MOSCOW, Aug. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --BeOne, the Russian blockchain start-up is revolutionizing online education and course delivery by creating a distributed ledger backed platform. The BeOne platform is designed to offer a range of courses to users with different educational backgrounds in various domains. The platform, currently undergoing closed alpha testing has announced the launch of its ICO campaign to raise the necessary funds to build a comprehensive finished product.

Users on BeOne can teach or learn a wide array of skills, starting from cooking to photography. The platform is designed keeping the needs of students and instructors in mind. The platform makes it easier for instructors to create and share informative education content of various types at a fraction of the cost while earning better returns than any other online course platform out there. Meanwhile, users/students can lay their hands upon exhaustive course content for a small fee.

BeOne users can take part in the webinars hosted on the platforms, avail one-on-one consultations and get immediate answers to their queries. When it comes to courses, they can just purchase a particular module of significance based on their needs instead of paying for the whole course. The platform also allows users to search for like-minded people and join interest groups to learn together. For instructors and course creators, BeOne has a broad range of monetization models that charge commission not higher than 10%, which is the least in the industry.

The BeOne ICOis set to go live on Aug. 28, 2017, at 12:00 (MSK). During the month-long crowdsale, investors can purchase the platform's tokens by depositing BTC, ETH, LTC or DASH. The BeOne tokens serve as the mode of transactions on the platform. The platform has set a maximum cap of 10 million tokens out of which 9 million will be available for purchase during the crowdsale.

BeOne has an attractive bonus option in place for early bird investors. Those investing during the first three hours of the ICO stand to gain a 50% discount on the token purchase. Following which, the tokens will be made available at a 20% discount for the next 72 hours.

Out of all the funds raised during the ICO, BeOne will allocate 50% for marketing, 20% for development, 20% for onboarding instructors and the rest 10% for operating expenses. More information about the education platform and the ICO is available on the company's website.

About BeOne

Based out of Russia, BeOne is an innovative decentralized online learning platform that enables users to make money by sharing skills, knowledge, and experience. The company is striving to make online educational resources more affordable and readily accessible to people of all age groups across various domains.

Learn more about BeOne at https://be-one.coAccess BeOne whitepaper at https://be-one.co/wp/whitepaper_eng.pdfBeOne on Twitter https://twitter.com/beone_coBeOne of Facebook https://www.facebook.com/beonecoJoin BeOne Telegram Channel at https://t.me/beoneco

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Contact Name:Kristina SmirnovaContact Email: rel="nofollow">kristina@be-one.coLocation:Moscow, Russia

BeOne is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

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China-focused venture capital firm H Capital has led a US150 million series C round in Zuoyebang, a K-12 online education spin-off from Baidu Inc.

It marks the largest funding round in the K-12 online education industry. Tiger Global Management LLC., Sequoia Capital, Legend Capital, GGV Capital and Xianghe Capital also participated in the round, according to a company announcement.

"I have been focusing on online education industry, and I believe the combination of education and Internet technology will create great companies," said Chen Xiaohong, founder at H Capital. "Zuoyebang has made significant developments in the past two years, and I believe they have the potential to grow in the future."

In September 2015, Baidu spun off its online education platform Zuoyebang as part of the search engine giant's strategy to make its various new businesses independent and open them to outside investors. The platform currently has nearly 60 million monthly active users, and have over 70% market share in the K12 online education market.

The company focus on providing assistance to K-12 students on their homework, including problem search, one-on-one Q&A, teacher live streaming videos and homework evaluation.

Zuoyebang previously raised a US$60 million series B round from GGV, Sequoia and Legend Capital last September. One year prior, it also received a US$25 million series A round from Sequoia and Legend Capital. The company plans to use the latest proceeds to improve its products and build up its team.

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H Capital Leads $150M Round In Chinese K12 Online Education ... - China Money Network

Ruth Thieme with her father, the Rev. Wolfgang Shulte-Berge.

Ruth Thieme felt close to her adoptive mother and father growing up in university towns in California and Arizona. But the fact that her biological parents gave her up always bothered her, even though her adoptive parents assured her that the reasons were benign.

Being adopted made me feel unwanted or thrown away, or that somehow I wasnt good enough, said Thieme, now 35. Why would someone give their baby away?

When she turned 18 and her parents told her that her real father was a Catholic priest working in a small parish outside Cologne, Germany, she understood her biological parents decision better, and decided she wanted to meet them.

I didnt know what I wanted from them, she said. I just wanted to meet them and ask for any genetic markers in case I wanted to have children. I didnt know whether I wanted a relationship.

Her initial meeting with the Rev. Wolfgang Shulte-Berge in 2000 would prove to be the catalyst for an unusually close father-daughter relationship that would span the next 12 years and unfold in countries throughout Europe.

He was always gung-ho about connecting with his daughter, Thieme said. The minute I was there, he was a part of my life.

Still, Shulte-Berge insisted on keeping their relationship a secret, until shortly before his death four years ago, a condition that Thieme readily accepted.

He was in this tiny town with maybe 5,000 or 7,000 people, and I knew that if word got out, it would ruin his reputation, Thieme said. I cared more about the relationship with my father than whether it was a secret of not.

Shulte-Berge did his best to answer all Thiemes questions, explaining that her adoption was intended to be an act of compassion after he confessed to another priest that he was involved with a woman who was pregnant.

Shulte-Berge said the priest with the approval of their bishop quietly arranged to have a Catholic couple adopt the child. That couple, Thiemes parents, were college professors working in Germany who would soon return to the United States.

During the decade after Thieme met her father, Shulte-Berge flew to the United States four or five times and visited his daughter. And once a year she would meet him in Europe for a two-week vacation, when they would travel together, talk endlessly, and try to make up for the years they had lost.

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Almost always, their conversations centered on Shulte-Berges desire to be a father as well as a priest. In the early 1960s, Shulte-Berge explained, he was one of many young priests who believed incorrectly that the celibacy rule would soon be lifted, allowing them to marry and have families.

Since her fathers death, Thieme has married and has had a son who carries her biological fathers name, Byron Wolfgang Best. She has stayed in touch with her biological mother, while continuing to meet more members of his fathers family.

Before he passed, he let his entire family know he had a child, Thieme said. It was something he didnt want to do until it was close to the time he was going to pass because there are people in his family who are older and still very conservative. Shulte-Berge also insisted that local authorities issue Thieme a new birth certificate, one with his name listed as her father.

Thieme, a practicing Catholic, has become an advocate for abolishing the celibacy rule for Catholic clergy, something her father had hoped would happen in his lifetime. He wanted me to do whatever I could that was in my power to talk about this, she said.

Renate Hilda Waltraud Brandt thought her lover, a Catholic priest, would be happy when she told him she was pregnant back in 1969. The two had a bond that had endured a two-year separation while the Rev. Alois Ober did missionary work in Madagascar.

At that time, there were a lot of people in the ministry who were rebelling against celibacy, said Brandt, then a committed socialist living in Germany. There were quite a few priests who left the priesthood because of it.

She thought Ober might be one of them.

But, after fantasizing together about having a child before she was pregnant, Ober reacted negatively to the news that he would be a father, and soon made it clear that he was not about to give up the priesthood.

From then on, Brandt and her young daughter lived at the margins, depending on how generous Ober was feeling. The priest would make occasional visits to Brandt and little Nicole, but, before long, the adults were arguing over child support.

When I asked him for help, he was so arrogant, Brandt said, adding that Ober was reluctant to provide more than modest support even though he ran a lucrative business on the side.

Eventually, a friend helped persuade Ober to provide give more, as Brandt and her daughter embarked on a nomadic life, living in experimental, communal households in Germany, Austria, and even India.

We moved around all the time, said Nicole Brandt, who uses the name Presence now. By the time I was 14, I had been to 14 different schools.

By then, Brandt and her daughter had moved to Northern California, where they were frequent visitors at an Oregon commune run by a controversial guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Ober objected to Brandts involvement with the commune, but they stayed in touch, and Brandt and her daugher always kept Obers identity a secret.

No one knew he was a priest, Nicole Brandt later wrote in her journal.

Over time, however, Nicole Brandt grew disenchanted with her fathers occasional letters and yearned for a closer connection.

The letters he wrote to me felt like carbon copies of one another, she said. I told him Id love to have a more intimate conversation and he never responded to that.

Nicole Brandt said she made two serious suicide attempts during her teen years as she struggled with the feeling that she was unworthy, in part because of her absent father.

Growing up, you want to have a meaningful relationship with your father and feel that you matter, and I didnt have a lot of that, she said.

As an adult, Nicole Brandt made peace with her father and began visiting him in Germany every couple of years around Christmas. But, in 2007, when she arrived at his home, she learned that Ober had been hospitalized with a serious illness. Thats when she learned the limits of what it means to be a secret daughter.

My father was a closed book, Nicole said. He saw to it that none of his family members, including his mother, father, sisters, and brothers, ever met or knew of me.

When she was introduced to her uncle as Obers daughter, she said his reaction was a challenge: Do you have any proof?

Ober died later that day and left a large estate, though very little went to Nicole Brandt. More distressing, she said, is the fact that Obers relatives her relatives prevented her from going through her fathers belongings, depriving her of the chance to learn more about him.

As Nicole Brandt wrote in her journal: Of all the wealth he possessed, this was the most important thing of all to me to be able to go through his home, his personal belongings, and perhaps find some clues as to who he was and what he valued.

It was Flag Day, June 14, 1969, and the Rev. William J. Manseau arrived at the house on Boston Street, a stones throw from St. Margaret Church in Dorchester, with a sense of rising anticipation. But he was taken aback when he found a crowd of reporters waiting for him, even though their presence should have come as no surprise.

Are you the priest? The one whos getting married? the reporters all seemed to ask.

I am, Manseau replied.

A short while later, Manseau and his wife-to-be, Mary Doherty, a former nun, were married in the crowded living room of Dohertys childhood home. Three of Manseaus fellow priests officiated at the ceremony, witnessed by friends and family members who later celebrated during a reception at Florian Hall.

I came to this juncture by realizing that in order to be true to the gospel I had to enter into the deepest relationship possible with another Christian, Manseau said to a Globe reporter at the time.

But, despite the public nature of his wedding, the church never censured Manseau in any formal way, even though the penalty at the time was instant excommunication. As far as hes concerned, hes still a priest, though he does not wear a clerical collar and the church does not permit him to say Mass in a Catholic church, because hes married and has a family.

Ive been a Catholic priest for 56 years, said Manseau, who has also served as a minister in Protestant churches and maintains a pastoral counseling practice in Nashua, N.H. He is still married to Mary, and together they have raised two sons and a daughter.

Manseau has also played an active role in several organizations that represent Catholic clergymen who have married publicly, raised families, and are seeking to be formally reinstated as Catholic priests.

Its common sense, he said, noting the shortage of Catholic priests worldwide. You have trained personnel able to provide a service that really benefits a lot of people.

The argument in favor of letting married men serve as priests rarely focuses on the taboo subject of the children of priests, and the hardships they endure when forced to keep their fathers identity a secret.

By contrast, the children of priests like Manseau who marry the mothers of their children appear to have more satisfying lives.

One of Manseaus sons, Peter, wrote a book affirming the road taken by his parents: Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son. And in 2007, at the annual conference of the organization Corpus, which promotes the idea of married Catholic clergy, several children of former priests who have married and raised families spoke glowingly of how well things can go for children of priests whose fathers decide to openly marry and have families.

Theyve been raised in loving homes, said Manseau, a past president of Corpus. Thats what does it.

Michael Rezendes can be reached at michael.rezendes@globe.com

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Love and loss in the shadows: children of priests try to connect with their fathers - The Boston Globe

The Haskalah, often termed Jewish Enlightenment (Hebrew: ; literally, "wisdom", "erudition") was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with certain influence on those in the West and Muslim lands. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism.

The Haskalah pursued two complementary aims. It sought to preserve the Jews as a separate, unique collective and worked for a cultural and moral renewal, especially a revival of Hebrew for secular purposes, pioneering the modern press and literature in the language. Concurrently, it strove for an optimal integration of the Jews in surrounding societies, including the study of native vernacular and adoption of modern values, culture and appearance, all combined with economic productivization. The Haskalah promoted rationalism, liberalism, freedom of thought and enquiry, and is largely perceived as the Jewish variant of the general Enlightenment. The movement encompassed a wide spectrum ranging from moderates, who hoped for maximal compromise and conservatism, to radicals who sought sweeping changes.

In its various changes, the Haskalah fulfilled an important, though limited, part in the modernization of Central and Eastern European Jews. Its activists, the maskilim, exhorted and implemented communal, educational and cultural reforms in both the public and the private spheres. Owing to its dualistic policies, it collided both with the traditionalist rabbinic elite, which attempted to preserve old Jewish values and norms in their entirety, and with the radical assimilationists who wished to eliminate or minimize the existence of the Jews as a defined collective.

The Haskalah was an extremely multifaceted phenomenon, with many loci which rose and dwindled at different times and across vast territories. The very name Haskalah only became a standard self-appellation in 1860, when it was taken as the motto of the Odessa-based newspaper Ha-Melitz, though derivatives and the title Maskil for activists were already common beforehand in the first edition of Ha-Meassef from 1 October 1783, its publishers described themselves as Maskilim.[1] While Maskilic centres sometimes had loose institutions around which their members operated, the movement as a whole lacked any such.

In spite of this diversity, the Maskilim shared a sense of common identity and self-consciousness. These were anchored in the existence of a shared literary canon, which began to be formulated in the very first Maskilic locus at Berlin. Its members, like Moses Mendelssohn, Hartwig Wessely, Isaac Satanow and Isaac Euchel, authored tracts in various genres that were further disseminated and re-read among other Maskilim. Each generation, in turn, elaborated and added its own works to the growing body. The emergence of the Maskilic canon reflected the movement's central and defining enterprise, the revival of Hebrew as a literary language for secular purposes (its restoration as a spoken tongue occurred only much later). The Maskilim researched and standardized grammar, minted countless neologisms and composed poetry, magazines, theatrical works and literature of all sorts in Hebrew. Historians described the movement largely as a Republic of Letters, an intellectual community based on printing houses and reading societies.[2]

The Maskilim's attitude toward Hebrew, as noted by Moses Pelli, was derived from Enlightenment perceptions of language as reflecting both individual and collective character. To them, a corrupt tongue mirrored the inadequate condition of the Jews which they sought to ameliorate. They turned to Hebrew as their primary creative medium. The Maskilim inherited the Medieval Grammarians' such as Jonah ibn Janah and Judah ben David Hayyuj distaste of Mishnaic Hebrew and preference of the Biblical one as pristine and correct. They turned to the Bible as a source and standard, emphatically advocating what they termed "Pure Hebrew Tongue" (S'fat E'ver tzacha) and lambasting the Rabbinic style of letters which mixed it with Aramaic as a single "Holy Tongue" and often employed loan words from other languages. Some activists, though, were not averse to using Mishnaic and Rabbinic forms. They also preferred the Sephardi pronunciation, considered more prestigious, to the Ashkenazi one, linked with the Jews of Poland who were deemed backward. The movement's literary canon is defined by a grandiloquent, archaic register copying the Biblical one and often combining lengthy allusions or direct quotes from verses in the prose.[3]

During a century of activity, the Maskilim produced a massive contribution, forming the first phase of modern Hebrew literature. In 1755, Moses Mendelssohn began publishing Qohelet Musar ("The Moralist"), regarded as the beginning of modern writing in Hebrew and the very first journal in the language. Between 1789 and his death, Hartwig Wessely compiled Shirei Tif'eret ("Poems of Glory"), an eighteen-part epic cycle concerning Moses which exerted influence on all neo-Hebraic poets in the following generations. Joseph ha-Efrati Troplowitz was the Haskalah's pioneering playwright, best known for his 1794 epic drama Melukhat Sha'ul ("Reign of Saul") which was printed in twelve editions by 1888. Juda Loeb ben-Ze'ev was the first modern Hebrew grammarian, and beginning with his 1796 manual of the language, he authored books which explored it and were vital reading material for young Maskilim until the end of the 19th century. Solomon Lwisohn was the first to translate Shakespeare into Hebrew, and an abridged form of the "Are at this hour asleep!" monologue in Henry IV, Part 2 was included in his 1816 lyrical compilation Melitzat Yeshurun (Eloquence of Jeshurun).

Joseph Perl pioneered satirist writings in his biting, mocking critique of Hasidism, Megaleh Tmirin (Revealer of Secrets) from 1819. Adam HaCohen was primarily a leading metricist, with his 1842 Shirei S'fat ha-Qodesh (Verses in the Holy Tongue) considered a milestone in Hebrew poetry, and also authored biblical exegesis and educational handbooks. Abraham Mapu authored the first Hebraic full-length novel, Ahavat Zion (Love of Zion) which was published in 1853 after twenty-three years of work. Judah Leib Gordon was the most eminent poet of his generation and arguably of the Haskalah in its entirety. His most famous work was the 1876 epic Qotzo shel Yodh (Tittle of a Jot). Mendele Mocher Sforim was during his youth a Maskilic writer, but from his 1886 B-Sether Ra'am (Hidden in Thunder) abandoned its strict conventions in favour of a mixed, facile and common style. His career marked the end of the Maskilic period in Hebrew literature and the beginning of the Era of Renaissance.

The central platforms of the maskilic "Republic of Letters" were its great periodicals, each serving as a locus for contributors and readers during the time it was published. The first was the Knigsberg (and later Berlin)-based Ha-Meassef, launched by Isaac Euchel in 1783 and printed with growing intervals until 1797. The magazine had several dozen writers and 272 subscribers at its zenith, from Shklov in the east to London in the west, making it the sounding board of the Berlin Haskalah. The movement lacked an equivalent until the appearance of Bikurei ha-I'tim in Vienna between 1820 until 1831, serving the Moravian and Galician Haskalah. That function was later fulfilled by the Prague-based Kerem Hemed from 1834 to 1857, and to a lesser degree by Kokhvei Yizhak, published in the same city from 1845 to 1870. The Russian Haskalah was robust enough to lack any single platform. Its members published several large magazines, including the Vilnius-based Ha-Karmel (18601880), Ha-Tsefirah in Warsaw and more, though the probably most influential of them all was Ha-Melitz, launched in 1860 at Odessa by Alexander Zederbaum.

While the partisans of the Haskalah were much immersed in the study of sciences and Hebrew grammar, this was not a profoundly new phenomenon, and their creativity was a continuation of a long, centuries-old trend among educated Jews. What truly marked the movement was the challenge it laid to the monopoly of the rabbinic elite over the intellectual sphere of Jewish life, contesting its role as spiritual leadership. In his 1782 circular Divrei Shalom v'Emeth (Words of Peace and Truth), Hartwig Wessely, one of the most traditional and moderate maskilim, quoted the passage from Leviticus Rabbah stating that a Torah scholar who lacked wisdom was inferior to an animal's carcass. He called upon the Jews to introduce general subjects, like science and vernacular language, into their children's curriculum; this "Teaching of Man" was necessarily linked with the "Teaching (Torah) of God", and the latter, though superior, could not be pursued and was useless without the former.

Historian Shmuel Feiner discerned that Wessely insinuated (consciously or not) a direct challenge to the supremacy of sacred teachings, comparing them with general subjects and implying the latter had an intrinsic rather than merely instrumental value. He therefore also contested the authority of the rabbinical establishment, which stemmed from its function as interpreters of the holy teachings and their status as the only truly worthy field of study. Though secular subjects could and were easily tolerated, their elevation to the same level as sacred ones was a severe threat, and indeed mobilized the rabbis against the nascent Haskalah. The potential of "Words of Peace and Truth" was fully realized later, by the second generation of the movement in Berlin and other radical maskilim, who openly and vehemently denounced the traditional authorities. The appropriate intellectual and moral leadership needed by the Jewish public in modern times was, according to the maskilim, that of their own. Feiner noted that in their usurpation of the title of spiritual elite, unprecedented in Jewish history since the dawn of Rabbinic Judaism (various contestants before the Enlightened were branded as schismatics and cast out), they very much emulated the manner in which secular intellectuals dethroned and replaced the Church from the same status among Christians. Thus the maskilim generated an upheaval which though by no means alone broke the sway held by the rabbis and the traditional values over Jewish society. Combined with many other factors, they laid the path to all modern Jewish movements and philosophies, either those critical, hostile or supportive to themselves.[4]

The Maskilim sought to replace the framework of values held by the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe with their own philosophy, which embraced the liberal, rationalistic notions of the 18th and 19th centuries and cast them in their own particular mold. This intellectual upheaval was accompanied by the desire to practically change Jewish society. Even the moderate maskilim viewed the contemporary state of Jews as deplorable and in dire need of rejuvenation, whether in matters of morals, cultural creativity or economic productivity. They argued that such conditions were rightfully scorned by others and untenable from both practical and idealistic perspectives. It was to be remedied by the shedding of the base and corrupt elements of Jewish existence and retention of only the true, positive ones indeed, the question what those were, exactly, loomed as the greatest challenge of Jewish modernity. The more extreme and ideologically-bent came close to the universalist aspirations of the radical Enlightenment, of a world freed of superstition and backwardness in which all humans will come together under the liberating influence of reason and progress. The reconstituted Jews, these radical maskilim believed, would be able to take their place as equals in an enlightened world. But all, including the moderate and disillusioned, stated that adjustment to the changing world was both unavoidable and positive in itself.[5]

Haskalah ideals were converted into practical steps via numerous reform programs initiated locally and independently by its activists, acting in small groups or even alone at every time and area. Members of the movement sought to acquaint their people with European culture, have them adopt the vernacular language of their lands, and integrate them into larger society. They opposed Jewish reclusiveness and self-segregation, called upon Jews to discard traditional dress in favour of the prevalent one, and preached patriotism and loyalty to the new centralized governments. They acted to weaken and limit the jurisdiction of traditional community institutions the rabbinic courts, empowered to rule on numerous civic matters, and the board of elders, which served as lay leadership. The maskilim perceived those as remnants of medieval discrimination. They criticized various traits of Jewish society, such as child marriage traumatized memories from unions entered at the age of thirteen or fourteen are a common theme in Haskalah literature the use of anathema to enforce community will and the concentration on virtually only religious studies.

Perhaps the most important facet of Masklilic reform efforts was the educational one. In 1778, partisans of the movement were among the founders of the Berlin Jewish Free School, or Hevrat Hinuch Ne'arim (Society for the Education of Boys), the first institution in Ashkenazi Jewry that taught general studies in addition to the reformulated and reduced traditional curriculum. This model, with different stresses, was applied elsewhere. Joseph Perl opened the first modern Jewish school in Galicia at Tarnopol in 1813, and Eastern European maskilim opened similar institutes in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland. They all abandoned the received methods of Ashkenazi education: study of the Pentateuch with the archaic I'vri-Taitsch (medieval Yiddish) translation and an exclusive focus on the Talmud as a subject of higher learning, all presided over by old-school tutors, melamdim, who were particularly reviled in Maskilic circles. Those were replaced by teachers trained in modern methods, among others in the spirit of German Philanthropinism, who sought to acquaint their pupils with refined Hebrew so they may understand the Pentateuch and prayers and thus better identify with their heritage ignorance of Hebrew was often lamented by Maskilim as breeding apathy towards Judaism. Far less Talmud, considered cumbersome and ill-suited for children, was taught; elements considered superstitious, like midrashim, were also removed. Matters of faith were taught in rationalistic spirit, and in radical circles also in a sanitized manner. On the other hand, the curriculum was augmented by general studies like math, vernacular language, and so forth.

In the linguistic field, the maskilim wished to replace the dualism which characterized the traditional Ashkenazi community, which spoke Judaeo-German and its formal literary language was Hebrew, with another: a refined Hebrew for internal usage and the local vernacular for external ones. They almost universally abhorred Judaeo-German, regarding it as a corrupt dialect and another symptom of Jewish destitution the movement pioneered the negative attitude to Yiddish which persisted many years later among the educated though often its activists had to resort to it for lack of better medium to address the masses. Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn, for example, authored the first modern Judaeo-German play, Leichtsinn und Frmmelei (Rashness and Sanctimony) in 1796. On the economic front, the maskilim preached productivization and abandonment of traditional Jewish occupations in favour of agriculture, trades and liberal professions.

In matters of faith (which were being cordoned off into a distinct sphere of "religion" by modernization pressures) the movement's partisans, from moderates to radicals, lacked any uniform coherent agenda. The main standard through which they judged Judaism was that of rationalism. Their most important contribution was the revival of Jewish philosophy, rather dormant since the Italian Renaissance, as an alternative to mysticist Kabbalah which served as almost the sole system of thought among Ashkenazim and an explanatory system for observance. Rather than complex allegorical exegesis, the Haskalah sought a literal understanding of scripture and sacred literature. The rejection of Kabbalah, often accompanied with attempts to refute the ancientness of the Zohar, were extremely controversial in traditional society; apart from that, the maskilim had little in common. On the right-wing were conservative members of the rabbinic elite who merely wanted a rationalist approach, and on the extreme left some ventured far beyond the pale of orthodoxy towards Deism.[6]

Another aspect was the movement's attitude to gender relations. Many of the maskilim were raised in the rabbinic elite, in which (unlike among the poor Jewish masses) the males were immersed in traditional studies and their wives supported them financially, mostly by running business. Many of the Jewish enlightened were traumatized by their own experiences, either of assertive mothers or early marriage, often conducted at the age of thirteen. Bitter memories from those are a common theme in maskilic autobiographies. Having imbibed the image of European bourgeoisie family values, many of them sought to challenge the semi-matriarchal order of rabbinic families which combined a total lack of Jewish education for women with grating them the status of providers early marriage, and rigid modesty. Instead, they insisted that men become economically productive while confining their wives to the home environment but also granting them proper religious education a reversal of what was customary among Jews, copying Christian attitudes at the time.

The Haskalah was also mainly a movement of transformation, straddling both the declining traditional Jewish society of autonomous community and cultural seclusion and the beginnings of a modern Jewish public. As noted by Feiner, everything connected with the Haskalah was dualistic in nature. The Jewish Enlighteners pursued two parallel agendas: they exhorted the Jews to acculturate and harmonize with the modern state, and demanded that the Jews remain a distinct group with its own culture and identity. Theirs was a middle position between Jewish community and surrounding society, received mores and modernity. Sliding away from this precarious equilibrium, in any direction, signified also one's break with the Jewish Enlightenment.

Virtually all maskilim received old-style, secluded education, and were young Torah scholars before they were first exposed to outside knowledge (from a gender perspective, the movement was almost totally male-dominated; women did not receive sufficient tutoring to master Hebrew). For generations, Mendelssohn's Bible translation to German was employed by such young initiates to bridge the linguistic gap and learn a foreign language, having been raised on Hebrew and Yiddish only. The experience of abandoning one's sheltered community and struggle with tradition was a ubiquitous trait of maskilic biographies. The children of these activists almost never followed their parents; they rather went forward in the path of acculturation and assimilation. While their fathers learned the vernaculars late and still consumed much Hebrew literature, the little available material in the language did not attract their offspring, who often lacked a grasp of Hebrew due to not sharing their parents' traditional education. Haskalah was, by and large, a unigenerational experience.[7]

In the linguistic field, this transitory nature was well attested. The traditional Jewish community in Europe inhibited two separate spheres of communication: one internal, where Hebrew served as written high language and Yiddish as vernacular for the masses, and one external, where Latin and the like were used for apologetic and intercessory purposes toward the Christian world. A tiny minority of writers was concerned with the latter. The Haskalah sought to introduce a different bilingualism: renovated, refined Hebrew for internal matters, while Yiddish was to be eliminated; and national vernaculars, to be taught to all Jews, for external ones. However, they insisted on the maintenance of both spheres. When acculturation far exceeded the movement's plans, Central European Jews turned almost solely to the vernacular. David Sorkin demonstrated this with the two great journals of German Jewry: the maskilic Ha-Me'assef was written in Hebrew and supported the study of German; the post-maskilic Sulamith (published since 1806) was written almost entirely in German, befitting its editors' agenda of linguistic assimilation.[8] Likewise, upon the demise of Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, authors abandoned the maskilic paradigm not toward assimilation but in favour of exclusive use of Hebrew and Yiddish.

The political vision of the Haskalah was predicated on a similar approach. It opposed the reclusive community of the past but sought a maintenance of a strong Jewish framework (with themselves as leaders and intercessors with the state authorities); the Enlightened were not even fully agreeable to civic emancipation, and many of them viewed it with reserve, sometimes anxiety. In their writings, they drew a sharp line between themselves and whom they termed "pseudo-maskilim" those who embraced the Enlightenment values and secular knowledge but did not seek to balance these with their Jewishness, but rather strove for full assimilation. Such elements, whether the radical universalists who broke off the late Berlin Haskalah or the Russified intelligentsia in Eastern Europe a century later, were castigated and derided no less than the old rabbinic authorities which the movement confronted. It was not uncommon for its partisans to become a conservative element, combating against further dilution of tradition: in Vilnius, Samuel Joseph Fuenn turned from a progressive into an adversary of more radical elements within a generation. In the Maghreb, the few local maskilm were more concerned with the rapid assimilation of local Jews into the colonial French culture than with the ills of traditional society.[9]

Likewise, those who abandoned the optimistic, liberal vision of the Jews (albeit as a cohesive community) integrating into wider society in favour of full-blown Jewish nationalism or radical, revolutionary ideologies which strove to uproot the established order, also broke with the movement. The national Jewish movements of Eastern Europe, founded by disillusioned maskilim, derisively regarded it in a manner similar to other romantic-nationalist movements' understanding of the general Enlightenment as a naive, liberal and assimilationist ideology which induced foreign cultural influences, gnawed at the Jewish national consciousness and promised false hopes of equality in exchange for spiritual enslavement. This hostile view was promulgated by nationalist historians from Simon Dubnow and onwards, and is was once common in Israeli historiography.[10]

A major factor which always characterized the movement was its weakness and its dependence of much more powerful elements. Its partisans were mostly impoverished intellectuals, who eked out a living as private tutors and the like; few had a stable financial base, and they required patrons, whether affluent Jews or the state's institutions. This triplice the authorities, the Jewish communal elite and the maskilim was united only in the ambition of thoroughly reforming Jewish society. The government had no interest in the visions of renaissance which the Enlightened so fervently cherished. It demanded the Jews to turn into productive, loyal subjects with rudimentary secular education, and no more. The rich Jews were sometimes open to the movement's agenda, but mostly practical, hoping for a betterment of their people that would result in emancipation and equal rights. Indeed, the great cultural transformation which occurred among the Parnassim (affluent commumal wardens) class they were always more open to outside society, and had to tutor their children in secular subjects, thus inviting general Enlightenment influences was a precondition of Haskalah. The state and the elite required the maskilim as interlocutors and specialists in their efforts for reform, especially as educators, and the latter used this as leverage to benefit their ideology. However, the activists were much more dependent on the former than vice versa; frustration from one's inability to further the maskilic agenda and being surrounded by apathetic Jews, either conservative "fanatics" or parvenu "assimilationists", is a common theme in the movement's literature.[11]

The term Haskalah became synonymous, among friends and foes alike and in much of early Jewish historiography, with the sweeping changes that engulfed Jewish society (mostly in Europe) from the late 18th Century to the late 19th Century. It was depicted by its partisans, adversaries and historians like Heinrich Graetz as a major factor in those. Later research greatly narrowed the scope of the phenomenon and limited its importance: while Hasklaha undoubtedly played a part, the contemporary historical consensus portrays it as much humbler. Other transformation agents, from state-imposed schools to new economic opportunities, were demonstrated to have rivaled or overshadowed the movement completely in propelling such processes as acculturation, secularization, religious reform from moderate to extreme, adoption of native patriotism and so forth. In many regions the Haskalah played no part at all.[12]

As long as the Jews lived in segregated communities, and as long as all social intercourse with their Gentile neighbors was limited, the rabbi was the most influential member of the Jewish community. In addition to being a religious scholar and "clergy", a rabbi also acted as a civil judge in all cases in which both parties were Jews. Rabbis sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. The rabbinate was the highest aim of many Jewish boys, and the study of the Talmud was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of the ghetto", not just physically but also mentally and spiritually, in order to assimilate among Gentile nations.

The example of Moses Mendelssohn (172986), a Prussian Jew, served to lead this movement, which was also shaped by Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn (17541835) and Joseph Perl (17731839). Mendelssohn's extraordinary success as a popular philosopher and man of letters revealed hitherto unsuspected possibilities of integration and acceptance of Jews among non-Jews. Mendelssohn also provided methods for Jews to enter the general society of Germany. A good knowledge of the German language was necessary to secure entrance into cultured German circles, and an excellent means of acquiring it was provided by Mendelssohn in his German translation of the Torah. This work became a bridge over which ambitious young Jews could pass to the great world of secular knowledge. The Biur, or grammatical commentary, prepared under Mendelssohn's supervision, was designed to counteract the influence of traditional rabbinical methods of exegesis. Together with the translation, it became, as it were, the primer of Haskalah.

Language played a key role in the haskalah movement, as Mendelssohn and others called for a revival of Hebrew and a reduction in the use of Yiddish. The result was an outpouring of new, secular literature, as well as critical studies of religious texts. Julius Frst along with other German-Jewish scholars compiled Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries and grammars. Jews also began to study and communicate in the languages of the countries in which they settled, providing another gateway for integration.

Berlin is the city of origin for the movement. The capital city of Prussia and, later, the German Empire, Berlin became known as a secular, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic center, a fertile environment for conversations and radical movements. This move by the Maskilim away from religious study, into much more critical and worldly studies was made possible by this German city of modern and progressive thought. It was a city in which the rising middle class Jews and intellectual elites not only lived among, but were exposed to previous age of enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.[13] The movement is often referred to the Berlin Haskalah. Reference to Berlin in relation to the Haskalah movement is necessary because it provides context for this episode of Jewish history. Subsequently, having left Germany and spreading across Eastern Europe, the Berlin Haskalah influenced multiple Jewish communities who were hungry for non-religious scholarly texts and insight to worlds beyond their Jewish enclaves.

Haskalah did not stay restricted to Germany, however, and the movement quickly spread throughout Europe. PolandLithuania was the heartland of Rabbinic Judaism, with its two streams of Misnagdic Talmudism centred in Lithuania and other regions, and Hasidic mysticism popular in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Russia. In the 19th century Haskalah sought dissemination and transformation of traditional education and inward pious life in Eastern Europe.[where?] It adapted its message to these different environments, working with the Russian government of the Pale of Settlement to influence secular educational methods, while its writers satirised Hasidic mysticism, in favour of solely Rationalist interpretation of Judaism. Isaac Baer Levinsohn (17881860) became known as the "Russian Mendelssohn". Joseph Perl's (17731839) satire of the Hasidic movement, "Revealer of Secrets" (Megalleh Temirim), is said to be the first modern novel in Hebrew. It was published in Vienna in 1819 under the pseudonym "Obadiah ben Pethahiah". The Haskalah's message of integration into non-Jewish society was subsequently counteracted by alternative secular Jewish political movements advocating Folkish, Socialist or Nationalist secular Jewish identities in Eastern Europe.[where?] While Haskalah advocated Hebrew and sought to remove Yiddish, these subsequent developments advocated Yiddish Renaissance among Maskilim. Writers of Yiddish literature variously satirised or sentimentalised Hasidic mysticism.

Even as emancipation eased integration into wider society and assimilation prospered, the haskalah also resulted in the creation of secular Jewish culture, with an emphasis on Jewish history and Jewish identity, rather than religion. This resulted in the engagement of Jews in a variety of competing ways within the countries where they lived; these included the struggle for Jewish emancipation, involvement in new Jewish political movements, and later, in the face of continued persecutions in late nineteenth-century Europe, the development of a Jewish Nationalism. One source describes these effects as, "The emancipation of the Jews brought forth two opposed movements: the cultural assimilation, begun by Moses Mendelssohn, and Zionism, founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896."[14]

One facet of the Haskalah was a widespread cultural adaptation, as those Jews who participated in the enlightenment began in varying degrees to participate in the cultural practices of the surrounding Gentile population. Connected with this was the birth of the Reform movement, whose founders such as Israel Jacobson and Leopold Zunz rejected the continuing observance of those aspects of Jewish law which they classified as ritual, as opposed to moral or ethical. Even within orthodoxy the Haskalah was felt through the appearance of the Mussar Movement in Lithuania and Torah im Derech Eretz in Germany in response. Enlightened Jews sided with Gentile governments in plans to increase secular education among the Jewish masses, bringing them into acute conflict with the orthodox who believed this threatened Jewish life.

The spreading of Haskalah affected Judaism as a religion because of how much the different sects desired to be integrated, and in turn, integrate their religious traditions. The effects of the Enlightenment were already present in Jewish religious music and opinion on traditionalism versus modernization. Groups of Reform Jews such as the Society of the Friends of Reform and the Association for the Reform of Judaism were formed because they wanted and actively advocated for a change in Jewish tradition, mainly rituals like circumcision. Another non-Orthodox group was the Conservative Jews, who emphasized the importance of traditions but viewed with a historical perspective. The Orthodox Jews were actively against these reformers because they viewed changing Jewish tradition was an insult to God and that fulfillment in life could be found in serving God and keeping his commandments.[15] The effect of Haskalah was that it was a dividing factor between sects.

Another important facet of the Haskalah was its interests to non-Jewish religions. Moses Mendelssohn criticized some aspects of Christianity, but depicted Jesus as a Torah-observant rabbi, who was loyal to traditional Judaism. Mendelssohn explicitly linked positive Jewish views of Jesus with the issues of Emancipation and Jewish-Christian reconciliation. Similar revisionist views were expressed by Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinsohn and other traditional representatives of the Haskalah movement.[16][17]

This articleincorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (19011906). "Haskalah". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.

More:
Haskalah - Wikipedia

Photo Robert Wright

OMS LAW: To the extent that Buddhism encourages its practitioners to cast aside the self on their way to enlightenment, it can seem like a fools errand. The self isnt so easy to shed, as Buckaroo Bonzai noted: No matter where you go, there you are. But that doesnt mean theres no wisdom to be found in the effort. The journalist Robert Wright a practicing Buddhist who often explores the intersection of science and religion, as in his 2009 best seller The Evolution of God makes the case for a Zen lifestyle in his latest book, Why Buddhism Is True, new at No. 4 in hardcover nonfiction.

Wright has been a spiritual seeker for a long time. In 2002 he founded a video site called MeaningofLife.tv, in which he talked to various people about matters relating to (wait for it) the meaning of life. Hes still editor in chief, and last month participated in a conversation posted there with the Buddhist author and emergency room doctor Daniel Ingram. The video, which touches on everything from current politics to Buddhist sociopaths to Wrights own level of spiritual attainment, offers an endearing look at Wright fumbling toward ecstasy. It also suggests that meditation can echo more pharmaceutical paths to enlightenment.

On my first retreat I had an experience that bordered on hallucinogenic, that had to do with viewing the interior of my mind, Wright says as Ingram beams an encouraging, euphoric grin his way. And at first I was, like, Whoa. I mean, this is my first retreat, right? And at first its like red and purple and Im like: Whoa. This is a new place. And then, what I observed was actually in a sense that thought, except that, for the first time, what it looked like was one entity saying it to another, and I realized it was kind of like the inside of my mind. I dont actually consider that the most interesting proximity to not-self that Ive had. But anyway, there is that. Such experiences, he added, can convince you that our ordinary way of seeing things is pretty deeply confused. You have apprehensions that are quite different from your ordinary way of experiencing things. Like and this is another version related to not-self youre meditating on a retreat, and you feel that the tingling in your foot is no more a part of you than a bird thats singing, right?

Right, Ingram said. That tingling is actually important, because thats impermanence, and thats vibrations

Actually, Wright interrupted, this may have just been a tingling in my foot. I dont mean this may not have been a special tingling.

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A Science Writer Embraces Buddhism as a Path to Enlightenment - New York Times

By Muftau Ogunyemi

Akure A university lecturer, Mr Anthony Akapa, on Thursday advised the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to partner with the media for effective public enlightenment and sensitisation.

Akapa, a Senior Lecturer of Mass Communication at Joseph Ayo Babalola University (JABU), Ikeji-Arakeji in Osun, gave the advice at the 2017 3rd Quarters Retreat in Akure organised by Ondo State Command of FRSC.

He spoke as the guest lecturer at the retreat entitled: Public Education: A Veritable Tool in Archiving the Corps Mandate.

According to him, FRSC needs to be proactive by introducing policies that can checkmate activities of motorists and manage the public expectations.

In its efforts to be proactive, FRSC must put effective programmes in place with a view to reaching out to the public.

The only way to achieve this and its other mandate is to link up with the media in the area of awareness campaigns and sensitisation of the public

Partnership with the media will drastically reduce carnage on our roads and it will also help to manage public expectations from the corps, he said.

Akapa also charged FRSC officials and personnel to be more dedicated to their duties and avoid acts capable of destroying the image of the corps.

Also, Mr Agustine Aipoh, the Zonal Commander in charge of Osun, Ondo and Oyo, explained that the workshop was to educate and enlighten men of the corps on their relationship with the public.

The idea is to continue to improve on various means and methods of reaching members of the public; for every organisation to succeed, it must have guidelines.

We have an operational guideline which we review periodically to accommodate new developments or updates.

This is why we also have stiff sanctions against anybody that violates the operational guidelines, Aipoh said.

He said that FRSC had been engaging its staff in various conferences, seminars, training and workshops to update their knowledge on public expectations from them.

In his remarks, Mr Vincent MT Jack, the FRSC Sector Commander in the state, said that the retreat was to give men of the corps brotherly perspective on issues at public domain.

The retreat will also help to open up the space to know the issues that basically lead to clashes within our men and motorists.

Public enlightenment will assist the Corps to do its job better and there will be no crisis in the cause of doing our assignment, he said.

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Partner With Media For Effective Public Enlightenment, Lecturer Urges FRSC - SundiataPost (press release) (blog)

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- There's a total solar eclipse coming to America on August 21st 2017 and it's bringing millions of Americans together who all want front row seats to collectively witness what is anticipated as the most-viewed celestial event in U.S. history.

Others are gathering across the country to get a break from the fear, drama and discord so they can appreciate the rare beauty and mystery of the total solar eclipse as it crosses over Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Millions of out-of-town visitors and stargazers are expected to flood into these areas, hopeful to catch a glimpse of the eclipse from the best possible viewing angle -- potentially creating a sizeable traffic jam stretching across the heart of the United States.

While no suggestions are being given on how to navigate the coming influx of traffic from Oregon to South Carolina, the historic space event has inspired a collective movement to use the celestial sign as a launch pad to put differences aside and achieve one common goal.

"Instant enlightenment," says David Griffin, Imperator of the world famous Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a respected society of intellectuals and philanthropists founded in 1888.

According to Griffin, the total eclipse happening in two weeks presents a unique opportunity to collectively achieve a quantum leap in the evolution of consciousness. He provides a simple method tested by himself to achieve an experience of illumination during the 1999 total eclipse in Hungary.

"Everyone is encouraged to come together as humanity everywhere, anywhere, of any race, class, religion, belief or culture to experience enlightenment and evolution," says David.

He is freely giving away the ancient Hermetic method for Enlightenment during a total eclipse at http://www.EclipseEnlightenment.com/

To get in contact with David Griffin for interview requests, media/talk show appearances, news segments or partnerships send an email to: admin@golden-dawn.com or phone 775-764-9828.

Contact David Griffin 171904@email4pr.com775-764-9828

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/great-american-eclipse-inspires-new-age-movement-for-instant-enlightenment-300503660.html

SOURCE David Griffin

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Great American Eclipse Inspires New Age Movement for 'Instant' Enlightenment - PR Newswire (press release)

Speaking of moments: One phrase that hasnt occurred in this piece so far is living in the moment. This may seem strange, since this theme is so commonly associated with mindfulness, and so emphasized by meditation teachers. Indeed, The New York Times recently defined mindfulness as the desire to take a chunk of each day and simply live in the present. Stop and smell the roses.

Theres no denying that deep appreciation of the present moment is a nice consequence of mindfulness. But its misleading to think of it as central to mindfulness. If you delve into early Buddhist writings, you wont find a lot of exhortations to stop and smell the rosesand thats true even if you focus on those writings that contain the word sati, the word thats translated as mindfulness.

The ancient Buddhist text known as The Four Foundations of Mindfulnessthe closest thing there is to a Bible of mindfulnessfeatures no injunction to live in the present, and in fact doesnt have a single word or phrase translated as now or the present. And it features some passages that would sound strange to the average mindfulness meditator of today. It reminds us that our bodies are full of various kinds of unclean things and instructs us to meditate on such bodily ingredients as feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin-oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, urine. It also calls for us to imagine our bodies one day, two days, three days deadbloated, livid, and festering.

Im not aware of any bestselling books on mindfulness meditation called Stop and Smell the Feces. And Ive never heard a meditation teacher recommend that I meditate on my bile, phlegm, and pus, or on the rotting corpse that I will someday be. What is presented today as an ancient meditative tradition is a selective rendering of an ancient meditative tradition, in some cases carefully manicured.

But thats OK. All spiritual traditions evolve, adapting to time and place, and the Buddhist teachings that find an audience today in the United States and Europe are a product of such evolution. In particular, modern mindfulness teachings retain innovations of instruction and technique made in southeast Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the main thing, for our purposes, is that this evolutionthe evolution that has produced a distinctively Western, 21st-century version of Buddhismhasnt severed the connection between current practice and ancient thought. Modern mindfulness meditation isnt exactly the same as ancient mindfulness meditation, but the two can lead to the same place, philosophically and spiritually.

Whats more, they start at the same place. The Satipatthana Suttathe Bible of mindfulnessbegins with instructions that will be familiar to a modern meditator: Sit down, with legs crossed and body erect, and pay attention to your breath.

The text then enjoins the meditator to pay attention to lots of other thingsfeelings, thoughts, sounds, smells, and much, much more (yes, including pus and blood). Then, at the end, it makes an extraordinary claim: If you practice mindfulness assiduously, you are following the direct path for purification of beings and so can achieve nirvana. Sufficiently diligent mindfulness meditation, apparently, can lead to true awakening, complete enlightenment, and liberation.

Of course, that other Buddhist text Ive mentioned puts the story differently. It says that what leads to enlightenment is the apprehension of not-self. I hope by now its clear why these two claims coexist easily: Mindfulness meditation leads very naturally toward the apprehension of not-self and can in principle lead you all the way there. And the reason it can do so is because its about much more than living in the moment. Mindfulness, in the most deeply Buddhist sense of the term, is about an exhaustive, careful, and calm examination of the contents of human experience, an examination that can radically alter your interpretation of that experience.

Most meditators dont give much thought to going all the way down the path toward this radicalism. And many meditators, like me, would love to go all the way but arent optimistic about making it to the end. Which leads to a question: Why keep meditating if you suspect that this path wont realize your deepest aspiration, wont lead all the way to full enlightenment?

The easy answer is that meditating can make your life bettera little lower in stress, anxiety, and other unwelcome feelings. But thats the therapeutic answer. The spiritual answeror at least my version of the spiritual answeris more complicated.

It begins with one of the more striking claims made by Buddhismthat enlightenment and liberation from suffering are inextricably intertwined. We sufferand make others sufferbecause we dont see the world, including ourselves, clearly.

One common conception of this relationship between truth and freedom is that you see the entire truth in a flash of insight, and then you are free. Sounds great! And what a time-saver! Im not just being sarcastic here; there are people who seem to have been blessed with the spontaneous apprehension of not-self, and an attendant sense of liberation. But the more usual experience is incremental: A bit of movement toward trutha clearer, more objective view of your stress, for exampleleads to a little freedom from suffering.

Importantly, this incremental progress can work in the other direction: a bit of freedom can let you see a bit of truth. If you sit down and meditate and loosen the bonds of agitation and anxiety, the ensuing calm will let you observe other things with more clarity.

Some of these observations may seem trivial. Had I never started meditating, Id never have realized that the monotonous-seeming hum generated by my office refrigerator actually consists of at least three distinct sounds, weaving a rich (and surprisingly pretty!) harmony. But sometimes these observations have larger consequence. If you view your wrath toward someone with a bit of detachment, you may realize that the irate email youve written to that personthe one sitting in your drafts folderwill, if sent, create needless turmoil.

And if you carry this kind of calm beyond the meditation cushion, you may find youre less likely to label someone a jerk just because hes at the checkout counter fumbling for his credit card and youre behind him and in a hurry. Which Id say qualifies as movement toward truth, since its logically contradictory to consider someone a jerk for doing something lots of people you dont consider jerksincluding youhave done.

Indeed, according to Buddhist philosophy, not seeing this person as a jerk is, in a certain sense, movement toward profound truth. The Buddhist doctrine of emptinessthe one Jack Kerouac cryptically alluded towould take eons to explain fully, but one way to put the basic idea is to say that all things, including living beings, are empty of essence. To not see essence of jerk in the kind of people youre accustomed to seeing essence of jerk in is to move, however modestly, and in however narrow a context, toward the apprehension of emptiness.

Here again, ancient Buddhist philosophy gets support from modern psychology. In many circumstances, it turns out, we do tend to project a kind of essence onto people. We may naturally conclude, upon observing a stranger for only a few seconds, that she is a rude person, periodrather than entertain the possibility that shes had a stressful day that led her to behave with uncharacteristic rudeness. This tendency to attribute behavior disproportionately to dispositional factors, and to underemphasize situational factors, is known as the fundamental attribution error. To commit the error, as humans seem naturally inclined to do, is to see a kind of essenceessence of rude person, in this casewhere one doesnt actually exist.

Anyway, the key point is this: The two-way relationship between enlightenment and liberationthe fact that a slight boost in either may boost the othercan create a positive feedback loop that doubles as a spiritual propellant, pushing you down that slope toward deeper exploration. If sending fewer incendiary emails and spending less time fulminating in checkout lines reduces the amount of agitation in your life, maybe this effect will be so gratifyingso liberatingthat it encourages you to meditate for 30 minutes a day instead of 20. And maybe that will lead you to view more of your emotional life with greater claritylead to more enlightenmentand this enlightenment will further reduce the needless suffering in your life and further deepen your commitment to meditation. And so on. Before you know it, youve gone on a meditation retreat, absorbed some Buddhist philosophy, and are driving the Adam Grants of the world even crazier than more casual meditators drive them. Well done.

But does this really qualify as a spiritual endeavor? After all, upping your investment in meditation certainly has its therapeutic payoffs. Id say the answer depends partly on how far you gohow far toward not-self, for examplebut also on how you think about the exercise, what you take away from it. When youre standing in that checkout line, judging that credit card fumbler more leniently than usual, is that just a fleeting effect, the welcome byproduct of a particularly immersive morning meditation session? Or is it part of a sustained effort to be mindful of how casually and unfairly were naturally inclined to judge peopleand how those judgments are shaped by self-serving feelings that, actually, we dont have to consider part of our selves?

And when youre getting some distance from stress and anxiety and sadness, is the ensuing comfort the end of your practice? Or is there ongoing and deepening reflection on the way feelings shape our thoughts and perceptions, and on how unreliable they are as guides to what we should think and how we should perceive things?

For many of usmyself included, I fearpursuing enlightenment is doomed to failure if we think of enlightenment as a kind of end stateif we hope to eventually attain the elusive apprehension of not-self, of emptiness, and sustain that condition forever, living wholly free of delusion and suffering.

But you can always think of enlightenment as a process, and of liberation the same way. The object of the game isnt to reach Liberation and Enlightenment with a capitalL and Eon some distant day, but rather to become a bit more liberated and a bit more enlightened on a not-so-distant day. Like today! Or, failing that, tomorrow. Or the next day. Or whenever. The main thing is to make progress over time, inevitable backsliding notwithstanding. And the first step on that path can consist of just calming down a littleeven if your initial motivation for calming down is to make a killing in the stock market.

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Is mindfulness meditation a capitalist tool or a path to enlightenment? Yes - WIRED

INDIANAPOLIS Training camp began with the starting quarterback on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list, and it officially ended Thursday with the news the starting center will miss the start of the regular season.

In between, the Indianapolis Colts lost a host of key contributors for varying periods of time. Rookie safety Malik Hooker, wide receiver Donte Moncrief, tight end Erik Swoope and inside linebacker Edwin Jackson are among the notables likely to miss Saturday's second exhibition game at Dallas.

They'd join quarterback Andrew Luck who still hasn't thrown publicly this summer and center Ryan Kelly who will undergo foot surgery after an injury last week on the sideline.

It's small wonder Colts head coach Chuck Pagano was feeling ever-so-slightly overwhelmed by it all on Thursday.

"Guys have got to push through," he said. "We've had our rash of stuff, but you've got to keep going; you can't stop."

The news is actually fairly optimistic on the defense, where projected starters Jon Bostic and Antonio Morrison returned at inside linebacker this week and are expected to make their season debuts in Dallas. Defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins perhaps the team's most impactful free agent addition also is expected to make his Colts debut after missing last week's game with an ankle injury.

Still, things are so thin at cornerback where Rashaan Melvin, Darryl Morris and Christopher Milton all recently missed significant time that the team is taking an extended look at a potential move of safety T.J. Green to the position.

Wide receiver also has been hit hard by injury. Moncrief continues to be limited with a shoulder injury, and Phillip Dorsett missed all of last week with a tweaked hamstring. Previous injuries forced the waiving of several receivers, and four players at the position Marvin Bracy, Brian Riley, Valdez Showers and Justice Liggins were not on the roster when training camp began on July 29.

"My hat goes off to all the guys that are here the guys that have practiced, that have pushed through," Pagano said. "There are some guys out here that are practicing that are really hurt. They're sucking it up and they're pushing through it, and it's our vets."

The sixth-year head coach got "on a soap box" and said the league's current offseason rules do young players few favors. Teams can work with their players for just nine weeks in the spring, then there's a five-week break before camp in which no football-related contact of any kind is allowed.

If players don't report in top shape, injuries such as muscle pulls are nearly inevitable.

The Colts are taking precautions to deal with the nagging injuries, including a 45-minute post-practice recovery session Thursday that used foam rollers to ease the strain on players' muscles.

But there's still a long way to go.

"So it's on all of us," Pagano said. "It comes down to ownership and doing the right thing. Hopefully, guys figure it out sooner than later."

WORK TO DO

Training camp officially ended with Thursday's practice, but there is no ceremonial break this year.

The team will continue preseason training at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center on Monday, and little will change aside from perhaps the starting time of practice.

"Guys love the game; they love to work," Pagano said. "But we've got a long way to go. We're in camp mode. We will not be out of camp mode until the (Aug. 31) Cincinnati game is over. There is nothing more important than tomorrow and nothing more important than the next game, which is Dallas.

"But we need to work. That's it. We've got to work."

LUCK TALK

The Colts continue to expect Luck to be activated from PUP before the start of the regular season, and Pagano admitted it will be tempting to throw the quarterback directly back into the fire.

But the team will excercise the same caution it has displayed with the situation throughout the offseason.

"I think he is going to want to jump right in," Pagano said. "We are going to want him to jump right in. (But) I'll listen to the doctors and trainers. Whatever they tell us is the right thing to do, that's what we'll do."

Read more here:

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The Phenomenon of Man (Le phnomne humain, 1955) is a book written by the French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this work, Teilhard describes evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity, culminating in the unification of consciousness.

The book was finished in the 1930s, but was published posthumously in 1955. The Roman Catholic Church initially prohibited the publication of some of Teilhards writings on the grounds that they contradicted orthodoxy.

The foreword to the book was written by one of the key scientific advocates for natural selection and evolution of the 20th century, and a co-developer of the modern synthesis in biology, Julian Huxley.

Teilhard views evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity. From the cell to the thinking animal, a process of psychical concentration leads to greater consciousness.[3] The emergence of Homo sapiens marks the beginning of a new age, as the power acquired by consciousness to turn in upon itself raises humankind to a new sphere.[4] Borrowing Huxleys expression, Teilhard describes humankind as evolution becoming conscious of itself.[5]

In Teilhard's conception of the evolution of the species, a collective identity begins to develop as trade and the transmission of ideas increases.[6] Knowledge accumulates and is transmitted in increasing levels of depth and complexity.[7] This leads to a further augmentation of consciousness and the emergence of a thinking layer that envelops the earth.[8] Teilhard calls the new membrane the noosphere (from the Greek nous, meaning mind), a term first coined by Vladimir Vernadsky. The noosphere is the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed.[9]

The development of science and technology causes an expansion of the human sphere of influence, allowing a person to be simultaneously present in every corner of the world. Teilhard argues that humanity has thus become cosmopolitan, stretching a single organized membrane over the Earth.[10] Teilhard describes the process by which this happens as a "gigantic psychobiological operation, a sort of mega-synthesis, the super-arrangement to which all the thinking elements of the earth find themselves today individually and collectively subject".[8] The rapid expansion of the noosphere requires a new domain of psychical expansion, which "is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it".[11]

In Teilhards view, evolution will culminate in the Omega Point, a sort of supreme consciousness. Layers of consciousness will converge in Omega, fusing and consuming them in itself.[12] The concentration of a conscious universe will reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all that we are conscious of.[13] Teilhard emphasizes that each individual facet of consciousness will remain conscious of itself at the end of the process.[14]

In 1961, the Nobel Prize-winner Peter Medawar, a British immunologist, wrote a scornful review of the book for the journal Mind,[15] calling it "a bag of tricks" and saying that the author had shown "an active willingness to be deceived": "the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself".

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins called Medawar's review "devastating" , and The Phenomenon of Man "the quintessence of bad poetic science".[16]

In the June 1995 issue of Wired, Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg said, "Teilhard saw the Net coming more than half a century before it arrived":[17]

Teilhard imagined a stage of evolution characterized by a complex membrane of information enveloping the globe and fueled by human consciousness. It sounds a little off-the-wall, until you think about the Net, that vast electronic web encircling the Earth, running point to point through a nerve-like constellation of wires.

In July 2009, during a vespers service in Aosta Cathedral in northern Italy, Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on the Epistle to the Romans in which "St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship", commented on Teilhard:[18]

It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. Let's pray to the Lord that he help us be priests in this sense, to help in the transformation of the world in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves.

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The Phenomenon of Man - Wikipedia