On April 7, PBS broadcast a two-hour documentary “Buddha” a journey through the life and times of the historical Buddha who lived in north eastern Indian two thousand five hundred years ago. The documentary is also an introduction to his teachings. One of the commentators extols the four sites of great importance for Buddhists and anyone interested in his teachings. The Buddha was born in Lumbini on the Nepal-India border, he found enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, gave his first teaching at Sarnath (near Varanasi) and died at Kushinigar.

Varanasi, River Ganges, India (© Janet Levine, 2007)

On a month-long journey to India and Nepal in 2007, I visited all four places and many others and can attest to the power of the Buddha’s presence, nowhere more powerfully (for me) than in Bodh Gaya in remote, desolate Bihar province.

At the same time as this PBS airing was receiving notice, I was teaching the timeless novel by Hermann Hesse “Siddartha” to two sections of high school juniors. In his novel Hesse follows the journey of a fictional Indian prince, Siddartha, and cleverly illumines for western readers some of Buddhism’s key teachings. I teach this book following on a unit on “Hamlet”, a precocious Western prince struggling with all the depression, anxiety and angst that causes so much suffering in the mind structures of the human condition as we understand it in the west. This Eastern prince searches for happiness, inner peace and enlightenment. He learns to trust his own inner teacher, the same voice inside himself that is heard throughout nature and governs the universal laws that keeps the earth on its axis and the great spiral of our cosmos swirling in limitless space. He teaches the “middle way” neither too tight nor too loose. These are eastern mind structures.

Throughout the “Siddartha” reading students kept an “ideas” journal;  informal, personal responses to some of the ideas they are encountering for the first time. Reading these journals is rewarding. None more so than the student who wrote of understanding one’s destiny as being a path to greatness, of being arrogant enough to unleash that greatness into the world, of knowing that every human being is capable of finding that greatness inside oneself. Buddhism teaches that this greatness is called achieving buddhahood, reflecting into the world the radiant enlightenment the Buddha achieved under the bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. Nelson Mandela famously quoted Marilyn Williamson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

But the Buddha also taught that the greatness is not greatness at all but ordinariness, the ordinariness of a hot cup of tea on a frosty morning, washing the dishes, taking out the trash and seeing the moon rise. The ordinariness of the courage of getting out of bed every morning and doing what you do every day. The ordinariness of responding to a stranger’s smile. And most importantly the ordinariness of living in the present moment, of being aware to everyone and everything in every moment.

Tags: Children, creativity, human rights, meditation, mind structure, Mind-training

Every four years the Winter Olympics come around and I am hooked. I love the speed of downhill skiing and bobsled races. I cannot comprehend the luge and feel distraught at the death of the young Georgian on the first day of these 2010 games in springlike gorgeous Vancouver. I am a sports fan but trying to understand curling is one sport too many. The skating competitions have the strongest draw for me: gymnastics, dancing, skating at the highest level all in one package. The costumes, the different personalities (go Johnny Weir and Patrick Chun), the symbiosis of coach (Svengali) and young athlete, the choice of music; this is compelling. But this time around the thrill of watching is enhanced by two factors, HDTV and the record button on my remote. HDTV is image perfection; watching the cross-country ski pursuit on a picture perfect Saturday fully displays what I am talking about. Then there is the ability to record programs so I can watch at my convenience and zip through at alpine ski speeds those endless, inane and mind-numbing ads. To say nothing of Bob Costas and his smooth talking, bland commentary and schmaltz with which NBC tries to tie the drama (that needs no enhancement) together. (Although I did enjoy watching Mary Carillo attend the Royal Canada Mountie school. But then I am a tennis fan too.) No doubt it already exists, but is not available to the American public, raw live feed of the events as they happen without commentary and without ads. May they day come soon when we can see what the TV producers and  journalists see.

Another huge plus (which perhaps is our live feed of the moment) is the amazing official Olympic Winter Games website with myriad opportunities to follow in real-time each and every minutia of the Games.

So this leads me to a socio-political line of thinking. HDTV, touch of the button recording of at least two channels at the same time, access to the latest computer technology and the ability (economic and utilitarian) to use the ever-changing and increasing tools of the Information Age creates a cyber-age global apartheid that separates the hi-technology and computer literate and savvy haves, from the billions and billions of have-nots. Earlier this week I lost electrical power as I was settling in to watch the medal round of the Men’s figure skating (why all those falls?) Sitting in the dark for two hours while the electrician did his work, brought home to me how utterly dependent so many billions of us are on electricity. Think about it.

I have no idea what this means for the future of our beautiful planet. I am an optimist, so I think of great opportunities for out-of-the box thinking entrepreneurs who can attempt to close the gap. On the other hand the gap may become so vast that cyberspace implodes and sinks us all in an immense dark hole.

Happy Winter Olympics second week TV watching.

Tags: adolescents, Children, colleges, consciousness, creativity, cyberspace, Enneagram, Generation E, Janet Levine, janetlevine.com, Parenting, www.janetlevine.com

This weekend I had some discussion with a high-level member of an organization that focuses on reconciling differences between Israeli settlers and Israeli Arabs. Old feuds and resentments run deep. Who took whose land from whom? We can go back thousands of years trying to understand the roots of this conflict. The truth is that over millenia the vast majority of feuds, struggles and wars between all people everywhere are over territory and resources. It is part of our DNA to defend our territory and ensure not only our food supply but the future of our children and our clan. Xenophobia’s face is that of the cave dweller across the valley.

In my native South Africa the famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission that for three years in the late 1990s tried to heal the wounds caused by apartheid atrocities for both the oppressed and the oppressor was a daily Greek theater played out on TV and radio across the land; a catalyst for airing the tragedies, the manifold tragedies of those years. The mighty, the all powerful, the members of the Security Police brought face-to-face with their accusers and humbled by the probing commissioners. Amnesty or no amnesty, a bad conscience set to rest, a death explained, some expiation of revenge. Thus far there is no similar commission anywhere that has attempted to tackle the root question of who took whose land from whom? White settlers with a four hundred year history of living in South Africa regard themselves as Africans born of African soil. And they are, but who took their land from them? History is a tangled knot.

There are so many well-meaning, well-trained mediators conducting grass-level interventions in so many conflict areas; to mention but a few,  Sunnis and Shia, Serbians and Bosnians, Hutis and Tutis, Israeli settlers and Israeli Arabs, Tibetans and Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. These mediators do good work especially when they work with children to create a new narrative that bridges the differences of conflicting older stories. Then the children can believe, “This is the nownarrative of our land, this is ourstory. ”

A fundamental challenge for our time, as cyberspace  shrinks our planet, is how do we change the humanstory, the rigid mind structures of past eras? How do we  preserve the richness of cultures and traditions and learn to share the resources of the planet. Mother Teresa said, “Small steps with great love.”

Perhaps. But until we understand the fundamental truth that all conflict arises from a struggle for resources even small steps towards lasting reconciliation are unlikely. In North America the Water Resource Wars have already begun…how are we going to change our mind-structures to accommodate this story?

Tags: Children, consciousness, creativity, cyberspace, Generation E, high school, Janet Levine, janetlevine.com, mediation, meditation, mind structure, Mind-training, Parenting, Parents, reconciliation, www.janetlevine.com