Friday Night - The Dharma Test Kitchen

(cartoonstock.com)

Against the Stream is offering a new class -- an exploration of the practical connection of Dharma practice and our daily lives.

The focus of the class is the belief that what we do off the cushion matters more than what we do on it. Success in meditation, after all, comes from being virtuous and mindful enough to get on a cushion in the first place.

Social "engagement" is more than a buzz word. So each month ATS will explore a different fundamental aspect of basic Buddha-Dharma from a variety of participant perspectives. The class has a rotating schedule of teachers, teaching together and individually on a given monthly theme.

Start the weekend with artful practice, sangha community-building, and a connection to basic Dharma philosophy.

• ATS Santa Monica
  
• drop-in, donation-based
• Fridays, 7:30 pm

Bulls focus on a goal, not Riders (Zen video)

Shambala SunSpace, Rage Against the Machine


Sit-a-Long with Taigu: The Ten Oxherding Pictures (IX)

Rev. Taigu again takes us for a ride with the next of the Ten Oxherding Pictures. He writes:

“Riding the bull home… As one mounts the bull, rides the bull, the world and practice itself are not experienced as obstacles anymore. The bull as an object to grasp, a goal to reach has disappeared. Practice and self are intimate. In this, carefree-ness, detachment, joy arise from the silence space of sitting. The boy is not worried anymore about where he should go, where the bull takes him to, what the Bull-boy will become. As the comment sates: this struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. The song of the flute is played by ten thousand things met and released. Forms and sounds play and are played. This dance is nothing but the Bodhisattva stepping into the world, freely playing with what comes and goes, fully interacting with things and beings without being caught by any…”

(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”)

"Bulls on Parade" (Rage Against the Machine)
His microphone explodes, shatterin' the molds
Either drop the hits like De la O or get the [fudge] off
The commode, with that sure shot, sure ta make
The bodies drop, drop and don't copy yo don't call
This a co-opt, terror reigns, drenching, quenchin'
The thirst of power dons that five sided fist-a-gon
Tha rotten sore on the facade of mother gets
Bigger the trigger's cold, empty your purse

Rally around the family
with a pocket full of shells
They rally round the family
with a pocket full of shells

Weapons not home not food not shoes not need
Just feed tha war cannibal animal I walk the corner to
The rubble that used to be a library, line up to the
Mind's cemetery now what we don't know keeps
The contract's alive and movin, they don't gotta
Burn the books, they just remove while arms
Warehouses fill as quick as the cell
Come wit it now. BULLS ON PARADE!

Should I be Liberal or Conservative? (test)

Wisdom Quarterly editors Seven and Ashley Wells

• Take the test: Liberal or conservative?

I want to be rich, so that makes me liberal. I am poor, so that makes me conservative. Anyone who wants to conserve this system is, by definition, a corporate-welfare-loving "conservative." Obama, for example. Anyone who wants change, equality, fairness and justice for all regardless of categories or labels we put on them from birth is radical and rises on the side of being liberal.

I am rich, so that makes me conservative. I want to be poor, so that makes me liberal. Anybody who wants to change this system is, by definition, some kind of human-welfare-loving "liberal." Bush, for example. Anybody who wants preservation, inequality, "fair and balanced" news and justice for some depending on labels and the categories we put them in is reactionary and falls on the side of being conservative.

• But everybody wants to be richer!
• Yes, but not everyone wants to be richer by making others poorer. That's a cruel delusion many people carry around. We can have a win-win cooperative world. Instead, many push for a win-lose competitive world. What does the conservative media feed us?
• I can be rich and kind to everyone?
  
• Yes, be rich; have compassion; think of yourself AND others! It's called "enlightened self-interest." We don't have to be like Cartman...or Stan.

Click here for the figures.

Hippies don't go to no Mall, mom!SOUTH
PARK