Anxiety yeah that stuff

Posted on 2012 February 3 by

Anxiety Yeah That Stuff

I went to group yesterday and we talked about anxiety.  It’s an anxiety and depression skills group.  I can’t talk about what other people talked about (except maybe the facilitator, and even then the personal stuff probably not).  We mostly worked on looking at our own anxiety and how we would relate it.  First we looked at domains of anxiety, we kind of made a mind map, which I created a spiffy map using FreeMind.  If all works out I can share them with you.  So here goes.

We Now Pause for Some Technical Difficulties

And of course none of the files are permitted due to “security concerns”.  I’ll figure out a way to fix this.  Even if it means using a PNG rather than an SVG or a MM file.  Which is what I need to do.  I’ll need to figure out how to get SVG and MM files into WordPress.

Mapping Domains

We started by mapping the domains that have significant anxiety components in our life and these are the domains that I came up with in group.  Feel free to ask about any of these domains if you have any questions.

Anxiety Domains

Anxiety Domains

Setting Anxiety Levels

Then we were asked to come up with a list of the things that give anxiety from 0 being no anxiety to 10 giving, or being very near a panic attack this is the list that I came up with in group. I would really revise the numbers dramatically, mostly down, but some of the low numbers up. Throw it through a compression algorithm.

Levels of Work Anxiety

Levels of Work Anxiety

So that really got me thinking, what would get me to a 10 on an anxiety scale?  Would I be able to find something that would really get me feeling that anxiety is just too much to handle.

Some Thoughts on the Process

OK, so at the end of the group, I quickly did a check-in with myself, and found “oh wow, look I’m at an 8, and those two cups of black tea were probably a bad idea, and so was skipping lunch.”  So really it’s things like that get me to the higher levels, when I don’t take care of my basic needs, when I let myself increase my vulnerability, and then put myself in a situation when if I was at a relatively normal or low-level of vulnerability I’d be at more like a 4 or a 5 anxiety level that get me up into the 8 to 10 levels.  I have to remember these things.  And eat, and not drink caffeine, or be willing to face the consequences.

Posted in counselling, Education, Group Counselling, health and wellbeing, mental health | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Copyright law

Posted on 2012 January 24 by

Personal Thoughts on Copyright Law

This post came out of a post I made on Plurk saying that I wanted some ideas about some blog posts I could put here, on my business site, and on my sister’s new site.  The idea of writing about SOPA was mentioned.  So I thought great, I could potentially write three different blog posts about SOPA from the three different perspectives of the three different sites.  So this is the one for this site.

I wanted to get the post about the “Four Dharmas of Gampopa” posted first, so I posted that yesterday.  I wanted to post that first because I wanted to refer to it particularly in my post about Copyright here.  So why did I want to refer to it?  I wanted to talk about Fair Use, and permission to use.  I didn’t get permission to use that, or the portion of “The Sutra of The Recollection of the Noble Three Jewels” that I put in the previous post.

Do I think that these posts constitute Fair Use?  I think that the Sound Cloud recordings do not, in themselves constitute Fair Use.  The Sound Cloud recordings with what I wrote about the chants themselves may or may not constitute Fair Use.

In United States Copyright Law the doctrine of Fair Use is governed by four principles:

Purpose and Character of the Use

The first factor is regarding whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only “supersede the objects” of the original for reasons of personal profit. – Wikipedia Fair Use

This only applies to Copyright work, where permission is not granted.  If permission is granted, or if the work is not Copyright then this doctrine is not applicable.

Lets take the last part first.  Am I attempting to supersede the objects of the original?  Am I attempting to duplicate the original?  With the Sound Cloud recording yes, I’d say that I am, but “for personal profit” might be questionable.  The original being the printed version which I have bought my copy of from a reseller.

Now what about the blog posts themselves?  I have attempted to link to the originals as best I can.  Now since these are somewhat restricted texts, there might be other issues with that as well.  So I don’t think that I’m really trying to do this for personal profit.

As for whether this “stimulates creativity for the enrichment of the general public” I would lean very much on the side that it does.

Nature of the Copied Work

To prevent the private ownership of work that rightfully belongs in the public domain, facts and ideas are separate from copyright—only their particular expression or fixation merits such protection. — Wikipedia Fair Use

Both of these works in their original form are in the public domain.  It seems that at least under United States Law translations of works in the public domain are protected under the Copyright Act (as well as other acts).  So what this refers to is whether these works should even be copyright.  My personal feeling is that it’s very questionable if such works should be.  Is the presentation of the translations that significantly different from any other translation of the same works?  I don’t really think they are.  Not when they get “Life plus 50 years” or “Life plus 70 years” copyright protection.  That maybe is a matter for another post.

Amount and substantiality

The third factor assesses the quantity or percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been imported into the new work. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, ex: a few sentences of a text for a book review, the more likely that the sample will be considered fair use. — Wikipedia Fair Use

This is a tricky question to answer for both, and then the question also arises, do the two blog posts get considered as a whole, or are they always considered separate?  The “Four Dharmas of Gampopa” post probably is a little easier to consider.  That is the entirety of the chant.  But that chant is only available as part of the whole chant book.  So, it is complicated.  It would probably be considered a significant amount shared.

As for the other one, it is only a small part of the whole chant, which is available online for free.  Which really complicates matters.  Still it would be considered a significant amount copied.

Just because something is available online for free, it doesn’t mean that it is appropriate to redistribute it, especially claiming it to be your own.

Effect upon work’s value

The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner’s ability to exploit his or her original work. — Wikipedia  Fair Use

OK, so does this change any of the ability of the Nalanda Translation Committee’s ability to exploit their work?  I would like to believe that it increases the value of the original work.  What does reduce (at least in theory) their ability to ability to exploit their work is the requesting of people to provide copies of these works to read from.  I see these requests every year around this time for the Mamo chants.  They are restricted works which are shared at public events for the purposes of the accumulations of merit, but are not publicly available for personal use.

Conclusions

Probably both of those previous posts could be requested to be taken down under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and rightly so, by law.  But I am firmly of the opinion that morally they are contributing far more to the Nalanda Translation Committee than they are harming them, and would like to invite them to comment on this, and the other two posts.  (Email sent)

Posted in Intelectual Property, Law, United States | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Grant Your Blessings

Posted on 2012 January 23 by

Four Dharmas by JigmeDatse

This is the chant The Four Dharmas of Gampopa as translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee the chant goes:

Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the dharma.
Grant your blessings so that dharma may progress along the path.
Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion.
Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.

It is a really simple chant really.  It is, or at least was, chanted at the beginning of the sitting practice.  In a longer group practice umdze or timekeeper chats this alone at the beginning of the day.

Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the dharma.

The first question you may be asking is who are we asking to grant these blessings.  That is a very good question that has me off to look for an answer.  The best I can come up with is that we are not really asking anyone, but that we are asking that we achieve these things for ourselves.

What would it mean to have your mind be one with the dharma?  That would mean that you would in part experience all phenomena as sacred.  That is a very vajrayana view to experience all phenomena as sacred, but it would also mean that you would not violate the precepts that you have taken whether the five precepts or precepts of ordination, or the precepts connected with taking the vows connected with entering the path of becoming a bodhisattva.  Those mainly being that all life is sacred, but mostly sentient life, and that you will continue to come back until all beings have reached enlightenment, otherwise known as until the end of time.

Grant your blessings so that dharma may progress along the path.

I take this to mean that the dharma is not static, and that it will change with the times, and that things will move forward.  I also take this to mean that my understanding of the dharma will move along a path of understanding it.  At first the dharma may seem completely baffling, or it may seem absolutely understandable.  Then with time, you understand it more, and you realize that you did not understand it that well before, and that you are always learning more and more about the dharma.  Eventually you realize that you know a lot about it, but also that you do not really understand it, and that you just need to sit with it for some time and get your nose out of scholarly works and start resting your mind with the simple basics of the dharma.  So that is the dharma progressing along the path.

Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion.

The path, which is namely the dharma is supposed to clarify confusion, and much of the time it does.  But sometimes it does not.  That is when you have not progressed along the path far enough, and need to engage the sangha more to let them help resolve your confusion with what the path is, and where you should be moving along it with your life at this time.

So for example, when you are thinking of doing harm to yourself or others.  Maybe thinking of committing suicide, the teachings on karma or the four reminders that turn the mind to the dharma, might come to mind, which will in turn bring to mind why exactly you do not really want to do something like commit suicide, or harm someone else.

Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.

This one is a bit of a two-fold one.  On the surface it is, “please lets have confusion turn into wisdom,” which is really great.  Or maybe that the confusion turn into wisdom through applying the teachings of path.  While, yes, that will probably happen.  To a greater or lesser extent it will happen.  Depends on the degree of the confusion, and the degree of the wisdom.  You just get a bit of an “aha” moment from time to time.  You might be wallowing in confusion, and then “aha” you get it.  That is one kind of confusion dawning as wisdom.

Another kind of confusion dawning as wisdom is seeing the confusion itself as wisdom.  This is a much deeper wisdom.  You don’t really get it, you are still confused, but you know that somewhere there is deep wisdom in that confusion, and that it is really wonderful.  This is a kind of wisdom where you can be confused, but not upset.

Posted in Buddhism, Dharma, Religion/Spirituality, Three Jewels | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Buddha’s Virtues

Posted on 2012 January 14 by

This is me chanting The Buddha’s Virtues are Inconceivable.

This is the text:

The Buddha’s virtues are inconceivable;
The dharma’s virtues are inconceivable;
The sangha’s virtues are inconceivable;
Having faith in these inconceivables,
Therefore the fruitions are inconceivable:
May I be born in a completely pure realm.

Substances that have been offered to the three jewels and plunder from others—
I have completely abandoned all such impure and perverted nourishment;
This food is in accord with the dharma, free from evil deeds:
May the health of my body flourish.

I may have flubbed on some of the lines, I think that I did.

The Buddha’s virtues are inconceivable;
The dharma’s virtues are inconceivable;
The sangha’s virtues are inconceivable;

This is invoking or calling on your understanding of the three jewels.  The three jewels of the Buddha as example, the dharma as the teachings, and the sangha as the community of practitioners on the path.  This is a taking refuge in these three jewels.

Having faith in these inconceivables,
Therefore the fruitions are inconceivable:

This means having faith in the three jewels means that you will have the fruition of following the three jewels.  The fruition being enlightenment, which is also inconceivable.

May I be born in a completely pure realm.

This is asking the three jewels that you be born in a pure realm.  That is the realm of enlightenment otherwise known as nirvana or nibbana.

Substances that have been offered to the three jewels and plunder from others—
I have completely abandoned all such impure and perverted nourishment;

“Substances that have been offered to the three jewels” are anything which has been a shine offering.  Offering water, torma, tea, etcetera.  These are not to be consumed by a human, but to be placed where “no one will walk” though it seems that allows for the walking of some animals to walk in and around these offerings.  Plunder from others, is anything that was taken that wasn’t offered.

These are considered impure and perverted nourishment as they are for “others” to consume, not you.  Those others are “the three jewels” and those whose nourishment, it was to offer, but for whatever reason didn’t offer to you.

This food is in accord with the dharma, free from evil deeds:
May the health of my body flourish.

Evil deeds are any deeds which at least at this level are not in accord with the five precepts, or eight or ten precepts.  Or whatever group of precepts that you have taken.  It also refers to the paramitas as this comes from the Shambhala tradition, which is a Vajrayana school of Tibetan Buddhism.

“May the health of my body flourish,” is asking that this food nourish your body and is a form of cleansing of the food.

This is just my take on this chant, more on other chants later.  As this is really part of a longer sūtra, there may be more on this sūtra later.  The sūtra is the “The Sūtra of the Recollection of the Noble Three Jewels”

Posted in Buddhism, Meal Chants, Religion/Spirituality, Three Jewels | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Website Survey

Posted on 2011 December 28 by

I decided that I’d create a survey for this website.  I don’t really know how this will turn out, I thought I’d give it a try.  I’m using SurveyMonkey, and you can do the same for your website.  So here it is.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

Posted in Business Development, Development, Surveys, Web Development | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

New counsellor

Posted on 2011 December 19 by

I finally decided that I needed to seek out a counsellor.  I guess it was a good thing.  I had an appointment on Friday.  It was pretty much a get to know you kind of thing.  A bit of working on the treatment plan and what I might want to do in terms of my treatment.  I’m not really sure what to say about her.  She seemed like a really reasonable counsellor, but I ended up leaving with more anxiety than I went in.  Which really bothered me.

Another thing that bothered me was that she was showing what I thought was an inappropriate amount of cleavage.  I don’t know, this is a counsellor at Nelson Mental Health and Addiction Services, but she is dealing with public more than people who are severely mentally ill.  People who are having a hard time coping now, or want to work on a few things with a counsellor.  Still bothered me.

I just thought I’d update my readers about a few things that have gone on.

Why did I decide that I wanted to get counselling again?  I guess having an acupuncturist at the ACOS Student Clinic.  She is now done.  I’m not sure when she’ll get her doctorate, but probably in the next 4 months or so.  I really liked working with Dana, I consider her a friend, but not super good friends.  We’re connected on Facebook, we originally met at the Kootenay Shambhala Meditation Centre, which I continue to attend.

Dana encouraged me to look at getting a counsellor; she even asked around to see if there might be a counsellor that I could connect with who would be a good fit.  I ended up with one of the two that she recommended.  It was apparently entirely by accident that happened, or luck, or something.

I have thought that I wanted to see a new counsellor for a long time.  And it turns out that by asking enough times you eventually get a new counsellor.  It also turns out that my file wasn’t closed when I requested that it be closed.  That peeved me to find that out.  Still, in the end, I have decided that I really shouldn’t expect people to do what they say they are going to when it relates to my health care.

I have another appointment in January and will give more information about how things are looking in January.  The jury is still very much out as to whether this is going to work or not.  I guess the idea of not cleanly fitting into any of the categories that they have kind of annoyed me.  I don’t think I’m really in that different a situation than that many people, and I feel I always end up slipping through the cracks one way or another.

Sandy suggested that maybe it would turn out that I’d see this counsellor for a while, then I would see another counsellor if I needed more than she was really able to offer.  We’ll really look to see what happens.

Still thinking of going off my medications.  Which seems like a good idea long-term, but it could be a very long-term project having that work out for me.

Posted in counselling, health and wellbeing, medications, mental health | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Going off medications

Posted on 2011 August 29 by

I’ve really looked at this.  To go off the one medication that is costing $122 every two weeks, would allow me to get 4 acupuncture treatments every week instead, or 3 every week, and the extra amount going to savings.

But then the question really is, does this drug help me?  I think it does, but I think 3 acupuncture treatments a week would help as much if not more than the medication helps me.  I’m really on edge a lot of the time, and I think it partially has to do with how my medications are balanced and the, “take this medication because you are having problems with that medication”.  It really seems like a soup to me, and not really a good soup.

So what has convinced me to get to this point.   Part of it is that it just costs so much.  Sure I’m not paying for it myself, but my parents are paying for it.  I really don’t think that it will be covered any time soon.  It has gone down in price since I started taking it.  But it’s still too expensive for me to be able to afford it myself.

The other concern, I have is that I really don’t think that all the psychiatric medications I’m on are really helping me “cope better”.  They help for the short-term to deal with the issues that are becoming “chronic” that is persisting longer than they should.  I think I could do a lot better with natural medicine and good nutrition.

A lot of this comes from reading what is going on in the Facebook Group Treating People as People/ Beyond Disability which has had some discussion of alternatives from a number of people.  One thing that is clear to me is that we have more disability now due to psychiatric conditions than we did before we had the dramatic increase in the availability of psychiatric drugs.  The majority (probably over 90%) are on long-term psychiatric drug therapy.  So either the world is getting much worse (several orders of magnitude) to live in, or the drugs are actually causing the disability.

I’m not sure the latter is true.  At least short-term these drugs are shown to be “efficacious and safe,” but since the studies that have shown that are almost entirely done by the pharmaceutical companies, you start to wonder just what that really means.

Also, I can get herbal formulas from the Chinese Herbal Dispensary at the Academy of Classical Oriental Sciences (ACOS), which would be formulated by either students at the student clinic at ACOS or the wonderful people at Nelson Community Acupuncture Clinic (NCAC) specifically for me, or possibly a patent formula (cheaper, but not customized for me).

Really, it doesn’t seem to make sense for me to be doing something that doesn’t really fit with my values.  It seems the money that is going towards the drugs now, isn’t going very much to support the local economy.  Whereas acupuncture the money almost entirely stays in the community.  Sure some of it goes toward paying for supplies and that sort of thing, but most of it stays in the community.  Which is really important to me.

I know I’ve rambled on this issue a lot.  But to me it seems like a good thing for me to do this.  It will really take a long time me to be able to go off a medication like this that I’ve been on for as long as I have.  Probably a year, maybe more.  But it will be worth it to be off the pharmaceuticals.  I may not be doing anything to try to get off them until spring, because that’s the best time to be reducing medication.

Posted in counselling, health and wellbeing, medications, mental health | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Our Greatest Natrual Resource

Posted on 2011 August 12 by

A friend of mine from Plurk posted his Friday Five and it got me thinking.

What his Friday Five post was about was five Walt Disney (the man) quotes and the one that got me most thinking was “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.” While all of the quotes brought certain thoughts to mind about how children in North America grow up, and become adults, this one brought certain thoughts to mind.

I specifically started out thinking about what we do with our natural resources in North America.  Look at things like the Exxon Valdez oil spill, or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Sure these are things that have gone wrong when the safeties in place have failed us.  These sorts of things are happening all the time in places like the Athabasca oil sands.  Where the way we’re treating the environment with great disrespect in the normal operations of things.

So this is how we treat our natural resources.  We take them and mine them, and chop them down, and basically destroy them, and bend them to our will.  We are also doing this with our children and their minds.

A child is hyperactive and can’t settle down to the teaching that we offer them, we call it Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and medicate them with psychostimulants like Ritalin.  A child has social problems we call it Asperger’s Syndrome or Social Anxiety Disorder and treat it with different drugs.  We shape the minds of these children to our wills.  We don’t listen to them.  We don’t spend time trying to understand what is going on with them.  We don’t adapt to their needs.

We have them adapt to our needs.  We have them conform to the way we see the world.  I’m not just talking about people who have a “clinically significant impairment”.  We treat all children like this.  The ones who are imaginative, we don’t ask them to express their imagination, and develop that imagination.  We tell them “that’s not true,”  “That’s just your imagination.”

We don’t try to work with the individual and help the individual, become someone who is exceptional at something (dreaming up stories, drawing, writing programs, whatever), we want them to do well in standardized tests.  Tests that are high stakes to the schools, but low risk to the students.  And in my opinion of very low benefit to the students, but maybe slight benefit to the schools.

We stifle creativity.  We encourage conformity.  Why?  I think it’s because we don’t want our children to stand taller than us.  We don’t want them to grow bigger than us.  We want them to be just “good enough”.  And while sometimes good enough is actually good enough.

We really could develop an education system where innovation is honoured and encouraged.  Where children are encouraged to take part in determining just how well they are doing.  We could develop an education system that really excels at producing adults who are ready to go out there and explore the world in new and novel ways.

I believe if we don’t do this, we will continue to treat all our natural resources like we have been, and we will destroy the planet for human habitation, or at least make it much harder to live on this planet.  We’re already seeing dramatic changes in climate.  And we’re experiencing what at least seems to be more natural disasters, and more severe ones when they do occur.

So what do we do?  We start treating our most precious natural resource, as if it has intrinsic value, value in just being there, and we help our children develop their mind in ways that works for them.

How do we do that?  Well I think that’s time for another blog post, but for now I ask how you would do it?  With your children?  With your students?  With your friends and families children?

Posted in Children, Education, Environment, Natural Resources | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Hello world!

Posted on 2011 July 26 by

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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