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May we become partners once again?
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I’ll be waiting for your reply.
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Sincerely, John Flicker
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P.S. On behalf of everyone here at the National Audubon Society, we look forward to saying, “Welcome back!”
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So this morning I sat down and thought about what it would take for you to give us a second chance.
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“Welcome back!”
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All of us are excited about sending you your magazine and membership materials.
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In advance, please accept my personal “Thank you!”
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“Thank you!”
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I thought about our new, enhanced local efforts, our expanding scientific research and educational programs, our fresh new writing in AUDUBON magazine.
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Then I thought about an enticing way for you to regain your place among America’s most intelligent, concerned and caring citizens who proudly avow membership in the National Audubon Society.
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I’m inviting you back to full membership for just $17 - 51% off the regular rate.
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By accepting my personal invitation, you’ll provide yourself and every member of your family with a fulfilling sense of proprietorship, and a steady flow of priceless enjoyment.
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Medicine for one's mind
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The first evening, the twenty-something students--most from my college, four from another--gathered in the shrine room, sitting cross-legged on cushions as we listened to Khenpo Kalsang introduce Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.
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He began by telling us, "Do not take any of what I say on faith.
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"Do not take any of what I say on faith. Take it through analysis, if there is some benefit in it for you."
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Take it through analysis, if there is some benefit in it for you."
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Religion, he said, is like a drugstore full of medicine.
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You do not go to the drugstore and buy everything in it--you just buy what would be beneficial to you now.
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You believe the other medicine may have just as much value, but in other situations, not this one.
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When we talked about the giving, and how one should try to give what one could to other sentient beings (in the form of material items, kind words, protection, and so on), Khenpo Kalsang shared a story of the Buddha, and how the Buddha had given his flesh so that a family of hungry tigers could eat.
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The gentle wind makes them flutter.
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"So,"
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"So," a fellow student asked, "Giving one's life for another being is the ultimate gift?"
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"Giving one's life for another being is the ultimate gift?"
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"Only if you feel no regret,"
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"Only if you feel no regret," he said.
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Tibetan Buddhist Retreat
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Orange-gold light filters into the grassy meadow, touching a row of canvas tents and the temple house beyond.
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Until then, preserve your own life, and do not give away anything that would cause you regret.
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This struck a chord.
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Self-preservation above all else, unless the right situation arises.
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Knowing and understanding
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Later, I talked to the resident nun, Ani Kunga, about psychology and cognitive science.
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She had studied psychology for a while in grad school, but now holds the view that psychologists are going about understanding the mind and understanding the knower and what knowing is the wrong way.
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"Psychologists,"
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"Psychologists," she said, "study the brain and the self externally.
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But the mind can only be known by you, the person whose mind it is."
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She said philosophy and epistemology were doing it right: looking at experiences from the inside.
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A big overlap exists between Tibetan Buddhism, psychology and cognitive science.
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Tsechen Kunchab Ling : Temple of All-Encompassing Great Compassion.
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But this doesn't mean that there isn't merit to such studies, nor that nothing of use can be learned in that way.
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During a second philsophy session, Khenpo Kalsang translated a sutra about a king who received advice from the Buddha.
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This sutra delved into some questions about the nature of the self, whether the self is a delusion, and how the clinging of self is a defilement.
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I intend to discuss it in more depth later, so stay tuned.
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This is the seat of His Holiness the Sakya Trizin in the United States, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery established nine years ago.
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Compassion training and prayer flags
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In the afternoon, a group of us gathered outside for a meditation session with Ani Kunga.
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Sunshine melted lazily through the tree branches above, a breeze animating the branches' shadows so they danced between our cushions.
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The key message:
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"If there's something you can do, why are you unhappy? Just do it. If there's nothing you can do, why are you unhappy?"
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Just do it.
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If there's nothing you can do, why are you unhappy?"
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Ani Kunga explained several off-session and one on-session technique for dealing with negative emotions (anger, hate, irritation, stress, jealousy, and so on).
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Stay tuned for a more in-depth post on the topic.
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Another of the day's activities was making prayer flags.
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As Ani Kunga explained, "Prayers, wishes, hopes, aspirations--someone, many people, may share those with you.
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"Prayers, wishes, hopes, aspirations--someone, many people, may share those with you. Hanging the prayer flag shares your prayer with everyone else in the world. This may do no good at all, but it may--if everyone hopes and wishes and dreams and aspires, perhaps it will do good. It may not. But if no one shares their prayers, it will certainly do no good. So on the offchance that it will help, why not?"
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Hanging the prayer flag shares your prayer with everyone else in the world.
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This may do no good at all, but it may--if everyone hopes and wishes and dreams and aspires, perhaps it will do good.
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It may not.
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But if no one shares their prayers, it will certainly do no good.
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So on the offchance that it will help, why not?"
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Never done
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This weekend reminded me that I'm not done learning.
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I spent the past weekend there.
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If I stay still long enough, if I've achieved a relatively constant level of happiness and satisfaction, I forget that I can and should continue to seek out new ideas and approaches, and incorporate beneficial ones into my life.
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A person is never "done," and so, I'll continue to observe and discuss and study, trying to pick the directions in which I'll change, and trying to make tomorrow better than today.
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"done,"
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Ever onward and ever upward.
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Faded squares of fabric, strung together in repeating blue-white-red-green-yellow chains, crisscross the branches of bare-limbed trees.
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Everyone I've talked to who has previously attended says wonderful things about it; this semester, one of my friends told me she was going: I should join her!
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I like learning new things, so I signed up.
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A good decision: I didn't return all chill and zen, as one friend told me his roommate had, but I certainly gained a few new ideas and approaches to mull over, and dipped my hand into a previously unfamiliar piece of the world.
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They suggested that what you believe about self-control affects the goals you set and achieve [PDF].
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I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions.
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In the paper, "self-control" is used to mean a sense of willpower.
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"self-control"
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Mukhopadhyay & Venkatarmani discuss various lay theories of self-control, noting that the amount of self-control a person has can be seen as either an inherently limited or unlimited resource, and that this resource can be seen either as malleable or as fixed (the amount of self-control a person has can change over time, or not).
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I mean, sure, I could take my pick of popular New Year's resolutions ; I could decide, on the first day of the new year, that this year, I'll start exercising more and eating better, or that I'll spend more time with my family and friends, or that I'll learn a new skill.
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An important premise to note here is the idea that the probability of choosing a goal or making a resolution increases if a person thinks that goal can be attained.
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So if you think you'll be able to achieve a goal, you're more likely to set it.
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Combine this with theories of self-control, and in general, if you believe you have unlimited stores of self-control, you'll set a larger number of goals.
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If you believe self-control is malleable but limited, you'll set fewer goals.
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Mukhopadhyay & Venkatarmani also discuss self-efficacy: belief in one's capabilities, the perceived ability to carry out a desired action.
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They propose that people with high self-efficacy--people who believe that failure is the result of insufficient effort, and thus exhibit increased commitment and persistence--will achieve more of their goals than people with low self-efficacy, who tend to view failure as the result of deficient ability, and thus may simply give up.
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Self-control, Self-efficacy, and New Year's Resolutions Unresolved
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The studies
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In the first study, 85 participants (all college students) each read one of four passages presenting lay theories of self-control.
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Each passage contained two paragraphs; the first discussed self-control either as limited or as unlimited, and the second discussed self-control as either malleable or fixed.
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The participants then answered questions about their belief in each of two theories presented, followed by a second questionnaire to assess motivation, in which they listed all their current goals.
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The study was testing whether a belief in unlimited, malleable self-control would result in most resolutions, and indeed, this is what was found.
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The experimenters had some concerns about participants' natural beliefs in relation to the passages they read, however, so in study two, the order of the two measures (lay theories and motivation/goal listing) was varied.
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Data from 130 new participants revealed that, as hypothesized, if the motivation & goals questionnaire were assessed first, then among the people who believed self-control is malleable, those who also believed self-control to be unlimited (vs.
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limited) set more goals.
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When lay theories were assessed first, this result reversed.
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The people who believed that self-control is fixed were unaffected by order.
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The third study moved on to examine goal achievement, adding a measure to look at self-efficacy.
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The study had two sessions, in November then February.
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