Mindfulness very gently moving around the world's classrooms

The Age, Colleen Ricci April 13, 2015

The Mindfulness in Schools Project, based in the United Kingdom, is one of many initiatives bringing mindfulness meditation into classrooms around the world.

Peaceful change: mindfulness is being taught in more schools here and overseas. 
Photo: Simone De Peak

What is happening?

Mindfulness meditation – the practice of quietening the mind to bring awareness and attention to the present moment – is increasingly being used in schools around the world as a tool to improve student wellbeing and enhance academic performance. Although originating in Buddhist religious tradition, it is a secular form of the practice that has become popular in classrooms and workplaces. 

One particular program making headway on an international scale is the Britain-based Mindfulness in Schools Project. It provides two main courses designed specifically by teachers for use in the classroom: ".b" – pronounced "dot-be" (Stop, Breathe and Be) – aimed at older children, and "Paws-be" geared towards 7  to 11 year olds. Now taught in more than 20 countries with a curriculum translated into numerous languages, co-founder Richard Burnett hopes that mindfulness meditation will one day be taught in all schools "just like reading and writing".

The largest Buddhist settlement in the world is in China

By Becky Pemberton, The Daily Mail, 19 April 2015

Larung Gar, China - Among the green rolling hills in the Larung Gar Valley in China, the last thing you would expect to see in the countryside are thousands of red wooden huts that have been built in a massive cluster.

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy is home to 40,000 monks and nuns, 
who travel to the settlement of Sertar to study Tibetan Buddhism

Despite its secluded location it is home to the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy, the world's largest Buddhist settlement.

A vibrant splash of red, this colourful settlement has sprung up in the 1980s 
and is now a haven for over 40,000 monks and nuns.

Incense smoke hazardous to health: Thai officials

AP, March 12, 2011

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The clouds of aromatic smoke that waft through Thailand's Buddhist temples are potentially hazardous to your health, according to the country's Public Health Ministry, which has issued new guidelines for incense burning.

The smoke emitted from the incense, or joss sticks, commonly used at temples contains unsafe levels of benzene, butadiene and benzopyrene, which could cause leukemia and lung, skin and bladder cancers, Thailand's Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said in a statement Thursday.

The ministry is recommending that temples avoid lighting the incense in poorly ventilated places, use short joss sticks rather than long ones and quickly discard ashes from burned incense, the statement said.

There is no magic to Vipassana, only follow the instructions

"You have seen me. I was disheartened and broken down due to the loss of my children and husband, and due to disease. I suffered so much. I could not walk properly. But now, how are you finding me? All my disease is gone. I am refreshed, and there is nothing in my mind. There is no sorrow, no grief. I am quite happy. If you come to meditate, you will also be happy. There is no magic to Vipassana, only follow the instructions." ~ Dipa Ma

The most dangerous thing in the world is apathy

By Michael Naughton, Harvard Gazette, March 30, 2015 Karmapa stresses importance of caring for each other and the Earth Cambridge, MA (USA) -- Besides epidemics, wars, violence, and starvation, there is another source of disaster that is often overlooked: “a lack of love.” So said His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, to a capacity crowd at Harvard’s Memorial Church during his visit last week. << His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, who leads the 900-year-old Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, guiding millions of Buddhists around the world, came to Harvard this past week. “A lack of love can cause people to have no help when they need help, no friends when they need a friend,” Karmapa said. “So, in a sense, the most dangerous thing in the world is apathy. We think of weapons, violence, warfare, disease as terrible dangers, and indeed they are, but we can take measures to avoid them. But once our apathy takes hold of us, we can no longer avoid it.”

Our real home is inner peace

Anyone can build a house of wood and bricks, but the Buddha taught that that sort of home is not our real home, it's only nominally ours. It's home in the world and it follows the ways of the world. Our real home is inner peace. An external, material home may well be pretty but it is not very peaceful. There's this worry and then that, this anxiety and then that. So we say it's not our real home, it's external to us. Sooner or later we'll have to give it up. It's not a place we can live in permanently because it doesn't truly belong to us, it belongs to the world.

Our body is the same. We take it to be a self, to be ''me'' or ''mine,'' but in fact it's not really so at all, it's another worldly home. Your body has followed its natural course from birth, until now it's old and sick, and you can't forbid it from doing that. That's the way it is. Wanting it to be any different would be as foolish as wanting a duck to be like a chicken. When you see that that's impossible - that a duck must be a duck and a chicken must be a chicken, and that the bodies have to get old and die - you will find courage and energy. However much you want the body to go on lasting, it won't do that.

- Ajahn Chah -

13 Buddhist Antidotes to Anger

Source: http://www.peaceful-traveler.com/Buddhism/life/, April 2, 2015 Here is a summary of various approaches to anger. They obviously will be most efficient when used with a calm and concentrated mind, either during meditation or at the moment you realize that something needs to be done about your anger. Obviously, the problem during an actual difficult situation is to have a calm and concentrated mind – a regular meditation practice can be of great help then! One of the best ways to really make progress with understanding and changing the functioning of our own mind is to try out analytical meditation, combined with these clues.

Dhammapada 197-200

Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred.

Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the afflicted (by craving). Amidst afflicted men we dwell free from affliction.

Happy indeed we live, free from avarice amidst the avaricious. Amidst the avaricious men we dwell free from avarice.

Happy indeed we live, we who possess nothing. Feeders on joy we shall be, like the Radiant Gods. 

One Truth

"Indeed, truth must be one and indivisible. This must be borne in mind. Nowadays, when Buddha-dhamma is being disseminated, there should be only one basis of teaching relating to the Middle Way or the Eightfold Path: the practice of morality, concentration, and acquisition of profound knowledge, and the Four Noble Truths. But if one were preaching that the aims and objects of Buddhism can be achieved without recourse to the actual practice of the Dhamma, we should understand that such a one has strayed from the Path."
~ Mahasi Sayadaw (Discourse on To Nibbana via the Noble Eightfold Path)