In the spare elegant lines of Charles Martin’s poems, we often confront hard realities and/or our conscience. I recommend his blog. Jamie Dedes
please
have your ticket
ready
we shall
be boarding
soon
destination
is
undefined
and
unscheduled
but
that’s
life
Colin never disappoints. I think you will enjoy this thought provoking piece with which we restart “Into the Bardo.” For the foreseable future, this site will be a simple digest of some of the finest work to be found online and which I think you will enjoy. It’s a slow start, but I hope a good one. Jamie Dedes
The dynamic concept of the Figure of Eight was introduced in my Blog ‘Somatic Markers’ dated 16th November.
The bottom half of the Figure of Eight represents the ground of our being—core self—that which we can become more aware of in meditative exercises of one kind or another: the rush of blood in the ears, the crackling of knee joints, the tingling in the right big toe (notice it now…), the sense of suspension in the limbs when you imagine that all motion has been stopped, the place we go to when listening to the slow movement of a Mozart Piano Concerto—α-wave intelligence.
The ascent into the top half of the Figure of Eight takes us into β-wave intelligence which is needed to sustain everyday living during which there’s a tendency to forget that everything depends on the natural functioning of the Core Self where the laws of one’s own…
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This is a story that make its point in a charming and memorable way. Its oft told on blogs and in emails, but not always with the charm invested by Kate. J.D.
COFFEE PHILOSOPHY
by
Kate (Subtle Kate)
A professor stood before his philosophy class with a large empty jar and and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar, of course the sand filled up everything else.
He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things like your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car.
The sand is everything else –the small stuff.”
If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner.Play another eighteen holes. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked,” he said.
“It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a cup of coffee. “
·
Photo credit ~ Image Chef.com
Kate ~ has been blogging as subtlekate since December of last year and in that time she has garnered an impressive array of awards. She’s a doctor and a mom and says she’s “very much in love with a sexy bald man.” She lives by the sea in Australia. Kate writes quite a bit about writing and reading and is participating in goodreads 2012 reading challenge.
THE ACT OF INVISIBILITY
by
AMY NORA DOYLE (SoulDipper)
Into the Bardo Contributing Writer
Yesterday, a professional musician read aloud The Prayer of St. Francis. The man wasn’t performing for the crowd. He was reading as though the prayer had been written for him.
The intonations and musicality of his voice lured me into loving the words. I questioned the opposites contained in the prayer. Are they better served verbally? Or silently?
Does an effective “channel” speak love or just show it somehow? How is it easiest to receive vibes of pardon, faith, hope, light, and joy? Is it best to transmit consolation, understanding and love with an act of invisibility?
People who personify the virtues listed in St. Francis’ prayer are rare, but Susan Boyle came to mind. Did she have years of invisibility? Did it magnify her beauty?
The prayer says, “It is in dying that we are born…” Being, instead of being seen, disciplines the ego and makes room for giving.
I wanted to know: How can I construct my own invisibility?
This question first arose in the early 1970s in London, Ontario. I joined the London Little Theater Group and was given the role of a seductive secretary in a murder mystery. I was overjoyed until I realized my character was murdered in the first minute of the first act. My only lines were repeats of phrases spoken by my lover/boss. I was taking shorthand while he dictated a letter. I didn’t even have to do a dying scene. The lights went out, a shot was fired and when the stage was lit again, weeks had passed.
That kind of invisibility was easy. The mystery revolved around my character and I didn’t have to do a thing. I sat bored and impatient backstage, waiting for the end of the performance so I could do curtain call with the rest of the cast.
Stan, a professional actor who had retired in London, was a small, quiet man with powerful stage presence. His role in the play suited him – a quiet, polite, detective who matched the cunning of a yet-to-be-famous Columbo. His role required a deftness that caused players, and certainly audiences to forget he was on stage.
“How will Stan ever be invisible on stage?” I asked the director.
“It’s one of the most challenging roles for any actor,” he said. “It’ll be especially tough for Stan because everyone likes to watch him.”
“Does that mean the other players have to do a good job of distracting the audience?”
“That’s important, but Stan can’t count on that. What if the other players don’t pull that off? The story relies on his shadowy observations and impeccably timed responses.”
During rehearsals, I popped in, did my one minute on stage and left. I didn’t have a chance to ask Stan about invisibility. He was continuously engaged with fellow cast members.
We had a packed house each night of both weekends. I wanted to watch Stan in action, but had to stay backstage. It wasn’t until the cast party that I finally had a chance to pose my question.
“Stan, apparently you mastered invisibility every night. I’d love to know how to do it. Is it the opposite of acting?”
“It’s a wonderful and artful challenge. It’s customized with each play, each cast and each setting.”
“But how do you do it?” I asked.
“I think myself into a state of not being available. I’m absolutely still. I don’t draw attention to my character in any way. I work with the timing of the other actors as I blend in with the scenery, the movements, and the mood. I imagine myself small until it’s time to step back into the spotlight – big as life.”
“So…you are turning your visibility off and on in accordance with what’s around you?”
“Yes. For me, being invisible requires more acting than being center stage. It’s draining. It is the most intense, yet rewarding, acting I have done. It’s terrifically fulfilling.”
Here I was, yesterday, listening to a professional musician invisibly read a prayer. I listened to Susan Boyle sing the St. Francis prayer with the power of coming out “big”. I remembered a gifted actor teaching the art of invisibility.
Am I any closer to knowing how to channel the virtues named as opposites in the prayer?
I’ll have to see how invisible I can be. However,I’ve learned one thing. An act of invisibility is a supreme act of giving. Self-willed or not. Both have purpose.
Can you become invisible?
© 2012, photograph and essay, Amy Nora Doyle, All rights reserved
AMY NORA DOYLE ( souldipper) ~ has been blogging since 2010, always write-on-target with the topics she chooses to address and her not insignificant gift of story. She is appreciated as much for her insightful comments on blogs as she is for her indefatigable efforts applied consistently to the subject and spirit of the sacred. Amy is also an intuitive. Amy’s work in the ground of the sacred derives from “a life-changing trip to an incredible country, South Africa, the longing in my soul to release concepts about the magnificence of ordinary life has blown the typical writing blocks, corks and stoppers.” The inspired and inspiring Amy lives with her cat in a house on an island in Canada. Be sure to stop and visit her on your trips around the blogospher.
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live. (1990), Mary Catherine Bateson (b. 1939), American writer and cultural anthropologist
THE AGE OF DISCONTINUITY AND THE CHINESE SHI
by
Shakti Ghosal (ESGEE musings)
The other day, I sat leafing through the yellowing pages of that half a century old Peter Drucker classic, ‘The Age of Discontinuity’. This book never ceases to amaze me at the prescient feeling it can generate even after so many decades. Drucker of course could not have envisioned the internet and today’s information flows but his book does ask the question, “As technology becomes ubiquitous, how would we need to cope?” He also challenged us “to be prepared for the complexities”. Big discontinuities that he saw so many years back……. as yet unresolved.
Since the dawn of history, Mankind has experienced discontinuities brought in by adoption of learnt skills and technology. As the first human learnt how to seed and grow plants, Mankind did a makeover from a wandering lifestyle to that of settlers on land. Then with the successive arrivals of the steam engine and electricity, the agrarian lifestyle started morphing into industrial clusters and an associated urban way of life.
And so has been the cycle. A periodic massive disruption of the way we live, the way we work, the way we trade, all leading to a discontinuity. But always, Mankind returned back to stability. Adjusting back into the equilibrium of a new socio-economic format, till the next bout of discontinuity.
But methinks we now have reached a different arena. A space and time where technologies are no longer stabilizing. If at all, they seem to be changing at a faster and faster pace. One needs to just see what is happening to computing, information and communication to appreciate this.
As I reflect, I am left wondering if we are facing the mother of all discontinuities, a shift to a world without stability. A world in which extreme social and economic disruptions become the norm. Be it the ongoing financial turmoil in the global markets. Be it increasing volatility in commodity prices. Be it companies losing out their leadership positions at an increasing rate. Be it product life cycles becoming shorter and shorter. I wonder if these indeed be the symptoms of a world becoming increasingly unstable.
So how do we, the individuals, cope with such constant discontinuities and loss of stability? Wired as we are to cherish stability and continuity in life, how do we retain our balance and sanity?
I think of the Chinese concept of Shi. Simply put it signifies a propensity based on situation. So whenever there is the propensity to play out to an extreme, there also occurs the tendency to self correct and reverse course. And herein lies the magic of Shi- embodying the spirit of dancing in the moment.
Shi is a belief. It promotes lightness and a dynamic view of our world. In Shi, everything is in a state of becoming. So as we focus on the flows and the lightness of the moment, we lose our obsession with discrete people, objects or situations. Shi allows a holistic appreciation of the complex webs of relationships among people, objects and the broader environment.
In a world fast losing traditional reference points, the future may well belong to those who adopt a Shi mindset. Those who embrace the lightness of relationships and flows rather than the heaviness of resource ownership. I believe it would be these ‘dancers of the moment’ who would lead the world in this era of uncertainty and discontinuity.
Acknowledgements:
1 The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to our changing society
by Peter F Drucker,1969.
2. The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China
by Francois Julien,1999.
© 2012, Shakti Ghosal, All rights reserved
Shakti Ghosal ~ has been blogging (ESGEE musgings) since September 30, 2011. He was born at New Delhi, India. Shakti is an Engineer and Management Post Graduate from IIM, Bangalore. Apart from Management theory, Shakti remains fascinated with diverse areas ranging from World History and Economic trends to Human Psychology and Development.
A senior management professional, Shakti has been professionally involved for over twenty-five years at both international and India centric levels spanning diverse business areas and verticals. With a strong bias towards action and results, Shakti remains passionate about team empowerment and process improvement.
Shakti currently resides in the beautiful city of Muscat in Oman with wife Sanchita, a doctorate and an educationist. They are blessed with two lovely daughters, Riya and Piya.
RAY DOUGLAS BRADBURY (1920-2012), American Writer
While there were many salutes to Ray Bradbury upon his death on June 5th, I encountered none as charming and well-targeted as Colin’s. J.D.
RAY BRADBURY:
InFLYING UP AMONG THE STARS
by
Colin Blundell (colinblundell)
Forty years ago, I began teaching ‘English’ to 11-16 year-olds in a comprehensive school in a suburb of Luton, Bedfordshire UK—Stopsley High School. A class of 4th year boys was well on the way to defeating me till I discovered that reading Ray Bradbury short stories to them was a really good way of keeping them quiet for a whole lesson and even inspiring them to think and write. Ray Bradbury was the key that opened doors for these boys who had mostly been rejected by the system they found themselves enslaved by. Admittedly, by report, some of them later did a stretch in prison but not a few of them went on to get degrees, to become teachers and hold responsible jobs in local industry. I have sadly lost touch with all of them.
The short story that seemed to have the most immediate effect, and the one I always associate with that period of my life, was The Murderer from The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953). It was the story that perhaps meant most to me, one I could put my heart and soul into the reading thereof.
Music moved with him in the white halls. He passed an office door: ‘The Merry Widow Waltz’. Another door: ‘Afternoon of a Faun’. A third: ‘Kiss Me Again’. He turned into a cross corridor: ‘The Sword Dance’ buried him in cymbals, drums, pots, pans, knives, forks, thunder, and tin lightning. All washed away as he hurried through an anteroom where a secretary sat nicely stunned by Beethoven’s Fifth. He moved himself before her eyes like a hand; she didn’t see him. His wrist radio buzzed.
“Yes?”
“This is Lee, Dad. Don’t forget about my allowance.”
“Yes, son, yes. I’m busy.”
“Just didn’t want you to forget, Dad,” said the wrist radio. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ swarmed about the voice and flushed into the long halls.
Where are we? What’s going on? Forty years back there was no such thing as a mobile phone; the wrist radio is part of Ray Bradbury’s accurately terrifying vision of the future, which is now: the mobile phone is a symbol for the way life for many people seems to be threaded on messages from an imagined other place, messages, usually of no real consequence, that materialise to interrupt life while it is being lived, to divert attention from the concentrated flow of existence.
Once upon a time, you were able to move from experience to experience without the feeling that at any moment your flow was going to be interrupted by messages from an outer space which is not yours; life has changed and with it consciousness—it’s no longer a direct relationship between you and mountain, river, birdsong, zebra, touch of skin, and sensation of wind but something mediated by a mechanical drive to make contact with somebody to express the connection in some dull-witted way, or have it interrupted by somebody else’s account of their own experience of zebras and so on…
I do not remember that piped music was everywhere when I was growing up (I don’t think it was) but it’s more or less impossible to avoid the intrusiveness of the assault on the ears nowadays. The person with the switch assumes that it’s OK to bombard us with Muzak; most people don’t notice that it is washing over them—it’s the mechanical norm.
One might just consider oneself lucky to have Beethoven’s Fifth or L’après-midi d’un faune swarming about the long halls of the supermarket rather than the latest pop-crap but on the whole, instead of having others impose their banal choices on me, I prefer to organise my own listening schedule just when I want it to happen and not otherwise.
Ray Bradbury is simplistically referred to as a Science Fiction writer but it’s more the case that he is of that fraternity that seems to be plugged into the way things are going in fact rather than as fiction—those who are sufficiently tuned into human trends and weaknesses to understand where things are heading. H.G. Wells was another member of the clan.
“Prisoner delivered to Interview Chamber Nine.”
He unlocked the chamber door, stepped in, heard the door lock behind him.
“Go away,” said the prisoner, smiling. The psychiatrist was shocked by that smile. A very sunny, pleasant warm thing, a thing that shed bright light upon the room. Dawn among the dark hills. High noon at midnight, that smile. The blue eyes sparkled serenely above that display of self-assured dentistry.
“I’m here to help you,” said the psychiatrist, frowning. Something was wrong with the room. He had hesitated the moment he entered. He glanced around. The prisoner laughed. “If you’re wondering why it’s so quiet in here, I just kicked the radio to death.”
At length we find that our hero is Mr Albert Brock, who calls himself ‘The Murderer’. The psychiatrist, who intends to put him right, deems him violent, but Brock says that his violence is only towards ‘machines that yak-yak-yak…’
He quickly demonstrates his murderous intentions.
“Before we start…” He moved quietly and quickly to detach the wrist radio from the doctor’s arm. He tucked it in his teeth like a walnut, gritted, heard it crack, handed it back to the appalled psychiatrist as if he had done them both a favour. “That’s better.”
I often feel like doing this to mobile phones and other beeping implements on trains when my quiet reading is interrupted by them.
Deviant Behaviour
The psychiatrist asks Brock to talk about his deviant behaviour.
“Fine. The first victim, or one of the first, was my telephone. Murder most foul. I shoved it in the kitchen Insinkerator! Stopped the disposal unit in mid-swallow. Poor thing strangled to death. After that I shot the television set! … Fired six shots right through the cathode. Made a beautiful tinkling crash, like a dropped chandelier…”
“Suppose you tell me when you first began to hate the telephone.”
Because the telephone used to upset me as a child and because I would still rather not talk over the telephone I used to read the following explanation to my classes with extreme relish and rhetorical gusto, loudly and at increasing speed.
“It frightened me as a child. Uncle of mine called it the Ghost Machine. Voices without bodies. Scared the living hell out of me. Later in life I was never comfortable. Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn’t want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality.
It’s easy to say the wrong things on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you’ve made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone’s such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the telephone it was the television, the radio, the phonograph. When it wasn’t the television or radio or the phonograph it was motion pictures at the corner theatre, motion pictures projected, with commercials on low-lying cumulus clouds. It doesn’t rain rain any more, it rains soapsuds. When it wasn’t High-Fly Cloud advertisements, it was music by Mozzek in every restaurant; music and commercials on the buses I rode to work. When it wasn’t music, it was inter-office communications, and my horror chamber of a radio wrist watch on which my friends and my wife phoned every five minutes. What is there about such ‘conveniences’ that makes them so temptingly convenient? The average man thinks, Here I am, time on my hands, and there on my wrist is a wrist telephone, so why not just buzz old Joe up, eh? …I love my friends, my wife, humanity, very much, but when one minute my wife calls to say, “Where are you now, dear?” and a friend calls and says, “Got the best off-colour joke to tell you. Seems there was a guy…”
The climax came when Brock ‘…poured a paper cup of water into the intercommunications system’ at his office which shorted the electrics and had everybody running around not knowing what to do with themselves. Then Brock ‘got the idea at noon of stomping my wrist radio on the sidewalk. A shrill voice was just yelling out of it at me, This is People’s Poll Number Nine. What did you eat for lunch? I kicked the Jesus out of the wrist radio!’
A Solitary Revolution
Brock decided to ‘start a solitary revolution, deliver man from certain ‘conveniences’… Convenient for anybody who, out of boredom or aimlessness wanted a diversion.. “Having a shot of whisky now. Thought you’d want to know…” Convenient for my office, so when I’m in the field with my radio car there’s no moment when I’m not in touch…’
Why on earth should we ever wish to be ‘in touch’ with people, with contacts, with a million or so connections on the Internet, with ‘friends’ on Facebook? Why do we feel a need to communicate our insignificant ideas to anybody who will, we imagine, click in on a regular basis? Why am I writing this?
We are living the Twentieth Century illusion of total connectedness; we imagine an audience; we think we are making something happen. We are not. All that’s happened is that our concept of the world has changed; we like to think that we are all in it together—it could well be that this has affected the shape of ‘consciousness’ itself.
Why is it that the bosses imagine now that they can extend the working day 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by constantly having workers ‘in touch’? We let them get away with it.
In touch! There’s a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather. Mauled and massaged and pounded by FM voices. You can’t leave your car without checking in: “Have stopped to visit gas-station men’s room.” “Okay, Brock, step on it!” “Brock, what took you so long?” “Sorry, sir.” “Watch it next time, Brock.” “Yes, sir!”
Brock progressed his one-man revolution by spooning a quart of French chocolate ice cream—chosen because it was his favourite flavour— into the car radio transmitter.
The psychiatrist asked what happened next.
Silence
“Silence happened next. God, it was beautiful. That car radio cackling all day, Brock go here, Brock go there, Brock check in, Brock check out, okay Brock, hour lunch, lunch over, Brock, Brock, Brock… I just rode around feeling of the silence. It’s a big bolt of the nicest, softest flannel ever made. Silence. A whole hour of it. I just sat in my car, smiling, feeling of that flannel with my ears. I felt drunk with Freedom!”
Then Brock rented himself a ‘portable diathermy machine’. Now, if ever there was a sensible invention this is one. Often, especially on trains, I’ve thought to myself, “If only I had a ‘portable diathermy machine’, I could turn it on and silence all the inane chat, all the music blasting out of half-wit headphones, all the tapping and beeping that so disturbs me…”
I’ve even thought of trying to invent something that would do the trick. I once met a man who said he could help though there might be issues of legality. Brock, c’est Moi, I thought.
In the story, the effect of Brock’s murderous impulses was striking.
“There sat all the tired commuters with their wrist radios, talking to their wives, saying, ‘Now I’m at Forty-third, now I’m at Forty-fourth, here I am at Forty-ninth, now turning at Sixty-first.”
“I’m on the train…”
“One husband cursing, ‘Well, get out of that bar, damn it, and get home and get dinner started, I’m at Seventieth!’ And the transit-system radio playing Tales from the Vienna Woods, a canary singing words about a first-rate wheat cereal. Then—I switched on my diathermy! Static! Interference! All wives cut off from husbands grousing about a hard day at the office. All husbands cut off from wives who had just seen their children break a window! The Vienna Woods chopped down, the canary mangled! Silence! A terrible, unexpected silence. The bus inhabitants faced with having to converse with each other. Panic! Sheer, animal panic!”
“The police seized you?”
“The bus had to stop. After all, the music was being scrambled, husbands and wives were out of touch with reality. Pandemonium, riot, and chaos. Squirrels chattering in cages! A trouble unit arrived, triangulated on me instantly, had me reprimanded, fined, and home, minus my diathermy machine, in jig time.”
The psychiatrist, namby-pamby liberal democrat, suggests that Brock could have joined a club for gadget-haters, got up a petition, asked for a change in the law… Brock says he did all these things and more but he still found himself in an undemonstrative minority. The psychiatrist says that the majority rules.
“But they went too far. If a little music and ‘keeping in touch’ was charming, they figured a lot would be ten times as charming. I went wild! I got home to find my wife hysterical. Why ? Because she had been completely out of touch with me for half a day. Remember, I did a dance on my wrist radio? Well, that night I laid plans to murder my house… It’s one of those talking, singing, humming, weather-reporting, poetry-reading, novel-reciting, jingle-jangling, rockaby-crooning-when-you-go-to bed houses. A house that screams opera to you in the shower and teaches you Spanish in your sleep. One of those blathering caves where all kinds of electronic Oracles make you feel a trifle larger than a thimble, with stoves that say, ‘I’m apricot pie, and I’m done,’ or ‘I’m prime roast beef, so baste me!’ and other nursery gibberish like that. With beds that rock you to sleep and shake you awake. A house that barely tolerates humans, I tell you. A front door that barks: ‘You’ve mud on your feet, sir!’ And an electronic vacuum hound that snuffles around after you from room to room, inhaling every fingernail or ash you drop. Jesus God… ”
The psychiatrist suggests he minds his language.
“Next morning early I bought a pistol. I purposely muddied my feet. I stood at our front door. The front door shrilled, ‘Dirty feet, muddy feet! Wipe your feet! Please be neat!’ I shot the damn thing in its keyhole! I ran to the kitchen, where the stove was just whining, ‘Turn me over!’ In the middle of a mechanical omelet I did the stove to death. Oh, how it sizzled and screamed, ‘I’m shorted!’… Then I went in and shot the television, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little…”
Having been arrested for destroying other people’s property, Brock was sent to the Office of Mental Health to be straightened out by a psychiatrist. Brock is unrepentant and says he’d do it all over again. The psychiatrist checks that he’s ready to take the consequences
“This is only the beginning,” said Mr. Brock. “I’m the vanguard of the small public which is tired of noise and being taken advantage of and pushed around and yelled at, every moment music, every moment in touch with some voice somewhere, do this, do that, quick, quick, now here, now there. You’ll see. The revolt begins. My name will go down in history!”
He’s prepared to admit that all gadgets were initially dedicated to making life less of a drudgery.
They were almost toys, to be played with, but people got too involved, went too far, and got wrapped up in a pattern of social behaviour and couldn’t get out, couldn’t admit they were in, even.
The gadgets have now become an unquestioned part of life. The next generation grows up with all the e-things and cannot understand old fogies like me wanting to, as they might see it, put the clock back.
Brock points out the irony that he ‘…got world-wide coverage on TV, radio, films… That was five days ago. A billion people know about me now. Check your financial columns. Any day now. Maybe to-day. Watch for a sudden spurt, a rise in sales for French chocolate ice cream!’
Brock looks forward to spending six months in jail, free from noise of any kind.
The psychiatrist’s diagnosis announced over the tannoy system is that Brock seemed convivial but ‘…completely disorientated’ refusing ‘… to accept the simplest realities of his environment and work with them…’
A Story to Shape the Soul
Re-reading Ray Bradbury’s brilliant short story on the day I heard of his death at 91, I realise, not for the first time, how much it has shaped my being; my disgust with the way the world is now, my refusal to compromise, my sense of horror at the way people are sucked into A Influences and diverted by gadgetry from the things that really matter: the life of the soul, responses to Nature and all that comes under the heading of Understanding properly nurtured by Knowledge and Being… Indiscriminate working with the realities of one’s environment means giving in to crass stupidity, mass resignation to the way things are fostered by Big Business brain-washing and the endless traps of Capitalism.
Accept nothing unless it nurtures the soul. Verify everything for yourself, says Gurdjieff…
Brock walks cheerfully to prison looking forward to a nice ‘bolt’ of silence. Meanwhile for the psychiatrist normal life resumes…
Three phones rang. A duplicate wrist radio in his desk drawer buzzed like a wounded grasshopper. The intercom flashed a pink light and click-clicked. Three phones rang. The drawer buzzed. Music blew in through the open door. The psychiatrist, humming quietly, fitted the new wrist radio to his wrist, flipped the intercom, talked a moment, picked up one telephone, talked, picked up another telephone, talked, picked up the third telephone, talked, touched the wrist-radio button, talked calmly and quietly, his face cool and serene, in the middle of the music and the lights flashing, the two phones ringing again, and his hands moving, and his wrist radio buzzing, and the intercoms talking, and voices speaking from the ceiling. And he went on quietly this way through the remainder of a cool, air-conditioned, and long afternoon; telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio…
End of a Story…
What I would dearly love to know is whether The Murderer penetrated the soul’s of the lads I taught all those years ago as much as it has penetrated mine. Amongst others, Paul, Martin Chris, Richard, Stephen, John and also Chris & Pete who went off to swim unwillingly amongst the stars in the 1970’s.
If any of you should chance to read this, please get in touch, as they say…
Colin Blundell ~ (colinblundell) warns us that if we’re into sound-bites, we’re going to be disappointed. His writing is generous, informative, and covers the range: poetry, fiction, and philosophical tomes. When he isn’t writing he is busy making music and hand-made paperback books, painting watercolours, and going on long-distance motorbike treks. He’s left off being a wage-slave in 1991. He is now an independently teaching Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Accelerated Learning, Steven Covey’s Seven Habits, Change Management, Problem-solving and Time Management, and the art and practice of the Enneagram.
Normandy American Cemetery
“My army buddy, Jack Oliver, attended boot camp with Uncle Lewis. He helped me understand that my father was as much a victim of the war as my uncle. When the War Department tallies the casualties, it counts the dead, the wounded, the missing in action. But no one ever takes into account the broken hearts and broken families left by the wayside in the wake of war. If they did, perhaps they would stop sending our children off to fight and die.” Naomi Baltuck
REMEMBERING UNCLE LEWIS
by
Naomi Baltuck (Writing Between the Lines)
One of my earliest memories is of dinner at Grandma Rose’s house. Her towels, furniture, and closets smelled of mothballs; she even stored her silverware in mothballs. Mostly, though, I recall standing on Grandma’s couch to study the framed collage of black and white photographs on her wall. I recognized my father, but knew the other boy in the pictures only by name, and by heart.
Uncle Lewis was my father’s only sibling, younger than my dad by ten years. We never met, and Daddy never spoke of him. But they were best friends. In one picture Lewis was laughing, having been surprised on the toilet by my father with his camera. The brothers teased Grandma too. Lewis would yell, “Harry, stop hitting me!” Grandma would rush in, and scold my father for picking on his brother. Undaunted, they’d laugh and repeat, until Grandma caught on.
Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lewis was drafted into the infantry, a shy studious eighteen year old who had never kissed a girl. My father joined up as an officer. He pulled a few strings to get Lewis transferred into the 30th ‘Old Hickory’ Division, so the brothers could cross the Atlantic on the same ship. Lewis wrote letters and post cards home, often addressed to their dog ‘Peanuts.’
“Hey, Peanuts, tell Pa to eat his spinach!” From the ship he wrote, “Harry and his buddies sneaked me into their cabin. They gave me chocolate and let me play with their puppy. Don’t tell anyone, or we’ll all catch it. They smuggled the pup on board, and officers shouldn’t fraternize with enlisted men…”
While serving in Africa, Italy, England, France, and Germany, Harry was safely behind the front lines. But Lewis was sent to Normandy two days after the D-Day invasion. He fought in the hedgerows of France, and in Holland. “The Dutch ran into the streets and passed out everything from soup to nuts. As we marched out of there in the middle of the night, you could hear the clink of cognac, whiskey, and wine bottles in the guys’ jackets, amidst all the cursing and the roar of the Jerrys’ planes overhead.”
To his parents Lewis wrote, “Dear Ma and Pa, today I saw General Eisenhower drive by.” Or, “Kronk said the war can’t last. It just can’t. And he said it with such an angelic look on his face, I believe him!”
But to my father he wrote, “You should see the bruise from where a bullet passed through my shirt, Brub. It was a close call.” Or, “They took Julian away. It’s so lonely here, Brub. He’s the reason I wouldn’t take that promotion to sergeant. We dug in together, took care of each other when things got rough. I don’t know how bad he’s hurt; I just hope he makes it, and escapes this Hell. Pray for me, Brub. Pray for me.”
On September 20, 1944, the day before his company attacked the Siegfried Line, Staff Sergeant Lewis Baltuck was killed by the blast of a shell. Twenty years old, he had hardly begun to live. He was survived by his parents, his dog Peanuts, and his brother Harry. He never had the time or the opportunity to fall in love and marry. He left no children to mourn for him—only the Bronze Star and the bronzed baby booties Grandma kept on her bookshelf until the day she died, more than forty years after her son’s death.
Harry married, had seven children, and built his own little house in Detroit. But for the rest of his life he suffered acutely from the unspeakable burden of depression and Survivor’s Guilt. When Grandpa Max died, my father became the sole caretaker of his widowed mother. There was no one to share that burden with, to joke with or jolly her along. Worst of all, crazed with grief, Grandma Rose blamed Harry for Lewis’s death.
I envied those kids who grew up with cousins to play with, and uncles who cared about them. Uncle Lewis would’ve been that kind of uncle, and my father would have been a different man, without that black cloud to live under. When Daddy died in 1965, we lost our connection to my father’s extended family, and our ties to our paternal cultural heritage were nearly lost as well. But it does no good to dwell on the past or to speculate on what might have been.
Uncle Lewis was right about one thing. War is Hell. The price it exacts is impossible to tally, and can never be repaid. When a soldier is killed, one heart stops beating, but many more are broken. The wounds inflicted upon whole families are so deep that the scars can still be felt after generations.
I swear my uncle’s little bronze baby booties will never end up on the bargain shelf at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, like so many others I have seen there. How sad to think that such precious keepsakes might be tossed into the giveaway because no one remembers or cares about the one whose little feet filled them.
I attended the 60th reunion of the Old Hickory Division in Nashville in search of someone who knew my uncle. I met only one man who remembered him…“a quiet man who didn’t say much, but when he did speak, he was always worth listening to.”
I tell my children that story, and many others about their Great Uncle Lewis. I am confident he will be cherished and remembered, not just for his tragic death, but for his joyful life.
© 2012, essay and family photos, Naomi Baltuck, All rights reserved
Photo credit ~ Normandy American Cemetery: I doctored this (taken in 2010) so that the original colors would not lend a dissonant note to the post. The photo was taken by Harald Bishoff and uploaded to Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. J.D.
Naomi Baltuck ~ has been blogging (Writing Between the Lines) since December 2011. She shares her days and her thoughts in the true spirit of weblog, a dairy of sorts. Her posts are perfectly executed works of art: careful and caring, symmetrical and clear. Her interests are eclectic but her family is certainly her center. We are proud to have her as a contributing writer. J.D.
Gratitude by any other name is still gratitude. A bit different from our usual style but still in the spirit of “Into the Bardo:” we share this blog post with thanks to to Chris (Introspections During Quiet Time) who wrote it. J.D.
I truly enjoy the small things in life. The other day one of these things (I call them “little wins”) happened and it got me to thinking about the little wins that we all get and about what mine are specifically. So, these are just the little things that somehow can turn a bad day around on a dime:
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Recently, while sorting through boxes, Sarah found an old journal with guidelines written long ago for her daughter. These guidelines (rules!) are well-considered and a valued contribution to the work we are collecting on Into the Bardo. We’ve taken them to heart and are pleased to have Sarah’s permission to share them with our valued readers and contributing writers. J.D.
SARAH’S RULES TO LIVE BY
by
Sarah Deen
© 2012, list, Sarah Deen, All rights reserved
Photo credit ~ Flower and bud of a yellow chamomile by Alvesgaspar via Wikipedia licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 unported
SARA DEEN ~ is a mother, grandmother, and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a personal friend of ours and much admired for her spirit, humor, and wonderful home cooking.
I am pleased to welcome my friend Michael Watson, a shaman and gifted healer to Into the Bardo. He and I go back many years as friends, colleagues, and fellow therapists in Vermont. It is so nice to see that our minds continue to follow similar tracks. Shared here with gratitude, Rob.
A World of Difference:
ON SEEING AND BEING SEEN
by
Michael Watson (Dreaming the World)
The cold returned this past week, and many trees and flowers seem to have taken a deep breath and halted their rush into Spring. Were the maple sugaring season ongoing, these would have been perfect sugaring days and the sugar houses would be boiling madly. (The warmth of a couple of weeks ago stopped the sugar season short.) Now, there is an air of expectancy in the natural world, a quickening and watchfulness, for we are in April, and returning warmth and renewing rains become daily more likely.
The seasonal round brings comfort and a sense of belonging. Maple sugaring gear is cleaned and put away. A few people have made it into their gardens, preparing for the warm season to come. Neighbors, yard and garden tools in hand, wave to one another. “This sure is weird weather, ain’t it,” echoes down the block. A few daffodils have burst into bloom in south-facing flower gardens, some making their way indoors to adorn tables. Throughout the neighborhood there is shared business and meaning.
Last week, in class, I showed the Bill Moyers interview with Bill T. Jones, Still Here. The video, from 1994, follows the MacArthur Award winning choreographer as he morns the loss of his mate, faces mortality via an AIDS diagnosis, and creates his groundbreaking dance, Still/Here. The video addresses many topics our culture still finds difficult, and does so with refreshing directness: death, terminal illness, homosexuality, loss, and race, among others.
The real focus of the film is difference, a too-hot-to-handle concern in many cultures. Difference is a form of social glue, allowing us to identify ourselves in opposition to the other. It is also the source of creativity, innovation, and adventure, as well as some of our most threatening taboos. The tensions between these functions are played out daily in our cultures, our personal relationships, and our inner worlds. For many people around the world, accepting new technologies, no matter how socially disruptive, has become easier than accepting differences among human beings.
Of course, issues of difference demand attention in the therapy setting. Whether we sit with couples struggling with disagreements about how to manage daily life, young women critical of their body image, or youth and adults who carry labels of major mental illness and wrestle with unique experiences of the world, the underlying concerns are those of difference and acceptability. Always the questions held deep inside include, “Am I loveable as I am?” and “Am I safe?” These are not simple questions.
A walk in the forest offers the opportunity to see difference. No two plants of the same species are identical. Life history and microecology play an enormous role in the development of each individual. From the point of view of the forest, each is perfect. Only through the gaze of other organisms do individual plants acquire differentiated value. When humans are involved, value is most likely culturally ascribed. Persons of diverse cultures may well read the worth of an individual plant differently from one another, as may individuals of separate species.
Ideally, psychotherapy offers persons the opportunity to challenge internalized or culturally enacted views of difference in relationship to her or his life. In the process, it may place any number of subversive, liberatory tools at the disposal of those seeking help. Such therapy seeks to provide a space for the successful re-authoring of those stories that isolate and demean on the basis of rubrics of difference. In order to do so, patients are encouraged to challenge the authority of many voices, within and without. Yet, no one can successfully create a rewarding life alone; we each need others to witness and affirm our acts of courage and self authoring. The therapist is a necessary, yet usually insufficient witness.
Would you share with us your healing stories of seeing, and of being seen by others?
♥
Michael Watson ~ has been blogging (Dreaming the World) since September of 2009. He is a shamanic practitioner, psychotherapist, educator, and artist of First Nations* (Mixed Eastern Woodlands, Cherokee, and Lakota Sioux) and European (British Isles) descent. He lives and works in Burlington, Vermont.
Michael’s teachers and his teachers teachers were shamans. His work is influenced by both the traditions of the First Nations* and contemporary Western traditions. It reflects a strong sense of “connection to the forces and processes of Nature.” The greater objective of his work is to “support others in developing intimate, transformative relationships with both Self, and the natural world.”
* First Nations – the indigineous peoples of the North America.
THREE YEARS TODAY
by
Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight)
three years today not
tomorrow giving rise to
yesterdays filled with
sorrow and trepidation
angst beating against
us like rain drops to
pelt out songs of dismay
pain like no other
causing us to walk in
our own shadows trying
to keep the pain at
bay until another
day and still the rain
came down to wrap us
secure in the fashion
meant for bringing forth
life and love with
emotional passion
we wept in silence an
effort to be brave
standing fierce against
the onslaught of a
disease rending
you mute most days
covered in blankets
against the inner chill
freezing your blood
a prisoner your will
three years today not
tomorrow giving rise to
yesterdays filled with
sorrow and trepidation
we are unbelieving now
the sun doth shine an
unbridled warmth we
walk among the living
cautious to walk forth
secure in our hesitation
did it really ever
happen that cancer
took our lives now we
took them back again
© May 05, 2012 Renee Espriu
This is dedicated to a woman who, when diagnosed with Stage III Breast Cancer, took her faith and belief that all would be well and fought to overcome and now three years later is cancer free. Her faith and fierce determination carried her through.
Copyright 2012, Renee Espru, All rights reserved
RENEE ESPRU ~ is a creative prose writer and poet. She began delighting us with her work at Renee Just Turtle Flight in March 2011. The work she shares with us there includes short stories. Renee is a daughter, mother, grandmother, and seeker of spiritual peace and soul-filled freedom. She’s studied at the graduate level and has attended seminary. She describes her belief system as eclectic, encompassing many faiths. She believes “Nature is the basis of everything that is and everything that is is also a part of Nature.”
shred the social safety nets
by
Marilynn Mair (Celebrating a Year)
Into the Bardo Contributing Writer
shred the social safety nets
we cannot afford fairness
this is as good as it gets
for the future don’t make bets
poverty powerlessness
shred the social safety nets
any lingering regrets
are pointless though it’s a mess
this is as good as it gets
what ill mechanism lets
governments pleading blameless
shred the social safety nets
as the rich hide their assets
pretending with false distress
this is as good as it gets
and our silence aids abets
while willful lies egregious
shred the social safety nets
is this as good as it gets
© 2012 photograph and poem, Maryilynn Mair All rights reserved
Marilynn Mair – author, world renown mandolinist, and blogger – wrote this beautiful sympathetic villanelle in response to Charles W. Elliot’s piece HERE, “Mindful Steps to the End of Hunger.”
KAREN ARMSTRONG (b. 1944), British Author, Commentator, Academic
Charter for Compassion
“Karen Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who left the convent to study literature, becoming one of the most provocative and original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world, and a leading international authority on faiths, religious fundamentalism and monotheism.
Her poignant and captivating talks have sparked worldwide debate and healthy discussion. Her bestselling books, including Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and A History of God, examine the differences and the profound similarities between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and their impact on world events.
In 2008, she was awarded the TED Prize in recognition and support of her call for a council of religious and spiritual leaders to draw up a “Charter for Compassion” that applies shared moral priorities to foster greater global understanding based on the principles of justice and respect. The project has grown to a considerable international following, and a network of Compassionate Cities is emerging that endorse the Charter and find ways to implement it practically, realistically and creatively.
As a speaker and writer, she asserts that all major religions embrace the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule, and also emphasizes that many of today’s religions bear similar strains of fundamentalism borne of frustration with contemporary life and current events.” ( – Official Biography of Karen Armstrong.)
KAREN ARMSTRONG – A CHARTER FOR COMPASSION GROWS
by
Amy Nora Doyle (souldipper)
Contribution Writer, Into the Bardo
On our tiny island, a group recently finished its study of Karen’s book,“Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life”. The same group seized an opportunity, on March 22, to share a live video of Ms. Armstrong accepting a prestigious award from the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. In recognition of her exceptional work with Compassion, Vancouver dedicated 12 days in which to dialogue about compassion, in a variety of ways, throughout the city.
The Charter for Compassion begins:
“The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”
(The complete Charter is available here.)
.
Karen Armstrong – Simon Fraser University – March 22, 2012
.
Those of us who watched Ms. Armstrong’s acceptance of the SFU award, discussed, at its completion, how we envisioned enhancing compassion in our community. Though time may provide a more profound conclusion, most of us agreed that Compassion is an inner condition through which each of us may filter our actions and exchanges throughout the community. In support of this commitment, the local book club, one of 500 worldwide, will again offer a study of Karen’s 12 steps to compassion.
Our group may have been influenced by the Rev. Alisdair Smith, Deacon and Business Chaplain for Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver. As he introduced Karen, he shared a phenomenal story about a dear friend – a woman who suffers from severe bouts of depression. She gave Alisdair permission to share her story with us.
In my words:
The depression became severe enough that the woman knew she had to go to the hospital. With all the courage, will and determination she could muster, she called an ambulance.
A male attendant rode quietly beside her in the back of the ambulance. As the vehicle wound its way through traffic, the man remained silent, but dutifully attended to any concern for comfort or safety.
After some time, he turned to face her. He held her hand and looked into her eyes. He said, “We are almost at the hospital. I want to tell you that while I have been in your presence, I have discerned that you are a very creative, kind and intelligent woman.
Therefore, when we arrive, I will step out of this ambulance and wait for you to take my hand so you may step down on your own. We will walk together to Emergency and you will hold your head high with the dignity that is yours to claim. There is no reason or need to be or feel embarrassed.
Are you willing?”
The woman did exactly as he suggested. Her life was transformed.
Though she is still plagued with depression, it only takes a moment to reflect on this incredible act of compassion, performed by a stranger, that dispelled and diminished the degree of debilitating power that depression would otherwise demand.
I watched Karen Armstrong’s Ted Talk in 2008. I became a member of the Charter for Compassion in 2009. I committed to being a compassionate person.
Big deal, I thought. That’s not doing much for the Charter.
I found out it is.
Especially if we each do our best with every opportunity that inevitably comes our way.
I keep forgetting about the hummingbird and the forest fire.
© 2012, essay – Amy Nora Doyle, All rights reserved
© photos ~ courtesy of A Charter for Compassion, all rights reserved, used here under fair use
If you have the time for this 22 minute video, you might find it gratifying to hear Ms. Armstrong’s TED award acceptance. J.D.
By Charles W. Elliot
Posted here with the permission of Buddhist Global Relief
The simplest act of eating a piece of fruit is inevitably embedded in a complex web of systems: economic, agricultural, financial, and environmental. In attending mindfully to this act, we can discern myriad interdependent phenomena: the beginningless origins of its seeds, the earth from which the fruit grew, the laboring hands that brought the food to our table. The same mindfulness will show how our own lives depend upon the efforts of others, the essential kindness of countless strangers. And in recalling this kindness, we should be ready to take steps to repay it. One such way is to carefully consider the needs of others, and where we find that basic human needs remain unmet because of injustice, we should be motivated to act.
The Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition states that “society today already possesses sufficient resources, organisational ability and technology and hence the competence to [eradicate hunger].” While food supplies are abundant, access to that food is not. In 2010, 925 million people suffered from chronic hunger, representing one in seven of a global population approaching 7 billion.
Access to adequate food, as indispensable to basic human survival, is a matter of social justice. One of the earliest pronouncements of global governance on fundamental human rights was the U.N. General Assembly’s simple declaration: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food[.]” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, paragraph 1, 1948.) If food has been recognized as a human right since the end of World War II, and if society has the resources and competence to end hunger, we should ask ourselves: why are so many millions still hungry?
Of course, there is no single answer to that question. Like all other phenomena, the persistence and spread of human hunger is a complex dependent-arising involving many interwoven causes. Two disturbing factors are financial speculation, which drove commodity prices sky-high in 2007-2008, and the increasing diversion of crops from food production to biofuel production. Thus, the portion of U.S. corn grown to produce corn-based ethanol rose from 15% in 2006 to an estimated 40% in 2011. Other factors include catastrophic weather conditions such as droughts and floods, and global climate change, which has an adverse impact on water supplies and land, especially in the developing world. At the same time, urban sprawl reduces available farmland, while the urban middle class consumes more meat and processed food, which in turn demands more land, water, and energy.
While resources for food dwindle, governmental policies, particularly in the West, have become increasingly hostile to the poor. The shredding of social safety nets puts at risk an ever-larger number of people who need help in the face of poor economic conditions. Last year, about 25% of the House of Representatives voted to eliminate foreign food aid. Such policies appeal to the notion that the world is a zero-sum game, that any help we offer another family will mean that we get less and that we cannot afford fairness. Here in the U.S. help for the poor is in jeopardy. In my home state of Pennsylvania, food stamp use has risen 50% from 1.2 million people in 2008 to 1.8 million today. Despite the increasing need driven by the Great Recession, the current governor proposes to disqualify anyone with assets of more than $5,500—for example, a bank account or a second car—from food stamp eligibility. As a result, it is estimated that 4,023 Pennsylvania households will lose their food stamp benefits on May 1 of this year.
Battling institutional and entrenched social injustice helps alleviate hunger because poverty is at the root of hunger, and the root cause of poverty is powerlessness: the “powerlessness of those who lack resources such as land and water to grow food, jobs to earn money to buy food, an adequate food safety net and food reserves, and adequate nutrition.” (The Downward Spiral of Hunger: Causes & Solutions)
There are many small steps we can take to end hunger, but we must be prepared to respond to the call of conscience to help others and to restore social justice. A key step is to rebuild and enhance small-scale local food systems and turn away from globally concentrated control of food production and distribution. Ultimately, we should reject the domination of agriculture by large corporate agribusiness, and confront corporate attempts to control the very seeds of life with their patented genetically-modified “single generation” seeds.
At the neighborhood scale here in the U.S., community food gardens are springing up even in major cities like New York City and Detroit. Food waste and post-harvest losses could be remedied to make more food available to those in need. Greater investment in small-scale agriculture in rural areas and urban agriculture in the cities would empower the poor and hungry.
At Buddhist Global Relief, we are taking our own small steps. For example, we provide village-scale training in intensified rice cultivation to rural farmers in Cambodia and Vietnam, helping to build their capacity and confidence in applying sustainable agriculture techniques. These techniques dramatically boost yields without expensive external inputs. BGR funds tools and seeds to impoverished families in Cambodia to grow cash crops and home vegetable gardens. Following each harvest, each family then gives the same amount of seed they received to another local family, thus establishing a community of mutual support. BGR helps train villagers in Kenya and Malawi in small-scale agricultural techniques that nurture healthy soil fertility, produce high yields, conserve resources, and meet the basic need of people to independently feed themselves.
Such small steps, taken collectively by Buddhist Global Relief and countless others, are helping to empower the poor, reduce poverty, and alleviate the suffering of hunger. Neither the complexity of the manifold causes of hunger nor the daunting statistics of global poverty should deter us from acting out of compassion and generosity. In the Buddhist tradition, the embodiment of compassion, Avalokiteshvara – Guanyin – Kwannon, is often depicted not just with a thousand eyes to gaze upon the suffering in the world, but with a thousand hands to aid those who suffer. Of course, not even a thousand arms are enough to help the billion people who suffer from hunger. But if we recognize each motivated human heart as the eyes and hands of Avalokiteshvara, each of us acting in our own way, in our own communities, might yet help to end hunger in our generation.
Charles W. Ellliott, a member of the Board of Directors of Buddhist Global Relief, is a lawyer practicing environmental, land use, and human rights law.
© 2012, photo and essay, Buddhist Global Relief, All rights reserved
Ashok Zamon is a spiritual explorer and freelance writer living in Shanghai who, in this detailed post, brings us a view of the ancient practice of Buddhism as it is rekindled in modern China. For those readers who are not entirely familiar with Buddhist concepts, this well-written feature incidentally provides excellent definition of mindfulness. The post includes stunning and evocative photographs by Mr. Zamon’s partner, Anya.
The blog is just three months old and already contains a wealth of information and insight. I’m grateful to have “Into the Bardo” as a means to provide an introduction to “The Beyond Within” and it’s very excellent writer. J.D.
I was going to blog from the temple, but of course it ended up panning out differently. It was a wonderful weekend and it’s great to see how things are progressing there. The last couple of days I’ve been putting together the piece for Vantage Magazine, and here is the draft that I’m turning in. It’s a bit of a rewrite of the Emergent Buddhism piece for a more public audience. We’ll see what the editing process will do to it. I had to take a knife to it myself and cut about 500 words, always a hard thing to do. Hopefully Vantage will just tidy it up a bit and help it flow. It’s obviously for a more mainstream audience, so there were many aspects that I could only really allude to rather than express directly, and plenty of details that I had to leave out all together, but hopefully…
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A bit of inspiration from Pat Cegan with which to begin the weekend.
One-by-one, my days unfold
like petals of the finest rose,
blooming into the Flower of Life,
sacred moments of ordinary acts
made Divine when done with
loving intent.
© photo and poem, 2012 Charles Martin, All rights reserved
it was just a matter of time
by
Charles Martin (Read Between the Lines)
i’ve begun
to
believe
that night
is day
and
day
is night
that
philosophical
point
that
one
can be
convinced
to
believe
anything
like
it’s okay
that
collateral damage
for
profit
includes
born
and
unborn
children
© portrait, 2010 Charles Martin All rights reserved
Charles Martin – a fine poet of social conscience has been blogging since January 17, 2010 and no doubt writing poetry all his life. This is the third poem he has graced us with and we know you are as pleased with his work as we are. Charles is a photographer and poet living in SoCal. He enjoys world travel and is concerned about humanitarian issues. He is trained as a Speech and a Language Pathologist. (M.S. & Ph.D.) We highly recommend regular visits to his blog, Reading Between the Minds.
BLAGA TODOROVA
EDITOR’S NOTE: Continuing our tradition of serving up the arts (they are spiritual expression after all) and as a special treat for Valentine’s Day, we’re grateful to share a wistful, romantic poem by Blaga Todorova. Given her gift of poem, perhaps it is appropriate that she shares her name with the renowned Bulgarian poet and the former president of Bulgaria, Blaga Dimitrova.
Blaga Todorova says she “discovered the power of breathing the words of poetry recently, still trying to define my style and improve the language and the emotions offered to the readers.” Blogging since September of 2010, she’s quickly gained a loyal and sustained following. Her work has been picked up by several online literary arts magazines.
Though living in Athens, Greece, she was born in Bulgaria and studied engineering at college. Her great loves are poetry, travel, and languages. In addition to her native tongue, Blaga is fluent in Spanish, Greek, and English. She comes late to English (her preferred language for writing), having taught herself by reading an English copy of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath alongside a Bulgarian copy. Her inspiration is often “the souls of places worth visiting and remembering” and Pablo Neruda who “has left a big mark in my heart. I hope one day to reach the same level of master writing.” Visit Blaga at BrokenSparkles. J.D.
THE SMILE OF THE MOON AND SOME GREEN EYES
by
Blaga Todorova (BrokenSparkles)
I stared at the moon last night,
her full, silver smile
tickling the shy sky
and I thought,
she must’ve seen you,
somewhere,
walking along Arroyo Seco
or camping,
by Lake Tear of the Clouds;
Your eyes
in green and sparkles,
locking virgins and darkness
in flames, fierce,
and those lips,
musings for the skin;
your hands,
binding sunsets and memories
of a past in oblivion.
Seasons have changed, twice,
from the blooming sour cherries
to the summer rain,
from the lush grapes in vineyards
to the window crystals
carving winter life,
I’ve lost the count on
nonsense and lonely nights,
on loves dying without
honesty and candle lights,
but I still remember
the shade of green in your eyes.
© 2012, photograph and poem, Blaga Todorova, All rights reserved
The BeZine 