True and Useful™

 "If only the true and useful things were recorded, our huge historical libraries would be reduced to very narrow dimensions – but we would know  more, and know it better."        ~ Voltaire

Quote of the Week Marcel Proust

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
                          ~ Marcel Proust

Cathedral Rock, Sedona

Quote of the Week Luke 12:35

"Be dressed for action and
have your lamps lit."
                          ~ Luke 12:35

Inquiring Mind

For anyone who wants to know more about Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness or related ideas and insights, check out the Inquiring Mind Website, where you can subscribe to Inquiring Mind at no charge, or make a donation if you're willing and able.

Inquiring Mind is a donation supported, semiannual journal dedicated to the creative transmission of Buddhadharma to the West. Founded in 1983 and published each April and October, the journal is distributed worldwide to a readership of more than 30,000 people.

Readers of Inquiring Mind include followers of many different Buddhist traditions, and others interested in the philosophy and ideas of Buddhism. Born out of the Theravada Buddhist community of Insight (vipassana) meditators, Inquiring Mind is highly regarded for its excellent and thought provoking interviews of Buddhist teachers, philosophers, psychologists and artists, as well as for its presentation of art, poetry, stories and humorous essays.

Regular contributors include Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Gary Snyder, Nina Wise, Robert Thurman, Ram Dass and many others. In addition, each issue includes an extensive international calendar of vipassana retreats, as well as a listing of events and sitting groups throughout North America.

Wonder by St. Augustine

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long courses of rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars;
And they pass by themselves without wondering.

Quote of the Week Arthur Koestler

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
                          ~ Arthur Koestler

The Power to Change Your Mind

Whenever you stop yourself in the middle of an overreaction to someone’s behavior, you have your own experience of mind power. This interruption of your response can feel a little like stepping outside of yourself, giving you the opportunity to see what you're doing and choose to do something different.

Every time you realize that your negative emotional reactions to others hurt you much more than they hurt them, you take another step forward in your awareness and increase your ability to determine your own experience.

You can add another layer of self determination by moving through the process of expanding your awareness with compassion and kindness for yourself rather than judgment and frustration.

How powerful would it feel to shift your experience of a challenging situation by stopping your internal reaction, seeing it clearly, choosing to let it go and being kind to yourself in the process?

~ A.G.R

love is a place by e. e. cummings

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

Quote of the Week Guilaume Apollinaire

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
         ~ Guilaume Apollinaire

Bizarro by Dan Piraro

Bizarro.com

S-l-o-w Learner: Life and Death

S-l-o-w Learner is a series based on the premise that I seem to require more time than most to learn basic life lessons.

As I was following the casket at the funeral of yet another friend who had taken her last breath a few days earlier, I was once again struck with the realization of how fragile and fleeting this experience we call life really is. Walking along the corridors of the mausoleum past marble enclosures housing the departed, the muffled sounds of crying and shuffling feet echoing through the halls, I wondered how soon this memory would fade amid my daily preoccupations.

I listened to and participated in the comforting exchange of words among the mourners – the renewed pledges of love, the promises of staying close and spending more time really appreciating each other and the time we have together. I don’t doubt the sincerity, the good intentions, but I wonder about the follow through.

It seems that no matter how often I’m confronted with another ending, another experience of the narrowing circle of family and friends, it doesn’t take long to absorb the new reality and carry on as if nothing is more important than my personal agenda. I suppose this response, variously referred to as moving on, bouncing back, persevering, and letting go of the past, is a natural survival mechanism, and I don’t dispute it’s value. But do I learn anything; do I change, as a result of so life-altering an event as death?

When I take a hard look at my reaction, I realize that I may be operating under the dubious assumption that death is for other people. Regardless of the number of memorials I attend and the fact that loved ones with whom I’ve had a deep connection are no longer here, my behavior would indicate a person who thinks he has unlimited time to stop and smell the roses but only after all the important details of daily existence are attended to. While I would never express such an irrational notion out loud, I have only to look at what I do each day, operating for the most part within my carefully crafted parameters.

I envy people who seem to live more fully in the present and become more connected to others after having what they describe as near death experiences. Presumably surviving a miraculous firsthand confirmation of their own death is the lightning bolt needed to clear the fog of self-absorption.

You would think that watching someone you love take their last breaths and feeling the stillness of their absence as you walk behind their empty shell toward their final resting place would be a near enough death experience. It seems to me the very definition of slow learner that I still resist perhaps my most important lesson, not to miss the essence of life in the process of being busy living.

~ A.G.R

One Moment

A life-time is not what's between
the moments of birth and death.
A life-time is one moment
between my two little breaths.

The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get.
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret.

~ Chade Meng

Quote of the Week Ram Dass

"The quieter you become,
the more you can hear."

~ Ram Dass

A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings

Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Barks's elegant and beautiful translations of Rumi's greatest poems, including fifteen never-before-published poems.

Barks includes an Introduction that sets Rumi in his context and an Afterword musing on poetry of the mysterious and the sacred. Join Coleman Barks and Rumi for a year-long journey into the mystical and sacred within and without. Join them in recognizing and embracing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.

Jalalud'din Rumi, born in 1207 in what is now known as Afghanistan, is one of the world’s most revered mystical poets.  During his lifetime he produced a prolific range of inspiring and devotional poetry which encapsulates the sufi's experience of  union with the divine.  These timeless classics have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, as Rumi has become one of our most popular poets.

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: HarperOne (October 31, 2006)

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

- Rumi
  translated by Coleman Barks
  with John Moyne

Is your heart really in it?

If your heart is clenched in anger, clouded over with sadness, or encased in layers of protection against your worst fears, how can you fully express yourself? If your heart’s not really in it, you’re just going through the motions and doing what you must to survive, or doing nothing while waiting for motivation to magically appear at your door. You must find a path into your heart to explore what’s keeping it closed and seek ways to open it. The more heart you bring to any endeavor, the more you can feel the fulfillment of true self expression.

~ A.G.R

Last Night As I Was Sleeping by Antonio Machado

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Antonio Machado y Ruiz (1875 – 1939) was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98.

Translation by Robert Bly

Quote of the Week Elbert Hubbard

"Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed. There's so little competition."

~ Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Green Hubbard (1856–1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist and philosopher. He was an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement and is, perhaps, most famous for his essay A Message to Garcia.

Nature's Beauty

S-l-o-w Learner: What I Still Don’t Know

S-l-o-w Learner is a series based on the premise that I seem to require more time than most to learn basic life lessons.

I used to hate not knowing. That’s why the process of learning has always been so painful for me. By its very nature learning is intended to shift us from not knowing to knowing. But if you've hated not knowing, as I have, then you’re constantly tensing up against the learning process, even while striving to alleviate the stress of not knowing. Just as you reach the next level of knowing, you also bump up against the next level of not knowing. There is never any relief.

So I finally realized the secret: learn to love not knowing, and see not knowing as a wonderful gift. That way each test, each challenge, each awkward performance becomes another opportunity to discover what I still don’t know. And still not knowing becomes a welcome state because at least I know what I still don’t know.

~ A.G.R

The Right-To-Laugh Party Humanifesto Declared and Absurdified by Swami Beyondananda

We believe that every human has the right to laugh, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness unless of course happiness is a warm gun, in which case some restrictions may apply.

We have the right and duty to laugh at our leaders, particularly those times when their actions are either seriously foolish or foolishly serious. We have the right to help them laugh with each other and at themselves, and if they are incapable of doing that, we have the right to laugh them out of power.

We have the right to laugh at the obscene foolishness of spending so much of our precious livelihood on weapons of deadlihood, and at the utter absurdity of doing the same things that haven't worked in the past and expecting them to work now and in the future.

We propose creating the office of Supreme Court Jester to encourage citizens to use the light of laughter to illuminate the shadow, especially in those poorly lit corridors of power.

We seek to extend this Right-to-Laugh all across the globe, especially places where things just aren't funny.

We propose that the United Nations and all levels of government begin each session with the Hokey Pokey. You put your whole self in - that is commitment. You pull your whole self out - that is detachment. You turn yourself around - and that is transformation and that's what it s all about.

We believe the problem is serious. But the solution is humorous. It's a scientific fact. The best way to overcome gravity is with levity. So all those who want to take a vow of levity please rise! Put your hand on your jocular vein, and recite the Right to Laugh Pledge: All for fun and fun for all.

Congratulations! You have now joined farces with the Pro-Laugh movement to raise the laugh force and increase the laugh expectancy on this amazing planet.

May we all wake up laughing, and leave laughter in our wake. For surely, the Farce is with us!

OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER

Although we are enthusiastically pro-laugh, we are pro-choice as well. We respect each and every individual s right to not laugh. If you want to be miserable, go right ahead. Whatever makes you happy.

All for fun and fun for all!

One big party, everyone is invited.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Steve Bhaerman is an internationally known author, humorist, and workshop leader who writes and performs as Swami Beyondananda, the “Cosmic Comic.” Swami’s comedy has been called “irreverently uplifting” and has been described both as “comedy disguised as wisdom” and “wisdom disguised as comedy.”

Click here for more from the Swami.

Quote of the Week Albert Einstein

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

~ Albert Einstein

The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell

The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed The Second Book of the Tao. Drawn from the work of Lao-tzu's disciple Chuang- tzu and Confucius's grandson Tzu-ssu, The Second Book of the Tao collects the freshest, most profound teachings from these two great students of the Tao to offer Western readers a path into reality that has nothing to do with east or west, but everything to do with truth. With his own illuminating commentary alongside each adaptation, explicating and complementing the text, Mitchell makes the ancient teachings at once modern, relevant, and timeless.

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 5, 2010)

What is the Empty Space? by Casey Kochmer

Take some clay. Feel it in your hands. Now spin it upon a potter's wheel. What is shaped? A bowl comes out. However, the bowl is defined by an empty space, a space enclosed by the bowl's very form. The empty space holds the water, fulfilling the purpose of the bowl. The actual physical form of the bowl is reflected by the empty space it projects. The final use and form of the bowl is determined in the moment of artistry used to spin out the shape.

In this example the bowl is made from clay. The clay forms the body, but the actual bowl projects out as more than a clay shell; it must include the "empty space" in its definition. In fact a bowl is more about the "empty space" than the materials comprising the bowl.

In living, we each have a physical form which is mirrored by an empty space. The process of shaping this space is the very definition of a person's free will.

Free will is the ability to express the very nature of the empty space. Free will is the whim of the moment, the place before the dream, the moment of shaping.

In part, our initial empty space is formed by parents, elders, teachers, culture, our bodies and tendencies of the mind. Yet each person has an incredible degree of freedom to shape their own empty space. At certain times this process is more dramatic than others, such as being a teenager or experiencing a mid-life crisis. These moments stand out as a time to question earlier frameworks that shaped our forms. These times can be difficult due to the twisting around of our core shape and beliefs: a time when our very nature is in flux. Often a person reshapes their empty space without the benefit of outside perspective, adding to the frustration and chances of something "breaking". A person never truly breaks in this sense, but radically changing one's own empty space then reflects out to form a vastly different person after the experience.

We are the light of our own empty space.

Source: A Personal Tao

Quote of the Week

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."

~ Carl Jung