And the music played...

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noti...ced there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

http://www.joshuabell.com

Year of the Male Water Dragon

Happy LOSAR!

 

Statement from the Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje. 

Bodhgaya, February 6th, 2012

Reports have just emerged that three more Tibetans set themselves ablaze within a single day in eastern Tibet. This comes shortly after four Tibetans immolated themselves and others died in demonstrations in Tibet during the month of January. As tensions escalate, instead of showing concern and trying to understand the causes of the situation, the Chinese authorities respond with increasing force and oppression. Each new report of a Tibetan death brings me immense pain and sadness; three in a single day is more than the heart can bear. I pray that these sacrifices have not been in vain, but will yield a change in policy that will bring our Tibetan brothers and sisters relief.
Having been given the name Karmapa, I belong to a 900 year old reincarnation lineage that has historically avoided any political engagement, a tradition I have no intention of changing. And yet as a Tibetan, I have great sympathy and affection for the Tibetan people and I have great misgivings about remaining silent while they are in pain. Their welfare is my greatest concern.
Tibetan demonstrations and self-immolations are a symptom of deep but unacknowledged dissatisfaction. If Tibetans were given a genuine opportunity to lead their lives as they wished, preserving their language, religion and culture, they would neither be demonstrating nor sacrificing their lives. Since 1959, we Tibetans have faced unimaginable loss, yet we have found benefit in adversity. Many of us rediscovered our true identity as Tibetans. We rediscovered a sense of national unity among the people of the three provinces of Tibet. And we came to value a unifying leader, in the person of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. These factors have given us all great grounds for hope.
China speaks of having brought development to Tibet, and when I lived there it was materially comfortable. Yet prosperity and development have not benefited Tibetans in the ways that they consider most valuable. Material comfort counts for little without inner contentment. Tibetans live with the constant suspicion that they will be forced to act against their conscience and denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Chinese authorities persistently portray His Holiness as the enemy. They have rebuffed his repeated efforts to find a peaceful and negotiated solution to the Tibetan-Chinese problem. They dismiss the heartfelt faith and loyalty with which the Tibetan people universally regard His Holiness. Even Tibetans born in Tibet decades after His Holiness the Dalai Lama had gone into exile still regard him as their guide and refuge not only for this life, but for life after life. Therefore, constantly depicting His Holiness the Dalai Lama in hostile terms is an affront that benefits no one. In fact, striking at the heart of Tibetan faith damages the prospect of winning Tibetans' trust. This is neither effective nor wise.
I call on the authorities in Beijing to see past the veneer of wellbeing that local officials present. Acknowledging the real human distress of Tibetans in Tibet and taking full responsibility for what is happening there would lay a wise basis for building mutual trust between Tibetans and the Chinese government. Rather than treating this as an issue of political opposition, it would be far more effective for Chinese authorities to treat this as a matter of basic human welfare.
In these difficult times, I urge Tibetans in Tibet: Stay true to yourselves, keep your equanimity in the face of hardship and remain focused on the long term. Always bear in mind that your lives have great value, as human beings and as Tibetans.
With the prospect of the Tibetan New Year in sight, I offer my prayers that Tibetans, our Chinese brothers and sisters, and our friends and supporters across Indian and around the world may find lasting happiness and true peace. May the New Year usher in an era of harmony, characterized by love and respect for each other and for the earth that is our common home.  

Ogyen Trinley Dorje 
17th Gyalwang Karmapa


http://www.kagyuoffice.org/

70

18.02.2102

Buon compleanno,

Mamma!

Fais do do...

Fais do do, mon petit frère
Fais do do, t'auras du lolo.

Maman est en haut,
Elle fait des gâteaux

Papa est en bas,
Il fait du chocolat.

Fais do do, mon petit frère
Fais do do, t'auras du lolo.

Hush-a-bye...

Go to sleep, baby child,

Go to sleep, my little baby.

Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,

Go to sleep, my little baby.

When you wake, you shall have

All the pretty little horses.

Black and bay, dappled grey,

All the pretty little horses.

Black and bay, and dappled grey,

All the pretty little horses.

Hush-a-bye, don't you cry

Go to sleep, my little baby.

http://www.childrensmusic.co.uk/LUL.html#trax

Errata corrige

Ci siamo sbagliati!!!

Non era la Fatina della Primavera...

... era la Fatina della Neve!

What the Bleep Do we Know?

 

On a piece of paper, worn out, torn, with 50 pin pricks, has gone from cork boards to a box I found this morning. It has moved me back to me, every time I've ever read it. Gil Cross of WOR-Radio in New York tells the story about a young couple who had one little girl and a new baby. The little girl wanted to be left alone with the baby, but the parents were afraid. They had heard of jealous childr...en hitting new siblings, and they didn't want the baby hurt. "No, no" they said. And, "Not yet." And also: "Why do you want to be with him?" She begged for days. She was so insistent that the parents finally agreed. There was an intercom in the baby's room. They decided that they could listen, and if the baby cried, if the little girl hit the baby, they could rush into the room and snatch the infant up. So, the little girl went in, approached the crib. Alone. She came up to the newborn baby, and over the intercom they heard her whisper, "Tell me about God. I'm forgetting."

Angel Letters by Sophy Burnham (from:

https://www.facebook.com/TheFamilyBalancingActRadioShowandBlog?sk=app_190322544333196)

Spiritual friendship

"Venerable Buddha. I've been thinking - 

spiritual friendship is at least half of spiritual life!"

The Buddha replied:

"Say not so, Ananda, oh say not so!

Spiritual friendship

is the whole of spiritual life!"

Samyutta Nikaya

(una fatina fa) Primavera

Siamo sotto zero da due settimane. Un vento gelido ulula tutte le notti e oggi per tutto il giorno, finché ha abbattuto l'ulivo in terrazza. Il resto d'Italia è sotto la neve. Petit Rouge e Merlot fra un po' entrano in cucina a scaldarsi...

Era tempo di chiamare la Fatina della primavera...

e già si è data da fare!

Kindle

kin·dle   

v. kin·dled, kin·dling, kin·dles

v.tr.

1.         a. To build or fuel (a fire).

b. To set fire to; ignite.

2. To cause to glow; light up: The sunset kindled the skies.

3. To arouse (an emotion, for example): "No spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion" (George Eliot).

v.intr.

1. To catch fire; burst into flame.

2. To become bright; glow.

3. To become inflamed.

4. To be stirred up; rise.

1 luty 2012

 

Monolog dla Kasandry

To ja, Kasandra.
A to jest moje miasto pod popiołem.
A to jest moja laska i wstążki prorockie.
A to jest moja głowa pełna wątpliwości.


To prawda, tryumfuję.
Moja racja aż łuną uderzyła w niebo.
Tylko prorocy, którym się nie wierzy,
mają takie widoki.
Tylko ci, którzy źle zabrali się do rzeczy,
i wszystko mogło spełnić się tak szybko,
jakby nie było ich wcale.


Wyraźnie teraz przypominam sobie,
jak ludzie, widząc mnie, milkli wpół słowa.
Rwał się śmiech.
Rozpalały się ręce.
Dzieci biegły do matki.
Nawet nie znałam ich nietrwałych imion.
A ta piosenka o zielonym listku -
nikt jej nie kończył przy mnie.


Kochałam ich.
Ale kochałam z wysoka.
Sponad życia.
Z przyszłości. Gdzie zawsze jest pusto
i skąd cóż łatwiejszego jak zobaczyć śmierć.

Żałuję, że mój głos był twardy.
Spójrzcie na siebie z gwiazd - wołałam -
spójrzcie na siebie z gwiazd.
Słyszeli i spuszczali oczy.


Żyli w życiu.
Podszyci wielkim wiatrem.
Przesądzeni.
Od urodzenia w pożegnalnych ciałach.
Ale była w nich jakaś wilgotna nadzieja,
własną migotliwością sycący się płomyk.
Oni wiedzieli, co to takiego jest chwila,
och bodaj jedna jakakolwiek
zanim -

Wyszło na moje.
tylko że z tego nie wynika nic.
A to jest moja szmatka ogniem osmalona.
A to są moje prorockie rupiecie.
A to jest moja wykrzywiona twarz.
Twarz, która nie wiedziała, że mogła być piękna.

 

That's me, Cassandra.
And this is my hometown, buried under ashes.
And this is my stick together with my prophetical ribbons.
And this is my head full of doubt.

That's right, I triumph.
My reason struck the sky with brightness of fire.
The only people that can sense it
Are prophets whose visions are not believed in.
Only those who had approached the matters wrong
And everything could have come true so fast,
As if they didn't exist at all.

Now I can clearly recall
How people, having seen me, lapsed into silence.
Laughter stopped abrubtly.
Hands disentangled themselves.
Children rushed to their mothers.
I didn't even know their fragile names.
And that song on the green leaf-
No one ever finished it close to me.

I did love them.
But not from their level.
I loved them above the life.
From the future, a place
Empty enough to notice the death easily.
I regret that my voice was so harsh.
Have a look at yourself from the stars - I shouted -
Take a look at your own being from the stars.
They heard it and looked down.

They lived IN a life
Lined by a grand wind.
Prejudged.
Living in their ultimate bodies since their birth.
But they posessed a kind of moisty hope.
A tiny flare consuming its own flickerness.
They knew what a while is.
Oh, may even one while, any one
Until-

Things have gone my way.
However it doesn't lead to anything.
And that is my modest garment singed with fire.
And that is my prophetical frippery.
And that is my wry face.
A face that never realised how beautiful could it be.

Scrivere un curriculum

Che cos'e' necessario?
E' necessario scrivere una domanda,
e alla domanda allegare il curriculum.
A prescindere da quanto si e' vissuto
e' bene che il curriculum sia breve.
E' d'obbligo concisione e selezione dei fatti.
Cambiare paesaggi in indirizzi
e malcerti ricordi in date fisse.
Di tutti gli amori basta quello coniugale,
e dei bambini solo quelli nati.
Conta di piu' chi ti conosce di chi conosci tu.
I viaggi solo se all'estero.
L'appartenenza a un che, ma senza perche'.
Onorificenze senza motivazione.
Scrivi come se non parlassi mai con te stesso
e ti evitassi.
Sorvola su cani, gatti e uccelli,
cianfrusaglie del passato, amici e sogni.
Meglio il prezzo che il valore
e il titolo che il contenuto.
Meglio il numero di scarpa, che non dove va
colui per cui ti scambiano.
Aggiungi una foto con l'orecchio in vista.
E' la sua forma che conta, non cio' che sente.
Cosa si sente?
Il fragore delle macchine che tritano la carta.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)

Listening

Seth Segall, May 12, 2011

www.existentialbuddhist.com

I once heard filmmaker Stan Brakhage tell a story about a movie theater that opened in some unnamed African country.  The theater opened with King Kong and the moviegoers loved it.  A few weeks later the owners tried a new movie, but this time the audience rebelled.  They wanted King Kong again.  And so it went.  The theater showed King Kong for years.


If you have young children, you know what it’s like for a child to latch onto a story and want to hear it over and over again.  There’s something sweet and reassuring about old favorites, even after the excitement of newness is gone.

Dharma talks are a lot like that.  They’re always the same: suffering, attachment, mindfulness, letting go, loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, awakening.

The Buddha said I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the release from suffering.  I guess the Buddha couldn’t count very well, because that’s actually two things.  But the Buddha said it over and over, thousands of times in long discourses, medium length discourses, short discourses, numbered discourses, and miscellaneous discourses –  the whole Sutta Pitaka.

I’ve listened to nearly one thousand Dharma talks over the past fifteen years.
The Dalai Lama. Toni Packer. Thich Nhat Hanh. Henapola Gunaratana.  Bhikkhu Bodhi. Tsoknyi Rinpoche.  Joseph Goldstein.  Sharon Salzberg.  Larry Rosenberg.  Sylvia Boorstein.  Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Lama Surya Das.  Stephen Batchelor.  Robert Thurman. Narayan Liebenson Grady.  Michael Liebenson Grady.  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Peter Matthiesson.  Grover Genro Gaunt.  Claude Anshin Thomas.  Gavin Harrison.  Jan Willis.  Sulak Sivaraksa.  Myoshin Kelley. Ajahn Amaro. Rebecca Bradshaw. Christina Feldman.  Michelle McDonald. Alan Wallace. Ruth Denison. Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia. Robert Kennedy Roshi.  Paul Seiko Schubert.  Michael Koryu Holleran. Tsultrim Allione. Annie Nugent.
I’ve even been guilty of giving a few myself.

Toni Packer sometimes begins talks by asking “is it possible to listen freshly?”
What does it mean to listen freshly to something one’s heard a thousand times?

The mind is like a Greek chorus listening in and ceaselessly commenting.
“That makes sense!”  “That doesn’t make sense!”  “I agree!”  “I disagree!”
The mind can’t help itself.  Usually when teachers say something we agree with they’re brilliant, when they say something we disagree with they’re wrong.

“Listening freshly” means two things. (Let’s see if I can count better than the Buddha.)
First it means not assuming we’ve heard something before.  We actually haven’t heard this particular talk before.  This particular talk may say something in a way that allows something new to click, or that helps new questions to arise.  Thinking you’ve already heard something before is a way of shutting down and preventing the possibility of discovery.  So first and foremost, “listening freshly” is adopting an attitude of openness.

Secondly, “listening freshly” means listening to everything that’s going on.  The speaker’s words.  The sounds of birdsong in the background.  The Greek Chorus in your mind.  When thoughts like “I agree” or “I disagree” arise, can they be bracketed off and seen as conditioned responses to what’s being heard without assigning them a truth value?  The speaker’s words sink in, and reactions arise.  Watch the entire movie.  It’s King Kong.  Again.  You may learn more about the Dharma from observing your reactions with genuine interest and non-attachment than you do from the speaker’s words themselves.

I’ve recently been re-learning this lesson as I’ve been listening to Dharma talks in my zendo.  As my faithful readers may remember, my particular zendo has a Jesuit priest as it’s roshi and another Catholic priest as a visiting sensei.  Getting used to this has not always been easy.  I was raised within the Jewish faith and attended synagogue until I was fifty years old.  I never set foot inside a Church until I attended a friend’s wedding in college.  With a history of nearly two thousand years worth of persecution by Christians, sitting in the Episcopal Church, where my zendo is located, still carries some negative connotations.  My initial entry into Buddhism was made easier by the fact that most of my earliest teachers were either Jewish or half-Jewish in origin.  If my current zendo had been my first Buddhist experience, I might never have become a Buddhist practitioner.  This is not a negative statement about my zendo, but a statement about the power of conditioning.  We all come from somewhere and have attachments that can close us off to what is actually transpiring in the moment here and now.
What’s actually transpiring in my zendo?  It’s a beautiful structure with a vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows.  The building creaks and groans in the wind when the weather is stormy.  Cicadas chirp outside in the summer.  It’s a wonderful place to sit.  It’s a friendly community, and we all sit together with inspiring sincerity and determination.
Occasionally a teacher will mention God during a Dharma talk, or even Jesus.  As a Jewish agnostic, my mind goes into overdrive whenever that happens.  “Buddhism is non-theistic”. As a member of an historically persecuted minority, I don’t want to hear Jesus talk.  “That was a perfectly good Dharma talk until he dragged Jesus into it!” My fellow sitters, who are mostly Christian in background, are probably comforted by the reference, just as I was comforted by my early exposure to Jewish teachers.  “What I’m doing here really isn’t apostasy.” All of it, the raised hackles or the comfort, conditioned response.
The hard thing is to hear what the teacher is saying behind the words.  What he means by “Jesus” or “God” may be what I mean by “dharmakāya.”  Or maybe not.  Can I “listen freshly?”  Is there something in his experience that can reverberate in mine?  Something beyond conditioned responses?

It’s not for nothing that the Buddha’s first disciples were called śrāvakas, or “hearers,” those who actually heard the Buddha speak.  That’s our aspiration too, to be “hearers.”

Larry Rosenberg used to say (maybe he still does) that watching our own conditioned responses over and over is like watching “Gone With the Wind” one thousand times.  It’s a great movie, but (unlike the King Kong audience!) we eventually tire of it and are able to drop the story.
That’s our job in Dharma practice.  Dropping the story.
Dharma talks — stories to end stories.