As if the Heart were not enough . . .

Its as if we are newborns
unable to walk and survive on our own
unaware that the treasure
of our heart
is all that is needed
to move beyond this collective infancy
no wonder humanity wears
the diaper of Religion
for God is truly our father
our model and protector
the great teacher
and Goddess is truly our mother
our life and and safety
where expression is born
the great nurturer
and like parents that allow the young child
to fall again and again
while learning to walk
God & Goddess give us this space
to commit our human atrocities
again and again through out centuries
in patient silence
we are urged to listen
to the beauty of the human heart.

Two Ways of Running

A certain man had a jealous wife
and a very, very appealing maidservant.

The wife was careful not to leave them alone,
ever. For six years they were never left in a room together.

But then one day
at the public bath the wife suddenly remembered
that she'd left her silver washbasin at home.

"Please, go get the basin," she told her maid.

The girl jumped to the task, because she knew
that she would finally get to be alone
with the master. She ran joyfully.

She flew,
and desire took them both so quickly
that they didn't even latch the door.

With great speed they joined each other.
When bodies blend in copulation,
spirits also merge.

Meanwhile, the wife back at the bathhouse,
washing her hair, "What have I done!
I've set the cotton-wool on fire!
I've put the ram in with the ewe!"

She washed the clay soap off her hair and ran,
fixing her chador about her as she went.

The maid ran for love. The wife ran out of fear
and jealousy. There is a great difference.

The mystic flies moment to moment.
The fearful ascetic drags along month to month.

But also the length of a "day" to a lover
may be fifty thousand years!

You can't understand this with your mind.
You must burst open!

Fear is nothing to a lover, a tiny piece of thread.
Love is a quality of God. Fear is an attribute
of those who think they serve God, but who are actually
preoccupied with penis and vagina.

You have read in the text where 'They love him'
blends with 'He loves them.'

Those joining loves
are both qualities of God. Fear is not.

What characteristics do God and human beings
have in common? What is the connection between
what lives in time and what lives in eternity?

If I kept talking about love,
a hundred new combining would happen,
and still I would not say the mystery.

The fearful ascetic runs on foot, along the surface.
Lovers move like lightning and wind.

No contest.
Theologians mumble, rumble-dumble,
necessity and free will,
while lover and beloved
pull themselves
into each other.

The worried wife reaches the door
and opens it.
The maid, disheveled, confused, flushed,
unable to speak.

The husband begins his five times prayer.

The wife enters this agitated scene.
As though experimenting with clothes,
the husband holds up some flaps and edges.

She sees his testicles and penis so wet, semen
still dribbling out, spurts of jism and vaginal juices
drenching the thighs of the maid.

The wife slaps him
on the side of the head,

"is this the way
a man prays, with his balls?

Does your penis
long for union like this?

Is that why
her legs are so covered with this stuff?"

These are good questions
she's asking her "ascetic" husband!

People who renounce desires
often turn, suddenly,
into hypocrites!

~ Rumi

What Does Jesus Run From?

The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks, "Where are you going?
No one is after you." Jesus keeps on,
saying nothing, across two more fields. "Are you
the one who says words over a dead person,
so that he wakes up?" I am. "Did you not make
the clay birds fly?" Yes. "Who then
could possibly cause you to run like this?"
Jesus slows his pace.

"I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence, it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth
and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing
happens. They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow. Other diseases are ways
for mercy to enter, but this non-responding
breeds violence and coldness toward God.
I am fleeing from that."

"As little by little air steals water, so praise
dries up and evaporates with foolish people
who refuse to change. Like cold stone you sit on -
a cynic steals body heat. He doesn't feel
the sun. "

Jesus wasn't running from actual people.
He was teaching in a new way.

~ Rumi

The Winds of Change - Employment, Money, Shelter, Sex = First Chakra

The first chakra, or Muladhara Chakra, has the associated element of Earth. With earth comes the physical manifestation and representation(s) of our life. This includes of course, survival. Survival today means $, and $ means employment (or asset investments if you've set yourself up that way). Food, Shelter, Money, Employment & Sex are all part of the representation of this root chakra.

Recently there has been a mutual parting of ways from myself and my current employer. Their servers are running smooth, the application i've helped develop does its job, and there is a cheaper version of myself in the Philippines, where the new office has been opened.

I'm not upset at them, after all, business is money, not charity, and I've done all I can do for them at this point. I've been thinking about branching out into more diverse technology experience for a while, and now is the time. I'm available for employment once again. And if sex is any indication of how my Muladhara Chakra is vibing, then the perfect opportunity is out there waiting for me as I write this, cuz I had some awsome sex last night =)

If you or anyone you know has an opening for a High Energy, Self Motivated, Sexy PHP developer, System or Network Admin, or Technology Trainer then please forward my resume to them. The technology side of myself can be located at the following URL's:

www.peacefulthinkers.com/brian...me.pdf
www.peacefulthinkers.com/brian...me.doc

Mahalo All
- BZ

How are the Children?

Dear friends,

I want to pass along to you a couple of quotes and a thought-provoking phrase that is actually a customary greeting of the Masai of South Africa. The quotes both speak to the element of time with regard to teaching and relationships. And the greeting is a vast improvement over the commonly heard "How's it going?" or "How are you?" -- the habit most people fall back on that generally lead to rather unsatisfying conversations.

The first quote came to me in a note Michael sent to me over the holidays. It read:

If you plan for a decade, plant trees,

If you plan for a century, work with children.

The author of this little gem was listed as anonymous (which usually means that it was a woman) but regardless, it's a short-and-sweet reminder of the importance and long-lasting affect of the work in which we are engaged. I also love the connection to nature and how placing the work of teachers alongside that of gardeners reminds us of the foolishness of trying to control time and the un-naturalness of rushing children through childhood. The gardener sows, waters, weeds, watches and patiently waits. The effect on children of the frantic pace of our hurried world seems to take the bloom off of what otherwise should be the gradual blossoming of childhood existence -- for all children.

Here's another eloquent quote, which is also one of my favorites. The author -- Antoine de Saint Xupery:

Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

Occasionally I ask parents, "What do you want for your child?" and "What scares you?" These questions are commonly responded to with, "I want them to be happy" or "I worry that my child won't have any friends." As we watch the kids at our school developing friendships as they play alongside each other, we see even at this young age that relationships have their share of breakdowns and patch-ups. And, of course we are there to help guide them, but sometimes I wonder if we work as hard as we should on our adult relationships -- the ones the children witness? Meaningful friendships are going to have their ups-and-downs if they are ever going to arrive at "old friend." By not allowing conflict a place "to be" in early childhood centers, are we interfering with young children's chance to practice "trials endured" and "generous emotions?" What exists in far too many places is conflict removal rather than resolution. Are we asking of our young children the kind of hard work we are unable or unwilling to do ourselves and keeping them from acquiring the very tools they need to develop into decent people?

"So, how are the children?" ("Ke biot ingera" or "kasserian ingera") This wonderful greeting comes to us from the Masai people. It's the traditional greeting that takes place between Masai warriors and acknowledges the importance they place on the welfare of their children -- even if they don't have children of their own! That the safety and protection of the young and powerless is at the forefront of their people's thoughts is a model all people should adopt. 'So, how are the children?' feels so much better to me than 'No Child Left Behind' unless of course you include the last part of the sentence that phrase comes from. The poem Marion Wright Edleman penned finishes the 'no child left behind' thought with "and every child is loved, and every child is safe." The essence of the hope she wrote about comes through to me in the greeting, "So, how are the children?"

This phrase became better known when it was used as the subject of a sermon around 15 years ago. The question then arose, "What if it became tradition that the first thing asked of a President at a press conference were, 'So, how are the children?'"

Imagine that.

Love,

[Annonymous] (posted without permission)

Tsunami Watch Cancelled! =D

from: www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/bulletins.htm

SUBJECT - TSUNAMI WATCH CANCELLATION

THE TSUNAMI WATCH IS CANCELLED FOR THE STATE OF HAWAII EFFECTIVE
AT 0933 PM HST.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 0623 PM HST 12 JAN 2007
COORDINATES - 46.7 NORTH 154.4 EAST
LOCATION - EAST OF KURIL ISLANDS
MAGNITUDE - 8.2 MOMENT
MAGNITUDE - 8.1 RICHTER

MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY

GAUGE LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL PER
------------------- ----- ------ ----- ------ -----
HANASAKI HOKKAIDO 43.3N 145.6E 0605Z 0.10M 28MIN
SHEMYA ALASKA 52.7N 174.1E 0712Z 0.30M 08MIN

TIME - TIME OF THE MEASUREMENT
AMPL - AMPLITUDE IN METERS FROM MIDDLE TO CREST OR MIDDLE
TO TROUGH OR HALF OF THE CREST TO TROUGH
PER - PERIOD OF TIME FROM ONE WAVE CREST TO THE NEXT

EVALUATION

BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA THERE IS NO DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI
THREAT TO THE STATE OF HAWAII. THEREFORE THE TSUNAMI WATCH FOR
HAWAII IS CANCELLED.

HOWEVER SOME COASTAL AREAS IN HAWAII COULD EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA
LEVEL CHANGES AND STRONG OR UNUSUAL CURRENTS LASTING UP TO
SEVERAL HOURS. THE ESTIMATED TIME SUCH EFFECTS MIGHT BEGIN IS

1223 AM HST 13 JAN 2007

RECREATIONAL BOATERS AND SWIMMERS SHOULD TAKE NOTE OF THIS AND
EXERCISE APPRPRIATE CAUTION AS EVEN SMALL CURRENTS OR UNUSUAL
SEA LEVEL FLUCTUATIONS COULD PRESENT A HAZARD TO THESE ACTIVITIES.

IN ADDITION DUE TO THE HIGH SURF CURRENTLY AFFECTING HAWAII
THE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES COULD INCREASE THE IMPACT OF THE
SURF WAVES.

THIS WILL BE THE FINAL MESSAGE ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.

THE TRAIN CLANKED

THE TRAIN CLANKED and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty - a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows.
At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that she was unharmed.
Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that on of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.
I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I like to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. Trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of aikido, we were not allowed to fight.
"Aikido," my teacher had said again and again, "is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it."
I listened to his words. I tried hard I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.
This is it! I said to myself, getting to my feet. People are in danger and if I don’t do something fast, they will probably get hurt.
Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. "Aha!" He roared. "A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!"
I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.
"All right! He hollered. "You’re gonna get a lesson." He gathered himself for a rush at me.
A split second before he could move, someone shouted "Hey!" It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it - as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for something, and he suddenly stumbled upon it. "Hey!"
I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.
"C’mere," the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. "C’mere and talk with me." He waved his hand lightly.
The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.
The old man continued to beam at the laborer.
"What’cha been drinkin’?" he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. "I been drinkin’ sake," the laborer bellowed back, "and it’s none of your business!" Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.
"Ok, that’s wonderful," the old man said, "absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s 76, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree had done better than I expected, though especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening - even when it rains!" He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.
As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. "Yeah," he said. "I love persimmons too…" His voice trailed off.
"Yes," said the old man, smiling, "and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife."
"No," replied the laborer. "My wife died." Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. "I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I am so ashamed of myself." Tears rolled down his cheeks; a spasm of despair rippled through his body.
Now it was my turn. Standing there in well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.
Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. "My, my," he said, "that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it."
I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.
As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.

~ Terry Dobson

Merry Christmas! A Reasonable Life . . .

I like to remind myself every year about the reality of our actions. Getting depressed doesn't help anything, but awareness is the first step to changing anything. So just ponder these words this holiday season. They are from Ferenc Ma'te', as he makes his case for a reasonable life.

Consider that the following was written in 1993 - almost 14 years ago.

Merry Christmas

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE TRUE COST OF A THING

Lets look at the child's toy. To find it, you, well meaning parent, drove down to the mall, which was built to display the toy in tasteful, waterfalled, musical surroundings with lots of pretty lights and humming escalators - all burning up energy, all, indirectly, belching out tons of pollution. Then you bought the toy. With what? With money you earned with the sweat of your brow and the fumes of your factory, or the tons of wasted energy of computers and copiers and throwaway paper products of your office.

So, you see, you would be misleading yourself if you thought you had simply bought your child a little present. You have done much more than that. For along with Kiburka the jumping-serpent-dildoman transformer, you have also, unwittingly, bought him an added gift: a few hundred cubic feet of poisoned air, and chemical poisons that trickled into creeks and groundwater from the inks, dyes, and bleaches used for refining and coloring the toy, the packaging, the signs, the giftwrap, the gas for your car and the saleslady's lipstick. And if you bought him something larger, say a Rustic Plastic Farm, you then might also be giving him a big blob from the oil spill in Alaska or maybe even an oil-choked dead seal.

Such is the way of civilized man; we no longer kill in a bloody hunt for food -- we're refined. We work in clean well-lighted places making civilized movements, and kill instead from a great distance with a hired bucket of oil . . . for a toy . . . or for a plastic bag for garbage.

If we are to survive in a world worth living in, if we have enough love for our children not to condemn them to a life in a universal slum with unbreathable air, undrinkable water, and soil either too eroded, too exhausted, or too poisoned to feed them, then we will have to drastically change our habits.

This time we have no one else to blame. Governments have done only what we wanted. We wanted to be safe so they made us enough bombs to blow every man, woman, and child off the face of the earth once a day, from Labor Day until Christmas. Even when they try to do something honorable and simple like putting less carbon into the air to control global warming, the result seems to be guarunteed disaster. From 1983 to 1988 the average annual increase of global carbon emissions was 2.8 percent. World governments meeting in Toronto in June of 1988 called this an outrage and vowed to CUT world emissions 20 percent in the coming years. That year carbon emissions jumped 3.7 percent, the largest increase in a decade. And, even more frightening, in February of 1990 the New York Times reported analysts' predictions that demand for oil might jump as much as 50 percent in five years, while others see a sixfold increase in energy demand within five decades. . . . So much for cutting back on emissions of carbon.

And you can't blame big business; it's nothing but our slave. It finds out what we like, then drowns us in the stuff. "You like Barbie dolls? Good! Here's a billion of them. You like hamburgers in Styrofoam containers? Here's thirty billion more." And we helpless, smiling sheep follow right along. But we don't "Bah, Bah, Bah." We Buy, Buy, Buy.

We want everything ever made and we want it now, want it cheap and in twenty different colors. And next year we want more, only a bit different. So big business almost kills itself every year to please use. If it means oil spills, poisoned water and chemical disasters . . . well . . . nobody's perfect.

So you want to know who's guilty? . . . You! . . . You bought the bloody toy. . . And so did I.

We bought radios, stereos, cassettes, CDs, then VCRs. We bought Instamatics, Veg-O-Matics, popcorn makers, muffin bakers, machines to mow the lawn, fry a prawn, shear the dog, saw a log, to blow snow, leaves, hair or air; we bought gear to barbecue a chicken, broil it, roast it, deep-fry it or toast it or put it in a Radar Range and blow it to the moon; bought chemicals to calm our fits, dry our pits, clean our mitts, expand our tits . . . Have we gone and lost our collective bloody minds?!

Or are we simply bored? Have our lives become so meaningless and empty that we have to fill every moment with a toy? If that's so, it's sad. Sad that we might turn the universe's only living planet into a monstrous monument to the boredom of us all.

It's up to us. Each of us. And yet the sacrifices we need to make can be no sacrifice at all. We simply need to cut back on our addiction to buying and hoarding. We need to do more with our lives than numbly earn and spend. We need to think. We need to come alive again and live as simply, freely, happily, and passionately as we did when we were children.

There is no doubt that we can make major changes, not in a generation, not in decades, but in weeks. Maybe we cshould call this a war -- that seems to unite us best. But there need be no shots fired, or bodies mangled, just all of us at home, at peace, cleaning house. And we will ALL win a habitable earth, livable cities, and unpoisoned, verdant land. And some sanity. Some calm, some time to know our children. Some pride in being Human.

There is much talk of the world cutting back on the most absurd junk of all. They say it's not easy. They're arguing about a missile here, a warhead there; inspection, deception, verification. Slow old men, slow old ideas. But it's something. They have finally realized that the most absurd junk of all might not be vital for our survival. If the slow old men can finally come this far, then couldn't we? If they can disarm themselves of bombs, can we not disarm ourselves of junk? If we don't, if we continue with this manic pace of destruction of our planet and our lives, we might yet come to a time so horrible, so inhuman, that we may wish we had saved some warheads for ourselves.

So let's start . . .

Today Was a Good Day

Why? Because I feel good. It seems to be that simple!

I woke up next to a warm body and I couldnt resist but to kiss those cute little toes and feet. Then I had the pleasure of waking up slowly while conversing with a treasured friend.

Mason came home and we built a submarine together. Then we decided it would be fun to shower together. He helped scrubb my tatt, bless his little soul =-)

I went to the gym, and took up an offer for free body fat testing as i walked in. (you'll all be happy to know im in the "fit" category at 17% body fat).

The personal trainer (Dwight) that was doing it wasn't busy with appointments and after talking with him a while he offered to help me out with my workout.

Free training session always good!

I like to unwind in the Sauna after working out. Today there was an older gentlemen in there doing forward bends in a kind of "forward bend vinyasa" (vinyasa means flow). OF COURSE I had to talk to that guy (Joe).

We shared some yoga tips and tricks for a few minutes, and he recommended the YMCA in Kailua for some good Ashtanga/Vinyasa style intermediate/advanced classes. Ashtanga and Vinyasa series of Hatha yoga is some of my favorite yoga to practice =)

its only 4pm but I can safely say, today was a good day.

How about you? Are you having a good day? When was the last time you had a good day? Tell me about it!

Peace

BZ

30 seconds with forever

I gaze up at the stars
Each one shines so unique
Some bright, some clustered, all together - perfection

The low clouds roll by
A slideshow of sky pillows
I sit in awe

drip
drop
1
2

ooo it feels good on my skin
I look up
drip
blinking as the crystal ball shatters across my mind
i feel the sound of that raindrop - and it is colorful!!

In the Distance . . .
titter tatter
titter tatter

I feel it coming
Like a carwash for the city - the rain comes
It's intense as it grows near'er
here it comes, like an old locomotive!
my heart floods as mother nature gracefully cleanses the sins of our souls

"Whoa. I've never felt that before" I say, grinning wide- Content in the rain.