June 16th 1904 is that faithful day in the life of Dublin marking the epochal birfurcation of narrative, given in the epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus & Leopold & Molly Bloom. The last lines of the 644 page turning story of Ulysses - a book that at times one does not read but rather, wades through - are the subject of this video; also known as the soliloquy of Molly Bloom.   more »

Grizzled shehnai ustad Ali Ahmad Hoosain laid out the cross-cultural and cross-epochal sonic landscapes along with his two sons and his tabla accompanist Subhen Chatterjee at U of California, Irvine. Prana, Kratu and Jazz commingled once more.   more »

A few last words before the election: revised and re--posted from C Theory:

The trajectory of global temperatures since the Enlightenment
is a trajectory of the catastrophic,
in 1800 some ten million tons of coal were mined annually,
as steam engines raged in Yorkshire,
when Blake was born in 1757 the atmospheric concentration
of “fixed air” was two hundred eighty ppm,
when he left his body in 1827 it had risen to two hundred eight five ppm,
in a life span of seventy years ending today CO2 would have increased
at a rate of more than fifteen times that,
that's the tipping point, that's exponential acceleration,
   more »

I met Paul Lonely last night at a friend's gathering. When I told him a bit about SCIY, he said he was an admirer of Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri, and graciously offered to send me a link to his own new book of "post post-modern" poetry: Suicide Dictionary. I've been looking over his website and his work is quite impressive. E.g., see below the words of one of his many enthusiastic reviewers, the artist-musician Michael Garfield.  ~ ronjon

---

I am the voice of a generation starving for an adequate myth. Myths are the carriers and conduits of a vision - the metaphors and narratives around which we organize and accrete our understanding. Every generation has come together within a mythology, and used it to push forward into its fruition. In a way, we are nourished by our myths in return for fulfilling them.

It must be said that my generation has more mythology from which to choose than any before it. We stand before a global buffet of stories, food of all flavors, information crashing in from all sides, an unprecedented panoply of cultural richness. What we lack is an organizing directive, some way to handle all of this humanity without shrinking from its light or dissolving into incoherence at the spectacular diversity of it all. Imagine everyone in the cafe trying to force-feed you simultaneously, and you'll get the idea. In spite of our wealth of culture, we hunger for genuine, hopeful, reconstructive narratives that is, integral myths. Almost no one is telling my generation, or those to come, what to do with this orgiastic diversity of experience. Our myth has been one of dissipation, of dissolution the end of oil, the end of modernity, the end of the biosphere, the end of western hegemony, the end of science, the end of childhood. We are born into a world that has come together just in time to discover it is breaking apart.

But Paul Lonely is changing all of that. What Paul is doing for us - the generation growing up alongside the academic reconstruction of integral theory - is offering us a new mode of experiencing these truths. ... Freed from the conventional trappings of historical spiritual texts, blindingly aware of its own cultural embeddedness and laughing at it compassionately, Suicide Dictionary belongs in a thin pantheon with the paintings of Alex Grey as a message for and from our collective future. It is playful and colorful and fluid, in stark opposition to even the most inspiring theories of the world into which we walk with one eye open. That Paul has used language to communicate this utterly translinguistic vision is a testament to his cleverness his book is winking at all of us from behind the veil, like the Tao Te Ching or its formal predecessor, the Upanishads. Every page rings brightly with the cause to which he is devoted. ...   more »

Imho, this is an important article about the pluses and minuses of religion, an interview with a former nun who has had many deep experiences of what she writes. Highly recommended. ~ ronjon

Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God. ...   more »

The following poems were penned by a new friend of mine, Rosita Wandallah, whom I met at Burning Man 2007. She's a remarkable writer, performance artist, model, dancer, actor, community leader, project coordinator, global traveler, and international service provider. -- I am honored to know her.

We are all wells of gratitude
deep, plentiful, pure
connected to the
infinite source of all

if only we would drink
more often,
replenish ourselves
with the kinetic wisdom
of the cosmos within

For what is it to live
without gratitude? ...

Poems from Oaxaca-Winter 2008, by Rosita Wandellah

   more »

Thanks to Yatanti for referring us to this site re "The Works of Rabindranath Tagore" and other sacred texts.  ~ ron
_________________
   more »

one can sense a touch of e.e. cummings in the following ferlinghetti piece and the innocence of the song is a welcome variation from some of the Beats more indulgent themes rc

The pennycandystore beyond the El

is where I first

fell in love

with unreality

Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom

of that september afternoon   more »

Thanks to RY Deshpande for this wonderful link!

Audio recordings of The Mother reading Savitri, compiled by Narad.

Cavaet: Listening to these recordings could change your life ...   more »

Joseph Kent is a poet living in San Francisco and closely connected with the Cultural Integration Fellowship. Like many others, he was profoundly influenced by Haridas Chaudhuri and introduced by him into the spiritual teachings and practice of Sri Aurobindo's yoga. Joseph's poetic sensibility approaches experiences of the everyday world in a mystic vein. The poems presented here cover a gamut of reflections ranging from meditations on nature to intimations of the supramental future and inward yogic illuminations.   more »

Durga is the Divine Mother's aspect of luminous Power. She is known for the slaying of the Buffallo Demon, Mahisasura. She (and her companion aspects of the Divine Mother) are particularly active at this time of the year. In these two poems, I contemplate Durga as she has been realized in stone at two ancient Goddess worship sites of India - Mamallapuram, near Pondicherry in South India and Ellora, in the hills of the western Deccan.   more »

These two poems were written after a trip tp Japan in December 2003. The first, titled Uji, refers to a town with a famous bridge where the late 12th c. hero Yoshitsune fought a legendary battle and where Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the 16th c. shogun initiated the Zen cult of tea. Uji is famous to this day for its tea but its earliest claim to fame was the Phoenix Hall or Byodo-in built by a Fujiwara aristocrat in 1053. This building, so called, because it seems poised for flight with outspread wings (while simultaneously plunging into the underworld through its reflection in water), replicates within the perfect world of Amitabha Buddha holding this aspiration for the world's future. The second poem, titled Taikan's House is about the home of the famous nationalist (Nihonga) painter Yokoyama Taikan. Taikan's house in the Ueno suburb of Tokyo is now a museum of his works. When I visited during a brief stopover in Tokyo, the curators were exhibiting Taikan's water=related paintings.   more »