This via the Allen Ginsberg Library: Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program Blog has posted a video from “the Allen Ginsberg Service held on July 3, 2009 on the green at Naropa.” It includes a performance by the great Beat poet and Naropa prof Anne Waldman. Take a look here or below.
This from The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama:
I earnestly urge the Chinese authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with the situation in a spirit of understanding and far-sightedness.
I offer my prayers for those who lost their lives, their families and others affected by this sad turn of events.
THE DALAI LAMA
July 8, 2009
Two goodies from Robert Thurman today: a post proclaiming that “Now Is The Time for All Good Women to Come to the Aid of the Planet!” for The Huffington Post, and “Ten Points of Hope” excerpted from his book Why the Dalai Lama Matters.
I spent this past Fourth of July weekend in Granville, OH, with some dear friends at our undergraduate alma mater Denison University. I had an absolutely wonderful and incredibly relaxing time with my old pals, and now find myself back in Los Angeles genuinely rejuvenated.
Though the spirit of the weekend was certainly light-hearted and warm, two moments of an entirely different tone altogether stand out in my mind today.
The first came while we were all walking through the campus together on the Fourth. At one point, we found ourselves strolling through the cemetary on campus and someone noticed this headstone:
Luckily, my friend Dave, a longtime professor at Denison, was there to clarify its meaning. As it turns out, when the Life Sciences building on campus was being renovated some years ago, “embryonic and human tissue samples” were found among some of the materials that were being discarded. The decision was made to inter the samples at the cemetary rather than have them incinerated.
Seeing the headstone with the marker “Unknown Infants” over remains that have been clinically described as “embryonic and human tissue samples” certainly got me thinking about certain aspects of the abortion debate as well as the one about stem cell research. I can definitely get lost in thought about such things: medical ethics, rhetoric, and so on. But, as we made our way slowly out of the cemetary, my thoughts turned instead toward Jizo Bodhisattva, who is often described as being (among other things) the patron saint of “children who are caught between the worlds of life and death.” Remembering his mantra, I whispered it quietly to myself: “Om ha-ha-ha vismaye svâhâ.”
Not much longer after that, we were all walking in downtown Granville when an older man called to my friend Spencer and I to help him move a large rock out of the mulch in his garden. “I need to move it so that I can put something else there,” he said. We moved it, and then he went up to his porch for that something: a statue of Guan Yin. I couldn’t help but think that it was a funny coincidence that I should be randomly asked to help with a chore like this. Once the statue was in place, I quietly dedicated the merit and snapped a picture. A moment later, Spencer and I had caught up with the others and our Fourth of July festivities continued.
By this merit, may all obtain omniscience
May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing
From the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death
From the ocean of samsara, may I free all beings
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (left), and the Very Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh (right), circa 1966.
Over at The Buddhist Blog, “They Call Him James Ure” posts the wonderful picture above and a poem by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that “reminds [him] of the teaching to be in the present moment and try to be the best you can be in that moment and not to worry too much about what will come.” Take a look.
I had never seen this picture before–or, if I did, I don’t remember it. I really appreciated “discovering” it today through James. For those who don’t know, a young Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a letter to Dr. King in 1965, urging him to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. The two met later in 1966 while Nhat Hanh was visiting the United States. Then, in 1967, Dr. King gave his now-famous sermon “Beyond Vietnam” at New York City’s Riverside Church. That same year, he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, writing (among many other lovely things):
[...]
He is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity.
[...]
The history of Vietnam is filled with chapters of exploitation by outside powers and corrupted men of wealth, until even now the Vietnamese are harshly ruled, ill-fed, poorly housed, and burdened by all the hardships and terrors of modern warfare.
Thich Nhat Hanh offers a way out of this nightmare, a solution acceptable to rational leaders. He has traveled the world, counseling statesmen, religious leaders, scholars and writers, and enlisting their support. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.
Interestingly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not award the Peace in 1966 or 1967, and so Nhat Hanh did not receive the honor. The meeting of these two extraordinary minds and hearts seems inspiration enough, though. Wouldn’t you agree?
