thanks be for the continuation of Thay’s work and wisdom so needed in our world today as the world unravels before our eyes… breakdown to breakthrough in this moment of emerge-n-see, this moment of both danger and opportunity of bringing lasting peace for all beings…

this prayer was used throughout South Vietnam in 1965 in the “Don’t Shoot Your Own Brother” campaign to rouse the willingness to work for peace… during meetings of young people, they chanted this poem, uniting our hearts and our efforts to continue to work for peace:

“In beauty, sitting on a lotus flower,
is Lord Buddha, quiet and solid.
Your humble disciple,
calm and pure of heart,
forms a lotus flower with his hands,
faces you with deep respect,
and offers this heartfelt prayer:

Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Please have compassion for our suffering.
Our land has been at war for two decades.
Divided, it is a land of tears
and blood and bones of young and old.
Mothers weep till their tears are dry
while sons on distant fields decay.
Its beauty torn apart,
only blood and tears now flow.
Brothers killing brothers
for promises from outsiders.
Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Because of your love for all people,
have compassion on us.
Help us remember we are just one family,
North and South.
Help us rekindle our compassion and brotherhood,
and transform our separate interests
into loving acceptance for all.
May your compassion help us overcome our hatred.
May Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva’s love
help the flowers bloom again in the soil of our country.
Humbly, we open our hearts to you,
so you may help us transform our karma
and water the flowers of our spirits.
With your deep understanding,
help our hearts grow light.

Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha
whose great vows and compassion inspire us.
I am determined to cultivate only thoughts
that increase trust and love,
to use my hands to perform only deeds
that build community,
to speak only words of harmony and aid.

May the merit of this prayer
be transformed into peace in [the world]
May each of us realize this,
our deep aspiration.”

shanti shanti shantihi…

Happy TwosDay! 22-02-2022

welcome, well come to this once in a century portal day, a day filled with celebrations of this moment in eternity… a very beautiful celebration i attended this morning was for the launch of pianist, philosopher, systems scientist Ervin Laszlo’s new book and movement, Upshift… Understanding we are at a critical crossroads, Laszlo is issuing a powerful call for us to live wiser and responsibly with our eyes to the seven generations rather than short-term benefits…

Ervin Laszlo’s Ten Commandments for Thriving in a World of Diversity

1. Live in ways that enable other people to live as well: Meet your needs and pursue your objectives without detracting from the chances of other people to meet their needs and pursue their objectives.
2. Live in ways that respect the right to life and to economic and cultural development of all people, wherever they live and whatever their ethnic origin, sex, citizenship, station in life, and belief system.
3. Live in ways that safeguard the right to live in a viable environment of all the living things that inhabit the earth.
4. Pursue happiness, freedom, and personal fulfillment in harmony with the integrity of nature and with consideration for the related pursuits of others around you.
5. Require of political leaders that they relate to other peoples peacefully and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations for a better life and a healthy environment of all members of the human family.
6. Require of business leaders that they accept responsibility not only for the owners and shareholders of their enterprise, but for all its stakeholders, demanding that they produce goods and offer services that satisfy legitimate demand without impairing nature and reducing the opportunities of local enterprises and poor economies to compete in the marketplace.
7. Require public media to provide a constant stream of reliable information on basic trends and crucial processes to enable citizens and consumers to reach informed decisions on issues that affect their health, prosperity, and future.
8. Make room in your life to help those less privileged than yourself to live a life of dignity, free from the struggles and humiliations of abject poverty.
9. Work with like-minded people to preserve or restore the essential balances of the environment in as well.
10. Encourage young people and open-minded people of all ages to evolve the spirit that could empower them to make ethical decisions on issues that decide their own future and the future of their family, partners, and children.

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá’u’lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.“

~ Ervin Laszlo ~

Happy 64th Birthday, Peace Symbol!

welcome, well come to day 23 of a season of peace on this twenty-first day of fledging february, the sixty-fourth birthday of the peace symbol and a beautiful day of gathering the quintessence as ambassadors of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of  freedom… on a somber note, it is the fifty-seventh anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination…

now, back to the peace sign…

 “Children of today easily identify it. They may not know its original meaning, but they know it stands for good things – be nice to friends, be kind to animals, no fighting. This is a marvelous achievement for Gerald Holtom’s simple design. Peoples around the world have marched with it, worn it, displayed it during combat, held it high on banners, and been arrested in its name. Ask any man, woman or child, ‘What one thing would everyone in the world want more than anything else?’ The answer would surely be world peace.’”

~ Ken Kolsbun, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol ~

on this day of walking into the unknown through a field of  impermanence, a day when peace is so called for, it is a beautiful synchrony that it’s the re-birthday of the symbol for peace…

Gerald Holtom, an artist and conscientious objector, created the Peace Symbol on February 21,1958. According to Christopher Driver, author of The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Holtom created the design and then brought it to an organizer of a local British peace group. After several revisions, it was unveiled publicly on Good Friday of that year, by anti-nuclear demonstrators — the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — who marched 50 miles from London’s Trafalgar Square to the weapons factory at Aldermaston. It was the first Ban-the-Bomb March.

When Gerald Holtom sat down at his drawing board sixty-four years ago, he was in almost total despair. He later told the editor of Peace News: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it symbolizing Earth.”

Welcome “International Peace Symbol Day.”  May we hoist peace everywhere waving the remedy for despair…  Peace Out!

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things

Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations

These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders”

~ Lao Tzu ~

welcome, welcome to day 22 of a season of peace, on this 20th day of fledging february so that we have a day pulsing at the quintessential frequency of 22222, a day of grace, wisdom, clarity and a day also known as world social justice day – may it be so, may we roll up our sleeves, come home to our heart, set our eyes within and in thought, word and deed be in balance with all our relatives… and, it’s the moment of celebrating the astonishing light of our interbeing with all our relatives who vaya con gaia en paz with the sun shining through the clouds radiating the liberating energy of  freedom…

and, today is a day of rainmaking, of holy synchronicity… do you know the rainmaker story? it is a favorite of mine and has been for decades, this story of restoring circulation between the inner and outer flow of life which is the central story of my life…

during a time of great drought, a rainmaker was asked by villagers of a neighboring province if he could help bring rain to their dry fields… they had tried many other approaches without success before reaching out to him… the rainmaker agreed to come and asked for a small hut with a garden that he could tend… for three days, he simply tended the garden… on the fourth day, rain began to fall on the parched earth… when asked how he had achieved such a miracle, the master answered that when he came to the village, he had sensed disharmony within himself and the village… each day, as he tended the garden, he returned a little more to himself… when he returned to balance, the rain came naturally…

yes, it has long been known by indigenous gaiians that it takes three days for the body to settle when on retreat, for the rainmaker, the rainbowmaker  to come into harmony and for the re-joy-sing to flow…

we rise up singing kissed by sun

on the banks of the river of joy dreaming the magic to come

gliding over stones, nothing impedes the flow

wind whispers softly to lean in and let all go

trusting in the rhythm of eternal ebb and flow…