By Balajijagadesh [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia CommonsWaiting at the train station in Tiruchirapalli, otherwise known as Trichy, as even the locals can’t pronounce it… Waiting for the train to return to Chennai after 2 weeks at a Catholic Ashram in rural south India, our pilgrimage group sought dry seats along the quai. The unpleasant end of the spectrum of smells of urban India surrounded us. Staring off into the distance from my perch on the circular bench, my eyes lit on a line of teen age girls dressed in matching blue shalwar kamiz
From a web-site selling school uniforms to Indian families. This one was listed at INR400. See https://www.indiamart.com/ The shalwar kamiz is a popular school uniform for Indian girls.
outfits. Preceded and followed by a middle-aged woman, each had her right arm on the shoulder of the girl in front of her. They walked slowly past us. Their very pale white skin and the visible consequences of their vision impairment made them stand out from the usual crowd of very dark skinned predominantly ethnic Dravidian families and individuals waiting to get on the second class trains. (I’ve been told that only politicians and their entourages can purchase first class tickets in India)
“Blind! What a blessing!” laughed my fellow American pilgrim. “Albino, but blind so they can’t see anyone staring at them!”
It just struck me very strongly that the fact that DUELING was still popular and apparently accepted among at least some of our founding fathers SHOULD BE TAKEN AS A WARNING.
My opinion of “originalism” in Constitutional interpretation just deteriorated. Not that it was high to start with.
Why “Conservatives” want to conserve the barbaric concepts from the past is something I fail to understand. At the time of the founding of the country, we gave lip service to equality. It’s time to take action to elect and support people who will work to promote equality. And trying to act like we can have equality in the US when it’s not present all over the globe is a farce.
May all beings be happy. May all beings have the causes of happiness.
Balance is the core element of all true spiritual paths. The human condition consigns us to be killers, whether of plants, the insects or fungi that would have otherwise have eaten them, or “higher” life forms.
The salient question is what we make of the inevitable pain we cause. Since without evil, we wouldn’t even know what good is, some evil must exist in for good to be recognized.
But balance in real life is much more complicated than choosing good or evil. Most of the time we don’t know which one we are choosing until years / decades later, and even then, what appeared evil may end up being the compost that brought forth the beautiful flower of a later, larger good.
So what else might we consider trying to balance? The food we consume and the energy we expend? Now there’s a huge effort right there! The amount of work we do and the time we “relax”? The amount of money we earn and what we spend? The skills we develop versus the friendships we nurture?
Of course that last one isn’t really an either / or. We can build friendships with people who are working on similar skill development, or those we mentor or are mentored by.
How do we balance our feeling of integrity when fighting for justice against people who disagree with us?
Is the United States setting itself up for a major internal conflict with the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice?
Isn’t it time for humanity to vomit up the remains of the undigested apple of knowledge of good and evil? It was always a false choice. That was the greater sin. Believing that we could KNOW GOOD AND EVIL, rather than focusing on pragmatic realities for the benefit of all.
I feel depressed and disgusted when confronted by the actions of people who think they are doing good by forcing women to bear unwanted children.
How many people existing today were actually PLANNED by their parents? When I was in the home-birth education course, decades ago, we were the ONLY couple of 10 who had actually planned that conception at that time. Those working against abortion are basically saying “I (or others) suffered, so must you.” Could it be perverse cruelty that drives them? Why is the unborn more important than the born? Only because we are tied to values that date from the time when a group kept its property by having soldiers to defend it to the death. The perceived necessities of group survival morphed into forcing individual behavior.
In most cultures on the earth today, the worst thing that can happen is to be burdened with the care of undesired offspring. I see many friends and acquaintances whose lives and dreams were put on hold for decades, or forever, by having to become parents before they were ready. The price of a moment’s passion or victimization can be steep.
I have never seen any historians specifically state that the need for armies was due in large part to the filling of the parts of the earth where it is relatively easy to survive. This 5000 year old imbalance is philosophically starting to tip back, but without renouncing our belief in the possibility of self-righteousness,I think attaining balance will be tough job.
May all beings be happy, and more importantly, may all beings have the causes of happiness.
To achieve that, we must promote education and basic security for all. That will be much easier if we promote policies that ensure children are born when they have a nurturing space in society awaiting them. Right now, the dominant world culture promotes misery for most.
Today in the Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers, we used a new prompt methodology promoted by our fearless leader. We wrote a NOUN on a PIECE OF PAPER, passed it to the next person, added a verb, passed it to the next person, added an adjective, passed it to the next person, and added an adverb, passed to the next person, and added a gerund. It pushed many of us to write something we never would have in usual prompt based exercises. Plus some of us had a grammar review!
Tree Drool Flaky Lightly Thinking
The tree drooled. That was strange. But of course. This must be a dryad. A nominal tree, with the spirit of a nymph locked into it. Always a sad story, the nymph chose to give up freedom of movement in the world for freedom from sexual harassment by an obnoxious member of Olympia.
I chose to move lightly, watching in fascination as I perambulated the tree. Yes. It was definitely drool, not just sap dripping. The flaky bark had a horizontal slash that clearly hinted, if you squinted properly, at a mouth. It was a dryad’s drool.
I decided to offer the trapped being a blessing. After thinking it over, not knowing how much consciousness she retained, I chose to speak very slowly. “You paid a high price for the advancement of complexity at the hands of arrogant men. The times are changing. You have learned patience. I will report your condition to the new magicians. Maybe they can liberate you now.”
I stepped back, and slowly walked around the tree again. Yes, definitely drool. I felt sad for the dryad. Very sad. I felt sad for all of womankind. After all, it was our fertility that created the need for the male dominated armies to protect our territory. The simultaneous kundalini awakening of the entire male population of course created excesses. I hoped that the dryad experienced sufficient time to make sense of my message. I decided to tell her that I would be back. In a week, or a month, or a year, or ten years. All but the blink of an eye to a dryad trapped for the last 3000 years. A blink of an eye for her. For me, a big task, to locate a magician’s group that would help to liberate her. I needed to give her a name. A name that would entice the magicians to come to her aid. A name. But what name? What name would do the trick?
Her postulating drove me crazy. She was crazy. She said intuitive. I said imaginative at the least, probably crazy.
When I first met her, I wondered where she got her ideas. One day I found her alone, heavily breathing, her eyes closed. After a few more breaths, she settled into lighter breathing. A trance. That must be where she got those ideas.
She never could produce a shred of evidence for any of it. But her descriptions were extremely detailed and when she told me what she had seen, I felt like I was looking into another world.
The tea kettle whistled and brought me back to the current time. The current time, until I got to listen to the latest harvest of factoids from some other reality.
She drove me crazy, but I couldn’t leave her. Whether it was the pheremones, or the simple fact that we both knew we had better survival chances with each other than without, I was never able to figure out. But that morning I started to put together a plan. I was going to drive her crazy too. Make her question her reality. But how? Either I was going to have to learn to go into a trance, or my imagination needed an upgrade.
