Author: Bodhi Baba

THE HEART OF THE N.A. WAY – “We begin by asking for help and trying out recommendations of people at the meetings. … In time we learn to pass on what we have been given.” “[I]t is the heart of the N.A. way of recovery from addiction – one addict helping another.” (The Basic Text, p.57)

“That change we seek … it can not happen without you. … [W]ithout a new spirit of service – a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolve to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.” (The Basic Text, p.57) – Barak Obama (1961 – ) U.S. Pres.-elect, 11/04/08 Victory speech in Chicago, IL

 

Super Bass – Nicki Minaj (3:39)  

What have you done lately to help your fellow man and replenish your spirit with love?

 

 

Heart of The Monkey :

There grew a big tree on the seashore. Half of its branches were over the land and the other half over the water. A little Monkey lived in the tree. He played in the branches all day and when he was hungry, he ate the sweet fruit that grew in the tree. Now, in the sea there lived a Shark. One day the Monkey threw some of the fruit into the sea. The Shark ate it up. From that day on the Shark and the Monkey were friends and the Shark asked the monkey to throw some fruit down to him every day.

“Thank you, friend Monkey,” said the Shark, “I have only fish to eat in the sea and I like your fruit very much.”

The Monkey was happy to be a friend of the Shark and threw fruit into the sea every morning. Once, the Shark said to the Monkey, “You are so good to me that I want to do something good for you.”

The Monkey looked down at the Shark and listened. The Shark said, “I want to show you my home. You will meet my brothers and sisters. You are so good to me that I think they will like you.”

The Monkey thought a minute and said, “No, I don’t want to go. Thank you. I am afraid of cold water. And I cannot swim. I shall be happier if I stay in my tree.”

…

“Oh, no, no!” said the Shark. “Don’t be afraid! Come with me. I shall carry you to my home on my back. I shall not swim very quickly.”

The Monkey thought, “The day is very hot. It will be nice on the water. I think I’ll go.”

So the Monkey sat down on the Shark’s back. And they went off.

At first the Monkey did not like going on the Shark’s back, because the Shark swam very quickly. But soon he liked it and looked at the new places and at the fish in the water. It was so interesting!

“Do you like the sea?” asked the Shark. “Is the sea better than your forest?”

“Yes, it is. How far must we go?” asked the Monkey.

“It is not very far,” the Shark answered. “And now I must tell you something. Our chief, the biggest shark in the sea, is very ill. Our doctor said to him, ‘You must eat a monkey’s heart. Then you will be well again.’

So I am taking you to him and I am telling it to you, because you are my friend.”

The poor Monkey was ready to cry. But he did not cry. The Monkey thought of a plan to save himself. Then he said, “How silly you are! Why didn’t you tell me that before? I have no heart with me. It is at home, in the branches of a big tree. We Monkeys always hide our hearts in the branches of big trees in the daytime. We take out hearts only at night. What will you do if your chief finds that I have no heart? How angry he will be? I am ready to give my heart to your chief, because I am your friend. But how can I do that when I have no heart with me?”

…

The Shark asked the Monkey, “If I take you back to your tree, will you go and get your heart?”

“Of course, I will. And let us go quickly. Your dear chief must not wait!”

The Shark with the Monkey swam back very quickly. They came again to the big tree. The Monkey climbed up the tree saying, “Wait for me! Wait for me! I’ll take my heart!”

But the monkey did not come back. The Shark was swimming and swimming in the water under the tree. Then he shouted, “Friend Monkey, where are you?”

There was no answer. The Shark thought, “I am afraid he can’t find the heart in the branches!”

The Shark waited and waited for the Monkey. Then he shouted again, “Monkey? Monkey? When will you come back to me?”

Again there was no answer. Then the Monkey began to laugh.

“Do you think I am a fool?” asked the little Monkey. “Do you think I want to give my heart to your big bad chief and then die?”

“But you said your heart was in the branches of the tree,” said the silly Shark.

“My heart is in its place in my body. It is always there!” shouted the Monkey. “And you go away! We are not friends any more!”

And with these words the clever Monkey threw a big rotten fruit on the Shark’s nose.”  (http://www.english-for-students.com/Heart-of-The-Monkey.html)

 

Acting Upon our Spiritual Principals- “To a degree, he has done this when taking a moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt and in what ways.”  (12 & 12, p. 77)

A CLEARER PICTURE OF THE HARM WE’VE CAUSED –

“By making our list, we can no longer deny that we caused harm.  We admit that we hurt others, directly or indirectly, through some action, lie, broken promise, or neglect.”  (The Basic Text, p. 38)

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions  but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”  John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) British economist/philosopher

 

Disco Lies – Moby (3:21)

John Stuart Mills brief Bio (1:52)

Native American Acting Consciousness Meditation (4:06)

 

What area(s) of your life do you feel especially proud of your level of accountability, lately?

 

TAKE ACTION TODAY – ” … we simply try to live this program in the here and now. We find joy as we start to learn how to live by the principles … needed to carry the message of recovery.” “Spiritually refreshed we are glad to be alive.” (The Basic Text, p. 52)

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) U.S. poet

 

Get Out the Vote on Broadway (2:35)

Spiritual Freedom in America – Emerson (1:44)

Powerful Healing Gayatri Mantra (3:31)

 

How do you take action to live according to your own spiritual ideal, lately?

 

 

How We Used to Take Action and VOTE –

On the morning of November 2, 1859 —Election Day— George Kyle, a merchant with the Baltimore firm of Dinsmore & Kyle, left his house with a bundle of ballots tucked under his arm. Kyle was a Democrat. As he neared the polls in the city’s Fifteenth Ward, which was heavily dominated by the American Party, a ruffian tried to snatch his ballots. Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck.

…

Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds.

…

The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party’s Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis’s victory was upheld on the ground that any “man of ordinary courage” could have made his way to the polls. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/13/rock-paper-scissors)

 

 

WE DIVE WITHIN TO FEED THE HIGHER SELF – “As we have seen, self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures.” “We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst of us, to flower and to grow.” (12 & 12, p. 52)

“He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” – Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC) Greek tragic dramatist

 

Amazing Grace – Leann Rimes (3:55) 

Aeschylus Animated Bio (4:42)

 

How has your sense of self-searching gratitude made you feel spiritually relieved, lately?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32qIyKx8QI

 

The Lion and The Grateful Mouse :

A lion was preparing to eat a mouse it had just caught.

‘Let me go,’ the mouse begged him, ‘sooner or later you may need my help.’

The king of the forest found this idea so ridiculous that he laughed aloud, but he let the little mouse go anyway.

Some time later, the lion was trapped in a net which had been set down by the hunters. Then along came the mouse that chewed the netting and freed him.

‘As you can see,’ said the mouse, ‘even the mighty sometimes need the help of the weak.’ (http://www.english-for-students.com/The-Lion-and-The-Grateful-Mouse.html)

“When you burn a bridge sometimes — it doesn’t matter if it’s a significant player on a team, especially a significant player like Kobe — you might say let bygones be bygones, (but) there’s always that underlying, ‘Oh, you talked about me.’ Me personally, I don’t think it’ll work out. But who knows? Crazier things have happened.” – Robert Horry (1970 – ) U.S. Laker star basketball player

 

Real Honesty – Miles Davis Jazz Guided Mediation (9:57)

 

What elements of your own past have weighed you down, lately?

 

 

Dreams Lost In Water :

by Naseer Ahmed Nasir

No distance ever separates

Dreams and desires

No mirror ever dissolves

Reflection and water

In one’s eye

What graph would you make

Of lines of thought?

The triangle of pain

Is without any angle

Countless races

Have dreams alike

But sleep and night-watch

Are never the same!

Names are forgotten

Codes alone come to mind

In nuclear setups

Dreams of radiant generations

Are smitten

By atomic explosions

Cities sink

Nuclei dissipate

Orbits dwindle

What remains

Are terra and sol

In the dance of death

God is a casualty.

A moment of brightness

In a light year

Breaking into smithereens

In a million eons

An accident – yes

But not an event

History is continuity

Broken once

Telescopic eyes, tired out, give up

Their distance watching

Lost planets

Bygone epoches

Have no interposition.

Who will look for

Flowers

In spring-fresh hands

Of tiny tots?

Who will see

Dreams

In eyes-yours and mine

In centuries to be?

No one is sure

Of things lost in water!

 

Shikisokuzeku – Beautiful Zen Pride & Vanity Meditation (6:47)

 

When has pride and vanity prevented you from doing what you know to be right, lately?

 

 

A Poem for Pulse

BY JAMESON FITZPATRICK

Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don’t think it’s going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop—
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that’s not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess—
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren’t queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.

Just people, I guess.

They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn’t let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear—
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men’s desire to move men to violence.
What’s a single kiss? I’ve had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence—
but there is a place you can’t outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.

It might be a bullet, suddenly.

The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing. Last night
I can’t get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn’t believe they’d die, who couldn’t have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I’m thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government’s response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.

We must love one another whether or not we die.

Love can’t block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us—
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there’s nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.

 

“The process of the Seventh Step brings about a peace of mind that we never dreamed possible. We sense that what is present throughout our search for spiritual growth is our ability to feel our Higher Power’s love for us.” “It doesn’t matter that  we will not attain a state of perfection or complete humility in our life-time.” (It Works, How & Why, p. 53)   “Affirm divine calmness and peace, and send out only thoughts of love and goodwill if you want to live in peace and harmony. Never get angry, for anger poisons your system.”  – Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 – 1953) renowned Bengali Yogi

 

One Thing – Finger Eleven (3:32) 

Biography of Paramahansa Yogananda (7:17)

Powerful OM Meditation by Paramahansa Yogananda (9:43)  

 

What have you done to achieve “peace and harmony”, lately?

 

 

Peace XVIII

by Khalil Gibran

The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning.  But now silence prevailed overall as if Nature’s war had never been fought.

At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly.  Her heart flamed with agony. But she could finally open her lips and say, “Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me.  I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death’s door; let him see me, or come and take me to him.”

Quietly a young man entered.

He wrapped head in a bandage soaked with escaping life.

So he approached her with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice which bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union.  And uncertainty of her reaction, he said, “Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. And be not sad.  But smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment.  For Love has a power that dispels Death; a charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.

“Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace.”

Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart, and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.

At dawn, the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, “Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun.”

 

OLD-TIMEY WISDOM  –  “Theirs is the quiet opinion, the sure knowledge and humble example that resolve a crisis.”  “[T]hey lead by example. This is the experience which has led us to the conclusion that our group conscience, well-advised by its elders, will be in the long run wiser than any single leader.” (12 &  12, p. 135)

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”  Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976) writer & inventor of the 1st Chinese typewriter

 

Bad Wisdom – Suzanne Vega (3:24)   

The Native American Commandment  (3:58)

The Wisdom of the Autumnal Equinox Meditation (11:26)

 

When has the wisdom of the group conscience been evident in your journey, lately?

 

 

What Is an Informed A.A. Group Conscience?

The group conscience is the collective conscience of the

group membership and thus represents substantial unanimity on an issue before
definitive action is taken. This is achieved by the
group members through the sharing of full information,

individual points of view, and the practice
of A.A. principles. To be fully informed requires a
willingness to listen to minority opinions with an
open mind.

…

On sensitive issues, the group works slowly —
discouraging formal motions until a clear sense of
its collective view emerges. Placing principles before
personalities, the membership is wary of dominant
opinions. Its voice is heard when a well-informed
group arrives at a decision. The result rests on more
than a “yes” or “no” count — precisely because it
is the spiritual expression of the group conscience.
The term “informed group conscience” implies that
pertinent information has been studied and all views
have been heard before the group votes.                                            (https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-16_theaagroup.pdf)

“With this faith we
will be able to hew out
of the mountain of despair
a stone of hope. With this
faith we will be able to trans-
form the jangling discords of
our nation into a beautiful
symphony of brotherhood.
… knowing that we will
be free one day.”

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) “I Have a Dream” speech (1963)

 

The Edge of Glory – Lady Gaga (5:28)

I Have a Dream (full speech – 17:27)  

Religions of the World Meditation (7:16)

 

How have you contributed to the betterment of the human condition, lately?

 

 

A Mountain Storm

by Katharine Lee Bates

Our blue sierras shone serene, sublime,
When ghostly shapes came crowding up the air,
Shadowing the landscape with some vast despair;
And all was changed as in weird pantomime,
Transfigured into vague, fantastic form
By that tremendous carnival of storm.
Pilgrim processions of bowed trees that climb
To sacred summits, in the clashing hail
Shuddered like flagellants beneath the flail.
Most gracious hills, in that tempestuous time,

…

Went wild as angered bulls, with bellowing cry
And goring horns that strove to charge the sky.
Masses of rock, long gnawed by stealthy rime,
With sudden roar that made our bravest blanch,
Came volleying down in fatal avalanche.
All nature seemed convulsed in some fierce crime,
And then a rainbow, and behold! the sun
Went comforting the harebells one by one;
And all was still save for the vesper chime
From far, faint belfry bathed in creamy light,
And the soft footfalls of the coming night.