A few months ago, I [Lihi Be] stood on a stage in New York City and performed slam poetry for the first time. The scene was hosted by Nuyorican Poets' Cafe at the Bowery Poetry Club, a small, legendary room where decades of poets have stepped up to a microphone and turned their inner worlds into sound.
It's the kind of place where language has history, where words have weight, where the air feels charged from voices that came before.
I remember standing there, waiting my turn, feeling my heart beating in my throat,
which surprised me.
I’ve spoken in front of rooms before. I’ve guided workshops, taught movement, led breathworkjourneys where people open parts of themselves that are tender and alive.
Holding space for others doesn’t scare me.
But this was different.
This time, I wasn’t holding material space; I was the material.
A poem I wrote alone earlier that morning was about to leave the page and hit the stage, entering a room full of strangers, not through dead ink, but through my living breath, my voice, my body.
Until that moment, "poetry" was something I wrote, never something I performed.
When I published my book, The Self, Reframed, it felt like a big step outward. Suddenly the poems were technically "public." Someone, anyone, could order the book, underline a passage, carry a piece of it into her own life.
Butt even then, there was still distance.
The page protected me.
Readers meet a poem alone. They can pause, reread, close the book, throw it in the garbage disposal, flip the switch, make acid-free wood pulp that washes out to sea... That meeting happens quietly, inside their own interior worlds.
Shame? We refuse to limit ourselves
Slam poetry is different:
Spoken word removes the distance. When one performs a poem, there is no safe distance, no page between the room and the I performing. My breath carries my language. My nervous system becomes part of the delivery. My voice, my pauses, my trembling chest -- all of it becomes part of my poem.
In some ways, it feels easier to be naked than to perform one's own poem, in the woods, with someone you love, in front of Mother Nature, playing pretend it's Adam and Eve in a Sumerian garden.
I was in New York for a series of gatherings -- one of them a nude experience I was hosting with the Füde Experience: a roomful of naked people exploring embodiment, mindfulpresence, the simplicity of being in our bodies without the usual layers of social armor.
Standing naked in a room with others didn’t feel nearly as vulnerable as standing on this stage.
In fact, being naked felt surprisingly simple. Source: a poem is a different kind of naked (seeds of the self)
"No bikinis! Cover up those shameful bodies...or you are headed for hell!" - Loving Christian
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Lihi Be (Benisty)
AUTHOR: Lihi Be (Benisty), teacher of somatic self-inquiry, breathwork, movement, teacher, mentorship, poetry, summer retreat leader, author of The Self, Reframed. She leads a dynamic blend of somatic practices to navigate emotional landscapes. She is profoundly committed to the poetic art of self-inquiry through breathwork and movement. Her teaching is distinguished by her ability to weave these elements into a cohesive practice that respects the complexity of the human experience. Her poetry serves as a reflective mirror, deepening the themes she navigates in her somatic work and offering an additional avenue for connection and self-discovery. She lives in Los Angeles, California. (Substack, Instagram, FÜDEin LA, Amazon, Facebook, Omega Institute, lihibe.com)
Like Korean Buddhism,* K-pop (Korean 케이팝, RR Keipap, "Korean popular music") is a best-selling creation originating in South Korea [2]. The music genre that the term is used to refer to colloquially emerged in the 1990s as a form of youth subculture, with Korean musicians influenced by Western dance music, hip-hop, R&B, and rock [3, 4, 5].
Today, K-pop commonly refers to the musical output of teen "idol" acts, chiefly all-girl groups and all-boy bands, who emphasize visual appeal and performance [6].
As a pop genre, K-pop is characterized by its melodic quality and cultural hybridity [7, 8, 9]. K-pop can trace its origins to "rap dance," a fusion of hip-hop, techno, and rock popularized by the group Seo Taiji and Boys, whose experimentation helped to modernize South Korea's contemporary music scene in the early 1990s [10, 11, 12].
Their popularity with teenagers led the music industry to focus on this demographic. Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment, who developed the Korean idol system in the late 1990s, created H.O.T. and S.E.S., the "first generation" of K-pop [13].
By the early 2000s, TVXQ and BoA had achieved success in Japan and gained traction for the genre overseas [14, 15]....
ROSE and PSY perform "APT." (live from Summerswag 2025)
By 2019, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) listed South Korea as the 6th largest music market in the world [116], with boy band BTS alone accounting for $4.65 billion, or 0.3%, of South Korea's GDP [117].
In 2024, IFPI declared K-pop the leading global genre in unit sales, across both physical and digital formats. Seventeen of the top 20 albums on the IFPI Global Album Sales Chart that year belonged to this genre [118, 119] thanks to BTS, Blackpink, solo Rosé, Katseye, and a few others. More
Korean Buddhism began in the 4th century CE during the Three Kingdoms Period. Centuries after Buddhism originated in [Gandhara, now modern Afghanistan] and Magadha [a Buddhist territory later brought into the empire under the umbrella term "India" under Buddhist Emperor Ashoka], the Mahayana tradition arrived in China through the Silk Road in the 1st century CE, then entered the Korean peninsula in the 4th century, from where it was transmitted to Japan.
In Korea, it was adopted as the state religion of three constituent polities of the Three Kingdoms Period, first by the Goguryeo (aka Goryeo) in 372 CE, by the Silla (Gaya) in 528 CE, and by the Baekje in 552 CE [1].
Korean Buddhism is distinguished from other forms of Buddhism by its attempt to resolve what its early practitioners saw as inconsistencies within theMahayana Buddhist traditions that they received from foreign countries.
To address this, Korean Buddhists developed a new holistic approach to Buddhism that became a distinct form, an approach characteristic of virtually all major Korean thinkers.
The resulting variation is called Tongbulgyo ("interpenetrated Buddhism"), a form that sought to harmonize previously arising disputes among scholars (a principle called hwajaeng 和諍) [2].
As it now stands, Korean Buddhism consists mostly of the Seon [Zen] Lineage, primarily represented by the Jogye and Taego Orders. The Korean Seon has a strong relationship with other Mahayana traditions that bear the imprint of Chan teachings as well as the closely related Zen.
Other sects -- such as the modern revival of the Cheontae lineage, the Jingak Order (a modern esoteric sect or Vajrayana), and the newly formed Won -- have also attracted sizable followings [3].
Korean Buddhism has contributed much to East Asian Buddhism, especially to early Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Tibetan schools of Buddhist thought. More
(Let's Be Clear with Ana Kasparian) Israel is going to regret suing New York Times for exposing their mass rape, bestiality, prisoner abuse, crimes against humanity, war crimes
(Buddha's Wisdom) GOENKA: The man who removed Buddhism from Buddhism?
Do it yourself at home the U Ba Khin way
The Goenka Method (of U Ba Khin) provides some practical advice for practicing systematic mindfulness (sati) of the body, one of the four crucial elements in the setting up of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipatthana), a practice necessary for "insight" (vipassana). Is it the only method? No. Is it the most effective method? Who can say, as it varies from individual to individual. Is it an effective method? Without sufficient stillness, calm, samadhi, absorption (jhana), it seems to Wisdom Quarterly that it is not. The claim is that practicing vipassana can produce its own mild forms of "access concentration" without needed full absorption. This will at best be a very weak and sketchy foundation of sila and samma-samadhi, virtue and "right samadhi." Samadhi is crucial and cannot be skipped over with the ideal of "dry insight" being enough for this decadent age.
S. N. Goenka (Satya Narayana, Satyanārāyaṇa Gōyaṅkā, Burmese ဦးဂိုအင်ကာ) lived from Jan. 30, 1924–Sept. 29, 2013. He was an Indian Burmese businessman and teacher of Buddhist insight (vipassanā) meditation.
Goenka-jii (an honorific added out of great respect) retired from business in 1962, during a period of business nationalization by the military junta in Burma, then moved to India in 1969 to start teaching vipassana meditation.
His teachings are secular and therefore stay away from anything that might appear to be rites or rituals and instead emphasize that Buddha's path to liberation, which was non-sectarian, universal, and scientific (rational) in character.
This led to vipassana meditation appealing to people of all religions as well as no religion, theists, nontheists, atheists, and agnostics, from all parts of the world, East and West.
Vipassana, in the Burmese Theravada Buddhist tradition, is derived from the Abhidhamma(as taught by the Buddha to the monk he declared "foremost in wisdom" Ven. Śāriputra [27, 28]).
Although some Burmese teachers hold that vipassana and Abhidhamma study are inseparable [29], Goenka invited students to consider the theoretical aspects of these Teachings (pariyatti), advising them that the most important aspect of the technique is its practice (paṭipatti), contrasting mere book learning from experiential learning.
Students are free to accept the theoretical background or reject any part they find objectionable.
Goenka reported the words of the Buddha as follows [30]: "Filled with these compassionate and loving thoughts, [the Buddha] proclaimed: Apārutā tesaṃ amatassa dvārā Ye sotavanto pamuñcantu saddhaṃ "Open are the gates of the deathless state to those with ears [to hear] who renounce their lack of [confidence]," that is to say:
"Open are the gates of Nirvana so that people who hear and practice will be able to overcome all doubt," which is one of the Five Mental Hindrances.
Free 10-day course
I thought I'd join a 10-day course, get enlightened, then go get my nails done. Boy, was I wrong.
Mr. Goenka became an influential teacher and played an important role in establishing non-commercial vipassana meditation centers globally where vipassana meditation is taught as a free 10-day residential program with no charges for food, lodging, or meditation instruction, with centers funded by voluntary donations from "old" (past and present) meditators.
How could it possibly be free? It is non-commercial. The rule is that only "old" students (who have completed at least one course) are allowed to donate. "New" students (who have not yet completed at least one course) are not allowed to donate. Donations are accepted after the completion of a course, which everyone qualifies to donate to at the end of each course, so there's never really a time when centers are open to donations and not accepting them. As soon as they are open to accepting dana (donations, gifts, charity), everyone present who just completed the course can give. Give what? Dāna
Goenka was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the government of India in 2012, an award bestowed for distinguished service of a high order.
Sign up for free 10-day courses worldwide at dhamma.org
(Wisdom Quarterly was fortunate enough to meet S. N. Goenka, 88, and his lovely wife when they were invited to the Dhammakaya Meditation Center in Azusa, Los Angeles, for a lunch in his honor and to receive an award for service to humanity, circa 2012. This was just as the Aztec Calendar was wrapping a cycle and the world was about to end, with few people noticing that a new cycle and new world would immediately be continuing. He seemed very kind, and not nearly as Dracula-like as one might think from hearing his droning, baritone Transylvanian/Indian accent on the standardized tapes played during all free 10-day courses). More
Buddha's Wisdom (video); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
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