Sunday, May 16, 2010

Buddhist solution to lust, love-torture, crushes

Waylon Lewis (HuffingtonPost.com)

Meditation on Foulness: the Buddha advised those who are ardent on attaining nirvana (release) to contemplate the body's manifold impurities.
I'm a "Dharma Brat" -- an American Buddhist. My parents met and fell in love back in '72, at a seminar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

While I appreciated my "sangha," or community, I didn't get into Buddhism personally until I was 16. I was graduating from high school and figured that before I left my teenage home (Karme Chöling, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Vermont) I'd say goodbye to all that by doing a weeklong meditation retreat. Nine hours of meditation a day, including zen-style meals.

And that's when I finally, personally, fell in love with Buddhism. Meditation, I belatedly realized, wasn't just some way of avoiding living life. It wasn't boring. It was...to use a word I generally avoid...transformative. I could enjoy life from a clear, open, sane, relaxed point of view (and as a teenager, that was one h*lluva discovery).

So I canceled my summer travel plans and stayed and studied and partied and meditated and worked (as a lumberjack) at Karme Chöling for a year. Along the way, I learned a whole h*ll of a lot. One of the funny little things that's stuck with me is how to wake oneself from that exquisite pain that is lust or having a crush on someone. More>>

Being Bad at Relationships is Good for Survival
Feeling happy and secure in our relationships is a goal many people strive for, but in times of need the emotionally insecure partners may be doing us a favor by being more alert to possible danger.

Dwindling testosterone levels reduce sleep
At 30 years, male testosterone levels drop by one to two percent annually. By age 40, men's quality of sleep begins to diminish. Could there be a link between decreased testosterone and reduced sleep? Absolutely, according to Zoran Sekerovic, graduate student at the University of Montreal (UM) Department of Psychology.

No comments: