You have to love the British! There's a big ta-do over an offensive depiction of the Buddha in a Norwich gallery, which you can read about here.

Whether you think the piece is offensive or not, I find it more telling that the complaints were about the Buddha with a fruity phallus, and not the, "Christ crucified on the back of a flying bomber and Hindu god Ganesh sitting beneath a Nazi helmet." Not sure what that says about the level of concern for Buddha's image, as opposed to Christ and Ganesh, for our modern age, but I do think it's interesting.

Cheers!

Do yourself a favor and check out this video. It's about the Public Meditation Project started by Alexander Cequea Fuentes. It inspired me to start an extra daily meditation session of 15 minutes (in addition to my daily morning session of 30) in the break room at work. For me, this type of down home, grass roots, spreading of peace and mindfulness is just what our world needs.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Personal growth is a painful thing. It's never easy, and is often brought on when one's personal set of translations for the world fail to an extent that requires a transformation of the basic structures through which we see, and with which we relate to the world at large. It's not easy. It's a painful thing to do, and go through.

One of the obstacles on the path of personal discovery, growth, and change are the very people we turn to for support; our friends, family, and loved ones. Just as we are butting our spiritual heads up against our own habitual patterns, our loved ones will also hold those patterns for us. They have set expectations on who we are, and how we should behave. They rely on us conforming to those expectations to maintain their own world views. When we change, they will resist. Sometimes they will do this to be helpful and keep us on what they feel is a rational track. Sometimes they will do this out of fear and confusion, perplexed by our behavior making the world as they experience it, "not what it should be." Regardless of the motivation, the result is the same, they resist our changing.

It is because of the above that spiritual traditions often call for a break with the aspirants home and family. From Gurus in India commanding their disciples to never again contact their families, to Buddhists being assigned to far away monasteries, to cults holding their followers in private compounds. It's also the reason for the strong tradition of hermitages, remote places to hide away from the influence of others.

I don't think such extreme measures are strictly necessary when grappling with your own path. But, I do think it a useful tool to know that if you change, those who know you will at first resist. Knowing that is happening makes dealing with the confusion it can produce much easier.

Just one example of many, this quote is from an article by Rabbi David Cooper from an article in Parabola magazine.

Many of these teachings, nonetheless, were revealed publicly in the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, published around 1300 C.E. The Zohar teaches for all to see that the initial Hebrew words of the Bible, Bereshit bara Elohim, have, in fact, two contradictory translations. One way to translate the opening line, as described above, is to treat the word Elohim, one of many Hebrew names of God, as the subject of the sentence, thus rendering the translation as the familiar phrase: “In the beginning, God created….”

The other grammatically correct way to translate these words, however, is to treat Elohim as an object, thus rendering the translation: “In the beginning ____ created God…” The blank in the sentence has an assumed “It,” which compels us to read the opening, “In the beginning, [It] created God, heaven and earth.”

If one chooses to accept the first translation, with Elohim (God) as Creator, we are immediately ensnared in a well-known series of difficulties that result from having a Creator that precedes and is separate from its Creation. Serious questions arise: If God is all good, how or why would it create evil in the universe? If God is all powerful, why doesn’t it end war forever? Moreover, if God knows everything then there can be no free will. For two thousand years, philosophers have discussed many contradictions like these and most have concluded that such paradoxes will never be resolved and thus the idea of God, as presented in the Bible, can never be proven nor disproven.

On the other hand, if one chooses to consider the mystical translation, that Elohim is part of the Creation rather than the Creator, we must ask, what is the hidden “It” that created God (Elohim)? This extraordinary “It” that precedes the God-name Elohim was a core element of hidden esoteric teachings that were first openly acknowledged in the twelfth century C.E. by a Jewish mystic named Isaac the Blind, who was also the first to give Kabbalah its name. Isaac’s kabbalistic teachings rapidly spread in a way that within a hundred years led to the publication of many parts of the Zohar.

Isaac the Blind referred to the mysterious “It” as Ein Sof (literally: without end, or Boundlessness), which he defined as “that which can not be conceived by thought.” This is a difficult teaching, for it stipulates that there are no words, no thoughts, no way to describe Ein Sof, which should not even be called an “It,” for that implies an entity.

You can read the rest of the article, here.

Cheers!

Came across a remarkable article today, Giving Something Each Day May Keep the Doctor Away. The piece is about the origins of the website (and challenge), 29gifts.org. It's a noble effort and a good reminder of what's important in life, especially in this age of Consumerism. Check it out, I think it will put a smile on your face (which is my official gift on the first day of my taking up the challenge.)

This comes at a particularly synchronistic time for me. I am headed to Burning Man this weekend, to experience that mad atmosphere of engaged participation and gifting economy once again. Almost feels like cheating since, for at least ten of the days of this challenge for me, I will have no choice but to give things away every day, and likely many times a day.

Cheers!