the most incredible interview with the Dalai Lama's translator, Thupten Jinpa

In the Room with Thupten Jinpa, the Dalai Lama's English Translator from On Being on Vimeo.

you can vote for Caithlin De Marrais on Deli Magazine's Artist of the Month poll

http://nyc.thedelimagazine.com/

And why wouldn't you?


photo by Bernie DeChant

I am totally addicted to MSNBC's Making A Difference segments. No, I am not receiving money for this plug.

Also—Liam Kuehn informed me Tim Kinsella has a blog. Looks great, I need to dig in.

my man Chris is recording an album

me & the old RMs are going to play on it









check it out

Top 25 Most Played Songs on My iTunes



I was a little surprised myself . . .

Andrew Vladeck's New Record



While I continue to plug my friends' music, may I commend to you Andrew Vladeck's new EP which you can order while simultaneously helping him raise money to make his next record.

Nope, that's not a video player up there. It just looks like one.

Love y'all
K

FOOTBALL, ETC.



My friends in the great TX band Football, Etc. have at long last released their first full length record. You all should check it out.

I wrote them a nice email talking about how much I like the record and I thought it might be a helpful description for you all.

"You know, it was funny, I put it on my player and when I put it on, the volume was way way up, like all the way up. And when the record started, actually the first think I thought—even before 'OUCH!' was, 'Wow, that snare drum sounds SO GOOD!' And it's true. James is killin it on the record, hats off! Actually the whole record sounds really amazing, you all should be proud for making such wonderful sounds, and Trent too should take a bow for rendering them so honestly and so beautifully.

"Of course you must know that your skillful combination of Kinsella-y clean tones with those skronk-y, shuddering distortions I like so much are always a win for me. And Mercy's low end is sounding so lyrical——she's singing too in places, right? Really you all are up to great work.

"My favorite song is actually Safety, because the lyrics are so beautiful. I love that bit about 'I'll use whatever I can find, I'll use my own hair.' I was listening to it on the way back from teaching Tibetan downtown and was——I actually remember where I was, because I found it so affecting——was at 14th and 6th Ave, nearing the corner to cross, and that lyric was like a beautiful thunderbolt. And I thought, 'What band like this is writing a line like this?' Such a sweet and pure and wonderful sentiment. I really appreciated that. May we all live that way, be that person, for everyone we meet!

"I also really like how drawn out the singing is, almost like it is happening at a different tempo than the songs themselves. Your clear, no-vibrato thing has really developed into your own style, it's great to see. You sound very——pretty, actually!"

see y'all on Saturday, OK?

hey cool!

my dad and step-mom wrote a children's book

check it out
I can't wait to read it myself (I'm just a kid at heart)

Hey everybody

Please consider supporting my dear dear friend Caithlin's Kickstarter effort to record her new album. I've heard many of the songs and they are totally totally amazing.

Love from Kyle

photo from Eric Nowels, knicked from his Flickr site. Thanks Eric!

I'm teaching Classical Tibetan on Mondays starting Sept. 20th

It's a five-week series. Class starts at 7 p.m. Please come!

Three Jewels Center
61 Fourth Avenue
3rd Floor
New York NY 10003

Check out our boy Chris McFarland's seriously lovely music video


Directed by the inimitable Jeremy Mack/Mack Attack Films.

If you like his song as much as I do, you can buy his EP here.

PS yes, I am the steel-playing goofball you see in the video

Balthrop Alabama on NPR's song of the day!

Genla was just finishing his oatmeal this morning. His spoon struck the edge of his bowl. It made a ringing sound. I looked up.

He beamed back at me. Holding the bowl in his left palm, he began to rap on the inside of it with his big silver spoon.

*dingdingdingdingdingdingding!*


Genla and I have used the same two bowls every morning for over a year now. "I never knew it made a sound like that," I said.

Genla replied, "Sakya Pandita says,

'mkhas pa brtsad cing ma dris pa
de yi bar du gting mi dpogs
rnga la dbyu gus ma bsnun pa
de srid gzhan dang khyad ci yod"

Then he translated for me,

"'If you don't seek out and question wise people,
their depths remain unfathomed.
Until you beat a drum with a stick,
how will you know
what difference it has from others?'"

and smiled.

my friends Caithlin and Seb put out a record. CHECK IT OUT!

Photos from Our Trip to India #3 - Genla puts on his scarf, preparing to leave the Gelug Temple in Sarnath

my friend Sebastien sent me a link to this amazing blog by a young musicologist who is traveling the world

Photos from Our Trip to India #2












small Buddha from altar at the Mahabodhi Society temple in Sarnath

Photos from Our Trip to India #1


















small engraving of a Buddha, near Dhamekh stupa, Sarnath

Lately, Genla has been relaxing with some Winter Olympics time at the end of the evening. Last night, he was most interested in the men's figure skating short program.

We sat down in front of the TV with a bowl of chopped fruit and homemade yogurt as the garishly clad young athletes hit the ice.

I must be getting a little self-serious lately.

"Enjoy your life," Genla said, "watch this!"

When you believe in cause and effect, there can be no accidents.

At my Wednesday night Dharma class, we'd been studying meditation according to instruction given by Pabongka Rinpoche in his superlative Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, a book which I must recommend to absolutely everyone.

Then in December, at Genla's Dharma class at the tiny chinese Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Chinatown, we started the same passages we'd been reviewing on Wednesdays for a few weeks. The first of these includes instruction on the benefits of developing single-pointed concentration. One way to develop this is to try to hold a specific visualized image very clearly in your mind, as if seeing it in a mirror.

Here for instance is Genla's favorite sculpted image of Buddha Shakyamuni, from the museum in Sarnath.


The image you try to hold is supposed to be given to you by your precious Teacher. Very often, it is an image of the Buddha--perhaps one they give to you or show to you. Sometimes--as in mahamudra meditation--you are instructed to pay particular attention to your own stream of consciousness, as if watching it from outside.

In my own meditation, I often vacillate wildly in my visualization, something Pabongka Rinpoche specifically warns against. So on the subway on the way home, I got up the courage to ask Genla for specific instruction:

"Genla, what should I meditate on, while I'm working to develop single-pointed concentration?"

His single-pointed answer: "Garbage!"

I laughed out loud, but inwardly I was shocked. After a long silence, I screwed up my courage again and asked: "As a visualization? I should visualize garbage?"

"Have to visualize garbage. Have to pick up garbage. Every piece of garbage you pick up, you clear an obscuration. You pick up two pieces, even better. No more garbage, no more obscurations. This is called nirvana."

In his Himalayan accent, it sounds even better. Nirvana becomes "neer-wanna."

The subway door ping!-ed open at 14th Street, where we had to walk through the underground tunnel from 6th to 7th Avenue to make our transfer. I followed Genla out of the car and up the stairs to the passageway, pondering what a trash Buddha would look like.

And there, at the top of the stairs, sitting cross-legged on the floor, accepting offerings from passersby, was a homeless man dressed--entirely--in garbage. Literally wearing shreds of newspaper all over his body and on his head, with a billowing skirt of black plastic garbage bags.

What seemed like a thousand Angels paraded by him, disguised as businessmen, handing him, one after another, what seemed like an endless supply of dollar bills.

We walked fifty yards up the passageway before I recovered my composure. I managed to ask Genla, "Did you see him?"

"Who?" he said.

"That man," I replied.

"What did you see?"

"There was a man sitting there, wearing garbage."

"I did not see him," Genla said, not needing to look at me. "I saw a deity."

A year and a half ago, I was walking out of Naomi Jaffe's matchless yoga class in Brooklyn with my friend Caithlin. Cait said, "Have you heard what's happening in the Congo?" My heart was all opened up, coming from this wonderful yoga class, and when she told me about the devastating large-scale sexual violence that has been going on against women there, I cried.

On that afternoon, I could clearly connect the dots, and intuit how cause and effect hold true in all things. And as Caithlin spoke, I knew, instantly, the ways in which my own internalized misogyny had grown, from even small thoughts of anger and careless acts of desire, and was now contributing to the oppression of women everywhere. In the ugliest of ways.

Later that afternoon I read this article in the New York Times about the situation of women in the Congo. Be forewarned it is explicit.

(Don't think that only women suffer in this kind of epidemic. A later article, equally explicit, explained how the weapon of sexual violence was also being used against men there.)

Some months prior, I'd begun to aspire to change the way I related to all the women I knew--my mother, my sister, my friends, my girlfriend--and moreover to every woman I saw, be it on the street, in yoga class, on the subway, it didn't matter where or in what context. I have hardly always succeeded. But even frequently failing, I've tried my best to be intentional in every interaction. And what I've found is that those actions, loaded with intention, also took root, and then grew and grew.

And then just this afternoon, tucked away at the bottom of the Op Ed page, I saw this totally inspiring piece about Lisa Shannon, a woman about my age who had heard the same stories from the Congo, and similarly resolved to change her life. She has dedicated her entire existence to benefit these people.


Cause and effect are real. So if it's true my previous non-virtuous intentions towards women in some way participated in the oppression of those in the Congo, then it must likewise be true that my resolve to help participates in every effort to help them.

(yay!)

[images from the NYT web site]

Ending War in Our Lifetime

བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ་རང་གི་བདེ་མ་ཆགས། 
རང་གི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་མི་བརྫི་ཡང་།
གཞན་གྱི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་སྡུག་བསྔལ་ཏེ། 
དེ་དག་བདེ་བས་དགའ་དང་ལྡན་པར་འགྱུར།

Bodhisattvas are not attached to their own happiness,
neither are they trampled by their own sufferings.
Instead, they suffer through others' sufferings,
and come to joy through others' happiness.

-from The Tantra Called 'The Inquiry of Subhahu'

Have I mentioned Genla sewed his own watchband from a piece of ribbon? Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Tibetan dbu med chart

Since I just spent some time on the Web looking for this, I'm going to re-post it here, to make it more accessible for others.

My source was this blog. They aren't sure where it came from originally.

I hope it helps you students out there who want to learn to read or write Tibetan dbu med script. By the merit of our deeds, may we all pass together into the matchless bliss of perfect Buddhahood.

Check out Fred and Daily's new Halloween song at endup.org

Whatsmore, listen to their album, and get it, if you haven't

The Times reviewed my professor Paul Knitter's just-published memoir, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian - a very interesting and highly recommended book. Just how interesting I'll let you know when I've read it.

You can order it from Amazon, of course. Or wherever quality books are sold.

I skipped out on Izzi's birthday party yesterday so I could see Genla teach in Chinatown and then come home to do my own studies for school. These kinds of decisions are really hard for me. Who wouldn't rather be hanging out with their good friends? But I have this idea that by studying well, I can help a lot of people, including all those same friends. So I have been curtailing my extracurricular activities and hitting the books as much as I can.

I won't lie - it's hard!

As my friend Jeremy said, "I don't actually like reading. It's just I like ideas, and they happen to be in books." He's a PhD student.

Actually, I do like reading. All of the Tibetan scriptures we get to read are amazing. And FWIW I love love loved reading Roger Haight's Dynamics of Theology over the summer.



Roger Haight is scholar-in-residence at my school. He used to be a professor there, but the Vatican banned him from teaching. How exciting! (not for him). You can read a bit about it at this Union alum's blog.