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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Good morning everyone! Happy Turkey Day!!!!

I must admit, I used to use this phrase freely, without thought, for much of my life. And when I became vegetarian and learned more about the treatment of the turkeys, I abhorred the usage, somewhat sadistic, of the phrase "Happy Turkey Day". How twisted, considering the atrocities that occur to these beautiful creatures. However, I have recently learned more about the wonderful things being done by animal rights activists to rescue turkeys, and have come to see how this phrase could become a rallying cry.......on this day of thanks, let's not forget to save the turkeys! Make it a happy day for them as well as you! Give them a holiday!!!!!

In Some Households, Everyday is Turkey Day

 

 

Karen Oeh and her husband, Mike Balistreri, with two new members of the family. "I am like a new parent," Ms. Oeh said.

It is one thing for the president of the United States to pardon a pair of turkeys every year and then send them off to live out their days in Florida. It's quite another to save a turkey from the Thanksgiving table by inviting it to live with you.  Two weeks ago, Karen Oeh and her husband, Mike Balistreri, who live not far from Santa Cruz, Calif., adopted two turkeys that had been rescued after an airline shipping misfortune in Las Vegas. "I am like a new parent," said Ms. Oeh, 39. "I instantly, totally fell in love, and now I just want to stay home with them."

[...]   (But the sad reality of our factory farms means even those turkeys that are saved, often don't live very long......)

Whether the turkeys come from a shelter or the White House, they don't live very long. Most adopted turkeys are commercially bred broad-breasted whites, genetically disposed to grow to a marketable size in about four months. Even on a diet of only a couple of cups of turkey feed a day, they become obese. They usually develop leg problems, congestive heart failure and arthritis. "One just couldn't get up, so I had to have her euthanized," Ms. Lane said. "Another one just dropped dead one evening."

Read on: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/dining/22turkey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Friends......becoming family among new generation

For some Gen-Yers, holidays back home are passe

It's becoming increasingly popular for young people to host Thanksgiving for their friends.

By Jenna Fisher | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

It had all the premeal buzz of a typical family Thanksgiving, except that the 20 or so guests were not related. The 20-somethings who gathered in Washington, D.C., last Saturday were friends, holding their third annual Thanksgiving together.

Increasingly, America's young adults appear to be spending traditional family holidays with friends rather than – or in addition to – their relatives. Chalk it up to the high cost of travel or the increasing time young people spend on their own between the end of college and marriage. For whatever reason, people in their 20s appear to be blurring the distinction between family bonding and friendship.

As more and more young people organize holiday rituals with their friends, it may lead them to redefine holidays as less family-based and defined more by friendship and community.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1121/p01s03-usgn.html?page=1

Pretty piglet given another chance to live

photograph of a piglet nicknamed Andrex who is recovering after being found in the back of a lorry full of toilet paper at a supermarket.......

Stowaway piglet survives loo roll ordeal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_britain_piglet

President Lincoln creating the Thanksgiving holiday

The first religious day of thanksgiving at Plymouth may actually have been in 1623—and not in autumn, but in late summer—when the colonists offered up their thanks to God after a six-week drought. Occasional days of thanksgiving were declared throughout the colonial era and into the years of the early republic. But it wasn't until Abraham Lincoln called for late-November Thanksgivings in 1863 and 1864—and used explicitly religious language to do so—that the day became an annual, permanent fixture.

The first observance of the national holiday came one week after the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The language of the proclamation by President Lincoln is beautiful and marked by a rare felicity of expression:  (excerpts)

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.  [...]

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. [...]

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.  [...]

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S THANKSGIVING DAY PROCLAMATION, OCTOBER 3, 1863.

Rethinking how to end hunger in the US

Th co-founders of Jivamukti Yoga, David and Sharon, always talk about yogis being "radical" - radical in the sense of getting to the root (which is the origin of the word radical) causes of issues. Not just blindly swallowing the prevailing notions of society but really analyzing the driving factors behind everything. For this Thanksgiving season, an important issue to consider is the ongoing food poverty in the US. The way we have been handling it for years has been through food banks.......but this provocative article below challenges that notion. Read it and decide for yourself!

When Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends

By Mark Winne

Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page B01

excerpts:
My experience of 25 years in food banking has led me to conclude that co-dependency within the system is multifaceted and frankly troubling. As a system that depends on donated goods, it must curry favor with the nation's food industry, which often regards food banks as a waste-management tool. As an operation that must sort through billions of pounds of damaged and partially salvageable food, it requires an army of volunteers who themselves are dependent on the carefully nurtured belief that they are "doing good" by "feeding the hungry."  C
[...]
While none of this is inherently wrong, it does distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States. The risk is that the multibillion-dollar system of food banking has become such a pervasive force in the anti-hunger world, and so tied to its donors and its volunteers, that it cannot step back and ask if this is the best way to end hunger, food insecurity and their root cause, poverty. During my tenure in Hartford, I often wondered what would happen if the collective energy that went into soliciting and distributing food were put into ending hunger and poverty instead.

Mark Winne is the former director of Connecticut's Hartford Food System and the author of the forthcoming "Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty."

Svaha

I finally did it - I got a tattoo. And I happened to find an amazing tattoo artist in DC to work on me..........totally random, no less. Although - nothing is really EVER random..........

I had the Sanskrit word "svaha" tattooed onto my forearm. Originating in ancient times, the word "Svaha" was originally said when making sacrifices into the sacred fire ("Agni"). Another interpretation is to think of "Svaha" as the personification of an "oblation" or sacrifice. In this way, Svaha is regarded as the female goddess, consort to the Fire God, Agni.

Over the years, and certainly in Jivamukti tradition (thanks to Manorama!), "Svaha" has come to mean making of oneself a sacrifice into the sacred fire, or for God. In other words, it means a total and complete self-offering to God.

My tattoo artist, Tony was awesome and the tattoo place (Jinx Proof) is featured all over in magazines and whatnot. If you feel inspired, go here for your tattoo!

  Jinx Proof was mentioned in the June 2007 issue of Alternative Press (#227) as a place to visit while in Washington D.C.

"Started in 1996 by Tim Corun and Karl Hedgepath, Jinx Proof is the place to get tattooed in D.C. It was the first tattoo shop to open in Georgetown, which proved to be a good idea. With an internationally recognized team of artists, you are sure to get exactly what you want, whether it's the Chinese symbol for t-shirt or a full backpiece of your favorite member of Fall Out Boy."

Quite the endorsement indeed.

Brad and Angelina buy island to showcase green issues

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have bought a man-made island in the shape of Ethiopia that is part of an ambitious luxury development off the coast of Dubai, a newspaper reported Wednesday. The Hollywood couple intend to use the reclaimed piece of land to showcase environmental issues and encourage people to live a greener life, the Emirates Today newspaper said. The couple's purchase is part of cluster of 300 islands, shaped like a world map, that is gradually surfacing in waters off the booming Gulf emirate.