Sunday, January 30, 2011

Your Dreams



"Every second you spend thinking about someone else's dreams, you take time away from your own."

- Yogi Ramen

Friday, January 28, 2011

Sound Mind Sound Body



This is such a beautiful commercial by ASICS shoes.

Yes, all the stress, doubts, fear should not stick to you - it literally falls off!!

When you have a sound mind, you will have good health.


Here is a short video of how the commercial was made : -

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Truth is the First Casualty of War



There is so much suffering in the world. So much evil done in the name of "righteousness". So much death in the service of some fragile ego.

When will it ever end?

It will end when all people treat each other like their brothers and sisters.

It will end when all of us see life through the lens of compassion and tolerance.

It will end when the Truth is revealed and people awakens ...

Sky In Motion



Anytime that you feel like life gets too much for you, take a deep breath, pause and look up.

There is so much beauty surrounding you.

You just need to open your eyes to appreciate the glorious Gaia all around you...

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Fly in the Tea



On this particular afternoon a fly fell into my tea. This was, of course, a minor occurrence. After a year in India I considered myself to be unperturbed by insects – by ants in the sugar bins, spiders in the cupboard, and even scorpions on my shoes in the morning. Still, as I lifted my cup, I must have registered, by my facial expression or a small grunt, the presence of a fly.

Choegyal Rinpoche, the eighteen-year-old tulku who was already becoming my friend for life, leaned forward in sympathy and consternation. ‘What is the matter?’

'Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing, just a fly in my tea.’ I laughed lightly to convey my acceptance and composure. I did not want him to suppose that mere insects were a problem for me; after all, I was a seasoned India-wallah, relatively free of Western phobias and attachments to modern sanitation.

Choegyal Rinpoche crooned softly, in apparent commiseration with my plight, ‘Oh, oh, a fly in the tea.’ ’It’s not a problem,’ I reiterated, smiling at him reassuringly. But he continued to focus great concern on my cup. Rising from his chair, he leaned over and inserted his finger into my tea. With great care he lifted out the offending fly – and then exited from the room. The conversation at the table resumed…

When Choegyal Rinpoche reentered the cottage, he was beaming. ‘He is going to be all right,’ he told me quietly. He explained how he had placed the fly on a leaf of a branch of a bush by the door, where his wings could dry. And the fly was still alive, because he began fanning his wings, and we could confidently expect him to take flight soon…

I could not, truth to tell, share Choegyal Rinpoche’s dimensions of compassion, but the pleasure in his face revealed how much I was missing by not extending my self-concern to all beings, even to flies. Yet this very notion that it was possible gave me boundless delight.

– Joanna Macy (World as Lover, World as Self) [Excerpt]

Monday, January 24, 2011

Be Present in the Midst of Beauty



Take a deep breath and appreciate the beautiful sunrise ...

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Buddhist Wisdom for Uncertain Times: Gary Gach



Buddhist Wisdom for Uncertain Times: Gary Gach

Go to this site for an excellent lecture, lasting less than an hour, about Buddhism.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Living in the Moment



The video shows Mark Visser riding JAWS, the largest waves in Hawaii. And he is surfing it at night, with special lights developed by NASA to show him the way.

Amazing!! It must have been an exhilarating ride. Isn't that what living is about?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Mad World




When did beautiful Mother Nature become such a mad world?

Perhaps it is all the madness generated by human-kind...

What Really Matters Most



In a bold act of kindness, a pilot decides to hold a plane for a grieving grandfather to catch the flight to see his dying grandson (Getty Images).

By William Lee Adams of TIME Magazine

The most important trips aren’t about getting somewhere. They’re about getting to someone. (via Elliott.org)

But in an age of mounting airline fees, reduced in-flight services, uncomfortable security pat-downs and multi-day delays caused by erupting volcanoes, it’s easy to forget that.

Amid the cries of “I’ve already paid for my hotel!” and “You need to get me to Atlanta!” anger and inconvenience frequently blind us to the fact that travel is ultimately about people. We also forget that airline employees—bound by big company rules and regulations—get frustrated, too.

Enter Nancy, whose travel triumph, tempered by a great deal of sadness, has turned an unnamed Southwest Airlines pilot into an online hero.

Nancy reads a blog by Christopher Elliott, a consumer advocate and journalist, and wrote to him about her husband’s recent ordeal traveling on flights from Los Angeles to Tucson to Denver. Their situation makes complaints about leg room look downright petty.

“Last night, my husband and I got the tragic news that our three-year-old grandson in Denver had been murdered by our daughter’s live-in boyfriend,” she wrote. “He is being taken off life support tonight at 9 o’clock and his parents have opted for organ donation, which will take place immediately. Over 25 people will receive his gift tonight and many lives will be saved.”

So early in the morning, after what must have been a torturous night’s sleep, Nancy and her husband arranged for him to fly from Los Angeles, where he was traveling for work, to Tuscon, where he would step off one plane and immediately onto another one headed to Denver. “The ticketing agent was holding back tears throughout the call,” Nancy wrote. “I’m actually her step-mother and it’s much more important for my husband to be there than for me to be there.”

Mourning the loss of his child’s child, and no doubt worrying about his grieving daughter, he was likely in no state to travel. Airport stress only compounded his despair. He arrived at LAX two hours before his scheduled flight time, but quickly realized that delays at baggage check and security would keep him from making the flight.

According to Nancy, he struggled to hold back tears as he pleaded with TSA and Southwest Airlines staff to fast-track him through the lines that were moving like molasses. Even though missing his flight could mean missing a final chance to see his grandson, no one seemed to care.

Too much was at stake to simply roll over and cry. When he finally cleared security—several minutes after his flight’s planned departure—he grabbed his computer bag, shoes and belt, and ran to his terminal wearing only his socks. The pilot and the gate agent were waiting for him.

“Are you Mark? We held the plane for you and we’re so sorry about the loss of your grandson,” the pilot reportedly said. “They can’t go anywhere without me and I wasn’t going anywhere without you. Now relax. We’ll get you there. And again, I’m so sorry.”

It’s hard to underestimate the courage of the pilot’s decision. The flight, which ultimately departed 12 minutes late, likely had hundreds of passengers rolling their eyes in contempt. And given that any delay has knock-on effects for passengers at the destination airport, his decision placed Southwest at risk of facing the wrath of travelers, and more than a few demands for compensation.

Elliott, who brought the story to the blogosphere’s attention, approached Southwest about the story, half expecting the airline to be outraged by a pilot’s refusal to push the on-time departure.

Instead, they told him they were “proud” of their pilot, a man who clearly understands that taking a child off life support has consequences that run deeper than a flight taking off late.

As Nancy wrote: “My husband was able to take his first deep breath of the day.” Hopefully, over time, his daughter can do the same.

How They Lost Their Way



Darkness 2011

“Understand this apprentice! Forget what those derelict academics taught you in Yale…..let me tell you the story of the empire of the bones and how it came about.

The Americans and Europeans took a wrong turn in the eighties; some idiot thought it was a good idea to pack up all their factories like a traveling circus and move it to low cost producing countries like China, Vietnam and Mexico – many others saw that it too made sense, so they did the same – I don’t disagree in the short term; the cost of a shovel or toaster went right down and it would seem as if it was a boon to the average American as his dollar can be stretched further – but what they didn’t realize is these days when you take a look at even a Harley Davison, that iconic symbol of Americana; the head lamp is made in Xiamen, the drive train in Taiwan and all the average American worker is good for is just applying glue to a Harley-Davison badge – things are so bad these days; when you ask an average American shop floor worker to hand you a No.9 monkey wrench, he gives you a ticket to the zoo – there are no more skilled artisans; only kids sitting before a computer designing virtual bikes – and that is what happens when a factory is turned into a stock market. Worst of all they have lost the very one thing that makes possible for real sustainable wealth – say what you like about protectionism and xenophobia, but I think the Germans got it right.

Today if you go to Munich; you can see the benefits of what I call real wealth creation – when you walk around the BMW plant you will have very little doubt that what I am saying is so true, you don’t know this because your lecturers in Yale have never ever rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty before. I’ve worked in a factory, followed a shift even when I could have held down a decent 9 to 5 job in an air-conditioned cave. At that time, all my friends said, “look at Darkness, he is a wash out! He’s got a Masters of Science that nearly broke his balls and what does he do with it? He becomes a grease monkey!” But these same people today have no idea where to even begin valuing a factory or when one of those serious men ask them: is this a good place to plonk my money, all they can do is run to me – do you now see my young apprentice, they never once invested in the real!

Just like the Americans who traded in their factories for warehouses; they lost the ball; but look at how the Germans nourished the one thing those dumb Americans threw away; they kept the real, they fertilized the real and so they are the only race on this planet who know how to build real cars from the ground up, to turn a metal sheet into a car bonnet that sort of technology and let me tell you another thing, they do it cheaper than the Chinese – now you know why the Hasidic Jews control the diamond industry; they keep all 300 designs right up here.

Learn from the Jews, they know what is real – do you see those wise men outsourcing their black arts to China for a quick buck? So don’t tell me that Wall-Mart is heaven; it is the hottest place in Hell!”

Extracted from : - http://dotseng.wordpress.com

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A Pure Land Story



During the time of Sakyamuni Buddha, there was a kind king who was overthrown by his evil son and imprisoned in the dungeon. He was deprived of food and any physical comfort. The king's wife, was also prohibited from seeing him.

The king became sad and despondent. He was dismayed the the world can be so filled with such unbearable anguish.

Faced with this world where suffering abounds, he prayed, "Oh Lord Buddha!! Why do you not come to my aid during this difficult time of my life? Can you show me a sanctuary where I can rest my weary soul?"

In the meantime, the queen, who had repeatedly asked to see her king, was finally allowed to do so. However, his treacherous son forbade her from bringing any food for the starving king.

In her desperation, she coated her body with a layer of flour paste so that the king would have some nourishment.

At such a time of anguish and despair, the two of them tearfully prayed to the Buddha for deliverance from their suffering.

To their amazement, the Buddha supernaturally appeared before them. The prison cell was filled with a beautiful luminous light and the smell of beautiful flowers.

The Buddha told the king and queen, "To the West of this saha world, more than a hundred thousand million Buddha lands, there is a world called 'Ultimate Bliss Pure Land', where the teacher of the land, Amitabha Buddha, is currently teaching the Dharma.

In the land of Amitabha Buddha, the most serene, secure and happy place, there is no suffering, only happiness.

If you recite the name of Amitabha with single-mindedness, Amitabha Buddha will use the strength of his great vow to receive you to be reborn in the Pure Land."

After listening to the guidance of the Buddha, the king and queen started to earnestly recite the name of Amitabha Buddha.

For many days, they sincerely recited and chanted Amitabha Buddha's name with little rest. Their hearts were filled with a deep faith and utmost conviction that they will be able to get to the Pure Land.

One day, in the course of their praying, a radiant Pure Land did indeed appear before their eyes. They saw Amitabha Buddha, surrounded by a host of Bohidsattvas and celestial beings, all in radiant light, come down to welcome them to the Pure Land.

Because of the good karma that they have accumulated during his reign, the king and queen was reborn in Amitabha Buddha's World of Ultimate Bliss. There they can listen to Him preach the Dharma and ultimately, become enlightened.

The evil son reaped the karma that he sowed. He was killed not long after that in a hunting accident.

Great Flood of Queensland



The above shows the great flood surging through the town of Toowoomba, with the flood level peaking beyond 25 meters.

Brisbane, the third largest city in Australia, will face peak flood level tomorrow as the Brisbane River rises to a new record of more than 15 meters. More than 75% of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone.

Everything has been swept away. Mercifully, the death toll has been low, less than a 30 people has died in the floods. Even then, any death in such a situation is unfortunate.

This massive flood is the result of man not respecting Mother Nature.

Queensland has been enjoying a the fruits of a huge economic boom because it has been raping Mother Earth through open mining vast areas for coal, emptying the streams and rivers to grow more produce for export and building towns and villages on flood plains.

Just 2 months ago, in Nov 2010, many farmers in Queensland and New South Wales were up in arms about their water rights when the Federal Government revealed its Water Plan for the Murray-Darling basin. Many faced cuts in their allocations even though there were enough rain at that time to bring the 10-year drought to an end.

Isn't it ironic that Mother Nature has now flooded these areas with more water than they can handle? La Nina has spoken and girl, did she screeched!!

And of course, the State Government of Queensland got a lot of the economic rewards. The pity is that it did not spend these abundance wisely but wasted it on superfluous projects and government spending, thinking that there would be lots of money coming from its vast natural resources.

All this is really karma.

Because of man's selfish actions, it has disrupted the natural order of Mother Nature. With indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels, like coal and oil, the earth has gotten warmer over the years. With that, storms have gotten fiercer and hurricanes are stronger. As a result, the damages have been more serious.

Well, Mother Nature has spoken and it will costs tens of billion dollars to recover from this calamity. Produce will costs more as a lot of top-soil has been washed away in the floods. Many areas may suffer desertification.

In the years to come, many countries which import most of their food will face increasing costs in their food. There will be riots and war over hunger and the lack of water.

May people, who has endured this suffering, be awaken to the consequences of their actions. May they be wiser in their dealings with Mother Nature and be grateful for the blessings of abundance that they have enjoyed for so many years...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller



Bill Zeller was a talented programmer, working towards his PhD in Princeton, whose work we’ve featured on Lifehacker. He took his own life on Sunday and left an explanation that I think it’s important you read.

Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It’s clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn’t leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described “darkness”, which despite his prostration it’s clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized. Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere.


May you have the peace that you seek while you were alive. May you be reborn in a beautiful life where you can continue to contribute to the betterment of this evil world.
___________________________________________________________


Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There’s no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone in particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—-

I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they’re dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us, “saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point), that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—-

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—-

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

___________________________________________________________________

Here is a posting in the blog of someone who knew him. Each person that he had contact with paints a picture of a beautiful person. It is so sad that he cannot believe that he can overcome the darkness in his soul...

RIP Bill Zeller

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

The American Dream



The AMERICAN DREAM is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you've been scammed by the most basic elements of our government system.

All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away.

Do you know how your money is created? Or how banking works? Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge? Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day?

THE AMERICAN DREAM takes an entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems we have today are nothing new, and why leaders throughout our history have warned us and fought against the current type of financial system we have in America today.

You will be challenged to investigate some very entrenched and powerful institutions in this nation, and hopefully encouraged to help get our nation back on track.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Tron Legacy



Watched "Tron Legacy" in 3-D yesterday and enjoyed it very much.

The special effects were really amazing.

More than that, the movie deals with man's search for perfection, one that can never be achieved.

It deals with unintended consequences of our actions. Our realities are simply mental constructs that we manifest.

And also, when the conditions are right, sentient beings will arise from the void.

This is like what the Heart Sutra has stated - the void and the form is the same...

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Sydney New Year Fireworks

The 9 pm Fireworks : -



Last night, my wife and I went to the Sydney Harbour to welcome the New Year and watch the fireworks.

There were 2 fireworks sessions, one at 9 pm and the more spectacular one at midnight.

For the 9 pm one, we watched it from Lavender Bay at the beach. After it finished, many parents with small children left for home.

We then walked for about 1/2 hour to get to Milson Point's Watson Park, which is directly under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was very crowded, with more than 300K people gathered everywhere there is space.

More than 1.5 million people watched the fireworks from about 43 different vantage points around the Sydney Harbour. Many of them started camping out at the best places with picnic baskets as early as 8am on New Year's Eve.

Apparently, 5 indigenous vessels were also used to "cleanse" the Harbour of negative spirits.

Many cruise ships, beautifully lighted up, were also offering dinner or supper programs while sailing around the Harbour to give the best view of the fireworks.

It was truly a spectacular show, with numerous fireworks going off in various sections of the Sydney Harbour. 11,000 pyrotechnic shells were used, costing about $5 million.

The sky lit up with X-shaped fireworks, lightning bolts, crescent moons, double hearts, bow ties, boomerangs and a dazzling tumbling red and white checkerboard effect. After more than 15-20 minutes, the fireworks ended with a crescendo of the traditional Bridge golden waterfall.

The focal point is on the Harbour Bridge, as you can see from the video below.

What a beautiful experience that we shared with all the Sydney-siders. There was a lot of gracious partying around, with people very friendly and greeting each other with shouts of "Happy New Year"!!

When the fireworks finished, we walked to the main road to take a bus home. There were numerous buses, with coordinators to help direct the buses and passengers, to help all the spectators go home.

Guess what - the service is free! Yup, you do not have to pay a single cent to ride the bus home.

And everything went smoothly and efficiently even though there were so many people going home. A lot of people also walked home.

It was a really memorable experience for us.

Enjoy the videos of the fireworks. Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!



Happy New Year!!

May 2011 be a year of Health and Happiness.

May the year be Peaceful and Joyful.

May you also be blessed with an abundance of Prosperity and Wisdom.

Have a wonderful year ahead!!