The popularity of the phallus for waving in good luck and dispelling evil spirits dates back to Lama Drukpa Kunley (1455-1529) who was known as the divine monk or divine madman for fighting demons with his Flaming Thunderbolt (penis). A new ibook, Drukpa Kunley, Madcap Lama of the Himalayas, by Russ and Blyth Carpenter, explains how it became depicted in this particular manner in the story of Drukpa Kunley introducing himself to Tsongkhapa, the great teacher, at the temple of Ramoche near Lhasa in Tibet.

When Kunley first went to visit Tsongkhapa, he was turned away by the attendant monks for not bringing an offering. Arriving without one, he offered his testicles on the spot, but that was not accepted. The next time, he returned with a box of gold and was able to see Tsongkhapa right away. Kunley prostrated before Tsongkhapa and presented his gift along with a sarcastic song (that was lost on Tsongkhapa). Tsongkhapa, pleased, offered a protective thread to Kunley. Traditionally these protective threads are worn around necks and wrists, but Kunley wrapped the thread around his Flaming Thunderbolt and went to the market.

Look! Look! he shouted. If you have fifty pieces of gold, you can gain audience with the Buddha Tsongkhapa himself. He may even give you one of these! And he waved his member with thread around it in the air.

And now you know why the friendly phalluses painted on houses and buildings throughout Bhutan have a thread tied around the center.

In the video above, from the Share Your Story feature on My Reincarnation’s website, Robert Thurman shares his understanding of reincarnation.

…It’s not like a religious belief in something mystical, it’s acceptance of causation. Acceptance of causation means that everything has a cause, and every cause has an effect. And therefore, there’s no something coming from nothing, and there’s no something going into nothing. That is an incoherent expression, something going into nothing. It’s not possible.

Modern physics recognizes it as the law of thermodynamics. No energy is ever created or destroyed. They talk about entropy, but that’s just people lying around lazily. So rebirth is actually the common sense, natural thing to expect, that consciousness will go on past the death of a physical body.

The belief that consciousness is just a byproduct of brain complexity, and the minute the brain is destroyed it becomes nothing, is an incoherent belief actually. And I consider it the worst kind of blind faith. Because there’s no evidence for nothing. Nobody ever discovered it, nobody ever reported on it. Technically it’s not a place something can go into, it’s not a foundation, it simply isn’t there, nothing. So therefore, you can’t be in it. And the continuum of consciousness which is a form of energy, a very subtle energy at its deepest level, it must continue.

The “Share Your Story” online campaign to engage people in the themes of the film is co-presented with the Tibet House US, the Tibet Fund, Interdependence Project and The International Dzogchen Community in North America.

The video below features highlights from the New York premeire at Cinema Village and after party at Tibet House US with Jennifer Fox, Khyentse Yeshe and Robert Thurman.

Highlights from the NYC Premiere of MY REINCARNATION! from Zohe Films on Vimeo.

I love Jennifer’s words about making the film:

I’m lucky to be able to make films because it’s such an incredible way to be in the world. That I can do something in the world, but also learn as I’m doing it, and that’s what this film is about. Clearly I’m a student, observing my teachers, trying to interact and trying also to express what I think is very important.

Related articles of note:
• First Person on IndieWIRE: “My Reincarnation” Director on Her 20 Years in the Making Spiritual Doc
• Jennifer Fox’s Reincarnation as an Artist Entrepreneur including 5 lessons Jennifer learned from the campaign by Jon Reiss
• Review of My Reincarnation at Wildmind Buddhist Meditation

Inspired by one of the first photo essays about Bhutan, “Castles in the Air,” from the April 1914 issue of National Geographic, Kathleen Worrell, wife of the dean of the Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy (now UTEP), thought the images of the Himalayan kingdom resembled their setting in the Chihuahuan Desert and decided the Bhutanese dzong would be the perfect architectural style for the buildings of the school.

Since then, most of the UTEP buildings have been built in the Dzong style, creating visual harmony throughout the campus. Even the shelter housing an ATM, the guard kiosks and a Hilton Garden Inn on the edge of campus are designed à la Bhutan.

Two things that separate the Texas dzongs from the Bhutanese originals are the blueprints and nails — the 17th century originals were built on a massive scale without a single nail or drawing.

Now, UTEP will be home to an authentic Bhutanese Buddhist lhakhang (temple), originally constructed for the 2008 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., and given as a gift to the people of the United States. UTEP was given the privilege of showcasing the 40 ft by 40 ft temple permanently where it will serve as a center for Bhutanese culture. (See this video on Building the Bhutanese Temple by Smithsonian Folklife Festival.)

If you’re yearning to travel in Bhutan, but can’t quite make it just yet, you might well enjoy a visit to El Paso, Texas!

How nonviolence – cool revolution – is key, and how meditation on compassion can help bring this about.

Bob explores Bhutan’s concept of Gross National Happiness vs GDP around 34:09 and points out (around 53:45) that capitalism is not the problem. That in fact, true capitalism traces back to European monasteries where monks and nuns made beautiful paintings, champagne, crops, beer and manuscripts exemplifying work as a spiritual practice.

Amplification is not allowed in the park, so his words are repeated by everyone, forming a “human microphone,” and listeners make “twinkles” with their hands to signal they agree with the speaker.

Thank you Erric Solomon for recording and sharing this at What Meditation Really Is.

We don’t want to simplistically think that Wall Street is the den of all evil, but the abuse of wall street, and the deification of it, and making it the shrine to Mammon, that’s the problem. It operated reasonably well under the Glass-Steagall Act, and the people who revoked the Glass-Steagall Act are the ones who should be liable. And some sort of more tempered, socialistic capitalism, there’s a balance in there. Not laissez-faire capitalism, not dog-eat-dog capitalism. That’s not capitalism anyway. Capitalism is based on generosity, actually. True capitalism. Max Weber said it’s based on monastic wisdom. True capitalism. Selfless asceticism. People producing to benefit others, more than they can consume themselves, that’s really the basis of it. This kind of thing using the tools of capitalism to monopolize and tyrannize people and strip them destitute, that’s piracy, that’s robbery, that’s thievery. Capitalism is creative actually, and based on generosity.

In this segment, Part 1 of 4, Robert Thurman introduces and moderates speakers Alyn Ware, Global Coordinator of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and winner of the Right Livelihood Award from New Zealand, and Isobel Arthen, youth representative of PeaceJam Foundation.

Part 2 features Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Congressman Donald Payne, and comments and questions from Joe Green, Alyn Ware and Leymah Roberta Gbowee, moderated by Robert Thurman.

Part 3 Robert Thurman introduces Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, who speaks eloquently about real ways of making change and difficult truths that keep us from achieving that. Leyma Roberta Gbowee who organized Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace to form a political force against violence and was the subject of documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” brings up the essential role of women in an for peace. After which, Robert Thurman recommends reading New Zealander Marilyn Waring’s Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth as a wake up call. Amandine Roche, founder of Amanuddin Foundation, asserts that nonviolence is the only way for Afghanistan.

Part 4 Professor Clement Price of Rutgers University, who reminds us how civic spaces can change narratives, and that peace really begins in our hearts, in our homes and in our communities. Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International highlights how conflict impacts women, yet they are mostly absent from the negotiating table. Joe Green, founded Causes.com, built on top of Facebook, to help people realize connections that already exist. Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute points out the need to see all lives as one and poses the questions we need to ask ourselves. He poses questions we need to ask all our political leaders: What are your plans to deal with poverty? (If you don’t have any, try the Millennium Development Goals) What are your plans to protect the environment? (If you don’t have any, start with the Kyoto Protocol) What are your plans to get rid of nuclear weapons? If every one of us demands answers to those questions, we could actually have action that makes a difference. Nobel Peace Prize Winner for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Jody Williams, closes circling the focus back to women and liberating men.