Jihad

Jihad and Love

I finished reading the fictional novel "Finding Nouf" by Zoe Ferraris. The action takes place in Saudi Arabia where a 16 year-old Saudi girl has disappeared before her wedding.

I like this re-definition of jihad on page 275 in the hardback edition. It's not militaristic or combative; it re-defines jihad as a peace within, a recognition that fighting is not the answer.

"That was the true jihad, the giving up of goods, hopes, desires, when life demands it, when not to give up would lead to wrong."

Giving up strikes a chord in me and an affinity with my spiritual practice. Giving up things that have the potential to cause chaos in the world is a noble jihad. Here is another passage that moved me.

The 77 Words for Love

"It was disorienting to see such calculation amid such cloying romanticism. There was hubb, which meant love, and also seed; 'ishq, entanglement, and an ivy that strangles a tree; hawa, liking and error; fitna, passionate desire, also chaos; hayam, wandering thirsty in the desert; sakan, tranquility; and izaz, dignified love. Then the list grew darker, from captivation to confusion and affliction, even to depression, sorrow, and grief, culminating in fanna, nonexistence. The page stood out as a work of art…"

Horseshit or the Collective Unconscious

I have always liked the word serendipity, enjoying its carefree and spunky five-syllable trip down my tongue, so this after-sex shower scene from Michael Gruber's "The Tropic of Night" made me smile.

She kissed his neck.

"Serendipity that I called, huh?" he said.

"No, serendipity is when you're looking for something and you find something else that's even better. Penicillin. Columbus too, I guess. What you mean is synchronicity, which is when two independent variables happen at the same time, in a pseudo-meaningful way. Serendipity is scientific, synchronicity isn't."

"Why not?"

She tossed the book on his belly and slipped out of bed. "Read the book."

"Why should I when I have you? Where are you going?"

"The shower, where you can join me, if you promise not to get me started."

Under the lukewarm stream, he soaped her long back, while she held her braid away from the water. He said, "So tell me, why isn't synchronicity scientific?"

"By definition. And Jimmy, I want you to know that you are the first and only man I have ever discussed epistemology with under the shower."

"I appreciate that," he said.

"It was. In any case, science looks for causality. Event B only occurs after Event A, or is associated with it more than chance alone would allow. Lightning always precedes thunder, and so we assume that lightening causes thunder, and we look for a physical connection between the two events, and in that case, we find it, and science marches on. Synchronicity… proposes a linkage between two events that is meaningful without being causal or related in any reproducible or deterministic way… me wanting to get together with you and you happen to call me…"

"It's like luck."

"In a way. But it's supposed to be meaningful on the psychic level, too. The cosmos or the collective unconscious is trying to reach us. Horseshit, in other words." She looked down at him and let out a yelp. "Yikes, get that thing away from me," she cried, and hung a wet washcloth on it, then turned the cold tap all the way up.

READS that I wanna READ

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea

The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky

Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

Paris Journal 1944-1955 by Janet Flanner

Check out the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize winners and more...

MORE INFO

Look deeply into yourself and come face to face with the primal "Huh?" -Andrew K. Davis (2001)

Family, Family, Family

If you don't include my two cats, Seymour and Sully, this is my immediate family, although Sully decided to go on a walkabout and disappeared several days ago.

But, my two cats are in my heart, even if they are not visible in this photo.

I know that it looks as if my sister is a ventriloquist and my mother is her prop in this photo, but I assure you that is not the case. My mother usually tells my sister what needs to be done.

Superintendent of Pubic Instruction: Really??

After looking through various educational equity policies on-line, I found a policy that was comprehensive and systemic.

The policy was created in the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in the State of Washington. But be careful, one small letter turns that official into

The Superintendent of Pubic Instruction

What would the job duties be? I wonder. Overall, I'm glad I caught that typo.

Peanut: the spirit, the kitten, the freedom to play

This is Peanut.

He reminds me to keep my spirit open to positive energy and opportunity and use common household items, such as shoestrings, for play!

Keep the mind open and flexible always...

take this highway

Love Doesn't Stink: but fear does

the fear at the base of human existence

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field... So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.

--Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen, from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith

are you ready?

This applies to all teaching and learning.
Well said Thich Nhat Hanh.

Even if the teaching is very valuable, if you don't make it appropriate to the person, it is not Buddhist [or productive] teaching.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

a sleepy town on the prairie grows art

Arts Council on the Prairie

When I was a kid discovering what it means to be alive in the small town of Humboldt, Iowa- population 5,000 (visualize "Little House on the Prairie" with indoor plumbing and I'm Laura)- exposure to the arts was a rarity in the midst of Farm Rhythms and practical solid folks who followed the same routines of eat, work, watch some television, procreate and go to church on Sunday with slight variations.

The Humboldt Arts Council is making an effort to change art deprivation on the prairie. I sing the praise of the council members even though I don't always agree with the choices they make.

Staging "The Odd Couple" would not be not my choice for summer 2008, but there will be one more production in town this year than there was last year. Noted, only one production, but that is better than none.

wild-willed and traveling clematis vine

With all my master gardening training, I have realized that I need to take time to research how to encourage a clematis vine to climb a trellis. My vine decided to snake its way across the top of my lupine and cone flowers and bypass the trellis that I wanted it to form a bond with for life.

This pink-flowering vine is a free spirit, and since it's not choking the plants below it to death, I watch its progress with some joy; I have also chosen to take a road less travelled.

become porous: open to life

Let the barriers of your personality become porous and open to life.

The only way to achieve maximum openness is to arrive at every moment without a single preconception, judgement, fear or foregone conclusion, forget bias. We must step into the mystery of life naked and undefended.

We can learn to encounter life directly, without anything to mediate its intensity. When we truly hate what's happening, our instinct is to flee from it like a house on fire. But if we can learn to turn around and enter that fire, to let it burn all our resistance away, then we find ourselves arising from the ashes with a new sense of power and freedom.

-Raphael Cushnir, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran - May 10, 2008

I am spiritually digging the "open to life" theme of the recent Daily Dharma readings.

identify & stop the delusions: Daily Dharma: May 7, 2008

May 7, 2008
Tricycle's Daily Dharma

Stop Pretending

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there's no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are--as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy. I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being: identify and stop, identify and stop, identify and stop. Identify the myriad forms of delusion we place upon ourselves, and muster the courage to stop each one. Little by little deep inside us, the diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That).

--Bo Lozoff, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran

Elimination Dance

Elimination Dance
(an intermission)

Michael Ondaatje includes an intermission dance between the two sections of his poems in the book “The Cinnamon Peeler”. His particular intermission is sparkling with humor, exposing miniature moments of life that surprise readers with an unexpected novelty separating the doers from the observers. Here are a few of the elimination dances. I encourage you to add your own moments to the intermission.

Those who (while visiting a foreign country) have lost the end of a Q tip in their ear and have been unable to explain their problem

Gentlemen who have placed a microphone beside a naked woman’s stomach after lunch and later, after slowing down the sound considerably, have sold these noises on the open market as whale songs

All actors and poets who spit into the first row while they perform

Any dinner guest who has consumed the host’s missing contact lens along with dessert

Those who have filled in a bilingual and confidential pig survey from Statistics Canada (Une enquête sur les porcs, strictement confidentielle)

Women who gave up the accordion because of pinched breasts

Those who have pissed out the back of moving trucks

The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together and returned the book, thinking I wouldn’t notice

Anyone with pain


Here is one of my own.

anyone who has taken a photo of a performing chicken, a strutting cock, in one of the busiest squares in Africa, Djemaa el-Fna in Marrakech- (envision acrobats, snake charmers, date sellers) and screamed at the chicken owner that she would not pay him for the shot

Thich Nhat Hanh: Speaking of Faith

CONNECTIONS

Thich Nhat Hanh was a guest on the National Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith" this morning. Hanh is a Buddhist monk from Vietnam who administers compassion and forgiveness to the pain bodies suffering inside each of us.

His poem "Interrelationship" reminds me that I am connected to others, and that what I do to others, I do to myself.

Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

"Interrelationship"

You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy



Destiny, fate, chance or just life…

I stumbled across this article by Curtis Lang on the SatyaCenter.com site and Lang’s ideas on self-love and ego were interrelated to the poem "Interrelationship". Destiny, fate, chance or just life…

Back to the Garden Part 3: Self-Love: The War Between the Ego and the Higher Self
by Curtis Lang
The Law of Resonance

The importance of Self-love as a lasting foundation for a successful love relationship cannot be overstated. Without true love of self, you have nothing to share with another but your own poverty of spirit.

According to the great ancient law of resonance and attraction, like attracts like.

To attract a great love in your life, you must have great love to share and that love must first of all be true Self-love, not egoistic love.

If you have not yet attained Self-love, by that same law of resonance and attraction, you will attract an egoistic lover who, like yourself, must work to overcome social and cultural conditioning, egotistical self-centered behavior, character flaws, mental misconceptions, emotional wounds, energy attachments and karmic limitations.

Self-love is the necessary prerequisite for all successful sexual relations.

Self-love is the first step up the ladder of love for any individual.

The second step is love for another individual human being, a spouse, a lover, or an intimate friend, a teacher, a brother or sister or child.

The third step is love for humanity, manifest as compassionate actions in the world.

The fourth step is a universal love that is beyond description, a mystical Unity with the Source of all creation.

So if you wish to learn to love others, and to love God fully, first love yourself. Love is giving. By giving love to yourself, you give yourself permission to love others, and to be loved.

Note: SatyaCenter.com is a community website focusing on alternative health and healing, healthy relationships and global news. Satya means truth in Sanskrit. The Satya Center is in Hudson, New York.

Satyacenter.com

leave the yellow bark dust on my pillow

This poem is an intimate sensual understanding between two people that is earthy and understated; I smell cinnamon every time I read it.

The Cinnamon Peeler
- by Michael Ondaatje -

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

The Mating Mind: Choosing Mr. Right

Men Court, Women Choose

Geoffrey F. Miller visualizes our ancient sisters in his book "The Mating Mind."

"When you picture ancestral females facing predators, do not imagine Marilyn Monroe whimpering and cowering. Imagine Steffi Graf brandishing a torch in place of a tennis racket."

One of the premises of the book is that men court (dance, give gifts, advertise and flaunt their talents in the arts and sciences) and that women choose the most desirable partner during the mating process. Fitness indicators such as height, physical fitness, kindness, generosity, witty conversation, intelligence and a sense of humor are clues to the quality of a man’s genes; Women respond to these indicators and this has helped shape the course of human evolution.

He has this to say about the male penis:

"The large male penis is a product of female choice in evolution. If it were not, males would never have bothered to evolve such a large, floppy, blood-hungry organ. Ancestral females made males evolve such penises because they liked them… larger penises led to better orgasms by permitting more varied, exciting and intimate copulatory positions."

Miller questions the traditional view that females needed males to protect them from predators because females moved around in larger groups than males while they were foraging for food. He writes that women had "many eyes and many hands to offer mutual vigilance and protection. An ancestral female would be much safer in a group of a dozen sisters, aunts, and female friends than with a single man in a nuclear family. The same group-protection effect would have guarded females against sexual predators."

The book explores fascinating possibilities involving the evolution of the human mind through sexual selection and our choice of partners. If Miller’s ideas are valid, we have the power of choice my sisters, but haven’t we always understood that reality in our heart of ancient hearts.

Miller received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University and adapted his dissertation on how sexual choice shaped the human mind for a mainstream audience.

Finally, a male biologist who attempts to see the clitoris from a woman’s perspective: 



The inconspicuous design of the clitoris

"combined with its exquisite sensitivity suggests that the clitoris is important not as an object of male mate choice, but as a mechanism of female choice. It helps to select for males who provide pleasurable foreplay, copulation, and orgasms, and such discriminative power is just what we should expect from an organ of female choice."



From a sexual selection viewpoint,



"clitorises should respond only to men who demonstrate high fitness, including the physical fitness necessary for long, energetic sex, and the mental fitness necessary to understand what women want and how to deliver it. The choosy clitoris should produce orgasm only when the woman feels genuinely attracted to a man’s body, mind, and personality, and when the man proves his attentiveness and fitness through the right stimulation."



Yes

Excerpt from "Yes"
by Muriel Rukeyser

Open your eyes
Dream but don't guess
Your biggest surprise
Comes after Yes


Say yes today!

carnal cakes served here

I had beans and rice for breakfast this morning.

Carnal Cakes

Abstract pancake lover
syrup and honey sweet on the tongue
whet my appetite
with cake-like, crepe thin thinking
pancakes bubbling
over with salty butter
round layers tease my palate
gentle stabbing journey
between my lips
slippery hunger
why stop cravings for
pancakes?

written by LJ Runkle, March 25, 2008

the meaning of work

I have been thinking a lot about work: why we do it; what rewards we seek from it; the joys of work beyond monetary benefits- because money is not what motivates me to get out of bed and go to work.

Today, March 24, I read Tricycle's Daily Dharma, and now I have another book to add to my "want to read" list about the meaning of work.

Tricycle's Daily Dharma: March 24, 2008
Dharma and the Dollar

Awakening entails economic pursuits that foster self-respect and self-reliance and that serve to integrate, rather than disperse, the energies of the local community. From the perspective of the Dharma, economic goals include not only production and profit, but also their human and environmental impact. The conservation of material resources, their humane use, and their equitable distribution are taken as preeminent concerns.

--Joanna Macy in Mindfulness and Meaningful Work by Claude Whitmyer

I would add that the collective attitude of the people working together is important, as well as the positive energy that we have the ability to create in the world when we strive toward a shared goal we believe will make the planet a better place for other humans, sentient beings and the environment. This is what I call community. This is what I want to be a part of throughout my life.