As you wake up each morning, hazy and disoriented, you gradually become aware of the rustling of the sheets, sense their texture and squint at the light. One aspect of your self has reassembled: the first-person observer of reality, inhabiting a human body.
As wakefulness grows, so does your sense of having a past, a personality and motivations. Your self is complete, as both witness of the world and bearer of your consciousness and identity. You.
This intuitive sense of self is an effortless and fundamental human experience. But it is nothing more than an elaborate illusion. Under scrutiny, many common-sense beliefs about selfhood begin to unravel. Some thinkers even go as far as claiming that there is no such thing as the self.
In these articles, discover why "you" aren’t the person you thought you were.
We’ve been settling into Portland, ME, since our move here in July. For one thing, Bodhi sure looks comfortable on my zafu, no?
For another, people don’t sound as “different” as they did when we moved. Heck, the other day I called my old health insurance company in Minneapolis and talked to a nice lady there about an issue that I was having. OMG, did she have a Fargo accent! We don’t talk like that around here, that’s for gall darn sure!
From the Tricycle archive: 10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
In the new series 10 Misconceptions about Buddhism, scholars Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. will expand on one of these popular misconceptions on the Tricycle blog every Thursday.
ON ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION OF SOTO ZEN BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA
An Open Letter to the Leadership and Membership Of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association
And all care about the Zen Dharma in the West
James Myoun Ford, Osho Senior Guiding Teacher’s Council Boundless Way Zen
Inform Autumn Seminar - Minority Religions and Schooling
Saturday, 6 December 2014; 9.30am - 4.45pm New Academic Building, London School of Economics.
State multiculturalism has failed’, declared David Cameron in 2011. Yet there is a continued expansion in state-funded religious schooling in Britain. This expansion has gone hand-in-hand with legal rulings that have placed minority religions on stronger footing next to the more established faiths. After exponential growth of Academies operating outside of local authority control since 2000, and three years after the first Free Schools opened their doors (a programme which has assisted the expansion of a diversity of faith-based schools), it is a good opportunity to take stock and reflect on the nature of minority faith schooling in Britain.
Provisional Programme
The presence of speakers on an Inform programme does not mean that Inform endorses their position. The aim of Inform Seminars is to help participants to understand, or at least recognise, different perspectives.
9.30 - 10.00REGISTRATION
10.00 - 10.10Eileen Barker (Founder and Honorary Research Fellow, Inform)
Welcome and Housekeeping
10.10 - 10.35Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist (Deputy Director, Inform) and Suzanne Newcombe (Research Officer at Inform)
Minority Religions and Schooling
10.35 - 11.00Farid Panjwani (Director of the Centre for Research and Evaluation in Muslim Education at the Institute of Education, University of London)
Muslims and Faith Schools: identity and social aspiration in a minority religion
11.00 – 11.25Damon Boxer (Assistant Director, Academies and Free Schools Policy, Department for Education)
Government Policy on Minority Religions and Schools
11.25 – 11.50TEA/COFFEE
11.50 – 12.15Ozcan Keles (Executive Director of the Dialogue Society)
Fethullah Gulen-inspired Hizmet schools from an alumnus: basics, characteristics and critique
12.40 - 13.05Richy Thompson (Campaigns Officer (Faith Schools and Education), British Humanist Association)
A Humanist Perspective on Minority Religions and Schooling
13.05 - 14.15LUNCH/BOOK LAUNCH
14.15 - 14.40Graham Kennish
Vision as Mediator between Faith, Belief, Experience and Knowledge
14.40 - 15.05Jonny Scaramanga (Doctoral student at the Institute of Education)
The History of Accelerated Christian Education in the United Kingdom
15.05 - 15.30TEA/COFFEE
15.30 - 15.55Jo Fageant (SIAMS inspector and Principal RE Adviser, Oxford Diocesan Board of Education)
Faith and Inspection in Church of England schools
15.55 – 16.45GENERAL PANEL DISCUSSION
Registration is now open and can be done using a credit/debit card through PayPal or by posting a booking form and a cheque payable to 'Inform' to Inform, Houghton St., London WC2A 2AE.
Tickets (including buffet lunch, coffee and tea) paid by 10 November 2014 cost £38 each (£18 students/unwaged). Tickets booked after 10 November 2014 will cost £48 each (£28 students/unwaged). A limited number of seats will be made available to A-Level students at £10 before 10 November 2014 (£20 after 10 November).
7th February 2015 London School of Economics, London, UK
This is advance notice for theFebruary Inform seminar.
Innovation, violence and paralysis: how do minority religions cope with uncertainty?
What happens when groups lose control of their own destiny? Whether it leads to violence, as in the case of Aum Shinrikyo’s response to a potential police investigation in 1995, or to non-violent innovations, as found in minority religions following the death of their founders or leaders, uncertainty and insecurity can lead to great change in the mission and even teachings of religious groups. What does it take to bring back certainty? Bringing together past and current members, as well as academics and practitioners this seminar will explore how minority religions and their members work with notions of uncertainty and insecurity.
More information will follow shortly. Please forward this information to your contacts and networks as appropriate.
----------------------------- Inform Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE 020 7955 7654
The Adventurous Life of Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969)
Published on Nov 5, 2014
The Adventurous Life of Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969)
Readers of Alexandra David-Neel’s early books knew nothing of her life before she became a celebrated traveller, explorer, and pioneer of the esoteric practices of Tibetan Buddhism.
Born in Paris, Alexandra was a debutante, bohemian of the Belle Epoque, opera singer in Indo-China and wife of a railway engineer. She researched occultism, travelling in India, Japan and Korea, crossed the Gobi Desert and journeyed to Lhasa in disguise – all unheard of for a woman of her time. Her name is synonymous with Tibet and the secrets of Tibetan magic and mysticism. Asked if she believed in miracles, Alexandra replied, “Of course, I perform them all the time.” Alexandra David-Neel died in France, aged 100, in 1969.
Alexander Maitland explores Alexandra David-Neel’s life and travels and her fascinating sojourns among magicians on the Roof of the World.
About the speaker: Alexander Maitland’s interests include music, painting and architecture. He first met Marco Pallis in 1966, while researching a life of the explorer John Hanning Speke. Later he wrote biographies of Freya Stark and Sir Wilfred Thesiger with whom he collaborated on other books including Freya Stark’s Rivers of Time and Wilfred Thesiger’s Among the Mountains. Alexander Maitland is married and lives in London.
Rather than think about faith as "conscious assent" when referring to
Buddhism, it is more closely related to notion of trust - the kind of
trust that any listener must have to listen to a teaching.
Credit: shutterstock
