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What's So Bad About Attachment?

Red Eye Tree Frog

You may have heard that Buddhists are supposed to be free of attachments. Does that mean we Buddhists have to abandon our loved ones? Thankfully, no. In Buddhism, "attachment" doesn't mean what you might think it means.

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Naropa University "Pervasively Sectarian"?

Thursday July 24, 2008

The state of Colorado is guilty of religious discrimination, according to a federal appellate court. Colorado had provided taxpayer-funded financial aid to students at some religious colleges, but not to students at colleges it considered "pervasively sectarian." The 10th Circuit Court found the state's criteria for what is "pervasively sectarian" and what is not to be discriminatory and to involve "intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and practice."

Colorado's policies had been challenged by Colorado Christian University, lawyers for which argued that Colorado had denied aid to its students because of the "school's affirmation of Christian faith," even though students at Regis University, a Catholic school, were eligible for aid. And even though another school considered "pervasively sectarian" is Boulder's Naropa University, one of the few accredited Buddhist universities in North America.

Naropa University was founded in 1974 by the late Chogyam Trungpa and is home to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Naropa seems to me to be a reasonably nonsectarian Buddhist university. From what I can make out from their web site, the only required religion course is a "Contemplative Practice Seminar."

There are thorny separation of church and state issues here about which reasonable people can disagree. But I suspect the real reason Naropa was on the "no fund" list was that it was "pervasively not Judeo-Christian."

Catskill Retreats at Zen Mountain Monastery

Wednesday July 23, 2008

New York's Catskill Mountains were once known for its "Borscht Belt" resorts and summer camps for New York City kids. But today it's becoming a center for spiritual retreats.

The Canadian Press has a story about this summer's Sufi, Christian, Jewish and Hindu retreats in the Catskills. Buddhism is represented by Zen Mountain Monastery of Mount Tremper, New York, where I began my Zen practice.

The writer describes a zazen period: "As light from a single candle wavers, you smell the rain against a background of incense, see the intricate natural patterns in the hardwood floor ..." Ah, brings back memories. Sit a few sesshins, and you do become intimately acquainted with that floor.

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