NEW YEAR WISHES FOR YOUR HEART: QUOTE FROM DALAI LAMA

We leave you with some wise words:

Never give up
No matter what is going on
Never give up

Develop the heart

CHEW YOUR FOOD: A BUDDHIST LESSON FROM EMORY-TIBET PARTNERSHIP

Emory has study abroad program in Dharmasala

Several weeks ago, on Martha’s Vineyard, I attended a talk on Depressionm, Stress & Compassion Meditation given by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, from Emory Univeristy’s Institute of Tibetan Studies.  The gist of the talk: the pressures and habits of daily life all too often activate our flight and fight response. Compassion Meditation helps reduce modern stress.

One point made, which I would like to offer here, is chewing. Take time to chew your food. Macrobiotics recommend chewing food 50-100 times.  Too, so do the stress & inflammation studies.

Eating fast—particularly eating protein (macros do not usually eat red meat) activates the fight and flight hormones, which ready the body for attack and action.   Eating fast makes the body act as if it is under threat; soon to be attacked.

You can’t imagine why eating fast would signal an imminent attack? Here’s the picture: Human hunters who just killed a buffalo eat their catch quickly

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE A “FORMER TERRORIST”?

he claims to be an ex-killer

Book Review: THE BLOOD  OF LAMBS A Former Terrorist’s Memoir of Death and Redemption  by Kamal Saleem

Reading The Blood of Lambs is like seeing a train coming straight at your house, your school, your gut, your bank account, and your children.  I suppose you could put the book down and filter out politically incorrect thoughts, but that’s the problem.  Put it down and, according to the book’s author Kamal Saleem, you will be an accomplice in the rape of your own nation. Radical Islam is counting on you not wanting to know what they are up to: clearing the world of infidels.

They hate Americans with as much passion as they hate Jews. Saleem writes, “Because if it were not for America, Israel would not exist.”

We realize that not all Muslims are extremists. However, according to studies Saleem cites,  one in ten have declared war on our Western way of life.

The Blood of Lambs is a startling book, a nuanced version of the celebrated Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci’s trilogy. The Rage and the Pride, The Strength of Reason, and Fallaci Interviews Herself were her scandalous wake up calls to Europe. We might not remember that after 9/11, Fallaci spoke out against

Buddhist Self-Help: Going to Pieces without Falling Apart

For every season, turn, turn turn

In the 70s self help books had a we’re-all-in-this-together feeling and clustered around transpersonal themes such in the book I’m Ok, You’re OK In the 80s, decade of major money-making, self help moved onto managing time and handling the people–either at home or in the workplace–who made you angry or got in your way: think One Minute Manager and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  In the 90s, books such as Listening to Prozac pondered pharmaceutical possibilities for being comfortable with the self.  Move on to the first decade of the 2000s and we find popular self-help and transformational

Green Tara Holds an Outstretched Hand

 

Green Tara

The Green Tara is a female meditational deity who is regarded as the embodiment of all the buddhas. She is the ‘mother’ of all the buddhas. Her compassion for living beings, her desire to save them from suffering, is said to be even stronger than a mother’s love for her children.

Meditating on Green Tara in my mind develops compassion.  Everybody has a mother; every person is a mother’s child. Holding this knowledge