"Know

The true nature of your Beloved.

In His loving eyes your every thought,

Word and movement is always-

Always Beautiful."

by D. Ladinsky

Restless Night

As bamboo chill drifts into the bedroom,
Moonlight fills every corner of our
Garden. Heavy dew beads and trickles.
Stars suddenly there, sparse, next aren't.

Fireflies in dark flight flash. Waking
Waterbirds begin calling, one to another.
All things caught between shield and sword,
All grief empty, the clear night passes.

by Tu Fu

US to Release Young Gitmo Prisoner

The Obama administration has OKed the release of a young Afghan prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner, Mohamed Jawad, was as young as twelve at the time of his capture seven years ago in Afghanistan. Last week, the Obama administration admitted it could no longer hold Jawad as an enemy combatant after a federal judge ruled his confession was obtained through torture. Jawad’s confession that he threw a grenade at a US soldier reportedly came after an interrogator threatened to kill him and his family. On Thursday, Justice Department lawyers said Jawad will be freed from Guantanamo Bay next month. His lawyers expect him to be sent back to Afghanistan.

Freed Gitmo Prisoners Found Advocacy, Support Group

Meanwhile, several former Guantanamo Bay prisoners have founded a group to help other freed prisoners deal with life after their release and lobby for those still jailed. The Guantanamo Justice Center says it hopes to help the hundreds of freed prisoners find work and obtain medical treatment to deal with their ordeal. It will also try to sue former Bush administration officials for authorizing torture. The group’s founders include the Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj, who was jailed at Guantanamo for more than six years.

Democracy Now!

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

The Big Picture

Stillness soars as a mountain peak,

Seeking its greatness in height.

Movement stops in a silent lake,

Seeking in depth its limit.

~

The fish in the water is silent,

the animals on the earth is noisy,

the bird in the air is singing.

But man has in him the silence of the sea,

the noise of the earth

and the music of the air.

~

There is a point where in the mystery of

existence contradictions meet;

where movement is not all movement

and stillness is not all stillness;

where the idea and the form,

the within and the without, are united;

where infinite becomes finite,

yet not losing its infinity.

- Tagore

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

- William Wordsworth

Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,
As if wandering in a dream,
In the midst of illusion I awaken to the true path;
There is one more matter I must not neglect,
But I need not bother now,
As I listen to the sound of the evening rain
Falling on the roof of my temple retreat
In the deep grass of Fukakusa.

From: The Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace By: Steven Heine

Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars, by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them, fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God, who was an iron scimitar...

Jorge Luis Borges

How to be a Cultist

1. Pick one faith and stay with it. Dilettantism is the mark of the amateur.
2. Avoid needless embarassment. Practice the correct pronunciation of your god's name in the privacy of your room before chanting it in public. Flash cards are often helpful.
3. Never invoke anything bigger than your head.
4. Avoid all cabalistic jewelry over 10 pounds in weight, you're just asking for trouble.
5. Citronella candles may *not* be used in rituals. I cannot stress this enough. Pastel-coloured candles in the shape of cute animals are like beacons to the Dark Lords.
6. Always keep your kit with you: candles, chalk, incense, silver knife, thuggee knife, service revolver, garlic, Yellow Sign, cabfare, condoms, and change.
7. *Never* be the cultist that goes to rough up the investigator. Ransacking hotel rooms is probably safe, but going 'round to beat up the good guys is a sure route to the bottom of the Thames.
8. When the Black Mass goes awry, stay away from the cult leader. Enraged demons always go for the pompous.
9. Don't gloat.
10. If you do gloat, never reveal your plans.
11. If you gloat and reveal your plans, never leave the investigators to die slowly. They don't.
12. If you gloat, reveal your plans, and leave the investigators to die slowly, don't have the audacity to look surprised when thy show up to foil you.
13. Investigators always show up at the last moment to foil you. Start a half- hour early, they hate that.
14. Select ceremonial robes that are easy to run in while still affording ample concealment.
15. Never fuck with anything whose genetic structure you do not feel absolutely comfortable about.
16. Never admit to having fucked anything whose genetic structure you didn't feel absolutely comfortable about.
17. When a religious artifact begins emitting light, CLOSE YOUR EYES. Thousands of cultists could be saved every year if they'd just remember this simple safety tip.
18. When mutilating cattle, avoid the ones with testicles.
19. During ritual sacrificing, taking bits home for later is now generally considered bad form.
20. Blood tests are now required of all sacrificial victims before the ritual. The effects of HIV+ offerings on the average malefic deity have never been witnessed by anyone living, or even intact.
21. Contrary to historical belief, drugs and invocations do not mix. When the shit comes down it is vitally necessary to be able to discern between the gibbering monstrosity to throw the holy water on and the gibbering monstrosity that will go away after a few hours, some B-complex, and a good hot bath.
22. Never play strip Tarot.
23. Piety and belief are powerful things, and few forces in nature can stand against one who is true to his faith, his god, and his soul. However, it is also true that God is on the side of the heaviest artillery, so be prepared to change sides at the drop of a hat.
24. For those situations where a fresh, living sacrifice is just not feasible or even possible, the lower ranks of demons can be fooled by microwaving a previously frozen chunk of ex-victim and cleverly jiggling it. However, a mock-victim sculpted from Spam will be all right too.
25. Go to the discordian website
    

In the Four Eternal Vedas,

In the study and reading of scripts,

In sacred ashes and in Holy Writs

And muttering of prayers

You will not find the Lord!

Melt with the Heart Inside
and proclaim the Truth.

Then you will join the Light-

Life without servitude.

- Sivavakkiyar

The Key

(Ella rose)

The key to my own soul-home
I have lost.
Therefore, I am a beggar.
The key to the world's body-cave
I have found.
Therefore, I am unquestionably great.
The key to the God-source
I am.
Therefore, God treasures me.

Poem By: Sri Chinmoy

I dreamed that I was walking down the beach with the Goddess. And I looked back and saw footprints in the sand.

But sometimes there were two pairs of footprints, and sometimes there was only one. And the times when there was only one pair of footprints, those were my times of greatest trouble.

So I asked the Goddess, "Why, in my greatest need, did you abandon me?"

She replied, "I never left you. Those were the times when we both hopped on one foot." And lo, I was really embarrassed for bothering Her with such a stupid question.

Carl Muckenhoupt, without honorary

"When the voice of the Silent touches my words

I know him and therefore know myself."

- R. Tagore

SUPPORT THE GREAT APE PROTECTION ACT!

Contact Your Legislator

The Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) was introduced by Representatives Edolphus Towns (D-NY), David Reichert (R-WA), Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) on March 5th, 2009.

Global Music: Inbar Bakal

“I want my music to be universal,” Bakal says. “That’s my goal.”
The article is on the Global Post (which I have heard about on BBC).
There are also four songs of hers. (beautiful)

Giant Red Devil Squids Invade California Coast

San Diego beach managers are puzzled by a sudden swarm of giant Humboldt Squid. These voracious predators grow to 7 feet and over 100 pounds despite their 1 year lifespan. Something has caused these unique predators to invade shallow coastal waters and to wash up on shore, creating a human safety hazard and drawing attention from divers and ecologists worldwide.

While ecologists have yet to announce an official reason for the Red Devil squid habitat shift, climate change, El Nino, and even undersea earthquakes are all being speculated by divers, and beach goers. These creatures, which are prolific in deep water habitats up and down the west coast of the Americas, feed on smaller squid, rock fish, sardines, and anchovies. This invasion has fisheries managers concerned that the squid will decimate fish populations in these shallow waters, and scare tourists away from popular diving spots.

Despite the aggressive tendencies of the Humboldt Squid, some divers are intentionally swimming amongst these creatures without extra protection. Stories of "near-misses" from veteran divers in the area are creating quite a buzz. While some divers fear for their personal safety, the opportunity to dive with these giants may be too attractive for others to pass up.

The Humboldt Squid moves via jet propulsion at speeds approaching 25mph. Their 10 tentacles are covered with fang-lined suckers, and conceal a parrot-like beak that is capable of taking a fist-sized bite out of larger prey. Their skin changes color rapidly, often white when near other squids, red when feeding, black when dead or unconscious, and flashing between black and white when alarmed or angry.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

- Thich Nhat Hhan

Bjork-army of Me

( A flower a day link. Beautiful )

I am a Golden Compass -
Watch me whirl.

To the east and to the west,
To the north and to the south,
In all directions I will true your course
Toward laughter and unity.

To everywhere I will deliver enlightenment
On the backs of camels, birds
And strong pilgrims.

Into every country
I will carry the Holy Names and dance
And dance.

I am a Golden Compass -
Watch me sing and spin
Illustrious strands of lyrics and truth.

I am a divine Agent.
Your passage to light, your ticket,
May need my stamp.

My feet and verse are now ecstatic
And midair;
Just place your self beneath our leaping arch -
We will sweetly rain upon you.

Watch me whirl into nothingness
Your fears and darkness -
Just keep tossing them onto my golden plate.

I am a Holy Instrument always tuned by God
I live beyond every dimension.

I have been lifted drunk off the floor
In a Magnificent Tavern.

Now at my seat upon Divine Love
I gaze at Everything with brilliant, clear eyes.

I can so easily lean my cheek across this small table
Of time and space

And let you touch my beautiful laughing
Wooly beard.

Hafiz is an Emerald Compass.
My knowledge will put manna in your purse.

My only duty that now remains
To this world

Is from every direction
To forever serve you wine and
Hope.

Hafiz is a Golden Skirt
The Beloved has lifted off a magnificent floor
And has tied around His waist.

Watch us whirl, whirl,
Whirl!

Hafiz

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.

Rumi

From Coleman Barks, the translator of Rumi, to President Bush:

Click this link to save eye strain.

Just This Once President Bush, before you order air strikes, imagine the
first cruise missile as a direct hit on your closest friend. That might be
Laura. Then twenty-five other family and friends. There are no survivors.

Now imagine some other way to do it. Quadruple the inspectors, or put a
thousand and one U.N. people in. Then call for peace activists to volunteer
to go to Iraq for two weeks each. Flood that country with well-meaning
tourists, people curious about the land that produced the great saints,
Gilani, Hallaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels near those tombs. Encourage peace
people to spend a bunch of money in shops, to bring rugs home and samovars
by the bushel. Send an Arabic translator with every four peace activists.
The U.S. government will pay for the translators and for building and
staffing the hostels, one hostel for every twenty activists and five
translators. The hostels are state of the art, and they belong to the Iraqis
at the end of this experiment.

Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my friend, Jonathan Granoff at the U.N.,
will be the core organization team. No one knows what might come of this.
Maybe nothing, or maybe it would convince some Iraqis and some of the world
that we really do not wish to kill anybody, and that we truly are not out to
appropriate oil reserves. We're working on building a hydrogen vehicle as
fast as we can, aren't we? Put no limit on the number of activists from all
over who might want to hang out and explore Iraq for two weeks. Is anything
left of Babylon? There could be informal courses for college credit and
pickup soccer games every evening at five. Long leisurely suppers. The U. S.
government furnishes air transportation, that is, hires airliners from the
country of origin and back for each peace tourist, who must carry and spend
the equivalent of $1001 US inside Iraq. Keep part of the invasion force
nearby as police, but let those who claim to deeply detest war try something
else just this once, for one year. Call our bluff. If this madman Saddam's
WMD threat is not, somehow, eliminated by next February, you can go in with
special ops, and do it that way.

Medical services, transportation inside Iraq, lots of big colorful
buses--let the pilgrims paint them!--along with many other ideas that will
be thought of later during the course of this innocently, blatantly, foolish
project will all also be funded by the U.S. government.

There's a practice known as sama, a deep listening to poetry and music, with
sometimes movement involved. We could experiment with whole nights of that,
staying up until dawn, sleeping in tents during the day. So instead of war
there's a peace period from March 2003 through February 2004. It could be as
though war had already happened, as it has, and the healing and rebuilding.
Now we're in the celebration afterward. I'll be the first to volunteer for
two weeks of wandering winter desert and reading Hallaj, Abdul Qadir Gilani,
dear Rabia, and the life-saving 1001 Arabian Nights.

I am Coleman Barks, a retired English professor living in Athens, Georgia,
and I don't really consider this proposal foolish.
Coleman Barks


If you didn't know about this awesome letter now you do.
If only bush had taken the advise to heart.
That took a lot of courage to write.
Thank you Mr. Barks.

Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don't try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it's too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

Ode 2865 Trans. Coleman Barks

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

The
Delta-United
Ring Formation
Theory states
that the rings
of Saturn are
composed
entirely
of lost
airline
luggage.

00000
0000

The big picture
from space.

infomercial hell

infomercial holy hell

the wow cult song

Going to the Redwoods; tomorrow ?

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir

After seeing the wedding picture, of the
marine with the melted face, I drove to work.
And on the way I saw the Young Marines,
dressed in their red and blues. They were
drilling, or playing war, or something.
undoubtedly glorifying war in some way.
I understand that honor, love of country,
and staying out of trouble, are good ideas
but, I wish that they also understood the
horrors of war. I think the media try's
to keep that well hidden. Maybe the marine
recruiter should have this as a poster.

I also sincerely hope that they can reconstruct
this guy's face. I hope he has a happy life.

Face of Truth

The Face of Truth is covered

with a brilliant golden orb.

Remove it, O Sun,
so that I who am devoted to the Truth
may behold the Truth.

Sri Chinmoy.

I Heard God Laughing

Forget every idea of right and wrong
Any classroom ever taught you

Because
An empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear

Are always the testimony
You have been completely fooled!

Turn your back on those
Who would imprison your wondrous spirit
With deceit and lies.

Come, join the honest company
Of the King's beggars -
Those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns
And those astonishing fair courtesans
Who need Divine Love every night.

Come, join the courageous
Who have no choice
But to bet their entire world
That indeed,
Indeed, God is Real.

I will lead you into the Circle
Of the Beloved's cunning thieves,
Those playful royal rogues -
The ones you can trust for true guidance -
Who can aid you
In this Blessed Calamity of life.

Hafiz,
Look at the Perfect One
At the Circle's Center:

He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass,
Beyond all that is Rational,

To show this dear world

That Everything,
Everything in Existence
Does point to God.

Renderings of Hafiz

by Daniel Ladinsky

Thunder in the sky
at midday.
Plane in the sky,
lawn mower for the clouds.
Sun in the sky
a clear day.

Dragonfly
and
humming birds,
stealing this present
in small sips.
The small
ringing bells
of
humming birds song,
smaller than
the wasps
paper
bell.

Photo
of
humming bird
in your fathers palm.
The smallest
gift
sometimes
as big as your
heart.


Ritsu Katsumata performs Portrait of a Guitar Hero for the Music With a View Series at the Flea Theatre curated by Kathleen Supove. Part 1 features riffs by Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Malcolm Young.

The youth
of Earth are moving
intuitively toward an utterly
classless, raceless, omnicooperative,
omniworld humanity. Children freed of
the ignorantly founded educational traditions
and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned,
computer-stored and -distributed outflow of
reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally
verified data, shall indeed lead society
to its happy egress from all
misinformedly conceived,
fearfully and legally imposed,
and physically enforced
customs of yesterday.
They can lead all
humanity
into
omnisuccessful
survival as well
as entrance into
an utterly new era of
human experience in an
as-yet and ever-will-be
fundamentally mysterious Universe.

Buckminster Fuller

A huge Buddha statue is being built in India's Northern Sarnath province. The statue is one of the tallest in the world and stands where Lord Buddha delivered his first sermon.

Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless.

Henry Miller

An Indian Prayer

My grandfather is the fire

My grandmother is the wind

The Earth is my mother

The Great Spirit is my father

The World stopped at my birth

and laid itself at my feet

And I shall swallow the Earth whole when I die

and the Earth and I will be one

Hail The Great Spirit, my father

without him no one could exist

because there would be no will to live

Hail The Earth, my mother

without which no food could be grown

and so cause the will to live to starve

Hail the wind, my grandmother

for she brings loving, lifegiving rain

nourishing us as she nourishes our crops

Hail the fire, my grandfather

for the light, the warmth, the comfort he brings

without which we be animals, not men

Hail my parent and grandparents

without which

not I

nor you

nor anyone else

could have existed

Life gives life

which gives unto itself

a promise of new life

Hail the Great Spirit, The Earth, the wind, the fire

praise my parents loudly

for they are your parents, too

Oh, Great Spirit, giver of my life

please accept this humble offering of prayer

this offering of praise

this honest reverence of my love for you.

Oh Great Spirit,

Whose voice I hear in the wind,

Whose breath gives life to the world,

Hear me!

I come to you as one of your many children.

I am small and weak.

I need your strength and wisdom.

May I walk in beauty.

Make my eyes behold the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things that you have made,

And my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may know the things

That you have taught your children--

The lessons that you have hidden in every leaf and rock.

Make me strong, not to be superior to my brothers, but to be

able to fight my greatest enemy: myself.

Make me ever ready to come to you with straight eyes, so that

When life fades as the faded sunset

My spirit will come to you without shame.

by H. Kent Craig

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

Buddha in Glory.
Rilke

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next

moment.
(Rilke)