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.

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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.)

The Wayseer Manifesto

Today, into my world came a gift from a friend*; a YouTube video that speaks to the part of us tuned to Truth, the Way, the Cosmic Order, the Absolute, God, ...

Dare to listen and feel with your heart:

* Marianne Henry

Failing into success

The way up and the way down is the same. Failure and success are two sides of one coin. A duality that is not! No success is lasting, regardless of how solid and powerful it looks. Even the whole universe will run down, will fail. Profound failure can become profound success. Jesus' life work "failed" into becoming the most abiding success in religious history.

Every time I fail, I let myself feel the failure as deeply as possible. A whole new perspective soon arises with rich fields of opportunity. Learn to be thankful for apparent failures -- this flips the perspective. Failure never happens; it's my expectations that failed to match reality at the moment. Change the expectations; look again at what-is with clearer sight. Go on. Live fully.

With what do you buy your money?

With what do we buy our money? Many years ago, I was giving a talk on wisdom in the world. At the end of the talk, I was approached by an old man. He came up to me and said, "I want to ask you a question." I said, "What's that?" He said, "With what do you buy your money?" I thought about it for a minute, and said, "With your life, of course." He said, "You're right, and I wish I had known that when I was much younger. For all my life, I worked for money. I put all my time into working for money that I thought I would enjoy later on." He explained that he just never thought about anything else except working to save money, to put money away, to plan for the future. And the future had arrived, and here he was, an old man. And he expressed that he had a sense of bitterness about that, that he hadn't achieved an earlier understanding about the importance of living life, and that he had indeed bought his money with his life. (+)

Image by Terry Pettengill.

Running like snails

We take jet planes to get somewhere fast, while taking hours to get in and out of airports for a one hour flight. Booking passage, packing, deciding what to take and not take, freeway travel, airport security, weather problems, and the unexpected mechanical problems -- a one hour flight becomes a half-day event. This is "running like snails." Rage is a symptom of running like snails. You see it with commuters on trains and freeways; and, on the internet and in the office.

Freeways ought to move quickly -- everyone gets on them during "rush hour". "Rush hour" could be renamed "running like snails" hour. Fast automotive technology meets congested overcrowded freeways. Road rage flares on freeways as drivers try to move faster. Every year 40,000 people die because of the need to “get there on time”.

Companies now organize around information efficiency for maximum profit. For instance, eliminating contact with "ineffectual" and “expensive” humans, instead providing web pages and interactive voice activated telephone services. Customer satisfaction problems are more difficult to resolve nowadays. No one can hear you scream in cyberspace! Fast internet service does not make us more productive, rather it gives us more distractions along the information superhighway.

Someday we will all learn to just walk like lightening.

My window of time

View out my window of time

People and cars passing by

Meaning is not an issue

Only the Being all around

It is what it is as-it-is

So easy. You know that

someday you'll step off this

life. So accept it in

ways deep inside. So inside

that it's just That.

Breathe into Being

this morning. You and I

are here where we are

Brilliant Discussions

During Kiva Time of Winter 2003, in the Oakland hills, I recorded my good friend Glenn Matson sharing a few thoughts on the Native American Indian practice of brilliant discussions. This practice has profound implications for dialogue in schools and businesses - and with friends.

LISTEN TO "Glenn Matson on Brilliant Discussions" (1397 kb; time 2:00)

Related post:
Brilliant discussion regarding time

Image from painting by George Catlin's Sioux Indian council, Chiefs in Profound Deliberation, 1832–37

Brilliant discussion regarding time

Glenn Matson introduced the idea of brilliant discussions. As we proceeded with our recording session, we moved into a brilliant discussion focused on the the nature of time.

Perhaps, the greatest miracle is the one that creates time. The quality of no-time, no-space is all inclusive. Time might not be real. We became almost speechless. The mind and soul are drawn to deeper levels.

LISTEN TO "Glenn Matson & Americ Azevedo in a brilliant discussion on time" (4002 KB; time 5:41)

Related post:
Brilliant Discussions

Image from Corbis.com online catalogue.

Sierras Wander

My friend, Glen, took a long, long hike in the High Sierras. He's his report, complete with text, pictures, and video:

http://sierraswandern.blogspot.com/2011/01/high-route-recap.html

Enjoy!

Science & Wonder-The desire to know and the power of imagination

Without limit

Why are we so often
Afraid of meeting
“the still point of the turning world*”?

Shall we drop down to the
center of Being?
Like a stone that no longer orbits earth
falling down and burning up in
the atmosphere

Are we afraid of meeting someone
we’ve been avoiding (for a long time)?
God? Self? Atman? Jesus? Krishna?
Who’s there?

It’s you
without limit, definition, clothes
without memories

Just you as silent radiant joyful consciouenss

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*T. S. Elliot