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Mountain Dreaming

By Patrick Given-Wilson | 8/29/2021

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Ingynbin 2015

By Karen Weston and John Geraets | 8/29/2021

[1] Towards Ingynbin,

a train passes—

buffalos bellow

We arrive at the end of the rainy season. It is extremely humid, and the journey is uncomfortable: twenty miles or more on the back of small motorcycle taxis, backpacks between our knees, along potted, dirt roads, scattered trees.

Bhante U Mandala, a senior monk who speaks some English and deals with foreigners, had received our letter and expects us; but he has a new phone and so we couldn’t confirm our time of arrival. He smiles disarmingly. We settle into the same room in which we had spent two nights last year. It’s pleasing to be back—although, as I say, the first week requires making several adjustments. Aside from the weather, there’s no running water in the accommodation for the first week and we must carry buckets filled at the nearby bore-fed tank in order to flush the toilet and to wash ourselves—even then nothing feels particularly clean. Occasionally John douses and soaps himself at the tank.

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Run Pierre Run: Wallowing in Thought is a Risky Distraction

By Pierre Robert | 8/29/2021

Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) is an intriguing 1998 German film. It is composed of three sequences that have the same beginning, but evolve and end in very different ways. A young woman hangs up the phone after a call from her boyfriend, and has 20 minutes to save his life by bringing him a large sum of money, which she hopes to get from her father, a bank manager.

In the opening sequence, Lola runs down the stairs past a man walking his dog, and at the bank gets into an argument with her father who is talking to his mistress. Tragic consequences ensue. In the next sequence, events again start from the moment Lola leaves her house. This time however she trips over the man walking his dog, and the ten-second delay means that she arrives at the bank later, which substantially alters the outcome. In the third sequence Lola also races down the stairs, but this time she leaps over the dog. No ten-second delay, and a completely different ending.

A small but vital distinction produced disparate sequences for Lola, leading to profoundly different conclusions. Similarly, my droll little story involves problems that I created for myself and how, in working through them, different consequences have, over time, played out.

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From the Buddha to Us: A Brief History of a Lineage and Tradition

By Bruce Stewart and Luke Matthews | 8/11/2021

The Beginning

Historians differ on Gotama the Buddha’s actual birth and death dates. According to one accepted calculation, he was born around 563 BCE and died at the age of 80 in the year 483 BCE. He taught Dhamma for forty-five years, during which time there were other prominent spiritual teachers in India, including Mahāvira, revered by the Jains, and numerous ascetics who were not followers of the Buddha.

Emperor Ashoka

About 260 BCE, the aggressive Indian emperor Ashoka conquered a neighboring Indian kingdom. The extensive loss of innocent lives and widespread destruction filled him with remorse and caused him to repent his misdeeds. In subsequent years he was drawn toward the Buddha-Dhamma and became a devoted lay disciple.

In marked contrast to his previous reign of conquest and cruelty, Ashoka began espousing nonviolence and freedom of religion, and introduced within his empire certain features of a social welfare state, such as medical facilities, rest houses and elder care. Through his proclamations and edicts, often carved on rock outcrops and stone pillars, and the emissaries whom Ashoka sent to promote the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teachings spread across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, into Central and Southeast Asia, and westward as far as Greece.

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