberating around my brainpan. It reminded me of my old grannie who in her 90s seemed to live almost totally in the Now. Fortunately, Gram had the care she seemed to need and want, and a pretty good end.

Meditation calms the mind in order to decrease stress and find inner peace and balance. A daily three-minute meditation is a time efficient and effective way to increase back your inner peace.

Autumn leaves are turning red and gold throughout New England, The High Holy Days are for us, as well as the Day of Death (Halloween) is approaching- and my spiritual mind turns towards the poignancy of aging as well as death. Maybe it’s due to the fact my father passed away at the end of august and my mom in September. Or possibly is my personal later season nearing as well? Who knows? Life is tenuous. Lama Surya Das says: Handle with prayer.

Losar, the Tibetan New Year, begins tomorrow in our American time zone. This Year of the Wood Sheep celebration runs February 19-21, 2015, and is not dissimilar to the Chinese astrological (lunar) calendar. Like a spiritual awakening, each and every New Year holyday can remind us of birth’s sacred meaning.

Lama Surya Das is an American-born lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him “The Western Lama.” He has long been involved in charitable relief projects and in interfaith dialogue.

In 2006 His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who calls Lama Surya Das the American Lama, said to an American audience, “It is not enough just to meditate and pray, which are always good things to do, but we also must take positive action in this world.”

The power of one is inconceivable; let's harness this strength and energy by empowering ourselves and each other to assume the high road of altruism, peacemaking, collaboration and lovingkindness in action. We are all first responders for someone. Let's remember the power of one.

This is an excerpt from a talk given by Jack Kornfield during his regular Monday Night Class at Spirit Rock. The title of the talk is "Garden of the Heart" and the full audio version can be found on Dharmaseed.org. For more details visit here - http://www.surya.org/bio/

I could wail on how a little Mindful Anger Management could go a long way to save endangered young  black men on the street, or how the credibility gap between the interested public and our government agencies and leadership, in this Over Information Age, seems to grow and fester; but it's the holiday season now and I'm looking at the three quarters of the glass that's full, rather than the half that's empty.

Every morning I wake and take a moment to appreciate the lovely view from my bedroom window. And every day, as I take in the stillness and beauty of my little pond and surrounding woods, I wonder: Who made all of this? Wordless gratitude fills my heart and mind, body and soul each day as I begin my morning ritual, and I sense the sacred Presence transcendent over all of us yet immanent in each and every one of us, by whatever name or image-ing.

From love we learn to easeour fretful longing for moreand to rest in the blessednessof things as they are.

Prayer is a conversation with God. It should be part of our spiritual journey, transforming confusion into clearness and suffering into joy.

Twenty years ago, when there was quite a bit of troubling public news concerning dangerous cults among spiritual groups, I co-authored a white paper called "Spiritual Responsibility" with my Boston neighbour, cult deprogramming expert Steve Hassan.

Lama Surya Das, a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, clarifies how Buddha described life as a string of subjective experiences that we string together with the crazy glue of our concepts and how understanding this can bring us bliss.

“You have been telling people that this is the eleventh hour. Now you must go back and tell people that this is the hour! And there are things to be considered: Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water?