Once in awhile I read about people who have illnesses or injuries that trap them inside a body that can't function or communicate--with an awake and aware mind. We had a discussion about this on one of the pagan forums I visit. I was reminded of this song by Ani DiFranco:
Back, back, back
In the back of your mind are you learning an angry language?
Tell me, boy
Boy
Boy, are you tending to your joy, or are you just letting it vanquish*?
Yeah, back, back, back
In the dark of your mind where the eyes of your demons are gleaming
Are you mad
Mad
Mad about the life you never had
Yeah, even when you are dreaming?
Who are these old, old, old people in these nursing homes
Just scowling away at nothing?
Like big rag dolls
Just cursing at the walls and pulling out all of their stuffing
Yeah, every day is a door leading back to the core
Yes, old age will distill you
And if you're this, this, this full of bitterness now
Some day it will just fill you
When you sit right down in the middle of yourself
You're gonna wanna have a comfortable chair
So renovate your soul before you get too old cuz you're gonna be housebound there
When you're old you fold up like an envelope and you mail yourself right inside
Yeah, and there's nowhere to go except out, real slow
Are you ready, boy, for that ride?
Your arrogance is gaining on you, and so is eternity
You better practice happiness
You better practice humility
Yeah, you took the air
You took the time
You were fed and you were free
You'd better put some beauty back, yeah, while you got the energy
You'd better put some beauty back, yeah, while you got the energy
Back, back, back
In the back of your mind are you learning an angry language?
Tell me, boy
Boy
Boy, are you tending to your joy, or are you just letting it vanquish*?
Yeah, back, back, back
In the dark of your mind where the eyes of your demons are gleaming
Are you mad
Mad
Mad about the life you never had
Even when you're dreaming?
*I always hear this as "languish" which makes far more sense but every online version I look at says vanquish.
I heard recently about Global Voices Online, which translates blogs from around the world into other languages so most of us can access them. It's amazing! Read news you probably won't hear about anywhere else.
Finally, evidence of what the fat acceptance movement has always said (based on comparisons between fat people in their native cultures vs. those who move to America and live a less heart healthy lifestyle): Overweight doesn't always mean heart risks and normal-weight people aren't always heart-healthy! Excerpt:
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- You can look great in a swimsuit and still be a heart attack waiting to happen. And you can also be overweight and otherwise healthy.
A new study suggests that a surprising number of overweight people -- about half -- have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, while an equally startling number of trim people suffer from some of the ills associated with obesity.
The first national estimate of its kind bolsters the argument that you can be hefty but still healthy, or at least healthier than has been believed.
The results also show that stereotypes about body size can be misleading and that even "less voluptuous" people can have risk factors commonly associated with obesity, said study author MaryFran Sowers, a University of Michigan obesity researcher.
"We're really talking about taking a look with a very different lens" at weight and health risks, Sowers said.
Of course people of any size with a family history of heart disease will want to be cautious about weight gain and want to be particularly careful with their diet. It is recommended that they also keep their cholesterol well below the 200 that used to be considered normal. (Mine was only slightly higher than that in the years leading up to my diagnosis.) We should all be aware of our risk factors since heart disease is the number 1 killer of both men and women.
My husband is always telling me that I must write my book because no one seems to know about the experiences of poor and working class people in their own words. I hadn't heard about it before, but there's already a book by working class women that does just that: Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Diane Di Prima, Terri Griffith, Daisy Hernandez, Frances Varian, Eileen Myles, Shawna Kenney, Siobhan Brooks, Terry Ryan, and more. There's an excerpt by Frances Varian here. You can read other excerpts by clicking on the "more about this book" link.
I submitted this via the Senator's office contact form online.
Senator, I am shocked by your recent "Britney" ad against your fellow Senator Obama. I looked up to you as one of the few people on the Republican side I could respect and even hoped that maybe some day you would join my party--which I expressed in a 2004 message to this office. I always figured that if you ran for president that at least I wouldn't have to be fearful of our side losing the election because you would be honorable and could work effectively with members of my party. I appreciated your candor and willingness to stand up for unpopular ideas--some from my own party--no matter what anyone else said. Even in your primary against an opponent like Romney you kept the high ground.
Now I hear you say you are proud of an ad that compares Senator Obama, who has spent his adult life trying to serve his community and society, to such people as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, known mostly for clubbing and flashing their bodies these days? You know enough about how ads work to know that even if people reject this with their conscious minds, the images remain and influence them.
I was so shocked by this ad and the fact that it was you, whom I had so respected, running it and professing to be proud of it that I mustered up what funds I could on my credit card (I am currently unemployed and struggling with disability) to donate to Barack's campaign so that he could counter your ads effectively. I suspect your ad had the unintended effect of causing many others to do the same. I implore you not to go down this road any further. I thought you had promised to address the issues and keep the campaign focused on the needs of the American people. I thought you remembered how it felt to suffer the tactics of the Bush campaign in the primaries leading up to the 2000 election.
The Britney ad followed closely on the heels of your lying publicly by saying he didn't visit the troops because he couldn't bring cameras, when he didn't bring cameras to such visits in Iraq and it was widely reported that he had no intention of doing so.
I must repeat that I am really shocked by the turn you are taking in your campaign, not just because I support Barack but because I believed you were better than that, a statesman and not just another politician. It would seem to me, if I were running your campaign, that I would recognize that honor is part of your "brand" and that if you abandon that in your tactics, you damage your own campaign. Then everything else you say will be suspect. I beg you to just admit it was a mistake and return to the high road. So many people already don't vote because they hate campaigns that end up in straw-man shouting matches rather than substantive, thoughtful debates. We need people to tune in--not tune out in disgust.
Sincerely,
Tapati [last name]
(copied from CNN, bolding mine, coincidentally just got back from a follow up sleep study last night and am glad I use a CPAP!) Sleep apnea boosts your risk of death, study shows!*WASHINGTON (AP) * -- Shakespeare once called sleep the "balm of hurt minds." Bodies, too, apparently. People with the severe form of apnea, which interferes with sleep, are several times more likely to die from any cause than are folks without the disorder, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Sleep. The findings in the 18-year study confirm smaller studies that have indicated an increased risk of death for people with apnea, also known as sleep-disordered breathing. "This is not a condition that kills you acutely. It is a condition that erodes your health over time," Dr. Michael J. Twery, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, said in a telephone interview. People with such disorders "have been sleep deprived for perhaps very long periods of time, they are struggling to sleep. If this is happening night after night, week after week, on top of all our other schedules, this is a dangerous recipe," said Twery, whose center is part of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The institute estimates that 12 million to 18 million people in the U.S. have moderate to severe apnea. The condition is not always detected because the sufferer is asleep when the problem occurs and it cannot be diagnosed during a routine office visit with a doctor. Researchers tested the patients for sleep-disordered breathing in the laboratory and then followed them over several years. For people with apnea, their upper airway becomes narrowed or blocked periodically during sleep. That keeps air from reaching the lungs. In some cases, breathing stops for seconds to a minute or so; the pauses in breathing disrupt sleep and prevent adequate amounts of oxygen from entering the bloodstream. "When you stop breathing in your sleep you don't know it, it doesn't typically wake you up," Twery said. Instead, it can move a person from deep sleep to light sleep, when breathing resumes. But the overall sleep pattern is disturbed, and it can happen hundreds of times a night. He said that a person typically will have four or five cycles per night of light sleep, deep sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when most dreams occur. More deep sleep comes early in the night with more REM sleep closer to waking up. This pattern helps control hormones, metabolism and levels of stress. The institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, says apnea has been linked to a greater risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes and excessive daytime sleepiness. In the new report, the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort followed 1,522 men and women, ages 30 to 60. The annual death rate was 2.85 per 1,000 people per year for people without sleep apnea. People with mild and moderate apnea had death rates of 5.54 and 5.42 per 1,000, respectively, and people with severe apnea had a rate of 14.6, researchers said. Cardiovascular mortality accounted for 26 percent of all deaths among people without apnea and 42 percent of the deaths among people with severe apnea, according to the researchers led by Terry Young of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In the same issue of the journal Sleep, a separate study of 380 adults between 40 and 65 in Australia came to a similar conclusion. This study found that after 14 years, about 33 percent of participants with moderate to severe sleep apnea had died, compared with 6.5 percent of people with mild apnea and 7.7 percent of people without apnea. "Our findings, along with those from the Wisconsin Cohort, remove any reasonable doubt that sleep apnea is a fatal disease," said lead author Dr. Nathaniel Marshall of the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia. Apnea often is treated with a device that delivers continuous positive airway pressure through a mask over the nose and/or mouth. The U.S. study found that patients using this device had reduced death rates.There has been debate over whether to use airway pressure to treat patients who are not sleepy in the daytime, the report noted. The U.S. researchers noted that while theirs was a large study, 95 percent of the participants were white and most had adequate income and access to health care. "It is likely that our findings may underestimate the mortality risk of SDB in other ethnic groups or the lowest socio-economic strata where there is poor awareness and access to health care," they said. The U.S. research was supported by the National Institutes of Health. The Australian study was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.
Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.
The first man had married a Woman from Illinois and had told her that she was going to do dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple days, but on the third day he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.
The second man had married a woman from Michigan . He had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done, and there was a huge dinner on the table.
The third man had married a girl from KENTUCKY. He told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, enough to fix himself a bite to eat and load the dishwasher.
Seen on the blog of Advaitadas:
Although most western devotees have been initially taught that all westerners go to hell because they don’t follow the Vedic principles and that ‘ignorance is no excuse’, when I told this to Sadhu Baba he laughed and thought I had told him the joke of the year. Later, when studying the teachings of Vijay Krishna Gosvami, I understood why –
“Although not every human being has the same duties, obligations and ethics, there is morality according to country, society and time. Whatever is thus considered decent is accepted, and unless and until it is understood and realised to be wrong and unjust it should certainly be followed. Whatever I believe to be my duties and propriety that is my religious principle. If one doesn’t follow one’s fundamental religious principles one meets with woe and commits sin according to one’s local, social and temporal customs and ethics. Whatever obligation and ethics one believes in and accepts with a simple heart, that is one’s religious virtue and should certainly be followed. In some places the eating of fish and meat is established custom and at other places it is rejected as a sin as if it is poison.”
Vijay Krishna Goswami, June 1891.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------end quote--------------
This is an issue that I have thought about for years, ever since Catholicism emphasized the need for baptism in order to achieve salvation and go to heaven. (They have since softened their position on this issue, I've been told.) It always seemed to me that a loving and fair God would not punish anyone for doing what their culture, family, and upbringing had always told them was right, so long as they were sincere in that belief. It always seemed to me that God would give us many ways to approach him, just as parents accept any little gift their children give them with love. I am glad to see this passage which hopefully counteracts some of the ethnocentrism that leads to overzealous preaching.
I found this in a Buddhist magazine and had to chuckle:
Hair Braiding Meditation
By Polly Trout
May I be filled with lovingkindness. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.
May my daughter, who wants a billion tiny little braids this morning, be filled with lovingkindness. May she be well. May she be peaceful and at ease going to school with a billion tiny little braids.
May her best friend, who got a billion tiny little braids put in her hair at Club Med Ixtapa last week, be filled with lovingkindness. Also her mother, may she be peaceful and at ease. And the woman the mother hired to do all that cornrowing, may she be well. May she be happy.
May I be filled with lovingkindness as I put in these billion tiny little braids. May I be peaceful and transcend greed. Also, may I go to Club Med Ixtapa next season, when the beach will be even more inspiring due to my newly enlightened and greed-free state. May I be happy.
May my coworkers be filled with lovingkindness as they wonder why I am late for work as I make these billion tiny braids. May they be peaceful and at ease.
May my daughter not notice that these braids are not nearly as cute as her friend’s braids that got done professionally in Ixtapa, or if she does notice, may she be peaceful and at ease about that, please for God’s sake.
May my toddler, currently trying to vie for my attention as I make these tiny braids for her big sister, be filled with lovingkindness. May she be peaceful and at ease.
May my mother, who did this for me when I was five, be filled with lovingkindness. May she be peaceful and at ease. I wonder why I never thanked her for that.
May I remember this day sitting with my daughter, braiding her hair, late for work again, peaceful and at ease, happy.
http://www.halfsatori.com/2008/07/celebration-of-life.html
My friend Ananda's inspirational doodles about consciousness dancing through the cosmos to the universal beat.
Legumes and indeed, all carbohydrate-based foods these days, often get a bad rap. However, in defense of legumes they do have a lot of good things to offer and have been a vital mainstay of poor people's diets throughout the world and down through the ages. The fiber they provide help prevent some of the diseases of the colon that modern low fiber diets have contributed to. (I had zero polyps when I was examined on '06--the doctor said that's very rare for someone my age in America.) Fiber is also good for a heart-healthy diet since it helps lower cholesterol. Here's some more information for anyone wanting to make an informed decision about the role of legumes in their diet, perhaps in moderation and with an application of Beano. Nutrition
During the lean years of the Great Depression, beans were also tagged "poor man's meat" because of their protein power at pennies per pound. Beans are a source of Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, B6 vitamins and many other nutrients as well. They are also rich in complex carbohydrates and fiber. All of these nutrients are necessary for normal growth and for the building of body tissues. Beans are high in potassium which is required for the normal functioning of nerves and muscles. A cup of cooked beans contains more potassium than a banana. In fact, beans have more calcium and iron per cup than three ounces of cooked meat but contain no cholesterol and with less calories.
Beans are the best source of folate and are excellent sources of minerals and vitamins. High in fiber they have good cancer fighting characteristics and have been specifically linked to lower the risk of colon cancer.
Recent research has brought to light that beans have 'anti-aging' agents or antioxidants found in the seed coat. There are eight flavonoids in the outer bean layer, six of which are particularly strong antioxidants. Because of new research, we are learning that beans have a perfect nutrient base for people interested in weight loss. They also aid in reducing cholesterol, improve digestion and, as already mentioned, are an aid in cancer prevention.
Beans are grown throughout the world. The legumes we supply come from the United States and are grown throughout the country on 1,700,000 acres of land producing from 1 to 1.4 million metric tons annually, half of which are exported all over the world. From improved agricultural practices, we feel beans grown right here at home in the USA have the highest quality of any bean grown anywhere. Cooking Beans
Beans can be eaten raw, sprouted or cooked. Unknown by many, they can even be ground into a flour and in this form beans cook up in two or three minutes into a hearty soup. But this is not all, for the more adventurous among us, beans can be juiced into milk, curdled into tofu, fermented into soy sauce or made into transparent noodles called vermicelli. Truly, beans rival the versatility of wheat in what you can do with them. Let's look at some of the different processes in preparing beans for eating. Soaking: This step isn't completely necessary, however, there are some real advantages. A shorter cooking time is probably the biggest advantage. Figure about an extra hour of cooking time for beans that are not pre-soaked. Beans should be soaked for at least 6 hours. During this time, the beans will absorb water until they have increased in volume and weight about 3 times. You should add 5 times as much water as dry beans. Soaking also leaches some of the gas producing properties out of the bean. But for this to work, you need to discard the soaking water and replenish it with fresh water before cooking. The longer you soak them the less gassy beans will be. You can also drain the water after 12 hours, then rinse and re-drain them every 12 hours for 2 to 3 days until the sprouts are as long as the bean. This not only dramatically increases the vitamins in the beans but also removes some of the gas producing qualities. After you have sprouted them as described above, cook them like regular soaked beans. You can also quick soak beans by boiling them for 10 minutes first, then setting them aside for two hours. As with a cold soak, you should discard the soaking water and replace with it fresh water before cooking them. Boiling the beans kills the seeds so don't expect them to sprout after you've heated them. | One lb. dry packaged beans = 2 cups dry = 6 cups cooked beans. |
Cooking: After soaking, most people cover the beans with water then boil them. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the bean. You should check them for softness every 15-30 minutes then pull them off the heat when they've reached their desired softness. But you can also throw them in a crock pot in the morning and let them go until the evening. And we've already mentioned that beans ground into a flour cook up almost instantly into a soup or paste, depending on how much water you use. If you've boiled your beans for several hours and they still haven't softened, it's probably because they are old. Old, air stored beans 5 or more years old get 'hardened' and may never soften up. There are two ways of getting around this. You can put them in a pressure cooker for 45-60 minutes and this should do the trick, or you can grind them. Incidentally, normal beans that aren't 'hard' cook in about 20 minutes is a pressure cooker. Hardened beans still contain much of their nutrition.
After your beans are cooked, add your flavorings, meat, vegetables or whatever you are adding to make the bean dish you are preparing. Don't add these ingredients while the beans are cooking as there are many ingredients that will increase the beans' cooking time before they become soft. This includes the acidic foods which include tomatoes, lemon juice, vinegar and similar ingredients. Adding a bit of cooking oil, butter or margarine to the cooking beans will help to keep the foaming down as they cook. Consider cooking a double batch and freezing the beans not used immediately. Beans soaked for 12 hours or more often have a more uniform shape than quick soaked beans. You may need to increase the cooking time if your water is overly hard or you live at high altitudes.
Cooked beans will store nicely in your refrigerator for a week and they freeze nicely for a minimum of 6 months. Source: http://waltonfeed.com/self/beans.html where you can find much, much more information.
Cecil Earl Paris, 31 year-old night watchman at the Keokuk Box Factory plant on Commercial Alley, was shot and killed some time Saturday night by an unknown assailant who was armed with a .22 caliber revolver. The body was discovered on Sunday morning by Walter Bryant, the day watchman. The body had been pushed under a lumber wagon about forty feet from the doorway of the boiler room at the plant. There was a sack of coal found near the building. Police believed he was shot when he ordered someone off the premises. His own .32 caliber revolver was missing and believed stolen. Money had also been removed but a cheap watch was untouched. Three charcoal tablets had been wrapped in a paper that they think the murderer mistook for a bill and were found on the ground along with the paper. "A sister of the murdered man told the coroner who told the officers that a week ago her brother had accosted a man in the boiler room and ordered him out." Henry Faber was the police officer who responded to the call and he called Frank W. Oertel, Justice of the Peace and acting coroner. Bloodhounds were used to follow the trail the murderer might have taken. They were given the scent from the victim's body and also the sack of coal. Five times they led to the house of a man named Hammond in the vicinity of the tenth street bridge, following a trail along "bloody run." [I never heard of an area called Bloody Run. Interesting.] A man named H. Lewis was taken into custody and questioned but later proved to have an alibi. He explained also that he had done some work unloading coal for a local coal dealer and the Hammonds with whom he was staying confirmed that he was at their home all night. An autopsy traced the route of the bullet as it entered the right side of Cecil Earl's body to the left of the right nipple, between two ribs, and lodged in the pericardium and had pierced the ascending aorta (the largest artery entering the heart) which would cause nearly instant death. At the direction of Coroner Frank Oertel, the autopsy was performed by Dr. F. B. Dorsey Jr. and Dr. Johannes Anderson. The bullet was recovered and sealed as evidence. A three-inch spread of powder burns was found on the victim's shirt and body once the shirt was removed. The Sheriff's office was notified and Sheriff Hart, Deputy Sheriff Reinig and County Attorney D. J. McNamara joined the police officers already on the job under the direction of Chief J. B. Parks. Deputy Sheriff Fred Weisemann of Fort Madison also joined the officers. Deputy Sheriff H. E. Coles brought two bloodhounds who were allowed to sniff articles from the body and the bag of coal as described above. The dogs "worked furiously" when they came to a place in the creek where the ice had been broken, as if someone had plunged through. A tag bearing the name of a local feed store was found on the sack of coal. No other mark was on it. This tag and the clothes of the murdered man were taken by the coroner for evidence. He empaneled a jury composed of R.L. Sherwood, Dr. P.E. Hanes and Henry Van Essling to hear the inquest on February 21, 1928. The body was removed to the Cunningham funeral parlor.
"Paris was said to have come here from Memphis, MO, about five years ago and was employed at the box factory. He had been night watchman for two years. He is survived by his widow and five children.
Native of Missouri
"Earl Paris was born in Schuyler county Missouri, on August 5, 1896, and was the son of George and Laura McDaniel Paris. He came to Keokuk three years prior to his death. [This contradicts the portion above which says five years.] He was married to Rosa McKinney on September 17, 1917 at Moulton, Iowa, and to this union were born seven children, two of whom preceded him in death.
"He was a member of the Christian church at Downing, MO.
"He is survived by his wife, five children, all of whom live at home; his parents who live at Memphis, MO; four brothers; and seven sisters, besides other more distant relatives.
"The body will be taken to Memphis, MO., Tuesday morning where funeral services will be held from the Camp Ground church near Downing, MO., Wednesday morning."
Aunt Pauline (wife of George Paris, Cecil's infant son at the time of the murder) claims that there were theories about the killer but nothing was ever proven. It sounded like the implication was that gambling was involved. She says that whenever the elder family members were talking about it they'd all hush up if one of the younger generation came into the room, so she never did learn very much about his parents or the murder. There is an interesting portion of an article that was not fully copied which talks of a Virgil Coovert, motorcycle cop who was paid one dollar by Mr. Paris earlier Saturday evening for a debt. One has to wonder if this was related to the rumored gambling. Mr. Coovert later gave this money to the widow out of sympathy. There's also a mention that the .32 caliber revolver used by Mr. Paris was considered "old-fashioned." Additionally, the course of the bullet indicates that the assailant was taller than Mr. Paris and fired at close range. Mr. Paris was described as a "big well built man, and his companions said he was a good wrestler, and could have been a match for anyone in a fair fight."
The other night we were looking at the offerings of our cable's "On Demand" feature. I thought it would be amusing to see what porn offerings they had, even though I don't really like the x-rated stuff. I just wanted to see what they had, maybe they had one of the classics like "Wifemistress" or "Emmanuele."
I had been coughing so much that my ribs and back hurt, so I was trying to avoid doing anything that would use those muscles.
But when I saw the titles I couldn't help but laugh, especially when I saw "12 inch Attack."
For some reason that title just struck me as particularly funny and I was off in one of those laughing fits where you just can't stop yourself and can hardly come up for breath. I guess it represented everything that was ridiculous about...well the kind of men who care that much about impressing everyone with their penis length.
I thought I'd die before I could stop. I would start to wind down and then I'd think of it again and be off, though it hurt so much I was simultaneously groaning in pain.
I don't think there could be an equivalent for women...Attack of the 12 inch vagina? Maybe Attack of the Quadruple D Cup?
I'm not a follower of Osho but I recently read this quote and what it says about religion, guilt, and social control is in line with my own observations. You have to realize that for most of human history religion has been aligned with government, and as such it was an enforcer of social norms and controls required by each government. You can see the culture wars in America as being a struggle between this idea that religion (specifically Christianity) should control our behavior and the idea that we alone should decide what is right and wrong and that should not be imposed on us by religion. While I don't believe in wallowing in guilt, taking responsibility for one's actions is of course the right thing to do, including making amends whenever necessary. Guilt, however, never helped anyone.
BELOVED OSHO,
I FEEL SO GUILTY WHEN WANTING TO EXPRESS MYSELF AND WHEN I FINALLY TAKE COURAGE TO DO SO, IT FEELS MORE LIKE A NO TO OTHERS THAN A YES TO MYSELF. THEN THE GUILT RETURNS BECAUSE OF THIS. POSTPONEMENT OR DEFIANCE ARE THE ONLY WAYS I KNOW BUT THEY SEEM PART OF A CIRCLE ANYWAY. BELOVED MASTER, IS THERE A WAY TO TRANSFORM GUILT?
My God!
Nobody has ever transformed guilt. It has to be simply dropped.
Why transform it? Do you want to preserve it in some form or other?
Guilt is not something that you are born with, it is not part of your nature. Guilt is created by the society.
For example, every religion creates guilt -- in different ways, but the technique is the same. All the religions live, thrive, on guilty human beings. First make them guilty -- once you have succeeded in making somebody feel guilty, you have almost killed his spirit. Now he will be a soulless slave to you.
As far as I am concerned, my whole work is in how to free you from guilt -- not to transform it.
I was born in a Jaina family. It is a very orthodox religion. You cannot conceive -- small things become guilt. You cannot eat in the night, that is guilt. If you have eaten in the night, you have gone down towards hell; you have taken one step downwards.
I don't see any problem. The religion is very old -- at that time, there was no light, no electricity, and it was understandable to prohibit people from eating in the night -- but why make it guilt? Just a rational explanation is enough, but religions are not interested in rational explanations. They don't miss a single opportunity in which they can make you feel guilty. Guilt is their power over you.
If we can remove all guilt from humanity, all the churches will be empty, all the temples will be empty. There will be nobody praying, nobody carrying Holy Bibles. But anything can be made into guilt. Sometimes it is very hilarious....
Up to my eighteenth year, I had not eaten in the night, and I was praised for it and I used to feel higher and holier than all the Hindus who lived around me -- they are eating in the night, poor fellows. They are all bound to go to hell. I was feeling tremendously happy that I was saved and these people were destroyed. But eating in the night... whenever you eat, somewhere it is night! So what difference does it make whether the night is here or the night is in London? The night is around.
In the Sikh religion, a Sikh is expected to follow five principles and each of those five is simply hilarious. A Sikh must have long hair... in the Punjabi language, these are called five "K's." The first K means kesh, hair; you cannot cut any hair of the body. The second K is katar. Katar means a special kind of sword -- now, what has a sword to do with a religion? -- every Sikh has to carry a sword. The third K is even more strange. I have been trying to find the religiousness of it but I have not been able to yet. It is called kachchha. Kachchha means underwear -- without underwear, you are finished.
My God! As far as I know, God himself has no underwear... because in no religious scripture is it described that God has underwear. But these poor Sikhs are having underwear. I was thinking, what is the matter? Why did underwear enter into it and become a religious principle?
Those were the days when Sikhism was born. India was under Mohammedan rule. And in war, if you use something that falls -- you are running and your dhoti falls away -- then kachchha is needed. Otherwise, katar will not do anything and you will become unnecessarily a laughingstock. But now there is no war and nothing is a problem. You can put the kachchha to rest!
But a Sikh cannot cut his hair. If he cuts it, he feels guilty. You have never felt guilty -- cutting your hair or shaving your beard, you have never felt guilty -- not even a far away, faint idea of guilt. What is there to feel guilty about?
But once the idea is put in your mind, and from the very childhood conditioned continuously, then it becomes difficult.
One Sikh driver used to drive me, he was my chauffeur. One night, when he was snoring, I cut his hair. In the morning he came running, crying, tears... he said, "I resign from the job."
I said, "What has happened?"
He said, "Can't you see? Somebody has cut all my hairs. He has destroyed my religion, my spirituality."
I said, "Just sit down. How, by cutting your hair, can your religion be destroyed?"
He said, "I don't want to listen to anything. It is written in the scriptures, and I don't want to listen to anything against my scriptures. So please, give me my kachchha and I am going."
Because while I was cutting his hair, I thought it would be good to take his kachchha also. So I pulled his kachchha out and he was so deeply asleep....
I said, "Kachchha? Who has taken your kachchha? You never take a bath -- I can say that my chauffeur is within a one mile radius, your kachchha sends such disgusting radiations. If somebody has taken it, be finished with it!"
He said, "No, it is my religion! And first I want to know who the person is."
And he had his sword in his hand. I said, "Calm down. I will bring you a new kachchha."
He said, "What about the hair?"
I said, "False hairs are available."
He said, "Then it is good."
These fools are all over the world, and they feel guilty. So you have to understand the psychology of guilt. Just understanding is enough, and it drops.
You have to understand that people, to make you spiritual slaves, have put ideas in your mind that "these things are wrong." That "if you do these things, God will be angry and throw you into hell." And naturally, nobody wants to go to hell -- except me, because I am immensely interested in hell. I don't want to go to heaven, for the simple reason that in heaven, you will find only dry bones, ugly saints, somebody holding his kachchha. In hell, you will find the best company possible. All great artists are there, all great poets are there. All great philosophers are there, all great mystics are there. In fact, anything that has happened on this earth and is beautiful, you will find in hell, not in heaven.
In heaven, you will find dusty old saints who are now suffering -- why have they made so much effort to come to heaven? And remember one thing that shows the situation: from heaven there is no exit. You can only enter, and finished. From hell, there are both doors -- entrance and exit. If you want to go, you can go. But nobody goes out. All the beautiful women, all the beautiful men -- it is twenty-four hours a celebration.
So I told my chauffeur, "Don't be worried. If you are going into hell, I am coming with you. You can remain my chauffeur there too!"
He said, "But I don't want to go."
But I said, "You don't understand. In heaven, there is no car -- what will you do?"
He said, "That is a real question -- I know only one job. Are you sure there is no car?"
I said, "Never heard... you can look into all your scriptures, in all the religions' scriptures. There is no car."
He said, "My God! Then it is better -- be finished with this kachchha and this kesh, I am coming with you! If you are going to hell, then there must be something in it."
Guilt has to be dropped.
Simple understanding, that's all.
You have been befooled, you have been conditioned.
Just drop it.
The moment you understand that this is something absurd, drop it. Transformation is not needed. And transformation is not possible either, because guilt is not a real thing. It is just an idea enforced in your mind. It is like a person who by mistake has learned that two plus two are five. Now, do you think some transformation is needed? All that is needed is to tell that person: "Two plus two are not five but only four." Just put four chairs before him -- two chairs on this side, two chairs on this side -- bring them together and tell him to count, whether they are five or four. And do you think he will have much difficulty in dropping the idea of five? There is no question. The moment he sees that two plus two is four, the five is finished.
Guilt is exactly like that.
It is the greatest crime against humanity done by your religious people. They cannot be forgiven.
You can see some of the photos from our trip to Malibu here.We also went to the L.A. zoo. I used a disposable to take the zoo photos and I will post those as soon as they are developed. Of course I always get a digital copy to upload. It was quite hot at the zoo and I was grateful I chose to get an electric wheelchair for the day. Everything was quite spread out and I wouldn't have been able to walk very far. (Normally I could walk a couple of miles but with my foot injury I had to stop walking and I am out of condition to do such things. I'll have to build back up to that gradually.) As it was, just getting to the rental station was a trial, from the parking lot and up a lot of steps. We didn't get to see everything but I estimate we saw about 2/3 of the zoo. I of course prioritized the primates given my Anthropology background. It was exciting to see the gorillas (while they are still in existence!). We saw a lion but like a lot of the animals he was kicking back in the shade and couldn't be bothered to come over and see us curious humans. Yawn. The giraffes were so amazing. You know they are tall but that doesn't quite prepare you for the impact when you see them live and up close. I probably enjoyed the petting zoo the most, though it was for children, because it's the only place you can actually touch animals. I took lots of pictures there. We got back late and I'm very tired today. Both Dave and I are sick with a respiratory infection. I'd just gotten over one when he finally succumbed to one being pa ssed around at work, just before we left on our trip. Then I caught it from him, apparently. He went right back to work today. I thought he should stay home and rest but he says there's no back up for his Monday tasks. Isn't that an oversight on the part of his boss? Anyway, I hope the Malibu pictures convey something of what my experience was like. I think the campground has changed a lot, though, become more overgrown with foliage over the years. The bathrooms look kind of run down and in general it has an unkempt look, though still in a beautiful setting. But funds for park rangers and upkeep have suffered under budget cuts and it may be when they are better funded again things will improve. Dave was amazed that there were camp grounds you could just drive in and park at, with bath rooms and such. I pointed out that there are different levels and types of camping, from the backpacking into the unstructured wilderness type to the RV parks and state camp grounds like Leo Carrillo. 
George Carlin died yesterday of heart failure at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. George had a history of heart disease. In his own words:
Q. Somewhere in there I was reminded of the bit on your Web site where you talk about your second heart attack at Dodger Stadium. And somewhere in there you say, "The Mets beat the Dodgers. Fuck the Dodgers." I was thinking, "That's a New Yorker."
Carlin: Yeah, they tore a hole out of this city when they left. I was a young Dodger fan at that time. I was in my late teens, approaching 20. I had spent all of my young life adoring them for their non-corporate image and their warm, human, fallible, blue collar, beer-drinking image, whereas the Yankees were U.S. Steel corporate and the account executives and Wall Street guys were there. Now that has switched. Now the Mets, who were my National League choice, have that kind of suburban following, and the Yankees have the pot-smoking Third-World people in the stands. It's a little generalization on both sides, but for the most part, there's some truth in it. They've traded places.
Q. Speaking of the heart attack, what do you learn from three heart attacks?
Carlin: You learn a lot about heart disease, or rather coronary artery disease. I never had any profound wake-up call, and it didn't scare me. The thing about a heart attack is that once the discomfort in your chest is over, once they've aborted the heart attack, and you live through it, there's no more discomfort. You feel fine. You're the same as before the heart attack. You don't feel weak. You don't feel hurt. You're not sore anywhere. You just lie there and say, "OK, I'll eat better and I'll exercise. When can I go home?"
It wasn't such a crippling heart attack that I had a bad rehab; I just had to take it easy. They did do an angioplasty, but I've had six angioplasties. I'm usually at work the next weekend. I'm definitely out of the hospital the next day. It's hard to take it all very seriously. It's plumbing. It's really mechanical. I know there's a disease process at work, but you get in and clean it. Everything I've ever had could be fixed: a hernia , a bad knee, they scrape that shit out of your arteries. I never had an organic disease/function where things are changing and getting weirder. I've always just had mechanical plumbing shit and carpentry.
I'm a very positive person. I'm optimistic about my own life and the people who are close to me, yet I'm not that way about the world. That optimism takes me through the illnesses when I had them. That's really the only stuff I had, that and allergies. That stuff about my immune system from swimming in the Hudson -- it strengthened my immune system. It's tempered in raw shit. I'm lucky, I've got a great genetic package.
http://www.billhicks.co.uk/faithinaction/carlin.html
A fire broke out this afternoon in Watsonville, the south end of Santa Cruz County, at 2:15 p.m. Witnesses on Hwy 1 reported a motorist starting multiple fires. This hasn't been confirmed but there are at least four confirmed sources for the spot fires that have now spread to five hundred acres between the airport and Seascape golf course. Hwy 1 S is closed from Freedom Blvd on, Hwy 1 N is closed at Airport. Traffic has backed up for miles and emergency vehicles are making their way through with great difficulty. Some structures are burning and homes have been evacuated with a reverse 911 call. I heard phone interviews with residents who could see their homes were not burning or surrounded by fire who were determined to jump the fence at the airport to get past the police and rescue pets.
Smoke is billowing in a huge mushroom like cloud because there is no wind blowing it away. The humidity is only eleven per cent right now and it's blistering hot--in the nineties. Let's hope they get containment before the wind can kick up. I hope if this was deliberately set they catch whoever is responsible.
I am just amazed at the THIRD fire in Santa Cruz County within a month.
Of course the floods are still in progress in the Midwest, with more levees failing.
Where are the locusts? They can't be far behind.
My husband wanted to understand how Tim Russert could die of a heart attack so suddenly when he was on medication and exercising regularly, dieting to lose weight, and so on. Why, he wondered, does someone die when they are managing their risks and doing well? Russert passed a treadmill test in April and had just used a treadmill for exercise that morning with no apparent problems. His heart disease was still asymptomatic--no chest pain, no trouble getting out of breath with exertion or fatigue, and it was being well-managed. (Note that you can be up to 75% blocked by plaque in one or more arteries and still pass a treadmill test. I passed one in 1999, just two years before my quadruple bypass.) One of the features of heart disease is, indeed, the suddenness with which it takes its victims. With other diseases there are usually the warning symptoms and then a diagnosis and a warning that death may occur within a certain time frame if treatment is not an option. The patient's condition may visibly worsen and then friends and family gather to say goodbye. There are a few known causes of very sudden death aside from accidents, and these are usually cardiovascular. Stroke, aneurysm, AVM, pulmonary embolism--these too will strike suddenly and sometimes without prior warning. One may get a warning that one is vulnerable to stroke or heart attack, or has an AVM, but the timing of the final event is unknown. Walking around with this knowledge is a lot like living under the fabled sword of Damascus.Usually when you hear someone has died of a "massive heart attack" what they are really talking about is sudden cardiac arrest. Newsweek has an article explaining how heart disease leads to heart attacks or sudden cardiac arrest. I think it is important to remember that risk factors, such as having plaque in your coronary arteries, are like lottery tickets. One can "win" with only one ticket, but the more tickets you have the greater your chances of "winning." In the case of having lots of risk factors, or tickets, for sudden cardiac arrest, winning can mean a quick death unless a defibrillator is immediately available and implemented. But, remember, it only takes one ticket to win, and any plaque in the coronary arteries creates the danger of a rupture and subsequent blood clot. Dick Cheney has so many lottery tickets for a cardiac event based on his previous heart history that he was implanted with a defibrillator internally that is supposed to kick in and restart his heart if it should falter. Given that stress is a huge risk factor and that being a Vice President is stressful, one can imagine that an implanted defibrillator is a must-have accessory for a politician with heart disease. No matter how long a person has heart disease prior to their death, it still comes as a shock. I remember getting the call that my mother had died and not quite believing that it had finally come. She'd had two coronary artery bypass surgeries and had lived with heart disease for twelve years and still I was not prepared for that call. It's all the more shocking if your loved one has not been diagnosed--many people do not survive their very first heart attack--or has been living very successfully and managing all their risk factors to the best of their ability. Likewise I was shocked by the sudden death of my father, which resembled Tim Russert's death. My dad didn't even know he had heart disease on the day he died while working in his garden. He had passed a physical just six months earlier. Living with heart disease means that you have to be sure to let the people in your life know every day that they are loved. You may not get a chance for the dramatic death bed scene where you get to say your farewells. Isn't that something we all should do, regardless of risk factors? After all, accidents also take people suddenly and without prior warning. My heart goes out to Tim Russert's family, including his second family at NBC.
God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing. --Hafez (aka Hafiz) of Persia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez
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