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MaryArnold
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Another way of looking at Buddhism from a more secular angle is to think of it as a right-thinking methodology. I find that a more pragmatic and helpful term than philosophy because philosophy in the West is a very debated and misunderstood term. Th…
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One thing I learned while doing Buddhist retreats was to enjoy simpler and much more subtle flavours. I had developed the kind of habits that TV chefs indulge in, using masses of garlic, flat-leaf parsley, black pepper or loads of chilli. On retre…
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Wonderful recipe -- here in the Cape we have old Malay dishes and a great variety of vegetables to choose from including wild spinach called moroq, sweet potato, butternut squash, different kinds of local beans, peanuts, fresh fenugreek and cilantro…
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Hi Federica -- the age-old problem of deciphering tone in posts. Thanks-- Mary
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You sound quite impatient and dismissive. I'm sorry if I offended you. For some of us social freedoms are not just armchair concerns. And after working in Asia I know many very skilled Buddhists involved in political struggles. In netiquette …
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Hi Simon I like that expression 'counter-intuitive utilitarianism'! And the adaptive qualities or tendencies in Buddhism have been remarkable. But questions around sexuality and sexual identity are always going to present certain difficulties …
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I may be wrong here and I read Palzang's post quite carefully, but historically Buddhism like all of the major religions and philosophies had a strong ascetic, antiisexual and anti-body bias. We are more familiar with the Western Christian/Abrahamic…
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No, that is too over-simplified. And the history of alcohol and breweries and stills and Prohibition laissez-faire free trade agreements on sales of alcohol and the vicissitudes of the tobacco industry in the Third World is very freighted with contr…
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I have been here on the forum for the last week -- I live in Africa and grew up in Zimbabwe and Kenya, am now bsed near Cape Town. I have been doing sitting meditation, reading Buddhist writers and studying the Pali texts for eight or nine years but…
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Beautiful - and that delicacy and lightness of the buttrfly is an image that has come to me so often in working through difficulties in meditation. Mary
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Thanks Abu -- establishing a sitting practice in isolation is not easy and suppportive comments help. Mary
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Hi Abu -- there are many skilled Westerners working with various projects in Africa and helping create aid projects that have acountability and monitoring built in. And it is so dangerous to generalise about Africa because there are 43 countries and…
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Quote: 'The problem isn't greed on our part, its the outright inability to get the food to the people who need it. How on Earth can we ship food to parts of Africa where there are no paved roads? No airports? Where the nearest coastline is hundreds …
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The cartoon was hilarious Simon! I was on a business trip to Hong Kong in 2003 when the SARS panic was on -- most visitors wore masks and it was very entertaining to watch people trying not to touch moving escalator rails, press lift buttons with …
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Hi Lonely87 I hope you are able to find freinds to help you establish a sitting practice. I have found that just meditating daily, using very simple vipassana techniques, has helped me regain balance in my life and opened my heart to compassion a…
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Just to frame this debate in another way. Right across the Eastern Cape of South Africa are illegal but unmonitored fields of marijuana, known locally as dagga. Most of it is exported but the industry is curtailed by the illegality of operations. …
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Chilling to sit next to Fred West all the same! It is important to hold in balance the trauma endured by the victims and what they suffered, along with the effort to extend understanding and empathy towards those who act out in such terrible ways. T…
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I hope this isn't too much of a digression -- because I have a bad head cold and chest infection, I have changed my style of meditating which follows that described by Palzang above in the thread to another way of meditating by paying attention to t…
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I worked in corporate media for a while. Moral panics sell newspapers. Economic profits tend to fuel righteous indignation in media. I'm with Esau on the pathologising and demonising of certain kinds of criminals. Mary
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I am new here and find this thread interesting -- for me the cultural appropriation of various Asian Buddhist traditions by affluent and individualistic Westerners is always going to be problematic. Because I live in Africa and work amongst people l…
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It is a lovely quote, isn't it? I do find curiosity and alertness to be a great help when something throws me off-balance, whether meditating or in daily life. That vigilance for me needs to be light, not too intense, but just a lightly maintaine…
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Hi to everybody and thanks for the welcome. I live in the Overberg, a mountainous farming area about three hours drive from Cape Town. It is a very beautiful but wild and lonely area. My work is mostly writing for international agencies and publicat…
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Here in Africa it is harder in rural areas for women to get enough vegetables to achieve a health varied balance. A new book by LIerre Keith called The Vegetarian Myth looks at the problems around an inadequate vegan diet for women in menopause and …
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I liked what Palzang said about that bardic state because I understand our lived experience to be flux, ever-changing, a process of rising, falling, passing away. 'Bardo means becoming or transitioning. Basically we're always in a bardo state beca…
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Thanks very much for the welcome. I have learned that to maintain a non-judging, interested and curious stance as far as possible is the most helpful way forward. Right now it is winter here and I have a bad chest infection and head cold, so I am …
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I'm new here and live in a fairly remote part of South Africa so I also do sitting practice alone. I do retreats when possible and read what is available on the Internet because imported books are very expensive. It is difficult at times and I so…