Too Much Communication and Not Much Understanding

There's too much communication & not much understanding. It's easy to pour words and sound bites out into the electronic atmosphere. But who's listening? You? Me? How much can I listen, read, or watch in one day? It becomes easy to neglect one's own mind and deeper truths. To understand is to "stand under" - to get below the surface. This takes time. Time to stand in silence. Time to listen, and allow what-is to disclose itself.

World is Changing

The world is changing. It always changes. So many of my peers in age fear the future. It will not be the same. I was reading this morning about the tragedy of the north American Indians as their cultures become invaded by European cultures. Suffering and death by disease and violence that reflect some our worst images of the future. Indeed, the worst has already happened. Now "we" are here. Hold on for the ride. Nothing new. But, let's do better. No excuses.

New Times

I feel change in the air. It's time to be more informal and spontaneous. To be more ourselves in our personal and public lives. Looking good is not as good as being good. 


Many people feel the world is "on the edge" with uncertainty. I don't know. What we are going through is not new. We're on a small planet now. Lots to learn and change.


Perhaps, these are "New Times". The past ten years many folks felt that this new year - 2012 - will be the moment of a huge paradigm shift. Some thinking it will be an "end of the world scenario". I don't know. Better not to make any year or moment that special. To paraphrase an old rock song: something is happening here, what it is we don't exactly know.  

International Area Studies Meditation Talk

International Area Studies Meditation & Talk (December 9, 2011) by americ

Talk and meditation presented for International Area Studies students at UC Berkeley on December 9, 2011 - a week before semester final exams - the most stressful moment of the semester. Two short five minute meditation sessions were conducted. I aimed to inspire students with an easy method of daily meditation practice: five five-minute sessions spread throughout the day. I call it the Five by five meditation method or just 5x5. Enjoy. 

Two five minute meditations were recorded - which are each abridged to one minute. You may wish to pause and
restart recording at those points, in the spirit of the talk.

Meditation Poetry Slam - Fall 2011

Students of Fall 2011, PACS 94 (Meditation Theory & Practice) at UC Berkeley: presenting their own poems inspired by meditation practice.

Meditation Poetry Slam - November 16, 2011 by americ

Occupy Your Mind

Meditation talk given at UC Berkeley on November 9th, 2011 - the day when the Occupy movement came to campus. Reflections on inner "occupy" in the time of the social "Occupy Wall Street" movement(s).
Occupy Your Mind by americ

This Class Not About Meditation - It is Meditation

Audio recording of meditation talk at University of California, Berkeley. Meditation is not separate from any aspect of life. All of life is infused with the potential of intense presence-at-hand.

This Class Not About Meditation - It is Meditation by americ

Desire Behind All Desire

It's not so important how long you live; but that you realize who you really are before you pass away. In that self-realization is the true goal of life consciousness. The desire behind all desire.

HBO's 'Enlightened' Take On Modern Meditation

This afternoon (1:27 pm, October 10th), I'm listening to the Terry Gross interview of Laura Dern and Mike White on NPR's "Fresh Air". Suddenly, my mind is twisted with the story of a new HBO television show about meditation and enlightenment. The series starts tonight. You will be enlightened!

To hear the interview or read parts of the transcript visit THIS LINK.  

From the program description:

Can people really change? That's the question Laura Dern and Mike White ask in their new HBO series, Enlightened, which premieres Monday night. The show features Dern as Amy Jellicoe, an ambitious executive who has a nervous breakdown at her workplace. She goes to a rehabilitation center in Hawaii, where she experiences an awakening.

When Amy returns home, she wants to put her new philosophy into practice — meditating, communicating better with her mother (Diane Ladd), and fostering a healthier relationship with her ex-husband (Luke Wilson). But she finds her lessons of enlightenment being put to the test.

Show creator Mike White wrote the series and also directed some of the episodes. White and Dern join Fresh Air's Terry Gross for a conversation about Enlightened.

Occupy Wall Street Becoming a Mainstream Dialogue

I've been watching the fast growing "Occupy Wall Street" movement on Twitter and in the mainstream media online. Today (Sunday, October 9th), it emerges as a major news story on CBS's online website. The cat is out of the bag - the "money, wealth, and power" discourse is up for renewal. I'm hoping it's a return to reality and away from ideology. This will take a massive amount of dialogue in all directions; between many kinds of people.

Occupy Wall Street is now a "normative dialogue" (a dialogue about the kinds of society we value) between people on the streets, people at home watching/reading the news, and talking with friends at coffee houses, local markets, workplaces, etc. There are also the measured responses of those with "control" on all sides of the political spectrum. We are facing a profound social-political-economic mystery. All I hope for now is that we all stay nonviolent and be open to deepening dialogue and understanding - open minds, suspending all judgments. Let truth guide us.

Outremer by Fanny Howe

I recently "discovered" a new poet in my life, Fanny Howe while reading Poetry Magazine's September 2011 issue - which published Howe's long prose-like poem, Outremer. Upon reading it three times, I was hooked. Here's video reading of Outremer (a collaboration by Fanny Howe and artist Maceno Senna):


Outremer from Fanny Howe on Vimeo.

"Greed is Good" - Wall Street & Beyond

Years ago I saw the classic 1989 movie: Wall Street. A story of a corporate takeover artist. He took over one company at a time. Small stuff compared the financial engineering that brought down the world's financial system in 2008, followed by global economic depression.

Is greed the real engine of human progress? Given all the current events around the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, let's revisit the "greed is good" speech by the movie's main protagonist: Gorden Gekko (played in 1987 by Michael Douglas). Here are his words in court:



By the way, Gekko did not use the the words "Greed is Good" in the original Wall Street film. Here's a transcript: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A."

Nicholas Ashford, MIT Economist re: Occupy Wall Street

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests in New York are growing into a global event. This phenomena questions basic assumptions about money, value, society, and environment. This second week of September 2011, see many main stream news stories emerging. The following extracted from http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/1004/Occupy-Wall-Street-flash-in-the-pan-or-beginning-of-a-movement.

---

Americans should be prepared to see this movement take hold and spread, says MIT economics professor and lawyer Nicholas Ashford, author of “Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development – Transforming the Industrial State: Exploring the Critical Conflicts between Economy, Environment, and Employment.”
It’s not just a matter of people being “mad as hell and not taking it anymore,” he says. “It’s more crucially the dawning realization that the US economy was always built on quicksand, and that our current dismal state is not the anomaly, but the reality.”
“Instead of waiting for the economy to ‘bounce back’ to a previous state of health that was nothing but a sad illusion,” says Professor Ashford, “Washington, Wall Street, and big business need to address a strategy for moving forward from where we are,” not from where they thought we were.

Meditation & the Practice of Law

The Practical Value of Meditation in Law Practice. Talk, guided meditation, and question/answers. Delivered by Charles Halpern, Director, Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law. (Bolt Law School, University of California, Berkeley). Presented to the 300 students of Americ Azevedo's "Theory and Practice of Meditation" course at UC Berkeley. September 28th, 2011.
Listen/Download   Long quiet guided meditation moments deleted from this audio file.

1 Giant Leap - Trailer for 2nd Film - 2sides2everything

This is a philosophic snapshot of how people around the world feel and think about the "big questions". Indeed, an important enterprise. (Many thanks to Marianne Henry for bring this to my attention.)

Mining Circle Building - Inside View

View from my Engineering Ethics class (Summer 2011).

There's Nothing to Do

What needs to be done?

There's nothing to do.
It's all done.
Move about as you do.
No need to add your concern -
it does not help at all.

Now, how shall we act? Action without attachment to results is best. You know the outcomes, and perform the tasks without grasping. Tasks will happen more precisely, more actions, with more joy, and fulfillment. You are living your life now – rather than in the future.

It passes

There is
That consuming
Desiring part
Empty inside
So wanting to fill up
On things, people, events
What is it?
Genetic instincts
Blindly driving us
To buy, produce, consume
Meaning?
Just tired and hungry
Sit with it
It passes

Another kind of wealth

Barron's: The Dow Jones Business and Financial Weekly published (August 11, 2003) a letter to the editor, in which I wrote the following:

I was delighted with one of your recent cartoons (Mailbag, Aug 4). Two well-fed men are on a commuter train and one says to the other, "All the harping about the rich getting richer; what are they supposed to do?" I propose a basic answer. Don't expect the rich to give away money or have fewer tax breaks. But expect the rich to use their own time wisely, to go deep into the meaning of their own lives, finding the way to real happiness. Those who do so will become different people -- no longer trading the wealth of the human heart and soul for just more material wealth. That would change the world.

Mother Theresa noted that America is a land of spiritual poverty. Everyone, even the poor, have televisions, but poor in spirit. People are valued by the things they have, not their wisdom and spirit. Perfectly intelligent well-off women and men gather to talk about their cars, houses, and things they own or are planning to buy. Often, hiding from themselves, through feigned joy, the feeling that life is meaningless. You are encouraged to spend your life energy getting the right car, right house, right club membership, right clothes, and way of talking - to the point that you forgot that you are, at the bottom, none of these things. Real satisfaction keeps receding into the horizon. Stories are told of people who buy the expensive car, and find a week later they need "something" else to drive them on to achievement.

(+)

Atlantis revisited

It's been said that the Azores Islands are the tip of the lost continent of Atlantis – home to a civilization of the highest technology. The Atlantians, like the citizens of Babel were overpowered by their technology. By divine power or human ingenuity both were brought to total destruction.

The Azores are in the Atlantic ocean about 800 miles east of Europe, in the middle of nowhere, which makes them a stepping stone between North America and Europe. Columbus’ last stop before proceeding to the New World was the Azores Islands. His sailing ships where the high technology of the time.

I was born in the Azores Islands as World War II ended. I immigrated from the Azores to the U.S.A. with my parents at the age of two. As I grew up in America on a farm in Los Angeles County, I fell in love with science and technology. To me it was magic. Happily learning to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen, building a radio transmitter and receiver, looking into the deep sky with a telescope, and creating electricity by moving a magnet through a wound coil of copper wire. I wanted to be a wizard; my magic wand was a pen.

(+)

(Image of Terceira Island, Azores. From Oceandots.com.)