11/11/11 (11:11 am) Meditation

MedMobLA, Wisdom Quarterly, Occupy LA, Occupy Freedom, Against the Stream

Sundry groups sat in unity with a worldwide matrix of meditators on the northside steps in the heart of Los Angeles, Camp City Hall. Meanwhile, around the world and across occupation sites, peace demonstrators began to follow the words:

Think with your heart, love with your mind.

"Jay Baba," a disciple of Himalayan master Yogiraj Siddhanath, lead a moonlight sit the night before on the southside steps following general assembly. The technique we employed to hold the peace involved becoming the Moon, facing the Earth, and flooding our planet and everyone on it with love.

After all, this is not an anti-Wall Street protest. It is a pro-99% movement. Give fairness a chance, Corporate demagogues. Give generosity a try. Since there is not enough for even one bank's greed -- which becomes too big to bail -- there might just be enough for everyone's need. Thriving never has to mean depriving others. Win-win is our goal, with institutions, with each others, with the world.

• VIDEO: livestreamed at occupyfreedom@ustream.com courtesy of Yoga Activist Arthur Klein (the Guru Within) and the Occupy Los Angeles Media Tent.
  
• Organize meditation flash mobs, yoga, and interfaith community services at the new dedicated Interfaith Tent (southside), Meditation Temple tent (a Magdha creation), and daily Yoga Loft yoga instruction (5:00 pm, southside steps).

-peaceprize.com-warisacrime.org-

YYoga Movie (trailer)

(YYogaMovie)

Filmmaker Arthur Klein examines the philosophy and reality of yoga in a compelling documentary. After becoming a devotee of the ancient art in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, Klein traveled the world to explore how yoga has affected others. From a charter school in South Central Los Angeles to wrestler Diamond Dallas Page's yoga class for American soldiers in Iraq, Klein reveals how this ancient practice continues to bring harmony to the world.

• YYogaMovie.com
  

Shift Happens, so SHINE! (video)

Seven (Co-Editor, Wisdom Quarterly)
(GR8quotes/Facebook)

The Real Meaning of "Metta"

The exclusively Buddhist language Pali has a word being incorporated into English: Mettā. This term (Sanskrit, maitri) is very much like the English meta.

Although it is usually translated as (altruistic-) love, kindness, loving-kindness, or friendliness, it has more in common with meta, which means "beyond." It is an "active interest in others" that takes us beyond ourselves.

Selfishness, self-interest, and self-absorption are the problem; the sense of love that grows so powerful it becomes compassion is part of the solution along with liberating wisdom.

Metta goes beyond. It transcends. It is universal and eventually boundless. One extends it first to loved ones, respected teachers, one's own tribe or the constellation one navigates. But with the same fervor a mother shows for a beloved child, that same concern extends to everyone without exception -- even the monsters, betrayers, Hitlers, devils, or anyone considered "other."

Of course, there's ONE horrible, almost unforgivable creature who also deserves our loving-kindness. Most find this being so odious that they just cannot bear to forgive it. Compared to this one, Adolf Hitler is easy. But it is necessary to do so. It may even be necessary to forgive this one first:

You can travel the whole universe and yet never find anyone more deserving of your loving-kindness than yourself.

According to Gary Sanders: The founder of Against the Stream, (Dharma Punx author) Noah Levine had so much trouble loving Levine that he set up a picture of himself as a child on an altar. Following Jack Kornfield's advice, he developed loving-kindness towards that child for a year. When we are able to love ourselves, loving everyone else somehow becomes possible. And we can finally go beyond.

Shift happens, like an accident or job loss. But foul shytza becomes fine soil. For it is capable of fertilizing many great things. It is fundamental to our meta-morphosis into loving, empathic beings.

Meta Futures (metaphorics.co.uk)

(GR8quotes/Facebook)

288,000 Jelly Beans, 1 video (Kina Grannis)

(Kina Grannis) Posted Nov. 2, 2011 -- "In Your Arms" took 22 months, 1357 hours, 30 people, 2 ladders, 1 still camera, and 288 thousand jelly beans! It already has well over 2 million hits. Kina is on tour and in Europe in 2012 and on Facebook all the time.She has a new album called Stairwells. "In Your Arms" was written by Kina Grannis, directed by Greg Jardin, produced by Daphne Raves, with concept art by Lauren Gregg, wardrobe by Gillian Zwick, sound design by Suzanne Goldish, using the production company: @radical.media. See the Secret Crazy Project celebration.

The awesome Jelly Bean Animation Team was: Kristina Carucci, Lauren Cunningham, MacKenna Dixon, Marcus Demmon, Kevin Harman, Alexandra Judelsohn, Jay Kim, Pearl Lung, Ptolemy Slocum, Erin Thiele, and Clarisse Wiedem with additional animators: Monica Ahanonu, Matt Beans, Sarah Burt, David Chang, Jane Cohen, John D'Arco, Hope Marquardt, Erin McLaughlin, Krisztianna Ortiz, Kyle Padilla, Allen Marshall Palmer, Natalie Pasallar, JJ Rubin, Cherie Saulter, Susan Wiedem, John Sheptock, Janine Sides, Hethur Suval, Chelsea Stark, and Sarah Tejeda.

Special thanks to Jelly Belly [a gross, allergenic, sweet tasting mix of chemical flavors, colors, sugar, bleached flour, and corn syrup that it better regarded as a pretty "art supply" than any kind of "food"]. Kina Grannis on Myspace or kinagrannis.com

A Buddhist-Vegetarian Debate Resource

David N. Snyder, Ph.D. (veggiebuddhists.com)

Not eating animal products for a day beats buying and releasing animals (peta.org)

Buddhist vegetarian vs. meat-based diet debate resource

Q: Didn’t the Buddha eat meat?

A: The Buddha may have eaten some meat, following the threefold rule. But his diet was more like a vegetarian diet who ate meat "out of pity" (Numerical Discourses III.49) on rare occasions.

• Diet of Buddha

Are lamb chops actually made of lambs, killed and bloody, crying and clinging to life?

Q: What about the famous threefold rule the Buddha allowed meat eating if one did not hear, see, or [suspect] that the animal was killed for one’s consumption.

A: The main premise behind the threefold rule is to accept what one receives in one's bowl when on alms round. This rule was meant for and given to monks and nuns, not lay people. “Beggars can’t be choosers” in modern terms. So for the vast majority of Buddhists who are lay people, a conscious decision must be made.

• Threefold Rule

Q: What about evolution? Doesn't evolution show that all animals must kill and eat as members of the food chain?

A: Some people argue that we as humans should be eating at the top of the food chain, like other large animals or because of our “superiority.” However, if we are truly superior to other animals we do not need to show it by being the greatest inflicters of violence.

Chinese Buddhist cuisine in Taiwan (knowledgerush.com)

Rather, it is better to show moral superiority by being the most compassionate. Not all large or intelligent animals eat at the top of the food chain. [The largest and strongest are vegetarian -- as an intelligent way to support their mass.] For example, elephants, rhinos, whales, and gorillas are all very large, very strong, and very intelligent animals that eat at the bottom of the food chain where food is most abundant. The largest whales use a filter in their mouths to catch the tiniest green plankton in the sea as their meals. A microscope is necessary to view plankton.

Because of our close connection to animals biologically (evolutionarily) and spiritually in the rebirth process, the Buddha was opposed to violence toward animals. An understanding and acceptance of the theory of evolution is important because without that acceptance there is a perception of a great separation between humans and animals which simply does not exist.

Somehow some of us love some animals but do not give a second thought to other animals.

As time goes on, people will realize that it is not just a biological connection. If we are animals, as evolution shows us, then animals also evolve with the same Buddha-nature (capacity for enlightenment, or whatever spiritual terminology one wishes to use). We all evolved from the same source.

Q: Devadatta, who was a Buddhist monk and a cousin of the Buddha, made a list of new rules he wanted implemented. The Buddha refused to make them mandatory. The list included ascetic practices, including strict vegetarianism: Since the Buddha refused to accept this list, isn’t he saying that meat eating is allowed?

A: No, Devadatta made this list not out of compassion for monastics or animals but as a ploy to cause a schism in the Sangha and take the Buddha's place. See Devadatta

Q: How does vegetarianism fit with the middle way? Isn’t vegetarianism an “extreme” view?

A: See Vegetarianism and the Middle Way

Q: In first world countries only about 3 to 5% are vegetarian. What good is one person becoming a vegetarian?

A: See Nutrition and environment

Q: What do the Buddhist Theravada and Mahayana scriptures say about vegetarianism?
A: See Numerical Discourses 3.16

• Edicts of Ashoka
• Lankavatara Sutra
• The Complete Book of Buddha's Lists - Explained by David N. Snyder, Ph.D. sold out in June of 2009 and is now downloadable free online (PDF) or as an e-book.
• PETA to Buddhists: Don’t buy and and release animals, go vegan instead
  
• Buddhists get Taiwan to enact world's best food labeling law (elephantjournal.com)
• Dalai Lama is a "Master Chef"?
  
• Go Vegan! Why Vegan? (veganoutreach.org)
• The PETA Vegetarian Starter Kit
• How to go Vegetarian or Vegan
• Veggie dates are the best dates of all
  

Slaughter-Free Milk

If you must drink milk (or consume dairy products like cheese, whey, lactose sugar, ice cream, or other things that do more to leach calcium from bones -- due to their acidifying of body chemistry and the ammonia produced from the break down of protein -- than they provide in any assimilable form), use slaughter-free. It's the least we could do to give thanks for what is taken from moo cows.

PRODUCTION:

The Lotus Trust has finally found a suitable farm to produce slaughter-free milk after two years of searching. Working in partnership with OMSCo (Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative), an organic dairy in SE England has agreed to pilot the production of Ahimsa [nonviolent, harm-free] milk with a select herd of cows.

Commonwork is an environmental charity, study center and an organic dairy near Sevenoaks in Kent [England]. It has a well established educational program that explores local and global sustainability. The thrust of its work is towards a just and sustainable world.

Due to parallels in its vision with The Lotus Trust for a fairer world, one where there is collaboration and connection with nature, it has agreed to run this first pilot.

Ahimsa milk will be produced to the following minimal standards:

• No cows, calves, or bulls will be slaughtered
• Cows can graze freely on open pasture
• Cows will be protected for life

Commonwork Organic Dairy is fully responsible for all milking cows. The Lotus Trust has set up a new not-for-profit organization -- the Ahimsa Dairy Foundation (ADF), which will be responsible for ongoing care of all non-milking cows, specifically calves, bulls, and retired milking cows.

Meat and milk as commodities -- cash cow

Cows at Commonwork are looked after to Soil Association organic standards, which means:

• they are not injected with hormones or steroids;
• they are on a diet of non-GM forage (mainly plant leaves, stems, legumes, and grass) primarily grown on the farm;
  
• they graze in open fields during spring, summer, and autumn.
  

Winter housing is spacious and they have areas where they can walk around with access to food 24 hours a day. The health and welfare of the cows is foremost, they are treated with homeopathy and alternative treatments when possible. Antibiotics are used only when no other approaches work. More

• Genetically-altered cows produce human milk
• Cow escapes slaughterhouse, new adventure
  
• Cow Dharma
• Save the Cows

Living beings treated like unfeeling factories

11 Advantages of Loving-Kindness (sutra)

"Discourse on the Advantages of Loving-kindness" (Mettanisamsa Sutta) translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera edited by Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha on tour by foot through India teaching (buddhagautama.com)

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Buddha was staying near Savatthi at Jeta's Grove in Anathapindika's abbey. He addressed the monastics there, "Monks."

"Venerable sir," they replied.

"Eleven advantages are to be expected from the release of heart/mind by [the absorbed] practice of loving-kindness (metta), by constantly increasing thoughts of loving-kindness, by regarding loving-kindness as a vehicle and as something to be treasured, by living according to loving-kindness, by putting these sentiments into practice, and by establishing them. What are the eleven? The practitioner:

• (1) sleeps in comfort, (2) awakes in comfort, (3) sees no bad dreams, (4) is dear to human beings, (5) is dear to non-human beings, (6) is protected by devas, (7) is safe from fire, poison, and swords, (8) concentrates the mind quickly, (9) is of serene countenance, (10) passes away free of confusion, (11) and if one does not attain full enlightenment here and now in this very life is reborn in a brahma world [a literal divine abode].

The Buddha returning from the "Space Realm of the Thirty-three" (buddhagautama.com)

"These advantages are to be expected from the release of heart/mind by [the absorbed] practice of loving-kindness, by constantly increasing thoughts of loving-kindness, by regarding loving-kindness as a vehicle and as something to be treasured, by living according to loving-kindness, by putting these sentiments into practice, and by establishing them."

So said the Buddha. Those monks rejoiced at the words of the Blessed One.