Recommendation

Our old StumbleUpon friend Ogmin (aka, Craig from Turtle Hill) has a fine Blogger blog, as well.

Here’s a sample:

Mankind suffers from the narrow viewpoint afforded by conditional consciousness and the largely egological concerns of this present life. We habitually ignore or overlook those aspects of the cosmos which do not relate to the present pursuit of money, food and sex. Through the subtle complexities of causality, one of the more obvious consequences of this mass fixation on self is the wave of extinctions now taking place on all continents. Short-sighted, expedient actions and decisions made by ordinary people are irreversibly changing and impoverishing us all far into the future. In a saner world, awareness of this situation would immediately lead to a global summit to direct all available resources toward measures which might slow (if not stop) this trend, beginning with attention to the most vulnerable species. Like the dark of the moon, the moment passes and it is already tomorrow.

We will all do everything we can while true transformation will not come about through any mechanical process. The nature of consciousness itself provides the key. Beyond all the hope and hype, the media is fixated on absurdities, congress is chasing down baseball players while all the Presidents men conduct business as usual. It doesn’t take a Buddhist to see that on the political front, things are so locked up, fixated on fear, and dumbed down, whatever we might think is practically irrelevant; thus the angle of this blog.

You said it, brother.

I like.

One New Earth (O.N.E.)

Here’s a worthy effort to which I’d like to draw everyone’s attention:

O.N.E. is a non-profit, social organization that seeks to unite human rights efforts worldwide.

The purpose of O.N.E. is to spread positive change through unifying the principles of consciousness and action. Our world is overwhelmed with a plethora of issues that seem so immense that we feel paralyzed in our reactions. Many of us either want to do something or are already doing something to remedy the world’s ills, yet still feel that the struggle toward justice is fragmented. A major objective of O.N.E. is to create a strong network of humanitarians whose talents and knowledge can be called upon to address various issues in society.

They’ve got a wonderful website, ready for your exploration.

It’s what this blog is all about: seeking a positive response to what may otherwise depress us, in the interest of creating a world we all would prefer to inhabit.

Cosmology According to the Eastern Church

Lots of interesting reading at this site:

It began some 13.7 billion years ago, more or less, on a day without yesterday, when all of creation emerged from nothing except the will of God. The dark and immensely hot plasma of rapidly expanding primordial creation was eventually pierced by light and populated by the evolution of galaxies and stars interspersed by enormous quantities of gas, dust and energy. Some four and one half billion years ago, more or less, in a distant arm of an average spiral galaxy there formed an average star surrounded by an accreting disc of dust, debris and gases which in time took the form of the planets which we know today. On the third planet from that star, our sun, early life appeared which over the eons evolved into higher forms of animal and plant life dwelling in the seas and covering the land of the planet. Very late in this evolutionary process emerged a species of primate called man which was unlike all other primates and other forms of animate creation in that it possessed consciousness, intelligence, and reason – attributes of the divine spark which we call the human soul. Man, unlike the rest of animate creation, was a moral creature, for having “eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, he possessed the ability to chose between good and evil in his relationships with his Creator and others of his species.

Kind of refreshing, especially when compared with certain other scriptural interpretations of the Creation….

Peace Refuses to Die

Our friend Sadiq brings the good news of a worthy Nobel laureate:

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus has urged world leaders to get on with the fight against poverty, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. He has called on world leaders to stop spending money on wars like the one in Iraq.

The 63-year-old and the Grameen Bank he founded have won the peace prize for their work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans to the poorest of the poor, especially women in rural Bangladesh.

Mr Yunus and Grameen Bank representative Mosammat Taslima Begum have received gold medals and diplomas at a ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall to applause from about 1,000 guests.

Sadiq supplies part of Mr. Yunus’ prepared speech, in which he states plainly, “Poverty is a threat to peace.”

War, on the other hand, increases and deepens poverty, which is a protracted state of suffering that should long ago have been irradicated from the collective human experience.

Thank God for people like Mr. Yunus, whose organization sets a shining example of what can be accomplished when our hearts are in the right place.

And thanks to Sadiq, who hails from Bangladesh himself (at least part of the time), for giving coverage to this inspiring story.