That’s ma with a dot underneath- bad ghosts. After witnessing the len dong ceremony (details on my main blog) and talking to Kirsten Endres and her friend Andrea it seems to me that there are different purposes for the rituals in len dong to the mother goddess. Rather than spirit mediumship per se it is [...]

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Yesterday went to a len dong ceremony that went for four hours! it is devoted to the mother goddess and the person performing (it’s really a series of rituals rather than spirit mediumship) embodies 21 different spirits from mandarins to women. It’s very elaborate and complex accompanied by music and singing, and repetitive- first a [...]

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Well it’s at the halfway point of my residency and I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve achieved so far. I have collected about ten short stories to put in a collection and have started the sequel to Vixen. I have met with authors and translators and anthropologists- have been to two conferences- an author [...]

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Went to Dinh Quan pagoda again- and this time the dharma talk was disappointing what little of it I caught railed against sex before marriage, AIDS and young people. I guess there is still a conservative streak in some Buddhist monks- just like there are conservatives in the church.Had a chat with Nicholas and Hannah [...]

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I went to a shamanic hour at an antique shop courtesy of Friends of Vietnam Heritage. We got to sit and talk for an hour or more with the shaman from the San Diu people. Funnily enough his translator told us that he was not sure if ghosts existed or not. The rituals sounded very [...]

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Last night did a very profound practice “Touching the Earth”. Thay suggests that you do this practice until your anger and resentment etc has been released. It consists of listening to words about your ancestors and how they are in your body and recognising them in you even if they have not been able to [...]

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I have started reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Calming the fearful mind- A zen response to terrorism and it’s really inspiring. I want to do more work that is compassionate and from the heart- and I want to reconcile my day job as a psychologist with Buddhism. There is only one course running in WA [...]

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I’ve been shopping lately at two bazaars, a craftlink bazaar which donates money back to ethnic minorities and a charity bazaar run by the international women’s club. I can’t tell you what I’ve bought because they are presents for people- but needless to say they are very beautiful and relatively inexpensive. I saw some Vietnamese [...]

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Last night’s practice included a talk by Trish Thomson whom is a member of the order of interbeing since the mid eighties about habit energies. She talked about how we all have the seeds of different emotions in us, and that we sometimes respond from habit energies formed when we were younger from our family [...]

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I went to a conference on religions and culture today and was disturbed to find out about the added gathas that a woman has to learn before being ordained as a nun as opposed to a monk (a woman has to learn about 100 more sayings!) The researcher whom was an Australian woman interviewed nuns [...]

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