Topic: The Magickal Web

An authorised biography of the Dalai Lama, Man, Monk, Mystic, by Chicago-based Indian origin journalist Mayank Chhaya is being published simultaneously in nine countries.

Counsellors from the service explain that Christmas will have been a positive experience for most people, but some will be left feeling weighed down with worry.

The artists used an unusual medium that encouraged an unusual approach. Tibetan Buddhist monks Tenzin Thutop and Lobsang Gyaltsen, representing the Dalai Lama’s Namgyal Monastery in India (via its satellite branch in Ithaca, New York), were on campus to demon-strate the Tibetan Buddhist ritual art of sand mandalas. For four days they labored painstakingly to create, one grain at a time, an exquisite sand painting that measured four feet in diameter and represented the dwell-ing place of a Buddha.

As the moon drew further from his vision, Dr. Edgar Mitchell began to focus on the beauty of space.

“We were so focused on the task at hand that we didn’t have time to look around and get emotional. But on the way back, I could look out the window and be a tourist. I observed the heavens for three days all the way home,” Mitchell said. “There were ten times as many stars and they were ten times brighter than anything you see on Earth. They were more like what you see on a powerful telescope. It was very emotional, very wow. I felt connected to everything.”

Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking - the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick - are far more common than people acknowledge.

In September, 16-year-old Evan Briese awoke his family in the middle of the night to describe how he had witnessed strange beings steal a 450-pound sow from a corral on the family’s farm near Tappen.

The general public and the media tend to associate prosecutions under the act with actual witchcraft, but historian Owen Davies has pointed out that, in fact, the Witchcraft Act strove to eradicate the belief in witchcraft once and for all among educated people, the judiciary and the Anglican church. Its passage meant that it was no longer possible to be prosecuted as a witch in an English or Scottish court. It was, however, possible to be prosecuted for pretending to "exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration, or undertake to tell fortunes". Supposed contact with spirits fell into this category. Some 200 years later, when it was finally repealed, it was pronounced to have been "a most enlightened measure, well in advance of public opinion" by the then home secretary, James Ede.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is thought to severely affect about 2% of the population of Northern Europe, with about 10% suffering less severe symptoms.

Khenpo is taking classes in English as a Second Language at Montgomery College, near the Tibetan Meditation Center in Frederick, MD, where he’s been a resident since 2001. I sit with some regularity at twice-monthly meetings of a Norfolk Buddhist sangha—roughly translated, that’s Sanskrit for "spiritual community"—where I struggle with concepts of non-materiality advanced in dharma talks—lectures by accomplished Buddhist teachers—we watch on DVD.

Some people go to Las Vegas for the casinos and the showgirls. I went for a little bald man with a white beard that would have done Charles Darwin proud.