What if our educational system had meditation as part of the curriculum?

Math tests, soccer matches, the cafeteria bully. Grammar diagrams, global warming, dad losing his job. Now add this to some 8-year-olds’ schedules: a second- period class on dealing with stress.

Before graduating another generation of workaholic, road-raged adults, a number of California schools are intervening as early as kindergarten, reworking adult relaxation techniques for little ones.

Bows, Sacramento Bee and Wildmind.

Here we find an assortment of audio spiritual goodies from Ken Wilber’s blog.

One of Thailand’s newspapers, The Nation, printed an article by Thanong Khanthong in which he shows his prescience:

Here is what I wrote in 1998:

“The impending collapse of the global capital system could heighten the interest of economists and thinkers on Buddhist economics, expounded by Thailand’s candidate for this year’s [1998] Nobel Peace Prize, the Venerable Prayudh Payutto.

He goes on:

“In conventional economics, when there is a demand for, say, whisky, it is supplied by production – growing grain, distilling it into liquor and distributing it to the consumers. ‘When it is consumed, demand is satisfied. Modern economic thinking stops here, at the satisfaction of the demand. There is no investigation of what happens after the demand is satisfied,’ Payutto says.

“By contrast, he says, economics inspired by dhamma would be concerned with how economic activities influence the entire process of cause and condition, which will essentially affect the three interconnected spheres of human existence: individual, society and nature or the environment. ‘In the case of the demand for a commodity such as whisky, we would have to ask ourselves how liquor production affects the ecology and how its consumption affects the individual and society,’ he argues.

Interesting. Definitely worth the read.

(Bows, BuddhistChannel and About.com)

This is an interesting article about the relationship between psychotherapy and meditation.

Psychotherapy is a distinctly Western idea, especially in its current, most popular form—cognitive-behavioral therapy. It’s about identifying problems (“diagnoses” in medical terminology), discovering ways to deal with them, and setting objective goals or end points.

Then meditation:

Unlike psychotherapy which has an end, one learns to practice meditation over a lifetime, and ideally engages in it every day. The experience is like falling awake into deep and total awareness of the present moment.

The idea of giving it up at some point because it is no longer needed is irrelevant, since it can be an integral part of life. It deals with moment-to-moment identification of thoughts and emotions, and accepts them all, regardless of content. In meditation, one does not judge thoughts and feelings as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, but observes and accepts whatever comes. Let your mind be the sky. Thoughts, sensations and feelings drift by like clouds, and you observe them without trying to change them.

Bows, BuddhistChannel

This is interesting. It looks like a more deeply integrated approach to “loving thy neighbor” is showing up in DC.

In his remarks today at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama retold the story of his journey to Christianity:

“I believe this good is possible because my faith teaches me that all is possible, but I also believe because of what I have seen and what I have lived.

He goes on:

I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known. She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done.

And then:

I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God’s spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.

Sounds like the kind of inspiration that could be very helpful about now.

Bows,  Articles of Faith – Boston.com.

The following topic has come up a fair amount recently in our sangha. Here’s a repost of a section from Awake in This Life.

This ascent can get difficult. At every turn in the path we have to look into the depths of our experience fearlessly without avoiding whatever the view shows us. Climbing with integrity and intention means we must be ready to offer nothing less than total honesty and radically open observation for whatever shows itself at each of our steps. Doing so helps us see that in order to move up the Mountain of Spirit, we must live lives that continually come from an open place of attention rather than a closed place of judgment. This is the essence of our climb. As the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti says, “Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.” Using this kind, open, non-judgmental intelligence of ours frees us from the traps set up along the path by our minds, thus allowing for us to climb and eventually to reach the summit of the Mountain of Spirit. – p. 16

Not only does meditation lead to lower blood pressure, it makes you tougher.

Zen meditation is proven to subdue pain according to Universite de Montreal researchers. A Psychosomatic Medicine study has suggested that Zen meditators were prone to have lower pain sensitivity both while in meditation and out of the meditative state when compared to non-meditators.

Bows, Wildmind