Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/859762
SELF-CARE TIPS FOR MOMS yoga & spirit H is Holiness the Dalai Lama is a major phenomenon on our planet today. Just the fact that he lives with us in our time keeps alive—all too often only subliminally for most—the great moment, an everywhere, everywhen moment, when Prince Siddhartha became Shakyamuni Buddha about 2550 years ago in our conventional sense of time as history. We humans on this planet have been extremely blessed by living in a time when there is still a memory of certain great human beings who, though once just like us, became perfected—in the sense of fully, experientially realized the perfect bliss energy of which the world is made—as beings of full, accurate knowl- edge and joyful, selfl ess but artful love. In cultures close to most of the humans who became thus great, they are called "buddhas"—indicating both that they have awak- ened from the sleepwalking life in the grip of delusion and also that they have blossomed into complete com- passion for others, born of their awareness of the realities of life and death, suffering and bliss. The fact that such beings have shown us examples of how we can make our own lives meaningful is immensely signifi cant for those whose culture or education enables them to acknowledge it, either consciously or subliminal- ly. During the 82 years since the Dalai Lama was reborn, the number of people aware of some possible beings called "buddhas" has increased from perhaps one fi fth of the global population to three fi fths. We mostly still live for subsistence. We are brought up and schooled to be productive and successful, that is supposed to make us happy. This is to treat us sim- ply as cogs in society's wheel of production, aim us in a certain professional direction and we must just per- form and be happy we can do it. No free lunch. We may have a few occasions as ado- lescents or liberal arts students where we can address existen- tial questions but not for too long, if at all. Religion, whichever one, is supposed to answer those by con- ditioning us intellec- tually and ritually to believe and belong. But our religions no longer, or only rarely, encourage us to live an inner life. Each one promises its spe- cial relief after death, this or that version of heaven, undergirded by threats of hell, and as for life, just tells us to get to work and conform to Caesar, i.e. the authorities. As for our mainstream, materialist worldview, it makes our lives meaningless and purposeless, offi cially. It also holds out the seeming assurance of relief at death, com- pared to heaven, a modest relief through obliterating an- esthetic immersion in the nothingness that we are condi- tioned to imagine as being there, underlying the purely random play of matter. Our leaders take advantage of SELF-CARE TIPS FOR MOMS SELF-CARE TIPS FOR MOMS By Robert Thurman The Dalai Lama as a Planetary Phenomenon A MAN OF PEACE Photo courtesy of Tenzin Choejor, H.H Dalai Lama Private Offi ce 18 wholelifetimes.com