My mother died on Sunday 24th August after an illness of some months, and I have not posted for a while. I love this poem, from Rabindranath Tagore:

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over
the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in
silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.

A week ago my father became ill and had to be rushed to hospital. He needs his gallbladder removed, and it was also discovered that he has an aortic aneurysm. I suppose the gallbladder problem could be seen as a bit of good luck, as without it we would likely not have found out about the aneurysm.

I too am struggling with my own health problems, being told the day before my mum’s funeral that I had a bulky womb, and it could be fibroids or it could be a ‘mass’. My mum had uterine cancer some years ago, so this was a worry I could have done without right then with the funeral to get through. I had an ultrasound  last Monday and the sonographer told me she could see only fibroids. Tomorrow I will go to the hospital to get the result of the biopsy taken a few weeks ago, and to see how the consultant feels is the best way to proceed.

There has certainly been much opportunity for contemplating life, aging and death these last few months… Hopefully I will now be able to post more regularly…

I don’t see life and death as opposites; I see them as the beginning and ending of this identification with this personal consciousness. This ending may come before or at the death of the physical body. Beginnings and endings aren’t opposed to each other either. They are the same thing, the flow of life continually changing and evolving. Beginnings and endings cause each other.

” In a world of beginnings, middles, and endings, all beginnings force an ending. Beginnings push through middles and roll on to endings. And what do endings do? Does the energy of the event disappear?
No, it doesn’t. It goes on to be something new, re-forming in a new beginning, an endless, inexhaustible cycle of energy.”
~Ajahn Sumano

Life doesn’t really worry too much about the individuals, any more than we lie around worrying about the individual cells which die off in our body every minute. Can you imagine if we worried about every one?
Then there would be a lot of weeping and wailing. No, the cells are just replaced and the body carries on. So it is with life.

“Life and death: they are one, at core entwined.
Who understands himself from his own strain
presses himself into a drop of wine
and throws himself into the purest flame. ”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Gill Eardley

Ajahn Sumedho has been one of the greatest influences on me.
I really like the way he puts things across in a simple way,
accessible to everybody.

I have found some recorded dhamma talks on line, you may
like to listen to:

http://www.dhammatalks.org.uk/sumed.php

allspirit : Message: Ajahn Sumedho dhamma talks.

Rough Metaphors / Rumi

Someone said, “there is no dervish, or if there is a dervish,
that dervish is not there.”

Look at a candle flame in bright noon sunlight.
If you put cotton next to it, the cotton will burn,
but its light has become completely mixed
with the sun.

That candlelight you can’t find is what’s left of a dervish…

If you sprinkle one ounce of vinegar over
two hundred tons of sugar,
no one will ever taste the vinegar.

A deer faints in the paws of a lion. The deer becomes
another glazed expression on the face of the lion.

These are rough metaphors for what happens to the lover.

There’s no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He, or she,
jumps up on the scale opposite eternity
and claims to balance it.

And no one more secretly reverent.

A grammar lesson: “The lover died.”
“Lover” is subject and agent, but that can’t be!
The “lover” is defunct.

Only grammatically is the dervish-lover a doer.

In reality, with he or she so overcome,
so dissolved into love,
all qualities of doingness
disappear.

‘The Essential Rumi’
Barks/Moyne

allspirit : Message: Rough Metaphors / Rumi.

From: “My God” by M.K. Gandhi

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal? In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals.

All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection as they pass through the medium of humanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect.

Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one? Every one is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that every one is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it.

Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.

I have said I do not disbelieve in idol-worship. An idol does not excite any feeling of veneration in me. But I think that idol-worship is part of human nature. We hanker after symbolism.

I am both an idolater and an iconoclast in what I conceive to be the true senses of the terms. I value the spirit behind idol worship. It plays a most important part in the uplift of the human race. And I would like to possess the ability to defend with my life the thousands of holy temples which sanctify this land of ours.

I am an iconoclast in the sense that I break down the subtle form of idolatry in the shape of fanaticism that refuses to see any virtue in any other form of worshipping the Deity save one’s own. This form of idolatry is more deadly for being more fine and evasive than the tangible and gross form of worship that identifies the Deity with a little bit of a stone or a golden image.

Bitter experience has taught me that all temples are not houses of God.  They can be habitations of the devil. These places of worship have no value unless the keeper is a good man of God. Temples,mosques, churches are what man makes them to be.

allspirit : Message: My God.

Dear Lovers of Rumi, It’s been 20 years since Shahram Shiva began working, translating and sharing Rumi. Shiva began his deep and very personal connection with Rumi in 1988.

Listen to a new 52-min interview with Shahram Shiva, broadcast on WRPI-FM and webcast on WRPI.org today, August 7, 2008. In this interview by Gary Goldberg, Shiva talks about twenty years of living with Rumi and what it has meant for him. Goldberg also plays a few cuts from Shiva’s CD, Rumi: Lovedrunk. And Shiva talks about shattering inaccurate cliché notions on spirituality and personal growth.

Please use this link to listen:
http://www.rumi.net/Shahram_Shiva_WRPI_8-08.wma

Warm regards, Rumi Network

allspirit : Message: A Special Anniversary Interview with Shahram Shiva – Listen now!.

Disguised Karadzic ‘Gave Spirituality Lectures’

From:
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/11986/

22 July 2008 Belgrade _ Top war crimes fugitive
Radovan Karadzic had been hiding in Belgrade
under a false identity as a doctor and gave
lectures on spirituality, Balkan Insight has
learnt.

“Karadzic was hiding in New Belgrade under a
false identity…He was using name of Dragan
Dabic,” Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir
Vukcevic said, adding that the world’s most
wanted war crimes fugitive “practiced alternative
medicine in a private office in Belgrade.”

“Karadzic was moving freely in Belgrade. His
false identity was so convincing that no one
was able to identify him, including his landlord
and employer,” Vukcevic said.

Balkan Insight has learn that a Belgrade magazine
“Healthy Life” ran a series of stories signed by
Dragan David Dabic, a doctor from Belgrade.

The man under the same name lectured on healthy
living in Belgrade’s Ada Ciganlija on May 23.

The employees of the magazine told Balkan Insight
that the man shown in the most recent photographed
Karadzic as displayed by the Serbian prosecutor,
looks absolutely like the contributor.

“I met him in September at a lecture about
spirituality. A friend introduced us and he seemed
like a very nice man who knows about spirituality…
with his long beard and long hair he doesn’t resemble
Karadzic at all. I would have never guessed,” Goran
Kojic, the editor in chief of the magazine told Balkan
Insight.
“He wrote without a fee… as Dragan Dabic spiritual
healer.”

allspirit : Message: Disguised Karadzic Gave Spirituality Lectures.

Spiritual mothering

Raising a child is a devotional path,
a model of selfless service

Story by SANITSUDA EKACHAI

Full story at:
<http://www.bangkokpost.com/270708_Outlook/27Jul2008_out001.php>

‘Bloom where you are planted.” That is the
motto of Jacqueline Kramer, who believes
mothers can attain enlightenment right in
their kitchen while cooking dinner or doing
the dishes.

The motto comes from a poster where she had
a retreat many years ago, said the author of
Buddha Mom, a book on the spirituality of
mothering.

“It dawned on me that I didn’t need to go
to far-off places or engage in strange
unfamiliar practices – I can become
enlightened right here where I am, right
now, as I engage in mothering and householding.”

Motherhood is often glorified to silence women’s
self-realisation urges. Homemaking and service
is also often demeaned as a symbol of female
subjugation and weakness. For Kramer, mother-
hood is a perfect spiritual practice.

“Motherhood is a beautiful container of the
virtues we need to develop our spirituality,”
she explained. “While monks and nuns in
different faiths devote themselves to develop
unconditional love, selfless service, good
will, joy for others’ happiness and the
ability to let go, these are actually what
mothers do in their everyday life.”

If mothers do their selfless nurturing while
practising mindfulness – being constantly aware
that whatever arises will pass away naturally
without being lost in the ups and downs of
emotions – then they can grow leaps and bounds
spiritually, she advised.

Writing from her own experiences as a single
mother and a meditation practitioner, Kramer’s
Buddha Mom: The Path of Mindful Mothering has
inspired many mothers to bring spirituality
into their lives.

Recently in town to receive the Outstanding
Buddhist Women Award, Kramer, 56, has also
set up free online classes for mothers who
want to grow spiritually and can study more
deeply about the Buddhist teachings or share
their experiences at their own pace, in their
own time.

allspirit : Message: Spiritual mothering.

From Charles Tart’s “studentnotices” list:

Back in April I recommended a YouTube video
of neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor discussing
her stroke and the incredible experience she
had at a stroke. That video is still there at
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/when-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-strok\
e/?emc=eta1

My wife has now finished reading Taylor’s book,
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s
Personal Journey and is so impressed she
wrote a review for friends of ours. I’m
going to share it below. I’ve only had
time to read part of the book, but it is
indeed impressive!

Maybe you’ve seen Jill Bolte Taylor’s video
on TED or YouTube. She’s a neuroanatomist
who had a stroke, from which it took 8 years
for her to fully recover. Both the video
and her book, My Stroke of Insight, describe
what happened, but the book is far more
detailed. She was able to observe in great
detail what was happening to her, moment by
moment. As she lost her verbal, cognitive,
left-brain functions, she found herself in
a completely altered state of consciousness -
vast, peaceful, and all-knowing – which she
believes to be the right brain, though it
sounds very much like a description of a
mystical state, and also very like what are
called “near-death” experiences.

Judy Tart

allspirit : Message: Stroke, brain, mystical experience.

From:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Randy Pausch, a terminally ill professor
whose earnest farewell lecture at Carnegie
Mellon University became an Internet
phenomenon and bestselling book that turned
him into a symbol for living and dying well,
died Friday. He was 47.

Pausch, a computer science professor and
virtual-reality pioneer, died at his home
in Chesapeake, Va., of complications from
pancreatic cancer, the Pittsburgh university
announced.

When Pausch agreed to give the talk, he was
participating in a long-standing academic
tradition that calls on professors to share
their wisdom in a theoretical “last lecture.”
A month before the speech, the 46-year-old
Pausch was told he had only months to live,
a prognosis that heightened the poignancy
of his address.

Delivered last September to about 400 students
and colleagues, his message about how to make
the most of life has been viewed by millions
on the Internet. Pausch gave an abbreviated
version of it on “Oprah” and expanded it into
a best-selling book, “The Last Lecture,”
released in April.

Yet Pausch insisted that both the spoken and
written words were designed for an audience of
three: his children, then 5, 2 and 1.

“I was trying to put myself in a bottle that
would one day wash up on the beach for my
children,” Pausch wrote in his book.

Unwilling to take time from his family to pen
the book, Pausch hired a coauthor, Jeffrey
Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal writer who had
covered the lecture. During more than 50
bicycle rides crucial to his health, Pausch
spoke to Zaslow on a cellphone headset.

“The speech made him famous all over the world,”
Zaslow told The Times. “It was almost a shared
secret, a peek into him telling his colleagues
and students to go on and do great things. It
touched so many people because it was authentic.”

Thousands of strangers e-mailed Pausch to say
they found his upbeat lecture, laced with humor,
to be inspiring and life-changing. They drank
up the sentiments of a seemingly vibrant terminally
ill man, a showman with Jerry Seinfeld-esque
jokes and an earnest Jimmy Stewart delivery.

If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I
should be, sorry to disappoint you.

He used that line after projecting CT scans,
complete with helpful arrows pointing to the
tumors on his liver as he addressed “the
elephant in the room” that made every word
carry more weight.

Some people believe that those who are dying
may be especially insightful because they must
make every moment count. Some are drawn to
valedictories like the one Pausch gave because
they offer a spiritual way to grapple with
mortality that isn’t based in religion.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

allspirit : Message: “Last Lecture” author Randy Pausch dies at age 47.