Mind at Peace

When the mind is at peace,

the world too is at peace.

Nothing real, nothing absent.

Not holding on to reality,

not getting stuck in the void,

you are neither holy or wise,

just

an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un) (The Enlightened Heart 34)

Observations on Rousseau, [part 1]

[wikipedia]

Theory of Natural Human

“	The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.			From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.	”
	— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally; in fact, terms such as "justice" or "wickedness" are inapplicable to prepolitical society as Rousseau understands it.

Morality proper, i.e., self restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Humans "in a state of Nature" may act with all of the ferocity of an animal.

They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self-sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society. In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape, such as the orangutan as described by Buffon; and the "natural" goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad.

Rousseau, a deteriorationist, proposed that, except perhaps for brief moments of balance, at or near its inception, when a relative equality among men prevailed, human civilization has always been artificial, creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires.

In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride.
 
Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason.

In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.

Tami Lynn - I'm Gonna Run Away From You

Lindisfarne-Lady Eleanor

I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No.4 - i: Allegro

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No.3 - iii: Allegro

KAARE NORGE - LA CUMPARSITA - TANGO by GERARDO.H.M.RODRIGUES

Pablo Neruda

You will remember that leaping stream 

where sweet aromas rose and trembled, 

and sometimes a bird, wearing water 

and slowness, its winter feathers.

You will remember those gifts from the earth: 

indelible scents, gold clay, 

weeds in the thicket and crazy roots, 

magical thorns like swords.

You'll remember the bouquet you picked, 

shadows and silent water, 

bouquet like a foam-covered stone.

That time was like never, and like always. 

So we go there, where nothing is waiting; 

we find everything waiting there.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine



[Pablo Neruda]

Rage! Rage!

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Lightning-Rod Man,by Herman Melville.

The Lightning-Rod ManWhat grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearthstone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag irradiations, and swift slants of sharp rain, which audibly rang, like a charge of spear-points, on my low shingled roof.

I suppose, though, that the mountains hereabouts break and churn up the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark! -- some one at the door.

Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And why don't he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker's clatter with his fist against the hollow panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. "Good day, sir:" an entire stranger. "Pray be seated." What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: "A fine thunder-storm, sir."
"Fine? -- Awful!"
"You are wet. Stand here on the hearth before the fire."
"Not for worlds."
The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny.

A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange-walking stick vertically resting at his side.

It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff, by insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper bands. The metal rod terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt. He held the thing by the wooden part alone.
"Sir," said I, bowing politely, "have I the honor of a visit from that illustrious God, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have to thank you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains. Listen: that was a glorious peal. Ah, to a lover of the majestic, it is a good thing to have the Thunderer himself in one's cottage. The thunder grows finer for that. But pray be seated. This old rush- bottomed arm-chair, I grant, is a poor substitute for your evergreen throne on Olympus; but, condescend to be seated."
While I thus pleasantly spoke, the stranger eyed me, half in wonder, and half in a strange sort of horror; but did not move a foot.
"Do, sir, be seated; you need to be dried ere going forth again."
I planted the chair invitingly on the broad hearth, where a little fire had been kindled that afternoon to dissipate the dampness, not the cold; for it was early in the month of September.
But without heeding my solicitation, and still standing in the middle of the floor, the stranger gazed at me portentously and spoke.
"Sir," said he, "excuse me; but instead of my accepting your invitation to be seated on the hearth there, I solemnly warn you, that you had best accept mine, and stand with me in the middle of the room. Good Heavens!" he cried, starting -- "there is another of those awful crashes. I warn you, sir, quit the hearth."
Mr Jupiter Tonans," said I, quietly rolling my body on the stone, "I stand very well here."
"Are you so horridly ignorant, then," he cried, "as not to know, that by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?"
"Nay, I did not know that," involuntarily stepping upon the first board next to the stone.
The stranger now assumed such an unpleasant air of successful admonition, that -- quite involuntarily again -- I stepped back upon the hearth, and threw myself into the erectest, proudest posture I could command. But I said nothing.
"For Heaven's sake," he cried, with a strange mixture of alarm and intimidation -- "for Heaven's sake, get off the hearth! Know you not, that the heated air and soot are conductors; -- to say nothing of those immense iron fire-dogs? Quit the spot -- I conjure -- I command you."
"Mr Jupiter Tonans, I am not accustomed to be commanded in my own house."
"Call me not by that pagan name. You are profane in this time of terror."
"Sir, will you be so good as to tell me your business? If you seek shelter from the storm, you are welcome, so long as you be civil; but if you come on business, open it forthwith. Who are you?"
"I am a dealer in lightning-rods," said the stranger, softening his tone; "my special business is -- merciful Heavens! what a crash! -- Have you ever been struck -- your premises, I mean? No? It's best to be provided," -- significantly rattling his metallic staff on the floor, -- "by nature, there are no castles in thunder-storms; yet, say but the word, and of this cottage I can make a Gibraltar by a few waves of this wand. Hark, what Himalayas of concussions!"
"You interrupted yourself; your special business you were about to speak of."
"My special business is to travel the country for orders for lightning-rods. This is my specimen rod;" tapping his staff; "I have the best of references" -- fumbling in his pockets. "In Criggan last month, I put up three-and-twenty rods on only five buildings."
"Let me see. Was it not at Criggan last week, about midnight on Saturday, that the steeple, the big elm, and the assembly-room cupola were struck? Any of your rods there?"
"Not on the tree and cupola, but on the steeple."
"Of what use is your rod, then?"
"Of life-and-death use. But my workman was heedless. In fitting the rod at top to the steeple, he allowed a part of the metal to graze the tin sheeting. Hence the accident. Not my fault, but his. Hark!"
"Never mind. That clap burst quite loud enough to be heard without finger-pointing. Did you hear of the event at Montreal last year? A servant-girl struck at her bedside with a rosary in her hand; the beads being metal. Does your beat extend into the Canadas?"
"No. And I hear that there, iron rods only are in use. They should have mine, which are copper. Iron is easily fused. Then they draw out the rod so slender, that it has not body enough to conduct the full electric current. The metal melts; the building is destroyed. My copper rods never act so. Those Canadians are fools. Some of them knob the rod at the top, which risks a deadly explosion, instead of imperceptibly carrying down the current into the earth, as this sort of rod does. Mine is the only true rod. Look at it. Only one dollar a foot."
"This abuse of your own calling in another might make one distrustful with respect to yourself."
"Hark! The thunder becomes less muttering. It is nearing us, and nearing the earth, too. Hark! One crammed crash! All the vibrations made one by nearness. Another flash. Hold."
"What do you?" I said, seeing him now instantaneously relinquishing his staff, lean intently forward towards the window, with his right fore and middle fingers on his left wrist.
But ere the words had well escaped me, another exclamation escaped him.
"Crash! only three pulses -- less than a third of a mile off -- yonder, somewhere in that wood. I passed three stricken oaks there, ripped out new and glittering. The oak draws lightning more than other timber, having iron in solution in its sap. Your floor here seems oak."
"Heart-of-oak. From the peculiar time of your call upon me, I suppose you purposely select stormy weather for your journeys. When the thunder is roaring, you deem it an hour peculiarly favorable for producing impressions favorable to your trade."
"Hark -- Awful!"
"For one who would arm others with fearlessness, you seem unbeseemingly timorous yourself. Common men are choose fair weather for their travels; you choose thunder-storms; and yet --"
"That I travel in thunder-storms, I grant; but not without particular precautions, such as only a lightning-rod man may know. Hark! Quick -- look at my specimen rod. Only one dollar a foot."
"A very fine rod, I dare say. But what are these particular precautions of yours? Yet first let me close yonder shutters; the slanting rain is beating through the sash. I will bar up."
"Are you mad? Know you not that yon iron bar is a swift conductor? Desist."
"I will simply close the shutters, then, and call my boy to bring me a wooden bar. Pray, touch the bell-pull there."
"Are you frantic? That bell-wire might blast you. Never touch bell-wire in a thunderstorm, nor ring a bell of any sort."
"Nor those in belfries? Pray, will you tell me where and how one may be safe in a time like this? Is there any part of my house I may touch with hopes of my life?"
"There is; but not where you now stand. Come away from the wall. The current will sometimes run down a wall, and -- a man being a better conductor than a wall -- it would leave the wall and run into him. Swoop! That must have fallen very nigh. That must have been globular lightning."
"Very probably. Tell me at once, which is, in your opinion, the safest part of this house?"
"This room, and this one spot in it where I stand. Come hither."
"The reasons first."
"Hark! -- after the flash the gust -- the sashes shiver -- the house, the house! -- Come hither to me!"
"The reasons, if you please."
"Come hither to me!"
"Thank you again, I think I will try my old stand -- the hearth. And now, Mr Lightning-rod man, in the pauses of the thunder, be so good as to tell me your reasons for esteeming this one room of the house the safest, and your own one stand-point there the safest spot in it."
There was now a little cessation of the storm for a while. The Lightning-rod man seemed relieved, and replied --
"Your house is a one-storied house, with an attic and a cellar; this room is between. Hence its comparative safety. Because lightning sometimes passes from the clouds to the earth, and sometimes from the earth to the clouds. Do you comprehend? -- and I choose the middle of the room, because, if the lightning should strike the house at all, it would come down the chimney or walls; so, obviously, the further you are from them, the better. Come hither to me, now."
"Presently. Something you just said, instead of alarming me, has strangely inspired confidence."
"What have I said?"
"You said that sometimes lightning flashes from the earth to the clouds."
"Aye, the returning-stroke, as it is called; when the earth, being overcharged with the fluid, flashes its surplus upward."
"The returning-stroke; that is, from earth to sky. Better and better. But come here on the hearth, and dry yourself."
"I am better here, and better wet."
"How?"
"It is the safest thing you can do -- Hark, again! -- to get yourself thoroughly drenched in a thunder-storm. Wet clothes are better conductors than the body; and so, if the lightning strike, it might pass down the wet clothes without touching the body. The storm deepens again. Have you a rug in the house? Rugs are non-conductors. Get one, that I may stand on it here, and you, too. The skies blacken -- it is dusk at noon. Hark! -- the rug, the rug!"
I gave him one; while the hooded mountains seemed closing and tumbling into the cottage.
"And now, since our being dumb will not help us," said I, resuming my place, "let me hear your precautions in traveling during thunder-storms."
"Wait till this one is passed."
"Nay, proceed with the precautions. You stand in the safest possible place according to your own account. Go on."
"Briefly, then. I avoid pine-trees, high houses, lonely barns, upland pastures, running water, flocks of cattle and sheep, a crowd of men. If I travel on foot -- as today -- I do not walk fast; if in my buggy, I touch not its back or sides; if on horseback, I dismount and lead the horse. But of all things, I avoid tall men."
"Do I dream? Man avoid man? and in danger-time, too."
"Tall men in a thunder-storm I avoid. Are you so grossly ignorant as not to know, that the height of a six-footer is sufficient to discharge an electric cloud upon him? Are not lonely Kentuckians, ploughing, smit in the unfinished furrow? Nay, if the six-footer stand by running water, the cloud will sometimes select him as its conductor to that running water. Hark! Sure, yon black pinnacle is split. Yes, a man is a good conductor. The lightning goes through and through a man, but only peels a tree. But sir, you have kept me so long answering your questions, that I have not yet come to business. Will you order one of my rods? Look at this specimen one? See: it is of the best of copper. Copper's the best conductor. Your house is low; but being upon the mountains, that lowness does not one whit depress it. You mountaineers are most exposed. In mountainous countries the lightning-rod man should have most business. Look at the specimen, sir. One rod will answer for a house so small as this. Look over these recommendations. Only one rod, sir; cost, only twenty dollars. Hark! There go all the granite Taconics and Hoosics dashed together like pebbles. By the sound, that must have struck something. An elevation of five feet above the house will protect twenty feet radius all about the rod. Only twenty dollars, sir -- a dollar a foot. Hark -- Dreadful! -- Will you order? Will you buy? Shall I put down your name? Think of being a heap of charred offal, like a haltered horse burnt in his stall; and all in one flash!"
"You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and from Jupiter Tonans," laughed I; "you mere man who come here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, that you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man's earth."
"Impious wretch!" foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the rainbow beamed. "I will publish your infidel notions."
"Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm."
The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes as the storm rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me; his tri-forked thing at my heart.
I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.
But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbors, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.

thanks to;http://www.melville.org/lrman.htm

Zen, Tortoises, and Shades..

Tortoise

Perhaps Zen is instructive because it is humorous. I would guess that if you took all such stories entirely seriously, you would miss the point as often as you would get it.

Achilles

Maybe there's something in your Tortoise-Zen.

Tortoise

Can you answer just one question for me? I would like to know this: Why did Bodhidharma come from India into China?

Achilles

Oho! Shall I tell you what Jōshū said when he was asked that very question?

Tortoise

Please do.

Achilles

He replied, “That oak tree in the garden.”

Tortoise

Of course; that's just what I would have said. Except that I would have said it in answer to a different question—namely, “Where can I find some shade from the midday sun?”

Achilles

Without knowing it, you have inadvertently hit upon one of the basic questions of Zen. That question, innocent as it sounds, actually means, “What is the basic principle of Zen?”

Tortoise

How extraordinary. I hadn't the slightest idea that the central aim of Zen was to find some shade.

Achilles

Oh, no—you've misunderstood me entirely. I wasn't referring to that question. I meant your question about why Bodhidharma came from India into China.

http://www.madore.org/~david/zen/#prel.hackerszen.geb

Aquinas on Aristotle

Aquinas studied Aristotle like no other man had before or since and he used Aristotle to justify his entire thinking.

Aquinas' theory of knowledge is not a vision of divine truth -- you might expect that coming from this very Christian saint.
Rather, his theory of knowledge is a sober statement of how men know the world.

Man is a rational animal and the world can be understood by human reason. 

A being endowed with reason, man can understand the universe. 

But as an animal, man can know only that which he can experience with his senses.

This is Aristotelianism to the core.

As Aquinas himself put it: "whatever is known is known in the manner in which man can know it."

This is a fundamental principle of all knowledge according to Aquinas and could lead man in two directions:

1. man can know of the world only that which he learns from his experience of the material world. This brand of empiricism sets limits to what we can know. For Aquinas, this raised the question: "how can we reconcile faith and reason?"
2. the world is intelligible to rational man. Whatever exists, can be understood. Whatever exists, has a set of causes. These causes are known only through man's experience and his reflection upon that experience.

To find these principles or first causes is the whole object of our knowledge. 

What experience conveys can be put into language and expressed in words, propositions and demonstrations.

Though man cannot say all that the world is, what he can say is truly said.

This is a theory of the function of the individual knower. 

The mind knows itself, knows its objects, and finally, the mind knows its own nature.

[from 'Aquinas and Dante', ;http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture28b.html 

Taxi - Part 1

James Cagney - According To Rules

Cullen in the Afterlife by P. K. Page : Poetry Magazine

Cullen in the Afterlife

By P. K. Page 1916–2010

 

He found it strange at first. A new dimension.

One he had never guessed. The fourth? The fifth?

How could he tell, who’d only known the third?

Something to do with eyesight, depth of field.

Perspective quite beyond him. Everything flat

or nearly flat. The vanishing point

they’d tried to teach at school was out of sight

and out of mind. A blank.

Now, this diaphanous dimension—one

with neither up nor down, nor east nor west,

nor orienting star to give him north.

Even his name had left him. Strayed like a dog.

Yet he was bathed in some unearthly light,

a delicate no-color that made his flesh

transparent, see-through, a Saran-Wrap self.

His body without substance and his mind

with nothing to think about—although intact—

was totally minus purpose. He must think.

Think of a Rubens, he said to himself. But where

Rubens had been there was a void, a vast

emptiness—no opulence. And then

Cézanne who broke all matter up—

made light of it, in fact. And mad Van Gogh

who, blinded by the light, cut off his ear.

Gone—that shadowy assembly—vanished, done.

Gone without substance. Like himself. A shell.

Insensate in a flash. (What was that flash—

bereft of all but essence?) Was it death?

He wondered about the word, so filled with breath

yet breathless, breathless, breathless. A full stop.

“Divino Espirito Santo,” he had said

once in Brazil, “Soul of my very soul.”

He’d prayed in Portuguese, an easier tongue—

for newly agnostic Anglos—than his own,

burdened with shibboleths and past beliefs.

“Alma de minha alma”—liquid words

that made a calm within him. Where within?

Was there a word for it? Was it his heart?

Engulfed by love. Held in a healing beam

of love-light. Had he earned such love?

And how partake of such a gift when he

was handicapped by Earthshine—wore the stars,

badges and medals of privilege and success?

Desensitizers, brutalizers—all

the tricks that mammon plays to make one sleep.

He must wake up. He must expose and strip

successive layers to find his soul again.

Where had the rubble come from? He was like

a junkyard—cluttered, filled with scrap iron, tin.

As dead as any metal not in use.

So he must start once more. He had begun

how many times? Faint glimmerings and dim

memories of pasts behind the past

recently lived—the animal pasts and vague

vegetable pasts—those climbing vines and fruits;

and mineral pasts (a slower pulse) the shine

of gold and silver and the gray of iron.

The “upward anguish.”

What a rush of wings

above him as he thought the phrase and knew

angels were overhead, and over them

a million suns and moons.

Source: Poetry (June 2009).

El Paso. and More about the ,'Pineal Gland'.

THE PINEAL GLAND: ITS PHYSIOLOGY AND INFLUENCE ON SHAMANIC STATES

The pineal gland is a cone-shaped pea that sits on the roof of the 3rd ventricle of the brain, directly behind the root of the nose (3rd eye chakra) floating in a small lake of cerebrospinal fluid. It is our body's biological clock and has been called a window of the brain because, as with all mid-line structures bordering the 3rd and 4th ventricles of the brain, it doesn't have a blood-brain barrier. Instead it relies on a constant supply of blood via, considering its miniscule size, a particularly rich vascular network.

It was considered for many years to be as redundant as our appendix but this theory is brought sharply into question because, in our body's infinite wisdom, the pineal gland has been supplied with the best blood, oxygen and nutrient mix available other than that received by our kidneys!

It acts as a receiving mechanism capable of monitoring electro-magnetic fields and helping align bodies in space.

With its central hormone, MELATONIN, the pineal not only regulates sleep/ wake cycles and the aging process, but also appears to act as the Mistress Gland (sofia)* orchestrating the body's entire endocrine system and thus, energetically speaking, the chakra system.

I believe it is also responsible for shamanic states, visions, kundalini e.t.c.

read more;               http://www.bridgeofstars.co.uk/pineal-gland.htm

Steel Guitar