Lesson is Simple; Student is Complicated

Wisdom Quarterly; Dan Millman (PeacefulWarrior.com); Laura Murphy
What can just one person do?

Mark Twain once said about worrying, "I've had a lot of problems in my life, most of which never happened." We get in our own way. The Path is there. The Path is clear. Wherever we step, it appears underneath our feet -- if that is the direction we have set ourselves in. The Path is not the problem. The student is.

The student is complicated. The world spins around us. Occupy this, occupy that, Occupy Samsara. We already here, being crushed by the Wheel of Death and Rebirth. We are suffering. And it need not be that way -- except for the craving, hate/fear, and delusion that overwhelms us and gets us to buy in.

"I always wanted to be someone," Lily Tomlin observed, "maybe I should have been more specific." Today Foley Square is on fire (Occupy Wall Street's massive protest). Berkeley is burning (after being doused again).

Burma, paradoxically, is cooling. And taking a stand is Los Angeles means going to UCLA, Occupy LA, or Cal State University Dominguez Hills. I want to sit down, not by going to work, to take a stand.

"It begins on the ground. Strong roots help a tree to bear fruit; the same is true of human beings. Magical thinking is popular, always has been. But reality rules. Observe and listen to nature's whispers, and all will be well."
- Dan Millman

Wisdom Quarterly invited Amma, and a dozen meditators crowded into Magdha Rod's Meditation Temple at Occupy LA to hear Amma speak and lead meditation.

What Can One Person Do?
Laura Murphy, CC Liu
The Buddhist nun Amma (Bhikkhuni Thanasanti) has been in Los Angeles.

Wisdom Quarterly along with the Occupy LA Interfaith Council and Against the Stream, she was brought down to speak at City Hall and lead a meditation.

It has been an honor to meet and share space with her and other engaged Theravada Buddhist meditators.

Her efforts and willingness to be of service have inspired. Her presence has benefited many. She moves on to Santa Barbara as the movement expands or breaks with a 1,000+ SEIU (union) members, students, and LA occupiers.

Occupy LA may expand to an additional site. Nonviolence may provoke police to behave like soldiers on foreign soil. It has elsewhere -- in a nationwide sweep of Occupy Movement encampments and preemptively violent police tactics.

Hold the ground for a more mindful, peaceful, safer movement to benefit all (even the 1% who benefit when the 99% benefits).

What can I do? Walking meditation, water-only fasting, refrain from speaking in observance of nonviolence (ahimsa), when even words may do harm.

I am inspired to investigate true freedom and how I may achieve that in my own way, in my body, using my mind, and filling my spirit with breath.

"The First Law of Planning:
Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything."
- Arthur Bloch

• [Totalitarian] Burma generals inch towards reform
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• UC Berkeley Student Protest UPDATES
• Introduction to "healthy skepticism"
  

JoAnna Harper and Amma's meditation/dialogue at ATS, 11-16-11

What are the Buddhist precepts for?

Amma chants to close a mindful exercise of deep listening she led.

Police dismantle Berkeley's Occupy Cal tents

CC Liu, Pat Macpherson (Wisdom Quarterly)
Sproul Plaza, massive student gathering at UC Berkeley (CTV.ca/AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Police dismantle Occupy Cal tents, camps elsewhere remain quiet

(SJMN) While Occupy Movement camps around the San Francisco Bay Area were relatively quiet overnight, police in riot gear cleared out tents at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, the center of the 1960's student Free Speech Movement. The same location is becoming the West Coast center of the Occupy Wall Street cum Occupy College Movement. The separate more exclusive University of California system, already facing massive hikes, has reacted by Occupying UCLA starting today. More coverage

• "Occupy" Movement Spreads to Campuses
  

  (UCLA) An article in Tuesday's LA Times about California college students supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement referenced a protest and outdoor... More
• The Daily Bruin: Occupy UCLA protest starts

Meanwhile in England, "Occupy the Stock Exchange" (occupylsx.org) and Occupy London rage. Demonstrators are asking British police one question: "Who do you serve?" In the USA, Occupy Wall Street is reanimating larger than ever. Police tried to set up barricades protesters moved aside then panicked when vinegar fell on them; they demanded to be rushed to the hospital (to get hazard pay and a day off while on overtime). Police in Long Beach (Los Angeles) pepper sprayed hapless students protesting a crippling 9% tuition hike on Cal State University students.

• [1,000+] gather for OLA/Union march; Occupy Cal raided
• Dozens of Occupy protesters arrested at bank sit-in
• Occupy Cal draws thousands: Supporters crowd Sproul
  
• Police clear Occupy Cal encampment (again)
• Occupy Cal makes history at UC Berkeley
• Occupy Cal - The Daily Californian

Mario Savio Speech: Prof. Reich (video)

(CalTVinfo)

This is the full speech given by author, former US Labor Secretary, and current UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich on the "Mario Savio Steps" of Sproul Plaza on Nov. 15, 2011. Filmed by Jeffrey New, Myles Moscato; edited by Myles Moscato. At the same rally, students used the people's mic to repeat Savio's words verbatim. It was a glorious moment.

• Cal State Long Beach protesters met with police brutality
• "Very ugly" tuition protest at CSU Long Beach end in pepper spray
• Protesters pepper-sprayed during vote on tuition increase as CSU

Famous Mario Savio speech segment

"Police are not my friends" (video)

Wisdom Quarterly interview with "Caroline" (Occupy Cal)


"Police are not my friends."

If police are not your friends, why are you their friend?

"Because I'm a Buddhist, and we don't expect to succeed acting the same way as they do. They drag people to jail by the hair like cavemen. It's sexism. There's racism. It's a police state."

Why are you participating in tomorrow's campus strike and teach out?

"We want student loan gouging to stop, bank greed, police abuse, endless war, fee increases, cut courses... There are so many issues that anyone not participating has to be questioned for apathy or ignorance."

Police drag demonstrators away by the hair
There is a lot of controversy at UC Berkeley after two videos surfaced showing law enforcement officers dragging two "Occupy Cal" demonstrators by their hair. The images triggered outrage among the faculty at Cal. Officers forcefully yanked people from their huddle, eventually forcing them to the ground. At one point in the video, an officer is shown pulling Prof. Celeste Langan by her hair and then arresting her. More

The Buddha on Friendship
Sharon Salzberg (adapted from The Force of Kindness, Sounds True, care2.com)

The Buddha often emphasized the characteristics of a good friend. He spoke about a good friend as one who gives a kind of happiness based on knowing our interconnectedness. Learning to be a good friend to ourselves and being one to others is really the same thing. Here are wise words about friendship from the Buddha as we approach Thanksgiving: He spoke about a good friend, a true friend, as being someone who is a helper, who protects us when we are unprotected, surprised by life in some way. The friend is a refuge when we are afraid. A good friend is constant in our time of happiness and... More

Interfaith Community, which has joined occupations, is being arrested.

• Police to conduct review after "Occupy Cal" arrests
• CHP officer shot near Sac; police execute suspect
• Police (LAPD) shoots man in downtown
• VIDEO: Raided Oakland demonstrators chant
• Occupy Yale, the Ivy League, and New Haven
• Student loans add to angst at Occupy Wall Street
• Brilliant students seek jobs beyond Wall Street

• VIDEO: fully armed SWAT used to evict Occupy Philly
  
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• Campus police shoot man at Elizabeth City State Univ.
• Police shoot man carrying assault rifle on N.C. campus

VIDEO: Portrait of a protest

• 
  Panorama: 360° view of L.A. City Hall encampment
• 
  Audio slide show: Through the words of an artist
• 
  Audio slide show: Nightfall to daybreak

• SF police shoot, kill man after foot chase
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• OH, AND, BTW: Banks quietly ramping up costs

UC Berkeley plans massive rally 11-15-11

OccupyBerkeley.org

Occupy Cal has not gone anywhere. Tents were destroyed and teenage students dragged away by "storm trooper" style police in jack boots. In outrage students are holding teach outs and a general student strike. People -- supporters, faculty, graduate student teachers, Occupy Oakland (who are marching to Cal in support), Occupy San Francisco, and UC students -- will not stand by for 1960s history to repeat itself as the country (empire) is again engaged in secret wars around the world and strip mining the planet from its base on Wall Street and anti-environment corporations (Monsanto, ADM, Halliburton

• Occupy Yale
  
• Student loans add to angst at Occupy Wall Street
• Bank of America expects $1.8 B gain from Chinese bank
• Is "Occupy Rose Parade" organizer former corporate lawyer?
• (Susan Swift) We can put a face behind the Occupy movement -- and it appears to be a wanna-be one percenter. Peter Thottam is the creator of Occupy Los Angeles and also the progressive force behind Occupy the Rose Parade.

  

  Thottam’s been planning this occupation disruption of the Rose Parade for the last six months — at least that’s how long he’s had the “Occupy the Rose Parade” Twitter feed going. Ironically, Peter Thottam is a Goldman Sachs alum, an Ivy-Leaguer, and former corporate lawyer from an international mega law firm, and recent MBA grad. Yale, Boalt Hall Berkeley Law, and UCLA MBA. Does this sound like a community organizer or a one percenter? While Peter Thottam’s CV reeks of Wall Street elitism, his bio depicts someone grabbing for the corporate brass ring. But he is strangely unwilling or unable to keep a job at such elite corporate employers as Goldman Sachs or O’Melveny and Myers.

Oakland re-attacked by Police (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, RT.com, Global Grind,

(RT) Nov. 14, 2011 - The City of Oakland paid for 1,000 paramilitary troops in this planned take down. Now police in occupied Oakland have cleared out a re-formed occupation after threatening Occupy demonstrators with more heavy handed violence.

Oakland PD and agents from other San Francisco Bay Area cities encircled the downtown encampment before dawn and moved in at about 6:00 am. They escorted handcuffed protesters away soon afterward to be imprisoned, strip searched, humiliated, and potentially violated further.

• Eyewitness: Occupy Oakland raided again
• Storm Troopers hit one Oakland camp, leave other
  
• Student loans add to angst at Occupy Wall St.

The police state action comes a day after police attacked hundreds of Occupy Wall Street-style demonstrators from encampments in Portland, Oregon arresting more than 50 people. Oakland officials insisted on an end to their city's encampment using the pretext that a man was fatally shot Thursday near the camp.

Scott Olsen regains (free) speech

War veteran/peace activist Scott Olsen releases statement

Berkeley (Occupy Cal), St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Eureka, Denver, Albany (NY), Riverside, Portland, and other camps have been attacked as part of an organized suppression campaign.

• PHOTOS: Can police end occupations and save Wall St.?
• PHOTOS: Occupy Oakland and Wall Street solidarity
• VIDEO: Crackdown on UC Berkeley student protest
• Keystone Tar Sands: Ring Around the Rose Garden
  

Power to the People Film Series


(Theendofpoverty.com)

• Police clear Occupy Oakland tent city

  (San Jose Mercury News) Police cleared Occupy Oakland early Monday in what has so far been a peaceful raid. Hundreds of protesters gathered at... More
• Occupy Oakland: Pre-dawn raid on Frank Ogawa Plaza
• #OWS: The Most Important Thing in the World Now
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• How do we dismantle rape culture
  
• Capitalism versus the climate
• Racism in the Occupy Movement?
• Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots have been catching flak for being so "white." Occupy Atlanta is no exception, getting off to a rough start...when a civil rights movement hero-turned-Congressman stopped by to offer his support, only to be waved off by the mostly white G.A.

Occupy Cal: Police brutality in Berkeley (video)

Miles Matthews, RT.com, Occupy Cal, The Daily Californian, Wisdom Quarterly

(Nov. 10, 2011) Our own media won't cover what really happens, but RussiaToday, the British tabloid press, CBC.ca, and Al Jazeera sometimes will.

(Video by Miles Mathews, CalTV) US paramilitary forces in riot gear clashed with dissenting students at Cal Berkeley after demonstrators refused to dismantle their Occupy Cal camp. Tents were erected following a march protesting tuition fee increases for students -- in solidarity with the broader Occupy Wall Street movement. Several activists were arrested, some were beaten with impunity by police with batons, guns, spies, mace, cannons, and secret disorienting weapons.

Police are free to riot: totalitarian tactics on kids

The crowds at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza at 10:30 pm, Wed., Nov. 4, 2011 (dailycal.org)

Occupy Cal protest sees large crowds, police violence

Amruta Trivedi (DailyCal.org)
On a day marked by large crowds and violence between protesters and police, UC Berkeley students and community members established an Occupy Cal encampment on Sproul Plaza, despite it going directly against campus policy.

The encampment, approved in a nearly unanimous general assembly vote by the protest’s participants, was formed to show solidarity with the national Occupy movement but focused on the increased privatization of the UC system... More (Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 at 1:01 am, updated at 4:19 am).

UC students were arrested and suffered injuries following a police crackdown on an attempted campus. ­"We had the tents set up for about a half an hour when the police decided they wanted to shut down the camp," student protester Eric Uribe recalled in an interview with RT.



"What the students did is they set up a human wall around the tents. Soon after that, the police approached with full force in riot gear, with batons. We had no intention to move, but they jabbed some of us repeatedly in the stomach, pulling people onto the floor and arresting them." Hundreds of protesters had gathered at the town's Sproul Plaza to protest against tuition fee increases and public education funding cuts.

Police beat children, girls, and defenseless teens

• Riot police break up Occupy Cal peace demonstration (CBS)
  
• Occupy Cal plans encampment despite Chancellor’s warning
• Occupy Cal moves ahead despite administration’s warnings
• Day of Action sweeps across California
• Vice Chancellor Le Grande addresses Occupy Cal protesters
• Occupy Cal protests sees melee between police and protesters
• RT on Twitter twitter.com/RT_com
• RT on Facebook facebook.com/RTnews
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Occupying US Campuses (video)

Wisdom Quarterly on campus, Education Activist Network

OCCUPY CAL (BERKELEY), OCCUPY HARVARD, OCCUPY UCLA, OCCUPY [UR UNIV.]
NYPD forms "army" to counter #Occupy Wall Street

Why? Mario Salvo explains in 30 seconds.

"Occupy Education" began Wednesday [at UC Berkeley] with teach-ins at 8:00 am. A student walk-out and rally happened at noon and a general assembly meeting took place at 1:30 pm. [Occupy Oakland and San Francisco came to support. Eventually riot police came in swinging batons beating student demonstrators peacefully exercising their free speech rights]...

Protest to "Occupy" Harvard Yard
(Harvard Crimson) Students and faculty will protest the University’s investment policies and perceived biases in its economics courses at an “Occupy Harvard” rally Wednesday night. Organizers said they hope the event will draw attention to what they believe was Harvard’s role in the economic crisis while showing solidarity with the national Occupy Movement.

• Occupy Harvard: Students pitch tents in Yard
• Harvard tosses Occupy protesters, uproots tents
• Staying occupied: inside the tent city, Boston
  

Student loans are the next "mortgage crisis." Students are rallying today on various campuses including UC Berkeley (Sproul Plaza), UCLA (Bruin Plaza), LACC (next to Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society), UC Irvine... on 13 California campuses in all. Not since the 1960s or recent student fee hikes have colleges been so galvanized to stand up to the 1% (corporations, banksters, and corrupt politicians who form the "military-industrial complex"). Plainclothes police and overdressed paramilitary troops are expected to be out in force to intimidate and provoke peaceful demonstrators.

"Berkeley in the Sixties"

Sproul Hall 2011, where the 60's student movement began (Annie Sciacca/Add photos)

Occupy Cal to establish camp at UC Berkeley
Emily Henry (Berkeley Patch); Wisdom Quarterly

...Wednesday marks the beginning of two planned days of action on campus to protest budget cuts and tuition hikes affecting public education.

Along with teach-ins and walk-outs, demonstrators plan to emulate New York (#Occupy Wall Street) and Occupy Oakland -- the site of shocking police state brutality -- with an "Occupy Cal" encampment. Student groups began by gathering in Sproul Plaza Wednesday morning.

Occupy Cal is comprised of students, faculty, teachers, and university workers, as well as community members.

Organizers penned an editorial about the movement for The Daily Cal, stating that "UC Berkeley should be a place where political expression and assembly are encouraged" and calling for a protest "free of police interference." More

• Reclaim UC: Occupy Cal newsletter
• Occupy Cal plans to shut down Chase Bank
• UC Berkeley Day of Action planned for Wednesday
• Occupy Cal plans camp despite Chancellor's warning
• Occupy Cal - The Daily Californian
• Coalition pledges support for Occupy Cal
• Facebook Occupy America
  
• Mainstream Media: "'Liberals' oppose #OWS, too!"
  
• Education Activist Network

Anti-abortion "personhood" amendment fails in Mississippi

Remains of war dead dumped in landfill

Issue 2 falls, Ohio collective bargaining law repealed

Forgiving Hitlers, Building New World (video)

The Lakey Sisters, Wisdom Quarterly
Classic speech accompanied by new images courtesy of the Lakey sisters

One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given, paradoxically, by a silent movie comedian named Charlie Chaplin. It beckons us to forgive our Hitlers -- Dick Cheney, the Bush Dynasty, B.S. Obama, Rumsfeld, Rove, Goebbels, Bill Gates, Ashcroft, Rice, Hillary, Stalin, Osama, Kaddafi, Thatcher, Saddam, Adolf... A new and better world -- full of fairness, compassion, and solutions -- is not built by opposing the previous bad, but by erecting the present good. Share these inspiring words around the world in many languages. It has been enhanced with new imagery.

German-Spanish-Chinese-Arabic-French-Hungarian-Dutch-Greek-Slovenian-Polish-Turkish-Finnish-Korean-Portuguese

• "Kristallnacht" anniversary: Germany, Israel sign pact

Police shoot cameraman on video

Ernest A. Canning (BradBlog.com)

New video has emerged, courtesy of ThinkProgress, of an apparently unprovoked Oakland police officer shooting a cameraman during a recent stand-off with Occupy Oakland demonstrators.

In an email to The BRAD BLOG, Sgt. Christopher Bolton, Oakland PD's Chief of Staff, confirmed that the incident involved an "OPD use of force," which took place at 16th Street near San Pablo Ave. in Oakland on the morning of Nov. 3, 2011.

The matter was "under investigation." (Recall that a general strike took place in Oakland on Nov. 2. This event, according to the cameraman, took place shortly after midnight.) More

• INN World Report radio's Wall St. Teach-In
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• Wolf: The people versus the police (CNN)
• Second Iraq Vet critically injured by Oakland PD
  The police's violent Oct. 25 crackdown on Occupy Oakland demonstrators sent another vet to surgery, one who wasn't even protesting...
• City Council hears testimony on Occupy Oakland
• The Oakland City Council heard hours of emotional testimony on the Occupy Oakland encampment and the city's brutal crackdown. Supporters urged a resolution opposing police brutality.

(democraticunderground.com)

Scientists translate dreams into YouTube videos

Gallant Labs UC Berkeley, Wisdom Quarterly, The Consumerist

(GallantLabUCB) Left clip: segment of Hollywood movie trailer subject viewed while in fMRI machine. Right clip: reconstruction of segment from brain activity measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Translating brain activity into YouTube videos
Phil Villarreal (The Consumerist, Sept. 26, 2011)

BERKELEY, California - Science is getting closer to letting people see through the eyes of others. UC Berkeley scientists have designed a way to read brain activity and reconstruct YouTube videos.... broadcasting the mental images people create, meaning you could soon watch others' dreams.

• It would be amazing to hook up Buddhist saints (Noble Ones) or at least monastics and asking them to meditate or "see" nirvana. We know those who have seen it exist.

(Meggito/Flickr)

The Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley had people watch videos while hooked up to an MRI machine, then matched the data and brain activity to shapes, movement, and colors. The computer model the researchers created blurry, dreamlike images. More

• AUDIO: SCPR's Patt Morrison to cover topic in depth
  
• Now you can see images from someone else's mind
• UC Scientists "see" images in people's minds (ABC News)

Procedure
1. Record brain activity while subject views hours of movie trailers.

2. Build dictionaries (regression model) to translate between shapes, edges, and motion in these movies and measured brain activity. A separate dictionary is constructed for each of several thousand points in the brain at which brain activity was measured.
3. Record brain activity to a new set of movie trailers that will be used to test the quality of the dictionaries and reconstructions.

4. Build a random library of approximately 18,000,000 seconds of video downloaded at random from YouTube (that have no overlap with the movies subjects saw in the magnet).
5. Put each of these clips through the dictionaries to generate predictions of brain activity.
6. Select the 100 clips whose predicted activity is most similar to the observed brain activity.
7. Average those clips together. This is the reconstruction.

• See related video. See the related (Nishimoto et al., 2011, Current Biology) scientific paper. More information: gallantlab.org
• PUBLIC RADIO VIDEO: Roasting Charlie Sheen (X-rated)
  

Who needs educating? Not US (video)

(robertreich.org)

"If you think education is expensive...try ignorance."

The Public Video Project presents Prof. Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, on why the US needs to save its schools NOW. The US financial sector has been "bailed out" while the crisis in education worsens. But human capital is more important to the long term health of America than capital markets. Never mind. Who needs educating?

Making a Case Against Unsustainable Debt

Truth about the economy in 2 mins, 15 secs

ROBERT REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as Secretary of Labor under Pres. Bill Clinton. He has written 13 books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

• DEBT: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber)