Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Menla, Peace and all...
You know, Menla is one of the Medicine Buddhas...there are 7...and since it is Robert Thurman's dream to make the Menla Mountain Retreat a center for Tibetan Medicine and what he calls "Industrial Medicine" to get together and dialogue and discover ways to work together, Menla is the perfect name for this astonishing place in the middle of an enormous crater where a meteorite once fell to earth! The name of the subsequent mountain range is Pantherkill, because of the blue-black color of the rock and shale, and also because of the glorious river running dramatically through the valley...("kill" being Dutch for "river")...one day, Thurman hopes the mountain will actually be called Menla...because the Menla Buddhas are all blue-black in color as well!!! Anyway....all this is preface to the tale of our five days there...it was wonderful....stirring on may levels and disturbing, as well as peaceful and deeply centering...it was alive with thought, discussion and meditation.
The central theme was peace...the central teachings, The Blade Wheel of Mind Reformation that the Dalai Lama taught while he was here at the Beacon Theater two weeks ago....Bob and Sharon Salzburg decided that since the Dalai Lama hd to rush through so much of the profound latter part of the teachings , that to focus on them in a more concise and provocative way over this retreat time would be a good grounding in talking about peace...and so...that is what we did...thoroughly understandable, since Peace does begin with us as individuals, and the Blade Wheel is all about conquering the "enemies" of self-cherishment and self-centeredness...the Blade Wheel, as poetic as it is, is sharp and harsh in its demands that we face and get rid of as much self-ego-selfishness as we can on a conscious level....it is subtle and clever in pointing out the ways, in verse after verse, we delude ourselves into thinking we are selfless, and in reality are deeply, stingily and destructively anti-the-other! AMazing..and scary and wonderful! We humans are so full of clever tricks!!! It delightful as well as infuriating...as complex as we are as human animals....more on that ...
Right now...I have to go pick up puppies at our friends Janice and Sue who took care of them while we were gone....thank you Susan and Janice!
The central theme was peace...the central teachings, The Blade Wheel of Mind Reformation that the Dalai Lama taught while he was here at the Beacon Theater two weeks ago....Bob and Sharon Salzburg decided that since the Dalai Lama hd to rush through so much of the profound latter part of the teachings , that to focus on them in a more concise and provocative way over this retreat time would be a good grounding in talking about peace...and so...that is what we did...thoroughly understandable, since Peace does begin with us as individuals, and the Blade Wheel is all about conquering the "enemies" of self-cherishment and self-centeredness...the Blade Wheel, as poetic as it is, is sharp and harsh in its demands that we face and get rid of as much self-ego-selfishness as we can on a conscious level....it is subtle and clever in pointing out the ways, in verse after verse, we delude ourselves into thinking we are selfless, and in reality are deeply, stingily and destructively anti-the-other! AMazing..and scary and wonderful! We humans are so full of clever tricks!!! It delightful as well as infuriating...as complex as we are as human animals....more on that ...
Right now...I have to go pick up puppies at our friends Janice and Sue who took care of them while we were gone....thank you Susan and Janice!
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