Thursday, March 21, 2013

Crime and Punishment

A thought provoking article worth reading:


Smart on Crime


Being tough on criminals hasn’t worked, but neither has being lenient. Here’s how to prevent—and punish—crime the right way.

When I was young and irresponsible, I met with the domestic policy team of a Democratic presidential nominee. To my suggestion that the candidate run on smarter crime control—and the gross failure of mere toughness as a strategy—the head of the team said, “No, crime isn’t our issue; it’s their issue.”..........

http://www.democracyjournal.org/28/smart-on-crime.php?page=all

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

No-fear


by Elihu Genmyo Smith

In the Diamond Sutra the Buddha states, “Those beings shall be most remarkably blessed, Subhuti, who are not alarmed, not frightened, not distressed by what is said in this Sutra.” Or to say it another way, those who are not frightened, not distressed when not attaching or clinging “to a self, a being, a life and a soul.” This is our life of wisdom and perfection – non-self, non-being, non-life, non-soul; this not-other, non-attaining. Because this is so, the greatest gift we can give is no-fear, the gift of this moment as is. The way we give no-fear is being no-fear–being no-fear we give this gift of no-fear.

No-fear is not the opposite of fear.....
 
The rest of this article is at http://prairiezen.org/Readings/Text_list.html

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Mind/thought beyond body - or ?


How are our notions of self and other, mind and body, reflected or amended by the scientific findings linked to below? How does this fit into dualistic notions of body-mind-self and other?

"Mind melds" move from science fiction to science in rats - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/mind-melds-move-science-fiction-science-rats-144950902.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The scientists call it a "brain link," and it is the closest anyone has gotten to a real-life "mind meld": the thoughts of a rat romping around a lab in Brazil were captured by electronic sensors and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States. The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group. ...

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Tibet and China - self-immolation and political options

An issue of the journal Cultural Anthropology on the topic
of Tibetan self-immolations with many interesting articles
from different perspectives:

http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/526

And another article of related interest:

http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_25_12.pdf

And the Dalai Lama on the political options and future:

http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/episodes/2012/04/interview-with-the-dalai-lama.html

After posting this, was sent the following:

http://world.time.com/2013/03/08/good-lord-in-china-christian-fundamentalists-target-tibetans/