Quietness Distilled

Deriving a positive meaning with practical applications from the experience of a stroke. Fascinating. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Not all that many years ago, the pace of life in the South was a little on the slower side with long summer evenings after work or school enjoyed on screened-in porches with tall glasses of fresh iced tea and, of course, excellent company.

Over the course of my life, though, I’ve watched time speed up or, at least, how people tend to think of time and how its spent. It’s been heartening to watch as not only ecological and social awareness come back into vogue, but with them a more healthy approach to time.

– Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed

Is it just me, or does he talk really fast? ;)

Can coexistence be trademarked? Apparently so.

Long-time favorite, Peacemonger, appears to have become unwittingly embroiled in a massive drama over the coexistence of artistic renderings of the word ‘coexist’ in a chicken and the egg trademark dispute. A widely familiar sight, even in my hometown, is the Peacemonger’s own bumper sticker design utilizing the following symbols to spell ‘coexist’:

• The Islamic Star and Crescent
• A Peace Symbol
• Male/Female Symbols
• The Jewish Star of David
• A Wiccan ‘Candle’
• The Yin-Yang
• The Christian Cross

Most thankfully to U2′s Vertigo Tour prominently displaying a company logo in signs and on clothing produced by Coexist, LLC, another version by Polish artist Piotr Mlodozeniec also has become widely known. The work produced in the year 2000 utilizing three of the seven symbols, however, was commissioned by the Museum on the Seam in 2001 for its Exhibition Coexistence and the clothing company apparently never approached either the artist or the museum to inquire about its use.

The three major religions have much of the world’s nearly undivided attention at the moment and Mlodozeniec’s concept highlights them in such a way as to appear the essence of poignancy. That said, it is definitely not just extremist elements of those three religions that are in conflict, but seemingly those of every other ideological “club” in the world as well. For that reason, Peacemonger’s design is not only more encompassing but, were it to have a donkey and an elephant depicted in it, would cover nearly every conflict raging around us today.

A few things stand out:

1. Why is it always the little guy that gets shafted? Instead of a cease and desist letter, complete with decidedly unprofessional-sounding epithets such as “there is simply no functional rationale for your slavish coping [sic]“, it seems twenty-something adults could find a more equitable way to broach the subject and perhaps even reach a conclusion without bringing the lawyers into it. Besides, coping with the incessant sociopolitical power-mongering is about all many of us are capable of anymore.
2. How is it that a company producing “high-end” merchandise has to register a domain name with the typical alternate version that comes up in a taken domain search? In this case, ONLINE. (It seems coexist.com is parked for sale by a domain-squatter looking to take in a cool $100,000 for the coveted word. Whether or not the 100 grand would go to charity or not is entirely unclear.)
3. How is it that Mlodozeniec’s art can be trademarked anywhere in the world without his prior approval? There really is not much of a discernible difference between the company’s logo and his original artwork.

Finding Peacemonger’s design more appealing anyway, I’d hoped to become the proud owner of one of the Peacemonger’s coexist items myself on revisiting the site today. As it happens, I suppose I’ll have to go for “Believe in Love” or — better yet — “I believe we all need to practice Patience”.

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

The Eightfold Path »

The four sublime states (the Brahma Viharas) are mettaa (loving kindness), karunaa (compassion), muditaa (sympathetic joy) and upekkhaa (equanimity). Their potentiality to deal with conflicts, jealousies, prejudice, and hatred are immense, and at the social level very significant. In the words of Ven. Nyanaponika: “They are the great removers of tension, the great peace-makers in social conflict, the great healers of wounds suffered in the struggle of existence: levelers of social barriers, builders of harmonious communities, awakeners of slumbering magnanimity long forgotten, revivers of joy and hope…”

The Pschology of Emotions in Buddhist Perspective »

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one’s self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived–this is to have succeeded.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Interspirituality is the world music of religion; borrowing, fusing, blending and bouncing rhythms and riffs off one another not to create a homogenized spirituality, but to birth a radical new sound embedded in the ancient and timeless silence. This doesn’t impact or deepen my life?it is my life.

– Rami Shapiro

Read an Introduction to Interspirituality »