Sunday, September 19, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Kirshnamurti: 

If you are really serious, to find out the implications of death, then you have to come into contact with that fact of death, actually come into contact with it - not theoretically, not as something which you have got to face, therefore let's face it, but rather by coming directly into contact with it, by dying. Dying - I mean by that word, coming to the end of all the things that you have known psychologically, your experiences, your pleasures, to die - every day. Otherwise, you will never know what death is; for it is only in the dying that there is something new, not in continuing the old. Most of us are so weighed down by the known, by the yesterday, by the memories, by the `me', the `self', which is but a bundle of memories accumulated yesterday, having no actual existence in itself. Die to those memories; actually die to a pleasure without any argument. If you know what it means to die to a pleasure, to something that you have taken great pleasure in - without argument, without postponement, without any sense of resentment, bitterness - that is what is going to happen when you do die. And to die every day, to everything that you have gathered psychologically, is to be totally reborn. If you do not die in that way, then you have the continual problem of this memory that you have accumulated as the `me' and the self-centred activity that we indulge in - the thought of `my' house, `my' family, `my' book, `my' fame, `my' loneliness - you know, that little entity that moves around incessantly within itself, with its own limited pattern of existence. Will that continue? - you understand? - that is the problem we have. Either one knows how to die every day, and dying actually, the mind is fresh, instant, eager, tremendously alive, or, there is this bundle of memories, of self-centred activity, with all its thoughts, searching for fulfilment, wanting to be somebody, imitating, copying. That whole network of thought - will that continue? - yet that is what we want to continue. We say, at the least, if I haven't fulfilled in this life, perhaps I will in the next. - J. Krishnamurti Talks in Europe 1967

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Behind every silver lining hides a cloud.

mek

Monday, September 06, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Do you think this is possible or true?

Consider this, which I find extremely important in understanding life:

A person with multiple personalities, only some of which are diabetic, is only insulin-deficient when in the diabetic personality!

mg
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. 

Albert Einstein
1879-1955

Here's something from an old Richard Russell letter: 

It's a slow day in a Texas town.The streets are deserted. The sun is beating down, business is lousy, everyone is in debt.

A man from the East comes into the local hotel, drops a hundred dollar bill on the desk saying that he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs and pick one. 

As soon as the tourist goes upstairs the hotel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the hundred dollar bill and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 bill and goes to the Feed Supply Store to pay off his debt. 

The  guy at the Feed Supply Store takes the hundred and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who, like everyone else in town, has been having hard times and has had to offer her 'services' on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the proprietor. 

The hotel owner puts the hundred dollar bill on the counter so that the traveler will not suspect anything. 

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the hundred dollar bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money and leaves town. 

No one produced anything. No one earned anything.

However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism. 

Is that how the government is conducting business today?    

Sunday, September 05, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Homage to Grandpa for Labor Day

Grandpa's dictums: taught to me while I sat on his knee:

"Repeat after me, Michael:"

"Hate the bosses, love the worker!"

"OK, Grandpa, 'Hate the bosses, love the worker'."


"Now, Michael, I want you to promise me that you'll never cross a picket line."


"I promise, Grandpa -- but what's a picket line?"

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

To paint over one dead animal may be regarded as a misfortune…

To paint over one dead animal may be regarded as a misfortune…

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Today, as if there wasn’t enough sadness in the world, the Guardian gives us more to shake our heads about. Has the dignity of the dead hedgehog fallen foul of efficiency accountants? Apparently, the taking-away-roadkill department didn’t turn up in time, so the road painters painted on according to schedule. Even penguins (who I haven’t mentioned nearly recently enough) go round a static object, rather than over it. A spokesman for Hartlepool borough council said, clearly with a degree of satisfaction and relief: ‘This is obviously an unfortunate incident, but it was the only one reported during the massive project.’ But all may not be what it seems.

In July the BBC reported something similar: slightly better, slightly worse, depending on how you look at it, though, of course, it’s of no concern to the dead creatures involved. Questions avalanche. Does the painting around rather than over show more respect for nature? Or a greater respect for badgers than hedgehogs? Or are these two incidents not a statistically weird coincidence at all? Are both the work of guerilla anti-health-and-safety activists out to shame a world where road painters are not allowed to move roadkill except by special training and licence? The fact that the Guardian report is also in the Mail suggests that this may well be the answer.

But perhaps we are witnessing a new real-world meme: something along the lines of the crop circle artists but with road traffic accidents as their canvas – this does not bode well if taken too far. Or it might tell us that painting long lines (double yellow or single white) over miles of roads is so boring and the quest for fame so great that people have taken to bringing dead hedgehogs and badgers to work with them to liven things up a bit and get the papers round. This, too, if taken further and into other boring areas of life, may not be pleasant.

Jenni Diski London Review of Books

Thursday, August 26, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

memo

No one chooses his own story.

Black & White for Faces.. B&W looks into the soul, it looks into the eyes, and through the eyes into the soul.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Forgotten Days

You think I forgot
The bed and those yellowed sheets.
The iron bedstead,
The whiskey bottle on the nightstand,
Quiet music from the next room.

Your dress on the floor,
That fragrance of only you,
The sighs of oak leaves
Caressing the window pane.

And your whispers in my ear.
Did I bite, or was it you?

That, at last, I have forgot.

mek

Monday, August 16, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

On Growing Old

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your corn-land, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

John Masefield

Sunday, August 15, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Calm is all Nature as a Resting Wheel."




Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.

Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.



William Wordsworth

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know that it is."  

Oscar Wilde

BUT

"A wise man should have money in his head, But not in his heart."

Jonathan Swift. 

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


from "The Church & the Fiction Writer"

What the Catholic fiction writer must realize is that those who question [the faith] are not insane at all, they are not utterly foolish and irrelevant,  they are not utterly foolish and irrelevant, they are for the most part acting according to their lights. What he must get over is that they don't have the complete light.


Flannery O'Conner

Friday, August 06, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Thinking of my Father

Yesterday was a wonderful blue sky day.
I saw pelicans fishing while I swam
In spring sea water, still cool,
The summer warm soon to come. 

Like you, I swam out far
And the beach seemed out of reach
I cried because you are gone,
But all you gave me 
Runs always in my blood.

mek  Aug 5,  2010

Sunday, August 01, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dreams


Here we are all, by day; by night we're hurl'd
By dreams, each one into a several world.

Robert Herrick

Sunday, July 11, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

“We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature.


So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.”

— Sogyal Rinpoche via Glimpse of the Day, July 7 (via sharanam)

Reblogged from it's all dhamma..

Tags: Sogyal RinpocheWisdom TraditionsTibetan Buddhism

July 09, 2010, 9:52am 0 Comments and 0 Reactions





» Consider

"The word consider comes to us from around 1350 CE, and it traces its origins through the Middle English consideren and the Latin considerare, both words meaning “with the stars” or “in the company of the stars”. Those origins are shared with other English words like constellation and sidereal, the former describing a whole group of stars glowing up there in the night sky, and the latter meaning simply “starry” and by extension, celestial or heavenly…”

(from Beyond The Fields We Know)


“No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it.”

— Annie Dillard (from Whiskey River)

Tags: Annie DillardDeathWisdom TraditionsQuotesWriters

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.”

V.Nabokov

Thursday, May 27, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A Birthday Note for my Wife of 47 Years



The chairs and lounges were taken from the beach
years ago, and the gate closed and locked. Over
the ocean, far from our window
a windswept moon rises into dark night.

Far away rollers ride the sea, their sound arriving
out of darkness, and white surf crashes on the sand.
We look at each other, now older than we were.
Nodding, we know what was once unknown.



mek            May 26, 2010









Friday, May 21, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


If you had the choice of two women to wed,
(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)
And the first from her heels to her dainty head
Was charming in every sense of the word:
And yet in the past (I grieve to state),
She never had been exactly "straight".

And the second -- she was beyond all cavil,
A model of virtue, I must confess;
And yet, alas! she was dull as the devil,
And rather a dowd in the way of dress;
Though what she was lacking in wit and beauty,
She more than made up for in "sense of duty".

Now, suppose you must wed, and make no blunder,
And either would love you, and let you win her --
Which of the two would you choose, I wonder,
The stolid saint or the sparkling sinner?

Robert William Service

I don't know,I chose the saint and am much the happier for it.