Wisdom Quarterly
Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, Los Angeles
Sign up now and be a part of Against the Stream's Second Annual Sit-a-Thon. Join them for a lovely day of mindful practice dedicated to helping others. Commemorating a fateful day, this fundraiser for ATS's scholarship program is targeted specifically for the October retreat at Joshua Tree. Sitters are encouraged to raise funds by having friends and family sponsor them. They can support practitioners via an online donation, or sitters can bring cash, checks, or credit cards to the sit. All are welcome to come sit just for the sake of good practice -- allowing this to be a day of remembrance. Read about ATS's
intention for the weekend.
9/11 FEMA search filmed underground (cbsnews.com)
The Decades' Biggest ScamGlenn Greenwald (Salon.com)
The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:
- "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism. More
"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).
The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:
Is America a "terrorist" nation invading country after country? Using the pretext that we are helping them or retaliating when in fact our businesses and government are robbing them? Installing dictators? Training secret police agencies? Trading blood for oil? Terrifying its own population and stirring up anti-Islamic sentiments (which it has been doing since it turned its eye on Iran in the 1970s)? Exporting a consumer-capitalist McWorld mentality? Launching propaganda campaigns to cover the Shadow Government's tracks?