Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year!


New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. - Hamilton Wright Mabie

As another year comes to its end I want to thank all of you for your patronage of my blog and wish you a spectacular New Year 2013. May all your dreams come true! 

With much Love, Light and Laughter  - Dominique


Sunday, December 30, 2012

Discovery of Heaven


Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, 
you are always right. - Henry Ford

Only a few days ago I met a colleague whom I did not see for a while. He wasn't doing well at all. In fact, I do not remember ever seeing him happy. He was in "hell" as things in his life seemed to have fallen apart  long ago and the regular dose of antidepressants made only minimal impact on his mood. He completely gave up on his life and hoped to die soon. He admitted that he was a coward and would never be able to take his own life, but to speed things up he started smoking again. He smoked the strongest cigarillos in hope that his heart would give up and his "end" would somehow come sooner.

This year wasn't "good" for many people. Economy, politics, natural disasters, terrorism, personal tragedies - there wasn't a month that wouldn't shock us with some horrible news. I can imagine that many people do not have much hope right now. But a new year always comes as a blessing. It always means a new beginning. We should look at new year not only with hope, but with new energy and determination to make things better.

If things were bad for us in 2012, we want to change them. If we failed, we hope for strength and new opportunities. We have dreams and new ideas. We make promises and write down our New Year's resolutions. 

No matter how bad things were the previous year, we do not want to give up without a try. We hope for change and understand that much depends on us and our beliefs about the world and our place in it. 

What struck me about my colleague was his complete loss of will to take control over his own life. Not that he did not have any options. He simply believed that all that happened in his life was his karma and he deserved it all. The misery he was in was a retribution for evil he must have committed in his previous lives. No amount of persuasion would change his mind. He created this hell on earth and deserved to be punished, but at the same time he admitted that he was exhausted and could not take anymore pain.

This was quite shocking to me. I do not have the right to judge anyone but it seems really odd to me that a rational person would relinquish control of his life to an abstract construct of a mind. Imagine, what if there was no such thing as karma? What if we had the power to change what happens to us? What if we could change the direction in which our lives were unfolding? What if we were free to choose "heaven on earth" instead of endless suffering in a self-made hell? What if we were always right no matter what we believed? What if our dreams could come true if only we had them?

As my colleague described his situation I realized that his problem consisted of many smaller issues that had to be addressed separately, one by one, something he did not realize since he saw his life as one big mess: failed marriage, depression and insurmountable debt. At least he still had a job. But this did not matter as he enjoyed it less and less and even considered giving it up...

If you consider yourself a failure and believe that there is no way out, you may be a living proof of your own believe. You are right! A self-fulfilling prophecy, a loser who only attracts disasters and does not even know that he can take control of his own life. 
 
Horrible things happen to many of us, but what makes us winners or losers in the game of life is our resilience, or lack of it, and our response to circumstances.

Some people have the remarkable talent to pick themselves up and start anew. The pain, the loss, the suffering will and should not be forgotten, but are looked upon as life lessons and opportunities for growth and change.

We can choose happiness. We have the power to create our own heaven on earth no matter what. If we believe that we deserve to be happy we will find the strength to deal with our  problems. We will be able to attract people who may suggest solutions where we've seen none. 

End of the year is a perfect moment to start anew. No matter what your current circumstances are, make a wish and hold on to it. And if you believe that you will succeed, you definitely will. Do not give up on yourself. Do not give up without a fight. Wish for more. Discover heaven. Dream.
 
By Dominique Teng

Dominique Teng©2012

Friday, December 28, 2012

Chopin's Small Miracles

Frédéric Chopin by Bogusław Orliński
 Frédéric Chopin by Bogusław Orliński

By David Dubal

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), whose 200th anniversary it is this year, is the overwhelming favorite composer for the piano. He possessed the most subtle intuitions and fathomed the mysteries of the world. Oscar Wilde once said of him, "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."  

Most of the 24 Chopin Preludes were sketched out between 1837 and 1838. They are the ultimate miniatures. In an age when the symphony and sonata still held sway, writing these aphoristic Preludes was revolutionary. All except two contain a single musical idea, each boiled down to its essence. Never had brevity been so brief. Ten are under a minute in length; nine last just over a minute. Only the celebrated No. 15, the so-called "Raindrop Prelude," attains the length characteristic of a small piece, clocking in at 4½ minutes.

Fourteen of the Preludes are full of light, gaiety, serenity and a kind of happiness. Seven contain anguish, rage and fury. Three are simply sorrowful. No matter how tiny, the Preludes loom large musically. Each one is a masterpiece of compressed emotion blended with an unequaled pianistic ingenuity and originality. Many of them are horribly difficult to play. When Robert Schumann read them, he proclaimed Chopin to be the "proudest poet soul of the age."

What was the inspiration? As a child in Warsaw, Chopin was nourished on the then practically unknown preludes and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in each of the major and minor keys and collectively known as "The Well-Tempered Clavier." Chopin was one of the rare pianists of his time who played most of them, and Bach remained his ideal. During the creation of the Preludes he was particularly obsessed with Bach, and took "The Well-Tempered Clavier" with him on a vacation to Majorca in November 1838, where the Preludes were refined and polished.  

Bach's preludes, some of considerable length, need their fugues, but Romantic composers did not often use this musical form. Each of Chopin's Preludes is self-sufficient, but they were composed, like Bach's, with one for each major and minor key. Since nothing follows them, one may ask what these works are a prelude to - certainly to another Prelude or, poetically speaking, perhaps a prelude to the infinite. We don't know if Chopin intended them to be played as a cycle, although today's pianists usually perform them that way in recital.

The completion of the Preludes formed one of the most harrowing episodes in the composer's short life. When Chopin and his companion, the novelist George Sand, first got to Majorca he was ecstatic. But he soon became nervous, as the piano his friend Camille Pleyel, the music publisher and piano builder, had promised to send him had not yet arrived. By early December Chopin had become gravely ill and the Majorcans, terrified of what was known as consumption (tuberculosis today), made life very unpleasant for the group. To make matters worse, the piano was stuck at customs for weeks, forcing Chopin to rent a wretched replacement. Pleyel's piano was finally delivered in early January, and the Preludes were finished late that month. 

In these tiny microcosms Chopin established the hegemony of the Romantic miniature. His Preludes would find progeny later in the preludes of Scriabin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and others. 

Space does not permit a detailed analysis of all 24, but mention of a few may give a sense of their character: 

•No. 1 in C major : An exquisite example of Chopin's devotion to Bach. Pulsating and agitated, it is over in half a minute, leaving the listener yearning for more.

•No. 2 in A minor: A lugubrious melody seems to hang in the air. Ingmar Bergman made impressive use of the piece in his film "Autumn Sonata." 

•No. 4 in E minor: A slender melody over rich, slow-moving chordal harmonies with the left hand. It, along with the B Minor (No. 6) and C Minor (No. 20) Preludes, was played on the organ at Chopin's funeral at the Church of La Madeleine in Paris on Oct. 30, 1849. 

•No. 7 in A major: Sixteen bars of pure grace.

•No. 8 in F-sharp minor: A highly textured polyrhythmic piece, the melody of this feverish, throbbing vision is played entirely with the right thumb. One of the greatest of the Preludes.

•No. 19 in E-flat major: Pure azure contentment in triplets for both hands, marked "Vivace." To play it through unscathed is an achievement. 

•No. 24 in D minor : Marked "Allegro appassionato," a tremendous discharge of despairing passion, concluding with three foreboding D's from the bowels of the piano.

Probably more people have come to great music through Chopin than from any other composer. In my case, growing up in Cleveland, I used to listen to a radio show whose theme music entranced me at first hearing but was never identified by the host. Although the show aired much past my usual bedtime, I would occasionally sneak down the stairs, turn the radio on at low volume and drink in the strains of this music, over so quickly that I listened with all my might. It was not until somewhat later, when I was taking piano lessons, that I found out that it was No. 7, the Prelude in A Major. Not too long after that I could play it myself, which was bliss! Only later did I find out that there were 23 more Preludes that I would love equally, and in later years would come to study and teach.

About the author:

Mr. Dubal is a professor of piano performance at the Juilliard School and the author of "The Art of the Piano" and "The Essential Canon of Classical Music." His radio program, "The Piano Matters," can be heard world-wide on www.wwfm.org.


Article source here
Image source here 

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas!


Christmas waves 
a magic wand 
over this world, 
 and behold, 
everything is softer 
and more beautiful. 

Norman Vincent Peale

Wishing everyone magical Christmas time ~ Dominique



Friday, December 21, 2012

Imagined Perfection

Happy Winter Solstice!

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create. - Chuck Palahniuk in "Choke"

Image by Roman Shalenkin 
Image source here

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Timeless Universe

 The Frosty Leo Nebula
 The Frosty Leo Nebula

The underlying state of the universe is timeless. Before the first nanosecond of the Big Bang, there was only the potential for time in a dimension of all possibilities, after which quantum objects (energy, spin, charge, gravity), emerged. A potential doesn’t have a life span. It encompasses past, present, and future. The ground state of physics turns out to resemble the zero state of samadhi.

Once these timeless possibilities begin to collapse into space-time events, our connection to eternity seems lost. That is an illusion, though, fostered by our dependence on clock time. You have always been eternal; you still are. - Deepak Chopra in "War of the Worldviews: Science Vs. Spirituality"

Three thousand light-years from Earth lies the strange protoplanetary nebula IRAS 09371+1212, nicknamed the Frosty Leo Nebula. Despite their name, protoplanetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets: they are formed from material shed from their aging central star. The Frosty Leo Nebula has acquired its curious name as it has been found to be rich in water in the form of ice grains, and because it lies in the constellation of Leo.

This nebula is particularly noteworthy because it has formed far from the galactic plane, away from interstellar clouds that may block our view. The intricate shape comprises a spherical halo, a disc around the central star, lobes and gigantic loops. This complex structure strongly suggests that the formation processes are complex and it has been suggested that there could be a second star, currently unseen, contributing to the shaping of the nebula.

Protoplanetary nebulae like the Frosty Leo Nebula have brief lifespans by astronomical standards and are precursors to the planetary nebula phase, in which radiation from the star will make the nebula’s gas light up brightly. Their rarity makes studying them a priority for astronomers who seek to understand better the evolution of stars.

Image and description source here

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Winter


Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.

By Mary Oliver


Thursday, December 13, 2012

What Is Wrong With the Christmas Tree?


Here we are again! The Christmas tree debate. This happens every year as soon as people start taking the Christmas tree ornaments out of their storage and Christmas trees start to appear in front yards and in public squares. And what can you say when the First Tree is no longer called a Christmas tree, but a Holiday Tree? 

Never mind that Christmas tree is a tradition cherished by Christians. Pundits all over the liberal media give us wise explanations how the Christmas tree is simply a pagan or a pre-Christian symbol, something the ignorant Christians who stupidly insist on calling it a "Christmas" tree, are not even aware of... 


For lack of better analogy, let me give you an example. How would you feel if your birthday was on December 13 and you wanted to celebrate it with joy just like millions others who were born on that day, but someone told you that you could not call it "your birthday" because by doing so you were excluding every single person on earth who wasn't born on that day? What if the only politically correct way to celebrate your birthday was to simply celebrate the Day of December 13 so that everyone who felt like celebrating this holiday could participate at will? What if someone told you that your "birthday" cake is a symbol of the womb and the seven layers of chocolate symbolized the shaman's steps to higher awareness? What if the chocolate on your cake wasn't simply a chocolate, but an offering to the gods? Would you still celebrate your birthday? Or would you rather allow your critics to suppress your joy and celebrate the December 13 instead? 

Like many other religions, Christianity incorporated symbols and rituals of the peoples that were converted to it. Churches were erected on the remains of Roman, Celtic, Etruscan, Slavic, and Nordic temples. Many converts retained their religious practices and beliefs and gradually incorporated them into Christianity. Many Christian symbols evolved from symbols as old the the human collective consciousness itself.

Religious syncretism is known to other religions as well. Take Buddhism, for instance: the Chinese Buddhism incorporated elements of Taoism; Tibetan Buddhism included elements of the Bon religion that it wanted to suppress; in Japan Buddhism had to compete with Shinto and made the use of its concepts of purity.

Religions may be the last bastion of conservatism, but they evolve as well. They adapt to new circumstances, cultural necessities and spiritual needs of the faithful. The change may be slow, but it occurs independently from what the scriptures dictate. 

No one dares to attack the Jews for lightening a menora. Yes. It is called menora and not a holiday candle stand. And no one feels "excluded" because the Jews celebrate "their" Chanukah even if we are not invited. So why is there so much noise about the Christmas tree?  

Christmas tree is a Christmas tree and not a "holiday" tree. This is why you do not see it when people celebrate Cinco de Mayo or the October Revolution. This is why people decorate their Christmas trees around Christmas and not in July. 

We are living in a modern world where heretics and apostates are not burned at stake any longer. We are free to chose our religion or to practice none. One would have thought the persecution of religion is a thing of the past, but how true is this when we live and let live until the December and wage a "war on a Christmas tree" as soon as we see one?

I don't know on which side of the divide you are right now and whether you celebrate Christmas at all, if you want to have a Wicca tree in your yard go for it, but let the people who love Christmas trees in peace. Take some time to reflect and simply enjoy the beauty of the Season with all its sights, sounds and scents.


By Dominique Teng

Dominique Teng©2012 

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Nuclear Winter


By Robert Lamb 

Call it par­anoia or keen insight, but humans have long pondered the possibility that the end of the world won't come as the result of warring gods or cosmic mishap, but due to our own self-destructive tendencies. Once nomads in the primordial wilds, we've climbed a ladder of technology, taken on the mantle of civilization and declared ourselves masters of the planet. But how long can we lord over our domain without destroying ourselves? After all, if we learned nothing else from "2001: A Space Odyssey" it's that if you give a monkey a bone, it inevitably will beat another monkey to death with it.

Genetically fused to our savage past, we've cut a blood-drenched trail through the centuries. We've destroyed civilizations, waged war and scarred the face of the planet with our progress - and our weapons have grown more powerful. Following the first successful test of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer brooded on the dire implications. Later, he famously invoked a quote from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." 
 
In the decades following that detonation, humanity quaked with fear at atomic weaponry. As the global nuclear arsenal swelled, so, too, did our dread of the breed of war we might unleash with it. As scientists researched the possible ramifications of such a conflict, a new term entered the public vernacular: nuclear winter. If the sight of a mushroom cloud burning above the horizon suggests that the world might end with a bang, then nuclear winter presents the notion that post-World War III humanity might very well die with a whimper.

Since the early 1980s, this scenario has permeated our most dismal visions of the future: Suddenly, the sky blazes with the radiance of a thousand suns. Millions of lives burn to ash and shadow. Finally, as nuclear firestorms incinerate cities and fo­rests, torrents of smoke ascend into the atmosphere to entomb the planet in billowing, black clouds of ash.

The result is noontime darkness, plummeting temperatures and the eventual death of life on planet Earth. 

To read on, please click here

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Extreme Weather


The wind blew my words away from you. So while I told you I love you, the phrase was carried in the opposite direction and landed 333 miles away in the ears of a confused farmer. He was nice, though. He sent me a kind letter saying that while he was flattered, I wasn’t really his type. - Jarod Kintz in "The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over"


Saturday, December 1, 2012

I Heard a Bird Sing


I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

By Oliver Herford 

Sunday, November 25, 2012

On Vision


Both, what and how we see, are intricately interwoven with our conditioning. We see what we have learned to see. If we come out of our house in midday and see a yellow barn surrounded by a forest, that image becomes a part of our memory. Later, at the end of the day, when the evening sun is sinking over the horizon and the once yellow barn and green trees have been transformed by the fiery orange hue, we may miss that change. Our tendency will be to remember the yellow and green unless a deliberate effort is made to see things as they are. In the glow of twilight the house maybe have a pinkish tone. Trees will turn purple. Yet our mind, if we let it be controlled and fixed by our memory, will only see the afterimages of the past.

I sit here each evening and look at the same things and each evening find that I see different things. The renown Japanese Zen teacher and mystic, Eihei Dogen once asked, “Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?” His words come back to me again and again; ripples on the water expanding in widening circles, reaching out endlessly.

John Daido Loori Roshi

Image source here

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's time to be grateful

We can always find something to be thankful for, 
and there may be reasons 
why we ought to be thankful for even those 
dispensations which appear 
dark and frowning. 

Albert Barnes

Wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving
 With Love, Light and Laughter

 Dominique

Image by Masahiro Makino 

Friday, November 16, 2012

Quote of the Day


The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly. - Richard Bach


Image source unknown but greatly appreciated

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Ustrasana - The Camel Pose

 Ushtrasana

By Tysan Lerner

There is something very invigorating about the camel pose. Upon completion, the whole front of the body will feel long and open, while the back muscles will feel warm, supple, and pleasantly worked. The camel pose helps lift one’s mood, open one’s heart, and deepen one’s breath.

Despite these wonderful benefits, go cautiously into this pose. It is an intense back bend, requires tremendous focus, and can strain one if he or she has a serious back or neck injury. It is also not recommended for someone with high blood pressure or insomnia.

Preparation Exercise 

To prepare the body for this backbend, start with some gentle chest stretches and back stretches. One good preparation exercise is to roll out the back on a foam roller or small rubber ball. This will help warm up the back muscles and mobilize the vertebrae.

 Ustrasana

When ready to begin, kneel on the knees with the toes tucked under. Keep the thighbones perpendicular to the floor and in line with the hip sockets. Rotate the thighbones internally and gently press the hips forward. Reach both arms up until they are shoulder height. Lift up through the pelvic floor and lower abdomen while reaching the left fingertips forward and the right arm back toward the heels until it touches the right heel. 

Return to center and repeat on the other side. 

If this feels manageable, point the feet and repeat the exercise again. This makes the exercise more challenging.

Tuck the toes under. Place the hands on the back of the pelvis with the fingertips pointing down. Lengthen upward through the spine and begin to bend back while keeping the head in line with the spine. Keep bending back until hands can rest on the heels.

Stay here for five to ten deep, full breaths before returning the starting position. If that felt manageable, the next step would be to point the feet, pressing the ankles and shins into the floor, and repeating the posture one more time. 

To come out of this pose, lead with the sternum instead of the head.
  
Therapeutic Applications
  • Respiratory ailments
  • Mild backache
  • Fatigue
  • Anxiety
  • Menstrual discomfort
Benefits
  • Stretches the entire front of the body, the ankles, thighs and groins,
  • Abdomen and chest, and throat
  • Stretches the deep hip flexors (psoas)
  • Strengthens back muscles
  • Improves posture
  • Stimulates the organs of the abdomen and neck
Contraindications and Cautions
  • High or low blood pressure
  • Migraine
  • Insomnia
  • Serious low back or neck injury
If you have health issues you should consult you health care provider and practice yoga with a certified yoga instructor.


Article source here & here
Image by Barry Stone
 


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Happy Veterans Day!

Polish-American World War II Veterans 

On November 11, we dedicate the day to honor all military veterans with the respect and gratitude they so richly deserve. Their legacy reminds us that selfless service in the defense of liberty is a hallmark of all our military members. -  Gen. James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps


Image source here

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The End of the World As We Know It

Gulag bound
 Gulag Bound...
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? - Frédéric Bastiat
And you think the people have spoken? Think again... Nothing is more deceitful than an orchestrated political spectacle in which you have truly nothing to say.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Vote!


The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. - Franklin P. Adams

Make a difference! Vote!


Image by Andrew Rich

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Quote of the Day

Geaorgia O'Keeffee

When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore... unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone. - Georgia O'Keeffe

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!

Boooooo!

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? - Doug Coupland in "The Gum Thief"




Image source here

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Spicy Pumpkin Soup Recipe


Pumpkin in season! Time to try something new. A warming soup always seems like a good idea.

Ingredients:
  • 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
  • 2 teaspoons minced garlic
  • 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • 2 teaspoons curry powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • dash of cinnamon
  • 6 cups of chopped pumpkin
  • 6 vegetable broth
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • toasted pumpkin seeds for garnish
  • organic sea salt to taste
Method:

1. Melt butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 4 minutes. Add spices and stir for a minute more.

2. Add pumpkin and vegetable broth; blend well. Bring to a boil and reduce heat, simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. 

3. Transfer soup, in batches, to a blender or a food processor. Cover tightly and blend until smooth. Return soup to saucepan.

4. With the soup on low heat, slowly add coconut milk while stirring to incorporate. Adjust seasonings to taste. If a little too spicy, add more coconut milk to cool it down. You might want to add a teaspoon of salt.

Serve in individual bowls. Sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds. Enjoy in good company!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Autumn Glory

Pumpkins by Dominique Teng

I am rich today with autumn's gold,
All that my covetous hands can hold;
Frost-painted leaves and goldenrod,
A goldfinch on a milkweed pod,
Huge golden pumpkins in the field
With heaps of corn from a bounteous yield,
Golden apples heavy on the trees
Rivaling those of Hesperides,
Golden rays of balmy sunshine spread
Over all like butter on warm bread;
And the harvest moon will this night unfold
The streams running full of molten gold.
Oh, who could find a dearth of bliss
With autumn glory such as this!

By Gladys Harp 
 
Image: Pumpkins by Dominique Teng©2012

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Natural Beauty


A young monk was in charge of the garden within a famous Zen temple. He had been given the job because he loved the flowers, shrubs, and trees. Next to his temple there was another, a much smaller temple where a very old Zen master lived. 

One day, when the temple was expecting some special guests, the young monk took extra care in tending to the garden. He pulled the weeds, trimmed the shrubs, combed the moss, and spent a long time meticulously raking up and carefully arranging all the dry autumn leaves. As he worked, the old master watched him with interest from across the wall that separated the two temples.

When the young man had finished his work in the garden, he stood back to admire his work. "Isn't it beautiful," he called out to the old master. "Yes," replied the old man, "but there is something missing. Help me over this wall and I'll put it right for you."

After hesitating, the young monk lifted the old master over and set him down. Slowly, the master walked to the tree near the center of the garden, grabbed it by the trunk, and shook it. Leaves showered down all over the garden. "There," said the old man, "you can put me back now."
 

Image source unknown but greatly appreciated

Sunday, October 14, 2012

128,000 ft Jump!

Everyone has limits. Not every one accepts them. - Felix Baumgartner

Everyone has limits. Not every one accepts them. - Felix Baumgartner

Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, aka Fearless Felix, jumped from the altitude of 128,097 feet around noon this Sunday, October 14, just outside of Roswell, NM, breaking several world records: highest free-fall, fastest free-fall, and highest manned balloon flight.

The free-fall lasted 4 minutes 22 seconds.

Although Baumgartner broke several world records today, he was unable to break Kittinger's free-fall record.

The Red Bull Stratos mission to the Edge of Space attempted to transcend human limits that had been set by Joseph W. Kittinger some 50 years ago. 

The Red Bull Stratos team brought together the world's leading minds in aerospace medicine, engineering, pressure suit development, capsule creation and balloon fabrication. It included retired United States Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger, who holds three of the records Felix wanted to break.

Joe's record jump from 102,800 ft in 1960 was during a time when no one knew if a human could survive a jump from the edge of space. Joe was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force and had already taken a balloon to 97,000 feet in Project ManHigh and survived a drogue mishap during a jump from 76,400 feet in Excelsior I. The Excelsior III mission was his 33rd parachute jump. This was the time he established a world record that remains unbroken to this day. Kittinger's free-fall lasted 4 minutes 36 seconds - 14 seconds longer than Baumgartner's. 

 Felix Baumgartner in free-fall

Although researching extremes was part of the program's goals, setting records wasn't the mission's purpose. Joe ascended in helium balloon launched from the back of a truck. He wore a pressurized suit on the way up in an open, unpressurized gondola. Scientific data captured from Joe's jump was shared with U.S. research personnel for development of the space program. Today Felix and his specialized team hoped to take what was learned from Joe's jumps more than 50 years ago and press forward to test the limits of the human capacity.
 
Landed safely east of Roswell
 
Baumgartenr ascended to the low stratosphere in a capsule that was carried by a balloon which itself was a technological marvel.

The balloon was constructed of strips of high-performance polyethylene (plastic) film that was only 0.0008 inches thick or 10 times thinner than a lunch bag. In total, these strips would cover 40 acres if they were laid flat. Polyester-fibre reinforced load tapes were incorporated to do the weight bearing.

The Stratos balloon was filled with 30 million cubic feet of helium which10 times larger than Joe Kittinger's balloon in 1960.

The Roswell-jump not only terminated Baumgartner's skydiving career, but it also marked the 65th anniversary of US test pilot Chuck Yeager successful attempt to become the first man ever to officially break the sound barrier aboard an airplane.

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Saturday, October 13, 2012

Nobel Peace Prize 2012

The Atomium - Brussels, Belgium
The Atomium - Brussels, Belgium
None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace. - Theodor Adorno, German Philosopher and a prominent member of the Frankfurt School of philosophy know for its critical theory of society

By Ian Trynor

Wracked by its worst ever crisis of confidence in almost 60 years, the European Union received a surprise boost to its self-esteem when it won the Nobel peace prize. 

In a decision that many saw as paradoxical given the multiple frictions and disputes afflicting the union as it struggles to save its single currency, the Nobel committee in Oslo took the bigger and longer view, citing the EU's long record of generating reconciliation between historical foes and helping to restore democracy and peace to the erstwhile dictatorships of southern Europe and the former communist regimes of the old Soviet bloc.

The award brought a rapturous reaction at EU headquarters in Brussels, as well as sour and embittered criticism from europhobes and Eurosceptics, principally the British. (...)

José Manuel Barroso, head of the European commission, said the prize had been awarded to all 500 million EU citizens. (...)

Rather than dwelling on the crisis of the past three years, the Nobel committee looked back two generations to the founding of what was to become the modern EU as a political and economic instrument above all aimed at halting the historical rivalries and enmities between Germany and France that saw the two countries fight three wars in the century before the EU was established.

The committee said the EU's powers of healing were being brought to bear on the Balkans, the scene of bloodbaths only 20 years ago, through a policy of integration towards former Yugoslavia. Slovenia is already a member and Croatia is slated to become the EU's 28th member next year.

The praise for the Balkan policy came despite the EU's failures to stop the bloodshed in Bosnia in 1992-95.

In a further paradox given the emphasis on the EU's prowess at reconciliation, the current six-month presidency is held by Cyprus, a country whose intractable conflict and partition has defied decades of mediation and has contributed hugely to the freeze in Turkey's negotiations to join the EU.


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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Moral Origins


How Human Beings Became Moral

By Megan Gambino

Why do people show kindness to others, even those outside their families, when they do not stand to benefit from it? Being generous without that generosity being reciprocated does not advance the basic evolutionary drive to survive and reproduce.

Christopher Boehm, an evolutionary anthropologist, is the director of the Jane Goodall Research Center at the University of Southern California. For forty years, he has observed primates and studied different human cultures to understand social and moral behavior. In his new book, Moral Origins, Boehm speculates that human morality emerged along with big game hunting. When hunter-gatherers formed groups, he explains, survival essentially boiled down to one key tenet - cooperate, or die.

First of all, how do you define altruism?

Basically, altruism involves generosity outside of the family, meaning generosity toward non-kinsmen.

Why is altruism so difficult to explain in evolutionary terms?

A typical hunter-gatherer band of the type that was universal in the world 15,000 years ago has a few brothers or sisters, but almost everyone else is unrelated. The fact that they do so much sharing is a paradox genetically. Here are all these unrelated people who are sharing without being bean counters. You would expect those who are best at cheating, and taking but not giving, to be coming out ahead. Their genes should be on the rise while altruistic genes would be going away. But, in fact, we are evolved to share quite widely in bands.

What did Charles Darwin say about this “altruism paradox?”

Charles Darwin was profoundly perplexed by the fact that young men voluntarily go off to war and die for their groups. This obviously didn’t fit with his general idea of natural selection as being individuals pursuing their self-interests.

He came up with group selection as an answer to this paradox. The way it worked, if one group has more altruists than another, it is going to out-compete the other group and outreproduce it. The groups with fewer altruists would have fewer survivors. Therefore, altruism would spread at the expense of selfishness.

The problem with group selection has been that it is very hard to see how it could become strong enough to trump selection between individuals. You need an awful lot of warfare and genocide to really make group selection work.

And what did Darwin have to say about the origins of the human conscience?

What he did really was to take the conscience, set it aside as something very special and then basically say, “I throw up my hands. I can’t tell you how this could have evolved. What I can tell you is that any creature that became as intelligent and as sympathetic as humans would naturally have a conscience.”

Fast-forward a century and half - where are we now in understanding the origins of human morality and conscience?

Well, there are quite a few books on the subject. But they are almost all arguments out of evolutionary design; that is, they simply look at morality and see how it functions and how it could have been genetically useful to individuals. My book is the first to actually try to look at the natural history of moral evolution. At what time and how did developments take place which led us to become moral? In a way, this is a new field of study.

Can you tell us about the database you have created to help you draw your conclusions?

It has been argued that all of the human hunter-gatherers that live today have been so politically marginalized that they really can’t be compared with prehistoric human beings who were hunting and gathering. I think that is flat-out wrong.

Since the 1970s, we have learned that the rate of climate change was just incredible in the late Pleistocene. Therefore, there was plenty of marginalization taking place 50,000 years ago, just as there has been today. Like today, some of it surely was political, in the sense that when there would be a climate downswing, everything would be scarce and hunting bands would be fighting with each other over resources.

What I have done is to look at all of the possible hunter-gatherer societies that have been studied. I simply got rid of all of those that could have never existed in the Pleistocene - mounted hunters who have domesticated horses that they got from the Spaniards, fur trade Indians who started buying rifles and killing fur-bearing animals and some very hierarchical people who developed along the northwest coast of North America. So far, I’ve very carefully gone through about 50 of the remaining societies, looking for things that they mostly share. Then, I project the patterns of shared behavior back into the period when humans were culturally modern. Now, that only gets us back to 45,000, maybe 100,000 years ago. If you go back beyond that, then there are problems, because you are not dealing with the same brains and the same cultural capacity.

About when did humans acquire a conscience?

Getting pinned down on a date is very dangerous because every scholar is going to have something to say about that. But let me just give you some probabilities. First of all, there could be little doubt that humans had a conscience 45,000 years ago, which is the conservative date that all archaeologists agree on for our having become culturally modern. Having a conscience and morality go with being culturally modern. Now, if you want to guess at how much before that, the landmark that I see as being the most persuasive is the advent of large game hunting, which came about a quarter of a million years ago.

According to your theory, how did the human conscience evolve?

People started hunting large ungulates, or hoofed mammals. They were very dedicated to hunting, and it was an important part of their subsistence. But my theory is that you cannot have alpha males if you are going to have a hunting team that shares the meat fairly evenhandedly, so that the entire team stays nourished. In order to get meat divided within a band of people who are by nature pretty hierarchical, you have to basically stomp on hierarchy and get it out of the way. I think that is the process.

My hypothesis is that when they started large game hunting, they had to start really punishing alpha males and holding them down. That set up a selection pressure in the sense that, if you couldn’t control your alpha tendencies, you were going to get killed or run out of the group, which was about the same as getting killed. Therefore, self-control became an important feature for individuals who were reproductively successful. And self-control translates into conscience.

Over how long of a period did it take to evolve?

Well, Edward O. Wilson says that it takes a thousand generations for a new evolutionary feature to evolve. In humans, that would come to 25,000 years. Something as complicated as a conscience probably took longer than that. It has some bells and whistles that are total mysteries, such as blushing with shame. No one has the slightest idea how that evolved. But I would say a few thousand generations, and perhaps between 25,000 and 75,000 years.

In what ways is morality continuing to evolve?

It is very hard to make a statement about that. I’ll make a few guesses. Prehistorically, psychopaths were probably easy to identify and were dealt with, as they had to be dealt with, by killing them. And, today, it would appear that in a large anonymous society many psychopaths really have free rein and are free to reproduce. We may need to take further moral steps at the level of culture to deal with an increase of psychopathy in our populations. But this would be over thousands of years.

Morality certainly evolves at the cultural level. For example, the American media in the last year have suddenly become very, very interested in bullies - so have school officials. Our social control is now focused much more than it ever was on bullying. It has been a major topic with hunter-gatherers. So, in a sense, you could say our moral evolution at the cultural level has rather suddenly moved back to an ancient topic.



Article source: The Smithsonian
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