O-Bansho at Green Gulch

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

Awakened Exemplar

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

Josh Harkinson, over at Mother Jones, offers some analysis on how to break the toughest terrorists:

From Time comes this account of FBI interrogator Ali Soufan’s successful attempt to win over Al-Qaeda operative Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured:

He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn’t touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: “He was a diabetic and couldn’t eat anything with sugar in it.” At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal’s angry demeanor. “We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him,” Soufan recalls. “So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures.”

Bows, Mother Jones.

Over at One City, Julia May Jonas offers Buddhism’s newest celebrity convert (as well as other newbies) some great advice.

Kate Moss, I think this could be a good fit. And to welcome you into the fold, I thought I’d share some tips that might help with your first six months of study. Now I am no Buddhist teacher (far from it), but I have an advantage of having started meditating and studying Buddhism recently and therefore I remember fairly clearly what did and didn’t work. So without further adieu, I present to you, and the rest of the burgeoning dharmic community, my completely unauthorized, subjective and possibly inacurrate top ten recommendations for those beginning Buddhist months:

Read on.

From Chapter 5 of AiTL:

…words are the way we articulate mind, and the most profound spiritual experiences transcend the mind’s boundaries. This gap leaves the mind groping for signs and signifiers with which to communicate meaning. Words are what our minds create in order to participate in the arena of circumstance; in contrast, profound spiritual experiences can take us to the source of this arena. So our language can leave us feeling like we’ve been asked to repair a watch with a truck mechanic’s tool set. Some rare individuals have a gift for being able to point practitioners verbally into the eye of Spirit. But, those who are best at it merely point us in the right direction. They are careful never to allow us to confuse their words with what their words are pointing out. This is part of what makes these teachers so great. Great teachers, in whatever their form, recognize that words often amplify our spiritual clumsiness, and so they stay silent, rightly believing that their presence and silent intention can communicate more generosity than their words. This silent presence is very difficult for egos to accept, which explains why most spiritual seeking can be so short-lived. Egos are not interested in anything revolutionary unless they can control the experience. When we learn to communicate in a way that isn’t bound by ego’s selfishness, our ego is forced to get out of the way of a white hot clarity of intentional generosity. Exposure to this flame of magnanimity has the potential to change ego’s relationship to everything, since everything starts to reveal itself as an expression of exactly what is beyond the scope of anything ego can grasp. This kind of communication may or may not involve words or sound. But for those ready to communicate from and as Spirit, a deep, silent connectivity awaits them.

via Awake in This Life.

Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt suggests an “unattached” approach to Pyongyang’s recent nuclear tests.

… the best response is to remain calm, and stop talking as if this event is a test of Obama’s resolve or a fundamental challenge to U.S. policy. In fact, the tests are just “business as usual” for North Korea, and it would better if the United States “under-reacts” rather than overreacts. Instead of giving Pyongyang the attention it wants, the United States should use this incident as an opportunity to build consensus among the main interested parties China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and let China take the lead in addressing it. Above all, the Obama administration should avoid making a lot of sweeping statements about how it will not “tolerate” a North Korean nuclear capability. The fact is that we’ve tolerated it for some time now, and since we don’t have good options for dealing with it, that’s precisely what we will continue to do.

via Less is more: Why we should not react to pyongyang’s provocations

I’ve been out of town for a while so I’m late on this one. Still, it merits mentioning:

…scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences.

Go to the NPR’s, Is This Your Brain On God? and get your interactive fill.

Exploring

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister