Archives | January 2010

For those of you are are on Facebook, the following may well be old news. For that I apologize. Having said that given this is my personal blog, the following does have a more personal tone than the offical announcement over at the AICS website. Here's a quote from the AICS to kick things off. From http://australianinstitute.org/announcement-new-aics-board-members/ It is with great pleasure that I welcome the following eminent professionals to our board of directors and advisory board. Each new board member brings a unique skill and focus to AICS. Thus giving the Insitute a wide set of skills...

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I am delighted to officially announce that B. Alan Wallace has accepted my request to join the board of the Australian Institute for Consciousness Studies. Alan, as you may well know, is a dynamic lecturer, scholar, and one of the most prolific writers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Alan continually seeks innovative ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science and was the genesis behind AICS. I want to thank Alan for his open and warm approach to the Buddhadharma and for believing in me.

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I am delighted to announce affiliation between the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and the Australian Institute for Consciousness Studies (website coming soon). For those who may be unaware, the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (SBICS) is an organization established as a nexus for advancing interdisciplinary and cross-cultural understanding that joins scientific knowledge and spiritual practice. It is a non-sectarian organization that reaches out to the scientific and academic communities, a variety of contemplative traditions, and the general public. Most recently...

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I want to share with you—the loyal reader—some of the exciting events that have taken place over the past month or two. It all began when I emailed Alan Wallace—a Buddhist teacher and writer with a B.A in Physics and a Ph.D also—to thank him for his wonderful presentation at the Mind and its Potential conference, which some of us monks and nuns attended in the same week as His Holiness Dalai Lama teachings held in Sydney last year. You can hear the panel discussion which included HH Dalai Lama at the ABC radio show All in the Mind here Here is Alan's reply: Dear Clarke, Thank you for your...

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Buddha said more than two and a half millennia ago: all beings want happiness and wish to avoid suffering. At first glance, this may seem like a simplistic observation, however, a closer examination will reveal an extraordinary implication. Everyone has this innate wish, the wish for greater happiness—a flourishing life— it is not a selfish wish, however, we often employee erroneous methods in our endeavors to find happiness. Many people believing that happiness can be found through external conditions such as physical stimuli or financial security, spend their entire lives chasing after...

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Buddhism is not simply a religion. It is a pragmatic description of life that details our very existence and shows methods for eliminating the dissatisfactory nature of many everyday experiences. The Buddha showed us the true nature of conditioned existence and thus It can be said the teachings of the Buddha are a set of mind training instructions that lead anyone who diligently practices these trainings to a flourishing life. Not in the sense of the happiness found through good external conditions, or physical stimuli but rather, from the inner conditions of functional states of mind. for...

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It seems that my assertion from the article Philosophy as Practice raised some eyebrows among Buddhists. Here is the section of in question: ...without the ability to analyze and use critical thinking, even the compassion spoken of in Buddhism cannot be fully developed. Therefore the wisdom lineage, as in “method and wisdom”, pervades the method lineage. I was surprised by the doubt raised by this statement, as it seems to me to be quite clear. However, in order to practice what I advocate, that is, doing philosophy, since last Thursday when the doubt was surreptitiously raised during...

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Please do not quote as I am in the process of rewriting this article. Some think: meditators do not need to study; those who teach need to study. Actually, learning is more necessary for the meditator; teachers may just incur the fault of explaining something incorrectly. It is vital for a meditator to study in order to properly understand what to meditate on. This may sound obvious, however, many people think that studying or the doing of philosophy gets in the way of real practice. However, the great Kadampa masters of old Tibet tell us it is more important for a meditator to study...

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Note: below I have described "mindfulness" as it is popularly known in modern cognitive psychology. This is but a small piece of the pie of the Buddhist practice called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a technique usually spoken of in terms of meditation. However it can be defined as: being intentionally phenomenally aware of cognitive states. That is, being intentionally aware of your thoughts and actions in the present moment without placing values, labels or categories on these mental phenomena. It is a process of observing thoughts, feelings,, sensations, everything around you, and staying...

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Meditation is an integral part of a larger process of becoming healthy, and as such, it is both a diagnostic and therapeutic tool used in this endeavor. In the Buddhist context, the term meditation is used to translate the Sanskrit term bhavana. While the Tibetan equivalent is gom. To receive notification of articles as they are published subscribe below: Subscribe via RSS Enter your email address: The Sanskrit term bhavana carries with it the connotation of cultivating particular cognitive states. While it's Tibetan equivalent gom has the idea of developing a familiarity...

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