Madison square 2000

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

- Rilke Maria Rainer

O my mind,

Your unhappy experiences

From human beings

Can never be an adequate excuse

For you to remain shockingly imperfect

Sri chinmoy

Four years after

"Our approach is simple: Government must keep its responsibility to the people, so that Americans have the opportunity to take responsibility for their future," Obama said in his address, released during his vacation on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.
"I have also made it clear that we will not tolerate red tape that stands in the way of progress or the waste that can drive up the bill," said Obama. "Government must be a partner — not an opponent — in getting things done."

The question of evil and where it lurks has been largely ignored by the scientific community, which is why a recently released study titled “The Spatial Distribution of the Seven Deadly Sins Within Nevada” is groundbreaking: Never before has a state’s fall from grace been so precisely graphed and plotted.

Geographers from Kansas State University have used certain statistical measurements to quantify Nevada’s sins and come up with a county-by-county map purporting to show various degrees of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride in the Silver State. By culling statistics from nationwide databanks of things like sexually transmitted disease infection rates (lust) or killings per capita (wrath), the researchers came up with a sin index. This is a precision party trick — rigorous mapping of ridiculous data.

Their findings were presented Tuesday at the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting at the Riviera, where Kansas State geography research associate Thomas Vought fielded questions while standing next to a poster of his research. Seven maps of Nevada, in seven different colors, for seven different sins.

The darker a county, the more evil it is.

" The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people. It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. Light and liberty go together. I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man. Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity. "

- Thomas Jefferson

What is bestowed on us at birth
is called human nature.
The fulfillment of human nature
is called the Tao.
The cultivation of the Tao
is the deepest form of learning.

The Tao is the way things are,
which you can't depart from
even for one instant.
If you depart from it,
it wouldn't be the Tao.
Therefore the Master
looks into her own heart
and respects what is unseen and unheard.

Nothing is more manifest than the hidden;
nothing is more obvious than the unseen.
Therefore the Master
pays attention to what is happening
within her innermost self.

Stephen Mitchell (The second book of the Tao) Chapter 1.

Sweetness
Is the most powerful strength
Of the heart.

Sweetness tells me
I can love the world.
Dignity tells me
I can rule the world.
With sweetness we conquer the world.
With dignity we frighten the world.
Dignity surrenders to humility's sweetness
And finds there its satisfaction-abode.

Sweetness purifies our heart.
Brilliance strengthens our mind.
When sweetness enters into brilliance,
The victory of brilliance is soulful.
When brilliance enters into sweetness,
The victory of sweetness is powerful.

Love
Is sweetness embodied.
Devotion
Is sweetness revealed.
Surrender
Is sweetness manifested.

My sweetness is my magnet-love
To bring down God's Compassion-flood.
My sweetness is my heart-cry
To carry me to God's absolute height.

Sweetness and bitterness
Fight against each other within me
To be my teachers.
Sweetness is anxious to teach me
How to become a morning rose.
Bitterness is anxious to teach me
How to heave an evening sigh.

Sri Chinmoy

So there can only be peace when mankind, when you and I, have no conflict in ourselves. And you might say, "If one achieves, or comes to an end of all conflict within oneself, how will it affect the rest of mankind?" This is a very, very old question. This has been put thousands of years before Christ, if he ever existed. And we have to ask whether in ourselves sorrow, pain and anxiety, and all that, can ever end? If one applies, looks, observes, with great attention, as you look with considerable attention when you are combing your hair, or shaving, with that quality of attention, heightened, you can observe yourself - all the nuances, subtleties. And the mirror is your relationship between human beings, in that mirror you can see yourself exactly as you are. But most of us are frightened to see what we are, and so we gradually develop resistance, guilt, and all the rest of that business. So we never ask for total freedom - not to do what you like, but to be free from choice. Where there are multiple choices there are multiple confusions.

So can we live on this earth, 'pacem in terris', with great understanding of mankind, which is to understand yourself so profoundly, not according to some psychologist, analyst. They too have to be analyzed. So we can, without turning to the professionals, as simple laymen we can observe our own
idiosyncrasies, tendencies. Our brain - the speaker is not a specialist about brain matter - our brain has been conditioned to war, to hate, to conflict. It is conditioned through this long period of evolution, whether that brain with its cells, which contain all the memories, whether that brain can free itself from its own conditioning. You know it is very simple to answer such a question. If you have been going north all the days of your life, as humanity has been going in a particular direction, which is conflict, and somebody comes along and says, "That leads nowhere". He is serious, and perhaps you are serious. Then he says, "Go south, go east, any other direction but that". And when you actually move away from that direction there is a mutation in the very brain cells themselves because you have broken the pattern. And that pattern must be broken now, not forty or a hundred years later.15 And can human beings have the vitality, the energy, to transform themselves to civilized human beings, not killing each other?

J. Krishnamurti's talk to The United Nations when he was presented with the
1984 United Nations Peace medal

I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun in my eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.

Jack Kerouac

Once and for all there's no genetic virtue.
Our cherubic baldy flounces around, fresh out of
Boulder,
in black robes, Japanese words quick on his tongue.
World war II nearly destroyed mt family,so I ask
him to learn Chinese. He understands I'm a fool.
Then over a gallon of wine we agree there's no
language
for such matters, no happiness out side consciousness.
Drink.

Jim Harrison

Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
My optimism, then, does not rest on
the absence of evil, but on a glad
belief in the preponderance of
good and a willing effort always
to cooperate with the good, that
it may prevail. I try to increase the power
God has given me to see the best in everything
and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.

Helen Keller

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Thailand's Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple,
made of one million beer bottles.

I have been looking for you, World Honored One,
since I was a little child.
With my first breath, I heard your call,
and began to look for you, Blessed One.
I've walked so many perilous paths,
confronted so many dangers,
endured despair, fear, hopes, and memories.
I've trekked to the farthest regions, immense and wild,
sailed the vast oceans,
traversed the highest summits, lost among the clouds.
I've lain dead, utterly alone,
on the sands of ancient deserts.
I've held in my heart so many tears of stone.

Blessed One, I've dreamed of drinking dewdrops
that sparkle with the light of far-off galaxies.
I've left footprints on celestial mountains
and screamed from the depths of Avici Hell, exhausted, crazed with despair
because I was so hungry, so thirsty.
For millions of lifetimes,
I've longed to see you,
but didn't know where to look.
Yet, I've always felt your presence with a mysterious certainty.

I know that for thousands of lifetimes,
you and I have been one,
and the distance between us is only a flash of though.
Just yesterday while walking alone,
I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves,
and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate,
suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.
And all the stars confirmed that you were there!
All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall,
while lightning flashed through my window
and a great storm arose,
as if Earth and Sky were in battle.
Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted.
The moon returned,
shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky.
Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly
I saw myself,
and I saw you smiling, Blessed One.
How strange!

The moon of freedom has returned to me,
everything I thought I had lost.
From that moment on,
and in each moment that followed,
I saw that nothing had gone.
There is nothing that should be restored.
Every flower, every stone, and every leaf recognize me.
Wherever I turn, I see you smiling
the smile of no-birth and no-death.
The smile I received while looking at the mirror of the moon.
I see you sitting there, solid as Mount Meru,
calm as my own breath,
sitting as though no raging fire storm ever occurred,
sitting in complete peace and freedom.
At last I have found you, Blessed One,
and I have found myself.
There I sit.

The deep blue sky,
the snow-capped mountains painted against the horizon,
and the shining red sun sing with joy.
You, Blessed One, are my first love.
The love that is always present, always pure, and freshly new.
And I shall never need a love that will be called “last.”
You are the source of well-being flowing through numberless troubled lives,
the water from you spiritual stream always pure, as it was in the beginning.
You are the source of peace,
solidity, and inner freedom.
You are the Buddha, the Tathagata.
With my one-pointed mind
I vow to nourish your solidity and freedom in myself
so I can offer solidity and freedom to countless others,
now and forever.

Thich Nhat Hahn

A Heron flew from the east, over my backyard,
as I was rising to go inside; after reading
this Gatha.

41. For a Monk

People come a long way to reach Parrot Lake
anxious to ask about practice
this old monk tells them the truth
the gatha that frees you has no words

The Zen Works of Stonehouse
translated by Red Pine

I have been waiting for this book since May.
It finally came yesterday!

I don't stop moving all day
long before sunset I'm done
back home I wash off my feet and sleep
too tired to notice the mountain moon's passage
birds wake me up from a distant grove
the red sun's disc shines through the pines
today and tomorrow don't differ
the years are all the same.

Stonehouse

The Supreme Court has taken the rare step of ordering a new hearing for Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. The nation’s highest court ordered a federal district court in Georgia to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes his innocence.” Davis was convicted for the 1989 killing of a white police officer. Since then, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, and there is no physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. In a Democracy Now! special, we hear from Davis, speaking from death row; Davis’s fifteen-year-old nephew Antone, and his sister Martina Correia, who have led the campaign to exonerate him; Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA; and Ezekiel Edwards, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project.

It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy.

—Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double",

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

After losing her foot to a landmine a decade
ago while working in a Thai logging camp,
the 48-year-old elephant has been fitted
with a special prosthesis. Reports this
week say she took a stroll, tossed
some
dust
with her trunk, and is doing great.

Oh, if a tree could wander

and move with foot and wings!

It would not suffer the axe blows

and not the pain of saws!

For would the sun not wander

away in every night ?

How could at ev'ry morning

the world be lighted up?

And if the ocean's water

would not rise to the sky,

How would the plants be quickened

by streams and gentle rain?

The drop that left its homeland,

the sea, and then returned ?

It found an oyster waiting

and grew into a pearl.

Did Yusaf not leave his father,

in grief and tears and despair?

Did he not, by such a journey,

gain kingdom and fortune wide?

Did not the Prophet travel

to far Medina, friend?

And there he found a new kingdom

and ruled a hundred lands.

You lack a foot to travel?

Then journey into yourself!

And like a mine of rubies

receive the sunbeams? print!

Out of yourself ? such a journey

will lead you to your self,

It leads to transformation

of dust into pure gold!

Look! This is Love - Poems of Rumi,

Annemarie Schimmel

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land-
that sacred earth that is
your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.

When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future?

The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear- to our innocent follies.

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.

If you put your heart against the earth with me, in serving
every creature, our Beloved will enter you from our sacred realm
and we will be, we will be
so happy.

From “Love Poems From God” by Daniel Ladinsky.

I
came
home
from work
to five young
raccoons that were
eating cat food from
the cat food hopper.

there
are four
cats and two
strays that I feed
so I've got a large dog
sized feeder.


By
the
time
I came
back down
stairs, with my
camera, there were
only two. The one picture
of the raccoon in the window was
from the outside of the garage and he
did n't notice that I was there. I wish the pictures
turned out better. This happened about 5 a.m. this morning.

There in Rangoon I realized that the gods
were enemies, just like God,
of the poor human being.
Gods
in alabaster extended
like white whales,
gods gilded like spikes,
serpent gods entwining
the crime of being born,
naked and elegant buddhas
smiling at the cocktail party
of empty eternity
like Christ on his horrible cross,
all of them capable of anything,
of imposing on us their heaven,
all with torture or pistol
to purchase piety or burn our blood,
fierce gods made by men
to conceal their cowardice,
and there it was all like that,
the whole earth reeking of heaven,
and heavenly merchandise.

Pablo Neruda

Grass Car

"When dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases" -- Robert Anton Wilson

The notion that the universe is conspiring to help you succeed. That'll definitely help you get energized to get things done. On the other hand, remember this bit of Arabic spiritual wisdon; "Trust in God but tie your camel". Take a look around. People are impatient. They don't have time for delusions of grandeur. They want the real thing. The real thing is:

1) hacking the money system. The single evil hallucination that holds the future in check right now is the belief that the goverment issued and World Bank/IMF approved notes representing value actually represent value. Money is a virtual reality. It always was. We went from barter to symbol. But now, money is TRULY virtual, it's bits and bytes floating around the world, online, at the speed of light representing nothing, not even a shared hallucinated social consensus, because the average person has no access to its real meaning, what it means to be a quant on wall street, what it means to use mathematical complexity theory to buy and trade abstract units of ownership in companies that might be making microchips potato chips or nuclear bombs in a split second, in a micro second. If you want to change the world, change the money system.

But remember, when we say "Change the world" it sounds like "change your diapers" or change your mind." World - the word world - is deceptive, it sounds like a unit. In fact it's a complex system of several billion needy souls, an eco-system, various gene pools ad infinitum. It's large, diverse, and multiplex... not ONE at all. So honor diversity. And bring it into the world of resource exchange.

Other than that, watch for nanotechnology... and keep on dancing...

~rusirius

This place of wild land
has no boundaries
north south east or west
It is hard to see
even the tree
in the middle of it
Turning your head
you can look beyond
each direction
For the first time
you know that your eyes
have been deceiving you

Muso Soseki

I love to think of nature as having unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so.

George Washington Carver

In Barcelona a new « Camp Nou »
In the A-7 highway, a new continuity
In Tarragona, biotechnology and cinema.
In El Perelló, techno-agricultural micro-villages
2020 The Mountains have established in land a new code natural-artificial.
A new attitude that allows the growth towards the interior of the cities, and a more natural way to live the established landscape.

The laws have changed. It exists a three-dimensional urbanism and the law of the forth factor is used: To get the double Benefit with half resources.

~

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet,

And whither then? I cannot say.

- J.R.R.Tolkien

A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
—From the Dusk to the Dawn.

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
In The house of Suddhoo (Rudyard Kipling)
The Gutenberg Project

Stephen Hemsley
must be possessed by Cuthulu.
Or maybe he has his own
brand of soul
eating
evil .

The great Tao floods and flows in every direction.
Everything in existence depends on it, and it doesn't deny them. It accomplishes its work without naming or making claims for itself. Everything in existence is clothed and nourished by it, but it doesn't lord over anything.
Aimless, ambitionless, it might be called "small."
Everything in existence returns to it, and still it doesn't lord over anything. Thus it might also be called "great."
Because it has no desire to be great, it can achieve greatness.

Tao Te Ching

What is the mind doing when we swivel from perception to recognition? This is not an ordinary exchange. Rational people, whose minds are nothing more than parking lots for memes, dismiss this exchange as ‘simply’ imaginary. There is nothing simple about imagination. It is dreaming us. Its secrets, its unspoken meanings, compass the very nature of darkness in which we, elected by chance, dressed in distance, and obscure to our own minds, exist as light. This light of human being we call consciousness.

A.A.Attanasio

The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.

Jorge Luis Borges

A Country Fair

Drive me out of my mind, O Mother!
What use is esoteric knowledge
Or philosophical knowledge
Transport me totally with the burning wine
Of your all-embracing love.
Mother of mystery, who imbues with mystery
The hearts of those who love you,
Immerse me irretrievably
In the stormy ocean without boundary,
Pure love, pure love, pure love.

Wherever your lovers reside
Appears like a madhouse
To common perception.
Some are laughing with your freedom,
Others weep tears of your tenderness,
Still others dance, whirling with your bliss.
Even your devoted Gautama, Moses,
Krishna, Jesus, Nanak and Muhammad
Are lost in the rapture of pure love.

This poet stammers,
Overcome with longing:
“When? When? When?
When will I be granted companionship
With her intense lovers?”
Their holy company is heavenly
A country fair for those mad with love
Where every distinction
Between master and disciple
Disappears

Their love of love sings:
“Mother! Mother! Mother!
Who can fathom your mystery,
Your eternal play of love with love?
You are divine madness, O goddess,
Your love the brilliant crown of madness,
Please make this poor poet madly wealthy

With the infinite treasure of your love

- Ramprasad

People are scared to empty their minds
fearing that they will be engulfed by the void.

What they don’t realize is that
their own mind is the void.

Huang Po

Music from bamboo and fruit from wood. from Jan van der Meer on Vimeo.

Interesting guitar and the guy can really play!

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.
Jim Harrison