Daily Moments of Zen

Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to change a light bulb? A: None, they are the light bulb.
Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Three -- one to change it, one to not-change it and one to both change- and not-change it.
Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Tree falling in the forest.
And finally about love: Q: Why don't Buddhists vacuum in the corners? A: Because they have no attachments.


1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me,for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me the F" \l "@K" alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tyre.
3. Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.
4. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
5. No one is listening until you fart.
6. Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else.
7. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
8. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
9. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
10. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. 11. Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticise them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
12. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
13. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat & drink beer all day.
14. If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
15. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
16. If you drink, don't park; accidents cause people.
17. Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
18. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes of bad judgment.
19. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
20. Timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
21. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
22. Gaffer tape is like the force. It has a light side & a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
23. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
24. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your mouth is moving.
25. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
26. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
27. We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.
28. Live like there's no tomorrow. Love like you've never been hurt. And dance like there's no one watching

In other words, meaning well doesn't guarantee an easy ride...

How to give a cat a pill:

1) Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

2) Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.

3) Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.

4) Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right fore-finger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

5) Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.

6) Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.

7) Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.

8) Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.

9) Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

10)Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.

11)Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus jab. Throw Tee-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.

12) Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat.

Tina Turner - Break Every Rule

YouTube - Tina Turner - Break Every Rule

Five Mindfulness Trainings

The Five Mindfulness Trainings were developed during the time of the Buddha to be the foundation of practice for the entire practice community, including monastic and lay members. The basis for the trainings is mindfulness. They build on the concepts of Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are believed to protect freedom and make life beautiful. As guidelines for daily life they are the basis of happiness for individuals, couples, families and society.
___________________________________

The First Training: Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.

The Second Training: Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on earth.

The Third Training: Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I vow to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.

The Fourth Training: Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord; or words that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

The Fifth Training: Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body and my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self transformation and the transformation of society.

Going Home, to Breathe

Mark Knopfler's song 'I feel like Going Home', performed by Bonnie Rait and Trisha Yearwood:


YouTube - Bonnie Rait and Trisha Yearwood: Feel Like Going Home

And a blast from the past, just because...

80s song by band Breathe called Hands to Heaven.



YouTube - breathe - hands to heaven 80 song

Homeward bound

Heima (meaning "at home" or "homeland") is a spectucular film diary that records the band Sigur Rós as they return to Iceland, their country of origin, to perform a series of free, unannounced concerts there during the summer of 2006. 40-plus people were herded back and forth between 15 locations, some very remote, to facilitate the creation of an inspirational live film. Places visited included small community halls, art secrets off the beaten track, ghost towns, national parks, and the isolated expanses of the highland wilderness. They also played the largest show of their career (and in Icelandic history) at their homecoming Reykjavík show.

Despite its length and simplicity, the fact that Heima was voted most popular video on the internet recently is testament to the growing hunger for earth-bound reality. The trailer portrays hints of what's in store in the epic visual documentary that essentially takes the reflected glory of stardom back to the level of tribe. -




More information is at:
http://www.heima.co.uk/

Seasonal Preoccupations: U2 & The Ramones

In a little while
Surely you'll be mine
In a little while... I'll be there
In a little while
This hurt will hurt no more
I'll be home, love

When the night takes a deep breath
And the daylight has no air
If I crawl, if I come crawling home
WiIl you be there?

In a little while
I won't be blown by every breeze
Friday night running to Sunday on my knees
That girl, that girl she's mine
Well I've know her since,
Since she was

A little girl with Spanish eyes
When I saw her first in a pram they pushed her by
Oh my, my how you've grown
Well it's been, it's been...a little while

ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

Slow down my beating heart
A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the skies
He lives on a star that's dying in the night
And follows in the trail, the scatter of light
Turn it on, turn it on, you turn me on

Slow down my beating heart
Slowly, slowly love
Slow down my beating heart
Slowly, slowly love
Slow down my beating heart
Slowly, slowly love
-U2

Merry Christmas Baby - The Ramones

A Day of Great Expectations

(A man received a parrot as an early Christmas present, but he got annoyed when he found it wouldn’t stop swearing. So as punishment he put the bird in the freezer. An hour later, the shivering parrot begged to be let out of the freezer. “I promise never to swear again”, it said. “I’ve learned my lesson. Just tell me one thing: what on earth did that turkey do?”)

SOULMATE
Oh! For a soul-mate to see
The lonesome and looked-over me!
For a true friend to find the foundling
Forgotten while world-bells were sounding.

Full glad would I share my possessions
With someone of parallel lesions
Who’s fallen, yet still trodden on,
Ne’er abandoning hope for the sun ,
And while on that pot-holed, parched path,
With priest, child and beggar hath sat.

Happy healer; here! Heed, and give me
An injection of you to me free.
Then, cured in your comforting craft,
Spiced, tickled soft till I’ve laughed,
I’ll learn the love’s touch of your trade,
And leave, going till millions I’ve made –

Millions of smiles, laughs and tickles,
And I’ll meet you next time with more wrinkles!

- goinghome


Nature Boy, by Nat King Cole


YouTube - Nat king cole, Nature Boy

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"

(instrumental interlude)

"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"
Written by Eden Ahbez

Love is Blindness - U2


Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Oh, my heart, love is blindness.

In a parked car, in a crowded street
You see your love made complete.
Thread is ripping, the knot is slipping
Love is blindness.

Love is clockworks and cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel.
Squeeze the handle, blow out the candle
Love is blindness.

Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Oh, my love,
Blindness.

A little death without mourning
No call and no warning
Baby, a dangerous idea
That almost makes sense.

Love is drowning in a deep well
All the secrets, and no one to tell.
Take the money, honey...
Blindness.

Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Oh, my love,
Blindness.

Emmanuel

Monty Pythons Life of Brian, Clip 1 | Canoe Video
Wherein the Three Wise Men visit the mother of Brian bearing precious gifts.

Oh My God! Ida Maria

www.myspace.com/idamaria

Open Invitation to create textual art

Jenny Holzer is an acclaimed unorthodox artist from America who seeks out public spaces to present ideas, often in the form of one-line aphorisms, although she has also exhibited in some of the major galleries around the world. She has used TV, LCD panels, posters, stickers, t-shirts, buildings and more to display her compositions.

Her current project is online, entitled 'Please Change Beliefs' at - TRUISM 39

It draws the viewer in to become a co-creater, facilitating the interactive composition of truisms. A list of axioms is seen on the screen, any of which can be selected to move or edit. The action mirrors cognitive behavioural therapy, offering the opportunity to challenge fixed concepts and the freedom to change them when it feels right to do so.

ActiveResistance - Vivienne Westwood

“The most important thing about this manifesto is that it is a practice. If you follow it your life will change. In the pursuit of culture you will start to think. If you change your life, you change the world.” - Vivienne Westwood

Excerpts: -
...We do have a fixed standard – timeless, universal, recognisable. We refer to it as Representative Human Nature (RHN). It is the key to this manifesto: –
You or I – as individuals – we change. But there is something typical about us which does not change. When we say, "Man is the measure of all things", we mean the unchanging part: Man, both in his general nature and according to his various types: this is RHN...

... Art is the only objectivity available to human beings; real life, including science, cannot do this: art is objectivity.
To recapitulate, the artist, taking RHN as his model presents an imitation of life; the imitation is a completed view, a whole, as in a microcosm – albeit an illusion of reality. The illusion captures our imagination and the ethnical imagination tests it out as to it’s truth. We see our human face and we ask, – could it be otherwise?
Without judges there is no art. We, the art lovers respond to the truths of art and spread the ideas which give culture.
Thus RHN is the authority on which culture rests. Culture must rest on something abiding, an authority, a belief. But our authority is not dogma (no need for God to supply social cement or fill the spiritual vacuum) but the authority of a consensus, – the facts of shared experience.
Culture is a unifying experience. We are moving towards a centre which is infinite. Our guide is RHN, universal, timeless and recognizable even to the point where we recognize something we’ve never seen before – as true to life. In this sense RHN is a dynamic force, alive and open to improvement because it depends on the inner check – the ethical imagination – of every one of us. We become more human which in turn gives culture its rejuvenating power.
We define culture as: The exploration and cultivation of humanity through art. " -

For the full manifesto and more about the world-esteemed fashion designer's work and her compassionate interest in world crises, goto -

ActiveResistance

Peace, Fratres - Arvo Part & Immaneul Kant

This is a fine performance of Arvo Part's masterpiece, Fratres (brothers), by Vadim Repin and Nikolai Lugansky, available on YouTube and recorded in Tokyo, 2004.




Immanuel Kant
Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch
1795

...Here, as in the preceding articles, it is not a question of philanthropy but of right. Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabitant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other. Originally, no one had more right than another to a particular part of the earth.

Uninhabitable parts of the earth--the sea and the deserts--divide this community of all men, but the ship and the camel (the desert ship) enable them to approach each other across these unruled regions and to establish communication by using the common right to the face of the earth, which belongs to human beings generally. The inhospitality of the inhabitants of coasts (for instance, of the Barbary Coast) in robbing ships in neighboring seas or enslaving stranded travelers, or the inhospitality of the inhabitants of the deserts (for instance, the Bedouin Arabs) who view contact with nomadic tribes as conferring the right to plunder them, is thus opposed to natural law, even though it extends the right of hospitality, i.e., the privilege of foreign arrivals, no further than to conditions of the possibility of seeking to communicate with the prior inhabitants. In this way distant parts of the world can come into peaceable relations with each other, and these are finally publicly established by law. Thus the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to a constitution establishing world citizenship...

...Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a supplement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, indispensable for the maintenance of the public human rights and hence also of perpetual peace. One cannot flatter oneself into believing one can approach this peace except under the condition outlined here.

Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace"

Life after Bankruptcy: Bertolt Brecht & Jurgen Habermas

I sat through both an enticing and chilling evening at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin recently as an audience member at The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht. The physicality, almost to the point of slapstick, of the performances was superb. Moreoever, the parallels in the economic environment then to the protracted tumbling of markets today is plain, and consequently, so are the dangers therein.

The blurb from the theatre websiteThe Abbey Theatre: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - elaborates: -

Times are bad. Prices are rising. House prices are falling. There’s a recession looming. A new leader is needed. It’s 1930s Chicago.
With a winning smile, a machine gun and an army of hoods, local crime boss and aspirational tyrant Arturo Ui sees an opportunity. He offers protection and freedom - at a very large price.

Brecht’s both alarming and hilarious farce about the rise of a fascist dictator has all too many modern parallels. Originally written in 1941, the play is a highly satirical, no-holds-barred allegory of the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany. All the characters, groups and situations in the play had direct counterparts in real life.
With his characteristic verve, Jimmy Fay (The Seafarer, The Playboy of the Western World, Saved) directs a disconcertingly funny and unflinching version of this European masterpiece.

A recent interview last November with Jurgen Habermas elaborates on related dangers approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century:

Life after bankruptcy
The age of privatisation is over. Politics not the market is responsible for promoting the common good. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas talks to Thomas Assheuer about the necessity of an international world order.
Die Zeit: Herr Habermas, the international financial system has collapsed and a global economic crisis is looming. What do you find most worrying about this?

Jürgen Habermas: What worries me most is the scandalous social injustice that the most vulnerable social groups will have to bear the brunt of the socialised costs for the market failure. The mass of those who, in any case, are not among the winners of globalisation now have to pick up the tab for the impacts of a predictable dysfunction of the financial system on the real economy. Unlike the shareholders, they will not pay in money values but in the hard currency of their daily existence. Viewed in global terms, this avenging fate is also afflicting the economically weakest countries. That's the political scandal. Yet pointing the finger at scapegoats strikes me as hypocritical. The speculators, too, were acting consistently within the established legal framework according to the socially recognised logic of profit maximisation. Politics turns itself into a laughing stock when it resorts to moralising instead of relying upon the enforceable law of the democratic legislator. Politics, and not capitalism, is responsible for promoting the common good...

Jürgen Habermas, Thomas Assheuer: Life after bankruptcy - signandsight

Auto Da Fé - Elias Canetti

The Nobel-prize-winning novel Auto da Fe is the story of Peter Kien, a sinologist whose mission in life is collecting volumes of rare philosophical literature. It was written by Elias Canetti in 1935. Many commentators have interpreted the paranoia, insularity and need for rigid control of the protagonist as symbolic of the conditions required for fascism and the inevitable deadly resistance it triggers, sooner or later.

What is a little more distasteful to discover is that the esteemed author Elias Canetti had himself proved to embody many petty, misogynistic and repulsive behaviours, particularly towards his famous literary wife, Iris Murdoch. Random reports to this effect were reinforced in a recent biography by Sven Hanuschek (review here) Seminar

The blog Everything Else provides a comprehensive summary of the plot. The post in response is also well worth reading in the context of current-world power plays: -

...Kien is so consumed by books that he personifies them. He despises all the people around them precisely because they are not books, or they fail to treat books with respect, or they haven’t read books. He judges a person solely on the reverence with which they treat books. He has lurid nightmares in which his library is burnt to the ground and he must be its saviour, as if in some vision from the Book of Revelations. His visions of “judgement day” mention nothing of human suffering. Instead masses and masses of books are burnt.

Yet despite his misanthropy, his obsession ultimately makes him completely naive to the schemes of those around him, who ironically seem to vindicate the negative view he has of humanity. It’s interesting to see how misanthropy and naivety sit together in Kien. Others swindle him at every juncture, even as they too are oblivious to the possibility that every person may not be as vicious as they are...

Everything Else » Blog Archive » Elias Canetti-”Auto Da Fé”

Writers are not reliably moral

Fintan O' Toole is one of Ireland's most insightful social and artistic critics. He wrote an article for The Irish Times newspaper on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 that debates how much trust we should put in authors' views of the world. It was triggered by a revelation that the liberal Czech writer Milan Kundera collaborated with the dreaded secret police, and it also touches upon the German writer Gunter Grass' own admission in 2006 that he was a teenage volunteer for the Waffen SS. Perhaps neither was aware of the scale of destructiveness to be meted out by these controlling forces, but these incongruous facts about the writers commonly elicit indignation and disappointment. Here is O' Toole's conclusion on the artist's moral responsibility:

"Moral outrage also misses the nature of literary creativity. To be shocked that Grass lied about his youth or that Kundera may be lying about what he did 58 years ago is to buy into the discredited idea of writers as our public conscience. For the uncomfortable truth about literature is that morally virtuous people are less likely than morally slippery people to be great writers. Having a clear set of values and sticking to it through trials and tribulations makes for a splendid human being, but seldom for a splendid novel.

In our times at least, deceit, betrayal, confusion and doubt are the stuff of literature. Writers are fuelled by secrets, by guilt, by unresolved tensions between the perfection of art and the imperfection of life. They invent worlds, and words, not to reflect the reality they have lived, but to evade or sublimate or transcend it.

They invent, not by blurring out the truth, but by hovering around it, moving towards and away from it, devising elaborate denials or constructing alternative realities in which the past never happened. The very things that make them interesting writers often make them the last people we should look to for moral clarity. There are exceptions, of course, but they are relatively rare. And there are differences of circumstance. In relatively free societies, writers have the luxury of scratching at intimate personal secrets and private betrayals.

In less free societies, the secrets are more often about power and collaboration, and the betrayals involve real harm to others. If novelists teach us anything it is to be very careful about judging other people's foibles. And if novels themselves teach us anything, it is that at their best they achieve a kind of autonomy, not just from the powers that be, but from the hypocrisies of their authors."

Magical Memory Tour Study with the Beatles

The public was asked to take part in a study about the role of memories in personal histories, using the Beatles music, to help researchers learn more about how the brain functions and the way we relate to our memories. Some results of the Magical Memory Tour are now online, unveiled in full at the BA Festival of Science in the European Capital of Culture, Liverpool (6 to 11 September).

Magical Memory Tour is a collaboration between the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BA), and Professor Martin A. Conway and Dr Catriona Morrison of the Leeds Memory Group, Institute of Psychological Sciences at the University of Leeds.

Participants were asked to think about an event from their own life that involved something to do with the Beatles. The researchers were interested in how things the Beatles did - songs, movies, news stories, and so on - intersect with our own lives through our memories, seeking as much information as possible for mass analysis. One of the interesting discoveries would be about the extent to which different songs/albums/news stories evoke strong memories.

Related information is available online at:
Magical Memory Tour - Remembering the Beatles

After nearly 3000 contributions were received from 69 countries, one surprising finding was that men's memories are just as emotional as womens'. Many recollections were very vivid. The most cited song was "She Loves You". The study reveals the power of music in shaping and reliving sometimes long-neglected memories.

'We're gettin' tired of hangin' around' - The Doors

YouTube - The Doors When The Music's Over




Yeah, c'mon

When the music's over
When the music's over, yeah
When the music's over
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights, yeah

When the music's over
When the music's over
When the music's over
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights

For the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end
Until the end
Until the end

Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection
Send my credentials to the House of Detention
I got some friends inside

The face in the mirror won't stop
The girl in the window won't drop
A feast of friends
"Alive!" she cried
Waitin' for me
Outside!

Before I sink
Into the big sleep
I want to hear
I want to hear
The scream of the butterfly

Come back, baby
Back into my arm
We're gettin' tired of hangin' around
Waitin' around with our heads to the ground

I hear a very gentle sound
Very near yet very far
Very soft, yeah, very clear
Come today, come today

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

I hear a very gentle sound
With your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it...
We want the world and we want it...
Now
Now?
Now!

Persian night, babe
See the light, babe
Save us!
Jesus!
Save us!

So when the music's over
When the music's over, yeah
When the music's over
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights

Well the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end
Until the end
Until the end!

A Vision from the Past for the Future

Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. He promoted the Arts and Crafts movement and his essay A Message to Garcia is his best known work.

Amongst his other publications was a book called White Hyacinths released in 1907 which began with the preamble: "So here cometh White Hyacinths, being a book of the heart by Elbert Hubbard wherein is an attempt to body forth ideas and ideals for the betterment of men, eke women, who are preparing for life by living".

In the concluding section he offers his own Creed of the Future which he says will begin, "I know", not "I believe".

And this creed will not be forced on people. It will carry with it no coercion, no blackmail, no promise of an eternal life of idleness and ease if you accept it, and no threat of hell if you don't. It will have no paid, professional priesthood, claiming honors, rebates and exemptions, nor will it hold vast estates free from taxation. It will not organise itself into a system, marry itself to the state, and call on the police for support. It will be so reasonable, so in the line of self-preservation, that no sane man or woman will reject it. And when we really begin to live it, we will cease to talk about it.

As a suggestion and first rough draft, I submit this - I KNOW:
That I am here
In a world where nothing is permanent but change,
And that in degree I, myself, can change the form of things
And influence a few people;
And that I am influenced by these and other people;
That I am influenced by the example and by the work of men who are no longer alive
And that the work I now do will in degree influence people who may live after my life has changed into other forms;
That a certain attitude of mind and habit of action on my part will add to the peace, happiness and well being of other people,
And that a different thought and action on my part will bring pain and discord to others,
That if I would secure reasonable happiness for myself, I must give out good-will to others,
That to better my own condition I must practice mutuality;
That bodily health is necessary to continued and effective work;
That I am largely ruled by habit,
That habit is a form of exercise;
That up to a certain point, exercise means increased strength or ease in effort;
That all life is the expression of spirit,
That my spirit influences my body,
And my body influences my spirit,
That the universe to me is very beautiful,
And anything and everybody in it good and beautiful,
When my body and my spirit are in harmonious mood: That my thoughts are hopeful and helpful unless I am filled with fear,
And that to eliminate fear my life must be dedicated to useful work - work in which I forget myself;
That fresh air in abundance and moderate, systematic exercise in the open are the part of wisdom;
That I cannot afford, for my own sake to be resentful nor quick to take offense,
That happiness is a great power for good,
And that happiness is not possible without moderation and equanimity;
That time turns all discords into harmony if men will but be kind and patient
And that the reward which life holds out for work is not idleness nor rest, nor immunity from work, but increased capacity,
GREATER DIFFICULTIES, MORE WORK.

Further information about this eccentric benevolent life, cut short on the ill-fated Lusitania, can be found at: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycroft Print Shop

Antony and the Johnsons - Another World

YouTube - Antony and the Johnsons - Another World

I need another place
Will there be peace
I need another world
This one's nearly gone
Still have too many dreams
Never seen the light
I need another world
A place where I can go
I'm gonna miss the sea
I'm gonna miss the snow
I'm gonna miss the bees
I miss the things that grow
I'm gonna miss the trees
I'm gonna miss the sun
I miss the animals
I'm gonna miss you all
I need another place
Will there be peace
I need another world
This one's nearly gone
I'm gonna miss the birds
Singing all their songs
I'm gonna miss the wind
Been kissing me so long
Another world
Another world
Another world
Another world

Change the System

Daniel Quinn is somewhat of an erudite seer who has stirred up debate through his award-winning books, Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael.

The following are extracts from his 1999 book, Beyond Civilisation in which he argues that devising modern variations of tribal living may be the best way forward for humankind in these precarious times -

Tribes have leaders, to be sure, and sometimes very strong leaders, but leadership carries little or nothing in the way of special benefits that are denied to other members of the tribe. Has there never arisen a tribe that has "gone hierarchal," where the leader has made himself into a despot? I'm absolutely certain this has happened, perhaps thousands of times. What's important to note is that no such tribe has survived. The reason isn't hard to find - people don't like living under despots. Again, that's natural selection at work: tribes ruled by despots fail to hold onto their members and become extinct...

...The New Tribal Revolution is an escape route from the prison of our culture. The walls of that prison are economic. That is, the need to make a living keeps us inside, because there's no way to make a living on the other side. We can't employ the Mayan solution - we can't disappear into a life of occupational tribalism.

Will this leave our civilisation a smoking ruin? Certainly not. It will diminish it. As more and more people see that going over the wall means getting something better (not "giving up" something), more and more people will abandon the culture of maximum harm - and the more this culture is abandoned, the better. The escape route leads beyond civilisation, beyond the thing that, according to our cultural mythology, is humanity's very last invention.

The escape route leads to humanity's next invention.
But even so, will this next invention give us a sustainable lifestyle? Here's How I assess this. Humans living in tribes was as ecologically stable as lions living in prides or baboons living in troops. The tribal life wasn't something humans sat down and figured out. It was the gift of natural selection, a proven success - not perfection but hard to improve on. Hierarchalism, on the other hand, has proven to be not merely imperfect but ultimately catastrophic for the earth and for us. When the plane's going down and someone offers you a parachute, you don't demand to see the warranty.

Quinn's website is: www.ishmael.org .


Recently I happened upon another hugely ambitious project which seems important in the gathering momentum towards environmental enlightenment. In a highly scientific but beautifully-recounted study spanning the history of humanity across the globe focussing on civilisations which effectively became extinct, or teetered perilously close, Jarred Diamond tackles how we might learn from past failures, coming more from the objective AQAL paradigm vantage point.

About one of the many societies studied in the book, one review – The Vanishing: The New Yorker summarises:

This was a society on the brink of ecological disaster, and if there is anything that is clear from the study of such societies it is that they inevitably descend into genocidal chaos. In “Collapse,” Diamond quite convincingly defends himself against the charge of environmental determinism. His discussions are always nuanced, and he gives political and ideological factors their due. The real issue is how, in coming to terms with the uncertainties and hostilities of the world, the rest of us have turned ourselves into cultural determinists.

Internal Self-Defences

In a world where processed foods lacking nourishment are the norm, research is mounting that proper nutrition can markedly improve health - Lose Weight - Gain Energy - Beat Stress

The holistic approach of chiropractic involves efforts to ensure spinal health as all organs of the body are linked critically to the spine via nerves -International Chiropractors Association#practice

The Buteyko method has been helping many breathing-related sufferers - Buteyko Breathing Association

Emotional Freedom Techniques is easy and by all accounts, works wonders:


The growth of mindfulness application in health practice is edging ahead of late great cognitive behaviour therapies which were susceptable to implicate a client's negative thoughts and perceptions about a negative reality as requiring correction - Mindfulness getting new look from doctors : Health and Fitness : Boulder Daily Camera , and
Welcome to MindfulnessForum.com

A mindfulness session led by world leader in the field, Jon Kabat-Zinn is shown at this link- YouTube - Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

Along with mainstream medical treatment as necessary, these and other high-quality alternative approaches are worth considering for health maintenence.


Tim Lott, introducing Morrissey in The Guardian Newspaper's extra series of classic booklets 'Great Lyricists', confessed:

"I love Morrissey, because he legitimises complaint. He is/was the great grumpy young man. Luck is against him ("I know my luck too well / and I'll probably never see you again"), his environment is against him ("this town has dragged you down"), but there is meaning within and beyond all these things.

The meaning lies in the statement Yet This Also Affirms What You Are, and now, at least, you have a definition and thus a partial remedy for confusion."

From: - Tim Lott on Morrissey's lyrics | Music | The Guardian

Finally, a little appropriate complaining is officially good for your headspace! - TheSpec.com - Local - GO AHEAD, WHINE

Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach- God Give Me Strength

YouTube - Elvis Costello - God Give Me Strength 1996

Now I have nothing, so God give me strength
'Cos I'm weak in her wake
And if I'm strong I might still break
And I don't have anything to share
That I won't throw away into the air
That song is sung out
This bell is rung out
She was the light that I'd bless
She took my last chance of happiness
So God give me strength
God give me strength
I can't hold on to her, God give me strength
When the phone doesn't ring
And I'm lost in imagining
Everything that kind of love is worth
As I tumble back down to the earth
That song is sung out
This bell is rung out
She was the light that I'd bless
She took my last chance of happiness
So God give me strength
God if she'd grant me her indulgence and decline
I might as well wipe her from my memory
Fracture the spell as she becomes my enemy
Maybe I was washed out like a lip-print on his shirt
See, I'm only human, I want him to hurt
I want him
I want him to hurt
Since I lost the power to pretend
That there could ever be a happy ending
That song is sung out
This bell is rung out
She was the light that I'd bless
She took my last chance of happiness
So God give me strength
God give me strength

Health is not Profitable

Thomas Szasz, then professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical College in Syracuse, published his book, called The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct in 1961. It won him much admiration but also enemies within his own profession, for charging psychiatry with being a pseudoscience.

Jeffrey Oliver, writing for The New Atlantis to promote his new book The Myth of Thomas Szasz provides an informed background to the circumstances and issues, including the following observation -

At his best, Szasz actually clarified the Sisyphean predicament in which psychiatry remains largely stuck. For almost half a century, he has obstinately argued that a mind can only be sick in a metaphorical sense. And all this time, psychiatry has been desperate to prove what it claims to have already proven—to bring mental illnesses “down to the level of all other diseases of the human body, and to show that the mind and the body are moved by the same causes and subject to the same laws.” In response to the image crisis that psychiatry had suffered at Szasz’s hands, past-APA President Robert Felix offered the following cure: “More of us must intensify our efforts to become more identified with the mainstream of American medicine.” In other words, the legitimacy of psychiatry’s refutation of Thomas Szasz rests entirely on the profession’s ability to prove Benjamin Rush right. This was the goal implicit in Felix’s proposed merger with “the mainstream of American medicine.”

Not surprisingly, over the last four decades, psychiatry has systematically placed its greatest hopes in the biology of mental illness. We are led to believe that new disciplines like neuroscience are putting old ambiguities to rest. We hear of “explosions in scientific knowledge of the brain” and “remarkable advances in understanding the human mind.” Evidence of the biological basis of mental illnesses would seem to be so overwhelming that to doubt is akin to doubting evolution. Yet a review of the facts fails to reveal the sort of breathtaking advancement commonly claimed.

The full 2006 article is at: The New Atlantis » The Myth of Thomas Szasz

Szasz was not alone. Other towering figures pushing the same case to humanise the psychiatric field included R.D. Laing, Ivor Browne (his autobiography Music and Madness came out earlier this year) and more.

Meanwhile there are plenty of lay people harbouring grave reservations about mainstream medicine, exemplified sensationally in Michael Moore's 2007 documentary Sicko . Here's the trailer:

Everybody's Lost

LOST - Morrissey (live New York 2000)

"Jet trails in the sky
Leave one word behind
A hand bangs into sand a name
And we all understand

Everybody's Lost
But they're pretending they're not
Lost
Oh, Lost

Jet trails in the sky
Leave one thought behind
A hand bangs into sand a name
And we all understand

Everybody's Lost
But they're pretending they're not
Lost
Oh, Lost

So if I see you
And I tell you
How I've watched you
I'm just Lost

So if I see you
And I tell you
I've watched you
Don't make fun of me later
Cause I'm just Lost

If I see you
And I tell you
How I've watched you
Don't make fun of me later
Cause I'm just Lost

If I see you
And I tell you
How I've watched you
Don't make fun of me later
Cause I'm just Lost
Lost Lost Lost Lost Lost Lost"

(Alternative better audio version here - YouTube - Morrissey - Lost

Caution! - Psychiatry

YouTube - One flew over the cuckoo's nest (trailer)

WHO NEEDS PSYCHIATRY?

Injections and tablets, instructions and limits,
Are the good news from some in the psychiatric profession.

So if you’ve depression, or sorrow, or sin,
Consider all else before here entering.

Your hunger for life, could be hunted, barking,
With hypnotic persuasion, until you’ve given in.

Just when all is intolerable, is a stay here considerable,
Though still second, artificial, to your playing your own whistle.

Don’t give up, crooned Kate Bush, and song-mate Gabriel,
‘Cos life - it’s vast, free, with both days rush, night’s hush.

If your head’s in the clouds, happy head-bangs with God;
Or you’re stuck in the mud, dig your daily bread!

- goinghome

Holly Cole covers Tom Waits' Train Song

YouTube - Holly Cole - Train Song (by Tom Waits)
i broke down in east saint louis
on the kansas city line
i drunk up all my money
that i borrowed every time
i fell down at the derby
well the night's just as black as a crow
a train took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

what made my dreams so hollow
i was standing at the depot
with a steeple full of swallows
that could never ring the bell
i come ten thousand miles away
without one thing to show
yeah it was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

well i remember when i left
without botherin' to pack
you know i up and left with
just the clothes i had on my back
now i'm so sorry for what i've done
and i'm out here on my own
it was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

Selfish Capitalism Spreads Mental Distress

Oliver James is a psychologist who wrote the book "The Selfish Capitalist - Origins of Affluenza". He introduced the core topic in The Guardian newspaper back in January this year, which is that the worldwide burgeoning of capitalism has engendered a corresponding alarming rise in mental illness which is not coincidental. Read on for some core snippets of that reportage:

In itself, this economic inequality does not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have the lowest prevalence of mental illness. Furthermore, inequity may be much greater in the English-speaking world today, but it is far less than it was at the end of the 19th century. While we have no way of knowing for sure, it is very possible that mental illness was nowhere near as widespread in, for instance, the US or Britain of that time.

What does the damage is the combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza - placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when you already have enough income to meet your fundamental psychological needs. Survival materialism is healthy. If you need money for medicine or to buy a house, becoming very concerned about getting them does not make you mentally ill.

But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism...

The full article is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/03/comment.mentalhealth

Also see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/05/scienceandnature.society

Why Mental Health Services can Act as Social Police

"...the psychologisation of distress firmly places the cause for psychological ill-health within the individual...This deprivation, abuse, oppression and the social and political context of distress can largely be ignored and the practice of clinical psychology can continue to try to mop up problems caused by a sick society" (Gillian Proctor, 2005)

Writing in American Psychologist on the subject of how clinical psychology perpetuates the creation of distress, George Albee (2000) highlighted major political differences between a medical/organic/brain-deficit model to explain mental disorders and a social-learning, stress-related model. He argued that the former is supported by the ruling class because it does not require social change and major readjustments to the status quo. The social model, on the other hand, seeks to end or to reduce poverty with all its associated stresses, as well as discrimination, exploitation, and prejudices as other major sources of stress leading to emotional problems.

The history of psychology testifies to how psychological practices are influenced by prevailing cultural conceptions (Jansz & van Drunen, 2004), and it would be naive to think that our current perspectives are not similarly influenced. In support of this view, in their discussion on the nature of psychopathology, Maddux et al (2005) wrote:
"...psychopathology and mental disorder... are social constructions - abstract ideas whose meanings are negotiated among the people and institutions of a culture and that reflect the values and power structure of that culture at a given time... it is time to acknowledge that science can no more determine the proper or correct conception of psychopathology and mental disorder than it can determine the proper and correct conception of other social constructions such as beauty, justice, race and social class..."

They urge us to move towards understanding the facilitation of well-being not as a medical treatment but as the province of educational social and political intervention, not in hospitals and clinics but in community centres, schools and people's homes, and to give equal emphasis to mental health as we do to mental illness. -

The above are parts of an article by Stephen Joseph for The Psychologist (monthly magazine of the British Psychological Society), July 2007, Vol. 20, No. 7.

Another powerful insight into the frequent cul de sac of institutional services is served up in the 2006 novel Poppy Shakespeare, a sound review of which is here - Review: Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan | Books | The Guardian

Comedians De-Brand Psychiatry...

Russell Brand shares a mental health anecdote - or two:





Jo Brand's newspaper article argues for loosening the chains of Bedlam palare:
Glad to be 'mad'? | Society | The Guardian

Regular Psychological Services

The STEPS team based in Glasgow, Scotland offers a range of services to people with common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Their website is an example of the spectrum of services that mainstream medical practitioners in this field provide to people suffering stress and more distressing conditions. It is easily navigable and affords some extra resources such as simple descriptions of the services, an outline of who administers them, statements on clinical standards and on the rights of would-be clients. It has made available for download a number of information brochures, and it has a comprehensive section focusing on self-help practices.

In particular, the website hosts an assessment interface where readers can measure their current levels of stress and of the related common states categorised as mental illness, mainly of the neurotic type. This can be located here - Glasgow STEPS - Assessment

The BBC website has recently produced a similar but much more glossy affair:
BBC - Headroom

A statistic exists that one in four people will suffer from mental illness in their lives. There is less known about those who encounter similar or worse trigger incidents in their lives, and yet they have somehow staved off severe mental suffering. People who blame themselves are easier to manipulate than those who have the resilience and social support to stand up for themselves. Justice in everyday dealings could have a surprising effect on the epidemic figures of mental illness on record.

- goinghome