Bohemian Grove is a private campground covering 2,700 acres (1,100 ha) in Monte Rio, Marin County, Northern California.
It is the site of many bizarre rituals related to the occult, capitalism, initiation of the rich, influential politicians, businessmen, and other movers and shakers behind the scenes who control the USA. There are other such gatherings, like the Bilderbergers who get more attention. But so far as anyone can tell, The Bohemian Grove is still operating covertly.
Founded in 1878, it is owned by a rich, private "gentlemen's club" called the Bohemian Club. Each year in mid-July, the Bohemian Grove hosts an annual gathering lasting more than two weeks, attended by invited members and guests from politics, business, and the arts [1, 2]. More
Evening twilight over Berkeley, California (Alfred Georg Sonsalla/Getty Images)
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Beloved city has neighborhoods and Cal (UC)
What is the healthiest city in the U.S. to live in? Niche.com did its annual analysis, and a California destination came out on top.
Berkeley, California, was named the healthiest city in the USA by niche.com. The Northern California Alameda County city (just across the bay from overpriced San Francisco) enjoys an average of 256 sunny days each year and a mild Mediterranean climate, allowing residents to spend ample time outdoors.
The strangest thing about attending UC Berkeley is that no one here calls it "Berkeley." Everyone refers to it as "Cal" (or Cal Berkeley) because "Berkeley" (so often misspelled as Berkley) refers to the city, which is also sometimes called the "Republic of Berserkley" and F everywhere else because this is the best place to go to college, the greatest public university in the world since Nalanda and Timbuktu closed, rivaling the great private universities of the nation. (Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal likely exists because Berkeley exists and, strange and counterintuitive as it may seem to outsiders, half-baked L.A. is more spiritual than Berkeley or S.F. probably because it needs to be, with so many people desperately searching for meaning in the throat chakra of the planet (thanks in large part to Hollywood film, music, radio, and TV industries). That surprised us, thinking we were going to the Shangri-La of the state where everyone would be spiritual, where the Sixties would still be alive, where San Francisco was just a BART ride away to visit Golden Gate Park and join a love in, be in, or free concert, slipping over to Haight Ashbury, but it's always so cold, and Berkeley mostly empties out for the summer when the tourists come and classes are not in session. There is KPFA.org (the founding Pacifica station even older than KPFK.org in LA, where Alan Watts got his start and where he lives on, respectively). There are so many protests on campus and in Berkeley that there is a nationwide media blackout about it. One rarely hears about all that is going on there, and every week something IS going on there. It's a nearly daily occurrence the mainstream media keeps quiet, ignores, and suppresses so that the radicalism doesn't spread as quickly to other campuses across the nation. It is the most progressive of the big schools.
In this famous scene (and song) Ben, "The Graduate" (played by a young Dustin Hoffman), is driving his red convertible to Berkeley, which is funny because he's headed the wrong direction, but that never stopped Hollywood (who needed to show him with the top down, which wouldn't look as good on the lower level that runs toward Berkeley. He's from Los Angeles and going to UC Berkeley in Berkeley to see about a girl, Elaine, which is odd because she's the daughter of Mrs. Robinson, the older married woman he's been having an affair with all summer. Had it not been for a roommate at Cal, I would never have known to see such an important film all about the wonders of legendary California.
Each year, Niche.com reveals the healthiest places in the nation, based on "a comprehensive assessment of the general health levels among residents in an area." The company considers key indicators of personal health, including smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, rates of obesity, and people's access and proximity to health care facilities, including gyms, doctors, and mental health practitioners.
And this year, Niche.com named Berkeley, California, the healthiest city in the U.S.
The Alameda County city is less than half an hour from San Francisco [depending on traffic on the Bay Bridge, it would only take 15 minutes to go between the two] and boasts 256 sunny days per year [but is nearly always cooler than one would think, just like San Francisco is chilly and foggy] and a mild Mediterranean climate.
Residents don't have to travel far to enjoy time in nature and stay active. Why? — Berkeley has over 50 parks with sports facilities, trails, and playgrounds. [There's a secret swimming lake behind the campus, up the mountain on Grizzly Trail.] Additionally, places like Muir Woods National Monument, Yosemite National Park, and Pinnacles National Park offer even more options for outdoor recreation.
In fact, the city was named the No. 1 Healthiest Place to Live in America and the No. 1 Healthiest City, really driving home the point that this is indeed a healthy place.
Berkeley also snagged an A+ rating for its schools, A+ for nightlife, and an A+ for outdoor activities, which surely helps to keep its population in tip-top shape.
The only categories it falls short in are housing, where it scored a C-, crime and safety, which also nabbed it a C-, and the cost of living, where it scored a low D+. And these grades are well reflected in the local reviews. More
(Digitalbondo) The Summer of Love was 50 years ago, way back in 1967. The KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival ran from June 10th to the 11th, 1967. Here are home movies (from a kind of recording time machine) of The Seeds, Country Joe and the Fish, The Jefferson Airplane, and The Byrds by John Cuniberti. Music by The Byrds.
Why is summer for love? - It's the outfits.
June 10, 1967, was an important day for the Summer of Love and for music history.
Over two days (June 10-11, 1967), tens of thousands of music fans (many of the shiny hippies) would participate in the first rock festival in American history.
While the Monterey Pop Festival is often credited with being the first rock music festival in history, in fact it was the “Fantasy Fair” that deserves the honor.
Led by KFRC, an AM radio station, the festival featured the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, Sons of Champlin, and many other bands that were gaining notice throughout California and beyond.
Once upon a young American from the Bay Area in California decided to go on a spiritual quest.
(Yes, that's true of writers at Wisdom Quarterly, but this time we're talking about Jack Kornfield, who preceded us).
Kornfield decided to seek the wisdom of the East along with his hippie friends from the East Coast.
Jack Kornfield: Life is funny because karma is.
While working in the Peace Corps and learning languages in Asia, he trained to be a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma, and India (just like we did, although we added Sri Lanka, where many of the sutra texts are stored along with their chief translator, Bhikkhu Bodhi, our teacher and inspiration.
Buddhism for Beginners (Jack Kornfield)
Wishing to visit Thailand, a friend who became Tan Jess, and I heard about Kornfield's guide to young seekers, which talks about a dozen living masters one might possibly study under in the original wandering ascetic forest tradition). Kornfield was good enough to write about his experiences under ten teachers, ten living Buddhist masters, for a Western audience back home. Not everyone is called to let it all go and go East. (But we were). Thankfully, Kornfield was.
The Wise Heart (Jack Kornfield)
Miraculously, he found what he was looking for, and not only he but at least four others. All seem to have attained the path of stream entry (the first stage of enlightenment) there under Dipa Ma and others.
There is Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein (IMS, IMS Forest Refuge), Sylvia Boorstein, and we could swear there was someone else who is not Trudy Goodman (founder of InsightLA.org) because she came into Kornfield's life much later and is now his wife, but maybe it was his previous wife, Liana.
Kornfield awakened (probably in Dipa Ma's living room in India), was sent back to the US, and is now the co-founder of the Bay Area's Spirit Rock Meditation Center near San Francisco and one of the co-founders of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.
Kornfield has worked to make Buddhism accessible for Westerners [10], combining loving-kindness and self-compassion with the practice of mindfulness. He incorporates the wisdom of Eastern and Western psychology. In his book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, he writes about the honest development of the wise heart within the cycles of day-to-day life.
Original 1977 cover of the book
For instance, "amid all the Western masters and teachers I know, some idealistic perfection is not apparent.
"Times of great wisdom, deep compassion, and a real knowing of freedom alternate with periods of fear, confusion, neurosis, and struggle. "Most teachers will readily admit this" (pg. xix).
Kornfield's early lectures were featured by Joe Frank on his radio series "The Other Side." More
Jack Kornfield, Living Buddhist Masters (Internet Archive, archive.org);Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ajahn Mahindo (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Though nominally communist, China is really a capitalist empire that hates Tibet/Dalai Lama
Protests erupt around San Francisco over a Free Tibet, Free Palestine, anti-APEC, anti-Israel, anti-China, anti-Biden
(KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco)
Nov. 15, 2023: There were multiple protests over a range of global causes around San Francisco today, erupting even as it rained, because of the visit of China's Pres. Xi (who is continuing the genocide in Tibet), as the APEC summit continued in the city with U.S. Pres. Biden orchestrating an appeasement and compromise trade solution to America's financial problems and the imminent loss of Taiwan as China advances in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. SF may get the spotlight, but more radical UC Berkeley is not being silent, just systematically ignored by the mainstream media. UCB students are the first to hit the pavement but are rarely mentioned anywhere outside of the Bay Area as it seems to encourage other campuses to follow suit.
Many demonstrators braving the rain oppose APEC, which does not care about the people of Asia or the climate.
It instead greenwashes (fakes caring about green environmental causes like the climate, industrial pollution abatement, and sustainable practices while actually doing nothing about them other than paying lip service).
Many marchers are Pro-Palestine, opposing Israel's government.
Others are here to protest China's occupation in autonomous Tibet.
Some stand for Falun Gong, a movement oppressed by China.
The city is liberal and leans to the left and therefore hates Biden.
Biden is not a leftist no matter what right-wing conservatives try to say about him; rather, he is a corporate bought senile puppet who does what our ONE party system demands: the Money Party, with its two wings, wants war, more war, Big Pharma profits, and a military-industrial complex that does not much care about common citizens without healthcare or a higher education.
Tos subscribe to KTVU's YouTube channel:
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KTVU delivers in-depth reports, interviews, and breaking news coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area and California. Watch KTVU's newscasts on ktvu.com/live.
Jack Kornfield, Amazon, 2001; Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Buddhism for Beginners by Dr. Jack Kornfield is an Audible audiobook, an original recording Bay Area psychologist and successful Buddhist meditator Kornfield.
Dr. Kornfield is founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California (next to San Francisco), who also narrates.
This Sounds True publication has 4.5 stars out of 5 with 15 ratings. It was created specifically to address the questions and needs of first-time students. (It is offered FREE with Audible trial).
Here is Buddhism's vast spiritual legacy (in the early Theravada back-to-basics tradition of the Teachings or Dhamma of the historical Buddha, Siddhattha Gotama or Sakyamuni) presented by one of America's leading meditation teachers. More + audio sample
World famous meditators Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg on decades of Dharma practice
(Tricycle) April 21, 2021. Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg were among the first Western teachers to bring insight meditation practice to the United States in the 1970s.
In 1976 they co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, one of the first meditation retreat centers in the Americas.
On the occasion of the center’s 45th anniversary, these three celebrated teachers come together for a live discussion with Tricycle Editor-in-Chief James Shaheen.
This conversation was recorded on April 8, 2021, as a part of Tricycle's 30th Anniversary celebration —a monthlong series of donation-based virtual events celebrating 30 years of Dharma in the West.
Welcome to the New Year. It's time again for our annual month of meditation with the Real Happiness Meditation Challenge! Registration is now officially open, and famed American meditator [and awakened person] Sharon Salzberg hopes readers will join in (again or for the first time) for the month of February.
This is the thirteenth year of offering this challenge, and for many of us it's become an annual tradition to participate. This is a chance to begin (or reboot) our home meditation practice, with as little as five minutes a day of practice.
The secret to meditation is persistence in practice.
This month-long program runs from February 1st to 28th, 2023, and consists of 28 lessons, organized into four week-long themes:
Concentration
Mindfulness of the Body
Mindfulness of Thoughts/Emotions
Lovingkindness.
Lessons are sent via email to complete at one's own convenience each day. The program
covers a full spectrum of meditation techniques to empower practitioners with a robust toolkit for a happier life.
• Guided meditation of the day (pre-recorded audio)
• Meditation tip of the day (text)
• Inspirational artwork (image)
• Question of the day (text)
• Meditation Transcript (text)
The Challenge is offered on a sliding scale basis, with a $10 suggested contribution, to keep this offering as accessible as possible.
Full scholarships are available for those who cannot contribute financially, and Sharon Salzberg gratefully accepts larger contributions for anyone with the means to support the Challenge in a bigger way.
Sharon Salzberg hopes readers will join us, and please invite friends as well! As a community, we can all explore the many gifts these practices have to offer to help us navigate these complicated times with greater ease and peace.
As Buddhism does not require any formal "conversion," American Buddhists can easily incorporate Dharma practice into their normal routines and traditions. The result is that American Buddhists come from every ethnicity, nationality, and religious tradition.
The Beat Poets were early American Buddhists
In 2012, The San Diego Union-Tribune estimated there were 1.2 million U.S. practitioners, of whom 40% are living in Southern California.
In terms of percentage, with its large Asian and particularly Japanese American community, Hawaii has the most Buddhists at 8% of the population.
The term "American Buddhism" can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian American Buddhists born into the tradition, who comprise the largest percentage of Buddhists in the country.
#american_buddhism#buddhism#mindfulness
Music: Etoll_New Dawn-Robert Etoll
Song 1 of 2
Feels
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ARTIST
Q-Factory
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MUSIC FOR FILM and TELEVISION - Vol.2 - CD2.
American anthropologist Margaret Mead with baby in Africa holding a doll (inquirer.com).
Sunday Morning Practice Group with founding teacher Trudy Goodman (insightla.org)
Margaret Mead, what's the first sign of civilization? I bet it's pottery! - No. (forbes.com)
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Help, I broke my leg and I can't swim!!!
A friend told me that anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked by a student what she considered the first sign of civilization for a culture.
The student expected her to talk about clay pots or grinding stones. But Mead said that the first sign of civilization was a thighbone (femur) that had broken and healed.
Hold on...I just gotta check something first.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can't run from danger, get to water to drink, or search for food… No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
“A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts,” Mead said.
In this spirit InsightLA.org launched a community fund for "Giving Week" to offer a hand if anyone is experiencing hardship. Insight in Action programs have pivoted online to serve.
My heart is full, witnessing much goodness and beauty all over the world as people care for one another. I’m touched by participation with iACT to provide public health information so refugee camp leaders can prepare their communities, isolated from heath care, for the pandemic.
Mead loved the people she studied, and they loved her: Taking Note doc (store.der.org).
Several of us Insight in Action teachers have been working with iACT (iact.ngo) for a few years, traveling to refugee camps in Eastern Chad in Africa, Greece, and Cameroon to teach mindfulness skills.
Yesterday my friend Oumda Tarbosh, a community leader who literally saved thousands of lives during Darfur's genocide, sent the following message to everyone. It’s especially poignant knowing how little food they have:
We start to see big changes in the community, and I have a hope that the situation is going to be good. Refugees are knowing more [about] health and hygiene. Yesterday, I was doing mindfulness. I closed my eyes and… I started seeing my beloved brothers and sisters, friends and parents [dying] around the world[.] I don't know even [their] names... and my mind was changed. After a certain moment, I cried so much and start my prayer. Yesterday, I didn't eat food, my friends. So I encourage all supporters, donors, refugee camp leaders [for] all we are doing for our communities. I have a hope, together as one, we will win! Thank you all.
Together during this frightening time, we safeguard human flourishing and compassion for all beings everywhere, without exception. This is Teacher Appreciation Week. Please join me in gratitude for all dedicated teachers; gratitude is a powerful antidote to fear and sadness.
Find a gratitude buddy at insightLA through our Digital Dharma Pals program. Helping each other through difficult times is where civilization starts – and where love flourishes!
Join me for a 6-night ONLINE retreat through Spirit Rock beginning on May 20th with Anam Thubten, James Baraz, and Jill White Lindsay. This is the only weeklong retreat I'm teaching in 2020!
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