How to meditate on July 16 (Ajahn Chah)

Bing; AjahnChah.org via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

J.D. Salinger publishes seminal novel The Catcher in the Rye, July 16, 1951. See below.

Nuclear age begins in New Mexico

July 16, 1945: Architects of the Manhattan Project, including Nazi project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, gather in shelters 10,000 yards from "The Gadget's" detonation site in New Mexico and at 5:29 a.m. the world's first nuclear bomb explosion, code-named Trinity, pierces the darkness with 20 kilotons of atomic power. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the U.S. Army as part of the Manhattan Project in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range...More

Meditating

In the beginning, just concentrate on allowing the mind to be calm and peaceful. Whether sitting in a chair, riding in a car, taking a boat ride, or wherever you happen to be, get proficient enough in meditation that you can enter a state of peace at will.

When you get on a train and sit down, quickly bring your mind to a state of peace. Wherever you are, you can always sit. This level of proficiency indicates that you’re becoming familiar with the Path. Once calm, investigate. Utilize the power of this peaceful mind to investigate what you experience.

At times it’s what you see; at times what you hear, smell, taste, feel with the body, or think and feel in the heart.

Whatever sensory experience presents itself -- whether we like it or not -- take that up for contemplation.

Simply know what you are experiencing. Don’t project meaning or interpretations onto those objects of sense awareness. If it’s good, just know that it’s good. If it’s bad, just know that it’s bad. This is conventional reality. Good or evil, it’s all impermanent, disappointing (unfulfilling), and impersonal (not self).

It’s all undependable, uncertain, in flux. None of it is worth being grasped or clung to.

Holden Caulfield is done with "phonies" in new novel

July 16, 1951: A teenager is expelled from school and travels to New York City to spend a few days wandering around. Out of this deceptively simple plotline, J.D. Salinger weaves an archetypal tale of teenage angst in The Catcher in the Rye, a novel published today that will be hailed and censored in equal measure. More

East and West in Constantinople Church clash

July 16, 1054: The conflict between the Latin West and Greek East divisions of the Christian church heats up when a Papal writ of excommunication is placed by Western Roman legates on the altar of the Hagia Sofia, the holy site of the Christian East. It's the first major crack that will end in a total break some 100 years later.

• July 16, 1999: John F. Kennedy Jr. dies tragically

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, Gap (forum)

CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; KPCC FM (scpr.org)

Dr. Joshua Greene, Harvard Moral Cognition Lab, talks about morally-based decision-making and the brain. Although matters of morality are abstract, there are ways of examining brains while we decide, allowing for the collection of data about brain activity in parallel with our decisions. In this way, we can better understand which brain circuits drive different types of decisions, particularly those involving moral judgment.

Why can't we come together on climate change? Should the rich pay higher taxes? Should they use their profits to help desperate strangers on the other side of the world? Do gays have a right to marry? Does a woman with an unwanted pregnancy have a right to choose? Is it wrong to eat animals because we care more about their taste than their pain?

On Thursday, Nov. 14th, explore how we make decisions about such questions as KPCC's science reporter Sanden Totten speaks with guest Dr. Joshua Greene, director of Harvard University's Moral Cognition Lab and author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. 

 

Through a "Me vs. Us" and "Us vs. Them" lens, Dr. Greene takes a penetrating and entirely original look at the ways in which neuroscience and evolution guide our moral decision-making process.

(TED Talks) "Experience vs. Memory," Nobel laureate and founder of "behavioral economics" Prof. Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy, and our own self-awareness. He is regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist.

In the tradition of Prof. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, Moral Tribes deftly reveals the science behind our modern thinking and moral dilemmas and offers a new way of looking at and resolving seemingly irresolvable moral issues.

• Crawford Family Forum, Pasadena
• 7:00 pm - Program
• Admission is FREE with RSVPs

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