Harvard Zen

Wisdom Quarterly visits Harvard University and the Cambridge Zen Center

The way to Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center is as colorful as it offerings.

We went to see the scene at the Cambridge Zen Center, where Harvard elites can gather in silence. Until the questions start and life advice is sought.

Cambridge is the penultimate college town. And Harvard Square is its epicenter. MIT geniuses walk by remembering to chew, step, chew, step -- caught up in daydreams of ultimate reality and material sciences.

Garden Buddha at the Cambridge Zen Center (cambridgezen.com)

Modica Way in on the path to Cambridge Zen (Kwan Um school). And its array of heady graffiti is good preparation for the blank wall one will soon be staring at in zazen: Daydreams are as vivid as the imaginations of street artists.

The subway underground, art, Harvard Square, nascent nerd overlords... Mass. is an amazing place. But the jewel in the center of the lotus is surely the Mahindra Humanities Center. Its offering are potent and academic, rivaling UCLA's Mindfulness Awareness Research Center and Berkeley's Buddhist Institute, Dept. of Buddhist Studies, and Buddhist monastery.

Ah, to be bicoastal! Flying east and west, merging cultures, and watching Woody Allen movies in between would be the best of both worlds. The Midwest is the great divide, as most of Wisdom Quarterly's American readers hail from east of the Mississippi as our editors sit staring at the Pacific from under the Hollywood sign.

• The Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum provides an opportunity for faculty, students, and participants to discuss approaches to Buddhist studies that are as diverse as philology, intellectual history, anthropology, art history, literary studies, and religious studies. In addition to being interdisciplinary, lectures discuss Buddhism within a variety of geographic contexts, including South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. More
  

Dose of Dalai Lama for $10,000 a pop

Janine Hill (sunshinecoastdaily.com.au)

China accuses the Dalai Lama (L), seen here with Richard Gere, of being a "splittist" [separatist] bent on dividing country (AFP/Getty Images/Stephen Chernin).

Tickets to the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Sunshine Coast have sold out, but a spare $1,000 or $10,000 [Australian dollars] will still buy some time in the presence of "His Holiness."

Maureen Walshe, director of the Chenrezig Institute of Buddhist wisdom and culture at Eudlo, said tickets at $50 and $35 for His Holiness’s June 16 visit sold out in February.

Benefactor packages, ranging from $1,000 for two people in the public teaching area to $10,000 for two people in the VIP area, plus a commemorative plaque and photo opportunity, remain available.

Ms. Walshe said Chenrezig had kept general ticket prices down to make the event affordable for as many people as possible.

“There are people who say we could have charged $100 a ticket, but that’s not what we’re about,” she said.

She said the $125,000 raised by general ticket sales covered the basic costs of staging the event, including a speaker’s fee.

Further money raised by the benefactors’ packages would help cover other costs, such as transport and security, she said. “We’ve just broken even,” she said. Ms. Walshe said two $10,000 packages had already been sold. More

• Richard Gere says US must do more for Tibet
• Miss Tibet 2011 Beauty Pageant kicks off
• New star steers Tibetan transition
• DHARAMSALA, India - When exiled Tibetan spiritual-cum temporal leader the Dalai Lama announced his retirement from political life in March, he had reasons to be optimistic that the torch of self-determination for his people would be carried forward by a younger generation. The timing to separate the religious mandate of the institution of Dalai Lama from its political one seemed to coincide with free elections in which a suave Harvard-educated [USA controlled?] lay intellectual was elected as the new prime minister.
• Tibetan student wins essay, offers advice to US students
• Dalai Lama to convene free forum in Brisbane, Australia
• How to draw a proper Yeti (abominable snowman)
• Sunshine Coast prepares for Dalai lama visit

Dalai Lama "won't seek rebirth"

The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in an interview with Taiwan television aired [in 2009], said he is in excellent health -- but won't seek reincarnation [rebirth]. In an interview with Taiwan's Formosa TV, which was conducted in India to mark the 50th anniversary of China's occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama said it would be up to the Tibetan people to decide if there should be a reincarnation after his death. Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama to be the current incarnation of their supreme Buddhist leader, whose holiness has exempted him from the cycle of birth and death, and can instead be reincarnated of his own free will. More