315

"Hell, I've always been old Ben. Ya' know what though, I don't mind. I mean if my muscles ache, it's because I've used 'em. It's hard for me to walk up them steps now, its 'cuz I walked up 'em every night to lay next to a man who loved me. I got a few wrinkles here and there, but I've layed under thousands of skies with sunny days. I look and feel this way, well cuz I drank and I smoked. I lived and I loved, danced, sang, sweat and screwed my way thorough a pretty damn good life if you ask me. Getting old ain't bad Ben. Getting old, that's earned.” From the movie The Guardian

300

 300 Days of Solitude 

Thomas Merton 

“We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.”

251

 Rami Shapiro

“Job understood the light and the dark of reality, the fact that one cannot exist without the other and that you and I cannot live without encountering both. Through all of this, Job maintains what his wife calls his ‘integrity’. In other words, as sad as he is over the death of his children and the loss of his wealth and vitality, he is not moved to blame God, fate, himself, or anyone else. Reality is reality, it does what it does; all we can do is move on.”

246

"But often, in the world's most crowded streets, 

But often, in the din of strife, 

There rises an unspeakable desire 

After the knowledge of our buried life; 

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force 

In tracking out our true, original course; 

A longing to inquire 

Into the mystery of this heart which beats 

So wild, so deep in us—to know 

Whence our lives come and where they go."

From The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold

184

 “Yoga is not an ancient myth buried in oblivion. It is the most valuable inheritance of the present. It is the essential need of today and the culture of tomorrow.”

~Swami Satyananda Saraswati~

163

Li Po 

“The birds have vanished 

into the sky and 

the last cloud drains away. 

We sit together, 

the mountain and me. 

Until, only the mountain remains.”

Eighty

Digital Detox 72 Hours

"A digital detox refers to a period of time when a person refrains from using tech devices such as smartphones, televisions, computers, tablets, and social media sites. “Detoxing” from digital devices is often seen as a way to focus on real-life social interactions without distractions. By forgoing digital devices, at least temporarily, people can let go of the stress that stems from constant connectivity."
~ Kendra Cherry ~

“We live today not in the digital, not in the physical, but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes of the two.”
~Paola Antonelli~

“Technology can be used as a force for good, but I’m not sure that we’re using it correctly at the moment.”
~ Rich Pierson ~

Troglodyte
trog·lo·dyte
noun
(especially in prehistoric times) a person who lived in a cave.
a hermit.
a person who is regarded as being deliberately ignorant or old-fashioned.

Seventy-nine

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people, does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

~ General James Mattis ~

Seventy-eight

"The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America – or how it becomes a better place."

~George W. Bush~

Seventy-seven

The kind of leadership that we need...

"Yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a US Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it. But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels. The bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn't between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform. It falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station -- including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day -- to work together to create a 'new normal' in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts."

President Barack Obama

Seventy-six

“Like so many of you, I’m pained by these recent tragedies. And I’m exhausted by a heartbreak that never seems to stop. Right now it’s George, Breonna, and Ahmaud. Before that it was Eric, Sandra, and Michael. It just goes on, and on, and on. Race and racism is a reality that so many of us grow up learning to just deal with. But if we ever hope to move past it, it can’t just be on people of color to deal with it. It’s up to all of us—Black, white, everyone—no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out. It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our own. It ends with justice, compassion, and empathy that manifests in our lives and on our streets. I pray we all have the strength for that journey, just as I pray for the souls and the families of those who were taken from us.”
 ~ Michelle Obama ~

Seventy-five

Martin Luther King Jr.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Seventy-four

Burn it down...

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.“
~Malcolm X~

Seventy-three

“which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it’s so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America and basically it all means that the older generation has RUINED EVERYTHING and her generation is doooooomed”

From Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Seventy-two

“It is impossible to express the experiences you have below the surface with words, when water gently caresses your face and body, the pulse decreases and your brain relaxes. You are immediately cut off from the stress and hustle of everyday life when you are below the surface – there are no noisy telephones or SMS messages, no inboxes full of mail, no electrical bills, or other trivialities of everyday life taking up time and energy. There is nothing connecting you to the surface but the same withheld breath that connects you to life. There is only you and a growing pressure on your chest that feels like a loving hug and the vibrations from the deep quiet tone of the sea. It is quite possible that this deep quiet tone is none other than the mantra Om, the sound of the universe, trickling life into every cell of your body.”
~ Stig Åvall Severinsen ~

Seventy-one

Today in America, after only four months from our first case, we exceeded 100,000 deaths.

~Aeschylus~
“And even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget 
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair, 
against our will,
 comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Seventy

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne

Sixty-nine

Again...

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
Lord Byron

Sixty-eight

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. ”
~ Anatole France ~

Sixty-seven

“In Buddhism, we express our willingness to be realistic through the practice of meditation. Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space through the simple discipline of doing nothing. Actually, doing nothing is very difficult. At first, we must begin by approximating doing nothing, and gradually our practice will develop. So meditation is a way of churning out the neuroses of mind and using them as part of our practice. Like manure, we do not throw our neuroses away, but we spread them on our garden; they become part of our richness.”

From The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
By Chogyam Trungpa

Sixty-six

when you add grief to misery...

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” 

~ E.A. Bucchianeri ~

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” 

~ Anne Lamott ~

“we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.” 

~ Joan Didion ~

“It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible I felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.”

~ Daniel Handler ~

Sixty-five

For the love of fermentation...

"God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

“To ferment your own food is to lodge a small but eloquent protest - on behalf of the senses and the microbes - against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a great, undifferentiated lawn across the globe. It is also a declaration of independence from an economy that would much prefer we remain passive consumers of its standardized commodities, rather than creators of idiosyncratic products expressive of ourselves and of the places where we live, because your pale ale or sourdough bread or kimchi is going to taste nothing like mine or anyone else's.”

~ Michael Pollan ~

“Resistence takes place on many planes. Occasionally it can be dramatic and public, but most of the decisions we are faced with are mundane and private. What to eat is a choice that we make several times a day, if we are lucky. The cumulative choices we make about food have profound implications. Food offers us many opportunities to resist the culture of mass marketing and commodification. Though consumer action can take many creative and powerful forms, we do not have to be reduced to the role of consumers selecting from seductive convenience items. We can merge appetite with activism and choose to involve ourselves in food as cocreators.”

From Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz

Sixty-four

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”

~George Eliot~

Sixty-three

Happy

Three Little Birds by Bob Marley
Living in the Moment by Jason Mraz
The Sound of Sunshine by Michael Franti
Higher Love by Whitney Houston & Kygo
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawio'ole
Happy by Pharrell Williams
Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles
What a Wonderful World by Louie Armstrong
Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFarin
Across the Universe by The Beatles
Give Love by MC Yogi

Sixty-two

Eight Limbs of Yoga

1. Yama = Social Restraints

• Ahisma = Do No Harm
• Satya = Tell The Truth
• Asteya = Do Not Steal
• Brahmacharya = Use Sexual Energy Wisely 
• Aparigraha = Have No Possessions

2. Niyama = Self-Restraints

• Saucha = Purity of Mind, Body, and Speech
• Santosha = Be Content
• Tapas = Be Self-Disciplined
• Svadhyana = Study Self
• Ishvarapranidhana = Study God

3. Asana = Practice of Body Postures

4. Pranayama = Practice of Breath Control

5. Pratyahara = Withdrawal from sensory experiences - release addictions and distractions

6. Dharana = Concentrate on Inner States: Mantra, Breath, Bandha, Mudra

7. Dhyana = Meditation

8. Samadhi = Enlightenment

Sixty-one

“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”
The Bhagavad Gita

Sixty

“Most people think that meditation just involves allowing the mind to rest in a non-conceptual state. But if we simply strive to let the mind relax without having applied methods to transform our habitual patterns, we won’t see much change. If we push the ‘pause’ button on a tape recorder, the sound will stop; when we release the button, the tape will continue to play the same tune. Just because we pause and take a break from our mental habits during resting meditation, this doesn’t mean that we have a erased the tape of habitual mind. To actually do so and record a new one,We don’t force a non-conceptual state but instead engage in effortful meditation - repeatedly bringing the mind back to a spiritual topic or point of concentration, no matter how often we become distracted.

The method of effortful meditation that we use in the Bodhisattva Peace Trainings is contemplation. We repeatedly contemplate the teachings, imprinting them on the tape of the mind. Then when we press the pause button, relax, and release it, what we hear will be different than before. Contemplation has the power to change the mind’s patterns, replacing our negative habits with virtuous thoughts.”

From The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku

Fifty-nine

The Greater Good

Paraphrased from an article by Marcie Bianco

What is the difference between liberty and freedom in the eyes of many Americans?

Absolutely nothing.

And therein lies not only the problem driving the culture war around coronavirus shelter-in-place orders but also arguably the crux of all fronts of America's culture wars; from guns to religion to speech to now, it seems, haircuts.

"Give me liberty or give me death!" so goes the universal whine, lifted from Patrick Henry's Virginia Convention speech in 1775. Leaving aside the obvious reply, there is an irony in the protesters' call for liberty that inspires me to reach for another popular quote from American culture: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Because, my fellow Americans, liberty does not mean what you think it means.

Liberty is a type of freedom defined and limited by civil society. It is not an unrestrained, unchecked license to do whatever one desires. Rather, liberty is a right constituted by the nation one lives in.

This is perhaps why the Declaration of Independence does not once mention the word "freedom" but instead champions the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  And the preamble of the Constitution mentions "liberty" only in the context of forming a more perfect union.

And yet, as the quarantine protests make clear a popular, yet factually and legally inaccurate sentiment, has infected the minds of many Americans. To paraphrase, it goes something like this: "This is America and I am free to do whatever I want!"

But, actually, no. You can't. Americans must abide by laws, regulations, and codes that range from their towns' garbage collection rules to the federal law declaring that 18 is the legal voting age.

The general and patriotic spirit is that collectively, as Americans, we will follow these laws to promote and ensure the general welfare of all of the people of the United States.

Without a doubt the tension between liberty and freedom resides at the very foundation of this nation. It is a tension that has widened into an incredible and increasingly partisan chasm between "the good of the people" and "the good of the person."

But, instead of indiscriminately crying freedom or liberty to defend one's assumed rights what might happen if we were to understand liberty as a freedom that holds us accountable for the welfare of the nation and all of its people?

Might we then be able to form a more perfect union?

Fifty-eight

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
~Antonio Gramsci~

Fifty-seven

“The way that Bhakti Yoga works... you just love until you and the beloved become one.”
~Ram Dass~