Zen - Chanting 'What am I?'
Just a few years ago I wouldn't be caught dead chanting. I'm not a praying man, and seeing chanting to deities I don't know or believe in, that's not me.
Then, some time after participating in a Yong Mang Jong Jin (YMJJ) sesshin at the Providence Zen Center, I found that one of my fondest memories of the Zen Center was the chanting time. I'd often listen to audio recordings of their chanting sessions just so I could remember the pace of each "song" that we chanted.
Want to be rich?
One of my favorite books these days is a very short Buddhist book titled "Life in Relation to Death". While you might think the answer to that statement is obvious (death comes after life), well, I wrote the answer here before, and I'll repeat it again:
"In enlightenment, death has no relevance to one's state of being."
As the chef Emiril would say, "Bam!"
In regards to those wanting wealth, the author offers another gold nugget.
Wisdom of the Zen Masters
I had a dream of death this morning, more specifically life after death. In the dream I was forced to move into some area where my body would be burned to death. I had plenty of fear of pain going to the area where I was to be killed, but the pain didn't last too long, and to my surprise I heard the "thud" of my body fall over to the ground (presumably) while my "soul" left my body, and was in no pain at all.
Alternate universes
There are days when I have lucid dreams that I can easily believe there are alternate universes. Today is one of those days.
I've been sick lately, with the stomach flu or something like it, so I took off from work most of the day yesterday and again today. Around noon today I laid down, and very soon found myself in another world, a world I know, and actually feel comfortable in.
Life in Relation to Death (book)
Geez, if you're ever interested in Buddhist thought on life and death, the super-small book "Life In Relation To Death
Here are a couple of sample lines from this wonderful little book:
In the ER, next to an Iraq war veteran
I depart from my "normal" posts tonight, in that this post is not about a dream or an OBE. Instead, it is about spending this evening with a friend in the ER (she seems to be okay), and hearing a very sad story in the room next to us about a veteran of the current Iraq war (or the U.S. invasion/occupation of Iraq, whatever the politically correct term is).
