Month / August 2015

by carlos

We have to get to know and be honest about our particular strategies for dealing with vulnerability and learn to use mindfulness to allow ourselves to experience more of that vulnerability rather than less of it. To open yourself up to need, longing, dependency, and reliance on others means opening yourself to the truth that none of us can do this on our own. We really do need each other, just as we need parents and teachers. We need all those people in our lives who make us feel so uncertain. The goal is not getting to a place where we are going to escape all that, but creating a container that allows us to be more and more human, to feel more and more.

Barry Magid -- Right Here with You

by carlos

To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away starting to change the world—for the better.

It will not be easy.

But, YOU are the class of 2014—the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed.

Find someone to help you through life.

Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if take you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up—if you do these things, then next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today and—what started here will indeed have changed the world—for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook ’em horns.

William McRaven

by carlos

THE KEY TO LISTENING WELL

The key to listening to people’s pain, paradoxically, is to be clear that we are not responsible for taking it away. The entire study and practice of Buddhadharma is designed to address the problem of human suffering. With time, we come to understand that simply being present to each other is our most basic moral obligation. There may be occasions when we can lend a helping hand. There may be instances when we are obligated to interfere, but more often than not, simple presence provides a context for others to listen to themselves, and that is the real service.

Letting go of responsibility for other people’s states of mind is fundamentally liberating. When we feel free of pressure, we are happy to listen, so we listen well. In the context of practice, releasing ourselves from this responsibility is to learn—again and yet again—what it feels like to let go.

Diane Musho Hamilton

by carlos

This makes me sad and angry at the same time

"Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now," says Edwards, 50, a lifelong gamer and developer who worked on Microsoft's Halo. "There's ample evidence of that over and over again . . . What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, 'We need to stop this. This has got to change.'"

http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/game-on-women-are-developing-new-video-games-and-a-new-culture/

by carlos

A wish for you

May your coming year
be filled with magic
and dreams
and good madness. 

I hope you read
some fine books
and kiss someone who
thinks you are wonderful,
and don't forget 
do make some art --
write or draw
or build or sing
or live
as only you can/

And I hope,
somewhere
in the next year,
you surprise yourself

Neil Gaiman