WHATS WITH HAPPY HOLIDAYS?

Hi Sangha and Friends

I have to chuckle at the attempt to squeeze the Japanese Buddhist “Bodhi Day” (December 8th) into the collection of equivalent December religious holidays, along with Eid, Hannukah and others. The hand-wringers, who want little Johnny to have the same size cookie as little Janie,  want to make sure we all get a religious holiday when Christmas comes along. This allows the use of Happy Holiday, instead of what they see as a self-interested Merry Christmas.

After 40 years of Buddhist practice,  even over my past  few years in a Japanese Buddhist tradition like Tendai,  I have to say that Bodhi Day hardly makes a ripple in the calendar of most Buddhists outside of some sects in Japan. Apparently Bodhi Day, or  Rohatsu, to those who actively celebrate it, refers to the day when Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha had his enlightenment experience. Even the date is variable, depending on whether you use the Chinese or Gregorian calendar. It is in no way a parallel to Christmas, since it does not mark Shakyamuni’s birth, but rather the culmination of his awakening journey. Its probably more related to Christ’s awareness that he was going to have to sacrifice himself, if one has to force a parallel. Oddly, it’s a date hardly celebrated even by Christians.
 
By far the more widely celebrated Buddhist holiday is Vesak, the birthdate of Shakyamuni. Even this is a variable one, since it is celebrated in most countries on the May full moon. The Japanese shift it closer to the culturally important cherry blossom festivals and celebrate it in April. Somehow that date gets lost in the flurry of Easter and Passover.

To me it seems a bit disingenuous to try to force a common container for these widely disparate celebrations which happen to arise in a very arbitrary page of the calendar. Nothing is really gained by doing so. As a Buddhist, I am quite comfortable to wish Merry Christmas and have no expectation that anyone knows when Bodhi Day or Vesak falls, or even means. If anything I am discomforted by the mega-holiday being constructed by the Happy Holidays people. It ultimately robs each of our traditions of their uniqueness. If others want to express their interest and awareness of our traditions, it might show more sensitivity to do so on the holidays that matter to us, rather than the ones which happen to fall near the ones that matter to them.

in the Dharma,

Innen, doshu

MINDFULNESS OF THE AGING BODY

A group of instructors for the local Fit, Fun and Fully Alive seniors fitness program invited me to describe how mindfulness training might be of use to them and their program participants. These would be mostly women in the 55+ age group. So often I teach mindfulness and meditation in the context of emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression, this invitation pushed me to explore the benefits of practice in terms of fitness and body awareness, most particularly the aging body.

I began by emphasizing that mindfulness had nothing whatsoever to do with values fitness programs usually emphasize - building core strength, maintaining muscle flexibility and tone. Instead, I contended, training in mindfulness benefits fitness training in other ways. Mindfulness practice improves :

1. awareness of the integrity and the multiple spaces within our bodies; with greater clarity of both gross and fine motor movements;
2. awareness, functionality and control of the breath;
3. balance, and weight distribution, thus improving safety and endurance;
4. symptoms of conditions like hypertension, diabetes, arthritis and other pain disorders, anxiety, depression, stress and others, thus reducing risks in physical activities;
5. personal purposefulness, and persistence through reduced expectation and judgements and cultivation of regular practice effort.

To illustrate this, I taught them the “Five-minute breathing exercise”, familiar to most mindfulness practitioners. This I followed with a demonstration of Thich Nhat Hahn’s “Ten Mindful Movements”. I was struck at how appropriate these movements were for seniors, and how similar to those exercises promoted by the speakers who preceded me, namely a dietician and a physiotherapist. I also taught them indoor mindful walking (kinhin).

It can be easy to isolate mindfulness as an activity of mental cultivation. One needs to remember that the first two aspects of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are body and breath (with vocal expression and mind cultivation as the other two). Mindfulness of body, especially mindfulness of the body in motion is every bit as important as any sitting practices.

Thanks to Lara M for the invite and eager participants of FFFA

WANT TO HELP GROW BMINDFUL?

1. IF you have a LITTLE time
.tell us about - any events you hear of, any books or articles you have read
.share your own experiences and questions on the blog
.attend as many of our activities as you can
.tell friends about mindfulness
.send us your ideas and suggestions

2. IF you have MORE time
.write about your experience for the blog
.research community events and resources
.contribute to book reviews for the blog

3. IF you have LOTS of time
.volunteer for events (advertising, logistics, etc)
.become a co-facilitator (with Ray or elsewhere)
.participate in our online discussions
.build our resource database

Most of all, you can help, us and yourself, by maintaining a strong and sincere mindfulness practice and lifestyle of your own.

WELCOME BACK TO BMINDFUL

This is a message I shared with about 50 friends and grads today
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Greetings mindful-friend,

We held our CYM Week &/Grad Reunion this past weekend and it was a huge success. There were about a dozen each of current participants and grads. Thanks to all who made it such a success.

A couple of follow-up details:

1. the CHC will work towards another “reunion” event, likely sometime on a Saturday in late February at the Marg again;
2. there is a ‘germ’ of an idea to establish another bi-weekly drop-in practice group which would alternate between Renfrew and Pembroke/Beachburg
3. I have re-started the mindfulness blog and will re-work it over the next few months to present
a. Announcements of any events or training I hear of for the general area (Renfrew County, not Ottawa)
b. Resources of use to practitioners
c. “mini-lessons” for people developing a practice
d. A forum for comment or Q/A for anyone working on their practice.

More of this will happen if there are others who are interested in helping out (salary range $0.00 to 0.00, with no benefits other than satisfaction). If you have some time and energy. Let me know.

We are the small but leading edge of bringing these invaluable practices to our lives and the lives of others. I welcome everyone who wants to make mindfulness more of a force in our communities.

The “new” BMINDFUL Blog is at http://www.bmindful.blogspot.com

You are invited to share this information with all you know who may have an interest in mindfulness meditation in Renfrew

LETTER TO EDITORS 28

Greetings to all,

       
 LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Here is the text of a letter I submitted to local newspapers:

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To the Editor

The hype and hysteria which has arisen this year around so-called Black Days of Christmas shopping calls for a serious reality check. There is no doubt that gift-giving has a place in Christian celebration and that seasonal shopping is an excellent way to demonstrate support for our local merchants and their employees. Nonetheless, the encouragements for us to act like frenzied animals does nothing but debase the beauty of the Christmas message.
If we are determined to get swept up in any spending orgies this month, may I suggest we leap fully into spending in support of our local and critically underfunded hospitals, hospices and health care services. May I suggest we go crazy with support for Bernadette McCann House, Lanark Interval House and Living without Violence who have worked ceaselessly to keep our wives and daughters safe from abuse. May I suggest we completely lose our minds in supporting our local animal shelters, our food banks and organizations trying to protect our suffering natural environment. If these suggestions are not compelling enough to encourage more responsible spending orgies, it will not be difficult to identify countless other struggling causes who depend on our financial support much more than the malls of up-state New York or the trash-makers of China. This is the season to remember the birth of Peace not the cancer of Greed.

We wish all our Christian neighbours a joyous Holiday,
Rev. Innen Parchelo
Red Maple Buddhist Congregation
Renfrew, ON
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CYM BLOG RE-BORN

This blog has been dormant for a couple of years but, because of current interest ,its being re-named and re-developed. please bookmark the blog and come back again for news and resources,

Ray
December 01, 2011

A SERIOUS CASE OF KARMA

Hi Sangha and Friends

Last night’s Buddha Café film, A Serious Man, stood out on the store rack as a simple story of a man’s loss of faith and his grappling with the events that challenge him. It was that at least, and more. It begins with almost a cartoonish version of events in the lives of Larry’s Eastern European Jewish ancestors whose own doubts generate a family curse. Jumping ahead to Larry and family in 1960's suburban America, it follows a few days in Larry’s life that unfold the curse. In true Coen Brothers’ style, the screen is populated with a combination of odd-ball, grotesquely-recognizable characters from Larry’s routine life. From there we witness splinters of crises of mid-life, puberty, sexual awakening, career, adultery, Jews in America, religious leadership and, yes, faith. 

What began as a comic curse unfolds as the fulfilment of that curse in and as the lives of all those around Larry. The narrative is far too complex to encapsulate, in fact that may be the true message of the film. The usual dramatic arc of American cinema is the resolution of some simple moral issue which plays out on the stage of some elaborated setting. This film innocently drops you into the incomprehensible flow of karma. Rather than a simple cause-and-effect morality tale, this cross-section of Larry’s life becomes the playing out of the mystery of interdependence. This is not a maudlin story of how “underneath it all we are connected” or cheesy example of “what goes around...”. That simplistic version of karma and interconnection has no place in this tale. We see a broad landscape where lives criss-cross, good and evil interchange in a blink and the arc becomes a kind of Indra’s Net where all lives impact each other. No one story drives the drama, no one character is fully redeemed or condemned. The film has no happy or unhappy ending, and in fact , as with karma, implies no ending at all. As with the Japanese Buddhist teaching directs, we view “the whole universe in an instant”.

.... in the Dharma, Innen, doshu