Monday, February 9, 2009

Newsflash (S.L.): Meditator Notes Breath

WQ exclusive (2/9/09)

KANDY, Sri Lanka -- Today in a precedented move, a Western meditator living in the vicinity of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, noted his breath. The sensation was one of plausible expectability.
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However, the noting was undertaken with utter mindfulness and clear comprehension (sati sampajanna) of circumstances and conditions just as they are (or were). There was neither addition nor subtraction from the equation of the direct experience. As meditation improves and insight dawns, the expectation is that advancement towards enlightenment will be made.

WQ editors, however, caution that without the assistance of jhana (meditative absorption) the "dry insight" road of this yogi will be difficult at best and is likely to be unsuccessful altogether. More as the situation develops. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the island...
  • PHOTO: Stewart enjoying meditation stateside (robinstewart.com)
Female suicide bomber kills 24 in Sri Lanka
Jean H. Lee (AP, 2/9/09)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – A suspected Tamil Tiger rebel who pretended to be a war refugee blew herself up Monday as Sri Lankan soldiers frisked her at a checkpoint. Twenty troops and eight civilians died.

State TV showed the carnage after the suicide bombing in Vishwamadu, a northeastern town where hundreds of civilians had been waiting to be sent to refugee camps: a woman in a blue dress curled up in the fetal position, her face and neck spattered with blood; plastic lawn chairs upended and piled in a jumble from the force of the blast.

A soldier briskly picked up a dead child who was sprawled face down in the dirt, yellow shorts peeping out from beneath her bloodstained pink-and-purple dress. He dropped her rag-doll body on top of another corpse in a truck, leaving their bloodied, bare feet jutting out the back.

The footage, released by the government, did not show the bodies of any soldiers.

Government troops claim to be closing in on the Tamil Tiger rebels in their push to end a 25-year-old war that has killed some 70,000 people. The military has backed the rebels into a strip of land on the northeastern coast, and the Red Cross says some 250,000 civilians are trapped there too. More>>

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