Catrin Nye
BBC Asian Network
Wembley's newest looming landmark has opened it doors after 14 years of construction.
It is the £16m Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir, which loosely translates as the all-inclusive temple.
There is none of the metal core most buildings have and, instead, it has been built using ancient techniques based on Hindu scriptures.
The method dates back thousands of years and was used to construct the world famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
Many of the temple's component pieces have been hand carved in limestone in the tiny town of Sola - located in the Indian state of Gujarat - before being flown over and pieced together in the UK.
There were also 41 marble deities made in India especially for the mandir.The temple covers 2.4 acres (9,700 sq m) on the Ealing Road and, at its highest point, is 66ft (20m) tall.
Its bright sand-coloured walls stand out in stark contrast to the unassuming surroundings.
A ceremony called Pran Prathistha was held to "infuse the spirit of God into the statues" as part of the temple opening.
A VIP opening was then held with donors, sponsors and local dignitaries in attendance.
Ajay Jobanputra is governor of Shri Vallabh Nidhi UK (SVNUK), the charity which raised the funds to build the Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir.
He hopes the temple will provide a place of worship for all Hindus and welcome those of other faiths."Famous spiritual leaders and forms of Gods from other religions are featured in the carvings such as Mother Teresa, Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji (a Sikh Guru), Meerabai, Lord Swaminarayan and many more.
"It's about showcasing the importance of respect, love and compassion for all religions, making the temple dynamic and universal.
"The message being promoted is of Vasudev Kutumbakaum, a Hindu term to describe the world as one big family."
The chief priest at the Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir is Dr Raj Pandit Sharma, who said the new temple may stand out as a structure but it fits in with the eclectic local community.
"I think it will add to the charm of the area," he explained.
"Ealing Road already has mosques and churches and I think this temple will stand out as something unique that can be seen from some distance.
"I would hope that anybody who comes to the temple would find it a place where they will feel relaxed. It's like a sanctuary of peace amongst the bustling heart of London."
Special events
Each morning there will be prayers at the new temple in line with Hindu tradition.
It will house special events for such occasions as Diwali and Navratri as well as annual religious functions to celebrate the birth of Hindu saints and Gods like Jalaram Jayanti (Saint Jalarambapa) and Janmasthami (Lord Krishna).
Mr Jobanputra says the temple is expected to draw crowds from across London and visitors from much further afield.
"We're estimating around 400 to 500 local people will visit us during the weekdays and double that on weekends.
"We also expect visitors from other parts of the UK and Europe.
"We have already had visit requests from Spain, Portugal and Switzerland."
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Dalai Lama Advocates Non Violence Path for Tibet
PTI
Paddar(J&K), June 7, 2010
Maintaining that Tibetans follow the non-violent path for their fight for Tibet, Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Sunday said they are not seeking independence but meaningful "autonomy".
"We are not seeking independence... we are seeking meaningful autonomy for Tibet. That is the guarantee for preservation of Tibetan culture including language," the Lama told reporters when asked if Tibetans would achieve freedom from China.
"Now every Tibetan wants modernised Tibet. Therefore, as far as development is concerned, it is all in the interest of the people," he said.
Asked if there are differences among youth to adopt violent ways to achieve the goal, Lama said, "No, more than 99 per cent of Tibetans follow the non-violent path including youth organisations for peace resolution".
"Youth organisations right from the beginning stood for struggle for independence. (But) We are not fighting for independence, so there are differences. But, as far as non- violence is concerned, all agree."
The spiritual leader had on Saturday arrived here on a two-day visit to address a religious congregation. The city has a Buddhist population of about 7000.
This was his first visit to the area as his visits so far were confined to Leh and Ladakh where Buddhism is the main religion.
About India he said, "It is preserving its culture and promoting peace in the region. I am closely associated with India and consider myself as its peace ambassador."
Paddar(J&K), June 7, 2010
Maintaining that Tibetans follow the non-violent path for their fight for Tibet, Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Sunday said they are not seeking independence but meaningful "autonomy".
"We are not seeking independence... we are seeking meaningful autonomy for Tibet. That is the guarantee for preservation of Tibetan culture including language," the Lama told reporters when asked if Tibetans would achieve freedom from China.
"Now every Tibetan wants modernised Tibet. Therefore, as far as development is concerned, it is all in the interest of the people," he said.
Asked if there are differences among youth to adopt violent ways to achieve the goal, Lama said, "No, more than 99 per cent of Tibetans follow the non-violent path including youth organisations for peace resolution".
"Youth organisations right from the beginning stood for struggle for independence. (But) We are not fighting for independence, so there are differences. But, as far as non- violence is concerned, all agree."
The spiritual leader had on Saturday arrived here on a two-day visit to address a religious congregation. The city has a Buddhist population of about 7000.
This was his first visit to the area as his visits so far were confined to Leh and Ladakh where Buddhism is the main religion.
About India he said, "It is preserving its culture and promoting peace in the region. I am closely associated with India and consider myself as its peace ambassador."
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Spiritual Course - Watch the Fee Cost
LINDA LEICHT • NEWS-LEADER • JUNE 5, 2010
The tiny hermitage in the middle of the 23 acres of Mystic Trace provides the perfect place for Romona Baker to get away for a few days on a spiritual retreat.If she would prefer the smell of fresh baking bread and a little company, she can stay at the bed and breakfast.
Chris Davison and his family visit the retreat every few weeks for a Sunday morning small-group gathering where people share their spiritual questions and insights.
The retreat center near Pleasant Hope also offers spiritual direction and counseling by Tom and Kathryn Boone, co-founders of Life Development Ministries.
The Boones hope to introduce their unique retreat center and inclusive embrace of spirituality by inviting the public to a music festival next weekend.
On Saturday night, there will be three live bands, playing everything from folk to funk. Campers are invited to take advantage of the setting, and everyone is invited back on Sunday morning for music and storytelling, an alternative to traditional church worship.
Taking Root
Mystic Trace started as a spark of an idea in 1998 when Tom Boone began his own spiritual direction with a local adviser. "That's when I began to think about Christian spirituality as something different from the Christian religion and the church," he explains.
Boone is an ordained Baptist minister, serving in churches from 1971 until 2005, when he resigned his position as college student minister at University Heights Baptist Church after working there 16 years.
He earned his master's degree in Christian spirituality from Creighton University, adding to his seminary degree in religious education, and certification as a spiritual director and directed retreat leader.
Kathryn Boone is a licensed professional counselor who has a private practice in Springfield and at Mystic Trace.
While her services include traditional approaches, she will also add a "spiritual dimension," based on the desires of the client.
"It's not doctrinal or religious," she says. "It is just spiritual, helping the person tap into the resource of divine connections."
The tiny hermitage in the middle of the 23 acres of Mystic Trace provides the perfect place for Romona Baker to get away for a few days on a spiritual retreat.If she would prefer the smell of fresh baking bread and a little company, she can stay at the bed and breakfast.
Chris Davison and his family visit the retreat every few weeks for a Sunday morning small-group gathering where people share their spiritual questions and insights.
The retreat center near Pleasant Hope also offers spiritual direction and counseling by Tom and Kathryn Boone, co-founders of Life Development Ministries.
The Boones hope to introduce their unique retreat center and inclusive embrace of spirituality by inviting the public to a music festival next weekend.
On Saturday night, there will be three live bands, playing everything from folk to funk. Campers are invited to take advantage of the setting, and everyone is invited back on Sunday morning for music and storytelling, an alternative to traditional church worship.
Taking Root
Mystic Trace started as a spark of an idea in 1998 when Tom Boone began his own spiritual direction with a local adviser. "That's when I began to think about Christian spirituality as something different from the Christian religion and the church," he explains.
Boone is an ordained Baptist minister, serving in churches from 1971 until 2005, when he resigned his position as college student minister at University Heights Baptist Church after working there 16 years.
He earned his master's degree in Christian spirituality from Creighton University, adding to his seminary degree in religious education, and certification as a spiritual director and directed retreat leader.
Kathryn Boone is a licensed professional counselor who has a private practice in Springfield and at Mystic Trace.
While her services include traditional approaches, she will also add a "spiritual dimension," based on the desires of the client.
"It's not doctrinal or religious," she says. "It is just spiritual, helping the person tap into the resource of divine connections."
John Wooden was a Spiritual Man
MARTINSVILLE, Ind. -- The stately gym still stands, a massive red-brick edifice dating back more than 80 years -- to a time when The Wizard was The Martinsville High School gymnasium opened in 1924, and it was built to Hoosier Hysteria scale. The original capacity was 5,200 -- in a town with a population of 4,800 at the time. They built the thing with 16 locker rooms, in hopes of attracting the Indiana state high school tournament.
Even then, just 33 years after James Naismith produced basketball's Big Bang in Springfield, Mass., the hoops universe was expanding rapidly in Indiana.
And it was in this gym, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places, that the nascent hoops universe gave birth to one of its brightest stars.
This was the place where John Wooden's incomparable basketball life began taking real form. He would ultimately earn his prominent place in America's sports pantheon for work done far away, but the unrivaled 10 NCAA titles at UCLA were built on a moral, intellectual and athletic foundation established here in the heartland.
You could take him to the big city and make him a globally worshipped coaching icon, but you could never take the small-town Indiana out of John Wooden. And he was proud of that.
"He coached with the values and principles he learned in Indiana," said Wooden's closest living friend in Martinsville, Larry Maxwell.
In reciprocity, Martinsville still cherishes its identity as Wooden's hometown. In 1989 they named the current high school gym after him, and his signature is on the court. A street near the school bears his name. The trophy case contains pictures of a teenage Wooden in uniform. And a huge hightop sneaker in the school lobby is decorated on one side with the coach's famed Pyramid of Success.
"It's a big deal," being the hometown of John Wooden, said Martinsville athletic director Don Lipps, sitting in his office beneath a large framed print of The Wizard. "It means quite a bit."
Even into his dotage, Martinsville meant quite a bit to Wooden. Whenever he was in Indianapolis for the Wooden Tradition, an annual college doubleheader, the coach would make the rustic, 30-mile drive south for a day.
The one place he never failed to visit was the small cemetery in Centerton, seven miles from Martinsville, where the Woodens lived when John was a boy. His parents and two sisters are buried there.
You could usually count on a visit to the eponymous high school gym, too. More than once, Lipps said, they unlocked the gym on a Sunday so Wooden's great-grandchildren could scurry around the gym playing basketball. The eternal coach would sit in a chair watching them, critiquing shooting form and chiding anyone who dribbled behind their back.merely a sorcerer's apprentice.And no trip home could be complete without a visit to Poe's Restaurant. Wooden loved the persimmon pudding.
"I think he was very appreciative of his roots," Lipps said.
The roots run deep. Nearly to the beginning of basketball time.
Befitting the Hoosier archetype, Wooden first started shooting baskets at a hoop his father, Joshua, put up outside the barn on the family's hog farm in Centerton. When tainted hog cholera medication cost the Woodens their herd and ultimately their farm, hard times set in.
They moved to the seat of Morgan County and shuffled from residence to residence while Wooden went to Martinsville High and became one of the infant sport's earliest heroes.
In brittle black-and-white pictures that hang just inside the gym's doorway, he wears a sternly serious expression and a jersey that read "Artesia City" -- in reference to Martinsville's plethora of restorative mineral water springs. His socks are curled down over his canvas shoes.
Playing for Glenn Curtis -- a disciplinarian who would win four state titles and one day have the old gym named after him -- muscular and intense Johnny Wooden was something to see.
From 1926-28, he would lead Martinsville to three straight state championship games, losing as a sophomore and a senior and winning it as a junior. Later at Purdue, he would become the first consensus three-time All-American in the history of college basketball.
And then he merely became the greatest coach in the history of team sports.
His first stop was at a high school at Dayton, Ky., not far from Cincinnati. The Dayton Green Devils would go 6-11 that first year -- the one and only losing season Wooden ever experienced, as a player or coach.
After that it was nothing but success at South Bend Central High School, then Indiana State (where he succeeded his old high-school coach, Curtis), and finally UCLA. Los Angeles, of all places, and the 1960s and 70s, of all times, was the setting for Wooden to export his middle-American sensibilities and Hoosier hoops fundamentals to the world."When you think about what was going on in Southern California at that time, it's amazing that he could coach the way he did," Maxwell said. "He held to what he learned here.
"People say he couldn't win today, with today's players. I think you put him on the end of the bench, he'd find a way to win."
In an era that celebrated the free spirit, Wooden steadfastly championed team spirit. He was a square and a stickler at a time when authority was vilified. And yet it worked.
In October 1972, of the two best players he had, hippie-on-training-wheels Bill Walton, showed up for the Bruins team picture with a beard. Walton argued that he had the right to grow a beard and should not be ordered to shave it.
"Bill, I appreciate that," Wooden told him. "And we will miss you."
Walton shaved in time for the picture.
Wooden's word was law, but he still approached his profession as more of an educator than a dictator. He possessed an academic quality almost completely missing in today's coaching ranks.
How many other basketball coaches quoted Shakespeare or wrote poetry? Who else in coaching has come up with anything as enduring and popular as Wooden's Pyramid of Success? What other coach has ever sounded so wise when talking about everything but basketball?
All of that was a product of the upbringing Wooden got in his home state -- first in Hall, Ind., where he was born ("just a wide spot in the road," Maxwell said). Then Centerton, where the family farm house still stands, though the barn does not. Then Martinsville.
Early in his high school days, Wooden met a girl named Nellie Riley at a carnival. He spent the next few years visiting Nell's house at 90 South Wayne Street, but had to be careful doing it -- Glenn Curtis lived nearby, and he forbade his players from having girlfriends.
The girlfriend thing would only happen once for Wooden. Nell became his wife, and even after her death in 1985 he never dated another woman. He was a one-woman man his entire life, exporting Nell Wooden beyond Indiana as well.
One of the few things John Wooden didn't take with him from his hometown was its unfortunate racial history. There was a major Ku Klux Klan rally in the town square during Wooden's youth, and the overwhelmingly white town long carried a reputation as a forbidding place for minorities.
But it was Wooden who broke the color barrier in the NAIA national basketball tournament, playing reserve guard Clarence Walker while the coach at Indiana State in 1947. The previous year, Wooden had declined an NAIA tourney bid because it prohibited African-Americans from playing.
That was consistent with the nobility and wisdom so often ascribed to John R. Wooden. Those are characteristics he learned growing up in a small Indiana town -- characteristics he exported from Martinsville to the world.
Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.
Even then, just 33 years after James Naismith produced basketball's Big Bang in Springfield, Mass., the hoops universe was expanding rapidly in Indiana.
And it was in this gym, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places, that the nascent hoops universe gave birth to one of its brightest stars.
This was the place where John Wooden's incomparable basketball life began taking real form. He would ultimately earn his prominent place in America's sports pantheon for work done far away, but the unrivaled 10 NCAA titles at UCLA were built on a moral, intellectual and athletic foundation established here in the heartland.
You could take him to the big city and make him a globally worshipped coaching icon, but you could never take the small-town Indiana out of John Wooden. And he was proud of that.
"He coached with the values and principles he learned in Indiana," said Wooden's closest living friend in Martinsville, Larry Maxwell.
In reciprocity, Martinsville still cherishes its identity as Wooden's hometown. In 1989 they named the current high school gym after him, and his signature is on the court. A street near the school bears his name. The trophy case contains pictures of a teenage Wooden in uniform. And a huge hightop sneaker in the school lobby is decorated on one side with the coach's famed Pyramid of Success.
"It's a big deal," being the hometown of John Wooden, said Martinsville athletic director Don Lipps, sitting in his office beneath a large framed print of The Wizard. "It means quite a bit."
Even into his dotage, Martinsville meant quite a bit to Wooden. Whenever he was in Indianapolis for the Wooden Tradition, an annual college doubleheader, the coach would make the rustic, 30-mile drive south for a day.
The one place he never failed to visit was the small cemetery in Centerton, seven miles from Martinsville, where the Woodens lived when John was a boy. His parents and two sisters are buried there.
You could usually count on a visit to the eponymous high school gym, too. More than once, Lipps said, they unlocked the gym on a Sunday so Wooden's great-grandchildren could scurry around the gym playing basketball. The eternal coach would sit in a chair watching them, critiquing shooting form and chiding anyone who dribbled behind their back.merely a sorcerer's apprentice.And no trip home could be complete without a visit to Poe's Restaurant. Wooden loved the persimmon pudding.
"I think he was very appreciative of his roots," Lipps said.
The roots run deep. Nearly to the beginning of basketball time.
Befitting the Hoosier archetype, Wooden first started shooting baskets at a hoop his father, Joshua, put up outside the barn on the family's hog farm in Centerton. When tainted hog cholera medication cost the Woodens their herd and ultimately their farm, hard times set in.
They moved to the seat of Morgan County and shuffled from residence to residence while Wooden went to Martinsville High and became one of the infant sport's earliest heroes.
In brittle black-and-white pictures that hang just inside the gym's doorway, he wears a sternly serious expression and a jersey that read "Artesia City" -- in reference to Martinsville's plethora of restorative mineral water springs. His socks are curled down over his canvas shoes.
Playing for Glenn Curtis -- a disciplinarian who would win four state titles and one day have the old gym named after him -- muscular and intense Johnny Wooden was something to see.
From 1926-28, he would lead Martinsville to three straight state championship games, losing as a sophomore and a senior and winning it as a junior. Later at Purdue, he would become the first consensus three-time All-American in the history of college basketball.
And then he merely became the greatest coach in the history of team sports.
His first stop was at a high school at Dayton, Ky., not far from Cincinnati. The Dayton Green Devils would go 6-11 that first year -- the one and only losing season Wooden ever experienced, as a player or coach.
After that it was nothing but success at South Bend Central High School, then Indiana State (where he succeeded his old high-school coach, Curtis), and finally UCLA. Los Angeles, of all places, and the 1960s and 70s, of all times, was the setting for Wooden to export his middle-American sensibilities and Hoosier hoops fundamentals to the world."When you think about what was going on in Southern California at that time, it's amazing that he could coach the way he did," Maxwell said. "He held to what he learned here.
"People say he couldn't win today, with today's players. I think you put him on the end of the bench, he'd find a way to win."
In an era that celebrated the free spirit, Wooden steadfastly championed team spirit. He was a square and a stickler at a time when authority was vilified. And yet it worked.
In October 1972, of the two best players he had, hippie-on-training-wheels Bill Walton, showed up for the Bruins team picture with a beard. Walton argued that he had the right to grow a beard and should not be ordered to shave it.
"Bill, I appreciate that," Wooden told him. "And we will miss you."
Walton shaved in time for the picture.
Wooden's word was law, but he still approached his profession as more of an educator than a dictator. He possessed an academic quality almost completely missing in today's coaching ranks.
How many other basketball coaches quoted Shakespeare or wrote poetry? Who else in coaching has come up with anything as enduring and popular as Wooden's Pyramid of Success? What other coach has ever sounded so wise when talking about everything but basketball?
All of that was a product of the upbringing Wooden got in his home state -- first in Hall, Ind., where he was born ("just a wide spot in the road," Maxwell said). Then Centerton, where the family farm house still stands, though the barn does not. Then Martinsville.
Early in his high school days, Wooden met a girl named Nellie Riley at a carnival. He spent the next few years visiting Nell's house at 90 South Wayne Street, but had to be careful doing it -- Glenn Curtis lived nearby, and he forbade his players from having girlfriends.
The girlfriend thing would only happen once for Wooden. Nell became his wife, and even after her death in 1985 he never dated another woman. He was a one-woman man his entire life, exporting Nell Wooden beyond Indiana as well.
One of the few things John Wooden didn't take with him from his hometown was its unfortunate racial history. There was a major Ku Klux Klan rally in the town square during Wooden's youth, and the overwhelmingly white town long carried a reputation as a forbidding place for minorities.
But it was Wooden who broke the color barrier in the NAIA national basketball tournament, playing reserve guard Clarence Walker while the coach at Indiana State in 1947. The previous year, Wooden had declined an NAIA tourney bid because it prohibited African-Americans from playing.
That was consistent with the nobility and wisdom so often ascribed to John R. Wooden. Those are characteristics he learned growing up in a small Indiana town -- characteristics he exported from Martinsville to the world.
Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Rabbi Working at Camden Hospice
For the first time in its history, the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead has its own chaplain.
Seriously ill patients at the Royal Free Hospital have access to a multi-faith chaplaincy for their spiritual comfort. But the one and only chaplain at the Hospice is a rabbi. Why? Because, they say, he is simply the best man for the job.
Markus Lange is young, modern – he has guitar and poetry sessions on Fridays – and his approach, like the hospice, is strictly non-denominational, as is his style: “Hello, my name is Markus – I’m here if you need a chat.”
And the chat is not about religion. One of the best and longest conversations he has had, he says, was with a man who said: “I’m afraid you’re talking to the biggest atheist in town.”
Mr Lange was born in Germany, had a quiet, rural upbringing there, left when he was 20 and spent the next years travelling and studying in Europe and, perhaps most significantly, in New York; an important step, he says, because in America there is a holistic approach to chaplaincy.
“I studied there with a team of specialists from all faiths,” said Mr Lange. “Our group was Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran – a great mix of people. Which is what you find when you go into a hospice.”
He thought he’d end up in Jewish education but friends persuaded him to go for the rabbinate. The studying continues – he will be ordained in July – but the 19 hours a week he spends in the hospice are of great importance to him. He is there, he says, for everyone: friends, doctors, neighbours, carers, and staff, as well as patients – and for the receptionists, too, who see so many people come and go and who can suffer their own share of distress. Mr Lange gives them all time, and he listens.
He makes sure that the practical lines of communication work well (he has a bleeper) but says that it is rare to have an emergency.
“If we have already spent a lot of time with people, then we have helped them along the way,” Mr Lange said. “It’s about being spiritually present.”
How often do you actually talk about God? There is wisdom that has operated for thousands of years, and there can be connections, but it is not, says Mr Lange firmly, about religion or religious ritual. The hospice provides another dimension.
He said: “It’s not, ‘are you Catholic?’ or ‘are you Jewish?’ or whatever faith. “The talk can be about plans, about concern for the family, about contacting a brother someone hasn’t seen for years. It is above all taking care of people’s emotional needs.”
What if someone needs a religious context, or indeed asks for a prayer? “I ask if there is a text that matters to them,” said Mr Lange. “We can all link into ancient wisdom, cultures and traditions. A chaplain is there to tap into people’s own spiritual resources. I do not have to be of the same faith.”
He smiles, and sums up his position in a few trenchant words: “They have a Jewish chaplain at the Royal Free. Here we have a chaplain who happens to be Jewish.”
Care at the hospice is provided free of charge to residents of north London. It will cost £4.6million to run it for the next 12 months, and half of that depends on voluntary contributions.
Fundraising is of the utmost importance, therefore, and in June there will be a repeat of a concert and afternoon tea, one of the most delightful fundraising events of the season, which last year raised more than £40,000 for the hospice.
This year’s concert, “Mostly Beethoven and Cream Tea”, will take place at Hampstead Parish Church, Church Row, Hampstead, at 3pm on Sunday, June 13, and will feature the Fidelio Piano Quartet – among them the Hampstead cellist Gemma Rosefield. The concert will be followed by a cream tea donated by Hampstead patisseries.
Tickets for the tea and the concert are £12.50. To book call Mary on 0207 853 3415 or Emma on 0207 853 3436.http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2010/jun/health-news-rabbi-explains-his-approach-offering-spiritual-comfort-patients-all-faiths
Seriously ill patients at the Royal Free Hospital have access to a multi-faith chaplaincy for their spiritual comfort. But the one and only chaplain at the Hospice is a rabbi. Why? Because, they say, he is simply the best man for the job.
Markus Lange is young, modern – he has guitar and poetry sessions on Fridays – and his approach, like the hospice, is strictly non-denominational, as is his style: “Hello, my name is Markus – I’m here if you need a chat.”
And the chat is not about religion. One of the best and longest conversations he has had, he says, was with a man who said: “I’m afraid you’re talking to the biggest atheist in town.”
Mr Lange was born in Germany, had a quiet, rural upbringing there, left when he was 20 and spent the next years travelling and studying in Europe and, perhaps most significantly, in New York; an important step, he says, because in America there is a holistic approach to chaplaincy.
“I studied there with a team of specialists from all faiths,” said Mr Lange. “Our group was Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran – a great mix of people. Which is what you find when you go into a hospice.”
He thought he’d end up in Jewish education but friends persuaded him to go for the rabbinate. The studying continues – he will be ordained in July – but the 19 hours a week he spends in the hospice are of great importance to him. He is there, he says, for everyone: friends, doctors, neighbours, carers, and staff, as well as patients – and for the receptionists, too, who see so many people come and go and who can suffer their own share of distress. Mr Lange gives them all time, and he listens.
He makes sure that the practical lines of communication work well (he has a bleeper) but says that it is rare to have an emergency.
“If we have already spent a lot of time with people, then we have helped them along the way,” Mr Lange said. “It’s about being spiritually present.”
How often do you actually talk about God? There is wisdom that has operated for thousands of years, and there can be connections, but it is not, says Mr Lange firmly, about religion or religious ritual. The hospice provides another dimension.
He said: “It’s not, ‘are you Catholic?’ or ‘are you Jewish?’ or whatever faith. “The talk can be about plans, about concern for the family, about contacting a brother someone hasn’t seen for years. It is above all taking care of people’s emotional needs.”
What if someone needs a religious context, or indeed asks for a prayer? “I ask if there is a text that matters to them,” said Mr Lange. “We can all link into ancient wisdom, cultures and traditions. A chaplain is there to tap into people’s own spiritual resources. I do not have to be of the same faith.”
He smiles, and sums up his position in a few trenchant words: “They have a Jewish chaplain at the Royal Free. Here we have a chaplain who happens to be Jewish.”
Care at the hospice is provided free of charge to residents of north London. It will cost £4.6million to run it for the next 12 months, and half of that depends on voluntary contributions.
Fundraising is of the utmost importance, therefore, and in June there will be a repeat of a concert and afternoon tea, one of the most delightful fundraising events of the season, which last year raised more than £40,000 for the hospice.
This year’s concert, “Mostly Beethoven and Cream Tea”, will take place at Hampstead Parish Church, Church Row, Hampstead, at 3pm on Sunday, June 13, and will feature the Fidelio Piano Quartet – among them the Hampstead cellist Gemma Rosefield. The concert will be followed by a cream tea donated by Hampstead patisseries.
Tickets for the tea and the concert are £12.50. To book call Mary on 0207 853 3415 or Emma on 0207 853 3436.http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2010/jun/health-news-rabbi-explains-his-approach-offering-spiritual-comfort-patients-all-faiths
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A Different Perspective on Spiritual Enlightenment
Written by Doc Edwards
Thursday, 27 May 2010 12:01
About a hundred and sixty years ago scientists at the Borden company came up with "Instant" milk, though, that naturally meant --- unless you're one of those who drink it strictly "black," --- that "Instant" coffee would follow. And so it did. So, here we are a little more than a hundred years later, and nearly everything now has its "Instant" or condensed version. Why then should anyone still be surprised to find --- that is, if research at the University of Wisconsin, Stanford, and M.I.T. over the past few years is any legitimate indicator of "things to come"--- that such a previously unthinkable thing as �Instant� Spiritual Enlightenment as well as "Instant" Higher Mental Powers might not also be possible? Of course, "Instant� might be pushing the envelop just a bit too far --- instead, let's just say simply "a faster route to enlightenment and higher mental functioning and powers." But at any rate, the point is, given the Western World's seemingly insatiable appetite, desire, and demand for immediate gratification in nearly everything else, who�s to say they shouldn't or couldn't have it in spirituality as well.
Where it all began is when researchers at the University of Wisconsin's Neurological Research Department asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama to lend them a few well-seasoned and practiced monks to explore brain wave phenomena, particularly in this case, anyway, the quite obvious effects that certain emotional states seem to have on the production of brain waves in the human brain and mind.
Like the Buddha himself might have suddenly appeared in the lab, you can imagine the excitement that resulted when it was discovered that when these monks, as well as other experienced meditators, held or had strong feelings of compassion or empathy, it produced, as a consequence in their display of brain wave activity, as it was recorded and documented by an E.E. G. machine, an incredible rise in the production and manifestation of the rarest brain wave frequency of all, the illusive and mysterious, Gamma wave,� the mystical wave of illumination and enlightenment,� as some have come to call it.
Of course, almost everyone, at least everyone who has any interests at all in higher, more beneficial, more intuitive, and enhanced states of consciousness is familiar with the standard and known effects produced by such brain waves as Alpha, with its profound effect on relaxation and creativity, and Theta waves with their own credentials and credits for producing states of higher consciousness, as well as Beta, which is often called, the Reality (this reality) brain wave, and its uses in treating certain mental disorders, but few there be that know much about, well less have actually experienced , what is truly and rightly called, the brain waves master brain wave,.. the Gamma wave.
The remarkable thing about the Gamma brain wave frequency -- among a long and growing list of remarkable things already --- is that it is the one brain wave that can duplicate all of the effects produced by all of the other brain wave patterns together... ", and then some," as they say! In a mysterious way that defies even an explanation by the university researchers, the Gamma wave frequency seems to unlock and open in the human mind a ancient doorway and portal that began closing --- at least in most of our species--- long ago when our survival as a species no longer depended entirely on some or all members of the tribe seeing and knowing psychically, through a paranormal side effect of this illusive Gamma brain wave, what was on the other side of the mountain long before they ever could actually physically see it with their eyes. Obviously, as well as, inexplicably, both then as now, the activity and presence of this Gamma wave induces and switches on mystical powers of clairvoyance and precognition, even some claim sudden remarkable flashes of incredible states of profound mystical awareness and enlightenment --- it has for me and many that I have worked with, as well.
When the Gamma-Effect, as it is being called, is induced by a special new technique for activating this higher Gamma wave (see my website, www.tomorrowsprophecy.com for more info) even the most average of human minds can experience, if the Gamma brain wave frequency is properly induced, the sudden ability to function at paranormal levels so high that they are capable of producing and manifesting not only states of higher enlightenment, but also to duplicate feats of Psi activity that would make Uri Geller blush for having been so presumptuous as to call himself a psychic.
C-O-M-P-A-S-I-O-N Spelled Backwards Spells Gamma
The really interesting thing to develop and come out of all of this research at the University of Wisconsin really didn't take place there, but in Tennessee, where several of us in a group, calling ourselves then, the Gamma-Mind Group, all of whom were either practicing clairvoyants or had some other credentials and background in Mind Enhancement and Higher states of consciousness, such as that associated with T.M. (Transcendental Meditation), saw a potential in the results of this research that others either didn't see or didn't care to develop. Really the theory behind the technique we have today, which we proposed several years ago and then spent several years developing and tweaking, is very simple in principle, but produces as you can imagine profound results and effects: We reasoned that if the Gamma Effect (as we began to call the collective phenomenal results of increased intelligence, altered states, and paranormal functioning that resulted when Gamma waves were induced in the brain) could be manifested in the human brain in response to the hyper-emotional state produced (at least in those capable of these strong feelings) by feelings of great compassion and empathy, then why could not most anyone, Buddhist monk or a busboy in a restaurant, by intentionally inducing in their conscious awareness a profound feeling of compassion not also likewise exhibit a profound and pronounced state of high Gamma activity. They did. And it worked. And it works every time as long as your feelings, filtered through your emotional make-up and sustained and supported by the imagination, are developed out of, and supported by, a high state of SINCERETY as to the feelings generated.
As one of our members, a fellow co-researcher pointed out, once when a student asked to be shown exactly how to do it, after trying a time or two on his own to induce the Gamma Effect without following the exact technique and procedure as we had set it out to be followed, my fellow co-researcher said in response, �It�s kind of like when you've tried to make yourself cry." The young student looked more perplexed than when he asked to be shown, just a moment ago, and shook his head back and forth slowly in denial of ever having tried to make himself cry.
My co-researcher, an older guy about sixty, looked just a tad bit exasperated, �When you were a kid, didn't you ever try and make yourself cry so the grown-ups would pay attention to your faked illness so they wouldn't make you go to school that day, or else you wanted to make them think they had brought you near to seeing the white light before death from some otherwise lame and barely felt spanking, just so they wouldn't try a little harder to deliver the real wallop that might actually make you cry? The beleaguered student only stared at my partner in blank eyed, doe-faced amazement, "I've got to cry...too...to induce Gamma?
Thursday, 27 May 2010 12:01
About a hundred and sixty years ago scientists at the Borden company came up with "Instant" milk, though, that naturally meant --- unless you're one of those who drink it strictly "black," --- that "Instant" coffee would follow. And so it did. So, here we are a little more than a hundred years later, and nearly everything now has its "Instant" or condensed version. Why then should anyone still be surprised to find --- that is, if research at the University of Wisconsin, Stanford, and M.I.T. over the past few years is any legitimate indicator of "things to come"--- that such a previously unthinkable thing as �Instant� Spiritual Enlightenment as well as "Instant" Higher Mental Powers might not also be possible? Of course, "Instant� might be pushing the envelop just a bit too far --- instead, let's just say simply "a faster route to enlightenment and higher mental functioning and powers." But at any rate, the point is, given the Western World's seemingly insatiable appetite, desire, and demand for immediate gratification in nearly everything else, who�s to say they shouldn't or couldn't have it in spirituality as well.
Where it all began is when researchers at the University of Wisconsin's Neurological Research Department asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama to lend them a few well-seasoned and practiced monks to explore brain wave phenomena, particularly in this case, anyway, the quite obvious effects that certain emotional states seem to have on the production of brain waves in the human brain and mind.
Like the Buddha himself might have suddenly appeared in the lab, you can imagine the excitement that resulted when it was discovered that when these monks, as well as other experienced meditators, held or had strong feelings of compassion or empathy, it produced, as a consequence in their display of brain wave activity, as it was recorded and documented by an E.E. G. machine, an incredible rise in the production and manifestation of the rarest brain wave frequency of all, the illusive and mysterious, Gamma wave,� the mystical wave of illumination and enlightenment,� as some have come to call it.
Of course, almost everyone, at least everyone who has any interests at all in higher, more beneficial, more intuitive, and enhanced states of consciousness is familiar with the standard and known effects produced by such brain waves as Alpha, with its profound effect on relaxation and creativity, and Theta waves with their own credentials and credits for producing states of higher consciousness, as well as Beta, which is often called, the Reality (this reality) brain wave, and its uses in treating certain mental disorders, but few there be that know much about, well less have actually experienced , what is truly and rightly called, the brain waves master brain wave,.. the Gamma wave.
The remarkable thing about the Gamma brain wave frequency -- among a long and growing list of remarkable things already --- is that it is the one brain wave that can duplicate all of the effects produced by all of the other brain wave patterns together... ", and then some," as they say! In a mysterious way that defies even an explanation by the university researchers, the Gamma wave frequency seems to unlock and open in the human mind a ancient doorway and portal that began closing --- at least in most of our species--- long ago when our survival as a species no longer depended entirely on some or all members of the tribe seeing and knowing psychically, through a paranormal side effect of this illusive Gamma brain wave, what was on the other side of the mountain long before they ever could actually physically see it with their eyes. Obviously, as well as, inexplicably, both then as now, the activity and presence of this Gamma wave induces and switches on mystical powers of clairvoyance and precognition, even some claim sudden remarkable flashes of incredible states of profound mystical awareness and enlightenment --- it has for me and many that I have worked with, as well.
When the Gamma-Effect, as it is being called, is induced by a special new technique for activating this higher Gamma wave (see my website, www.tomorrowsprophecy.com for more info) even the most average of human minds can experience, if the Gamma brain wave frequency is properly induced, the sudden ability to function at paranormal levels so high that they are capable of producing and manifesting not only states of higher enlightenment, but also to duplicate feats of Psi activity that would make Uri Geller blush for having been so presumptuous as to call himself a psychic.
C-O-M-P-A-S-I-O-N Spelled Backwards Spells Gamma
The really interesting thing to develop and come out of all of this research at the University of Wisconsin really didn't take place there, but in Tennessee, where several of us in a group, calling ourselves then, the Gamma-Mind Group, all of whom were either practicing clairvoyants or had some other credentials and background in Mind Enhancement and Higher states of consciousness, such as that associated with T.M. (Transcendental Meditation), saw a potential in the results of this research that others either didn't see or didn't care to develop. Really the theory behind the technique we have today, which we proposed several years ago and then spent several years developing and tweaking, is very simple in principle, but produces as you can imagine profound results and effects: We reasoned that if the Gamma Effect (as we began to call the collective phenomenal results of increased intelligence, altered states, and paranormal functioning that resulted when Gamma waves were induced in the brain) could be manifested in the human brain in response to the hyper-emotional state produced (at least in those capable of these strong feelings) by feelings of great compassion and empathy, then why could not most anyone, Buddhist monk or a busboy in a restaurant, by intentionally inducing in their conscious awareness a profound feeling of compassion not also likewise exhibit a profound and pronounced state of high Gamma activity. They did. And it worked. And it works every time as long as your feelings, filtered through your emotional make-up and sustained and supported by the imagination, are developed out of, and supported by, a high state of SINCERETY as to the feelings generated.
As one of our members, a fellow co-researcher pointed out, once when a student asked to be shown exactly how to do it, after trying a time or two on his own to induce the Gamma Effect without following the exact technique and procedure as we had set it out to be followed, my fellow co-researcher said in response, �It�s kind of like when you've tried to make yourself cry." The young student looked more perplexed than when he asked to be shown, just a moment ago, and shook his head back and forth slowly in denial of ever having tried to make himself cry.
My co-researcher, an older guy about sixty, looked just a tad bit exasperated, �When you were a kid, didn't you ever try and make yourself cry so the grown-ups would pay attention to your faked illness so they wouldn't make you go to school that day, or else you wanted to make them think they had brought you near to seeing the white light before death from some otherwise lame and barely felt spanking, just so they wouldn't try a little harder to deliver the real wallop that might actually make you cry? The beleaguered student only stared at my partner in blank eyed, doe-faced amazement, "I've got to cry...too...to induce Gamma?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Dalai Lama Still a Marxist - Dalai Says So in NYC
y VERENA DOBNIK, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - The Dalai Lama on Thursday declared that he is still a Marxist in spirit who condemns capitalism as a system whose main goal is "how to make profit."
Marxism has "the only economy system expressing concern of equal distribution (of wealth); that is moral ethics," the Tibetan Buddhist leader told a news conference at the start of a four-day New York visit.
The 74-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke minutes before his afternoon teaching session at Radio City Music Hall on the stage that hosts the dancing Rockettes every Christmas.
Tickets for each of six such sessions -- two a day starting Thursday morning -- sold for $20 to $60 apiece. But several Internet sites were reselling them at prices nearing $700.
Asked what he thought about people having to pay to hear his spiritual lectures, he said: "This is up to organizer. I have no connection."
He then said that he always asks organizers of his worldwide appearances that any tickets be "cheap" and that he personally never accepts payment. In addition, some of the proceeds from the events go to hunger relief and other charities, he said.
However, to laughter, the Dalai Lama added that after his teaching sessions, certain organizations do "look a little wealthier."
He said some friends tell him not to mention that "still, I am Marxist" -- because he believes the goal of many Western democracies is "only how to make profit," creating economic inequalities that contribute to social ills.
But in practice, he added, Marxism as applied by authoritarian governments, such as China's, is oppressive, because it lacks an independent judiciary, a free press and human rights for his fellow Buddhists in Chinese-governed Tibet.
Thousands of Tibetans rose up against Chinese rule in 1959, and the Dalai Lama was forced to escape to India with his followers. He's now the political leader of Tibet's exiled government.
On Thursday afternoon at Radio City Music Hall, the Dalai Lama planned to speak about the philosophical concept of emptiness and the way to enlightenment. Four more teaching sessions were planned for Friday and Saturday.
On Sunday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Dalai Lama was to participate in an interfaith discussion titled "Kinship and its Meaning in Our World Today."
He said he believes followers of all religions should respect one another.
"Islam was also created by God," he said, letting out a giggle when several reporters appeared surprised.
He came to appreciate Muslims during his 50 years living in India, he said. And now, when "the terrorists come from Pakistan," most Muslims still deserve respect.
As he left the site of the briefing, in a basement room of the hall, a beaming Dalai Lama assured reporters that despite his view of capitalism, he enjoys being in the world's financial capital.
"I love New York!" he exclaimed.
NEW YORK - The Dalai Lama on Thursday declared that he is still a Marxist in spirit who condemns capitalism as a system whose main goal is "how to make profit."
Marxism has "the only economy system expressing concern of equal distribution (of wealth); that is moral ethics," the Tibetan Buddhist leader told a news conference at the start of a four-day New York visit.
The 74-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke minutes before his afternoon teaching session at Radio City Music Hall on the stage that hosts the dancing Rockettes every Christmas.
Tickets for each of six such sessions -- two a day starting Thursday morning -- sold for $20 to $60 apiece. But several Internet sites were reselling them at prices nearing $700.
Asked what he thought about people having to pay to hear his spiritual lectures, he said: "This is up to organizer. I have no connection."
He then said that he always asks organizers of his worldwide appearances that any tickets be "cheap" and that he personally never accepts payment. In addition, some of the proceeds from the events go to hunger relief and other charities, he said.
However, to laughter, the Dalai Lama added that after his teaching sessions, certain organizations do "look a little wealthier."
He said some friends tell him not to mention that "still, I am Marxist" -- because he believes the goal of many Western democracies is "only how to make profit," creating economic inequalities that contribute to social ills.
But in practice, he added, Marxism as applied by authoritarian governments, such as China's, is oppressive, because it lacks an independent judiciary, a free press and human rights for his fellow Buddhists in Chinese-governed Tibet.
Thousands of Tibetans rose up against Chinese rule in 1959, and the Dalai Lama was forced to escape to India with his followers. He's now the political leader of Tibet's exiled government.
On Thursday afternoon at Radio City Music Hall, the Dalai Lama planned to speak about the philosophical concept of emptiness and the way to enlightenment. Four more teaching sessions were planned for Friday and Saturday.
On Sunday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Dalai Lama was to participate in an interfaith discussion titled "Kinship and its Meaning in Our World Today."
He said he believes followers of all religions should respect one another.
"Islam was also created by God," he said, letting out a giggle when several reporters appeared surprised.
He came to appreciate Muslims during his 50 years living in India, he said. And now, when "the terrorists come from Pakistan," most Muslims still deserve respect.
As he left the site of the briefing, in a basement room of the hall, a beaming Dalai Lama assured reporters that despite his view of capitalism, he enjoys being in the world's financial capital.
"I love New York!" he exclaimed.
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