Milarepa's Song on Having no Posessions

The Economic Times of India are running a post today pointing out the current struggle of the monks of Tibet. - China is now comparing them to Li Hongzhi's Falun Dafa and the monks are reacting with suicide by self immolation.

In the midst of all this I was reading some works from Milarepa. Here is something I came across this morning; a meeting with the King of Kathmandu; something to think about amid all the talk about Tibet and China, Dharamsala and the world.

Where is Tibet?

Milarepa's Song:

"I have no desire for wealth or possessions, and so I have nothing. I do not experience the initial suffering of having to accumulate possessions, the intermediate suffering of having to guard and keep up possessions, nor the final suffering of loosing the possessions. This is a wonderful thing. I have no desire for friends or relations. I do not experience the initial suffering of forming an attachment, the intermediate suffering of having disagreements with friends and family, nor the final suffering of parting with them. Therefore it is good to be without friends and relations. I have no desire for pleasant conversation. I do not experience the initial suffering of beginning conversation, the intermediate suffering of wondering whether to continue the conversation, nor the final suffering of the conversation deteriorating. Therefore I do not delight in pleasant conversation. I have no desire for a home land and have no fixed residence. I do not experience the initial suffering of partiality of thinking that 'this is my land and that place isn't.' I do not experience the intermediate suffering of yearning for my land. And I do not experience the final suffering of having to protect my land. Therefore I do not have a fixed abode."

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Global communications and personal freedom

There is a new message moving through riseup.net. to warn internet users about the evils of Google, Facebook and Paypal. They encourage the use of non profit Firefox http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ rather than Google Chrome.

The gist of the email is that the corporate interests are using our information for marketing. "Email companies such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. offer great free services, but in exchange, they sell all information sent through their service (through emails, passwords, attachments, etc) to top marketing firms around the world, who then use this information to bombard and pollute our lives and the world with GARBAGE."

However, I am skeptical of the evils of the internet data. - Isn't it possible that if we collect enough data on spending and activities we begin to learn a lot about who we are? - With the steering of the MDG and well intentioned governments, activist groups and NGOs, it could be that the data gathered through the internet can help us to make the world a better place.

See GapMinder.org for more on the amazing power and potential good of statistics.

The internet is possibly the biggest thing humans have come up with since religion and it might soon become smart. Maybe we can use that smartness to make real positive change - groups like Avaaz, EnvironmentAmerica and 350.org (today's victory with the Keystone pipeline is a great example of the power of good use of the internet) and the collective organization and networking of riseup.net and couchsurfing.org are all examples of how the internet is making big positive changes, transforming lives!

As Al Gore pointed out with his Internet 2.0 idea the internet can also be a tool for good. The internet is helping the environmental and social justice movements in a HUGE way!

In the late 1990s and early 2000s we were networking through the post. It was expensive and slow. I was getting a few bits of mail a year from many organizations with as many as one a week from the well funded groups like Habitat for Humanity, WWF and Greenpeace. I signed the petitions and sent what little money I could to support the campaigns.

Today I am informed about issues as I sit at my morning coffee... Sometimes I sign a few petitions a day and make donations (still small but) on a regular basis to all the movements I feel strongly about..

So I would ask riseup.net of they are being properly precautionary or paranoid. Is the internet really a problem or could it be a boon‽

The Facebook group "Hurricane Island Outward Bound School"

The Hurricane Island Outward Bound School is changing the world one incredible experience at a time. 

When I was there as an instructor I had my world completely transformed and saw a lot of people turn their lives around, young and old. 

Check it out. 

facebook Hurricane Island Outward Bound School has been upgraded to the new groups format, which makes it easier for members to connect and share. Visit Group What can you do in your group? Members can post and comment on updates, chat with everyone at once, schedule group events, create shared docs, and more.

Kuan Yin's Prayer for the Abuser

We just listened to a Scottish Zen buddhist Minister Jana Drakka giving a talk at the San Francisco Zen Center.

She spent some time being homeless with PTSD after a bad relationship and spoke from her experience and from her practice about how to practice loving kindness even with difficult people. 

This seemed an appropriate poem, a kind of meditation to start the fire breathing dragon year. 

Kuan Yin's Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,

I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.

To those that cause a child to cry out,

I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.

To those that inflict terror,

I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.

To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,

I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.

To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,

I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.

To those who cling and grasp,

I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.

To those who vent their rage on small children,

I return to you your deepest innocence.

To those who must frighten into submission,

I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.

To those who cause agony to others,

I give the gift of free flowing tears.

To those that deny another's right to be,

I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your birth.

To those who see only division and separateness,

I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.

For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother's embrace,

I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.

To those who still feel somehow incomplete,

I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

Compassion

Lately I have been listening to a lot of Thich Nhat Hahn ('Being Peace' and 'Touching the Earth') and have just read His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 'How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships'. These works have made me aware of a meditation on love and kindness called Metta. According to the research of Karen Armstrong's 'A History of God' and the work of the Dalai Lama, Metta, or loving kindness, is the basic teaching of all major religious traditions.

Karen Armstrong was recently awarded the TED Prize and is asking for people to affirm the 'Charter for Compassion'. The charter is a call for morality and compassion to return to the center of spiritual and political activity. According to the teachings of Armstrong and H. H. Dalai Lama compassion is actually the heart of religion and politics. The golden rule, for instance, was taught by Confucius 500 BC. He said: "Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself."

Watch Karen Armstrong's TED Talk:

http://www.tedprize.org/karen-armstrong/

Affirm the 'Charter for Compassion':

http://charterforcompassion.org/share/the-charter/

Read more about 'How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships'.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Expand-Love-Widening-Relationships/dp/0743269683

Read excerpts from 'Being Peace':

http://www.cit-sakti.com/peace/peace-being-peace.htm

Check out the guided meditation from 'Touching the Earth':

http://touchingtheearth.posterous.com/

Finally, here is a quote from 'The Confucian Analects':

"Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness."

Change in December 2011

This month has been full of hopeful signs of what H. H. Dalai Lama has been calling our transition away from the century of bloodshed to the century of dialogue.

This month Kim Jeong-il is dead after 17 years of his dictatorship in North Korea which have caused the systematic impoverishment and starvation of millions of Korean people. There has always been a lot of nationalistic sentiment against the North Koreans in South Korea since the Korean war. It seemed natural to think that this may have manifested in some celebration at the death of Kim Jeong-il. However, there are no crowds cheering in the streets. In fact most people interviewed by the media in South Korea said they are hoping for change in North Korea. They have expressed hope that the North Korean people will now get more to eat and that displaced families, separated by the post Korean War border, may see each other again. It is amazing and refreshing to hear that the people are choosing a more compassionate and hopeful view of the situation.

Also today the last of American troops have left Iraq after nine years of senseless and bloody war. The Iraq war was started for no apparent reason other than economic interests of the United States and it has now ended. (I think Joseph Palermo said everything there is to say about this topic in the first few paragraphs of his fantastic piece for the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/the-end-of-the-iraq-war-a_b_1157086.html). This is a great relief for billions of people who are victims of violent US foreign policy and are hopeful that the military force of the United States may finally stop working to serve the bottom line of giant business and American commerce. The dialogue has begun about a possible future where the United States does not serve as the world police but instead cooperates and participates in a fair and just world.

What is more, the streets and web pages are filled with the peaceful protesters and voices of the 99 percent who are saying that time is up for the ill formed feudalist style economies. This is very hopeful news. 

http://occupywallst.org/

http://www.occupytogether.org/

In support of all this and more here is a quote from the Dalai Lama's 'An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life'

I find that because of modern technological evolution and our global economy, and as a result of the great increase in population, our world has greatly changed: it has become much smaller. However, our perceptions have not evolved at the same pace; we continue to cling to old national demarcations and the old feelings of 'us' and 'them'. War seems to be part of the history of humanity. As we look at the situation of our planet in the past, countries, regions and even villages were economically independent of one another. Under those circumstances, the destruction of our enemy might have been a victory for us. There was a a relevance to violence and war. However, today we are so interdependent that the concept of war has become out dated. When we face problems or disagreements today, we have to arrive at solutions through dialogue. Dialogue is the only appropriate method. One-sided victory is no longer relevant. We must work to resolve conflicts in a spirit of reconciliation and always keep in mind the interests of others. We cannot destroy our neighbors! We cannot ignore their interests! Doing so would ultimately cause us to suffer. I therefore think that the concept of violence is now unsuitable. Nonviolence is the appropriate method.

Just listening to a podcast from Green Gulch Farm last July. Reb Anderson gave a dharma talk on consciousness and karma, he cited Smokey the Bear in that talk and it reminded me of this poem:

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(may be reproduced free forever)