Dorje Shugden Contraditions

There is no ban, but there is a ban

"Together with documents pertaining to this ban on the worship of Dholgyal, this Congress will urge each and every spiritual master, including geshes, that in the interest of the health of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Independence, they should stop worshipping Dholgyal;"

USB Drive from Windows7 USB DVD tool

I just had such an issue trying to create a bootable USB drive on Windows 8.1. Every article online states that you should use the Windows7 USB DVD tool which is easily downloadable from Microsoft. When I tried to install it, it just did nothing. No error messages, nothing. In the end, I opened a command prompt and navigated to my downloads dir and ran:

> Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe /C

Which enabled me to extract the files from the executable and then double-click "setup.cmd" and it installed!

Posting this here in case it helps someone else.

Ecstatic Truth

Watching Grizzly Man, I'm starting to understand what Werner Herzog means by ecstatic truth.

Concentration

A new book looks at concentration, there a great related article in the NYT. I especially liked this quote:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”

Via Tricycle

The history of Dorje Shugden

It seems that the history of Dorje Shugden has been presented in an unbalanced way.

Evelyn Glennie

This is both revelatory and inspiring:

Evelyn Glennie: How to truly listen

Via 21awake

Byron Katie

This technique seems to fit very snugly with Kadampa practice, so far I have found it very incisive and deep. I don't agree with many of the ways she presents "the work", but at its core, its simply beautiful: