J Krishnamurti  has been a favorite of mine.  He can be hard to comprehend but when one does, great understanding takes place.

Transmitting Compassion If I am concerned with compassion, with love, with the real feeling of something sacred, then how is that feeling to be transmitted? Please follow this. If I transmit it through the microphone, through the machinery of propaganda, and thereby convince another, his heart will still be empty. The flame of ideology will operate, and he will merely repeat, as you are all repeating, that we must be kind, good, free -all the nonsense that the politicians, the socialists, and the rest of them talk. So, seeing that any form of compulsion, however subtle, does not bring this beauty, this flowering of goodness, of compassion, what is the individual to do? What is the relationship between the man who has this sense of compassion, and the man whose mind is entrenched in the collective, in the traditional? How are we to find the relationship between these two, not theoretically, but actually?That which conforms can never flower in goodness. There must be freedom, and freedom comes only when you understand the whole problem of envy, greed, ambition, and the desire for power. It is freedom from those things that allows the extraordinary thing called character to flower. Such a man has compassion, he knows what it is to love -not the man who merely repeats a lot of words about morality.So the flowering of goodness does not lie within society, because society in itself is always corrupt. Only the man who understands the whole structure and process of society, and is freeing himself from it, has character, and he alone can flower in goodness. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Anonymous Creativity

Posted:

Have you ever thought about it? We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Because we really don't love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems, if you really loved it you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. To want to be famous is tawdry, trivial, stupid, it has no meaning; but, because we don't love what we are doing, we want to enrich ourselves with fame. Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action. You know, it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty. - 
J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The relationship between thought and time

To discover what is beyond time, thought must come to an end ...

It is the mind, it is thought, that creates time. Thought is time, and whatever thought projects must be of time; therefore, thought cannot possibly go beyond itself. To discover what is beyond time, thought must come to an end -and that is a most difficult thing because the ending of thought does not come about through discipline, through control, through denial or suppression. Thought ends only when we understand the whole process of thinking and, to understand thinking, there must be self-knowledge. Thought is the self, thought is the word which identifies itself as the 'me', and at whatever level, high or low, the self is placed, it is still within the field of thought. And the self is very complex; it is not at any one level but is made up of many thoughts, many entities, each in contradiction with the other. There must be a constant awareness of them all, an awareness in which there is no choice, no condemnation or comparison, that is, there must be the capacity to see things as they are without distorting or translating them. The moment we judge or translate what is seen, we distort it according to our background. To be is to be related, and it is only in the midst of relationship that we can spontaneously discover ourselves as we are. It is this very discovery of ourselves as we are, without any sense of condemnation or justification, that brings about a fundamental transformation in what we are -and that is the beginning of wisdom.

JKrishnamurti
Collected Works, Vol. VI,220,Choiceless Awareness

“Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration”

A friend sent this to me and others may enjoy its substance:

The truly free man needs to make no parade of himself, he needs to do nothing but exist within his own duties. If he does his duty as a human being, if he becomes fully and truly compassionate, then he will find service for his energies; he wiil find satisfactions for his needs. He will be a light and a warmth to whom many come.

Warriors of the Spirit

I cannot remember where I first read this, but it is a powerful statement.

Warriors of the Spirit
War arises from unkindness, from fear, from love of power and greed. Those are where the roots are and as long as we let those roots grow in our spirit we will contribute to another war.
Power is admired in the community of men. How much better it would be to infect people with hope and care about the whole of life.

He enjoys no freedom who has no control over himself. Man needs the order f an inner harmony, which implies mastery over himself....N. Sri Ram

"Life itself has speech, and is never silent. And its utterance is not, as you that are deaf may suppose, a cry: it is a song."
Clara M. Codd. MEDITATION: Its Practice and Results

A friend recently sent me this idea on compassion:

“Move in sympathy, not only to yourself, but to all beings.  

Come into compassion with the struggles of all others.  

Come into putting yourselves in the place of every man  

so that, knowing your own effort, you know also his,  

and you judge him with the utmost love –  

not that you do not see his needs and his undeveloped areas,  

but you know yourself and your own.

So you help where you can.”

Ayline Amirayan

A COMPASSIONATE AND TALENTED TEACHER, SINGER AND SONGWRITER Ayline Amirayan is an adapted Physical Education teacher in the Norwark/LaMirada Unified School District and has created a remarkable program for her special needs students who never go to school dances. Wanting to give them that joyful experience, she prepares her students to participate in a special school dance she sponsors yearly. Inviting compassionate general education students to join her special needs students for the dance event, she also teaches them movement to music. She ends the class with a social pizza party where the general and special students have an opportunity to converse with each other in a safe setting. Ayline began this event 10 years ago. She teaches different dance themes every year including music from the 1920's with the Charleston, as well as ballroom dances, disco, pop, country and multicultural dances. Her yearly event gives her special needs students the opportunity to practice proper dance etiquettes such as being kind when asking someone to dance and learning to be polite when refusing. “Those who learn the most are the general education kids who give hope to the special needs kids who respond when being asked to dance,” Ayline said. She also encourages and prepares these students to show their talent on stage with comedy, singing songs or synchronizing dances Ayline feels this is an important part of the event so these special students get a dose of "celebrity" when they make their way onto the stage. It may be the only opportunity for them to perform for their teachers, friends, parents and family members who are invited to the event and see their children on this special performance. It has been a high light event every school year.
This is what compassionate teachers do for their students.

Lao-tzu

This is what Lao-tzu taught so long ago: The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind. I ask you ladies and gentlemen...Who today profits from the making and selling of all those weapons?

I recently read something that Gandhi said that makes me wonder about the male species and armaments. Do the two go hand in hand? "Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all."

I found a writing from the great Mahatma Gandhi tucked away in a drawer I hadn't opened in years. I spent several months in India many, many years ago working on my dissertation and I remember reading this piece over and over and as I read it again after all these years it still makes me think deeply. Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him, will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his life and destiny? Will it lead to self rule for the hungry and also spiritually starved millions of our country men? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

The greatest of those in history revered and loved
Were simple people who during their lives
Worked, spoke and acted quietly.
the quality of their actions influenced many.

This is the potential and power of all beings
Who are honest about the depth of their abilities
And become the best of what they can be.

Our Media Life

Our Media Life

I attended a conference last weekend and one of the speakers talked about how much of the meaningless absorbs our media life. As if this were a coincidence shortly thereafter I read this statement and thought how true!

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion.  In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”  

Your Body

It was in that pamphlet I mentioned in my last post...At The Feet of the Master. Another sentence that sparked my thinking was: TREAT YOUR BODY WELL FOR IT IS THE HORSE YOU RIDE THROUGH LIFE. Does he mean I should think of my body like that of a horse...a wild mare that needs to be tamed? Hmmm. Enter: self-discipline?

I recently picked up a pamphlet on a trip to Ojai, CA. It is called AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER and the author is said to have been J. Krishanmurti when he was a young teenager. I was deeply affected with one of his ideas.  He said, “There are two kinds of people in this world: THOSE WHO KNOW AND THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW.  Those who do not know strive for wealth and power.   Those who know understand evolution. Two words popped into my mind as I read those sentences…karma and rebirth.  I wonder if those two words would affect the thinking of those who do not know.

PROFOUND BOOKS:


Is there a book that has had a profound effect upon your life? More than likely there is and one of these days I will write about that one book I read some thirty years ago that still resonates in my mind. But today I want to write about Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer and the book that affected him so deeply, a novel, THE PLAGUE, by the French writer, Albert Camus. In an interview a long time ago with Charlie Rose, Justice Breyer talked about a doctor in the novel who behaved better than most when a plague invaded a city in Algeria and he said that the germ of the plague is in each of us and never dies, goes into remission but when it is sent forth to invade and the rats come out, we judges in a small way set up a dyke to stop it. That statement had a profound effect upon me and I thought about a story I had recently heard about an old and wise Native American Indian and his conversation with his grandson. This is the essence of that story: "My son, there are two wolves inside us all and they are continually battling one another. One is self pity, anger, lies, sorrow, regret, greed, guilt, false pride, envy, inferiority, superiority, arrogance, and resentment. The other is truth, love, faith, peace, humility, compassion, generosity, and joy."
The grandson thought for a moment and asked, "Grandfather, which wolf wins?"
"The one you feed."

I recently returned from the Pomegranate Film Festival in Toronto. My documentary, MY MOTHER'S VOICE, a story about my mother's tragic life in Turkey and how she found her way to America to marry a man she knew only from a photograph was awarded Honorable Mention for best documentary, the Michael J. Hagopian Award. This link will take you to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kad0VzWzxgA&list=PLB3AE4DB9BA5CC93B&feature=player_detailpage

Last Friday evening October 5, I was blown away with the depth of Ambassador Edward Djerjian's remarks. He spoke at the Western AGBU center in Pasadena,California and I was captivated by this man. As the former U.S. Ambassador to both Syria and Israel during his tenure at the State department, he understands the history of why things are happening in the Arab Spring...and much of it has to do with the partitions from World War I. Also, he told this predominately Armenian audience of maybe 500 that his hero is Nelson Mandela and how he wants to see a reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey. Interestingly, his father was deported from Hadjin,Turkey as was my own mother. Both our parents survived the Armenian Genocide, immigrated to America and gave us, their future children the great opportunities that America avails to all its citizens