Check out Wired’s post on UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman’s recent study of labeling emotions. At first blush it may seem like this supports the idea that any of us using the vipassana technique of “noting” or “witnessing” where we name whatever emotion arises in our experience as it is happening, are now practicing with science on our side. This may be true, and for the record, I don’t know many long term meditators who wouldn’t look at this as obvious. However, as we read a little more carefully we see that Wired’s writer, Alexis Madrigal misses something huge here when he starts off his article with:

Perhaps all those blog posts you wrote about your breakup really did have a purpose.

I’ve never read a blog about a breakup that wasn’t in some capacity a chorus of egoic clinging. Describing one’s pain, and then backfilling the description with its associative story lines isn’t the same thing as simply witnessing the pain of heartbreak. To be fair, there is a sentence late in the article that touches on this:

The researchers postulate that … the bare fact of labeling your emotions that counts, not whatever conclusions you draw in the course of verbal expression (or poetry writing).

But this is the whole point of using a witnessing technique in ones practice. It’s not about controlling our feelings. It’s about letting the light of our awareness dissolve our identification with positively everything. This offers us, and everyone else, a spacious openness in which we can meet the world.

As meditators, our job is to watch our thoughts and emotions as well as the baggage brought on by experiencing them fully. The moment we either indulge or avoid either our thoughts or feelings along with their baggage, awakening is veiled from our sight.

Bows, Wired.com and Wildmind

Beautiful expression of fullness.

Andrew Sullivan writes of the moving case of John Hari:

I linked to Johann Hari’s excellent defense of free speech in the face of religious intimidation here. The piece was eventually published in India – and this is what happened:

That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was “prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet” and I should be sent “to   hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech.”

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world’s largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with “deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings”. I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

The original piece is, as Sullivan aptly points out, is a classic piece of free speech “that no free society should ever suppress.”

So how do we meet this type of brutality with open hearts and minds? For us not to get caught by overt and subtle expressions of unconscousness is such a trick, but in becoming intimate with our own clinging we have the potential of finding the dance that goes on between our own inner fundamentalists and the ultimate Freedom beyond name and form; our Buddha Nature, our Christ Consciousness, our divinity beyond faith.

As the prophet Mohammed says, “He who knows himself, knows God.” May we continually invite this meeting.

Great post.

I’ve written about this before but it’s always helpful to revisit the issue.

What do we do when our spiritual guides don’t quite measure up to our own expectations of them? Can recognizing their limitations actually help free the wisdom the have to offer us?

Bows, Integral Life.

Wow. I never would have guessed that Tommy Lee would be so concerned with spiders’ rights to “rock out.” I guess incarceration was helpful.

TOMMY LEE: I practice Buddhism, and I definitely believe there’s someone higher and greater than all of us out there, you know…It was a couple of years ago. I was in jail for an entire summer, like four, five months, and I started reading a couple of books on it, and I was like, “Wow!” It’s really amazing you know. It’s good stuff.
QUESTION: So what about Buddhism have you been able to apply to your life? And what about it has really helped you?
TOMMY LEE: It’s just compassion really, more than anything. Like, if you see a little spider on the ground, you don’t smash him, you grab him and put him outside and let him go rock out. I think, it’s just compassion for everything, all things.

All things. Good. Don’t smash things. This also goes for your ex-wife, Pamela… despite her obvious, ahem, unnatural attributes. No smashing anything.

Bows, LiveJournal.

Barbara O’Brien, over at About.com offers us a nice piece on one of the most famous of all Buddhist texts.

Of the countless scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, few are more widely read or revered than the Lotus Sutra. Its teachings thoroughly permeate most schools of Buddhism in China, Korea and Japan. Yet its origins are shrouded in mystery.

The sutra’s name in Sanskrit is Saddharma-pundarika Sutra, or “Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law.” It is a matter of faith in some schools of Buddhism that the sutra contains the words of the historical Buddha. However, most historians believe the sutra was written in the 1st or 2nd century CE, probably by more than one writer.

Bows, About.com.

Click HERE, or on the player below, in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the new iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
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In this podcast, recorded at San Damiano Retreat Center in Danville, California, Michael proposes that when we truly stop, we don’t leave room for the ego to manage our experience. Instead something greater takes over allowing for us to respond appropriately in each moment.

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“Not knowing is closest.” – Ji Jang

Bows, elephantjournal.