Quotes from Kahlil Gibran

• When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
  
  
• Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
  
  
• Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

A quote from Zen master Shunryu Suzuki

The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for existence. This is the true teaching for all of us. Wherever we go this teaching is true. Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. We should find perfection in imperfection. We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering. This is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad. They are two sides of one coin. So to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency.

A quote from C. G. Jung

The man who would learn the human mind will gain almost nothing from experimental psychology. Far better for him to put away his academic gown, to say good-bye to the study and wander with the human heart through the world. There, in the horrors of the prison, the asylum, and the hospital, in the drinking shops, brothels and gambling halls, in the salons of the elegant, in the exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, religious revivals, the sectarian extasies, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body he would reap richer store of knowledge than text-books a foot thick give him. Then he would doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul.

Women Are Heroes...

I came across this political-art project through Rebecca Walker’s Twitter page…


The project is called... Women Are Heroes...

Have you seen this?
It's amazing...
It takes my breath away...
It makes me cry...

About Women Are Heroes:

The work is the creation of an anonymous French photo- grapher who goes by the initials JR.

Back in 2004, he started taking pictures with a camera he found in the subway.
In 2008, he started documenting the stories of women through his photographs…
And he converted these pictures into huge posters…

And trans- formed open spaces into outdoor photo galleries using decaying walls…


The sides of buses...







The exterior facades of homes…







Trains…










Tin roof tops.









In 2008, he photographed women in the most violent neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The women in these photos lost family members to clashes between local police and drug traffickers.
According to his website, JR explains that by photographing these women he intends to…
“underline their pivotal role and to highlight their dignity by shooting them in their daily lives and posting them on the walls of their country.”


He has since taken photo- graphs of women in Kenya, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia…


Countries where “the violence suffered by women.. is the extreme expression of discriminations.”
Through his photographs of these women he conveys…
“their force, their courage and their noble struggle: first to live, then to exist.”

As I look at these photographs, I see the stories...
I see the stories that these women are otherwise made to believe should not be spoken.
I see strength...
Courage...
Vitality.
I see how resilient qualities manifest out of the void caused by their anguish.
I can read in the facial features and expressions of these women...
Stories that require something more visceral and more profound than words.
The public display of their images demand witnessing...
Witnessing of their stories...
Witnessing of their sacrifice...
Witnessing of their womanhood...
Witnessing of their heroism.

When you get a chance, please watch the following video clip:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4lv1b_trailer-women-are-heroes_creation

Near Enemies of Awakening...

The below passage is a transcription of an interview with Jack Kornfield from 1994. Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, India, and Burma. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and is considered to be one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West.

True awakening is discovering a greater capacity to love, for compassion, for balance....

The near enemy to love is attachment. You can probably sense the difference in your life when you love someone and want them to be the way they are, and it turns into attachment. There’s a grasping, “they’re different, they’re separate,” and you need to possess them.

The near enemy to compassion is pity. “Oh, that poor person is suffering,” as if we ourselves didn’t, whereas true compassion is the shared heart of our joys and our sorrows.

And the near enemy to balance or spiritual equanimity is indifference. It masquerades as spirituality. “It doesn’t matter, easy come easy go, this marriage doesn’t work out, I’ll try another. These children… I can have more children.” And so it is a not caring that is fear.

The awakened spiritual potential is an opening of the heart and the mind in the midst of all things. It’s not a fear, but rather a discovery of this great heart of the Buddha that we each contain; this great human capacity for presence and freedom of spirit, in the midst of any circumstance. And that’s why we revere the greatest of sages and teachers. Not because they left the world, but because they sat in the midst of it, lived in the midst with such great love and freedom.