Thursday, April 30, 2009

Skipping to the Swadisthana/Sacral (Orange)


So yesterday I missed posting about the blue chakra. Here's how I feel about that. Also about the fact that I'm skipping to Orange out of order. Why not complete the odd colors first, after all?

So, for a change, Wikipedia has a bit more than a stub. My "brow" (laptop) & I are working in the bedroom today on my final project for this semester's class, so hopefully my swadisthana will help me make some sort of reality out of my fantasy that I can complete this report and powerpoint today...

Hopefully this will put me in the mood:

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Ajna/Brow Chakra Spring Cleaning (Indigo?)


OK, so how about spring cleaning that brow chakra? That would be the den or home office. Well, over the past 2 days that has moved a bit. My "home office" is the laptop, which has lied (lain? ohwhocares) next to my chair in the living room for most of its life, but since yesterday is in the bedroom with me, at least temporarily. The story of why that is would bore even the dog, but the laptop will be migrating with me from room to room every few days for the next week or so. Perhaps this will suffice to dust off my brow chakra? I'll try the lucid dreaming, too, but I haven't practiced in ages, so I can't really expect much success.

The color Indigo for the ajna/brow chakra is an interesting proposition. It's not really blue and red mushed together, so what is it? In the context of selling gemstones, it's "light, knowledge, power, dignity, meditation, and contemplation". Hmm. This site says that it's indigo because "clairvoyant" people see it that way. Doubtful hmm. As flaky as this site seems, I'm actually most drawn to its proposal that the ajna chakra is indigo because the 1st chakra, which is red, is flowing around and back through the Violet 7th and Indigo 6th to the 5th chakra, which is blue, so that the ajna is intermediate and therefore indigo.

Since my dinky little blog that no one reads is, when combined with 100 million other dinky little blogs that no one reads, a threat to The American Way (as interpreted by SonyBMG), I have to link to today's musical selection, as embedding has been disabled by request.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Long Life (White)



And by the way, in the course of your Spring cleaning, don't forget your chakras! ;) Why not count down the chakras this week? We'll count down instead of up, because today is White and the white chakra (or violet) is the crown chakra.

I can actually see part of the roof from my bedroom window. There are clumps of moss growing on it. Sometimes the squirrels kick the clumps down onto the deck or the front walk. I could go out there and sweep the ones on this lower roof off myself, but I'm thinking my parents wouldn't be too keen on having my big clumsy behind up there on the roof. (Nervous types, you know. ;)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Truth of the Cessation of Suffering (Yellow)



Update regarding the media-hyped link between obesity and global warming: "We argue that increased population adiposity, because of its contribution to climate change from additional food and transport GHG emissions, should be recognized as an environmental problem." The actual study is based on energy consumption estimates, not assumptions about behaviors, which would be dodgier. One interesting point raised in the discussion:
"Because some studies show that up to one-third of
the food that is purchased is wasted, higher food consumption
is likely to result in more food waste. The
majority of waste food is either landfilled, where
organic waste releases the powerful greenhouse gas
methane when it decomposes, or it is incinerated producing
CO2. Although wasted food increases the GHG
impact of the overweight population, we have not
included these emissions in our estimates."

So, yes, the fat-hating media has way-hyped and distorted this actually quite reasonable "duh" study.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Truth of Suffering (Red)

(Uma's dad goes on for about 10 minutes in an introduction which is informative and not too boring, and H.H. starts speaking at 11 minutes, if you want to skip ahead.)

I could go to Los Angeles September 25th & 26th, maybe. Or if I had $500-600 to spare, I could stay home and see him at DAR/Constitution Hall October 8-9th and/or see the half-day teaching on October 10th. (Of course, going to LA would cost at least $500-600, too, but I'd be able to visit the SoCal Contingent, too.)

Truth of Suffering
Truth of the Causes of Suffering
Truth of the Cessation of Suffering & Truth of the Path to Cessation of Suffering
[from Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen Rinpoche]

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Red Light, Green Light


If it has a little red light on, it's not green.

In other news, the International Journal of Epidemiology has published a study in which modeling was used to quantify the rather obvious supposition that obese people consume more resources and generate more carbon emissions than non-obese people. I don't have access to the actual write-up in the IJE, but I consider this "duh" study to be dubious. For example, a lot of assumptions are made about behavioral differences, apparently, so that increased emissions from use of cars is not simply a matter of increased fuel, but also increased use of cars. OTOH, it may be that the study itself didn't really attribute the differences to obesity directly, since it merely compared energy use of modeled population body compositions from the US and VietNam. IOW, it could be our fat-hating media blowing the obesity component out of proportion in what might really be a more complex analysis that merely notes and takes account of the obesity factors.

Can anyone with actual access to the study help me out here? I'm in total agreement that being thin and vegetarian is likely greener than being an obese carnivore, and I don't see anything wrong with try to quantify that, but the reporting of this study is over-the-top. The FoxNews headline on my google page, for example, reads "Do fat people cause global warming?" [I won't link to a FoxNews anything, you'll have to look it up yourself if your interested.]

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Ugly, but Cool

There is an ugly (but cool) new gadget at the bottom of the page that allows navigation, verse by verse, through the Bhaghavad Gita. I have found the Bhaghavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching (ooh! online version!, and The Day of a Buddhist Practitioner to be handy little books to carry along with one for perusal and re-perusal during those few-minutes-of-waiting times we so often encounter. (This is what we did before iPhones, Dean.)

So if you can excuse the ugliness of the gadget, you may occasionally peruse (and re-peruse) the gadget at the bottom of the page. After an initial (or two) reading of the Gita, you will likely find portions that illuminate certain personal situations for you, and those portions and the illumination will evolve over time. For more aesthetically pleasing options The Bhaghavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and The Day of a Buddhist Practitioner can be purchased and easily carried-along, as I have done.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Way Back (and then some)

I had this on vinyl, that's how old it is:


And someone possibly as odd as me has put one of her later songs to a Tenchi video! :)

Angelina & I used to watch Tenchi Muyo, and my favorite character was (of course) Ryoko. (If only I had my own Ryo-Ohki, I would be invincible, mwuahahahaha!)