The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful
then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Diane Ackerman: Love Is the White Light of Emotion
Brené Brown: Loving Ourselves
How much we know and understand ourselves
is critically important, but there is something that is even
more essential to living a Wholehearted life:
loving ourselves.
- Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection:
Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be
and Embrace Who You Are
Diane Ackerman: A Wholehearted Life
I don't want to get to the end of my life
and find that I have just lived the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well.
Anna Quindlen: Becoming Oneself
The thing that is really hard,
and really amazing,
is giving up on being perfect and
beginning the work of becoming yourself.
- Anna Quindlen
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Howard Zinn: Serve the People
HOWARD ZINN : Reminded Us To Serve the People, Not The Executioners!
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) – the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress – is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they --- the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court --- represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as “the United States”, a subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a “national interest” represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
“History is the memory of states”, wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, “A World Restored”, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the “peace” that Europe had before the French Revolution was “restored” by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation ---- a world not restored but disintegrated.
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different : that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem……And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can “see” history from the standpoint of others.
— Howard Zinn,
A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present, pages 9-10
from Haymarket Presente
The Unknowable Essence
The deepest purpose of life is to reflect what is hidden, to reveal
the unknowable essence of which we are all an expression.
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
from Spiritual Ecology
Image via Old Moss Woman's Secret Garden,
quote via Working with Oneness
Sharon Salzberg: An Open Heart
Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.
Sharon Salzberg: It Is Never Too Late
It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view.
When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades.
The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.
It is never too late to take a moment to look.
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