THE PANORAMIC VIEW

LUXLAPIS  NEWSLETTER

FULL MOON 

Sunday, May 03, 2015

THE PANORAMIC VIEW

In an article published in 1994, Prof. Robert Thurman writes:

 “If you’re a twentieth-century teacher, who can say what the twenty-first century will want? We would think somebody would have to be enlightened to be able to do that, and we don’t really have a concept of such a kind of enlightenment. But Tibetan Buddhists do. They know that enlightened knowledge does not just include knowledge of spiritual matters, but it also includes an awareness of how humanity develops and evolves.” [Robert Thurman, Treasure Teachings, An Interview with Robert Thurman, Parabola, Winter 1994, pp.  7-16. ]

His Holiness the Dalai Lama writes:

 

“If we want a beautiful garden, we must first have a blueprint in the imagination, a vision. Then that idea can be implemented and the external garden be materialized. “  [His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Little book of Wisdom, Rider, London, 1997. ]

This is a very important point. Do we have a vision of what we would like the beautiful garden of the future to be? How many people, today have:  “ . .an awareness of how humanity develops and evolves.” How many people care?  Yes, there are glimpses here and there. But certainly not in the realms of business and politics, where profit in the former and ideology in the latter are all that matters. 

 
Recently while reading the writings of Sir Arnold Toynbee, I was talking to a friend about the panoramic Vision always being necessary in taking an overview of the patterns of one’s life, as well as the pattern “ . . of how humanity develops and evolves.” In its entry on Toynbee, Wikipedia notes:
 

“Toynbee's work lost favor among both the general public and scholars by the 1960s, due to the religious and spiritual outlook that permeates the largest part of his work. His work has been seldom read or cited in recent decades.”  WIKI.

 
It seems, that having a “ . . . religious and spiritual outlook . . . “  is to be avoided at all costs? Peter Kingsley adds this observation:

“Even in these modern times, what half-heartedly is described as mystical perception is always pushed to the periphery. When it’s not denied it’s held at arm’s length — out there at the margins of society. But what we haven’t been told is that a spiritual tradition lies at the very roots of western civilization.” [Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom, The Golden Sufi Centre, 1999, pp. 6-7}

In the light of all the problems besetting the world today, let us examine some of the ideas of Toynbee:  He writes:

 

“In a world that has been unified in both space and time, a study of human affairs must be comprehensive if it is to be effective. It must include, not only the whole of the living generation, but also the whole of the living generation’s past. In order to save mankind we have to learn to live together in concord in spite of traditional differences of religion, civilization, nationality, class and race. In order to live together successfully, we have to know each other, and knowing each other includes knowing each other’s past, since human life, like the rest of the phenomenal Universe, can be observed by human minds only as it presents itself to them on the move through time.”  [Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Thames and Hudson, London, 1972, -p. 47. ]

 
Toynbee not only brings religious and spiritual aspects into his work, but also, introduces the idea of LOVE:

 

 “We shall, however, have to do more than just understand each other's cultural heritages, and more even than appreciate them. We shall have to value them and love them as being parts of Mankind's common treasure and therefore being ours too, as truly as the heirlooms that we ourselves shall be contributing to the common stock. Without the fire of love, the dangerous fissures in Mankind's social solidarity cannot be annealed. Danger, even when it is as extreme as ours is today, is never a sufficient stimulus in itself to make men do what is necessary for their salvation. It is a poor stimulus because it is a negative one. A cold-blooded calculation of expediency will not inspire us with the spiritual power to save ourselves. This power can come only from the disinterested pursuit of a positive aim that will outrange the negative one of trying to avoid self-destruction; and this positive aim can be given to men by nothing but love.  [Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Thames and Hudson, London, 1972, -p. 47. ]

 

CULTIVATING HUMAN-HEARTEDNESS

 
Thomas Alexander, has gifted us with some very beautiful and important advice in how to deal with the incivility in our society:

 

 “. . .  the central message of Confucianism, something important that it has to say to pragmatism -  namely, the salvation of society comes about by developing humanity in our hearts. This is not about making life more attractive. It is not even about making government "rule by example" rather than by compulsion, though that is a central teaching of the Master. It is about the power of art to shape the way we perceive and feel about other human beings and ourselves so that we are "aesthetically attuned" to them and they to us. This is the great question that Confucianism poses to pragmatism: the real art is the art of humanity, and this is the art of feeling humanity with a humanized heart.”

 

“The Way, for Confucius, was to be found in cultivating ren, often translated as "benevolence."  The ideogram in Chinese, which combines the pictogram of "man" with that of "two," suggests "person- to-personness." I will render it as "human-heartedness." In Confucius' day, it also connoted inward nobility of character: behaving like a true man, with great-heartedness. This is a fundamental concern for the "aesthetics of social existence" - a concern that human life and its dignity, value, and web of meaningful inter- relationships is foremost in our hearts, and that our hearts are emotionally "attuned" to respond to this instinctively. Ren, human-heartedness, is the raison-d'être for the arts - they restore ren in us, but ren must be there.”    

 

“Culture is the musical language that allows us to play together. This is why we need ceremony, rituals, manners: li. Without them we would not know how to communicate our care, love, respect, devotion, honor, gratitude. But it is not just any music; the music must express this - ren - not pettiness, greed, small-mindedness. The heart must be there first. "Aesthetics" should deal with beautiful behavior, but the beauty comes from human-heartedness. Life was indeed art for "Master Kong," but art was concerned with an aesthetics of living together. The arts should be used in education to foster our moral feelings, enhance our power of true sympathy, and give us ideals of dignified, caring lives. That was how you saved civilization.
 

Thomas Alexander, The Music in the Heart, the Way of Water, and the Light of a Thousand Suns: A Response to Richard Shusterman, Crispin Sartwell, and Scott Stroud, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring, 2009), pp. 45-46.

“The task is not finished. South Africa is not yet a home for all her sons and daughters. Such a home we wish to ensure. From the beginning our history has been one of ascending unities, the breaking of tribal, racial and creedal barriers. The past cannot hope to have a life sustained by itself, wrenched from the whole. There remains before us the building of a new land, a home for men who are black, white, brown, from the ruins of the old narrow groups, a synthesis of the rich cultural strains which we have inherited. There remains to be achieved our integration with the rest of the continent. Somewhere ahead there beckons a civilisation, a culture, which will take its place in the parade of God’s history beside other great human syntheses. Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, European. It will not necessarily be all black; but it will be African.”

 
Albert Luthuli

 

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FEEDBACK
 

“Such clear and inspiring thoughts. To cultivate human-heartedness. Yes, this is what makes life beautiful and bearable. This is the energy that transforms. Thank you for sharing these beautifully worded ideas with me, Samten. It is a clear, crisp autumn morning and the sky is blue. I feel their resonance in the world about me. Now I will put on my boots and take the dogs for a walk in the forest. Much love to you, fellow traveler. Alexandra Dodd

CLICK HERE   THE 22 ARCANA AT BROTHERHOOD OF LIGHT;  FOR DOING YOUR OWN TAROT READING -  INSTANT & FOOD FOR THOUGHT [MY WEBSITE]

“It occurred to me that the images in Tarot function much the way dreams do in psychoanalysis, by providing a symbolic and interpretable language for the elusive shape of our lives. We want our daily experiences, so disappointingly ordinary and frequently chaotic, to be magnified, as Sebald says they are in dreams. We want them to have a dramatic narrative, a coherent shape, a palpable vividness, which the Tarot can provide.”

Christopher Benfey, Tarot Dreams

Richard Stromer, Hermes as God of Liminality and the Guide of Souls. HERE

THE SYMBOLISM OF WATER:

“Liquid is the element of most birthing, but liquid in what form? Myth presents images of birth from the froth of Uranus’ testicles; birth from the swallowed semen of the masturbating Atum-Ra; birth from the sweat of Ymir’s armpits; birth from the mating of Ymir’s feet; birth from the urine of Izanami; birth from the blood of Medusa; birth from tears as well as vomit; birth of the world from the sucked toe of Vishnu; birth from the cosmic egg; birth from Purusha’s mouth, arms, and thighs; birth from the dew of the East Wind. I suspect there must have been sweat of some sort that birthed, too, Mwindo. Like other divine heroes, he emerged from the finger of his mother, the hand or finger thought to contain procreative power similar to that of a womb.”

 Mary Aswell Doll, The More of Myth. A Pedagogy of Diversion, [Savannah College of Art and Design], Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2011, p.7

Mike Crowley, When Gods Drank Urine. A Tibetan myth may help solve the riddle of soma, sacred drug of ancient India; HERE

MYTH

  Reading Joseph Campbell on Oriental Mythologies, I was struck by the fact that some of the ideas alive and well in the present day, can be traced back from between  1,700 to 4,000 years. For example: the Great Dualist struggle between Light and Darkness, today regurgitated as The Evil Empire, or Satan in the Whitehouse. The efforts to attain a perfect civilization often include the destruction, or vilification of the old.  The ISIL destruction in Iraq, for example, or throwing shit onto a statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, as seen recently.
  Hence, we continue to suggest that a deeper exploration into the roots of our respective cultures, may help to deconstruct some of the cruder aspects of literal interpretations of ancient archetypes. In Greek Mythology we see the struggle between the Titans and the Gods is almost identical to the Battle between the Devas and the Asuras in Aryan/Hindu Mythology. I have been exploring these similarities in a project, which you can explore here:  THE TITAN PROJECT

THE PLUTONIC UNDERWORLD

“The lower depths have been the object of superstition and of legend for as long as there have been men and women to wonder. The Minotaur, half man and half bull, lived in a labyrinth buried beneath the palace at Knossos in Crete. A dog with three heads, Cerberus, guarded the gates of the underworld in classical myth, The Egyptian god of the underworld, Anubis, was a man with the head of a jackal. The journey underground prompted strange transformations. Anubis was also known as ‘the lord of the sacred land’, with the world beneath the ground creating a spiritual as much as a material presence.  The great writers of antiquity – Plato and Homer, Pliny and Herodotus – have described the underground worlds as places of dream and hallucination. Most of the great religions have created temples and shrines beneath the surface of the earth. Terror lingers in caverns and caves, where there may be subterranean rivers and fires. Sixteen thousand years ago the wandering people of Europe lived in or besides the entrance to caves; but they painted frescoes in the deeper and darker spaces of the caverns. The further downward you travel, the closer you come to the power.” [Peter Ackroyd, London Under London, Vintage, p.3. ]

 

Here are more Projects, Blogs and Websites to explore:

BROCADEO
NATURE AND ECOLOGY
THE LUXLAPIS FACEBOOK RESEARCH PROJECT
THE LIGHT STONE
ARCANAROOM 
SAMTEN ON PINTEREST
LUXLAPIS MAIN  
THE BEARDED LILY

  "I miss that degree of genuine, unfabricated feeling...In a sense, the most dangerous thing in the world is apathy. Unlike violence, warfare, and disease, which can be avoided, people cannot defend against apathy once it takes hold. I urge you to feel a love that is courageous -not like a heavy burden, but a joyous acknowledgement of interdependence."

 H.H. the Karmapa

Love and Peace,  

Samten de Wet.

PS.  The above material consists of seed ideas, plucked at random, or almost from larger bodies of work.  The line of thought can be followed, albeit without  extensive amplification.  EMAIL ME HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

THE FORCES OF ILLUSION

 

And the god, perceiving that his flowery stroke had failed, said to himself: "He does not notice even the arrow that set the sun aflame! Can he be destitute of sense? He is worthy neither of my flowery shaft, nor of my daughters: let me send against him my army.”

 

   And immediately putting off his infatuating aspect as the Lord Desire, that great god became the Lord Death, and around him an army of demonic forms crystallized, wearing frightening. shapes and bearing in their hands bows and arrows, darts, clubs, swords, trees, and even blazing mountains; having the visages of boars, fish, horses, camels, asses, tigers, bears, lions and elephants; one-eyed, multi4aced, three-headed, pot-bellied, and with speckled bellies; equipped with claws, equipped with tusks, some bearing headless bodies in their hands, many with half-mutilated faces, monstrous mouths, knobby knees, and the reek of goats; copper red, some clothed in leather, others wearing nothing at all, with fiery or smoke-colored hair, many with long, pendulous ears, hav­ing half their faces white, others having half their bodies green; red and smoke-colored, yellow and black; with arms longer than the reach of serpents, their girdles jingling with bells: some as tall as palms, bearing spears, some of a child's size with projecting teeth; some with the bodies of birds and faces of rams, or men's bodies and the faces of cats; with disheveled hair, with topknots, or half bald; with frowning or triumphant faces, wasting one's strength or fascinating one's mind. Some sported in the sky, others went along the tops of trees; many danced upon each other, more leaped about wildly on the ground. One, dancing, shook a trident; another crashed his club; one like a bull bounded for joy; another blazed out flames from every hair. And then there were some who stood around to frighten him with many lolling tongues, many mouths, savage, sharply pointed teeth, upright ears, like spikes, and eyes like the disk of the sun. Others, leaping into the sky, flung rocks, trees, and axes, blazing straw as voluminous as moun­tain peaks, showers of embers, serpents of fire, showers of stones. [20] And all the time, a naked woman bearing in her hand a skull, flittered about, unsettled, staying not in any spot, like the mind of a distracted student over sacred texts.

 

   But lo! amidst all these terrors, sights, sounds, and odors, the mind of the Blessed One was no more shaken than the wits of Garuda, the golden-feathered sun-bird, among crows. And a voice cried from the sky: "O Mara, take not upon thyself this vain fatigue! Put aside thy malice and go in peace? For though fire may one day give up its heat, water its fluidity, earth solidity; never will this Great Being, who acquired the merit that brought him to this tree through many lifetimes in unnumbered eons, abandon his resolution."

 

   And the god, Mara, discomfited, together with his army, dis­appeared. Heaven, luminous with the light of the full moon, then shone like the smile of a maid, showering flowers, the petals of flowers, bouquets of flowers, freshly wet with dew, on the Blessed One; who, that night, during the remainder of the night, in the first watch of that wonderful night, acquired the knowledge of his previous existence, in the second watch acquired the divine eye, in the last watch fathomed the law of Dependent Origination, and at sunrise attained omniscience.

Asvaghosha, The Buddhacarita, Translated by E. B. Cowell, F. Max Müller and J. Takakusu, Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1894, pp. 137 -58 [Vol. XLIX of The Sacred Books of the East

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, Penguin Books, pp. 19-20. Online HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Luxlapis?

What are the Aims and Objectives of The Luxlapis Project? Why Luxlapis?

Two words: Lux = Light – Lapis = Stone. Thus one could say a Stone of Light is the Diamond -  which cuts through everything. Plus the Diamond Path, is equivalent to Tibetan Buddhism,  known also as Vajrayana – again this can be called The Vehicle [or Path] of The Diamond Sceptre. So Luxlapis contains some of these meanings. 

The Stone: Lapis – is an important symbol in Alchemy – The Philosopher's Stone – so partly, Luxlapis is a project to weave systems of philosophy, Wisdom Lineages, spirituality, culture  &c. It is not an all-encompassing activity -  but has specific co-ordinates which are obvious to those who examine all the material published to date. Using the byline:

The Interface between CULTURE & SPIRITUALITY

 expresses the modus operandi,  and this piece by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is exactly the context in which the word 'spirituality' is used for all the LUXLAPIS activities:

"Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit – such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony -  which brings happiness to both self and others."

"The unifying characteristic of the qualities I have described as "spiritual" may be said to be some level of concern for others' well-being. In Tibetan, we speak of shen pen kyi sem meaning "the thought to be of help to others." And when we think about them, we see that each of the qualities noted is defined by an implicit concern for other's well-being. Moreover, the one who is compassionate, loving, patient, tolerant, forgiving, and so on to some extent recognizes the potential impact of their actions on others and orders their conduct accordingly. Thus spiritual practice according to this description involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for other's well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so. To speak of spiritual practice in any terms other than these is meaningless."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium, Riverhead Books, New York, 1999, pp. 22-23.

An interface is " . . a point where two things meet and interact." Make your own conclusions.

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We are not human beings having a spiritual experience;

we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Image: Detail from a face of an octahedral uncut (rough) diamond. From Wikipedia Commons.

 

The Precious Human Body

    In Buddhism, there is an analogy of how difficult it is to attain a Human Birth. Or imagine that a small ring is floating on the ocean. On the bottom of the ocean there lives a special turtle that surfaces briefly only once every hundred years. The probability of its head surfacing within the ring is pretty slim, but far greater than the chance of obtaining a precious human body.

The Four Thoughts That Turn The Mind From Samsara by Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche

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Let us say that a turtle lives in an ocean for a hundred times a hundred years.  Floating upon that ocean is a single yoke with a hole in it, blown by the wind so that it did not stay in one place for even a moment.  It is very unlikely that the turtle's throat will be thrust into it.  But obtaining a human body from within the lower realms of samsara is taught to be far more difficult.  The Spiritual Letter says:

               It is harder to gain a human birth and the Dharma,

               From the state of having been an animal,

               Than for a turtle to put its head into a yoke

               While both of them are lost in the vastness of the ocean.

               Therefore with these faculties of human beings

               By practicing holy Dharma let us reach its fruition.

The Bodhicharyavatara says: 4.20

               This is the reason why the Bhagavan has taught

               That attaining human birth is much more difficult

               Than for a turtle to put its head into a yoke,

               Tossed within the vastness of a limitless ocean.

As for the scripture they are speaking about, the Bunch of Flowers says:

     It is difficult for the Buddha Bhagavats to enter into the world.  But very much more difficult than that is attaining human birth.  Let the reason for this be taught in an example.  O Shariputra, let the great difficulty of the first be like an ocean.  Within it let there be a yoke, having a single hole.  Let there also be a decrepit turtle.  In that great ocean the wind blows from above and blows from below, and as it blows these things about, that decrepit turtle rises out of the ocean once in a hundred times a hundred years.  The difficulty of becoming human again  after having fallen back is not equal to that of the throat of that decrepit turtle that rises once in a  hundred times a hundred years quickly entering into the hole of that quickly moving yoke.  For those who fall away like that, becoming human again is very much more difficult.

The commentary on  THE GREAT PERFECTION: THE NATURE OF MIND, THE EASER OF WEARINESS called the Great Chariot

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It is taught that a human birth is precious in relation to time, number, and example. “Time” refers to the fact that a human body is very rare. Looking at history and biographies, one learns that a human lifespan is very short. “Number” refers to the number of those few living beings who have acquired a human body in comparison to the inconceivable number of sentient beings who are not able to receive the teachings and practice them. “Example is best illustrated in “The Bodhicharyavatara” by Shantideva, in which he states: “For these reasons, the Buddha has said that for a turtle to insert its neck into a yoke adrift upon the vast ocean, it is just as extremely hard to attain the human state.” In explanation: A blind turtle dwelling on the ocean’s ground has no ambitions; there is a wooden yoke with a hole which tosses about on the great ocean’s surface. The Buddha taught that it is just as difficult to attain a human birth as it is for the turtle to stick its neck through the hole of that yoke when it happens to rise to the surface of the ocean every one hundred years – in fact, it is less likely to attain a precious human body.

His Eminence Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche the Third, Karma Lodrö Chökyi Senge. The Supplication - Instructions on “Calling the Lama from Afar  by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye the Great

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An example is mentioned in Engaging in the Conduct of Bodhisattvas:

For these very reasons, the Buddha has said

That hard as it is for a turtle to insert its neck

Into a yoke adrift upon the vast ocean,

It is extremely hard to attain the human state.

This was explained by the Buddha in the sutras:

  Suppose that this whole earth were an ocean and a person threw in a yoke that had only one hole. The yoke would float back and forth in all the four directions. Underneath that ocean, there is a blind tortoise who lives for many thousands of years but who comes up above the surface once every hundred years. It would be very difficult for the tortoise’s head to meet with the yoke’s hole; still, it is possible. To be born in a precious human life is much more difficult.
The Jewel Ornament of Liberation

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See also: SHANTIDEVA AND HERE:

Social Transformation

Monday, 03 October 2011

I was watching Roseanne Barr on the Kaiser Report on RT News, she mentioned that the Occupy Wall Street protest reminded her of the 60’s, and by a co-incidence, the same night I saw Ang Lee’s recent film Taking Woodstock. The event is beautifully reconstructed, through the lens of a Jewish family who lived in the area, and in its own way, celebrates the peaceful and gentle qualities of the Festival.  Other statements that Roseanne Barr made, almost exactly parallel the astrological analysis of Richard Tarnas, relating to the configurations of Saturn, Pluto & Uranus, in particular.  Personally, I find an extraordinary precision and clarity in this paradigm –  for example, on the 60’s period, Tarnas writes:

“ . . the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s and early 1970s, coincided with that volcanic eruption of revolutionary and emancipatory impulses,  accelerated historical change, social and political turmoil, and heightened creativity and innovation in all spheres of human activity that has shaped the global zeitgeist ever since.”

And on the present alignments, he writes:

“Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T-square configuration will present the human community with major challenges on many fronts. The Uranus-Pluto square that will continue through 2020 could well represent something like a combination of the 1930s and the 1960s in a twenty-first-century context, a sustained period of enormous historical change requiring humanity to radically expand the scope of its vision and draw upon new resources and capacities in ways that could ultimately be deeply liberating. Whatever form this coming era will take, I believe that the great global transformations and emancipatory movements that have coincided with the long sequence of axial alignments of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto surveyed in this book, as well as the deep human suffering and moral evolution that took place during the Saturn-Pluto, Saturn-Neptune, and other such challenging alignments, have prepared the world to enter this critical threshold with a collective awareness that could make a significant difference in its outcome. . . . “

This all makes sense to me. But how do we put this information into practical action patterns.  This involves a deeper exploration of the astro-mythological material, excavating imaginal ideas for inspiration creative social action.  I am convinced of this,  but setting this process into motion, needs human interaction -  always difficult to achieve  when individual and group ego/self structures [the Saturnine]  dominate. 

We have ourselves to blame if we fail to act on the Uranian [change] energies that are  available, in embryo, so to speak.  A recent query to the I Ching produced this:
"After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force. The upper trigram K’un is characterized by devotion; thus the movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time; therefore no harm results. Societies of people sharing the same views are formed. But since these groups come together in full public knowledge and are in harmony with the time, all selfish separatist tendencies are excluded, and no mistake is made."
The I Ching - 24 Fu / Return (The Turning Point)

I was delighted, as this Hexagram suits the situation perfectly. The general consensus is that in many organizations at the moment, the shit is hitting the metaphorical fan. I think this is also because we need to completely refresh our paradigms.  All  indications are that this is a period of great organic change, for us as individuals, and as organizations.

Samten         

The White Hat

Many have heard of the famous black hat of the Karmapa and the red hat of the Shamarpa, maybe the lotus hat of Padmasambhava and the yellow hat of the Gelugpa Tradition. What about a white hat that is identical to the black hat of Gyalwa Karmapa? See: THE WHITE HAT OF THE KARMA KAGYU.

 

The Shattered Heart Bursting with Seed . . .

  Federico Garcia Lorca, a great Poet and Visionary was murdered by the Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.  This beautiful Homage by another great Poet, Pablo Neruda -  brought to mind the refrigerated trucks filled with corpses headed for Saudi Arabia, filled with corpses of people murdered by their own Government in Bahrain, because they want a piece of the pie. Just a little piece. Mubarak is gone. But there are still too many Mubaraks – and as Wikileaks is proving, they have devastating power, wielded through Plutocracy.   

Pablo Neruda:

“There are two Federicos: the real and the legendary. And the two are one. There are three Federicos – the poet, the man who lived, and the man who died. And the three are a single being. There are a hundred Federicos, each of them singing. There are Federicos for the entire world. His poetry, his life, and his death have spread across the earth. His song and his blood are multiplied in every human being. His brief life is not ended. His shattered heart was bursting with seed: those who murdered him could not have known that they were sowing the seed, that it would send forth roots, that it would sing and blossom everywhere, in every language, ever more resonant, ever more vivid.”  

Pablo Neruda, Passions and Impressions, p. 96, in : Noel Cobb, Archetypal Imagination. Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art, Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, New York, 1992, Chapter 3, Dionysos and Duende, p.126.

And to continue the theme of Change, which is central to the next few years:

“The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it. The static, the enemy of change, is the enemy of life, and therefore our implacable enemy.”

John Wyndham,. The Chrysalids, 1955.

“There are two great powers,” the man said, “and they’ve been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn from one side by the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”

Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife, Scholastic, London, 1997.

 “Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world . . . Substance alone is eternal and unchangeable . . . It reveals itself to us in an infinite variety of forms, but ... its essential attributes, matter and energy, are constant.

E Haeckel, The wonders of life, tr. J McCabe, London, Watts, 1904, p. 100.

Shame on those, who continue to cling to the Old.

Peace, Samten