The trees on Ox Mountain were once beautiful. However because the mountain is on the borders of a great state, they were cut down with axes and saws, so how could they retain their beauty? Yet they continued through the cycle of life and the feeding of the rain and dew to put forth buds and new leaves. But the cattle and the goats came and browsed amongst the trees and destroyed them.
This is why the mountain is now bare and stripped. People look at it and think this is how it has always been. But this is not the true nature of the mountain. And this is also the case with humanity. Surely we were not without benevolence and righteousness? The way in which a person loses their true goodness is just like the way that trees are destroyed by the axe. Cut down day after day, how can the mind, anymore than the tree, retain its beauty or continue to live?
I had a special request to write this recipe down right away so I don't forget it. It is indeed delicious, but I think it is more the care put into finding good ingredients than the precise measurements described in the recipe given below. I've recently been reading about the Sikhs and their culinar ...
Spring is a period of transition and this spring has been especially full of changes in my neck of the woods. I attribute it mainly to craniosacral therapy and the GAPS diet which we have been on for over a year now. The past couple weeks we ran out of probiotics (we take biokult twice a day) and ha ...
Some of you may have thought that I am a Christian because of how much I talk about my MK (missionary kid) upbringing in Papua New Guinea (who wouldn't enjoy being a kid in the jungles of PNG?). The truth of the matter is I no longer call myself Christian. The thing that kept me on the fence for so ...
I spent a bit of time in Burma (Myanmar). In 2006 I was the Executive Chef of the historical Strand Hotel, where many deep thinkers (George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, E. F. Schumacher...) wrote some of their incredible books. Maybe that is why I resonate with the id ...
A beautiful liturgy of justice and welcome which can be found in The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread, & Resurrection by Andrea Bieler. Sunshine sent this in around Christmas last year and I (hellaD) am just getting around to sharing it with you all now. The ritual of speaking from the elements is very powe ...
I have pulled out some excerpts from Sema: Human Being in the Universal Movement (Text by Dr. Celaleddin Celebi, illustrations by Ingrid Schaar) which will help to explain the Sema Ceremony of whirling. At the end it explains briefly how to twirl like a dervish and tap into the energy of nature, ple ...
One should not pass over these things, simply saying they are food. They are in reality a complete civilization. -Abdulhak Sinasi, Camlicadaki Enistemiz (1944) I really like the philosophy and spirituality of the Mevlevi (a Sufi brotherhood which originated in the Seljuq period, under Mevlana Ja ...
