aiming for metta

the economics of happiness

2011-02-26T20:51:00.000-04:00

Consider that apples grown in the UK are shipped to South Africa to be waxed and shipped back and sold in English supermarkets. Our food system is broken. Our economic system is broken. So . . . let's fix it. The second half of "The Economics of Happiness" shows some ways forward. Here is an interview an MSNBC with Holena Norberg-Hodge, the creator.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Warm Embrace. Spoken by Thich Naht Hanh

2011-01-24T09:02:00.002-04:00

A Warm Embrace - The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

principles of neurotheology

2010-12-20T13:28:00.002-04:00

We have no choice

2010-12-06T13:09:00.003-04:00

Actually, we do have a choice -- to let nature's limits force the change (not a pretty sight!) or try to adapt our ways, which will mean sacrifice but might help us avoid all out chaos.

This is fabulous! And where do they get these guys that can draw so fast?!

Youth learning about food justice

2010-08-30T12:28:00.001-04:00

You don't have to go to California to take advantage of Bioneers; it's coming to Louisville and check out Beaming Bioneers if you don't live in the bluegrass state.

Picture macho Minnesota voyager guys telling these moose jokes

2010-08-28T17:36:00.002-04:00

The Climate Food Connection

2010-07-22T15:22:00.000-04:00

The Food and Climate Connection from WhyHunger on Vimeo.

Paddle for the Planet and Lady Gaga

2010-05-26T08:49:00.004-04:00

Check out the TV coverage of Paddle for the Planet - a 518-mile canoe expedition down the Mississippi River from its source!

And Colby's latest slide show...

People's Movement Assemblies to Culminate in Giant PMA in Detroit!

2010-04-20T14:32:00.000-04:00

USSF People's Movement Assemblies: Easy as ABC! from US Social Forum on Vimeo.

WHAT IS A PEOPLES MOVEMENT ASSEMBLY?

A People's Movement Assembly (PMA) is a gathering of people (25, 250 or more!) who come together to identify community issues, discuss solutions, and commit to actions.

The Assembly is an organizing tool . . .

BEFORE the FORUM: Communities, movement sectors, and regions will gather, reflect, discuss, and articulate the big issues facing our world as well as explore strategic solutions and alternative practices. Communities make commitments at the Assemblies about how to get to the Forum, what to bring to the Forum, and what to bring back.

DURING the FORUM: Organizations will collaborate to hold Assemblies throughout the five days of the Forum to culminate in a national Peoples Movement Assembly on the last day.

AFTER the FORUM: Coordinated actions across the country! The Assembly process offers the opportunity to collectively create action plans and political directions for our movements in the US, our regions, and our local communities.

Currently Planned People's Movement Assemblies include:

- Border PMA, San Antonio, Texas, February 13, 2010
- Brownsville PMA, Texas, February 20, 2010
- Houston PMA, Texas, February 27, 2010
- Detroit PMA, Michigan, March 13, 2010
- Portland PMA, Oregon, May 8, 2010

Hold the banks accountable!

2010-04-14T21:56:00.002-04:00

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Get directions: Earth to Heaven

2010-02-18T15:37:00.000-04:00

View Heaven on Earth in a larger map

What to do when the top court of the country sells out democracy?!

2010-02-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

Corporation runs for Congress

2010-02-05T15:54:00.001-04:00

The Absurd Notion of One

2010-02-02T22:59:00.001-04:00

the absurd notion of one' from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

Supermarket to the world comes clean!

2010-01-28T09:11:00.004-04:00

youth call for climate sanity

2010-01-04T21:35:00.001-04:00

Farmer's sit-in at FAO World Summit--Rome 16 Nov 2009

2009-11-23T13:55:00.000-04:00

Land Grabbing, Food Sovereignty and Cimate Change are the issues expressed in front of FAO summit in Rome. Interviews with Nettie Wiebe - NFU - Canada ( english), Fausto Torres ATC - Nicaragua (Spanish), Devlin Kuyek GRAIN (english), Philippines activist on hunger strike ( english), Tonino Mancino - Fondazione Mancino - Italy (italian), Hortense Kinkodila-Tombo - Congo Brazzaville (french)

Nicaraguan farmer on CAFTA's impact

2009-10-31T22:31:00.001-04:00

Eddy Gutierrez talks about how trade rules and multinational corporations make it very tough for farmers to survive.

Vanishing Bees!

2009-10-22T14:07:00.000-04:00

Green Revolution to Famine?

2009-09-28T22:16:00.003-04:00

New video about the dangers of the new Green Revolution

enneagramed

2009-08-15T08:51:00.001-04:00

Taking the long test on the Enneagram Institute site confirmed what I knew about myself...

sahena's story from bangladesh

2009-07-13T11:25:00.002-04:00

"Begin" by rumi

2009-06-30T17:37:00.002-04:00

This is now. Now is,
all there is. Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,
feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance
the way branches
of jasmine and cypress
dance in a spring wind.

The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.

~ Rumi ~

tsatsulow freestyle soccer street

2009-05-23T02:05:00.001-04:00

watch and weep

Stop the bullets. Kill the gun.

2009-05-13T08:12:00.001-04:00

No words needed. Kill the gun...

cutting urban wheat

2009-05-03T20:33:00.005-04:00

I had mixed feelings - cut the wheat down to make room for vegetable seedlings or let it dry and rustle all summer? Well, while it did look pretty cool in a breeze, with the food crisis and economic meltdown, some food to eat might just come in handy. So down it went. Brother Stephen's colin- a type of machete used for chopping - was the perfect tool for the job!

global climate disruption

2009-04-24T08:32:00.000-04:00

Theory U and Otto Scharmer

2009-03-25T08:49:00.001-04:00

Not great production, but a good candid interview. Does he seem nervous to you?

Sunny Johnson harvests the wild

2009-02-04T15:38:00.003-04:00

QuickTime | Flash | iPod | Ogg

greening the ghetto

2009-01-20T15:05:00.001-04:00

Majora Carter!

adyashanti and nonduality

2009-01-19T11:46:00.001-04:00

The camera makes him nervous, but he is very clear.

contemplative practice a la Garrison Institute

2009-01-19T11:31:00.002-04:00

Contemplation - the practice of reflecting deeply - transforms one's  state of mind, changing perceptions and opening fresh possibilities  for action. If, as Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the  state of mind that created them, then contemplative practices are an  indispensable part of the solution to today's real-world problems.  Contemplation is not passive or theoretical, but active and practical.  When skillfully applied, it can be a wellspring of social as well as  personal change.

The active ingredient in contemplative practice is direct personal  experience that encompasses more than just rational, logical, or  conceptual content. Authentic contemplative practice generates deep  insight into the essential interdependence of all forms of life and  between life and the inanimate environment. Contemplative perception  awakens unselfish compassion for others, and the combination of  contemplative insight and compassion represents the purest and surest  force for positive social change.

The Garrison Institute believes that contemplative methods will come  to be broadly used as an effective and wise force for cultivating the  essential human qualities of insight, caring, altruism, ethical  behavior, and courage. On an individual level, all people have the  innate capacity to grow and transform to higher orders of  consciousness. On a systems-level, the more intractable or anxiety- producing the problem, the greater the need for contemplative  perspectives on it to help find new, effective, and ultimately  transformative solutions. By giving rise to new vision and wisdom,  contemplation will lead to fundamental and much-needed value shifts in  society. This is true not only of the social and environmental  challenges in our time; a genuine, rigorous, and fruitful intercourse  between Western science and contemplative wisdom is now both possible  and necessary.

The Garrison Institute is home to diverse contemplative methods. While  the visiting teachers of Retreats at Garrison often derive their  practices from wide-ranging spiritual traditions, our Initiatives  apply the secular, non-sectarian contemplative forms best suited to  their goals. For example, Garrison Institute Initiatives have  variously employed breath, walking meditation, techniques for  developing concentration and awareness, attention training and  refinement practices, loving-kindness practice, expressive movement,  visualization, art-making, mindfulness, movement, values-based  conversation and active listening.

mayan calendar explained

2009-01-18T16:10:00.002-04:00

By Ian Lungold

Meet at Natural Bridge State Park!

2008-12-30T17:20:00.004-04:00

Go here to make a reservation.

We'll be going Friday, Jan. 2, staying the night and driving back to Louisville on Saturday evening.

Here are directions from a random Frankfort Ave and Ewing in Louisville to Natural Bridge State Park.

View Larger Map

How many cannibals could your body feed?

2008-11-26T21:04:00.001-04:00

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Sites

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL! or not

2008-09-21T15:00:00.002-04:00

Given the environmental damage, should we drill for oil in some of the most beautiful and precious ecosystems?
The answer seems obvious.

Unless you are waiting for the rapture.

"Wild Mountain Thyme" by Julian

2008-08-13T07:05:00.003-04:00

This is the self-held version filmed live in Kentucky!

And here is a - eh hem - more serious version from Electric Scotland.

learning the camcorder

2008-08-10T15:55:00.001-04:00

Shock Doctrine - Video of Naomi Klein (1 of 6)

2008-07-16T19:44:00.001-04:00

upside of high food prices?

2008-05-12T22:26:00.002-04:00

This interview from WNYC radio's Brian Lehrer Show with Nina Planck and Anna Lappe, co-author of GRUB! looks at cheap versus higher priced food.

Is it right to call it cheap? How else do we pay? LISTEN in...

Capitalism killing democracy?

2008-04-12T13:48:00.010-04:00

The answer may be obvious to some of you, but it helps to have an economist and former U.S. politician say it.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, does a masterful job in his essay called, "How Capitalism is Killing Democracy" of explaining exactly how this happens.

We owe it to those that fought for independence and to future generations to read this and mobilize to reverse the trend!

Louisville citizens arrest George W. Bush on war crimes

2008-01-26T14:07:00.000-04:00

Senator Sanders decries slavery in Florida

2008-01-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

Senator calls for hearings "so that the American people can understand how slavery can take place in the year 2008."

One day after a federal grand jury indicted six people in Immokalee for their part in what US Attorney Doug Molloy called, "Slavery, plain and simple," (Ft. Myers News Press, 1/18/08) US Senator Bernie Sanders declared:

"The headline in today’s newspaper says all that has to be said. In the year 2008, in the United States of America, slavery exists. Human beings are being forced to work against their will, are being beaten, are being denied their most basic freedoms. This should not be happening in the United States in 2008. This exploitation must end."

MLK Jr "I have a dream!"

2008-01-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

Ants that Moved Mountains

2008-01-15T11:16:00.001-04:00

This is an inspiring video about the women of Nueva Vida, Nicaragua who built and now run their own cooperative sewing factory called Fair Trade Zone, the first cooperatively-owned "free trade zone." Don't miss it.

Ever need a good multi-language translator?

2007-12-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

a parable for an empire in collapse

2007-12-08T15:02:00.000-04:00

Photo: Activists helped detainees escape from Woomera during a protest in 2002.

Nauru is a tiny island, population 12,000, a third of the size of Manhattan and despite being in the middle of nowhere has been in the middle of some of the biggest global events.

"This American Life" contributing editor Jack Hitt tells (yes, back in 2003, but I missed it!) the untold story of this dot in the middle of the Pacific.

Highlights include the bankrupting of the Russian economy, global terrorism, North Korean defectors, the end of the world, and the late 1980s theatrical flop of a London musical based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci called Leonardo, A Portrait of Love. And there are 89 Afgani and Iraqi detainees trapped on this island in conditions similar to Guantanemo. The difference? They escaped from the Taliban and Sadam Hussein!

The story is SO worth the $0.95 download because it is a parable, an almost unbelievable story illustrating the dis-eases of our current misguided civilization and its warped, material-entrapped world view.

Interesting to me (at least, because of the name) was the role that Senator Andrew Bartlett of Australia in criticizing the government's treatment of the detainees. Bartlett has been a courageous advocate and human rights champion of refugees and the people trapped on Nauru. A recent blog post of his talks about a hotel guest book and the stories it tells. And you can watch a You Tube video talking about his stances and testimonies from Nauru detainees.

As I can't find the transcript of the radio show, here is a version Hitt did for Utne Reader on Nauru. Toward the end, this question is posed:

Could it be that Nauru will become the first nation-state of the modern age simply to go out of business? Once, Australia offered to give the Nauruans a new island off the Great Barrier Reef. The Nauruans declined, since it would have meant completely surrendering their sovereignty. But it does seem likely that some future leader will have to plan for such a contingency.

2012 and the Mayan calendar of thirteens

2007-12-07T23:08:00.000-04:00

I just finished this fascinating romp of a read by a very human Daniel Pinchbeck - 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. The image is artist Andrew Jones' take of this mystical creature the Mayans called Kukulcan. This segment from page 240 gives a taste of this psychically juicy book, which was a gift from my sister Martha. Thank you Martha!

In The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, the Swedish biologist Carl Johan Calleman, a cancer specialist and former adviser for the World Health Organization, raised the discourse on the ancient time-science of the Maya to a new plateau. According to Calleman’s thesis, the nine levels of the most important Mayan pyramids—the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, the Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal, and the Pyramid of Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl) in Chichen Itza—represent a model of time, from the origin of the universe to the upcoming phase-shift, in which each step, or “Underworld,” is twenty times more accelerated in linear time than the one preceding it.

“The nine-story Mayan pyramids are thus telling us that consciousness is created in a hierarchical way and that each Underworld stands on the foundation of another,” writes Calleman. The initial level, starting thirteen hablatuns or 16.4 billion years ago, proceeds from the inception of matter in the “big Bang,” through the development of cellular life on Earth. During the second step, beginning thirteen alautuns, or 820 million years, ago, animal life evolved out of cells. The third underworld, starting thirteen kinchiltuns or 41 million years ago, saw the evolution of primates and the first, rudimentary use of tools by human ancestors. During the fourth underworld, beginning thirteen kalabtuns or 2 million years ago, tribal organization began among the ancestors of Homo sapiens. During the next underworld, starting thirteen piktuns of 102,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged, developing spoken language. The sixth underworld comprises the Great Cycle of thirteen baktuns, beginning 5,125 years before the approaching birth date, when we created patriarchal civilization, law, and written language—Calleman calls this the National Underworld. The seventh step, dubbed the Planetary Underworld, thirteen katuns or 256 years, beginning in AD 1755, introduced industrialization, electricity, technology, modern democracy, gene splicing, and the atom bomb. Our knowledge became Faustian power over the physical world. The eighth level—the Galactic Underworld—thirteen tuns or 12.8 years, began in 1999, with the development of the Internet into a global communications infrastructure. The final step, thirteen uinals or 260 days, will lead, Calleman believes, to the attainment of “nondual cosmic consciousness” across the Earth. By the end of this Universal Underworld, humanity will have crossed the threshold of the abyss, confronting the shadow projections of the Apocalypse, to become conscious cocreators of reality.

New source of fuel - water!

2007-12-07T16:21:00.001-04:00

What the hay?! Is this for real?

The Story of Stuff - Intro

2007-12-06T16:39:00.001-04:00

This is a 2-1/2 minute intro to The Story of STUFF video - a fast-paced look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. Great illustrations to draw out the connections between environmental and social issues, and the direction we need to go - together - to create a sustainable (for humans and many other species we are fond of). It's a funny, even delightful, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life (forever? or maybe through the Christmas shopping season?!).

Tonglen Collection: Taking and Giving

2007-11-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

Ah, Tonglen. This is a wonderful and challenging practice - at least for me! But worth the effort...

Tonglen from Wikipedia
Tonglen is Tibetan for 'taking and giving', and it refers to a meditation practice found in Tibetan Buddhism.

In the practice, one visualizes taking onto oneself the suffering of others, and giving one's own happiness and success to others. As such it is a training in altruism in its most extreme form.

The function of the practice is to:

reduce selfish attachment
increase a sense of renunciation
create positive karma by giving and helping
develop loving-kindness and bodhicitta, which refers to all of the Six Perfections of giving, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom, which are the practices of a Bodhisattva.

The Practice of Tonglen - Pema Chodron
Transforming Confusion into Wisdom

All-Embracing Compassion: The Heart-Practice of Tonglen

Peter Fox, Tonglen - receiving and letting go
Methodology and stages

Dalando's Favorite Dharma Delicacy
"In with the bad and out with the good" the topsy-turvy world of TONGLEN

How It All Ends

2007-11-19T18:46:00.001-04:00

Interesting and fast-paced logic. Worth a view. It'll hone your thinking...

Crop-circles: non-human, magical, or high-tech?

2007-11-17T10:20:00.000-04:00

I had a book in the early 80s, maybe it was the Aquarian Conspiracy, that had crop circle pictures, but I haven't seen pictures of recent ones until this morning. These are wild!

This one appeared on July 7, 1996, just across from Stonehenge and is called the "Julia set." According to the account, it was made within a 45-minute time-window in the daytime. Given the detail and size, construction of this would normally have taken hours. Stonehenge has guards and many visitors, and you can see it is adjacent to a fairly busy highway. Plus there was a farmhand working the next field - but no one saw it made.

Jonah Ohayv has compiled photos of crop circles that appear more genuine to him. Check them out, if for no other reason than the cool patterns.

Mobilize to end the war

2007-10-24T13:23:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, October 27th there will be 11 massive demonstrations for peace throughout the United States. In Boston, Chicago, Jonesborough, Tennessee, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, people from all walks of life will join together to express their anti-war sentiments and to call for an immediate end to the conflict in Iraq.

How about Louisville?!

Mountaintop Removal Video "Like another planet"

2007-09-20T07:25:00.000-04:00

China holds strings on reincarnation

2007-08-24T10:02:00.000-04:00

According to Newsweek (August 20-27, 2007 issue), "In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission."

Al Queda too issues regular pronouncements on the limits and directions of its adherent’s thoughts and behavior in this current life as well as, more importantly, on their relationship to the afterlife. Certainly their definitive offer of 72 virgins attempts to institutionalize, as does China, management of the ‘world to come’ as well as one’s ultimate resolution of mortality – suicide bombings notwithstanding. An abundance of fat was demanding the death of all disrespectful opposition, of all non-believers, of all sacrilegious iconoclasts further fine tunes their inordinate attempts to micromanage who lives, who dies and who inherits heaven or hell.

Do Christians do this?

Showering in solar hot water

2007-06-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

The Louisville Courier-Journal featured our solar system on the front page of the St. Matthews Neighborhood section.

GAP unveils new 'For Kids By Kids' clothing line

2007-05-14T11:18:00.000-04:00

Leave it to the Onion News Network to peal back the skins of our hypocrisy.

GAP For Kids By Kids

Buy Sweat-Free T's from a worker-owned cooperative in Nicaragua!

Great Moments In Presidential Speeches Compilation

2007-05-02T08:27:00.000-04:00

With these hands I demand the future

2007-04-14T20:00:00.001-04:00

Fast Food, sure. Now we have Fast Fashion?

2007-03-03T16:32:00.000-04:00

Clothes – and fast clothes in particular – are a large and worsening source of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, because of how they are both produced and cared for, concludes a new report from researchers at Cambridge University titled "Well Dressed?" [read the press release for the study]

The global textile industry must become eco-conscious, the report concludes. It explores how to develop a more "sustainable clothing" industry – a seeming oxymoron in a world where fashions change every few months.

You can read the full article here.

We can't make it hear anymore

2007-02-25T10:35:00.000-04:00

James McMurtry, with a voice reminiscent of Bruce Cockburn, sings about class war straight up. While country music may not get your toes tapping, the song is worth a listen.

Choose the top song from the album "Childish Things" here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7548171

It's Sunday morning and I just came across this at npr.org. We are here south of Louisville in a motel with a indoor waterpark, yes, of ALL places. The owner of the bar behind our house didn't want us calling the police in the middle of their 10 - 4 a.m. party with an extra tent outside, so he put us up here.

Next party, we'll send the kids to sleep at Grandma's...

Organic versus Local? - for an iPod

2007-01-28T16:19:00.000-04:00

Newsvine <www.newsvine.com> does a 'Question of the Day' and last week's question generated a phenomenal 151 answers.

The Question:
If given a choice between purchasing either organic produce that has been grown in another country or non-organic produce which has been grown locally, which choice would you make and why?

The chosen winner was 'kurtstack' and here is his answer:

I would go with organic produce which has been grown in another country. Even though purchasing local empowers your local economy the well-being of a local field worker exposed to pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers is worth more than a few extra dollars in his or her pocket. In addition, the number one water pollutant in the United State's are pesticides. The value of everything affected because of these chemicals outweighs the revenue which is generated from non-organic produce which has been grown locally. We must look at the big picture and see what is best for the planet, because without a healthy planet, generations which follow will be asking, what went wrong?

For more answers...
http://questions.newsvine.com/_news/2007/01/24/534940-organic-vs-local#comments

One person replied:

"Produce? Grown? You mean food that isn't red meat, flamin' hot cheetos, oreos, various junk foods, and otherwise artificially made?

You're kidding, right?"

on being firm

2007-01-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

Things might have quickly devolved into an attitude meltdown. At one point, I threw up my hands and said, "Forget it. After the parent-teacher conference, I'm dropping you all off and I'M going for at hike at Mt. St. Francis. I wanted to walk on the lake before the warm weather melted the ice. With 48 predicted for today, and warmer the rest of the week, it was only a matter of time.

Elias wanted to go to Iroquois Park so we could do disc golf and basketball. I want the kids to enjoy the outdoors without always doing a sport. So, finally I put my foot down and said, "We're going to Mt. St. Francis, period. No more discussion." And that is what we did.

Elias tried to bribe me into going out for lunch. "If I don't complain, I get to pick where we go out for lunch, okay?" I said I didn't know. In the end, after making a bird-headed snow man in the middle of the lake, and hiking a couple miles, I convinced them they could choose anything they wanted from Whole Foods to cook up for a mid-afternoon "Linner." Or "Dunch."

The resulting meal was a feast. Julian mashed some lovely new potatoes with salt-pepper, milk and olive oil. I bought four "wild caught" Top Necked Clams, simmered them in Trader Joe's marinara sauce, served it on hot spaghetti noodles, and sprinkled with Parmesan. I also boiled some fresh organic broccoli.

Elias made rolled biscuit dough and we shaped the rolled dough around uncured hot dogs to bake in the 450 degree oven. The hot garlic mustard and organic ketchup perked up those pigs in a blanket. And we finished it off with extra bisquits, lathered with margarine and gobs of wild blueberry jam from Lake Adaquetangie. Yum!

--

"Bobby" - Trailer for the movie

2006-12-27T13:32:00.000-04:00

“Bobby” and Love as the Force of Total Revolution

2006-12-27T13:19:00.000-04:00

"...heroes were dying from bullets and shrapnel. The ones that made the news were being knocked down by assassins. Each time skin was punctured, air escaped from our collective idealism. John Kennedy's head was blown apart, Malcolm X soaked in his blood as his wife mourned over his body, young Robert Kennedy shot down point-blank range, Martin Luther King Jr. crumpled onto the motel cement walk. All my earliest heroes were assassinated.

White police were kicking Blacks. German Shepherds tore their clothes and skin. Fire hoses plastered Black women and men to slum walls. Yet the riots spread through the country. Watts, Harlem, Philadelphia. Then Kent State. Wow. They kill white people too. Rifles on unarmed students - four dead in Ohio."

I wrote these words eighteen years ago with little emotion, but yesterday as I watched the movie "Bobby," the emotions flooded onto my cheeks. My mom and I paid our $3 at the Village 8 and were swept back to those days of turmoil, when racism and violence oozed out of the pores of our society in a country (then and now) seduced by power and progress. More and more to lose, individual and collective anxiety ever growing.

In our ignorance and arrogance, we divide our world into us and them - American and Vietcong, White and Black, rich and poor - spreading suffering in the wake of our stupidity. Many protested against the Vietnam War but already the violence was in us.

Vimala Thakar explains,

"If we are not romantic and sentimental, and do not feel gratified just by reacting emotionally, by expressing how bad the wars are, but rather go deep, won't we find the roots of war in the systems and structures that we have accepted?"

"We will discover that there are systems and structures that inevitably lead to aggression, exploitation, and war. We have accepted aggression as a way of living. We create and entrench ourselves in structures which culminate in wars. Retaining the structures and avoiding wars is not possible. You and I as individuals have to realize how we are responsible, how we cooperate with the systems and thereby participate in the violence and wars. And then we must begin to inquire whether we can discontinue cooperating with the systems, whether we can stop participating in wars, and explore alternative ways of living for ourselves."

She continues,

"We must go to the roots of the problem, to the core of the human psyche, recognizing that collective social action begins with action in individual life. We cannot separate the individual and the society. We each contain the society when we accept the value structure of society, when we accept the priorities worked out for us by governments and the states and the political parties. We are expressions of the collective, repeating the pattern created for us, and we feel happy because we are given physical security, economic security, comfort, leisure, entertainment. We have been trained to be obsessed with the idea of security;..." (Vimala Thakar, "Awakening to Total Revolution: Enlightenment and the World Crisis")

"Bobby" wove the dramatic stories of Mexican kitchen help ("the new niggers") in the Ambassador Hotel, young RFK campaigners dropping acid, Demi Moore as the singer Virginia Fallon, Harry Belafonte as the elderly and lovable Nelson, a couple marrying to avoid frontline duty (the husband played by Bilbo) into the day 42-year-old Robert Kennedy was shot dead. His nasal, high-pitched words of peace and justice were water to the desert of war and social divisiveness.

Bobby spoke of the violence in downtown Cleveland, "...whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded." And linked it to the killing fields of Indochina:

"...we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire." (Robert F. Kennedy, Cleveland, OH, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence")

Bobby described the humiliation that breeds isolation, suffering and violence, which is either internalized, fought out among the oppressed people, or which lashes out at those that oppress.

"For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."

"This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all..."

"...When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered."

"Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence."

"We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge."

In a separate speech, Bobby pointed to the deeper challenge, "Violence breeds violence, retaliation breeds retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls."

So, must we first remove the sickness from our souls?

Or should we first cleanse the society that inculcates the sickness in us?

Vimala Thakar, the Indian spiritual leader and social activist, helps us sort this out. She describes how traditionally there have been two separate approaches:

"One approach takes us toward the social, the economic, the political problems, and says, "Look here, unless the economic and political problems are solved, there will be no happiness and no peace, there will be no end to suffering. It is the responsibility of every individual to engage in solving these problems according to some ideology. Turning toward the inner life, the imbalances and impurities of the inner life, that is not so important, that can be taken care of later on, for it is a self-centered, egoistic activity. But the responsibility is toward the society, toward the human race, so keep aside all those problems of meditation and silence, inner sophistication, transformation for inner revolution-keep all that aside. First turn toward this." And the other approach says, "The political and economic problems cannot be solved unless the individual is transformed totally. Be concerned with your psychological mutation, the inner, radical revolution. The political, the economic, the social problems can wait."

Each fragment has its own set of values - and pitfalls.

"Among many social activists, anger, hatred, violence, bitterness, and cynicism are accepted norms, even though the effectiveness of these motivations for peaceful living has been seriously put in doubt. And indifference to the needs of the poor has had shocking acceptance among generations of spiritual people who considered higher states of consciousness much more significant than the misery of the starving millions."

Going Beyond Fragmentation

"A new challenge awaits us at the beginning of the twenty-first century: to go beyond fragmentation, to go beyond the incompatible sets of values held even by serious-minded people, to mature beyond the self-righteousness of one's accepted approaches and be open to total living and total revolution. In this era, to become a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a luxury that we can ill afford, and to be a social activist without a scientific understanding of the inner workings of the mind is the worst folly."

With this in mind, let us return to the war. Where is it being waged? Is the war only out there? In Iraq? In the Congo? In Somalia? Thakar says, no.

"Viewing the world as a large pieced-together collection of fragments, some of which are labeled as friend and others as foe, begins internally. We map out our internal territories with the same positive or negative designations as we do external territories, and wars go on there as they do in the world. Internally, we are divided against ourselves; the emotions want one thing, the intellect another, the impulses of the body yet another, and a conflict takes place which is no different in quality, although it is in scale, from that of the world wars. If we are not related to ourselves in wholeness, is it any surprise that we cannot perceive the wholeness of the world? If we believe ourselves each to be a patched-together, unmatched assortment of desirable and undesirable features, motives at odds with each other, undigested beliefs and prejudices, fears, and insecurities, will we not project all this on the world?"

Inner Freedom is a Social Responsibility

The path is described by Thakar:

"...the source of human conflict, social injustice, and exploitation is in the human psyche, we must begin there to transform society. We investigate the mind, the human psyche, not as an end in itself, as a self-centered activity, but as an act of compassion for the whole human race. We must move deep to the source of decay in society so that the new structures and social systems we design will have a sufficiently healthy root system that they will have an opportunity to flourish. The structures of society need to be transformed, but the hidden motivations and assumptions on which the structures rest need to be transformed as well. The individual and collective values and motives that give sanction to the injustice and exploitation of modern society must become the focus of change as much as the socioeconomic and political structures. We no longer will be able to allow the motivations and values that underlie personal and collective behavior to remain hidden and unexamined. It serves no lasting purpose for us to change the surface structures and behaviors while the deep foundations remain decadent and unsound."

Getting at those "hidden motivations and assumptions" requires a practice which will help us 'get over ourselves'. Who are you really? Is your mind yours? Those of us in the West, especially, have much individuation to transcend:

"Those of us who have dedicated our lives to social action have considered our personal morality and ethics, our motives and habits, to be private territory. We not only want our personal motivations and habits cut off from public view, but from our own recognition as well. But in truth, the inner life is not a private or personal thing; it's very much a social issue. The mind is a result of collective human effort. There is not your mind and my mind; it's a human mind. It's a collective human mind, organized and standardized through centuries. The values, the norms, the criteria are patterns of behavior organized by collective groups. There is nothing personal or private about them. We may close the doors to our rooms and feel that nobody knows our thoughts, but what we do in so-called privacy affects the life around us. If we spend our days victimized by negative energies and negative thoughts, if we yield to depression, melancholia, and bitterness, these energies pollute the atmosphere. Where then is privacy?"

From here, Vimala Thakar will have the final words. She presents the choice before us - ultimately one of survival for the human race - and lays out an enlightened path. It leads from awareness of oneness, to love, beauty and truth, to the spontaneous movement of compassion, into the mystery of total revolution of our lives and the world.

“We need to learn, as a social responsibility, to look at the mind as something that has been created collectively and to recognize that our individual expressions are expressions of the human mind.

Inner freedom from the past, from the thought structure, from the organized, standardized collective mind, is absolutely necessary if we are to meet one another without mistrust or distrust, without fear, to look at each other spontaneously, to listen to one another without any inhibition whatsoever. The study of mind and the exploration of inner freedom is not something utopian, is not something self-centered, but it is urgently necessary so that we as human beings can transcend the barriers that regimentation of thought has created between us. Then we will perceive ourselves, each as an unlabeled human being; not an Indian, an American, a capitalist, or a communist-but as a human being, a miniature wholeness. We have not yet learned to do that. We are together on this small planet, and yet we cannot live together. Physically we are near one another, and psychologically we are miles apart.

Clearly the social responsibility for arriving at inner freedom is a very relevant issue. We study the mind because we want the harmony of peace to prevail, because we need the joy of love in our hearts, because we care about the quality of life our children will inherit. We do not undertake such study because we want something new and esoteric for the ego, some transcendental experiences to enhance our self-image. We study the mind as a social responsibility; we recognize that the roots of violence, injustice, exploitation, and greed are in the human psyche, and we turn our clear, precise, objective attention there.

We are related organically, and we have to live that relationship. To be attentive to the dynamics of the inner being is not creating a network of escapes to avoid responsibility. It is not continuing a false superiority that I am sensitive and you are not. It is simply recognizing that our personal relationships and collective relationships are miserable affairs, and that these relationships stimulate fear and anxieties and throw us on the defensive. However much we yearn for peace, emotionally we are not mature enough for peace, and our immaturity affects everything we do, every action we take, even the most worthy of actions.

The elimination of inner disorder takes place in the lives of those who are interested in being truly creative, vital, and passionate whole human beings, and who recognize that inner anarchy and chaos drains energy and manifests in shabby, shoddy behavior in society. To be attentive requires tremendous love of living. It is not for those who choose to drift through life or for those who feel that charitable acts in society justify ugly inward ways of being. The total revolution we are examining is not for the timid or the self-righteous. It is for those who love truth more than pretense. It is for those who sincerely, humbly want to find a way out of this mess that we, each one of us, have created out of indifference, carelessness, and lack of moral courage."

The Choice Is Ours

Most of us are not aware of our motivations for living or our priorities for action. We drift with the tides of societal fashions, floating in and out of social concerns at the whim of societal dictates and on the basis of images created by the media or superficial, personal desires to be helpful, useful persons. We are used to living at the surface, afraid of the depths, and therefore our actions and concerns about humanity are shallow, fragile vessels easily damaged. Ultimately most of us are concerned chiefly with our small lives, our collection of sensual pleasures, our personal salvation, and our anxiety about sickness and death, rather than the misery created by collective indifference and callousness.

We have reached the point, however, where we no longer have the luxury to indulge in self-centered comfort and personal acquisition or to escape into religious pursuits at the cost of collective interests. For us there can be no escape, no withdrawal, no private arena in which we can turn our backs on the sorrows of humanity, saying, "I am not responsible. Others have created a mess; let them mend it." The writing on the world's wall is plain: "Learn to live together or in separateness you die!" The choice is ours.

The world today forces us to accept, at least intellectually, our oneness, our interrelatedness. And more and more people are awakening to the urgency of arresting the accelerating madness around us. As yet, however, our ways of responding are superficial, unequal to the complexities of the challenge. We do not take or even consider actions that threaten our security or alter our habitual ways of drifting through life. If we continue to live carelessly, indifferently, emphasizing private gain and personal indulgence, we are essentially opting for the suicide of humanity.

We can become involved in many acts of social service, according to our resources, without ever moving one inch from the center of our private interests; in fact, the very act of social service typically enhances self-image and self-centeredness. But we cannot become involved in true social action, which strikes at the roots of problems in the society and in the human psyche, without moving away from ego-centered motivation. We must look deep into the network of personal motivations and discover what our priorities are. Our yearning for peace must be so urgent that we are willing to free ourselves from the immaturity of ego-centered action, willing to grow into the sane maturity required to face the complex challenges that affect our existence. If we are motivated by desire for acceptance either by the dominant culture or the counterculture, clarity of right action and passion of precise purpose will not be there. We may be praised for our contributions, but unless there is a deep awareness of the essence of our lives, a penetrating clarity about the meaning of human existence, our contributions will not penetrate to the roots of human misery.

To be ready for social responsibility, we will have to be mercilessly honest with ourselves. Wherever we are, we are responsible to resist injustice, to be willing to put our comforts, securities, our lives at stake in fearless non-cooperation with injustice and exploitation. If we adopt all the habit patterns of the enslaved-the fear, the acceptance of tyranny, the intellectual and emotional blindness to injustice-we deserve the inevitable consequences that are descending upon us in a dark storm cloud. If we are submissive, clinging to our small islands of security, naturally terror will reign. If we are willing to allow all others to perish-the peoples of other countries, races, castes, cultures, religions; the other creatures of the earth-so that we may flourish and endlessly increase our network of pleasures and comforts, obviously we are doomed to rot and decay. The callousness of letting others be abused so that our petty little lives will be undisturbed, so that all the comforts of a lovely home, pleasant meals, and good entertainment will not be threatened, portends doom for us all.

When we come face-to-face with the actualities of human and planetary suffering, what does the powerful moment of truth do to us? Do we retreat into the comforts of theories and defense mechanisms, or are we awakened at the core of our being? Awareness of misery, without defense structures, will naturally lead to action. The heart cannot witness misery without calling the being to action, without activating the force of love. We may not act on a global or national scale; it may be only on a community or neighborhood scale-but act, respond, we must. Social responsibility flowers naturally when we perceive the world without the involvement of the ego-consciousness. When we relate directly to suffering, we are led to understanding and spontaneous action-but when we perceive the world through the ego, we are cut off from direct relationship, from communion that stirs the deepest level of our being.

The Force of Love Is the Force of Total Revolution

A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely felt to be the misery of all. The force of love is the force of total revolution. It is the unreleased force, unknown and unexplored as a dynamic for change.

We have moved very far away from love in our collective lives, dangerously near destruction, close to starvation. Perhaps we have the wisdom now, the awareness that love is as essential to human beings as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Love is the beauty, the delicate mystery, the soul of life, the radiant unspoiled purity that brings spontaneous joy, songs of ecstasy, poems, paintings, dances, dramas to celebrate its indescribable, never-to-be-fully-captured bliss of being. Can we bring love into the marketplaces, into the homes, the schools, the places of business, and transform them completely? You may call it a utopian challenge, but it is the only one that will make a significant difference or that is fully worthy of the potential of whole human beings.

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.

Compassion does not manifest itself when we live on the surface of existence, when we try to piece together a comfortable life out of easily available fragments. Compassion requires a plunge to the depths of life-where oneness is reality and divisions merely an illusion. If we dwell at the superficial layers of being, we'll be overly conscious of the apparent differences in human beings on the physical and mental level, and of the superficial difference in cultures and behavior. If we penetrate to the essentials, however, we will discover that there is nothing fundamental that differentiates any human being from another, or any human being from any other living creature. All are manifestations of life, created with the same life principles and nurtured by the same life-support systems. Oneness is absolute reality; differentiation has only transitory, relative reality.

It is not sufficient that a few in society penetrate to the depths of living and offer fascinating accounts about the oneness of all beings. What is necessary in these critical times is that all sensitive and caring people make a personal discovery of the fact of oneness and allow compassion to flow in their lives. When compassion and realization of oneness becomes the dynamic of human relationship, then humankind will evolve.

We are suffering throughout the world in the darkness of the misery we have created. By believing in the fragmentary and the superficial, we have failed to live together in peace and harmony, and so darkness looms very large on the horizon. It's in such darkness that common people such as you and I feel the urgency to go deeper, to abandon superficial approaches that are inadequate and to activate the creative forces available to each of us as expressions of wholeness. The vast intelligence that orders the cosmos is available to all. The beauty of life, the wonder of living, is that we share creativity, intelligence, and unlimited potential with the rest of the cosmos. If the universe is vast and mysterious, we are vast and mysterious. If it contains innumerable creative energies, we contain innumerable creative energies. If it has healing energies, we also have healing energies. To realize that we are not simply physical beings on a material planet, but that we are whole beings, each a miniature cosmos, each related to all of life in intimate, profound ways, should radically transform how we perceive ourselves, our environments, our social problems. Nothing can ever be isolated from wholeness.

There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual."

at the hermitage

2006-12-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

~
~ ~
~ ~ ~
The lake. Raining. Raining on the lake.

Raindrops, millions, dance geometric.
Each rippling circle,
a life and a death,
immortally flatten
flatten on the lake's skin.

Something pulls my gaze.
Movement?
or is it condensed life?
bound tighter, clumped together,
entropy defeated for now.

a beaver
scurries along the bank,
pushes into the lake
ducks its head
into the water
arching black back
glistens for an instant
gone beneath the surface.

Lake. Lake.

Then head pops up elsewhere,
an extra splash (it seems to me)
of joy in the task,
absorbed and ecstatic.

V-shaped wavelets
follow him around
around the bend.

Gone.

Until there,
here,
again. Again.

Raining on the lake. Raining. The lake.

solar hot water!

2006-12-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

A large FedEx truck pulled up with my new solar water heating panels and components yesterday. It took us an hour and a half, a bruise on the shin, two crushed fingers, a popped lens on my glasses, and an aching back today to get those 906 pounds of stuff from the truck into my mom's garage. Actually two solar systems. My mom bought one too.

In the spring, brother David will drive his veggie VW Gulf down from Finland, Minnesota to install the systems. We are his guinea pigs! I'll get to learn how to do it. Or I'll learn how to deal with the sorrow of dropping a 160-pound panel from my 30-foot tall roof peak through the roof below!

Here is the system we bought - http://www.heliodyne.com/SHW/SHW.html

I'll post a picture of the FedEx truck driver later...

The Democracy School: An Introduction

2006-11-22T21:00:00.001-04:00

Townships in Pennsylvania are taking constitutional rights of personhood away from corporations, and giving those rights back to human beings. The Legal Defense Fund provides the analysis and tools to take back democracy.

footprint of nations

2006-11-20T20:35:00.000-04:00

Overshoot: World's Ecological Footprint Exceeds Biocapacity by Nearly 40%

The Ecological Footprint is a measure of the amount of nature it takes to sustain a given population over the course of a year. According to the new 2005 Footprint of Nations report (pdf), humanity’s footprint is 57 acres per person while the Earth’s biological capacity is just 41 acres per person. By comparing a population’s footprint with its biological capacity, Ecological Footprint analysis suggests whether or not that population is living within its ecological means. If a population’s footprint exceeds its biological capacity, that population is said to be engaging in unsustainable ecological overshoot.

The new Footprint 2.0 is a great educational tool created by Redefining Progress to measure how much of the Earth's carrying capacity it takes to sustain humanity's consumption of goods and services. Go to www.ecologicalfootprint.org for the full scoop.

Meatrix II 1/2 - the sequel continues

2006-11-01T11:38:00.000-04:00

Watch The Meatrix II ½, online now!
What happened to Moopheus after being kidnapped in Meatrix 2?
What really goes on in meat processing facilities? And what can you do?
Answers to these questions, plus plenty of Meatrix action and excitement, can be found online at www.moremeatrix.com.

which superhero am I?

2006-10-31T08:42:00.000-04:00

I came out as...

Supergirl

Lean, muscular and feminine.
Honest and a defender of the innocent.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

meta metta: toward sacred activism

2006-10-25T14:17:00.000-04:00

"A new challenge awaits us at the beginning of the twenty-first century: to go beyond fragmentation of the inward and outward, to go beyond the incompatible sets of values held even by serious-minded people, to mature beyond the self-righteousness of one's accepted approaches and be open to total living and total revolution. In this era, to become a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a luxury that we can ill afford, and to be a social activist without a scientific understanding of the inner workings of the mind is the worst folly. Neither approach in isolation has had any significant success."

This essay - Awakening to Total Revolution: Enlightenment and the World Crisis, by Vimala Thakar - is essential reading. The insights here are central to the shift in consciousness we as a species need to make if we are to survive, much less thrive. Thakar points us in the right direction in figuring out approaches and mindsets that will allow us to live out the changes we, on a good day, can envision.

Print it up, take it home, read it with care...
http://www.wie.org/j19/vimala.asp?pf=1

habeas corpus suffers ignoble death

2006-10-04T08:41:00.000-04:00

Democracy is about to take a big hit when Bush signs the shocking bill passed by Congress last Friday.

Why then am I not out on the street protesting?! And why aren't you? What is the expression about you don't know what you've lost until it's gone?

"With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta."

How could this be when Bush himself said in July 2003: "The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."?

How do you spell hypocrisy? (or is it with 2 'c's?)

Do read Molly Ivins's
Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

meditation as sit-down strike

2006-10-02T10:24:00.000-04:00

"It is subversive to gain some control over your desires, especially the excessive kind that have been stimulated by all the advertising messages. It is an act of dissent to sit down and do nothing, to be content with this moment, this breath, this mysterious aliveness. And when you aren't producing or consuming, then you are sabotaging the system. Meditation can be understood as a sit-down strike."

In April of 2001, I did a week-long silent meditation at Spirit Rock led by Joanna Macy and Wes Nisker, and the above is from Wes's book. He is a hilarious Buddhist sit-down comedian. His books are fun and insightful.

gym teacher secretly hates nerds

2006-09-30T16:42:00.000-04:00

Ever felt like you were being singled out for punishment or difficult tasks in gym? Because you weren't as athletic as others? Seems you weren't imagining things. Here is an article that proves it wasn't just paranoia (though people may all be out to get you anyway). The Onion provides the definitive article on the subject.

metta connection: steiner and buddhism

2006-09-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

As soon as I started reading Steiner's How to Know Higher Worlds, I saw the connection. I don't know whether Steiner studied Buddhism or not, but if not, the similarities would be almost miraculous. This essay explains the links - http://southerncrossreview.org/16/kirchoff.htm

More on this later...

Who killed the electric car?

2006-08-18T10:28:00.000-04:00

Engineers modify hybrid cars to get up to 250 mpg

Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away.

Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage.

Read the article from SFGate

Plus, there is a documentary out now called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" playing in the better theaters around the country. Here is a review

Why are Indian cotton farmers committing suicide? And what can be done to help them?

2006-07-15T15:21:00.000-04:00

Burning GMO Cotton in India

On January 10 of this year, Jamuna Ramdas Ade decided she’d had enough. The cotton farmer from the Indian state of Maharashtra was so deep in debt that she swallowed a mouthful of monocrotophos, an insecticide so poisonous it is banned in Europe and the United States.

Read the rest of the article and find out how to help.

Also on the cotton squeeze, see the article about Seydou Coulibaly, a cotton farmer from Mali who was recently in Louisville to meet with local farmers and students. By Rasa Zimliki (Oxfam) and Andrew Kang Bartlett. Download the two-pager here.

post-captivity metta

2006-06-03T16:15:00.000-04:00

Problem: How to help prisoners create changes in their behavior that are sustainable upon release, promote a positive lifestyle, and decrease the likelihood of recidivism?

The Upaya Zen Prison Project teaches meditation as a means of ending the cycle of addiction, violence and incarceration for men, women and youth. Through meditation prisoners learn how to examine and eventually transform the unhealthy habits that have governed their lives up to this point. This is a place where Buddhist rubber hits the road.

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which I've been a member of for many years, has an excellent program on prisons. You can also get all your Socially Engaged Buddhist News on their home page.

mercury for dinner

2006-05-15T18:46:00.000-04:00

Yes, every body of water in my whole state has a mercury advisory. In fact, Kentucky leads the nation in per capita deaths due to power plant pollution. The following letter to the EPA by Ramish Blatt gives an excellent overview.

And the problem is not just Kentucky. The EPA itself has found that as many as 630,000 children are born each year in the US with unhealthy levels of mercury in their blood.

Administrator Mike Leavitt
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Leavitt:

I am writing on behalf of 4600 Kentuckians who are members of the Cumberland (Kentucky) Chapter of the Sierra Club. We are dismayed that the EPA has proposed an extraordinarily industry-friendly and ineffective mercury rule. These weak regulations will not only perpetuate the negative impacts of the toxic chemical across the nation, but will also exacerbate the existing serious pollution problems in our state. We urge you to rescind this rule and come up with more stringent regulations that will protect Kentuckians and their environment.

Read the rest of this letter

Clear the air puts out excellent fact sheets on air pollution. Clicking here will pull up a PDF of the Kentucky one.

Feel free to visit an earlier post -- "Carving the Flesh of the Earth"

no burritos?

2006-05-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

Demonstrator Lubian Piedras holds up a sign while wearing a sombrero at a planned protest in San Diego, California May 1, 2006. In what organizers called 'A Day Without Immigrants,' rallies across the country closed hundreds of restaurants, shops and factories. Construction projects were disrupted, day labor jobs went begging, children stayed home from school and waves of humanity poured through city streets.

REUTERS/Fred Greaves

FBI reviews 1946 public lynching case

2006-04-13T19:06:00.000-04:00

Nearly 60 years after a white mob lynched two black couples on a summer afternoon and got away with it, the FBI is taking another look at the case.

***

Read the complete story on the Newsvine -- 1946 lynching case

immigration hypocricy

2006-04-03T17:21:00.000-04:00

[Letter to the Editor of the Louisville Courier Journal; April 3, 2006]

How long will the debate on immigration reform carry on without addressing the root cause of the demographic phenomenon that has fueled the migration of millions of undocumented workers into the U.S.?

Ask almost any undocumented worker in the U.S. for his/her story. Ask the right questions, and you will invariably discover that economic conditions in his/her home country have worsened in the last 10 to 15 years, accelerating in our closest neighbor, Mexico, since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

Estimates by reliable sources put the number of Mexicans displaced from their former occupations by NAFTA at several million. The beneficiaries, some who helped design NAFTA, include such mega-corporations as Cargill, ADM and Wal-Mart.

Those living in poverty in Mexico increased from some 56 million in 1994 to more than 70 million today. This is because NAFTA allowed U.S. corn exporters to flood the Mexican market below the cost of production (thanks to corporate consolidation, over-production and massive subsidies of U.S. production), and it allowed Wal-Mart to build an estimated 500 superstores in Mexico and purchase hundreds of stores that do not have the Wal-Mart name on them, displacing millions of small family businesses.

Can we wonder why Mexicans have turned up in virtually every corner of the U.S.? Can we blame these hard-working people? All roads lead to Rome. Let us cease to blame the victims of our own policies and cut the hypocrisy. Demilitarize the border. Repeal NAFTA and other policies of economic predation. They harm workers on both sides of the borders. Cease the war on the poor. That is the only long-term solution.

STEPHEN BARTLETT
Louisville, KY

behind closed doors

2006-03-31T07:25:00.000-04:00

From "War Plan--Red," a United States plan for war with the British Empire. The plan was first approved at the cabinet level in 1930. The United States is "Blue," Canada is "Crimson," and the United Kingdom is "red."

The most probable cause of war between RED and BLUE is the constantly increasing BLUE economic penetration into regions formerly dominated by RED trade, to such an extent eventually to menace RED standards of living. The RED race is essentially homogenous, more or less phlegmatic, but determined and persistent when once committed to a policy, and is noted for its ability to fight to a finish.

While CRIMSON provides the RED Empire with advantageous bases at such widely separated points as to invite an initial dispersion of BLUE armed forces, CRIMSON itself occupies an extremely weak position with respect to BLUE. While its territory is of great extent, all well-developed parts thereof lie close to the BLUE bborder; hence, they are especially vulnerable to attack from BLUE.

DECISION

(A) To initiate, at the earliest practicable date, operations designed to sparate CRIMSON from RED. This will include:
--an expedition against Halifax and the Montreal-Quebec area.
--immediate air operations on as large a scale as practicable.
--the establishment of the United States Fleet in the Western North Atlantic to destroy all RED naval forces in that area and to control sea communications between RED and CRIMSON.
(B) To seize RED bases in the western North Atlantic, the West Indies, and the Caribbean Sea.
(C) To make all necessary preparations for the use of chemical warfare from the outbreak of war.
The use of chemical warfare, including the use of toxic agents, is authorized.

-from Harpers, April 2006

Makes me wonder what Cheney and Rove talk about behind closed doors.

coke's latest pr move

2006-03-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

Protest over Coca Cola sponsorship of World Water Forum

The fourth World Water Forum (Mexico City, March 16-22) aims to bring together politicians, water management professionals and NGOs to aid cooperation for "better living standards for people all over the world and a more responsible social behavior towards water issues in-line with the pursuit of sustainable development." Coca Cola's sponsorship of the upcoming World Water Forum, the global summit aiming to improve access to freshwater worldwide, is out of line with the event's stated objective say activists. The Indian Resource Center NGO says that Coca Cola is sponsoring the event as a "publicity maneuver" to whitewash over its record of wasteful water use and pollution. Globally, the company's water use ratio is 2.7 to 1 on average - meaning 63% of the water it takes from the ground is discharged as waste.

See: http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=11172&channel=0 and more on the World Water Forum at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0309-02.htm

abuses in Colombia: the real thing

2006-03-09T18:51:00.000-04:00

Can you imagine a company that makes fizzy sugar water employs anti-union death squads in Colombia to prevent workers from organizing?

Yet, the Campaign for Labor Rights has compiled some damning reports of exactly that.

As the situation in Columbia grows worse, Coke is trying to end-run the demands for justice. They have hired two people who have connections with the International Labor Organization (ILO), one who was an employer representative; the other is a labor representative. Now the company has enlisted the international federation for its company union, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers - IUF, to ask the ILO to investigate the labor situation at Coke in Columbia.

Two things are interesting here. First, despite numerous assassinations of labor activists in Columbia, the ILO has repeatedly refused to launch a general investigation in the country's labor rights situation. Secondly, word has already filtered out of management meetings with workers at Coca-Cola FEMSA to decide which workers will be allowed to meet with any investigators, and which will not. This marks the fourth effort by Coke to set up a controlled "investigation."

The first was their own law firm, the second was by CalSafety (a notoriously discredited company that monitors codes of conduct), the third was with students and university administrators that Coke dumped when they insisted that Coke not be a member of the investigatory team, and now the ILO. Few companies go to such extremes to avoid doing the right thing.

Some universities are concerned enough to ban that corrosive liquid from their campuses. You can read the statement from the University of Michigan if you wish.

For a comprehensive Corporate Profile Report, called "Inside the Real Think" you can see the Polaris Institute's October 2005 publication.

Though your dentist may come after me for saying this, there may be some good reasons for switching to tap!

their words ~ on mountain top removal

2006-03-04T15:45:00.000-04:00

MARIA GUNNOE, 37, Bob White, West Virginia

"With mountaintop removal, the species we are losing is the human species—just because we're hillbillies. Hillbillies are the last people you can make fun of—it's acceptable. We do have educations. We do have lives. There's going to be an uprising here; the coal industry has turned us into activists. I try not to hate, I really do. There's a part of me that feels sorry for them. There's a part of me that would be standing with my foot on their throat and I wouldn't feel sorry for them."

JACKIE BROWNING, 56, Horse Creek, West Virginia

Browning was poisoned by chemicals used at a coal preparation plant. "I thought I was going to lose my mind. I tingled from my groin to my feet, my mouth burned—I felt like I ate a hot coal. I had diarrhea for four years and a severe sore throat for seven months." Browning claims that a Massey representative monitored his medical examination. "Massey is rock bottom. They're cruel people."

Read more in Antrim Caskey's portrait - "We Live It Every Day" Great photos of faces and quotes from West Virginians impacted by mountaintop removal.

carving the earth's flesh

2006-03-04T15:22:00.000-04:00

Not since the glaciers pushed toward these ridgelines a million years ago have the Appalachian Mountains been as threatened as they are today. But the coal-extraction process decimating this landscape, known as mountaintop removal, has generated little press beyond the region. The problem, in many ways, is one of perspective. From interstates and lowlands, where most communities are clustered, one simply doesn't see what is happening up there. Only from the air can you fully grasp the magnitude of the devastation. If you were to board, say, a small prop plane at Zeb Mountain, Tennessee, and follow the spine of the Appalachian Mountains up through Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, you would be struck not by the beauty of a densely forested range older than the Himalayas, but rather by inescapable images of ecological violence.

On Thursday, I will fly in a small plane in eastern Kentucky to view the results of our insatiable need for electricity and all the comfort, power, and riches it brings.

The top paragraph is from Erik Reeces article in the new Orion Magazine, which you can see here along with photos of the region by Antrim Caskey. Reece's LOST MOUNTAIN: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia just came out last month.

Demands on Appalachian coal, millions of tons of which sit beneath the forested mountains of this impoverished part of the country -- poor largely because of this extractive industry -- grow greater every day with the expansion of the economies of China and India, and the rise in oil prices.

What is the answer? Insatiable desire (need?) versus ravaged lands and lives? Who wins may, in part, be up to you and me. Great, huh?

burning desire

2006-02-12T19:53:00.000-04:00

I just started reading The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser. Rolheiser’s grasp of and ability to articulate reality at a profound level is impressive. The other book, described as a precursor, is called The Shattered Lantern. I highly recommend both.

Rolheiser starts Part I of The Holy Longing with this poem of the same name by Goethe. Take a long in-breath, exhale slowly, and read.

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "The Holy Longing"

31 days in iraq - a pictoral

2006-02-06T15:58:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports that in January more than 800 people — soldiers, security officers and civilians — were killed as a result of the insurgency in Iraq.

A chart with map, dates and icons for the lives lost depicts the scope and extent in a powerful way.

You can open the link from here

the road less traveled (for good reasons)

2006-02-01T17:10:00.000-04:00

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Tim Flannery gave Collapse a warm review in Science, writing:

the fact that one of the world's most original thinkers has chosen to pen this mammoth work when his career is at his apogee is itself a persuasive argument that Collapse must be taken seriously. It is probably the most important book you will ever read.

metta cheese

2006-01-14T12:38:00.000-04:00

Well, happy new year. It will be better than 2005. I feel it. In fact, you can start celebrating now because January 15 - 21 is slow . . . down . . . week.

Along these lines, if you haven't heard about Slow Food, this is a great concept and growing movement, especially in Europe but now in the U.S. too. Go to www.slowfoodusa.org to learn more.

If you're lucky, you can also find Slow Food near you.

The kids are itching to leave the library, so I should sign off here.

* No, that is not a shamanic drum, it is a drum of artisan cheese held by its creator.

P.S. I just discovered that the Polaris Institute has created a colorful map of the major companies that control most of the commerce on the planet.

the center . . . in louisville

2005-12-31T13:20:00.000-04:00

While a multi-purpose, exciting building-center doesn't exist yet, it could... http://dancekorean.net/thecenter

blood + gore

2005-12-28T16:04:00.000-04:00

Used to be blood and beastial sex was a common experience for those living on animal farms. And prior to agriculture, for 99% of our 100,000 years as modern homo sapiens, we have slaughtered and cut up animals for survival.

No longer do we "civilized folk" see animals doing what comes natural in the fields and barn, nor do we participate in killing and butchering of animals.

You might think we would miss it? And we probably do.

Some say this explains our fascination, even obsession with violent movies and pornography. We just aren't getting enough of that good old, everyday hunter gore. Not enough bloody birthing cows. Not enough neighborhood roasts.

Could explain a lot.

buddha weighs in on metta

2005-12-21T16:06:00.000-04:00

The Buddha's Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta)

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

steak

2005-12-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

Steak. It was exemplary in its beefiness, beef with a capital B, the reddest of meats. A thick piece of seared flesh that held the promise of perfect satisfaction. Steak transcended mere gastronomic pleasure by unlocking a realm of corporal plenitude. To eat steak was to exist on a wholly different, more exalted plane than those who did not eat steak. There is no doubt about it, I had a steak fetish. But I certainly wasn’t alone.

Nirej Sekhon describes his experiences as a school boy from a traditional Indian family, who is introduced to the American beef culture.

Read the whole article at Ode

speaking of torture

2005-12-16T12:21:00.000-04:00

The . . . painful scream resulting from a blow, wound, or an accident indicates immediately not something buy rather somebody. One who hears the cry of pain is astonished because the scream interrupts the commonplace and integrated world. The sound, the noise, produces a mental image of an absent-present sombody in pain. The hearer does not know as yet what kind of pain it is, nor the reason for the outcry. But the hearer will be distrubed until he knows who is crying out and why. What that cry says is secondary; the fundamental issue is the cry itself; one who is somebody is saying something. It is not what is said buy rather the saying itself, the person who cries out, who is important.

- Enrique Dussel

images of resistance - hong kong wto

2005-12-16T12:19:00.000-04:00

Here is a fabulous compilation of images from the WTO demonstrations in Hong Kong from Indymedia!

cathedral in old edinburgh

2005-12-16T12:15:00.000-04:00

photo credit: akb