There’s a story about one time when Jerry Brown was Governor of California in the 70’s and the eco-poet Gary Snyder was working in his administration. One day Brown, exasperated, said "Gary, why is it that, whatever the issue, you are always going against the flow."
To which Gary replied: "Jerry what you call ‘the flow’ is just a 16,000 year eddy, I'm going with the actual Flow!"
Standing on the Time Coast, one begins to apprehend the actual Flow, that Snyder is talking about. cf: The Real Work- by Gary Snyder.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Blazing Splendor:The Memoirs of the Dzogchen Yogi Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
Was surfing for something else and came across this on the Rangjung Publications web site; It looks like one of their forthcoming titles for Sept. 2005 will be a biography of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. I look forward to it.
Here are some extensive excerpts that describe this forthcoming title:
"Tulku Urgyen was widely recognized as one of the most outstanding Tibetan lamas to survive the tragedy of the Chinese takeover. To quote Tarthang Tulku, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's depth of understanding was unsurpassed and many Tibetan masters stood in awe of his comprehensive knowledge. He had thoroughly studied and practiced the highest teachings and his exposition on Dzogchen transformed the lives of those he touched with gentle, penetrating clarity. As a meditation teacher and a vajra master, he was without peer; he used his knowledge to touch the heart of everyone he met.
The world Tulku Urgyen knew was one in which today's conventional values were turned upside-down: instead of fame, fortune or celebrity being the marks of success, it was inner realization that counted, and the mark of a life fulfilled was leaving a spiritual legacy for others. Tulku Urgyen was uniquely positioned to know-and share with us-people who lived within this landscape of sacred values. Yet his message is not that realization is reserved for an elect few, but something that each and every one of us can attain.
Central to Blazing Splendor is the teachings known as terma- a sacred teaching from a mystical source dating back a millennium which enriches the life and spirit of anyone who connects to it. Tulku Urgyen's stories cast a special light on these treasures which he carried in his heart and mind over the Himalayas during his escape from Tibet and which he eventually came to transmit to thousands of people from every walk of life throughout the world.
The unique lifestyle and culture of old Tibet was inexorably changed by the Communist take over in 1959 and with each passing year, the great masters who were trained under the classical spiritual system have been passing away. In an effort to keep the spirit of this tradition alive, we felt compelled to present this first-person account by one of the last of this dying breed.
Blazing Splendor is a tale of remarkable human achievement so different from the mundane contemporary world we live in-a glimpse that can inspire and awaken a nobility of heart. Candid and entertaining, each story is a spiritual gem yielding the profound wisdom that Tulku Urgyen embodied. With natural humility, Tulku Urgyen does not draw attention to himself or his own stature, but lets one see the world-and a fascinating pantheon of characters-just as he does: with blunt, often wry, candor. Travelling through the landscape of a society whose greatest wealth was not material but spiritual, Tulku Urgyen's life story instills a renewed confidence and enthusiasm for the inner life in those who feel imprisoned in a barren, spiritually vacuous society."
http://www.rangjung.com/blazingsplendor/index.htm
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Even dwarves started small
Bushism of the Day
By Jacob Weisberg Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2005, at 10:04 AM PT
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 .
http://slate.msn.com/id/2119542/
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”— Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister -1938.
By Jacob Weisberg Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2005, at 10:04 AM PT
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 .
http://slate.msn.com/id/2119542/
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”— Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister -1938.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
A Quote from Clinton's Autobiography
Was reading My Life last August and came across this passage.
"Psychologically, we're all a complex mixture of hopes and fears. Each day we wake up with the scales tipping a bit one way or the other. If they go too far towards hopefulness, we can become naive and unrealistic. If the scales tilt too far the other way, we can get consumed by paranoia and hatred. In the South, the dark side of the scales has always been the bigger problem." pg. 84 -- - My Life by Bill Clinton . He wrote this in the context of explaining racism in Arkansas in 1966. I stopped and pondered for a while on this . I found it interesting, and generally the first part of the book, Clinton growing up in Arkansas is just fascinating.
I found it to be a relatively easy read, though there are parts one can skim.
"Psychologically, we're all a complex mixture of hopes and fears. Each day we wake up with the scales tipping a bit one way or the other. If they go too far towards hopefulness, we can become naive and unrealistic. If the scales tilt too far the other way, we can get consumed by paranoia and hatred. In the South, the dark side of the scales has always been the bigger problem." pg. 84 -- - My Life by Bill Clinton . He wrote this in the context of explaining racism in Arkansas in 1966. I stopped and pondered for a while on this . I found it interesting, and generally the first part of the book, Clinton growing up in Arkansas is just fascinating.
I found it to be a relatively easy read, though there are parts one can skim.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Potala Palace- Lhasa, Tibet.
I took this photo in Oct. 1993 while standing on the roof of the Jokhang temple . One of those awesome moments in one's life that leaves you speechless.Too bad much of Lhasa's buildings have been demolished and replaced by ugly Chinese buildings. For more info about the current status of Tibet check out: http://tibet.com/ To learn about Kalachakra teachings and the concept of the "Wheel of Time", a good site is: http://kalachakranet.org/kalachakra_tantra_introduction.html.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Monday, May 16, 2005
Found Interesting articles on Delay over at...
the American Prospect Online.
Here is a excerpt from one of them by Michael Tomasky:
"Well, they’re the gummint now, and they have to be taken seriously. And in the obvious ways, of course, they are. But there’s one important way in which, oddly, they’re still not taken seriously enough: There remains an unwillingness to recognize just how reactionary their agenda is, and to call it what it is. It’s a strange thing, because it’s hardly as if those on the right have kept their agenda a secret. They’ve demonstrated many times that they have no patience for civic debate, and seek only to smash the opposition. They want virtually no government protection or regulation for regular people; they’ve passed virtually no major legislation that serves the public interest, and only legislation that serves corporate and far-right religious interests. In their desire to reintroduce the teaching of creationism in the schools, they want to go back to the 1920s; in their desire to merge state and church, their ideal America looks more like the 1720s. "
Three good articles: check them out at:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9537. The home page is:
http://www.prospect.org/web/index.ww. Current issue lists:
Tom Delay: Corrupt. Fanatical. Un-American. In Trouble.
Preferred Citation: Michael Tomasky, "Texas-Sized Problem", The American Prospect Online, Apr 19, 2005.
Here is a excerpt from one of them by Michael Tomasky:
"Well, they’re the gummint now, and they have to be taken seriously. And in the obvious ways, of course, they are. But there’s one important way in which, oddly, they’re still not taken seriously enough: There remains an unwillingness to recognize just how reactionary their agenda is, and to call it what it is. It’s a strange thing, because it’s hardly as if those on the right have kept their agenda a secret. They’ve demonstrated many times that they have no patience for civic debate, and seek only to smash the opposition. They want virtually no government protection or regulation for regular people; they’ve passed virtually no major legislation that serves the public interest, and only legislation that serves corporate and far-right religious interests. In their desire to reintroduce the teaching of creationism in the schools, they want to go back to the 1920s; in their desire to merge state and church, their ideal America looks more like the 1720s. "
Three good articles: check them out at:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9537. The home page is:
http://www.prospect.org/web/index.ww. Current issue lists:
Tom Delay: Corrupt. Fanatical. Un-American. In Trouble.
Preferred Citation: Michael Tomasky, "Texas-Sized Problem", The American Prospect Online, Apr 19, 2005.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Gerontion - by T.S. Eliot
One of my favorite poems, from way back when I was a English Major at U.T. was , and still is Gerontion, by T.S. Eliot. I wrote a paper on it back then. It is still full of meaning for me. The hot gates it refers to is generally thought to mean an allusion to Thermapolye (480BC ), where the Spartans made a stand against the entire Persian Army.
Written right after World War I (1920), the poem seems quite apt, even for todays situation. "We would have a sign", cf. some groups even longing for the rapture, Mary appearing in a stain under a overpass,etc.
I found it online over at: http://www.bartleby.com/199/13.html
But since it my blog, I would lke to post it here also. So here it is:
Gerontion
Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign":
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.
Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year.Us he devours.Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
Written right after World War I (1920), the poem seems quite apt, even for todays situation. "We would have a sign", cf. some groups even longing for the rapture, Mary appearing in a stain under a overpass,etc.
I found it online over at: http://www.bartleby.com/199/13.html
But since it my blog, I would lke to post it here also. So here it is:
Gerontion
Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign":
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.
Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year.Us he devours.Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
An interesting photo of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche -likely taken in the 1980s---"To understand how prayer works consider the sun, which shines everywhere without hesitation or hindrance. If we live on the earth's surface but keep our eyes closed, its not the suns's fault that we don't see the light." -- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Soundtracks in our Lives
I think everyone in these times- - has had some album come along, at a certain time in their lives, and serve as a support, or an illuminating lens, which gets you through your days, or touchs your spirit in a certain way.
I know when I was In Saudi Arabia in the fall of 1992 Achtung Baby by U2. Total soundtrack.
We had this car with a cassette player, and a cheapo U.A.E. pirated tape--- must have listened to it til it wore out.
Anyway, while over in Kolin in the Czech Republic, my collegues Nicole and Joey, among other things turned me on to Riot on an Empty street, an album by Kings of Convenience, a Norweigian group that sounds like a jazzy Simon and Garfunkle. A good album for sensitive people going thru transitions in their lives. Well, yeah!
By the way a special thanks to Nic and Joey for putting up with my noseful of nonsense. Trippy dude indeed,
I think we all tried to support each other in dealing with a highly unusual situation, and the winter we found ourselves going thru.
At any rate I came to appreciate all the songs and moods on that album. The last song in particular would remind me of my love of trains--- yeah I have loved trains since I was 3, and the sound of hearing the various trains come thru Kolin while sitting in that room with a view on Joey's PC, listening to The Build Up at the same time.
Sometimes knowing when to get on ....
being as imporant as knowing when to get off - - -
Well, okay here are the lyrics for the song:
The Build Up
The build-up lasted for days
Lasted for weeks
Lasted too long
Our hero withdrew
When there was two
He could not choose one
So there was none
Worn into the vaguely announced
Worn into the vaguely announced
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
When to get off
When to get off
When to get off.....
I know when I was In Saudi Arabia in the fall of 1992 Achtung Baby by U2. Total soundtrack.
We had this car with a cassette player, and a cheapo U.A.E. pirated tape--- must have listened to it til it wore out.
Anyway, while over in Kolin in the Czech Republic, my collegues Nicole and Joey, among other things turned me on to Riot on an Empty street, an album by Kings of Convenience, a Norweigian group that sounds like a jazzy Simon and Garfunkle. A good album for sensitive people going thru transitions in their lives. Well, yeah!
By the way a special thanks to Nic and Joey for putting up with my noseful of nonsense. Trippy dude indeed,
I think we all tried to support each other in dealing with a highly unusual situation, and the winter we found ourselves going thru.
At any rate I came to appreciate all the songs and moods on that album. The last song in particular would remind me of my love of trains--- yeah I have loved trains since I was 3, and the sound of hearing the various trains come thru Kolin while sitting in that room with a view on Joey's PC, listening to The Build Up at the same time.
Sometimes knowing when to get on ....
being as imporant as knowing when to get off - - -
Well, okay here are the lyrics for the song:
The Build Up
The build-up lasted for days
Lasted for weeks
Lasted too long
Our hero withdrew
When there was two
He could not choose one
So there was none
Worn into the vaguely announced
Worn into the vaguely announced
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
The spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
Fading, oh so quiet, but constant 'til it passed
Over the ridge into the distances, written on your ticket
To remind you where to stop
And when to get off
When to get off
When to get off
When to get off.....
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