An American Zen Buddhist training center in the Mountains and Rivers Order, offering Sunday programs, weekend retreats and month-long residencies.
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A Walk to Remember: A grandmother completes a 4,400 mile journey across the US
This morning several Tricycle staff members waded through un-plowed snow drifts from last night's storm to meet Jeana Moore at the Northwest corner of Central Park. We were greeted by Jeana—wearing her trademark reflective yellow vest—and a dozen friends who were ready to join her on the last 3 miles of her 4,400 mile "Steps To-Marrow" walk from Seattle to New York City. Jeana begin the walk on October 19, 2009 in an effort to register donors to the National Bone Marrow Registry (NBMR). Jeana became involved with the NBMR after her granddaughter, Jada, was born with Leukemia in 2007. Thanks to the NBMR, doctors were able to find a donor match for Jada (the donor joined Jeana on the final leg of the walk today). The bone marrow transplant saved Jada's life. More » -
No more industry in the Buddha's birthplace
The road to Lumbini, Nepal—the birthplace of the Buddha—is littered with industry. Cement companies, brick kilns, steel mills, and a paper mill all manufacture goods alongside the Bhairahawa-Lumbini highway, a stretch of land that falls within the Lumbini Protected Zone—an area of a 15km radius around the UNESCO World Heritage Site, meant to be industry-free. Though rules barring industry in the LPZ have not been enforced before now, Nepal's Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, said Sunday that the government will not license new industries and will begin to crackdown on existing ones. From Republica: More » -
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Make your next Facebook status: "Just meditated to ensure that I care about all you people."
A recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, has found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years. From Keith O'Brien at the Boston Globe, “The empathy deficit: Even as they become more connected, young people are caring less about others”: Perhaps more than any other characteristic, one’s capacity for empathic concern dictates how much one cares about others. Those who score high in empathic concern, according to past research, are more likely to return incorrect change to a cashier, let someone else ahead of them in line, carry a stranger’s belongings, give money to a homeless person, volunteer, donate to a charity, look after a friend’s pet or plant, or even live on a vegetarian diet. And what’s alarming, Konrath said, is that empathic concern has fallen more than any other aspect of empathy. Between 1979 and 2009, according to the new research, empathic concern dropped 48 percent. The results have led to the obvious follow-up questions: What cultural changes may have shaped children in the 1980s and ’90s, giving rise to a less empathetic generation? Why do we care less? And is there any way we can reverse the trend? Read the rest of “The empathy deficit” here. Although they don’t mention this in this article, other recent studies suggest that meditation works as a way to reverse this trend. This from a 2008 msnbc.com article “Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama: A new study reveals that meditation may increase empathy, benevolence”: More »
