reading about religion 6 (Buddhism)

    ive been looking forward to this chapter. i think it was the most talked about religion in my childhood with my new age parents. i love the movies Little Buddha and Seven Years in Tibet. i've read the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. and lately ive been following the Dalai Lama on Twitter. i think part of what is so appealing about it is the way the Buddha is portrayed. i grew up seeing all the depressing images of christianity. all the artwork is so dark and sad and Christ is always on the crucifix or about to be on it looking sick and hungry and beaten. but in Buddhism the Buddha is just sitting around with a smile on his face. and then there's the Laughing Buddha. adorable! the artwork is so beautiful and peaceful. love it.
    so the chapter starts off with the story of Siddhartha who becomes Buddha. i recommend seeing the movie Little Buddha for this. it's beautiful and shows the story well. plus it shows lots of other aspects of Buddhism. plus Keanu Reeves plays Siddhartha. what?!? he goes from being a prince born in luxury who becomes an ascetic who starves himself for his spirituality and then finds The Middle Path. he becomes The Awakened One. he was sitting under a tree and vowed to stay there till he figured out "the secret of our everlasting wandering from rebirth to rebirth." after 49 days it came to him. he saw that all things are impermanent and ever changing and we suffer because we wish the world were otherwise.
   buddhism is a lot like Hinduism in many ways. they both believe in reincarnation and karma. and they both want to be free of the cycle of rebirth because this world is full of suffering and happiness is only temporary. in Buddhism the problem with the human condition is the karma-fueled cycle of life, death and rebirth (samsara, same as Hinduism) but the solution is nirvana, which means extinguishing suffering. according to Buddhism there are Four Noble Truths: life is marked by suffering, but suffering has an origin, so it can be eliminated, and the path to elimination of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.
   The 8-fold path includes: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. that all sounds like a lot of pressure to me. to be "right" about so many aspects of your life. but it all comes down to "be kind, be wise, be mindful." that i can work with. it's the idea that human beings can solve the human problem on our own, without help from above. there is an emphasis on experience over belief. in fact, Buddhists don't see Buddha as being divine, he was a path finder and Buddhism spread because it had a powerful story. Buddha "taught his listeners not to be seduced by the authority of any text, tradition, or teacher (even himself), but to discover for themselves how to live an authentically human life."
    There are three main branches of Buddhism: Mahayana (which is very similar to Hinduism and is the most popular because you don't have to be a monk to reach nirvana), Theravada (where you do have to be a monk to achieve nirvana but if you aren't you can get merit towards a better life next time), and Vajrayana which is also known as Tibetan Buddhism and is the one the Dalai Lama practices. Tibetan Buddhists use mantras or sacred chants, they have reverence for the lama (guru or teacher), they have many practices that are passed down in secret from lama to student, and they have practices that are derived from Tantra. you might be surprised to find that most Buddhists don't meditate. much the way Hindu's have devotion to the God of their choice, some Buddhists show devotion to the Buddha (there are many) or bodhisattva of their choice.
   there are some ideas in Buddhism that are hard to explain and even harder to grasp. they say there is no self and no soul. which gets kinda confusing cuz, then, what are we talking about here? and then there's the idea of emptiness. it sounds daunting and depressing but it really isn't. it's freedom. i'm not gonna try and it explain it cuz i wouldn't know how to on here. so if you wanna learn more about it, just go look it up. but there is an ''implication of emptiness that we are all already Buddhas. It is the dualistic mind that sees Buddhahood as something different from us." they say that nirvana isn't something you have to wait for until you are dead. you can reach it here in this life. and that being a Buddha is not being an "omnipotent spiritual superman", but becoming a true human being.
   the idea of empitness says that there is no distinction between samsara and nirvana. it says that nirvana is inevitable. it is already here. "all we need to do is step out of the closed either/or mind to open the heart of emptiness. Samsara is nirvana if you just accept things as they are. ...There is nowhere to go, nothing to wait for. This is it." there is another great part of the book that says "you can't get to nonduality with the dualistic mind. You can't think your way to nirvana; it comes when you are out of your mind." i love that. sorry if that was hard to understand, the idea of duality and nonduality is not something i wont to go into here. i learned about it in my Mysticism and Meditation class at OCC. this might seem strange and foreign to a lot of my christian friends and relatives, but it's the most familiar religion to me. in a lot of ways i totally get it.
    i wanna learn more about Buddhism, i especially wanna get some of those books from the Dalai Lama. i love his peaceful smile. it's funny though, sometimes when i read his tweets about always being kind and patient with everybody i find myself thinking "you've never driven in LA traffic." i'm not sure if i will ever call myself a Buddhist, but it's a lot more likely than me calling myself a follower of any other religion. and now i wanna watch Little Buddha again. wish i had it on DVD.

adorable baby videos #4

more adorable videos and pics of madilyn!!!

and now an adorable video of madilyn and her momma :)

in this last one madilyn is playing with her toys and being adorable, but at about 3:40 she snores!

cutest baby girl ever! :)

my body hurts

and it is gonna hurt a lot more tomorrow and the day after. i took a real dance class tonight for the first time in who knows how many years. it was a beginning modern class at a studio in Burbank. although i've done years and years of modern dance, i'm so out of shape i knew i wouldn't be able to finish an advanced modern class. overall it was a very positive experience. very fun and it felt great to dance again. but man, am i gonna be hurting tomorrow.

so about 30 minutes into the floor exercises we were doing this stretch

and then when i brought my right leg down my right butt cheek started cramping. that was fun. so then i had to dance the rest of the class with one sore butt cheek. plus by the end of class i could feel a blister forming under my big toe. i could literally feel the fluid moving around in it when i was standing. gross. plus i always sweat buckets. and by the end of class i had a bright red face. it looked like i had managed to severely sunburn just my face. 

i miss dance class :)

so i found that it's still hard to find modern classes in LA. i know Lineage Dance in Pasadena and Dance CoLab in Burbank offer a few, but i'm not sure of any others. so if you know of any other dance studios that teach good modern, not contemporary, let me know. 

reading about religion 5 (Hinduism)

i finally finished the chapter on Hinduism! man, i got distracted from that for awhile. ok, here we go.

     Hinduism is that religion from India with all the Gods, including the one that has a head of an elephant. finally heard the story behind that, just a lot of unnecessary decapitations if you ask me. anyways, it's a very old religion and has gone through many changes over the years. Stephen Prothero called it the least dogmatic and the most diverse. i like the sound of it so far.
     some Hindus say there is really just one god, some say there are many gods but one supreme god, some say there are many gods and they are all equal, and some say there are no gods. there is shared scripture in The Vedas, a shared sacred symbol called Om, and a sacred center Varanasi in North India. there is no founder and no current leader. they have no shared creed or mechanism for excommunication. i have to say, i like the idea of no leader. too much power in one person's hands in not a good thing.
    the problem with the human condition as identified in Hinduism is something called samsara. this is the vicious cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Hindus see reincarnation as a problem: "this world is a vale of tears, and whatever happiness we might cobble together here is transitory and impermanent. Even heaven... was created and will be destroyed, as will whatever gods reside there. The Hindu goal, therefore, is not to escape from this world to some heavenly paradise, but to escape from heaven and earth altogether." the Hindus call this goal moksha.
     i'm not sure how i feel about that idea. it feels like a better goal than i have heard in other religions, but i don't think it would be my goal. i like this world. it's beautiful. and the happiness is only really noticed in comparison to sorrow. it is the hard times that make the good times so special. we human beings have a tendency to get bored when everything is going well and create problems for ourselves. if we had the opportunity to always be happy, wouldn't we just screw it up? plus the things i live for the most are the people i love. what if your loved ones don't go with you when you escape? wouldn't you miss them? wouldn't you want to all leave together?
   there are three other goals in Hinduism: 1) kama - sensual pleasure, 2) artha - wealth and power, and 3) dharma - duty. but moksha is the ultimate goal. there are three different yogas (disciplines to getting moksha): 1) karma yoga - discipline of action (ritual actions), 2) jnana yoga - discipline of wisdom written down in the philosophical scripture the Upanishads, and 3) bhakti yoga - discipline of devotion - all you need is heartfelt devotion to the god of your choosing.
    Hinduism is big on rituals and storytelling. the two main books of Hindu stories include the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. the first one is incredibly long (much longer than the Bible) and includes the famous Bhagavad Gita. the stories in both are very dramatic and entertaining. both have been turned into cartoons, miniseries, and comic books in the modern age as a way of getting the stories out to the younger generations. i kinda wish i could see them.
     the explanation behind reincarnation is the idea of karma which refers to moral action and consequences. consequences flow from actions without any supernatural intervention. no one is judging you and deciding your fate. it's just cause and effect. and when you die you die with a combination of good karma and bad karma. so when you die there are good actions awaiting reward and bad actions awaiting punishment.  so you are born into another body and the cycle continues. another idea i like, just kinda makes sense to me.
     in Hinduism there is something called maya which is a veil of illusion that we look at ourselves and the world through. it keeps us from seeing that human beings are not different from divinity, we are one. "The essence of the human being is the same as the essence of divinity. ...The individual soul is divine. The essence of each of us is uncreated, deathless, and immortal." to know this is to achieve moksha. but it's not enough to believe, you must experience it. (sounds like a job for hallucinatory drugs)
    this idea behind what the soul is and it's connection to the divine and God, i really like. i think i have always felt that way. but i'm not sure i can get on board with the goal of moksha. doesn't seem like something i wanna work towards. but then maybe i'm just not ready.
   one thing i wanna look up more about is this one goddess he mentions in the book. her name is Durga and she rides a tiger or a lion while carrying many (up to 18) weapons and is fierce for righteousness. she slays the buffalo daemon of chaos. that just sounds awesome! i also wanna learn more about Gandhi because he barely mentions him in the book.