Daily Buddhist Wisdom

"People must realize that even with all these comforts, all this money and a GNP that increases every year, they are still not happy. They need to understand that the real culprits are our unceasing desires. Our wants have no end."

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Imagine All the People"

Christian-Dharma

Um, check this out people.

γρηγορειτε και προσεθχεσθε, ινα μη ελθητε εις πειρασμον, το μεν πνευμα προθυμον η δε σαρξ ασθενης.

This is Mark 14:38. It says "watch and pray, so that you do not fall into trouble: on the one hand the spirit is ready, but the flesh weak." Some of us out here are concerned with the possibility of bringing Buddhism and Christianity together. And so just a quick note here on one little verse that jumped out at me as I was doing my Greek homework. Keeping watch, as it says here, is practiced in most of the Buddhist sects I know. Zen made much, and continues to make much if it is authentic Zen, of simply sitting and observing and learning how create distance between what is happening to you and with you. This distance, as neurologists and brain researchers are now figuring out, takes place in your frontal lobe where the brain does its long range planning and finds control for all of its operations. Questions about possible conflicts over what it means to pray and what it means to meditate are nullified here. Watch AND pray! Just do it and forget about whether its Christian of Buddhist. Your brain needs it. You need it.

"the flesh is weak but the spirit willing" to me sounds like one of the four noble truths. Suffering exists, it is all pervasive in fact. But it can be overcome. That little running-back back there behind the line of scrimmage just needs one good block and he's gone. That was an idiot analogy. Yes. But a potentially life transforming opetation, provided we watch and pray long enough and jump into it with both feet.

Jubail "Church"

You'd be forgiven if you thought my blog had been lame of late. Reason? I got nuttin'. Well, I love the Buddhist quotes Beliefnet sends me, and at times they have to go up here simply so I can ponder them more and pass them on like the need to be passed on. But, yes, I have been sucky lackluster recently.

So here is where is where it picks up, sort of. There is this supposed church near Jubail Saudi Arabia. Story goes that some guy ran across it in the 1980s when his car got stuck in the sand next to it. Story is that he got put in jail for this: nothing worse than a Saudi exposing Saudi's non-muslim past. But I am not willing to believe this happed either. So the chruch supposedly dates from the period before Islam. How do we know this? Because story is that there were crosses around the structure, whch soon disappeared when the government got wind of what had happend.

Well, thing is, I have not seen the crosses. I have not seen any coins or pottery shards that date the place. I went the other day and took a look for myself. The structure overall is pretty unimpressive. There are these kind of Hellensitic/Roman looking decorations on either side of one of the tiny rooms. But does this mean this is a Nestorian structure? Dunno! Maybe it was built by portugues traders in the 16th or 16th century, or by non-Muslim Arabs, or even by Muslim Arabs a few hundred years ago.

It is too bad that the Saudi government is not interested in history and deny that was any history here before Islam. The fact that they do not seem to want to acknowledge this place exists tempts the mind in the direction that the place may have some non-Muslim connections. But the fact that it has not been demolished tempts in the either direction as well. So for now, we do not know who built this and if we can really call it a church. I am not taking the risk of getting shot by the Bedouins who live next door to find out either.

Saudi Blogger freed from Jail

(CNN) -- A Saudi Arabian blogger detained in December, ostensibly because he supported reform advocates accused by the Saudi government of backing terrorism, has been released, a fellow blogger posted Saturday.

Web sites like this one pushed for Fouad al-Farhan's release.

Ahmed al-Omran said on his blog, saudijeans.org, and later told CNN that he was awakened by a text message from the wife of Fouad al-Farhan, saying he had been released and was at home with his family.
"That's great news, and this is just how I wanted to start my morning," al-Omran wrote.
He said he later spoke with al-Farhan for several minutes on the telephone.
"He sounded fine; he seems to be in good spirits," al-Omran said. "He said he would have more to talk about later but not at this point. He said now he'd like to take some time to spend with his family, with his children that he hasn't seen for so long." Watch al-Omran describe his conversation with al-Farhan »
A Web site set up to call for al-Farhan's release said, "Fouad is free. He is back home in Jeddah after 137 days in custody."
The Saudi Interior Ministry said it had no immediate comment on the reports.
In January, a ministry spokesman said al-Farhan was arrested December 10 "because he violated the regulations of the kingdom."
But in an e-mail posted on al-Farhan's Web site after his arrest, he told friends that he faced arrest for supporting 10 reform advocates the Saudi government accused of backing terrorism. In the e-mail, al-Farhan said a senior Interior Ministry official promised that he would remain in custody for three days at most if he agreed to sign a letter of apology.
"I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that," he wrote. "An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is [a] liar when they accused those guys of supporting terrorism?"
Al-Farhan, who blogs at alfarhan.org, is one of the few Saudi Web commentators to use his own name, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
In January, the Bush administration expressed its concerns to the Saudi government regarding al-Farhan's detention at "a relatively senior level," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"The U.S. stands for freedom of expression," McCormack said at the time. "Wherever people are seeking to express themselves, via the Internet or via other areas, whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the world, we stand with that freedom of expression, and that was our message to the Saudi government."
The American Islamic Congress, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, launched an online letter-writing campaign aimed at freeing al-Farhan, whom it called "the godfather of Saudi blogging."
"All he did was express his opinions in a very obvious way, and he didn't threaten anyone," al-Omran said. "He was advocating against violence and terrorism."
Al-Omran said al-Farhan had stopped blogging for a few months in late 2006, after the Interior Ministry ordered him to take down a blog he was operating, but he began again at a new site.
He said al-Farhan told him he was treated well in jail. He also called al-Farhan's release a turning point for the blogging community in Saudi Arabia.
"It showed the community of bloggers in Saudi Arabia can come together and support this cause -- support his freedom of speech -- even those who didn't agree with some of the things he wrote," he said

Emyo

"If you wish to understand yourself, you must succeed in doing so in the midst of all kinds of confusions and upsets. Don't make the mistake of sitting dead in the cold ashes of a withered tree.

-Emyo

Why Bonaventure Rocks!

"But if you wish to know how things come about, desire not understanding: ask for grace instead of instruction, the groaning of prayer not reading, the Spouse not the teacher, God not man, darkness not clarity, not light but fire"

St. Bonaventure, The Soul's Journey to God

Knowing Hearts

your heart still beats
and so does mine
and so as long as that is the case
and we draw breath
we are obligated
to do all we can
to pay back this precious gift:
heart must be repaid with heart
so wherever you go
go there with all your heart