Buddhist Studies in Tel Aviv University

So, I got back to Israel and signed up for classes in East Asia studies and in Philosophy. I'd love to write about what I am learning and if any thoughts or insights arise, share them here. These are the courses I am attending in:

• Japan's Culture- about the history and development of Japan
• Japan Architecture and Environment- mostly historical and classical architecture
• Emptiness: My Life is Full, My Life is Empty - about the concept of emptiness in the mahayana
• Introduction to Chinese Philosophy - Confucius, Mo dze, Djong Dze...
• Introduction to Indian Philosophy
• Cutting with the Sword of Wisdom: Japanese Zen Martial Arts - about samurais and the warrior archetype (Karl Jung)
• The History of the Philosophy of Emotions - about being human as being a rational being, and the idea of controlling the emotions... and the place of emotions in moral judgments

* I marked the courses that are the most important for me...

M working subject is : Contemplative [Zen] Arts as an Educational Practice

I am also participating in: Meditation and Education: Theory and Practice, which is a MA course in Education. And it is also a research.

In addition, I am a research assistant for an Education research about children literacy, in 2nd grade, using computer technology. Specifically, the kids read an electronic story, which is, by chance, a Chinese fairytale about the 'empty vase'.

Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment

Talk in May @ Shambhala NYC
"The Eight Worldly Concerns

with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo"

I was fortunate to hear Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo talk about the 6 Paramitas, in Tushita center, in McLeod Ganj. I learned insightful things from her presence and her speech.

I'm very curious about here book: "Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment".

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo was born in London in 1943. When she was 20 years old she traveled to India, and soon after met her teacher. In 1964, she became one of the first Western women to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. After twelve years of study and frequent retreats during the long Himalayan winters, she sought complete seclusion. She found a remote cave, where she practiced intensively for twelve years. Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment is the story of her life. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is a renowned champion for the rights of women to attain spiritual enlightenment. She is the founder of Dongyu Gatsal Ling, a nunnery in India.

Saturday class: The Healing Power of Loving-Kindness

The Healing Power of Loving-Kindness

with Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

Sat December 18th: 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM

All happiness in the world
Comes from wishing happiness for others.
All suffering in the world
Comes from the desire to have happiness only for oneself.

- Shantideva

Loving-kindness is the thought of wishing total happiness for others and putting that wish into practice. It is the thought of unconditioned, pure, and universal love towards all beings without attachment, self-centeredness, or expectation of rewards. Our mind has the power to generate love or hatred, inspire helpful or harmful actions, and enjoy joyful or painful experiences. Our mind has the power to ease all our pain and stress and to enjoy peace and happiness simply by loosening its tight grasping at mental objects.

The true nature of our mind is inherently peaceful and joyful. Once our mind is filled with love, whatever we say or do will be the expression of loving kindness. We will become a source of peace, joy and love for others. However, our mind is highly impressionable. We become what we see and think. If we meditate on the Buddha of Loving-Kindness, we turn into a person of Loving-Kindness.

In this workshop, we first visualize and pray to the Buddha of Loving-Kindness and Compassion (Avalokitesvara) and enjoy his blessing light of loving-kindness. As a result, thoughts and feelings of pure loving kindness - the pure qualities of our own mind - will be awakened in the depths of our heart. Then our mental, emotional, and physical energies spontaneously start blazing forth as the energy of pure love. Finally, whatever we see, hear, and feel will turn into the images, sounds, and experiences of unconditional love. Then our lives will become joyful lives of true loving-kindness - the source of peace and joy for many.

Tulku Thondup Rinpoche was born in Tibet and trained at the Dodrupchen Monastery. He moved to India in 1958 and came to the United States in 1980 as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His many books on Tibetan Buddhism include The Healing Power of Loving Kindness, Boundless Healing, The Healing Power of Mind, Masters of Meditation and Miracles and Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth. Tulku Thondup teaches throughout the United States and Europe.

West-Eastern Divan: Arab + Israeli Youth Orchastra

Wiki says:

"Daniel Barenboim (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born Israeli pianist and conductor. He is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Jewish musicians."

His official website: Daniel Barenboim

In the beginning there was sound - BBC Radio lectures by DB

Quote from WIKI:

The West-Eastern Divan is a youth orchestra based in Sevilla, Spain, consisting of musicians from countries in the Middle East, of Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian background. The Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said founded the orchestra in 1999, and named the ensemble after an anthology of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The first orchestra workshop was in Weimar, Germany in 1999,^[1] after the organisation had received over 200 applications from Arab music students.^[2] Daniel Barenboim has also expressed interest in musicians from Iran (a non-Arab country but in conflict with Israel) and three Iranian musicians are to play in the Orchestra each year.

The aim of the West-Eastern Divan is to promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and pave the way for a peaceful and fair solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Barenboim himself has spoken of the ensemble as follows.:

"The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn't. It's not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and [I'm] not trying to convince the Israelis to the Arab point of view. But I want to - and unfortunately I am alone in this now that Edward died a few years ago - ...create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives."^[3]

[read a bit more on Wiki]

Miyazaki King of Dralas: Japanese Animation Exploring Nature, Spirits, Mankind

Animated films about mankind/nature/technology, ecology+ pollution, spirits/dralas.

If you don't know him, then you should!

Hayao Miyazaki.

Flying colors, transforming characters, female protagonists, personified rivers and forests, shiney lights, unpredictable plot... and more I'd love to write about and share with you. But do yourself a favor and just watch it :-)

Solitary Retreat, Beautiful Watercolor Artwork, Calligraphy and Meditation Journal

Pleased to introduce you to the wondrous world of Barbara Bash.

Be sure to watch the calligraphy video on the site. Poetry and calligraphy as contemplative, meditative practice, enchanting!

Check out her Visual Blog to get a taste of what I wrote in the title...

Cookbooks for healing, learning, vegeterian, soy & health

Cookbooks i am reading/starting to use

The Natural Healing Cookbook: A Wellness Program Designed for Your Optimal Health by Bessie Jo Tillman

The Kripalu Cookbook: Gourmet Vegetarian Recipes - by Atma JoAnn Levitt

Zone-Perfect Meals in Minutes by Barry Sears

The Soy Zone by Barry Sears

Book List for January: mindfulness, creativity, zen and yoga

Books about mindfulness, creativity, zen and yoga....

Ordered from Amazon, waiting for it to arrive:

Yoga and You: Energizing and Relaxing Yoga for New and Experienced Students

Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work

Returning to Silence

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life (Gawain, Shakti)

The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life

Buddhism and Shamanism: Working with Energy

Podcast by Robert Chender

Bringing mindfulness to schools

Bringing mindfulness to schools

Attending Events @ The Interdependence Project

Planning to attend these events atThe Interdependence Project:

Thursday Night Open Class and Gathering: "Love, Attachment, and Heartbreak: Is it Possible to Practice Dharma in Relationships?" with Susan Piver
Learn about romantic love and non-attachment. How to have a loving relationship with less confusion and suffering...

Cultivating Intuition and the Munay-ki Rites with Robert Chender
Unleash creativity Inca style

"Write Action" Writer's Group
Meet on Sunday to write awakefully

Staffing "Awakened Heart" (Part 2)

[Originally written in Hebrew on Fri. Oct. 22].

This weekend I am volunteering as a staff member in the program 'Awakened Heart," the fourth weekend program on the Shambhala Warrior training. In this program you learn to listen to the heart and feel it, beating, sensitive, vulnerable and courageous.
When I first participated in the program it was a very emotional experience for me. I think I also cried a little. A good kind of healthy cry. And I really felt my heart and started noticing it more. What happens to it in different situations, how the body and the heart respond to things around, and to internal things. I started noticing its beatings, and to times it's very quiet, but still there, very busy with pumping enough blood so I will live. I don't know if I thought of all this at the time. But I felt. I experienced. I experienced the feeling of being a person with a beating heart. And to look at that.

There were more emotional and mental things that happened in that program, but you can't express them in words. These programs are very centered in the personal experience. So for each person it's a bit different, even though there are definitly things that are common among the participants.

So this weekend I am volunteering. I will help the team of people who are on the spiritual path I am on, friends for the road, as they say, sangha, community, in order to help others look deeply at the sensitivity and courage of our beating heart. When you volunteer, you also learn a lot from the experience. It is a meditative act in itself. Because while you staff the program, the awareness to yourself and others is very high, and there is a great aspiration to be very very good to others and yourself, to be of benefit, and to be kind. And then it's possible to experience this kindness within you and within others. That feels very warm. Like a warm welcoming home.

In general, this program includes- talks, a lot of sitting meditation (this is the time in which participants are reflecting, feel and experience a lot), and there is also walking meditation (sometimes even outside, in the middle of Manhattan!) and sometimes some contemplation activities. As volunteers, we prepare the food (fruits and vegtables, crackers, cheese, cookies and cakes, coffee and tea), and we also escort the participants to their interviews and meditate in between. We can listen to the talks , meditate with the group and participate in discussions.
So maybe this gives you some idea about the program. Perhaps I can add a picture here later =)

Love,
Yael

Staffing "Awakend Heart" (Part 1)

This weekend I am volunteering to staff 'Level IV' at the NYC Shambhala Center. It will be an opportunity to meditate and to allow others to meditate as well. I especially like Level IV: Awakened Heart, because when I first did it, it really did allow me to feel my heart more closely, and feel its fragility and warmth. It was very special for me, and I am happy to be there for the program to allow others to explore their own experience and maybe feel their heart throbbing inside their body too. :-)

From the Website's Program info:

In Shambhala Training Level IV, we learn how to awaken and open our hearts so that we can communicate fully with the world.

“Basic goodness is very closely connected to the idea of bodhicitta in the Buddhist tradition. Bodhi means ‘awake’ or ‘wakeful’ and citta means ‘heart,’ so bodhicitta is ‘awakened heart.’ Such awakened heart comes from being willing to face your state of mind. That may seem like a great demand, but it is necessary. The sitting practice of meditation is the means to rediscover basic goodness, and beyond that, it is the means to awaken this genuine heart within yourself.”
— Chögyam Trungpa

A Talk: The Shmbhala Buddhist Path

Going tonight to hear a talk in the Shambhala center about The Shambhala Buddhist Path: From Level I to Vajrayana.

This talk will present the Shambhala path of the warrior, the Shambhala lineage practitioner, from "Level I" weekends, and first meditation instructions, until entering the Vajrayana path, which is a more demanding, committed and advanced part of the path. Some lineages, such as the Kagyu lineage, believe that some people were incarnated in a way that enables them to start their path (in this lifetime) straight with with Vajrayana path. In Shambhala, we practice a lot of shamhata, mindfulness meditation, as a foundation before we advance to deity visualization and chants. I am writing this in a very simplistic terms, just to give a short note about it.



Quotes from the program invitation:

One key component will be an introduction to our core curriculum, The Way of Shambhala, which provides a structured path of meditation and an introduction to the foundations of Shambhala Buddhism—wisdom teachings and practices rooted in the ancient traditions of Shambhala and Tibetan Buddhism. The series of weekly courses and weekend programs integrate practice and study, exploring mindfulness-awareness meditation and teachings on contentment, joy, fearlessness, and wisdom, all with an emphasis on application in everyday life.

Shambhala Vision
Throughout history, people have aspired to create societies that express the dignity of human existence within a wise, flourishing culture. This is the vision of Shambhala - a legendary enlightened society. The first king of Shambhala is said to have receive teachings on the inseparability of spirituality and daily life directly from the Buddha. The Tibetan meditation master and founder of the Shambhala community, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, carried this tradition into the modern world. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, his son and spiritual heir, continues this tradition.

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, was recommended to me by Suzanne, the sweet girlfriend of my boyfriend's flat-mate and long-time buddy, Greg.

We were talking about my interests and her studies, and she recommended this book to me, since I was talking about the 'aesthetic experience' and 'meditation' and transformative experiences, values and so on. She asked if I know of this hard-to-pronounce scholar and his theory of flow, and I didn't. She explained he writes about people's experiences after they see an art exhibition, which reminded me of Pierre Bourdieu, a sociology and education scholar I've studied about, but this was different. There would be less French complications and more down-to-earth spiritual air to this, perhaps. In any case, my eyes were wide open, my ears perked up, and I was TOTALLY interested.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and I lay my hands on a fascinating book, in the Chicago O'Hare airport - and guess what? I can hardly pronounce its author's name. Flow? I guess there aren't too many 'flow' theories out there. This is probably it!

I'm reading it like I sometimes like to read books- from the middle, back and forth, on random pages. Tasting it.
So far, it keeps me very interested and mystified!

I'd love to share what I learn from it here.


Wiki: "Flow" Psychology

Wiki: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Vid of M.C on 'Positive Psychology" [7 min.]

Vid of M.C. on "Flow Theory" [3 min.]

The book on Amazon

"If the Buddha Dated" by Charlotte Kasl

"If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path" by Charlotte Kasl was given to me by a house-maid of a luxurious Southampton villa, who was inspired by Buddhism and thought I would like it. I do like it very much! I am grateful for receiving this gift from her.

Being on a spiritual path, for me, means being honest with myself and comitted to be as good as I can. To be "fully human being," as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, my spiritual teacher, would say. So it is very interesting to explore this notion in two! How to be kind to myself by finding a partner who can be kind to himself (or herself), and how to cultivate a relationship that is deeply honest and kind.

To synchronize with our partner, it helps us if we are synchronize our own body and mind. To be authentic with our lover, we need to search for that authenticity within ourselves. And that means being brave to handle the ugly parts as well as to acknowledge the beautiful parts.

It also helps, as the book suggests and gives exercises, to know ourselves, and our values. What do we actually want, or need from a partner? What would we like to give? The clearer this is, the easier it is to see if it's a match between two people.

Ultimately, the spiritual relationship is deep, willing to cope with whatever arises, combines mind and body of the two lovers, and brings out the best of both.

What do you think or feel about this subject?

Charlotte Kasl Official Site

Buy the book on Amazon

Getting Things Done / by David Allen

"Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" by David Allen, was recommended to me by my precious friend, Michal Harari, who helps people achieve their life goals, dreams and visions.

I often find myself procrastinating, or planning to do one thing and then doing something totally else. Sometimes I have a long list of things to do and then I feel guilty about not doing those things, or not accomplishing all of them. I have gone to a time-management workshop in New York once, and it opened my mind to the possibilities of efficient planning.

This book guides us to create a system that works, and more importantly, that works for us. It explains how our brain gets in our way of "flowing" with activities and feeling great, and how we can stop interfering with this natural flow. Once we let it be, and understand how our mind actually works, in relations to goal-achievement, we can achieve a lot, and feel great and energized!

I am very interested in this idea, because I prefer doing many things and feeling energized, joyous, harmonious and flowing, rather than stuck, disappointed, frustrated, and guilt-stricken.

So, I am reading this book, trying to implement it in my life and see how it goes. So far it has been really good. Maybe I can share some quotes here, and some experiences of the process.

Recommended!

Official site

Buy the book on Amazon