Power of SEDUCTION in daily life (video)

Chen Lizra (TEDx Talks, Vancouver, 2013), CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

With nearly a decade of experience in the animation industry -- working on projects for MTV, TVA, Alliance Atlantis, Mainframe Entertainment, and Radical Entertainment -- Chen Lizra's intellect, imagination, and creative thinking evolved her into a branding expert. 

[Think of the mark placed on cattle, slaves, or the shamed.]
 

Boys love to show off. Charming?

In 2009 and 2012 Chen was nominated as one of the "YWCA Women of Distinction in Vancouver" and was recently honored by the Australian government with a Distinguished Talent Permanent Visa for her international achievements in the arts.
 

As the international author of My Seductive Cuba, a UniqueTravel Guide, Chen has won two awards in the US, including the prestigious IPPY Book Award. With a passion for dance and creative movement, Lizra offers students "seduction workshops" and focused lectures and seminars about the art of seduction in our everyday lives.

  

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TEDx: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Dr. Gabor Mate to speak in LA (KPFK benefit)

UprisingRadio.org (Pacifica), Wisdom Quarterly

• Dr. Gabor Mate to speak in Los Angeles Nov. 30th
• Fostering Health in a Toxic Society: The Social Basis of Illness and Well-Being
• Click for tickets (All proceeds to benefit KPFK)

In the first of Uprising's Speaker Series, world famous Dr. Gabor Mate comes to Los Angeles for an all new talk on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 7:00-9:00 pm at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd.

Addicts in recovery -- are cycling through the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts" (the Peta Loka in Buddhist cosmology) -- could find themselves racing against the clock to beat their addiction in Maine before health insurance coverage for their treatment ends.

• What is the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?

Treatment? Doctors say, "Let's give heroin addicts heroin" (madmikesamerica.com).

The Maine Morning Sentinel reported [on Oct. 15, 2011] that state officials for Medicaid and MaineCare programs have proposed capping prescription drug and counseling services at two years.

The move would save money but hit the state during an epidemic of addiction to painkillers. A Sentinel editorial opposing the cuts to treatment programs predicted the result “would be a self-defeating exercise that could end up costing much more than the short term budget savings.”

Drug use remains controversial in the US. Addicts are stigmatized and often considered unworthy of help.

Portion of scroll (thangka) depicting the plane of hungry ghosts (pretas) who suffer from intense craving with no store of profitable karma to alleviate their craving. A store of merit is a tremendous blessing human and superhuman beings often take for granted.

However, there is a growing movement for compassionate models of addiction treatment. The approach has a strong advocate in physician and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Mate.

Doctor Mate, What is the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts"?

After a career including 20 years as a family doctor, Dr. Gabor Mate spent 12 years as a physician in Vancouver Canada’s downtown Eastside, notorious for its highly addicted population of indigent and transient residents. His experience with this complex population is chronicled in his bestselling In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

Dr. Mate makes a convincing case that without abandoning medical treatment, the social and interpersonal basis of disease from addiction to attention deficit disorders must be examined and understood to effectively treat and prevent them.

Dr. Mate’s medical expertise combined with a rare kindness, humor, and intellect have made his books bestsellers. He is now a much sought after speaker on health. A, and he is coming to Los Angeles to give a talk tailored for the KPFK audience.

Dr. Gabor Mate is the bestselling author of four books, including When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress Disease Connection. Based in Canada, Dr. Maté ran a popular family practice in East Vancouver for two decades. For seven years he also served as Medical Coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital, caring for the terminally ill. More recently he worked for twelve years in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside neighborhood with patients suffering from hardcore drug addiction, mental illness and HIV. In 2009 Dr. Maté received an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University, and has recently been appointed Adjunct Professor in SFU’s School of Criminology. In 2011 he will receive an Honorary Degree from the University of Northern British Columbia.

• Uprising Media presents Gabor Mate on Nov. 30
• All proceeds benefit KPFK
• Tickets are $12.50 each ($25 a pair) for general admission at 7:00 pm and $50 each ($100 a pair) for the pre-event reception plus preferred admission at 6:00 pm.
• Purchase tickets (brownpapertickets.com)
• NOTE: Metro red and purple lines have a stop (Wilshire/Vermont) just blocks from Immanuel Presbyterian.

Tibetan sand symbolizes "impermanence"

Scott Hewitt (The Columbian, Clark County, Washington)

Monks from Drepung Loseling Phukhang Monastery wear orange and red because their culture considers those colors the humblest and least attractive, according to translator Tenzin Sherab of Gresham, Oregon (Zachary Kaufman).

Impermanence? Everyone has enjoyed the paradoxical play of sand castle construction -- focusing with delight and deliberation on a project that is doomed. The point is the process, the reward a sense of satisfaction despite the looming tide of destruction.

Monks donned colorful garb and chanted blessings (Zachary Kaufman).

Imagine spending day after day drawing on ancient designs to create the most stunningly elaborate, spiritually significant sand art on the planet -- then sweeping it up like so much dust when it is finally done.

A group of five Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Phukhang Monastery in southern India has been touring the West Coast since October. And most of their days are spent piecing together, grain by grain, mandalas made of multicolored sand. On Tuesday [Dec. 21, 2010] morning, those monks prayed and chanted in the main room of the Cascade Park Community Library before buckling down on a three-day mandala project.

A mandala is a sacred artwork -- a microcosm of the entire universe -- that takes the shape of an intricately sectioned and subdivided circle-in-a-square. It may include images of deities and buddhas, natural forces and the architecture of the cosmos. Buddhists and Hindus have used mandalas as teaching and meditation tools for thousands of years.

“They are unique and beautiful things, and it’s a rare window into a quite amazing culture,” said Kat Wilson of Vancouver, a student of Tibetan Buddhism for decades and manager of the monks’ tour. It was only beginning in 1989, Wilson added, that Tibetan Buddhist practitioners of sand mandala art started venturing forth to introduce their creations and themselves to the outside world. More>>

Addiction: "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts"

(MG9, 2/3/10) Democracy Now! talks with Dr. Gabor Maté about his latest book, the title of which is based on Buddhist cosmology and pretas. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction proposes more effective ways of treating addiction. He discusses the biological and socioeconomic roots of drug, sex, and other addictions.

Dr. Maté is staff physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which runs a residence/harm-reduction facility and North America's only supervised Safe-Injection Site in Vancouver, Canada. The city is home to one of the world's densest populations of drug abusers. Dr. Maté is the bestselling author of four books.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts explores the futility of the "war on drugs." To stop drug abuse, first one must understand the social-psychological, biological, and political origins of addiction. Dr. Maté also discusses his work on Attention Deficit Disorder and the mind-body connection.

"Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body." -- Naguib Mahfouz

• Partial transcript of the show
• The Cause of Addiction

Wisdom Network News

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6. A new kind of justice in Pakistan's Swat Valley
7. Death toll in Samoas tsunami reaches 149
8. 2nd quake shakes Indonesia after temblor kills 467
9. Asia readies for next storm as death toll rises
10. South Korean leader urges strong army, citing threat