Meditation

NPR has this story about meditation. The French monk Matthieu Ricard has really been gathering fame after the book "The Monk and the Philosopher". A general cite to the University of Wiscosin's "Mindfulness Meditation" study can be found here. The report is in here.

Subchu Rinpoche

I went to a retreat by 5th Dhicyag Subchu Rinpoche over the last weekend (7/15/05 - 7/17/05) in the BodhiPath center in Pasadena. I also went to the talk on 7/19/05 night too. It is a rare chance to talk to a reincarnated lama in such a short distance. I've associated with Buddhism idea for quite a long time, 16 years, to be exact. I've only get serious since Feburary this year and in April, I found out this BodhiPath center, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism (Karma Kagyu) under the guidance of Sharmapa. He clarifys a lot of confusion on meditation. I have some recordings of him at here. He is really young, 21, at this time. He likes music and his CD is really popular in Nepal. The Nepal Times has an article about him (please see pg. 6 "The singing Rinpoche").

Words of My Perfect Teacher

A practiced truth VS an ideal truth

A special characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism, and in general, Buddhism, is that it stresses the "practice", one of the major lacks I find in Western philosophy and to some extent, Western religion. As we grow up, we learn a lot of "truths" from different sources but we can't practice them because it is just a view of the world. Everybody can have different view and we end up don't know what is the ultimate truth. The approach in Buddhism here is to elevate your person achievements and then, you can contemplate a "revealed" truth step by step. Whether one believes this or not, it provides another way to experience the truth.

From the "Words of My Perfect Teacher", we can learn Tibetan Buddhism's moral viewpoints and we can practice them. The second part, inner preliminaries, as I am told, needs to have instructions from a lama instead of practicing yourself though. From Amazon.com, a lot of people are reading it through. This is absolutely ok but the book needs people to practice (e.g. meditation). When doing the inner preliminaries, I think it is best to seek advises from the teacher.