"Leela" the meditation video game

(THQ) Welcome to Deepak Chopra's Leela™, a groundbreaking interactive experience that seeks to bring focus, energy, and balance to everyday life. Leela is a journey of mind and body through play -- helping us connect with the seven chakras which are energy centers within each of us. More

• DeepakChopraLeela.com

"I don't have the attention span to meditate"

Wisdom Quarterly (INTERVIEW with Fat Joe) no relation to Fat Mike

• Joe, do you or could you meditate?

"What? I have ADHD. At least I think I do. My mom's doctor gave me speed [the chemical pharmaceutical Ritalin], so I do now anyway."

[Still drinking soda, eating fast food (excitotoxins and cancer-forming carbs, adulterated fats, sugars), watching TV (commercials)...]

"There's no way I can meditate. I can't pay attention. I've been sitting here playing Call of Duty: Black Ops for like 12 hours.

"If I try to meditate, I'll fall asleep. So, like, forget it. My phone keeps going off, texts, uh... What was I saying?

"I'm so fat and losing my hair. I look like Da' Buddha, or who's that guy at the Chinese take-out, Hotei Budai? You know, you rub his belly. Anyway. What, like, you sit down, like, on the floor on a cushion? Dude. No way! Maybe after some primo bud..."

• But, Joe, how are you able to pay attention to those videogames for 12 hours?

"What d'ya mean?"

• If you have Attention DEFICIT and Hyperactive Disorder, where are you getting all this attention?

"Oh-oh, I see! Hmm, huh, yeah. Medication? This game's exciting! Isn't meditation, like, BORING? Just sitting there staring at your belly button. What is meditation? I can't do it! I don't have the attention span to meditate."

Fact Find Tour Inside Joe's Head


Short Attention Span Theatre "Leaving Jesusland" (NOFX)

• Beer and the Science of Partying
• Adventures in Hyperactive Meditation (borntoexplore.org)
• Zen Buddhism and ADHD: Meditation not medication
• VIDEO: Excitotoxins The Taste That Kills
• PDF: Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
  
• TaoJoe.com: Path of Least Resistance

Meditation as treatment for ADHD (ABC News)

Meditating with Deepak on Wall Street (video)

Get Grounded, Deepak Chopra, Occupy Wall Street, Wisdom Quarterly

(Getgroundedtv)

October, 2011 - There was meditation at Occupy Wall Street early on. Why? Meditation is about change and evolution. It is not passive resistance. It is internal activism that blossoms into external action. From the first day of coverage of the Occupy Movement in New York Getgrounded.TV will be putting out short videos on the network until it succeeds, and a documentary down the road.

“I personally believe that you can accelerate neural development and biological evolution through video games,” says Deepak Chopra. “Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re doing right now. What we’re doing is creating addictions to violence, adrenaline, and mindlessness, rather than mindfulness.”

Still from Leela, a meditation video game for Xbox 360

“[V]iolent games stress you out? Would you like to meditate to a soothing video game after a long day’s work? If so, spiritual guide Deepak Chopra and THQ may have a game for you. Called Leela, a word that means “play” in Sanskrit, the game uses Microsoft’s Kinect or the Wii Remote to combine the world of games with breathing and meditation exercises, reports the AP. More

I'll kick your @$$... once I finish this video game

V. Tran, Seven Dharmachari, Pat Macpherson (Wisdom Quarterly)

5:30 reveals why* we have difficulty mastering either martial arts or meditation (Tstyle9).

This short documentary explores the myth and reality of the "One Inch Punch," featuring interviews with Eastern master Dr. Ze Lo (instructor Jeet Kune Do) and Western Wing Chun master Will Y.

It highlights the acting of Buddhist actress Uma Thurman (pictured left), daughter of former Tibetan Buddhist monk Prof. Robert Thurman), in "Kill Bill." It deals with what Bruce Lee demonstrated years ago as filmed and edited by Victor Tran.

The core message is simple: It is not the physical aspects of the exercise but the mental (concentration, absorption, jhana, or zen) and "spiritual" (breath, chi, qi, prana, spiritus) aspects that actually matter.

Chi is what gives the punch its power. Internal chi is far more important than external fighting because, as karma teaches, misdirected chi always turns against the practitioner. Chi can be used in meditation to great benefit. Its use in jhana leads to a meditative counterpart sign (nimitta). This establishes one and makes fruitful mindfulness/insight (vipassana) practice possible.

Who is Robert A. F. Thurman? He is referred to by the New York Times magazine as "The Dalai Lama's man in America." Scholar, author, former Tibetan Buddhist monk, co-founder with Richard Gere of Tibet House in New York City, a close personal friend of the 14th Dalai Lama, and father of five children including the actress, Uma Thurman, he is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. TIME magazine named him one of the "25 Most Influential Americans." He has lectured all over the world as his charisma and enthusiasm draw packed audiences.

Quentin Tarantino exploits Uma, Asian culture, martial arts, Lucy Liu, and even the original Mr. Kung Fu (Kwai Chang Caine) actor David Carradine all in one gory action thriller.

*Video Games are Ruining Us

WARNING: This funny "Mad TV" clip alludes to a cruel prank on boys and girls.

How to Meditate in a Moment (video)

Onemomentmeditation.com, Wisdom Quarterly

Scripted by Martin Boroson, animated by Somnath Chatterjee

"If you can meditate and be mindful for just one minute then just repeat that 60 times, and you have meditated for an hour!" But don't get ahead of yourself. Start with a minute. The "secret" to meditation is to not think by focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Once settling, centering, and focusing becomes strong, then systematic mindfulness exercises can be taken up. They are of little value in producing their enlightening result (insight, vipassana) without a firm foundation in serenity and right-concentration (samma samadhi) to the point of access or absorption (jhana).

• OneMomentMeditation.com
  
• China's 9/11 Nirvana Rose Memorial
  

Is There "Evil" in the World? (video)

Wisdom Quarterly (revisiting a question)

The banality of "evil" -- What would possess humans to such conduct? Otherworldly entities or our own psychological makeup?

There are unseen beings -- yakkhas, petas, narakas, bhummmi-devas, nagas, kumbandhas, and so on -- in Buddhist lore. They correspond to those of European legend: ogres and "demons," spirits of the dead, hellions, mischievous faeries, reptilians, dwarfs, trolls, gnomes, and poltergeists in general.

Like humans, they have personalities and tendencies. They are not strictly malevolent, but are subject to anger, jealousy, territoriality, and delusion.

They may communicate with humans, some of whom due to past karma are able to see them, offer advice, mislead, or even haunt. They frequently inhabit the wilderness and old homes but are, as in the case of pretas ("hungry ghosts" who linger after they have passed from the human world due to strong attachment).

What is "Evil"?
Evil is an interesting concept. We must separate it from Judeo-Christian connotations. There is Mara, a tempter figure in Buddhism who sounds like Lucifer but is more akin to the ancient Greek Cupid. He is not the devil. The Buddha often referred to him as Namuci ("the Evil One") because of his misguided tendency to obstruct attempts at enlightenment and liberation from the sensual realm.

Mara's "evil" is human-evil. That is to say, the roots of good and evil are present in all of us at birth to a greater or lesser degree. These are known as the Three Poisons:

1. Greed (lobha)
2. Hate (dosa)
3. Delusion (moha)

They are best understood as categories. Under "greed" falls: selfishness, lust, envy, jealousy, lack of consideration. Under "hate" falls: fear (bhava, which is so serious that it is sometimes categorized separately as a fourth poison of the heart) annoyance, irritation, anger, vengeance, ill-will, spite, begrudging, blaming, and unfriendliness. Under "delusion" falls: wrong-views, misperception, distortion of reality, ignorance, sophistry, and foolishness.

There are said to be many maras (obstructors). They can, and often are in the commentaries, viewed as mental defilements and hindrances to virtue, concentration, and wisdom rather than as independent entities.

The ogres (yakkhas) who support Mara are called "demons," but this is misleading. They are from an external point of view beings reborn on the basis of anger. Their good karma has led to a less unfortunate state than might have been, for they can be powerful, clever, and influential.

That a mara could wield influence over them is only because of that being's own good karma having come to fruition placing it in possession of great powers, now misused in the service of lust, anger, and delusion. But Mara's goal, unlike the Christian conception of Satan, is not that beings end up in the hells.

Even Yama, the mythological "king" or "judge" of the dead, does not want that. Mara, like Cupid, is instead an obstacle to liberation, wishing everyone to remain within his sphere of influence, which is the Sense Sphere (kama-loka).

• Protective Buddhist Chants (parittas)

The tormented narakas, denizens of various unfortunate destinations commonly referred to as hells, none of which are eternal but do last a miserably long time, might appear in the world only to warn someone or to grab a moment of respite, their karma allowing.

Pretas -- who are often confused, lacking direction and motivation, and are terribly sad and hungry in their pathetic state -- likewise do not mean to harm. They stand at the edges around houses wishing to come in, it is said in the Petavatthu. They are the ill-born departed.

Something can be done for them, by way of offering and merit in their name. This helps them move on IF, looking on, they approve of such actions. (It is their own mental karma, that of rejoicing in well done deeds, that liberates them, not some magical transference of merit).

But malcontent or disturbed pretas -- the "ungrateful dead" -- can sometimes become poltergeists. Modern parapsychological research reveals that this tends to happen in the presence of pre-adolescents, whose vital energies can be misdirected.

As for the others, nagas (powerful beings, particularly reptilians) and devas (demigods, whose lives are like that of the gods of the Greek pantheon) and so on, they are "evil" to a degree -- just as humans are evil to a degree.

Even celestial devas (radiant light beings inhabiting space) have not, generally speaking, overcome and eradicated greed, hatred, and delusion. Having suppressed these hindrances and contaminants of the heart, having undergone a fortunate rebirth based on some skillful karma (any deed, word, or thought rooted in nongreed, nonhatred, or nondelusion), they are beautiful, long lived, and enjoy many delights.

Their lives, too, are temporary. They are reborn in the future according to their karma, their "just desserts." Only the arahants, the enlightened ones, have overcome all that can upset. Only the Arya have even set foot on that route to freedom from all suffering.

Is there evil in the world? Yes, when defined as the Three Poisons. Is there good? Absolutely, when defined as the converse of those poisoned states of mind. Good can be summarized into three categories:

1. Nongreed: generosity, beneficence, love for oneself as one loves others and vice versa (metta), compassion (karuna), happiness in others' happiness (mudita), impartiality (upekkha). [These four are called Divine Abidings, Brahma Viharas, here and now.]
2. Nonhatred: forbearance, forgiveness, fearlessness, friendliness, loving-kindness, tolerance.
3. Nondelusion: wisdom, right-view (samma-ditthi), insight, understanding in accordance with the truth, knowledge, clear comprehension, mindfulness of what is in this very moment.

• Corpse of a Kumbandha?
• Scary creatures, fact or fiction

Buddhism: Clearer Understanding (video)

Buddhism: Part 1

• Part 2
• Part 3
  
  

Discipline? Mind Your Own Business! (video)

Today In The Park (MSN Lifestyle Video); Wisdom Quarterly (text)

New mom Lauren gets unwelcome parenting advice from someone she meets at the park (Aug. '11). Being a mindful parent is hard unless you are practicing mindfulness, in which case it just naturally rubs off on kids. But will others notice? Might they think they "know better"?



Having a baby is... yada yada yada. We've all heard it. It changed my life. It was the greatest moment ever when s/he was born. Everyone is sick to death hearing about it. Then comes the tough part, actually raising the bodhisattva...without a white pony.



Destined for enlightenment, born to me? I'm not always sure those go together. But assuming they do, there's Buddhist discipline and money management. In Buddhism monastics get it ready-made as the Vinaya. But the closest thing to a Householder's Discipline comes from the advice to Sigala sutra.

• Siddhartha's early childhood (rootinstitute.com)
• "The Buddha's Lost Children" (Zeitgeist Films)
  
  

In Search Of...Atlantis (video)

Giant Underwater Cities of India (video)

Guided Relaxation Meditations (video)

(Secret Meditations) This sample meditation helps one relax. The guide's beautiful voice leads meditators sitting at their computer through an entire session. Find calm and peace while more deeply entering into a lucid meditative state. Self-help meditation brings one into balance and imparts peace of mind.

• AngelMeditations.net also has a Perfect Day Meditation to feel positive, refreshed, and ready to start the day.

There is universal, timeless Oneness in true love that reside in our hearts (CosmicHalf).

Introduction to Buddhism (video)

A Year of Makeup in a Day (video)

(nowness.com)

If "beauty is only skin deep," what is makeup? A way of knowing that there has been too much aging ("oxidative stress")? No one wants to see what makeup can't hide... unless we've cultivated beauty within as well. The Buddha taught that beauty now and beauty in the future is the result of karma -- willing, performing, and accumulating mental, verbal, and physical acts of loving kindness, compassion, joy in others' joy, impartiality, the Five Precepts, non-anger, and other merit. In Natural Beauty, Dutch artists Lernert and Sander apply a year's worth of makeup on Belgian supermodel Hannelore Knuts. More

Rescuing Afghanistan's Buddhist history

Compiled by Wisdom Quarterly, Megalithic.co.uk , AFP, Science Religion News

"The Lost Buddhas of Afghanistan" (David Adams Films)

Last year [2010] the French archeological mission cooperating with the Afghan National Institute of Archeology began an excavation of an ancient Buddhist settlement at the Mes Aynak temple complex and mine.

Mes Aynak has the second-largest known unexploited copper deposits in the world. The team is racing to rescue as much as possible before the Chinese mining work begins.

Sacred buried treasure can be found throughout Afghanistan (Wall Street Journal)

The Afghan government awarded mining rights to the China Metallurgical Group Corporation [in collaboration with the Chinese government], which is keen to begin work at the site, 25 miles (40 km) from the capital Kabul.

First the Taliban mindlessly dynamited 1,500+ year old statues of the Buddha, the tallest in the world. Now a massive ancient Buddhist monastery is under threat in Afghanistan from a copper and rare earth mining company.

Mining in Afghanistan (NPR)

[This is so valuable to China that it recently pledged $3 billion to Nepal to build up its Lumbini as the Buddha's birthplace. This diverts attention from its more probable location in Islamic Afghanistan, which has many precious archeological sites that neither Chinese capitalists, atheist-communists, nor Afghani Muslims want more attention for.]

A Chinese company intends to blow up an ancient Buddhist monastery south of Kabul to make way for a massive copper mine. The plan has sparked outrage among Afghan and French archeologists, who have recently uncovered more than 100 statues within a large spiritual complex that includes seven burial mounds (stupas) built to house the relics of saints.

Located in a mountainous region southeast of Kabul, Mes Aynak is a hill topped by a 4500-square-meter monastery. [Monasteries were often built near precious metal deposits, which were used to create sacred art on the site.]

Although the site was spotted by archaeologists in the 1960s, it was never excavated. During the late 1990s, the hill was home to an al-Qaida " training camp," according to a 2004 report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.



In recent years, looters damaged much of the monastic complex in search of antiquities, according to Nader Rassouli, director of Afghanistan's National Institute of Archaeology in Kabul, which is also participating in the current excavations.

Two millennia ago, this region served as a critical conduit in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, says T. Richard Blurton, an archaeologist and curator at London's British Museum who has excavated in Afghanistan. He says Mes Aynak can provide new data on both the origin and demise of Buddhism in this culturally fertile region.

• See more at Science Religion News with a link to a paid article in Science and AFP.
• NOTE: Because Chinese mining in Afghanistan threatens an ancient tomb complex, Afghan archeologists have unofficially only been given a short time to excavate the site, which due to the US war and other limitations is actually only long enough to describe what is there. But will this informal delay be honored before mining and the site's destruction begins?
• Rescuing Afghanistan's Buddhist history at Mes Aynak

UFOs filmed over London (video)

Mass sightings in New York were explained away with nonsense stories of "balloons." Never mind that the timelines did not coincide. And the craft over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Palestine (occupied by Israel), although simultaneously filmed by various witnesses, was turned into a joke by subsequent fake footage.



Pyramidal (not triangular) craft over Moscow and other cities, triangular UFOs over the US, lights over China... how much evidence does a skeptic need? It is not a lack of evidence that keeps people from believing. It is the fear of ridicule and expulsion (from a job, position, university, media outlet).

(

(EllasVirgo) UFOs over London's BBC Radio 1 Building. It took over a week but it was finally possible to capture these alien crafts (vimanas) on camera on a clear day and even get a close-up. The sighting was attracting a crowd as they appeared. Fortunately, this mass sighting cannot easily be debunked, for it was filmed from multiple angles by various witnesses, in addition to all the witness who did not film it.

VIDEO: A big part of history is missing

Alien implants? Dr. Leir has proof (video)

Last night L.A. Marzulli related a strange scientific tale on Coast to Coast AM. Research is being done on alien implants by Dr. Roger Leir. These devices have been surgically removed from patients. However, they then seem to reconstruct themselves within 24 hours. It is possible that the implants are being used to alter human DNA. Both Marzulli and Dr. Leir conjecture that such technology might be a prototype for the biblical prophecy known as the "mark of the beast" (666). In a coming deception humankind will be offered an implanted chip by being told that it is able to extend the average human lifespan to 500 disease-free years. Would they then not only accept but demand it?

Incredible events that cannot be explained

Government Secrets Exposed (video)

(DHudson369) Seeing is believing. This video series contains amazing footage of secret government photos of UFOs, a lunar pyramid, the top secret plasma B-2 nuclear bomber, and similar advanced technology.

• "The Untold War in Antarctic" (Pt. 1)
• VIDEO: Did Hitler go to Antarctica?
  

Moon over Russia: lunar eclipse (video)

(RussiaToday) The bright midsummer full moon of June (Poson) has all but disappeared into darkness around much of the world -- with the longest lunar eclipse in a decade now underway. RT filmed some stunning footage of eclipse in Moscow.

Red moon in June vs. partial lunar eclipse earlier in 2011

Nepal's Buddha Boy (Discovery Channel video)

(BuddhaBoyVideos) Five-part documentary on Nepal's "Buddha Boy"about Ram Bahadur Bomjon who has been meditating for years without food or water. He is thought by many to be a bodhisattva, being reborn to become a supremely enlightened buddha with the capacity to teach and establish a dispensation. Therefore, there are throngs of followers seeking to encourage him, bask in his boundless compassion and goodness, and the rarity of such a feat. Meditation in the vicinity of his forest must be more fruitful and inspired (were it not for the hullabaloo created by the sort of devotional pandemonium that runs contrary to what he is trying to accomplish).

Natural Cures: "Dying to Have Known" (film)

(NewVideoDigital) In "Dying To Have Known," filmmaker Steve Kroschel went on a 52-day journey to find evidence to the effectiveness of the Gerson Therapy -- a long-suppressed natural cancer cure.

The filmmaker's travels take him across the Atlantic and the Pacific, from upstate New York to San Diego to Alaska, from Japan and Holland to Spain and Mexico. In the end, he presents the testimonies of patients, scientists, surgeons, and nutritionists who attest to the therapy's effectiveness.

Gerson Therapy is efficacious: It cures cancer and other degenerative diseases (heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, hypoglycemia, and more)!

Scientists present the hard scientific proof to back up their claims. We hear from a Japanese medical school professor who cured himself of liver cancer over 15 years ago, a lymphoma patient who was diagnosed as terminal over 50 years ago, as well as noted critics of this world-renowned healing method who dismiss it out of hand as "pure quackery."

So the question remains, "Why is this powerful curative therapy still suppressed, more than 75 years after it was clearly proven to cure degenerative disease?" Viewers are left to decide for themselves.

• BOOK: Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases (gerson.org)