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#2887 - Monday, July 30, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights
See with your eyes, hear with your ears. Nothing is hidden. ~Tenke
Gill Eardley www.allspirit.co.uk
Arunachala Greening Australian woman Apeetha Arunagiri lived in India for 30 years near the temple town of Tiruvanamalai in Tamil Nadu. Initially drawn there as a devotee of Ramana Maheshi, she stayed and was instrumental in forming the Annamalai Reforestation Society dedicated to replanting the sacred mountain Arunachala. This is her story and the story of the Arunachala Village Forest Plantation, a small scale village-based group which she also formed.
| Arunachala
Greening 11:52 |
or paste http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yz12nWcTOQ
Arunachala is a sacred mountain
near Tiruvanamalai in southern India. Seen as a manifestation of
the god Shiva, it is a site of great annual pilgrimage. Over the
last 20 years, it has also been the site of much tree-planting.
This 12 minute documentary tells the story of the formation of
the Annamalai Reforestation Society (ARS) and examines the
juncture between spirituality and practical environmentalism.
| Reweaving Shiva's
Robes 11:53 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mOWw8Lb6eM
Eulogy
One night when I was 19 years old I
went to see a Fernandel movie at one of the only 'Art' theatres
in Brooklyn. Fernandel was a French comedian who would send me
into spasmodic laughter and I eagerly awaited his films which
were popular in the late 50's and usually succeeded in filling
the tiny 'Flatbush' theatre with a capacity crowd of admirers.
This particular night the 'second feature' was a Swedish film and
although it was fifty years ago I remember clearly the scene as
my friend and I took our seats - we walked in midway through the
second feature because we wanted to be assured of catching the
Fernandel movie in its entirety. On the screen is a close up of a
most beautiful face of a girl who is bound to a cross and is
being hoisted up to be burnt as a witch. A knight and squire
interrupt the garish guards who allow a brief interview if only
because the knight is a man of such prestige. He talks for a
while with the girl; she vacillates between terror and insanity;
the knight asks her if she spoke to God or the devil; he is
looking for answers just back from the crusades into the plague
ridden middle ages; a seeker yearning to know of God; his faith
is shaken; he can not reconcile his role in the crusades - so
much death and suffering; these were real questions to me at 19
and no one in Brooklyn but a small cadre of friends ever asked
let alone answer them. The knight's companion is squire John; he
is a stoic, strong, understanding, unaffected by the questions of
his master yet steadfastly loyal; he becomes my role model for
years; the film is in Swedish with subtitles directed by
Ingmar Bergman who died yesterday at the age of 89.
The Fernandel movie cracked me up as expected, but I couldn't
tell you the name of it. At the end most of the crowd left and
they showed 'The Seventh Seal' one last time before the theatre
shut down for the night. I sat through it again along with a
dozen or so similarly transfixed individuals. I had never
conceived as film being an art form and here someone had done it.
Some dude from Sweden whom I had never heard of in the second
movie of a double feature reached his spirit out to a tiny
Brooklyn theatre and illuminated this individual's life with
possibility. What a thing! Thank You Ingmar!
posted by John Steinberg to GardenMystics
John Astin, of the wonderful music CD reviewed here, has a new blog. http://www.nonduality.com/hl2825.htm
Also wanted to let you know
that I started a new blog last month which you might enjoy
having a look at - if you haven't already come across
it, here's the link: http://www.integrativearts.com/blog/
One day the Buddha
held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns.
He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was
perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to
see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the
Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled
at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite
simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he
wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower.
The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able
to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the
problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the
present moment, we miss everything.
--Thich Nhat Hanh
Alan Larus Photography
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/o_lord.htm
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/inside.htm