Examine the mind and how it creates happiness and suffering. Learn to transform destructive thoughts and attitudes to create a positive and joyous mind!
Follow this course on the FPMT Online Learning Center at http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org and learn more about Discovering Buddhism at http://www.fpmt.org/education/programs/discovering-buddhism.html.
The full Discovering Buddhism DVD can be found at http://shop.fpmt.org/Discovering-Buddhism-Series-DVD--English_p_360.html
Discovering Buddhism Module 2
In this fascinating documentary, historian Bettany Hughes travels to the seven wonders of the Buddhist world and offers a unique insight into one of the most ancient belief systems still practiced today.
Buddhism began 2,500 years ago when one man had an amazing internal revelation underneath a peepul tree in India. Today it is practiced by over 350 million people worldwide, with numbers continuing to grow year on year.
In an attempt to gain a better understanding of the different beliefs and practices that form the core of the Buddhist philosophy and investigate how Buddhism started and where it traveled to, Hughes visits some of the most spectacular monuments built by Buddhists across the globe.
Her journey begins at the Mahabodhi Temple in India, where Buddhism was born; here Hughes examines the foundations of the belief system – the three jewels.
At Nepal’s Boudhanath Stupa, she looks deeper into the concept of dharma – the teaching of Buddha, and at the Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka, Bettany explores karma, the idea that our intentional acts will be mirrored in the future.
At Wat Pho Temple in Thailand, Hughes explores samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death that Buddhists seek to end by achieving enlightenment, before traveling to Angkor Wat in Cambodia to learn more about the practice of meditation.
In Hong Kong, Hughes visits the Giant Buddha and looks more closely at Zen, before arriving at the final wonder, the Hsi Lai temple in Los Angeles, to discover more about the ultimate goal for all Buddhists – nirvana.
GIMP, the image editing program that’s a popular open-source alternative to Photoshop, is now easier than ever for Mac users to start using. Though it was completely free, installing it has long required that X11 also be installed — a major pain in the butt. That changes with the latest version of GIMP: the app is now a self-contained native app that’s a breeze to install. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping.
After downloading the app from the GIMP website http://www.gimp.org/downloads/(a file that weighs in at around 73 megabytes), you’ll have a DMG installer on your hands. Open it up, drag the GIMP.app file to your Applications folder, and voila! GIMP installed, and ready to use!
The total size of the app once you unpack it is about 230 megabytes. We’d say, “make sure you have enough hard drive space”… but this is 2012, and 230MB is what you have on your hands after warming up your shutter finger.
When we tried out this latest version, the app crashed the first time we tried opening it. Other users are reporting this same bug. Try it a second time, however, and it should load just fine.
Aside from this quirk, the 2.8.2 update fixes some bugs that were present in the previous version. Enjoy.
(via OS X Daily via Lifehacker)
This past Friday wasn’t a good day for photographers. On the same day that one wedding photographer saw his client drown in a freak accident during a trash the dress shoot, a man hiking in Alaska was mauled to death by a grizzly bear after getting too close to it with his camera.
The hiker, identified as 49-year-old Richard White of San Diego, stumbled upon the bear while backpacking along the Toklat River in Denali National Park.
After spotting the bear, he walked closer instead of retreating to a safe distance. Although the park rules require at least a quarter-mile of separation between hikers and bears, White got within 50 yards of the bear and spent 8 minutes taking pictures of it with his digital camera.
The details of what happened were pieced together by investigators after discovering the body, killing the bear, and locating the camera. The photos on the memory card showed images of the bear grazing peacefully prior to the attack.
If you’re hiking the wilderness and hunting for once-in-a-lifetime wildlife photographs, remember that wildlife has the word “wild” in it for a reason.
(via Washington Post)
