Invisibly Emptied Oceans

I have seen the ravaging effects of our insatiable culinary desires on our world's most fragile of ecosystems first hand, during my years living in the Western Pacific. The industrial floating cities, flagged by far away Asian tigers, lights blazing 24 hours a day, seemed otherworldly within the backdrop of the verdant, placid environment. These floating cities were, and are, raping the oceans; they are cleaning out the vastness of the seas; they are leaving yet another unfortunate gift to our next generation.

Baraka

This is so cool...take 2.
The word Baraka means blessing in several languages.

an increasingly militarized world

The recent debacle of Somali pirates hijacking a Ukranian ship carrying 30 new T-72 tanks, as well as loads of ammunition and rocket launchers for the Kenyan Army got me to thinking.
It got me to thinking that Kenya is one of the poorest countries in the world. A country constantly looking for handouts from the international community, a country whose bloated bureaucracy consumes $800 million dollars annually just to pay for the bloated government. Kenyan MP's are amongst the best paid in the world. The BBC reported recently, that in a country where the average income is less than $400...

Cabinet posts attract a monthly salary of nearly $18,000 (£9,000). Assistant ministers earn a bit less - just over $15,000.
The new prime minister and two new deputy prime ministers will be paid more. So salaries alone will cost the Kenyan taxpayer $1.5m a month.
Ministers and their assistants also get allowances - that adds another $210,000 a month to the bill.
To add insult to injury, the Kenyan exchequer only claws back a little in tax: only around $3,000 of the ministers' income is treated as taxable income.
It is impossible to put an accurate figure on the total burden, but these extra bonuses amount to a cash value of at least $13m a year, or to put it another way, enough to build around 50 new schools in Kenya.

Which brings us back to the military spending. In a country where the average person is barely surviving on less than $400 a year, the military spent $283 million dollars last year. Which brings us to the current debacle off the lawless coast of Somalia. A country that relies on food aid and development agencies to provide medical care to its citizens, a country where the annual educational budget is $30 million.

No Longer

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/no-longer/

For some time I have been following the educational odyssey of Will Okun, a Chicago public school teacher who has been battling with many of the same issues I have encountered in my first month in NYC for the last 8 years; he has left his teaching job, and reflects on his times, struggles and triumphs in a piece on Nicholas Kristof's blog, On The Ground, titled, No Longer.

nicely put.

Matt Taibbi, from Rollingstone Magazine..."Mad Dog Palin"

http://www.alternet.org/election08/100551/mad_dog_palin_/?page=entire

"So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.

Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are."

oil change

Almost a trillion dollars materialized out of thin air, but not a penny to spare...Thomas Friedman points out some glaring miscalculations in our financial policies, policies generated to serve the few at the expense of the masses, policies falsely represented as free market capitalism....


Our economy is like a car, added Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are the engine.

“I cannot help but ponder about how quickly we are ready to act on fixing the transmission, by pumping in almost one trillion dollars in a fortnight,” said Sridhar. “On the other hand, the engine, which is slowly dying, is not even getting an oil change or a tuneup with the same urgency, let alone a trillion dollars to get ourselves a new engine. Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would return to the economy, including the ‘transmission,’ if we committed at that level to green jobs and technologies.”

thoughts

a fleeting thought.
a bolt of brilliance.
and then its gone.
chasing a thought, chasing a life, experience melding into existence.
a fine line to cross, this one is. no retort. melting back into normalcy, a
trapeze artist standing on a balance beam; refusing to fall, refusing to walk
forward.
refusing to chase what is not his.



a restless mind,
a vagabonds soul,
a truants heart,
a stranger's casing.

Wrathful Dieties

I had the good fortune to see the excellent new exhibit at the Rubin Museum, "The Dragons Gift: Sacred Art from the Kingdom of Bhutan."
Me and a few others were given a tour on wrathful dieties, iconography used in Himalayan Buddhist art to represent various mindstates and mental projection that need to be overcome by serious practicioners of the Path. They are enlightened beings which take on these forms to lead others to enlightenment. The detail and aura of these works of art is truly stunning; each piece will require years of dedicated work, and most are perfectly preserved from the mid 1400's. This is the first time the sacred art of Bhutan has ever left the remote Kingdom, and it is certainly worth seeing.





"The Vajrayana Buddhist pantheon comprises a wide variety of divine figures. Many of these are the focus of practices such as meditation, visualization, mantra recitation, sacred dances, and elaborate rituals. In this context, yoga means the technique or method of employing deity practices for spiritual development. One of the most frequent is the generation of the personal deity by the practitioner via meditation. In such cases, the practitioner follows specific techniques to embody the deity him- or herself. From one perspective, these divine beings can be understood as expressions of one’s own enlightened mind. The visual elements with which these deities are portrayed are richly symbolic, and to the initiated these images convey important aspects of the Buddhist teachings."
-from The Rubin Museum

Sharon

I have had the pleasure and fortune to study with a true master of loving kindness and compassion, Sharon Salzberg, on and off for a few years now. From this week's teaching, one line really stood out for me.

"Life should be a profound exploration."

I have attempted, in my short time on this tiny blue dot floating in infinitesimal space, to see this speck of matter crashing through the cosmos, to experience the peculiar inhabitants, to witness the spectacular fallout from divergent evolution across the globe. It hasn't always been profound. But is has been exploration. But externality is only one half of this great bargain with the world. There is an entire world of exploration within the realms of our being; perhaps this is where my travels will lead next. I sit, wait, and ponder; if given the proper time, proper surrounding, and proper motivation, enlightenment can be possible in our lifetimes. Enlightenment in understanding the true nature of all things. The absence of all existence, the emptiness of all phenomena. This is the ultimate level of understanding.


"A Buddha experiences the world completely free of grasping and delusion and mistaken appearance. Once this is understood, we can then help others to be free. "
-Kadam Morten

"First you reel me out,
then you cut the string."
-Thom Yorke

traveling words

from a book i'm reading on the Rwandan Genocide, Philip Gourevitch eloquently captures a moment on the road, a scene that I have experienced countless times in countless countries, sitting, watching an alien world slowly creep by, an innocent observer.

"on the road, the country resolved itself in rugged glory, and you could imagine, as the scenes rushed past and the car filled with smells of earth and eucalyptus and charcoal, that they people and their landscape-the people in their landscape-were as they had always been, undisturbed. In the fields people tilled, in the markets they marketed, in the schoolyards the girls in bright blue dresses and boys in khaki shorts and safari shirts played and squabbled like children anywhere. Across sweeping valleys, and through high mountain passes, the roadside presented the familiar African parade: brightly clad women with babies bound to their backs and enormous loads on their heads; strapping young men in jeans and Chicago Bulls T-Shirts ambling along empty handed-save, perhaps, for a small radio; elderly gents in suits weaving down red-dirt lanes on ancient bicycles; a girl chasing a chicken, a boy struggling to balance the bloody head of a goat on his shoulder; tiny tots in ragged smocks whacking cows out of your way with long sticks."


fantastic imagery of the road.

God They're Cool

And this video rocks....

Pulitzer-Prize columnist reflects on Darfur - News

Pulitzer-Prize columnist reflects on Darfur - News

"Kristof told the crowd to do two things: travel and find a cause bigger than themselves. Students should find an issue they care about now, because they may not have time later, he said. Young people should work to eliminate poverty, and the best ways to do so are improving health and education in the Third World, he said. "

I LOVE this one!!

Ah, greed. Manifested so unambiguously, in plain focus for our collective viewing pleasure.

Lehman Brothers, brokers of greed, masters of the universe, teetering on the edge of insolvency,
as the result of risky business practices aimed at screwing the less-informed out of their hard earned money...board members skipping their weekends in the Hamptons, praying for yet another Bear Sternsian bailout by the magical hands of Hank Paulson and his deep silk lined pocket of our tax dollars. People are losing their homes every day due to the exact form of predatory lending proliferated by the hands and minds of the likes of Lehman. And needless to say, Hank Paulson is not showing up with the head of the New York Federal Reserve to bail them out of their financial misery.

So alas, Lehman Brothers has one hope...that its competitors, its cohabitators in the land of plenty, will come to its rescue, will put duty and loyalty ahead of greed and ambition for just this one moment, will do "the right thing" and buy out the ailing investment firm...

HA!!

They have proved, yet again, what a shark tank it is that they swim in; without a federal guarantee of taxpayer dollars, nobody would step in to help an ailing brother. Greed wins, again and again, without fail. There is nothing but the almighty dollar and the endless pursuit of its filthy lucre.
And for once, I applaud Paulson; he did not sink more of our country's wealth into bailing out more filthy rich investment bankers, did not further the promise of guaranteeing risky business practices, did not further propel the chain of covetousness that runs so much of this country.
And to Lehman Brothers, whose greed finally got the best of, whose friends left it to drown in a shallow pool, I say good riddance. One less house in the Hamptons will be good for you.

Pedi-Paws

I was taken aback just now at the graphic scenes of destitute hurricane survivors in Haiti literally throwing themselves into razor wire for the chance at a food handout from the United Nations.
I usually tune into CNN for a minute or two each day, to quickly tune out from the nonstop political bantering nonsense. But this report was brutally graphic; the desperation in the people's eyes, the screams manifesting from empty stomachs as real as it can get through a metal box.
wow. CNN is actually covering something going on in the world that is not associated with Palin, McCain, Obama, or Lehman Brothers.
and then....
Pedi Paws. I was almost more astonished at the followup to this chilling report on the frontlines of humanity. A pet nail clipper commercial. Pedi Paws. Promises to not crack or splinter, or cut too short, your pet's nails. "Fast, easy, and painless trimming!"
My god. Cut back to young women entangled in razor wire in a desperate plea for life.
Cut forward. Painless trimming for Fido's comfort.
Citizens of this great country will spend way more this year on their pets than on all international humanitarian aid expenditures combined.

Where is our collective consciousness? When politicans appeal to our sense of unity, of standing as one, as coming together, what, exactly, are we uniting together for? What, exactly, do we stand for? Is it crass materialism, zombified advertising bookending usually-zombified programming, an individualistic mentality that values pet clippers over human need? Can the people who set up commercial programming at least be more sensitive to the news topics at hand when deciding when and where to smear their coorporate feces??

Pedi Paws. Now, you will get the Shed Ender free with your purchase!! Just pay shipping and handling!! Order now!!

into the wild

"Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. - Alexander Supertramp May 1992 "

- from the book, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer

"when you think you have to want more than you need, until you have it all, you won't be free. ...when you have more than you think, you need more space. won't be the last, won't be the first. find my way, to where the sky meets the earth. on bended knee is no way to be free..."

-Eddie Vedder
Into the Wild Soundtrack(bits and pieces of this wonderful work...)

Drill Here! Drill Now!

When will be get beyond the sound bites, the talking points, and have an honest conversation in this country? I do hope it occurs within the next 60 days...

"...a nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while owning only 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness or self-sufficiency... ...Global problems obviously require a global response. As the world’s most profligate user of energy, and as one of its most technologically gifted nations, the United States can and should lead the way by developing more efficient vehicles and by expanding carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar power."

-nytimes editorial