Merry Christmas!

Pope Makes Appeal on the Environment

 

 

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI reinforced the Vatican's growing concern with protecting the environment in the traditional midnight Christmas Mass on Tuesday, bemoaning an "ill-treated world" in a homily given to thousands of pilgrims here in the seat of the world's billion Roman Catholics.

On the day Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago, Benedict referred to one early father of the church, Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop in what is now Turkey. "What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation?" the pope asked, according to the Vatican's English translation.

 

He expanded on the theme briefly by saying that an 11th-century theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, had spoken "in an almost prophetic way" as he "described a vision of what we witness today as a polluted world whose future is at risk."

In recent months, Benedict has spoken out increasingly about environmental concerns, and the Vatican has even purchased "carbon offsets," credits on the global market to compensate for carbon dioxide emissions, for the energy consumed in the world's smallest state, Vatican City.

 Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/world/europe/25pope.html?hp

Aerobic exercise = boost your brain memory!

Jogging your memory
By Anne Underwood | NEWSWEEK

Dec 10, 2007 Issue

excerpt:
"With a reasonable amount of effort, you can improve your memory 30 to 40 percent," says Dr. Barry Gordon, founder of the memory clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the past year, research has shed new light in particular on the benefits of both mental and physical activity. It's been known for a while that aerobic exercise increases levels of a brain chemical called BDNF, which encourages neurons to form new synapses and strengthen existing ones. "I call BDNF brain fertilizer," says Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at UC Irvine. But in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this year, Small at Columbia showed that exercise in 11 volunteers did even more. Aerobic exercise—an hour a day, four days a week for three months—led to changes on brain scans that seemed to indicate the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus. "My lab members are dusting off their sneakers," he says.

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and we plant 10 trees!

Just click to help!

Just click on a link at The Hunger Site and a donation goes to charitable groups that work on issues like child health, breast cancer or animal welfare. It costs you nothing. Just look at the ads.

The Hunger Site

This, the original click-to-donate site, is the perfect gift for those of us with literally no holiday shopping budget at all. If you can't buy a holiday heifer on behalf of your best friend, you can send a New Year's note to everyone on your email list telling them about this site, which receives sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their ads.

It's almost too simple to be true, but trust us — it is: All one does is click a button on the Hunger Site once per day, and that click results in a donation equivalent to 1.1 cups of food to needy families in impoverished countries. Most recently, the charities that have delivered the food are America's Second Harvest and Mercy Corps, which this year distributed the equivalent of more than 500 million cups of staple food as a result of the daily clicks from concerned citizens worldwide.

Visit the Hunger Site at www.thehungersite.com; then — even if you never give Christmas or Chanukah gifts — forward the link to everyone you know, with a "Happy Holiday!" greeting that will keep on giving.

OTHER IDEAS FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS: http://www.fineliving.com/fine/favorite_things/article/0,1663,FINE_1425_5732445,00.html

Clorox buys Burt's Bees

I don't know if any of you use Burt's Bees products, but please be aware that they were bought out by Clorox, who, notoriously uses animal testing on it's products.  Please take the time to encourage Clorox to maintain the integrity of Burt's Bees original policy not to test any of it's products on animals,AND, if possible to discontinue animal testing all together.  Whole Foods informed me today that Burt's Bees did NOT sign a contract to maintain the integrity of this product, so if you begin to see Burt's Bees products in your local grocery isle, in a big display, as I did tonight in Safeway, know that they are now part of the Clorox Bleach clan.

 

Jiva Focus for December: Presence

 

The Jivamukti Focus of the Month for December is "Presence" and the mantra is taken from the Buddhist "Heart Sutra." It goes as follows:

 

"Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha."

Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sammeans everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like "Welcome!" or "Hallelujah!" "Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha !"

 

This is one of the most sacred sutras in the Buddhist cannon, and many meanings can be explored. One of my favorite commentaries comes from the venerable Thichh Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk commonly referred to as a living Buddha. He explores how this mantra teaches us about emptiness and how this translates to the  He says, 

 

"The Heart Sutra gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that. In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world."

"If we observe things mindfully and profoundly," he explained, "we find out that self is made up only of non-self elements. If we look deeply into a flower, what do we see? We also see sunshine, a cloud, the earth, minerals, the gardener, the complete cosmos. Why? Because the flower is composed of these non-flower elements: that's what we find out. And, like this flower, our body too is made up of everything else—except for one element: a separate self or existence. This is the teaching of 'non-self' in Buddhism.

"In order to just be ourself, we must also take care of the non-self elements. We all know this, that we cannot be without other people, other species, but very often we forget that being is really inter-being; that living beings are made only of non-living elements.

"This is why we have to practice meditation—to keep alive this vision. The shamatha practice in my tradition is to nourish and keep alive this kind of insight twenty-four hours a day with the whole of our being." 

 

 

About Thich Nhat Hanh - commonly called a Living Buddha
His students call him "Thay," Vietnamese for "Teacher." Born in l926, Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tick-Not-Hawn) has been a monk for fifty-three years, dedicating himself to the practice and transmission of "Engaged Buddhism," a root insight tradition melding meditation, awareness of the moment, and compassionate action as a means of taking care of our lives and society. In l967, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King for his peace work in Vietnam.