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ethics and philosophy

my thoughts are sometimes better expressed by others.....

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In his 1951 The True Believer: Notes on the Nature of Mass Movements, philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that once people are wedded to a strongman, they will cling to him ever more tightly as his behavior becomes more and more erratic.
This loyalty is in part to demonstrate their own devotion to the cause, and in part to justify their own attacks on those the strongman has given them permission to hurt.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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3319

posted 3 weeks ago

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In life's trials, little by little we realize
that the source of joy
does not lie in extraordinary abilities or great expertise,
but rather in the humble giving of ourselves
in order to understand others with kind-heartedness.
Joy is always there lying in waiting for us
when simplicity is united to kind-heartedness
in our daily lives.

Brother Roger of Taizé
(1915-2005, Christian monastic scholar and teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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Karma means that past thoughts and actions
have led to this moment.
It also means that this moment
is the birthplace of the next.
What we think, how we feel,
what we do—it all matters.

Matthias Esho Birk
(psychologist, PhD in business, Zen teacher at Still Mind Zendo in New York,
teaching leadership and mindfulness at Columbia Business School)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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To all that is chaotic in you,
let there come silence.
Let there be a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you,
that go with you
even to the holy places
but will not
let you rest....
Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath the chaos,
where you find the peace
you did not think possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

Jan Richardson
(1967 to pres., artist, writer, minister)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed.
By imagination I mean knowledge and love.
I mean compassion.
People of power kill children,
the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination.
They have power.
Can you have power and imagination at the same time?
Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?

Wendell Berry
'Hannah Coulter', 2004

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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Those seemingly ordinary moments of wonder in your life
— when you are arrested by the sunset or swell of music or your child’s face,
and the line between you and everything blurs — are not throw-away moments.
They are actually portals into the sacred nature of things.

Valarie Kaur

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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It seems all too easy for modern life
to become one continuous rush
tainted with frustration
and a feeling that there is never enough time
to do anything with care and sensitivity.
So it is a very useful practice just to take one's time.
The truth is that if we can take pleasure
in what we do and be mindful,
we will find we have more time.
Our relationship with time itself can change.
Time becomes full of life
rather than second by second
stealing our life away.

Paramananda
(1884-1940, mystic, poet, teacher of Vedanta)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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If you have your health,
if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings),
if you can sleep without first taking a pill,
if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you,
you are a most fortunate individual and
you should get down on your knees morning and night and
thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power…
If you can fall in love again and again,
if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world,
if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes,
if you can forgive as well as forget,
if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked.

Henry Miller
(December 26, 1891–June 7, 1980)
American novelist, short story writer and essayist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 weeks ago

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I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the sacred Dance of life.
I was created to smile
to Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.
O Sacred one
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.

Hafiz

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowned highrises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I hear his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.

~Mary TallMountain
(1918-1994, Native Alaskan writer and elder)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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In comparison to emotions,
which come and go
and sometimes mistakenly lead us
into thinking there is danger,
values provide a steady hand
that reminds us about the kind of person
we want to be.

Yael Schonbrun
(Psychologist and family therapist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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Hope is a state of mind,
not of the world.
Either we have hope within or we don't;
it is a dimension of the soul
not essentially dependent
on some particular observation of the world
or estimate of the situation.
It is an orientation of the spirit,
an orientation of the heart;
it transcends the world
that is immediately experienced
and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Vaclav Havel
(1936 to 2011, Czech playwright, dissident, president)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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Our ability
to reach unity in diversity
will be the beauty and the test
of our civilization.

Mahatma Gandhi
(1869-1948, Spiritual Teacher and Political Leader)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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FRIENDSHIP is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness.
Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn.
A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them.
An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy.
All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness.
Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.

David Whyte
poet and philosopher

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another,
listening with the ears of another,
and feeling with the heart of another.

Alfred Adler
(1870-1937, Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist,
founder of the school of individual psychology)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 week ago

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May such calm of soul be mine,
so as to meet the force
of circumstances.

Aeschylus
(525-465 BCE Greek poet, playwright, philosopher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 6 days ago

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Practice not causing harm to anyone, yourself or others,
and everyday do what you can to be helpful.

Pema Chodron

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 5 days ago

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...a repeat

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.”

The sweat of workers, the genius of scientists,
and the hopes of children would be better spent
on schools, hospitals, roads, and homes than on armaments.
World peace could be achieved, Eisenhower said,
“not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton,
by milk and by wool, by meat and by timber and by rice.”

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

M Ljin

master gardener

Posts: 2011

Location: Zone 5

1091

I like...

posted 5 days ago

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No thought but my own, but I thought it seemed like the best place to put it anyway.

One becomes a leader not by participating in or winning petty squabbles, but by rising above them.

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

PEP - BB5 Badge (verified skill)
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Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 4 days ago

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Interconnection
is the tree at the atomic level,
bird at the atomic level,
us at the atomic level.
There is no atom that we haven't breathed,
drunk, or eaten from the planet.
We're walking, talking Earth.
We're not separate.
We are the Earth
that has figured out how to communicate
with itself.

Neil Theise
(Professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 3 days ago

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Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance
a poem titled “SOS 1995,” that is really an anthem for all times, a lifeline for all periods of helplessness and uncertainty, personal or political, and a cautionary parable about the theater of authority, about the price of giving oneself over to its false comfort. He writes:

"Take a long time with your anger,
sleepyhead.
Don’t waste it in riots.
Don’t tangle it with ideas.
The Devil won’t let me speak,
will only let me hint
that you are a slave,
your misery a deliberate policy
of those in whose thrall you suffer,
and who are sustained
by your misfortune.
The atrocities over there,
the interior paralysis over here —
Pleased with the better deal?
You are clamped down.
You are being bred for pain.
The Devil ties my tongue.
I’m speaking to you,
“friend of my scribbled life.”
You have been conquered by those
who know how to conquer invincibly.
The curtains move so beautifully,
lace curtains of some
sweet old intrigue:
the Devil tempting me
to turn away from alarming you.

So I must say it quickly:
Whoever is in your life,
those who harm you,
those who help you;
those whom you know
and those whom you do not know —
let them off the hook,
help them off the hook.
You are listening to Radio Resistance."

from The Marginalian by Maria Popova
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/07/18/leonard-cohen-anger-resistance/?mc_cid=c68dcbeb24&mc_eid=a3782d59bf

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 2 days ago

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Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.
They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life:
they feed the soul.
When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness
of their prose and their truths,
and even make us laugh about ourselves or life,
our buoyancy is restored.
We are given a shot at dancing with,
or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life,
instead of being squashed by it over and over again.
It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea.
You can't stop the raging storm,
but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people
who are together on that ship.

Anne Lamott,
Bird by Bird

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 1 day ago

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...the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

David Whyte
poet and philosopher

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10117

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3319

posted 10 hours ago

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If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches
but take away from his desires.
Not what we have,
but what we enjoy,
constitutes our abundance.

Epicurus
(341-270 BCE, Greek philosopher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

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