JSO Jazz Scene

-d

http://sutraofgoldenlight.com/http/viewer.html

Hi,

We're up and running with the AMAZING Sutra of Golden Light Global Recitation Server. The power of Mantra meets the digital age.

So we haven't sent word to Roger yet to show this to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, but I'm pretty sure when he sees it he's gonna love it!

The best way to test it is to tell a lot of people to go check it out. The Mandala article is coming out next week, but we didn't get this aspect in there in time. Please pass it on to Buddhists and Non-Buddhists.

Click the link above and see what happens. Let me know if there's any trouble.

Thanks to 'the anonymous developer' who wrote this Java application for us for absolutely free. Thanks to Tysa for coming up with this idea while we were watching Bob Thurman talking with Deepok Chopra about mantra being the place where science meets poetry and the possibilities of the digital age for influencing world peace...

-d

Darren Littlejohn
http://blacksamba.zaadz.com
spiritual diary/gallery/discussion area

http://www.dalailamacenter.org/multimedia/index.php

I went to Vancouver, B.C. this weekend for the Dalai Lama's public talk. We took a train from Portland to Seattle for 3.5 hours, followed by a bus from Seattle to Vancouver for 3.5 hours. Yikes! We got picked up by some Canadians I'd met on retreat this summer. Our accomodations were the Grand Trunk Hostel downtown. It had a lovely view of the Dugout soup kitchen below, complete with fights over split pea at 0700.

Our impression of Vancouver, B.C. is that it's a very liberal, permissive society, yet is very busy and intense. Like Portland, Vancouver is very kind to the homeless and makes every effort to be permissive. However, Vancouver seems to have taken it to the extreme. It's like they opened up the gates of hell. There are swarms of insane, twitching, cracked out, tweaked out, freaked out people wandering everywhere, by the hundreds. Walking by the alleys our guts wretched with the warm stink of piss, shit, vomit and you can only imagine what else. The streets are littered with the usual garbage, add the additional feature of a spattering of used IV needles! Evidently, you can shoot up right in public there in Vancouver, in the 'safe zones'.  Amazing. I thought Santa Cruz was bad! I thought Portland was loose!

We walked and took a bus a few kilometers to get to a badly needed AA meeting on the first night. Since the AA people weren't amenable to giving us a ride back, we took the night bus back through downtown. We were tired, unnerved and a little bit freaked out. Everyone had told us how beautiful and warm the city of Vancouver was. I expressed to the bus driver how grateful I was not to be walking down these streets. He then proceeded to tell us that these people are 'just lost souls, who need compassion and love just like the rest of us'.  Tysa and I found his presence and comments to be quite amazing. This is the message of the Buddha, after all. So he told us we were safe, which we believed, and proceeded, however cautiously, to weave through these streets not of dreams, but of nightmares - with a calmer perspective.

It was, however, impossible to sleep in the hostel. The noise from the streets; crack heads, bar go-ers, head pounding hip-hop and the constant traffic only afforded us a few minutes here and there of uninterrupted winks. I was kind of worried about the cleanliness of the bed and the relative safety of our belongings, despite repeated assurances from Dave, the hostel host. So by the time daylight hit on Saturday morning, we were READY TO ROLL down to the area of the GM Place, where the Dalai Lama would be speaking.

Our friends Marylin and Barry, who have their own study group/center in Williams Lake, B.C., bought us breakfast at Moxies. I don't recommend Moxies, as the food is cold, the service bad, and the prices high. That said, we had very nice conversations about the Dharma, their center and otherwise catching up since the summer retreat with Ven. Robina. They actually had her there in August and hope to have her back next year.

After poking around a bit and otherwise hanging out, we got over to the GM center to wait a long time in the crowd to be let in. Since I was exhausted, wasn't able to eat much and was overwhelmed with the coffees I'd just slammed in a desparate effort to gain consciousness, I was a little woozy with crowd anxiety. So we hung back until they opened the doors. When we got in, we were dissapointed that there was very little in the way of a Tibetan Bazaar, but I did get the $20 commemorative book of last year's Vancouver Dialogues, as well as a beautiful wood bead mala for $5 and some authentic Tibetan incense for $3. The mala is so nice, fits so well, and I did mantra for the whole time His Holiness was speaking.

So they made H.H. an honorary citizen of Canada, an honor bestowed only twice before in Canada's history. That was nice. They sang a few rounds of Oh Canada. I would have preferred Tayatha Om Muni Muni, Maha Muniye Soha myself, but hey, eh? They also had some Tibetan children singing traditional songs and so forth, which was pleasant, but long. The news guy announcer announced the Dalai Lama and some officials a little prematurely. After an awkward 5 minutes of fumbling for words, and a jaunt backstage to no doubt chew somebody's head off, the news guy came back out. Then he tried it again and the  political officials rolled up the ramp, followed by His Holiness. When we thought he was coming out the first time, I got very emotional and was compelled to prostrate, which was impossible in the situation. Oh, did I mention that we were like at like 10,000 feet altitude? Yeah, these seats came with cotton plugs for the immanent nosebleed you'd get after climbing the stairs.

At any rate, they didn't allow cameras, and we weren't about to go all the way up there after walking 10 blocks and have them taken away, so unfortunately, no pictures. That said, a bunch of people did it anyways, so next time I'll think again. And, they webcast the whole thing, so you can go to the link above and see everything we saw. No problem.

His talk was very general, very surface and very politically correct. I say this with utmost respect, because I understand why he does it this way and I admire his ability and willingness to do so. The place was packed with what, 10,000 people? All of them wanted to hear his message. The message of the Buddha. But His Holiness is very, very careful not to offend anyone. If you're bitten by the Buddha bug and want to know more, you'll have no trouble at all finding his books and the entire Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism is right there, waiting. But I found it very interesting that underlying the general talk, is deep Buddhism. After studying aspects of Buddhism for 2 decades, I have a pretty good sense of the message. And I think that anyone listening, watching or attending would be moved by the presence of the Dala Lama. This would lead easily into materials which will take one deeper into the spiritual traditions and practices from which he emerges.

So what did he talk about? Compassion. Having a calm mind and as a precursor to being a nice person. The similarities between religions and his respect for all of them. A little bit about the Dalai Lama Center for Peace, which is the reason he came to Vancouver - to inaugurate the center. Two things struck me as especially profound. One is when he said, "I'm a Buddhist, " and mentioned Shakyamuni Buddha, Nagarjuna and Shantideva. To me, hearing His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso speak those names was, quite simply,  utterly profound and worth the entire trip. Call me weird, but that's how I felt. Then at the end, during the reading of some email questions, he answered about 'why is there so much suffering?' by mentioning karma, but not in any depth. But then he said, "I don't know. If you believe in God, perhaps you can ask him". That blew my mind. I loved it! Subtle, yet powerful.

I recommend that you just watch the video, rather than have me summarize his talk. He's just a profound teacher to behold, and his presence is magnetic, beautiful and moves one to look deeply within one's self. But you probably already know that. If you read, however, the Jeffrey Hopkins books, or page 72 of the Commemorative guide, you'll see that the Dalai Lama is more than just a good speaker on general principles of good behavior. His knowledge of practise is vast, and he can take you anywhere that any Buddhist teacher in the world can't. He's the real deal, on many levels.

For this reason, I intend to get to the next 'real' teaching that he's doing. Probably in San Francisco in the Spring. He's going to Pasadena tomorrow to do some teachings and initiations. My friends Will and Sandy are part of the hosting 'team'. Those teachings will be webcast, so I intend to tune in! I also intend to read more of his books and listen to more of his archive of teachings.

Had I known then what I do now, I'd have gone down there for those rather than bus it all the way to crack town for the general talk. But hey, it was a cool experience overall, I'm very glad I did it and have no regrets.

A woman whose boyfriend was trying to win her back offered us a dozen long stem roses after breakfast. We were hoping to offer them to His Holiness, but that wasn't possible. So after his talk we walked the streets of Gastown, crack town, B.C. and looked for men and women who were lonely, suffering, lost, insane, filthy and confused. Or any combination of the above. You can imagine, we didn't have to look far. So Tysa said mantras silently and offered a rose to select wanderers in samsara on these dark, disgusting streets. Some took them and wandered off, hardly noticing. Some were almost moved to tears, but you could tell they learned to keep the tears in long, long ago. When they looked at Tysa, puzzled in disbelief, I said to them, "That's for YOU. Smell it. Touch it. Know that life has beauty", Or something like that. It was our effort at practising the compassion which was talked about by His Holiness. It was difficult, and beautiful. Tysa isn't Buddhist. And, she sure joins me in the practical applications of spiritual principles, which is more than I can say of a lot of people. So I thank her for this, which was a practise for us. In AA we have a saying, "we can walk through the most sordid places on earth if our motivation is right".  That's how we dooz it!

As always, comments are welcome.

-d

may you enjoy happiness, and the root of happiness

Well this certainly has been an interesting summer. Now it's come to a close. I started in June with a falling out at my zen center. See the post "Zen, Tibetans or Tolle". This left me in more than the usual disarray. So I happened to get an email from FPMT about the Discovering Buddhism at Home course. I'd been on the mailing list since I'd seen Ven. Robina in May, 05. So I made an appointment with them to discuss it and picked up the first module and a bunch of books from Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa and some Mandala magazines.

I embarked upon that journey with a solo retreat down at Still Meadows. The topic was The Spiritual Teacher, which was appropriate and timely. During the retreat, one of the exercises was to imagine your spiritual teacher before you in a visualization. I had thought of Ven. Robina and Joko Beck, primarily. Then a few days later I came upon the ad in Mandala for Ven. Robina at Vajrapani for a 10 day lam rim course, which was in fact part of the requirements for the DB@Home completion.

The next event was the Relic Tour, where I received blessings from Yangse Rinpoche with the Shakyamuni Buddha Relics. See the July 8th post for that story. That was a pivotal moment of the Dharma summer for me.

Then I went on the Kopan West retreat at Vajrapani with Ven. Robina. See the blog entry on that one. HUGE. A big deal. Lots of stuff happened.

Taking refuge with Robina was a big step for me, and I still didn't have a local teacher to count on. So I stuck with her via email with various little projects, and became involved with more projects at FPMT and Vajrapani. This led me back to Vajrapani for a week with Lama Zopa and Ven. Rene. This 2nd lam rim retreat actually picked up where the first one left off, which was amazing.

When I got back I built the Sutra of Golden Light website and Global Recitation Server, which was fulfilling a request from Lama Zopa. I also built myself a Dharma Desk for all my new books and study materials, as well as a lot of work on the altar, printing various images to hang on the wall and so on. Creating the space to create the cause.

I  then took the Medicine Buddha initiation with Genshur Rinpoche from Tibet. He is the root guru of Yangse Rinpoche (our resident lama here in Portland at Maitripa), so I thought it was a good idea to do this. It didn't require any high tantric initiation or more vows, and I wanted to get myself more oriented towards healing - both for myself and others. The picture above is from that day. We had to sip blessed water, which I'd just had poured into my hands after receiving the blessing.

Following this, I went to Vancouver, B.C. to hear His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. See last blog entry for that story. It was great, and educational. Then I returned, and had my first meeting with Yangse Rinpoche, which also went very well. I resumed work with FPMT on their media tasks, which include making the FPMT Podcast.

This is the week where I also started taking teachings from Rinpoche and attending the center more frequently. Since this is my center in the town where I live, it's important to go often and stay connected. They're having a big fundraser for the University they're trying to establish. I wound up being able to play jazz for the fundraiser, which will easily be the coolest gig ever. Then the opportunity came up to do a Cable Access TV show for Maitripa, which we'll go into the studio for this weekend.

I also established a daily practice. I do Preliminary Practise of Prostrations to the 35 Confession Buddhas first, followed by a reading of the King of Prayers, some mantras, 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation and dedications. In the evening I do Vajrasattva recitation and visualization with 25 more minutes of silent zazen style meditation, more prayers, and some reading. I doubled or quadrupled the number of AA meetings that I was attending as well.

I'll keep the blog up, as well as my journal, as the Fall unfolds. It looks like there are lots more teachings in the future, at this and other centers. I have MANY books on my shelf to read, but have promised myself to tackle them one at a time. I have a Thicht Nhat Hahn retreat, with his Director from Plum Village, at the end of October. Ahh...a silent, still retreat. Beautiful. I have more modules for DB@home to work on, and twice weekly teachings with Yangse Rinpoche, as well as all of my new tasks for FPMT Media. Oh, and the Portland Jazz Jams keeps going on as well.

So it truely has been a Dharma Summer for me. Thank you for tuning in.

..more at 11,

-d

ps, as always, comments are welcome.

Click this link to watch the show:
http://maitripa.blip.tv/

I brought our lama, Yangsi Rinpoche into the TV studio to do a show about Maitripa Institute as an introduction to Buddhism, the Dharma Center Programs, and a bit of a promotion for the upcoming fundraiser benefit. It went very well, and is quite informative. Take a look and let me know what you think. This is the description from the video blog where it's hosted:

Maitripa Institute is a Buddhist University and Dharma Center here in Portland, Oregon. This show is an introduction to Maitripa and it's programs. Sara Blumenthal is assistant editor of Mandala Magazine, and a graduate student at Maitripa. She interviews resident lama Yangsi Rinpoche on the history, development and future aspirations of Maitripa. Also interviewed are Dr. James Blumenthal, Professor of Buddhist Studies and two graduate students. It is approximately 45 minutes in length.

Click this link to watch the show:
http://maitripa.blip.tv/

This program was developed at Portland Community Media and was produced, directed and edited by Darren Littlejohn.