What kind of sanity is it that cheers the mining of ever dirtier and more polluting petroleum in a world climate fast changing to conditions where those claiming their sanity can no longer live?

This week, the world marked the passage, upward, of the benchmark 400 ppm atmospheric CO2, the highest it's been since the dinosaurs. We are fast heading toward a climate only dinosaurs can live in, and you claim this sanity?

| In Response to Pipelines :: Enbridge’s (ENB) Northern Gateway pipeline project

There are so many gains from fat talk. It signals submissiveness -- to one's conversational partner, to society. It fishes for compliments (oh, no, not you!) and in a wierd way, it exonerates with a half-hearted helplessness that often gets masqueraded as "self-acceptance.

First friend: “I can’t believe I ate that brownie. I am so fat!”

Second friend: “You must be joking — you are so not fat. Just look at my thighs.”

The second friend’s reply, an “empathetic” self-deprecating retort to maintain the friendship on equal standing, includes reflexive praise of the first friend’s body, supposedly feeding the first friend’s hungry cry for affirmation, Dr. Corning said. But to do so, the second friend has eviscerated herself, a toxic tear-down by comparison.

| NYT

And who said women are the greater sex !?



Rob Poh |

As a graduate student, I had the dubious pleasure of watching primates in social troops behave as primates do. Undoubtedly the experience of those years has shaped my perception of humans-as-primates. Monkeys certainly, and it seems to me humans, interfere with each other's socio-sexual lives. Doing well? Here, let us fix that for you. Fat-talk looks to me an awful lot like the incessant low-level harassment primates employ to keep one another in check while jockeying for social advantage. To some that will sound critical or even cynical, but it seems to me that fat-talk is just one expression of social behavior that tries to balance cooperation and competition.

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Both sexes do a certain amount of 'our gender only' behavior regulation. Men, a little less, I contend, because they're not nearly as dependent on being liked by members of their own sex, as women are. Guys instead tell larger than life stories about themselves to one another. There's an understanding that the stories are hyperbolic. The dance carries its own limitations. Men don't beat up on one another much once they mature because that's just a stage in their lives. Also, they avoid judging one another once they mature because they've learned from experience its not healthy to judge. There is pressure to succeed by a male standard but usually not enough to create neurosis. I think it comes down to emotional support. Rightly or wrongly, men often try to get along without it. Women seem to have a whole series of emotional needs that have been nurtured during socialization stages of their early lives. I have had women tell me they feel sometimes the need to escape this. That its a relief to have men to work with because the world of women is so constantly challenging.

There’s a line from the Lovin’ Spoonful: ‘You came upon a quiet day, and simply seemed to take your place.  

| Mr.Black
 NYT :: Discovered at age 64; a Brooklyn Artist

I am 62 and started jogging in graduate school in my mid-twenties. I felt good enough in my mid-thirties to complete two NYC marathons and several shorter races. Now I do four-to-six combined run/walk routines on the tread mill per week, covering a little more than three miles per session at about an 11:45 pace. I also do 30-40 minutes a week of weight work and stretching. Had I not started out running all those years ago, there's no way I'd be able to do what I do now.

 | Runner Post- on NYT

The power of the mantra has been explained by Shiva himself in the Netra Tantra, a conversation recorded between Shiva and his wife, Parvati. At the opening of the text Parvati asks, “Your eyes are so beautiful; they are filled with the tears of compassion. How is it possible that from such eyes flared forth the terrible fire capable of reducing death itself to ashes?”

Shiva said, “Be joined in yoga, O Parvati, for only then will you be able to understand how the fire inherent in my eyes is the immortal elixir. The light in my eyes is all-pervading. It faces every direction and it resides in all states of waking, dreaming, and sleep. It is the source of life for all living beings. It can be known only through the practice of yoga, and can never be experienced by those who lack self-effort.

“The light in my eyes is the same as one’s own radiance. It is self-evident. It is the highest form of inner strength. It is eternal and it is ojas (the radiant energy that infuses matter with life). It is the power of will—the indomitable will of the soul. In it lies the seed of omniscience, the power to know, and the power to act. It is through this force, intrinsic to me, that I destroy and I create.

“The whole universe is filled and sustained by this energy. In fact the powers of will, knowledge, and action together are my eyes. They are the source of immortality, the ultimate force of healing and nourishment. They are the embodiment of my radiant vitality. The knowers of mantra science call it Mrityunjaya, “the conqueror of death.” It enables one to attain freedom from all forms of misery, for it is the destroyer of all diseases. Meditation on this brilliant light manifesting in the form of Mrityunjaya mantra cools down the scorching heat of worldly and spiritual poverty. It is pure, peaceful, and unfailing.

“The light of this mantric shakti outshines millions of suns. It is with this fire of radiant divine energy that I destroy the world in a flash and breathe life into it in no time. There is nothing beyond this power….

With this mantra one is able to conquer all one’s enemies (anger, hatred, jealousy, and greed). It is the source of longevity, health, and well-being…. Assuming different forms and shapes, the power of this light, the Mrityunjaya mantra pervades the whole universe. It is the source of all protection, physical, mental, and spiritual. There is no mystery higher than this, the mystery of my eyes, the fire residing in them, and how that fire manifests in the form of Mrityunjaya mantra.”
—Excerpted from the Netra Tantra, translated by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD

As our ox cart came up the road facing Skandasramam, Kunju Swami reminisced, "Bhagavan used to come up this road. The houses at night would be lit up, the doors and windows open, and people would be quiet, just like this. 'This is like the turiya state,' Bhagavan would say, 'All the doors of the senses are wide open, and yet the mind is quiet.'"