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Trike Daily Shambhala
Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America
Following the recent allegations at Shambhala International, we take a look back at a 1990 article that investigated the troubling legacy of its first two heads and established a precedent for Buddhist journalism.
By Katy Butler
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche from the film Crazy Wisdom. | http://www.crazywisdomthemovie.com/
Following reports of sexual abuse by teachers at Shambhala International, members of the organization's governing body have announced their resignations. Their leader, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, has also stepped aside amid an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse brought to light by Buddhist Project Sunshine, a survivor advocacy group founded by a Shambhala member. Sadly, stories of teacher misconduct in sanghas are nothing new.
Below, we have re-published a groundbreaking 1990 article by Katy Butler—a Tricycle contributing editor and the author of Knocking on Heaven's Door and the upcoming The Art of Dying Well (January 2019)—about the sexual misconduct of Osel Tendzin, the then-leader of Vajradhatu, later renamed Shambhala International in 2000. Tendzin took over Vajradhatu in 1987, following the death of its founder, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was also known to have had sex with many of his students. Tendzin died in 1990 from complications due to HIV, a virus that he had spread to some members of his sangha, at least one of whom later died of AIDS. Trungpa's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, has been the head of Shambhala since.
Butler's article, published in the now-defunct Common Boundary magazine, shined a much-needed light on the problems of the sangha while placing it in a richer context—culturally, psychologically, and organizationally—that was largely missing from other accounts. Many of her observations about teacher-student relationships are as true today as they were back then. With this piece, and another article about sexual abuse at the San Francisco Zen Center, Butler paved the way for the future of Buddhist journalism, serving as a model for how writing can be a critical tool to examine and challenge our own communities.
That an article written in 1990 is still so relevant today is both a testament to the depth of insight in Butler's work and a heartbreaking reminder that the task of exposing abuses of power may never be complete. In an accompanying piece, Butler explains what led her to write this exposé and what has changed in the nearly three decades since it was written.
There is no final word on this matter. As new allegations continue to emerge, the conversation shifts, bringing new insights to old problems. Accordingly, Tricycle will continue to cover developments and showcase a variety of perspectives as the old story unfolds.
One summer afternoon in 1982, a friend of mine stood on a street in Boulder, Colorado—under a bright blue Rocky Mountain sky—holding a bottle of sake. The wine, a gesture of gratitude, was a gift for Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin, "Radiant Holder of the Teachings," second-in-command of Vajradhatu, the largest branch of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.
Moments later, my friend entered an elegant, minimally furnished office nearby. Tendzin—the former Thomas Rich of Passaic, New Jersey, round-eyed, mustachioed and wearing a well-cut business suit—rose from his chair and smiled. My friend shook his hand, grateful for the rare private audience. He had recently emerged from an emotionally repressive religious community in Los Angeles, and a meditation retreat led by the Regent had introduced him to a more colorful, less guilt-inducing, spiritual path.
As the afternoon wore on, the men talked about Buddhism, love and theology. Gradually, the sake level dropped inside the bottle. Then my friend, a little drunk, grew bold and raised the subject he feared most: homosexuality. There was a moment of silence.
"Stand up," Tendzin said. "Kiss me." My friend complied.
When the Regent requested oral sex, my friend, slightly dismayed, declined. "I think you can do it," the Regent said cheerfully. The two then moved to a couch, where my friend's taboo against homosexuality was broken.
When it was over, Tendzin mentioned in passing that he had similar sexual encounters several times a day. He offered my friend a ride, opened the office door and led the way through clusters of waiting assistants to a sleek car purring in the twilight below, a driver waiting at the wheel.
My friend later felt confused and embarrassed about that afternoon, but not bitter. "He pushed me into a homosexual experience, and yet at the same time, he was generous. I asked to see him, and he made time for me," he told me. "I felt a mixture of embarrassment and honor. I don't feel Tendzin abused me, and I don't want my sexual experience judged by anybody."
After my friend told me his story, I often replayed it in my mind, like a videotape, searching for hidden clues to later events. I noted my friend's fascination with the trappings of spiritual power and his discomfort with moral judgments. I observed Tendzin's apparently routine transformation of a religious audience into an afternoon of drinking and sexual relations, and how casually he admitted to addictively frequent sex. I had to acknowledge that my friend did not feel harmed; yet I saw in the incident the seeds of the disaster that followed.
A Crisis of Leadership
In April 1987, Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin assumed leadership of the Vajradhatu community, following the death of the well-known and widely respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Less than two years later, in December 1988, the most harmful crisis ever to strike an American Buddhist community unfolded when Vajradhatu administrators told their members that the Regent had been infected with the AIDS virus for nearly three years. Members of the Vajradhatu board of directors conceded that, except for some months of celibacy, he had neither protected his many sexual partners nor told them the truth. One of the Regent's sexual partners, the son of long-term students, was infected, as was a young woman who had later made love to the young man.
Two members of the Vajradhatu board of directors had known of his infection for more than two years, and chose to do nothing. Trungpa Rinpoche had also known about it before his death. Board members had reluctantly informed the sangha [community] only after trying for three months to persuade the Regent to act on his own.
"Thinking I had some extraordinary means of protection, I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me," Tendzin reportedly told a stunned community meeting organized in Berkeley in mid-December.
This crisis of leadership was hardly the only disaster to befall an American Buddhist sangha. In 13 years of practicing Buddhist meditation, I have seen venerated, black-robed Japanese roshis and their American dharma heirs (including my own former teacher) exposed for having secret affairs. Other Buddhist teachers—Tibetan, Japanese, and American—have misused money, become alcoholic, or indulged in eccentric behavior.
As an American Buddhist, I found the scandals heartbreaking and puzzling. I thought of Buddhism not as a cult but as a 2,500-year-old religion devoted to ending suffering, not causing it. I also knew that many of the teachers involved were not charlatans, but sincere, thoroughly trained spiritual mentors, dedicated to transmitting the Buddhist dharma to the West.
As a journalist, I noticed that media coverage of the scandals seemed to reinforce secular America's deeply held suspicion of all religious impulses. The teachers came across as cynical exploiters; their followers as gullible fools.
But having watched and participated in Buddhist communities for more than a decade, I know that these misfortunes are more than a tragic dance between exploitation and naiveté. Their roots lie not in individual villainy, but in cultural misunderstandings and hidden emotional wounds. And all community members, however unconsciously, play a part in them.
When Buddhism moved West, an ancient and profound Eastern tradition encountered a younger, more fragmented American society. The new American Buddhists enthusiastically built Japanese meditation halls lined with sweet-smelling tatami mats, and Tibetan-style shrine rooms with altars laden with ceremonial bowls of water and rice. Trying, to build new communities, they cobbled together structures that combined elements of Eastern hierarchy and devotion and Western individualism. The blending of widely divergent cultural values was complicated by the fact that orally students hoped to find a sanctuary from the wounds of painful childhoods and from the loneliness of their own culture. When the scandals erupted, however, many found themselves like Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz "back in their own backyards," having unconsciously replicated patterns they had hoped to leave behind.
Now, as the shadow side has come to light, certain common elements within the communities are apparent:
Patterns of denial, shame, secrecy, and invasiveness reminiscent of alcoholic and incestuous families.
Soft-pedaling of basic Buddhist precepts against harming others by misusing alcohol and sex.
An unhealthy marriage of Asian hierarchy and American license that distorts the teacher-disciple relationship; and
A tendency, once scandals are uncovered, to either scapegoat the disgraced teachers or blindly deny that anything has changed.
A Lineage of Denial
As a member of San Francisco Zen Center in the early I980s. I was mystified by my own failure—and the failure of my friends—to challenge the behavior of our teacher, Richard Baker Roshi, when it seemed to defy common sense. Since then, friends from alcoholic families have told me that our community reproduced patterns of denial and enablement similar to those in their families. When our teacher kept us waiting, failed to meditate, and was extravagant with money, we ignored it or explained it away as a teaching. A cadre of well-organized subordinates picked up the pieces behind him just as the wife of an alcoholic might cover her husband's bounced check or bail him out of jail. This "enabling," as alcoholism counselors call it, allowed damaging behavior to continue and grow. It insulated our teacher from the consequences of his actions and deprived him of the chance to learn from his mistakes.
The process damaged us as well: we habitually denied what was in front of our faces, felt powerless, and lost touch with our inner experience.
Similar patterns were acknowledged at Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1983, when their teacher, the respected Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi-roshi, entered a treatment program and acknowledged his alcoholism. [He later drowned in his bathtub after a night of heavy drinking.] "We were all co-alcoholics," one of Maezumi's students told the Buddhist historian Sandy Boucher. "We in subtle ways encouraged his alcoholism [because when he was drunk] he would become piercingly honest."
A similar process may have taken place at Vajradhatu in the 1970s, as students attempted to come to terms with their teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a maverick, Oxford-educated Tibetan exile, who was brilliant, compassionate, and alcoholic.
Trungpa Rinpoche, the 11th incarnation of the Trungpa Tulku, was the teenage head of several large Tibetan monasteries when the 1959 Chinese invasion tore him from his native culture. Eager to meet the West on its own terms, he gave up his robes for a business suit, fell in love with Shakespeare and Mozart, and married an English woman. He sometimes lectured with a glass of sake in his hand.
Trungpa Rinpoche taught that every aspect of human existence—neurosis, passion, desire, alcohol, the dark and the light—was to be embraced and transmuted. He called his wild approach "crazy wisdom," referring to a small but genuine tradition of revered, eccentric Tibetan yogis—most of whom worked intimately with one or two students.
Many Buddhist teachers—even those uneasy with his behavior—admired Trungpa Rinpoche for his brilliant translation of Buddhism into Western terms. Wary of importing Tibetan cultural forms, he first taught his American students a simple, sitting meditation. He then gradually introduced the elaborate Tantric disciplines that distinguish Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism from almost all other Buddhist schools. Students completed foundational practices, including 100,000 prostrations, and attended a three-month seminary in the mountains. Advanced students were ceremonially initiated into confidential Tibetan practices of meditative visualization. Teacher and student entered into a relationship, traditionally more devotional than anything in other Buddhist schools.
Trungpa attracted thousands of well-educated people who soon created the largest, most creative and least conventional of America's non-Asian Buddhist communities. He counted among his students poets Alan Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, playwright Jean-Claude van Italie, Shambhala Publications publisher Sam Bercholz, and Rick Fields, author of a respected history of American Buddhism. Based primarily in Boulder, students ran businesses, founded Naropa Institute, an accredited Buddhist university; edited a journal on contemplative psychotherapy; and published a widely read bimonthly Buddhist newspaper, the Vajradhatu Sun [later renamed the Shambhala Sun and eventually Lion's Roar].
Yet woven into the discipline and creativity was a strand of hedonism. Vajradhatu students had a reputation for the wildest parties in Buddhist America. Although most Tibetan Tantric schools clearly discourage "acting out" passions and impulses, Trungpa Rinpoche did not. In fact, drunk and speeding, he once crashed a sports car into the side of a joke shop and was left partly paralyzed. He openly slept with students. In Boulder, he lectured brilliantly, yet sometimes so drunk that he had to be carried off stage or held upright in his chair.
To student Jules Levinson, a Tibetan scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, the stories "were very upsetting—that he drank a lot, that he slept around." Yet at the same time, Levinson was grateful to Trungpa. "I found him gentle, delicate, provocative and nurturing—the most compassionate person I have ever known. I just couldn't put it together," he said.
Some students, replaying dynamics from their alcoholic families, responded to Trungpa Rinpoche by denying and enabling his addictive drinking and sexual activity. "I served Rinpoche big glasses of gin first thing in the morning, if you want to talk about enabling," said one woman, who had watched her own father die of alcoholism.
Others resolved their cognitive dissonance by believing that their teacher had transcended the limitations of a human body. "Trungpa Rinpoche said that because he had Vajra nature [a yogically transformed and stabilized psychophysiology], he was immune to the normal physiological effects of alcohol," said one student. "We bought the story that it was a way of putting 'earth' into his system, so that he could . . . relate to us. It never occurred to anyone I knew that he was possibly an alcoholic, since that was a disease that could only happen to an ordinary mortal. And many of us were ignorant—we thought of an alcoholic only as the classic bum in the street "
An atmosphere of denial permeated the community in the 1970s and early 1980s, and other Vajradhatu students became heavy drinkers. "I found myself a nice little nest where I could keep on drinking," said one long-time Vajradhatu Buddhist, who was among a handful of Vajradhatu members who joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in the early 1980s. Their recovery seemed to threaten others. The first woman to get sober was asked to quit the board of a home care organization founded by Vajradhatu members. "I felt such contempt for someone who had to quit drinking, and I treated her like a mental case." said the woman who got rid of her—a woman who has since joined AA herself.
When Trungpa Rinpoche lay dying in 1986 at the age of 47, only an inner circle knew the symptoms of his final illness. Few could bear to acknowledge that their beloved and brilliant teacher was dying of terminal alcoholism, even when he lay incontinent in his bedroom, belly distended and skin discolored, hallucinating and suffering from varicose veins, gastritis, and esophageal varices, a swelling of veins in the esophagus caused almost exclusively by cirrhosis of the liver.
"Rinpoche was certainly not an ordinary Joe, but he sure died like every alcoholic I've ever seen who drank uninterruptedly." said Victoria Fitch, a member of his household staff with years of experience as a nursing attendant. "The denial was bone-deep." she continued. "I watched his alcoholic dementia explained as his being in the realm of the daikinis [guardians of the teachings, visualized in female form]. When he requested alcohol, no one could bring themselves not to bring it to him, although they tried to water his beer or bring him a little less. In that final time of his life . . . he could no longer walk independently. At the same time there was a power about him and an equanimity to his presence that was phenomenal, that I don't know how to explain."
Some students now feel that the Regent Osel Tendzin suffered from a similar denial of human limitation, as well as ignorance of addictive behavior.
"Many students who are outraged by the Regent's behavior seem to think he arose out of nowhere," one student said. "They're not using their Buddhist training about cause and effect. I think the Regent has emulated in a more extreme and deadly fashion a pattern of denial and ignorance exemplified by Trungpa Rinpoche's own attitude to alcohol."
By the time the crisis broke, a small but significant minority of Vajradhatu students had begun to deal with wounds felt by family alcoholism and incest. By the mid-1980s, about 250 Vajradhatu members around the country—mostly wives of alcoholic husbands—had joined Al-Anon, an organization modeled after AA for the Families of alcoholics, and more than a score of sangha members had joined AA. Soft drinks were also served at Vajradhatu ceremonies, and the atmosphere of excessive drinking diminished.
Those in the 12-Step movement were a minority, however, and certain stubbornness persisted. For example, the Regent himself sought to suppress any public discussion of the sexual scandal and crisis, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of an alcoholic family's defensive secrecy.
When editor Rick Fields prepared a short article for the Vajradhatu Sun describing the bare bones of the crisis, he was forbidden to print it. "There have been ongoing discussions, both within community meetings and among many individuals, about the underlying issues that permitted the current situation to occur," read the banned article. "Those issues include the abuse of power and the betrayal of trust, the proper relationship between teachers with spiritual authority and students, particularly in the West, and the relationship between devotion and critical intelligence on the spiritual path."
In the article's place, Fields printed a mute drawing of the Vajradhatu logo—a knot of eternity—stretched to the breaking point over a broken heart. In March, Fields again attempted to run his article and was fired by the Regent. When the board of directors refused to support him, he formally resigned, saying that Buddhist teaching in the West "would best served in the long run by openness and honesty, painful as that may be."
The suppression of public discussion echoed both the Asian tradition of face-saving as well as the dynamics of alcoholic families. "There's a sense of family secrets, things you don't talk about, especially with outsiders," said Levinson. "Shortly after the news came out I wrote to the Regent and said, 'If the rumors are true, then [those actions] don't seem to be in accord with the dharma, but it doesn't make you a devil. The most important thing is what we do now. I would really like you to come talk to us openly, in small groups, at least in Boulder and Halifax, [Nova Scotia,] as your health permits. If you can do that we . . . may be able to re-establish some trust.' My biggest heartbreak is that he hasn't done that."
Cross-Cultural Clashes
For more than a year, the stalemate stretched Vajradhatu to the breaking point. Tendzin publicly but obliquely acknowledged violating Buddhist vows, but he declined to accept responsibility for infecting others. He remained on retreat in California with a small group of devoted students, defying a request by the board of directors that he withdraw from teaching. In Boulder, some anti-Regent students virulently and unrealistically blamed him for the entire disaster, while pro-Regent students practiced what might be called "devotional or transcendental denial." They urged the preservation of the Buddhist teaching lineage at the expense of facing what had happened. Many others fell into what one senior student called "the heartbroken middle." In a letter widely distributed in Boulder, one student wrote, "If the Board and the Regent cannot work out their differences with compassion and intelligence, the sangha will be shattered."
The community consulted Tibetan lamas to resolve the impasse, but their responses reflected an Asian emphasis on face-saving, hierarchy, and avoidance of open conflict. Although it is unclear how much he understood the situation, one venerated lama, the late Kalu Rinpoche, forbade his American students to comment on the Vajradhatu disaster. Another, the Venerable Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, first asked the Regent to go into retreat but urged Vajradhatu students to respect the Regent's authority.
It was too much for many students to stomach. "This is a living nightmare for us," said Robin Kornman a long-time Vajradhatu meditation teacher and a graduate student at Princeton University. "We are being told to follow a person we are certain is deeply confused."
Buddhist students at other centers have experienced similar cross-cultural problems. In the late 1970s, Zen student [and now-Tricycle Features Editor] Andrew Cooper became disturbed when he realized that his Japanese Roshi "discouraged the expression of personal disagreement, doubt or problems within the community, even when those problems were undeniably real and potentially disruptive."
Cooper, now a graduate student in psychology, thought his teacher was hypocritical until a friend who had lived in Japan told him that the Japanese have no notion of hypocrisy, at least not in the sense we in the West do. "For the Japanese, withholding one's personal feelings in order to maintain the appearance of harmony within the group is seen as virtuous and noble," Cooper wrote in an unpublished paper. "This attitude is part of the structuring of Japanese social relations—it has a place there. But when it is imported under the banner of enlightenment and overlaid on an American community, the results are cultish and bizarre."
Asian Deference and Western License
The results are particularly troublesome when communities import Asian devotional traditions without importing corresponding Asian social controls. Chogyam Trungpa, for instance, came from a society where the sense of "self" and the social controls on that self were very different from those in the West. Raised from infancy in Eastern Tibet as an incarnate lama, he headed a huge institutional monastery at 19. He was granted tremendous devotion and power, but his freedom was rigidly circumscribed by monastic vows of chastity and abstinence, and by obligations to his monastery and the surrounding community.
Community standards were based on an intricate system of reciprocal obligation. They were clear and often unspoken. Almost everyone's behavior—serf, lama, or landowner— was closely but subtly controlled by a strong and often unspoken need to save face.
But these social controls did not exist in the society to which Trungpa Rinpoche came in the freewheeling 1970s. His American students' behavior was loosely governed by contractual relationships; by frank, open discussions; and by individual choices rather than by shared social ethics and mutual obligation. His ancestors had lived in the same valley for generations; when he first arrived in America, he flew from city to city like a rock star. While America removed all social limits from Trungpa Rinpoche's behavior, his students became his household servants, chauffeured his car, and showed him a deference appropriate to a Tibetan lama or feudal lord.
The same deference was shown to his dharma heir, Osel Tendzin. "His meals were occasions for frenzies of linen-pressing, silver-polishing, hairbreadth calibrations in table settings, and exact choreographies of servers," said television producer Deborah Mendelsohn, who helped host Tendzin when he gave two meditation retreats in Los Angeles, but has since left the community. "When he traveled, a handbook went with him to guide his hosts through the particulars of caring for him, including instructions on how and in what order to offer his towel, underpants, and robe after he stepped from the shower."
This parody of Asian deference, combined with American license, ultimately proved disastrous, and not only at Vajradhatu. At Zen centers as well, students took on Asian gestures of subservience while their teachers sometimes acted "freely," drinking, spending money, making sexual advances to women or men, all with precious little negative feedback. The deference often went far beyond what would have been granted to a teacher in Japan or Tibet.
"Pressure from the community is very important in controlling behavior in Tibetan communities," said Dr. Barbara Aziz, an internationally known social anthropologist at the City University of New York who has spent 20 years doing fieldwork among Tibetans in Nepal and Tibet. "In Tibetan society, they expect more of the guy they put on the pedestal . . . if such a scandal had happened in Tibet, the whole community might have felt polluted. Osel Tendzin might have been driven from the valley. Depending on the degree of community outrage, his family might have made substantial offerings to the monastery for purification rites and prayers to infuse society with compassion."
Furthermore, Aziz pointed out, Tibetans may "demonstrate all kinds of reverence to a reverend, but they won't necessarily do what he says."
"I see far more discernment among my Tibetan and Nepali friends," she concluded, "than among Westerners."
In this confusing cross-cultural context, the teacher-student bond can he easily misunderstood. In the early days of my Zen training, I would make a formal prostration before my teacher when visiting him for practice instruction. I tried to see him as "enlightened," and I hoped that over time I would internalize the qualities of awareness, sell-containment, and energy that I admired in him.
Idealizing one's teacher is part of a long and healthy tradition in Tibet, Japan, and India, according to Alan Roland, a psychoanalyst and author of In Search of Self in India and Japan. "The need to have a figure to respect, idealize, and imitate is a crucial part of every person's self-development. But Eastern cultures are far more articulate about that need and culturally support it," he explained.
Roland believes that Asian students approach the teacher-student relationships more subtly than Americans—who often commit rapidly and completely, or not at all. Asian students may display deference, but withhold veneration, until they have studied with a teacher for years. They tend to have a "private self' unknown to many Americans, a self which is capable of reserving judgement even while scrupulously following the forms. When a teacher fails, Asians may continue to defer to his superior rank but silently withdraw affection and respect.
In America, it's often the reverse. Some Vajradhatu students could forgive Osel Tendzin as a human being, but could not treat him as a leader. Few Americans can show deference to someone they don't venerate without feeling hypocritical. Faced with this cognitive dissonance, they either abandon deference and leave, or they deny inner feelings.
If they deny their perceptions, reality becomes distorted and a mutual dance of delusion begins. "Part of the blame lies with the student, because too much obedience, devotion, and blind acceptance spoils a teacher," explained His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama last year at a conference in Newport Beach, California. "Part also lies with the spiritual master because he lacks the integrity to be immune to that kind of vulnerability. I recommend never adopting the attitude toward one's spiritual teacher of seeing his or her every action as divine or noble. This may seem a little bit bold, but if one has a teacher who is not qualified, who is engaging in unsuitable or wrong behavior, then it is appropriate for the student to criticize that behavior."
Last autumn, it looked as though the Vajradhatu sangha would be torn in two. After the long retreat advised by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Tendzin boldly re-asserted authority. Those who refused to accept his spiritual leadership were fired from key committees, denied permission to teach meditation, and barred from taking part in advanced practices with the rest of their community. The conflict became so intense that the two opposing factions sent delegations to Nepal and India to implore senior lamas to support their positions.
In response, Khyentse Rinpoche advised Tendzin to enter into a "strict retreat" for a year. Tendzin complied, retaining nominal authority but effectively abdicating his teaching and leadership role. Senior Tibetan lamas were invited to Boulder to teach, and Vajradhatu began to connect again to a wider Tibetan religious tradition.
"This is a real turning point," said a relieved David Rome, a member of the board of directors. "This is a way to come together and feel basic unity, and to look at the issues that this crisis brought to the surface. This is not the end, really, it's the beginning," he said.
After the Fall
As Vajradhatu struggles to pick up the pieces, other Buddhist sanghas, which have undergone similar crises, are likewise dealing with ways to heal their communities. In one of the most promising side effects, American teachers of Insight [vipassana] meditation have recently created a clear set of ethical standards for teachers and a community board to oversee them.
In other Buddhist communities, however, where teachers have stonewalled accusations of misconduct, successive waves of dissenting students have departed. At San Francisco Zen Center, my own practice home, our teacher resigned under pressure. We brought in psychological consultants and learned to talk more honestly to each other, and adopted more democratic forms of decision-making. Even so, many students left. The meditation hall emptied. Friendships were broken, and some people lost the energy for spiritual practice. Our former teacher moved to Santa Fe and continued teaching; my husband and I moved to the suburbs.
My black meditation robe still hangs in the back of my closet. I never lost faith in Buddhist teachings, but for some years I didn't know how to reconnect with them. Instead, I did what a friend called "remedial work," examining my personal history and the anger and self-righteousness I expressed when the scandal broke. I was among those who hoped to find a sanctuary within Buddhism for my personal wounds. But my culture and family history trailed me into my Buddhist community like a can tied to the tail of a dog.
I study with another Buddhist teacher now, and I constantly remind myself to allow him—and me—to have imperfections. Once a month or so, I gather with others in a friend's living room to recite the lay Buddhist precepts.
Yet something of the past remains unfinished. My old teacher simply left when he could not bear his students' anger any more. I remember a senior priest saying at the time, "Students are expecting him to transform himself without safety. You can't learn a whole new way when you are under attack."
The bitterness from that unresolved schism still hurts, like a splinter working its way deeper into one's palm. A friend of mine, Yvonne Rand—an ordained Buddhist teacher who still participates closely in the community—said to me recently, "We're still struggling with the fallout of his departure. I don't think the shoe will fully drop until we find a way to be in the same room together. As long as there's a fear of having him around, there's a way people don't understand their part in the situation."
We lack rituals that would allow communities to acknowledge these crises and toheal them. I remember reading about the Full Moon Ceremony used by monks in the first few centuries after Buddha's death. On the eve of every full and new moon during the rainy season, monks would gather in the forst for a ritual called "confession before the community." There, they publicly recited the precepts, admitted their shortcomings, their violations and any damage they had done to their community.
If we reinstated such a quiet ritual, perhaps, a brave, disgraced teacher might safely acknowledge his misconduct and the wounds that brought him to it. Perhaps the sangha could confess its deep disappointment and feelings of betrayal, and its participation in what had gone wrong. Perhaps the whole sangha could publicly apologize to the men or women who had been misused sexually or in other ways, and compensate them in some way.
After full acknowledgment and restitution, forgiveness might be possible and healing begin.
Sidebar: Sex in the Forbidden Zone
In the late 1960s, a bright-eyed, patrician woman I know entered San Francisco Zen Center intending to give her heart to the practice. She was in her early twenties, shaken by a failing marriage, with a fierce, lionhearted energy that kept her back straight for long hours in the meditation hall. Several years after the death of her first Zen teacher, his successor—who was married—pressured her to abandon her plans to attend the rigorous winter training period at the Tassajara monastery and to become his personal assistant. She resisted for months, knowing that this would mean living in his house and traveling with him. After she finally agreed, he asked her to enter what he called a "practice relationship" with him that was to be kept a secret from the rest of the community.
"I'd never really felt intimate, never really felt known before," she told me recently. "Until he began to relate sexually to me, he had been the most important man I'd ever met, a wonderful teacher. He touched my deepest primal self, and I felt the promise of a spiritual intimacy that I longed for with my whole being. I very much hoped that by breaking through to that forbidden area I would somehow, magically, break through to all that was held frozen and paralyzed within me."
For six years, my friend remained enmeshed in this secret sexual relationship. It healed none of her old wounds; in fact it created new ones. She became a priest, but at the same time, she was guilt-ridden, isolated by secrecy from the rest of the community, and yet unable to pull away. Even after ending the relationship, she guarded its secret for years. She ultimately gave up her priest's robes, left the community and entered therapy to repair the damage.
"As soon as we became sexually involved, any possibility of real spiritual intimacy with him ended," she told me recently. "And so did my trust of my own inner center. It felt like incest to me—it was very physically unrewarding, and after every time, I would feel just destroyed."
My friend's experience was not unique. Presumed taboos against sexual relationships between students and spiritual teachers from Asian traditions are frequently broken. When they end badly, these relationships cause the same damage seen in women sexually abused by therapists: guilt, emptiness, suppressed rage, and an inability to trust. In the worst cases, women have tried to kill themselves, have been confined to mental hospitals, or have seen their self-confidence or their religious vocations destroyed.
Jack Kornfield, a psychologist and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, informally surveyed 54 Buddhist, Hindu, and lay teachers in the United States as well as their students. In a 1985 Yoga Journal article, "Sex Lives of the Gurus," he reported that 15 of 54 were celibate. Thirty-four of the remaining 39—including Tibetan lamas, Zen roshis, vipassana meditation teachers, and Indian swamis—had had sexual relationships with their students, ranging from one-night stands to committed relationships ending in marriage. Half of the students told Kornfield that the relationships "undermined their practice, their relationship with their teacher, and their feelings of self-worth," he wrote.
Kornfield, a former Theravadan monk, said the teachers' motivation was not always a misuse of power, but a lack of training in the psychological dynamics of transference and counter-transference and "a longing for contact and intimacy, a longing to step out of the isolating role of teacher." Not all the relationships were disastrous, Kornfield added.
Many teachers, from all traditions, including Kornfield, have married students or staff members they met during retreats.
The late Maurine Stuart Roshi, a Zen teacher based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, distinguished between sexuality and sexual abuse when she broke off contact with Eido Shimano Roshi of New York. "I wasn't judgmental about sex, or about a teacher having sex with a student, but in this situation it was an unloving act," she told author Helen Tworkov, who profiled Stuart in Zen in America. "It was the misuse of sex—and of women and the manipulations that were so devastating."
While the distinction between sexuality and sexual abuse is a valuable one, others argue that such relationships almost always turn out badly because of enormous differences in power, experience and hope between the people involved. Peter Rutter, M.D., a San Francisco Jungian analyst, believes women are drawn into such relationships by psychological wounds: a background of incest, the desire to be deeply seen, or the hope of spiritual and psychological healing.
But the promise of healing almost always goes unfulfilled, explained Rutter, author of Sex in the Forbidden Zone: When Therapists, Doctors, Clergy, Teachers and Other Men in Power Betray Women's Trust. "The number of healthy relationships that emerge are minuscule," he said in a recent interview. "The damage is almost universal, and it is absolutely identical, whether the relationships take place within imported Eastern disciplines or Western psychotherapy." Rutter says the relationships bear the hallmarks, and cause the damage, of incest relationships. "There's the same difference in power, the built-in admiration for the symbolic father, and the inability to displease him or see that he is damaging her."
"These relationships are mostly temporary, and the women are usually discarded," Rutter said. "They break the student's connection to his or her own spiritual source, and that connection can be forever lost."
Katy Butler a longtime Buddhist journalist, the author of Knocking on Heaven's Door and The Art of Dying Well, and a Tricycle contributing editor.
"Train Your Mind: Take on the Three Principle Causes"
"Brain Karma"
"Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now"
Turning Turmoil into Clarity
Karla Jackson-Brewer
By Matthew Abrahams
Trike Daily Arts & Culture
Unbelievable Reveals Our Unspoken Beliefs
By Patricia Ullman
Buddha Buzz Weekly: Ex-Shambhala Member Arrested on Sex Assault Charge
By Karen Jensen and Matthew Abrahams


This photoshoot is the gift of Garoufalia to Kostas.
The photoshoot took place in Mainalo of Arkadia, where it is also the place of origin from both of them.
While living in Athens, they choose this place because they met there and have lived important moments of their common life.


bit of a different update, due to the car being used a a kind of rolling promotion, i bought 2 7" dishes and 2 rm halfs a few months back. the one ive done will be mounted in the back of the car for shows to promoting my wheel work. so here it is from the start, it will be made into a table for home so i can take the top off and use the bottom frame to be mount in the rear.
also made a small detachable product holder, james from autofinesse offered to put it on his stand at the players show so i made that to put his wheel sealer in to advertise both our work.
so not updated since the bay paint, been a bit slack with progress. keep meaning to blast the rest of the subframe and the other parts and go get them powdercoated but havent had the time, so tonight after an early finish at work i decided to go a bit extreme, cut a bit of the subframe out, and beef it up ready to smack into the floor next year. so made some templates and then made them transfered them to 5mm steel, then welded them up. then blsted the seems of the wishbones and stich welded those up too, not sure if ile ever notice the difference but i thought i may aswel have a go at it.
hope to make movemnt on the engine, and take teh head apart ready for the next step with that. and maybe get a few bits ready togo back in the bay.
cheers man, sweeet what you got?
been on and off blasting this week, finaly got round to getting teh subframe and wishbones done, will be dropped off at the coaters tomo, and more parts on monday.
who do you use for the powder coating mate ?
PP in sawston mate, why?
Gota get me a blast cabinet!!!
cheers man, neither can i! oooo more info on that?!
been rather busy the last week, even though not overly much to show for it as yet! loads of parts ordered ready for teh subframe togo back on and the powdercoaters didnt get it done in time so still waiting for that!!!
so in the big pile; new fk coilies, ball joints, top mounts, wheel bearings, track rod ends, brake line and fittings, powerflex-rack rubbers, front and rear wishbones and all ARB mounts.
aaaaaaaaah pedal box wasnt as easy fir as i thought, lots of hammering to get the bulk head up against the p/b. wish i new it was going to smash the paint up before i paided the bay! all painted now but reacted a bit! gutted.
looks good man that zinc plating is a nice touch!
quick update before i shoot back out, will get more pics tomo! cant wait to get all this together now!
yeh worth the couple days extra wait, such a smooooooth finish!
all this for a daily? get working on that truck!
finally got the subframe together, the last few weeks of getting things sorted finaly paid off, forgot to get some snaps of it in the car as loads of mates turned up and was a last min rush to swap the rear coilies over, more pics tomo.
rack gators washed last week, then went over with a nice coat of AF revive. so factory fresh finish! came up like new!
for now heres the assembly, so please with this! next year if i can get a company set up will be doing a few of these i hope! on an exchange basis. got a subframe here already to start getting the ball rolling.
and the only one i got of it in the car before it went onto its wheels!


Primary Pre-Primary 2 Education system: 2-7-4-2-3+ 2 years of pre-primary followed by 7 years of primary.
Education is free in theory up to age 15 in Tanzania, although unfortunately poorer parents are unable to afford uniforms, school materials and examination fees, and so their children continue to be deprived. The primary period lasts for 7 years, where after all children must pass the same examination for a primary school certificate.
Four years of junior secondary schooling follow. Nominal annual tuition fees are levied, as are a wide variety of other charges too, ranging from watchman fees through to a furniture levy. The medium of education is English, although Swahili language classes are also followed. There are examinations at the end of forms 2 and 4.
Secondary education in Tanzania follows the Cambridge model of ordinary and advanced levels, both of which require 2 years of study followed by an examination. The advanced level is available only at certain boarding schools, which effectively often means the end of the road for many a poor child because of cost.
A vocational education and training act is in place that finds expression through the vocational education and training authority. The latter sets standards, and issues educational and training guides, for implementation through a network of state and private colleges. Other roles include entrepreneurship development, gender issues in the workplace, and the war against child labor.
Tertiary education takes a minimum of 3 years, at a wide variety of institutions under control of the ministry of higher education. Of these the oldest is the University of Dar es Salaam, which was established in 1970 following the dissolution of the University of East Africa into 3 national institutions.
There are 5 campuses in the city and 10 faculties. These include mechanical & chemical engineering, electrical & computer systems engineering, civil engineering & the built environment, humanities & social sciences, and education.


text:
Tourists Are Tax-Hike Targets
Tourists have become victims of new tax-hiking schemes. Several states, for example, have been looking at rental car tax increases.
An effort to allow localities to raise rental car taxes was vetoed in June by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who stated in his veto message, "While I appreciate the inclusion of voter approval as a prerequisite to implementing the new tax, these taxes will be paid disparately by tourists visiting Florida, consequently creating taxation without representation."
Taxpayers in North Carolina were not so fortunate, as the legislature passed a bill that allows Mecklenburg County to raise the rental car tax by 5 percent.
— Sandra Fabry
Wisconsin Legislators Should Avoid Minimum Wage Hikes in 2023

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro comes in a medium sized box, but it packs only the essentials. There's a microUSB cable and a charger, which uses the USB cable, and a one-piece headset.
There's an 8GB microSD card in the retail package, which is no small thing.
There's also a user guide in the box and the Sony Ericsson PC Companion application is preloaded on the memory card.
At 109 x 52 x 15 mm the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro is just barely bigger than the original Vivaz – this makes it one of the most compact phones that can shoot 720p videos, and it does well in the hardware QWERTY category too. But put those two features together and the Vivaz pro is perhaps the best you can get in terms of size and weight.
The Vivaz pro continues the Human Curvature trend in Sony Ericsson designs and its looks trace back to the Satio. The Vivaz pro comes in Black or White only – the first Vivaz had more color options, but along with the "Pro" tag comes an air of seriousness we suppose.
The front of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is almost identical to its QWERTY-less sibling. There're only minor changes around the earpiece, but those are hard to spot. The sides, and mostly the back, are what has changed the most.
By the way, you'll only spot the difference if you've used a Vivaz before. Otherwise the Vivaz pro is reminiscent of the Sony Ericsson Satio, which kicked off Sony Ericsson's return to the Symbian OS.
What sets the Vivaz duo apart from the blocky design of the Satio is the Human Curvature design – the curved back for the Vivaz pro makes it more comfortable to hold in hand.
But let's stop the comparisons for a second and look at the Vivaz pro with fresh eyes.
The front of the phone is built around the 3.2" screen. It's set quite low on the face of the Vivaz pro – there's plenty of headroom above the display, but the keys below the screen feel very cramped, almost pushed off the bottom edge.
This makes the physical keys – a central menu key and the Call and End buttons –and the virtual soft keys at the bottom of the display, a bit uncomfortable to use.
The screen is the same as on the original Vivaz – nHD resolution of 360x640 pixels spanning the 3.2-inch diagonal. The viewing angles are great, colors remain unaffected even at extreme angles.
The screen uses the resistive touch technology, which fails to match the response and sensitivity of capacitive displays, but still does reasonably well.
Unfortunately, the sunlight legibility is poor – the screen washes out when hit by direct sunlight.
Moving away from the screen, we find the earpiece alongside the ambient light sensor. The Vivaz pro lacks a proximity sensor or an auto-locking feature, so the display is always prone to incidental presses during a call. Perhaps they'll fix that in a future software update.
The hardware keys below the display are a bit too thin and poorly positioned. They are not that hard to use but they still bring usability down.
On the left side of the Vivaz pro, the 3.5mm audio jack and the microSD card have swapped places compared to the non-pro Vivaz. The connectivity port is on top with the audio jack just below it. The microUSB port is covered by a plastic flap.
Below the USB port there is a small LED that blinks red while the phone is charging. Towards the bottom of the left side we also find the mic pinhole. Make sure you don't cover it with your finger when you hold the phone to your ear.
The right side hosts an array of controls. In the top half, there's the volume rocker, which also doubles as a digital zoom control. The bottom half offers not one but two shutter keys – one for the still camera and one for the camcorder. Both can start up the camera directly overriding the phone lock.
The power key of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro is placed on the very top of the back of the phone. Quite unusual but the curved top and the slider form factor didn't leave designers much options. As on any other Symbian handset, you can also use the power key for locking the phone (a double click on the key will do), switching profiles or handling the memory card. The power key location isn't the most comfortable though..
The back of the phone features the camera lens, which is integral to the Vivaz experience. Unlike the original Vivaz, the camera resolution has been brought down to 5-megapixels but it keeps the 720p video recording.
The camera lens is accompanied by a LED flash. Compared to the unorthodox positioning on the non-pro Vivaz, where the camera was placed very near the center, things on the Vivaz pro are more traditional. The nest of the camera lens protrudes slightly from the back, which makes it scratch-prone.
A small red light between the flash and the power key blinks while the video camera is recording.
Removing the battery cover reveals the 1200 mAh Li-Po EP500 battery – the same as the original Vivaz uses. The cover is quite hard to remove – you need to pull hard at the top and the cover just doesn't feel flexible enough – we feared breaking it more than once. On the other hand, the rear panel fits tightly in place, no wobbles or creaks.
The microSD card slot is under the battery cover, though not under the battery itself. The Vivaz pro comes with an 8GB microSD card in the package and supports up to 16GB cards.
The SIM card compartment is here too. The SIM eject solution is simple – you just slide the card in and out.
Sliding out the Vivaz pro reveals a four row QWERTY keyboard. The keys sit quite low to the surface but still have a solid enough press. There's plenty of room above the top row too. The keyboard's biggest problem however is that keys are quite small and close together, so you can accidentally press several keys at once. It's by no means a bad hardware keyboard but it will take some time getting used to. Anyway, four rows of reasonably thumbable keys is the best they could offer on such a compact device.
The Vivaz pro is really pocket-sized – it's taller and wider than the QWERTY-less variant by a whisker and it's thicker by only 2.5mm. That's no small feat considering Sony Ericsson managed to fit a full-fledged QWERTY keyboard. It is 20 grams heavier than its predecessor but at 117 grams the Vivaz pro is one of the lightest phones with QWERTY and a screen over 3-inches.
The phone is quite compact and will slip into your pocket with ease. The curved back lets it sit more naturally in the hand but that's only true in portrait use. The human curvature doesn't make much sense in landscape use, plus the phone is wobbly on a level surface. It tilts the wrong way if you place it on a table – keyboard raised and the screen lowered.
The build quality is solid though the slider is not the smoothest we've seen. It is spring assisted but requires quite a push to fully open it. If you try to slide it open by putting your fingers on the front and back, you'll encounter even more resistance.
The black plastic around the display and the display itself will quickly become a fingerprint mess. The back is much better at hiding fingerprints, and the finish is quite nice.


(NaturalNews) If you're nuts about walnuts, you could be doing your health a huge favor. Several research studies have revealed that the benefits of walnuts include the ability to inhibit cancer development and even initiate the death of cancer cells.
Protect your health and stop disease naturally with a subscription to the NaturalHealth365 INNER CIRCLE. With over 200 integrative healthcare providers plus over 300 program (and counting!), you'll discover how to safely detoxify the body, boost immunity and REVERSE disease symptoms naturally.
Researchers have also found that both walnuts and walnut oil reduced cholesterol and increased insulin sensitivity, making them valuable in the fight against heart disease and diabetes. For example, one study found that overweight adults with type 2 diabetes who consumed just one-quarter cup of walnuts daily reduced their fasting insulin levels in just a few months' time compared to those on non-walnut diets.
Take control of your health, naturally, with INSTANT access to the NaturalHealth365 INNER CIRCLE. Over 200 of the best healthcare providers in the world teach you how to balance hormones, properly remove heavy metals and clear away systemic infections, which will reduce your risk of cancer.
But, a word of caution about eating walnuts: Don't overdo it. For example, just 2.6 ounces of walnuts is about 482 calories, which may - in some people - contribute to an excess of stored fat. Calories aren't everything ... but, generally speaking, optimal health is directly associated with a relatively low calorie diet.


text:
namespace ymaps.multiRouter.driving {

    interface SegmentModel extends interfaces.IGeoObject {
        geometry:geometry.base.LineString; // todo report about incompatible override
        path:multiRouter.driving.PathModel;
        properties:SegmentModelPropertiesManager;

        destroy():any;
        getType():string; // todo determine?
        getViaPoints():multiRouter.ViaPointModel[];
        update(segmentJson:any):any;
    }

    interface SegmentModelPropertiesManager extends data.Manager {
        get(path:"index",             defaultValue?:number                                  ):number;
        get(path:"type",              defaultValue?:string                                  ):string; // todo determine?
        get(path:"street",            defaultValue?:string                                  ):string;
        get(path:"action",            defaultValue?:SegmentModelPropertiesAction            ):SegmentModelPropertiesAction;
        get(path:"distance",          defaultValue?:SegmentModelPropertiesDistance          ):SegmentModelPropertiesDistance;
        get(path:"duration",          defaultValue?:SegmentModelPropertiesDuration          ):SegmentModelPropertiesDuration;
        get(path:"durationInTraffic", defaultValue?:SegmentModelPropertiesDurationInTraffic ):SegmentModelPropertiesDurationInTraffic;
        get(path:"text",              defaultValue?:string                                  ):string;
        get(path:"viaPoints",         defaultValue?:number[]                                ):number[];
        get(path:"lodIndex",          defaultValue?:number                                  ):number;
    }

    interface SegmentModelPropertiesAction {
        text :string;
        value:any; // todo determine?
    }
    interface SegmentModelPropertiesDistance {
        text :string;
        value:any; // todo determine?
    }
    interface SegmentModelPropertiesDuration {
        text :string;
        value:any; // todo determine?
    }
    interface SegmentModelPropertiesDurationInTraffic {
        text :string;
        value:any; // todo determine?
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


If there's one thing in life worth fighting for, it's apparently cheesecake.
To celebrate its 40th anniversary, The Cheesecake Factory announced it would be giving out 40,000 free slices across its locations Wednesday. But the promise of silky sweetness turned sour as the promotion started in Arlington, Virginia, ARL Now reports.
The promotion, which promised a free slice of cheesecake to anyone ordering delivery through DoorDash, started at 11:30 a.m. at locations nationwide. Not long after, police were dispatched to Arlington's Cheesecake Factory amid reports of "a large crowd and heavy traffic," per ARL Now. Police barely left the scene when they got another call. This time, there was apparently a fight going on, but police didn't find one when they arrived.
Despite this restaurant being a place for families who drive Camrys, police and medics did find a "hectic" scene of delivery drivers and double parking, a department spokeswoman told ARL Now. Police tried to "calm the situation down," the spokeswoman said, but one person wouldn't listen, started fighting with police, and was arrested. He was sent to a hospital to be checked for injuries and will likely be charged with disorderly conduct.


text:
Enchanted Flamingo!
Posted by sharoncummings in animals, Art, Beach, birds, Florida
art, beach, beach art, beach decor, beach home, beach house, beach house decorating, beach themed art, beachy, beachy art, Colorful Art, flamingo, flamingo art, flamingos, pink flamingo, sharon cummings, sharon cummings art, tropical, tropical art, tropical bird, tropical birds, tropical decor, tropical decorating
Another enchanted piece! A hot pink flamingo bird perfect to make you smile anytime. 🙂 Tropical, beachy and fun!
I've got GIFTS! Scroll down to "Additional Products" and ENJOY! Shop HERE!
A Long Story!
Love Moves Us…
Give Art Not Candy…
It's Never Too Soon…
Your Love Deserves A Lasting Gift!
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Group Bookings & Tours are very welcome, and we ask that you give us a call or email to book in advance so we can give you our full attention for your visit.
We are now taking 2019 group bookings for our ever popular Garden tour of Stonyford Cottage Gardens.
The garden tour can be before or after lunch dependent on arrival time. Guests can then relax in our delightful tea room or marquee (for larger groups) while enjoying their lunch & cake and afterwards wander around the gardens & plant nursery at their own leisure.
Please provide details of your group including intended date, time of arrival, group size and package options. Any questions and requests for more information are welcome.


text:
Danny Trejo Gives LA the Nacho Donut: 'It's Some Good Shit'
'Machete' cuts up the sweets game in Hollywood
By Andy Wang • 06/16/17 10:05am
Danny Trejo's nacho donuts are topped with cheddar cheese. Trejo's Coffee and Donuts
Let's start by talking about the nacho donut at Trejo's Coffee & Donuts in Hollywood.
It's a crazy-sounding mashup that totally works, a spicy and savory concoction with a nice balance of cheese, Trejo's own hot sauce, jalapenos, sour cream and chives. But there's a little sugar, too, and you really get the sensation of eating a donut.
"I love everything about it," Danny Trejo says. "It's good and spicy. We put a little Mexican flavor in there. If I give you the secret sauce, I'd have to kill you."
Trejo is a special kind of Bad Ass, of course, so I'm not going to press him on the recipe.
Trejo, the cool-cat actor also known as Machete, is having a great time slashing his way through L.A.'s competitive dining scene.
"Oh man, I'm blessed," says Trejo, who opened Trejo's Coffee & Donuts in May after launching his Trejo's Tacos/Trejo's Cantina chain and a taco truck with partners Ash Shah and Jeff Georgino last year. "A lot of celebrities try to open up restaurants. Everybody goes to see the celebrity. But if your food isn't good, it's not going to last."
So Trejo isn't just a hype man. He pops by his new donut shop on the regular to make sure things are up to his standards.
"I take a bite of everything I can," he says. "And, man, it's some good shit."
Danny Trejo's first donut shop has been a big hit in Hollywood. Trejo's Coffee and Donuts
Trejo's a big fan of the O.G. donut, a classic glazed donut. ("It's the 'original gangster' or the 'old guy' donut," Trejo says and laughs.) He loves having horchata, Mexican chocolate, tres leches and margarita donuts that celebrate his heritage. But it's the pineapple fritter that's really been rocking his world.
"It's to die for," he says. "If you eat three, you'll be down on Fifth Street begging for more money to buy another. You taste it, and it just blows up in your mouth."
Trejo's overall goal with his restaurant empire is creating an alternative to bad fast food. So Trejo's Coffee & Donuts, located in the former Donut Time space that was featured in the film "Tangerine," has tapped pastry chef Dianne Crame (Boa Steakhouse, The Bazaar by José Andrés and Patina) to create its sweet and savory treats. The donuts aren't excessively sugary, so I felt fine about my growing son pounding five donut holes in one sitting.
"You can still have the joy of eating a donut, but it's not overwhelmingly bad for you with all that sugar," Trejo says.
Plus, Crame's repertoire includes vegan cake donuts with flavors like dark chocolate and peanut butter. There's also the vegan Low Rider with bananas, almond milk and cinnamon.
"Trejo's Tacos has a lot of vegan options, so I wanted to make some vegan donuts," say Crame, a vegetarian who also enjoys eating her own maple bacon donuts without the bacon.
But this is still a donut shop that embraces the classics, so Trejo's is catering to a lot more than a scenester food crowd.
"The police love our donuts," Trejo says. "That's the best test of when you've got a good donut."
The shop, which also sells Trejo's own blend of roasted-in-L.A. coffee, opens at 7 a.m. and has sold out of donuts on several days. Trejo has come a long way from when he used to make coffee by sifting it through a paper towel, and he also points out that he's not drinking "jailhouse coffee" anymore either. His days of being a drug addict who went to prison are long behind him, and the 73-year-old L.A. native has a thriving new business with huge ambitions.
Trejo's has sold out of donuts on many mornings. Trejo's Coffee and Donuts
"We have a line around the block," Trejo says. "We're investing in a bigger kitchen, so we can make more donuts. That way, we can get the late-night trade."
I have a feeling that nacho donuts will be popular with the midnight crowd.
Filed Under: Lifestyle, Food & Drink, Hollywood, food & drink, Donuts, Danny Trejo, Jeff Georgino, Ash Shah, Dianne Crame
SEE ALSO: Happy National Donut Day to Famed Donut Hater Ariana Grande


The list is broken down by local authority area (with the M6 , A500 and A50 separate because they fall under the remit of Highways England).
All information from Highways England and Roadworks.org.
Southbound Junction 16 - Junction 15: Closed overnight July 23/24 and July 24/25. Disruption expected between 9pm and 6am.
Southbound Junction 15 - Junction 14: Closed overnight July 26/27 and July 27/28. Disruption expected between 9pm and 6am.
Northbound Junction 14 - Junction 15: Closed overnight July 28/29 and July 29/30. Disruption expected between 9pm and 6am.
Southbound between the A527 North and the junction with the A52: Expect disruption everyday between 20:00 and 06:00 from 23 July 2018 to 10 August 2018. Closed.
Eastbound: Between the A520 and the junction with the A521 Blythe Bridge East: Closed overnight on July 23/24 and July 24/25. Disruption expected between 8pm and 5am.
Longton: Roadworks and road closures on Commerce Street until August 17.
Norton: Temporary traffic lights/two way signals on Norton Lane until August 31.
Newcastle: Road closure on High Street until August 31.


text:
Health Authority-Abu Dhabi and Children's National Lead the World in Detecting Critical Infant Heart Defects
The Health Authority – Abu Dhabi together with Children's National Medical Center announced the rollout of a newborn screening program in Abu Dhabi for critical cyanotic congenital heart disease (CCCHD), the most serious form of congenital heart disease (CHD).
In January, a team from the Children's National visited all regions of Abu Dhabi to meet with representatives from their twenty-three maternity hospitals and to present the scientific background and methodology of the pulse oximetry screening test. Congenital heart disease is the world's most common birth defect. By using pulse oximetry, HAAD estimates that 10 Abu Dhabi children each year will be diagnosed with CCCHD and will receive treatment early enough to more effectively manage the condition.
"This particular test is highly recommended in order to detect critical congenital heart diseases before the newborn is discharged from the maternity hospital. It will be fully integrated into the neonatal screening program, which began implementation in 2010," said Dr. Shereena Al Mazrouie, Senior Officer of Family and School Health at HAAD.
"Diagnosing and treating CCCHD in its early stages is key. That's why it is so important to have pulse oximetry screening available to all newborns," said Dr. Gerard Martin, co-director of Children's National Heart Institute, who conducted the trainings in Abu Dhabi.
Research shows that children who are diagnosed with CCCHD later in life tend to require more hospital care, greater resources, and have worse health outcomes long term. Made possible by a long-standing relationship between HAAD and Children's Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, this pulse oximetry program is the first in a series of initiatives where HAAD and Children's National will collaborate to identify improvements in pediatric care to benefit children worldwide.
Read the full media release.
Coverage of the announcement in Abu Dhabi and United Arab Emirates media includes:
Zawya
AMEInfo
Dubai Informer
UAE News.net
(Photo above: Dr. Martin shares data and information about pulse oximetry for newborn screening with clinicians at Madinat Zayed Hospital.)
Labels: announcement, HAAD, innovation
'Science' celebrates the art of visualization
Health Authority-Abu Dhabi and Children's National...
Children's Diabetes Doctor Shares Her Impressions ...


text:
Home/England
Segun Adewole 3 weeks ago
England coach, Phil Neville slams Cameroon team for crying in match
England coach, Phil Neville has reacted to the game between his side and Cameroon at the FIFA women's world cup.…
Netherlands beat England 3-1 to qualify FOR UEFA Nations League final
Netherlands have qualified for the final of the UEFA Nations League after defeating England 3-1 in the Semi-final last night.…
Segun Adewole April 19, 2019
Footballers to boycott social media today in protest against racism
Footballers in England and Wales are to boycott social media today in protest of the racial abuse suffered on social…
Segun Adewole February 14, 2019
Mauro Icardi stripped off Inter Milan captaincy
Argentina international, Mauro Icardi has been stripped off the captaincy band at Inter Milan and has also been left out…
Segun Adewole November 21, 2018
Ademola Lookman snubs Nigeria, pledges to play for England
Ademola Lookman, the Everton youngster born in England to Nigerian parents, has chosen to play for England as he snubs…
Modric reacts to England's 2-1 win over Croatia
Captain of the Croatian national team, Luka Modric has reacted to the team's 2-1 loss to England in the UEFA…
Segun Adewole November 8, 2018
Gary Southgate releases England squad for friendly against USA
England manager, Gareth Southgate has released the list of players which will feature in an international friendly against USA, and…
Segun Adewole October 31, 2018
Nigerian born Chioma Ubogagu named in England squad
Chioma Ubogagu has been named to play for England in games against Australia and Sweden. Despite being uncapped for her…
Guardiola speaks on coaching another club in England
Pep Guardiola has hinted at spending the rest of his coaching career with Manchester City as he reveals that he…
Raheem Sterlin scores twice as England beat Spain 3-2
Raheem Sterlin has said that England's clinical method is the reason why they succeeded in defeating Spain in last Night's…
Harry Kane is a fantastic player to everyone, but not me – Sergio Ramos
Spain captain, Sergio Ramos has said that England player Harry Kane is a fantastic player who surprises everyone but not…
Diego Simeone ruled out of a move to England, next club revealed
Atletico Madrid boss, Diego Simeone has been ruled out of a move to England. This is according to his sister…
Segun Adewole July 12, 2018
How England players and fans reacted before and after their loss to Croatia
Below are pictures showing how England fans reacted before and after their game against Croatia at the Russia 2018 world…
Croatia sacks coach Vukojevic ahead of semi final against England
Ognjen Vukojevic has been sacked from his position as Croatia coach ahead of the team's semi final game against England…
Segun Adewole July 9, 2018
World cup: What happened in 1966 is happening in 2018
History seems to be repeating itself as England is just a leg away from the final of the Russia 2018…


text:
template<typename ComponentType, typename... Bases> struct SubArray;
namespace java
{
    namespace io
    {
typedef ::SubArray< ::java::io::Serializable, ::java::lang::ObjectArray > SerializableArray;
    } // io

    namespace lang
    {
typedef ::SubArray< ::java::lang::CharSequence, ObjectArray > CharSequenceArray;
typedef ::SubArray< ::java::lang::Comparable, ObjectArray > ComparableArray;
typedef ::SubArray< ::java::lang::String, ObjectArray, ::java::io::SerializableArray, ComparableArray, CharSequenceArray > StringArray;
    } // lang
} // java

template<typename T>
static T* npc(T* t)
{
    if(!t) throw new ::java::lang::NullPointerException();
    return t;
}

poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::NotEqualPtg(const ::default_init_tag&)
    : super(*static_cast< ::default_init_tag* >(0))
{
    clinit();
}

poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::NotEqualPtg()
    : NotEqualPtg(*static_cast< ::default_init_tag* >(0))
{
    ctor();
}

constexpr int8_t poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::sid;

poi::ss::formula::ptg::ValueOperatorPtg*& poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::instance()
{
    clinit();
    return instance_;
}
poi::ss::formula::ptg::ValueOperatorPtg* poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::instance_;

void poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::ctor()
{
    super::ctor();
}

int8_t poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::getSid()
{
    return sid;
}

int32_t poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::getNumberOfOperands()
{
    return 2;
}

java::lang::String* poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::toFormulaString(::java::lang::StringArray* operands)
{
    auto buffer = new ::java::lang::StringBuffer();
    npc(buffer)->append((*operands)[int32_t(0)]);
    npc(buffer)->append(u"<>"_j);
    npc(buffer)->append((*operands)[int32_t(1)]);
    return npc(buffer)->toString();
}

extern java::lang::Class *class_(const char16_t *c, int n);

java::lang::Class* poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::class_()
{
    static ::java::lang::Class* c = ::class_(u"org.apache.poi.ss.formula.ptg.NotEqualPtg", 41);
    return c;
}

void poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::clinit()
{
    super::clinit();
    static bool in_cl_init = false;
struct clinit_ {
    clinit_() {
        in_cl_init = true;
        instance_ = new NotEqualPtg();
    }
};

    if(!in_cl_init) {
        static clinit_ clinit_instance;
    }
}

java::lang::String* poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::toFormulaString()
{
    return super::toFormulaString();
}

java::lang::Class* poi::ss::formula::ptg::NotEqualPtg::getClass0()
{
    return class_();
}


Friend just told me about one he knows is for sale - red - 500 miles on it & he thinks I can get it for around $4,000...anybody know anything about them?
Didn't Marlon Brandon ride an old Triumph Thunderbird in the movie "The Wild One"?
Tony, 4K is about right, maybe a bit high for that bike. It is though, very desireable among the TBS models. Fully adjustable suspension front and rear. 885cc water cooled triple with carburetors making about 98hp. Rock solid engine that has a hair raising howl at high revs.
Oddly enough, I was at the dealer in Tyler, Texas, this morning, and they have a new '03 still sitting on the floor.
Check www.triumphrat.net (http://www.triumphrat.net), a web site with grown up people like this one. Look under Classics and Cruisers, and then Hinckley Classic Triples to see what folk have to say. They also have a photo album broken down by model.
"Motorcycling used to be my second favorite thing, but now I've become an old man, it's moved up a notch."
There is a nice one in the Portland OR Craig's List on 7-25 for $3200. I'm interested. They are not FI yet though.
They're stuck at $4,500...& I can't test ride it until I get my M certification....after all these years, gotta take a written test! Who cares how big a bike a 15 year old can ride?


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180 Filosofia

February 22, 2018 — 00:00

Digueu-me què li dóna

a algú la seua màxima sensació d'importància

i jo li diré quina és tota la seua filosofia.

Dale Carnegie

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