Dalai Lama live over the holidays (webcast)

Mara Schaeffer, Wisdom Quarterly

Here's hoping everyone's holidays are fun. For me this series of talks by the Dalai Lama is the best thing going. Enjoy the winter solstice, the Mayan New Age and, of course, "The Big Day" in India, a celebration of all religions.

• Webcasts: Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life"

Great seasonal/perennial teachings from the Dalai Lama with two sessions over four days to live stream or download (video/audio) later, Dec. 24-27:

• 8:00-10:00 pm PST and 11:30 pm-1:30 am PST 
• (9:30-11:30 am and 1:00-3:00 pm IST)

New Delhi carolers (Julie McCarthy/NPR.org)

This is really interesting for many who enjoyed the broadcasts of Pema Chödrön discussing Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" and/or her book: Don't Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions. (DalaiLama.com/webcasts)

Read More

The SCIENCE of Monsters and Ghosts

Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

Too bad most of us do not believe in science. If we did, we'd believe in ghosts. What will happen when science dictates there is enough evidence for disembodied phenomena? Frightening thought. Science-lovers run out of haunted dwellings as quickly as ignoramuses. Why? The body knows what the brain cannot yet accept. What? Seen and unseen monstrosities roam about and among us. Wisdom Quarterly is only interested in the real-life ones in history and today.

• Buddhist Ghosts? Stories of the Departed
• Could dragons (nagas) have been real?

  The Science of Monsters
Matt Kaplan, The Science of Monsters (ScienceFriday.com, Oct. 26, 2012)

At their most basic level, monsters represent fears held by society, fears associated with dangers perceived in the surrounding world.

  

The Science of Monsters (Matt Kaplan)

These fears have a powerful evolutionary history by encouraging people to flee instead of fighting suicidal battles. When ancient hunters encountered a saber-toothed tiger by accident, they ran. When the human ancestor Homo erectus caught angry cave bears by surprise, it ran. When chimpanzees and [our sexy cousins the] bonobos, the nearest genetic relatives to modern humans, encounter large predators in the wild, they run.

  

While Hollywood heroes have made running away distinctly unpopular on the silver screen, every single actor who has ever portrayed a hero/heroine who stood his or her ground against some abominable terror comes from a long genetic lineage of cowards who fled in the face of danger.

  

Real life sea serpents: sturgeon (naga)

That is why they are here to act today. If their ancestors had fought against monsters far more powerful than themselves, as Hollywood heroes do all the time, their lineage would have been destroyed by predators long ago. Fear, in short, keeps people alive. But fear can also go too far.

  

Recent work in animal behavior has revealed something fascinating: There are personality types in animals. Among fish in a single species, there are adventurous individuals, ready and willing to take risks, and there are more cautious and timid individuals, fearful of doing anything that could put them in danger.
  

Yeti's bones, Tibet (factfictionandconjecture.ca)

Similar variations in personality are starting to be found in birds and mammals too. A recent study led by Kathryn Arnold at the University of York revealed... Being courageous or curious undoubtedly presents serious dangers. Ongoing studies indicate that fish with more daring personalities are...

  

Whether some humans are genetically predisposed to be more adventurous than others remains to be determined, but there clearly are some people who ultimately are more willing to take risks. Make no mistake, the instinct to flee from danger is still deeply rooted in every person’s brain, but some of us are more willing than others to go to places associated with danger....
  

LISTEN: Science of Monsters (Science Friday, NPR)
Parapsychology: Scary science (Coast to Coast AM) 
 
Like lion cubs play-fighting in the safety of their den, monsters may be allowing threats to be toyed with in the safe sandbox of the imagination.

  
So if monsters are present in society for both pleasure and mental practice for future frightening interactions, what happens when our fears are overcome? What then?
   

Camera catches real ghost (angelsghosts.com)

To a certain extent, danger should function as the life essence of monsters... Fears have changed a lot since the dawn of humanity, and with these changes have come alterations in the pantheon of monsters that lurk in our world.
  
The Minotaur is no longer with us, but aliens are. In a sense, monsters, while strictly the stuff of fantasy, experience evolution at a rate that is in stride with the pace of human understanding of the surrounding world. Science, the empirical testing and exploration of the world, which is about as seemingly unrelated to monsters as can be... [actually only denies their existence because of acceptability-filters not because of an absence of evidence.]

  
[Excerpted from Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite:  The Science of Monsters (Scribner). Copyright © 2012 by Matt Kaplan. Kaplan is a science journalist and a regular contributor to The Economist. He has also written for National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Science, BBC Wildlife, and The New York Times. When not chained to a desk, he travels the wilds of the world as part of a London expedition group. He lives in London.]

Read More

How our "Hidden Brain" thinks for us

Morning Edition (NPR.org, 1/25/10); Wisdom Quarterly

After making a silly mistake, it's not uncommon for a person to say, "Oops -- I was on autopilot." In his new book, The Hidden Brain, science writer Shankar Vedantam explains how there's actually a lot of truth to that.

Our brains have two modes, he tells NPR's Steve Inkseep -- conscious and unconscious, pilot and autopilot -- and we are constantly switching back and forth between the two.

Hidden Brain (Read excerpt)

"The problem arises when we [switch] without our awareness," Vedantam says, "and the autopilot ends up flying the plane, when we should be flying the plane."

The autopilot mode can be useful when we're multitasking, but it can also lead us to make unsupported snap judgments about people in the world around us. Vedantam says that when we interact with people from different backgrounds in high-pressure situations, it's easy to rely -- unconsciously -- on heuristics....

"Most of us think of ourselves as being conscious, intentional, deliberate creatures."

- Shankar Vedantam

Take Back The Controls

Racism can end (anothervoice-greenleaf.org)

In American society, [social] colorblindness is often held up as the ideal. And though it's a worthy aspiration, Vedantam says it's a goal that isn't rooted in psychological reality.
  
"Our hidden brains will always recognize people's races, and they will do so from a very, very young age," Vedantam says. "The far better approach is to put race on the table, to ask [children] to unpack the associations that they are learning, to help us shape those associations in more effective ways."
    

Going back to the autopilot analogy, Vedantam says it's not a problem that the brain has an autopilot mode -- as long as you are aware of when it is on. The Hidden Brain is about how to "take back the controls."
  
So if the human psyche is just a big constellation of conscious and unconscious cognition -- which thoughts represent the real you? More (LISTEN)

Read More

Suu Kyi's Engaged Buddhism (audio)

NPR.org (Morning Edition), June 20, 2012
Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is getting an honorary doctorate from Oxford Wednesday. Last week, she formally accepted the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. As she tours Europe, Suu Kyi is being honored for her nonviolent political protest against a military junta that kept her under house arrest [and continues to operate as dictators of Burma] for most of the last 20 years. But her philosophy of civil disobedience might have to change to fit her new role as a politician back home.
  
  

• A Life Beyond Money
• Closer look at Daw Suu Kyi and ethnic turmoil
• Sonali Kolhatkar welcomed a thoughtful guest to explore what's really going on in Burma -- from new "freedoms" within an impoverished police state to its government-fomented turmoil between Buddhists and extremely marginalized non-Buddhist ethnic minorities like the Rohingyas. The audio is archived for 90 days (Uprising! Wednesday, June 20, 2012 8:00 am). 
• Aung San Suu Kyi finally gets honorary doctorate 
• Oxford to honor Suu Kyi after years of house arrest 
• Burma's Suu Kyi visits London, Oxford on UK tour 
• Burmese journalists win battles, but war not over 
• Suu Kyi walks on with "star-struck" Bono 
• PHOTOS: Bono's many brushes with greatness (AP) 
• Suu Kyi' bittersweet return to her alma mater Oxford

Read More

Can Men and Women be just friends? (audio)

Text: Linda Holmes, Monkey See (NPR.org); Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

They're not naked if it's "art" - Ai Weiwei's nude supporters (monster-island.net)

  

It's a question that kicks around endlessly without resolution: Can men and women really be just friends? [The answer depends on your sex.]

   

On Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Faith Salie and Mario Correa, hosts of WNYC's RelationShow, about it.

• LISTEN TO THE SCIENTIFIC DEBATE (NPR)

As it happens, Faith and Mario are friends, but they put that down in part to the fact that Faith is straight and Mario is gay.

  

They describe some research that makes them think perhaps platonic friendship between straight men and women is NOT, in fact, really possible.

  

Some of the research indicates that men, in particular, are somewhat likely to both report some level of attraction to their female friends and to believe their female friends feel some level of attraction to them.

 

    

Now, I will make a confession... But I am always willing to listen to [scientific] research.... More

   

Our Sex and Violence Crazed Media

• PHOTOS: Models paid to look hot
• Indian kills wife in Italy for being "westernized"
  
• Rihanna strips for nude photo shoot
• Rihanna's boyfriends nearly kill each other 
• LAPD beating victim Rodney King dies prematurely
• Lindsay Lohan wasted in "dehydration" scare 
• Beauty: banishing blemishes and abolishing acne 
• Anderson Cooper kicks "Human Barbie" off show
• PHOTO: Swimming the Ganges with naked sadhus
• Parents charged with killing daughter's Pimp (CafeMom)
• A forum for former "sex offenders" and friends
• Suu Kyi picks up Nobel Prize, New Delhi water shortages
• The new elephants of Pinnawela, Sri Lanka
• 10 Quirky Facts About Mass-Produced Foods
• Russia denies holding talks over exit of Syria's Assad
• VIDEO: Beauty, tell your Beast to stop killing

Read More

Buddhist Suu Kyi accepts Nobel Prize

Text: NPR.org, June 16, 2012; USCampaignforBurma.org; Wisdom Quarterly

Worldwide protests, such as this one in Japan, were needed to gain Daw Suu's liberty (AFP)

   

Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy opposition leader of Burma (Myanmar), spoke in Norway today, formally accepting the peace prize she was awarded in 1991 while under house arrest by the authoritarian forces that led a coup and have held Burma hostage ever since. Her supporters portrayed the moment as a belated victory for democracy and human rights.

   

Introducing Suu Kyi, Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland hailed her as a champion of mankind, whose words give hope to the world. He added that his committee was right to award her the prize, and that thanks to people like her, democratic states will always prevail over autocratic ones.

  

"The democracies of the world should not despair today when they see authoritarian regimes outpacing their economic growth," Jagland said. "This is temporary [and] the regimes will be broken apart by inner contradictions if they do not reform themselves."

   

When Suu Kyi was awarded the prize in 1991, she was still under house arrest. So her [British] husband Michael Aris and two sons, Kim and Alexander, accepted the prize for her. More

  

Read More