“There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it’s enough.”
― Richard Rohr

“Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.”

Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It happens because it had to happen.”

 

 

“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

I am learning to see.
I don’t know why it is,
but everything
enters me more deeply
and doesn’t stop where it once used to.

 

This passage profoundly touches me.  So beautiful.

 

Poverty in youth, when it is mastered, has the sovereign quality that it concentrates the will-power upon striving and the spirit upon hope.  By stripping away our material existence to its essentials and exposing its drabness, it fosters in us an inexpressible longing for the ideal life.  The well-to-do young man is offered a hundred dazzling and crude distractions- horses, hunting and gambling, rich food, tobacco, and all the rest- occupations for his baser nature at the expense of everything in him that is high-minded and sensitive   The poor young man struggles to stay alive; he contrives to eat, and his only solace is in dreaming.  His only theater is the free show that God provides, the sky and the stars, flowers and children, mankind whose sufferings he shares and the created world in which he is trying his wings.  He lives so close to humanity that he sees its soul, so close to the divine creation that he sees God.  He dreams and feels his own greatness; dreams again and feels tenderness.  He progresses from the egotism of the man who suffers to the compassion of the man who meditates, and an admirable sentiment is born in him, of self-forgetfulness and feeling for others.  Reflecting on the countless delights that nature showers on minds open to receive them, and denied to those whose minds are closed, he ends, a millionaire of spirit, by pitying the millionaire of nothing buy money.  All hatred disappears from his heart as enlightenment grows in him.  Indeed, is he really unhappy?  No, he is not.  A young man’s poverty is never miserable.  Any youngster, poor as he may be, with health and strength, a buoyant stride and clear eyes, hot-flowing blood, dark hair, fresh cheeks, white teeth and clean breath, is an object of any to any aged emperor.  And then, he gets up every morning to earn his livelihood, and while his hands are busily employed his backbone gains in pride and his mind gains in ideas.  His day’s work done, he returns to the delights of his contemplative life.  He may live with feet enmeshed in affliction and frustration, hard-set on earth amid the brambles and sometimes deep in mud; but his head is in the stars.  He is steadfast and serene, gentle, peaceable, alert, sober-minded, content with little, and benevolent; and he blesses God for having bestowed on him those two riches which the rich so often lack- work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worth of freedom.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you

Holy camoly

A lot to think about in this…

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.

2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.

3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.

4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).

5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.

6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.

7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.

8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.

9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.

10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.

12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalized childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.

13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalized. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.

14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.

15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.

16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.

17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.

Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.- Dalai Lama