Word: buddhistically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They went on, however, with greater "authenticity" than in many parts of China itself, where the dragon dance tradition died more than 50 years ago along with many other old Buddhist superstitions. According to traditional beliefs, the dragon dance and firecrackers were employed as a defense against evil spirits which lurk in the streets during the holidays. The living are joined by the ghosts of their dead ancestors for the New Year's meal at home, but because some ancestral ghosts are evil and lazy they might be tempted to stop at someone else's home for dinner instead...
...launched the Naropa Institute summer program in a Boulder elementary school. About 450 students were expected. Instead, 2,300 showed up for courses that ranged from the history of Buddhism to self-exploration. The initial 41-member faculty included Psychologist Gregory Bateson, onetime LSD Apostle Ram Dass and Buddhist Scholar Herbert Guenther. Two subsequent summer schools each drew about 1,500 students, and the visiting faculty grew to more than 90 members. Encouraged by such success, Naropa went full time last year with 120 students, nine faculty and 13 staff members...
...Buddhist Renaissance. The heart of the institute, which fills the top floor of a 70-year-old red brick building, is a huge meditation room that doubles as a dance studio. Here, seated on red cushions, the students and the mainly Buddhist staff meditate for 26 hours weekly. "It is purely voluntary," explains Jeremy Hay ward, a Cambridge University physicist who is now Naropa's vice president. "But we nearly all do it. Meditation is the key." Otherwise there are few Eastern trappings: no beads, bells, robes, incense or even long hair. Says Ron Greathead, 33, a drama student...
Behind Naropa is the master's dream of a "great Buddhist renaissance" in America. "Americans have the greatest amount of confusion and wealth in the world," says Chogyam, a short, plumpish man who giggles frequently and peers over his glasses with benign amusement. Meditation attracts troubled Americans, he feels, because it damps their ego and ambition. "People are very relieved when they learn that they are nothing, that they don't exist," he says. Chogyam offers no panacea to his followers. His basic message is: "Go and sit and think and find sanity...
...What is the goal of all this?" he asks. "The goal is to have no goal." But Chogyam, who lives in a comfortable Boulder mansion with his wife and three sons, also has an earthly goal: expanding Naropa into the Buddhist University of America, with a heavy emphasis on psychology. Naropa now operates on $600,000 annually, of which $136,000 comes through donations and the rest from student fees. But the school has no endowment and at present lacks the necessary funds to expand and gain college accreditation. Still, the staff and students seem certain that Naropa will eventually...