Taken from this month’s issue of Mandala is the brief article below by Jampa Gendun, resident teacher at Buddha House is Adelaide. Gendun’s is a common theme I hear from my yoga teacher, meditation teachers and from that voice in the back of my head: Begin again. I found these words especially encouraging as I face my own struggles both on and off the zafu.

“Begin Again”

There’s a familiar saying, “Even a journey of a thousand miles necessarily begins with a first step.” Which is to say that, no matter how long the path, we have to actually begin it if we’re ever to reach its end; that, really, there’s no substitute for beginning, however humble, however tentative and faltering, our first steps might be.

A number of years ago, I lived in a small Buddhist monastery, a wat, on a tiny island off the southeast coast of Thailand. There were only three of us there, two Thai monks – only one of whom spoke a little English – and myself. Over the many months that I spent there meditating, I would at times become lonely and down-hearted and I would question just what I was doing there so far away from everything that I knew, everything that had any meaning for me – the people who I cared about and who cared about me, my interests, my habitual pleasures and distractions – living isolated, with few physical comforts, struggling with uncertainty, and for what I wasn’t sure.

Sometimes, when we came together in the afternoon for a hot drink, I would share these difficult feelings with the English-speaking monk and he would always listen with great attentiveness and patience. And though I was never sure if he understood even half of what I said, when I had finished, invariably he would smile and say, “Begin again.” That was all, just, “Begin again.” Since then I’ve learned that this is something of a common saying amongst Thai monks.

Perhaps the point is that we’re always free to begin, to start all over again if need be. No matter who we are or what we may have done, no matter what our story was up to even just a moment ago, still, we can start from just there, from just where we are at right now. From moment to moment we can choose to put one foot in front of the next in the choosing and re-choosing of what it is we want for ourselves, the direction we want our life to take. We can begin now to make a habit of the person we want to be, just as we have in the past formed the habit of who we currently are. We can create a new fate for ourselves; we can go beyond our present selves if only we have the imagination and the will for it.

This is, perhaps, our greatest of human gifts – our capacity for free and conscious choice, the ever-present possibility to begin again, and with that the opportunity to transcend our histories, the residue of our chain-like repetitive pasts. What was once true of us and for us need be true no longer if we so choose.

Whoever you are and whatever your real and imagined constraints may be, in some form or other, however limited, however narrowly circumscribed, the chance is always there to stop drifting into the old patterns, to stop yielding to the push of circumstances, and to choose in that moment – and if only for that moment – a new life-story for yourself, to reinvent another version of yourself: who you might be and the kind of world you want to live in.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

Politics and the political system are a way of life in the United States. As a Buddhist who struggles every day to walk the Middle Path, I have to accept that fact that my actions alone can not steer the direction of this country, which in turn has a huge impact on the world we all share.

And while it hasn’t been uncommon for me to rail against the politics of division and intolerance that we’ve seen our president use to tear our nation in two, until now I have only voiced my hope for a new day; we need for deep, systemic change that can turn our nation in a new direction.

I firmly believe we need to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and use the full force of our diplomatic means to encourage all nations to work for the betterment of all sentient beings and the Earth we share. I believe we have an obligation to use our status as the world’s sole superpower to invest in and promote technologies that will allow humanity to live comfortably on this planet in a sustainable manner. I believe we should use our vast resources to take a leadership role in promoting peace among nations, harmony among neighbors and liberty for all the world’s diverse people.

And I believe there is a man who make these things happen for us: Barack Obama. For the first time in a long time, I believe again in America.

We are not as divided as our politics suggest. Yes, we disagree. Yes, we have interests and ideologies that don’t always align. Yes, we have real differences.

 But the biggest divide in America today is not between its people, it is between its people and their leaders in Washington, DC. That is where our collective dream has been deferred.

That’s where the money and influence of lobbyists kill our plans to make health care more affordable or energy cleaner year after year after year. That’s where campaign promises to keep jobs in America or put tax cuts in the pockets of working families are cast aside to make room for the politics of the moment. And that’s where politicians would rather demonize each other to score points than come together to solve our common challenges.

 That is where the real division lies - in a politics that echoes through the media and seeps into our culture - the kind that seeks to drive us apart and put up walls where none exist.

 It’s the politics that tells us that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The gay person must be immoral, and the believer must be intolerant.

 Well we are here to say that this is not the America we believe in and this is not the politics we have to accept anymore. Not this time. Not now.

Sen. Barack Obama, Jan. 29, El Dorado, Kansas

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

It isn’t very often that a person realizes their dreams when they are at the right age to do something about them. My friend Corinne Purtill is one of those people. Everything came together at the right time, and now she’s in Cambodia, working on a book and telling the stories that the world needs to hear about.

This is serious stuff — it’s why I tried to be a journalist, and why she’s doing it. I love her for it.

Here is today’s dispatch from Corinne in Phnom Penh: the most senior surviving member of the Khmer Rouge made his first appearance at Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal.

Justice Delayed: KR Leader Makes Brief Court Appearance
By Corinne Purtill

PHNOM PENH – The top surviving member of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge appeared publicly Monday for the first time at the U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal for the bloody 1970s communist guerrilla regime.

Nuon Chea, 81, appeared alert and answered questions in a clear voice as his lawyers argued successfully for a postponement of the pre-trial hearing, citing his lack of eligible foreign defense counsel.

The delay angered many Cambodians in the public viewing room, some of whom had traveled for miles to witness the prosecution of the living man they believe is most directly responsible for the murders of their loved ones.

“I’m not satisfied,” said Sok Sour, 68, whose husband Phann Sopha was executed by the Khmer Rouge in Prey Veng province in 1977. “I felt angry seeing his face on the screen, protected by lots of bodyguards, sitting in an air conditioned room. I suffered too much from what they did to us.”

Nuon Chea was expected to ask to be released on bail from the detention facility adjacent to the courtroom, where he has been held since his arrest Sept. 19. He is one of five defendants currently on trial for war crimes committed during the 1975 to 1979 ultra-Maoist regime. He will stay in jail while the hearing is rescheduled, co-prosecutor Robert Petit said.

“Any delay in getting to the truth of this matter and getting justice for the victims is regrettable,” Petit said.

Known as “Brother Number Two,” Nuon Chea was Pol Pot’s most trusted deputy and is credited with helping orchestrate the party’s bloody purges of those deemed a threat to the revolution.

The Khmer Rouge emptied cities and drove the Cambodian population into work camps as part of a radical social upheaval. Roughly 1.7 million Cambodians died during the period from starvation, execution, disease and overwork.

Khmer Rouge chief Pol Pot died in 1998. Nuon Chea officially left the Khmer Rouge later that year and has since lived as a private citizen near the Thai border. In media reports in recent years he has defended his role in the Khmer Rouge, but denied knowledge of murders.

Cows wandered across the grounds of the court complex on Phnom Penh’s outskirts as spectators filed into Monday’s hearing, which took just more than two hours and gave hints of the political undertones that have dogged the court since its inception.

Dressed in a long-sleeved blue buttondown, his white hair neatly brushed, Nuon Chea addressed the judges directly to ask that the hearing be adjourned.

“If this proceeding goes ahead, I believe it is not fair for me,” he read in Khmer from a prepared statement.

Defense lawyers asked to suspend the hearing because one of Nuon Chea’s two foreign defense attorneys, Victor Koppe of the Netherlands, had not yet been sworn into the Cambodian Bar Association and thus could not argue before the court.

His other foreign attorney, Dutch lawyer Michiel Pestman, was in Amsterdam and could not attend, Koppe said. Tribunal rules allow each defendant to have both Cambodian and foreign counsel.

Bar officials on Friday postponed Koppe’s swearing-in, saying he violated bar rules by signing a legal document before his admission.

Koppe said he believed the bar was retaliating against his motion to disqualify pre-trial judge Ney Thol for political bias.

Ney Thol has issued several controversial rulings in recent years that appeared to favor the interests of Cambodia’s ruling party. Pre-trial judges voted unanimously Monday to dismiss the removal motion.

The aborted hearing is the latest delay in a trial that has slogged along for decades.

The $56.3 million tribunal was formed in 2006 after years of contentious negotiations between the UN and the Cambodian government. Two independent audits last year found serious evidence of mismanagement and shoddy hiring practices on the Cambodian side of the hybrid court.

The tribunal is running several million dollars over budget, according to auditors, and international donors say they want to see major reforms before chipping in.

Nuon Chea is one of five aging former Khmer Rouge cadres awaiting trial. Top-ranking officials Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith were arrested late last year. Kaing Guek Iev, also known as Duch, the director of the notorious torture center S-21, was arrested in 1999.

The slow proceedings frustrated Aun Phum, 77, who lost 19 members of his family to the Khmer Rouge and traveled to Monday’s hearing from Kompong Speu province.

“The court only considered the charged person’s interest,” he said. “What about the other people here?”

Clipped from my blog:  http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

Imagine: a president of the United States who practices yoga three times a week.  Tall, dark, last name starts with an “O”?

Now that’s change you can believe in.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp