Via Wildmind Buddhist Meditation: A blog post at Short Sharp Science reports on findings by neuroscientist Giuseppe Pagnoni and his colleagues at Emory University which suggest that “trained Zen Buddhists return to a state of inner calm faster than people who don’t practice meditation.” The study, which used twelve experienced Zen Buddhist practitioners and twelve control subjects, was published under the title “‘Thinking about Not-Thinking’: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation”, and can be found online here. Short Sharp Science feels that the findings have implications for the neurological study of Jedi mind tricks, but no such studies are being undertaken at this time.

The Associated Press is reporting that Nobel Peace laureate and Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party has expressed concern about her health. Suu Kyi has not accepted food delivered to her home in Burma, where she has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, for almost three weeks. It is still not known whether or not she is on hunger strike, which was speculated after she failed to make the first pick-up. Reuters reported earlier this week that Suu Kyi has also refused to meet with her doctor and Minister of Relations Aung Kyi, who is in charge of liaising with her. She also declined to meet with U.N. Special Envoy Imbrahim Gambari during his visit to Burma last month. Her lawyer Kyi Win, whom she did meet with recently, quoted her as saying: “I am well, but I have lost some weight. I am a little tired and I need to rest.”

Today’s mailbag question comes from my old friend Mickey. Mickey’s curious to know more about how to go about officiating at weddings. I’ve officiated at about half-a-dozen weddings in the last three or four years, with several more scheduled for the next year. Obviously, I wasn’t an ordained minister until very recently, so Mickey was curious how I was able to do this. I exchanged messages with him privately, but this was yet another case where I felt like it might be helpful to share the conversation with readers: some of you might be curious about how to legally officiate at weddings. Please feel free to leave comments, further questions, quibbles, or your own recommendations below.

DEAR MICKEY: The legal requirements for a wedding officiant vary depending on which state the wedding is being performed in. In some states, basically anyone can do it without having to jump through bureaucratic hoops of any kind. In other states, like Ohio, for example, one may have to present the state with ordination/endorsement papers from one of a list of churches the state recognizes. You can find a general list of state requirements for wedding officiants at this website, but you should also make sure to check with the leadership of the state. It’s very important to do everything in a legally sound way, because of the various problems a non-legally-binding wedding can create for the couple and even the officiant later on. Last year, the New York Times did a piece about organizations that will ordain people online for the sole purpose of performing weddings. Some states, like Connecticut, will not recognize these ordinations. (And the penalty in that state for unauthorized performance of a marriage is a fine of up to $500 and a year in jail!) An officiant’s carelessness with the law can also cause enormous problems for the couple if they divorce or if one of them dies. A couple might think they are married, but if they’re not legally married then they’re not legally married. Period.

That said, when I married people before my formal ordination as a Buddhist minister, I used an online ordination through the Universal Life Church in the states that required me to be a minister. As long as you’re careful and check state laws, there’s nothing wrong with using these organizations–it’s why they exist at all. They’ll even provide you with things like letters of good standing in the states that require them. They’re a good and important thing, I think, for people who want close friends or family members who aren’t clergy to perform their wedding. — DANNY

NEXT TIME: The lineage of Buddhist military chaplains. (Seriously. I really mean it this time.)

Last month, I posted about All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA) leader U Gambira being forcibly disrobed by Burma’s ruling military junta and charged with “multiple criminal offenses” stemming from the 2007 uprising. The Democratic Voice of Burma is now reporting that the Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC) has demanded that the junta abolish that state law that “allows” them to forcibly disrobe monks and try them at civil courts. U Myo of the BLC told the Democratic Voice of Burma, “As monks are not allowed to handle the affairs of monks and they are still under the mechanism of [state] power, monks are being oppressed. That’s why we are demanding the abolition of this law.”

Inhale, exhale

Forward, back

Living, dying:

Arrows, let flown each to each

Meet midway and slice

The void in aimless flight –

Thus I return to the source.

– Gesshu Soko

You, friend to so many, were so loved, and will be sorely missed. Bless you.

The Guardian considers the pressure building on the United Nations to act on the military junta ruling Burma–the country they see as “effectively…the world’s biggest prison.”

As I said in a post from earlier this summer, I will not be endorsing a presidential candidate or political party at this blog. It is my right to do so–as long as I don’t do it in a church, dharma center, or temple–but it strikes me as icky. It seems to me that the church and state are not all that separate when a clergy-person endorses a political candidate for office, especially when they leave the “Rev.” or whatnot in front of their name. At any rate, it makes me uncomfortable and I won’t do it.

That said…I’ve got some things to say about news items emerging from the Republican National Convention. I’m not going to suggest who you ought or ought not to vote for, but I am going to make some critical observations about a particular political party and their 2008 presidential ticket.

1. I really don’t like what presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin of Alaska said about the Iraq War being a “task that is from God.” Or what she said about it being “God’s will” to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska. Heck, every time she said “God” I was pretty bothered. I’ll let the great Welton Gaddy tell you why it’s such a big problem.
   
2. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the official poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent, which means that about 37.3 million Americans live in poverty. It’s bad enough that John McCain doesn’t know how many homes they own and thinks “middle class” means making less than $5 million a year, but for his wife Cindy to wear an outfit valued at $313,000–$313,000–while he pontificates about the opposition party’s “elitism” is supremely disturbing. The gross and callous disparity between rich and poor in this country has rarely been as clear.
   
3. Hypocrisy and bullshit are part and parcel of American politics–whether you’re on the right, the left, or somewhere in the middle. Really, though, the amount of it coming from the right-wing is pretty staggering. I’ll let that genius/American hero Jon Stewart tell you more…