Random Dharma

Not really 'random dharma' per se - more like random adharma - but the accusations around Sogyal Rinpoche which have been around for quite a while look like they may be coming to a head, and he has 'stepped back':

www.lionsroar.com/letter-to-sogyal-rinpo...s-abuse-allegations/

Matthieu Ricard has also written a blog piece (which I find a bit victim-blamey) on this and on the silence of the Dalai Lama:

www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/a-point-of-view--2

The Buddhist Geeks podcast is showing some signs of life again. Vincent has a new episode up: www.buddhistgeeks.org/

Chris Marti wrote: Dude - look up-thread three posts ^

Yeesh! You miss a post, you miss a lot!

Actually, I'm wondering if there might be an AN "feature" that caught me. I've often noticed that if I open AwakeNetwork to /forum so that it shows the unread items indicators on topics, then close the page and reenter the site, the unread indicators go away.

I would expect the unread indicator to go away only when I enter the thread. I suspect that's what I did and therefore missed Chris's post.

Anyone else see this behavior?

With this setup, it's sometimes the case that I miss posts (as I demonstrated above ) If I'm coming back to AwakeNetwork after a few days, I don't always have the time to look through the topics in one shot, so I try to leave a browser tab open to work around this issue. If I forget, and open another tab, it clears out the indications.

My experience on other forums is that unread indications only go away once I visit a particular topic. Also, there is often a "Mark All Topics Read" button. This helps when you want to catch up on very busy sites, but don't want to visit each topic to flag it as read.

I'm curious if such a thing is available here, and if so, would there be an interest in turning it on?

Chris Marti wrote: New Buddhist Geeks podcast: Meditating on Psychedelics

That appears to be some sort of weird error. This is an old episode, as far as I can tell: soundcloud.com/buddhistgeeks/bg-377-meditating-on-mushrooms

The new ones called stirrings from the bardo. I like it. Vince sounds more dark & cynical than before.

The latest post is actually the one on psychedelics. It turns out that there's an accompanying article on Medium that gives some context around the series. It's not on the web page. It's only listed on the show note in the podcast itself. I spoke with Vince about it yesterday, and he's now put up the link to that article on the main page: www.buddhistgeeks.org

Re: "darker Vince". I agree--I like that tone too. I'm really looking forward to see where he goes with it.

I don't always love neuroscience but this was a great piece problematising the idea of 'emotional intelligence,' the concept of a 'lizard brain,' and the idea that we can use cognition to control emotion - with a discussion of 'emotional granularity' and, in particular, the benefit of using varied words for emotion that made me a bit thoughtful about noting practice (though it's not explicitly mentioned):

nautil.us/issue/51/limits/emotional-inte...ence-needs-a-rewrite

Another interesting neuroscience piece, which despite being ostensibly about psychedelics is mainly about the self:

aeon.co/essays/psychedelics-work-by-viol...f-self-and-the-world

thehermitage.ca/retreats/winter/schedule
this may be of interest to people here. Daniel announced it on the DhO, as well. I am planing on going on this retreat in November. Shannon is a great teacher.

A great koan resource -

www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2017/07...mons-koan-index.html

This index lists the koans of the three central collections used in Harada-Yasutani lineages of Zen:

GG: Gateless Gate (a.k.a. Wumenguan, Wu-men-kuan, Mumonkan) – 48 cases
BCR: Blue Cliff Record (a.k.a. Biyan Lu, Pi-yen Lu, Hekiganroku) – 100 cases
BOS: Book of Serenity (a.k.a. Book of Equanimity, Congrong Lu, Ts’ung-jung Lu, Shoyoroku) – 100 cases

Some koans appear in more than one collection, and the total number of different koans is 210.* This index, when complete, will list all 210 cases, with links to posts providing the text of each case, plus a number of comments and verses. The order of the koans is roughly chronological with koans that have the same “main character” grouped together.

Thanks! This is a fantastic resource.

If you're interested in koans even a little bit, it's hard to go wrong by checking out John Tarrant and his fantastic Zenosaurus koan course.

Read Why Play with Koans for an introduction, then visit Zenosaurus itself. Click on "View Zenosaurus Index" near the top of the page. Then, start at the bottom of the list with "0 – Introduction: What Zen 2.0 Means"

Are the answers at the back of the book?

Only for the odd numbered ones .

There is a grilled cheese sandwich.

Monkeys shown to posses meta-cognition
(Not an inspiringly insightful interpretation by the researchers though.)
I wonder if they could be rewarded for and taught concentration and mindfulness practices, and if that would be humane?
www.rochester.edu/newscenter/monkey-sees...etacognition-266392/

More on Jim Carrey's enlightenment... he's currently at the 'embarass yourself in public by talking about your spiritual awakening inappropriately' phase

consequenceofsound.net/2017/09/there-is-...pet-interview-watch/