Sublime Vs our Reality..a profound cartoon from Russia

For all the souls trying to seek balance from both worlds..here is something profound..
alternate between realities..
BIGGGG EARR!!!

Passing on...

When a person who loves you..and whom you love dearly, passes on..
leaves this reality, leaving behind everything tangible..
& a vacuum that hurts unbearably..
you are left behind to wonder what they have left behind actually..
they actually leave parts of them in each of those lives they have touched in this reality..
memories..moments..growth..happiness..and most of all, Love..and much more.
No matter how much we can philosophize the mysteries of the Universe and the ways of this life, and the death that follows, trying to see the big picture..
the loss is very much a part of this reality..and the grief is real..we might never be able to come to terms with their absence..but they become integral parts of our existence..
and stay within us.
In memory of our loving, funny, caring, thoughtful..and much more..
"mama"(Uncle in Tamil)..

Absolute Spirit...

"Brahmam Okate"...The Absolute Spirit is One & Only ONE!
A collection of beings in multiple universes..
communicate with each other through their breaths and vibrations..
releasing the Infinite into the ether every single time..
to realize itself and be consumed again by another..
in an endless cycle of experiences..
Be it in one or many..the breaths hold the Absolute within..
metamorphosize with it & realize their purpose in this existence!
Is the purpose of the Infinite fulfilled or the Finite's fulfilled??

A place of my own!

A place to call my own in this universe...
Do I need to reassure myself that I am an inevitable part..?
whether I try to secure a place or not..
i will have one no matter what!
when will realize this?

Reckless Perceptions

This Earthling is yet another part of that infinite whole…

Where its chaos reflects in the world outside…

And its silence reflects in the peace that balances it…

Being a product of the eternal vacuum…

Tries to realize a purpose in this universe…

Truth is intangible…

And that it is intangible, is tangible!

Fusion of Contradictions- Part I

Artificial-Natural

It would not be an exaggeration that on all the efforts in defining and redefining the conception of ‘living’, a great importance had been endorsed upon one of the most significant aspect known as ‘soul’ in the great course of human history.

There had been the emergence of distinct schools of thought exactly opposite to each other and opposing philosophies and opposing ideologies in the conceptualization of ‘soul’ and the objective realities of existence.

The emergence of such exactly opposite values and the equal recognition they could attain in the course of development of mankind, it is evident that the quest for truth is inherent in the mankind that expresses an innate feeling for harmony.

In the search for truth there is inevitability for the correct inference of ‘untruth’, only which would distinguish the ‘truth’ with clarity.

The search for truth is mostly associated with the concept of ‘soul’; that accommodates in it also the objective realities of the world, which in turn encompasses the subjective contradictions in the objective world.

In the search for defining ‘living’ and realization of ‘soul’, human mind crosses several contradictions; one fundamental among which is the contradiction between ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ in the mind and practices of people.

The mankind in its course of growth has an inevitability to be compatible with nature to retain the very existence.

But in the course of growth an attitude of haste and aggression infiltrated in the mankind that is a tendency of opposing nature, both in the practices and also in the mind set of the people. This tendency is known as ‘artificiality’.

But on a generalized stand point, man is nothing but a product of nature and in this view whatever man does must also be natural.

But it has been widely recognized that whatever man does is artificial.

We recognize the nest of a bird as natural; a termite mound as natural; a bee hive as natural; a spider’s web as natural. But if a man builds a house then we normally say it as artificial.

In such a state of affairs it becomes necessary to distinguish the line of division between the artificial and natural, with lucidity.

In the struggle for survival at first man had made attempts to understand nature to adapt himself and also for protecting him for ensuring his survival. In the due course he became better comfortable with nature and started using it for his further comforts and also realized his inadequacy in the understanding of nature, when he formed groups towards organizing the search for solutions for various problems, when a tendency of fighting the insecurity in life became primary focus towards monopolizing the so called natural resources, which paved way for betterment of living standards and also productivity, focusing on trade and commerce. Abundant methods and means of production instigated various autonomous and isolated institutional structures while greatly curtailing human freedom due to the fetters of the so called institutional structures.

In the due course, the institutional structures became the depiction of authority, direction, regulation, guidance and so on when all the practices of the human race became focused towards strengthening the so called institutions, essentially economically, which had been assumed as the only means to attain the so called authority, thus getting far deviated from humanity, when the individual humans had no other option but to become slaves for the institutions of various forms and at times even countries turning out to be institutions.

The so called institutional structures of various forms oriented towards security, authority, power and economics did not permit even several heads and the members of the institutions to practice humanity, love, compassion and all those great virtues of mankind but to get involved in various acts against the conscience crossing various ethical and moral barriers with reduced sensitivity and increasing ignorance, while coining a tricky word known as ‘duty’ for obstinately justifying such ignorance. It is also a bitter fact that man is forced to compromise and overlook even his self respect on various occasions due to the institutional compulsions.

That is human invented institutions for his own alleviation to get organized and he got trapped with his own invention towards destruction of ‘self’.

On the other hand mankind invented a lot of means to enhance and betterment of living and the so called comfort ability. With all those inventions and various means for hurried usage of nature towards more and more comfort ability and establishment of authority, almost all the practices of man got focused towards exploitation of nature in a hasty manner.

That is, mankind invented a lot of technologies and gadgets to improve living towards more and more sophistication resulting in a very big question that, ‘where exactly are we heading towards?’

It is obvious that mankind is heading towards self destruction.

Now on the view point of the knowledge and practices of the human society, ‘artificial’ could be defined as something which is invented by man as the product of ignorance coupled with selfishness to get himself trapped in the due course towards destruction of ‘self’ and on the human society as a whole towards ‘self destruction’ and pseudo living.

In the same sense, ‘Natural’ could be defined as something which is invented by man as the product of awareness of the ignorance coupled with selflessness that elevates him towards an upper plane of consciousness and realization of ‘self’ and on the human society as a whole towards ‘existence’ and true living.

With such an understanding of natural and artificial when both of these prevail in the mind and practices of the society, a normally justified and accepted notion through the scientific perceptions is that, whatever materials invented by man that do not decay on natural course are known as artificial.

To be continued...

DHARMA THE CAT - David Lourie

The theme of the cartoon collection is "Havoc and mayhem on the rocky road to nirvana, with a Buddhist cat, a novice monk and a mouse that is hell-bent on cheese."

“Dharma The Cat” has three characters. There is a novice monk named Bodhi, who is stumbling earnestly along the Buddha’s Noble Path. The Cat’s name is Dharma, and he is a wise being who looks down from a great height on those who have taken birth in human form. And there is Siam, the house Mouse, who is concerned only with cheese.

The main character’s progress along his rocky path to Nirvana reflects our own delusions and obstacles, and enables us to digest the spiritual message in a compassionate and humorous way -- contrary to portraying the road to enlightenment as a friendless, unemotional journey. Practitioners do not have to be so brave, patient, or wise, else they will fail, and they might give up unless they lighten up, so to speak, and have a great sense of humour.

for more: visit the website http://www.dharmathecatcartoons.com/15blog/

An Interpretation to the Struggle of Life...

A lot of times we keep wondering why we face so much difficulty in life...obstacle over obstacle...struggling to overcome them. Trying to figure out why...why does it all have to be so hard. Why can't and don't we have an easy life? We keep searching for answers as to what we actually want to do, never ever resting in that quest. As inquisitive souls we seek answers and are desperate to find them. The moment we find an answer to one, there's another question, another struggle that we have to deal with. What is the reason for this struggle? This eternal struggle of life?
There's an answer, an interpretation, which seemingly is plausible enough to realize our purpose.
Our soul, our self, our spirit or whatever you wish to call your 'Being', is INFINITE in nature - meaning, we are free, boundless, beyond space or time, there's no beginning to our selves and no end. We are infinity itself in its purest form, that is, without the body. And our body, an accumulation of matter and substance, is FINITE, meaning, it only serves as a tangible medium for our shapeless soul, our formless self, the true 'Being' within.
So think about this for a second. What will happen when something so powerful, so vast, so vast as infinity, that is, our SOUL is put into something as small, as finite as our body? Yes, there's a conflict...not just a conflict, a struggle that starts right from the moment when the soul enters the germ cell in the womb all the way to when the body dies. So it is a struggle much bigger than anything we see tangibly, because this kind of struggle is invisible, unseen, unrealized by our conscious selves. So when we feel like doing something OUT OF THE WORLD, we feel confined, trapped and are bursting with emotion to do it. The ones among us, that realize that we can DO IT, actually get closer to doing it or even succeed. We keep trying, struggling to become our EXPANDED SELF, that is, our TRUE SELF, which leads to infinity.
We are born to be free, liberated from our minds or bodies that trap us although the body is that which gives us a finite shape. So what is the lesson here? Just be yourself, just try and be whatever you imagine yourself to be, because that is the truth. Reach out, become your Expanded Self, don't confine your thinking to what you think only your body can do. Never compromise on what you can achieve...because inside your finite body, is your infinite self, the true you.
This is not something that I just concocted out of the blue, but rather my interpretation from the teachings of Swami Ramakrishnananda in his booklet, The Universe and Man, a beautifully compiled thought process.

A thousand years - STING

a thousand reasons to live for...in this universe...with such soul-absorbing music...what can i say??

Words by sting, music by sting and kipper

A thousand years, a thousand more,
A thousand times a million doors to eternity
I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times
An endless turning stairway climbs
To a tower of souls
If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,
The towers rise to numberless floors in space
I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,
A million names but only one truth to face

A million roads, a million fears
A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty
I could speak a million lies, a million songs,
A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time
But if there was a single truth, a single light
A single thought, a singular touch of grace
Then following this single point , this single flame,
The single haunted memory of your face

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head

I may be numberless, I may be innocent
I may know many things, I may be ignorant
Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands
Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands
I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times
Reborn as fortunes child to judge anothers crimes
Or wear this pilgrims cloak, or be a common thief
Ive kept this single faith, I have but one belief

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head
On and on the mysteries unwind themselves
Eternities still unsaid
til you love me

Calling all fellow HUMANS positively!!!

POSITIVE PEOPLE TODAY IS HERE FOR ALL!!
TO SPREAD THE POSITIVITY IN THE WORLD..AROUND YOU!!!
Well, here are the details of the much awaited website for the non-profit we have started..
this is a very good venue for us in our journey..PPT(positive people today) as we call it..is an official non-profit organization from october 2007..and we have started this to spread positivity in the minds of people..!!
But, we are initially trying to spread the word around..
we are also going to use PPT as a platform for the world children's forum..
so, please register at the site and start adding articles..also any friends of yours could join this, add articles and positive energy to this..we will soon form a positive people's network where all of us will get together and spread love in the world..also upload your pictures/ art work /photographic skills to the gallery....
so go to PPT here from the link below..
www.positivepeopletoday.org
please do the registration and go through the whole website..pls also give us a review and tell me if the site is user friendly...
..pls spread the word..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOSS??

they say i lost another part of me today..
why do they use the word 'lost'?
there is nothing to lose when all that is lost is still here..within..
of what use is the word 'lost' when everything has to come back to me..one way or the other..
there is no place beyond the infinite where anything can go..
then why am i made to feel this way..?
i stand here, yearning to get in touch with the parts that will make me 'one' with the Whole..
do i understand anything here..?? i know not..
for.. i am the mystery!

OPEN CONTENT ALLIANCE-Libraries going open!

Imagine a world where each human can have access to information from books, no matter where on earth he or she is! Open Content Alliance is striving to get the books from libraries in universities, online, for each of us to access...the abundant information that would be possible will enable us to view the world with endless possibilities...and alternatives...
This would also unite a lot of elements which are disjointed from each other..in this world..in the current system!
A new consciousness would evolve bringing us together and giving meaning to the yet unrealized phrase - WE ARE ALL CONNECTED!!!

What is the Open Content Alliance?

The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!

The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors. Contributors to the OCA must agree to the principles set forth in the Call for Participation.

Building a Digital Archive of Global Content for Universal Access.
For further details please visit: http://www.opencontentalliance.org/
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/oca_test_004
This movie was commissioned by Internet Archive for the 2007 Open Content Alliance meeting held on October 17, 2007. click here for the movie

HOLE-IN-THE-WALL Project - A new way to learn!

A typical Learning station

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement." - Plato.

The driving force behind Hole-in-the-Wall is the the concept of Minimally Invasive Education which is truly path breaking. That children could learn on their own, was something not many people would have imagined and that too in such a cost effective manner with benefits like improved group dynamics, better in-class behavior etc.
Minimally Invasive Education is defined as a pedagogic method that uses the learning environment to generate an adequate level of motivation to induce learning in groups of children, with minimal, or no, intervention by a teacher.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Hole-in-the-Wall is one such idea, which offers the world a surprisingly fresh perspective on the learning process. Breaking the traditional confines of a school, Hole-in-The-Wall Education Limited (HiWEL) takes the Learning Station to the playground, employs a unique collaborative learning approach and encourages children to explore, learn and just enjoy!

As a concept, Hole-in-the-Wall has multiple dimensions and a potential which is virtually limitless. What it offers someone depends on the perspective one is looking from.

For experts, like Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, Hole-in-the-Wall is a ‘Shared Blackboard’ which children in underprivileged communities can collectively own and access, to express themselves, to learn, to explore together, and at some stage to even brainstorm and come up with exciting ideas.

For villagers, it is more like a village Well, where children assemble to draw knowledge and, in the process, engage in meaningful conversation and immersive learning activities that broaden their horizons.

And finally for children, it is an extension of their playground where they can play together, teach each other new things, and more importantly, just be themselves.

for more information please click here.
http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/education-challenge.html
Courtesy:HOLE-IN-THE-WALL
Picture Courtesy: Holeinthewall.com

What do you think the children learn from a place like this?? Have any of you actually seen one? please do let us know your experience, if you have come across one hole-in-the-wall computer.
Here is one article by Dan Simmons from the BBC news who writes about the project.
Something new has arrived at this slum on the outskirts of Delhi and it is exciting the locals.Most people at Vivekananda Camp had never touched or used a computer. Then three came along at once. for more click here

A few quotes your way...

Your Thoughts Build Your Life

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday,
and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life
is the creation of our mind.
The Buddha

Stay Positive

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore

Positive Action

Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail. Og Mandino

One Positive Thought

It takes but one positive thought, when given a chance to survive and thrive, to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.
Robert H. Schuller

Courtesy:Lucy MacDonald

Trafficked

Ordinary street, hidden horror. A trafficked woman was moved between three Cardiff brothels, one in West Bute Street, pictured above. Forced to see seven clients a day, her earnings were split between traffickers and brothel owners. David Rose / Panos Pictures

Behind the doors of ordinary-seeming flats, houses, hotels, a brutal form of modern slavery is taking place. And it’s happening worldwide. Vanessa Baird wonders why – and what can be done about it.

When I was 23, I responded to an ad that read: ‘Go-Go Girl Wanted.’

To be honest, I was not altogether sure what was meant by ‘go-go girl’. But I went – got the job and started straight away.

The hours were nine-to-five – the other nine, the other five. The pay wasn’t great, but I needed the money. I was living in Athens at the time and language-teaching opportunities had dried up as the long summer began. My rent was due in a few days’ time.

All I had to do, said the disco-bar owner – a balding Greek named Ringo – was talk to customers. That’s all. Talk to them and encourage them to buy drinks. And sometimes dance with them.

If I wanted to leave the establishment with a customer before the night was up, the latter would have to buy a bottle of champagne.

I didn’t see why I should want to do that.

I’ve been thinking about this interlude in my life quite a bit recently. And it fills me with horror.

Not because the experience was gruesome or exploitative, shameful or even regrettable – it was none of these. But because many of the young women who appear in the pages of this issue of the magazine did what I did: answered an ad in a paper and went for a job that might be a bit dodgy, because they needed the money.

The advertisement that Louisiana, a 26-year-old from Lithuania, responded to was innocuous by comparison. It was for cleaning and catering jobs in Britain. She travelled to England with a man from the job agency. ‘I had my own passport. But when we arrived he took my passport away and more...
Original article featured in NEW INTERNATIONAL September 2007, Issue 404.
Courtesy: New International

Lead by example!!

This is a very simple video of how you can be the change and do something about a situation instead of complaining and doing nothing about it. Anyone can be our teacher...so what are we waiting for??

Composing Utopia with words

Articipatory Music and other weird things by Jessica Corey-Butler

Last weekend Articipatory Music happened at the Olympia Community Free School during “A giant party for a better world,” the Love, Imagine, Network, Kindness (LINK) Symposium, an extension of “A World Beyond Capitalism,” The Third Annual International Multiracial Alliance Building Peace Conference. An activist folk music collective called Riotfolk performed and a Secret Café fund raiser was held, benefiting a residential permaculture project. And eight people created compositions, but not made out of notes and played on flutes and guitars.

Huh?

Articipatory Music was an idea originally born when it’s facilitator (and creator) Michael Gaiuranos attended a summer session with the School for Designing a Society, held on Patch Adam’s Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia.

Initially, Gaiuranos thought he was going there to compose music with the experimental musicians associated with cybernetics.

The second time he attended the school, he recalls, “I knew I was aiming for something else.” He credits the school for “encouraging me to do weird things.”

As such, he feels his extrapolation of one exercise he had learned where participants composed responses, one inane and one an elaborate ideal, and then negotiated within larger groups.

“That was the really really really interesting part,” Gaiuranos remembers, adding, “How do you negotiate your Utopia?”

would you like to read more and more....?

Designing Freedom - Stafford Beer

This is a part of the collection of articles under the title READINGS THAT MATTER TO ME which was suggested by the School for Designing a Society.
This excerpt is from the article Designing Freedom by Stafford Beer
1. The Real Threat to “All We Hold Most Dear”
The little house where I have come to live alone for a few weeks sits on the edge of a steep hill in a quiet village on the western coast of Chile. Huge majestic waves roll into the bay and crash magnificently over the rocks, sparkling white against the green sea under a winter sun. It is for me a time of peace, a time to clear the head, a time to treasure.
For after all, such times are rare events for today’s civilized man. We spend our days boxed in
our houses, swarming in and out of office blocks like tribes of ants, crammed into trains, canned in aeroplanes, locked solid in traffic jams on the freeway. Our unbiblical concern for what we shall eat, what we shall drink, and what we shall put on is amplified and made obsessional by the pressure to consume—way, way beyond the natural need. All this is demanded by the way we have arranged our economy. And the institutions we have built to operate that economy, to safeguard ourselves, protect our homes, care for and educate our families, have all grown into large and powerful pieces of social machinery which suddenly seem not so much protective as actually threatening.
Mankind has always been in battle with his environment. But until quite recently in history his
battles were on a reasonable scale, a human scale.
For more on Designing Freedom click here.

Memory of the physical 'self'

Just the other day I got back to my Keyboard...not that I regularly play music...(though I listen to music a lot)...I was trying to play something I had composed a few months ago...I just couldn't remember the notes...so I kept trying to think of the tune...though I had vaguely caught the tune...I still couldn't play it...and..
and amazing thing happened...I closed my eyes and kept my fingers on the keyboard...expecting to just play it...and my fingers did the magic...the muscles remembered the tune...actually...how strange is the co-ordination...between the soul and the physical self...
and so does the mind remember all the tiny details of an encounter...this always puts things in place for me that there is some underlying unifying connection...
what can i say?? i am happy to be given this opportunity...of sensing this and integrating it with my perceptions...

Nature of Time - HUMBERTO MATURANA

HUMBERTO MATURANA
Excerpts from Readings that matter to me shared by The School for Designing a Society
Living

Living takes place in the now, in the moment in which it is taking place. Living is a dynamics that disappears as it takes place. Living takes place in no time, without past or future. Past, present and future are notions that we human beings, we observers, invent as we explain our ocurrence in the now. We invent past as a source of the now or present, and we invent future as a dimension that arises as an extrapolation of the features of our living now, in the present. As past, present and future, are invented to explain our living now, time is invented as a background in which past, present and future can take place. But life, living, takes place as now, as a flow of changing processes. To say this, of course, is a manner of explaining the experience being now in which we find ourselves as we ask for the explanation of our living, of time, . . .
Language
I have maintained, and I think shown, in other publications, that language is a manner of flowing in living together in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior, and that languaging consists in operating in a network of consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors, in a relational dynamics of consensual coordinations of behaviors that is constitutively open to endless recursions1. Moreover, we are, as living systems, structure determined systems, and nothing external to us can determine or specify what happens in us. So, the external agents that at any instant impinge upon us can only trigger in us structural changes determined in us by our structure at that instant. As a result, all that we do at any instant arises in us determined in us by our structure in that instant, either as a result of our closed internal structural dynamics, or as a result of the modulation of that internal structural dynamics by the structural changes triggered in us by the interactions in which we participate. In these circumstances, we would have to say that we are constitutively ”blind” to the intrinsic features of the medium as an independent reality , if to speak about the intrinsic features of an independent reality had any sense.
This situation has the following basic consequences for understanding what we do and for more click here