Tue, 19 Aug 2008
Fluoridation Risks
Fluoridation has a long history of being a contentious issue. In an ideal world. people would weigh the benefits and risks of fluoridation and and draw the approriate conclusion. In the real world, partisanship makes each side pick the evidence that supports their position and ignore the rest, Everyone is aware of the pro-fluoridation position, but few know the arguments against it. In fact, the opponents of fluoridation are usually summarized as crazies. So it's worth citing this anti-fluoridation article by the union representing EPA workers, as it's the best summary of the anti-fluoridation position I'm aware of. The article says evidence suporting fluoridation is lacking:
Regarding the effectiveness of fluoride in reducing dental cavities, there has not been any double-blind study of fluoride's effectiveness as a caries preventative. There have been many, many small scale, selective publications on this issue that proponents cite to justify fluoridation, but the largest and most comprehensive study, one done by dentists trained by the National Institute of Dental Research, on over 39,000 school children aged 5-17 years, shows no significant differences (in terms of decayed, missing and filled teeth) among caries incidences in fluoridated, non-fluoridated and partially fluoridated communities.
There is also a discussion of the health risks of fluoride, but I can't give a brief summary, you should read the article.
Mon, 18 Aug 2008
Nonattachment
It's often said that Buddhism teaches nonattachment. This is so, but the point is often misunderstood. Nonattachment is often confused with being emotionally cold, not being affected by any situation. This is a misunderstanding. Seikan Hasegawa came and gave a talk when I was in college. I don't remember anything he said except this:
"Some people say Zen is not being affected even if your house burns down and family dies. But that is wrong. In that case Zen should cry."
So where is the mistake? We confuse enjoyment with attachment. The reason is simple. There's not a single thing we enjoy that we're not attached to. The point of Buddhist practice is to be able to distinguish between the two. This is not easy, it's a difficult distinction to make. Most often we fall to one extreme or another, either accepting both the enjoyment and attachment, or rejecting both. Both extremes have problems. If we accept both, we make no progress on the path. If we reject both, we set up a rigid mindset that is false to waht we really feel. So it seems to me that the best approach to put sensible limits on our enjoyments. Use our reason to decide if some enjoyment is for the good of ourselves and others. Attachment will want to overstep these limits. When this happens, we can watch the struggle within ourselves and find out a little about what attachment is.
To sum up, nonattachment is not giving up what you enjoy. It's seeing the attachment that's bound up with your enjoyment and rejecting the attachment by understanding its faults.
Sun, 17 Aug 2008
Free Books
The last time Pete and I visited Kathy, she gave us a big bag of Buddhist books that she cleared from her bookshelf. I took them to our Sunday meditation for the past two weeks and most of them were taken. So I'm left with the books that no one else wanted, some of which I find interesting. First, there's "Path of a Bodhisattva Warrior," which is a biography of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, together with a selection of some of his writings. The Tirteenth Dalai Lama was the one befor the current Falai Lama and he engineered a precarious independence for Tibet between China, Great Britain and Russia. For various reasons his reforms were not carried through and Tibet lost its independence. So he's both a heroic and tragic figure, sort of like Emperor Julian, the last gasp of a dying era. The other book I liked was "Treasury of Precious Qualities," which is a lam rim text from the Nyingma tradition. Lam rim is the traditional overview of sutra practices one needs to know before practicing. Each lineage has its own lam rim text and this one is from the Longchen Nyinthig lineage of Nyingma. There's a lot of similarity between lam rim texts, but also differences that make them worth reading.
Sat, 16 Aug 2008
Zombie Zen
I passed through the bookstore today and looked at the Buddhist book section. I noticed they were selling Kapleau's "The Three Pillars of Zen" and Blofeld's translation of Huang Po. Both these books are zombie zen. They were good and informative when they were first published, but now they're badly out of date. I've noticed that publishers keep reprinting these old standards. And I guess as long as long as there's a market for them, they'll continue to do so. Someone who's new to Zen won't know what's good and waht's not. I think with very few exceptions anything more than thirty years old should be disregarded. The only two exceptions I can think of are Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and Shibayama's translation of "The Gateless Barrier." The grand daddy of zombie zen is Dwight Goddard's "Buddhist Bible," a translation of various Buddhist texts that he assembled back in the Thirties. There's no excuse to keep this book in print.
Fri, 15 Aug 2008
Superiority of Tantra
People like to argue about which form of Buddhism is the best. Not surprisingly, they usually say their own. I usually dont like these discussions, but thought I would post the traditional explanation why tantra is superior.
First, tantra is superior because its methods for controlling the drops and winds is a faster way to cultivate the understanding of emptiness. Second, it has a vast variety of methods that accord with the result to be attained, the two bodies of a buddha. Third, because the path is traversed quickly, it avoids the hardship of practicing for three kalpas. Fourth, it is suited for persons of sharp faculties, who can quickly be introduced to the nature of things as they are.
Thu, 14 Aug 2008
Waiting for the Lama
Lama Gursam is coming back to Baltimore the last week in September and he will give a weekend seminar on Mahamudra. Mahamudra is always a popular subject, though when presented on an introductory level, is pretty much just a seminar on shamatha practice. It looks like Lama Gursam has been talking about mahamudra during many of his visits. Here is an excerpt from a talk he gave to the Bucks County sangha:
Lama had a beautiful coral mala (string of 108 prayer beads). He demonstrated how entanglements of the mind happen by coiling it about his hand. His hand represented a clear mind, and he wrapped the mala saying "Oh, I love this mala it is mine" and again "It has a nice red color". This obscured his hand. He said that attachment is like that. He said that meditation is the awareness that the mind is attaching, and this frees and clarifies. In fact he said, one experience of 'uncoiling' the mind by 'seeing' this attachment can really help our meditation to take root.
Lance sent around a flyer with the group photo from Lama Gursam's last visit. I remember how hot that August weekend was, probably the hottest of the year. It was about one year after the start of the group and our practice hadn't yet settled. This year our practice is smoother and more stable. I wonder if he will notice the difference. Last time I spoke with him, he advised me to read Takpo Tashi Namgyal's "Clarifying the Natural State" — in Tibetan! He had an unrealistically high opinion of my Tibetan abilities, I think. I can puzzle out some of the words, but can't really string them together.
Tue, 12 Aug 2008
Last Sunday
Last Sunday I opened our meditation group. We had two new people show up and the meditation seemed to go well. That afternoon we had our annual hhomeopathic study group picnic. Karole, who we had not seen in a while, was there and she told us that she had a nasty staph infection that wouldn't heal. She finally healed it with a salve made from manuka honey. Manuka honey is made from the flowers of the plant that gives us tea tree oil, so it combines the antibacterial oprperties of that and honey. According to Karole the cure was quite dramatic, so I thought I'd pass the information along.
