Anyone interested in a comprehensive collection of Buddhist blogs and news should check out Alltop. Nice work from Guy Kawasaki, et al.

Michael Paulson writes of last night’s screening of “Milk” for this morning’s Boston Globe:

California is facing a measure that would restrict gay rights amidst a national debate over how the nation’s legal framework should view homosexuality. The conservative religious community throws its muscle behind the proposition. And the gay community protests. Sound familiar?

To bust up George Santayana’s quote a little: those who forget the Now are condemned to repeat the past.

The AP’s Eric Gorski writes an interesting piece in Sunday’s Washington Post:

Earlier this month, a guest took the pulpit at Open Bible Fellowship in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church surrounded by cornfields. The speaker was an insurance salesman from Colorado named Ted Haggard.

The former superstar pastor, disgraced two years ago in a sex-and-drugs scandal, had returned – this time as a Christian businessman preaching a message that was equal parts contrition and defiance. Haggard linked his fall to being molested in second grade and apologized again.

Contrition and defiance? Sounds like attachment… but I could be wrong.

Ian, an ER nurse who runs Blinkwax.com posted this thought provoking commentary on grief:

That for us it is important to take every opportunity to swing our happiness around our heads, to let it unravel in wild arcs until it wipes against the walls.

To sling our humour at low angles, so it skips off the floor and splatters up like over-ripe tomato seeds covering a colleague or two.

We try to disinfect the surgical steel with our pranks, and tie-dye the sterile, white hospital sheets with our laughter.

And we do this because we know a great grief waits close by.

Always.

A grief that will pounce without forewarning.

A grief that will crush us with the weight of every child we have seen die, and roar in our ears with the memory of every person we have wrapped in plastic, and every word of tragic news that falls like lead from our lips.

A grief that will claw us open with busy sadness and drag us off to uneasy, restless nights.

Beautiful words that describe how grief can be a red carpet into the House of God.

A nice reminder.

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In this evening’s talk, Michael talks about our potential struggle with realization and recognition of Enlightenment in the face of karmic activity.

Interesting read over at the On Faith section of the Washington Post:

Malaysia’s top Islamic body fresh from banning tomboys issued an edict Saturday that prohibits Muslims from practicing yoga, saying that elements of Hinduism in the ancient Indian exercise could corrupt them.

The National Fatwa Council’s chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, said many Muslims fail to understand that yoga’s ultimate aim is to be one with a god of a different religion…

Interesting line: “to be one with god of a different religion.” Does this suggest that this specific brand of Islam is polytheistic? Our god versus your god must mean that there are at least two gods in someone’s mind. Everyone breathe deep and strike a pose, say downward god… er, dog. I meant dog.

Fascinating piece on the Utah and BYU rivalry from today’s New York Times:

As B.Y.U. players navigate the narrow alley onto the field, Utah fans on both sides hurl down insults that are as personal as they are profane. It feels less like an entrance than a perp walk.

Of course, some of those fans are themselves Mormon. They just happen to root for Utah.

“They know there are two things that are really personal — one is religion, two is family,” said Olsen, a former defensive tackle who finished his college career in 2000 and is now a sports talk radio host here. “So they’d throw out something like, ‘How many wives did you have to ask before you could play in this game?’ It’s all the typical stereotypes about Mormons. To hear that — and it would be the same for Catholics, Buddhists, Jews — it feels like they’re attacking God.”

Isn’t tribal-centric behavior interesting? Ah, rivalries: mind created orientations that so easily lead to internal violence.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed over the years is how there often seems to be more civility than cruelty in my own Cal v. Stanford experience. Yet I still find that there are those on both sides that generate amazing identification with their sense of belonging.

What’s not to belong to? Better yet, we all are members of all sides at the deepest levels of the Dharma.