Buddhist Poets
" as a flower blown out by the wind
goes to rest and cannot be defined
so the wise man freed from individuality
goes to rest and cannot be defined.
gone beyond all images-
gone beyond the power of words "From: Sutra Nipata
"In 1976, excluding property, the bottom half of the UK population owned 12% of the marketable wealth; by 2003 that had fallen to just 1%.In the same period, the share enjoyed by the top 10% rose from 57% to 71%.
Even when property is included, the bottom half of the population still only owns just 7% of the country’s wealth."
Heartening isn't it!
Source -
http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/spend-investment
In Buddhism, nirvāṇa (from the Sanskrit -- Pali: Nibbāna -- Chinese: Nie4 Pan2 (涅槃)), literally "extinction" or "extinguishing", is the culmination of the Buddhist pursuit of liberation. Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, described Buddhism as a raft which, after floating across a river, will enable the passenger to reach nirvana. Hinduism also uses nirvana as a synonym to its ideas of moksha, and it is spoken of in several Hindu tantric texts as well as the Bhagavad Gita. The Hindu and Buddhist concepts of nirvana should not be regarded as equivalent.
Etymologically, nirvana connotes an extinguishing or "blowing out" of a fire or candle flame, and in the Buddhist context carries the further connotations of stilling, cooling, and peace. In nirvana, all greed/craving, aversion/hate, delusion/ignorance, pride and jealousy as well as limited and relative ego-centered consciousness are extinguished.
As a negation of saṁsāra (i.e., the whole phenomenal world), nirvana is impossible to define directly; it can only be experienced or realized. One may not even be able to say this, since saying this implies the existence of an experiencing subject--which in fact would not persist after full nirvāṇa. While some of the side-effects of nirvana can be identified, a definition of nirvāṇa can only be approximated by what it is not. It is not the clinging existence with which man is understood to be afflicted. It is not any sort of becoming. It has no origin or end. It is not made or fabricated. It has no dualities, so that it cannot be described in words. It has no parts that may be distinguished one from another. It is not a subjective state of consciousness. It is not conditioned on or by anything else.
Calling "nirvana" the opposite of samsara may not be doctrinally accurate since even in early Buddhism and by the time of Nāgārjuna, there are teachings of the identity of nirvana and samsara. However, even here it is assumed that the natural man suffers from at the very least a confusion regarding the nature of samsara.
We can also say that, given the vital importance of the idea of anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: Anātman), which negates not merely the grasping mind but also any concept of essential substance or permanent self, it is clear that nirvāṇa is not to be understood as a union with monistic ideal. Since there is essentially no self and no not-self, there is nothing to unite, instead it is an experience of non-separation.
It should also be noted that the Buddha discouraged certain lines of speculation, including speculation into the state of an enlightened being after death, on the grounds that these were not useful for pursuing enlightenment; thus definitions of nirvāṇa might be said to be doctrinally unimportant.
A great list of software for Apple Macs.
Unititled, 2000.
Photo by William Wylie.
Making a photograph is symbolic. It is a representation, and in that, it stands for something,” William Wylie said. “The picture you create is not the same as the thing you photographed.
“I want the reverberation of the photograph, as an image of a subject that matters, to expand out to all aspects of our feelings and experience.”
In his work, Wylie focuses on themes and issues of landscape and place. His recent book, “RiverWalk: Explorations Along the Cache la Poudre River,” documents the last undammed river in Colorado. For more than four years Wylie chronicled the changing light along the 150-mile river, which runs from the Continental Divide to the Missouri River. At one point he spent 12 days hiking the entire river with his tripod and camera searching out and photographing areas that are often overlooked by the casual observer. The opening of Jane Ford's article HERE
Shiki, Masaoka. (1867-1902).
The summer river:
although there is a bridge, my horse
goes through the water.
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A lightning flash:
between the forest trees
I have seen water.
Watch it on Academic Earth
Clink on link to go to AcademicEarth and many other lectures
Houchang Chehabi of Boston University gave a thought-provoking, humorous assessment of the place of ethnic and religious minorities in the Islamic Republic. Talking directly to his largely Iranian audience, he mocked the notion that Iranians are innately tolerant people because, “Cyrus [the Great] freed the Jews 2,500 years ago.”
Chehabi spoke bluntly about the persecution of Iran’s Baha’i minority, giving examples of crimes, including murders, which have never gone to trial because the victims were Baha’i. He then addressed the biases of “leftist academics” who are “apologists” for the Islamic regime. He chastised these academics’ hypocrisy in ignoring “the deep contacts that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has with fascists in Europe,” and said that “perhaps prejudice [runs] as deep among the leftists as among the Islamists.” Chehabi’s remark about “leftist academics” was perhaps the most pertinent of the conference, because it challenged many of his co-panelists’ overriding assumption that the policies they espouse are in the best interest of the Iranian people.
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A Brief History of Evolutionary Spirituality
by Tom Huston
Evolution has always been a fundamentally spiritual concept. In fact, some of the first thinkers to seriously explore the topic—the German Idealists of the early 19th century—were mystic-philosophers who predated Darwin's Origin of Species by at least half a century. Writing in the year 1799, the 24-year-old philosophical wunderkind Friedrich Schelling summarized in a single sentence the profoundly original insight that was exciting him as well as his philosophical contemporaries (men like Immanuel Kant, J.G. Fichte, and Georg Hegel): “History as a whole,” he wrote, “is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the Absolute.”
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Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Howard Stern
DR. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL REVISITED
Click HERE to read transcript
Transcript of Radio Program
December 3, 2009Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Spiritual Audacity of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel."
Born into an esteemed Hasidic family in Poland in 1907, Heschel became a public intellectual and a provocative leader in 1960s America on race, war, and interreligious encounter. Heschel was a mystic, who wrote transcendent, poetic words about God. At the very same time, he marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and organized religious leadership against the war in Vietnam, embodying the extreme social activism of the biblical prophets he studied. This hour, we explore Heschel's teachings and his legacy for people in our time.
This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us.
[Announcements]
Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. This hour, we delve into the teachings and present-day relevance of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel is perhaps best immortalized in a famous photograph taken of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. He is a conspicuous bearded figure, looking every bit the Hebrew patriarch, in the front line of religious and political leaders surrounding Martin Luther King. Heschel later said, in words that also became famous, "I felt my legs were praying." Heschel was a mystic, who wrote inimitable transcendent words about God. At the very same time, he embodied the extreme social criticism and activism of the biblical prophets he studied. "The opposite of good is not evil," Abraham Joshua Heschel insisted, "it is indifference." He articulated spiritual, practical wisdom against indifference — on race, war, and interreligious encounter — as penetrating in our time as in his own.
From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel."
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.
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in Britain and most comparable countries the left is not thriving. Quite the opposite. The Brown government's mild tilt to the left has made it no more popular. At the European elections in June, left-leaning parties, whether in office or opposition, cautious or militant, were trounced across the continent. Votes went instead to mainstream conservative parties or far right and anti- immigration groups. Over the summer the broader political debate, particularly in Britain, has shifted in the same direction: "The crisis of the financial markets has become a crisis of public spending – it's incredible!" says Hilary Wainwright, editor of leftwing magazine Red Pepper. "Public servants are going to be scrutinised down to the last paperclip, while bankers are not going to be scrutinised down to the last million they have received from the government."
Has the left missed its moment? The radical American writer Rebecca Solnit fears so. "It felt like last October [the peak of the banking panic] was the golden moment to put forward an alternative vision," she says. "What's been dismaying is that there has been so little coherent response from the left since." Lawson wonders whether the sheer size of the political opportunity presented by the financial crisis has induced paralysis: "All our Christmases have come at once, but we don't know what to do about it."
- The Guardian, Monday 17 August 2009
- Article history
Surprisingly, perhaps, the mood at Marxism 2009 was animated rather than feverish. Photograph: Frank Baron
It is a rare sunny summer morning and I am on the bus from Stoke Newington to Bloomsbury in central London. In these old, slightly earnest parts of the capital, leftwing politics runs deep: from Karl Marx writing in the British Library to communes in the 70s to today's dogged socialist flyposters. This morning's bus ride does not disappoint. Seated in front of me, en route to Marxism 2009, the pre-eminent British gathering of the international radical left, are a clean-cut man and woman in their early 20s. He is wearing a crisp new T-shirt that reads "Revolución Bolivarana". She has a large rucksack. They are speaking German, but the word "socialism" recurs.
The papers today are full of the recession as usual. On the Today programme, David Cameron has been talking about emergency cuts in government spending, and a union leader has been fiercely defending the wages of public sector workers. It could almost be the heady days of the mid-70s, when capitalism seemed to struggle for breath and all political bets appeared to be off.
To read Andy's article click on link to go to Guardian site.
My view - two questions -
1) just what will wake people up?
2) how can real deep-down, social justice be achieved?
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I came across this on SCRIBD when looking for an explanation of 'aura' as used by Benjamin and by Adorno - still looking. If you can help please write me a 'comment'.
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O'Donohue. (HarperCollins, 2004)"When we lose sight of beauty our struggle becomes tired and functional. When we expect and engage the Beautiful, a new fluency is set free within us and between us. The heart becomes rekindled and our lives brighten with unexpected courage." -- John O'Donohue.This book speaks of the awesome landscape of imagination when beauty of the natural world is acknowledged. It would be impossible to make the journey through life without simple things of beauty such as sunlight dancing on a wall.
Walter Benjamin, Surrealism and Photography
Rajeev S. Patke
National University of Singapore
[Paper presented at Workshop on ‘Literature as Revolt in Twentieth Century Europe’, 17 August 1998, The University of Haifa, Israel (6th ISSEI Conference)]
Benjamin wrote his essay on Surrealism during 1928, when the Surrealist movement was still in what André Breton called its transition from an "intuitive" to a "reasoning" phase.1 Benjamin's recent work, the city-montage of One-Way Street (1928), had taken on the challenges presented to the writer by the natural history of the modern, post-Baudelairean, urban landscape of Europe. It had given him a presentiment of what was to become the Arcades project, the main preoccupation of his last decade. These developments were accompanied by the onset of a highly personal commitment to Marxism. In this context, his relation to the Surrealists was adventitious and fortuitous. He was neither part of the movement, nor close to its members, though he looked on, first with a keen—and then with a disappointed—eye on their activities in Paris.
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The Photographers’ Gallery named the four shortlisted artists nominated for its annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
The exhibition will be on display next year from 12 February until 18 April 2010, with the winner announced at a special award ceremony on 17 March 2010.
The four shortlisted artists are -
1) Anna Fox
c Anna Fox – from her ‘Back to the Village’ project which observes the uniquely English rituals that take place in picturesque villages of Hampshire. Citing Sir Benjamin Stone as an influence, Anna is creating a collection of photographs documenting the customs – such as nativity plays, Halloween festivities and Guy Fawkes Night – that take place in thee villages. I can only find a couple of images on her website at the moment, including the one below.
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2) Zoe Leonard
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3) Sophie Ristelhueber
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4) Donovan Wylie
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Anna Fox (b.1961, UK) is nominated for her exhibition, Cockroach Diaries & Other Stories at Ffotogallery, Cardiff (28 July – 10 October 09), initiated by Impressions, Bradford.
Zoe Leonard (b.1961, USA) is nominated for her retrospective exhibition, ZOE LEONARD: Photographs, at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (1 April – 5 July 09), initiated by Fotomuseum Winterthur.
Sophie Ristelhueber (b.1949, France) is nominated for her retrospective, Sophie Ristelhueber at the Jeu de Paume, Paris (20 January – 22 March 2009).
Donovan Wylie (b.1971, UK) is nominated for his exhibition MAZE 2007/8 at Belfast Exposed (27 March – 1 May 2009).
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010 is presented by The Photographers’ Gallery, London. The annual award of £30,000 rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution, in exhibition or publication format, to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2008 and 30 September 2009.
This year’s Jury is:
Olivia Maria Rubio (Director of Exhibitions, La Fàbrica, Spain);
Gilane Tawadros (Chief Executive, Design Artists Copyright Society, curator and writer);
James Welling (artist, USA); and Anne-Marie Beckmann (Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany).
Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, is the non-voting Chair.
Newly uncovered Foreign Office memos show how New Labour has played politics with the massacre of the Armenians
There are few genocides more clearly established than that suffered by the Armenians in 1915-16, when half the race was extinguished in massacres and deportations directed by the Young Turk government. Today you can be prosecuted in France and other European countries for denying the slaughter. But the world's most influential genocide denier - other than Turkey itself - is the British government, which has
repeatedly asserted that there is insufficient evidence that what it terms a "tragedy" amounted to genocide. Now, thanks to the Freedom of
Information Act, we learn that (in the words of Foreign Office memos) commercial and political relations with Turkey have required abandoning "the ethical dimension".For the past ten years, various Foreign Office ministers, from Geoff Hoon to Mark Malloch Brown, have told parliament that "neither this government nor previous governments have judged that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as genocide, as defined by the 1948 convention". This would have come as a shock to the architects of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide (for whom the Armenian genocide was second only to the Holocaust), as well as to the wartime British government, which accused the Turks of proceeding "systematically to exterminate a whole race out of their domain". (Winston Churchill described it as "an administrative holocaust . . . there is no reasonable doubt that this crime was executed for political reasons".)
What does the Foreign Office know that eluded our government at the time as well as the drafters of the Genocide Convention, not to mention the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the US House committee on foreign affairs and at least nine other European governments? The Freedom of Information Act has now unravelled this mystery.
The Armenian Centre in London obtained hundreds of pages of hitherto secret memorandums, bearing the astonishing admission that there was no "evidence" that had ever been looked at and there had never been a "judgment" at all. Parliament had been misinformed: as the Foreign Office now admits, "there is no collection of documents, publications and reports by historians, held on the relevant files, or any evidence that a series of documents were submitted to ministers for consideration". In any case, ministers repeatedly asserted that, "in the absence of unequivocal evidence to show that the Ottoman administration took a specific decision to eliminate the Armenians under their control at the time, British governments have not recognised the events of 1915-16 as genocide".
The OFT's mission is to make markets work well for consumers. We achieve this by promoting and protecting consumer interests throughout the UK, while ensuring that businesses are fair and competitive.
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The statement below seems to be a key one concerning images, or at least photography, and words.
Despite all claims or fears of the contrary, we do not live in a visual culture (see Reading images). The visuality of our culture is always text-based, or text-mediated. To put it bluntly: you will always need words to say that: “an image is stronger than thousand words”.
As Victor Burgin puts it, in an often quoted passage of his no less often quoted collection Thinking Photography:
“We rarely see a photograph in use which is not accompanied by writing: in newspapers the image is in most cases subordinate to the text; in advertising and illustrated magazines there tends to be a more or less equal distribution of text and images; in art and amateur photography the image predominates, though a caption or title is generally added. But the influence of language goes beyond the fact of the physical presence of writing as a deliberate addition to the image. Even the uncaptioned photograph, framed and isolated on a gallery wall, is invaded by language when it is looked at: in memory, in association, snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other; what significant elements the subject recognises ‘in’ the photograph are inescapably supplemented from elsewhere.”Burgin 1982: 192)
From PHOTHEREL
-0-Andy Warhol 1928-1987 US 1 ±0 533,195.94 +37,272.22 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 ES 2 ±0 494,341.41 +29,950.53 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Bruce Nauman *1941 (68) US 3 ±0 302,618.25 +24,862.87 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Gerhard Richter *1932 (77) DE 4 ±0 275,606.06 +19,961.70 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 DE 5 ±0 251,839.89 +25,923.05 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Paul Klee 1879-1940 DE 6 ±0 224,928.20 +13,667.90 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Cindy Sherman *1954 (55) US 7 +1 220,961.52 +21,421.05 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008 US 8 -1 220,100.23 +14,804.28 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Sol LeWitt 1928-2007 US 9 ±0 210,844.88 +13,084.08 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
Henri Matisse 1869-1954 FR 10 ±0 204,908.62 +13,980.21 www.findartinfo.com)" src="/afn_elements/img/icons/artist_auction.gif" border="0" height="14" width="14" />
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