Zen Center of Denver参访美国丹佛禅修中心

Zen Center of Denver

http://zencenterofdenver.org/AboutZCD/

 2012年8月6日启程前往美国，路过日本成田机场Narida Airport。

日本成田机场Narida Airport

Narida Airport成田机场平面图

美国西部上空

8月6日抵达美国丹佛市机场Denver International Airport

8月7日参访丹佛禅修中心Zen Center of Denver

丹佛禅修中心元为一基督教堂Zen Center of Denver

与丹佛禅修中心Karin禅师合影Zen Center of Denver

体育精神与体育道德

笔者身高只有1米69，从小爱好体育，从小学开始就代表养正学校（当时是全星小学的体育劲旅），至上个世纪的6、70年代念中学、大学时，代表新加坡国家排球队与新加坡中学联篮球队，乃至到加拿大念研究院时还成为滑铁卢大学排球队与多伦多飞虎排球队的主力球员兼教练，20多年来南征北战，屡获奖牌，并曾接受加拿大当地的报章与电视台的采访报道。

从小参与个各项体育竞赛，都是在一定的竞赛制度设计之下进行比赛，而比赛的制度经常更改；做为球员也经常要由国际的“总会”获取这些更改资料来进行调整训练。不管制度如何变更，球员们除了可以从参与比赛获得满足之外，最终都希望在设定的制度下能打败对手，获取竞赛的胜利。

这是运动员在一定设计的制度经过长期竞赛中内化而成的体育精神与道德，在不顾及制度而妄论的体育精神与体育道德是空中楼阁；然而，这一次中、韩、印三国发生八名羽毛球运动员消极比赛的事件所引起的大众议论，甚至提高到体育精神与体育道德的层次。作为一名业余运动员，笔者想提出一些看法与读者斟酌。

要作为一名业余运动员代表，首先必须要有一定完好的体格，还要经过刻苦的长期锻炼，才能成为代表。这背后当然要对体育充满无限地热爱，还要有智力与办法留在学校，才能延长自己的体育寿命。

像奥运会这种高强度锻炼的体育运动已经不是一般业余运动员可以有办法染指的活动，运动员所付出的艰辛与伤病，要比像笔者伤痛遍体的这些业余运动员要来得多。因此，笔者每每看到失败的运动员时，往往要给与更多的同情与惋惜。

运动员参与比赛的目的是要打赢对手，那么为何这八位球员如此艰辛地挤入16强时却要想方设法地输给对手，那不是一个很奇怪的事吗？

在深入了解事情的原由之后，笔者才发觉原来问题出在世界羽毛球总会所设计的制度；球员们是在世界羽球总会设计的制度下参与比赛，虽然在事发之前曾有人提醒羽总现行的比赛制度会造成孤独求败的效果来，可惜羽总不顾体育精神与体育道德，只为了可看度及可增加收入的前提下，一意孤行，八位球员（这是一个很大的数目）只想退一步海阔天空。

春秋战国时孙膑的下驷对上驷的策略，用下驷对上驷，简直是求败得策略，却使田忌打败了齐威王，说明制度的设计经过孙膑的对策运用是可以使比赛的胜负发生逆转。羽总的比赛制度所具有的漏洞使比赛出现那么大得变数而一意孤行，是使球员的体育精神与体育道德有机会产生逆转。

羽总不对自己的一意孤行从而使体育精神与体育道德堕落来道歉，却以重罚运动员来遮掩自己的过失，令人遗憾！错误的制度无法内化成高尚的体育精神与体育道德，运动员的道德建立是由正确的制度长期培育而成。

在批评球员的时候，我们是否应该也对世界羽球总会的比赛制度提出应有批评，要求羽总甚至是世界各项体育总会，设计出一套首先能够有利于体育运动员提高体育精神与体育道德的制度来。不能要求运动员像马匹一样的冲刺，毕竟人是有人性的。

笔者打了半辈子各式的球类比赛，南征北战，常要受到这些“总会”很多的窝囊制度的气，而这些设计制度的老爷们，很多不是球员出身，根本不了解球员，最后还反倒打一把，说球员没有体育精神，更甚的还提到体育道德的高度上去批评。

在奥运会的商业气氛越来越浓之时，球员已经被当为马场上的竞赛马匹来看待，如果球员竞赛合观众之意，观众就喝彩，反之就喝倒彩，还有人提议要退票。

如此发展下去，世界的体育运动员将会成为赛马场上的马匹一样，在骑师的鞭策之下，在裁判员的严格监视之下奋勇冲刺，最后口吐白沫为止，成最具有体育精神，最有道德的马。希望经此一役，各体育总会与奥委会应该会有所反省。

2012年8月3日

Buddha in the West: Even Bill Clinton Turns Toward Meditation - NAM EthnoBlog

Buddha in the West: Even Bill Clinton Turns Toward Meditation - NAM EthnoBlog

By Andrew Lam, Aug 21, 2012 9:19 AM

Buddhism made a bleep in the news early this month when theTimes of India, and other news outlets, citing an unnamed source, reported that Bill Clinton, has turned to Buddhism for mental and physical well-being. The former president went so far as hiring a Buddhist monk to teach him the arts of meditation.

This may come as a surprise to some but to many others it's only a natural course of how things transpire in the globalized world. In the last half of the 20th Century, America cunningly exported itself overseas, marketing its images, ideologies, products and religions with ingenuity and zeal, but what it has not been able to fully assess or prepare for are the effects in reverse. For if Americanization is a large part of globalization, the Easternization of the West, too, is the other side of the phenomenon.

I take it as some cosmic law of exchange that if Disneyland pops up in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Buddhist temples can sprout up in Los Angeles, home of the magic kingdom. Indeed, it comes as no surprise to many Californians that scholars have agreed that the most complex Buddhist city in the world is nowhere in Asia but Los Angeles itself, where there are more than 300 Buddhist temples and centers, representing nearly all of Buddhist practices around the world.

In October of 2009, CNN reported that, "programs and workshops educating inmates about meditation and yoga are sprouting up across the country." There are more than 75 organizations working with some 2,500 people, most of them prisoners, and they inspired a documentary called "The Dhamma Brothers." where inmates reached inner peace and spiritual maturity through meditation and the practice of compassion.

This was the same year that Thomas Dyer, a former Marine and one-time Southern Baptist pastor, became the first Buddhist chaplain in the history of the U.S. Army and he was sent to Afghanistan to administer to Buddhist American soldiers.

Over the past quarter-century, Buddhism has become the third largest religion in America behind Christianity and Judaism, according to a 2008 report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Evidence of Buddhism spreading deep roots in America is abundant. The UT San Diego newspaper estimated that there are at least 1.2 million Americans who are buddhist practitioners, the majority of whom live in California. Other scholars estimated that number to be as high as 6.7 million.

Even if small in population, the influence of Buddhist ideas are clearly strong on the cultural spheres. When the Dalai Lama visited the US three years ago, for example, he was a celebrity at every American institution. One scene in particular remains memorable: the most famous monk in the world sat on the dais, lecturing on wisdom in the modern world and exploring the concept of the soul, as hundreds of enthralled monks and laymen look on below. The scene harks back to the golden era of Tibet, with the halls festooned with hundreds of strings of colorful Tibetan prayer flags, except the event took place at American University.

Yet, despite Buddhism's message of inner peace and compassion, it, in its own way, is a very radical spiritual practice for its refutation of the existence of a creator. In essence, the serious practitioner aims to extinguish the self by defeating his own ego and, thereby, seeing beyond the illusion spun by the ignorant mind.

The ultimate Buddhist experience entails neither god nor self, neither "out there" nor "in here," for that membrane that separates the practitioner's being and that of the world, upon awakening, has been lifted. All that remains is - ohm - absolute awe and bliss. Imagine, if you will, Moses not turning his face away from the burning bush that is god but approaching it then fully merging with that terrifying fire. To reach spiritual maturity, the I must, at least temporarily in meditation, be dissolved.


"Buddhism," writes Diana Eck, professor of comparative religions at Harvard University, "challenges many Americans at the very core of their thinking about religion -- at least, those of us for whom religion has something to do with one we call God."

As ties deepened between the two continents, as immigration from Asia continues unabated, and as the Dhamma [Buddha's teachings] spreads beyond all borders, we are entering what many thinkers and philosophers call the second axial age, an age of pluralism where the various spiritual traditions co-exist.

In these global days, no single system can exist as a separate entity, nor can its borders remain impervious to change, all exist to a various degree of openness and exchange. And the old Silk Road along which so many religious ideas traveled has been replaced by a far more potent thoroughfare: unprecedented global migration, mass communications, and the information highway, which transcends geography.

I once kept on my study's wall two very different pictures to remind me of the way East and West have changed. One is an issue from a Time magazine on Buddhism in America. In it, a group of American Buddhists sits serenely in lotus position on a wooden veranda in Malibu overlooking a calm Pacific Ocean. The other is of Vietnamese-American astronaut named Eugene Trinh's space shuttle flight. The pictures tell me that East and West have not only met, but also commingled and fused. When a Vietnamese man who left his impoverished homeland can come very close to reaching the moon, while Americans are becoming psychonauts - navigators of the mind - turning inward, trying to reach nirvana with each mindful breath, I think that the East-West dialogue has come a long, long way.


New America Media's editor, Andrew Lam, is the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in Spring, 2013.