From “Awakening the Buddha Within” by Lama Surya Das: The Korean Zen master I studied with, Nine Mountains, used to exclaim with gusto, “What is it?” This, his main koan or Zen conundrum, was boldly calligraphed in Korean as a hanging scroll on the wall. This is an intense, heartfelt, visceral question: “What the hell is it?” That was his whole teaching. What the hell is going on? What is this? Who is this? This is a fundamental existential question, turning our exploration inward. What is this presenting itself right now?
For the Latin word, Bellum, WAR, comes from the old word, Duellum, a DUEL, as Bonus from Duonus, and Bis from Duis. Now Duellum was derived from Duo; and thereby implied a difference between two persons, in the same sense as we term peace, UNITY, from Unitas, for a contrary reason. So the Greek word, polemos, commonly used to signify war, expresses in its original, an idea of multitude. The ancient Greeks likewise called it lye, which imports a DISUNION of minds; just as by the term dye, they meant the DISSOLUTION of the parts of the body. Nor does …
There are 159 articles in the fourth iteration of the Geneva Convention which was signed on 12 August 1949. It’s worth having a perusal through the Convention, to see what the powers of the world agreed to with respect to protecting civilians in times of war. At times the document reads very coldly such as in article: Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking …
My little project of collecting meditation practices is now compiled on one page. You can access it here, or at the sidebar on the right where it will stay linked for a while. The project was to discover 10 different sources for meditation practices while sitting, standing, lying and walking. This was originally used to complement my practice working with the Four Fold Way, in which investigation of four basic archetypes are complimented by meditations using one of the four postures. Enjoy the collection.
More detail on the recent Hubble photo of the galaxies “Astronomers are already identifying some curious trends. For example, about 30 galaxies here seem to have redshifts greater than 5, meaning we see them as they were when the universe was less than 9 percent of its present age, or less than 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. But only three are candidates for having a redshift around 6 (cosmic age 900 million years). “Why is there such a huge drop in galaxy numbers at z = 6?” asks Benitez. For now, the answer remains elusive. “