Een centrifuge is een (techniek-)toestel dat gebruikmakend van de ‘middelpuntvliedende’ kracht, de mogelijkheid biedt om stoffen te scheiden, te zuiveren of te drogen
Zen is een vorm van boeddhisme die sterk de nadruk legt op dhyana oftewel concentratie-meditatie. Hiermee wordt inzicht verkregen in de eigen ware aard om zo de weg te openen naar een bevrijde manier van leven.
When we discover the Buddha that we are, we realize that everything and everyone is Buddha. … When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that’s how we perceive the universe.
What is there essentially is the Self, the reality in which appears you and the world. And so long as you imagaine that you’re in a body looking at the world you’re going to suffer. … Once you get rid of the person inside who looks outside at something, then you find your own natural state. [47:19]
Documentary on the great Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi. Released publicly on 25th May 2018. If you enjoyed the film donations can be made via www.jnani.tv to fund future productions.
The first time I heard this English expression, “good for nothing,” I was living in Massachusetts. One summer, to support our practice, we worked for a farmer harvesting blueberries. There were some high school students working there too, as a summer job during their vacation. There was a part of the field were another kind of berries were growing, called dogberries. The students were not very careful, so sometimes they mixed dogberries in with the blueberries. The farmer was always shouting: “Stop picking those good-for-nothing dogberries!”
I really liked this expression, “good for nothing,” and I thought, “What’s the difference between those good-for-nothing berries and the blueberries?” Dogberries are not edible, but they are pretty. Blueberries are pretty, too, but they are also edible, so they have market value. That means they’re “good for something.” Dogberries have no market value so we consider them “good for nothing.”
But when we put aside our human evaluation, then blueberry and dogberry are the same. They are both pretty and just live to continue their lives. So I thought, dogberries are good but for nothing. That’s why I translated Sawaki Roshi’s expression that way: “Zazen is good for nothing.” To me, this means zazen is good—but not for something. It is good in itself. I think this is very important. It is the same as what Bodhi-dharma said when the Emperor Wu told him he [the emperor] had helped Buddhism by creating hundreds of temples and monasteries and asked what karmic rewards he could expect. Bodhidharma said, “No merit at all.”
All that you are attached to, all that you love,
all that you know, someday will be gone.
Knowing this, and that the world is your mind
which you create, play in, and suffer from,
is known as discrimination.
Discriminate between the Real and the Unreal,
the known is unreal and will come and go.
So stay with the Unknown, the Unchanging, the Truth.
A human being is an effect of consciousness. They are not the operators of consciousness. [01:10-01:14]
Ego … is just a very contracted form of consciousness. A modification of consciousness. It’s like you’re not firing on all engines.
You’re working with very restrictive consciousness. When it’s in the modification, ‘I am a person,’ it is still consciousness. But it’s in very restrictive zone. When that is seen, then the consciousness opens up again. It’s depersonalized, and again it now it becomes universal, the consciousness.
You are universal consciousness! Dreaming itself as individuality. But we are not just to learn this, you have to recognize it. Discover this. Something gets somehow, cleansed, through your own seeing. [03:12 – 04:12]
I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
The theme for BFFE 2018 will be ‘Radical Presence’.
Angel Kyodo Williams will visit the festival and there will be a special focus on women. Check for updates about the opening film, the program and the special event on the website of BFFE 2018!
In the 13th Buddhist Film Festival Europe, under the direction of Babeth M. VanLoo, Buddhism, film, art and culture are brought together. This heart-warming meeting of people who are inspired by a careful selection of spiritual films, panels and art, will take place again this year in the beautiful space of the film museum EYE. Nothing gives more energy than feeling connected to a community of inspiring filmmakers and film-lovers in such a perfect location.
The Buddhist Film Festival Europe (BFFE) is a unique showcase for films and projects, panels and art that highlights the Buddhist culture of training in non-violence and altruism. For more than ten years, we have contributed with films and speakers to the growth of mindfulness, aiming at the creation of a more compassionate society.
The BFFE desperately needs your support to keep organising this special festival over and over again without a structural subsidy.
India is het land waar Boeddha vandaan komt, maar het boeddhisme is er al eeuwenlang zo goed als verdwenen. In het zuiden van India heeft de Jezuïet en zenmeester Ama Samy een meditatiecentrum (Bodhi Sangha) gesticht, waar westerlingen en Indiërs samen de stilte zoeken. We proberen te achterhalen hoe Ama Samy christendom en boeddhisme in zich verenigt, zonder water bij de wijn te doen en zonder er een soep van te maken. Hij leefde een tijdje als bedelmonnik en vertrok na lang soebatten bij zijn meerderen naar Japan om bij Yamada Koun, een zenmeester in Kamakura, in de leer te gaan.
Zonder zich bewust te zijn trad hij in de voetsporen van de bekendste boeddhistische monnik uit de geschiedenis: Bodhidharma. Deze mythische figuur verliet India in de vijfde eeuw om in China het boeddhisme te onderwijzen. Ama Samy heeft zenboeddhisme naar India teruggebracht. In zijn centrum heeft hij voor iedereen dezelfde vraag: hoe kunnen we de wijsheid van zen combineren met het christelijke uitgangspunt van compassie? Het is de grote vraag niet alleen voor de bezoekers van het centrum, maar voor een wereld waarin intolerantie steeds meer de boventoon lijkt te voeren. E uit 2016. – npo.nl
A man was running, stumbling, and gasping for breath as ferocious tiger chased him. Dashing for the edge of a cliff, he saw a vine. He desperately reached for the vine and in one last, bold leap swung himself over the cliff’s edge.
As he hung dangling down, he looked up and saw the growling tiger on the ledge above him. He felt a moment of relief as the tiger clawed the air but was unable to reach him. Then the man looked down. At the bottom of the cliff far below where he hung was another tiger! Tightening his hold on the vine, the man wondered what to do.
To his further dismay, he noticed two mice, one dark as night, one light as day, nibbling at the vine. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he would fall to the jaws of the tiger below. Just then, he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the face of the cliff.
Gripping the vine with one hand, he reached out with the other, plucked the strawberry from the cliff wall, and put it in his mouth. Never before had he realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.
Zen parable
“This meeting is not only a fight against a multinational company, it is a commitment to life and freedom. It’s all about stopping the big corporations, which are colonising our food system and our agriculture by enslaving our Mother Earth for their profit. (…) It is a fight for humanity and for the future of the planet.”
Nnimmo Bassey, Nigeria, author and environmentalist