Thank you Obama for meeting His Holiness!

Okay, the meeting was done in a very private, low profile setting yesterday (Thursday, 18 Feb 2010), but it's still a good sign that Tibetan voice is being heard.

Complete story can be found in Dalai Lama's official page. I can only say... thank you Obama for meeting His Holiness Dalai Lama, and also the Universe for making this happen!

Picture from Dalai Lama.com

Red Bird Explains Herself

Red Bird Explains Herself

By Mary Oliver

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed
and thus the wilderness bloomed, with all its
followers; gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.
Do you understand?
For truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.

Pic: Heart Bird by Ann Whim Tseng
Special thanks to Hafiz for sending me this poem...

Research is a detective work, Batman!

Two images I bastardised to boost up my thesis writing. Batman the Greatest Detective, and Lois Lane, the Kick Ass Reporter! Might be useful for some comic-geek students out there who struggles with assignments/thesis...

Okay, I need to get back to work. Where are those evidential files...er, papers...

PS, if you want to see how awesome Lois Lane is, click here.

Pic 1: Batman, from Detective Comics #405. Original file stolen from here
Pic 2: Lois Lane, from this site

Metanoia

I owe my dearest friend 'Cabe' for introducing me a new term today. Something that I've been experiencing and I am very aware of, but never knew the term until now. Metanoia.


From Wikipedia:

Metanoia (from the Greek μετάνοια, metanoia, changing one's mind) in the psychological theory of Carl Jung denotes a process of reforming the psyche as a form of self healing, a proposed explanation for the phenomenon of psychotic breakdown. Here, metanoia is viewed as a potentially productive process, and therefore patients' psychotic episodes are not necessarily always to be thwarted, which may restabilize the patients but without resolving the underlying issues causing their psychopathology.

Valentine poem

So today is Valentine's Day, and also the New Year of the Tiger. Love and Courage. Just all that I need now... particularly because I'm a Tiger, and this tigress doth need to shower herself with Love more often. But somehow, as many days before today, I opened Tagore's poem book this morning, and came up with a lovely poem befits of my reincarnated loves in the past. So here's for Love. Courage I shall post later after I find something suitable.

I think I shall stop startled if ever we meet after our next birth,
walking in the light of a far-away world.
I shall know those dark eyes then as morning stars,
and yet feel that they have belonged to some unremembered evening sky
of a former life.

I shall know that the magic of your face is not all its own,
but has stolen the passionate light that was in my eyes at some immemorial meeting,
and then gathered from my love a mystery
that has now forgotten its origin

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Pic: Cropped painting of the beautiful "Milkmaid' by the famous Ravi Varma of Kerala, India

Are You a Mere Picture?

Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as
this dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are
immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form.

The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your
limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in your voice, and
touched my heart with your face. You suddenly stopped in your walk,
in the shadow-side of the Forever, and I went on alone.

Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it
runs; it beckons me on, I follow the unseen; but you stand there,
where you stopped behind that dust and those stars; and you are a
mere picture.

No, it cannot be. Had the life-flood utterly stopped in you,
it would stop the river in its flow, and the foot-fall of dawn in
her cadence of colours. Had the glimmering dusk of your hair
vanished in the hopeless dark, the woodland shade of summer would
die with its dreams.

Can it be true that I forgot you? We haste on without heed,
forgetting the flowers on the roadside hedge. Yet they breathe
unaware into our forgetfulness, filling it with music. You have
moved from my world, to take seat at the root of my life, and
therefore is this forgetting-remembrance lost in its own depth.

You are no longer before my songs, but one with them. You came
to me with the first ray of dawn. I lost you with the last gold of
evening. Ever since I am always finding you through the dark.

No, you are no mere picture.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Pic: 'Guiding Star' by Mahmoud Farshchian

HH Dalai Lama is scheduled to meet Mr. Obama

NEWS FLASH:

His Holiness Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet and inspiration/guru to many people including myself is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. sometimes this month, perhaps next week. This move unfortunately has made the Chinese government cranky, and I sincerely hope that Mr. Obama will stick to his plan of meeting His Holiness. As someone who's been in a very close proximity to His Holiness, I can only attest to the beautiful feeling inside of me that resulted from meeting him in person. I hope that Mr. Obama will also have that priviledge, regardless of what Beijing says!

May all beautiful thoughts flow from all directions... Shanti, peace...

News source: Times of India, 13 February 2010.
Pic: Private collection in Sarnath, India, 9 January 2009

Peace, My Heart...

I dedicate these two Rabindranath Tagore poems for my friend 'Hafiz' who is currently into his 'little India' journey. May Allah ya Jamil be with you, dearest friend... Ishq Allah ya Jamil, Insya Allah we shall meet again...

There Is Room for You

There is room for you. You are alone with your few sheaves of rice.
My boat is crowded, it is heavily laden, but how can I turn you
away? Your young body is slim and swaying; there is a twinkling
smile in the edge of your eyes, and your robe is coloured like the
rain cloud.

The travelers will land for different roads and homes. You
will sit for a while on the prow of my boat, and at the journey's
end none will keep you back.

Where do you go, and to what home, to garner your sheaves? I
will not question you, but when I fold my sails and moor my boat
I shall sit and wonder in the evening, -Where do you go, and to
what home, to garner your sheaves?

~ Rabindranath Tagore, 'Lover's Gifts VIII'


Peace, My Heart

Peace, my heart, let the time for
the parting be sweet.

Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

Let the flight through the sky end
in the folding of the wings over the nest.

Let the last touch of your hands be
gentle like the flower of the night.

Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a
moment, and say your last words in silence.

I bow to you and hold up my lamp
to light you on your way.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, 'The Gardener LXI'

Pic: 'Traveller' by Anastasiya Markovich, Wikipedia

Too Beautiful for Words…

How do I start? How do I tell you how Blackest Night Wonder Woman # 3 wraps itself so beautifully that my heart is filled with the warm glow of love? Maybe by saying thank you (again) to Greg Rucka (story), Nicola Scott (art), Jonathan Glapion (ink) and Nei Ruffino (colour).

The first pages said it all: Wonder Woman’s love to all creation is her greatest asset. Star Sapphire Carol Ferris delivered the truth, that although Diana was the only hero possessed by a black ring when the violet ring searched for her, Diana could break through and reach out. “Enough of you remained that the violet could reach you, and that you could do what no one else could do… and reach back. That’s never happened before.”

The Spiritual Kiss

I still have the Kiss shared by Batman and Wonder Woman in Blackest Night Wonder Woman #2 (now officially a holy book for Batwondy fans!) lingering in my mind, despite it took place in a virtual reality created by Lady Aphrodite to contain a rampaging Black Lantern WW (see the previous post to make sense of it). Hence, this post.

And I promise you that this post will still be confusing for non DC comic readers or JL Animated cartoon watchers. Heck, it’s likely to confuse my fellow Batwondy fans, even! But I need to address this. I need to share with you why I see the kiss as beyond physical. Why I see it as reaching a spiritual level as well.

To do so, I need to make some disclaimers:

1. I don’t see anything wrong with seeing the kiss as very sexy. God, it IS very sexy. Alluring. Seducing. Nicola Scott really knows how to draw a sexy yet poetic kiss. I’m glad she’s with DC now.

2. Some references I shall make here will confuse many readers, particularly those unaccustomed with Vedic tradition, a very generic tradition I’m about to source. It’s not that these examples can only be found in Vedic books; I am certain that other traditions have some similar examples as well. I shall try my best to explain with my understanding that stems out of love.

3. As I will use these references in love, I shall disagree with fellow Vedic followers who might think of this post as a sacrilege or blasphemy, for trying to link human love with divine love. For… ah… where is the line, actually? Our true, pure, unconditional human love is basically a divine love as well, and a divine love can only be understood if we humans have experienced human love.

Enough of confusing you, now let’s start.