Today’s quote is another from our friend and wonderful Naropa University prof The 7th Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Karma Sungrap Ngedon Tenpa Gyaltsen, whom I previously produced a little biography for here. This is it:
Compassion or altruism is not about being perfect or just doing good; It’s about this daring heart that cherishes others and life itself.
Today’s quote is yet another from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, whom I first quoted and wrote a short biography for in this post. This is it — Snow Lion Publications’ Dalai Lama Quote of the Week this week:
When we focus our attention on the passage of breath, we break the usually continuous flow of thoughts of attachment, hostility and so forth, whatever they might be. This causes such thoughts to subside for the moment. Thus, by occupying the mind with our breath, we cleanse it of all positive and negative conceptual thoughts and thus remain in a neutral state of mind unspecified as either constructive or destructive. This is the meaning of the line in the root text, “Thoroughly clean out your state of awareness.” This unspecified or neutral state of mind, cleaned out of all positive and negative conceptual thoughts, is the most conducive one to work with. Because an unspecified state of mind like this is unburdened and supple, it is relatively easy to generate it into a constructive state.
Arun has the story at Angry Asian Buddhist:
In case you forgot about the Buddhists in Bangladesh, IANS reports on the current status of the dragged out Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord.
“A prominent Buddhist tribal leader of Bangladesh escaped an attack on his motorcade Monday, a day after he discussed with the government a peace agreement signed in 1997, which is yet to be implemented. […] The accord that proposes autonomy for the Buddhist tribals has been delayed because of protests from the Muslims. They were settled in the Buddhist majority region since Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) became part of the erstwhile East Pakistan during the India-Pakistan partition in 1947.”
I previously blogged about violence against Buddhists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Bangladesh’s uneven concern for its ancient Buddhist heritage. You can learn more at the Chittagong Hill Tracts Comission website.
Frank Bessac (pictured to the left in 2009 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama), the University of Montana anthropologist who was “one of two survivors of an epic and ill-fated trip led by the CIA in the early days of the Cold War which took him from the borders of Mongolia to the Tibetan capital Lhasa amid Great Game-style efforts to stymie communists both in China and in Russia,” has died. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have obituaries.
Our pal and editor Rod Meade Sperry has the story at Shambhala Sun Space. Check it out!
