*Click on the artwork to enlarge.This Buddhist goes up to a hotdog vendor; gives him a $20 and says, "Make me one with everything." The vendor fixes a dog with the works; hands it to the Buddhist, and says "Change comes from within."
Yea, I got a million of 'em, but a shout goes out to Elizabeth for this one - Ha! - comic relief, indeed!
Glad it worked! :)
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm
ReplyDeleteScientists say they have evidence to show that Buddhists really are happier and calmer than other people.
Tests carried out in the United States reveal that areas of their brain associated with good mood and positive feelings are more active.
The findings come as another study suggests that Buddhist meditation can help to calm people.
Researchers at University of California San Francisco Medical Centre have found the practise can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.
There is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek
Paul Ekman,
University of California San Francisco Medical Centre
They found that experienced Buddhists, who meditate regularly, were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry compared to other people.
Paul Ekman, who carried out the study, said: "The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek."
Brain activity
In a separate study, scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison used new scanning techniques to examine brain activity in a group of Buddhists.
Their tests revealed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners.
This area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.
Their tests showed this area of the Buddhists' brains are constantly lit up and not just when they are meditating.
This, the scientists said, suggests they are more likely to experience positive emotions and be in good mood.
"We can now hypothesise with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India, really are happy," said Professor Owen Flanagan, of Duke University in North Carolina.
Dharamsala is the home base of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.
The studies are published in New Scientist magazine.
Three things:
ReplyDelete1) Who's this "we" they keep referring to? Are "we" all seeking happiness? And how is this "happiness" defined? By becoming a blissed-out idiot? Using a cavalcade of circular thinking?
2) From Elizabeth (who commented before you):
"The most creative and morally advanced people are typically not models of high self-esteem. Their inner lives are often plagued by self-doubt, worries, fears, and feelings of inferiority.
One reason for this chronic insecurity is that they base their self-evaluations on very high personal standards, and thus their own behavior seems inadequate and far from ideal in comparison.
But this insecurity is usually a sign of an active conscience at work. Moreover, the insecurity and the demons it feeds, are necessary elements of a creative temperament and we have plenty of evidence that without them no meaningful creative efforts, especially in art, can be undertaken.
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish poet and writer, and a Nobel laureate, who died this year, attested to this, when he confessed: “From early on writing for me has been a way to overcome my real or imagined worthlessness”. Imagine that.
There remains something positive to be said about not feeling too comfortable with oneself."
3) "Dharamsala, India, a 'wild bazaar of the sacred and profane' where monks stream out of Internet cafes, shops bristle with Tibetan tchotchkes, and a meditation center offers the following schedule: 'Breakfast/ Impermanence and Death/ Suffering/ Selflessness/ Dinner/ Equanimity.' Tibetan lads use their martyr mystique to woo girls and sponsors; signs like 'Tibet Memory' and 'Lost Horizon' wallow in old-fashioned Orientalism; and a thriving industry of beggars feeds off blissed-out Western tourists,...for Western audiences, at least, the message boils down to the equivalent of a Benetton ad: Be nice, live happy. No profession of creed. No radical redistribution of income. (Richard Gere did pay for the bathrooms outside the Dalai Lama's main temple.) Not much self-sacrifice. (Feel free to wave your "Free Tibet" banner at the Chinese Embassy.)."
-- - From Louis Bayard's Salon.com review of Pico Iyer's Dalai Lama biography
Hey, CMC, thanks for the unexpected plug!
ReplyDeleteAn aside: Don't you just love this? 'Breakfast/ Impermanence and Death/ Suffering/ Selflessness/ Dinner/ Equanimity.'
I'm gonna pencil all in my schedule for tomorrow. Nothing goes as well with Sunday's breakfast as impermanence and death. That's what I learned in my Catholic days, anyway.
And for dinner, we'll have meatballs with a side of suffering, cranberry sauce, and a dash of equanimity. What the hell. ;)