The Chernobyl Reminder: A Documentary.

Although the Fukushima nuclear disaster following the Japanese quake and tsunami isn't at the level of Chernobyl, I feel it would be beneficial to repost this documentary on Chernobyl and the dangers of nuclear energy. It's titled, "The True Battle of Chernobyl Uncensored. It's helpful to remind ourselves just what nuclear radiation can do to humanity and the environment:
May we all stay humble in regards to the human potential for unspeakable disasters.

PHOTO: Gas mask in the rubble at Chernobyl, suspended in time 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear nightmare.
---End of Transmission---

The Nuclear Lesson of Fukashima, Japan.

Nuclear energy is not worth the risk. I'm watching the footage out of Japan with bewilderment and disappointment that our greed for cheap energy is contributing to an already epic disaster. The nuclear genie is restless in Fukashima, north of Tokyo, and it appears at this hour that a partial meltdown of a severely damaged nuclear reactor may be unfolding before our horrified eyes. Flashbacks of the Chernobyl holocaust race through my mind with chilling anxiety. But, In the back of it all I hear Master Thich Nhat Hanh telling me to, "just breath." It's times like these that our Dharma practice can carry us through some uncertain and frightening events. As we all know, it's something that we should incorporate into our daily routine, so that it becomes us and naturally unfolds, especially in times of crisis.

According to the Dalai Lama, and others, we practice the Dharma for not only life, but death. He explains that the death bed can be a frightening time but if we are practiced in the Dharma, it can be less of a stress upon ourselves, and the loved-ones around us. It will have already prepared us for the dying process. Our breathing techniques and contemplations upon impermanence, no-self and interdependence can really bring a lot of peace to the frightened mind. After a life lived of letting go of the fear of death, I would think it would be easier to accept death's clinical and unbiased verdict.

Now, having said all of this, such a strong practice is easier said than done, but even simple knowledge about deep breathing can really calm a person down in a crisis. I use it often to calm myself down when I have a panic attack from my psychological disorder. I realize that it would be harder to practice under an environment of total devastation, but any practice under the belt is better than none. It is my hope, that should I be caught in such a horrifying disaster, my training would carry me through--even, hopefully a possible nuclear nightmare.

But, humans have a consumption problem--we are greedy to the point of risking the death of countless people, and even more injuries, just for cheap power, so that we can continue our life of unchecked desire. And, yet, we take a risk with nuclear energy on something we still don't fully understand or know how to contain upon meltdown because we don't want to have to live a life with less luxury and fulfillment of desires. Well, I don't like saying this, but this is what happens when we gamble with samsara.

The time is now to commit, as a world, to putting the nuclear genie, back into the bottle, as much as possible. We owe it not just to our children, and their children, but the billions of innocent sentient beings, who are living within their means, in balance and harmony with nature's limits and abilities. We must learn the lessons of interdependence, because if we human's mess up and ruin Earth, making it inhabitable, then we have the karmic weight of the death of all those beings to bear into the next life. I know that I don't want that on my conscience, so let's work together to make this world a little safer and peaceful.

~Peace to all beings~

The Winds of Change.

changing winds swirl

clinging golden leaf shivers
smoke escapes cabin

By James R. Ure

Recently my wife and I did some cabin-sitting for our friends. Their A-frame structure is perched on a small hill deep in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado near where I live. It is miles from any sign of civilization, which is divine. They are nearly entirely, "off-the-grid" or self-sufficient thanks to solar panels and wind turbines that our friend manufactures with a buddy at his cabin a few miles away. It's a lovely home with a sea of green pine trees interspersed with small groves of quaking Aspens for a view from their front porch. We are often welcomed to come up and camp out on their property during the summer, so we were honored to give back to them by watching their homestead for a time.

Living "off-the-grid" means changing your focus on how you use energy and other resources. Knowing that the energy for the cabin was not unlimited nor on-demand like it seemingly is in the city made us much more conscious of its use. The irony is that we are already quite environmentally conscious. It underlined the truth that actually the energy we get in town isn't in-fact unlimited as we often think. It's easy to get complacent with energy use when we live in a city because it seems so permanent. Almost every time that we flip a switch, we are flooded with energy. This lulls us into thinking that this energy will always be there for us, which can never be true. Awareness of how energy is actually created; like seeing it work from wind gave me deep insight into how the way we live our lives is creating a deficit of suffering so to speak.

We put off a lot of natural suffering by our over-consumption of energy. We run our thermostat high, so we can wear shorts inside the house during the winter, and we plug in our cell phones while running the laptop and the television. This all makes for a very luxurious life to be sure, but each time we flip on the switch we are taking years off the livability of planet Earth. And, at the same time robbing our children and grandchildren from a healthy life. It's not unlike a country borrowing money to maintain a lifestyle that's unsustainable. It's a foolish game of borrowing against tomorrow to increase the enjoyment of today. And, like any form of karma this lifestyle will come back and reward us with exactly what we have invested into it.

But the hour is not too late. We can adjust our ways and live less greedily. It's easy to see greed by people who hoard money or take what isn't theirs but it's hard sometimes to see flipping on a switch as a form of greed. That's why I think if we invested in making everyone have a direct role in providing for the energy they use by hooking up all houses with wind turbines and solar panels that we could wake up in time. Awareness (as Buddha taught) is a powerful tool that can allow us to accomplish just about anything. If we don't know the full scope of what's actually going on around us, we really are living in denial and will be shocked back into reality. Isn't it better to see that reality now and adjust accordingly so that we are at one with that reality? That way, whatever is good for us will be the same thing that's good for nature because is it really a healthy life to have so much energy that we can go shopping for crap at 2 in the morning?

PHOTO: Cabin view from front porch by James R. Ure

~Peace to all beings~

Rebirth, Karma, Radio Waves, Supernovae and Electromagnetic Fields.

A lot of the questions that I hear most often from non-Buddhists, new Buddhists and/or skeptical westerners is about rebirth and how it happens. To begin this post I'd like to talk about my personal beliefs toward rebirth. I believe in rebirth because even from just a scientific perspective one can see that there is an order, structure and meaning behind the Universe and the patterns of life. On a more subtle level science has proved that nothing disappears but rather it simply changes form. The same applies to energy; Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another.

A radio in a car is run by the energy produced by the engine, which is run by the energy of gasoline, which came from the energy of pressure and heat converting decomposing organic matter into oil. The organic matter (mostly plants and animals including dinosaurs) was fueled by the radiation from the sun (plants) and other organic matter (plants being eaten by animals and dinosaurs). Before that the potential organic energy in plants formed as a result of carbon dioxide energy released by other plants and animals, which transformed into chlorophyll that fed the plants via photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a process fueled by the transformation of the sun's energy into sunlight. The sun's energy and mass was likely the result of a dying star, which created a supernovae (stellar explosion). This expelled massive amounts of energy and matter, which was reborn as our Sun. So our Sun is nothing more than the rebirth of a star.

Ultimately the energy of all super bodies in the Universe resulted from the powerful, trans-formative energy produced by the Big Bang itself, which is my view was the result of collapsing/dying Universe that existed before the current incarnation of our Universe. This would have been achieved through something called the, "cyclic model" which is basically a model where the Universe goes through an infinite number of self-sustaining cycles or Big Bangs and Big Crunches or collapses.

It's not unlike the energy created as an accordion expands and contracts in the form of sound waves. The power, which fuels our galactic accordion is said to be that of a substance known as "dark energy" which would solve the entropy build up problem and be in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics. I could get even more in-depth with the "cyclic theory" but I'm worried I'll lose you. Thus, if you're interested in reading about it further I'd suggest reading this page and the book mentioned within. So finally, there you have the massive cycle of an infinite number of deaths and rebirths of energy and matter occurring upon our Earth and within our Universe. So seeing how we are literally made from the guts of stars exploding their matter and energy; why would we humans be exempt from that paradigm of cycles, which even the giant, celestial bodies must adhere to?

The same is true of the seasons, which was the first cycle I contemplated that led me toward believing the birth, life, death and rebirth theory. Spring (birth), Summer (mid-life), fall (old age and sickness), Winter (death) and it would seem to end there if rebirth wasn't real or possible. However, it doesn't stop there as we know Spring is reborn anew and the cycle continues until the cycle of Earth's life ends. Then when Earth is absorbed one day by our dying sun before it explodes via new supernovae to expel the seeds and energy needed to be reborn anew as another planet or star somewhere else in our vast Universe. The cycle continues. So again, why would the rebirth of our energy into a new form of being not be possible? The potential energy of the body is absorbed into the earth, air, water and fire of our planet to be reborn as a flower, a tree or a mushroom, which would be eaten by a living being.

However, what of the energy left over in the mind upon the death of the body? In my view, that energy of our mind is nothing less than our karma but how does that karmic energy released find it's way into a new form? This often baffles many western, science based Buddhists. At this point I'd like to borrow an explanation of this from the Venerable S. Dhammika at Buddhanet:

Think of it being like radio waves. The radio waves, which are not made up of words and music but energy at different frequencies, are transmitted, travel through space, are attracted to and picked up by the receiver from where they are broadcast as words and music. It is the same with the mind. At death, mental energy travels through space, is attracted to and picked up by the fertilized egg [or receiver]. As the embryo grows, it centers itself in the brain from where it later "broadcasts" itself as the new personality.

James: The question then arises, "Why does that karmic energy get picked up by a particular egg/embryo?" To answer that I'd refer back to our example of our Solar System.

According to the nebula hypothesis, the Solar System began as a nebula, an area in the Milky Way Galaxy that was a swirling concentration of cold gas and dust. Due to some perturbation, possibly from a nearby supernova, this cloud of gas and dust began to condense, or pull together under the force of its own gravity. Condensation was slow at first, but increased in speed as more material was drawn toward the center of the nebula. This made gravity strong, making condensation faster.

As we saw earlier, supernovae are the expulsion of energy from a dying star. So imagine the supernovae as being the karmic energy of the mind being dispersed upon the death of the body. In our example the swirling spiral arms of the galaxy where all this takes place is the womb (called star nurseries). The dust particles within these nursery clouds are the tiny, unfertilized eggs while the gas is the sperm. This swirling, growing star cloud (now an embryo) is then charged with blasts of superheated energy (karma) from the supernovae (dying mind) thus infusing it with the energy (karma) of the former star (deceased body/mind). The energy released by a supernova is trapped by the gravitational pull of these star clouds (embryos) and converted into new stars (new birth). In this "new life" example the gravitational pull is similar to that from the karmic pull of the parents of our next life. They say that like energy attracts similar energy. So given that understanding it's no wonder that the Great Buddhist Masters teach us that our next rebirth will depend in part upon the karmic energy of our future parents. We will be attracted to the karmic energy that mirrors what our karmic energy demands.

Another possible explanation is electromagnetism. Electromagnetism pervades everything and everyone. It's not unlike an uncountable number of intersecting energy grids of infinite sizes, which permeates and connects all things to the power station (our sun) and to each other's homes (minds). It's possible that our karma travels from old body to whatever new birth occurs via the electromagnetic field that acts like a true Indra's net. The brain is charged with electromagnetic neurotransmitters, which act as pathways for the energy created to reach every cell in our body. Our brains are basically organic batteries and could very easily be emitting energy waves that can be received by a new life form or other type of entity when the death of the body occurs via the electromagnetic field/grid. We certainly know that our brains are good conductors of traditional electricity!!

I'll end with something to keep in mind about rebirth. There are many things like electricity and radio waves, which we can not see but we accept that they are real because we see their effects. Just because we can not see the exact details of rebirth doesn't mean that it we don't see it's effects and thus its reality. Why are some of us born with traits and characteristics that don't seem traceable to the genes or behavior of immediate family members? Why are we born with a fear of water for example and our siblings are not? These could very likely be the effects of karma fueled rebirth. My examples might not fully explain the process but I think they come close and at least show that rebirth is very, very likely.

UPDATE: I will admit whole-heartedly that my examples and ideas are by no means definitive. If rebirth is real then there has to be a missing puzzle piece to bring it all together. I welcome new science to help us fill in the blanks a bit. I have faith in the end that this process is true but it's not blind, unflinching faith. I'm not married to it. I could very well just die and that's it. I have no problem with that scenario. I don't fear annihilation of the body and mind though it's hard to square that with the central Buddhist teachings that nothing every really goes away but that (as science explains) it simiply changes for. Perhaps though the most likely change is on a more subtle level of our ashes become apart of a patch of flowers being fueled by the minerals in our ashes. I am open to many interpretations, which I think Buddhism embraces as a whole unlike many religions, which is partly what attracted me to it in the first place.

~Peace to all beings~

A is for Acupuncture

So there I was lying partially naked on the table with needles sticking out of my back, neck and legs yet It was the most relaxed that I've felt in a long time. I'm talking about acupuncture and this morning I experienced it for the first time.

According to traditional Chinese medicine the body has meridians (or channels) through which Qi (vital energy) flow. The channels and points are attributed to specific body parts and bodily functions/systems, which can supposedly relieve pain and relax muscles through stimulating these channels.

Each time he placed a needle It felt like it was popping a ball of stress, which released built up tension and after awhile I felt like I was one giant, floppy, relaxed noodle. Once all the needles were placed he left the room for about 15-20 minutes and during that time I meditated, which of course relaxed me even more. I began to feel light as a feather and felt like I was floating on a cloud with energy pouring out of every pore in my body and out my fingertips, toes and head.

As I laid there I felt as though the needles had activated endorphins or something because I was tingling with a pleasurable sensation. It was the kind of sensation that you feel from a silky smooth fabric gently sliding along your body but in this instance it was like that feeling didn't disappear like when the fabric moves off your body. Instead that feeling stayed with me along all the points that were stimulated by the needles to where I felt as though I was on some drug or something not unlike some of the sensations I felt when I did ecstasy, which I no longer do.

We talk a lot about the body being interconnected with the mind but meditating while those needles did their work was the most profound experience I've had with that interconnected feeling. And that is saying a lot because I've had some pretty deep feelings of interconnection between my body and mind from just meditation. However, the combination of acupuncture and meditation was very therapeutic to not only my body but also my mind. I highly recommend it if you are having problems with sore muscles, stiff, achy joints and alignment problems with your musculoskeletal system (spinal vertebrae misalignment).

I am a big believer in TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and It seems clear that it was developed in connection with Buddhism and Taoist understanding of the body and its connection with the mind. The meditation connection seems only natural as well because I am most aware of my body and any new aches or pains that I may have when I meditate.

Intentional Chocolate.

I was recently given a chance to sample some tasty chocolate (dark chocolate even--my favorite) from a company called, "Intentional Chocolate." First let me say that it is some of the best chocolate that I have ever had as it tastes like each piece is homemade by some cook's ancient family recipe. One of the reasons that I think I enjoyed this chocolate so much was because I knew that it was made with loving, caring, compassionate people. From the I.C. website:

Proven through scientific research to heighten well-being, Intentional Chocolate is the first intention-enhanced food on the market. The good intentions are infused into the chocolate from advanced meditators -- some who have trained with the Dalai Lama -- and is delivered with love to those who eat it.

All the products from Intentional Chocolate include this intention: “Whoever consumes this chocolate will manifest optimal health and functioning at physical, emotional and mental levels, and in particular will enjoy an increased sense of energy, vigor and well-being for the benefit of all beings.”

Intentional Chocolate™ donates 50 percent of its net profits to organizations committed to the benefit of humankind, and it assists non-profit organizations in their fundraising efforts by offering them low cost, customized packaging and product development for resale.

While the subtle and powerful relationship between mind and matter has been the subject of scientific inquiry for centuries, only recently have scientists studied the effects of positive thoughts on food. Intentional Chocolate™ and its research partner, the HESA Institute (www.hesainstitute.com) are leaders in the revolutionary new field of intentional nutrition proving that intention embedded into food can positively affect those who consume it.

Research shows that Intentional Chocolate™ significantly decreases stress, increases calmness, and lessens fatigue in those who eat it.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study that was published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (October 2007) it was found that one ounce of Intentional Chocolate™ per day for three days increased subjects’ well-being, vigor and energy by an average of 67 percent and, in some cases, up to 1,000 percent, when compared to a control group.

Read more about their research. I'm not sure if I believe the idea that meditating over food can make it better for a person but I do know that chocolate (especially chocolate made with pure and concentrated ingredients like Intentional Chocolate) can help relax the body and stimulate the pleasure zones in the brain. It can also energize due to the sugar and small doses of caffeine. I believe though that it does make a difference knowing that someone made the chocolate just for you with joy. Just as like they say on their website that soup made by your mother tastes better than any other!!

In the end, while I remain open to the intentional thoughts making the chocolate more beneficial the main thing is that I highly recommend this chocolate. One taste and you'll understand why I ate all of mine in about two days!! A gift package would be a great gift right before Halloween and the holiday season in general. Now I'm hungry. That chocolate just melts in your mouth and brings a smile to your face. Order some and find out what all the buzz is about!!

~Peace to all beings~