See, Young Hunters

“A poor man takes the songs in his hands, / And sets them near the place where the sun sets. / See, young hunters, run to them, / Take them in your hands / And place them ... under the sunset.

”This is a song for a Papago puberty rite.  It makes more sense when one learns that Creator comes from “under the sunset” in their mythology.  The word “songs” refers to all the myth and ethos stories, because in oral traditions these stories are easier to remember when they are chanted.  A “poor man” is a revered elder.

Corporations are not People

Civilized

Embrace life

El Agua

Speaking the truth

Attentional Focus

"Our will, our volition, our karma, constitutes the essential core of the active part of mental experience. It is the most important, if not the only important, active part of consciousness. We generally think of will as being expressed in the behaviors we exhibit: whether we choose this path or that one, whether we make this decision or that. Even when will is viewed introspectively, we often conceptualize it in terms of an externally pursued goal. But I think the truly important manifestation of will, the one from which our decisions and behaviors flow, is the choice we make about the quality and direction of attentional focus. Mindful or unmindful, wise or unwise-no choice we make is more basic, or important than this one."

One Common Mind

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series

""Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." -Gandhi

"Keeping Quiet"

By Pablo Neruda,

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,

let's not speak in any language;

let's stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victories with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about; . . .

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead in winter

and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

--Pablo Neruda, "Keeping Quiet'

Howard Zinn

"If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther and farther away.  Today, walking alone, I meet him everywhere I step.  He is the same as me, yet I am not him.  Only if you understand it in this way will you merge with the way things are."

-- Tung Shan

Let your thoughts precede you

"The Western tradition represents body because it's always looking at things out here at arm's length. It's using microscopes, it using all kinds of tools to look at things, to take them apart. That's changing, but this has been the understanding. The Eastern approach uses Spirit - you meditate, you breath, you apprehend the nature of the Universe through your Spirit. I think the Native American tradition, at least the one that I understand and grew up in represents Mind. Because, as I say, you let your thoughts precede you. You let your thoughts flow into that circumstance to understand it."

-- Paula Underwood Spensor Oneida tradition.

Proverb

Nor does truth

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life 

and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice 

than 'try to be a little kinder.' "

~ Aldous Huxley

"No revolution in outer things is possible without prior revolution in one's inner way of being. Whatever change you aspire to in your affairs must be preceded by a change in heart, an active deepening and strengthening of your resolve to meet every event with equanimity, detachment, and innocent goodwill. When this spiritual poise is achieved within, magnificent things are possible without."

--The Book of Changes, Chapter 40 (version by Brian Browne Walker)

Sacred Space

"To have a sacred place is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody or what they owe you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be...This is the place of creative incubation. At first, you may find nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen."

--Joseph Campbell

Beginners

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
Carl Sagan

Milky Way Monument

The Man Watching
by Rilke - translated by Robert Bly

 I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Hopeful

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives."
- Howard Zinn

 The word "genius" in its Latin originality means simply, "the spirit of a place." The genius of an individual lies in the inhabitation of their peculiar and particular spirit in conversation with the world. Genius is something that is itself and no other thing. The task is simple and takes a life pilgrimage to attain - to inhabit our life fully, just as we find it, and in that inhabitation, let everything ripen to the next stage of the conversation. We do this because that is how we make meaning and how we make everything real.
David Whyte, from "Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work As a Pilgrimage of Identity"

"Seeing the tremendous importance of science and recognizing its inevitable dominance in the modern world fundamentally changed my attitude to it from curiosity to a kind of urgent engagement. .... I wanted to understand science because it gave me a new area to explore in my personal quest to understand the nature of reality. I also wanted to learn about it because I recognized in it a compelling way to communicate insights gleaned from my own spiritual tradition."

- The Dalai Lama, in The Universe in a Single Atom  

A young monk came to live in the monastery where Ajahn Chah was practicing. The people who lived in the town outside the monastery were holding a series of festivals in which they sang and danced all night long. When the monks would rise at three thirty in the morning to begin their meditation, the parties from the night before would still be going strong. At last, one morning the young monk cried out to Ajahn Chah, 'Venerable One, the noise is interrupting my practice - I can't meditate with all this noise!; 'The noise isn't bothering you, ' Ajahn responded. 'You are bothering the noise.' As Lushtak put it to me, 'Silence is not a function of what we think of as silence. It's when my reaction is quiet. What's silent is my protest against the way things are.'

Ajahn Chah

John Fire 0n Being Civilized

Every father

"If there is a shadow of a doubt someplace, that will cause a weakness."
-- Wallace Black Elk, LAKOTA
In the Spiritual World there is a spiritual Law. The Law says; like attracts like. This means whatever mental picture we hold inside our minds we will attract from the Universe. To make this Law work we must maintain a constant picture. If we picture or vision something, and along with this picture we have doubting thoughts, our vision will not happen and we will get EXACTLY what we picture or vision. The Law always works. A doubting vision will not materialize what we want. A vision without doubt will always happen. This is a spiritual Law

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.Marianne Williamson in "A Return to Love"

Nearly Mythical

"The teachings of all the world's great wisdom traditions remind us that we have both an ordinary and a extraordinary identity, a personal and a universal nature, a self that is anchored in both the relative world of conditioned appearances, and also within the absolute dimension that is the mysterious, imperceptible source or ground of being that gives rise to all things and all beings. Interestingly, an analogue of this view is alluded to by our colleagues in modern cosmology and physics, who often remind us that only 4 percent of the universe is measurable, and that the remaining 96 percent exists as "dark energy" and "dark matter" which are both nearly mythical in their undefinability."
-Michelle and Joel Levey, excerpted from Reflections on Wisdom, Wellness, and Wholeness

We move toward turbulence and doubt

"On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky.  Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can.  We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is.   At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down.  With us move millions of others, companions in awakening from fear.  

Pema Chodron

  

"Only a spontaneous feeling of empathy with others can really
inspire us to act on their behalf. Nevertheless, compassion does not arise mechanically. Such a sincere feeling must grow gradually, cultivated within each individual, based on their own conviction of its worth. Adopting a kind attitude thus becomes a personal matter. How each of us behaves in daily life is, after all, the real test of compassion."
--The Dalai Lama

"When you listen to your body   you eavesdrop on the mind of the universe" - Deepak Chopra "The more you listen, the more you will hear. The more you hear, the more and more deeply   you will understand." - Kyentse Rinpoche

A dialogue between philosopher Krishnamurti and physicist David Bohm

Krishnamurti: "Through insight the activity of the cells that

   dominate consciousness in the brain can change - insight

   being out of time.

Bohm: This insight will be through the action of the mind,

   intelligence, and attention.

K: When there is that insight, intelligence wipes away suffering.

B: ...there is a contact from mind to matter which removes the

   whole physical chemical structure which keeps us going on

   with suffering.

K: That's right. In that ending, there is a mutation in the

   brain cells.

B: That mutation just wipes out the whole structure that makes

   you suffer...

K: Matter is limited, thought is limited.

B: But we are saying that the pure energy of mind is able to

   reach into the limited energy of man.

K: Yes, that's right, and change the limitation."

-- From "Limits of Thought" by J. Krishnamurti and physicist David Bohm

"I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out until sundown for going out I found was really going in.  When we try to pick anything out by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

John Muir