THE VISION BEHIND GLOBAL THE VIPASSANA PAGODA

                                            THE VISION BEHIND GLOBAL THE VIPASSANA PAGODA


The Buddha held that two qualities are rare among humans: Katannuta that is, gratitude and Pubbakarita, which is, initiative to help others without expecting anything in return. These two qualities are the true measure of progress on the path of Dhamma for any person devoted to Dhamma.

Gratitude is more important of the two qualities. Whenever we remember the help given to us by any saintly person we feel gratitude towards him/her, we naturally feel inclined to live up to that ideal and consequently we are inspired to give selfless service towards that ideal. Gratitude and selfless service complement and support each other. 

An individual uses words to express himself. A civilization expresses itself in architecture.The Global Vipassana Pagoda is an expression of our gratitude: towards the Buddha, who as the Bodhisatta strived for incalculable aeons to fulfill his paramis (noble qualities) to reach Supreme Enlightenment. Having done so, he taught the Dhamma for the good and benefit of many, out of compassion for all beings.

The Purpose and Value of the Global Pagoda

Some of the various functions and purpose of the pagoda can be listed as follows:

Honouring the Buddha

Following the instructions in the last discourse of the Enlightened One, the genuine Buddha relics are enshrined at the top of a large central hall where about 8,000 Vipassana students can sit and meditate jointly, getting advantage of the powerful vibrations emanating from the relics.

With the genuine relics enshrined, the Pagoda has become a centre of tremendous attraction for the devotees of the Buddha around the world to come and pay their respects to the relics and get the message of Vipassana - the quintessence of the teaching of the Enlightened One that is lost in their countries also. Hence, this magnificent structure will also be a great symbol for creating goodwill amongst countries that have traditionally revered the Buddha.

Correcting Historical Misconceptions

During the past nearly one-and-half to two millennia, the actual historical truth about the life and teachings of the Enlightened One has not only disappeared from the country but a gross misinformation has spread making him a mythological divine figure, completely forgetting his historical human reality. Besides, his rational, scientific teachings were totally misunderstood and became wrongly considered as just another of the many sectarian dogmas and religious tenets. The Pagoda will have an informative gallery exhibiting the actual historical life of the Buddha, and the benefit of the practice of Vipassana derived during his lifetime.

The Pagoda will be a vehicle for the spread of the Buddha’s true teaching that emphatically opposes any sectarian, casteist, religious dogmas. The teaching is already proving to be an ideal bridge for peace, tolerance and harmony across all the communal and regional divides splintering India today. The strongly secular nature of Vipassana is further proved by its acceptance amongst people of all religions, nations, sects and socio-cultural backgrounds.

Vipassana courses are taking root even in some of the staunchly sectarian countries.

Expression of Gratitude

The Global Pagoda is visible proof of the re-awakening of the Buddha's teachings in India, and the acceptance of the teachings around the world. It is an expression of gratitude to Myanmar, the country that preserved Vipassana, the practical essence of the Buddha's Teaching. It embodies our gratitude to U Ba Khin, who enabled each of us today to find the path to liberation.

Vehicle for Promotion of Social Peace, Harmony and Tolerance

Centuries ago, India served humanity at large by distributing the invaluable gift of Vipassana. This proved so very effective and beneficial that people accepted and adopted it wholeheartedly. History now is repeating itself, with the rapid spread of Vipassana to many countries across the six continents. The Vipassana Pagoda will be a central symbol of this spiritual tradition.

Acharya Goenkaji's most fervent Dhamma wish was fulfilled in November 2008 when the construction of the Global Vipassana Pagoda was completed. He hopes that this monument will act as a bridge between different communities, different sects, different countries and different races to make the world a more harmonious and peaceful place.

Meditation Program in California Schools Reduces Violence And Improves Performance

       

Meditation Program in California Schools Reduces Violence And Improves Performance

One of the most violence prone school districts in San Francisco, California, introduced a meditation program for all of its students and the results have been remarkable.

The program was dubbed “Quiet Time” and was introduced to four California schools including a Visitacion Valley School which has been exposed to violence both inside and outside of the school. That all started to change when the San Francisco Public School District introduced the “Quiet Time” meditation program to the Visitacion Valley middle school as well as three other local middle schools. Students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades participated in the program, which has the schools going silent two times each day for 15 minutes of meditation.

School officials told the local NBC news program that since the program began, they have seen dramatic changes in the students’ behavior and overall performance. Although many school officials were initially skeptical when the program was introduced four years ago, they are now believers in the power of meditation after seeing nearly an 80 percent reduction in the number of suspensions each year, coupled with increases in both academic performance and student attendance.

One of the principals at the schools that participated in the “Quiet Time” meditation program, Bill Kappenhagen, said that introducing meditation to the students on a daily basis had given them a way to “help our students find ways to deal with violence and the trauma and the stress of everyday life.” School officials also noted that since the meditation program began, students generally get along better with one another and are equipped to find ways of dealing with negative emotions and stressful situations in a positive, non-violent way.

These results are no surprise to those who advocate for meditation. In addition to reducing stress levels, several studies has shown that regular meditation brings a number of cognitive and health benefits for both children and adults, including reducing blood pressure and preventing heart disease. Meditation has also been successful in managing pain and a variety of health conditions including asthma, depression, sleep disorders, and anxiety, and is an excellent tool for child birth as well. The popular form of meditation sometimes called mindfulness meditation has also been shown to improve concentration and critical thinking skills and researchers from both Yale and Harvard have shown that meditation can actually improve grey matter in the brain.

With meditation being such an easy, not to mention free, way to improve the lives and educational experiences of students, it is likely that the amazing success of the “Quiet Time” program could spread to other schools in California and, hopefully, around the country.

Sufism: ‘a natural antidote to fanaticism?

Fifty years ago this autumn, Idries Shah published The Sufis, with an introduction by Robert Graves. The Washington Post declared it “a seminal book of the century”, while writers such as Doris Lessing, JD Salinger and Geoffrey Grigson were all drawn to it. Ted Hughes described it as “astonishing”. “The Sufis must be the biggest society of sensible men on Earth,” he wrote.

Now, the Idries Shah Foundation is bringing out new editions in English and commissioning translations of his work into Persian, Arabic and Urdu – the very cultures where much of his material originated.

So what is Sufism? Though dictionaries usually define it as the mystical current in Islam, Sufis themselves will tell you that it is an ancient organisation that has embraced free thinkers and people concerned with human development from many cultures throughout history. People from all walks of life – including poets, scientists and politicians – have been Sufis.

Classical Sufis in the Islamic world include Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Fariduddin Attar – whose stories were later used by Chaucer – and the Spaniard Avërroes, the “great commentator” on Aristotle. And many of their ideas passed to Europe through contacts between the Islamic and Christian worlds in the crusader states, Norman Sicily and the Iberian peninsula. From the outset, Sufism has been concerned with building bridges, not least between communities whose contact can be of mutual benefit. In the west, people as diverse as Dag Hammarskjöld, St Francis of Assisi, Sir Richard Burton, Cervantes and Winston Churchill have all been influenced by Sufism.

Though there had been previous studies of Sufism in western languages, they had taken a largely academic approach. Shah, who died in 1996, broke new ground by explaining it in a more accessible way, often employing psychological terminology to do so. He went on to write more than 30 books on Sufism, selling over 15m copies in more than three dozen languages. Many are compilations of tales and jokes – “teaching stories” – that Sufis often employ to help people to think more clearly about things.His work was less about passing on facts, he would say, than imparting a skill. “One is immediately forced to use one’s mind in a new way,” Lessing said after reading The Sufis.

Advertisement

Half a century on, the foundation’s mission to promote Shah’s ideas in the Middle East fits with the ancient Sufi concern of passing knowledge between different cultures, particularly at times of greatest need. To a certain degree, the classics – what Shah drew on to bring Sufism to the west – are being overlooked by younger generations.

There could not be a more important time for Sufi ideas to be reintroduced. With its concentration, among other things, on awareness and psychological balance – “mindfulness”, if you like – Sufism is a natural antidote to fanaticism. And while Sufis have at times been persecuted within Islam (Al-Hallaj was publicly executed in 922 for his mystical statements) it is, on the whole, respected as part of Islamic culture.

The west, too, needs to become aware once more of this “other face” of Islam. Those who would espouse a black-and‑ white view of the world might do well to read some of the jokes centred around the Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool of the Sufis, translated and retold by Shah. When a king insisted that his subjects tell the truth on pain of death, the Mulla was at the front of the queue the following morning to get inside the city gates. There, the captain of the guard, standing in front of a gallows, asked him a question, to which he had to give the true answer – or be hanged.

“Where are you going?” he asked Nasrudin.
“I am going,” said the Mulla, “to be hanged on those gallows.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Very well, then. If I have told a lie, hang me!”
“But that would make it the truth,” spluttered the captain
“That’s right,” said Nasrudin. “Your truth.”

Sufism does not claim to present the panaceas or comforting worldviews that so many ideologies, religious or political, peddle. Yet the complex and moderate thinking it does provide may be precisely what is needed right now.

“In one aspect of his life,” Lessing wrote of Shah after he died, “he was a bridge between cultures … at home in the east and the west … Not the least of his contributions to our culture has been to let us hear in this time of the wild Muslim extremism, the voice of moderate and liberal Islam.”

Despite having a powerful influence on many people, Shah refused to be a guru. “Do not look at my outward shape,” he would say, repeating Rumi’s phrase, “but take what is in my hand.”

After Vipassana, Heartfulness Meditation

Vipassana takes us to the door and heartfulness meditation leads us to the treasure inside. Let me explain. Vipassana meditation is a great gift. We learn to concentrate. We learn not to follow the seemingly endless distractions our mind can create. They are not leading us to where we want to go! Finally Vipassana meditation teaches us thinking and awareness are not the same thing. We can know awareness separate from thinking. We can know simple awareness. This is the door where Vipassana brings us.

Heartfulness is what we find inside the doorway. Once we discover awareness separate from our thoughts, once we enjoy just being, there is the great world of heartfulness or heart essence waiting for us. As our awareness passes through the doorway, leaving our mind and entering our heart, there is so much to receive.

When our awareness is not flooded with thoughts, clouded with worries, filled with desires, we begin a journey of being, expanding, receiving our true nature. As young children we knew this experience of simple peace, innocence, being quick to forgive ourselves and others. When awareness is not carrying so much, we move easily, live more easily. The moment is vibrant, real, naturally joyful!

The beautiful secret is that as we practice heartfulness meditation, we are not only thinking less, our thoughts are actually washed away. Heart essence is lightening our load. Heart essence is relieving us of all the stuff which just floats aimlessly in our awareness. Heart essence restores our awareness to our original fresh, innocent, essence. Whether we call this our Buddha nature, simple peace, or God inside of us, heartfulness is life separate from the busy mind, life united with a deeper river within us. Heartfulness restores our connection with eternity.

This is the true gift of meditation. The potential is much more then having less stress, more well-being. Heartfulness meditation is absorbing heart essence. There is a stillness of the heart, a silent peace waiting for us. Heartfulness is receiving, resting, rescuing our worn out nerves, our tired being. In the gentleness of the stillness of our heart, we discover our awareness expanding. Beneath our small self with all its concerns is suddenly an ocean of unlimited heart essence,our greater being. There is a vastness, an unending divine self of no self.

Talk to people who have had a profound spiritual awakening. Listen carefully to people who have had a Near Death Experience. They all are describing a similar experience. There is a vast space, a realm very intimate, of indescribable love. Heartfulness meditation takes us through the door of our thinking world,our complex personality to a sacred place. In the stillness of our heart we come home. Literally people find a palace, golden rooms filled with brilliant light. Others find just endless space. But this endless space is important. As our awareness absorbs, identifies with this endlessness, our daily world does not affect us so deeply. We have an expanded self and with it more choices, more freedom, more joy. Awareness without so much unnecessary thinking is awareness on a new course of life!

We live in a much too much thinking world with way too little heart. Heartfulness restores the heart in each of us and through us in the world. There is much more to meditation then watching our thoughts. We don't want to watch heart essence. We want to be it! Heartfulness meditation restores, uncovers, realizes our Heaven self. Inside simple inner peace there are worlds for us to discover. We don't have to take the word of others what the other side is like. We find the love of the other side on this side, in our hearts, in a life of greater heartfulness.

Healing the Body Through Meditation

Doctors and scientists have been studying the body-mind connection and its relationship to physical health. 

Medical researchers have linked certain illnesses to our state of mind and to our emotional condition. They have found that when we undergo mental stress or emotional pain or depression, our physical resistance to disease drops. 

We become more susceptible to contracting a disease because our ability to keep our immune system in top working order decreases.

Science has pinpointed certain diseases such as digestive problems, breathing problems, heart disease, and migraine headaches, to name a few, that are sometimes stress-related.

Meditation can help us in several ways. First, it can lessen our stress, and in turn, reduce our chances of developing a stress-related illness. In this hectic world, our mind is often agitated by stress and pressures. Life has become so complicated that people seem to have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Some people hold jobs that require long hours and too much responsibility. Other people work two jobs and raise a family. 

Too much pressure often causes people to seem to snap—they become irritable, off-balance, and “stressed-out.” They begin to act in ways that are not “themselves.” Sometimes they take out their frustrations on their loved ones and hurt those they should love the most.

Meditation is a way to eliminate the lack of balance caused by the mental stresses of life. By spending time in meditation, we create a calm haven in which we restore equilibrium and peace to our mental functioning. 

Researchers have recorded that the brain activity in people who meditate reflects a state of deep relaxation. Their mind becomes calmer. Meditation also calms the body. If we could spend some time each day in meditation, we would find our stress levels would be reduced and our health would reach a more optimum level.

Besides reducing stress during meditation, there is a carry-over effect. We can maintain more peace of mind as we continue our activities throughout the day. As we perfect our meditations, we can maintain that calm state of mind even in the midst of turmoil and strife. We would be more in control of our reactions and would maintain an even keel in the face of other people’s conflicts. Reducing our stress throughout the day can reduce the risk of becoming victim to stress-related ailments.

Second, meditation can lift our attention to a higher level of consciousness so that we do not feel the pinching effects of any illness we do develop. Through meditation, we come in contact with a stream of bliss and joy within that takes our attention away from the pains of the world. Through mastery of meditation, we have a refuge of bliss and peace within, safe from the ravages of physical pain. 

Although at times we may get sick because we break natural laws, meditation can help us rise above the discomfort and find solace and peace above the consciousness of bodily pain. We have only to look at near-death experiences to see how people who undergo excruciatingly painful accidents were lifted above their pain when they temporarily left their body. 

They could see their body with injuries and trauma lying below them, but they no longer experienced any physical pain until they returned to the body. This is one analogous situation to give us an idea of the power of protection from pain afforded to us when we perfect our meditations.

Recent medical studies are drawing a correlation between patients who pray and meditate before and after surgery and those who do not. Early studies find that patients heal and recover more quickly from surgery when they pray or meditate before surgery or after surgery.

Spending regular, accurate time in meditation has been shown to reduce stress. Many medical centres and hospitals offer classes in meditation as a way to reduce stress and eliminate certain illnesses. Many people have requested to learn our introductory meditation, called Jyoti meditation, taught at our Science of Spirituality centres throughout the world as a way to reduce stress.

As you continue to meditate, you will experience the inner peace and bliss. As you do this, you will experience a reduction in stress. Meditation is an effective means to help us reduce stress and increase a sense of calm and peace, which can help us heal our physical body.

Meditation for Strivers

                                      Meditation for Strivers

During a trip to the United States in the nineteen-seventies, the Tibetan scholar, translator, and lifelong meditator Lobsang Lhalungpa found himself in San Francisco’s financial district. Struck by the hordes of rushing bodies, he stopped, turned to his guides, and said, “I don’t see any humans here.” This was before A.O.L.

Now, in mid-2014, a spate of recent articles and self-help books advocate the kind of mindfulness that Lhalungpa practiced, not only as a means of improving one’s health and well-being but as a way to get ahead in one’s career. Two of these books—Arianna Huffington’s “Thrive” and the “Nightline” co-anchor Dan Harris’s “10% Happier”—have remained on the Times best-seller list for months. A recent Bloomberg News article reported on the increasing use of meditation among hedge funders to maximize performance (some call themselves corporate samurai and ninjas). How did strivers everywhere come to appropriate a twenty-five-hundred-year-old philosophy of non-striving?

A clue lies in “10% Happier,” which positions itself as self-help for those suspicious of the genre. Harris depicts himself throughout as a no-nonsense high-achiever who winces at having to cover religious events for ABC News. Seeing him, at the book’s end, as a happy (or ten per cent happier, as he brands it) practitioner of mindfulness is meant to amuse the reader, like finding Alex P. Keaton in lotus position.

The studiously constructed character arc also serves the book’s broader goal. If even Harris, a hard-nosed skeptic, can find use in it, so can you. He states his mission explicitly in the book’s preface: “Meditation suffers from a towering PR problem.… If you can get past the cultural baggage, though, what you’ll find is that meditation is simply exercise for your brain.” It’s clear from Harris’s conjured associations (“pan flutes,” “granola,” “crystals,” “Age of Aquarius”) what kind of cultural baggage he’s referring to: hippies, the sixties. This is Buddhism’s P.R. problem: it is still salted by its last wave of contemporary popularity, when it was widely presented as a more ancient form of tuning in and dropping out.

As he begins mindfulness meditation (also known as Vipassana meditation), Harris finds that quite the opposite is true. In this practice, one sits in an erect position for a designated length of time while focussing on a particular point of breath, whether in the nostrils, stomach, or chest. When thoughts arise, one is meant to observe these thoughts without judgment and return gently to the breath. Harris recommends starting with a modest length of time (five or ten minutes) and then trying to sit for longer. The “mindfulness” refers to the nonjudmental observance of thought.

As Harris soon discovers, sitting still in this way is exceedingly hard to do. Its sheer difficulty makes it resonant with the values of capitalism. It requires “genuine grit” and “can give you a real advantage.” He approvingly quotes a Georgetown professor who has helped to bring mindfulness training to the Marines: “There is nothing incense-y about [meditation].” Harris’s metaphors are practical, hygienic, often financial. He compares it to brushing one’s teeth. Meditation yields a good “return on investment.”

In a famously distracted age, it’s not surprising that a practice meant to bolster focus and equanimity has emerged as the aid of the moment, just as yoga has gained in popularity as we’ve become more estranged from our bodies and more attached to cubicles, computer screens, and cars. But how exactly did this happen? How did we go from “Be here now” to “R.O.I.”? The journey from a Buddhism antithetical to Western go-getting has been charted quite consciously by a number of influential practitioners in the baby-boom generation. Harris devotes a chapter to some of these mostly Jewish mentors, whom he playfully refers to as “Jew-Bu”s. These Jew-Bus, some of whom are mentioned in the book, include the psychotherapist and author Mark Epstein, the scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, and the founders of the influential Insight Meditation Society, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg.

A cursory history of Buddhism in the postwar West might go as follows: After the Second World War, more Americans encountered Zen masters, lamas, and monks, both here and abroad. This helped to popularize Buddhism with members of the Beat Generation, who in turn shared it with the generation that came of age in the late sixties and early seventies; by then, as a result of increased cultural interpenetration, Eastern religious study had become more common in American universities. Most of today’s celebrated teachers of Buddhism had their first experience of the religion in college, before pursuing study in the East. Some flirted with staying abroad before returning home, bringing back what they had learned in a more digestible form. Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein devoted themselves to serious Vipassana practice (Kornfield became a monk) while serving as part of the Peace Corps in Thailand, in the sixties. Sharon Salzberg studied Theravada Buddhism in India in the early seventies. The Columbia professor Robert Thurman and the prolific British author Stephen Batchelor were both ordained as Tibetan monks before returning West.

Part of this generation’s work involved shaping a view of Buddhism that was science friendly, pragmatic, and nonmystical. Kabat-Zinn founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center*; subsequent studies of its participants suggest that mindfulness can ameliorate, among other conditions, chronic pain and anxiety. Since then, practically a whole field has opened up, measuring the hale effects of meditation. The Dalai Lama, for his part, has encouraged this research, participating in a 2003 conference at M.I.T. called “Investigating the Mind” as well as lending his name to the university’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. Seconding these efforts, Stephen Batchelor has articulated an atheistic Buddhism, a vision echoed by many who advocate for meditation while dispensing with religious Buddhist beliefs, like reincarnation. Others connected Buddhist values to happiness studies or emotional intelligence.

If anything, the recent flourishing of corporate mindfulness is an inevitable, if unexpected, byproduct of these efforts. From Kabat-Zinn, it is a small leap for Harris to equate meditation with brushing one’s teeth, or Wired to name it “the new caffeine.” Many of the current iterations of Buddhist practice are even fully stripped of any philosophical or ethical coating. “Thrive,” for its part, reads a like a clip job of various wellness studies, among which meditation is but a small, unexamined part. If metaphor reflects clarity of thought, Huffington is fairly muddled; meditation, she writes, is an element of well-being, which itself constitutes only one of the four “pillars” (along with wisdom, wonder, and giving) that comprise the third “metric” of success (the other two are money and power). It doesn’t seem to occur to Huffington that pursuing this third metric (wisdom, wonder, giving, and well-being) might conflict with the primary metrics of money and power.

By contrast, “10% Happier” mainly seeks to do right by the tenets of traditional Buddhism. To his credit, Harris at least begins to explore the potential for conflict between his professional and meditative lives. Unlike other lay enthusiasts, he also gives an entire chapter to the frequently overlooked but central practice of metta, or loving-kindness meditation. A key principle of Buddhist life is the cultivation of compassion for all living beings. To do this, the sitter first conjures a feeling of warmth toward himself or herself, next toward a benefactor, then toward a close friend, a neutral person, an enemy, and then toward all beings. Harris regularly performs this meditation, and while he begins to explore how its practice may interfere with his daily tasks as an on-air personality, and asserts that he has become a kinder, more empathetic person, metta, it should be said, does not seem to have radically altered his life or ambitions.

One might fault Harris for not having moved to the Himalayas to become a monk (or to the outer boroughs to become a social worker). This failure of commitment is what Slavoj Žižek means, in part, when he calls Buddhism a Western “fetish,” and yet to expect it to be otherwise seems to me either to overstate the power of meditation or to understate that of capitalist ideology. It burdens the possibly helpful with having to be a spiritual or political panacea. One might also claim that Harris’s watered-down vision of Buddhism, with its emphasis on career advancement, will encourage misuse. This may be fair enough, but it’s not an especially revealing criticism. After all, one of the first things that people do with any tool or philosophy is misuse it. A history of Christianity is largely a history of the abuse of Jesus Christ’s teachings; Buddhism is not exempt from such misprision. On the spectrum of misappropriation, using self-advancement as a lure seems forgivable enough if it leads people to try a technique as subtly transformative as mindfulness. (Indeed, if personal betterment is America’s religion, such an approach might be seen as syncretic.) What can be lost by broadening access to a philosophy of liberation, even if a majority of people conflate it with the more vulgar priorities of our culture?

It’s a long road, even for those who are earnest in their practice, and Buddhists take the long view. According to Buddhist legend, the length of time it takes to achieve enlightenment through the course of one’s innumerable lives equals the time it would take a bird to efface a mountain with a silk scarf dangling from its beak. There is a peculiar kind of hope in this image, even if to ears less seasoned by the study of suffering it can sound like resignation. For, while it’s true that it takes a really, really, really long time, it can be done with a silk scarf! So we may say that a book like Harris’s does just as much—and just as a little—as a stroke of a scarf to the mountain of fear, self-interest, and inattention upon which our kingdom is built.