| *BLIA YAD MEETING* MANCHESTER BLIA YAD AND HOLLAND BLIA YAD |
| The Youth section of BLIA Manchester came to Holland by Easter. I hope they enjoyed some good days in Holland. We took our visitors to "Zaanse Schans"(windmills-village), "Keukenhof" (flowergarden) and downtown Amsterdam. We also went to the "Anne Frank Museum". At the temple we had a lot of chit chat and played silly games like singing Karaoke and pictionary. But there was one huge phenomenon called "UNO", a spectaculair game with a lot of flexible rules and possibilities. Furthermore we held a discussion with Venerable Man Kuan. Questions about: - what does Buddhism mean to you? - when do you apply Buddhism in your daily life? - what do you do when you have troubles in your daily life? The discussion ended up in a questionround. Questions about how we should express: Buddhism Relies on me. Or what should we do when other religions are trying their best to convert you into their believe. |
| Buddhism is basicly giving the oppertunity to stop the suffering of life. This doesn't mean to commit suicide and then with this ending the pain. But he is giving you methods to penetrate throught the pain. Psychotherapy in the western world were already using a lot of methods of Buddhism, such as breathingtechniques, meditationtechniques and interpretationtechniques. All three are methods been used by many psychologists and therapists. A very common problem is "agression". Agression is a human nature, it's caused by many fysical conditions. Like the hormones of the hypofyse and the hypothalumus. Two hormon mechanisms. What the techniques can do for somebody in a bad mood, is let the person become calm again, at least trying to control the anger. It's very difficult when the person has a disturbance in the hormon mechanism. The disturbance could lead the person to hav serious untolerant behaviour. This is because of the hyperproduction of the hormones. Medicines would be wise to give at these kind of situations. But as everybody know a training of behaviour is more wise, because medicines have a lot of complications for the health. It could disturb somebodies sleeppatern or other common problems. That's why the techniques to use to calm yourself are better and usefull in different situations in daily life. Breathingtechniques: We all know the techiniqe of close your eyes and take 5 deep breaths. Or go out and take some fresh air. In Buddhism we often use the techniqe to calm ourselves in combination with Zen-meditation. Zen-meditation is meant to control your own mind again. Nothing more then that. But how do we control our mind again?? First of all try to live in the present moment again. The moment in what you are now is also the moment of calm and peace. It doesn't matter what kind of environment you are in, allthough a quiet and peacefull place will stimulate the practice. After we reach the calm and the control of mind, we can start the interpretationsection, but before we start this, you have to have a common flexible thoughts and views about many extremes of joy and suffering. All extremes of life are sources of energy to create your wisdom. The breathing and meditation practices are meant to calm yourself in difficult situations. Like when you are in fear, anger, desperated, sad or ignorant. |
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| MORE..... PHOTOS OF MEETING |
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