Clarity’s blog

I’m off to a great Gathering of Shambhala Warriors at the Place of Great Bliss, where we will practice together, celebrate together and generally enjoy each others company and practice. (hah!)
The practice we will be doing is callled Primordial Rigden Ngondro, and is a preliminary practice that enables one to prepare one’s body and mind to receive the Rigden Abisheka. Personally, I really love this practice, and I can’t wait to do it together with so many people. We will raise so much windhorse, DCL might burst from all the brilliance! See you in roughly one month!

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I’ve been so busy lately, that it’s really been getting a bit much… Lots of things to do for the Slovene Buddhist Association (our general council meeting yesterday went up to 1:30am!), interviews with students, getting publicity ready for our next Shambhala program, and on top of that I’m leaving on Saturday for a one month ngondro retreat to France, so there’s all the pesky travel details to sort out.
Oh, and work of course. Sheesh… I need a vacation. (and no, ngondro retreat doesn’t really count as one, as much as I’m looking forward to it!).
So, no time to put up the photos yet from the Dalai Lama visit, but just a quick report: it was totally excellent!

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well, my shirt is ironed, and i’m ready to go to bed. Tomorrow morning we’re going to Austria, to visit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama as he will be inaugurating the Buddhist university in Huttenberg. We’ll be having an audience with him in the afternoon, though judging by the number of people attending in won’t be a very intimate situation (180!). Still, it’s always very nice and very inspiring to be in his presence, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ll try to bring back some photos!

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This is from Ocean of Dharma quotes of the week. It is just to excellent to not post!

Give yourself a break….Just enjoy the day, your normal existence. Allow
yourself to sit in your home or take a drive into the mountains. Park your
car somewhere; just sit; just be. It sounds very simplistic, but it has a
lot of magic. You begin to pick up on clouds, sunshine and weather, the
mountains, your past, your chatter with your grandmother and your
grandfather, your own mother, your own father. You begin to pick up on a
lot of things. Just let them pass like the chatter of a brook as it hits
the rocks. We have to give ourselves some time to be….We have to learn to
be kinder to ourselves, much more kind. Smile a lot, although nobody is
watching you smile. Listen to your own brook, echoing yourself. You can to
a good job. In the sitting practice of meditation, when you begin to be
still, hundreds of thousands, millions, and billions of thoughts will go
through your mind. But they just pass through, and only the worthy ones
leave their fish eggs behind. We have to leave ourselves some time to be.
You’re not going to see the Shambhala vision, you’re not even going to
survive, by not leaving yourself a minute to be, a minute to
smile….Please give yourself a good time.

From “Blamelessness: How to Love Yourself” in GREAT EASTERN SUN: THE
WISDOM OF SHAMBHALA, pages 122-123.

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hehehehehe…. from the street retreat with Bernie Glassman in New York City. More photos here.
You know, I can’t believe I lost that nose. I wore it once in a monastery as I was leading morning chants… People were so sleepy, it took them a while to notice!
no eyes, no ears, no nose, no body, no mind,… . hehehehe

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Only half of my work day is over, and I already feel like crawling somewhere and disappearing. I’ve been feeling irritated for the past few days and it just seems to be getting worse and worse. My communication is more snappy, less tolerant, and it’s therefore not received well. I might’ve hurt some people with what I said.
Expectations that I have of people and of what should be happening are getting in the way of seeing the situations clearly.
I decided to not to respond to emails today so not to cause any further damage. Bleh.

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This is just too precious:
Some people think that Buddhist practice and meditation are about stopping thoughts. As the saying goes, if that were true, a coconut would be enlightened. - Prof Robert Thurman, talking in Cleveland.

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You should appreciate yourself, respect yourself, and let go of doubt and embarassment so that you can proclaim goodness and basic sanity for the benefit of others. The self-existing energy that comes from letting go is called windhorse in the Shambhala teachings. Wind is the energy of basic goodness, strong, exuberant, brilliant. At the same time, basic goodness can be ridden, or employed in your life, which is the principle of the horse. When you contact the energy of windhorse, you can naturally let go of worrying about your own state of mind and you begin to think of others. If you are unable to let go of your selfishness, you might freeze windhorse into ice.
VCTR

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Well, the weekend is over and it went surprisingly well. The whole structure of these levels is so well made, that as my friend Jim said, it’s almost teacher-proof. Almost but not quite!
It is amazing though, how people can go so deep in only a weekend, and how the experience of the participants tends to really go with the teachings that are presented, actually anticipating the teachings.
Level 3 actually marks quite a profound shift, from shamatha mindfulness/awareness to the open space of vipashyana, with much more emphasis on postmeditation and practice being continous - off and on the cushion.
Beginning of that, of course, but still a big step. Things are shifting from THIS to THAT. It was quite interesting to see how that provoked irritation and poverty mind - how can we expand out, what about me? Isn’t this about working on me?
You mean, I can just let go of this and go out? What about my dramas ? I need to experience myself, feel myself.
We had lots of fun exploring these kind of questions.
I’ve also learned a lot, about the teachings and more so about my own cocoon, fears and insecurities. And also that I’m not stuck in them, and can just go out,relax and do it.
A tremendous gratitude to the lineage of warriors who brought these teachings to the world, these teachings that are so timely for this dark age. I bown down in gratitude and love.

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some lessons from yesterdays talk:

• If I see that I’m getting distant, that I’m not connecting, I try harder. Of course that makes it worse, and is indeed part of my cocoon
• it’s fine to stop, even if I haven’t covered all the material that I “should’ have covered. Believing in this should makes me try harder, and I get more distant. see no. 1.
• trust the first thought glimpse and have the courage to stay with it and honor it.
• if i feel tired, i try harder, making myself feel more tired. Beginning to see a pattern?
• it’s fine to say that I can’t answer this question at the moment. instead of trying harder.

all in all it went well, although too long, and the last part of the talk was a bit of a drag. see points above. The main message got across though, people seem very interested and curious, and I’m looking forward to how the rest of the weekend will go.
It seems the main theme for me is going to be “daring to be genuine in every moment” and learning what that really means.

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in 3 hours the weekend program will start, and i’m really beginning to get nervous.

i think the following teachings are in order:

• Abandon all hope of fruition (Thanks Nina for reminding me!)
• threefold purity - there’s no teacher, no students, and no teachings being given - what a relief!

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Tole sem dobil danes po posti, pa se mi je zdelo pomembno objaviti.
Uff..

===

V primežu proraèunske mafije

BRECELJ Erik, Sob 22.04.2006

Danes je sreda, dan, ko naèrtujemo program operacij za naslednji teden.
Obraèam seznam s 43 èakajoèimi bolniki, ki so samo na mojem spisku.
Podobno kot drugi kirurgi z našega Oddelka za onkološko kirurgijo.
Naslednji teden je en dan praznik. Poleg tega se moramo 25. aprila
zaradi servisa izseliti iz dveh operacijskih dvoran, ki ju imamo po poplavi
l. 2002 in zaprtju operacijskega bloka v stavbi A v najemu v Kliniènem centru.
Tako bomo operirali samo na dveh mizah dnevno.
Koga naj dam na operativni program? Do sredine aprila sem letos operiral 90
bolnikov. Teh 43 lahko torej operiram v mesecu in pol. Za nekatere
je to žal prepozno. Pri izbiri si skušam pomagati z opombami, ki si
jih napišem ob vsakem bolniku: pri mladem fantu: ima 3 tedne
starega otroka, pri obupani ženski: mati samohranilka, pri nebogljeni starki:
tumor hitro raste, pri naslednjem: se duši, pri mladem dekletu: na koncu z živci zaradi èakanja,
pri zadnjem: krvavi. Drugi teden bom operiral najveè dva dni. Lahko bi operiral
4 dni, pa žal ni dovolj operacijskih dvoran. Ostalo bo še skoraj 40
bolnikov plus novi, ki bodo prišli v ambulanto.
Zopet bo edina rešitev popoldansko in sobotno delo, brez dodatnega programa in dodatnega plaèila.
Èe smo bili po poplavi l. 2002 še ponosni na to, da smo z delom
izven rednega delovnega èasa spravili èakalno listo na 3 tedne, so
danes obèutki drugaèni. Osebje dela v nemogoèih razmerah. Ob tem,
da imamo konèano novo stavbo s sedmimi operacijskimi dvoranami, z
oddelkom, ki bi mu težko našli par tudi izven naše države. V
skladišÃ¨u imamo do selitve zapeèateno vrhunsko opremo, ki pa je žal
ne moremo uporabiti samo zato, ker še vedno živimo v balkanski državi.
Gradnja kirurškega oddelka se vleèe že veè kot 10 sramotnih let. Do
poplave v stavbi A l. 2002 je bilo jasno, da politika ni imela
namena zgraditi novega kirurškega oddelka. Po poplavi smo jo skupaj
z bolniki (nekateri so žal že pokojni) prisilili v gradnjo.
Neprièakovano smo se zaradi velike investicije sooèili z ljudmi, ki so obogateli na raèun
investicij v zdravstvu. Zaradi nesodelovanja smo bili deležni
nerazumnega poniževanja z njihove strani in s strani takratne
politike. Kljub temu, da smo v letih po poplavi poveèali število
operacij za skoraj 100%, smo ves ta èas dobivali le polena pod
noge. Edina uteha so nam bolniki in rezultati našega zdravljenja,
ki so primerljivi ali celo boljši kot v najbolj razvitih zahodnih državah.
Ko je že pred enim letom kazalo, da se bomo preselili iz
avstro-ogrske konjušnice, se je vse konèalo pri operacijskih mizah.
Po dveh letih razpisov za operacijske mize in pritožb smo se sedaj
znašli v brezizhodnem položaju. Miz, ki bi nam omogoèile preselitev, oèitno še dolgo ne bo.
Bolniki pa èakajo. V propadajoèi konjušnici. Skozi okno lahko le
nemo opazujejo konèan novi oddelek z veèinoma že kupljeno opremo,
ki propada v skladišÃ¨u. Poleg tega so stroški zaradi gostovanja v Kliniènem
centru vsaj 150 milijonov tolarjev letno. Blagor državi, ki si
lahko privošÃ¨i takšno zapravljanje denarja.
Zaposleni smo se že navadili na katastrofalne razmere v stavbi A.
Ne moremo pa se navaditi na smrad, ki se širi iz javnih razpisov.
Za koga je napisana zakonodaja o javnih razpisih, ki že dve leti
onemogoèa nakup operacijskih miz za slovenske bolnišnice, na
katerih bi reševali življenja bolnim ljudem. Koga šÃ¨iti? Bolnike in
proraèuna prav gotovo ne. Pisana je na kožo dobièkarjev, ki z
javnimi razpisi služijo vrtoglave vsote. Ob takih zaslužkih seveda
lahko èakajo veè let na rešitev razpisov in jih po potrebi tudi
sesuvajo in usmerjajo v pravo smer, tudi s pomoèjo državnih
uradnikov in funkcionarjev. Zaradi astronomskih zaslužkov popolnoma
legalno blokirajo ustanove, ki naj bi služile državljanom. Škoda
prostora, da bi našteval seznam ljudi, ki so vpleteni v lobiranje
zaradi nakupa operacijskih miz.
Obnašajo se, kot da bi kupovali igralniške mize in ne operacijskih,
na katerih naj bi reševali èloveška življenja. Èe na žalost ni bilo
niè nenevadnega, da so ti ljudje pod prejšno vlado zelo uspešno
ribarili v kalnem, mi tudi sedaj poèasi postaja jasno, da ti isti
ljudje poènejo to še naprej tudi pod sedanjo oblastjo. Žal je
sedanja vlada šibkejša od njih in zakona o javnih naroèilih, ki tem
dobièkarjem omogoèa legalno korupcijo.

Kdo sploh usmerja in nadzira investicije v zdravstvu? Preprièan
sem, da minister Bruèan nima te moèi. Mogoèe je bil iskren v želji,
da bi konèno kupil te uboge mize, še bolj pa bi mu verjel, èe bi
mize zaradi katastrofalnega stanja v stavbi A kupil urgentno mimo
razpisa. Pa tega ne more oz. si ne upa.

Pa tega pisma ne namenjam politikom. Nima smisla. Obraèam se na
bolnike, ki so bili zdravljeni v stavbi A, in na njihove svojce.
Prosim vas, napišite, kako je doma èakati na operacijo zaradi raka.
Opišite svoje obèutke, ko ste prviè prestopili prag stavbe A, kako je, èe v
prenatrpani sobi ne moreš pojesti obroka hrane za mizo, kako je zjutraj
èakati v vrsti na stranišÃ¨u, opišite smrad, ki se širi iz poèene
kanalizacije, ter kako izgleda nakladanje bolnikov v rešilni avto po snegu in
dežju in prevoz v Klinièni center na operacijo, opišite, kakšen je obèutek,
ko prideš na operacijsko mizo v premoèeni obleki, kako se je prijetno< v
poletni vroèini po veèurni operaciji peljati v rešilcu iz
Kliniènega centra nazaj v stavbo A - po razriti cesti, ki postoteri
boleèino. Opišite, kako težko je verjeti v ozdravitev v prenatrpani bolniški
sobi ob umirajoèem bolniku.

Pošljite to svojim politikom, ministrom, predsednikom, prejšnim in
sedanjim, skorumpiranim funkcionarjem, lobistom brez vesti,
nenasitnim direktorjem, urednikom, ki noèejo objavljati prispevkov
o sramoti v stavbi A, varuhu ne vem kakšnih èlovekovih pravic. Ne
pozabite pripisati, da ste to doživeli v Ljubljani. Ti gospodje so
sebe in mnoge izmed nas preprièali, da se to lahko dogaja samo v
neki od nas zelo zelo oddaljeni in nerazviti državi.

dr. Erik Brecelj, dr. med., spec. kirurg, Ljubljana

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