Individual Awareness, One Mind

At present, people create barriers between each other by their fragmentary thought. Each one operates separately. When these barriers have dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they are all one unit, but each person also retains his or her own individual awareness. That one mind will still exist even when they separate, and when they come together, it will be as if they hadn't separated. It's actually a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another. If you had a number of people who really pulled together and worked together in this way, it would be remarkable. They would stand out so much that everyone would know they were different."  ~David Bohm (physicist, philosopher, & mystic)

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. - From Genjo Koan, translated by Robert Aitken Roshi

Helen Keller

Biosphere

Our relatives

Must ask

"All things are tied together. When you cut the trees whose roots connect with everything, you must ask its forgiveness or a star will fall out of the sky."  ~ Lacandon Maya Indian Elder

Fooled again

Non-violence

Anger

Anger is just a bunch of thoughts. Angry is the feeling of those thoughts. Although it is our tendency to identify with anger, we must disassociate from the malevolent aspects of anger. Anger and feeling angry distorts reality. When anger fills our mental landscape, we project its distorted reality on people and events. When we identify with anger, we cannot dissociate from it. We perpetuate a vicious circle each time we see or remember that which makes us angry. To deal with anger we must avoid identifying with the trigger for our anger.

Wise words for the day:

"A good man gone wrong is usually a bad man found out.”        

Example

Mental attitude

  

"The most important factor in maintaining peace within oneself, in the face of any difficulty, is one's mental attitude. If it is distorted by such feelings as anger, attachment or jealousy, then even the most comfortable environment will bring one no peace. On the other hand, if ones attitude is generally calm and gentle, then even a hostile environment will have little effect on ones own inner peace. Since the basic source of peace and happiness is ones own mental attitude, it is worthwhile adopting means to develop it in a positive way.

~ Dalai Lama

Hozho

Home

To Be Strong

Meditate

"The more and more you listen,

the more and more you will hear.

The more you hear,

the more and more deeply you will understand."

~ Jamyang Kyentse Rinpoche

Civilized

Voltaire

THOSE WHO CAN CONVINCE YOU TO BELIEVE ABSURDITIES CAN CONVINCE YOU TO COMMIT ATOCITIES. (VOLTAIRE)

Books are magic

National Library Week

“You know, the more you know about something, the less you will fear it.” (Anonymous)

Security

"Security is mostly a superstition, it does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men (and women) as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!"  --Helen Keller

A Separate Reality

"We are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness. 

 We are not objects. We have no solidity. We are boundless. 

The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us.  

We or rather our reasons, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in a lifetime.  We are perceivers.  

The world that we perceive though is an illusion.  It was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born."

~ Don Juan

Comprehend

"When I was born in 1895, reality was everything you could see, smell, touch and hear. The world was thought to be absolutely self-evident. When I was three years old, the electron was discovered. That was the first invisible. It didn't get in any of the newspapers; (nobody though that would be important!)  Today 99.99 percent of everything that affects our lives cannot be detected by human senses. We live in a world of invisibles. The fact that...humanity does not understand nature is the prime reason for humanities failure to exercise its option to attain universally sustainable physical success on this planet ... I am confident that humanity's survival depends on all our willingness to comprehend feelingly the way nature works.

Vietnam

π

Black Elk

Pontiac

Syllogisms

AD HOMINEM:

Latin for "to the man." An arguer who uses ad hominems attacks the person instead of the argument. Whenever an arguer cannot defend his position with evidence, facts or reason, he or she may resort to attacking an opponent either through: labeling, straw man arguments, name calling, offensive remarks and anger.

ARGUMENTUM AD BACULUM: An argument based on an appeal to fear or a threat. (e.g., If you don't believe in God, you'll burn in hell)

ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIUM: A misleading argument used in reliance on people's ignorance.
ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM: An argument aimed to sway popular support by appealing to sentimental weakness rather than facts and reasons.

Commands

Difficult

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
— Upton Sinclair

What profits

Compassion

"Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. Compassion cannot be cultivated; it derives neither from intellectual conviction nor from emotional reaction. It is simply there when the wholeness of life becomes a fact that is truly lived."

~ Vimala Thakar

Pooh

Ira

Listen

Reason

Trees

Zinn

Talmud

Elie Wiesel