Food For Thought – Poem by Shah Nimatullah

Shah Nimatullah wali, a great Sufi master

 

A Wave on the Ocean

 I will journey to the court of the tavern of ruin,

Happily, happily I will take my place in the district of the Holy Fire.

I will travel from the tavern of annihilation to subsistence in God.

I will abandon myself and become traceless and nameless.

Although I grew old in the tavern of the Master of the Holy Fire,

By the grace of the Master, I will be young again.

No other picture but His dream is embossed on my eyes.

Because of His dream, whatever I see is cause for concern.

Wherever I found a goblet of wine, I cherished it,

So it seems I have become the cupbearer of the world of rendan.

I am like a wave that appears on the surface of this sea.

Become my companion for a moment, for soon I will disappear.

Nimatullah is like a dream that you see in your sleep;

If it is not so, within a week I will become a dream.

 

Copy right Translated by Parviz Rasti

My Apathetic Political Stance on Obama McCain- Let’s not loose sight of the Real Issue

Hey everyone

                        How are things. Everywhere I go I can be in peace in the bathroom I hear about Barack Obama and John  McCain at lunch, at work on the train. I am happy to see that for the first time since I’ve been alive politics is alive again, (is that a good thing?). My feeling is that snakes will be snakes, and even when oen merges victorious he is still by nature a snake.

                       I love being an American!!! absolutetly love it.  Good leadership is always important. Unfortunately no matter how much Crossfire or hardball with chris matthews or James Carville i watch I cannot be convinced that the president of the US speaks for everyone of us. He speak for the top 5-10% of us Americans who own msot of the wealth in this country and the media gives us what we are supposed to know. At every second of the day the media is polluting the airways radio ways, the internet, the blogosphere (lol)  with this similacra of reality that we buy into bit by bit.

                     Since I have been born there are certain neighborhoods in brooklyn and around NYC that have not benefited either positively or negatively despite whatever president was in office. I havent seen much change but I have seen somethings get worse, however that doesnt bother me.  Strife and change are the two constants of human existence. we are each responsible for teh world the way it is I feel, however I dont think the politics are going to change it.

                   When women wanted the right to vote they staged protest had conventions and like the police or the cavalry in any action movie, politics came in the end and passed some laws.  Civil rights a lot of people got attacked by dogs and water hoses and were beaten up before anyhtign legally and judiciously changed.

                  Politicians come and go  as do fades bad albums, and commerical marketing campaigns. C’est la vie. For me i let them pass by. How do i do my part to change this world, I first make sure I am not a hypocrite in anything i do or say. You can be sure I am not famous. I make sure i provide for myself and my family. I try to serve my fellow men by volunteering still trying to go to school , it seems a masters isnt enough, more importantly and I hear the snickers already - I try to walk the spiritual path. I feel that the people who have done the greatest service have been the spiritual lights of the world. Jesus, Mohammed, buddha, they werent politicians but there latter followers sure were. 

Please remember that whomever is elected doesnt mean you can relax from your responsibilities. How can we access how ready america or the world is ready for change, and is at a stage to benefit from it if we cannot first answer these questions for ourselves.

My point vote or dont vote I dont care but please remember the change starts within the espace of your own life. It not because you voted for someone  that change will just come in the way you can benefit from.

—- Dave

Please dont take this posting to mean not to vote or that i dont vote. Vote or die is the popular slogan correct? Please dont take this posting to mean I support or endorse anyone because I dont. Also dont take this posting as a sign that you need to win my support for your candidate of your choice. If one more person contacts me and take some more of my free time to talk about Obama or hillary or McCain, you will force me to act in an unbecoming manner…

Daily Inspiration Friday. August 29, 2008 Rumi

I have recently come across the fact that now Rumi outsells Billy Shakespeare in the United States. with that in mind check this out

Marriage and Spirituality: Can it work?

Hey There  Guys,

                    Blogging has been fun. I have found a great many interesting blogs that I find cool and inspirational.  I am going to add a list of cool blogs to my side bar and of course when it get filled i will make a page about it.

                  I got a question asking me how does being married affect my spiritual practices and vice versa. Its a tough questions but maybe the answer might be of assistance to someone of you who read this. When i first thought of marrying my wife I asked my teacher his opinion on marriage and he told me “Dave, never trust someothign that can bleed for 7 or more days and still be alive”.

                Marriage is at the same time one of the most rewarding and painful things you can experience, thankfully its bee more me more rewarding than painful. My spiritual practices arent odd at all I dont hang upside down from the ceiling or take laxatives and starve myself. I take a few minutes every day to  meditate do my exercises and thats it. The other time Im jsut Dave, from teh jokes I tell  and the crazy shenanigans i pull i doubt in real life you would consider me a seeker.

I always felt that now a days  having a balanced life is key. Some people are called to spiritual path and some people arent.  Thats perfectly fine, the questiosn alawys is can you recognize someone walking on the spiritual path?  Do you expect them to be a vegetarian ? have  beard and grey /white hair, not work a real job 9-5. would you be surprised if they were soldiers gym teachers ? garbage men?

Spirituality comes in all different flavors like ice cream. If you look at soemones outward form you wil really know much about who they really are.  Even us in our daily lives are always trying to access who we a really are. We can feel the disparity at time betwen what we are doing whats we want whats others think of us and how we conceive of ourselves?

If you associate spirituality with extrenal things like fasting and looking or appearing pious then it will be a problem to married life. I dont make any dramatic production when i pray its totally inward.  I am a vegetarian 95% if the time my wife isnt at all. It doesnt matter. My wife doesnt sit in emditation with me that doesnt matter. What matters is that she helps me, and is there for me during my trials and tribulations. When life beats me down she is there and thats all that matters. What she does for me what ever it is is done out of love not because she feels she has to or that its her role as a wife.

That to me is service, real service that is the essence of spirituality. Real service means that youa re doing something out of love not because if you feed a homeless man 10 times you will go to heaven, or  also nto because if you dont do your duty you will be a punished horribly in in the burning pits of hell. It has been said that great spiritual eople have been able to reach such high position in teh eyes of god more so through their service.

“The hands that help are holier to me than the lips that pray “

If your religious belief and practices are  creating emnity beyween you and ur family take time to look at them again. They should in essence be bringing you together,  making you more compassionate patient and tolerant.

I feel , and this is my opinion I am not a marriage counselor, that if both you and ur spouse are  of different religions you have a unique opportunity to see how another culture experiences the absolute. Will you argue about externals? or   come together over the best of what each has to offer?

-just my two cents – hope that answered the question

Here is a funny picture

Daily Inspiration Friday August 28th, 2008 continued

Fortune has smiles down on all of us in some way or another and spurned us in some way or anotherdo you agree or dont you? feel free to comment

O Fortuna                           O Fortune,
velut luna                          like the moon
statu variabilis,                   you are changeable,
semper crescis                      ever waxing
aut decrescis;                      and waning;
vita detestabilis                   hateful life
nunc obdurat                        first oppresses
et tunc curat                       and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem,                  as fancy takes it;
egestatem,                          poverty
potestatem                          and power
dissolvit ut glaciem.               it melts them like ice.

Sors immanis                        Fate - monstrous
et inanis,                          and empty,
rota tu volubilis,                  you whirling wheel,
status malus,                       you are malevolent,
vana salus                          well-being is vain
semper dissolubilis,                and always fades to nothing,
obumbrata                           shadowed
et velata                           and veiled
michi quoque niteris;               you plague me too;
nunc per ludum                      now through the game
dorsum nudum                        I bring my bare back
fero tui sceleris.                  to your villainy.

Sors salutis                        Fate is against me
et virtutis                         in health
michi nunc contraria,               and virtue,
est affectus                        driven on
et defectus                         and weighted down,
semper in angaria.                  always enslaved.
Hac in hora                         So at this hour
sine mora                           without delay
corde pulsum tangite;               pluck the vibrating strings;
quod per sortem                     since Fate
sternit fortem,                     strikes down the strong man,
mecum omnes plangite!               everyone weep with me!

O Fortuna (Chorus) O Fortune

Daily Inspiration Friday August 29, 2008

Hey There

                How are you everyone? Does you all remember the carmina burana ? Accordint to wikipedia

“It is a collection, found in 1803 in the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern, and now housed in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. The 119 leaves of the original collection contain 228 poems compiled by three different scribes…..   

The first section, thought to be of religious songs, is now lost and there is no record of the missing poems. Therefore it is impossible to trace the manuscript’s existence before its mutilation, since manuscripts were usually catalogued by their opening line. The final section was not originally part of the manuscript and is a scholarly reconstruction of some of the poems where differences and emendations have been found buried underneath other texts.

Many of the religious songs and several of the love songs and drinking songs are accompanied by neumes that suggest melodies. Some of the poems have also had corresponding melodies discovered in later manuscript sources.“

Anyways Carl orff a german composer but some of the carmina Burana to music and of course the msot celebrated part of it  is O fortuna,  O Fortune. It got me thinking about fortune itself, it favors some people today other tomorrow when I am talkign about forutne idont mean wealth or riches. Fortune here meaning:

Etymology:

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin fortuna; akin to Latin fort-, fors chance, luck, and perhaps to ferre

We all are fortunate in many ways and we dont know it. Even the most spiritually and economically poverished among us has something to thank god for. However the questions is are we doingthe best with what we have? take a look at these pictures and you tell me

Fortune may smile on some of us with some things material wealth and on others with other things  (spiritual wealth) but having great material wealth andhaving your soul corrupted by vice and emptiness isnt a life. Neither is having great spiritual wealth and not beign able to eat. Balance is the sign of real spiritual and material prowess and acheivement.

 

I firmly believe that each and everyone one of us is responsible for the world the way it is . If ther eis chaos and order in the world it is because our lives are brimming with chaos and disorder.  Whatever happens in our life is only magnified in the world.  Are we greedy? are we arrogant, are we vindictive? I knowI cant cast the first stone. I remember reading in the80’s that the problem with poverty is not that we dont have enough food but that we dont have the means of proper distribution. Now 20 some odd years later I wonder what the case is ?

My inspiration today is those less fortunate than me, its my gradnmother living in a poor village in the Haiti, its the girl I sponsor through the christian childrens fund that lives in brazil, its the hungry people in the subway.

its this man    in india

its this woman d child in slovakia

Night Owls Anonymous – taking my self control

Are you a night owl? There is something about the night  to me or beign awake at night when everyone is reposing of course having creditors takign a break from calling me helps greatly maintain a calmer state of mind. But there is something about the silences that comes with the setting of the sun. Its a svelte silence . it seems to heighten all sensations  because all  activities have become drumlike int the silence that invades them,  all acts to me seem to linger longer and longer like a fading drum beat.

Night for me is the time to write and to think to finally see my family after a long day of work, see my pets meditate. For some reason I feel more like myself, like the day time is just some fad we go through to set up for the night. Night is the essence i feel of the unknown element that is always a factor in our lives. This unknown element makes it presences felt through dreams, we get a daily repose from the ego an the stresses of human life.

I really feel like human life is like a school, we return home everyday  at night when we sleep, and of course  we are in a way forced to forget the pleasentness of our home beyond this plane and we wake up to the sanitations department cacophonous symphony. Do you remember your dreams, do you ever remember seeing old friends while you dreaming, or great feelings or beautiful lights………. maybe there ismore going on here  than we think. While the body is reposing and the midn turned off another of our selves is free to roam the universe…only to be forces back into the body to endure another day….

What are your thoughts on all this, on astral travel on the night ? to be funny here is a song by laura branigan about the night that I remember my mom liking when I was a little boy that always for some reason made me laugh  as a little kid as did peter jennings and the english language. yes english wasn’t my first language……

<sings> I…. I live among the creatures of the night…….. ……Im living in the forest of dreams I know the night is not as it would seem……..

I love the 80’s well the parts of it I remember

Thoughts Post Meditation (1)

Hello everyone,

                       I have come back home from an evening of meditation of course my legs were stiff and I feel incredibly hungry. I have foudn eating a few hours before meditation sort of helps with the quieting of my mind. Eachtime I meditate things get better and better, my mind has calmed down the surrepitous stream of thoughts, I am getting a fine tuned rhythm. However I dont want to discuss techniques and theories.

                       After meditation  i feel light, like  the normal me  is on vacation and I feel like I am seeing theworld for the first time, maybe its not even the world i am seeing, maybe its that hidden other world jsut behind thereaches of our senses that penetrates into every  aspect of our existence. But What I know I feel is love it may last for a few minutes but its a wonderful feeling. Everyhting makes sense and it feel like I am walking in a dream.

                    We have to hold on to the feelings of meditation and the longer we can maintain it and the more often we can do it , the more we cna feel connected with our higher selves, and a reality that there are no words to describe. While reflecting on meditation the thoughtof prayer came to mind.  I remember how when I was younger I heard that one should meditate before one prays. it took me many years to understand why.

                  From my point of view many prayers are like a routine, a beggars routine, we ask for short term happiness: more money, real friends, a better house, kids that have some goals or aspiration in life. However in doing so we are feeding the ego which isthe very things, or maybe I should say one of the major things preventing us from actually bridging the gap between us and God, between being a beggar pleading and a son and daughter of god asking for what we should rightfull be asking which is God alone.

It’s for this reason that I really felt a deep correspondance with the sufic philosophy that the sufi focuses on god and god alone neglecting this life and the next, the love of god is like a parasitic vine that kills the attachment and love of this world which is the tree of our mortal life. Anyways

Meditation establish a deeper intuitional contact with our higher selves and depending on how far we have gone into meditation we can benefit from a deeper intuitional contact with God himself - check out nirbikalpa and savikalpa  states of samadhi (divine union).  Once through meditation we have silenced the mind and the endless desires the race through our mind we cnafinally call in our ‘birthright’ as sons and daughters of God. Our birth right is Him Himself. 

What do you think? please share