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You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

- Mark Twain

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

- Albert Einstein

"The Art of Peace does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term samurai is one who serves and adheres to the power of love."

- Morihei Ueshiba

Holding back the lust
Turned face with distrust
Following a path in mind
Bringing life to the dust

When the time is right
Choose the path to keep your passion intact
Decide upon the vision you hold in your grasp
With the power of love, life lends you its' hand
Time mending connection for the rest to last
True friends transform the best of the past
Beaming eyes reprise in the height of the future
Pulsating rhythms keep your mind on the sutras
Lies conquered deep claiming heart warming mantras

Pry into yourself, not into the beat
Realize inside there's nothing to defeat
Release.
Retry.
Transcend to recognize
That knowledge is you.

"Humor is just another defense against the universe. "

- Mel Brooks

I recently saw an exhibition at NY's Guggenheim featuring the collective works of an artist by the name of Cai Guo-Qiang. This is a must see for anyone in the NY area. His phenomenal style and use of gunpowder create a truly unique and powerful sensation. His reasoning for using gun powder in his paint, and proceeding to ignite it once complete, is that in order to create we must destroy.

Having grown up during China's Cultural Revolution, Cai's pieces consist of many passionate portrayals of the Eastern cultures and the dramatic impact of its politics. My favorite work is the Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No.9 (above). For this piece, Cai created trenches to outline the symbol in the picture above, and then loaded the trenches with explosives. He then sat in the center strip of land, hooked up a monitor to his heart, hooked up a seismograph to the ground, and then proceeded to ignite the explosives wired around him. Once he was finished, he created the painting using the readings from the monitors to show the close connection of humans with the earth.

He will also be the mastermind behind this years Olympics in China.

"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there."

- Charles Kettering

"Having found no self that is not other,
The seeker must find that there is no other that is not self,
So that in the absence of both other and self,
There may be known the perfect peace,
Of the presence of absolute absence."

- "The Tenth Man" by Wei Wu Wei

With genius devotion
Surrealists in motion
Hearts' eyes intertwine
Reveal imagination

As time unravels its' life
Matter fuses and folds
Spiraling rears to implode
Time apart but remaining the same
Congeals to the few, obedient and contained

The ideas in this animation come from the first chapter of a popular new book "Imagining the Tenth Dimension." The movie succinctly covers the new concepts of string theory and the multiverse as well as the current dimensional model of reality: space, and time. I think it gives a fairly clear view on how dimensions work in general, and allow for a much more accurate perspective on how they mesh together.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks!

- Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like something like the following:

There would be:

• 57 Asians
• 21 Europeans
• 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South
• 8 Africans

• 52 would be female
• 48 would be male

• 70 would be nonwhite
• 30 would be white

• 70 would be non-Christian
• 30 would be Christian

• 89 would be heterosexual
• 11 would be homosexual

• 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
• All 6 would be from the United States

• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 70 would be unable to read
• 50 would suffer from malnutrition
• 1 would be near death;
• 1 would be near birth
• 1 would have a college education
• 1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for both acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent."

- Phillip M Harter, MD, FACEP Stanford University, School of Medicine - Found on Flatplanet

Politics

A little boy asks his father what politics is. His father tries to explain. "Well, son," he says, "I go out into the world every day and make money - so imagine me as Capitalism. Your mother handles the budget for the house - so you could regard her as the Government. Your nanny, who looks after you and your baby brother, works very hard - so we will call her the Working Class. You are in the midst of all this - so consider yourself as the People. And your baby brother? Look on him as the Future."

That night the boy goes to bed pondering his father's words. In the middle of the night he is woken by his baby brother crying, clearly wanting to have his diaper changed. He goes into his parents' bedroom and sees his mother fast asleep. He is unable to rouse her.

He goes to the nanny's room and finds his father and the nanny making love. He tiptoes quietly out without being observed and goes back to bed.

At breakfast in the morning, the boy says to his father: "I was thinking about what you told me and I think I understand about politics now, dad." His gratified father looks up from his toast and asks, "Oh yes, how is that?" "Well," replies the boy, "Capitalism is screwing the Working Class. The Government is asleep. The People are being lied to and the Future is in deep shit."

"Remember: What you focus on expands. So think positively."

- Words of the wiser

David Bolinsky, an animator for the medical industries, has begun a relatively large project, in collaboration with Harvard, to put together a visual guide to how our bodies work. The clip below provides a 3 minute clip of the inner workings of a cell, and his recantation of the body's story elaborates on the beauty behind it all. A wonderful glimpse at what is in store for future education of the human body. If you can't wait for this DVD, I recommend an excellent book by DK Publishing: "HUMAN". It is a visual guide, not only to how our bodies work, but how they interact with reality and the others sharing its space.

Can you see a sound?
Can you hear light?
Can you unite your senses?
Can you turn inward?

What we are all seeking is clarity. Forget about religious rationalizations. Forget about elaborate explanations. What we all want is clarity. What we abhor is ignorance. Ignorance confuses us, brings us misfortune and sorrow, and makes us miserable. If we have clarity, then we can live with equanimity.

It is a misconception that spirituality brings everlasting happiness. There is no such thing. Sadness still comes to the wise, but, unlike most people, their clarity of mind allows them to see beyond the temporal emotionalism of the moment. They are farseeing, and so happiness and sorrow become the same to them.

True clarity is more than just begin smart, more than just being wise, Clarity manifests from meditation. It comes when you can unite all the faculties of the mind and unify them into a magnificent light of perception. It is hard to talk of this in anything but mystical terms. Our language is unfamiliar with the frontiers of the spirit because few have ever seen those limits, let alone described them. But let's try.

If you unite sound with vision, then you will create light.
That light is the concentrated force of the mind.
It is by that brightness that truth is revealed.

- Deng Ming-Dao

"One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."

- Einstein

"In Buddhism, there is a teaching called the "three bodies" (sanjin), also called the "three properties" or the "three enlightened properties". These are the three kinds of form that a buddha may manifest as: 1) the Dharma Body (dharmakaya or hosshin) is the form in which a buddha transcends physical being and is identical with the undifferentiated unity of being or Suchness (Skt. tathata, Jp. shinnyo); 2) the Bliss or Reward Body (sambhogakaya or hojin) is obtained as the "reward" for having completed the bodhisattva practice of aiding other beings to end their suffering and having penetrated the depth of the Buddha's wisdom. Unlike the Dharma Body, which is immaterial, the Bliss Body is conceived of as an actual body, although one that is still transcendent and imperceptible to common people; 3) the Manifested Body (nirmanakaya or ojin) is the physical form in which the Buddha appears in this world in order to guide sentient beings. It is considered that the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, is nirmanakaya. Honen believed that Amida is sambhogakaya."