The Way

Program: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

Episode: The Way

Actor Martin Sheen says his new movie about the Camino de Santiago is ultimately about "a journey of the spirit as well as the flesh" as well as a search for ritual and transcendence.

Watch The Way on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

PBS.org

Throw this blog in the garbage

Hyun Gak Sunim has a new blog that is worth checking out in my opinion. As many of you may know, he is a very charismatic and engaging public speaker and happens to be one of my favorite public Zen teachers.

Below you can see a small excerpt from his new blog and links to various videos and talks. Enjoy!

Big mistake.
My Teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, used to always say, “Opening your mouth is already a big mistake.”
So, beginning this blog is an even bigger mistake, because words and phrases launched out into the crackling digital ether of the Internet have a half-life of infinity: When we say something with the mouth, unless it is recorded, at least the words and sounds can fizzle back into the Nothing from whence they came.  But digital marks and images — while also being fundamentally empty — still maintain the power to affect, long after they have been typed and launched.  Big mistake!

Cloud Path: The Weblog of Hyun Gak Sunim 

Bodhidharma to America: Public Lecture Series in Audio

Video Lectures on The Diamond Sutra

Dharma Talk - Screw Authority

Talk Given By: Hae Doh Sunim
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Duration - 20:38


Subscribe in iTunes!

Listen to other previous Dharma Talks here.

Pope Urges Silence For Better Communication

A great example of shared interfaith teaching. 

 Pope Benedict XVI is asking everyone to quiet down.

In his annual communications message released Tuesday, Benedict extolled the sounds of silence. He said a little bit of quiet makes people better listeners and better communicators by giving them more time to think about what they are hearing and saying.

And in a world inundated by Tweets and 24-hour news coverage, that precious time to think and reflect gives words greater value, he said.

"Joy, anxiety and suffering can all be communicated in silence – indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression," he said in his written message.

This year, his attention turned to the need to occasionally tune out the social media information overload to allow time for greater reflection. He called for striking a balance between silence, words, images and sounds.

"By remaining silent, we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself, and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested," he said.

He noted that sometimes the most authentic communication takes place in utter silence, "between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other."

Silence also allows for greater discernment about what is really worth listening to, Benedict said. 

From HuffPost.

NPR - Tibetan Areas Rocked By Protest

Frustrated Tibetans this week staged some of the largest protests against Chinese rule in nearly four years. Chinese security forces responded by opening fire on demonstrators, killing up to four and wounding more than 30, according to Tibetan rights groups.

The demonstrations were inspired — in part — by a disturbing new trend in Tibetan dissent: Tibetan people lighting themselves on fire.

By most accounts, this week's violence began with leaflets that were distributed in a Tibetan region of China's far-western Sichuan province. At least one leaflet urged people to protest Chinese rule by not celebrating Chinese New Year, which began Monday.

Since last March, 16 Tibetans have doused themselves with fuel and set themselves aflame to protest China's restrictive political and religious policies.

A video posted online last year shows a Tibetan teenager lying on a street, his blackened body still smoking. Women scream and one repeats the name of Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama....

Read more at NPR and listen to the full audio story. 

Samsara: The movie

Samsara is a word that describes the ever turning wheel of life. It is a concept both intimate and vast – the perfect subject for filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, whose previous collaborations include Chronos and Baraka, and who, in the last 20 years, have travelled to over 58 countries together in the pursuit of unique imagery. Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation that will transform viewers in countries around the world as they are swept along a journey of the soul. Through powerful images pristinely photographed in 70mm and a dynamic music score, the film illuminates the links between humanity and the rest of the nature, showing how our life cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet.

Visit the website here.

Professor researching Buddhist legal systems

University of Buffalo Professor Rebecca French, an expert in Tibetan law, is currently on a Fullbright scholarship in New Delhi, India, conducting research on Buddhist legal traditions. Hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University, her project is titled “The Buddha’s Theory of Secular Law.”

In a piece from the UB Reporter, French explained, “The result of this project will be a book that will provide a more nuanced understanding of legal ideas during the Buddha’s life, his approach to monastic and secular legal problems, the central texts that present his legal theories and the legal policies of the first Buddhist empire in India.” She continued, “This will set a foundation for a new subdiscipline and add Buddhism to the world’s major legal traditions.”

From Buddhadharma 

Dharma Talk - Superman and Suicide

Talk Given By: Hae Doh Sunim
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Duration - 20:16

Subscribe in iTunes!

Listen to other previous Dharma Talks here.

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan

Somewhere between meditation and metal lies this artsy Canadian act.
By Jenn Pelly , January 10, 2012 for Pitchfork.




One man's trash is an art-rock band's treasure, or so goes the 2007 origin story behind psych-opera collective Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. The group's core duo of drummer Alaska B and singer Ruby Kato Attwood studied fine arts at Montreal's Concordia University, where the band sprung from attempts to transform street garbage into "approximations of Eastern instruments."

On their recent self-made, self-titled album the duo draw inspiration from their respective Asian-Canadian upbringings as they "negotiate clashes between dominant cultures and those who are oppressed" by fusing Western and Eastern sounds. Like stoner-rock imaginings of Chinese opera and flower-child psychedelia, the music blends philosophies of Buddhism, meditation, and mantra with the band's love of extreme sounds like black metal, industrial, and noise. Their name, for example, pins a reference to the Buddhist deity Yamantaka with a song title from doom metal band Sleep's Dopesmoker.

"We would perform all kinds of violent acts on-stage," says Alaska, talking about early Yamantaka shows, which blended their Zen inclinations with brutal, Gwar-like theatrics. Ruby and Alaska winkingly dubbed their sound "Noh-wave," referencing No Wave and Noh, the classical form of Japanese musical drama.

Read the interview and hear more sound clips from Pitchfork.

BUY the digital CD from iTunes or the band's website here. (I just bought it myself!)

YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN - COUNTING TRACK from LZKA on Vimeo.

Matchmaking service gives Buddhist monks a boost in dating market

Buddhist monks and matchmaking services may sound like an unlikely combination, but many Buddhist sects in the country are now offering such services for their monks as their temples face a dearth of successors and possible integration with other temples.

One such sect is the Koyasan Shingon, headquartered on Mount Koya, Wakayama Prefecture.

Out of its 3,700 temples nationwide, some 800 currently have no managing monks and are being overseen by other temples.

In Japan, it is typical for relatives of monks — especially head monks — to inherit caretaker duties of their temples.

But because of a lack of successors, the monks have become desperate to find wives in order to preserve this tradition and save their temples from being closed or integrated.

According to Takua Kamei of Kongobuji, the head temple of the Shingon sect, one problem is that "the harder they pursue Buddhism, the fewer opportunities they can have to meet people of the opposite sex."

Kamei noted that families, known as "danka" in Japanese, which for generations have provided voluntary financial support to Buddhist temples, are also concerned about their temples if monks remain single and have no successors....

Continue reading on Buddhist Channel.