Journey

May we know that it is the journey that is important. May we find our own truths and the divine within ourselves and in doing so help our fellow travelers to find their own. May we see each other through spirit and not through worldly eyes.
Namaste

Clarity

There is no other task but to know your own original face. This is called independence; the spirit is clear and free. If you say there is some particular doctrine or patriarchy, you’ll be totally cheated. Just look into your heart; there is a transcendental clarity. Just have no greed and no dependency and you will immediately attain certainty.

~ Yen tou

The self

When a lute is played, there is no previous store of playing that it comes from. When the music stops, it does not go anywhere else. It came into existence by way of the structure of the lute and the playing of the performer. When the playing ceases, the music goes out of existence. 

In the same way all the components of being, both material and nonmaterial, come into existence, play their part, and pass away. That which we call a person is the bringing together of components and their actions with each other. It is impossible to find a permanent self there. And yet there is a paradox. For there is a path to follow and there is walking to be done, and yet there is no walker. 

There are actions but there is no actor. The air moves but there is no wind. The idea of a specific self is a mistake. Existence is clarity and emptiness.

~ Visuddhi Magga

Spring wind

What does the spring wind have in mind,
Coming day and night to these groves and gardens?
It never asks who owns the peach and damson trees
But blows away their crimson without a word.

~ Ch'i-chi, "Clouds Should Know Me By Now"

Love

Put away all hindrances, let your mind full of love pervade one quarter of the world, and so too the second quarter, and so the third, and so the fourth.

And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around and everywhere, altogether continue to pervade with love-filled thought, abounding, sublime, beyond measure, free from hatred and ill-will.

~ Adapted from the Digha Nikaya

Afflictions

People who do not know how to practice the way
want to get rid of afflictions.
Afflictions are originally void and null;
you are trying to use the way to seek the way beyond.

~ Pao-chih

Attitude

If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.

~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Transcience

All formations are transient; all formations are subject to suffering; all things are without a self. Therefore, whatever there be of form, of feeling, perception, mental formations, or consciousness, whether past, present, or future, one's own or external, gross or subtle, lofty or low, far or near, one should understand according to reality and true wisdom: "This does not belong to me; this am I not; this is not my Self."

- Anguttara Nikaya and Samyutta Nikaya

In every age

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Whenever dharma declines and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to re-establish dharma.

- Bhagavad Gita 4:7-8

Attachment

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When you keep thinking about sense objects, attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire, the lust of possession that burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgment; you can no longer learn from past mistakes. Lost is the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise, and your life is utter waste.

But when you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you live in the wisdom of the Self.

- Bhagavad Gita 2:62-65

Location

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That which makes the eye see but cannot be Seen by the eye, that is the Self indeed. This Self is not someone other than you.

- Kena Upanishad

Ceaseless births

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At all times and to all creatures
The seed of ceaseless births is desire.
If you must desire, desire freedom from birth.
That will only come by desiring desirelessness.
~ Tirukkural 37:361-362

The weeds

Those who have spent ten or twenty years brushing aside the weeds looking for the way and yet have not see the buddha nature often say they are trapped by oblivion and excitement. What they don't realize is that the substance of this very oblivion and excitement is itself buddha nature.
~ Kao-feng

Development

When tranquility is developed, what purpose does it serve?
The mind is developed.

And when the mind is developed, what purpose does it serve?
Passion is abandoned.

When insight is developed, what purpose does it serve?
Discernment is developed.

And when discernment is developed, what purpose does it serve?
Ignorance is abandoned.

~ Anguttara Nikaya

Discovery

Don't wave lights and incense, or offer flowers and food. He is found effortlessly when worshipped through self-realization alone.

-- Maharamayana

Sic semper tyrannis

China Is Losing a War Over Internet
Beijing Has Prevailed in Battles, but Segment of Society Has Awakened to the Constraints
By Loretta Chao and Jason Dean, The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2009

BEIJING — These appear to be dark days for the Internet in China.

Four months into a crusade against Internet pornography, the government is closing thousands of sites—some pornographic, some not—and tightening rules on who can register Web addresses inside China.

Foreign sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, blocked by censors in the run-up to the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1, remain inaccessible to most Chinese users. Several prominent critics of the state who used the Internet to spread their message have been detained or imprisoned.

Yet this list of casualties obscures a larger truth: The censors are losing. ...

The censors "are winning the battles everywhere," says Isaac Mao, a blogging pioneer based in China and Chinese-Internet researcher, "but losing the war." ...

~ Full Story here

"Some animals are more equal than others"

Russia's News Agency Allegedly Looking To Rebrand Stalin
By Jennifer Wright, Brandchannel, November 9, 2009

Stalin – he gave woman equal rights in Russia! Admittedly, that also meant the right to be massacred horribly as a portion of the 20 million people he purged. But it would seem the Russian government would have you focus on the former rather than the latter. To that end, they’re holding discussions with PR firms, looking to rebrand Stalin as kind of a good guy, according to EUobserver.

In addition to taking pitches on how to generally improve the image of Russia abroad (clue: this is not the right way to go about it), Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reportedly met with PR firms in Brussels to hear ideas for a campaign to rehabilitate Stalin. . . .

Pictured: Joseph Stalin in 1902

Full story here

Middle of nowhere

Infographic of the Day: It's a Small World, Afterall
By Cliff Kuang, Fast Company, October 23, 2009

If you're wondering how "close" two places are, a geographic map doesn't help much anymore. If the airports are good--or if there's a bullet train nearby--hundreds of miles might as well be down the street. Point being, "distance" is now really a function less of geography, than of the transport networks we've invented.

Which is why researchers at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and the World Bank, created this gorgeous map. They first created a model, which calculated how long it would take to travel from a given point, to the nearest city of 50,000 people or more; the model includes rail, road, and river networks. . . .

~ Full story here

Anglo-Saxon gold

Huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure uncovered in UK
By Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press, September 24, 2009

LONDON – It's an unprecedented find that could revolutionize ideas about medieval England's Germanic rulers: An amateur treasure-hunter searching a farmer's field with a metal detector unearthed a huge collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver artifacts.

The discovery sent a thrill through Britain's archaeological community, which said that it offers new insight into the world of the Anglo-Saxons, who ruled England from the fifth century until the 1066 Norman invasion and whose cultural influence is still felt throughout the English-speaking world.

"This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue," Roger Bland, who managed the cache's excavation, told The Associated Press. "It will make us rethink the Dark Ages."

The treasure trove includes intricately designed helmet crests embossed with a frieze of running animals, enamel-studded sword fittings and a checkerboard piece inlaid with garnets and gold. One gold band bore a biblical inscription in Latin calling on God to drive away the bearer's enemies. . . .

~ Full story here

Bravery

Sutton, inspiration of 'Norma Rae' . . . dead at 68
Times-News (Burlington, VT), September 11, 2009

Crystal Lee Sutton, the Burlington (Vermont) resident and former textile mill worker who tirelessly campaigned for workers’ rights and inspired an Oscar-winning film, died Friday.

Formerly known as Crystal Lee Jordan, Sutton died at the Hospice Home of Burlington. She was 68.

In 1975, New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote “Crystal Lee, A Woman of Inheritance,” a book that chronicles Sutton’s life and efforts to unionize employees of the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids in the early 1970s. That story was later adapted into the 1979 film “Norma Rae.”

Sally Field portrayed Sutton and won her first Academy Award.

“Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave struggles have left a lasting impact on this country and without doubt, on me personally,” Field said in a statement Friday. “Portraying Crystal Lee in ‘Norma Rae,’ however loosely based, not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being.” . . .

~ Full article here