Martine Batchelor at Against the Stream

Creative Engagement

• Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011, 7:30-9:00 pm
• Suggested Donation $25 (no one turned away)
• 4300 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, CA
• (across from Los Angeles Community College)
  

Against the Stream MELROSE is pleased to have Martine Batchelor as a guest for this special evening. She will speak on how we can creatively engage with ourselves and the world. This talk will explore meditation as a process of un-grasping, releasing, and thus allowing a creative response.

Batchelor was born in France and spent ten years in a Korean monastery studying Zen Buddhism. Then she met Buddhist writer and former monk Stephen Batchelor. She is now a guiding teacher at Gaia House in England. She was a founding teacher of the Sharpham College of Buddhist Studies. With her husband Stephen, she leads meditation retreats worldwide and lives in Southwest France. Her books include Buddhism and Ecology; Walking on Lotus Flowers; Women in Korean Zen, and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. Her most recent book is The Spirit of the Buddha.

Did it all begin with Korea? (video)

America was once Korean territory -- as was Sumer, Egypt, and Central Asia, which includes Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization"? (Mash84)

Historian Rick Field's research (How the Swans Came to the Lake) establishes an Asian history of Buddhism in America -- long before Christianity. It was the first world religion to reach the Americas prior to Columbus and the Conquistadors.



It is easy to imagine Japanese or Chinese expansion, but Korea? Some Korean historians say Korea seeded Sumerian, Egyptian, Central Asian, and Mesoamerican cultures and eventual empires.

Sublime has a remake of a classic punk rock song by Bad Religion that teaches us all a lesson about expansionism, a Manifest Destiny view of the planet, and an endless thirst for fresh conquests:

We're Only Gonna Die

"Early man walked away as modern man took control

Their minds weren't all the same to conquer was his goal

So he built his great empire and he slaughtered his own kind

He died a confused man killed himself with his own mind... Go!

We're only gonna die from our own arrogance.

We're only gonna die from our own arrogance.

We're only gonna die from our own arrogance.

(That's why we might as well take our time)."

(Written by Greg Graffin, Ph.D. of Bad Religion from their debut release: "How Could Hell Be Any Worse?")

Did Korea establish Aztec and Inca empires?