Vegan Guide to San Francisco
Vegan Guide to San Francisco |
- Vegan Guide to San Francisco
- Home Security: Try These 10 Ways to Make Your Home Safer – Without a Gun
- Early Morning Buddhist Spirituality Inspiration - 6/20/2013
- Innate purity versus original sin
- Odysseus Zen
- 3 key mindfulness practices for calm, self-compassion and happiness
| Posted: 20 Jun 2013 08:00 AM PDT By Leo BabautaSan Francisco is my favorite city in the world, and living here has helped me become fully vegan (Eva too, as of last year!). I thought I'd share a (non-comprehensive) list of places to try for fellow vegans visiting the city. It's the result of my exploration of many places, good and great, which has been admittedly a lot of fun. You won't get to all of these, so I've marked my favorites. All-Vegan SpotsRestaurants with only vegan food:
All-Vegetarian SpotsThese restaurants serve no meat and are great places for vegans:
Vegan-FriendlyYou'll find a ton of places in San Francisco that are vegan friendly (almost every place but steakhouses), but here are some that I like:
East Bay Vegan SpotsSome great places in Berkeley and Oakland (not a complete list):
A Vegan Sightseeing Tour of SFOK, let's put my faves together with my favorite spots in San Francisco into a 2-day highlights tour. Warning: It's not necessarily the healthiest of tours, but you'll burn it off exploring the city! Map out this stuff before you come to SF. Day 1
Day 2
If You Have More TimeOther good ideas: Encuentro in Oakland, Rainbow Grocery if you want to buy some food to cook yourself, the Golden Gate Bridge and trails along the coast in Presidio, Land's End trails, a house-made veggie burger and sweet potato fries at Roam Artisan Burger, Flacos or Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley. Read More @ Source |
| Home Security: Try These 10 Ways to Make Your Home Safer – Without a Gun Posted: 20 Jun 2013 07:00 AM PDT  The country is currently very divided on the issue of firearms. Some citizens insist on their right to arm themselves, others refuse to have a gun in the house, while some are considering purchasing a firearm for protection but are concerned about safety. If you're looking to make your home safer from criminals but don't want one around your kids there are other ways to protect your family without getting a gun. Assess your personal situation. If you've been robbed three times in the last year, maybe it's time for more home security.  Read More @ Source |
| Early Morning Buddhist Spirituality Inspiration - 6/20/2013 Posted: 20 Jun 2013 05:00 AM PDT  "It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love." ~Thich Nhat Hanh      Read More @ Source |
| Innate purity versus original sin Posted: 19 Jun 2013 10:00 PM PDT
"I had a normal childhood," the man replies. "Ah, so you vanted to kill your fazzer and sleep with your muzzer!" the analyst declares. I sometimes wonder if Sigmund Freud was an incarnation of Mara, the Buddhist personification of doubt. I've lost count of the number of people who have had experiences of happiness undermined because they suspect that they must be repressing something, somehow believing that happiness must be delusional. And many people carry around the notion that there is something fearful and unknown (incest! death wish! penis envy!) lurking inside them, unseen because repressed. The fact that you can't see these things just shows how deeply repressed they are. And people often assume that this repressed nastiness is more real and authentically them, than anything else, including their compassion and wisdom; we're inherently bad, and our goodness is superficial. This may or may not be what Freud taught, but it's the way his teachings seem to have been popularly understood. And this reinforces the Christian idea, dating back to the second century, of original sin, where we inherit Adam's sin of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. We inherit sin, so that by nature we are sinful. St. Augustine believed that unbaptized infants go to hell as a consequence of this inherited original sin. Even a newborn child — often taken as a symbol of innocence, can be seen as inherently evil. So there's this tendency to see human beings as inherently selfish and bad. This view isn't one that Buddhism shares, and the concept of original sin is one that hinders our practice. Some Buddhist schools teach that we are actually inherently pure, and that the mind is merely contaminated by greed, hatred, and delusion. This doesn't mean that at some time in the past our minds were pure and that they picked up these contaminants. Buddhism sees these "origins" questions as irrelevant and based on an unhelpful craving for certainty. What's important is that this view of our inherent purity makes sense practically. Let's say you had a jar of water mixed with dirt, that had just been shaken vigorously. What you see is a turbid slurry of swirling mud. But leave the jar undisturbed, and what happens? First, the water stops moving. Then, gradually, the mud begins to settle out. And what are you left with? Clear water. The mud was not an inherent part of the water. And so the water and the mud were separable. The inherent clarity of the water is revealed in stillness. And it's like this with the mind as well. Sit quietly, and the mind starts to settle. Sure, you keep having thoughts coming up that stir the waters of the mind once again, but keep on sitting, again and again, and you find that those thoughts come up less often. And you find that simply by letting go of thinking, and allowing the mind to settle, you become happier, kinder, more compassionate, and wiser. Joy, compassion, and wisdom are the natural qualities of the mind, and they are revealed by stillness. So in this way, practically speaking, the mind is inherently pure. And for those of us brought up in a culture that emphasizes original sin, the idea of "original purity" is enormously liberating. It's liberating on a personal level to be able to let go of this idea that we're essentially bad. It's hard to feel good about yourself when you have an assumption that you're inherently evil. And it's liberating to be able to think of others as being the same.  If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s, including The Heart's Wisdom, which includes all four brahmavihara meditations. Of course the muddy water illustration is just a metaphor, and it breaks down at a certain level. Practice is not just about letting the unskillful fall away, it's also about cultivating, strengthening, and maintaining the skillful. Joy, compassion, and wisdom are the natural qualities of the mind, but we need to give attention to those qualities and develop them. The water analogy is faulty because the water purifies itself naturally by sedimentation, and once that sedimentation has taken place you can't make the water any more pure. But with the mind, the sedimentation approach can only take us so far. Sure, sit long enough just being mindful, and your mind will become more joyful, wiser, and kinder. But only to a point. We need to actively cultivate those qualities. And this is why we have the metta (lovingkindness), karuna (compassion), and mudita (joyful appreciation) practices that we've been focusing on for the last two months. These reflections on human nature are particularly apropos when we're cultivating joyful appreciation, or mudita, which is a practice that's about appreciating the good that's in people. The concept of original sin suggests that goodness is superficial and may be entirely absent in a "bad" person. The concept of innate purity suggests that goodness is there, waiting to be revealed. PS. You can see all our 100 Days of Lovingkindness Posts here. Read More @ Source |
| Posted: 19 Jun 2013 09:00 PM PDT Sitting in meditation could be something akin to Odysseus being tied to the mast so he could hear the songs of the Sirens and not be as affected, while his crew, for their safety, plugged their ears with beeswax. Sitting is like being tied to the mast which helps us to resist the power of the Sirens. The deadly songs of the Sirens are the enchanting power of the Five Aggregates, which belong to Mara the Evil One. When we hear the demon Siren sing of physical shape we realize that this is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self. The same goes for the rest, namely, feeling, perception, habitual tendencies, and consciousness. Constantly, these demons are at work. Not for a moment do their deadly, alluring songs cease. But as we learn not to react to their call, which weakens us and makes us to believe even more we are the aggregates, their power over us gradually wanes. Related to this, the Buddha said in a discourse:
As part of the first jhâna or dhyâna (J., zen-na) rejecting the Five Aggregates is both necessary and important which, incidentally, is not taught in present day Zen circles to my knowledge. Why it is not taught I have no answer. |
| 3 key mindfulness practices for calm, self-compassion and happiness Posted: 19 Jun 2013 07:00 PM PDT
I know it sounds lofty, but give them a shot and let your experience be the teacher… Read the original article » |
One of my favorite lines in a movie is where a Freudian analyst (complete with thick Viennese accent) asks a man about his childhood.
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., PsychCentral: When it comes to mindfulness, there are a number of great short practices that help us be more present to our lives. In this post I'm going to reveal three key mindfulness practices that can help us pause, break out of auto-pilot, step into emotional freedom and even open up to a source of connection that is ultimately healing to ourselves and the world. Plus, I'll reveal a new practice that people are starting to love.| You are subscribed to email updates from BuddhaRocks ☸ To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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