"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.

LA Rising: Rage Against the Muse (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

(Life in a Day) On July 24, 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded videos of their lives to YouTube to take part in "Life in a Day," a historic cinematic experiment to create a documentary film about a single day on Earth. Now, it's time to watch their story unfold on the big screen. It wowed audiences at the Sundance, Berlin, and SXSW film festivals, a. And during its YouTube world premiere.

• You on Film: A Day in the Life (Wisdom Quartery)

Superstars Muse battle hometown heroes Rage Against the Machine and Lauryn Hill enchants as Buddhist freaks meet at the Coliseum while Buddhist geeks calmly discuss the Dharma at the nearby University of the West.

• VIDEO: MUFON speaker presentation
  

Best of the X-Games: The 17th annual alternative sports junket flies through town with spectacular spills, chills, and prodigious thrills. (One kid challenges his idol for supremacy as another competitor breaks his foot during practice and someone pulls off a triple flip while spraying himself with Axe).

It's easy to stay informed about what may really be going on in a world of compelling distractions and mainstream media disinformation campaigns.


Forget "Cowboys & Aliens," the better movie on alien invasions is the British "Attack the Block" from the producers of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD. This fast, funny, frightening action adventure movie pits a teen UK gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters -- and turns a London housing estate into a sci-fi playground, a tower block into a fortress under siege, and teenage street kids into heroes. It's inner city versus outer space.

Everything but thinking will be going on at the continuing OC Fair in neighboring Orange County, in spite of last year's ice sculpture "The Thinker."

• OC Fair 2011

Amazing Weekend for Los Angeles

Los Angeles is gearing up for a weekend of delightful overwhelm:

• Buddhist Geeks' The [First] Conference
• Shinzen Young keynote address at Geeks Conference
• MUFON Conference

• X Games and X Fest take over downtown
• (AdultCon going on at the Convention Center)
• L.A. Rising: Rage Against the Machine/Muse/Rise Against concert

Free "X Fest" at the Los Angeles X Games

Free X Fest at L.A. LIVE!

"X Fest," which opens at 9:00 am daily, is the FREE portion of the ESPN action sports festival featuring live concerts, interactive parks, athlete appearances, demos, giveaways, sponsors, industry booths, and more.

• See bands on the Radio X Stage powered by KROQ FM
• X Games Los Angeles (womentalksports.com)
• Men's grooming habits turn women off
  
• July 30th: L.A. Rising - Rage Against the Machine

Beavis & Butthead return

Could "gaming" save the world?

A female "World of Warcraft" character in the making -- but is her player male or female? (©2004-2009 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. The Burning Crusade is a trademark, and World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries).

VIDEO GAMES (On the Media)
(NPR, July 1) Take a one-hour look at the history, culture, and future of video games like WoW. Whether you know it or not you are likely a gamer and games are creeping into nearly every aspect of life. How far have video games come, and where are they going?

• The Future of Gaming
• The Influence of Gaming
• Tom Bissell keeps caring about videogame

WoW
howstuffworks.com

"World of Warcraft" has millions of active subscribers worldwide (Blizzard). While there's no publicly-available, comprehensive census of exactly who plays the game, there are several researchers who have studied WoW players extensively. More

Myth is the language of symbols. What does all the occult symbolism mean?

Saladin Al Kurdi sees an Illuminati conspiracy

Superstruct: Games predict our future
archive.superstructgame.net
Gamers’ scores will reflect personal role in humankind’s survival.

PALO ALTO, California — The Institute for the Future (IFTF) announced the [2008] launch of Superstruct, the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Game (MMFG). Designed by renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., and IFTF lead forecaster Kathi Vian Ph.D., Superstruct invites players to imagine life in 2019 and to document and record how they, their families, local communities, or extended social networks might respond to a catastrophic population collapse. Global gameplay ran for six weeks.

Superstruct was played by more than 8,000 citizen "future-forecasters." Although the game is no longer in play, learn about it and explore some archived game content:

• Find out how the game was played
• Watch the scenario videos to preview the Superthreats
• Learn about the 8000+ players
• Read 1000+ stories they crafted
• Discover the 500+ superstructures they created.

Did superstruct gamers predict this economic collapse, the Amero solution, or the next one?

Does "Monopoly" teach Capitalism?

The Straight Dope

Was Monopoly originally meant to teach people about the evils of capitalism?

Dear Cecil: I heard the original Monopoly game, before Parker Brothers took it over, was designed to teach people how broken capitalism is. Is that true? — Matt, Whitehorse, Yukon

Cecil replies: Yes, it's more or less true, although you have to ask: who needs a game to understand how screwed up capitalism is when all you have to do is read the news?

Be that as it may, I convened the Straight Dope staff to play several versions of proto-Monopoly. Their review: nothing like the socialists to make the capitalists look good. The earliest recognizable version of what we know as Monopoly was patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904. The Landlord’s Game, as she called it, featured a board with the familiar circuit of increasingly pricey neighborhoods interspersed with railroads and utilities.

At three of the corners were Go to Jail, Public Park (the ancestral version of Free Parking), and the Jail itself. The fourth corner, however, wasn’t labeled “Go” but instead bore a drawing of the globe encircled by the lofty words “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.”

Translation: you got a hundred bucks. Nonetheless you realize: someone here has an agenda. The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist Henry George, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a "single tax" on them to replace all other taxes. More