I wanted the music to mingle unobtrusively with the sounds of the garden. By not creating a continuous web of sound with the instruments, as one normally would expect from music, and by always letting the music disappear into silence at unexpected places, my listening experience became that of a calm awareness of the entire field of sound around me. The sounds from the everyday become part of the music; an old man drove by on his bicycle and by the fountain were people playing games.
SHOW ME WHO YOU ARE
A powerful short-story by Rick Maddox: One could see that the god’s form was like that of a human, that the shape of his face could have been that of an Indian gentleman. But little else conveyed an impression of a human being. Ishvara’s face and body consisted entirely of colored light. His face was an oval of soft white light. Set in it were large eyes of the deepest black. Violaceous swirls indicated the folds of his loose garment. A scarf of aqua light draped over his left shoulder and onto his right arm.
PURE LANDS – A POEM
View PostARTMONEY – A GLOBAL CURRENCY WITH A COLLECTIVE HEART
Imagine a world in which everyone can make their own money. All bills are 18 x 12 cm. You can use it as real money to buy food. In fact, Artmoney was invented in 1997 as an art project aiming at cleaning up the filthy path of real money with the broom of art. The utopian hope was to create a platform, where all people are worth the same, and anyone could make their own money gain freedom from financial slavery.
DANCE OF THREE VAJRAS
Dance of three Vajras
Practice on three vajras
Mind body and speech
Revealing the three mysteries
LIQUID GOLDEN EMBROIDERY OF LIGHT AND DEATH
Know this labyrinth, Friend. Know this dream. Know its luminous, transparent, liquid, holographic nature. Gnothe seauton, know thyself, as the Greek formula went, and know the dream. Feel its texture, for nowhere is its nature and mystery revealed but in the electricity of its experience. Feel the rainbow in whatever color or shape you see, whatever sound, texture, taste, smell. Whatever emotion, whatever thought, even sadness and pain.
MIND’S ULTIMATE NATURE: POEM BY DZONGSAR KHYENTSE RINPOCHE
View PostTO THE NEXT GENERATION OF ARTISTS BY WAYNE SHORTER & HERBIE HANCOCK
We are not alone. We do not exist alone and we cannot create alone. What this world needs is a humanistic awakening of the desire to raise one’s life condition to a place where our actions are rooted in altruism and compassion. You cannot hide behind a profession or instrument; you have to be human. Focus your energy on becoming the best human you can be. Focus on developing empathy and compassion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspiration rooted in the complexity and curiosity of what it means to simply exist on this planet. Music is but a drop in the ocean of life.
IN PRAISE OF TARA
Jason Espada read his exquisite poetry in praise of Tara, the female buddha of compassion:
Spiritual beauty bringing light, giving hope, removing obstacles, calming fear, pacifying suffering, and protecting, bringing harmony to every surrounding circumstance, bringing life, health, happiness, good fortune, and stability.
THE OPEN EXPANSE OF AWARENESS
View PostA CONVERSATION WITH DEATH
God of Death: Now let’s discuss what it means to die. Understand the workings of this organism. Imagine you were brought up in an environment where you were not taught any alphabet or words. You had just this working mind, which is inbuilt in every creature for its survival. That working mind does not think in terms of words or sentences. Its working are entirely based upon electrical impulses produced by light, sound, touch, taste and smell, striking the sensors of the sense organs, which send impulses to reach the brain.
AN INVOCATION CALLING ON GESAR KING OF LING
Show us the way through the realms of life and death. Show what does not change in the endless sea of change. And while time remains, live in our hearts as the light of our true being. Penetrating the darkness of painful illusion, show the dawn of Vajrasattva, the luminous bridge through the six realms and three times. Show us the path within the human heart to the Kingdom of Shambhala here and now.
LOOKING FOR HAPPINESS
Have you ever wondered why sometimes in a very bad situation, we can be well and in other times, even in perfect times, we find ourselves in a state of emotional boredom or stress?
–Sonia Gomes
THE WITNESS SKY
View PostRULER OF YOUR VAST KINGDOM
Since the beginning of all time until the end of all time there lives a ruler of a vast kingdom between myriads of interstellar clouds and within each single sentient being. May this timeless king of ancient lineage born in the foam of a colorful- iridescent sea of arising stardust remember his royal descent. May he wake up to the holistic realization of his eternally pulsating universe of body, speech and mind within an ocean of nourishing light for the benefit of all living beings as there are as many as shooting stars in a meteor stream.
REMEMBERING ETERNITY
Selections from Remembering Eternity, by author Rick Maddox:
He felt that he had been dissolved as a discrete entity but had, in an incomparably advantageous exchange, been reconstituted as the vital center of everything. Ego had nothing to do with this conception; on the contrary, the change allowed Skylar to see, in a profound way, that not only were all people and things in the universe interconnected, but that they all depended on one another.
THE FALSA EXPERIENCE OF SUFI MUSIC
Sufi music is a language around love and ecstasy, that is fundamental to the human experience, an abiding recognition of the astonishing complexity of being human. It is a tenderness around the most important, deeply felt emotional and psychological needs, and a cultural mechanism whereby satisfying these does not have to be a struggle.
