December 23rd, 2006
Blog visitors may wonder about the purpose of this category of postings. As part of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, our sangha is committed to relieving the suffering of all sentient beings. We do this through meditation, ritual practices, and our lifestyle choices. It is now a widely accepted fact that human beings have wrought great environmental damage upon our planet, as evidenced by phenomena like global warming and the loss of animal and plant species and habitat. By reducing our footprint, that is, our impact upon the environment and the consumption of world resources, we seek to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings.
This blog category is intended to provide our community with an opportunity to share information and ideas about reducing our footprint and employing alternatives to our present patterns of consumption. It is not intended to promote political parties or candidates. We hope that its content moves you to examine your own choices. What size are your feet?
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December 8th, 2006
Properly applied the practices of Tibetan Buddhism facilitate shifts in consciousness to higher levels where true, far-reaching wisdom manifests. Real wisdom is so rare there’s almost no reason to mention it these days. Very few people know what it is, why we need it, how different things would be if, on balance, people had it or at least could connect to it. Given the set of challenges the human race faces NOW, not some time in the future, we urgently need problem solving based in transcendent wisdom. For this reason alone, everyone should engage in meditation every day. All people free to do so should be doing daily meditation practice. Start now. Adopt a daily meditation practice. WAKE UP.
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November 27th, 2006
KTC First Light Ceremony 6:30a.m. 1 January 2007
May the poison of malicious enmity
Never arise in the mind of any one of us.
With loving minds, like the meeting of mother and child,
May all the world be filled with peace and happiness.
From the closing lines of the First Light Prayers. Written by H.E. Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche.
KTC will be doing its 2nd annual First Light Ceremony on New Year’s Day, 1 January 2007, beginning at 6:30 a.m. First Light is a ceremony that originated at KTD, KTC’s parent monastery, where 108 lamps, carrying the collective prayers for peace and harmony of all those who have contributed to their lighting, have been lit every day since January 1, 2000.
The First Light ceremony is dedicated to bringing a world of peace. Everyone is welcome to attend, but we request that you make a donation for a butterlamp dedicated to world peace. You can sponsor a lamp even if you will not be at the ceremony. Each person participating in KTC’s First Light will receive a copy of the First Light prayers. which can be read every morning upon arising. Each day the KTC First Light lamps supporting your intention for world peace will be lit on KTC’s shrine.
The approximate schedule for First Light is as follows:
6:30 a.m. Chanting of the First Light Prayers. There are 3 short prayers done in a plain chant. Each prayer is chanted 3 times in Tibetan and 3 times in English.
7 a.m. Green Tara Puja with Tsok. You may chant or follow along silently. The puja is in Tibetan but is transliterated and translated into English. Chanting usually requires some practice. Green Tara puja, open to everyone, is done every Thursday morning from April - Dec at 5:45 a.m. at KTC. Check our online calendar for the odd exception to this schedule. If you want to practice, feel free to come to this group practice.
8 a.m. Closing prayers and dedication.
8:15 a.m. Tea and Treats.
First Light butterlamp donation amounts: $1.50 per day. $45 per month. $540 per year. Or other amount in multiples of $1.50.
Please RSVP your lamp donation amount, and whether you will join us to do the practice on 1 January, to Marva Bohen. To reduce spam here is her email address typed out: bohen001 at umn.edu. You should replace the word “at” with the “at sign” when you send your RSVP email. Materials need to be prepared for all participants.
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November 2nd, 2006
Every region of space is awash with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lenths - each wave has energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy then the total energy of all the matter in the known universe.
This is the energy of a trillion atomic bombs in every cubic centimeter of space. Space is not empty. It is full, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves.
Michael Talbot in The Holographic Universe
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November 2nd, 2006
All energy has intelligence. What used to be e=mc2 is now known to be e=i=m.
Deepak Chopra, M.D.
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October 31st, 2006
Human consciousness is stratified… layers that are wholes within wholes…
mind
photo by Graciela Laura
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October 31st, 2006
Main KTC Shrine, Amitabha Puja to assist Sonam’s father, Ogyen Namdol.
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October 1st, 2006
Working on the new steps in the Meditation Garden.
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October 1st, 2006
Sonam la on the new Meditation Garden steps.
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September 27th, 2006
There are at least four mega or supervolcanos on Earth. When they erupt most, if not all, plant and animal life on our planet is wiped out. The largest of these megavolcanos is under Yellowstone National Park. It has a 600,000 year cycle. That is, it erupts every 600,000 years. It has been 640,000 years since its last eruption.
Nova, TPT Channel 2, 26.9.2006
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September 25th, 2006
‘ The planet’s temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.
…”This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution,” Hansen said in a statement.
…Hansen, who first warned of the danger of climate change decades ago, said that human-made greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate change factor.
…The study said the recent warming has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius _ 1.8 degree Fahrenheit _ of the maximum temperature of the past million years.’
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org. Quote from Road Runner News 25.9.2006.
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September 19th, 2006
“Developmental psychologists have looked at scales of development for decades. And once you start understanding these, the first thing you want to know is: How can we help adults move through these stages? … And, interestingly, there is only one thing that’s been consistently demonstrated to move people, on average, about two stages - and that’s meditation…
…Amrit Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, demonstrated that there’s never been a famine in a democratic country. A democracy stems from at least stage-five moral development. Since seventy percent of the world’s population is not there, the single best thing you can do to end world famine is to meditate. Meditation has a profound impact on the average level of consciousness in the world. It’s very, very important…
…meditation is a way to help you disidentify with finite objects and rest in that ground of being which is your very nature, your very SELF… meditation is extrememly important, and don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s just not having any impact on the world. You’re changing the fundamental fabric of the cosmos when you meditate.”
Ken Wilber in what is enlightenment magazine, Issue 32.
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September 17th, 2006
It’s helpful to think about human consciousness as stratified and pluridimensional, with layers that are wholes within wholes, going from simple and rudimentary at birth, to increasingly complex and whole layers superimposed upon their predecessor in a way that includes the previous layer but transcends it. Formless meditation looks directly at the layer you are currently grounded in.
There are things to consider:
Including Western psychological models and Eastern spiritual models, we can say that humans have the potential to go from a very simple consciousness at birth to vastly higher complex levels of consciousness in one lifetime but there are no orthodox Western psychological models for at least the top 25%, or so, of our potential. Human consciousness is a psycho-spiritual continuum, but the high end of this nonlinear continuum is missing in Western models from about the point where the duality between subject and object dissolves. Right now we are seeing quantum physics, with its non separate observer-scientist and supporting theoretical framework plus “scientific proof” for the manifestation of non local mind, point to the high end human consciousness.
Along with not having orthodox Western psychological models for the higher end of consciousness, our society as a pacer of transformation also drops off and the great majority of the population tables off about half way to their potential.
The maturation of human consciousness manifests as the unfolding of 10 or 11 ever higher order layers. As your consciousness matures during your lifetime, you can not skip over a layer. The layers are the same for everyone. We can tell what level of consciousness a person is at by looking at such things as cognitive and affective style, and what one believes is true about time, etc.
The maturation of consciousness is the primary developmental task of adulthood, like learning to crawl, walk, talk and read, etc. are at earlier ages. Stress, dis-ease, and crisis result from not attending to it.
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September 8th, 2006
Evolution is based on cooperation, not competition.
We are now deep into the 6th mass extinction event to hit this planet. This event is unique because it has been caused by humans.
Biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD.
Dr. Lipton is the author of Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, 2005 and earlier titles.
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September 6th, 2006
Thanks so much to everyone for the great donations again for our 2006 garage sale!!! Most people reading this probably know that the garage sale was held, for the first time this year, at Suzanne & Russ’s home in their phenomenal “Prayer Barn.” Use the search box in the right hand column at the top of this page if you would like to see a picture of the barn. Even with the dramatic change in location, receipts from the sale came within a couple hundred dollars of breaking our record year holding the sale at the Center. The money from the garage sale goes into our operating budget, which supports the people studying and practicing at the Center.
It was wonderful to be able to plan for the garage sale without being concerned about whether we would get rained out. Instead, what we got was that scorching, hot weather. The barn provided shade and lots of great space. We were able to set up ahead of time and we could leave everything set up overnight for the first time. Suzanne cooked fantastic food for the workers’ lunches - a big bonus. You might want to sign up to work next year just for the lunch - really.
Most of the KTC sangha work in one role or another at the garage sale, and many of our patrons donate wonderful things year after year. Every one of you matters. Everything you do makes a difference. Special thanks to Carolyn Peterson for pulling it all off with a fantastic coordinator effort!
The 2007 garage sale is out there, headed our way…
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