BuddhaDude.Net

We have a new area here on BuddhaDude.Net, a Magazine section. This section, when fully complete, will have articles, poetry, meditation topics and other cool “Buddha” stuff. To kick off the Buddha Dude Mag, please see the article, Is The Dalai Lama Relevant, describing the Dalai Lama giving his talks on; “Human Approaches to World Peace”. We have posted a few pics in the picture section, but they are not of the highest quality; sorry about that, but they were very restrictive on the size and type of cameras allowed in the stadium.

We will be doing some site maintenance over the next few months to upgrade the site and add some new sections, so please visit often to see what cool features we have added. So far, we have upgraded the backend to .Net 3.5 including the newest AJAX toolkit; at least the toolkit update fixed the annoying Java errors. :)

Wow, this has been a busy few months; we have had a special old friend stay in our area for a few weeks, Nadhia Sutara from Among Friends, our weeks were spent in Dharma talks, meditations, a retreat or two and yoga, please check our Links Section for more information on Among Friends .

We had a fantastic Buddha Day this year, we did our usual charity work during the day and had friends over in the evening; the celebrations continued right through the weekend, with people coming to join us for some ‘HenderZen' as our household has become known as.

The ‘Piece De Resistance' thus far though has been our pilgrimage to see the Jade Buddha at the Phap Van Temple , all I can say is WOW!!! The temple itself is absolutely stunning, the golden Buddha in the main hall literally took your breath away, but once we walked out to the area with the Jade Buddha, it brought tears to all of our eyes. The collective energy or ‘Chi' as some call it, of the thousands in attendance was thick in the air; one of the monks said ‘Our Chi is keeping the rain clouds away'. Once the Monks started chanting mantras in front of the Jade Buddha, I had tears of Joy streaming down my face.

We took some pictures and have posted them in the Picture gallery Enjoy!

Yesterday, Butterfly and I packed up the kids and we headed down to the “Big City”, Toronto, for some culture; we took the kids to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) , for the East Asian exhibits. The exhibits included artwork from China, Korea and Japan; they were absolutely breathtaking. Besides things like Samurai paraphernalia, the sheer amount of Buddhist Statues, Bells and full wall size paintings, that in some cases were well over a thousand years old, was what we went for.

We took some pictures and have posted them in the Picture gallery Enjoy!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wow! It’s been a while since we updated the NEWS, but with work, kids and life in general, it is sometimes hard it accommodate everything. We have been updating the quotes and pictures on a regular basis though, so even if the date on the NEWS page is stale, rest assured, the site is still updated regularly.

The 2009 holiday season was great, it is so nice to join Bodhi Day/Month with Christmas; it just makes both celebrations that much more special. Lighting candles every night, decorating the Bohi tree and increased meditations, joined with getting together with family and friends, giving presents, joy and laughter; this is what life is all about.

After a long trip out west, David Hickey is back and we thoroughly enjoyed our meditation/concert last weekend, welcome back David, we missed our monthly meditations immensely, please do not go away that long again, LOL. Speaking of Crystal Bowls, David has started selling crystal bowls at the concert and I bought one, I absolutely love it, with the other metal bowls, bells, ting shaws, finger board and drums that we already have, our little Sangha has great fun on Friday nights.

Our little Sangha is growing and doing great, (Little Sangha in the Country? LOL) we get together every Friday night for Dharma talks, singing bowls and of course, meditation.

Speaking of a Sangha, we are also looking for a temple (Preferably Tibetan, but Zen is OK too) to join so if you happen to know of a temple in the area, please send us an email; not too many Buddhist temples in central Ontario so that is why we formed our own group.

Thanks for everyone’s support and have a great 2010!

We hope everyone had a great Buddha Day! For us, our small Sangha went and made donations to the local Food Bank, Hospital and SPCA. We opened some small presents we had bought for each other (For Buddha Day, unlike Christmas, we buy either Buddha items, books or learning items), had a nice meal, read Zen and Tibetan stories to the kids, did a kids meditation and the adults finished the evening by watching, “What The Bleep, Down The Rabbit Hole”.

A time of sharing, a time of giving, a time of Dharma, especially with good friends; this is what this day is all about. And I mean THIS day as both, Buddha Day, and THIS very day…

We took some pictures and have posted them in the Picture gallery Enjoy!

The Quotes and Picture sections are getting big, really big, and are taking a while to load, especially the pictures section. We are in the midst of rewriting the server controls that load these contents to be more optimized; namely paging. For the pictures, each picture group, a single control, will have paging within that group.

For the Quotes, we are working on putting about 20 quotes per page, plus the option of sorting by posting date and by quote author. For now though, we have rewritten the stored procedures to display the quotes by “Lasted Posted” first, meaning the last quote posted is now on the top of the page, not at the bottom as before. If you are looking for a quote that you saw before and can not it in the same place, not too worry, it is still on the page, just in a different position; impermanence, got to love it :D .

Happy Easter Everyone!

This has been an interesting Easter for us here at BuddhaDude.net. First off, it was only the second Christening (Baptismal) that we have ever been too, the first one in over 20 years. Secondly, it was the first time we have ever been to a church service at Easter. Add in, the service was at night, and held at a 150 year old church, located in a, “blink and you missed it”, small town in central Ontario, you have the setting for something very spiritual; we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

More importantly though, we both had some cool insights in the whole Christian faith/religion. To tell you the truth, we never really understood the whole the Christian God concept and therefore it was very difficult to understand even the basics of the philosophy. If you are a non-Buddhist and you read some stuff on Emptiness and nonattachment, it will seem strange and bizarre at first; you will have no idea what it all means; now you know how we related to the Christian God.

But…When you listen to a Christian service and every time the minister says, “God”, you substitute the word “God”, for “Yourself” (Ultimate self), it actually made sense!

Here is an example, the Minister said, “The kingdom of God will ignore those that do not fully give themselves to God” can be translated into, “You will never fully find true happiness until you accept and love yourself”.

We took some great pictures of the church and have posted them in the Picture gallery ; have a peek and see if you can find the Buddha Nature; Enjoy!

Namaste and we hope the Easter Bunny was good to you.

The Quotes and Picture sections are getting big, really big, and are taking a while to load, especially the pictures section. We are in the midst of rewriting the server controls that load these contents to be more optimized; namely paging. For the pictures, each picture group, a single control, will have paging within that group.

For the Quotes, we are working on putting about 20 quotes per page, plus the option of sorting by posting date and by quote author. For now though, we have rewritten the stored procedures to display the quotes by “Lasted Posted” first, meaning the last quote posted is now on the top of the page, not at the bottom as before. If you are looking for a quote that you saw before and can not it in the same place, not too worry, it is still on the page, just in a different position; impermanence, got to love it :D .

Butterfly and I have a “Wall of Wisdom”, also know as the “Empty” wall, we hang quotes and notes to read and reflect upon, we have now added them to the site for everyone to read. Quotes

Enjoy!

We made it! We survived another Canadian winter, one of the coldest and snowiest winters in a long long time and to celebrate the solstice, we went to a special David Hickey concert at, Yoga In the Hills; revitalizing as always.

Also this week, we visited the Three Religions Temple, located on the International Taoist Tai Chi Centre grounds. A beautifully forested retreat located about 20 minutes from our house, we walked the various trails and visited the building, including the brand new temple.

For both outings, we brought our camera and tried to capture the moments as best we could; taking a camera with you on an outing is a good way to help train in awareness. We would like to share our outings with everyone so we have created a new, Pictures, section on the site; we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Namaste and Happy Spring!

Butterfly asked to me a few weeks ago if I would be interested in attending a “singing bowl concert” at the studio where she does Yoga; sure I said, as I have seen advertisements for things like this in Snow Lion . Some times when I am in Snow Lion, the owner will play some of the bowls, plus we have one or two CDs with singing bowls on them; I was expecting something similar with David Hickeys’ concert, man was I totally wrong…

David Hickeys music totally blew us away, not only does he use Crystal Singing Bowls, not the metal allow ones we were used to, but he brought along 10 Paiste Gongs; these were the star of the show! David admits that every concert is different, he plays what ever comes to him during the show, every moment of the show is a true moment, not rehearsed, not planned, it just happens. At one point I could just hear the faint sound of chanting, after the show Butterfly asked David if that was him, he said it was funny, he normally does not chant or sing during the concerts, but for some reason it just seemed right, so he did and it really add a texture.

The concert it self was not what I expected either, darkened studio with candles everywhere, a small audience, 20 max. We were encouraged to bring comfortable cloths, a yoga mat, meditation pillow and a blanket if desired; all of these we brought. David and the audience started with a quick meditation to bring us all in sync and then he began, butterfly said she felt like the man in the old, Maxell Tape poster, totally blown away and I fully agree. I watched David perform (I use this term loosely as he does not really perform as much as become one with whatever instrument he is playing at the time) for a bit and it was truly fascinating, the way he rubs and shapes the sound coming from the bowls and gongs is a sight to see. Some times he stand fairly still, rubbing and smoothing the gongs and bowls, other times he reminded me of a plate spinner in the circus, moving from one bowel/gong to next, and as one slows down he is back again.

The true appreciation of the show though is the sound, and I use that word as a label only, for you do not hear the music with just your ears, you hear it with your whole mind and body, I was sitting on my meditation pillow, eyes closed, focused on my breath and the music is just there, where? Everywhere! You could not have engineered a 7.1 surround sound track to come even close to the way the sounds play together, they are here, there, everywhere all at the same time, I had the most incredible visualizations I have ever experienced, I had the most incredible sound meditation, I had the most incredible touch meditation all at the same time!

When it was all over (about 2 hours with a 20 minute intermission) all I could say was, WOW! When David said he was coming back in two weeks for the Full Moon, Butterfly and I looked at each other and we knew we were coming back! The second time we brought 5 more with us! And yes, it was just as good, just as powerful as the first time. We have bought 3 of Davids CDs and they are great, not even close to the live performance but we enjoy them all the same. David will now be performing at our local Yoga studio once a month and we have decided to go every second month, it really is that spiritual.

If you ever get a chance to see David Hickey live, we highly recommend it. You may listen to some of his music via streaming, find out where he will be playing next, or order some of his products at http://www.crystaljourney.ca

We give David 6 Gongs out of 5 (yes, he got 6 out of 5)

We hope you all had a great summer!!! (Or winter if you are way down south) We were very busy, as usual this summer, birthdays, anniversaries, visiting, swimming, and just lazing around with a good book. As such, we did not have time to update the site at all, we are now back in full swing again. The broken links and images have been fixed (No more remote loading Amazon???), and we have a ton of new reviews coming out in the next few weeks, both books and look for the new Guided Meditation section, it will have reviews on, naturally enough, Guided Meditations on CD. We might have been out having fun all summer long, but we were also busy reading and meditating, nothing better than meditating By the Dock O the Bay!!!

Happy Fall Every One!