More wise quotes from Autobiography of a Yogi:

On discipline of the mind:
“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”
~Hindu Scripture

On virtues:
“Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.”
“Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon’s knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.”

On mind over matter:
“Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, while trying at the same time to remove their hold. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!”

On real communication:
“What a person imagines he hears, and what the speaker has really implied, may be poles apart. Try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men’s verbiage.”

On being even-keeled:
“A healing calm descended at mere sight of my guru. Every day with him was a new experience in joy, peace, and wisdom. Never did I find him deluded or intoxicated with greed or emotion or anger or any human attachment.”

On natural desires & discipline:
“Enjoyment of wine and sex are rooted in the natural man, and require no delicacies of perception for their appreciation…Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings,” he said. “Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered.”

On breaking religious rules:
“Sometimes, too, a master purposely ignores a canon in order to uphold its principle as superior to and independent of form. Thus Jesus plucked ears of corn on the day of rest. To the inevitable critics he said: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

As a fitting follow-up to my tour of the Berkeley Rose Garden, here are some thoughts about plants and other “inanimate” objects from the Indian Scientist Jagadis Chandra Bose in the early 1900’s, as recounted by Paramahansa Yogananda, in his Autobiography of a Yogi:

“The telltale charts of my crescograph are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals…A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant and animal under a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, as well as the permanent irresponsiveness associated with death…”

“By first chloroforming a huge tree, I achieved a successful transplantation. Usually, such monarchs of the forest die very quickly after being moved.” Jagadis smiled happily as he recounted the life-saving maneuver. “Graphs of my delicate apparatus have proved that trees possess a circulatory system; their sap movements correspond to the blood pressure of animal bodies. The ascent of sap is not explicable on the mechanical grounds ordinarily advanced, such as capillary attraction. The phenomenon has been solved through the crescograph as the activity of living cells. Peristaltic waves issue from a cylindrical tube which extends down a tree and serves as an actual heart! The more deeply we perceive, the more striking becomes the evidence that a uniform plan links every form in manifold nature.”

The effect of the chloroform discontinued all growth; the antidote was revivifying. The evolutionary gestures on the screen held me more raptly than a “movie” plot. My companion (here in the role of villain) thrust a sharp instrument through a part of the fern; pain was indicated by spasmodic flutters. When he passed a razor partially through the stem, the shadow was violently agitated, then stilled itself with the final punctuation of death.

The great scientist pointed to another Bose instrument.

“I will show you experiments on a piece of tin. The life-force in metals responds adversely or beneficially to stimuli. Ink markings will register the various reactions.”

Deeply engrossed, I watched the graph which recorded the characteristic waves of atomic structure. When the professor applied chloroform to the tin, the vibratory writings stopped. They recommenced as the metal slowly regained its normal state. My companion dispensed a poisonous chemical. Simultaneous with the quivering end of the tin, the needle dramatically wrote on the chart a death-notice.

“Bose instruments have demonstrated that metals, such as the steel used in scissors and machinery, are subject to fatigue, and regain efficiency by periodic rest. The life-pulse in metals is seriously harmed or even extinguished through the application of electric currents or heavy pressure.”

Yesterday evening I was driving aimlessly around Berkeley, and to my delight I discovered a beautiful Rose Garden up in the hills. You can see all my pictures by clicking here. One of my favorites was a shameless little rose exposing herself, named Las Vegas:

Another rose was truly aging gracefully. You can see her spots and wrinkles; she is stooped over from gravity’s effects, and the ants crawl on her…but she doesn’t care:

Finally, a beautiful, colorful maze of twisted branches viewed from the path around the rose garden.

The moon was so close and brilliant last night, outshining even San Francisco’s city lights. I didn’t have an opportunity to photograph it, but I doubt I would have captured its brilliance anyway…As I was driving away from Berkeley last night, I couldn’t help but shed a few grateful tears for how good my life is. It’s that good. I’m that lucky.

When you’re unemployed, you have time to listen to songs like this:

I caught some beautiful moon rays in front of my home last night and wanted to share them with you.

Evolutionary thought of the day:

Each interaction we have with another human ultimately affects millions of others living on earth, for generations to come. By affirming and lifting each other up, or degrading and bringing others down, the energy that you bring to an interaction with someone ultimately transfers in small part through that person into everyone they encounter. Thus simply in exchanging energy with one another (in body language, words, or actions), we effectively promote or degrade one-billionth of our status and purpose as a species, but spread that one-billionth of an idea into hundreds, thousands, and potentially millions/billions of souls. Hence, the great quote:

“Every action of my life touches on some chord that will vibrate into eternity.”

On another note, here are some great quotes from my current online reading adventure, “An Autobiography of a Yogi”

On miracles performed by people, as explained by early 20th century science:
“The different sensory stimuli to which man reacts—tactual, visual, gustatory, auditory, and olfactory—are produced by vibratory variations in electrons and protons. The vibrations in turn are regulated by “lifetrons,” subtle life forces or finer-than-atomic energies intelligently charged with the five distinctive sensory idea-substances.

Gandha Baba, tuning himself with the cosmic force by certain yogic practices, was able to guide the lifetrons to rearrange their vibratory structure and objectivize the desired result. His perfume, fruit and other miracles were actual materializations of mundane vibrations, and not inner sensations hypnotically produced.”

(I don’t know about “lifetrons,” but he’s on the right track…)

Also,
“Hypnotism is trespass into the territory of another’s consciousness.”

(Aha, my thoughts exactly! Maybe that’s why I have refused to let anyone hypnotize me!)

I was pleased to find that someone had already summarized and put into words my thoughts & experience with religion. I found these quotes today on Wikipedia, while learning about Buddhism (much to mother’s chagrin):

“Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, because you have been made to believe it from your childhood; but reason it all out, and after you have analyzed it, then, if you find that it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it, and help others to live up to it.”
~Swami Vivekananda

“Serenity of spirit and love for all sentient creation are enjoined by the Buddha. He does not speak of sin, but only of ignorance and foolishness, which could be cured by Enlightenment and Sympathy.”
~Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

“In my case strangely enough, it was not the love of science, nor the love of Nature – but an abstract idealisation, the belief in the value of the human spirit and the virtue of human endeavour and achievement (that motivates me). I am moved by the story of the Buddha’s great renunciation, of his search for truth, and of his final enlightment. It showed me that the capacity for renunciation in the pursuit of exalted aims is the very essence of human greatness.”
~Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman

My lucky life with Ryan M. The Glorious and Funnyheart.

Ryan M doing his math homework:

Ryan M’s desktop picture says a thousand words about his personality:

Funnyheart doing what she does best:

Massage is teaching me a lot about intuition. That gut feeling. “Lose yourself.” Let go. Be in the moment. That thing actors and performers are always talking about.

I’ve made a great effort to “center” myself before each massage, and each time I do it really pays off (sometimes literally). Yesterday, a woman (a writer) left me a comment that said something to the effect of: “Did you say a prayer before the massage or set an intention? because I really felt it in the massage, very powerful & meaningful.” Many other comments I’ve received have been along the same theme, but each relayed to me in a unique way by that individual. It’s a pretty awesome feeling to know you’ve made that deep connection with someone. I’ve experienced it myself in a good massage–it’s like the masseuse knows exactly where your pain is, and it sometimes feels like they are reading your thoughts because their hands seem “guided” to just the right areas of your body.

I’ve struggled for many years with living in the moment. Mostly, I think it was due to self-criticism and fear of judgement from others. I would choke when performing piano pieces that I had memorized and played perfectly 100 times by myself. I would miss a basketball shot game after game, a shot that I had perfected in practice over years of repetition. I would sabotage my own volleyball serves, hits, hammer, discus, javelin, and shot throws by actually talking myself out of performing my best–by distracting myself from the moment at hand. My coaches and teachers knew my weakness and encouraged me to stop holding myself back–but I didn’t know how. I felt like, when it got down to the moments when it counted, that a fear of success would overwhelm me, time after time, and instead I would fail.

The one-on-one environment of massage has given me a chance to redeem that part of me that wants so bad to succeed at something physical without my mental processes getting in the way. For the past couple months, I have been able to practice, one hour at a time, the art of accomplishing everything by doing nothing. I’m closing my eyes and allowing myself to be open to the subtleties of my interaction with another highly organized mass of molecules, and letting intuition guide my hands. Borrowing from the blind was a similar trick that I used in college competition. When I knew that my nerves would get the best of me that day, I would leave out my contact lenses and throw “blind”. My vision is bad enough that without my contacts or glasses on, people’s faces 3 feet away are blurry enough to disguise any subtle judgements or body language that I might perceive as negative. Thus, in throwing blind, I was centering or guarding myself against the distraction of the perceived judgements of others.

For someone as driven for results as I am, it is very difficult for the mental side of me to get out of my own way and let the intuitive side take over. But I’m learning that it is possible for me, and I look forward to applying what I learn here to other physical endeavors.

It was a beautiful day to walk among the giant trees in Sequoia National Park (all my pics here). The sun was beginning to set and I was sitting on the last bench along the Trail of 100 Giants, listening to the sounds of Nature. The longer I was quiet, the more I heard, from the calls of several different birds (none of which were meadowlarks!) to some unsettling creaking noises coming from the nearby trees. I paid special attention to the creaking, in case of a “timber” requiring a full dash with the cat under my arm back to the campground. I noticed things were falling loudly and often from a very tall tree I had passed just back up the trail. I couldn’t make out what had fallen, so I walked over to investigate.

Scanning the forest floor and nervously glancing upward, I waited for another falling object. Not 30 seconds later (and not 30 feet away): Crash, crash, crash, whack! Something small and round hit the ground with a heavy thud. I couldn’t tell if it was some kind of pinecone or what, and my instinct told me to stay on the trail but I had to find out what it was. Just as I stepped off the trail, I heard crash, crash, crash, of the branches high above, then a whizzing past my head and WHACK! Another one had smashed into the trail right where I had been standing. I realized whatever was up in the tree was aware of my presence and wanted me to stay away from its stash! I stepped back onto the trail and picked up the heavy, sticky, fragrant green object (that had nearly put a hole in my cranium) and walked back to the bench.

I could tell it had been connected to the tree with about an 1/8-inch diameter branch that was still green. It had clearly been gnawed off at the end and thrown down purposefully by some animal high up in the tree. It smelled almost sweet enough to eat, but woodsy and pungent enough to be made into an alluring men’s cologne: I would have called it Sequoia Dusk.

I carried it with me for a while, smelling it over and over again, then just before leaving, I tossed it back in the woods in hopes that some animal would be glad to have it back. Today was a good day.