Learning from Dogs

A route to be free of hate and ill-will and a guarantee of happiness – read on:

The Brahma Viharas are also known as the Four Divine Emotions or The Four Divine Abodes. They are the meditative states, thoughts, and actions to be cultivated in Buddhist meditation. They are the positive emotions and states that are productive and helpful to anyone of any religion or even to the one with no religion.

The result will be a good person, free from hate and ill-will. Those who cultivate the brahma viharas are guaranteed to happiness. Those who further cultivate equanimity, may reach insightful states and wisdom of enlightenment experiences.

The Four Divine Emotions

1. Loving-kindness (Pali: Metta)
2. Compassion (Pali:Karuna)
3. Joy with others (Pali: Mudita)
4. Equanimity (Pali: Upekkha)

The Four Divine Emotions are known in Pali (Pali is a literary and liturgical language only) as the Brahma-viharas and are also known as the divine abidings or the divine abodes. They are emotional states to be strived for.  By practising and developing the divine emotions, we will have a peaceful and patient daily life practice.

Joy

Loving-kindness is a soft, affection and care for others and yourself.It is not a hard, romantic type of love and not a love that includes extreme attachment or controlling feelings.

Compassion is like an open heart that cares for everyone. It includes empathy, being able to see the other person’s position and caring for and about them.

Joy with others, sometimes is called sympathetic joy or appreciative joy. It is the ability to be happy when you see others happy. Their joy becomes your joy as you welcome less suffering and happiness of others.

Equanimity is the balanced state of mind. It is the middle way state of mind that is neither clinging nor pushing away.

The above was an excerpt from the best selling book The Complete Book of Buddha’s Lists — Explained, by David N. Snyder, Ph.D., with a Foreword by the Venerable Madewela Punnaji. The full version can be downloaded for free from here.

By Jon Lavin

Hero rescues canyon-trapped canine

Using a cat carrier from a local animal hospital, outdoorsman Zak Anderegg was able to save a dog left for dead in a remote cavern in the canyons along the Arizona-Utah border.

Amazing story picked up off Facebook from Daniel Caride of The Daily Tail.  Really worth watching.

Antelope Canyon - Utah (Photo courtesy of Rob Ihn00d on Flickr)

By Paul Handover

Conscientiousness isn’t all it’s cracked out to be!

(Foreword from Paul.)

Jon is one of those rare individuals who not only has been committed to a path of self-awareness for more than 30 years but who has also studied incredibly hard so as to be able to help others and do so from a base of real competence, as his own Blog describes.  I can speak as a current ‘client’ of Jon who is assisting me in my own journey.

But then I realised the great strength in what Jon has written.  It is this.

There are many notable teachers out there who thousands upon thousands have turned to for a deeper understanding of what life is all about.  As far back as time itself teachers have surfaced and given spiritual guidance to those that come in need.  But it’s very difficult to read or listen to these great teachers and connect with the fact that they were born, as we are all born, with nothing.  And all of them, like many of us, went through Hell on wheels to come out the other side with a greater self-awareness and a deeper understanding of the real truths in nature.  Like all of us who wish to rise above our present place they first acknowledged their own frailties. It is the starting point.

So, let me get to the point.  Jon has the awareness and understanding to offer real help to those that seek answers that are currently beyond reach.  Jon’s article is an wonderful illustration that he experiences the same fears and feelings of helplessness that you and I feel.  You and I and Jon and all of humanity are much more closely connected than we realise.

Paul H.

—————————————–

To see in is to see out!

I’ve been running my own business for about 12 years now. In the beginning it started because I had a thirst for wanting to make a difference in small business in our local area and a passion for wanting to do it through working with people directly, on their behaviours. Still have, really.

I think this came as a form of acknowledgement to the few exceptional people managers I experienced while I was employed, and the all too common, terrible ones.

I was also mentored by a group of people to whom no developmental tool was barred. My eyes were well and truly opened to how a change of view could change outcomes.

The final boot up the backside was redundancy in the late 90s. I was all ready to go and just needed a kick.

My work ethic, trained at home and then through an engineering apprenticeship, was to conscientiously work hard and try hard and to treat people the way you want to be treated. Nothing wrong with that. I assumed automatic reward would follow as long as I did those things.

Over time I wised up and became a bit less idealistic and a little more politically aware but carried on in much the same way.

Much later I found myself embarking on a whole new adventure, with a lovely wife and family, all dependent on me, with a few contacts to start getting work from!

It took a year before the first jobs came in that didn’t necessitate robbing the almost non-existent savings and redundancy payment just to keep food on the table. Then, work slowly picked up and it started to get quite good for a one-man band. We were able to go on holiday once a year, camping, but still great, and then abroad.

All the time, I beavered away, trying hard, being very conscientious, as I’d been brought up to be, but slowly getting very stressed.

Time was when it took Friday night to de-stress, then 3 days, then 10 days and recently, not at all.

So faced with this present downturn, which is likely to go on for much longer than any of the others I’ve seen and survived, I’m wondering just what new strategy to adopt. Money is already getting very tight and everything is feeling very ‘hand to mouth’. Can’t really see one month in front of the other.

I notice our local farmer who I went to school with but didn’t really know.

I’ve got degrees, lived abroad, can speak Finnish fluently, (what use is that, I hear you say!), and can turn my hand to most things, but I still feel quite dis-empowered and at a bit of a loss.

My farmer friend is always smiling, he’s got a flock of geese he’s fattening up, the same with his beef cattle, does livery for half a dozen horses or so, has fields planted with various cereal crops, and has his finger in lots of different pies – and definitely does not look stressed. He is also renting his land plus another farm.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this all except for a few really important things – the importance of diversification, relationships and appreciating what you’ve got, especially people things, here, in the now.

I have also come to the realisation that I still haven’t cracked the main thing with being self-employed, and that is replacing fear with trust.

It’s been said by various enlightened people that we see a reflection of the world we hold in mind. Going forward into this brave new world I would like to see opportunities rather than fear, I will diversify into things which make more use of my wide range of talents, and I will swap fear for trust.

By Jon Lavin

The answer to whom we turn to when the times are tough.

Light your own fire!

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that a few days ago, Sherry wrote a piece entitled Light My Fire? It expressed her view that lately she was finding it a problem to be inspired, finding the passion as Sherry put it.

I have been thinking about Sherry’s article for the last few days and a couple of peripheral things come to mind.

We tend to get more of what we notice and orient towards. By allowing ourselves to become absorbed in the negative, that is what we tend to notice.  The fact is that the media thrive and make vast sums of money focusing on the negative. Just compare the amount of negative with the positive in any news cast.

That is not to say that we should not be aware of the negative or hide our heads in the sand. We can however change the way we view things and that has to come from within.

In fact, the answer rarely lies “out there”.

Change in how we view things, i.e. our attitude, needs to start coming from “within” ourselves.

The one thing that characterises these times is uncertainty.

A lot of us don’t even know where the next bit of money to pay the bills is coming from. In spite of the tendency to look ‘out there’ for strong direction, I still feel that the inner resolve has got to come for inside.

Another thing, I don’t believe it’s possible to think ourselves out of this one.

Although it’s a subject I go on a lot about, the sense of direction and well being has to come from us, or rather the feeling of interconnectedness that we share with everything. At a level, we are all connected.

We are all connected.

The one thing that gets us all through is a faith in some higher consciousness, that we can all tap into when we remember and ask for that miracle of clarity.

This is not thinking. The opposite in fact. This is a process of trust and ‘allowing’.

Allowing requires a power that few can sustain for long as we’re all geared to doing.  ‘Allowing’ requires us to turn off the noise machine that is in our head and creating a quietness and space for awareness to surface.

Paul recently wrote an article on Living in the Present that describes this way of letting go rather well.  I know for a fact that Paul is new to these ideas but already he is finding a peace and clarity emerging that shows that there’s always a good time to start – NOW!

Back to my thoughts. I am not advocating lying down and letting the world roll over us – the opposite in fact. By bringing awareness into this whole mess, we are more likely to take the right action.

I have honestly noticed that the more effort and circular thinking I have put into my present financial difficulties, and I’m a real expert in worry and circular thinking, the worse things have got.

I notice that by returning to silence and simply observing, a background is created that allows solutions and options to rise.

By asking to be shown the way forward and then letting go of the need for an instant solution, subtle options and ways forward present themselves.
Then right action follows.

An acceptance that in any moment we are all operating at our maximum level of consciousness. We are all doing the best we can. If we knew better, we would do better.

Therefore, what is going on in the world is a reflection of ourselves and is absolutely perfect for where the sum total of all of us are. (“Perfect”, does not mean we have to like it but it is, never the less, inevitable)

It follows, therefore, that the best way to help the world is to work on ourselves by striving to be the best we can, in every way. And the only way to do that is with awareness.

I think it was Abraham Maslow who coined the phrase, “Self Actualising”, meaning, being the best we can in every way, mentally and physically.

During these undoubtedly troubled times in the earth’s history, we all tend to turn to someone or something to provide a sense of direction.  That someone you need to turn to is yourself.

By Jon Lavin

Any firelighters out there?

I am not sure what the problem is, but I’ve had a difficult time of late finding the passion.

Maybe it’s the continuous stream of bad news that greets us every morning on everything from war and oil spills to lawsuits and unemployment.

Maybe it’s the finger pointing: no one standing up to take responsibility, everyone passing the blame (except for General McChrystal, who likely took the blame for his staff).

Maybe it’s the lack of leadership: we don’t really know where we are headed, and we have no plan for figuring out how we are going to get there, wherever that is.

So what do you do to find your passion?  Write in and let us know!   Inspire us!  We would love to hear what you do to “light your fire!”

Light my Fire?

by Sherry Jarrell

What do you think of it so far?

The above is a popular catchphrase.  It suggests that how we view something now is the product of all our experiences to date.  It might apply to a book, play, TV programme or life itself.

But the truth may be very different, how we view the present moment may be more to do with shutting off all those previous experiences and just accepting the present as if we have been blind, dumb and deaf until this perfect moment of now.

That’s why what we have to learn from dogs is so important even though that ‘lesson’ may be just this single, very, very important aspect.  Living in the now!

Here’s what is written on our Home Page post:

Dogs have so much to teach us. To an extent that’s difficult for humans to contemplate, they live in the present. Dogs just are!

They make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have.

Living in the present is not easy.  Trust me, I’m only starting to practice this myself and maintaining a few seconds is a challenge!

But try it.  Just let everything in your mind be replaced, just for a few moments, by NOW.  That’s the sound of your breath woven into the sound of everything going on around you.  Let all of those sounds just be a part of your awareness.

Be aware of touch.  Feel what you are sitting on standing on. Feel the messages your fingers and hands are sending to your nervous system.  Feel the bench, chair, ground or whatever is connecting your body in a physical sense to the world around you.

Hold a rock, a plant, a branch, anything real and be totally aware of the texture and feel of that object.

Smell the aromas entering your nose – just be aware of them.

And see with your eyes.  Really see.   See through your eyes with the innocence of eyes first opened.

Just hold this place of divine grace for a few moments.

You have just experienced true peace and your world will never be quite the same again.

A Spring flower

Oh, how I envy dogs!

By Paul Handover

The second part of the guest post by Captain Dave Jones. Ed.

Part One was yesterday which I introduced as follows:

The SR-71, a truly great aircraft

John’s couple of articles about the SR-71 here and here reminded me of the time that I was given an article by my instructor at Mojave. He was a military test pilot and ended up with NASA and he was one of a select few to fly the Blackbird as a civilian….a great chap to talk to…  I continue with Part 2

     The SR-71 was an expensive aircraft to operate. The most significant
cost was tanker support, and in 1990, confronted with budget cutbacks, the
Air Force retired the SR-71. The Blackbird had outrun nearly 4,000 missiles,
not once taking a scratch from enemy fire. On her final flight, the
Blackbird, destined for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, sped
from Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes, averaging 2,145 mph and
setting four speed records. 

        The SR-71 served six presidents, protecting America for a quarter of
a century. Unbeknownst to most of the country, the plane flew over North
Vietnam, Red China, North Korea, the Middle East, South Africa, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Iran, Libya, and the Falkland Islands. On a weekly basis, the
SR-71 kept watch over every Soviet nuclear submarine and mobile missile
site, and all of their troop movements. It was a key factor in winning the
Cold War. 

 Read the final part of this great story

This is a guest post from Captain Dave Jones.  Dave and I go back many years to the time when I was studying for my Instrument Rating, a flying rating that allows one to fly in the same airspace as commercial aircraft.  He is what I call a Total Aviation Person!  Dave read the posts from John Lewis about the SR-71 and mentioned that he had once had a instructor at Mojave Airport, California who had been a civilian SR-71 pilot.  Ed.

The SR-71

The SR-71, a truly great aircraft

John’s couple of articles about the SR-71 here and here reminded me of the time that I was given an article by my instructor at Mojave. He was a military test pilot and ended up with NASA and he was one of a select few to fly the Blackbird as a civilian….a great chap to talk to…

This is his article [broken into two posts because of its length. Ed.] with an intro from my instructor.

Awesome story about a truly great aircraft. I only let it go as high as Mach 3.27 once (the design speed was 3.2) but it could do all that is in this story, Cheers, Rogers

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin
disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist
camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the
damage our F-111s had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a "line of death,"
a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any
intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed
past the line at 2,125 mph. 

        I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world's fastest jet,
accompanied by Maj. Walter Watson, the aircraft's reconnaissance systems
officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn
over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was
receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating
the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4
surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I
estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and
stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance. 

 Read more about this amazing story

Now Think Sound Barrier!

I was excited to see details of a lecture held recently in Glasgow, recounting the Struggle to Break the Sound Barrier.  [Nice history on WikiPedia, Ed]

FA-18 breaking sound barrier

How easy it is today to jump into an aircraft, and expect to fly safely round the world in the luxury of an arm chair 7 miles or more above the surface of the earth, or know that the modern aircraft of our Air Forces can fly on every limit known, in the knowledge that all the aerodynamic tests and trials have been carried out.

Eric Brown is now 92. He gave up his wings at 70, but still 22 years later is lecturing on a subject which was at the time uncharted territory, a race to fly faster than Mach1, the Speed of Sound. Chuck Yeager got there first, but now ponder the following.

Captain “Winkle” Brown was with the Royal Navy for 31 years, much of it as an outstanding test pilot.

He flew 487 different types, (not variants) and made 2407 Aircraft Carrier landings, both World records.

At University he studied German, so at the end of the war as a linguist he interrogated many leading German aviation personalities such as Willy Messerschmitt, Ernst Heinkel, and Hanna Reitsch..

Capt. Eric Brown

What an interesting life, and still with stories to tell, and knowledge to pass on. There’s a lovely interview with Capt. Brown here.

By Bob Derham

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we usually only post a single article on week-end days.  But yesterday I received news that a business friend of many years standing had lost his battle against ill-health and died peacefully in the afternoon.  His name was Tom Murray and it’s my wish to celebrate his life by reproducing in full the email that was sent to me. It’s serendipitous that the planned posts by John Lewis for this week-end are aviation related.

Capt. Tom Murray

On Thursday afternoon the world lost a respected, influential, and creative aviator, one of the “Great Ones”.

Captain Thomas Murray was a pilot, artist, inventor, musician, and father.

A noted jet pilot, he explored the far corners of the globe, mapping out the Canadian Arctic, flying thousands of hours in Africa, Europe, the Himalayas, and the Americas.

Whether flying Gulf streams, Falcon, Hawkers, Learjets or old DC3s, Tom was a pilot’s pilot, the friendly, knowledgeable kind of guy who knew his craft so thoroughly that airmen the world over would “just call Tom”, whenever they needed answers.

He thrilled everyone he met with exciting stories of his travels…

…such as the time he found himself lost while flying over what should have been a large African lake, only to realize the lake had dried up. The only hope of finding civilization was to dead-reckon his way in a straight line and hope he hit the tiny “dot of a town” that was his final destination.

…Or the time his oxygen system failed in the Himalayas at 20,000 feet forcing him to dive the airplane into an 8000-foot valley to find out he was the only conscious crewmember.

…Or the time the entire front panel of his Hawker 800 fell onto his lap during takeoff because someone had forgotten to screw it in.

An adventurer to the max, he was also an inventor and visionary.

Tom took an ordinary problem such as converting hard-to-read aircraft performance charts into easy-to-read tables, and then turned that process into a successful business.

Tom created one of the first electronic documents to find its way into a cockpit – tables of aircraft performance data that minimized the chance of pilot error due to miscalculation that he called “EPADS”.

Constantly working to organize the cockpit, provide higher levels of safety and better information to the pilots, he invented one of the world’s first electronic flight bags, and established the process of managing aircraft electronic checklists, a process that the FAA later modeled their ECL guidelines after.

He joked that the entire cockpit should have a mode that turned it into a simulator during flight to alleviate boredom amongst pilots and give them a chance to train in truly challenging simulations during long flights.

He invented games for children, played flute, and wrote a storybook.

An accomplished artist, he relaxed by attending artist workshops and amazing all with his skill and precision. Just last summer, Tom held his first art exhibition.

His greatest creation with wife Daisy was his son, Thomas Alexander Murray, who was born with the charismatic smile and sense of mischief that characterized Tom at his best.

Tom’s inventions were his “other child”.  He would latch onto a design problem like a pit bull.

He cherished the fact that he would uncompromisingly focus on a design and refuse to leave it go it until it was “perfect”, even to his own financial detriment when those around him insisted he was losing sight of the “big picture”.

To this effect, during his last year, he asked me to form a foundation in his name, to offer an annual award (which I’ll see if it’s possible to do)…

“To the individual who focuses on solving difficult problems; who is clearly addicted to finding the solution; who is unrelenting in the face of opposition – which may seem to be (or genuinely be) to their own personal detriment”

Perhaps he wanted an award, he knew he’d win!

Tom was well known for acting as “pilot in command” in his daily life, often forcing people to act “my way or the highway” and insisting that his way was the “right way”.

While this trait was annoying and frustrating to colleagues and friends, what was possibly more frustrating was the number of times one was forced to humble oneself when he was indeed “right”.

In the last year of his life, Tom worked relentlessly to teach others his design philosophy and prepare several of us to run the company he’d created, the vessel that would carry his vision and concern for the safety of his fellow pilots into the future.

Tom loved life and spent his days on a personal mission to make the world a better place, a more interesting place, a more ordered place, a more beautiful place, a more fun place to live…

Tom wasn’t always too clear with his emotions, and though he often maintained a “business” exterior, at heart he was the artist, and his appreciation and depth of love for his family, fellow pilots, and the people who worked for him and with him, his friends — was endless.

You always knew when he respected you, he’d give you a big pilot’s “Thumbs up!”

We will miss him dearly.

Today, we salute a great airman, Captain Thomas Murray.

On behalf of Tom, I know he would wish you a warm, “Thumbs up!”

Charles Guerin President
On-Board Data Systems (OBDS)