Lauren Bausch

I am a student of ancient Indian literature.
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Requisites of a Bodhisattva

The Mind  |  The Scene   |   Lauren Bausch  |   March 31, 2013, 2:14 pm

Although these figures may use different words to express their ideals and look after separate communities, they all share one thing in common. They do not live for themselves. In the eight months that I have spent in India so far this year, I have encountered a number of modern day gurus. I stumbled across [...]

Higgs Boson

The Mind  |  The Scene   |   Lauren Bausch  |   November 28, 2012, 9:49 pm

On July 13th, UC Berkeley physicists, including Professors Beate Heinemann and Marjorie Shapiro - collaborators in the ATLAS experiment, explained the discovery of what could be the Higgs Boson. Their explanation of the decades long search for the Higgs Boson serves as an interesting comparison to Buddhist practice - not as a comparison of ultimate claims about the nature of reality, but a comparison of deep and prolonged investigations in subtle, invisible fields. This deep and prolonged investigation is at the heart of Buddhism as a personal practice, in contrast to Buddhism as a set of philosophical or religious assertions. [...]

Anticipating Bliss

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Lauren Bausch  |   August 2, 2012, 6:00 pm

“Happiness in a new size,” reads a billboard on Telegraph Avenue at 40th Street in Oakland. The “New 89¢ 12.5 oz.” bottle of Coca-Cola. In a time when “nirvana” is sold in a bottle, where do I turn in pursuit of happiness? Why am I looking at all? Since the 19th century, American advertising strategies [...]

Tuning In

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Lauren Bausch  |   July 10, 2012, 4:30 pm

As I tuned in, I noticed that I was hearing not only Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C. Major, but a cacophony of noise provided by my own mind.   Just as the soloist was accompanied by dozens of other performers, my perception of the concert was accompanied by past mental structures.  Thoughts, sensations, and images sounded, not always in harmony, with the orchestra. [...]

Unconscious Connections

The Mind   |   Lauren Bausch  |   May 31, 2012, 5:10 pm

Recently, UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff and I had a riveting discussion during his office hours. When he described his second book co-authored with Mark Johnson, what immediately came to mind was karma.[1] Philosophy in the Flesh asserts that sensory perception is experienced through the mediation of neural connections that conceptualize and reason metaphorically. [...]

The Tightrope Walker

The Mind   |   Lauren Bausch  |   February 9, 2012, 5:06 pm

To what extent am I an astronomer? In The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, George Kubler* suggests that time is conveyed in signals... whose message is based on the past, like old light seen by astronomers.  The signal energies, similar to karma, transmit impulses from the past....  Like the ancient light of the stars, karma has been accumulating from time immemorial. [...]

Tuning Up

The Mind   |   Lauren Bausch  |   December 8, 2011, 4:30 pm

… the flat tire represents mental structures that arise according to conditions from past karma, which influence how we perceive. Imagine your car has a flat tire and the ride is very bumpy. Rather than stop and fix the flat, you keep driving. What could be a smooth ride with functional tires becomes very uncomfortable, [...]
For me, authentic creativity comes from nothingness, from the space we open to possibility. Other forms of creation are reactionary, responses to immediate stimuli propelled by past habituations. They are imitations of an object or how we imagine others might respond to this object and its so-called creator. Jason brings up an important point, namely [...]