tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64290255407447442202012-02-15T12:28:35.643+05:30".....We should be careful of each other, we should be kind, while there is still time." Philip LarkinAshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.comBlogger7921100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-5077487507851849272012-02-15T08:43:00.000+05:302012-02-15T08:50:46.290+05:30

The time of the rain tree is not the time of the almond tree. While the rain trees are filling up their bare branches with a million fresh green leaves, their canopies thicker by the day, the almond trees are slowly turning golden-red and shedding their leaves, on the morning-walk streets. (You must someday speak to the road-sweepers, how intimately they must know each tree.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-56327925219753089482012-02-15T07:57:00.001+05:302012-02-15T12:28:35.653+05:30

"A pantheistic force animating the world; a schizophrenic deity both plebeian and patrician; a guide who leads us only to ourselves: Eros, clearly, is no simple god. He is, Socrates contends, no god at all. Draw­ing together the strands of these various reflections, Socrates main­tains that Eros is, rather, a 'great spirit' who is 'midway between what is divine and what is human,' his ambiguous

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-16329268892235784082012-02-14T08:34:00.000+05:302012-02-14T08:39:08.512+05:30

Many Scientists Convert to Islam Nomi Stone Conversations with a Muslim friend 1 So, if you don’t believe in full it means you don’t believe. Words tumble onto the rock. A book happens. Okay then tell me about heaven’s beautifulfood and women. Who are these women? My friend says, “This life is like a twenty-minute train ride.” He says, “I live inside my faith more fully every day.” I am

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-37731058527447433602012-02-12T21:27:00.000+05:302012-02-12T21:27:24.698+05:30

"From Remigiusz Sowa best Documentary Transmitter Award winner at the Crystal Palace International Film Festival; a truly remarkable story of Father Lazarus El Anthony, university lecturer, Marxist who abandoned his life in Australia and went in search of God and freedom. His pilgrimage eventually brought him to a life of a Christian Coptic monk and live in solitude on the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-13844067811595202732012-02-12T12:26:00.000+05:302012-02-12T16:57:16.769+05:30

"In fact, many Native American and First Nations songs do not use a fixed language at all, but rely on vocables, which are impromptu words without a specific meaning but whose sound fits the song. Words are not necessarily an essential component of songs, sung poems, or even certain prayer ceremonies. ...Here is a song (or poem) used by the Navajo Nation as a prayer in the healing ceremony

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-83722600234027441802012-02-12T11:51:00.001+05:302012-02-12T11:51:23.309+05:30

Anchorite (female: anchoress; adj. anchoritic; from Greek: ἀναχωρέω anachōreō, signifying "to withdraw", "to depart into the rural countryside") denotes someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, and—circumstances permitting—Eucharist-focused life. ...The anchoritic life became widespread during the early and

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-45035155279727919312012-02-11T12:41:00.001+05:302012-02-11T17:37:16.516+05:30

A Conversation Drinking together, just the one cup between us, The wine soon tasted of both our mouths, Back and forth so often I could not tell If the wine made me drunk, or your words. Hu Ming-Xiang From here.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-38018020213535494452012-02-11T11:53:00.000+05:302012-02-11T12:25:04.830+05:30

Of university days. Of theatre, street plays, changing the world. The belief that we will never let this fire die, that we are all in this together, this brotherhood of the Passionate. That autumn of Brecht. Of Kundera. Of Che. And Neruda. Of "Come and see the blood in the streets!" A poem of Brecht. And it all comes back. Parting  We embrace. Rich cloth under my fingers

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-53865413915444307372012-02-11T09:42:00.003+05:302012-02-11T09:44:30.373+05:30

Sea-weed sways and sways and swirls as if swaying were its form of stillness; and if it flushes against fierce rock it slips over it as shadows do, without hurting itself. D.H Lawrence

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-77543908916467717412012-02-10T07:05:00.006+05:302012-02-10T07:07:04.499+05:30

From 'Bombay, Meri Jaan - Writings on Mumbai', Edited by Jerry Pinto & Naresh Fernandes, Penguin 2004. "Asad, of all people, has seen humanity at its worst. I asked him if he felt pessimistic about the human race. "Not at all", he replied. "Look at all the hands from the trains." If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-29273673402795023032012-02-07T22:27:00.003+05:302012-02-14T08:44:09.699+05:30

“..As for Kabir, I went to him through the Nirgunia singers of Malwa whom I heard while lying ill in Dewas. I learnt about their capacity to create vacuum which is so crucial for a Nirgunia bhajan. They use notes in a distinctly hermit-like manner so that notes are thrown at you but you don’t get hurt. They sing in loneliness. In singing Kabir my attempt is to create

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-82451257185139840282012-02-07T22:22:00.000+05:302012-02-08T07:23:32.284+05:30

"....You haven't met yourself as yet. But the advantage of meeting others in the meantime is that one of them might present you to yourself." From the film 'Waking Life', by Richard Linklater *          *          *          *          *          *          * "We saw Lazarus arise and walk. Took off. And was not seen thereafter. No one saw him die the second time." 'The Garden of Epicurus

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-61296127932484189152012-02-07T22:13:00.001+05:302012-02-07T22:15:10.459+05:30

"...Nathaniel, I will teach you fervour.Our acts are attached to us as its glimmer is to phosphorous. They consume us, it is true, but they make our splendour. And if our souls have been of any worth, it is because they have burnt more ardently than others. Great fields, washed in the whiteness of dawn, I have seen you; blue lakes, I have bathed in your waters - and to every caress of the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-14375620017329500992012-02-07T09:24:00.000+05:302012-02-07T09:24:03.154+05:30

"Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living." Terry Pratchett

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-77223390884814232032012-02-07T09:07:00.003+05:302012-02-07T09:27:39.102+05:30

"There is only one reason why you could sympathize with this story and it is that you must care for the terrible lack of reciprocity we all must learn to live with. If you have not yet felt it, let me only say I love and envy you for your incompleteness. - and of course that inevitably you will feel it, as we all feel death, not as punishment, but simply the inevitable. ...We are looking at an

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-10728764524519217722012-02-06T08:16:00.000+05:302012-02-06T08:16:15.689+05:30

"All this talk so far about classic and romantic understanding must seem a strangely oblique way of describing him, but to get at Phaedrus, this oblique route is the only one to take. To describe his physical appearance or the statistics of his life would be to dwell on misleading superficialities. And to come at him directly would be to invite disaster. He was insane. And

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-65192714661728883812012-02-05T11:49:00.002+05:302012-02-05T11:51:12.294+05:30

"All beings on the planet are far more interconnected than we, for the most part, recognise. Technology did not initiate our linked-ness but has greatly intensified it. Telecommunications and mass media connect us not merely informationally, but also energetically and psychically. As a consequence, we can now instantaneously and exponentially multiply one another's agitation. In an era where

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-34391080256182841302012-02-05T11:29:00.000+05:302012-02-05T11:29:46.620+05:30

For Albors Pascal Askari, who brings me music that floats in and out of my day, unobtrusive, light, gliding, a reminder that you should not try to possess anything that is truly beautiful, you must just let it wash over you, and be grateful for finding yourself in its path. http://soundcloud.com/dreimalbla/tracks

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-3129586345700464782012-02-04T17:43:00.000+05:302012-02-04T19:13:53.865+05:30

Rain trees in winter. Their branches open up like a flower, a bouquet. They flow into the sky. Like water released into the open, suddenly frozen. Below the earth do their roots mimic the same spread, do they reach out with the same longing, tremulous, quiet? Looking at these, you feel you've overshot your quota of beauty in life, now everything else is a bonus: https:

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-27651741412940892142012-02-04T17:23:00.003+05:302012-02-04T17:24:18.408+05:30

Ben by David Budbill You can see him in the village almost anytime. He's always on the street. At noon he ambles down to Jerry's in case a trucker who's stopped by for lunch might feel like buying him a sandwich. Don't misunderstand, Ben's not starving; he's there each noon because he's sociable, not because he's hungry. He is a friend to everyone except the haughty. There are at least half a

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-23888740353921140282012-02-04T17:21:00.001+05:302012-02-04T17:21:51.224+05:30

 "A loved one is also singular, distinct, separate. The more closely one defines, regardless of any given values, the more intimately one loves. The finite outline is a proof of its opposite, the infinity of emotion provoked by what the outline contains. This is the deepest reason for the frequent elongation of Modigliani's figures and faces. The elongation is the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-9643710750599850822012-02-04T17:09:00.001+05:302012-02-04T17:10:35.337+05:30

The Suicide's Room I'll bet you think the room was empty. Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs. A lamp, good for fighting the dark. A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers. A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ. Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer. You think our addresses weren't in it? No books, no pictures, no records, you guess? Wrong. A comforting trumpet

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-2355297443907357242012-02-04T17:06:00.001+05:302012-02-04T17:06:55.273+05:30

 Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet, passed away on Feb 1. I cannot think of a better definition of poetry: “In a way, Szymborska supplied her own best epitaph, and obituary, in the text of her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which she took on the “astonishment” of normal life: “Astonishing” is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We’re astonished, after all, by things

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-2912662315343539602012-02-04T14:24:00.000+05:302012-02-04T14:26:22.682+05:30

The Descent by William Carlos Williams The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned. Memory is a kind of accomplishment, a sort of renewal even an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places inhabited by hordes heretofore unrealized, of new kinds— since their movements are toward new objectives (even though formerly they were abandoned). No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-48140837739853953952012-02-03T22:07:00.000+05:302012-02-03T22:07:00.883+05:30

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,And autumn grows, autumn in everything.Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shapeAs if I saw alike my work and selfAnd all that I was born to be and do,A twilight-piece. 'Andrea Del Sarto', Robert Browning

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-10454691919058027642012-02-03T08:33:00.001+05:302012-02-03T09:15:26.340+05:30

For Kavya, who sends me these beautiful lines from a cold country, saved by the bright sunshine she revels in: “To make the most of the sun’s warmth, sparrows flock the bush (lilac colored flowers bloom out of it in Spring) bordering my window. The leaves of the lilac bush have never withered. No, not even in harsh winter. They, just like the sun and the sparrows, want to keep me in

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-6734153914128706112012-02-03T08:26:00.001+05:302012-02-03T08:26:43.556+05:30

Oh, such beauty.   Living on the Plains That winter when this thought came -- how the riverheld still every midnight and flowedbackward a minute -- we studied algebralate in our room fixed up in the barn,and I would feel the curved relation,the rafters upside down, and the cows in their lifeholding the earth round and readyto meet itself again when morning came. At breakfast while my mother

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-14381981511914001712012-02-03T08:23:00.000+05:302012-02-03T08:23:41.419+05:30

At the posh restaurant, families sitting at tables, silently eating their food. You look around. Not many smiles, and no laughter. No visible enjoyment of the food, of togetherness. Couples not looking at each other, but elsewhere, or staring into the plate. An entire family of 20 sitting across a long table, separated from each other, no one talking to each other. Funereal. Is it only with

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-72053243145197380752012-02-03T08:19:00.003+05:302012-02-03T08:19:42.314+05:30

The indignant go-away horror of the safely married woman, in front of the garishly-dressed prostitute.The self-righteous "I would never do such a thing" loathing of the never-challenged morally correct person, in front of the criminal, the addict, the un-wed mother.The curled-lip smug superior air of the mother and grandmother, in front of the childless woman whose lap has never been filled and

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-23107269060310261512012-02-03T08:13:00.000+05:302012-02-03T08:13:17.605+05:30

Dr. Zhivago was playing at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud. That afternoon, we went into Russia, and when we came out, the snow was falling—the same snow that fell in Moscow. The sky had turned black velvet. We'd been through the Revolution and the frozen winters. In the Chevy, we waited for the heater to melt ice on the windshield, clapping our hands to keep warm. On the highway, these

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-83210643105919054832012-01-31T10:07:00.001+05:302012-01-31T10:33:26.224+05:30

Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery. Flies collect on a wound. They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings, your love for what you think is yours. Let a teacher wave away the flies and put a plaster on the wound. Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged wound. That's where the light enters you. And don't believe for a moment that you're

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-44673534014819854152012-01-31T08:35:00.002+05:302012-01-31T08:59:10.668+05:30

"For the human journey is ultimately about forgetting in order to remember again, this time voluntarily relinquishing that burden called free will. Free will is the defining characteristic of human incarnation. Free will is that which one eventually begins to experience as a self-inflicted limitation at the very root of much human suffering. Free will is the belief that we, as mortal

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-75898940625356943342012-01-30T21:43:00.002+05:302012-01-31T07:19:15.080+05:30

Spending most of your time at the concert watching the conductor's hands, as always. *          *          *          *          *          *          * 'Lost' composer Michael Giacchino rehearses with the Lost Live orchestra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OILYuJQd0Lk  Oh. His hands. *          *          *          *          *          *          * "Your soft

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-24010804881883838152012-01-30T09:09:00.002+05:302012-01-30T12:19:51.764+05:30

"I am thinking of George Willard, how he left Winesburg, Ohio. I am wondering how many Scars he took with him and wonder if Salinger Wasn't right, after all, when one of the heroes In one of his books said that he had scars On his hands from touching the people He loved." Page 23, 'Knowledge: The Hand of Another' 'The Book of What Remains' by Benjamin Alire Saenz From

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-27410896397004370702012-01-29T23:14:00.002+05:302012-01-29T23:15:36.151+05:30

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean-favoured and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich, yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-24318080857074525412012-01-29T23:07:00.000+05:302012-01-29T23:08:57.181+05:30

"You see, madness is like gravity. All you need is a little push." The Joker, in 'The Dark Knight'

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-65957177101991893302012-01-29T07:50:00.000+05:302012-01-29T22:38:31.646+05:30

To a Stranger by Walt Whitman Passing stranger! you do not know How longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, Or she I was seeking (It comes to me as a dream) I have somewhere surely Lived a life of joy with you, All is recall'd as we flit by each other, Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, Were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-46585652994800301902012-01-29T07:44:00.003+05:302012-01-29T07:44:51.183+05:30

A friend loved this description in one of my mails, so storing it here. Girmit - the North Karnataka version of the bhelpuri. It tastes like it sounds (roll that sexy r!) - crunchy-soft, an unabashed flaunting of chilly and raw onion and lemon and still-crisp bhel, functional food served without any flourishes on a piece of torn newspaper on a rough wooden table. The food

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-77511974593556458652012-01-29T07:24:00.001+05:302012-01-29T07:24:39.970+05:30

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend of the road where we turned toward signs painted 'Peaches.' From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all. comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-91717910776885421012012-01-29T07:22:00.001+05:302012-01-29T07:22:18.278+05:30

now i love you and you love me(and books are shuterthan bookscan be)and deep in the high that does nothing but fall(with a shouteacharound we go all)there's somebody calling who's we.we're anything brighter than even the sun(we're everything greaterthann booksmight mean)we're everything more than believe(with a spinleapalive we're alive)we're wonderful one times onee.e.cummings

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-50145592340550897462012-01-27T21:16:00.001+05:302012-01-27T21:16:55.836+05:30

What a beautiful surprise this poem was! Straight Talk From Fox Listen says fox it is music to run over the hills to lick dew from the leaves to nose along the edges of the ponds to smell the fat ducks in their bright feathers but far out, safe in their rafts of sleep. It is like music to visit the orchard, to find the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the rabbit with his fast-beating

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-11442697477278321742012-01-26T22:51:00.000+05:302012-01-27T13:19:21.072+05:30

When you look up through your helmet visor at the traffic signal, you see kites floating peacefully against the blue blue evening sky. And amidst the new green leaves on the rain tree, the babiest of baby squirrels scampering around from branch to branch. Is it even legal to be this happy? Will they lock you up for this? Didn’t they do that to the ecstatics? *

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-59081526792892684992012-01-26T22:38:00.003+05:302012-01-26T22:38:48.705+05:30

Fluency I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding. John O'Donohue

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-81476803314471241752012-01-26T21:36:00.002+05:302012-01-26T22:34:45.677+05:30

You are deeply religious - you worship the sun. Taking off in an airplane on a dark rainy gloomy day, rising above the clouds suddenly into bright impossibly clear sparkling sunlight that makes you  catch your breath, has been the closest you’ve come to a profoundly spiritual experience. *              *              *              *              *              *

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-14338955088787657392012-01-26T20:20:00.000+05:302012-01-26T20:20:15.591+05:30

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirrorup to where you’re bravely working.Expecting the worst, you look, and insteadhere’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.If it were always a fist or always stretched open,you’d be paralyzed.Your deepest presence is in every small contractingand expanding,the two as beautifully balanced and

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-30948298812567819902012-01-26T20:06:00.001+05:302012-01-26T20:06:34.737+05:30

Those who don’t like it say it’sjust a mutant violinthat’s been kicked out of the chorus.Not so.The cello has many secrets,but it never sobs,just sings in its low voice.Not everything turns into songthough. Sometimes you catcha murmur or a whisper:I’m lonely,I can’t sleep. Adam Zagajewski

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-17191058744579507822012-01-24T08:14:00.000+05:302012-01-24T10:52:21.196+05:30

You were always a mountain-and-sea-and-forest person. You could never understand people who loved the plains, flat featureless landscapes. But standing at the train door one morning and later another day, at sunset, you are suddenly seized by the beauty of it all, you are taken aback by your reaction to it. A flat plain leaves you with so much more sky.  The most prominent

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-37248847869819810472012-01-22T22:20:00.000+05:302012-01-22T22:33:48.987+05:30

"In 1953, twenty-four-year-old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass."....Bouvier so beautifully reiterates your belief that happiness is never a long stretch, but just a collection of brief extraordinary moments - moments that  you need to notice, underline, open up to and soak in

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-32691876923794998302012-01-22T17:31:00.001+05:302012-01-22T17:35:02.053+05:30

Love Don McLean. What a voice. And what poetry. The Pride Parade:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZolrgptRJA&feature=share It started out quite simply, as complex things can do; A set of sad transparencies till no one could see through, But least of all the one inside, behind the iron glass; A prisoner of all your dreams that never come to pass. Alone you stand, corrupted by the vision that

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-14947896897159091822012-01-21T08:40:00.001+05:302012-01-21T08:40:50.168+05:30

I Made a House of Houselessness I made a house of houselessness, A garden of your going; And seven trees of seven wounds You gave me, all unknowing: I made a feast of golden grief That you so lordly left me, I made a bed of all the smiles Whereof your lip bereft me: I made a sun of your delay, Your daily loss, his setting: I made a wall of all your words And a lock of your forgetting Rose

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-15945456971344094012012-01-20T22:57:00.001+05:302012-01-20T22:57:51.877+05:30

"My belief is that the key ideological struggle of the 21st century will be to bring a conscience to capitalism. ... To imbue a sense of meaning, and a purpose higher than the individual that both close-minded, mainstream religions, and the shallow, self-centered ideology of consumerism have failed to address." Everybody knows that we're trapped, but nobody knows what the cages look like:

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-77218580449979381202012-01-20T22:30:00.000+05:302012-01-20T23:01:00.281+05:30

If you place a fern under a stone the next day it will be nearly invisible as if the stone has swallowed it. If you tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue too long without speaking it it becomes blood sigh the little sucked-in breath of air hiding everywhere beneath your words. No one sees the fuel that feeds you. 'Hidden' by Naomi Shihab Nye

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-27435964596694143292012-01-19T22:52:00.000+05:302012-01-20T07:44:09.858+05:30

In the now-familiar hospital waiting room, you pretend to read, and listen to the conversations around you, of people who do not go to hospitals alone, unlike you. A multitude of languages, dialects, you cannot even figure out what some of them are. You still like to listen to the sounds, the tones, the emotions, the repetitions, the indignant recounting. Those sounds we make just to prove to

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-40384177095125617212012-01-19T20:56:00.002+05:302012-01-19T21:00:22.810+05:30

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same, There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All went to the university Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same And there's doctors

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-10525585211425050422012-01-19T07:39:00.001+05:302012-01-19T07:40:30.496+05:30

Drink Your Tea Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. Thich Nhat Hahn, Vietnamese poet

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-86227560063100223662012-01-16T19:53:00.000+05:302012-01-16T19:53:26.259+05:30

"Be an overwhelming bounty of impressions, ideas, conflicting theories, and let the propellant behind all this be generosity. A giving." John Patrick Shanley Revisiting Doubt: A Parable. Yet again.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-43668088781532512762012-01-16T07:55:00.002+05:302012-01-16T07:55:44.087+05:30

"These are your poems.Don’t ask how I discovered your thoughts.Maybe sometimes I was you.Maybe sometimes you were also me a bit.Maybe together we were the world "Miroslav Mika Antic, Yugoslavian poet, film director, journalist and painter

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-85087539196511641532012-01-14T07:46:00.003+05:302012-02-05T18:41:51.530+05:30

Walking past a lone cart full of fresh yellow lemons, this cloudy early morning of empty streets, the strong citron-y fragrance hits you like a sudden wave. You stop and turn around in wonder, dizzy. When you resume your walk, smiling, slightly inebriated, you wonder, “How does the lemon seller ever get through his day sober?”, and you remember this luscious poem by

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-20770236559578023262012-01-12T22:47:00.000+05:302012-01-24T10:52:37.421+05:30

As the night settles in the train, he climbs up to the top berth, and performs namaz, his prayers. Simple gestures, a pattern to follow five times a day, known, familiar. A ritual, a repetition, a returning to the centre, a remembering. Nothing prepares you for the sudden stab of envy you feel.  The amazement of it. Where is this bend in the road you have reached, what

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-38183742205232867282012-01-12T21:22:00.005+05:302012-01-12T21:24:26.090+05:30

To Marina (excerpt) by Kenneth Koch Let's take a walkInto the worldWhere if our shoes get whiteWith snow, is it snow, Marina,Is it snow or light?Let's take a walk...

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-67677805623851939192012-01-12T19:35:00.001+05:302012-01-13T09:14:31.229+05:30

To those of you who have wandered the dark passages of Murakami-land, and have wanted to "hide yourselves in dry wells" to shut the world out at times... .................................................................................................................... "It's the birthday of Haruki Murakami, born in Kyoto, Japan (1949). Murakami's earliest memory is from when he was three

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-15160398329069605232012-01-11T22:07:00.003+05:302012-01-11T22:21:16.336+05:30

Wept on reading this one. This is exactly the kind of thing you keep storing away in your head all the time, precious wordless moments of communion and ease, amidst the utterly ordinary.... Clearances (in memoriam M.K.H, 1911-1984) When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-64611507918685732442012-01-11T07:59:00.000+05:302012-01-11T08:48:39.066+05:30

There is a gap between the old and the new - that gap gives you the fear. You are afraid. You want to be transformed but simultaneously you want to remain the old. This is the deception. You want to grow, but you want to remain you. Then growth is impossible; then you can only deceive; then you can go on thinking and dreaming that something is happening, but nothing will happen because the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-85684792013685106732012-01-10T08:33:00.001+05:302012-01-10T08:35:38.148+05:30

Tonight of Yesterday The evening slips you into it, has kept a place for you and those wildwood limbs that have already settled on the morning. The words you have for it are flyblown now as the dandelion you'll whistle tomorrow into a lighter air. But tonight, your sleep will be as round as your mouth, berried with the story of sunlight finally run to ground. You are all about tomorrow. The

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-33604613780735698662012-01-10T08:29:00.000+05:302012-01-10T08:29:12.371+05:30

"Therefore, now, Ananda, be lamps to yourselves. Be a refuge to yourselves. Seek no other refuge. Take the truth as a lamp. Take the truth as a refuge. Seek no other refuge." 21. Mahaparinibbana Sutta, (Pali, 5th Century BC)Page 78, The Traveller, 'The Rivered Earth', Vikram Seth

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-57878033491913416842012-01-09T22:30:00.001+05:302012-01-09T22:30:46.838+05:30

...That you may hear me My words narrow occasionally Like gull-tracks in the sandOr I let them become Tuneful beads Mixed with the soundOf a drunk hawk’s bell Flick me your wrists….. Soft as grape skin – yesSofter than grapeskin I make them Which is a kind of treachery against the worldYet You who clamber Over all the desolations of mine Gentle as ivy.... Christopher Logue, Red Bird

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-52951966119698442372012-01-09T22:07:00.000+05:302012-01-09T22:07:10.662+05:30

A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.There are easier ways of making sense, the connoisseurship of gesture, for example. You hold a girl’s face in your hands like a vase. You lift a gun from the glove compartment and toss it out the window into the desert

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-6054450015166105842012-01-03T22:17:00.001+05:302012-01-03T22:18:33.842+05:30

"Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”  The Joy of Quiet, Pico Iyer. Article here.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-5992880253766046402012-01-03T07:46:00.000+05:302012-01-03T09:38:23.192+05:30

Mustang Jhong Cave Bon is Tibet’s oldest spiritual tradition, before Buddhism. This film on Bon, which was shot in Nepal and the Menri monastery in Northern India, was the Offical Selection at the Montreal festival. Came upon one of the producers, Rose Gordon, on LinkedIn. http://www.bon-mustang-to-menri.com/ You can buy a DVD for $20 plus shipping, directly from Rose. They

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-66418181028514831482012-01-02T22:09:00.001+05:302012-01-02T22:15:33.466+05:30

  Regular evaluations are done by Rang De (http://www.rangde.org/evaluations) to ensure that the loans we give are well-utilized and borrowers are happy. Click on image to enlarge and read text. Knock out Poverty. Be a Social Investor. http://www.rangde.org/ Rang De was started by the young entrepreneur couple, Ram and Smita.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-45951867957897321552012-01-02T20:21:00.001+05:302012-01-02T20:27:42.128+05:30

"In today's excerpt - wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic whereby greatness exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked details, and beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. Wabi-sabi is central to the idea  of Japanese beauty and has the same importance to Japanese aesthetic values as the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection do in Western thought: "Truth comes from the observation of nature. The

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-28779904489363107782012-01-02T09:30:00.000+05:302012-01-02T09:30:58.754+05:30

My gift of serendipity worked again. Picked up this book at a second-hand bookshop, an author I've never heard of. Brilliant stories, and spanning so many fields: bacteriology, mountaineering, anatomy, neurology, entomology. I love books that open up new worlds for me. ....................................................................................................

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-46574919702510814532012-01-02T08:02:00.001+05:302012-01-02T08:02:29.353+05:30

Can one possibly go wrong listening to Douglas Adams? :) :)  My motto for 2012: "Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all." Douglas Adams This morning's theme music, read obsessive repeat: Diversity, in here: http://soundcloud.com/dreimalbla

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-62442226964806654282012-01-01T22:36:00.000+05:302012-01-01T22:42:30.367+05:30

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath. Mark Strand

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-86302386945887107512012-01-01T22:23:00.002+05:302012-01-01T22:23:18.618+05:30

The blue river is grey at morningand evening. There is twilightat dawn and dusk. I lie in the darkwondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end. Jack Gilbert

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-20561315128756036682012-01-01T22:16:00.002+05:302012-01-01T22:18:22.566+05:30

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are, or no longer possess, lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places." From 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino Rediscovered this excerpt, here. Photo: Luang Prabang, Laos

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-37776915223518816472012-01-01T14:33:00.000+05:302012-01-01T14:33:06.634+05:30

"An altogether different approach is represented by Carl G. Jung, in whose view the imageries of mythology and religion serves positive, life-furthering ends. According to his way of thinking, all the organs of our bodies - not only those of sex and aggression - have their purposes and motives, some being subject to conscious control, others, however, not. Our outward-oriented consciousness,

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-89995852941148267412012-01-01T09:36:00.001+05:302012-01-01T14:31:04.142+05:30

When Odysseus finally does get homehe is understandably upset about the suitors,who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years,drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc.In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel.But those were different times. With the helpof his son Telemachus he slaughters roughlyone hundred and ten suitorsand quite a number of young ladies,although in

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-82762859614771274782011-12-31T22:46:00.001+05:302012-01-01T07:56:43.298+05:30

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." Robert M Pirsig For those of us who never quite recovered from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance': http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1951397,00.html

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-12640109131588107652011-12-31T18:39:00.000+05:302011-12-31T18:40:17.418+05:30

"In the middle ages, in England, when you met a very poor person, that person would be described as an unfortunate. Literally someone who has not been blessed by fortune, an unfortunate. Nowadays, particularly in the United States, if you meet someone at the bottom of the society, they may unkindly be described as a loser. There's a real difference between an unfortunate and a loser. That shows

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-54421821228195881172011-12-31T10:52:00.000+05:302011-12-31T10:55:06.578+05:30

For his morning tea A monk sits down in utter silence, Confronted by chrysanthemums. Basho Photo: Buddhist temple, Nanjing

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-59627171125396090172011-12-27T08:44:00.001+05:302011-12-27T08:44:17.585+05:30

The Economics of Happiness: a documentary film about the worldwide movement for economic localization. Site: http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomicsofhappiness "The Economics of Happiness' describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-24887497097380543592011-12-26T20:38:00.003+05:302011-12-26T20:40:19.835+05:30

Dance me to the end of love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki9xcDs9jRk&feature=share Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone Let me feel you moving like

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-45526405927319940702011-12-25T21:36:00.000+05:302011-12-25T21:36:18.758+05:30

Rain A teacher asked Paulwhat he would remember from third grade, and he sata long time before writing'this year sumbody tutched meon the sholder'and turned his paper in.Later she showed it to meas an example of her wasted life.The words he wrote were largeas houses in a landscape.He wanted to go inside themand live, he could fill inthe windows of 'o' and 'd'and be safe

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-52722946323376163242011-12-25T19:50:00.001+05:302011-12-26T20:41:54.821+05:30

We could have been mistaken for a married coupleriding on the train from Manhattan to Chicagothat last time we were together. I rememberlooking out the window and praising the beautyof the ordinary: the in-between places, the worldwith its back turned to us, the small neglectedstations of our history. I slept across yourchest and stomach without asking permissionbecause they were the last hours.

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-27437727465166789552011-12-25T18:39:00.000+05:302011-12-25T18:39:21.921+05:30

Boulevard of Broken Dreams, by Green Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWNRUVMboq4 I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known Don't know where it goes But it's only me, and I walk alone I walk this empty street On the boulevard of broken dreams Where the city sleeps And I'm the only one, and I walk alone...I'm walking down the line That divides me somewhere

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-32651808010820702422011-12-25T16:21:00.000+05:302011-12-25T16:21:46.242+05:30

"I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village." Shirly Jackson

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-58486652179007581372011-12-24T13:54:00.000+05:302011-12-24T13:54:00.192+05:30

http://www.myspace.com/ludovicoeinaudispace Primavera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmxFAT581T4

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-43707922772423443722011-12-24T13:35:00.001+05:302011-12-24T13:50:28.553+05:30

“Depression is hidden knowledge.” —James Hillman You think it will never happen again. Then one day in November it does, the narrow, dusty boards of the trapdoor you fell through twenty years before, cracking apart, a black grin opening its toothless mouth, darkness seeping out to fill the dead cornfields rattling around you. That sound’s back in your head again— like angry bees or static or

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-73742682611875477992011-12-22T08:28:00.002+05:302011-12-22T08:28:52.587+05:30

"Nothing is more useful or fitting than to be a normal human being; but the very notion of a "normal human being" suggests a restriction to the average - as does also the concept of adaptation. It is only a man who, as things stand, already finds it difficult to come to terms with the everyday world who can see in this restriction a desirable improvement: a man, let us say whose neurosis unfits

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-69208202324824252552011-12-16T22:23:00.003+05:302011-12-16T22:23:57.338+05:30

Can you understand being alone so longyou would go out in the middle of the nightand put a bucket into the wellso you could feel something down theretug at the other end of the rope? Jack Gilbert, 'The Abandoned Valley'

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-6722414780125063742011-12-15T22:05:00.000+05:302011-12-15T22:06:34.360+05:30

In Passing How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom: as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious Lisel Mueller

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-59794294891458228242011-12-15T21:23:00.000+05:302011-12-15T21:23:14.958+05:30

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."Page 1, 'The Power of Myth', Joseph Campbell

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-4994811280681256422011-12-15T21:15:00.000+05:302011-12-15T21:17:19.687+05:30

"The Ashaninka are one of the largest indigenous groups in South America, their ancestral homelands ranging from Brazil to Peru. Since colonial times, their existence has been difficult -- they have been enslaved, had their lands taken away or destroyed, and were caught up in the bloody internal conflict in Peru during the late 20th century. Today, a large communal reserve set aside for the

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-11567298516071956092011-12-12T08:52:00.001+05:302011-12-12T08:52:36.252+05:30

If, at your desk, you push aside your work, take down a book, turn to this verse and read that I kneel there, pressing my ear where on your chest the muscles arch as great books part, in seagull curves, bridging the seasounds of your heart, and that your hands run through my hair, draw the wayward mass to strands as flat as scarlet silk-thread bookmarks, and stroke my cheeks as if smoothing

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-79030483376369600652011-12-11T11:12:00.001+05:302011-12-11T12:34:06.300+05:30

“Noted philanthropist commits suicide, community stunned.” “His giving knew no bounds”. But you don’t find it strange at all, it makes perfect sense to you. To be that kind, you must be extraordinarily sensitive. And when you are that sensitive, you needs must suffer, more than others. With extraordinary kindness, comes extraordinary pain. “The Buddha when he was a

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-16783831536930670602011-12-11T11:11:00.001+05:302011-12-11T12:34:20.338+05:30

In the Iranian film 'Blackboards' by Samira Makhmalbaf, the scene you remember the most is of an old Kurdish shepherd grazing his sheep high up in the mountains, stopping the teacher and asking him if he can read a letter for him. He slowly pulls out a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket. His face opening up in a smile hearing that his son is doing well though he cannot visit him

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-49693320813132225512011-12-09T08:12:00.001+05:302011-12-09T08:50:57.405+05:30

And a time to walk around clutching an old yellowing copy of Four Quartets, as if at the very last straw. "You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure, That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here. When the train starts, and the passengers are settled To fruit, periodicals and business letters (And those who saw them off have left the platform) Their

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-76603867989805653582011-12-09T08:02:00.001+05:302011-12-09T08:04:32.488+05:30

"What did we ever own that hadn'tthe quality of seasonstheir numerous dyings?" Brian Patten

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-28390051392608049072011-12-05T22:19:00.001+05:302011-12-05T22:27:16.201+05:30

"Her face is deeply mapped, her back slightly bent. Three years ago she made a pilgrimage to Mecca, became a Hajji. For a year afterward, she wore only white. Today she alters this slightly, wearing a long white dress embroidered with green, over black-and-white pajamas. It is cool here in the West Bank in late May; people think of the whole Middle East as a great hot desert, but here in this

Ashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13973033025093612675noreply@blogger.com0