108 Zen Books shares “The Five Fears of the Beginning Bodhisattva”

Sangha of a Thousand Buddhas is a website where “Sylvia Boorstein and many Spirit Rock core teachers as well as visiting teachers from around the world offer you a daily 5 minute video Dharma teaching.”

“We don’t learn the meaning of our lives by discussing it.  It’s not to be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues or mosques.  It’s discovered through these actions of love”- From “My Faith: What People Talk About Before They Die“: CNN Belief Blog

February is Pet Dental Health Month and my pug just met with his dentist yesterday to go over his plan for an upcoming extraction/cleaning. Here’s some great advice on pet dental health techniques.

The Post Punk Kitchen 100

Digitals, Musical Short Film About Communication Overload

Digitals from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

http://dharmatattoo.wordpress.com/

and

http://nerdharma.com/

www.nataliedee.com

‘Live Humbly’ by Mikey Burton

Here’s an illustration from the book Live Now: Artful Messages of Hope, Happiness & Healing by Eric Smith who was diagnosed with three different types of cancer and decided to create a collaborative art project called “We Live Now’ which invites people to live in the moment.

The day to day has been catching up with me. Over the holidays I was struck with a nasty cold which required antibiotics and lots of rest. Winter has really gripped me and I’ve been feeling it both physically and mentally. I feel like Dön Season really gets at me early and I struggle to find the joy and beauty in Winter. All those thoughtful Instagram photos of snowflakes falling are lost on me. I’m chronically cold, on the verge of some virus or another, close to slipping and breaking my sacroilliac with every step I take on the frozen tundra of our city streets.

After a nice, firm toe stubbing, I was ready to toss in the towel and head off to a cave somewhere… anywhere to hide out until the sun came back.
                         *Man this photo makes my foot look like a dry, flakey, gnarled, old mass of flesh.

So I’m going to try to work with Winter. Try to be more patient with it and to soak in whatever goodness I can try to find in it. Try to see some lightness in the puffy snow as well as the cruddy brownslush. I’m going to send compassion to this angry red little piggy that looks like it ended up in a bar fight rather than a Whole Foods Market.

I’ll try to find some colour in the darkness because soon enough the season will change and this little piggy will welcome the Spring.

E. Gene Smith was the unlikely leader in the effort to rescue, preserve and share the riches of a 1,500-year-old seemingly lost Tibetan literary culture.  Smith’s mission crossed geographical, political and philosophical borders to rescue this chronicle of mankind’s advancements—from the medical to the mystical – and became the catalyst for an international movement to provide free access to the story of a people.

Please help to spread this message if you can and any amount you are able to donate would be greatly appreciated.

Something tells me that meditators may have an advantage in this contest.

Hopefuls must send in a picture of themselves watching paint dry and state the longest time they’ve managed to stare at a wall of drying paint without looking away. We also want to know your favourite paint colour and why.

Entrants don’t need to be physically fit or participate in a vigorous training regime, what’s more important is mental strength, concentration and endurance. Previous paint watching experience isn’t essential, but a bit of practice might help prepare you for the mammoth task ahead.

This cool piece of work is by Sacramento-based Graphic Designer David Angstead and was created initially for a talk Brad Warner gave in Summer 2011.

Stickers, hoodies and tshirs with this smiling Daruma-Simmons can be purchased here

I’ve been blessed with a gene that allows me to be quite diplomatic and able to see all points of an argument without feeling the need to shout over anyone to get my point across, be mean or cut someone down just to make a point.

Dont’ get me wrong. I’ve worked for some time on this acquired skill. I wasn’t always so kind in tone. I wasn’t always such a great listener, but by the grace of cultivating patience and attempts at Right Speech and not clinging to views, I’m a lover that knows when to be a fighter (rare, but it happens).

I don’t have all the answers. I’m walking the path. Investigating my mind. This world. So thank you haters. You are helping me grow. Funny how when we think we’re tearing someone down, we are in fact sometimes only helping them to build strength, resolve and courage.

More than 15,000 people a year turn to their website and its sister news site, www.sumeru-books.com, for information about where to practice and learn about Buddhism in Canada and they  want to make sure that the information they find is as accurate and current as possible.

You will notice that the survey has two parts. The first part contains questions about your organization that are important for potential members of, and visitors to, your group. In the second part, we are gathering sociological information about the state of Buddhist organizational development in Canada. No study like this has ever been done before. The data we hope to collect will be extremely valuable to benchmark your activities and place them within the larger context of Sangha in Canada.

The second part of the survey is also entirely voluntary, and all of the data we collect will be presented in a way that does not identify any individual organization specifically. In other words, your responses to part two of the survey will remain entirely anonymous.

The survey is presented in an interactive digital document – answers can be typed right into the form. It can be saved as a new file and submitted electronically. Printed versions of the survey are also available. Click here for a copy of the survey package: NEW Canadian Buddhism Interactive Survey Package. A low-tech version of the survey is also available in Word .doc format. For that, click here: Canadian Buddhism Survey.

There are more than 500 Canadian Buddhist organizations to be included in this project. In order to keep our project on track for publication in 2012, your prompt response would be greatly appreciated. We realize this is not a simple five-minute activity, and will require a bit more commitment on your part, but we hope you will share our vision of the importance of this work and will give it the attention it needs. However, keep in mind that whatever you do complete and send to us, even if you don’t answer every question, is in itself a valuable contribution to building strong Buddhist communities across the country.

This research has been formally approved by the Department for the Study of Religion and the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Toronto. If you have any questions or concerns, you may contact me, or Dr. Frances Garrett, Associate Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto (frances.garrett@utoronto.ca or 416-978-1020).

Thank you for your participation, and for all you do each day to make Canada a better place.

Please send us back your completed survey via e-mail to buddhismsurvey@sumeru-books.com. If you prefer, you can print it out, fill it out and mail it to us via regular post.