In the summer of 2017, I became one of eight. In the US, one in eight women will get diagnosed with breast cancer and I was now one of them. At age 40, I was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.

Life changes dramatically when youre diagnosed with breast cancer. Suddenly you go from joyfully going about your life to being faced with your own mortality. In the blink of an eye, you are on board a frightening roller-coaster ride and you have no idea how or when it will end.

In just a few weeks, I had to make decisions that impacted directly on the rest of my life. And fighting this awful illness taught me priceless skills.

Seek input and advice

I am not a cancer expert. Before I was diagnosed, I didnt have the slightest notion of what having cancer even means. I researched online, consulted with doctors, friends and others to make the most informed decision possible. When youre faced with making life altering decisions, you need to rely on input from others.

As a leader, you have a great amount of knowledge, but you cannot be an expert on everything. You need those around you to help you make a more informed decision. Be curious about what you might be missing. Include your team, peers and others in big decisions. Operating in a silo can be detrimental to your business because you set yourself up to miss ideas and solutions you cannot see yet.

At the same time, being curious will help your team feel more included and feel like they are a part of the decisions you make. This, in turn, will create more ownership and will increase your likelihood of success.

Be present

Life is precious. A statement you hear often, but it becomes much more real if you understand that your life could end sooner than you anticipate. The average person is probably not thinking about when theyre going to die. As a cancer patient, it is very easy to get caught in the stories of your mind. What if I die? What if chemo doesnt work? What if the cancer comes back? I had such a nice life, now my life will never be the same. All those statements are either contemplating the future or reminiscing about the past. What theyre not focusing on, is the here and now. If you get caught up in your stories, you miss out on what is right in front of you. Appreciate whats happening in the present moment. Savor every moment with your family and friends. Appreciate your surroundings, the weather and nature. Feel the sun on your skin, the sand between your toes. I would ask myself on a daily basis if I was being present and in the moment, and if I was stuck in the past or future I would redirect myself to the present. It requires constant practice, but it continues to make my life so much richer.

Applying presence to your interactions with your team, employees and family can change the way you work. Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt like you were really heard? What did that feel like? It was probably because the other person gave you their full attention. Being present goes beyond just listening. You need to be tuned in to the other person. What are the non-verbal cues they transmit? Can you stay in the moment, and not let your mind wander to the next meeting or the previous meeting you were in? Listening to your breath and observing your body can quickly connect you to the present. Do you feel the ground under your feet supporting you, or the warmth of the sun coming through the window?

Positive attitude

I made a conscious choice to not let cancer consume my life. I accepted that it is now part of who I am and always will be. I did not want to become the disease. This was something I observed while in the hospital with other patients. They would be so down and negative. I decided that was not going to be me. Im a strong believer in positive psychology and that the positive energy you put out in the universe will support you. I was going to do everything in my power to beat this disease. Even if it doesnt work out in the end, I can be at peace that I did everything I could control. Its all in the attitude. Its not easy to remain positive at all times, but you can choose not to let negativity encroach on your life.

There is a lot of negativity in the work place. Disengaged employees, upset customers, company results not meeting expectations and many more. As a leader, you have a great responsibility to remain positive and look at each obstacle with a glass half full attitude. I do not mean the cheerleader who is rah rah-ing, but a leader who can change their mindset and look at things from a positive angle, even if the circumstances themselves might not be positive. This requires a leader who understands that what you can control is only how you respond to a situation, instead of letting the situation control you. Who do you choose to be?

Self-care

You might be surprised, but self-care is not implied when facing cancer. You are on the hamster wheel of continuous doctors appointments, treatments and managing side effects. You cannot simply take a day off from cancer. I decided that cancer was not going to consume my life and I tried to keep my life as normal and as regular as possible. This included going on the cruise I had already booked in the middle of my chemotherapy (with the doctors permission, of course). I love to travel and discover the world, and this is something that allows me to disconnect from my day to day. So when I had the opportunity to travel, I did. It took my mind off the daily trips to the hospital for a little while. It allowed me to recharge. Self-care also includes saying no to friends and family when they want to meet up, go out or come by. You are not being selfish or rude. Healing from cancer takes a great deal of effort and you are the number one priority. You need to put yourself first.

I learned that there is more to life than work. Before cancer, I would often prioritize work over other things, including my husband and family. Work is only a part of life and although it might, at the surface, seem that work is the most important. I can tell you, its not. Im not saying you need to stop working the way you are, but maybe consider where it is on the priority list of your life. Are you prioritizing staying late at the office over dinner with your partner? What would it take to say no to a last-minute request that would require you to work on the weekend? Do you check the perceived urgency of a request? Self-care is about creating boundaries. It will take some time to set those boundaries. Its not going to happen overnight, but little by little, you can control how you are spending your time and with whom. Remember, you are a leader in your organization and your employees and teams follow your lead. If you respond to emails on the weekend, they will feel the need to do the same.

Take responsibility for what is in your control

I discovered that there are a lot of possibilities for how to experience cancer treatment. You can choose to follow along with the process and let it all happen or take control and manage your disease.

From the get go, I wanted to make sure I had the right doctors for me. We went into each doctors appointment with an interview mindset. How do I feel about this doctor? Are they taking their time with me? Are they creating a connection with me or am I just a number on a chart? Taking this stance created a real sense of control. I didnt feel comfortable with all my doctors, so I worked with the insurance provider to find another one.

Another example was during the chemotherapy I discovered that you are assigned a random nurse every week or treatment round. I could have just gone along with this process. Instead, I asked to be assigned the same nurse whenever possible and this was not a problem at all. It made my treatment experience so much better. We created a routine that made it much easier for both of us.

Are there any skills, abilities, attitudes, capabilities, anything you want or need to improve? What if you create a list of those things? What would you include? Go one by one and reflect on each. Which of those are under your control and which are not? By being in control I mean that you, as a leader, can intervene and modify the situation instead of one that you cannot change (e.g. economic crisis). If you have the right mental model youll realize that there are a lot of things that you can change. For example, an employee on your team who is underperforming. Have you done something to improve the employees performance? An option could be to sit down with them and explain what are your expectations and for them to understand what they can do to deliver better results. Are they even aware they are not performing as expected? Have you done as much as you can to support them to reach their performance potential? These things are under your control.

As I mentioned previously, therere also things beyond your control, what do you do with those? Blaming the outside could make you right, but will leaves you impotent or unable to intervene or change any situation, its like waiting for the external factors to decide for you. Remember, you can always chose how to respond to any situation. The question is, what choices do you have?

Having cancer is something beyond my control, something I cannot change. I can, however, choose how to respond to it.

Original post:
5 Leadership Lessons I learned from my fight with cancer - Thrive Global

Daniel dafran Francesca was able to claim victory in-game while streaming a competitive match, as a teammate of his utilized the new game-breaking bug to fly in and turn the tides of battle with a single Reinhardt ultimate.

If literal in-game tilting and every character being able to fly is the new meta, then Overwatch has got a bright future. Maybe not competitively, but in unlimited meme potential.

The new ability for characters to fly, thanks to a newly discovered bug in Meis frozen ice wall, is already paying dividends and helping players achieve victory in new and totally legitimate ways.

Former Atlanta Reign pro and self-proclaimed reformed streamer dafran saw his teammate use the accidental flying mechanic in-game, and just about completely lost it.

Dafrans chat couldnt stop themselves from laughing as well, as the massive Reinhardt soared upward, circling his prey like a hammer-wielding hawk before dropping into the garden entrance on Lijiang Tower.

This unexpected maneuver caught the enemy team completely off guard, allowing Reinhardt to drop his Earthshatter ultimate. This permitted dafran and company to storm the chokepoint, and the typically DPS player picked up two eliminations on one of his favorite characters, Tracer.

The surprising, but sudden, ultimate didnt completely shatter the enemy teams momentum, but it ballooned dafrans team control percentage over 90%. The other team was able to rally back and re-capture the point, but Daniel showed off why he went pro, leading a charge late in the game to re-take the point and win with some more stellar play on Tracer.

While the victory could be labeled as questionable due to the tactics displayed by the flying Reinhardt, theres no questioning dafrans dedication to his reformation project. After a Twitch ban due to self-proclaimed ignorance and admitting to saying stupid s**t all the time, he announced plans to come back to streaming with a more positive mental attitude.

So far, his reformation project has gone on without a hitch or speedbump, and hes even taking it a step further by streaming through his goal of giving up nicotine.

Not only is he going through a massive positive change, but his stream is also producing some great highlights of the new frozen wall flight meta. Hopefully, we get treated to more highlights before the Cursed Mei bug gets fixed.

Overwatch developers are already aware of the bug, and are currently planning to roll out a fix soon.

Read more from the original source:
dafran loses it as flying Overwatch teammate's ultimate wins the game - Dexerto

By: Lifestyle Desk | New Delhi | Updated: December 13, 2019 9:00:41 am

Regardless of how much you want to earn $10,000, $1 million or $1 billion you start by setting a specific goal and crunching the numbers, thats how millionnaire Grant Cardone, American motivational speaker, sales trainer, author and real estate investor who started his career at 25 as a used cars salesman in Louisiana in the US, sees it.

There is a need to change the target and change it daily. It shouldnt be anything less than 10 million dollars. Think big when you change the target. The second point is to save 40 per cent of your income. If you can do this, I guarantee you, you will be rich. You need to get your income not to what it pays your bills but to where you can save, he reveals in an interesting Goalcast video.

ALSO READ | Not just any change but positive, effective change is needed: Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi

Cardone, who was named as Forbes 25 Marketing Influencers to Watch in 2017, adds that from a survival standpoint, one needs to be money-motivated. Just stack cash and wait till you can put it in something where it wont be lost. It just goes away for a while. Inflation, over time, five years, seven years, 10 years, it all withstands. Live broke and invest savings, he said.

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Wish to be a millionaire? Grant Cardone tells you how he did it - The Indian Express

Image of female creative graphic designer working on color selection and drawing on graphics tablet ... [+] at workplace.

As the business world continues to evolve year after year, so does the way companies need to market themselves to be most effective in todays competitive marketplace. This is common knowledge for areas of marketing like social media and digital publishing, where the landscape seems to experience momentous shifts every few months as new platforms are launched and algorithms change.

An aspect of marketing that changes less frequently though, and as a result is often overlooked when it comes to finding new strategies, is branding. But it is critical to stay current on how to evolve your companys brand image to reflect the present needs and expectations of consumers.

As your company develops its 2020 marketing strategy, here are four key shifts in branding to be mindful of.

Branding Impacts Customers, Employees And Potential Hires

With a wider variety of companies now available to candidates than ever before from scrappy startups to established industry giants there are a lot of hoops to jump through to attract top-tier talent. On top of that, with higher transparency than ever before, thanks to platforms like Glassdoor, social media channels and various other websites, your company culture is on full display to potential new hires.

As a result, companies need to begin thinking of branding as a way to not only attract customers, but also as a way to entice qualified job seekers to join their teams. If your company appears unprofessional, whether by having poor design or having few followers on Instagram or limited reviews on Yelp you run the risk of missing out on premier candidates. Additionally, if your company appears not to prioritize employee well-being, candidates may doubt the integrity of your organization.

The numbers back up the importance of company culture quite clearly. In fact, a study by Deloitte found that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct company culture is important to the success of a business. Another study found that companies with strong work cultures saw a significant increase in revenue growth when compared to companies without performance-enhancing cultures. As you approach branding, keep in mind how much of an impact it has on different aspects of a business and your bottom line.

Affordability Isnt Always The Answer

The race to the bottom when it comes to pricing might not be something your company needs to participate in at all especially if you target millennial buyers. Whether its in the form of a superior customer experience or higher quality materials, younger customers are willing to pay more. In fact, according to PwC, 42% of consumers said they would pay more for a friendly, welcoming customer experience and 52% would pay more for a quick, efficient customer experience. On top of that, Nielsen found that nearly 3 out of 4 millennials are willing to spend more for sustainable products.

The meteoric surge in popularity of premium brands like Equinox and Whole Foods both attest to this increased attention to quality.

"The main goal is to create a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints to exceed your standards and your customers expectations. By keeping an eye on the entire customer journey, youre making sure that the promise of a positive experience is kept and that youre offering a superior service.Creating an experience really impresses purchasers and ensures that they will keep doing business with you in the future. A superior experience becomes a valued and unique asset for any type of business,says Shahin Safai, CEO of Royal Personal Training, a fitness startup focusing on personalized coaching and an elite workout experience.

The fitness company has seen success despite being in a highly crowded space peppered with low cost alternatives like Planet Fitness and LA Fitness by offering patrons a premiere customer experience, partnering with luxury hotels and top-tier Instagram influencers like Sommer Ray.

With so many options available on the market today, consumers arent afraid to shell out extra cash if it means theyll get something extra in return or are helping a good cause.

CEOs Building Personal Brands

Consumers today are pummeled with advertisements at nearly every touchpoint humanly possible: while scrolling through Instagram, on the subway during their morning commutes, while listening to their favorite podcasts, while driving along the freeway, when watching TV, and more the list goes on and on. During each of these interactions, consumers are told over and over again how important or life-changing every one of these brands are. As a result of this excessive exposure, consumers are becoming desensitized to the idea of trusting anything a faceless logo on a billboard is telling them.

This overexposure to traditional advertising might be a direct link to the rise in popularity of an alternative form of marketing for companies: the personal branding of CEOs as thought leaders in their respective spaces given how its much easier to trust a human being than a logo. This approach has become much easier with the proliferation of social media and other digital platforms, where ideas can spread like wildfire. With public figures like Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone helping forge the path as influencer CEOs, one click over to LinkedIn or Instagram will highlight how popular this approach has become for entrepreneurs as a method for generating brand awareness.

By publishing shareable, valuable content, whether thats in the form of blog posts, Instagram Stories, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts or something else entirely, you just might create unmatched reach and awareness for your business while also positioning yourself as a though leader in your industry.

The Importance Of Giving Back

Omnicom found that 70% of millennials are willing to spend more for brands that support charitable causes relative to those that dont. If the success of companies like TOMS, Warby Parker, Bombas and more have taught us anything, its that modern-day customers care and support mission-driven brands. Oftentimes, it isnt enough for a business to solely provide top-grade products or services you also may need to care about causes larger than your offerings and put your money where your mouth is to support those initiatives.

Take American Eagle for example the company is donating 100% of profits from a collection they designed with a team of teen advisers. Each piece of the collection is designed with an embedded QR code which allows anyone with a smartphone to scan the code and donate to the nonprofit Delivering Good, helping the homeless and underprivileged young people. Not only are they supporting a good cause with the initial sale, but continue to do so with future donations made through the QR code technology.

The good news is that giving back can take a variety of forms, such as donating a portion of your products to charity, allocating a percentage of your profits to related nonprofits, giving out helpful content for free, or allowing your employees to volunteer a certain number of hours.

Like any other aspect or process within your business, your companys brand image should evolve over time to reflect changing market trends, consumer expectations and collective ideals. In the coming year, applying these strategies just might give you the competitive edge youve been looking for in the marketplace.

More here:

4 Branding Strategies Your Company Should Apply In 2020 - Forbes

Two hours and eighteen minutes into The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) projects his avatar from across the galaxy to confront Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and save the Resistance. Both times I saw the film theatrically, once in Mumbai, and then in New Delhi a thousand miles away, the image of Luke floating cross-legged, deep in meditation, was met with thunderous applause. This wasnt just a clever twist for fans of Force magic; for many eastern audiences, the image of the Jedi levitating cross-legged above a mound evokes depictions of Siddhrtha Gautama, the first Buddha, in sculptures and paintings across the centuries.

The climactic reveal of Luke, lost in deep meditation on Ahch-To (the site of his self-imposed exile, where he lives a similarly material-free life), takes the place of the typical cowboy shot, where a subject is framed from the thigh-up as they grab their weapon from its holster a technique Star Wars has used in the past. Instinctively, most audiences in the west know what this image means whenever it appears, especially if its accompanied by the camera pushing closer for emphasis (as it does on Rey when she first wields her weapon in The Force Awakens). Its a precursor to heroic action scenes; a familiar visual shorthand that tickles the senses, as all genre tropes do. But in The Last Jedi, as the camera pushes in on Luke, the shorthand of the climax is an image more familiar to viewers in South and Southeast Asia. For me, the image recalled an enormous statue of the Buddha in the Ajanta Caves, a series of rock-cut Buddhist monasteries built as far back as the 2nd century BCE.

Cross-legged depictions of the meditating Buddha are most often depictions of the revered monk achieving nirvana, a form of deep spiritual understanding in South Asian religions like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. The latter, now the worlds fourth-largest religion, is believed to have been founded in the 5th century BCE by Siddhrtha Gautama, who most historians agree renounced the material world before embarking upon a journey of learning and teaching until his eventual death; more specific details are harder to verify, though most biographies cite his birthplace as Lumbini modern-day Nepal. In Buddhist traditions that arose in subsequent centuries, nirvana (or the great quenching) became one of Buddhisms central tenets, an escape from cycles of death and rebirth, achieved through deep concentration, helping others, and a state of peaceful, desireless living.

Despite its political and aesthetic touchstones, the Star Wars series philosophy has historically been a hodgepodge of eastern ideas, mixing Taoism, Buddhism and Zen. In the first film in the series, the Jedis belief in the Force and its light and dark sides mirrored the Taoist concepts of Qi (or Chi; a life force) and the yin-and-yang. Shortly thereafter, The Empire Strikes Back re-enforced, through characters like Master Yoda (Frank Oz), the idea that using the Force was akin to Zen or at least, the simplified version of Zen Buddhism that captured the attention of Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and leaked into the western zeitgeist of the 50s and 60s. In the west, the word Zen has since come to mean a state of calm attentiveness in which ones actions are guided by intuition, not unlike Lukes education on the Force. How will I know the good side from the bad? Luke asks, to which Yoda replies, You will know when you are calm. At peace. Passive.

However, the contradictory behavior of the Jedi would come to light in Return of the Jedi, when Obi-Wan insists that, in order to defeat the Emperor, Luke must vanquish Darth Vader in an act of physical dominance. This course of action would require Luke to detach himself emotionally from his own father, but it also contradicted the very things Yoda had taught him. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, Yoda said, never attack. By the end of the film, Luke rejects both extremes of the Force equation, neither buying into the visceral hatred of the Dark Side nor following the dispassionate Jedi dogma that wouldve also lead him to violence. After pummeling Vader in a fit of rage, Luke tosses his own lightsaber aside, and offers him a path to redemption.

By The Last Jedi, Luke has cut himself off from the Force, having failed to exorcise the darkness in his nephew Ben Solo. In flashback, we see Luke momentarily tempted by both sides of the equation once more: the violent potential within him that the Dark Side could draw out, and the Jedis dogmatic call to ascetic detachment in order to vanquish evil. In this moment, as in the moment Luke nearly took Vaders life, the Dark Side and the ways of the Jedi are one and the same. Luke thinks about (and nearly acts on) killing Ben. He doesnt follow through, but its too late: The betrayed Ben, denied the road to redemption by his own uncle, is set down on a dark path of his own. A second Skywalker villain is created by Jedi zealotry.

The greatest teacher, failure is, Yoda tells Luke, setting him on a path of amends. While simply appearing in person at the battle of Crait would have fulfilled the same plot function, the mechanics by which Luke appears, battles Ben (now Kylo Ren), and subsequently dies, serve to complete his story thematically. Luke uses the Force not to walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order, as he jokes earlier in the film, but as means of spiritual communion, the way it manifests elsewhere between Kylo and Lukes new protg, Rey (Daisy Ridley). While Rian Johnson got the idea for force projection from the Star Wars reference book The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force, astral projection as a spiritual concept takes hold in Buddhist scripture. In the Samaaphala Sutta, or The Fruit of Contemplative Life, the Buddha says:

With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, the monk directs and inclines it to creating a mind-made body ... He appears. He vanishes. He goes unimpeded through walls, ramparts, and mountains as if through space. He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. He walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land. Sitting cross-legged he flies through the air like a winged bird.

The Last Jedis cut away from the duel to Lukes cross-legged meditation signals the achievement of a greater, clear-minded understanding. The concept of nirvana ties back to the central Buddhist idea of escaping cycles of life and death, or attaining moksha, i.e. salvation from pain; what pains Luke, it would seem, is the guilt of his failure. In Buddhism, in order to attain this moksha, one must ascend as Luke does from ceto-vimutti, a state of simple, desireless living, to paa-vimutti, the escape from physical suffering through vipassana, or meditation. The term nirvana, when literally translated, means blowing out, as in a candle. As Luke fades from physical existence, backed by the sun-drenched horizon, his life ends like a fading flame.

Fittingly, Lukes enlightenment, and his rejection of Jedi dogma, mirrors the rift between two major sects of Buddhism: Theravada, or the School of the Elders, and Mahayana, or the Great Vehicle. Theravada, the oldest and most orthodox form of Buddhism, teaches the path to nirvana as a strict endeavour embarked upon only by chosen monks living according to a rigid monastic code, whose enlightenment takes precedence over helping others. In response, Mahayana, which arose cir. the 1st century BCE, introduced newer, more lenient teachings considered inauthentic by many Theravadins. It allowed laypeople the chance to walk the path to enlightenment, and placed a greater emphasis on helping struggling humans, even if it meant delaying ones own nirvana in order to do so (Mahayana, as it happens, was also the origin of Zen Buddhism).

This divide also echoes the paradigm of the new Star Wars films, which dramatizes the tensions between the rigidity of bloodline legacy from Vader to Kylo Ren and the arrival of an outsider Rey, who uses the Force and upsets the established order.

Rey is also a key fixture in the films use of Buddhist imagery. Her own moment of enlightenment, while searching for her parents identity in the cave on Ahch-To, comes in the form of gazing into infinite mirrors. In some sects of Buddhism, the mirror is considered a point of spiritual reflection; seventeenth century Zen master Hakuin Ekaku considered the mirror a false or illusory reflection of reality. Similarly, the truth Rey seeks in these mirrors presents itself first as illusion two silhouetted figures, perhaps her parents, walking towards her before finally reflecting the reality of the world as it truly is. In seeing these two shadows merge into her own reflection, Rey, the girl who raised herself on Jakku, begins to accept that its neither the phantom parents she clings to, nor idols like Luke or Han to whom she runs, nor Kylo Ren by whom shes tempted, that will show her her path. Its something she must forge herself.

Rey isnt the only important outsider in The Last Jedi either. Rose (Trn Loan) and Finn (John Boyega) help a young stable boy (Temirlan Blaev) on Canto Bight, the Casino city frequented by the galaxys war profiteers. The capital is a nexus of violence and materialism, in contrast with the Buddhist tenets of ending suffering (dukkha) and detaching oneself from the material desires that cause it (samudaya). At the end of the film, a young slave boy who finds inspiration in a Rebel ring given to him by Rose, as well as in the legends of Luke Skywalker, appears to use the Force. In an immediate sense, this child is a symbol of the continuing rebellion, the birth of a new generation of Jedi, and like Rey, a spiritual successor in the Skywalker story.

But where does the Force go from here, after Lukes ultimate rejection of violence and the Jedi dogma? How will this mysterious tool and spiritual fabric be seen, and canonized, in and after The Rise of Skywalker? The answer may partially lie with the new live-action Star Wars show on Disney Plus, The Mandalorian. The series, currently six episodes in of a planned total of eight, introduces a character colloquially dubbed Baby Yoda. This mute infant, of the same species as the Yoda we know, exhibits sensitivity to the Force, and in his innocent moments, tries to use the Force to heal the Mandalorians wounds. The Force as a means of physical healing is a concept yet unexplored by Star Wars, though it feels tethered to Lukes use of the Force as a great vehicle for spiritual healing in The Last Jedi.

When the film begins, Luke has taken a dark path akin to Yodas didactic prophecy many years ago: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering. But by the end, Luke breaks this painful cycle by finding an alternative to Yodas three-pronged mantra, one that echoes the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the core of the Buddhas teachings: Suffering exists. It has a cause. It has an end. And there is a noble path to ending it. The future of the Force, it would seem, lies in the ending of suffering, rather than in answering the call to violence; or, as Rose puts it, Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.

The saga thus far has woven a harmonious fabric, in which Luke Skywalker, the young farm boy from Tatooine who just wanted to be part of something greater, fulfills his destiny by becoming one with the Force. Hes helped along his path by none other than Master Yoda, whose own enlightenment has seen him become one with nature; We are what they grow beyond, Yoda tells him, of their Jedi students. That is the true burden of all masters. As the saga leans further into Mahayana tradition, the goals of its wise Jedi, and its older generations, are to guide these new heroes and outsiders toward their own forms of spiritual understanding.

Luke does not appear in front of Kylo Ren to fight, but to guide others to safety. When his astonishing new abilities are revealed, they are a path to salvation for Kylo, for the entrapped Rebels, and for the Jedi master himself instead of bloodshed. When Luke is revealed floating on the mound, the awesome power audiences applauded was not violent fantasy, but a path to peace.

Read the original:
The Last Jedi put Star Wars Buddhist philosophy in the foreground - Polygon

Its not easy being a 2,000-year-old Buddhist scroll. A slight gust of wind, a particularly humid day, or even a simple exhalation could cause the scroll to crack or crumble into pieces. To unroll a scroll this old is almost unthinkablebut recently, conservators at the Library of Congress found themselves with no other option. They wanted to read the words scrawled inside the Gandhara scroll.

Before the scroll came to the library, it was buried for 2,000 years in a clay jar in a Buddhist stupa, or dome-shaped shrine, in the ancient region of Gandhara, now the Peshawar Valley in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The high-altitude, arid climate kept it from crumbling until it was excavated in the 1990s. In 2005, conservators received the scroll in a Parker Pen box on a bed of cotton. It was the most fragile object we have ever encountered, Holly Krueger, a retired paper conservator at the library, writes in an email. A year passed before the conservators felt ready to unfurl the scroll without destroying it completely.

The scroll, which was radiocarbon dated to the first century B.C., is one of a handful of surviving early Buddhist manuscripts from Gandhara, according to Jonathan Loar, a South Asia specialist at the library. Gandhara, situated on the Silk Road, served as a gateway to India, and the regions monks are credited with spreading Buddhism into Iran and China, Krueger writes in a 2008 paper in The Book and Paper Group Annual. It was written in Gandhari, a language related to Sanskrit, on birch bark, an ancient writing material that consists of thin layers held together with a natural gluealmost like ancient phyllo pastry. As it ages, this glue breaks down, leaving the layers extremely vulnerable to shattering with the slightest disturbance, Krueger says, adding that a scroll this unstable could have only survived in a jar.

Krueger consulted conservators at the British Library, who had successfully unrolled 30 scrolls, for their input. Without any ancient, coiled birch bark laying around for a trial run, she practiced on a baked cigar roll, teasing apart its wafer-thin layers with bamboo spatulas. It was not as fragile as the scroll proved to be, Krueger says. A few days before the unrolling, the conservators placed the scroll in a specially constructed, humidified chamber, which softened the birch bark so it would not break upon contact.

The actual unrolling happened in June, 2006, on a Saturday, to reduce the risk of air currents created by coworkers and better control the humidity and temperature of the librarys paper lab. Krueger was present with only two others: Yasmeen Khan, a senior rare book conservator at the library, and Mark Barnard, the chief conservator at the British Library. One cannot underestimate the nerves of steel required for such a project, Krueger says. We had only one chance for success.

Krueger and Barnard removed the scroll from its moist chamber and placed it on top of a pane of borosilicate glass. One turn at a time, using bamboo spatulas, they unfurled the birch bark, placing small glass weights on newly flat sections. Each fresh turn revealed new fragments, which the conservators weighed down to preserve their place in the text. If the scroll seemed on the verge of cracking, a conservator would mist the air with a preservation pencil.

It was a dramatic and silent affair: Everyone took shallow, controlled breaths. One misplaced exhale could scatter the scroll shards and render something translatable into something lost. I was doing the photography and informed the conservators whenever I was going to move so that they would be prepared for air movement and change, Khan writes in an email. When the whole thing was laid flat, Krueger and Barnard removed the glass weights and laid a second pane of glass on the whole revealed scroll, pushing down tiny pieces that popped up with the bamboo sticks.

Finally translated, the final scroll has no title, beginning, or end, but it does retain around 75 to 80 percent of the original textone of the better-preserved Gandharan scrolls in existence, Loar says. It tells the story of 15 seekers of enlightenment who came before and after Siddhrtha Gautama, the sage living in the 5th or 6th century B.C. who became known as the Buddha. Repeating these namesverbally, mentally, and or in writingis a powerful practice, Loar says, adding that it functioned as a meditative exercise.

Too fragile for public display, the scroll has been reburiedthis time in a box within the archives of the library. Theres also a drawer that holds all the tiny bits of dust that sprung from the scroll during the unrolling. Conservators now transport it around the library on a cart with vibration dampening to ease its journey, Krueger says. But this past summer, the conservators digitized the entire scroll, making it surprisingly easy to read a millennia-old account of the lives of buddhasthat is, if you read Gandhari.

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How the Library of Congress Unrolled a 2,000-Year-Old Buddhist Scroll - Atlas Obscura

What effect does the closure of a church have on a village? Is Catholic life in these villages disappearing together with the church? In the Dutch village of Afferden the local church was sold to a Buddhist movement from Thailand and converted into a temple.

Parishioners are happy with the new owners: The Buddhists invest an enormous amount of time and energy in the village.

When the Buddhist monks in their orange robes first walked through the Dutch village in the east of the country, the villagers were more than a little surprised. Mark van Dinteren is one of them. He used to work as a handyman for the church in Afferden. Two years ago this church was sold to the Dhammikaya movement from Thailand and subsequently converted into a temple by the Buddhist monks.

Van Dinteren often went to church. He does miss the weekly Masses. Yet he is also happy with the newcomers, who he believes are already well established.

The Buddhists are friendly people and already completely accepted by the villagers. I am happy that the church is still being used by people who have its best interest at heart, he said.

The sale of the church in Afferden is part of a lengthy process of church closures in the local parish of St. Francis and St. Clara. Only the church in the nearby village of Druten remains open, the four other village churches have all been closed.

During the process of church closures, various project plans were submitted by parishioners in order to keep these churches open. Ton Perlo, vice-president of the parish board, was one of the people responsible for the evaluation of these plans and concluded that they were all inadequate.

They did not meet the strict guidelines of the diocese and financially speaking were not sound. Then there is not much left for us to do, he explained.

The search for a new owner for the church in Afferden was not an easy one. After a long period of waiting, the parish board eventually received a bid from a party that was interested in taking over the church: the Buddhist Dhammikaya movement from Thailand.

That was a tricky one, admitted Perlo. Church guidelines do not allow non-believers to buy a church. He is referring to the guidelines of the Dutch Catholic Church, stating that if a religious party wants to buy a church building, it must also be a member of the Council of Churches, a partnership of eighteen Christian Churches in the Netherlands.

After extensive deliberation, the parish board finally managed to convince the Diocese of Den Bosch to make an exception to the rule. The fact that it would remain a spiritual center, even though it would be a Buddhist center, was the determining factor, according to Perlo.

It remains a spiritual building. Its better to have Buddhists in it than apartments, he said.

When asked if a church could then also become a mosque, Perlo said that would be another discussion.

No, Buddhists are different. They do not really have a religion, as Muslims do, he said.

Freek van Genugten, policy officer of the Diocese of Den Bosch, agrees that as a rule only religious parties affiliated with the Council of Churches can buy a church. Yet this case, he says, is an example of necessity knows no law.

An exception was made in this case because there were no other buyers. What weighed heavily in this case was the fact that a new party came in that corresponded with the function of the church, Van Genugten said.

He also emphasized that it will not become the custom in the future to sell churches to other religious groups, saying, This will remain an exception to the rule.

Luang phi (venerable monk) Sander Oudenampsen was surprised when he found the church.

As the only Dutch-speaking monk, he was actively involved in the search for a good location for a temple. He proudly gives a tour of his new prayer site and shows the huge golden Buddha statue it will be replaced by a larger statue from Thailand and the various paintings about Buddhas life.

The location of the church makes it very suitable for a temple, he said.

Originally we were looking for a location in Amsterdam. But its much quieter here. Ideal for meditation, the monk explained.

When asked if it was difficult for the Buddhist movement to buy the church, he replied it wasnt.

No, not at all. I know that the diocese has strict guidelines when it comes to reuse. We were allowed to buy it because, according to them, Buddhism is not officially a religion. But, to be honest, that has also been an administrative solution. We do see it as a religion, Oudenampsen said.

Nevertheless, he is convinced that Buddhism is closely linked to Christianity, and therefore corresponds well with the original function of the church building.

Theyre both focused on prayer, on meditation. Thats also what I hear from the people who visit the meditation evenings, he explained.

The Buddhist monks regularly organize free introductory evenings where the basic principles of meditation are explained. More and more villagers attend these meditation classes, said Oudenampsen, including many people who used to go to the church before.

Elderly people from the village come to him with questions about life as well. Just like the pastoral task of a Catholic monk, he sees it as his task to answer these questions and teach them about Buddhism. He notices that there is a hunger for more knowledge about the deeper meaning of things. I think Buddhism can provide many answers to these questions.

One of the visitors of the meditation evenings is the former parish priest of Afferden. Between 2005 to 2013, Father Gerard van Hoofd served in the village, after which he retired. His time as a parish priest in Afferden and the surrounding villages was one of the best times of his life. He remembers that the community in Afferden was a small but living community: It was a group of people that really believed in the church and really wanted to make something of it.

But after several discussions with the parish board and the diocese, Van Hoof noticed that parishioners slowly began to lose their faith in the church. After the church was closed, Van Hoof tried to motivate people to go to the church in the nearby village of Druten.

I went to Mass in Druten in the hope that people would follow me there. But they didnt. I only know two people from Afferden who go to Mass in Druten, the priest said.

Van Hoof is open and honest about his love of Buddhism and meditation. He is therefore pleased with the new role of the church and with the fact that former churchgoers can meditate there.

The Buddhists invest a huge amount of time and energy in the village, and put a lot of effort into being known and seen, he said.

Van Dinteren doesnt think its a problem that some of the other parishioners are now meditating in the temple. Yet he himself doesnt feel the need to do the same, nor, however, does he feel the need to go to Mass in Druten. He does still like to visit the Lady Chapel in the cemetery, a place that feels familiar to him.

Van Dinteren sees that the people in Afferden are trying to find their own way: For example, by lighting candles on All Souls Day.

The Catholic traditions are not likely to disappear in Afferden anytime soon, you know, he said reassuringly.

Even if the church is closed, we do find ways to practice our faith. The traditions will certainly continue to exist. But in our own way, he said.

What effect does the closure of a church have on a village? Is Catholic life in these villages disappearing together with the church? And what are the consequences of closing a church for village traditions, the involvement of volunteers and the solidarity among villagers?

There is still much we dont know about this. Therefore, the Dutch Catholic weekly Katholiek Nieuwsblad is currently carrying out extensive research, with the financial support of the Dutch Journalism Fund, trying to give a clearer picture of a growing problem in the Dutch and in the international Catholic community. Crux will be providing translations of these updates.

This article was written exclusively for Crux and translated by Susanne Kurstjens van den Berk.

Crux is dedicated to smart, wired and independent reporting on the Vatican and worldwide Catholic Church. That kind of reporting doesnt come cheap, and we need your support. You can help Crux by giving a small amount monthly, or with a onetime gift. Please remember, Crux is a for-profit organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible.

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Dutch officials after church sale: 'It's better to have Buddhists than apartments' - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Updated December 15, 2019 10:57:00

Eng-Kong Tan wants you to get used to disappointment it could save your marriage.

When the honeymoon period is over, he says, you need someone outside the relationship who can say: "It's OK. It's part of the journey of intimacy."

He's not trying to burst anyone's bubble. In fact, he wants to help people stay together.

The Buddhist consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist provides mindfulness-based couples therapy.

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the present moment without judgemental thoughts.

And he knows a thing or two about how to make love last he's been happily married for 48 years.

While his religion Buddhism and mindfulness are closely connected, he is careful to separate the two in his work.

He acknowledges that similar techniques exist in Western psychology, and that comparable spiritual practices can be found in other religious traditions.

"I don't even call it Buddhist, because mindfulness is now in the air," he explains.

The point of his approach is to find new ways for couples to relate to one another and weather the inevitable hardships that come with being in an intimate relationship.

The process of choosing our beloved is a small cog in the wheel of romantic partnership, according to Eng-Kong.

He says the real test of a marriage isn't how well we've chosen it's how well we survive "all the disillusionments".

He is wary of the way popular culture puts romance on a pedestal, and he doesn't appreciate saccharine love songs on the radio.

"'You are the one', 'you are perfect for me' no! That is because they're in love," he says.

"When we're in love, we project onto the other what is perfect for us. But the other is not that."

The key is to check our unconscious expectations.

"Sometimes we think we marry someone because we just want to love them," Eng-Kong says.

But deep down, we might be looking for someone who gives us the order we need, "emotionally and psychologically".

He advises against believing in the "storybook happily ever after". Instead, he says, couples should focus on how to work together through inevitable disappointment.

Eng-Kong says it's a good idea to look for someone who isn't only attracted to you, "but fundamentally you feel is a good person who wants to take care of you".

He calls the drive to care for other people a "fundamental ingredient", and says that even the most severe marital problems can be solved if it is present.

Eng-Kong starts and ends each session by meditating with his clients.

He says this gives them "five minutes of quiet self-reflection" to help imprint "what was good and useful" about the session for later use.

These meditations are integral to Buddhism, as mindfulness is one element of the eightfold path that Buddha described as a route to Enlightenment.

The path has three arms moral conduct, mental discipline and wisdom with corresponding actions that are all interconnected, like a wheel, a prominent Buddhist symbol.

Piyasoma Medis, a lay Buddhist teacher and preacher, says following the eightfold path is not a selfish pursuit it's designed to benefit the people around you.

"It's an outward-looking way of leading a Buddhist life," Piyasoma, who has also been married for 48 years, explains.

"In our relationship, my wife should be my priority. And she feels the same way about me."

Piyasoma says practising right thought detachment from malice and selfish desire inevitably leads to right speech.

"You choose your words really carefully without hurting others," he says.

Right speech influences compassion in dealing with other people, and the cycle continues.

Eng-Kong says the Buddhist idea of rejecting the inward-focused, singular, unchanging self is a deeply useful tool in understanding the way we relate to others, including a partner.

The spiritual self is "less and less I, me and mine", he says. "Meaning in life is not about what I want or what I own, or what is mine.

"What gives us meaning in life is to understand there is no substantial, permanent, fixed self. We're always evolving."

Problems arise when we try to fix or hold elements in place, like thinking: "I want to be forever young. I want to keep this money, and this money must never leave me."

When we understand that constant evolution is a natural state, Eng-Kong says we come to understand inter-being the recognition that we are all deeply connected.

"Yourself and myself, I'm not actually separate. We're part of the human universe. That is what we call the transcendental self."

He says relationships exist in the "area of the interbeing".

"When there is a relationship, we should be growing together, not in competition, and not in an outward way, but in an inward way."

Eng-Kong says he speaks publicly about his mindfulness work to normalise the practice of sharing and to help his clients develop healthy relationships.

"Mindfulness itself modulates emotions, and it's often when emotions are running all over the place or are too intense that communication breaks down," he says.

And he wants other people to know that they're not alone when it comes to having intense feelings.

"Even the Dalai Lama says: 'I get angry and I lose my head!'"

Topics: buddhism, psychology, psychiatry, relationships, marriage, emotions, sydney-2000, nsw, australia

First posted December 15, 2019 07:00:00

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You probably knew mindfulness could help you with stress. But did you know it could save your marriage? - ABC News

(RNS) Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This weeks gallery includes a shooting in a Jewish community in New Jersey, an annual procession in honor of the Virgin Mary near Los Angeles, and more.

Orthodox Jewish men carry Moshe Deutsch's casket outside a Brooklyn synagogue following his funeral, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019 in New York. Deutsch was killed Tuesday in a shooting inside a Jersey City, N.J. kosher food market. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Bullet holes are seen on a piece of metal as people work to secure the scene of a shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. The city's mayor says gunmen targeted the kosher market during a shooting that killed six people Tuesday. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama wears a ceremonial yellow hat of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism at the Kirti Monastery in Dharmsala, India, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019. The Tibetan leader presided over a function marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of the monastery in exile. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

Exile Tibetan Buddhist monks perform by clapping their hands during a debate on Buddhist dialectics at the Kirti Monastery in Dharmsala, India, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was on hand to mark the monastery's 25th anniversary. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

Pope Francis prays in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, near Rome's Spanish Steps, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019, an annual tradition marking the start of the city's holiday season. In the background people look out from the balcony and windows of the Spanish Embassy. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice as Gambia's Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou, left, listens on the second day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Aung San Suu Kyi is representing Myanmar in a case filed by Gambia at the ICJ, the United Nations' highest court, accusing Myanmar of genocide in its campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Hundreds of pilgrims hike up Mount Rubidoux, in Riverside, California, as part of a 2.5-mile procession to celebrate the Virgin Mary, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019. The annual "El Camino de San Juan Diego" takes place the weekend before the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which falls on Dec. 12. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina

Pilgrims attend a Mass atop Mount Rubidoux at the conclusion the annual "El Camino de San Juan Diego" procession in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Riverside, California, on Dec. 7, 2019. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina

A child plays with a balloon as Kashmiri Muslim devotees offer prayers outside the shrine of Sufi saint Sheikh Syed Abdul Qadir Jeelani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. Hundreds of devotees gathered at the shrine for the 11-day festival that marks the death anniversary of the Sufi saint. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill pays his last respect to former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov during a funeral ceremony at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. One of the founders of Russia's ruling United Russia party, Luzhkov, has died at the age of 83. (Sergei Vlasov, Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)

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Photos of the Week - Religion News Service

This month, October, marks the end of vassa or the Buddhist Lent, the three months rainy season retreat observed by the Sangha or Buddhist monastic communities. The end of vassa is celebrated by Buddhists with Pavarana, the inviting ceremony, followed by Kathina, the robe offering ceremony, which take place on Uposatha (Observance) day. At the end of Buddhist Lent, Buddhist monks are free to travel again, but before parting they should maintain monastic discipline and punish offenders, in order to purify the Sangha. At the Pavarana ceremony, each monk invites the other monks to point out to him any faults he has committed during the vassa retreat period.

Kathina robe-offering ceremony

The word kathina denotes a cotton cloth offered by lay people to bhikkhus (monks) annually, after the end of the vassa rainy retreat, for the purpose of making robes. On the termination of vassa, the Kathina robe offering ceremony is usually held at the monastery. This practice started quite early in Buddhist society, with the approval of the Buddha himself. When the Buddha was staying at Jetavana monastery at Savatthi, he granted permission for the bhikkhus to accept kathina robes from the laity, as several bhikkhus only had old and torn robes. It is the Sangha as a whole which receives these gifts of robes or plain cloth from the laity: the cloth must be offered to the whole Sangha, and not to individuals, and the bhikkhus will then decide which of the monks should receive the gifts. If the kathina offered is plain cloth, selected monks will do the cutting, sewing, and dying of the cloth in a single day. The gifts are then distributed to the individual monastics who have properly observed the rainy retreat.

Jivaka, the Buddhas physician, is described as the first layman to offer robes to Buddhist monks. Before that, Buddhist monks made their robes themselves from pieces of rag cloth. Jivaka also requested the Buddha to allow the monks to accept robes donated by lay people. The Buddha appreciated that it was very hard for the monks to make their robes themselves and he allowed his monks to accept kathina robes donated by the laity. British Library.

When the Buddha granted his disciples permission to accept kathina robes, lay people from the city of Rajagaha brought the garments and other requisites to the monastery. The Buddha is sitting at the centre, surrounded by monks and lay people. Rows of monastic gifts, such as kathina robes and other requisites, are depicted in front of the Buddha. British Library, Or. 14405, ff. 36-37

Dana, or giving, is a practice essential to Buddhism, and the offering of kathina robes is considered to be one of the most meritorious deeds. Offering kathina robes to the Sangha is thus valued as a way of keeping alive the true spirit of offering, as taught by the Buddha, and at the Kathina ceremony monks will chant the Kammavaca for Kathina robes. Kammavaca is a Pali term and it refers to collections of passages from the Tipitaka concerning ordination, the bestowing of robes and other rituals of monastic life. A Kammavaca is a highly ornamental type of manuscript, usually commissioned by lay members of society as a work of merit.

The manuscript shown above (Or. 12010A) contains the following Kammavaca texts: Upasampada (Official Act for the conferment of the Higher Ordination), Kathinadussadana (Official Act for the holding of the Kathina ceremony), Ticivarena-avippavasa (text for the investiture of a monk with the three robes), Sima-sammannita (Official Act for the Agreement of boundary limits), Thera-sammuti (Official Act to agree upon the seniority of theras), Nama-sammuti (Official Act to agree upon a name), Vihara-kappa-bhumi-sammuti (text of the dedication of a Vihara), Kui-vatthu-sammuti (Official Act to search and agree upon a site for a hut), and Nissaya-muti-sammuti (Official Act to agree upon relaxation of the requisites).

The Festival of Light This festival celebrates the anniversary of the Buddhas return from the celestial abode where he had spent Lent, giving the sermon on Abhidhamma or the Higher Doctrines to celestial beings and his former mother, who had been reborn as a deva. It was on the full moon day of the month of October that the Buddha descended from the Tavatimsa heaven to the abode of humans. Humans on earth therefore illuminate their homes, and paper lanterns dazzle the streets, to welcome back the Buddha, and candles and lighted little bowls of oil are placed on the terraces of the pagodas. The event is celebrated with lights, which is why it is called the Festival of Light. People pay obeisance to their parents and elders, following the example of the Buddha who paid a visit to his former mother to repay his debt of gratitude.

The Kathina festival held at the conclusion of the rainy retreat originated 2,500 years ago and is still celebrated by Buddhists, with alms giving and offering of robes to the monks who observed the retreat. Buddhists believe that the offering of kathina robes is a great act, but in addition to giving robes, lay supporters also consider the bhikkhus other needs. The bhikkhus who receive the kathina robes deliver sermons to the lay supporters. The Festivals thus bring ordinary people together with the Buddhist orders, in a joyful spirit of shared devotion. In some places fire balloons rise up in the sky in order to pay homage to the Culamani Pagoda in Tavatimsa heaven, where the relic of the Buddhas hair is believed to be enshrined. According to Theravada tradition, these offerings take place over a period of one month, from 19th October to 16 November.

This post was previously published on bl.uk and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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The Asian and African Studies blog is written largely by curators in Asia and African Studies, but also includes contributions from colleagues across the Library, with occasional guest contributions. The blog focuses on the extraordinarily diverse collections in Asian and African Studies which constitute one of the worlds finest resources for the study of Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

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