Month: February 2023

Talk Out Loud – –  Soliciting Ideas for Drastic Changes 5 – Covid Virus and Side Effects of Vaccines

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According to HIV/AIDS Epidemic Global Statistics, AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 68% since the peak in 2004. In 2021, around 650,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide, compared to 2 million people in 2004 and 1.4 million in 2010.

In comparison, reports from Wikipedia indicated a total count of 6,869,759[4] (updated 26 February 2023) confirmed COVID-induced deaths have been reported worldwide. As of January 2023, taking into account likely COVID induced deaths via excess deaths, the 95% confidence interval suggests the pandemic to have caused between 16 and 28.2 million deaths.[5][6]

A December 2022 WHO study comprehensively estimated excess deaths from the pandemic during 2020 and 2021, concluding ~14.8 million excess early deaths occurred, reaffirming their prior calculations from May as well as updating them, addressing criticisms. These numbers do not include measures like years of potential life lost, far exceeding the 5.42 million officially reported deaths for that timeframe, may make the pandemic 2021’s leading cause of death, and are similar to the ~18 million estimated by another study (see below).

Historically, only the 1918 flu pandemic,[6] also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer of the Spanish flu, can be comparable to the Covid-19. 1918 flu pandemic was caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million,[7] and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

Other similar events in history was the Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague)[a] was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people,[1] peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.[2][3] Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but during the Black Death it probably also took a secondary form, spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols causing septicaemic or pneumonic plagues.[4][5]

Today many people in United States had received second, and even third boost shot of vaccination without knowing the long term side effects. Now fourth year into the pandemic, Are we out of the wood yet? We never know. Bitter arguments bickering on where the source of covid-19 came from, We can never be sure from the he-say, sher say. But we all know Covid-19 is a manifestation of the decades long intense contention and huge discord on numerous global social political issues. Looking back, the end of Spanish flu did not clear away anger and bitterness and the social, economic, political tension. the symptoms may temporarily disappear, but the underneath rotten wound has not recover.

The pandemic posts questions like what the meaning and purpose of life? How can we live a more meaningful life given it is so vulnerable? How is our body and mind functions holistically? How is the place of busy hustle bustle way of modern life How shall we arrange our education and medical system to be more meaningful, effective and inclusive in promoting those notions/understandings? How can we empower people for self help to take care of their health and their life?

The pandemic prompts us to think about our relationship with other humans, other races, other nations. And what is our relationship with nature? – the air, the water, the forest? the underground oil? Coal Energy? Nuclear energy? Who owns what? Individual property right? How do we relatively more fairly and evenly spread distribute the risk and cost of pollution over the society/nations? How to calculate pollution cost? How do we charge taxes? How to incorporate environment cost into our calculation of production cost? What is our relationship with this world? Who is to responsible for the ocean pollution, the climate change?

The pandemic forces us to took a intense look at our economy and the way we make livings: Can the consumerism sustain our living? Will the Earth resources support our insatiable for more? What would be a proper way or production and living? How does the large scale production and industrialization astray the society from true life meaning and purpose other than profits for the capitalist? Does the one size fit all globalization and supply chain truly good for majority of the people? Does the unrestrained capital free flow serve justice and fairness? What gives currency its value? Can we continue printing money out of debt?

The pandemic challenges us to think about norms and customs that make up a functional society: what is the right social order? How can we protect family and thus create a loving-kindness environment for disadvantaged and still encourage them to grow into better person ? How can our law and citizen education foster conscience and righteousness?

The pandemic also questions if some our Constitution clauses as well as laws in line with Divine principle? What is more functional structure and system for promoting social mobility and manage accountability? What is the accountability of government? What is the power limit of government officials? Where is the proper individual rights? How can we give proper consideration for all/group and while also integrate individuality (not individualism)? What make Americans think we are superior to other cultures socially and politically? What give American the justification to export our individualist culture to the rest of world and demand other country and culture to convert to our way of governance?

…… and many more questions like that certain are the undercurrents that flowing beneath the virus polluted social political and military atmosphere. How we answer those questions will determine the future of our civilization.

We live in an imperfect world. But it does not mean we should not strive for a better world for each other and for our future generation, think of how the American founding fathers influence the later generation by the rational thinking, law, ethic standard, culture framework. When we think in term of “me” versus “you”, when we regard nature as something to exploit resources from, when our system is built on any variation of colonialism, rather than to partner with; when our happiness is built on having more materially, we will inevitably collide into each other.

…. To be continued

Talking Out Loud – Soliciting Ideas for Drastic Changes 4 – Dr. Villoldo Retreat to Amazon for Recover

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This blog writer have strong confidence with Dr. Villoldo’s methods. For several years I used to have chronic fatigue and low energym with my mind felt clogging all the time. My blood test had indicated very low red cell counts which supposedly a sign of anemia. But I know my situation is more complex than that. Because since a kid, I had always have high ASO indicator in my blood system caused by some sort of chronic inflammation of Rheumatic fever. After I took a handful of over-the-counter nutrients suggested by Dr. Villoldo during a weekend California group workshop, and I gradually felt much better and my mind started to have more clarity.

So let’s continue to follow Dr. Alberto Villoldo on his battle for his very own life (and in a broad sense, all of ours)! Alberto described his body was a road map of the jungles and mountains where he had worked as an anthropologist, picking up the lethal critters that had taken up residence inside him. The jungle is a living biology laboratory, and anyone spend enough time there become part of the experiment. There had anthropologist who had died from the same diseases Alberto harbored. Actually the virgin rainforest of the Amazon is free of most diseases, but to get to it you have to go through filth-ridden outposts of Western civilization. The indios knew better than to foul their nests and their drinking water. Meanwhile, the white man surrounded himself with a sea of garbage and sewage.

The spiritual medicine Alberto Villoldo received from the shamans was powerful, but he had to complement it with Western medicine. The doctors put him on a worm medication – the same type people give dogs – and on antibiotics to kill other parasites. The problem was that the worms themselves harbored parasites, so when the pill killed the worms, they released their parasites into Alberto’s brain, which became very toxic. The situation was dire. Alberto’s brain was on fire with inflammatory agents and free radicals produced by the medication and the dead and dying parasites. He need to detox his brain to avoid going completely mad. The following is his account of the process:

In the Amazon, the shamans welcomed me lovingly. These men and women were friends who had known me for decades. And who knew me better than Mother Earth? She received me as only a mother can. As I pressed my body to hers, she spoke to me: “Welcome Home, my son.”

That night there was a ceremony with ayahuasca, a brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine that shamans use for visioning and healing. I was too weak to participate and stayed in our hut near the river. Marcela( Alberto’s wife) went for us both. ……. Hours later Marcela returned smiling. Pachamama – Mother Earth – had spoken to her throughout the night: “I make everything on the earth grow. I am giving Alberto a new liver. He knows how to heal everything else.” The next day I wrote in my journal: “After morning yoga a luminous bein appeared to me in road daylight. She walked out of the river, and I saw her as if in a dream – a feminine spirit who touched my chest and told me that I was a child of the Pachamama and would live many more years, and that she would look after me, as my work on the earth is not yet done.”

…… My return to the Amazon was the beginning of a return to myself. But first there was an enormous amount of work to do. I had to remind himself: “There are no guarantees here. There is a difference between curing and healing. You may not be cured; you may die. But regardless of what happens, you will be healed. you will not walk out of the jungle into your old way of being.” I could feel the life force draining out of me….. I wiped his day planner clean, cancelling every talk, every lecture, every class. The first speaking engagement I cancelled was in Switzerland, where the renowned Brazilian healer John of God was on the program. I had never met John, but I knew the head of his organization. A few days later I got a call offering me a distant-healing session.

Afterward, I wrote in my journal: “John worked on me with his entities, and I sensed a great spirit at the head of my bed. I could feel a tangle of ropes being removed from my liver, thick fibers being pulled out. Other entities worked on my heart, while still others performed a spiritual ‘surgery’ on my brain. It knocked me out. i could not get out of bed for the next 24 hours.”

From the Amazon, Marcela and I flew to Chile and our Center for Energy medicine, where we conduct intensive workshops. The monastery/retreat is in the Andes, near Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas. The mountain is the reason we settled here.It was time for the meeting I had been postponing for so long. I had only one focus now – healing – and I had to be wholehearted about it.

My brain fog and confusion were glaringly evident when I tried to play Scrabble with Marcela. That game became the barometer of my mental health. I could not access words. And then I started losing my sense of self. I panicked: What if I forget who I am? What if I lose my consciousness of self? Madness stared at me from the horizon – I saw it, felt it, breathed it. it sent naked fear into every part of my being.

Ironically, it was fear of losing myself that saved me. over the next three months, I simply observed the madness I was experiencing. the shamans (and Buddhists) have a powerful practice of self-inquiry that starts with asking, Who am I? Then, after a while, you begin to inquire, Who is it who is asking the question? So I began to ask, Who is it who’s going mad?

There was no place to hide. I saw the madness; others saw it. But, as always, there was another side to the pain. The fathomless depths to which my spirit sank were matched by the flight of my soul. I began to understand who I had been since the beginning of time and who I would e after I died. The gnawing fear was matched by divine love. I dwelt in both worlds, belonging to neither. I wrote in my journals: “Buddha left the palace of his childhood after he saw death, disease, and old age. I have lived with these three grim reapers and have struggled to leave the palace of ignorance and arrogance that I built. I have surrendered to the pain and the ecstasy.”

There is no way to adequately describe the place of darkness I reached, but the 16th century mystic John of the Cross must have understood it. From his prison cell he wrote: “There in the lucky dark,/… darkness far and wide; /no sign for me to mark,/no other light, no guide/except for my heart – the fire, the first inside!” I too, was in a prison, with my soul on fire. I had a dream: “I am in our cottage, in a kind of cloister. i am waiting for a spiritual treatment. The healing by water is already done, but the one I am waiting for, the initiation by fire, is not ready yet.”

I was the patient who should have died and now I would have to look death straight in the eye if I wanted to live. i would have to draw on everything I had learned walking the shamanic path: all the healing practices, all the techniques for growing a new body by awakening stem cell production in the brain, heart, and liver.

I called my friend David Perlmutter, a renowned neurologist who was my co-author on Power Up Your Brain. Together we crafted a strategy using potent antioxidants to trigger the production of neural stem cells to repair my brain. What followed over the next months were countless Illuminations to clear the imprints of disease from my luminous energy field, along with intravenous infusions of the antioxidant glutathione to detoxifying ly liver, soul retrievals to recover parts of myself I had lost to trauma, and out-of-body experiences in which my spirit took flight into the buddha fields, the bardos, the heavens. Energy moved, flowed, met obstacles, and flowed again. i was caught up in the highs and lows of fighting for my life. time drifted by like a sluggish river, and I stepped out of it, knowing I had to make friends with eternity.

In my journal I described one soul retrieval: “I strike the drum softly and journey to the lower world to attempt to do a soul retrieval for myself. i know it’s not a good idea. the shaman who treats himself has a fool for a patient. But I know the Guardian, the Inca Huascar, and he leads me to the chamber of wounds, where there is a pool of blood that triggers memories from my childhood of bloodshed in cuba during the revolution. ”

“I find a little boy who tells me his agreement with God is that he will never die, and that is why he cannot leave the hell he is in. i tear up that soul agreement and draft a new one that says, ‘Life and death and rebirth live within me. ‘ the child is happy and joins me. We then discover a ten-year-old body, somber and serious, who explains that he must stay behind to look after the little one. the little one had received lifesaving blood transfusions at the age of two, when he got hepatitis C from a contaminated needle. i tell the ten-year-old that the little one is with me now, and the older boy smiles.”

That night, I had another dream: “I am with friends looking at a grave full of flowers. I am buried there. My friends say I can stay there if I like. But I tell them I won’t need this piece of earth. I see my soul rise from the ground.”

I found solace in my dreams. But in spite of all the spiritual gifts I was receiving, my body still felt wretched. I feared I was exhausting all the life force that remained. This is the energy meant to be used at the end of life, in order to die consciously. As the Bhagavad Gita sys, “Whatever the state of being/that a man may focus upon/at the end, when he leaves his body,/ to that state of being he will go.”

I continually asked myself, Where is my focus? I could feel my mind teetering on the edge of the precipice. A journal entry reads: “Suffering is greatest when you believe you are at the end of your existence and face your annihilation. I have discovered the spiritual world, the continuation of life, and embraced it. Today I told myself, ‘ I’m just going back home. it might be hard – birth was not easy – but I’m going back home.’ I am blessed, for I know the road. I have been shown the way so many times. in shamanic ceremonies I have died a dozen deaths, have seen my body rot and wither, and have gone to the stars. Heaven and hell are both familiar. But just as the spirits did when I was two years old, they’re saying that my time is not yet.”

This time, however, I knew I had a choice. I could choose to remain in the world of Spirit. But the spirits were telling me that my work was not done. I would have to return to ordinary life. My mind led my body deeper into a state of collapse, and then into my ultimate surrender. That’s when I knew that something big was about to happen. But first I had to visit the realm of the dead: ” Marcela and I are at a ferry terminal. There are many people waiting to board. We have a small boat just for us, one that belonged to my father. People help us launch our oat, which I know how to pilot because my father taught me. Not my human father, but the heavenly Father. I am preparing to cross the great water to the land of the ancestors in my own craft, not with all the others taking the ferry. I am making my journey to the land of the dead but not with the dying. i am going with my shaman wife.”

There it was: I had a new mission life – to be a shaman. But wait! hadn’t I answered the call to be a shaman a long time ago? I’d even written a book about it: Shaman, Healer, Sage. But writing a book doesn’t make you a shaman, any more than writing a cookbook makes you a chef or having a spiritual library makes you a spiritual adept. for years I had been a spiritual guide but not a master. i was like the wilderness scout who can find his way through the forest but knows little of the destination. I wrote in my journal: “for years I was like Moses, helping others to the Promised Land but not being allowed to enter myself. Now that has changed. i am already in the Promised Land. I have been allowed entry. And I discovered that the door has always been open, that it was my pride and anger and fear that had kept me out.”

Now Spirit was offering me another lifetime within this one. I was being called to step fully into my destiny, this time without self-importance, without the subtle seduction of worldly accomplishment. The externals of my life might not change, but my attitude had to. A new contract with Spirit was required. I felt liberated. I was free. That night, I dreamed: “I am inside a breathing machine and friends are saying good-bye. i am unable to move or speak, but I am in bliss. they turn off life support. I have to pull myself out of the breathing apparatus to come back to life. i realize I can find eternity without dying. i rip the tube out of my mouth and breathe. I am alive. I understand that miracles organize space-time for healing to happen.”

That was followed by another dram: “I am leading a group on a tour bus. We come to a monastery with many empty rooms. In one room, there are some altars with candles on them. I light a candle, leaving some coins, and then walk down a spiral staircase carved out of rock. As it descends, the staircase narrows. I reach the ground, and as I squeeze through the exit, I realize that the group won’t be able to fit through the opening. The meaning seems clear: I must find another, less traveled path. I need to go alone.”

Again, I was at a choice point. I did not have to stay on earth; I could return home. the last time I had been offered this choice, I was just a child, scared and in pain, but now my fear of the Great Journey had passed.

And then I realized that I did not have to die literally. I could die symbolically. i could stay and heal myself so I could help and heal others. once I made that choice, I began reinhabiting my ordinary senses. I felt my spirit sinking roots into my body once again. Awe and wonder returned, as my brain fog began to clear and i saw that stewardship of all life and the earth was my path.

My return to health lasted more than a year. My good friend Mark Hyman, a physician who wrote The blood Sugar Solution and 10-Day Detox Diet, helped me put together a nutritional plan for healing. it included green juices in the morning and superfoods and supplements that boost the body’s self-healing systems and detox the liver and brain. i completely changed the way i eat.

Today, i am fully recovered. More accurately, i’m beyond recovered. i am a new person. …. My health crisis was more extreme than most. But the fact is, we’re all in a life-and-death struggle with the toxic forces of modern life that throw our health and well-being out of balance. Many of us feel stressed-out physically and emotionally, and wonder why, with all the antianxiety and antidepressant medications and relaxation techniques available, we don’t seem to be able to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, autism, and Alzheimer’s’ disease are increasing at an alarming rate. Close to 70 percent of Americans are overweight, and one in three children born in America today will develop type 2 diabetes by the age of 15. Fifty percent of otherwise healthy 85-year-olds are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is being called type 3 diabetes, linked to a gluten-rich, wheat-based diet and a stressed-out brain. And these are just a few of the diseases that are killing us prematurely and compromising our quality of life.

Our ancestors in the Paleolithic era, as well as many of the tribal cultures I have lived with in the amazon and the Andes, did not, as we often assume, lead short and brutish lives. they enjoyed healthier life spans, fewer incidences of warfare and violent crime, and less stress than the people who came after them, including us. What accounted for their health and well-being? A primarily plant-based diet and One Spirit Medicine.

Talking Out Loud – Soliciting Ideas for Drastic Changes 3 – Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s One Spirit Medicine

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As scary as COVID-19 is, our short memory is once again rolled back to 1980s when crisis of rampant HIV/AIDS virus spreading in the western world in the 1980s by Thrasher’s Book. Here is an account of the HIV/AIDS timeline and history. Things had became so uncontrollable that on May 26 1988, the American Surgeon General releases the nation’s first coordinated HIV/AIDS education strategy, mailing out 107 million copies of a pamphlet titled Understanding AIDS in an attempt to reach every household in America, the largest public mailing in history. Later that same year, President Reagan signed the first comprehensive federal AIDS bill, the Health Omnibus Programs Extension (HOPE) Act, establishing the Office of AIDS Research and authorizing federal funds for AIDS prevention, research, and testing. With on sign of the disease being under check, President George H.W. Bush signed the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act on July 26 1990, allocating over $220 million in federal funds for care and treatment of people with AIDS in its first year. 

Looking back, that maybe just an rehearsal of what to come in the 2020 and after. According to UNAIDS fact sheet: There were approximately 38.4 million people across the globe with HIV in 2020. Of these, 36.7 million were adults and 1.7 million were children (<15 years old). In addition, 54% were women and girls. An estimated 1.5 million individuals worldwide acquired HIV in 2021, marking a 32% decline in new HIV infections since 2010.

What is the root cause of HIV/AIDS virus and Covid-19 infection? Author Alberto Villoldo shared powerful blend of spiritual philosophy and scientific principles woven into the perfection of a practical formula of healing for everyday life in his book One Spirit Medicine – Ancient Ways to ultimate Wellness. Brimming with timeless wisdom, Alberto leads us on a journey of discovery that shatters common misconceptions about us, our relationship to our body, and the world. In doing so he reminds us that the key to our healing lies in our ability to embrace ourselves, and the world, as living, conscious, and connected.

Alberto first shared his personal experience of fell gravely ill during a trip in Mexico for a conference. Apparently earlier during his years of research in indonesia, Africa, and South America, Villoldo had picked up a long list of nasty microorganisms, including five different kinds of hepatitis virus, three or four varieties of parasites, a host of toxic bacteria, and assorted nasty worms. His heart and liver were close to failure, the brain was riddled with parasites. He had a physical collapse which further confirmed by the doctor of brain disease that need best medical care available and immediately get on a liver transplant list. But where to find a healthy brain?

He had two choice, one is taking the flight to Miami where he would be admitted to a top medical center for treatment, another option is the flight to Lima and the Amazon, where he would be in the land of his spiritual roots, go with his wife to lead one of the expeditions working with jungle shamans who have journeyed beyond death. The irony was he had just published a book entitled Power Up Your Brain: The neuroscience of Enlightenment. Prior to these, he had been a best-selling author with 12 books to his credit, a researcher and medical anthropologist with a Ph.D. in psychology, a teacher and healer with a following worldwide. The light body School and the Four Winds Society that he founded had grown exponentially: more than 5000 students had gone through his training in energy medicine or had accompanied him on journeys to the Amazon and the Andes. Felt like it was the last day of his life, he was overwhelmed by sadness at the thought of leaving this beautiful earth. All the test results indicated he is dying, the doctors had even said, ‘You should already be dead.’ Miami was the logical choice. But in that moment he summoned up the courage to put his future where his mouth was – to live what he had taught to so many. Long story short, Villoldo’s return to Amazon was the beginning of a return to himself.

Drawing on more than 25 years of experience as a medical anthropologist – as well as his own journey back from the edge of death – acclaimed shamanic teacher Alberto Villoldo shows you how to detoxify the brain and gut with superfoods: use techniques for working with our luminous energy fields to heal your body; and follow the ancient path of the medicine wheel to shed disempowering stories from the past and pave the way for rebirth.

Today our minds, our emotions, our relationships, and our bodies are out of kilter. We know it, but we tend to ignore it until something brings us up short – a worrying diagnosis, a broken relationship, or simply an inability to function harmoniously in everyday life. When things are a little off, we read a self-help book. When they’re really bad, we bring in oncologists to address cancer, neurologists to repair the brain, psychologists to help us understand our family of origin. But this fragmented approach to health is merely a stopgap. To truly heal, we need to return to the original recipe for wellness discovered by shamans millennia ago: One-Spirit Medicine.

In the West, we’re accustomed to looking to doctors and experts to guide us in our healing, growth, and learning. Our schools, businesses, religions, and government are hierarchical. In the Amazon, however, there are no levels of management between us and Spirit. The shaman—the wise old man or woman—is honored as a healer but is not regarded as superior to other members of the village. The shaman is simply a skilled facilitator who interacts with both the visible and invisible worlds to help restore balance to body, mind, and soul.

The message of One Spirit Medicine is that you don’t need to track down a shaman to find Spirit, or look outside yourself to find health. You only have to look within. That’s where you will receive One Spirit Medicine. Through One Spirit Medicine, the shamans found that they could grow a new body that allowed them to live in extraordinary health. They learned how to switch off the “death clock” inside every cell, and turn on the “immortality” genes that reside in password-protected regions of our DNA. Cancer, dementia, and heart disease were rare. The shamans of old were truly masters of prevention. Here is one comment from a reader with username PuraVida :

Three months later and I’m down another 15 pounds, but BEST OF ALL, my LDL cholesterol and triglycerides are well within normal ranges and my average blood sugar level has dropped. I do not miss carbs or sugars, but I do not deprive myself on special occasions if I feel like a little cake and ice cream. Frequently, people I have not seen in a while ask me how I did it – I cannot recommend this book enough!

….I don’t often read this genre, but I was strongly motivated after my doctor gave me some pretty depressing news – at 64, I was 30 pounds overweight, pre-diabetic, and my cholesterol was higher than ever, despite being on two kinds of statins. A dear friend listened to my tale of woe and lent me an advance copy of One Spirit Medicine she had just received. That was two months ago.

Some things come into your life at the exact moment you are most receptive. I started Dr. Villoldo’s 14-day detox and eliminated bread, pasta, grains, sugar and other unhealthy foods. I started drinking fresh “green juice” for breakfast (not nearly as bad as it sounds!) and eating nuts, seeds, fresh caught fish (mostly salmon, not a big fan of seafood) and fibrous veggies. I cut back on fruit (that was hard) and root vegetables (high in sugar – who knew?), and increased my water intake.

By the end of the detox, I was amazed to find that my “brain fog” had lifted. I honestly thought it was early onset Alzheimer’s, so the relief was enormous. My clothes felt looser, so I could tell I had dropped some weight.

That motivated me to keep at it. I am not a creative cook, and One Spirit Medicine is not a diet book with lots of recipes, so I googled “no carb, gluten-free recipes” and found a LOT of good ideas on the Internet. Following the broad guidelines in the book, I added quinoa (yum), avocado, coconut oil, and food supplements to my diet. Two months later, I have dropped at least 15 pounds and feel more energetic than I have in years. I have a sense of joy and peace that I realize has been missing from my life for a long time.

I have learned so much from this book about how the body functions, and that has helped a lot as well – I have a better understanding of why I need to stick with the program. I’m also getting back in touch with my long-neglected spiritual side, though this is taking a little more effort than the dietary changes. But the focus on shamanism and energy medicine is interesting, and some of the spiritual exercises have been mind-opening.

I am looking forward to my follow-up visit to the doctor and am certain my blood sugar levels have dropped. Keeping my fingers crossed on the cholesterol as well, despite a genetic predisposition. I feel so much better, I can’t imagine going back to my old eating habits.

So, corny as it sounds, I can honestly say this book has changed my life. And for that I am grateful. I hope this review motives others to make changes in their lifestyle as well.

to be continued …….

Talk Out Loud -Soliciting Ideas for Drastic Changes 2 – Interview Milford PA’s Mayor Sean Strub

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Here we continue the Epilogue of The Viral Underclass – The Human Toll When Inequality And Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher:

After antiretroviral medications were developed in the 1990s to treat AIDS, many white gay men in New York who had so far survived that plague used the new drugs as a ticket out of the viral underclass in which they’d recently dwelled. While HIV concentrated among people who were poor, Black, and who didn’t get those drugs, a lot of the newly medicated survivors stopped caring much about AIDS. Some of these surviving gay men bought weekend hones within a couple of hours of new York City. Still alive because of loud gay activists, they started spending their weekends in sleepy hamlets, quietly turning the word “antique” into a gerund.

In September 2020, I took my first post-lockdown reporting trip to one of those towns, or so I assumed – Milford, Pennsylvania, population 1172. When I arrived and put on my KN95 mask and face shield before exiting my rental car, I realized I’d parked near an SUV with a rear window completely converted in crudely painted letters that screamed, “Wearing a Mask & Rubber Gloves While You Are Alone in Your Car Is Like Wearing a Condom to Bed While You Are Alone!!!”. Milford was the kind of place where painstakingly restored country houses owned by some of the town’s gay male couples had “TRUMP-PENCE 2020” signs on their perfectly manicured lawns. Meanwhile, seemingly straight white men openly brandished guns at the local diner.

I had traveled to interview Milford’s most famous homosexual, Sean Strub. But even though he was the town’s Democratic mayor, Sean had not become one of those white gays who had abandoned the viral underclass. Far from it. He had not only named the idea into being back in 2011, but he had also committed much of his life to the people who lived in it ever since.

Sean was the executive director of the Sero Project, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people harmed by the criminalization of HIV. Sero had organized the 2018 conference where I first heard the term viral underclass used (though, there, it had mutated a bit into a strain different from Sean’s original usage). Recently, Sero had joined organizing efforts to flatten the rising curve of COVID-19 criminalization happening around the world.

I had connected with Sean six years earlier, when I was commissioned to write about Michael Johnson. Over the years, I had noticed how Sero was unlike many civil rights organizations I had covered in my career, in one respect: it did not demand “respectability” from the people it supported publicly. From legal advocacy to organizing letter-writing campaigns to people in prison, Sero supported anyone who had been incarcerated due to HIV and asked for its help – the kinds of people ignored by almost all advocacy groups and journalists.

After I arrived, Sean and I went for a hike in the Pocono Mountains. the pandemic had kept me cooped up for months in the city by then, and I was grateful for the chance to interview someone not on Zoom, but safely outside while walking together among trees in a glorious forest.

In COVID-19 times, some people knew a bit about ACT UP, which had directed its power externally. Its targets were organizations like the Food and Drug Administration, and its success with that agency was a reason that drug trials were already happening that summer for potential COVID-19 vaccines.

But Sean had been an activist even before that – since a time when “there was no distinction between AIDS activism and a gay activism,” as he put it. “What I think of as real AIDS activism,” he told me, “really began when people with AIDS started finding each other and organizing and came out in support groups and out of anger at the gay organizations for not listening to us.” That work was internal, and could also be called a kind of mutual aid, a concept new to many in 2020.

Sean was a part of the gays who did this decades ago. when governments around the world left us to fend for ourselves in the COVID-19 pandemic, many people looked to the example of activists like Sean as they set up Google Docs to schedule regular check-ins on their elderly neighbors, shopped for groceries for immunocompromised friends, pooled resources in their communities, and learned together about viruses in teach-ins.

Why, I asked Sean, did he keep doing this work after he got the good drugs, when so many people of his standing had stopped slumming in the viral underclass?

Saying he didn’t “begrudge people who got better and went on with their lives and other things,” he told me, “It never felt like an option for me. for one, I was so wrapped up in it.” he ran a magazine about people living with HIV, and he was close to so many people harmed not just by the AIDS virus, but by the conditions that caused it. (After Lorena Borjas died of COVID-19 in the spring, the next two people I read about online in my social circle who died were both African American HIV activist friends of Sean’s – Deloris Dockrey and Ed Shaw.)

Sean wouldn’t say it about himself, but i will say it about him: unlike many people, he didn’t allow a viral divide to develop in his life, where he saw himself as deserving and those afflicted by the social vectors that cause HIV/AIDS as suddenly undeserving. He is the rare person with privilege who leverages that privilege on behalf of people with the least – and I mean the least -social standing. he doesn’t even let prison bars keep him from trying to create an intact sense of community with other people living with HIV. When the Human Rights Campaign, ACLU, and NAACP wouldn’t even take my calls about Michael Johnson in 2014, Sean had been actively building up support for him for months. And unlike many who got the drugs and ran, Sean saw that people with viruses should not be carted off to jail; they are still part of the body politic and deserve care.

When we discussed this, it was a spectacularly sunny day, and our hike took us up a bluff high above the expanse of the Delaware Valley, to look down upon a bend in the mighty, muddy Delaware River. It’s the same river George Washington crossed on Christmas night in 1776, mythologized by Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 oil painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (which includes an enslaved Black man, Prince Whipple, whom Washington owned). But on that day, it reminded me of the mighty, muddy Missouri River, which snaked downhill from the jail in St. Charles where I would visit Michael Johnson. Unlike when I’d interview Michael, though, Sean and I were free to talk under the sun and enjoy the bounty of natural beauty around us.

Though his work had begun around viruses, his journey, Sean told me, had led him ‘deeper into understanding the systemic flaws in our society and our system. And the most satisfying work that we do is the prison work. That is, in some ways, where I feel we are being least effective at changing anything systemically, but most effective at influencing individual lives.”

Some of the people the Sero Project corresponds with (imprisoned for failing to disclose that they have a virus thirty million people live with) may never get out of prison, and there’s nothing they can do about it. While the one person I covered who was imprisoned for transmitting HIV got out – albeit, after Herculean efforts over six years – i, too, write about and work with people who will likely never escape being in the underclass, viral or otherwise.

How did Sean cope with this?

You start, he told me, by “simply acknowledging it, letting them know somebody heard them and sympathized. That’s all you can do. You need to do that. You can’t just ignore it.”

Even if it feels like there is no way to solve their crisis, “if all you can do is witness, you need to be doing that. And not to diminish the value of that.”

The novel coronavirus has made millions, if not billions, of humans consider for the first time how living with a common virus can make a person feel like a pariah.

I did not acquire SARS-CoV-2 prior to being vaccinated. And yet, before I got jabbed, even though I would never lob such a stigmatizing label at others, I deeply feared being a vector myself – even though I preach that it is societal structures and not people that are vectors. I so feared infecting others that I even had suicidal ideation, under the warped logic of thinking that if someone has to die, it might as well be me before i am a vector and accidentally kill others.

Some of this was a familiar sensation for me. As a single, gay Black man, I’ve long internalized a fear of being an undiagnosed “one in two” who could unwittingly transmit HIV to someone else; I fear this more than becoming HIV-positive myself. And as I began to overhear straight white people discussing community positively rates, trying to understand viral testing windows, and even asking each other questions like “So, when did you last get tested?” – things gay men have talked about for decades – I could tell that many people in the pandemic were suddenly struggling to process the kinds of fears that have long plagued queer folks like me.

There is tremendous power in how, for the first time in human history, all humans on the planet have been going through some version of the same thing, at nearly the same time, with the ability to communicate globally about it. “Some of us have lived here for years: that place to which others confine you when you are a ‘disease vector.’ (Even when you are not.) It’s a place where people don’t touch you or talk to you,” anthropologist and HIV activist Thomas Strong has observed. Now that billions may be having this sensation, Thomas has asked, “Will the ‘general public’ now experience this form of abjection, and therefore reject it? How will we come to terms with this? A fantasy of immunity? More walls? or careful, reflexive dialogue about the fact that we are all already polluted by each other, our bodies connected and permeable, energised and endangered by the life (vitality, livingness, flourishing, decay, dehiscence) that that connection engenders?”

What is SARS-CoV-2 finally allows us to drop “patient zero” scapegoat narratives? To release the morality plays of “Tiger Mandingo” and “COVID parties” that the extracnews media has foisted upon us? To let go of the languages of “superspreaders,” “personal responsibility,: and declaring “war” on everything? And to finally embrace notions of communal responsibility and collective care?

COVID-19 demanded that we pause and reconsider why we saw ourselves as different beings in the first place, and to ask ourselves different questions without that assumption.

Perhaps then, the most fundamental question viruses probe us to ask ourselves is: Why am I “me’ and you are “you”? if we believe that “you” and “I” are not separate, but that we face common challenges, then our hierarchies might melt away.

Racism would be gone.

Ableism would cease to exist.

Sexism, homeophobia, and cisgender superiority would all perish.

American exceptionalism wouldn’t need to exist, either, in its modern, jingoistic sennor as the insult Joseph Stalin originally meant it to mean – because the U.S. empire would be irrelevant.

The hoarding of resources through capitalism? Totally unnecessary; austerity would be replaced by anarchy and abundance.

If we accepted, as Alice Wong put it, that the world is “one big petri dish,” even speciesism would disappear, granting us perhaps our greatest chance of success at addressing the climate crisis.

In encouraging me to learn and unlearn these lessons, despite all the trauma they have caused, viruses have been among my greatest teachers. Or, rather they have the possibility to be our greatest teachers. And they offer us perhaps the best possibility of a new ethic of care – one not steeped in me getting mine first, but in us taking care of one another and of our very planet.

In this way, viruses have the potential to help us make a world predicated upon love and mutual respect for all living things, not just in the here and now, but across time and space.

To be continued ……

Talk Out Loud -Soliciting Ideas for Drastic Changes -The Viral Underclass 

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There are times we are just dumbfounded and lost our ability to process information and deal with life effectively by the overwhelming pressures all seems to come at the same time – the non-stop wars, the severe Earthquake everywhere, the derailed train spill intoxicant over in Ohio causing human and nature disasters. etc…. It is shocking so many horrified events happened one after another, and many leaders in religious group and government passed away this past three years.

The latest one being Master Xing Yun who left us two weeks ago after the Chinese lunar new year. I still remember his new year greetings broadcasting just a few days earlier: ” ….Let us begin anew, and tomorrow will be better. Let us think this way,: the last year is already the past, if I have fallen short, this year I shall remedy my flaws. If in the past year, anything was left unfinished, this year is a good time for me to seize the opportunity. In Humanistic Buddhism of ours, we are promoting Humanistic Buddhism. A human world where everyone is happy, everyone is at peace, everyone is joyful and wealthy. Wealthy does not mean only money, our health is wealth, our peace is wealth, our joy is wealth, having good affinities with others can be considered as our wealth. We have wisdom, compassion, and the Dharma, all of which are our wealth. So every Spring Festival, people wish each other prosperity. In fact, wealth is within our own mind, making aspirations is wealth. …… Let us encourage each other with mutual blessings. ……”

Yes life must go on, no matter what. Even though individually our brain can get short-circuit, but join the forces together, we can form group-will and face the issue (reality) together, by tackling it one by one, one step at a time, for the benefits of all – all human and non-human, however slowly the progress may be. 三个臭皮匠，赛过一个诸葛亮！ And when we are in one with the universe, that is, when we are operating under the divine principle, we should prevail.

We come to this Earth realm to take lessons. There are only two options, voluntarily or involuntarily: our soul either evolve or devolve. And in the spirit of promoting Humanistic Buddhism, I want to talk out loud on issues in whatever capacity I have, however immature and inadequate. By sharing and discussion, I hope together we may be able to come up with better understanding, and better solutions.

The past three years witness the spread of covid-19 virus that completely change our life in many ways. While the tragedy took away millions of life, causing numerous restrictions, gave rise to many drawbacks, we can not totally deny the lessons the virus teaches us. And that is the message the book The Viral Underclass – the Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide trying to convey. Author Steven Thrasher is an American journalist and academic, the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting at (NWU)Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism focusing on LGBTQ research. He is also a faculty member of NWU’s Institute for Sexual and Gender minority health and Wellbeing. The book combines broad and deep reporting and heartrending narrative storytelling, examines the ways HIV/AIDS and other viruses strike people and communities with deliberate intention. His book is essential reading for our understanding of epidemics. His analysis of the viral underclass ring the siren alarming us with transforming unequal access to health care in a world where a pandemic heightens the brutality of inequality. Author challenges us to abandon our fatal illusions of separateness in favor of an embrace of our place in a collective entanglement of bodies. The following is an excerpt from the Epilogue of the book:

…… “My body, my choice” is a bipartisan tenet in U.S. politics scripture considered by many to be as sacrosanct as the right to stand your ground and defend your property with a gun. In the 1970s, when liberals wanted to enshrine reproductive justice in U.S. law, they did not frame their arguments in terms of wanting free abortions as part of universal health care for the entire society. They rarely articulated it as a desire for abortion at all – nor have they named abortion access much in the decades since. Instead, they frame abortion in the context of privacy and choice, encouraging society to consider intimate health matters with the same neoliberal logic that was marketing so many areas of contemporary life.

If I own my body, such logic asserts, I should be able to do anything I want with it. With an ownership mentality, if one owns one’s body, one is also freed from all social obligations to and from others. So, if it’s “my body, my choice,” then anyone can think, Yes, I can have an abortion, which is a health necessity.

But this same logic can also lead to thinking, I don’t have to join a union; my destiny is mine, and mine alone. It can also lead one down the path of believing, I also don’t want to be taxed and forced to pay for schools for someone else’s kids. Or towards feeling that If I am buying bottled water – or if I am brave and I choose to drink tap water knowing its risks – why do I need to be forced to pay for treating the water in Flint, Michigan? And it can mean, if I don’t want to wear a mask or get a vaccine, that is my right, and the repercussions of this on those around me don’t concern me.”

Across the political spectrum, “my body, my choice” can be used to conjure America’s sense of how individual ownership should supersede all else. But this notion of individuality, despite being a core element of American society. It is a myth that we are each the master of our own distinct destiny. It is a myth that the risks inherent in experiencing child-rearing, pandemics, and climate change should never be experienced collectively. And it is a belief that results in behavior with regard to one’s health, and its consequences, being seen as entirely the choice and burden (financial and otherwise) of the lone person experiencing it.

The logic of this myth works only if we pointedly ignore the hierarchies of power class, and American history. Pay no mind to the fact that the myth often comes from people who want to bust unions or who own bottled water companies. forget that an ownership mentality about individual bodies has been dangerous on the North American continent from before the birth of the United States. After all, if a body can be owned, ownership of that body can be transferred – by force of enslavement, for example.

But do consider how often we are encouraged to frame our internal thinking, in some form, along the lines of I should be able to do what I want, when I want, because its my body and my choice! Thinking I have a body is very different from thinking I am a body. This schism can make it difficult for us not only to feel in alignment with our full selves, but also to understand just how deeply we are connected to other humans – how inextricably all our fates are bound together.

Viruses challenge the concept that any one of us “has” one body. As they move freely between the lungs, bloodstream, and genitals of one of us to another, they show how we is a more relevant concept than you or me. How can any of us “own” a part of this body we all share? We can’t. And yet, so much of our thinking is wedded to this concept of my body, as if it existed discreetly.

I believe people who are pregnant should be able to end pregnancies. I also believe that if someone has an abortion, they should not have to deal with it or pay for it alone. It should be free and supported, as part of universal health care. And I believe that if someone has a child, it is not up to them alone to provide everything that child will need for the next couple of decades.

Similarly, I believe every transgender person should get the health care they need, including gender-affirming surgery. But the burden should not be on them alone; they exist in relationship with others, and it is up to the cisgender people around them to offer them gender-affirming care.

Letting go of this ownership framing wouldn’t necessarily mean letting go of agency for anyone to get what they desired. Still, it could mean letting go of the burden that everything must be shouldered alone. It certainly would require relinquishing the illusion that we are all floating specks bobbing through the universe without tie to one another. Unlike so many economic and political forces in the United States that pressure us to see ourselves as siloed and alienated, viruses offer us a deeper understanding of how to think ethically in relation to one another – and a sense of how much more power that gives us.

For any person to enjoy the benefits of lower community viral loads, breathable air, and the kind of equitable vaccination that leads to herd immunity, communal thinking is required. But true communal thinking is not nationalist thinking. By the middle of 2021, more vaccines were freely available in the United States than there were people who readily wanted them; by the end of the year, many Americans could even get a third booster shot, if they wanted. Yet even as thousands were dying in countries where people desperate for vaccines couldn’t even get one shot, many proud U.S. citizens loudly bragged about refusing to take any that were available to them. By 2022, the United States was behind dozens of other countries in its vaccination rate.

Most of us in the United States are socialized to think as consumers, not as citizens of a society with collective health responsibilities – even me. For instance, before COVID-19, I could get on planes easily and fly anywhere I could afford in the world, with little thought to how that choice affected the asthmatic Black and brown children living near the airports I departed from and arrived at, whose lungs inhaled exhaust from the jets ferrying me around. Or how the carbon footprint of my travel would affect wildfires in California or Greece.

Why did I need to think of their bodies when I thought about flying? I was free to do whatever I chose with my body, as long as I could afford the price of the ticket ? ….. because…… we asked you to go on a journey focusing on the viral underclass, so that their stories could help you rethink your most deeply held assumptions – the most deeply held assumptions, that most fundamental, largely unexamined premise we have in the United States is the belief that I am me and you are you and that each of us is the master of our own hero’s journey.

What if viruses teach us that there is no “me” and no “you” at all and that we all share one collective body? And that such individualistic thinking creates not only an underclass, but alienation across lines of class?

Think back to how viruses literally take a part of one person’s code and transfer it to another, which transforms that person individually and forever alters their offspring. As the poet and medical doctor Seema Yasmin puts it, “Eight percent of your genome/ is viral – we are literal cousines of ancient pathogens /wretched offspring of pandemics.” What if we all share just one body – a body that stretches across not just our egos and political philosophies and national borders, but even species?

When I asked disability activist Alice Wong about protests against wearing simple face coverings, she told me (through the BiPAP mask she’s worn twenty-four hours a day for years) that she just had to “wrap my head around why people don’t realize it’s no just for you. It’s for others. it just gets back to this very individualist culture” in the United States.

…… If we humans are going to survive pandemics from any virus – let alone if we are going to survive the existential climate crisis – we cannot do so while behaving as if each of our destinies were disconnected. It is not a bad thing to say we’re interdependent,” Alice continued, raising a concept foreign to many Americans. It requires courage and an acceptance of vulnerability to admit how SARS-CoV-2 has shown , as Alice put it, that “we are in the same soup. Exactly in the same soup and open to the same things. ” Our connection is not merely biophysical but cultural: This is about the invisible conditions that are swirling around us. In our air. In our atmosphere. Through our words.“

……in our minds as well.

to be continued ……

Forbearance is the Strength – Venerable Hsing Yun told the Secret of Success

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So many Earthquake happen everywhere, first most serious one in New Zealand, then in XianJiang and Sichuan China, and in the recent days in two deadly quake that hit Turkey and Syria, 7.4 and  7.8 Magnitude. Thousands of homeless in the cold weather, and death toll reached 20000, I felt totally overwhelmed. So Much Upheavels， What Shall We Do？ What came to my mind first is recite Amituofo and pray.

Today, I just heard that Venerable Hsing Yun, the founding patriarch of Fo Kung Shan (Buddha’s Light Mountain), passed away Sunday afternoon February 5th at the age of 97. Years ago, I had learned the story of Venerable Hsing Yun visiting prison cells for decades using Buddhist teaching to help transform the prisoners. And I also know Venerable Hsing Yun through many publications from Fo Guang Shan International Translation Society. But I did not know what make him so success. 生于忧患，长于困难，喜悦一生， 星云大师终生为佛教贡献。 他出家修行80 余年， 一生执持不愿成为佛教负担的“佛教靠我”弘法大愿，做一个能够给人、为世间增添美好、肯牺牲奉献的报恩人。他弘法足迹遍布五大洲，著述3000万字影响亿万人。在他的努力下，除了佛法的弘扬取得了举世瞩目的成就，佛光山在医疗、教育等方面也帮助了数不尽的民众。他的影响力也远远超出了佛教界，受到了无数非佛教信众的爱戴和尊敬。

Master Hsing Yun summarize the secret of his success is forbearance. He said forbearance is ultimately his only method and his only strength. I am dumbfounded to hear that。 Maybe intellectually I kind of understand it, I understand cognitively the six paramitas, but psychologically I still have not cultivated in my character the qualities Master Hsing Yun talked about. I have so much repentance need to do. 让我觉得很震撼的是，星云大师总结他一生能够有这样的成就的原因，教导我们说这一切是靠“忍“而得以成就。有弟子对他说：「师父！你只叫我们忍耐，难道除了忍耐，就没有其余的办法了吗？」星云大师说，”确实，我一生唯一的办法、唯一的力量，就是忍耐。” 他说，“所谓「忍」，忍寒忍热，这是很容易的，甚至忍饥忍渴，也算不难，忍苦忍恼，还能勉力通过，然而忍受冤屈，忍一口气，就大为不易。但是，无论如何，想到自己既已学佛，深知相互缘起的真理，明白「忍」是一生的修行，为什么不能依教奉行呢？“

Comparing the harsh environment Venerable Hsing Yun had gone through in his life, my circumstances is a luxury, my complains are actually whining. I had been blinded by ignorance and anger. 大师从小生长在乱世里，先是军阀割据，外强环伺；继之中日抗战，后来国共对立，家乡的经济本来就很落后，加上这些人为的祸患，生计更是困难重重。条件的艰难养成他能忍的习惯。一九四九年，刚来到台湾时，他四处飘泊，无人收容，真正遇到难以度日的苦楚。不过，忍是一种力量，他开始与生活搏斗，与命运挑战。后来法师辗转来到宜兰，生活才逐渐安定下来，当时正信佛教不发达，为了接引更多的人学习佛法，他不惜将些微稿费、嚫钱拿来购买佛教书籍，送给来寺的青年；他甚至经常忍饥耐饿，徒步行走一、两个钟点以上的路程，到各处讲经说法，将饭钱、车费节省下来，添置布教所需的用具。佛教第一次传教用幻灯机、录音机、扩音器，就是那时购买的。随着弘化区域的逐渐拓展，闻法信徒的日益增多，星云大师发现到人生的问题无穷无尽，心中益发体会佛陀示教利喜的悲心宏愿，因而更加激励自己以弘法利生为己志，所以凡有人前来请法，无论路途远近，他都欣然答应；凡信徒有所请求，不管事情难易，他也尽量化解其忧。

正如佛光山一直以来提倡和奉行的“四给”：给人信心、给人欢喜、给人希望、给人方便。高希均先生在序中也这样写道：大师一生的言行，就是人间佛教最具体的示范：“给”是初心，它不拘形式，它没有终点。细数大师的事业，都是“给”来的，因为“给”就能“舍”，“舍”就能“得”。贫僧反而不贫而富有。“

What I did not know is Master Hsing Yun has been fighting Diabetes for more than 50 years. He said every single one of us shall learn to be our own doctor. Learn self-reliance and overcome the obstacles of each of our circumstances. The crisis is also an opportunity for cultivation and practice for improvement. 多年以来，星云大师在自身与疾病的和平相处中寻找到了养生之道的真谛，那就是“慢”。星云大师说，人生不能一味地求速成，所谓“饭未煮熟，不能妄自一开；蛋未孵成，不能妄自一啄”，人间万事都有其平衡之道。“面对各种疾病，大家要有一个态度，就是自己要做自己的医生。所谓‘兵来将挡，水来土掩’，身体有病，最重要的是自我治疗，自己做自己的医师。自己心理健全，就可以克服困难；自己的毅力坚定，就可以克服一切的病苦。”

我们惟愿星云大师不舍众生，乘愿再来 ！

Preface from A Journey of Learning and Insight by Chan Master Sheng Yen

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Today is the 14th year since Master Sheng Yen left us. I got to know Master Sheng Yen first through his book 《活在当下》and later through youtube programs and many other books I could get hold of. I am really thankful to his guidance. I was very slow to know about Master Sheng Yen, but he had been invited to make speech at the meeting for the World Council of Religious Leaders at the UN headquarters in NY in 2003, and also traveled to Israel and Palestine with representative leaders from WCRL for religious peace movement. The organization of Sheng Yen Educational Trust had presented a more official full movie: 《本來面目 Master Sheng Yen》聖嚴法師紀實電影 to introduce to the public the extraordinary life of a great master. You can also download some free booklets from Chan Meditation Center.

During his long career as a monk, teacher of Buddadharma, and founder of monasteries, meditation centers, and educational institutions, Master Sheng Yen (1930-2009) was also a very prolific lecturer, scholar, and author. Over the years, his works of more than one hundred volumes had published in many languages, and benefited students and seekers of the Dharma all over the world. These works covered three broad areas: (1) scholarly works, consisting of commentaries on major Mahayana and earlier scriptures, vinaya (monastic discipline), and seminal writings by Chinese Buddhist thinkers and Chan masters; (2) writings on the practice of Chan meditation for people at beginner and advanced levels; and (3) discourses on the practice of Chan in daily life with emphasis on a humanistic perspective. Dharma Drum Mountain, an international organization founded by Master Sheng Yen with the aim to uplift the character of humanity and create a pure land on Earth, had committed to a long term goal of translating selected volumes of the complete Works of Master Sheng Yen from Chinese into English to further benefit seekers of the English world. Below is the preface from his book A Journey of Learning and Insight, in which Master Sheng Yen gave personal account of his path following the Dharma.

I am an ordinary Buddhist monk born in 1930 at a village in Jiangsu Province, Nantong County. The second year after my birth, there was a great flooding of the Yangzi River, which washed away our home and everything we owned. We were impoverished. My family then moved to the south bank of the Yangzi River. I was always weak in physique and prone to illness since childhood. I entered school at the age of nine, and left school when I was thirteen. I became a monk when I was fourteen (thirteen according to the Western way of recording age). The basic education I received was equivalent to that of a fourth grade primary school student. While the other teenagers were studying at high school and university, I was busy working as a young monk and performing ritual services. Later, I served in the military for the country. Nevertheless, since I was young, I realized the importance of knowledge and education. I would take hold of any opportunity for self-study, and read many books. Meeting the educational requirements along with my published work, I was enrolled in Rissho University in Tokyo. Within six years time, I completed both a master’s and a doctoral degree in Buddhist Literature.

From the time I realized that the sutras are used to provide knowledge and methods to purify society and the human mind, I felt lament. I thought, “The Dharma is so god, yet so few people know about it, and so many people misunderstand it.” Ordinary people treat Buddhadharma as something secular or mystical; at best they treat it as an academic study. Actually, Buddhism is a religion that applies wisdom and compassion to purify the human world.

Thus, I vowed to use contemporary ideas and language to introduce to others the true meaning of the Dharma that was forgotten, and to revive the spirit of Shakyamuni Buddha. As a result, I read a variety of books, especially Buddhist texts, which I studied and later wrote about assiduously. Since my early years, I started submitting articles for publication, the materials ranging from literature and art to theoretical, from religious to theological, from articles on secular knowledge to academic theses on specific subjects. I have written for over 50 years …….. Buddhism is a religion that emphasizes practice. Through the cultivation of one’s mental stability and calmness, one can achieve balance of the body and mind, improve one’s character, lessen self-centeredness, care for others, and purify society. As a result, the objective of my personal reading and writing was to clarify and to give guidance on the theoretical concepts and practice methods. Primarily, my works follow the guidelines of placing emphasis on upholding moral precepts, teaching Chan practice, and clarifying concepts. I am personally compelled to follow the path of placing equal weight on the three Buddhist disciplines of precepts, meditational and wisdom. Thus, I would not be limited to the scope of what ordinary people would call Precepts Master, Chan Master or Dharma Master. For myself, I would always assume the status of Dharma Master because it is best to take its meaning of “taking the Dharma as one’s master.”

Due to the depth and extensiveness of Buddhadharma, one discovers through academic research that it is truly a great treasure in the history of world culture. To enhance the educational level and academic status of Buddhists, I have undertaken endeavors in Buddhist education and Buddhist research. I have been a professor at the Institute of Buddhist Studies of Chinese Culture University and Soochow University. I was invited to teach thesis writing to students in the doctorate program at the graduate school of National Chengchi University. I have also established the Chung-Hwa International Conference on Buddhism, hosting it again every two to three years, with Buddhist Traditions and Modern Society as the permanent topic. We gather leading Buddhist scholars worldwide to do research and hold discussions in various professional fields, for the purpose of practical application in today’s society.

It is through the opportunity of holding International Conferences on Buddhism that I became associated with the famous Professor Fu Weixun at Temple University. He and his friend Pro. Sandra A. Wawrytko attended our International Conference twice, and gave us many suggestions. After the two conferences, they assisted in compiling both the Chinese and English versions of all the papers. They also helped promote the publishing of our conference papers through Dongda Publishing Corp, and the Greenwood Press, thus allowing the papers to receive attention from academic circles worldwide.

Currently, Prof. FuWeixun was invited by Zhong Huimin, the chief editor of Cheng Chung Books , to compile the books series, the Study and Thought of Contemporary Academics (Dangdai xueren xuesi licheng). I am honored that Prof. Fu selected my writings for submissions to represent the Buddhist community and for the religious community to gain identity within academic circles. It is a true honor in my life. When I submitted my manuscript, I left out the preface due to my busy schedule. Now before publishing, in light of the editor’s request, I have completed this preface after my trip to Mainland China, passing through Hong Kong, and on my way to America.

Master Sheng Yen

Rio Hotel, Hong Kong,

April 26 1993