And the chills stay away

[embed]https://youtu.be/SVmjKHkgxis[/embed]

I love the new twist he put on an old standard.

Full lyrics HERE.

Recreating

"It’s a question of removing the clouds, rather than recreating the sun."  ~Chögyam Trungpa

Time

"A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men and women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time."  ~from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L'Amour ©1989

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of America's first celebrated Black poets.  His work is in the public domain, and can be read or downloaded freely from Project Gutenberg, HERE.

Most of his poems were written in standard English, but he wrote quite a few using Black, German, and Irish vernacular.  If I were to read one of these poems out loud today, there is a good chance I would be assaulted; at a minimum, I would be excoriated on social media and precluded from public office.

But in his time, this wasn't considered demeaning.  As a poet, I'm sure his intentions were quite the opposite.  He was exploring and celebrating different speech rhythms, something that in his time was quite ordinary and widely accepted.

Things change.  I'm sure today he would have written differently; but, like all of us, he was of his time.  His talent and works transcend something so ephemeral as current social mores, and should be appreciated against the canvas of their own time.

It's All the Same Thing…

https://youtu.be/ESIOSPb2KGc

 

Love And Rockets had a unique blend of electric and acoustic instruments that gave them a distinctive sound.

Full lyrics HERE.

No Limit

"It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time."  ~from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L'Amour ©1989

Mosaic

"We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic; different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams." ~Jimmy Carter

Vantage Point

"What happens when you begin to recognize your experiences as your own projections? What happens when you begin to lose your fear of the people around you and conditions you used to dread? Well, from one point of view: nothing. From another point of view: everything."  ~Mingyur Rinpoche

Joy

I was given a copy of The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and I looked forward to reading it.  I admire both of those men, and was sure they had insights I would find helpful.

Their days are striking similar.  Tutu begins his day with five hours of meditation, the Dalai Lama six.  Then a servant brings them a breakfast prepared by a chef.  When the plates are cleared a way, a driver appears to take them where they need to be that day…

And at that point I stopped reading.  These are not lives I can emulate.

I'm going to wait and read the book by the waiter, the driver, or the cook.

Dismantle

Excerpted from The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, ©2013.  It's the last paragraph that really stands out:

In 2001, the huge Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan were intentionally demolished. From a certain perspective within Islam, these statues were offensive instruments of idol worship, while to Buddhists they were reminders of sacred principles and the very best of our innate human potential. Basically, we Buddhists use physical images in our spiritual practice, while Muslims worship without images. Clinging to either position was creating a wall between people. But they are just statues. Allowing ourselves to be pitted against each other over a statue – now that is really clinging to biases.

Personally, I do not see a basis for treating religious differences this way. A while after the Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed, I had the opportunity to meet with an Afghan youth group working for peace. I suggested to them that we might view the coming down of the Bamiyan Buddhas as bringing down the walls between all peoples. If the presence of those statues was setting us at odds, perhaps we could see it as useful that they were brought down. This is how I felt about it.

Walls come up between people when we attach more importance to the form of our religious identities than to the substance of what they teach us. When spiritual beliefs are used to build up walls between people, this is a total misunderstanding of the purpose of spirituality. Spirituality should mean coming closer to yourself. When this happens, you become closer to others, too. Spirituality and religion should dismantle discrimination and labels, not shore them up. It should break, not create, barriers between people.

"He just didn't know any other way."

Steve Parish was a roadie for the Grateful Dead and manager for the Jerry Garcia Band.  His 2003 autobiography, Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road With the Grateful Dead, is about his own life and experiences.  It's not a tell-all by any means, but of course his story overlaps with theirs.

His stories about losing Jerry Garcia to addiction are heartbreaking.  The first excerpt below is about the aftermath of Parish losing his wife and children in a car crash; the second comes years later, as it became clear Garcia was nearing the end of his life:

That first night, when I got to the show, Jerry approached me backstage and gave me a hug. He seemed so sad, so moved by my loss. And then, in a twisted but genuinely loving gesture, he did something that astounded me.

"Hey, man," he said, his eyes brimming with tears. "You want some heroin? It'll kill the pain."

I thanked him but declined the offer. "If I did anything right now-- one snort, one drink-- I'd never stop."

He nodded and told me again how sorry he was. In that instant I felt more pity for Jerry than I did for myself, because he really was trying to help. He just didn't know any other way.

•

There is nothing quite as sad and painful as living with a junkie. You watch him die, inch by inch, and there's nothing you can do about it.

ETC

[embed]https://youtu.be/kaEWMbItfZE[/embed]

One of my first dates with Mona was to an Earl Thomas Conley concert.  We heard about it at the last minute, dropped everything and took off.  I'm so glad we did. It was an unforgettable night.

Mona took an album with her, and he signed it for us after the show.  It's framed and hanging on our wall.

He was an amazing songwriter.  He could write happy songs, but most were tinged with melancholy.  His music meant a lot to me, and became part of me.

He died two weeks ago, a cruel death at 77.

I'm at an age where there are a lot more "goodbyes" than "hellos."

They say you shouldn't be sad that it's over, you should be happy that it happened.

Yep.

That's what they say.

When/Then

“When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.” ~Stevie Nicks

Options

One ran, one attacked; neither of them thought to turn on the light.

"But now we have a choice…"

"As we begin to develop awareness of the mind, the mind itself appears to divide into two. A new aspect of the mind arises. This is referred to variously as the witness, the seer, the knower, or the observer. It witnesses without judgment and without comment. Along with the arrival of the witness, a space appears within the mind. This enables us to see thoughts and emotions as mere thoughts and emotions, rather than as ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ When the thoughts and emotions are no longer seen as ‘me’ or ‘mine’, we begin to have choices. Certain thoughts and emotions are helpful, so we encourage them. Others are not so helpful, so we just let them go. All the thoughts and emotions are recognized and accepted. Nothing is suppressed. But now we have a choice about how to react. We can give energy to the ones, which are useful and skillful and withdraw energy from those which are not."  ~Tenzin Palmo (via)

Creatures of the Night

"The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist."  ~Ernest Hemingway,

Never Never Never

https://youtu.be/lhTr7TsxfyQ

Full lyrics HERE.

Key

Half-Convinced

"When I saw the house again, after the death of my aunt Margaret in 1978, the silences of the vast rooms seemed to speak of boyhood pleasures. I am half-convinced that houses somehow soak up the psychic experience of their inhabitants; there are certain houses that have a mean-spirited or discouraged air, and there are city apartments which seem to radiate a sense of irritability, as if the walls still contained the last echos of an angry shout." ~Damon Knight, in La Ronde, ©1983

When I was a little boy, there was a field none of us ever played in.  We were allowed to, but none of us ever did.  When we were there it just always felt like something sharp and unpleasant was on the verge of happening, that we were about to fall down and hurt ourselves, be stung by a bee, yelled at by an angry adult.  We never talked about it, but somehow we all knew it.

As an adult, I once learned that a Chinese restaurant I frequented had long ago been the scene of a mass shooting.  Six people died there.  Truthfully, I never felt anything; no sense of foreboding, nothing ominous.  Even once I knew, there was nothing particularly creepy about the place.

The rational part of me thinks that when a building or place has a certain feeling to it, it's probably just an intersection of architecture with life experiences.

But that's not very much fun, is it?

Keep On Truckin'

"You keep going. That is the bodhisattva’s way. As long as it benefits even one being you have to, without any sense of discouragement, go on."  ~16th Karmapa (via)

Bucket of Water

From an interview with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in The Lion's Roar:

There are many different methods for recognizing the Buddha within. Of these, the quickest and easiest is to receive the blessings of the guru. This is why guru devotion is necessary.

For example, you may be having a nightmare about monsters. But then suddenly, somebody throws a bucket of cold water over you and you wake up. The cold water doesn’t really make the monsters disappear, because there were no monsters in the first place. It was just a dream. But on the other hand, when you are having a nightmare, your sufferings are real, and the person who throws the bucket of water over you is indeed very kind and special. If you have a lot of merit you are able to meet such a person, a person who can throw the water. On the other hand, if you don’t have merit, you may never wake up from the nightmare.

The guru lineage originates with someone called Vajradhara or Samantabhadra. Our masters tell us that he is our own mind, the nature of our own mind. This means that when we trace back through the lineage, we actually end up with our own minds, the essence of ourselves. The guru is not some kind of almighty sponsor that we have to worship or obey. The most important thing to understand is that the guru is the display of our buddhanature.

Happy Birthday, Tiny Tim

[embed]https://youtu.be/IlGOK-w14bM[/embed]

Today is Tiny Tim's birthday.  If you only know him for his campy, goofy songs, then please take a few minutes to play the song above.  You're in for a treat.

I really consider him a heroic, inspirational figure.   His was an odd dream-- he wanted to sing songs from the 1890s to the 1920s, in falsetto, in white-face, accompanied only by his ukulele-- but he persevered, he worked hard, and he made it come true.

He lived the life he wanted to live.  Who could ask for more?

Pretenses

"It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not You."  ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

•

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."  ~Kurt Vonnegut, in Mother Night

It's all a show…

[embed]https://youtu.be/Pc1Yuj4dNjI[/embed]

This is it, here and now
We can find our way somehow

Full lyrics HERE.

Manifold Miseries

The practice of all the bodhisattvas is never to commit a harmful act,
Even though not to do so might put one’s very life at risk,
For the Sage himself has taught how negative actions will ripen
Into the manifold miseries of the lower realms, so difficult to endure.

~Gyelse Tokme Zangpo (via)

 

Of course, another reason never to commit harmful acts is because it's nicer.

Shark Porcupine Hoot Owl

I found this in The Mad Bathroom Companion © 2004 and thought it was really clever.  The artist is credited on the image, but for those of you looking at the thumbnail: it's Max Brandel.

It's a simple idea, and it's something almost anyone can do.  Making our own looks like a fun and creative way to spend some time.

Projections

"You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free."  ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Imagination

"With compassion, you need to be able to envision the end goal – the happiness that you want the other to attain. It is not the case that when you feel compassion you only see suffering and pain and cannot see anything beyond that. Rather, you have the imagination to see the other as free and happy, and you keep that aim in mind."  ~Ogyen Trinley Dorje Karmapa (via)

Clear

"When you are not clear about the purpose of your life, you are never clear when it comes to making decisions that affect your life. You always hesitate and are always in danger of making the wrong decision. When your only purpose for living is the benefit of others, it is very easy to make the right decision. It is easy because you are very clear about why you are alive."  ~Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Ignore

"Ignore the mind the way you disregard the crowd you encounter in the streets."  ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Hit Sideways

If you have a few minutes, David Brooks has written a wonderful article for the New York Times about building a happy life and healthy society:  The Moral Peril of Meritocracy

Here is a short excerpt:

But in the lives of the people I’m talking about — the ones I really admire — something happened that interrupted the linear existence they had imagined for themselves. Something happened that exposed the problem with living according to individualistic, meritocratic values.

Some of them achieved success and found it unsatisfying. They figured there must be more to life, some higher purpose. Others failed. They lost their job or endured some scandal. Suddenly they were falling, not climbing, and their whole identity was in peril. Yet another group of people got hit sideways by something that wasn’t part of the original plan. They had a cancer scare or suffered the loss of a child. These tragedies made the first-mountain victories seem, well, not so important.

Life had thrown them into the valley, as it throws most of us into the valley at one point or another. They were suffering and adrift.

Some people are broken by this kind of pain and grief. They seem to get smaller and more afraid, and never recover. They get angry, resentful and tribal.

But other people are broken open.

The Things That Make Us Human

"This is the result of social collapse, a lack of education, the loss of values in our homes and in our institutions. In recent years this country has focused only on politics. We have forgotten about the things that make us human." ~Jorge Liscano

He was quoted in a BBC video about grave robbing in Venezuela (link), but it was a glimpse into the future of my own country.

12123!

"One, two… One, two, three, UNH!"  ~James Brown (source)

Tetris

Executives with multimillion-dollar stock packages often treat their employees like Tetris pieces, to be put into place as efficiently as possible, then promptly disposed of.

That's from an opinion piece about the video game industry Jason Schreier wrote for the New York Times (online HERE), but he could have been talking about almost anyplace.

A Machine

“Empathy is the most essential quality of civilization, and for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.   It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.”  ~Roger Ebert

Oh No

Saying rude and offensive things is hardly the badge of courage its practitioners believe it to be.

WebComicName is on the web HERE.

Put Together

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."  ~Desmond Tutu

Wonderful