:-)

 

The smile never changed!

Never Not

"Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now."  ~Eckhart Tolle

You Carry Your Heart

Excerpted from Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation is Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don’t want to deal with and try to escape from, or paper over and pretend aren’t there, catch up with you - especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears? The romantic notion is that if it’s not good over here, you have only to go over there and things will be different. If this job is no good, change towns. If these children are a problem, leave them for other people to look after. The underlying thinking is that the reason for your troubles is outside of you - in the location, in others, in the circumstances. Change the location, change the circumstances, and everything will fall into place; you can start over, have a new beginning.

The trouble with this way of seeing is that it conveniently ignores the fact that you carry your heart, and what some would call your “karma,” around with you. You cannot escape yourself, try as you might. And what reason, other than pure wishful thinking, would you have to suspect that things would be different or better somewhere else anyway? Sooner or later, the same problems would arise if in fact they stem in large part from your patterns of seeing, thinking, and behaving. Too often, our lives cease working because we cease working at life, because we are unwilling to take responsibility for things as they are and to work with our difficulties. We don’t understand that it is actually possible to attain clarity, understanding, and transformation right in the middle of what is here and now, however problematic it may be.

Huxley vs. Orwell

 

Look For Their Spirit

 

Too Many

Se você tiver a chance de ser uma boa pessoa para alguém, seja. A vida já tem idiotas demais.

―•―

If you get the chance to be a good person to someone, be it. Life already has too many idiots.

But Because

“A maior parte do tempo que você se sente cansado não é porque você fez muito, mas porque você fez pouco daquilo que te faz sentir vivo.”  ~Caio Costa

―•―

“Most of the time you feel tired is not because you did too much, but because you did little of what makes you feel alive."  ~Caio Costa

Symbiotic

Transcribed from a video on Reddit, which you can watch HERE:

Q:  What sort of alternative society and culture…

A:  Oh, one that doesn't make guns and bombs.  One that's not at war with itself constantly.  One that doesn't poison the air, doesn't poison the land, doesn't poison the sea.  One that has enough respect for each other and the planet we live on, and all the other life-forms that share this planet that we live on.  When there is enough respect for all of that, to live in a way that's completely sustainable, that is beneficial to all life, so that mankind becomes a symbiotic life-form that's supporting the life of its host planet, instead of being a parasitic life-form that's devoiding its host planet with its ability to support life.

At the moment I'm sat on a train going to Auschwitz, and I know that there's gas ovens at the end of the line, and I can't think of anything that makes me happy on this journey.  There's nothing to celebrate.

If you want to be depressed, read the comments at the bottom of the post.  One third of the people make fun of him for having a long beard, the other two thirds derided him as unrealistic, saying the world he aspires to goes against "human nature."  The word "utopian" was banded about as a pejorative.

But they're wrong.

It's infantile to suggest that every dark impulse is "human nature" and must be indulged.  A pig may be content to wallow in filth, a human should aspire to more.

But more than that, I would argue that "human nature" is based on cooperation, not competition.  We didn't build cities and new technologies through avarice, sloth, and aggression.   We worked with each other and made amazing things.

It's nihilistic to presume a world based on our better instincts is not possible.

It absolutely is.

Imagine

 Why Did God Create Atheists?

There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson.

One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?” The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”

“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”

~Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim Vol. 2 (1991)

The In and Out Cat Song

Shine On Harvest Moon

This is my favorite version.  In the movie it's a complete non sequitur:  Oliver and Stan are on the run from the French Foreign Legion, stop to have a song and a dance, then resume running:

Below are two other nice versions, the first by Tiny Tim:


And this one by Leon Redbone:

Maria

What I like about this song, besides it just being bouncy and fun, is that the singer realizes his own behavior led to the breakup of his marriage-- and he makes changes.

Full lyrics HERE.

Baby, you're a

 I was five years old when my Mom taught me how to draw a five-pointed star.

I was fascinated.  It was only five lines, but there were five points, each with two lines!  And five triangles!  And I didn't know the name for it at the time, but there was a five-sided square in the middle that was almost like a stop sign!

I spent hours drawing stars, first trying to make it perfect, then experimenting by making it fat or skinny or rotated.

I still love those things.  :)

Over the Moon

Joe Biden announced a "moonshot" initiative to end cancer.  That's a nice idea, I suppose, but if he doesn't do something to make those new treatments affordable it's going to be fucking useless.

We already have people dying of preventable diseases in this country because they can't afford the treatments.  Let's take care of those folks first.