Blade and Grip

The TV We All Watch

2011-11-08T23:02:00.003-05:00

For today, just a nifty little chart I drafted up. It shows something I find interesting: the top rated TV shows in each season are being watched by a smaller percentage of all the households watching.

Just one example of how as the media have expanded, and we have more and more channels, we share less of the same common shows as other people. We have more personalized content, but also more distance between each other.

There's Something About Muslims

2011-10-01T19:50:00.004-04:00

In his book, God is Not One a former religion professor of mine ranked religions by their "importance" on the world stage. Interestingly (and provocatively), he started with Islam. Not too long ago, I was looking at a data set that looked at international differences in well-being.

In it, I found a pretty fascinating stat that showed the importance of God to folks in predominantly Muslim countries. Given the link between fervency of belief and propensity to take action, maybe the professor's rankings weren't so off after all.

Percentage of people in each country that picked 10 out of 10 in agreement with the statement: "God is very important in my life."

Jordan 98

Pakistan 97

Algeria 95

Morocco 95

Saudi Arabia 94

Iraq 92

Puerto Rico 91

Indonesia 90

Tanzania 90

Trinidad 89

Egypt 89

Bangladesh 89

El Salvador 89

Zimbabwe 89

Guatemala 87

Philippines 87

Ghana 87

Brazil 87

Nigeria 86

Colombia 83

Iran 82

Domin. Rep 80

Venezuela 80

Rwanda 79

Turkey 78

Uganda 73

Zambia 71

Burkina Faso 70

S Africa 70

Mali 68

Malta 68

Ethiopia 67

Peru 67

Mexico 64

Azerbaijan 61

Chile 61

Cyprus 58

Argentina 58

USA 58

Romania 57

Singapore 55

Israel 55

Poland 54

Kyrgyzstan 48

Bosnia 42

Malaysia 40

Macedonia 40

Canada 40

Ireland 40

Georgia 38

India 38

Portugal 37

Uruguay 36

Moldova 35

Italy 33

Armenia 31

Greece 31

Slovakia 30

Croatia 28

N Ireland 28

Austria 26

Albania 25

Lithuania 25

New Zealand 24

Ukraine 24

Australia 24

Serb Bosnia 23

Montenegro 22

Switzerland 21

Hungary 21

Serbia 20

Belarus 20

Andorra 19

Belgium 19

Britain 19

Thailand 18

Russia 18

Spain 18

Latvia 16

Slovenia 16

Luxemburg 15

Finland 15

Iceland 15

Vietnam 14

S Korea 14

Bulgaria 12

W. Germany 12

Norway 11

Netherlands 11

Taiwan 10

Czech Rep 10

France 10

Estonia 9

Sweden 8

Denmark 7

Hong Kong 6

E. Germany 6

Japan 6

China 5

The Wisdom of Krishna

2011-08-22T10:39:00.008-04:00

Today is the birthday of Krishna - the greatest Yogi to live and one of mankind's most inspiring philosophers. Krishna is recognized by many religions: to Hindus, an avatar of the sustainer; to Buddhists, an incarnation of one of Buddha’s chief disciples; to Jains, part of the 22 heroic figures; to the Bahá'í, a Manifestation of God; to Ahmadiyya Muslims a prophet; and to Hare Krishnas, the Supreme Person.

In his honor, I'm sharing a few of my favorite verses from the Bhagavad Gita, his famous sermon to the prince Arjuna. These are translations from my upcoming book - enjoy the sneak peek!

Selections from the Bhagavad Gita:

Life constantly shifts between happiness and sadness, just as the weather shifts between warmth and cold. Such physical sensations arise from contact with matter and are fleeting. They come and go in their due course. So try to endure them without any agitation, O Arjuna.
2:14

Work for the sake of the work itself; this alone is your right. The results are beyond your control, so never act for a reward. But never fail to act either. Perform your life’s work steady in Yoga: without desiring or worrying about the results. Yoga means equanimity in both success and failure, O Arjuna.
2:47 - 2:48

As many rivers pour into the unmoving ocean, let all desires pour into your mind, but never let them move you. Peace is not won by entertaining the mind’s cravings, but by receiving them into stillness. Just become that vast ocean of calm into which all desires merge. Then peace will find you.
2:70

Move about unfettered by the chains of sensual craving and desire. Be free from all egoism and prideful ownership. This is the way to lasting peace, the state of divinity. Attain it but once – never again will you fall back into confusion like this. Even as your body slips into death, you will live in endless enlightenment.
2:71 –2:72

Whenever virtue suffers and wherever chaos prospers, I take form. To deliver the virtuous, defeat the wicked, and reinstate dharma, I manifest continually.
4:07 – 4:08

From whatever direction one approaches me – from that direction I receive them into my care. All paths are my path and all destinations end with me.
4:11

All created things were created from my energy – which is the source of matter and spirit alike. I am the force that projects and dissolves all the universes. Arjuna, nothing exists beyond me or apart from me. Everything hangs on me like pearls on a thread.
7:6 - 7:7

I am the taste in the water, the radiance of the sun and moon, the sacred AUM mantra, its vibrations in infinite space, and the power in mankind. I am the fragrance of the soil, the heat of the fire, the life in those who live, and the penance of those who atone.
7:8 - 7:9

Wherever there is power, beauty or glory, there is a spark of my divine radiance.
10:41

Babyface!

2011-07-19T14:01:00.003-04:00

Stumbled across an interesting little insight. Did you know that newborns mimic facial gestures within just 42 minutes of birth? This is especially strong within 12 to 21 days after birth. Check it out below:

The Call of Love

2011-04-29T10:18:00.002-04:00

Beloved One,
For how long have you wandered in darkness?
Searched in mountains and valleys
For a love that knows no death?

For how many years have you heard the call?
Piercing the noise of your city,
Calling you back to the home of your eternal love?

How much longer, dear soul, can you resist
A devotion that will never end?
And the hymn that hums in the air you breathe?

Will you rise from your sleep, at all hours of night,
Float from your bed, and be with me under moonlight?
Or will you steal away from the world, at the start of day,
and come to me with the rays of the morning sun?

Can the sound of our love, which echoes in the infinite
Ever know a beginning or a final consummation?
Or are we just dancing, circling each other for eternity?

There is a haziness of the air, and a slowness to the ear
That delays the call of love, which resounds in eternal void.
In this, there is grace, for time alone divides you and our love.

A Favorite Painting

2011-04-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

Scanned from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung and colored by myself.

Socratic Dialogue Today?

2011-03-20T17:02:00.003-04:00

Adapted from Karen Armstrong's November 22, 2009, piece: "A Socratic dialogue is need of the hour."
When a man came to converse with Socrates, he usually thought that he had a fair knowledge of what he was talking about. But after half an hour of Socrates’ questioning, he discovered that he knew nothing at all - and at that moment, Socrates explained, his philosophical quest could begin.

Socrates maintained that wisdom consisted of the disorienting realisation of the profundity of human ignorance. People must interrogate their most fundamental prejudices or they would live superficial, expedient lives, because “the unexamined life is not worth living”. To philosophise was not to bludgeon your opponent into accepting your point of view, but to do battle with yourself.

Furthermore, a truly Socratic dialogue must be conducted with gentleness and without malice. It was a joint effort to obtain new understanding: you expressed yourself clearly as a gift to your debating partners, whose beautifully expressed arguments would, in turn, touch you at a profound level.

Socrates once described himself as a midwife whose task was to help his conversation partner engender a new self. By learning to inhabit each other’s point of view with honesty and generosity, participants were taken beyond themselves, realised that they lacked wisdom and longed for it, but knew that they were not what they ought to be.

Dialogue is a current buzzword, but despite the vaunted rationalism of our society, there is little genuinely Socratic dialogue going on. All too often in a debate it is not sufficient for us to seek the truth; we also have to defeat and even humiliate our opponents. In a panel discussion it is often evident that participants are not really listening to adversaries but busy thinking up a riposte that will deliver the coup de grace.

And yet if ever there was a time when we needed an appreciation of how little we know, it is surely now. Our financial institutions are in meltdown; we are bound together more closely than ever before - electronically, politically and economically - and yet the world is polarised; we are engaged in destructive wars we seem unable to end or win; and we are facing environmental catastrophe. A joint effort and a Socratic humility and openness to others is required if we are to meet the challenges of our time and create a just and viable world.

Six Verses of Liberation

2011-01-22T15:46:00.009-05:00

Once in ancient India, a young student named Shankara wandered from city to city looking for a teacher of wisdom who could help him on his path to enlightenment. Along the way, a great Swami named Govindapada Acharya recognized the brilliance of this young boy of 8 years.

But first, the Swami decided to test Shankara by asking him a deceptively simple question: "Who are you?" In response, the boy replied in six verses of improvised poetry. Today these verses are known as the Nirvana Shatakam - or The Six Verses of Liberation.

Who are you?

1.
I am not mind, nor intellect,

nor ego, nor storehouse of past memories.
I am not the senses (hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling,)
I am something beyond that.
I am not made of the elements (space, earth, fire, wind.)
I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

2.
Neither can I be called energy, nor life-breath,
nor the bodily matter (fluid, blood, muscle, fat, bones, marrow, tissue)
nor the layers of being (from physical to mental to spiritual).
Neither am I physically involved in elimination,

procreation, motion, grasping, or speaking.
I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

3.
I have no hatred or dislike,
no affiliation or liking,
no greed, nor delusion,
no pride or haughtiness,
no feelings of envy or jealousy.
I have neither duty, nor wealth,
nor desire, nor even need for liberation.
I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

4.
I have neither merit, nor demerit.
I do not have happiness or sorrow,
pain or pleasure.
I do not need mantras, pilgrimages,
scriptures, rituals or sacrifices.
I am neither the one who observes,

the process of observing, or object being observed.

I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

5.
I do not have fear of death,
as I do not have death.
I have no separation from my true Soul,
no doubt about my existence,
nor have I discrimination on the basis of birth.
I have no father or mother, nor did I have a birth.
I am not the relative, nor the friend,

nor the guru, nor the disciple.
I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

6.
I am all pervading.

I am without any attributes, and without any form.
I have neither attachment to the world, nor to liberation.
I have no wishes for anything because I am everything,
everywhere, every time, always in equilibrium.
I am indeed,
That bliss born of true knowledge, Shiva:
love and pure formless awareness.

In the Center of the Earth

2011-01-13T00:30:00.009-05:00

This holiday season, I dug through some of my old books to find something worth reading to my little cousins. I stumbled across one of my favorites: How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World. In it, a boy starts to dig and eventually ends up in the center of the earth.

It had a nifty paradox that fascinated my cousins and myself alike:

The center of the earth

is a place where

east meets west,

north meets south,

and up meets down.

At the center of the earth

there is nothing under you.

Every direction is up.

Your feet are pointing up

and your head is pointing up,

both at the same time.

Because there is nothing under you,

you will weigh nothing.

You will float inside your no-spaceship.

And I couldn't help but reflect that the closest I've ever come to understanding such a paradox is in meditation: when we reach the center of ourselves, all concepts and directions and distinctions fade away. It is in such authenticity, when we are faced with ourselves as we truly are, that clarity of purpose and personal vision really emerge.

That's why I recommend at least 15 minutes of silence every day, centering and connecting with ourselves as we really are.

Fun with Ponchos!

2010-12-09T07:35:00.000-05:00

This is a really fascinating story of what can come from the mixing of cultures. The Zinacantec Mayans in the highlands of Chiapas Mexico traditionally created ponchos of a plain and austere style seen here, in 1962.

After coming in contact with Western influence, which was decidedly more decorative, they developed the following type of poncho by 1991:

It's pretty interesting to consider how the different foci of our various cultures can help us see the importance in things we previously considered completely unimportant.

For more information: Weaving Generations Together by Patricia Marks Greenfield

The Five Keys to Innovation

2010-11-30T11:51:00.003-05:00

This is an oldie-but-goodie. While looking through some of the articles I have saved, I came across this paper written by professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University.

Based on their six-year study, they identified five key characteristics that drive innovation:

Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask "why?", "why not?" and "what if?"

Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.

Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.

Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives.

The Innovator's DNA is available in more detail on HBR and CNN

Sherlock Holmes and Mindful Living

2010-11-06T18:00:00.006-04:00

I never liked Superman. Matter of fact, I never cared much for any superhero who was endowed with some sort of extraordinary power. My favorite heroes were regular human beings who decided to do more with themselves, like Batman and - of course - Sherlock Holmes.

When I was younger, I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories. One particular incident always stuck out in my mind. It was from the very first of Conan Doyle's pieces on the detective: A Scandal in Bohemia.

After noticing that Watson must be a doctor (based on the slight trace of iodoform, a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he kept his stethoscope), Watson responded:

"When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed."

What was so powerful about Holmes - even to me as a child - was the way that he had no special skills. He simply lived with mindfulness and that was the source of all his seemingly extraordinary abilities. It doesn't take a birth on planet Krypton or a bite from a radioactive spider to be a superhero - all you need is to pay close attention to life.

Things You Can Do With a Pumpkin

2010-10-30T20:01:00.006-04:00

Not only is pumpkin carving fun - but it's also delicious. Clean the guts off of the seeds, sprinkle a little olive oil, add some sea salt, and then bake them for about 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 350°. Pumpkin seeds make for a great snack while getting the real business done.

This year we went for something a little more goofy than scary. Here are a few of Ed the Pumpkin in his natural habitat.

Enjoy - have a fun and safe Halloween.

The Best Dream I Ever Had

2010-10-13T09:10:00.004-04:00

Keeping track of dreams is one of the most powerful practices I've incorporated in the past year. Generally there are two types of dreams - little dreams which mostly relate to topics in my own life, and big dreams which focus on bigger collective topics.

One of the best dreams I ever had fell into the second category. My first memory was being in a modern building with about 7 stories: marble floors, contemporary decor, minimalist style. Somehow I knew viscerally that this building was going to be destroyed. With this knowledge, I was running from floor to floor trying to get people to safety. Yet each floor was not simply a different location, but a different time. One was ahead 10 minutes, another behind 10 minutes, etc.

You can imagine this was rather confusing. Making a change on one floor prompted changes on another level - if I brought one person to safety on one floor, another floor would show me the ramifications of the action. Often somebody else would, as an unintended consequence, move into an unsafe area. I was constantly shifting people, objects, and even ideas into various areas - like a giant puzzle in space and time.

This process was exhilarating - a deep and meaningful challenge. When I woke up, I felt a great and powerful sense of wonder. This feeling usually comes only after the "big dreams." It took some time before I realized my dream was about dreaming itself. The building was a symbol for my own mind and I was arranging pieces of knowledge in different ways, seeing which way worked the best - all during the course of my dream. People I knew, experiences I had, and objects I came across all had to "click" together into one meaningful whole.

The destruction of the building referred to my waking from the dream, after which I could no longer re-arrange my thoughts. It really interested me to learn that many researchers believe that one of the purposes of dreams is in fact to re-arrange knowledge and experiences, to try them out in different manners and see what clicks. In that sense, symbolically interacting with the actual process of the dream itself makes this one of my favorite and most interesting dreams ever.

CNN Needs an Education

2010-10-08T19:36:00.006-04:00

In a recent piece, CNN described the nascent Milk Party - a bipartisan Florida movement aimed at bringing (often ignored) children's issues to national attention. Chief among their areas of concern is the poor quality of American education.

While deploring the poor state of our national education standards, CNN showed its own (poor) standards with a gloriously flagrant typo. Two lessons here: First, irony can be beautiful. And second, the Milk Party is definitely on to something.

Marketing Made Simple

2010-09-27T17:48:00.009-04:00

Just like the ads themselves, the study of advertising has a lot of noise. There are a ton of models and much unneeded complexity. While working in new business, I developed a model to explain the marketing process to small business owners in language they could understand.

Thus was born the 3 Tier Model of Marketing. It's pretty simple: you make a space, bring people in, and then keep them in.

Imagine a big crowd - like at a rock concert. Before you can set up shop, you need to create room by pushing enough people away. Once you have that space, whatever is going on there has to be appealing to people (it could be a mosh pit, folks dancing around, anything you like). As more people get interested in your space, it grows.

If you are observant, you'll notice three things:
1) The purpose of your space constantly evolves.
The people inside it decide what it's about just as much as you do.
2) People must constantly join in.
Otherwise your space is doomed to collapse on itself like a black hole.
3) Friends pull friends into spaces.
Existing members are the best way to get new people in the space.

That big crowd at a rock concert is literally the marketplace, and if you want your space to thrive, you need to pay attention to these three tiers. Every potential customer is on one of them - your job is to gradually move them closer and closer to the first tier. Keep the Pareto rule in mind: your tier 1 customers account for about 80% of sales.

Any firm, whatever its size or budget, should be addressing all three levels simultaneously - and startups should start thinking about their firm at tier 3, and then hone down to tier 1. What are you doing on each level? How do you create gravity to pull customers into tier 1? Do you let your space adapt or are you holding it hostage?

Dilbert and the Value of Employees

2010-09-23T00:32:00.005-04:00

Know somebody who feels undervalued at work? Forward this jewel over, maybe it'll bring a smile or two. After all, nothing says empathy quite like office humor.

The 10 Greatest First Lines

2010-09-16T22:25:00.009-04:00

Looking to write a piece of literary genius, but not sure how to begin? Here are some of the greatest first lines from novels. I have borrowed quite a few entries from the American Book Review's list, but added in my own, and changed the order. Take a look at a few great hooks.

1.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 1951

2.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 1859

3.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
King James The Bible 1611

4.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 1971

5.
It was a pleasure to burn.
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 1953

6.
124 was spiteful.
Toni Morrison Beloved 1987

7.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
George Orwell 1984 1949

8.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice 1813

9.
It was love at first sight.
Joseph Heller Catch-22 1961

10.
Call me Ishmael.
Herman Melville Moby-Dick 1851

The Creative Process in an Image

2010-09-09T14:01:00.002-04:00

For anybody who's ever languished trying to express a creative idea, this map may seem familiar. Click for detail or go to: Viruxcomix.com.

What Buddha Doesn't Know.

2010-08-30T22:55:00.008-04:00

There are traditionally 14 questions posed to the Buddha to which he either did not know the answer, or felt that we did not need to know the answer. They are rather interesting questions - when each was asked, he remained completely silent, never even acknowledging the question.

The idea that Buddha simply did not know the answers is interesting - but most likely false. More probable is that he felt we did not need to know these facts, and that intellectually wondering about them would only get us trapped in our own thoughts.

Instead of intellectual speculation, the Buddha focused on personal enlightenment and experience. The questions on which he was mum essentially break into four categories: Is the universe eternal in time? Is the universe finite in space? Is the soul material? Is Buddha eternal?

It's worthwhile to consider why he did not answer these questions and what the repercussions of his silence were: they left much of the theology up to his followers. For that reason, some view Buddha as a teacher and others as a god. Some view the soul as divine, others as transient. Some believe in the beginning was everything, and others believe in the beginning was nothing.

The 14 Unanswerable Questions:

Is the universe eternal?
Is the universe transient?
Is the universe both eternal and transient?
Is the universe neither eternal nor transient?
Is the universe finite?
Is the universe infinite?
Is the universe both finite and infinite?
Is the universe neither finite nor infinite?
Is the soul identical with the material body?
Is the soul different from the material body?
Does the Buddha exist after death?
Does the Buddha perish after death?
Does the Buddha both exist and perish after death?
Does the Buddha neither exist nor perish after death?

Leadership in 5 Lines

2010-08-23T17:36:00.003-04:00

British Petroleum is without any doubt a case study in botched leadership. A few months ago, I found this gem on the CNN homepage. Ill let the image speak for itself before I opine:

Whereas the universally despised former BP CEO Tony Hayward insists "many to blame," the new boss Bob Dudley says there's "lots to learn." What a contrast. I know headlines can be deceptive, but seeing this juxtaposition pretty much sums up the point for me: Leadership is all about the attitude we bring to life's ups and downs.

Don't Trust Pretty Graphs

2010-08-17T00:00:00.005-04:00

Numbers may lie, but so do pretty looking graphs. A good friend shared this image and its accompanying post from Fast Company's Co.Design blog. It suggested that the US is already very far behind the world in terms of innovation efficiency. (Just look how minuscule our teeny little pink box is.) The article is called: "Does the US Waste Money on Innovation?"

Now this struck me, because one of the staples of the American culture and economy is its excellence in innovation. And true, while some headlines do talk about how a greater percentage of innovative companies are starting abroad, most of the top 10 or top 25 most innovative companies are American. Bloomberg, Fortune, etc. all have lists that show this.

The article measures innovation efficiency by a simple ratio: number of patents granted to amount of money invested in R&D. The higher the number, they say, the more effective. This is the first problem. Consider an industry where a lot of R&D expenses are used on a single product that generates a ton of revenue, but files only a few patents. This undermines the ratio they use, because the ratio doesn't take into account the revenue generated by the patents, only the total number of patents.

If a country filed millions of patents on different kinds of unprofitable paperclips and spent only 2 dollars on R&D, it'd be higher than a company that filed one patent on Google's profitable algorithm but spent millions on R&D.

For example, they compare biotech vs. consumer electronics. A similar amount invested into biotech yields only a few patents versus CE, which yields hundreds of patents. So even if biotech and CE returned the same profits for the exact same amount of research, the ratio they use would make a country that favored biotech seem less efficient.

Efficiency should be about how much revenue each dollar of research yields - measuring quality of patents not the quantity of patents. So the biotech/CE example they bring up undermines the very metric the article is based on.

So, while I recognize that it's a tall task to trace revenue data back to patents, that's the only way to find any sort of meaningful metric. Without it, all we are left with is a pretty graph.

Building Your Ark: What Noah’s Myth Teaches Us About Living a Good Life

2010-08-03T12:19:00.006-04:00

This article appears in the July/August edition of 11:11 magazine.

The Role and Nature of Myths
Modern mankind has inherited a precious many gifts from the ancients. Perhaps chief among these are the rich mythologies that continue to delight our imaginations. Such stories tell of impossible heroes and the fantastic worlds in which they reside. The extraordinary events contained in these texts seem wholly unlike our commonplace everyday lives. Today people do not survive inside of whales, staffs do not turn into serpents, and men do not walk on water.

For this reason, their continued existence is a paradox. Why are myths still told? Why have they not been lost to time along with other outdated ideas like bloodletting humors and rain dances? Is it not curious that the same America that pioneers great science and technology is the America where a full 60% believe in the story of Noah’s ark and a global flood? This includes even some 29% of those with “no religion.”

All of this elicits mixed reactions in society. In criticizing the dangers of religion, mythology gets mixed in with dogma and fundamentalism as a social ill. Noah’s Ark is simply one more tool to demonstrate how superstitious minds are undermining scientific progress. Yet, while our media loves a food fight, we should not be hasty to write off mythology or use it as mere fodder for the usual partisan arguments. In fact, myths are perhaps the only tools that can resolve these disputes and deflate the social tensions. They have this unique ability because they bridge the rational and transcendental worlds.

We typically approach the world one piece at a time, in a linear fashion. This left-hemisphere brain function helps us deduce based on old patterns, but not form new experiences. Because wisdom comes from firsthand experience, ancient sages shunned traditional teaching methods. They instead painstakingly crafted elaborate verbal paintings to impart their profound knowledge. These paintings are meant to be absorbed whole.

For this reason, myths more closely resemble the dreams crafted by our unconscious minds than the linear and clichéd storylines our deductive minds crave. In myths, objects are imbued with deep meaning beyond, and often in spite of, their literal definitions. These odd details challenge us to think on a deeper, symbolic level. As a joke cannot be explained, so too symbolic myths cannot be passively studied. Only after one develops their spiritual intuition and receives certain keys to the symbolism can they fully interpret the story and unlock its inner meaning.

Noah's Ark and Manu's Ark
For this reason, to read Noah’s Ark as the story of a man and his boat is futile. It attempts to turn poetry into history. Even if one could prove the historicity of a global flood, what does that teach us? The deeper spiritual significance of the tale is far more compelling than any olden event. After all, the progenitor emerging from a great deluge is perhaps the most common of all myths. It finds a shared narrative in the Greek Deucalion, Sumerian Atrahasis, Norse Bergelmir, Chinese Nu-Wah, Aztec Coxcox, Hawaiian Nu’u, Tai Khun Borom, Roman Mannus, Indian Manu, and others with varying degrees of similarity. Whether these stories all refer to a common event or simply draw on archetypal images in the ancient collective unconscious we cannot say yet. However, what is certain is the significance of the message contained therein.

Although the ultimate origin of the deluge myth remains unknown, linguistics and other sciences can establish relationships between particular stories. For example, the Hebrew story of Noah is quite likely a derivative of an older Indian myth of Manu. A comparative reading of the two stories reveals some important similarities and differences. We hear of Noah’s story from the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Jewish and Christian bible.

In it, we learn that humankind had become corrupt and Jehovah felt grieved that he created such violent and immoral creatures. He thus commanded Noah, who was a virtuous and upright man, to build an ark and carry into it pairs of all living creatures along with his family. When the great flood came about, it rained for forty days and nights and the ark floated on the surface of the water. One hundred and fifty days later, the water receded. After sending out a dove, which returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf, Noah knew it was safe to exit the ark. He made an altar to Jehovah, sacrificed some of the clean animals and birds as burnt offerings, and was instructed to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”

The story of Manu is similar, but has certain key differences that allow us to glimpse into a deeper meaning behind the symbolism. As told in the Mahabharata, Vaivasvata Manu too was a righteous human being and great king. While performing ablutions in a pond, he raised a handful of water to the sky in offering. In his hands, he found a small minnow named Matsya. The fish pleaded for protection from the bigger fish in the pond. Feeling compassionate for little Matsya, Manu put it in his water pot before leaving. As the days progressed, the fish grew larger and larger. It first outgrew his water pot, then a tank, then a well, then a pond, then the Ganga river, and so on. When this little fish had grown too large for even the Indian Ocean, Manu was completely awed. “Who are you? I have never seen or heard of such wonders…” He continued contemplating the fish’s true identity until he realized that he was dealing with Vishnu incarnate.

The disguised deity then appeared and informed Manu that a flood would soon bring about the end of the age. Manu must build a boat to protect the living beings and sacred knowledge. After some time began years of terrible drought, famine, and starvation. The sun blazed in fury and burnt the earth, dark clouds formed, and water engulfed the earth. Manu entered into the boat with the seeds of plants and animals along with seven great sages as ordered. He then yoked the boat to the horn of the giant Matsya fish. Being thus tethered, Vishnu’s incarnation guided the ark along and answered several of Manu’s questions as he was being lead to safety.

Unraveling the Myth's Symbolism
Before reading on, take some time and meditate on the two stories – their similarities and differences. Try to sculpt a meaning around these seemingly odd narratives. It is a daunting but worthwhile challenge. There are several linguistic and symbolic keys that help us unlock this beautiful narrative. The name Manu is derived from the Sanskrit word “manas” or mind – in fact, our English word “man” also originates from this word. Given this detail, we find ourselves faced not with the historical story of a single man, but with a teaching about the human mind. Next, we turn to the fish. That the fish is a ubiquitous symbol for deity is well understood; Jesus, Bacchus, Dagon, Oannes, Vishnu, and many other deities find symbolic representation as fish. Thus, the story of a man and a fish becomes that of a mind and the divine soul. With these two keys alone, we can begin to unravel the deeper meaning of the narrative.

When the mind is engaged in prayer, in the great pond of thought, it finds a helpless minnow. In our minds, the thought of divinity is but a small fish compared to the bigger thoughts of desire. If the mind is both wise and compassionate, however, this budding spirituality can be sheltered and protected. Like the mustard seed, the small minnow of divine consciousness begins tiny but soon grows stronger and more powerful. All it needs is a nurturing environment.

With great ease and quickness, the soul’s power increases. Soon its strength exceeds even the wildest imagination of the mind that lovingly protected it and watched it grow. As is said widely in India, “One who shelters goodness is then sheltered by goodness.” In a role reversal, the newfound spirituality now becomes the protector. In this capacity, it reminds the mind of an important fact: the world will soon end in a great flood. The flood is not a global destruction in the objective sense, but a global destruction in the subjective sense. The flood is death.

One of the crucial downfalls of the mind is its inability to fathom its own impermanence. Most of our thought is directed towards immediate pleasure, and occasionally to longer-term considerations. Rarely does one contemplate one’s own mortality and make serious effort to merit a glorious afterlife. However, when the soul gains ascendancy over the mind, this goal becomes quite important. Only then does the mind realize it needs to build an ark.

The ark is not a literal boat made of wood, but instead a vehicle that will carry the mind into death. It is built of our life’s work, our karma. The actions and intentions of our entire life form the structure of this vehicle, which some cultures call an astral body. So through our labor in this world, we become prepared for our journey into the unknown. Each deed that we perform and each thought that we have changes the constitution of our ark; building only stops once we stop. Yet, as we age, construction gradually diminishes as our days draw to a close.

The overbearing heat, drought, and famine described in the story symbolically remind us of the infirmities of old age; hinting that soon the hourglass will run out of sand. In the adversity of one’s advanced years, perhaps the greatest solace of a life well-lived lies in hope of the future. There is great strength in knowledge that our ark is nearly finished and soon the spirit will arrive to protect and care for us. And quickly enough, the great flood of death is upon us. As the physical body begins to perish, the mind enters into the astral body.

As the rain washes away the contents of the world, death first washes away the contents of the conscious mind. Thus, what remains is the subconscious mind, represented by the passengers of the ark: Manu, living beings, and the sages. We will notice that no animals or plants are actually brought into the ark, only their “seeds.” The seeds refer to archetypal ideas, Plato’s eternal Forms. The seven sages refer to the seven universal creative principles, which find deeper explication in the Manu’s Mahabharata and Noah’s Genesis. So as the physical body dies in the plane of matter and objects, the astral body lives in the higher plane of ideas and principles, which some scientists have called the “Mind of God.”

Yet, reaching this plane requires a navigator. At this point in the death process, the soul appears in full glory to guide the mind. Thus the ark is yoked to great Matsya. Here is, perhaps, one of the most illuminating keys to the entire myth. The word “yoke” is a literal translation of the Sanskrit term “yoga.” As a human dies, there is a yogic method that enables one to yoke themselves to their soul and retain consciousness through the process of death and the worlds thereafter. The particulars of this knowledge are not fit to be printed here, but have been explained elsewhere by great yogis. When yoked to the immutable soul, the mind is guided through death, where many secrets of the universe are revealed. When the journey is over, one is reborn into a new world, ready to begin their next life.

Depending on the quality of the ark and the strength of its tether to truth, one may be reborn into a celestial world to enjoy the fruits of labor before returning to the earthly realm, or perhaps even to the ultimate liberation of full union with divinity, the fountainhead of life itself. Yet, instead of getting lost in metaphysical speculation about what happens next, this story ends and brings us back to the present moment.

Living a Good Life
Right here and now, we are building our ark. What kind of ark are you building? Have you nurtured the seeds of compassion and toiled hard in the quarry of life? Do you have a contemplative or meditative process that allows the little fish of your own divinity to survive in the chaotic pond of your own mind? From this story we learn that the particulars of our religion, rituals, or rites do not have enduring value. It is instead the actions and intentions of this life that truly affect our next.

So then the story of Noah and Manu is not about some ancient historical world. It is about our very life, right here and now. Whether there ever was a Manu, we cannot say. Yet, none can deny that the manas, or mind, is alive today. The story is not as much about the afterlife as it is about living a good life here and now. It reminds us constantly, like the little minnow, to “build your ark, build your ark, for the flood is coming soon!” Yet, despite the profundity of this message, the ancients were seldom content to imbue a myth with but a single meaning.

Many sages suggest that each myth has at least seven different meanings, of which we have uncovered but one. For further instruction, turn your eyes up to the stars on a clear night. Even today in the constellation of Aquarius, you can see Manu pouring Matsya out of his water jug into the waters. As you view this immortal lesson emblazoned in the stars, ask yourself: “What will I do when my minnow calls out for help?”

Carl jung on Al Qaeda

2010-07-19T07:04:00.002-04:00

Though he died in 1961, Carl Jung has some important and powerful words to say about our war with Al Qaeda. He focused his life on discovering hidden patterns that manifest themselves in our actions. His writings about the Soviets are painfully relevant to today's battle against the new global enemy.

The essence of his teaching is that enemies like Al Qaeda infuriate us for one powerful reason: they represent the very essence of our own dark side, our own shadow. There is something about their raw brutality that reminds us of our own brutal desires: the need to demonstrate our superiority, convert others to our belief systems, display our religious piety, and so forth.

Except, while they flaunt their violence, we hide our aggression behind UN resolutions and ideologies like "preemptive war." While they make no qualms of living by outdated and medieval religious codes, we attempt to veil our religious prejudices like homophobia in claims of "slippery slopes" and "protecting the children."

Neither Jung nor I mean to say that there is no difference between us and them, whoever the them may be. What we do mean to say is that the actual difference is rather unlike the difference we typically tend to imagine. They represent the authentic expression of our own most violent and decadent impulses.

While we torture ourselves in justifications and attempts in restraining the animal within, they revel in their own animal psychology. It is this fact, being confronted with the smiling face of our own ugly shadow, that makes us fight even more so to exterminate the enemy. As if by destroying them, we will destroy our own uncivilized, primitive, and tribal instincts.

Carl Jung on Al Qaeda:
(Adapted, just barely, from his chapter: The Soul of Man)

If, for a moment, we regard mankind as one individual, we see that the human race is like a person carried away by unconscious powers; and the human race also likes to keep certain problems tucked away in separate drawers.

But this is why we should give a great deal of consideration to what we are doing, for mankind is now threatened by self-created and deadly dangers that are growing beyond our control. Our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic, torn between the Western and Muslim worlds.

Western man, becoming aware of the aggressive will to power of the Muslims, sees himself forced to take extraordinary measures of defense, at the same time as he prides himself on his virtue and good intentions.

What he fails to see is that it is his own vices, which he has covered up by good international manners, that are thrown back in his face by the Muslim world, shamelessly and methodically.

What the West has tolerated, but secretly and with a slight sense of shame (the diplomatic lie, systematic deception, veiled threats), comes back into the open and in full measure from the Muslims and ties us up in neurotic knots.

It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the world.

It is this state of affairs that explains the peculiar feeling of helplessness of so many people in Western societies. They have begun to realize that the difficulties confronting us are moral problems, and that the attempts to answer them by a policy of military intervention are achieving little, for they cut both ways.

Many of us now understand that moral and mental means would be more efficient, since they could provide us with psychic immunity against the ever-increasing infection. But all such attempts have proved singularly ineffective and will continue to do so as long as we try to convince ourselves and the world that it is only they (i.e., our opponents) who are wrong.

It would be much more to the point for us to make a serious attempt to recognize our own shadow and its nefarious doings. If we could see our shadow (the dark side of our nature), we should be immune to any moral and mental infection and insinuation.

As matters now stand, we lay ourselves open to every infection, because Western civilization acts influenced by the same mythology as the Muslim world. Only we have the additional disadvantage that we neither see nor want to understand what we ourselves are doing, under the cover of good manners.

Unconsciously, we cherish the same prejudices, hopes, and expectations.

We too believe in the powerful welfare state, the silencing of others with different viewpoints, the supremacy of our way of life, and (do not say it too loudly) in the Kingdom of God on Earth.

The Moth

2010-07-13T07:54:00.003-04:00

Is Piracy a Positive Economic Force?

2010-06-08T08:19:00.001-04:00

Seems like a rather crazy question: of course piracy is bad for the economy, right? Well, a few friends and I were discussing the concept of disruptive technologies which are new innovations that fundamentally alter the paradigm of an industry.

The case that pretty much set the precedent for the fight against piracy was mp3 downloading through peer-to-peer software such as Napster. Essentially, what happened was that a new format of audio came out that was equal to CD quality and compressed to a small file size. Couple that with the tech and internet growth of the 90s and the ability to share files from user to user and, presto, you have the explosion of mp3 sharing.

Now, why did mp3 sharing become so popular? Well, CDs aren't exactly the best way to distribute music. Most people don't really feel like putting down $18 for a piece of plastic that contains maybe 3 or 4 good songs. The majority of that money didn't even go to the artists, few people actually cared about having a physical CD and album artwork, and there were high costs associated with trying new music.

So, because the market was providing an inferior product (CDs), mp3 sharing took off. And the music industry collectively freaked out. It spelled the end of an industry, the death of music as we know it... if you listened to them. (Coincidentally, TV folks said the same thing about the VCR back in the day). Then along came Apple and iTunes.

Mp3 players were already around at the time, what Apple developed was a common marketplace where the files could be purchased - legally and without all the inconvenience of the CDs. One could buy only the songs they want, whenever they want, and for a reasonable price. And Apple took off and made a killing on the pairing of iTunes/iPod.

But here's the rub - would Apple's legal operation have been successful if not for the illegal Napster operation? The availability and community built around peer-to-peer file sharing made the mp3 a hugely popular file type. In the course of a few years it nearly instantly penetrated the entire market.

Because the market for illegal mp3s had become so large so fast, it became only reasonable that there would be a subset of folks who would purchase legal mp3s. Given that the industry was taking a big hit with the free mp3s, it made instant economic sense for them to embrace a new distribution chain, give greater control to the consumer, and reduce the price point.

Would this have ever happened without illegal downloads? Perhaps, but certainly not this quickly. The disruptive technology of mp3s + peer-to-peer file sharing may have created a boon for us consumers that would not have come about in any other way. It essentially gave audio listeners a voice in the market, much like a strike or protest. Who knows, without illegal file sharing, we might all be using minidisk players.

Know Ye Not That Your Body is the Temple?

2010-06-02T14:57:00.009-04:00

In the depths of the mystical experience, the traditional lines are blurred, if not completely dismantled. The universe is seen in man, and man in the universe. Religion, in its most ideal sense, is supposed to be the gateway to this mystical experience of oneness.

It only makes sense then that religion's temples should architecturally represent this state of union. And, in fact, they do. Many religions throughout time have designed the temple to embody both the design of the universe and the design of the human body, to remind us that we are made in the image of the universe and "as above so below."

For this reason, I believe: "All religion is metaphor for spirituality. Whatever you may do in the outside temple is representative of something done within your body’s inner temple."

The ancient Egyptians actually developed a temple that grew over the course of centuries from a child to a grown adult. The archeologist, alchemist, and writer R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz explains this intruiging element of the Temple of Luxor in his book: The Temple in Man.

The ancient Indian science of Vastu, which focuses on sacred design, also employs such a "man in temple" approach. In fact, they represent the "cosmic man" within each temple. The mandalas developed by the Hindus represent the universe and man as one beautiful geometrical design. Buddhists use the same technique to similar effect.

Like in the Indian version above, we can see very clearly below the significance of the altar position. King Solomon's temple is also designed in such a manner, where the "Holy of Holies" represents the human breast, and the Ark of the Covenant is built over the heart. This one I photoshopped myself.

Even in religions that no longer believe strongly in sacred architecture and the microcosm/ macrocosm relationship, the symbolism carries through. The Apostle Paul used this imagery to powerful effect:

“Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” or “We are a temple of the living God; even as God said, ‘I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’”

Next time you are in a religious service, whether it's a Mass or Puja, try to see the bigger symbolic work being done. Knowing that the temple you are now inside represents a living being, notice the inner meaning of the ritual.

Sometimes its a story of spiritual regeneration, or sacrificing of the lesser instincts of the person, or moving closer and circumambulating the soul. To kneel before a statue placed on the altar is simultaneously to humble your ego before the divinity present in your own heart.

To Turn Down the Noise of the World.

2010-05-25T13:17:00.004-04:00

When and how does one turn down the noise of the world? Is there a volume knob, aside from that great one planted in the farthest reaches of man’s obscured soul? Where does the music cease and the sound of Life begin?

I have heard melodies and harmonies such that I am full. All I crave for is to find the humor in my own song: the clamor of pant legs clumsily brushing against each other, dancing to the rhythm of the cold city air, and the uneven hustle of a self-styled gentleman rushing to be somewhere.

It could be anywhere for all my song cares.

In moments like this, how I long to laugh at my music and turn down its noise. To set aside the passing pleasures felt of ear and for a fleeting moment sense the essence of pleasure: a child in search of a new world to imagine, a dog discovering a long-buried bone, an expired body releasing its final thought.

The hustle is by nature transient, seductive only in its brevity, attractive only in its mortality. It is the quiet pulsing beneath all that noise that we forget as we chase the fleeting. It is here, in the true sound of Life itself, that the greatest hope for mankind and the highest aspirations of divinity remain patiently waiting.

Waiting to be unfolded while we infinitely postpone and procrastinate because there is so much that is and will no longer be that requires our immediate exploration and attention.

Yet if it will no longer be, then soon will it no longer matter.

But that does not matter to me, for I am too lost in the now, yet not lost enough in the now. I am so entranced in the now that passes from moment to moment that I cannot immerse myself in the now that has always existed, the now that knows no other. The second that has no second: the one that lasts forever.

My breath. What happens in the spaces between the inhalations and exhalations, in the moments of quiet pause where the music no longer converses with itself? If the banter of the world and the chatter of the mind sustain this illusion, then let me disappear into my own loneliness.

Let me be nothing more than the space between my breaths, the air between my folded hands. Let me be contained by the permeating silence. In it, may there be bliss. Let me lose myself in love for the stillness, so patiently waiting to disclose its vast knowledge in the sounds of a quiet pulsing of blood through my veins, in the distant beating of my embryonic heart within the caverns of my own overgrown being.

Let me not seek abroad what I have already within; let me not empty the nothingness of an infinite number of finite truths into the abyss of the absolute Truth. My breath. What better sound could there possibly be than the very sound of Life’s energy? Why did we need to corrupt this beauty with tools of raw goatskin and drumsticks made of fallen trees? What part of me loves this noise so much that it cannot let go and simply repeat to itself:

I am the endless, I am the endlessness.
I am the endless, I am the endlessness.
I am the endless, I am the endlessness.

Inhale and exhale. Be born and then die. This is the rhythm of my loneliness, were I able to find it. This is the salvation of my silence, the poetry of my stillness. If only I could enter into it and be taken wholly by this moment: the moment that lasted forever.

In such sweet sleep, a poetic rebuke to my painful wakefulness, may it be in the space between breaths that I shall be released into the death of Life itself? In this holy stillness, might I hear the vibrations of creation?

In this sacred emptiness, might I disappear from the world long enough to simply hear myself breathe? In and out and in and out and in and out and endless bliss.

The Final Words of Hermes Trismegistus

2010-05-16T23:13:00.006-04:00

Hermes Trismegistus was perhaps one of the most enlightened souls to ever walk the earth. His deep wisdom and intimate experience with a divine force he called "the mind of the universe" or Atum lead him to write profusely on philosophy and religion. The documents that remain are called the Corpus Hermetica. To read more about his most famous writing, The Emerald Tablet, click here.

Below are his final words, which are absolutely stunning:

"Wise words,
although written
by my decaying hand,
remain imperishable
through time;
Imbued with the medicine
of immortality
by the Master of All.
Be unseen
and undiscovered
by all those
who will come and go,
wandering
the wastelands of life.
Be hidden,
until an older heaven
births human beings
who are worthy
of your wisdom."

Having sounded this prayer
over the works of his hands,
Hermes was received
in the sanctuary of eternity.

How I Started A Social Revolution

2010-05-05T12:48:00.014-04:00

Last week, I helped overthrow The Man and lived to tell about it. Here are some lessons I learned along the way. It started when I made the acquaintance of Barry Oshry, a brilliant thinker in organizational behavior who specializes in understanding how power flows throughout complex systems like corporations and societies. One of his premier programs is The Power Lab - a weeklong social experiment that tackles issues of power and systems.

Life in the Power Lab
At The Power Lab, all attendees are segmented into three distinct social classes: immigrants, middles, and elites. Without giving too much away, your class significantly affects the quality of your life. From your lodging to meals to the kind of work you perform in society, there is a serious disparity in wealth from the elites to the immigrants. I was cast as a middle - the one who pays employees for wages and works to create new jobs to move the economy along. It's a seductive position, and one that I got into easily given my business background. It taught me a sort of discipline and forced me to keep track of accounts and... wait, this is just like my normal job!

That was the realization. Here I was in a social experiment, a laboratory for professionals to test new ideas about power, and I had fallen back into my old routines. Habit energies are very difficult to break away from. The day was so busy with running back and forth between the immigrants and elites that I forgot to experiment, to try new things. I was already building my resume in a world that only lasted a week - for what purpose? Was I going to interview for a new position in the Power Lab society? "Well sir, you can see by these numbers that I grew the economy by 30% creating new jobs in labor and entertainment..."

One thing I noticed is that the other middles also fell into their normal habits - most of us are middles in a way, not the ones who do the hard labor, nor the ones with all the resources, but the ones that control how resources flow. Talking back and forth between us, it seemed that most of the other middles were pretty happy with making small marginal changes: a few more jobs, slightly increased decision making authority, perhaps even a coffee maker in the middle housing.

Would a week of small negotiations and putting out fires, which is fulfilling yet completely stressful, really provide a benefit that I couldn't get outside of the lab? No, I thought. There must be something more to this. And indeed, this train of thought was the seed of revolution.

The immigrants, unlike the middles, were very united in their utter disdain for their poor living conditions. They did the hardest work, had few ways to blow off steam, could not directly petition the elites in any fair way, and were generally unhappy with the rate of progress the middles were providing them. If my frustration with the seduction of the middle position was the seed of revolution, the immigrants were the water and sunlight it needed to blossom.

Together with a select small group of immigrants, we hatched our plan. Create a bill of rights, rally all the immigrants under it, petition the elites with it, watch it get rejected, act out in response and receive even more draconian punishments, use this frustration to unite all the immigrants under the idea of a complete overthrow, and then we take the elite house! Only partway through the plan would the rest of the immigrants find out that they had a middle defector to orchestrate and help lead the revolution.

The Revolution Begins
The day of the revolution, we collected the day's wages and worked hard - but there was a knowing smile that things were about to change. During lunch, even the instructors taught about "power moves" and how groups can radically change their position in society. Things seemed to be going perfectly. However, as a Prussian general once said, "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."

The elements we could control for, we did, and things mostly went according to plan. Though, slowly, elements within the immigrants grew too enamored with the plan and wanted to advance the revolution up. A coach hinted very strongly that the society exercise may end soon and that we may never get the chance to storm the elite house. And so, under serious pressure as the proposed early date for court was looming, we had an emergency meeting.

It was eventually decided that we would stage the revolution during the court session instead of after. Tough decision. The numbers of revolutionaries versus old guard was equal at court, but overwhelmingly in our favor at the house. We had a higher moral authority waiting until after our proposition was shot down, but if we interrupted the court session at the beginning, we could be sure all citizens get their rights. And so, we decided to go for it early.

The careful planning of revolution that played out over 24 hours was replaced with a new spur of the moment plan. At the sound of the gavel, all of us rose up with a fierce battle-cry and sprung into our plan. Keep in mind these folks are middle managers and executives at prestigious firms. Elites were detained, in cases even tied up, doors were locked shut, and chaos was everywhere.

Looking out at the crazy mess in front of me, I was both enthralled and disgusted. Revolution is really great when you're writing the bill of rights on paper, but pretty ugly when you start the fight for independence. In the struggle for control, two of the elites escaped.

We had captured the other elites and began to charge them with high crimes against human dignity. To all of the completely surprised middles, we explained our actions. The new constitution and bill of rights was read. After we charged the elites, we asked them if they had any preliminary statements in their defense. In one of the most powerful moments, one of them asked "Does it really even matter what we say?" In response, I said "Yes, it does. You will have access to a fair trial by jury - that's what this revolution was all about."

At this point, life was good. Aside from the two escaped elites, things were pretty much turning to our new society's favor. We had established a set of basic rights afforded to all, gross inequity was equalized without going overboard into a soviet-style communism, folks talked about their hopes and fears. We reflected nostalgically on the events that just transpired at the pub. As I said, life was good.

Then the cops showed up. One of the escaped elites called the police, which brought the entire society experiment to a screeching halt. It was the ultimate power move - using resources from outside the experiment to end the experiment. Ouch.

Reflections and Lessons Learned
The whole exercise was far more moving than I can possibly express on this blog, but even more important are the lessons I learned from the exercise. Here are a few:

Desperate Situations Create Desperate People. It amazed me how quickly successful and respected professionals can organize into a strong labor union and then into an insurgent force within the period of just days. When people's basic rights to privacy, free speech, and appeal are violated, when they see little opportunity for meaningful employment and advancement in their lives, they can very easily revolt. Sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently. It's all too easy to cast such people in other countries as mere troublemakers without realizing that if we were in their position, we too could be equally radical. In many ways, the situations around us sculpt our lives more than we do.

Allow People a Release. One of the reasons that the immigrants were so easily riled up is that the elites allowed them literally no outlets for their frustration. The courts were rigged and unfair, most were too poor to visit the pub, the newspaper was censored, and there was no time for organized sports activities. All people need a chance to relax and unwind, without which, there cannot be a peaceful and productive work environment.

Create Contingency Plans. Even the best laid plans will change - don't let the change take you by surprise. We were so emotionally overwhelmed by the idea that the society might end before we got a chance to revolt, we didn't fully consider the ramification of our new plan. If we had created contingency plans in the beginning, we would have been much better prepared for the changing nature of our revolution.

Study the System. So often we think only about our role and place in society without taking a step back and studying the place we occupy within the space. This is the reason that many middles were ineffective, they didn't see their space. This is the reason the elites created such a tense environment, they didn't see their power to deflate and deflect anger. This is the reason the immigrants did not revolt until they had a middle defector, they didn't realize the strength of their solidarity. Barry Oshry calls this "system sight" - we need more of it in our world today.

All in all, this was a fantastic and enlightening experience. The people I met, things I learned, and experiments we all performed taught me so much about human nature and the nature of systems. If you ever have a chance, sign up for the Power Lab. Or, better yet, try to see your place in your firm, family, and country and think about how you can bring about positive change. It's a fulfilling and beautiful experience.

Why South Park Loves Muhammad

2010-04-15T12:02:00.009-04:00

Yesterday, South Park premiered its 200th episode which was a sort of tribute to every celebrity ever mocked and every controversy ever tackled by the show. The main plot was that Tom Cruise and the other celebrities filed a class-action lawsuit, which would only be dropped if the town got the Muslim prophet Muhammad to show up.

The celebrities, of course, want the prophet because every human being has a "goo" in them, and Muhammad's goo prevents anybody from ever disrespecting or mocking him. They want that power for themselves. And so begins an entire episode that flirts with how he can be shown and in what context. Is it okay to draw a stick figure version of him? To use his voice? To dress him up in a full-body mascot costume?

What's ironic is, of course, that before the violence caused by the Danish cartoons, Muhammad was shown in an earlier episode of South Park. In this episode, Jesus, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Joseph Smith, Seaman, and Muhammad all team up to fight the new religion of David Blaine (the famous magician/ illusionist).

Here he appears with the rest of the gang:

And by himself, showing off his power of fire.

In fact, there is no real Western prohibition on depicting the prophet. He's been shown in many circumstances, from paintings of Quranic events to biographical images and even on the US Supreme Court building. The ban on a depiction of the prophet is a strictly Muslim one - Muhammad imposed it to prevent his followers from deifying him as the Christians did to Jesus. He considered the deification of a human being to be a grievous sin against God. Yet, there is no risk of a non-Muslim elevating Muhammad to the status of prophet - and it's quite certain that the theology has firmed up by now so he's pretty well established as a prophet. Nothing more and nothing less.

Orthodox Jews take their commandment of "Don't use God's name in vain" very seriously. Many will type out "God" as "G-d" for exactly this purpose. Yet it would be unthinkable that a Jewish person would force a non-Jew to follow their custom. It stems from their theology and their holy texts, not from anybody else's. Likewise, the example of depicting the prophet is almost exactly analogous. The only reason that their customs get preference over the Jewish G-d custom is because of fear of violent reprisal. This is the part that South Park pointed out constantly last night. And it's one we should think about seriously.

Arjuna's Prayer: An Original Translation

2010-04-09T16:29:00.008-04:00

The Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between a warrior named Arjuna and his charioteer and religious prophet Krishna. As they discuss issues of life and death, Krishna repeatedly explains that while a body is capable of perishing, the spiritual intelligence that informs the body is eternal and immutable. To Krishna, death does not exist.

Arjuna presses his friend and spiritual adviser how a mere mortal could know the secrets of life and death. For this reason, as the conversation continues, Krishna reveals himself to be more than a charioteer, king, or teacher. As one of the most spiritually advanced humans to walk the earth, within him was contained the deepest mysteries of the universe. With this great power came the ability to bestow individuals with the ability to experience the oneness of the universe that is truly beyond even our idea of beyond.

The vision that Arjuna experienced through Krishna is called the "Universal Form." It has been drawn variously in Hindu iconography. One of the most inspiring and beautiful prayers is the one that Arjuna delivers to the Universal Form as seen by Krishna. To him, God is both the loving father and the impartial destroyer of all. It is both form and formlessness, transcendent and immanent.

Below I translate and poetically arrange the warrior's words, which are a mix of complete awe, human terror, and overwhelming love.

Arjuna's Prayer to the Universal Form

O Lord, the world rightly delights and rejoices in Your glories.
At the sight of You, evil flees in terror, scattered in all directions,
while righteous beings gather to offer their love and respects.
How could they withhold their homage from You, Glorious Soul?
You are the greatest of all, Unlimited Lord of the gods,
Deathless Shelter of the universe, and Creator of even the creator.
Are You not what is, what is not, and the transcendence beyond both?

You are the original and primordial Spirit, the highest in heaven.
O Most Ancient Being, within You, the whole cosmos rests safely.
You are the Knower, the known, and the aspiration of all knowledge.
It is Your Being that pervades all of existence, taking endless forms:
You are the wind, fire, water, and moon; the death, birth, and eternity.
I know You to be imperishable, the deepest treasure of all existence,
the unshakable basis of the worlds beyond, the immutable Guardian
of spirituality’s eternal laws, and the timeless Soul of mankind.

Universal Form, You exist without a beginning, middle, or end,
and I find only boundless strength in Your endless arms.
I see the sun and the moon in Your eyes; from Your lips,
brilliant radiance pours forth, heating the entire universe.
Like moths rushing for their destruction in a blazing flame,
all beings race towards You from every direction to meet death,
scorched and consumed by the effulgence of Your fiery mouth.

Glory, all glory be unto You; salutations a thousand times over.
Again and again I offer You my homage, O Lord of Infinite Potential.
I bow forwards, backwards, nay, in all directions to Your omnipresence.
O Soul of All, You are infinite of might and boundless in glory.
You are all that is, thus I find and worship You everywhere.

Mighty One, be gracious to me and accept my homage.
I wish to know You, the Origin, and learn the course of Your ways.
Author of the cosmos, Architect of both the moving and unmoving,
You, the Venerable Teacher, are alone worthy of worship.
Where shall anyone ever discover Your equal, O Incomparable Power?
Therefore, laying myself down before You, Worshipful Lord,
I ask for Your compassion. As a Father to a son, a Friend to a friend,
and a Lover to a beloved, bear with me in my moments of weakness.

Stained Glass Jesus and Easter Thoughts

2010-04-04T12:50:00.004-04:00

Just in time for Easter is a little drawing I made while sightseeing in the Vatican. It's Jesus drawn in a stained glass style.

Reading the news lately, it's hard to ignore all the awful things done by his church. But in spirituality, a lot of times the problem and the solution are one and the same. If he is to be blamed as the problem, he should also be hailed as the solution.

Basic teachings on love for the neighbor, avoiding hypocrisy, and maintaining humility are exactly what the church needs to remember. To him, children are blessed and worthy of imitation. Maybe Christianity just needs a little more Jesus in it. Happy Easter everybody.

The Leadership Yoga

2010-03-30T07:55:00.005-04:00

What is yoga and what the heck does it have to do with leadership? This is a question I frequently get when I explain the topic behind my book manuscript and leadership seminars. Well, now you can find out all about why yoga is a unique and important model of leadership.

The Leadership Yoga applies the practice and philosophy of yoga to empower people and firms to achieve their higher aspirations. Or in other words, "Helping innovators of the world rise above it." The unique aspect of yoga is that unlike many other disciplines, it does not simply study and describe behaviors, but delves into the deeper psychological causes behind them.

Every leadership model I was taught in school focused on a relationship - how a leader related to her employees, market, competitors, stakeholders, etc. Any relationship is outward looking, but what about looking inwards? Is the source of leadership really in our behaviors, or is it in our being? The question I pose is a simple one: "Can a person alone in a room be demonstrating leadership?"

According to the traditional leadership models, the answer is no. Leadership requires an external relationship. But, as The Leadership Yoga explains, the most important relationship a leader has is with him or her own self. An individual demonstrates leadership not by controlling others, but by controlling themselves. From this philosophy, we find a bold new approach to leadership - won't you come along for the ride?

Visit us on our website, twitter, tumblr, and facebook.

Why Headlines Suck

2010-02-27T20:30:00.004-05:00

We all know headlines are meant to grab attention. They often exaggerate the real nature of events to draw users in - and hyperbole comes standard. Recently, comedian Jon Stewart used his own example to demonstrate this exact point. In the clip below, he compares his actual interviews and comments to the far-fetched headlines given both by traditional media outlets and blogs.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Blogs Must Be Crazy
www.thedailyshow.com

One of the big problems in media today is the concept of clutter. There are so many people, firms, and ideas competing for a limited audience that they inevitably bombard users with more and more messages, often which need to be more and more outrageous to compensate for viewer indifference. As people become used to exaggeration, hyperbole is needed to draw in the same number of viewers. Now that hyperbole is standard, where do we go? Flat out lying.

The headline below appeared on msnbc.com today. What struck me was the absolute, complete falsity of the title. In the headline and the picture caption, msnbc tells us that a contestant felt "judges were too harsh." In her quote from the article, however, she says the exact opposite: "I wouldn't say they were too hard..."

It seems more and more that not only has the story become secondary to sensationalism - but even the last shreds of journalistic integrity have gone with it. Granted, American Idol is hardly important in any real way - but it gives us a good idea of where editorial and accuracy departments stand. When we read articles about more important topics: international terrorism, possible nuclear programs, American politics, etc. it is going to be increasingly important to delve into the meat of our stories. Headlines and summaries are no longer a factual recap, but have the potential to be false advertising. And in a world that lives for the talking point, that is scary.

A Cruel Midwife

2010-02-17T16:37:00.001-05:00

This world is a cruel midwife to deliver us.
Of what use is the illusion of birth?
That celebrates our moment of separation,
And has the audacity to call it a promising beginning.
Of what use is a body with wings?
This heart was not meant for flight,
Not in the canopy of hollow clouds,
Nor riding into the first break of sunlight.
For a lifetime spent searching abroad
Brings worn shoes and tired hearts,
Well-travelled bones buried out there, alone.

This world is too callous a midwife to deliver our love.
Find me in the unnamed places where we first met,
Greet me in the untold spaces within the devoted heart,
Love me in the loneliness of a human apart.
Would that I could feel you in the stillness,
But there is no silence for a mind calling out in absence.
Let’s return to the wilderness, love, and begin this game again.
Play carelessly in the clay from which we were made,
And vow this time not to give our dance a name.

The Battle of Dan-no-ura and Heike Crabs

2010-02-04T17:17:00.004-05:00

Although most of us have little knowledge of Japanese military history, the Battle of Dan-no-ura is a fascinating tale both in itself, and because of its implications. The conflict occurred on April 25, 1185 between two clans, the Genji and Heike. It took place in a strait near the southern tip of Honshū, the largest island in Japan.

In the battle, the Heike were vastly outnumbered, yet had a strategic benefit in that they understood the tides and naval combat tactics. As the two fleets lined up, the battle began mostly with long-range archery, exchanging arrows from ship to ship. The Heike, however, used their knowledge of the tides and eventually made the first aggressive step, attempting to surround the enemy ships. This sparked more hand-t0-hand combat with swords and daggers as the crews of ships boarded each other.

One of the decisive factors that eventually undermined the Heike was the defection of one of their generals: Taguchi Shigeyoshi. He gave the Genji crucial information: the specific ship that the six-year-old Heike Emperor Anotuku was on. The Genji thus focused specifically on that vessel and bombarded it with arrows and other attacks, targeting the helmsmen and rowers. As the battle thus began to turn against the Heike, many of the warriors started committing suicide by plunging themselves into the sea. This was considered a preferable death to facing defeat at the hands of the Genji.

The young Emperor himself, as well as his grandmother, died in this manner - drowning in the Straits of Shimonoseki. After this battle, the Heike bid for control of Japan ended and the Genji eventually established a military government, with Minamoto Yoritomo becoming the first Shogun. Yet, a strange thing happened. Soon afterward, fishermen began noticing crabs that seemed to bear the faces of Japanese warriors on them. Take a look:

Ever since, the Japanese believe that these crabs contain the souls of those brave Heike warriors who plunged into the cold waters and perished there. Out of respect, whenever fishermen find such a crab, they throw it back into the water. These Heike crabs were referenced by Carl Sagan as an example of natural selection - facelike crabs were thrown back, while other ones were not. Thus, he claims, crabs evolved to look more and more like human faces. Whether this is an example of natural selection or the embodied souls of fallen warriors, the Battle of Dan-no-ura is certainly a fascinating tale for all readers, Japanese or otherwise.

The full Tale of the Heike is considered by many to be a fine piece of literature and is available translated for purchase here.

In Support of Shouting Fire (in a Crowded Theater)

2010-01-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

Often proponents of censorship refer to the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" as a clear case where free-speech should not be protected. The point is simple, but bears repeating: if somebody falsely claims a fire and as a result people panic and folks get hurt, the person who knowingly lied about the fire should be liable for the injuries and resultant destruction.

Supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. explained this point in his majority opinion in a 1919 case this way:

"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

It thus begs the question that if this point came up in a specific court case, to better understand the phrase and its implications, we should take a look at the case itself. While the phrase seems rather clear-cut, the context in which it was invoked is much less certain. In the Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, the Secretary of the Socialist Party, Charles Schenck, was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

So what did this "Socialist spy" actually do that lead to his arrest? He spoke out against the draft. He printed, distributed, and mailed 15,000 leaflets to men eligible for the draft telling them to "assert your rights" and not to "submit to intimidation." Another message reads, "If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain."

To us today where anti-war protesters are given a much longer leash by the government, these rather commonplace statements hardly seem worthy of note. Yet, not only was he brought to court for exercising his free speech, but he was also given six months in prison after a unanimous Supreme Court decision ruled that his speech was not protected by the First Amendment. After being released, he was later found dead in his house, presumably from pain-killers.

As Holmes, the justice pictured above, said: "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

This inevitably reminds one of the modern day right-wing assertion that the former President could not be criticized while "we're at war." How a man publishing anti-draft leaflets constitutes a "clear and present danger" and will "bring about substantive evils" is far beyond my understanding. This concept that civil liberties must be sacrificed during times of war is a rather common and dangerous fallacy. Media and government constantly reminded us that we go to war to protect liberties and expand democracy, yet then how can a war that is supposed to spread liberty abroad simultaneously diminish liberty at home?

Although the criteria of "clear and present danger" was later modified in an Ohio court case concerning the KKK, to me the whole concept of censorship seems bunk. Although responsibility should always be exercised in our speech, I cannot see a reason why speech should be limited just because it goes against the politics of the time. If somebody opposes a war, they have a constitutional right to express that opposition without fear of reprisal. If not, the First Amendment is a farce. Justice Holmes is a well-respected legal thinker, however on this point I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.

As an American, we have to realize that the same types of speech that are considered tantamount to "shouting fire" are the same types of speech that made this country possible. Was Thomas Paine shouting fire? Did the Declaration of Independence constitute a clear and present danger? I would say no, they did not. So, next time somebody talks about fire and crowded theaters, let them know where the phrase comes from and the un-democratic principles it assumes.

Freemasonry in Light of Vedanta Philosophy

2009-12-28T05:52:00.008-05:00

Despite the numerous parallels between the symbolism of the fraternal organization of Freemasons and the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, there is a rather small collection of meaningful articles on the topic. Given a working knowledge of both systems, here I have attempted to formulate a basic structure by which we can see how Vedanta understands the symbols and teachings of Freemasonry. But first, an explanation of each system:

What is Freemasonry?
The typical, and somewhat unsatisfactory definition of the Craft, reads: "Masonry is a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols." In the olden sense of the word, peculiar means particular, not odd. A more complete sense of what the organization represents can be gleaned from its history:

In medieval times, the stone masons who constructed the great cathedrals and temples of Europe began organizing into guilds or trade unions. These guilds were arranged into three degrees of initiation: Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason. Each degree bestowed certain rights and responsibilities upon individual members according to their skill level. At some point the philosophers among these Masons (who must have been influenced by alchemy, Hermetic thought, and other wisdom traditions) realized that they were not only constructing temples in the outside world, but were also constructing temples within themselves.

Given this realization, they used working tools of construction (such as the builder's square and compass as seen above) to represent mental tools of moral and spiritual instruction. For example, the square that fashions strict 90° angles came to represent the cut-and-dry moral code that one must live by, thus teaching Masons that morality is not relative but instead something clear and absolute. The compass that draws a circle around a single point came to represent the circle of discretion that allows one to circumscribe their desires, thus teaching Masons to remain within the bounds of morality. In a final example, the trestle board that contains the blueprint handed down by the architect came to represent the Sacred Law of Scripture which God, the Grand Architect of the Universe, has handed down to each culture of humanity.

Many of the aforementioned symbols are visible in this Masonic tracing board below. Indeed, these new meaningful teachings helped the trade guilds grow into strong brotherhoods. Eventually, as the need for cathedrals diminished, the Lodges of Masons became less about physical building and more about building the temple of the righteous human being. The symbols, degrees, and rituals from the days of operative stonemasons have been preserved, yet modified to bring focus on the moral instructions for speculative Freemasons. This brief history of the world's first and largest Fraternal organization should suffice for the purpose of this article.

What is Vedanta?
The term Vedanta itself is rather instructive. It is a composite of "Veda" or knowledge and "anta" or culmination. Thus Vedanta is the culmination of all knowledge, the highest possible realm of human understanding. This religious philosophy is primarily documented in the ancient philosophical text of the Hindus called Upanisads. While much of theology concerns the particulars of a single religious faith or tradition, the thinkers of Vedanta sought to understand the fundamental nature of reality and life itself. Thus, as far as religion goes, Vedanta is as universal as possible as it posits no dogma or ritual, but instead an enlightened worldview.

For this reason, Vedanta has been called the Eternal Truth or, to use Aldous Huxley's term, the Perennial Philosophy. In essence, it teaches a non-dual understanding of the universe. This means that all apparent differences are actually varying manifestations of a single Reality. The fundamental distinction in all religious thought is between Matter and Spirit, which they called Prakriti and Purusha, respectively. Philosophers of Vedanta posited that the truth underlying all existence was not a material reality (Prakriti) but instead a Conscious one (Purusha/Spirit). As such, the universe is more of a thought than it is a thing.

Science and Vedanta agree that the material world was created at the Big Bang, but most cannot fathom what could possibly exist before this event. What existed before matter, space, and time? The great seers taught that before the dream exists, there must be the dreamer. Thus before there was a material world or dream, there must have been a Consciousness, or Dreamer. This Prime Dreamer, existing before the Big Bang, must have been self-manifested, unborn, and undying - pure, formless, unconditioned consciousness.

Because the dream world and everything in it exists only in the mind of the Dreamer, all that exists within the universe is within God. Thus any perceived separation between humanity and divinity is only in perception, not in actuality. This illusory veil of ignorance they called maya. Instead of decreeing humans as sinful or fallen, they said humans were by nature divine, being part of God, and only temporarily blinded by illusion. The illusion hinges on the tendency of individuals to view themselves as merely a body. A body, being matter, was created and will be destroyed, however the consciousness within it, being part of the primeval consciousness that manifested this universe through thought, was not created and thus cannot be destroyed.

If humans learned to discipline their bodies, quiet their mind, and exercise their intellect, they could transcend the mortal elements of their existence and reach the pure and unconditioned Self - the embodied consciousness. Thus God was not a floating man in the sky, but instead the unbound consciousness which called the material universe into being. Knowing this, God was not reached by ritual or dogma, but by reflection and a gradual process of meditation. Because our senses are by nature limited, God could not be perceived externally through the senses, but only internally by a direct transcendent experience. This experience, called Self-Realization, marks the highest form of human accomplishment and achievement and was reached by masters such as Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus.

Vedanta and Freemasonry:
With this admittedly cursory explanation of Vedanta and Masonry, let's now turn our attention to some of the prominent symbols of Masonry as illuminated by Vedanta.

The All-Seeing Eye and Shiva's Third Eye

This single eye has long been important to Egyptian, Norse, Alchemical, and Deist philosophies in the West. The idea of God as a watch-maker who views the world, but does not necessarily interfere is quite poignant and is used in Masonry quite extensively as a symbol for The Grand Architect of the Universe. This suits Masonry's non-denominational purposes as well.

Yet, there is more to this symbol than meets the eye (no pun intended) when understood as a representation of the Third Eye of Shiva. For example consider the deeper meaning of the symbol, represented below:

We see here that the Third Eye, or Divine Eye, is placed vertically above the two human eyes. This symbolizes that while the material world which we process with our senses appears to have duality and fragmentation, the spiritual world which we learn by insight is non-dual. Why else choose only one eye to represent God instead of two or three? The essential teaching of the single eye is the unity of Godhead - that to the wise even matter is but a manifestation of Spirit. All perceived differences are actually composed of a single Reality. The great adepts have learned to see this one unchanging Reality as ever-present throughout the universe, while we only speculate about it. For this reason, Shiva is portrayed above with his eyes half-open and half-closed: open to the truth of the Spirit but closed to the illusion of the material world.

Also, the eye teaches us about the true nature of God. Instead of the common view of God as a celestial human being with a flowing white beard and pink tunic, the Eye of Shiva teaches us the true esoteric nature of divinity. God is consciousness - the unborn consciousness from which the universe emerged. The nature of consciousness is awareness and sight - not action, emotion, or thought. This beautiful truth is revealed by the Hindu philosopher and avatar, Krishna, in his sermon, The Bhagavad Gita.

"I know all creatures; past, present, and future, but none know Me."

Bhagavad Gita 7:26

This verse is often misunderstood by the uninitiated. Krishna here teaches that the mind may contain information, but only consciousness can be said to actually know anything. Thus, while consciousness knows all that can be known, nothing knows consciousness. Because only consciousness is capable of knowledge, only consciousness can know consciousness. This is why Vedanta teaches that meditation is the ultimate practice to merge into divinity - your eyes, your mind, and your body cannot know the All-Pervading Consciousness. One must first reach the seat of consciousness within to experience to full divine consciousness without. It cannot be reached by mere intellectualism or faith. Thus, while the idea of a personal intervening God with human emotions is efficacious for simplifying complicated truth into mythology, the single eye is perhaps the most accurate symbol for Godhead to an initiate.

33 Degrees and Chakras

It is also noteworthy to realize that the macrocosm is represented in the microcosm - this is an important theme in both Vedanta and Freemasonry. The Third Eye is not only present in the sky as God, but also in man: on a spot between the eyebrows representing the location of the pineal gland. This is the reason for the location of the bindi, or decorative red dot on pious Hindu women.

The Ancients fully understood the use and importance of the pineal area as the seat of consciousness within us. The process of awakening our spiritual Self and controlling our material body is thus the basis of Vedanta. The above chart shows the chakras, or spiritual centers, within the body including the all-important third eye of Shiva between the eyebrows.

The philosophy behind the chakras refers to a serpent-power called Kundalini that initially rests at a lower spiritual center, the base of the pelvis, as a snake with its tail in its mouth. (This topic will be addressed in depth in another post as the Kundalini may very-well be the basis for the ouroboros, caduceus, and some Pharaonic symbolism as well.) With spiritual and yogic practices, the serpent rises up the base of the spine until it activates the third-eye.

Masonic authors, including Manly P. Hall, understood that one of the primary reasons for selecting 33 degrees in Scottish Rite is that the spine contains 33 vertebrae and the process of initiation represents the rising of the serpent energy up to the third eye. This is even more so justified given the inclusion of several Vedic deities in the lecture of the 32nd degree called "Master of the Royal Secret." Albert Pike was a student of Sanskrit, the language of Vedanta, and frequently wove Vedantic teachings into the Scottish Rite lectures. However, the number has other significant and relevant meanings, which I would be remiss not to mention here as a qualifier: The first temple of Solomon stood for 33 years, King David ruled for 33 years, and Jesus was crucified in the 33rd year of his life.

Lodge Room and Vastu Purusha Mandala

It has been long understood to scholars of Masonry that the Lodge room is not simply a place of convention for Brothers, but a much deeper metaphor. As the three degrees represent the stages of life from youth to old age, so too does the Lodge room itself represent a human body. It is no coincidence that the Master of the Lodge, who directs the Lodge in its undertakings, sits in the position of brain and pineal gland. Moving downward from the Master is the altar, which of course lies at the spot of the human heart. This makes the fact that Masonic oaths are taken on Sacred Scripture placed atop the heart even more poignant. The relationship between the macro and micro runs deeper, however, as the human body also represents the universe. Hence the reason that the Worshipful Master, like the sun, resides in the East. Through the Lodge room anatomy, we see that the human body is both the temple and the universe.

This concept is echoed in the ancient Indian scriptures called Vastu Shastras. These texts explicitly depict the methods used in construction of Hindu temples from materials, designs, layout, etc. As you can see by the diagram below, the Vastu Purusha Mandala arranges the layout of Hindu temples according to the anatomy of the Cosmic Man. Mandalas are used frequently by Hindus and Buddhists alike to plot in beautiful graphic designs, the layout of the universe, heavens, and human anatomy. Similar to Feng Shui, the Vastu system focused on creating positive energy flow. In it too, we see the importance of the alignment of head and heart.

Although the Lodge rooms of Masonry are designed according to the schema of King Solomon's temple, and certainly not according to the Hindu layout, the importance here is not in the execution, but in the shared idea. The relation of the macrocosm to the microcosm is often explained in the West using the phrase "as above, so below." Certainly the early philosophers of Masonry were familiar with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus upon which the practice of alchemy was built. The following lines from this text are relevant:

"Truly, without Deceit, certainly and absolutely. That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, in the accomplishment of the Miracle of One Thing. And just as all things have come from One, through the Mediation of One, so all things follow from this One Thing in the same way. Its Father is the Sun. Its Mother is the Moon. The Wind has carried it in his Belly. Its Nourishment is the Earth."

- The Emerald Tablet

This ancient Egyptian mystic here perfectly explains the non-dual reality that Vedanta first discovered, while also highlighting two of the most important symbols of Masonry: the Sun and the Moon. It should be noted that the Kundalini serpent power is expressed by solar and lunar energies, which gives hatha yoga, the Vedantic process of bodily purification, its name. (Ha, being solar energy and Tha, being lunar energy.) By realizing the relationship between the above and below, Vedanta using yoga and Masonry using ritual degrees accomplished a shared goal. Both created environments where an individual can enter into himself and work his way into his own perfection: at first by mastering his body, then by entering into the dormant serpent energy and progressing his way up the 33 vertebrae to the seat of lucidity, the third eye.

Rough and Perfect Ashlars

The importance of becoming the Master of one's Lodge or Body, is not lost upon either the Mason or the Vedantist. Krishna, in fact, describes the body as a city of nine gates and teaches specifically the process of meditation that allows one to master it:

"Withdraw into yourself, renounce your actions; let the embodied Life within control your nature. Reside happily in the city within, neither working nor causing work to be done. Fortify and control your nine-gated fortress; for two gates see, two hear, two breathe, one speaks, and two expel. Your embodied Consciousness is the sole commander of its city-body; a witness as it never performs activities, induces others to act, or creates fruit of action."

Bhagavad Gita 5:13 – 5:14

The deeper theology behind his statement here warrants more explanation than we have time, but the one fundamental truth behind his statement here rings true: that by withdrawing from the body and the mind, one can reside in the pure unconditioned Consciousness that is the true Life within the body. When one realizes that they are only this Self, the pure awareness, they attain greatness both above, in transcendence, and below, on earth.

Meditation, yoga, and other practices aimed at transmuting the empty ignorance of unchecked materialism into spiritual wakefulness posits not that we require something external. While some seek God and Truth in the heavens and in books, the seeker of Vedanta renounces his attachment to external senses and instead looks within himself using meditation. The great mystics of Christianity recognized this:

"Jesus said: If those who lead you say unto you: Behold, the Kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of the heaven will be before you. If they say unto you: It is in the sea, then the fish will be before you. But the Kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then shall you be known, and you shall know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if ye do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty."

The Gospel of Thomas 1:3

The teachings of Krishna and Jesus perfectly and harmoniously explain the importance of the rough and perfect ashlars in Masonry. Each of us is born as a rough ashlar, in a state of ignorance believing ourselves to be our imperfect bodies. Yet, using the working tools of Masonry, we can use the gavel to remove the chunks of attachment, selfishness, and ignorance that prevent us from reaching perfection. Most importantly, the perfection is not without us, it is within us. Thus slowly we make our lives the process of turning our rough ashlar into a smoother and more perfect stone. We need not seek perfection abroad, but only remove the flaws that conceal our inner greatness.

Eventually we become the perfectly squared stone, ready to be placed into the Great Temple of Humanity according to the blueprint laid down by the Grand Architect himself. It is for this reason that the first request of any apprentice in Masonry is for the Light of knowledge. By this light, he can illuminate his own heart, hidden away in the Lodge of the body. Knowing his divine nature through self-knowledge, he thus escapes the poverty of ignorance. He rises up the ranks to become the Master of his own city-body and in this true state of enlightenment, he becomes perfect.

The Fire That Burns

2009-12-20T12:24:00.003-05:00

Fool was I to adore the fire that burns
That burns all I bring to you – you devour all things
Being such a fool, I would offer the world, whole to you.

Brave was I to fall into the fire that burns
That burns all I thought I was – you consume me
In the flames of your love, my name drifts away, meaningless.

Wild was I to surround myself in the fire that burns
That burns as far as I can see – you overcome all my senses
For everything I see is you, and I see you in everything.

Vanquished was I to succumb to the fire that burns
That burns silently in my being – you smolder in all my mind
Now there is no retreat, even in thoughts, you scorch me still.

You are my flame.

The fire burning the world, you are, I enter.
The world the fire burns, you are, I offer.
The fool offering the world, you are, I was.
You alone are my flame, for you everything is but kindling.

Sunshine

2009-12-10T07:33:00.001-05:00

There is no warmth like sunshine through my window.

Love of the Game Clause

2009-12-04T22:14:00.001-05:00

Ever a source of inspirational sports stories, basketball legend Michael Jordan had a deep passion for his work. When he initially signed a contract with the Chicago Bulls, he proposed a unique condition: a love of the game clause.

This clause allowed Jordan to play pick-up, alumni and charity games at his choosing. If he got injured in such games, the Bulls management were not allowed to legally terminate his contract. Thus he could continue to work on and improve his game during the off-season without fear of losing his contract.

In Jordan’s own words: “I needed to play… I used the summer to improve… I needed to be able to play the game of basketball without consequence.”

At the time, his proposal was very singular and his dedication to self betterment and love of the game still ring true with athletes and fans alike today. Do you love your work the way Michael Jordan loved his?

The Sufi Parable of Sands

2009-12-01T06:10:00.002-05:00

Like many Abrahamic faiths, Islam is primarily an exoteric religion. There is, however, an esoteric tradition within the religion called Sufism. Like most of the mystical paths, the eventual goal of Sufis is fanaa, or the dissolution of the individual sense of ego. In place of this limited sense of self comes a realization of a greater, more cosmic sense of being.

This pure consciousness and awareness is not tied to an individual body, but is all-encompassing and transcendent over the apparent divisions in the material world. While the exoterics consider this quest for oneness with divinity to be heretical, to the mystics this is mankind's highest aspiration.

Perhaps one of the best parables to describe this process of transcending the finite self in the Infinite is the Tale of the Sands. The following translation comes from Huston Smith's book on Islam:

A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.

It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: "The Wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream." The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand, and only getting absorbed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross the desert.

"By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over, to your destination." But how could this happen? "By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind."

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?

"The wind," said the sand, "performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river."

"How can I know that this is true?" "It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years. And certainly it is not the same as a stream."

"But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?"

"You cannot in either case remain so," the whisper said. "Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one."

When it heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly it remembered a state in which it --or some part of it?-- had been held in the arms of a wind. It also remembered --or did it?-- that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing, to do.

And the stream raised its vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain, many, many, miles away. And because it had its doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in its mind the details of the experience. It reflected, "Yes, now I have learned my true identity."

The stream was learning. Bu the sands whispered: "We know, because we see it happen day after day: and because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountain."

And that is why it is said that the way in which the stream of Life is to continue on its journey is written in the Sands.

Are You a Turtle?

2009-11-24T00:13:00.004-05:00

Initiatic societies and fraternities come in all varieties - some of which protect esoteric knowledge or carry deep rituals and traditions. The Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles does nothing of the sort. Still, it is one of my favorite organizations out there.

The Turtles began during WW2 on January 12, 1943 in an English pub. This honorable drinking fraternity started with Air Force pilots looking for a way to lighten up the otherwise strenuous war efforts. To join, one must have the highest morals and good character and never be vulgar.

Initiation tests the candidate's ability to think without being vulgar using the "Four Sublime Questions". Each of these questions can be answered without being crude. Give it a try to see if you're worthy of Turtle membership.

1. What is it a man can do standing up, a woman sitting down, and a dog on three legs?
2. What is it that a cow has four of and woman has only two of?
3. What is a four letter word ending in 'k' that means the same as intercourse?
4. What is it on a man that is round, hard, and sticks so far out of his pajamas that you can hand a hat on it?

Once a candidate has solved these riddles and been initiated into the organization, they are given the secret passcode of Turtles. From that point onwards, whenever they are asked "Are you a Turtle?" they must reply "You bet your sweet ass I am." Failure to do so requires one to buy all Turtles within earshot a drink.

Now one might take this answer as being vulgar itself, but it is assumed by the Turtles that the candidate "owns a donkey of a sweet and kindly disposition." These double meanings are also the key to answering their four questions.

Interestingly this rather innocuous question has found itself in the spotlight a few times. Turtle Brother and President John F. Kennedy was once asked by a reporter at a press conference if he was a Turtle. He responded: "I'll buy you your drink later."

Astronaut and Turtle Brother Wally Schirra, who flew Sigma 7, was asked if he was a Turtle by Brother Deke Slayton while in space. He turned off his radio before responding to avoid being perceived as unprofessional. On a later Apollo 7 flight, to get even, he wrote "Deke Slayton, are you a Turtle?" on a large object in front of the cameras. The NASA Public Affairs Officer and Brother Slayton were forced to reply.

If you'd like to join the Turtles, but couldn't answer the Four Sublime questions, here are the answers:

1. Shake hands
2. Legs
3. Talk
4. His head

The 15 Laws of Life

2009-11-13T06:19:00.001-05:00

One of the most remarkable aspects of Swami Vivekananda is his ability to take high spiritual teachings and explain them in simple and understandable ways. His 15 Laws of Life is such an example of concentrated and distilled truth. This 19th century monk studied the world's various religions and reached a central understanding that did not hinge on any particular dogma or tradition.

As the first Indian spiritual teacher to speak to the western world, his 1893 visit to the Parliament of World's Religions in Chicago was a historic event. Beginning his speech with "sisters and brothers of America" instead of the sober "ladies and gentlemen," he received a two minute standing ovation for his first five words alone. Today we can see how progressive this thinker is, as his list of 15 laws still resonates strongly today. It strikes me that he, in fact, coined the Apple tagline a half-century before they themselves used it.

1. Love is the Law of Life
All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love's sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

2. It's Your Outlook That Matters
It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

3. Life is Beautiful
First, believe in this world - that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

4. It's The Way You Feel
Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

5. Set Yourself Free
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

6. Don't Play The Blame Game
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

7. Help Others
If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

8. Uphold Your Ideals
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

9. Listen To Your Soul
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

10. Be Yourself
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

11. Nothing Is Impossible
Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin- to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

12. You Have The Power
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

13. Learn Everyday
The goal of mankind is knowledge... now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

14. Be Truthful
Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

15. Think Different
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

Rama: Attributes of Perfection

2009-11-09T05:49:00.002-05:00

Within the rich Indian literary history, perhaps no figure is more adored than Ramachandra, often known simply as Sri Rama. His life's exploits and lessons were first recorded in a 50,000 verse epic poem called The Ramayana. While other historical and religious figures such as Krishna and Buddha are also highly regarded within India, Rama bears a unique distinction.

He alone is known as the maryada purushottam or perfect human being. In fact, the Ramayana itself starts with a discussion between the author, Valmiki, and a learned sage named Narada. In it, Valmiki asks if there ever lived a moral human being with all the divine qualities. While recounting the story of Sri Rama as the living embodiment of goodness, these 16 important attributes are enunciated:

1. Principled integrity and virtuousness
2. Great bravery and prowess
3. Conscientiousness in the principles of religion and morality
4. Gratitude towards others
5. Truthfulness and honesty
6. Firm resolve, being self-determined in deeds and beliefs
7. Flawless character and good conduct
8. Compassion for every living creature, well-wisher to all beings
9. Truly learned, adept in skill and knowledge
10. Capable and powerful in action
11. Beautiful, uniquely good to look to
12. Self-control and discipline
13. Transcendence over anger and desires
14. Radiance, brilliant effulgence
15. Untouched by envy, always non-jealous
16. Valor even the gods fear, when provoked to war

Through better understanding how these principles affect the life of Sri Ram and other great leaders, we can better see their potential in our own lives. Whether you consider this list to be exhaustive or incomplete, there is one important takeaway:

These divine attributes were selected to impress upon the reader the necessity of a balanced perspective. Knowledge is paired with honesty, courage with competence, compassion with valor, etc. For this reason, it is important to develop a well-rounded and dynamic personality that is prepared for life's many uncertainties.

This is the first lesson on the first page of the Ramayana. And from my perspective, it perfectly sets the tone for a story about a courageous leader who overcame much adversity in his life.

What John Adams Taught Me About Family

2009-11-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

Family is quite a bit like country. Both are inherited at birth, and although we choose neither family nor or country, they play defining roles in our lives. Very early on, we learn that as a good child cares for his family, so does a loyal patriot care for her country. Indeed, what is a society is but an extended family?

Knowing this, in remembering the brave Americans who declared independence from the British, we have to see not only the beginning of a country, but also of a family. They were known as the Founding Fathers for a reason.

Whether our family sailed on the Mayflower or arrived in the new millennium, we have all become part of the American family. One of the most fascinating and touching descriptions of this concept comes from a 1780 letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail.

It shows the personal sacrifice that our early founders made, thinking exclusively about their children and future citizens - in other words, us. In this quote, the future second US President describes the cause of his single-minded absorption in government:

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." 5/12/1780

Given freedom, we often make important decisions strictly considering our own benefit. We balk at even the idea of altering our lives to suit our parents' fancies. Distant concepts like children and future spouses have little bearing on our day’s actions.

Liberty does mean the ability to choose, but to choose responsibly. Although we were born with freedom of choice, it is not an invention of our own design. Because liberty comes from our predecessors, it is an inheritance, not an object we can selfishly exploit. The right of choice is married with a responsibility to pass it along.

Thus, each of us is but a caretaker of our sacred freedoms. We cannot make decisions as if we are the only actor in mind; we must sacrifice for the future as a way to pay our respects to the past. If our decisions negatively impact our future generation’s ability to live freely, we have done ourselves a great disservice.

Yet, today it has become easy to be an American. While our Founding Fathers risked the noose for proclaiming independence, today we live in a land of convenient patriotism.

For centuries, generations of selfless leaders have made great strides in preserving, protecting and enhancing our liberties. Still, we often choose to cash in on those sacrifices with selfish actions instead of contributing to the forward momentum. This is true both politically within our government and socially within our family structure.

Although certainly many Americans still retain this ideal of selfless, I interestingly find the John Adams ethos present most strongly in immigrant families. Like our Founding Fathers, the first generations to move to the US often take jobs of necessity - thinking solely about future generations. It is the second and third generations that begin to explore arts, accumulate family wealth, and more thoroughly assimilate into the culture.

It is saddening to see how seldom children truly appreciate this great sacrifice; instead often lamenting their parents’ un-coolness or lack of cultural understanding. Yet this very unsavvy is an emblem of their loving sacrifice.

On the subway I saw a gentleman whose broken English was barely distinguishable from his native Spanish tongue. At first, I found the American flag on the cap he wore rather ironic, given that he could hardly even speak the language or read the documents that made this country so great.

Still, for him America was something completely different. America was not a set of freedoms that he had inherited from his parents, like I did. The reason this man, who could barely speak English, wore a flag is precisely because he did not have time for English classes.

He was working honest and hard so that his son might get an education, might be able to read the language, and might one day be able to explain to his father all the reasons America is great, probably the same reasons I believe. Reasons that this man likely has little use for.

It is not the experiencing of freedom that makes America great for him, but the promise of freedom, the start of a forward momentum. Based on the idea that if he puts in his due effort, his children will inherit a better life. A life that, unless Founding Fathers of family and country are known and celebrated, his grandchildren may take completely for granted.

The Infinite Spirit Is Not Your Homeboy

2009-10-29T08:01:00.002-04:00

How often have we heard people say that they "know the will of God" or claim that their holy book is the "exclusive word of God." Let's put these assertions to the test:

Everybody defines God as infinite. This is a bold claim: A force lives in all existence, transcending even time. It created our vast and ancient universe. In the 93 billion light-year wide observable universe, our Earth occupies a mere .044 light-seconds. Suppose the Earth’s history was condensed into 365 days. From the genesis of humanity to life today represents a mere 22.8 seconds in a year of our diminutive planet’s existence. This is a shorter period of time than your typical television advertisement.

Can any one book contain everything there is to know about this amazing divine force? Can we really logically believe that this entire vast creation is the mere set-up for one prophet? If God physically conceived a son by a human woman, is his DNA not also 95% chimpanzee? Knowing that race is a social construct, not a genetic reality, can it really be believed that the omnipresent Creator of over 5,000,000 species has one chosen tribe of Homo sapiens?

No force so grand could conceivably be so trivial at the same time.

Religious fundamentalism and discrimination, claiming only one “true” religion, are at once childish and destructive. Prejudice cannot be tolerated simply because its veiled in the speech-protected, tax-exempt institution of religion. If God is infinite, than God certainly encompasses the entirety of the human experience. Further, how can there be something other than the Infinite? If God is infinite, then God is one – and if God is one, then we all worship the same force but in different ways. Although we can challenge each other on our understanding and methods of attaining the infinite divinity, we cannot posit exclusive monotheism: “my god is better than your god.”

It would be like two blood-siblings arguing over who has better parents.

The only logically consistent view is an inclusive one. God, as we hear time and time again, knows all that exists in the universe. How can the Knower of objects be reduced to an object of knowledge? Books can only contain such objects of knowledge and thus no book can be authored by nor exclusively contain the Infinite Spirit.

Studying the structure of words teaches us an important lesson. All words are symbolic in that they signify other objects and have no inherent meaning. Still, words refer not only to physical objects like trees, but also to abstract concepts like love and justice. The concept of infinity is absolutely mind-boggling – thinking too much about a universe without end can give headaches. Yet by naming it, we can talk about it just as casually as we would a tree.

Ex. 1: I will be infinitely grateful if you visit my blog, www.bladeandgrip.com.

Words are symbolic because they make communication easier. Symbols alone do not increase our understanding of the underlying concepts. For this reason, words are inherently limited and finite in their meaning. Without experience, the finite can never lead us to the infinite. Just as “many thieves put together do not make a saint,” no amount of reading or talking alone can bring us to the Infinite. For this reason, we need to avoid the trap of a books-only approach – we again see the great flaw of scriptural literalism.

It is quite certain that any time a book is written, part of the eternal truth gets mixed with the spirit of the time. We often constrain the Infinite by imposing human characteristics on a being that transcends such trivial qualities.

If God, the absolute, is merely the grey-bearded man seen on the Sistine Chapel or the booming voice from the skies, we have imposed human limitations of figure and form. If God, the absolute, is jealous or desires offerings, we have imposed human limitations of emotion and egoism. Such human limitations cannot apply to God, because these limitations directly contradict the universally accepted ubiquitous nature of God.

Since by definition God has no other, being all-inclusive, any aspects that make room for another cannot signify God in the absolute sense. Positing a jealous God by essence makes room for a selfless God as well. Thus God is neither jealous nor selfless. Positing a male God requires the existence of a female God. Thus God, in the absolute form, has no gender.

No wonder Jesus called it a mystery. This absolute form of God, named Brahman in Vedanta, is incredibly difficult to comprehend and ultimately impossible to describe with tangible words. Although we cannot directly contemplate infinity, we can imagine an inch, a foot and a mile. Thus while the absolute mystery may be infinite, without shape or form, it has been represented in different more fathomable ways throughout the narratives of various time and cultures.

These personifications and fables help make religion easy to learn as both children and adults alike would like to hear about religion through interesting stories as opposed to dry sermons and philosophy. Thus even strict monotheists have a host of representations of God: the burning bush, the light in the sky, the holy spirit, the word, the voice in a dream, the various avatars, saints, divine incarnations, the angels, archangels and seraphim, etc.

Krishna showing Arjuna that all representations of divinity are part of the one Brahman.

Much religious intolerance and conflict stems from the confused belief that these limited descriptions are God, instead of being a part of God. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. Our personal and cultural understandings are certainly part of God, but they are not the entirety of God as Brahman, its mysterious absolute form.

It is the grand paradox and infinite splendor of the mystery that can bring us together. For if we can agree on the important things, we can agree to disagree on the lesser points. We can both forgive and appreciate the differences in those we meet from day to day.

Yet, when we look at the many world traditions, we see a mix of similarities and differences. Religion is complex – it speaks not just of the transcendent but also about activities as transient as everyday banking, purchasing clothing and eating food. The Ten Commandments, considered by some as God’s message for mankind, hold the important prohibitions against killing and stealing equal to the more arbitrary ban on all physical activity from sundown on Friday until three stars appear in the Saturday night sky.

One cannot help but ask: Is this really how a vast and intelligent God thinks?

Thoughts on The Dyer Dozen

2009-10-26T15:01:00.001-04:00

Dr. Wayne Dyer is a motivational and self-help speaker with some interesting ideas. He rather seamlessly adapts Eastern concepts of spiritual philosophy for the mostly Western audience he speaks to. His emphasis is on self-actualization, in other words: "Don't be Christian, be Christ-like. Don't be Buddhist, be Buddha-like."

He lays out 12 important steps to help us progress on the path towards our own perfection. I'm typically weary of new-agey gurus, but this list has very important teachings that are professed across many religions and schools of philosophy. I've added some responses below each item.

1 ) Want more for others than you want for yourself.
Response: If you make yourself your number one priority, odds are that others will see that and treat you accordingly. If, however, you make others your priority, they will see that and make you their priority. By wanting more for others, we inevitably contribute in some way to the richness of the lives of others. Because the giver receives more than the recipient of the gift, you will always turn out happy and successful without getting sucked into the world of ego-satisfaction.

2 ) Think from the end.
Response: If you view the particular outcome you seek as if it has already been attained, you are better able to visualize and manifest that goal. Thus, imagine everything as if it's been done, and simply work backwards to see what your next steps are to reach it.

3 ) Be an appreciator in your life.
Response: When you learn to see good in every action, it allows you to better cope with tough circumstances and endure through trying times. By appreciating that which you are given, you develop stronger relations with those around you. By appreciating your culture and the world at large, you develop a deeper connection with the totality of humankind.

4 ) Stay in rapport with Source energy.
Response: Within us is a divine spark of energy from that all-pervading Source of energy. By staying in rapport with it by properly utilizing its energy for positive means and by helping others to find it, you become situated in its flawless equilibrium.

5 ) Understand Resistance.
Response: Resistance takes you away from the Source energy: Wrongdoing, judging, fear, negative thoughts, etc. are all forces that drag you down to a lower energy level. We have lots of evolutionary instincts that represent a more animal nature. It takes spiritual strength and personal conviction to transmute these base characteristics into divine ones.

6 ) Contemplate yourself surrounded by the conditions you want to produce.
Response: When you are connected with the Source energy, you are able to co-create your reality. Instead of being helpless in the grand machine of the universe, you are able to manifest a better reality for yourself and those you love. By viewing the external world as a result of the internal world, you learn to focus on yourself and improve yourself. Thus, as your thoughts improve, so do your actions, and thus so does the world around you.

7 ) Understand the art of allowing.
Response: Take the path of least internal resistance. Do not do actions that contradict with your own internal compass and sense of morality. Much of the friction that slows down progress comes from our own thought patterns and doubts. Thus, let's be sure to pull energy from Source instead of pushing against it.

8 ) Practice radical humility.
Response: All humans are ends in themselves. On the basic and most fundamental level, each of us has unique value. The variations in our possessions, status, physical attributes, or even mental capacity are minor compared to all that which all humans share. Knowing this, we can practice humility in our interactions with all people.

9 ) Stay in a constant state of gratitude: stay in a state of being generous and grateful. Rumi said: “Trade your knowldege for bewilderment.” Be in constant awe and wonder at the generosity and beauty of life and be grateful for it.
Response: None of us can change the outcomes of the world, we can only affect our own actions and attitude. For this reason, we ought to ensure that our attitude is one of gratitude as it allows us to temper our lower nature and see the good in the situations and people we come across.

10 ) Keep in mind that you can never resolve a problem by condemning it. When you use shame, you are using the lowest energy out in the universe. You can’t shame your way into the Source just like no amount of poverty you live in can lift anyone else up out of poverty. Be the example you wish to see in the world.
Response: He paraphrases Gandhi here: "Be the change you want to see in the world." The concept is that through internal changes, you can affect the external world as well. So instead of focusing on the negatives in your issues, focus on uplifting yourself and the negatives will remove themselves from you.

11 ) Play the match game. Are you matched with the Source?
Response: Living with a constant state of awareness is crucial. When our consciousness is diverted by mental or sensory distractions, we lose our sense of purpose and dull our intellect. Keeping a sense of self-examination helps us achieve better outcomes.

12 ) Meditate: The quiet mind is your way of staying connected to Source. You cannot divide Source/God. Everything else has a polarity/dichotomy except for silence. You cut silence in half and you get more silence. Cut Source in half and you get more Source. You can’t divide it. Stay in the Gap.
Response: Most of what exists in the external world began first in the internal world. Yet, so often we seem to ignore much of what goes on inside us and instead focus on the outside world. By spending some time each day focusing on your thoughts and reaching increasingly fundamental states of being, you can recharge yourself and gain great inner knowledge.

Complex Systems, ADHD, and Dance

2009-10-20T14:07:00.007-04:00

Of all the elements of the universe, from black holes to bird songs, perhaps the least-understood is the human mind. We all too often assume that complex systems, like the mind or nature, can have simple and easy solutions. They hardly ever do.

Environmental regulation and mental regulation both come with serious setbacks - we have seen a prime example of the ways that our simplistic ideas hurt complex systems through Yellowstone National Park. In a presentation, Michael Crichton showed out how attempting "scientifically" reduce predators in order to protect certain species actually caused both the predators and the elk species themselves to die due to overgrazing.

The gist of the argument is that interference in complex systems usually creates unintended consequences. Alan Greenspan's interest rate reduction in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th certainly had much more long-lasting detrimental effects than the actual events themselves as it caused the great bubble that burst in our recent economic meltdown.

Yet, here we are again, attempting to regulate the human brain when we cannot regulate a market economy or nature preserve. As Crichton says about Yellowstone: it is truly "a cascade of ego and error." However on the issue of a child's mental state, simply quoting studies and statistics seem rather impersonal given how human and emotional this subject is.

In a rather fascinating TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson discusses whether education kills creativity. During the course of this presentation, he relates an important and telling story that focuses on ADHD and dance. I've pasted the transcript below.

I’m doing a new book at the moment called, Epiphany, which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I’m fascinated about how people got to be there. It’s really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who most people have never heard of, she’s called, Julian Lynn. Have you heard of her? Some have.

She’s a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did Cats and Phantom of the Opera. She’s wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England, as you can see. And eh, anyway Julian and I had lunch together one day and I said, ‘Julian how did you get to be a dancer?’

And she said it was interesting; when she was at school she was really hopeless. And the school in the thirties wrote to her parents and said, ‘we think Julian has a learning disorder.’ She couldn’t concentrate, she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD, wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930’s and ADHD hadn’t been invented, you know, at this point, so it wasn’t an available condition, you know. People weren’t aware they could have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist in this oak panelled room and she was there with her mother and she was led and sat on this chair at the end. And she sat on her hands for twenty minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems she was having at school.

And at the end of it (because she was disturbing people and her homework was always late and so on, a little kid of eight) In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Julian and said I’ve listened to all these things your mother has told me I need to speak to her privately so he said, ‘Wait here we’ll be back. we won’t be very long.’ And they went and left her.

But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk, and when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, ‘just stand and watch her.’ The minute they left the room she said she was on her feet moving to the music and they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, ‘You know, Mrs Lynn, Julian isn’t sick she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.’ I said, ‘what happened?

She said, ‘She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room and it was full of people like me; people who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.’ They did ballet, they did tap, they did jazz, they did modern, they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist. She had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company; the Julian Lynn Dance Company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theatre productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

Saint Patrick's Legacy

2009-10-12T13:06:00.005-04:00

In books and debates, in colleges and churches, the ongoing battle between the secular and religious worlds rages on. Both sides force us to ask important questions. By abusing religion, fundamentalist believers force us to consider religion’s capacity to cause harm. By denying religion, fundamentalist disbelievers force us to question the rationality of religious beliefs.

Still, behind both the fundamentalist believer and disbeliever there exists the same one great flaw: each side understands the words of religion on a strictly literal level. The story of Saint Patrick, if read the right way, can show us the dangers of such scriptural literalism and how eliminating it can bring us closer together.

A legendary fable about Saint Patrick credits him with banishing all the snakes from Ireland. Similar incredible stories exist about many figures in all religions. Yet, this example is useful because it is provably false. Scientific evidence shows that no snakes were ever present in post-glacial Ireland. This makes our fable of use because through it, we can see the nature of two prevalent approaches to religious literature.

Both believer and disbeliever approach the story with a predisposition – one is determined to believe anything and the other determined to believe nothing.

The believer makes the battle one of faith and willfully discards knowledge. He claims that even dinosaur fossils are merely God’s way of testing his faith. The disbeliever makes the story a mere weapon to undermine the beliefs of others. Yet, in her eagerness to disprove religion, the disbeliever reads the story on a simplistic and literal level. This makes her no better intellectually than the believer she criticizes.

What if we approach the text with clear eyes? Although Saint Patrick could not have banished literal snakes from Ireland, could these snakes be a metaphor? With just a small grasp of allegory, we can find a middle of the road answer to this puzzle.

Finding that native cults of Ireland used serpent symbolism, we uncover a more credible story: Saint Patrick converted the indigenous Irish cults to Christianity, thus “banishing the snakes.” Serpents have long ago been associated with esoteric gnosis or hidden knowledge. (And about the shamrock, he used the its three interconnected leaves to symbolize the Catholic Trinity, contradicting the then-popular Arian belief of a truer monotheism.)

By approaching this story literally, the believer received willful ignorance and the disbeliever received misplaced pride. It is the moderate perspective that unlocks a rich, hidden history. Scriptural literalism alone keeps believers and disbelievers at constant odds. It gives the atheist only contempt for religion and the religionist only contempt for rationality.

Could either side honestly prefer their answer to the one we reached here together?

To me, Saint Patrick represents more than the festive parades, green beer and my mother’s birthday that occur on March 17th. He reminds us through his fable that we ought not reduce the great poetry and symbolism of ancient writings into dull prose.

In Buddhism, teachers often use the method of upaya, or clever means. They believe that in certain cases by telling a seeker something only relatively true or even potentially untrue, a spiritual teacher can lead the student to realize the absolute truth.

Consider, many seek spiritual fulfillment but cannot ponder the philosophy or devote exorbitant time to devotional service. These relative ideas and allegories, I will contend, are especially helpful in such cases to help better people. The Greek Aesop’s Fables and Indian Panchatantra are not true stories, but still provide enduring moral lessons to humanity.

Whenever possible we should encourage the reading of all culture’s stories with both intention and awareness. Maybe with a fuller understanding of the deeper meaning behind such stories, we can help bring the believer and disbeliever closer together.

The Pakistani Aretha Franklin

2009-10-05T16:58:00.003-04:00

Abida Parveen has been one of my best kept musical secrets. Her style of Qawwali singing has deep roots in Sufi poetry - the mystical sect of Islam. In this particular piece, she adapts an 18th century poem by Bulleh Shah. Her combination of talent, style and passion are largely considered unrivaled.

The translations on the video are a little imprecise. Here is the poem expressed in a more authentic way:

O Beloved One:

If God were to be found by ritual bathing and washing,
then God would be found by fish and frogs.

If God were to be found by roaming in the jungle,
then God would be found by cows and buffaloes.

O Mian Bulleh
God is found by hearts righteous and pure.

You have read a thousand books
but have you read your own Self?

You rush to mosques and temples
in indecent haste,
but have you tried to enter your Self?

You are engaged in needless battle with Satan
but have you ever fought with your own mind?

You have reached the sky
but have failed to reach what's in your heart!

Come to my abode, My Friend morning, noon and night!

Destroy the mosque,
destroy the temple
destroy anything you please;
but do not break the human heart
for God dwells therein!

I search for You in jungle and wilderness
I have searched far and wide.
Do not torment me thus My Love
morning, noon and night!

Come to my abode, My Love
morning, noon and night!

How to Make Life Look Fake

2009-09-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

Some of the most fascinating aspects of film go on behind-the-scenes. It's certainly some feat that the Galactic Death Star that appears convincingly on screen is in fact a plastic model no more than 5 feet in diameter.

As Anthony Kiedis said: "Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement."

One film technique, called tilt-shift miniature faking, does precisely the opposite of the Star Wars-esque effect. Instead of taking a small model and making it look real, it takes reality and makes it look like a small model.

Check out this wonderful example of tilt-shift:

Can you figure out how they do it? The technique is conceptually very simple, but still effective. Take a look at the difference between these two photographs - the top is a miniature fake and the bottom is the original photo.

See the difference in the focus? On the top image, the shallow depth of field makes the scene seem much smaller than it really is, while the bottom image is completely unedited - giving the viewer a fuller perspective.

Because the top and bottom of the miniature photographs have been edited, and the photographs shot with a downward looking perspective, only the subject is clearly in focus. This is what gives the tilt-shift miniatures their unique look.

Here's one final example: the music video of Harrowdown Hill by Thom Yorke (of Radiohead fame).

So, next time you see some tilt-shift miniature faking, you can impress your friends and explain all about how this technique works.

Hinduism's Holiest Hymn

2009-09-13T08:23:00.005-04:00

The Gayatri Mantra is one of humanity's first prayers, dating back to at least 3,000 BCE. It is attributed to the ancient sage Vishwamitra and appears in the Rigveda, the oldest religious text that is still practiced today.

Although within Hinduism God is described as being beyond the senses, Vishwamitra here took the concept of a divine and eternal life-giver and symbolically represented it as Savitr, the sun. For this reason, this prayer is often recited at sunrise and sunset.

This 24 syllable hymn is considered the holiest in Hinduism, only revered behind the sacred syllable Aum. The words of the Gayatri Mantra are selected and arranged so that they not only convey meaning but also create specific power of righteous wisdom through their utterance.

In the Bhagavad Gita, a centrally important Hindu text, Krishna identifies himself directly with it: "Of all poetry, I am the Gayatri." (10:35)

Eventually, this important prayer itself became personified as the Goddess Gayatri. She is now worshiped by Hindus and Buddhists alike as the mother of all sacred knowledge and the personification of the all-pervading Absolute Reality. She is thus the feminine counterpart to the male concept of the Infinite Spirit.

In Sanskrit:

ॐ भूर्भुवः स्वः ।
तत् सवितुर्वरेण्यं ।
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि ।
धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥

oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ
tat savitur vareṇyaṃ
bhargo devasya dhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt

Word for Word Translation:

Aum / Auspiciousness
Bhur / Earth
Bhuvah / Heaven
Swah / Beyond
Tat / That
Savitur / Spiritual Sun
Varenyam / Most Worthy
Bhargo / Your Light
Devaysa / Most Divine
Dhimahi / We Meditate Upon
Dhiyo / Mind
Yo / May You
Nah / Our
Prachodayat / Illuminate

English Translations:
My Translation: "Auspiciousness on Earth, in Heaven, and Beyond! That Spiritual Sun, Most Worthy, we meditate upon Your Divine Light. Illuminate our minds!"

Arya Samaj: "O God, Thou art the giver of life, the remover of pain and sorrow, the bestower of happiness; O Creator of the Universe, may we receive Thy supreme sin-destroying light; may Thou guide our intellect in the right direction."

Gayatrimantra.net: "I invoke the Earth Plane, The Astral Plane, The Celestial Plane. Oh, great Spiritual Light which is the brilliance of all Divinity, we meditate upon You. Please illumine our minds."

To hear a recitation, click here.

The Way to Wealth

2009-09-07T06:37:00.001-04:00

What do all of the following well-known phrases have in common?

- Time is money
- There are no gains without pains
- Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise
- A word to the wise is enough, and many words won't fill a bushel
- Wise men learn by others' harms, fools scarcely by their own
- Have you somewhat to do tomorrow, do it today
- One today is worth two tomorrows

Each of these maxims comes from a 1758 essay by Benjamin Franklin called "The Way to Wealth."

While today's politicians are more likely to gift our culture with gaffes such as "misunderestimated" and the like, Benjamin Franklin's advice here continues to be relevant to this day. Many of us unknowingly use his terms, a tribute to his great intellect.

In this text, he writes from the perspective of Poor Richard who listens to a man named Father Abraham delivering a sermon to folks concerned about government taxation. Through this set-up, Franklin delivered a "best of" Poor Richard's Almanac.

This genius and founding father lays out a disciplined work-ethic and philosophy based on relentless action. Below are a few points that resonated with me that I summarized and commented on a little bit.

1. The Tax of Poor Work Ethic
Although government taxes may be high, they would not be as daunting a problem if they were the only taxes we face. We are taxed twice as much by idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much from our folly. These taxes are ones of our own design, so no commissioner can lessen their burden.

However, because God helps those who help themselves, we can lessen these taxes, and in doing so, better discharge the burden of government's taxation as well. In other words, focus on what you can control instead of complaining about what you cannot.

2. Action Preserves, not Sloth
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears. The used key is always bright, the unused key is rusted and wasted. A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. Do you imagine that sloth will afford you more comfort than labor? Of course not.

For this reason, if you love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. Don't sleep excessively; the sleeping fox catches no poultry and there will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Instead of wishing and hoping for better times, we can make these times better if we rise and act. Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. If you were a servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle? Are you then your own master, be ashamed to catch yourself idle.

3. Spend Money Carefully
A fat kitchen makes a lean will, so be frugal. The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt. Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. So, don't chase luxuries or small items: a ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

Only when the well's dry will you know the worth of water. Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy. Don't pursue vanity and clothing. Creditors have better memories than debtors, so rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.

Referring to the legendary philosopher's stone of alchemy, here is one final piece of advice:

"Get what you can, and what you get hold;
'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold,"

Spoiler Alert: What Happens After You Die

2009-09-02T05:06:00.001-04:00

This is perhaps the most often pondered question of human thought. Well, at least one culture believes they have the answer in a very concrete way: the Tibetan Buddhists.

In 1919, the Oxford educated anthropologist and folklorist Walter Evans Wentz travelled through the Himalayas and reached Tibet. There, in a Buddhist monastery, he became the first Westerner to see the Book of the Dead.

This 8th century text is a guidebook for the deceased to travel through the afterworld – it gives detailed advice for each of the three bardos or stages of intermediate life – the spiritual rebirth between lives. It was kept secret for centuries in The Forbidden Kingdom, yet when published in 1927 by Wentz, it has never gone out of print.

It became even more famous in the when Harvard professor Timothy Leary, psychedelic guru, used the stages to describe the process of an LSD trip. The psychedelic experience, Leary says, is much like a death of your former self, an interim period, and then a rebirth of a new self.

It’s referred to in Beatles songs and Hollywood movies. The core message of both the original and the psychedelic is simple: Don’t be too enchanted or conscious of the world that you experience as it is a construction of your own mind.

The story of the Tibetan Book of the Dead begins with a mystical figure known only by his title: Padmasambhava, the lotus born. He traveled to Tibet from India around 800 AD and was renowned for his siddhis, or mystical powers. He had the ability to perform miracles, heal the sick, prophecy the future, and even to fly.

In the remote Himalayan plateau, he arrived brining the message of Buddhism. In order to do so, he had to defeat the evil demons that inhabited the lands by challenging them to magical combat. Using his powers, he did not destroy these demons, but instead converted them to Buddhism. These ancient indigenous spirits continue to play a role in the Tibetan religion and protect Buddhism.

His greatest challenge, however, was to defeat death itself. He wrote specific instructions for the life and afterlife path, which was known as Bardo Thodol or “The book of liberation upon hearing in the afterlife.”

However, this saint felt that the Tibetans were not yet ready for this teaching and they might have misunderstood its purpose or misapplied its teachings, so for this reason he hid his book, providing only a prophecy of who will be the one to discover it on a future date.

Padmasambhava hid the Book of the Dead in very strange, remote places: in the middle of rocks, stones, and boulders. He died around 800 AD. He had converted the entire nation of Tibet from a military empire to the most spiritual society on earth. Yet, his greatest work had disappeared except for the prophecy.

Surprisingly, 600 years later, to the day, his prophecy was fulfilled. In 1350, visionaries called “treasure revealers” begin to discover these teachings. Karma Lingpa is said to have discovered a map to the book through a vision. According to legend, the map is written in a special script that only the one who is prophesized to discover the text can read. After Karma Lingpa discovers this long-hidden guide, Tibetan Buddhism changed forever.

Tibetan death rituals have remained relatively unchanged for about 600 years. The funeral prayers begin with monks chanting prayers at the side of the corpse to guide the soul through the stages of the afterlife.

This helps to guide the deceased through the frightening world of the afterlife. As the book says “death cometh to all.” This afterlife can be terrifying and it’s this book that can guide the person safely to a new life. “Listen with full attention, thou will experience three bardos, recognize them, be not afraid.”

It is common for a soul to come back to his home, and thus family members have to reassure the soul to attend to its important business. After several days, the corpse is prepared for burial. The bodies are forced into a fetal position, spine broken, arms and legs tied together and is then allowed to shrink into a bundle nearly half its original size.

The traditional Tibetan burial is called sky burial, taken to a remote location, it is left alone for the vultures. Once the body is dead, it is considered absolutely worthless in Tibet. The last gift of life is to offer oneself as food to other sentient beings.

For 49 days, the departed’s spirit is said to wander in the afterlife, guided by monks reciting the book through the three bardos of the afterlife. “Be not attached to this world, be not distracted, do not fear.”

There are parallels between this book and near-death experiences. The blinding and seductive light that we hear about is spoken about in very clear terms. “Oh Nobly Born, that which is called death has now come. Now thou are experiencing the radiance of pure reality.”

After facing the brilliant white life, the soul enters the second stage – the bardo of peaceful deities. Each of the peaceful deities offers the soul guidance to paradise or entrance into the sensual pleasures of the gods. Yet, these deities are a trap. You can easily become deluded and forget to stay centered and concentrated.

We cannot be enticed by the soft light of the gods as it is an obstacle to liberation. The goal is enlightenment, not pleasure, and thus each bardo is a test.

If one fails the test of the peaceful deities, he then faces the terror of the wrathful deities. The 58 flame inhaling and blood drinking deities are manifestations of the peaceful beings, part of the duality of life, yet they can terrify the uninitiated and the ones who do not know what they represent.

Thus paintings and sculpture like the one above have been shown to make seekers accustomed to these images. If one flees in terror, they can get lost. For this reason, maintaining concentration and listening to the chanting of the monks are so important in navigating the bardos.

The bardo ends with an encounter with Yama, the reaper or death incarnate. He looks like a wrathful deity, waiting for you. Yama will examine the deeds of your dead soul, piling up his good deeds in the form of white pebbles and evil deeds in the form of black pebbles.

A life of good deeds earns a positive rebirth, or entrance into the world of the gods. A life of evil deeds earns a negative rebirth as an animal, or entrance into hell or even worse. Perhaps the most gruesome incarnation is that of a hungry ghost. In it, you have a tremendous and burning hunger, but as your neck is the size of a pencil, you are always hungry. Hungry ghosts were very attached to previous lives and never satisfied.

Reincarnation is an important part of Buddhism as is karma – the idea that our actions have repercussions in the future life. By stepping off of the eternal wheel of karma, we can achieve liberation.

For this reason, if the soul can listen to the distant sound of the monks chanting, he can leave Yama, the lord of death behind. “Oh nobly born, fear not the lord of death, he is thine own hallucination, listen and go forward.”

With the help of monks chanting the book of the dead, the soul can enter the third bardo, where he can choose his own rebirth and meet his own future parents. Better than the chance to become a god is the opportunity to be reborn as another human, a bodhisattva whose sole goal is to help others.

Consciousness, like energy, is always conserved. The one thing you can’t do to consciousness is to destroy it. As the wandering soul prepares to be reborn as a human, he will experience a stage where he sees visions of his potential parents copulating and one must meditate very strongly and focus on choosing a favorable family.

When a soul foresees the future, it chooses a life and just as the moment where the sperm and egg join, he enters into the bliss, with a long trip down a dark tunnel to the glowing light. The path is the womb, and the light at the end of the tunnel is the light of the world as the baby is born.

The Book of the Dead teaches us that death is inevitable, but certainly not the end of our journey.

Credit to a History Channel documentary.

Learn to Beatbox in Two Languages

2009-08-23T00:40:00.008-04:00

If you've ever been curious to learn how to beatbox, here's your chance. This is my first time doing a video blog, because as you can imagine, teaching beatboxing with written words alone might be a little hard.

Just to spice things up, vocal percussion is explained through two different styles: drumset beatbox and spoken tabla bol. I'm just having some fun mixing and matching the two styles of hip hop and Hindustani classical.

If this works well, I'll do the video thing more often. Let me know.

The Curse of Knowledge

2009-08-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

Is knowledge ever dangerous? Can knowledge actually undermine our ability to communicate?

Adam and Eve, who famously ate from the Tree of Knowledge and suffered Jehovah's wrath would certainly say so. A little more recently, in their 2007 book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath explain the basic problem of knowledge:

Folks with a deep knowledge about a topic often assume others have that same knowledge.

This simple and rather obvious point often leads to major missteps. As Scott Anthony explains in his Harvard Business Blog Article:

The brothers Heath bring this to life by describing a simple experiment run by a Stanford doctoral candidate in the early 1990s. The researcher gave subjects a list of popular songs like "Happy Birthday" and asked them to tap those songs out on a table.

Another person had to guess the songs. The researcher asked the "tapper" to predict the percent of songs the "listener" would guess correctly. The tappers — who could hear the song in their heads as they tapped — assumed that people would get 50 percent right. They actually got 2.5 percent right.

What does this mean for innovation? Managers who have spent their entire lives working in an industry often suffer from the curse of knowledge. They assume customers know more than they do. This curse can blind managers to opportunities and threats.

The Secret of Life in 13 Lines

2009-08-12T06:16:00.001-04:00

Ever heard of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus? Odds are you aren’t especially familiar with this Christo-Pagan saint, whose name has a unique name meaning of “The Thrice Great Hermes.”

During the Renaissance, he was known as the “Gentile Moses” as his wisdom writings rivaled the books of Moses. Blending Egyptian, Gnostic and Greek paganism, his texts are purported to be the deepest secrets of Egypt as brought to the Western world.

His true identity has been lost to history, although it is believed he lived around 1,900 BCE. The Corpus Hermeticum, or body of Hermetic texts, is the inspiration for alchemy and other esoteric arts, including many of the mystery schools.

An amalgam of three messenger gods: Hermes (Greek), Mercury (Latin), and Thoth (Egpytian), his most famous writing is The Emerald Tablet. Great intellectuals such as Isaac Newton have spent much time and effort to decode its hidden spiritual secrets.

Hermetic alchemy combines many disciplines including metallurgy, medicine, spirituality, and philosophy. The Tablet speaks specifically about the workings of the sun. On an external level, the sun represents gold, yet on an esoteric level, gold represents the human mind.

The goal of alchemy is to understand how to transmute base metals into gold, thus symbolically representing the transmutation of the mind into higher states of consciousness.

According to tradition, this text is divinely inspired. “The god Hermes Trismegistus received this book from the angels as god's greatest gift and passed it on to all individuals fit to receive secrets.” - Book one: Kuranides from the Corpus Hermeticum.

Think you are ready to ponder the great secrets of the working of the sun? Give this 13 line spiritual text a reading and try to decode its rich symbolism and knowledge.

The Emerald Tablet

Truly, without Deceit, certainly and absolutely —

That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, in the accomplishment of the Miracle of One Thing. And just as all things have come from One, through the Mediation of One, so all things follow from this One Thing in the same way.

Its Father is the Sun. Its Mother is the Moon. The Wind has carried it in his Belly. Its Nourishment is the Earth. It is the Father of every completed Thing in the whole World. Its Strength is intact if it is turned towards the Earth. Separate the Earth by Fire: the fine from the gross, gently, and with great skill.

It rises from Earth to Heaven, and then it descends again to the Earth, and receives Power from Above and from Below. Thus you will have the Glory of the whole World. All Obscurity will be clear to you. This is the strong Power of all Power because it overcomes everything fine and penetrates everything solid.

In this way was the World created. From this there will be amazing Applications, because this is the Pattern. Therefore am I called Thrice Greatest Hermes, having the three parts of the Wisdom of the whole World.

Herein have I completely explained the Operation of the Sun.

Watch me on Pokin' Holes

2009-08-08T08:30:00.000-04:00

I was a recent panelist on a friend's show for young entrepreneurs run by a few friends called Pokin' Holes. The video is below:

The company we were looking at is DoInk. It is essentially a web resource that allows users to create their own art and animation regardless of one’s artistic ability.

The Illusion of Control

2009-08-04T05:45:00.000-04:00

Because he excels in transmuting the theoretical into the practical, Malcom Gladwell is among my favorite thinkers. In his New Yorker article, The Psychology of Overconfidence, psychology and war examples illustrate the neurosis that drove our economic collapse.

However, his point is much larger than just the Wall Street example. So here I did my best to preserve the merit of his 4 most important points while leaving them unconstrained by their initial business context:

1. We often apply confidence to places where it has no role

The psychologist Ellen Langer once had subjects engage in a betting game against either a self-assured, well-dressed opponent or a shy and badly dressed opponent (in Langer’s delightful phrasing, the “dapper” or the “schnook” condition), and she found that her subjects bet far more aggressively when they played against the schnook.

They looked at their awkward opponent and thought, I’m better than he is. Yet the game was pure chance: all the players did was draw cards at random from a deck, and see who had the high hand.

This is called the “illusion of control”: confidence spills over from areas where it may be warranted (“I’m savvier than that schnook”) to areas where it isn’t warranted at all (“and that means I’m going to draw higher cards”).

Most people are inclined to use moral terms to describe overconfidence—terms like “arrogance” or “hubris.” But psychologists tend to regard overconfidence as a state as much as a trait.

Langer didn’t say that it was only arrogant gamblers who upped their bets in the presence of the schnook. She argues that this is what competition does to all of us; because ability makes a difference in competitions of skill, we make the mistake of thinking that it must also make a difference in competitions of pure chance.

2. Confidence is especially important in high-stakes contests

Other studies have reached similar conclusions. As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master.

As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance. We are often overconfident at tasks not because the particular task doesn’t matter but, paradoxically, because it does; it is often in a high-stakes contest, of daunting complexity, that overconfidence takes root.

3. Self-deluded confidence is actually more effective than faked confidence

Several years ago, a team headed by the psychologist Mark Fenton-O’Creevy created a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of an index like the Dow, and recruited, as subjects, members of a highly paid profession.

As the line moved across the screen, Fenton-O’Creevy asked his subjects to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of the session, they were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. The buttons had no effect at all on the line.

But many of the players were convinced that their manipulation of the buttons made the index go up and up. The world these people inhabited was competitive and stressful and complex. They had been given every reason to be confident in their own judgments. If they sat down next to you, with a tape recorder, it wouldn’t take much for them to believe that they had you in the palm of their hand. They were traders at an investment bank.

In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, writes. “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.”

Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.”

4. Overconfidence is Globally Maladaptive

From an individual perspective, it is hard to distinguish between the times when excessive optimism is good and the times when it isn’t. All that we can say unequivocally is that overconfidence is, as Wrangham puts it, “globally maladaptive.”

When one opponent bluffs, he can score an easy victory. But when everyone bluffs, Wrangham writes, rivals end up “escalating conflicts that only one can win and suffering higher costs than they should if assessment were accurate.”

How a Sufi Mystic Received God's Highest Blessing

2009-07-31T06:01:00.001-04:00

The tale of Sultan Ibrahim Bin Adham, or more simply Abou Ben Adhem, is a beautiful and universal one. He was once the king of the mighty city Balkh, in the northern tip of Afghanistan, a city that has since been destroyed by the Mongol invasions.

Yet, even in the height of its glory, Abou left his post as king to become a zahid or ascetic. Having renounced his kingdom and wealth, he lived a very fulfilling life as a Sufi - the Muslim mystic sect.

Still, he become famous in the West through a poem published by James Henry Leigh Hunt in 1838.

It describes his famous encounter with an angel that lead him to receive God's highest blessings. The teaching behind this great tale is at once simple, beautiful and universally profound. It is even the inspiration for a Shriner's mosque in Missouri.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

A Film to See: The Entrepreneur

2009-07-27T09:45:00.003-04:00

Wow, what a fascinating story - it follows the intimate life of Malcom Bricklin as he works to be the first to break Chinese cars into the US market. It's a bit like The Apprentice, but with no producer-generated melodrama. It reinforces that no executive is perfect, but sometimes a person's quirks can also be their greatest strength.

Here's a synopsis from imdb:

Best known for bringing Subaru and Yugo to North America, and for producing the first sports car with gull-wing doors, Malcolm Bricklin has lost and regained millions, failing as often as thriving. But Malcolm is a man who gauges success by the experience itself, not just by the dollars and cents it generates.

Filmmaker Jonathan Bricklin follows his father's last grasp at power before his last gasp, as dad dreams of being the first to distribute Chinese cars in North America. All he needs is a near-bankrupt factory and some investors. You wouldn't actually think Malcolm could do it, given his insistence that everyone conform to his ideas and his blustery, ostentatious, and unprofessional conduct. Can this showman transform his talk into reality?

The Entrepreneur is a testament to Bricklin senior's legacy, a roller coaster ride through the ups and downs of brokering the blockbuster deal of a lifetime.

This video will only be available for a week or two, so I highly suggest you check it out while it's still available (and free).

Tibetan Buddhism and Transient Art

2009-07-22T20:01:00.004-04:00

The sand mandala is one of Tibetan Buddhism's most curious and celebrated art forms.

At first glance they are simply geometric designs, but within these complex designs are deep spiritual depictions of the cosmos. They are created using only colored sand - finely ground and poured into place.

The process of creating a mandala itself is seen as a form of meditation, with its elaborate swirls, gateways, and colors each representing a different form of wisdom. Indeed, the physical structure is the representation of the enlightened qualities when it is created with the right kind of motivation.

It may take a monk weeks to complete one of these elaborate works of art. When a mandala is consecrated, it is like bringing the life force to the mandala.

A symbol of life, as soon as the intricate sand mandala is created, it is destroyed. The very monk who designed the mandala and brought it to life then runs his finger through the sand design, thereby bringing the process full circle. The Creator must also become the Destroyer.

The mandala is a profound symbol of the brevity of life itself and the certainty of death.

"Number One" is Dead. On CNN, Fox, and TV Ratings

2009-07-17T12:39:00.014-04:00

Television ratings, one would believe, are objective metrics. We should be able to know quite clearly which networks are top rated based on Nielsen information, no?

Well it seems things are never quite as simple as they initially appear: enter CNN controversy.

"In a new television spot aimed at getting advertisers to spend more on the network, CNN proclaims it is "No. 1, with more viewers than Fox and MSNBC." The ad goes on to say that CNN has held the top spot for seven years in a row.

This came as a news flash to Fox and MSNBC, considering that both top CNN in the ratings. During the second quarter, Fox News -- which has been handily beating CNN since January 2002 -- more than doubled CNN's audience in prime time and for the entire day. Even MSNBC, a onetime also-ran in the cable news wars, topped CNN in weekday prime-time ratings for the first time in the second quarter."
LA Times

So what's the deal with these ratings anyways?

What we find is that there are two possible metrics we can use to pick our "number one" source for news:

The first and most commonly used metric is expressed as "points" or "shares." On these terms, the headlines are true: Fox News and even MSNBC have utterly surpassed CNN. Yet, rather counterintuitively, this does not mean more people watch Fox than CNN.

In fact, in any day, more people watch CNN than Fox News.

How is that possible? Well, this metric is based on "the average number of viewers watching a station or a show in a typical minute, based on Nielsen Media Research's monitoring of thousands of households. The average is arrived at by counting viewers every minute."

This means that folks who watch an entire show are counted 30 times, versus people who tune in to receive the news, watch some, and then surf away. So, while most people turn to CNN for their news, they do not stick around the way MSNBC or Fox viewers do.

CNN, in this ad, used a second metric that gives the same weight to the light viewer, who tunes in for a brief time, as it does to the heavy viewer: the "cume," the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day.

For instance, in April 2003, during the height of the fighting in Iraq, CNN 's cume was significantly higher than Fox 's: 105 million viewers tuned into CNN compared to 86 million for Fox (Cablefax , 4/30/03). But in the same period, the ratings reported by most media outlets had Fox in the lead, with an average of 3.5 million viewers to CNN 's 2.2 million. Source

So here's the big question: Why are Fox and MSNBC viewers more loyal than CNN viewers?

In short, their strategy hinges on personality-based and opinion programming.

Whether conservative O'Reilly or liberal Olberman, by forgoing the "straight news" and instead playing up personalities, networks get the "right" kind of ratings. These are the ratings that advertisers look at especially closely.

By allowing people to watch news that reinforces their worldviews, networks can build viewer engagement. Because active watchers of content may translate better to active watchers of advertisements, most advertisers prefer shows with engaged viewers of content, not passive seekers of news.

Not that CNN is a bastion of objective journalism, but its failure to keep up in shares points to one subtle fact underlying this whole conversation: Straight news is not engaging, not profitable, and most likely won't be around much longer. Why? Because the news is fueled by ad dollars determined by engagement, not accuracy or even general democratic popularity.

So, next time you hear one station or another tell you they are "number one" - tell your TV screen that "number one" is dead.

Red Skelton on the Pledge of Allegiance

2009-07-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

A visionary is somebody who knows the present so well, he can envision a potential future world. Comedian Red Skelton, I believe, is such a visionary. He had the great skill of making you laugh, not by being crude, but by making you think.

This clip is one of the best explanations of the Pledge of Allegiance I have ever heard - and his closing remarks show his foresight and vision.

Been Fired? Google Yourself.

2009-07-02T19:00:00.000-04:00

Career Distinction, the seminal personal branding book by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixon makes the case for investing in your online presence. One story in particular stands out:

Perhaps your Google results don't convey the image you want to share with the world. That was the case for Susan, a marketing executive who had been fired by the board of her company.

Her company posted the meeting minutes detailing her firing on the Web. When anyone performed a Google search using her name, the first item displayed was the summary of those meeting minutes.

She didn't understand why she couldn't get any job interviews- until an executive recruiter told her about her Google results. before that, she had no idea she had been "digitally dissed."

The moral of the story? Google yourself regularly. To those who don't know you personally, you are your Google results - no matter how inaccurate or unfair those results may be.

Why Jesus is My Homeboy

2009-06-25T00:55:00.000-04:00

Many of us have seen the tee shirts and hats - but how many know the fascinating story behind this overplayed tee shirt slogan?

It started out in the 1980s with Van Zan Frater - a Texan who moved to LA. Driving around in South Central, he got out to use a payphone. A dozen teenagers from a street gang approached him, one struck him and knocked him to the ground. As he felt a gun held to his head, cocked, with the members encouraging the teenager to take Van Zan's life, he acted.

He turned around, looked back at the boy with the gun eye-to-eye and said "Jesus is my homeboy and don't you know that Jesus is your homeboy too?"

The boy withdrew the gun from Van Zan's head and he left relatively unharmed. After talking to his friends about this incredible story, they encouraged him to spread the word. They created a silk screen print of this famous image, which was lost in 1994.

During the Rodney King riots, the printing store was broken into and the design was thought lost. This was not the case. Years later, when two men in the fashion trade found the prints at an odds and ends store, they fell in love with it and started printing the tees themselves.

Van Zan saw the shirts pop up in People and connected with those two and the rest is history.

Purchase your homeboy shirts here: www.jesusismyhomeboy.com

What Would Mithras Do?

2009-06-21T23:14:00.003-04:00

In an alternate universe, the largest world religion may have become Mithraism. It's certainly possible - early Christian church fathers considered this religion to be a major competitor until Pagan religions were banned in 391 AD.

Although no longer practiced, aspects of the Cult of Mithras are still alive in religion today. For example, Mithras is known as a savior of the world, with sacraments of wine and bread, born on December 25th. The title of Father in Catholicism is even borrowed from Mithraism.

Yet, because of these similarities between Mithras and Jesus - as well as the appropriation of Mithraic iconography and rituals - the real mysteries of the Mithras cult are left behind. The origins of this religion are mysterious and unknown, but may stem from Zoarastrian or Vedic sources. Oldest records date to 1400 BC.

The cult of Mithras was highly secretive - one could not simply enter a mithraeum (cave-like place of ritual/ worship). It was an initiatic society, where the all-male membership was chosen by the priests.

This may sound more like a secret society than a religion, but the initiatic format was actually quite common in that time. It may have been this very fact that doomed the mystery cults - Rome needed an all-inclusive religion that could unite the Empire. Thus, Christianity survived where others failed.

While Mithraism certainly is not a religion for the masses, it is both interesting and instructive to modern observers.

In a process that mirrored the seven celestial bodies, inductees rose through seven distinct rites:

Corax (Raven)
Nymphus (Bridegroom)
Miles (Soldier)
Leo (Lion)
Perses (Persian)
Heliodromus (Sun-Runner)
Pater (Father)

Without delving into all of the degree work, here are some of the more interesting observations.

The process begins, like most initiations, with a symbolic death. The first degree is the Raven - the bird that typically ate Persian corpses. After a symbolic death, the neophyte is reborn spiritually after being given a prayer to chant and a baptism by water. Like in Christianity, baptism is symbolic of washing away sin.

As the Bridegroom, one symbolically marries Mithras. The initiate carries a lamp in hand while wearing a veil. This teaches that the "light of truth" is invisible until the "veil of reality" is lifted. At this point, vows are made to the cult and celibacy is maintained. The initiate then offers a cup of water to a Mithra statue - the cup represents the heart and the water represents devotion.

The Soldier, the next step, gets even more interesting. The initiate, must completely undress, and kneel while being blindfolded and handcuffed. This represents submission to religious authority and a casting off of the initiate's old life. At the point of a sword, he is crowned. The sword then cuts the initiate's hands free.

At this point, the initiate himself removes the blindfold (newfound liberation) and removes the crown (from his own head). The candidate then places the crown on his shoulders and says "Mithra is my only crown.” This symbolizes how Mithra is now the initiate's intellect, path and guide.

As candidates progress from this soldier stage forward, they battle against their own lower nature. During the next stages, the Lion helps prepare a ritual feast that represented Mithras' last supper of bread and wine, before ascending to the heavens in Sun's chariot.

The Persian gives the initiate "an affiliation to that race which alone was worthy of receiving the highest revelations of wisdom of Magi.” This knowledge destroys the animal aspect of the initiate. After becoming a Sun Runner, one finally reaches the highest grade of Pater.

As Pater, one is considered the earthly representative of Mithras, the embodied light of heaven and the teacher of the congregation. Studying these foreign concepts can often help us find meaning in the sacraments and rituals of our own religions - which may be learned by rote.

Who Cares about Father's Day?

2009-06-20T14:39:00.008-04:00

Yup, about 3% of the population prefers Father's Day. I know this CNN poll is not "scientific" but I think it says enough. Of even all the men that visited the site - only 93 total votes.

So, for father's day - I give you the infinite wisdom of Bill Maher on why men have it tough.

What Bing Can Tell You

2009-06-17T00:04:00.000-04:00

The day Microsoft launched bing, people had some interesting questions for the "decision engine." bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions. Or, so they say.

Here are the types of questions the first users of bing had for the engine:

You just cannot make this stuff up.

As a first time visitor to the website, I typed in "should i" and here were the popular questions:

should i get a divorce
should i divorce
should i get married
should i call him
should i get divorced
should i marry him
should i file for bankruptcy
should i leave my husband

I'm not sure these crucial life decisions are the kind Microsoft wants you to be using bing to make. And poor old Jeeves is probably rolling in his grave right now.

Watch me Drum!

2009-06-14T10:26:00.003-04:00

Some friends and I were jamming at a Church yesterday - I know a few people have asked for a demonstration of the stick trick beat I use from time to time. So here it is:

I hope you enjoy the excessive backsticking.

How our economy failed and how some made billions from it.

2009-06-10T13:38:00.010-04:00

Ever sit back and wonder exactly what went wrong with our economy? If so, let's take a little tour of the causes of our economic failure and marvel at how some walked away from it with billions.

The Macroeconomic Ecosystem

Financial services contribute disproportionately to economic growth – and those within these fields have accumulated unprecedented amounts of wealth. Hedge fund and private equity managers made in the last decade what even the architects of the industrial revolution took half a century to accumulate.

Unlike those industrialist predecessors, today’s financial gurus did not manufacture a new product or devise a new technology – they worked in the structure of capital itself.

The financial meltdown has lead to great frustration, yet the full scope of its causes in the macroeconomic ecosystem has seldom been understood. In our discourse some blame subprime borrowers, others blame banks and others still blame our government.

To fully understand the implications of our shared troubles, we need not blame, but rather understand how each element works with the other. From this understanding we can better address potential solutions to our shared economic concern.

Chain Reaction

The first player in our recent meltdown is the Federal Reserve Bank, a non-governmental organization that sets our interest rates and controls our monetary policy. After the dot-com bubble burst, the economy faltered and then-chairman Alan Greenspan began to cut interest rates.

By doing so, he reduced the fee that the Federal Reserve charges to other banks. Because these banks get their money cheaper, he believed they would lend more, which increases investments and strengthens the economy.

After reducing interest rates, the US was attacked on September 11th, which sent global markets into frenzy. In response to these attacks and the general lack of consumer and investor confidence, Greenspan continued to cut interest rates to their lowest in 41 years.

This monetary policy created a sharp fall in the cost of money, which made the supply of credit plentiful. The global economy, being so intertwined, created an environment where cheap money could be borrowed anywhere.

Because they export more than they import, nations such as Japan, China and the Middle East were thus able to lend much of their vast surpluses to the US. Thus even many of the dollars US consumers spent on foreign goods were loaned back to fund this consumption.

Private individuals, firms, tycoons and financial institutions all went on a frenetic borrowing spree, utilizing this new influx of capital for all sorts of purchases. As a result of all this money, the price of all assets began to increase: art, houses, jewelry, companies, etc. because of basic economic laws- the price will increase as demand increases.

The first takeaway is that the Fed’s actions lead to this rise in the price of assets. The second, more subtle takeaway is that because individuals saw the valuations of their own assets increasing, they began to borrow more money against the new and inflated value of these assets.

In these few facts alone, we can already see the forming of a great bubble.

Despite this, the Fed and other Central Banks ignored the vast inflation of assets and focused only on price inflation metrics. Congress is largely unaware of monetary policy and thus the tough questions mostly went unanswered. As a result, exorbitant credit continued to flow throughout the global economy and our new bubble continued to grow.

Using Leverage

Because of the vast supply of easy money and rising markets, the process of leveraging yielded uniquely high returns. Leveraging, or borrowing others’ money to invest, became a compelling tool to quick personal wealth.

For example, suppose an individual contributes $10,000 down on a $100,000 house and borrows the other $90,000. If the value of the house rises from $100,000 to $110,000, then the initial investment of $10,000 has now doubled to $20,000. This is a 100% profit.

By using bank money to finance most of the purchase, this process multiplied profits for managers. In this rising market, the more one borrowed, the greater their profit. Because the level of available debt was so high and increasingly expanding, things seemed to work.

In this world, success disproportionately favored hedge funds, which bet huge amounts of contributed capital on price inefficiencies, and private equity firms, which buy and sell entire companies with borrowed money.

The macroeconomic environment in which these firms were operating magnified their accomplishments- there was high confidence, easy credit and lenient regulation, thus they quickly grew into the some of Wall Street's largest trading institutions.

Pay Structure

Managers became so incredibly wealthy partly because they devised their own pay structure. While the typical management fee is .5%, these private equity and hedge fund stars charged 2%. Yet, because their talents were so rare, they were given an additional 20% success fee. Thus, if a manager turns a billion dollars into two billion dollars, the deal’s fee is $200 million.

With this system, if a manager makes money, he gets a large percent of it. If he does not, there is no personal loss except that investors may remove money. This one-sided bet led a disproportionate few to great wealth. Because of this unique opportunity, big banks saw much of their talent defect to hedge funds and private equity firms.

In response, banks offered their more financially skilled employees an opportunity to receive 20% of the gains as well. Individual bankers now had the unique ability to play the game with their organization’s money.

In this bull market, with easy access to capital, everybody saw the potential to make money in this new system. Almost anybody who could facilitate these deals did so, leaving few to worry about the enormous debts piled on to the system.

Investment banks selling companies participated, accountants who did less and less work to make deals happen faster participated, lawyers who made their way around the technical difficulties participated, etc.

Although this trend had roots in Washington, many people across industries made money by doing as many and as large deals as they could. People made in weeks more than thousands of government employees combined made in a year.

Savings Rates

The first sign of an unraveling came with the sharp decline in the savings rate. Intervention in monetary policy often has unintended consequences; so while the low interest rates did spur activity and enable some to accumulate great wealth, for the average American it produced a disincentive to save.

Because with the Fed’s rate cuts saving became less attractive than borrowing, the amount of money deposited in banks declined nation-wide. Banks thus began to run out of lending capital to meet the high demand for new project funding.

In response, banks devised new forms of funding. These methods included repackaging some of their assets and selling them on the market - this gives the banks cash, which they can immediately begin to loan again. An important side effect is that with the sale of these repackaged assets, banks also transferred ownership away from themselves to a third party.

Subprime Borrowers

At first only good loans, like prime mortgages, were packaged and sold. Then, these new technologies were expanded to less credit worthy borrowers. The capital for these loans came from Wall Street and the loans were sold globally, often in Europe and Asia. There was no connection between the borrower and the ultimate lender.

Because mortgage brokers earned commissions on each subprime loan they secured and lending banks transfer ownership and cut a profit, there was no sense of involvement, relationship or responsibility on behalf of either the brokers or the banks.

Each of these parties earned their profit and transferred responsibility to other people; they had no incentive to ensure borrowers could repay their loans. Examples of such irresponsibility include using Google Earth and postcodes to value a house.

Structured Finance

Yet, a torrent of cash came through structured finance, which turned risky loans into supposedly safe payments. The idea was to mitigate risk by packaging these subprime loans into bundles. A particular bundle would then be offered to three investors: one risk friendly, one risk neutral and one risk averse.

The most risk averse lender is offered first dibs on whatever cash is received from the bundle, the risk neutral lender second, and so on for the third. If all of the borrowers pay on time, all three investors do very well. Even if one fails, the risk friendly lender is not too upset. It is only if none of the borrowers pay that all three become rather affected.

This process of structured finance allowed hundreds of billions of dollars of low quality subprime loans to transform into AAA quality investments sold across the world. Yet it is economic underpinning of these exotic vehicles, as they have been called, that undid it all.

The Bubble Bursts

Although historically AAA ratings have signified the most secure investments, these repackaged loans had a fundamental flaw: more people defaulted than they expected. Subprime borrowers were tricked by deceptive teaser rates, which rose after a period of time, causing many borrowers to default on the new rates.

We can see the potential conflict of interest for rating agencies being paid by the banks and issuers of the bands. These agencies never checked that subprime borrowers could pay back their loans. Compounding this problem, their ratings were based on historical data.

As the number of subprime mortgages grows and the market changes, those historical data became increasingly irrelevant. Risky mortgages constituted 1 in 13 of US mortgages in 2001 and grew to 1 in 4 by 2006. Somehow agencies assumed default rates would remain unchanged during such a dramatic change.

Truly, the fundamental rules had changed; things were going bad in a completely unprecedented way. Traditionally, people first default on credit cards and keep their house. But in this case, individuals quit their house payment first and kept on to their cards and other expenses. Homeowners affected by variable rate changes defaulted at record rates.

Eventually banks realized their inability to accurately value these subprime assets they maintained. Making matters worse, they could neither value their assets, nor could they value the assets of other banks. Thus, because nobody knew who had these toxic assets, lending between banks stopped and the markets seized up.

At this point securities started to go down in price because nobody knew the market’s full exposure to these toxic assets. This widespread consumer fear expanded to even prime mortgages - people simply did not want to buy.

This chain reaction, started by the Federal Reserve and spread through the entire economy, has brought the monetary policy mechanism for injecting fuel into the economy to a grinding halt. As long as these toxic assets remain on banks’ books, lending will remain stagnant.

Opportunities

Yet, hedge funds make money even now in the market turmoil. Many can boast billions in profit from betting that the subprime investments were overvalued. Some have also done quite well by betting the share prices of leading banks would tumble.

In the next few years, this recession will present the perfect opportunity for private equity firms to buy undervalued companies. The Great Depression had a similar effect, especially as smaller independent banks were purged from the system transferring wealth to chain banks.

Another striking similarity between these two financial crises is that the continuing economic contraction will mostly affect the middle class through inflation and will inevitably serve to consolidate wealth. This is true both of individuals and firms.

In this crisis, however, we can see that while many of the everyday investors in the economy may be affected by the ups and downs of the market, a group of financial gurus who architect the economy have devised an almost market-transcendent profit. This art may have been uniquely perfected in our time.

Absent any rigorous regulations under the new administration, fortune does favor the bold. In this era of investing, those with the most capital are the most brash. It is to them that opportunity is an ongoing proposition - at least until the next fundamental paradigm shift.

_ _ _
Credits to this brilliant BBC program.

Invocation to the Mystery

2009-06-05T21:41:00.003-04:00

O Mystery, so many ways to say your name.

I’ve recited unabridged dictionaries and resurrected dead languages.
Still, no word suffices.
Each word, a piece of you, contained in you.
Yet something lacks when the pieces are put together.

I have stacked truths on top of truths to reach you.
Yet you remain higher still, uncontained by that contained in you.
I have removed all sights from my sight, to see what remains.
Yet something dwells, underneath the emptiness of nothingness.

In dreams, in waking life, in deep sleep, I cycle endlessly, ever in orbit.
Yet how does the periphery ever reach the circle’s center?
I see you from every possible angle, but at impossible distance.
When does the lonely planet return to the sun from where it came?

O Mystery, you are impossible to capture with words.

That is the poetry of life, chasing your essence.
For if you could be described, you would be but science.

GM, Detroit and Michael Moore

2009-06-01T12:38:00.009-04:00

This story should come as a surprise to none - today GM filed for bankruptcy.

By doing so, the struggling firm will shed some of the plants, dealerships and debt that they cannot afford. This also includes letting go of the Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands and more than 1 in every 3 of its 6,000 U.S. dealerships by next year. That could result in more than 100,000 additional job losses if those dealerships are forced to close.

The "new GM" that emerges out of this bankruptcy with Chevy, Cadillac, GMC and Buick will carry $17 billion in debt, rather than the $54.4 billion it owed as of March 31. Yet, shedding brands and dealers could further reduce market share - this could result in the company surrendering the long-time position of largest domestic automaker.

Still, GM's failings were not simply business related - they were not merely poor balance sheets, union problems, etc. The companies failed because they were not forward-thinking and because the domestic markets preferred SUVs over cars of the future.

As a fellow Michigan native and liberal zealot Michael Moore put it:

"(GM) refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the 'inferior' Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to 'improve' the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?"

In Moore's rant, which has elements of truth in it, we see the fundamental paradox of Detroit. For so long the state's economy has been married to the auto industry that we have gotten into a love-hate relationship with our automakers. The company is hurt by the rigidity of its union workers, its union works are hurt by the company's responses which include outsourcing, etc.

As I referenced in my December 2008 post (The Big 3... 2... 1) - what matters is not the name of the auto company or its board. What is essential to Detroit's economy is preserving the infrastructure and jobs initially established by the auto industry. Yet, because many associate those critical elements of our infrastructure with auto - we assume protecting auto is protecting infrastructure.

We, as a culture, cannot afford to be as short-sighted as the auto industry CEOs. Instead of doing things just because they've been done that way, we must move forward and preserve our infrastructure by investing in new industries.

Although I do not share Moore's extremely cynical view of the auto industry or business in general - I do agree with parts of his plan to protect the jobs and infrastructure that are so crucial to Detroit. It is time, perhaps, that some of our Michiganders begin to divorce themselves from the Big 3.

Here are a few of his points that I found myself surprised to agree with:

"The President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices." Again, his point here is that we need to preserve the actual factories and jobs by whatever means are most prudent - investing in producing future technologies seems like a good start.
"Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now." This point relates to federal funding, which is again better put toward more worthwhile projects. Keep in mind that investors in GM have either been wiped out or have re-negotiated terms, so the urgency of protecting investments that existed in banks does not exist as much for GM.
"Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one!" This is another point - we must continue to innovate and if we are going to be spending federal dollars on projects, I believe projects such as these are worthwhile.
"Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them." Another suggestion of how to utilize those plants and workers that would otherwise be producing cars that nobody wants to buy.

All in all, from friends in Detroit I have heard mixed messages. Some say the city can rebound like it did in the 80s and others are joining the mass exodus to Chicago and other more industry-diversified cities. Where exactly Detroit will be 3 years from now is anybody's guess - but if this crisis can get Moore and I to agree on some points, there may be hope for us after all.

My Friend Amadeus

2009-05-30T06:30:00.011-04:00

Do you not see it now, Amadeus?
Their might is something altogether unique.

Not their skill, their strategy, their fearlessness – no, it is none of these.
The great strength of the insects is their lack of self-concern.
In the hours of the sun, an insect wanders into the room, only to be killed.
Yet, in the hours of the moon, its cousin may enter the room, living to return again.

Verily, I have seen it, Amadeus.
Their truth is of the living and the dead.

There are those who live and return - each as a testament to their race alone.
“Go out in the dark hours” they tell those who know nothing but ceaseless darkness.
There are those who die - each and every one, as a testament to their race alone.
“Do not go out in the light” they tell those in darkness who know nothing of the light.

Tell me Amadeus, do you ever lie awake at night?
Nay, you are soft to fall asleep early - for at night, the insects grow hungry.

By killing the insects at day, you teach them to live at night.
Do you not see your skin, my friend, so covered in marks?
They prey on you at night as you prey on them in the day.
Let those silent red intrusions sink into your skin with serenity.

You have earned them, my dear friend, lost in vast duality.
When you tear the insect but in two, one half dies and departs.
Yet the other half grows larger still in the sun and returns by the moon.
A ghost borne of your own deed - living in darkness and thirsting for light.

I have known this for some time, Amadeus, you are undone by darkness.
Their eyes see not light - those who live but in darkness, they will undo you.

Let the inevitability sink into you, for you are but one – and you have day and night.
Let the truth ring, for the insects are many – with such eyes that day and night are one.

At day, you toil, brilliant in performance as you bear red marks of nocturnal defeat.
Shake the insects off of your finely polished leather shoe in the sun, Amadeus.
Their ghosts will make a home there under the pale moonlight as you sleep.
Can you not see, my dear friend, that through me you have created these insects?

Their duality haunts you day and night - yet they are unable to perceive the light.
They care not to be split, they care not to die, to live, to become a ghost.
Yet perplexed by this, you split them and kill them – still they live and haunt you.
Look at your curious skin, Amadeus, so intricately sanguine and insect painted.

Fill your soul with your murdered ghosts, Amadeus, count each mark on yourself.
Feed yourself with their living cousins, Amadeus, swallow every single insect alive.

That is my advice to you alone, my dear friend, who lost your identity in this duality.
Consume the living and re-unite with the dead – surrender at once, be but an insect.
Coming to me in such a dream, at such a late time at night, be but an insect.
Prey on me in darkness, but leave me the daytime to endlessly finish you.

Grow wings, my dear Amadeus, you are but in my dream and realize it not.
I have created you alone and you have created these insects, each and every one.
Thus swallow them, my dear thought, so perplexed by your own mind’s creation.
For time has come for me to devour you, insect of the night, as I awake into the light.

*Font size shrunk to best preserve the line breaks.

Cultural Anthropology with Pepsi

2009-05-27T13:45:00.003-04:00

The market was envisioned by Adam Smith as a large guiding force that turned firms into "price takers." His concept revolved around the idea that a firm's interaction with the market is one-way.

Instead of simply participating in the market, however, some seek to understand and apply it. Many of the most engaging individuals and most successful businesspeople I have met share this one common goal. Such cultural anthropologists often create work that represents and shapes the spirit of the age.

Thus firms with rich two-way interactions with the market may be a repository for insights into past zeitgeists. Knowing this, it's pretty interesting to see Pepsi's past taglines and logos and consider how the company and our country has changed over time.

Pepsi's taglines over the years:

1906 The Original Pure Food Drink
1939 Twice as Much for a Nickel
1950 More Bounce to the Ounce
1958 Be Sociable, Have a Pepsi
1963 Come Alive! You're in the Pepsi Generation
1969 You've Got a Lot to Live. Pepsi's Got a Lot to Give.
1976 Have a Pepsi Day
1979 Catch That Pepsi Spirit!
1984 Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation
1991 You Got the Right One, Baby, Uh-Huh!
1995 Nothing Else Is a Pepsi
1997 Generation Next
1999 The Joy of Cola
2003 It's the Cola
2008 Something for Everyone
2009 Every Generation Refreshes the World

Relationship

2009-05-23T06:15:00.006-04:00

A friend asked me to draw a piece called "relationship" and insisted that there be a literal ship in the image. After thinking a bit about how to do this without being absolutely cliché, here's what I came up with:

Auto Tune Exposed

2009-05-21T09:37:00.003-04:00

We all know that auto tune, an audio filter that pitch corrects out-of-tune notes, has made life much easier for instrumentalists and vocalists alike. But exactly how easy does this technology make life? Does it undermine the actual talent requirement of artists?

This video lets us know that almost anybody can become a pop singer by using snippets from the news and media with a beat and a few original verses thrown in.

Improvements in music technology should make past accomplishments easier to achieve, but they should also push the limits of art further. Although now anybody can easily become a pop singer, has technology made new forms of music possible?

Indeed it has, yet, much of the new genres of music made possible by technology (such as Paul Dolden's Maximalism) never reach mainstream markets. Thus, perhaps such technologies often skew more towards making music easier and making artists lazier than they do to encouraging expansion and innovation in the arts.

Will the computer industry ever escape its antitrust problems?

2009-05-18T15:48:00.004-04:00

A brilliant article in the Economist made a few points regarding antitrust issues with the "computer" industry. Tech generally exhibits three traits that create barriers to competition, as summed up here:

Networking Effect: In many ways there is a "winner take all" scenario with technology whereby the more popular a particular language or operating system is, the better it works. This holds true for many other aspects of tech as well.
Disruptive Technology: New technology can, and often does, foster great sea changes where older technology can be completely eradicated in favor of newer and more efficient technology. This encourages the big companies to quell new and potentially conflicting innovation.
Competitive Strategy: Firms often use antitrust issues as methods to attack their competing firms and help stifle the development and growth of new technologies.

The full article is available here.

Mothers Day with Rumi

2009-05-10T06:01:00.001-04:00

Today is Mother's Day. What better way to celebrate than with the words of the Sufi poet, Rumi? This ghazal is written from the perspective of parent to son.

Hope you enjoy (especially you Mom!)

I swear my dear son,
no one in the entire world
is as precious as you are.

Look at that mirror.
Take a good look at yourself.
Who else is there above and beyond you?

Now give yourself a kiss
and with sweet whispers
fill your ears to the brim.

Watch for all that beauty
reflecting from you
and sing a love song to your existence.

You can never overdo
praising your own soul.
You can never over-pamper your heart.

You are both
the father and the son,
the sugar and the sugar cane.

Who else but you?
Please tell me who else
can ever take your place?

Now give yourself a smile.
What is the worth of a diamond
if it doesn't shine?

How can I ever put a price
on the diamond that you are?
You are the entire treasure of the house.

You and your shadow
are forever present in this world.
You're that glorious bird of paradise.

-Ghazal 2148 as translated by Nader Khalili

Political Poetry

2009-04-27T02:14:00.010-04:00

I recently heard a pretty good speech on the House floor.

The points made sense and I agreed with quite a few of them, then I changed the channel. Surfing on YouTube, I found a version of it a few days later, except the original visuals had been replaced with more creative graphics and the audio was augmented with music.

I now found the same "pretty good" speech to be epic and inspirational.

See what you think.

Original:

Edited:

Seeing first-hand how different my reactions were to the unedited clip and the prettied up version only confirmed for me the power of advertising. The same message, indeed the same words, can become much more appealing when packaged and articulated correctly.

In this case, the process of packaging Ron Paul's video required simply a laptop and an afternoon. This is what people mean by the democratization of data, but the point here to me is simple.

With an increasingly fragmented media and fewer independent sources of news, the capacity to deceive has never required more restraint and the capacity to inform has never needed more selfless contributors.

Seefood!

2009-04-11T01:09:00.014-04:00

40-feet long and flying through the air.

Manipulating Words: How to Sell Innuendo

2009-04-07T21:17:00.040-04:00

Any good marketer is a bit of a psychologist but if I'm reading him right, Justin Timberlake is a hell of a psychologist.

To save you the wikipedia trip, here's the story: After a rather poppy but commercially successful debut in 2002, he suffered writers block and ran out of steam. Three years later he found himself in the studio needing a strong comeback that could expand sales without alienating current fans. This is something many brands can relate to.

Not only did he return with FutureSex/LoveSounds, a career-changing re-branding, but in the process, he picked up a new market of influential older listeners without losing his younger fans.

A MTV reviewer summed up his album thus:

FutureSex/LoveSounds

Many companies sell innuendo, but Justin's job is essentially to sell the same innuendo to a teenybopper, her parents and her twenty-something year old brother.

The approval of parents coupled with the legitimacy granted by older 99-cent iTunes listeners makes Justin paraphernalia and tour tickets musts for teenage girls. Even James Bond's legendary innuendo can't get a household in harmony the way Justin's can.

His trick? Manipulating words and juxtaposing concepts. In this case it's sex and love. Like most things pop music, it is completely formulaic.

7 Steps to a Perfect Product Name:

Pick your desired response:
sex now
Pair it with its exact opposite:
sex now/love later
Reverse the terms:
sex now/love later becomes sex later/love now.
Pick a sensory noun that applies to both opposites:
sounds applies to both "sex" and "love"
Ensure your noun works better with step 1. than step 2.:
assonance: "sex sounds" is more pleasing to the ear than "love sounds."
Apply the sensory descriptor to step 2.:
sex later/love sounds
Add some artistic flourishes:
futuresex/lovesounds

Here's the beauty of this jumbled up portmanteau:

The mind instantly begins to subconsciously break up the pieces. Because the proposition seems rather illogical, the mind instead reconstructs the terms in ways that reaffirm core beliefs.

The pieces put in the mix disproportionately favor your initial proposition of "sex now." Even "love" itself has been paired with "sound," a word that (via step 4) sounds better with "sex."

futuresex/lovesounds could also be futurelove/sexsounds.

The parents see a wholesome message (relative to the rest of stuff out there on MTV), the older markets see a more sexual message, and teenage girls enjoy the allure of innuendo and a guilt-free blurring of moral boundaries.

Just to prove that this formula is a winner, see how quickly smoke now/ breathe later can become a winning product. I certainly wouldn't want a Philip Morris Cigarette, but a Smoke-Late Breath Scent? Now that I could do.

It's not my intention to blow the cover on Justin's marketing machine, I just thought some of you may find this an elucidating example of how applied linguistics and psychology can and do influence us daily.

Belated Apologies to Janet Jackson

2009-04-02T14:50:00.000-04:00

A Common Sense Media study called "Broadcast Dysfunction: Sex, Violence, Alcohol and the NFL" sifted through 60 games (over 180 hours of coverage) that contained nearly 6,000 commercials.

The result: It is "impossible to watch a single game without coming up against sex, violence, or Viagra."

Common Sense Media's report found that:

300 of the ads were for alcohol
40% of the games included advertisements for erectile-dysfunction drugs
500 of the advertisements involved significant levels of violence, including gun fights, explosions, and murders
80 of the advertisements involved significant levels of sexuality, including scenes about prostitution and strippers
44.7% of the violent or sexual advertisements were promotions by the networks for their own programs

While the report says that though approximately 16% of the ads and promos during pro football broadcasts are about sex, violence, and alcohol, more than 360 ads and promos (an additional 6% of the total reviewed) were for junk food and soda... juxtaposed with the NFL's new Play 60 public service campaign, which encourages kids to be more physically active.

So, Janet... I guess you didn't ruin the face of family friendly football forever. You actually fit in quite well.

Refer to the complete release here to find access to the PDF report and samples of ads reviewed by this study.

Zaireeka: The Most Unique CD Ever

2009-03-28T18:07:00.004-04:00

The 1997 Flaming Lips masterpiece Zaireeka is certainly one of my favorite CDs ever produced. The note on the cover might start to show you why.

"Warning: this is a unique recording. These eight compositions are to be played using as many as four compact disc players, and have synchronized start times. This recording also contains frequencies not normally heard on commercial recordings and on rare occasion has caused the listener to become disoriented."

This project started with parking lot experiments where the band would arrange cars in a parking lot, each supplied with tapes. They created a live experience where all drivers would insert the tapes, click play simultaneously and then walk around and hear the song.

Different parts and conflicting melodies and effects all conducted by Wayne with his megaphone made this an interactive music experience.

As the band began to record these into 4 cds, also meant to be played simultaneously, they noticed something unique. Each cd player actually speeds up and slows down in small fractions, so even two originally aligned cd players would eventually lose sync with each other.

Thus Zaireeka (a portmanteau of Zaire and eureka) could never be listened to the same exact way twice. The album was toured using boombox orchestras where the audience could engage in the social element by interacting with the music spontaneously.

This quirky video blogger provides an interesting example of what a Zaireeka experience sounds like. The word experience is apt here.

Ever been to a Zaireeka party? Each cd plays in a different room and folks wander from room to room, turning some up, others down, engaging with and enjoying the music.

The Luckiest & Unluckiest Drummers Ever

2009-03-25T18:55:00.003-04:00

Luckiest Drummer on Earth: Nick Mason

Somehow throughout the tumultuous history of classic rock band Pink Floyd, Nick Mason managed to hang on. In fact, he's the only continuous member from the inception of the band to its current state.

This is funny because Nick Mason is not a particularly exceptional drummer. In the band's 38 year history, he's only written 2 songs.

Perhaps this isn't such a band thing, however.

By keeping his parts simple, Mason pioneered the "let-it-breathe" ride cymbal feel in 6 that ambient and space rock has thrived on ever since.

Another reason to be grateful for Nick Mason is his great book. In it, he provides an inside look into a band with a very complex and nuanced history replete with unique photos and anecdotes.

Mason's likable style makes the book an easy read, and I'm sure made him invaluable to a band with high tension at times.

Unluckiest Drummer on Earth: Pete Best

Pete Best is the infamous Beatles ex-drummer.

After his band The Black Jacks dissolved, Paul McCartney snatched him up one day before a tour to Hamburg in August 1960. He was known for his upbeat and bass-heavy playing. Female fans called him “mean, moody and magnificent.”

Best was a strong student, unlike Lennon, McCartney and Harrison who had failed most of their exams. He decided to skip teacher-training college to tour.

Nobody told him he was the only drummer to audition.

Just two short years later, his sacrifice paid off.

The Beatles played a Parlophone audition at Abbey Road Studios for George Martin on June 1962. The four songs recorded convinced Martin to sign the group to a contract, but under one condition:

The Beatles had to fire Best.

So, Best got hustled into skipping his career with the false promise of £15/ week, traveling to Hamburg and touring to popularize the Beatles.

All this, only to be fired the day of the record contract signing, resigned to sit back and watch them become one of the most well-known rock bands of all time... with Ringo. Ouch!

The Deck Effect: Creativity Killer

2009-03-23T15:20:00.001-04:00

In the beginning, there was the deck.

The deck is a stack of physical slides used with old-timey projectors in the days before computers took hold of the corporate workplace.

Ad agencies today use PowerPoint but, for some reason, still call presentation files decks. It's as if the ghost of 1961 still hangs over Madison Ave.

I had to look the word up at my first agency.

When people say "advertising has changed" they usually really mean that consumers have changed. Advertising is struggling to catch up.

Much of advertising today has been inherited from the paradigm of days past. The deck is an apt metaphor for how hand-me down processes and tired ways of thinking cramp our creativity.

Maybe fundamental assumptions should be challenged.

Perhaps media and creative departments need not be arbitrarily separated in agencies. What about new metrics? Or new methods of compensation?

Again, just one more example urging us to clear our assumption residue and reinvent ourselves and our ways of thinking.

Globalized Music

2009-03-21T18:40:00.001-04:00

Shankar Mahadevan is a multi-instrumentalist, classically trained in the Indian and Carnatic schools of music. One of his songs, Breathless, brought him to national attention as he seemingly sung for three minutes in a single breath.

By applying traditional Indian techniques to more contemporary music, he gained acceptance from both mass audiences and the music establishment.

For those still in suspense, he takes tiny breaths in between the words.

What I enjoy about him is that he continues to innovate and adapt his sound. His concerts today are quite different than his music video (which is oh, so 90s).

When playing this following video for a friend, she said "Wow I never knew Indian rap was this good." I wondered whether Shankar would find this an insult or a compliment.

To be honest, I have no clue, but it got me thinking.

How amazing it is that a technique developed in one part of the world for one expression of music can transcend political motivations and cultural differences and apply to an entirely different school of music.

This thought to be continued...

A Thousand Words on Home Values

2009-03-21T13:02:00.004-04:00

This image has been floating around the net for quite some time, just thought I'd share for those who haven't yet seen it.

It's absolutely staggering how large of a bubble we managed to get ourselves into. Perhaps this will give some context to policies decisions.

A picture done right really is worth a thousand words.

Predicting the Future and Reading Minds

2009-03-21T01:08:00.000-04:00

Mankind has used a great many methods in pursuit of predicting the future: reliance on prophets, charting the stars, studying history, analyzing dreams, etc. Such attempts assume the present contains clues to future happenings.

Many such clues arise from faculties present within humans. These prediction methods assume that we are prescient on some level of consciousness. Dream analysts say it's the unconscious level, however a relatively new method is confident that humans have foresight on the preconscious level.

The preconscious is the Freudian level of self where memories dwell. It is just under our conscious mind and can be accessed without any internal conflict. In contrast, unearthing deeper memories (such as repressed memories from the subconscious) can cause internal emotional and mental conflict.

Enough talk about hokey psychology. Let's get technical.

I personally don't buy the 2012 prediction- I think we humans have a long path forward before we reach the end. But the idea that the internet is somehow a manifest version of a collective preconscious is quite fascinating to me. See some more predictions here.

This technology, by scanning internet discussion groups and monitoring shifts in language predicted 911 months ahead of time (as well as many other important world events). Language can confer senses of urgency and by analyzing the big picture shifts in chatter, the Web Bot makes predictions.

Now the obvious two points are that humans may not be prescient on the preconscious level and that the internet is not an accurate representation of human sentiment. Both of these, I believe are very valid points.

In many ways, the 2012 theory and other conspiracy theories live especially on the internet and thus are over-represented.

Bad news travels faster than good news (and is far more interesting, it would seem) so to me the Web Bot is sort of a "worst-case scenario" by its very nature.

Looking at some of their predictions, I certainly hope I'm right.

Hoodie Design: Praying Woman

2009-03-19T21:15:00.002-04:00

If you know me, you know aesthetics and design are hobbies of mine.

Sky, a creative genius and good friend, and I are launching a clothing/lifestyle company soon. It'll feature us leaving some muddy mental fingerprints on tees, hoodies, books and robotics.

Pieces will have more to them than initially meets the eye. As a teaser, here's a design I've been working on:

Here's a close-up of the pattern. It has variations of a woman donning the traditional Indian saree with her hands folded in prayer. This concept articulated in Sanskrit is pronounced namaste- the name of this design.

It shows the progression of my drawings of the praying woman over many tries, representing the progression of a person across many lives through prayer. The one that leaps out the most is the final incarnation I made of the drawing. (Red.)

If you like the designs, keep checking in. We'll be launching soon(ish).

How Crowdsourcing Makes Us Safer

2009-03-18T22:20:00.000-04:00

One of the wonderful examples of how outsourcing makes otherwise impossible tasks affordable is how folks offshore can be paid to watch security cameras for suspicious activity.

If they see something, officials in the States can be alerted in real-time. This makes such security affordable and thus much more accessible.

Outsourcing for the private sector has an interesting and analogous crowdsourcing solution for the public sector.

"Because of a $2 million grant from the state of Texas, anyone in the world can watch grainy live video scenes of cactuses, desert mountains and the Rio Grande along Texas' portion of the international border." CNN

By giving access to security cameras across the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, any visitor can become a "virtual deputy" patrolling for suspicious activity. Of course, if you see something you're expected to notify the police- not try for a citizens arrest.

Blue Servo offers multiple camera angles and even gives recommendations of the types of suspicious activity to look out for.

The idea of opening private security cameras to the public would never work because there is no real public interest in protecting the Nike store at the mall.

Protecting the US border, however, is another issue.

By using crowdsourcing and online collaboration- the government can utilize its patriotic and well-intentioned citizens while keeping us safe and cutting costs.

A host of unrealized solutions made possible by technology currently exist for all sectors of government spending. It's certainly possible that these may be explored as the Federal government becomes increasingly short on cash.

One can only hope that these solutions are increasingly brought to fruition in our economic downturn so we can emerge from our recession a more lean America.

In Defense of Cramer

2009-03-16T21:50:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show is the political equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos. Yet, it is making headlines recently.

Host and comedian Jon Stewart recently sponsored an unusually sober "showdown" on his show. Jim Cramer of Mad Money stood to defend CNBC while Jon Stewart prosecuted on behalf of his audience.

The week-long backstory is here.

I usually keep political opinions to myself, but I couldn't help addressing the seemingly pervasive idea that Stewart somehow won a point for main street by interrupting a straightforward Cramer with video clip after video clip.

In this particular debacle, I find Jon Stewart gets the best of himself. But first, for many of you who don't know much about Jim Cramer, here's his life in summation:

Despite graduating from Harvard law, Cramer spent his youth in a rundown apartment, getting robbed clean around 4 times. He ended up living out of his car as a broke journalist chasing stories.

Yet, he still refused to be supported by his parents.

Cramer eventually caught a lucky break and despite having no business degree, predicted 5 stocks to an investment bank during an interview.
4 of them went big.

Since then he routinely made $10 million a year on Wall Street and reinvested his profits to start his own hedge fund. Shortly after, he started thestreet.com and became a TV personality.

When his family started to become second priority to his work, he made a personal choice and retired his hedge fund. That year, his fund beat the S&P 500-stock index by 38 percentage points.

Oh, and he's also one of the biggest contributors to the Democratic party. But like Stewart said, the song isn't about Cramer.

Yet somehow it's him having to answer to the charge of being complicit with CEOs from Stewart and the White House.

How exactly is he just as much as fault?
For making some bad stock predictions?
For not being omnipotent?

Why blame CNBC for the SEC's faults? Why waste genuine outrage about CEOs that used illegal tactics to defraud taxpayers and investors on Cramer?

It seems to Stewart, the comedians are the reporters and the reporters are the government. We should be indicting the big guys instead of satirizing the little ones who used legal loopholes to make money.

Respected economists like Milton Friedman argue that it's not the corporation's job to apply standards other than the law of the land. Especially if it comes at a disadvantage to the shareholders.

It should be the government's job to close the loopholes for everybody- not for individual firms to forfeit profits that competitors enjoy.

In the summarized words of Joe Scarborough, Stewart has a lot of righteous indignation at Cramer for a guy who plays video clips out of context and then makes funny faces to Pavlovian audience response.

From my experience, people watch the Daily Show and think themselves informed because the show reinforces their political beliefs. Instead of compelling them to research stories further, it actually gives them the confidence that they are aware of the full picture.

It's the same mentality as people watched Hotel Rwanda and thought they did something good.

We all know Stewart's criticism of Democrats is much weaker than his criticism of Republicans, but that's fine cause he has a demographic to play to as well as his own political convictions.

Again, I'm not looking for objectivity in my fake news reporting. Although I would like it in my normal news. But in his criticisms Stewart assumes ideological theories like Keynsian economics which are hardly proven facts.

By nature Stewart only focuses on the existing political talking points, media snippets, gaffes, etc. He plays others' ideas against each other for comedic value more than he introduces new ideas to the discourse.

I've always been a fan of the underdog, I just never thought I'd see Stewart play the bully to a hedge fund manager.

Small Business: My Economic Recovery Plan

2009-03-16T01:48:00.000-04:00

Right now, we need good jobs created.

It's a well-known facts that small businesses have created anywhere from 60% - 80% of private sector jobs over the past 30 years.

This is most likely not the common perception.

Why reward negative behavior with bailouts? Why not instead return to capitalism and incentivize good behavior?

Websites like Kiva and work by Muhammad Yunus and others prove that investments in microfinance can provide disproportionate benefit for the struggling entrepreneur. These are people looking for opportunity, not handouts.

Imagine a government agency website where entrepreneurs could submit financing requests in the forms of business plans or more specific requests.

The amounts would be trivial compared to the massive bailouts our larger corporations require, yet the amount of jobs created and the ability to realize the rags-to-riches American dream should appeal to a bipartisan ethos.

It certainly could be possible that the ability to contribute capital could be opened up to the private sector, so citizens could help other citizens succeed by lending amounts from $25 and upwards.

I personally would be willing to contribute some amount of capital, however small or large, to an entrepreneur struggling to rebuild their store in a post Katrina New Orleans.

And from what I've heard, Kiva repayment rates have been very high.

As far as the big guys are concerned- I'll briefly opine on that as well. To some extent the Fed got us into this mess and to some extent it can get us out of it. Why not simply buy up the illiquid assets from firms at a price that keeps the public and private sector needs in mind?

Giving money to banks and thinking they will lend it all is a naive thought. As a CEO the natural inclination is to prioritize shoring up the balance sheet before lending to anyone.

By removing those bad assets from their papers at some bearable loss for the firm, it both chastises them and uses taxpayer money much more wisely. Remember, things are supposed to hurt right now- we're purging out a lot of inefficiencies that have allowed lax companies to get by in past markets.

This is an important part of the "it'll get worst before it gets better" truth of the day. Let's not be blindly reactive, nor automatically accepting of political solutions. Consider how emissions trading used the capitalist system for positive ends of reducing acid rain and other symptoms of toxic emissions.

Throwing money at a broken system fails to do anything except accumulate more debt for future generations.

We live in exponential times. We are approaching the limits of many of our financial systems and models.

Most Americans have long-term debt.
Our government is about to start maxing out its credit cards.
Companies are paralyzed by poor credit.

Because no bubble can grow infinitely without bursting, we may need a new set of fundamental assumptions. It's time to retire the idea of big government and pet projects, instead exercising fiscal responsibility and pursuing projects that lend opportunities for disproportionate rewards.

Great Sex: God's Way

2009-03-15T18:08:00.000-04:00

The Daystar Church is making news with their bold campaign to introduce "God's opinion" into the discourse of sexuality.

My general philosophy is that God can speak for himself, so people should quit trying to do it "in his name."

But these folks don't seem too unreasonable- perhaps this is all just a rather savvy marketing campaign for an otherwise normal church.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

2009-03-14T18:42:00.000-04:00

A wife named Robin Stearns, absolutely frustrated with the lack of job offers for her 30 year old husband created myhusbandneedsajob.com in the hopes that he will find work within "a corporate marketing environment."

If the website works, perhaps she should be the marketer.

In a tight market, it makes sense to take risks that one otherwise would never dream of taking.

The website concept might sound desperate to some, which could give him much publicity but few offers because of a poor personal brand.

However, the execution is pretty well done and because the general economy screams desperation as well, I think this is a brilliant stroke.

We need people who can take risks. This could be the saving grace.