In the wake of yesterday’s post about the power of meditation, this recent TED Talk seemed a perfect way to end the week.
Published on Jul 16, 2013
You don’t need to plan an exotic trip to find creative inspiration. Just look up, says Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. As he shares charming photos of nature’s finest aerial architecture, Pretor-Pinney calls for us all to take a step off the digital treadmill, lie back and admire the beauty in the sky above.
Want to learn a little more about the different types of cloud? Then go here. Want to learn more about the Cloud Appreciation Society? More details here.
And who knows, you may even see your dog in those clouds!
The full description may be read here, but I have taken the liberty of republishing this extract:
Earth, which is 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away in this image, appears as a blue dot at center right; the moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. An arrow indicates their location in the annotated version. The other bright dots nearby are stars.
Now it doesn’t take too much imagination to put that minute speck of light, our Planet Earth, into its scale of meaning and importance vis-a-vis the universe. You get my message, I’m sure.
The second event was a comment left by long-term reader and supporter of Learning from Dogs, Patrice Ayme. The comment was on yesterday’s post, The meaning of wildness, and I quote:
Excellent article. Clearly primary temperate rain forest, nearly gone everywhere except in the American North west, has to be reintroduced.
Sheep ought not to be removed by man, but be removed by wolf, bear, felids. Cows would feel whole, having to fight off lions. And man’s sense of what nature means, vital to insure our survival, would blossom in this hour of need, when we have arisen as the planet’s gods. gods of evil, or gods of wisdom? That is the most important question.
“gods of evil, or gods of wisdom?”
To everybody I say this. (And I am most certainly not excluding me.) When you next look at yourself in the mirror will you make a decision? Will you be a god of evil or a god of wisdom?
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
So said Albert Einstein.
The reason I went searching for a quotation on reality was that our, as in humans, ability to see the world in grossly distorted ways jumped ‘off the page’ at me when I was reading a recent essay from George Monbiot. Followers of Learning from Dogs will know that Mr. Monbiot has featured before; most recently just under a month ago in a post Returning to Nature. Before then in April when George gave permission for the full republishing of his essay The Great Unmentionable.
“Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.”
Why the notion of humans seeing reality in grossly distorted ways? Simply because in George Monbiot‘s following essay he challenges what we mean by the word ‘wildness’ and I immediately realised that my own idea of wildness was badly corrupted.
See if you react the same way as you read The Naturalists Who Are Terrified of Nature by George Monbiot, republished in full with the kind permission of George.
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The Naturalists Who Are Terrified of Nature
July 16, 2013
A radical challenge to British conservation and its bizarre priorities.
I’m writing this on the train home, after visiting two places in the north of England celebrated for their “wildness”. One of them is Ennerdale in the Lake District, now officially known as Wild Ennerdale, a valley in which the river has been allowed to move freely once more, and in which native trees are succeeding naturally up the hillsides(1).
The other is the Sheffield Moors (in the Peak District), from which most of the sheep have been removed and where the structure of the vegetation has been allowed to change a little. I found both visits fascinating, not least because of the eruditon and enthusiasm of the people who walked me through these places.
But sitting on the train, watching the chemical deserts of the English lowlands flash past, I’m struck by how pathetically grateful I feel. For what? For the fact that, in two small conservation areas, located in national parks, a few natural processes have been allowed to resume.
Were I to explain to a foreigner that these places are now celebrated by conservationists in Britain for their radical approach, he or she would think I had gone mad. “What?,” they would say, “you are telling me that this is the cutting edge of nature conservation in your country? Where have you been for the past 50 years?”
I don’t know if there is any other country in which people – including conservationists – are as afraid of nature as they are in Britain. I don’t know if there is anywhere else in which conservationists are so convinced that if they relax their intensive management of the natural world, something dreadful will happen.
Nowhere else do conservationists subscribe more enthusiastically to the biblical doctrine of dominion: that we have a holy duty to control and corral nature, in case it gets out of hand. Nowhere else does conservation look more like a slightly modified version of the farming which trashed the land in the first place.
In my view most of our conservation areas aren’t nature reserves at all. They are museums of former farming practices, weeded and tended to prevent the wilds from encroaching. The ecosystem’s dynamic interactions are banned. Animals and plants are preserved as if they were a jar of pickles, kept in a state of arrested development, in which little is allowed to change.
But nature is not just a fixed assemblage of species, maintained as if it were a collection in a museum. It is also the ever-changing relationships between them, the successional processes, the shifting communities: all of which, in many of our reserves, are prohibited.
The problem begins with designation. The “interest features” of a site of special scientific interest – its species and habitats – must be kept in “favourable condition”. Often this means the condition in which they happened to be when the reserve was created. In most cases that’s a condition of dire impoverishment and depletion: ecosystems missing almost their entire trophic structure, most of their large herbivores, all their large predators, in many cases even the trees. They have to be kept like this by extreme and intrusive management, in order to sustain the impacts which reduced them to this woeful state.
In Wild-ish Ennerdale and on the Sheffield Moors, there has been a partial relaxation of this draconian regime. But even in these places, there is much that I question.
On the Sheffield Moors, for example, cattle are kept: at much higher densities and for far longer periods than large herbivores would exist in a self-willed ecosystem. In many parts of the moors, trees, if they have the temerity to return, are cleared. The effort, even here, is to ensure that the landscape remains farmed, open and bare.
This is done partly to favour breeding populations of wading birds(2). It’s likely that these species are being maintained at artificially high populations(3). A tendency I’ve noticed among some groups is to try to make all their target species common, even if they were naturally rare. Perhaps some species ought to be rare. Those which lived in open habitats – which would have been small and occasional before people started cutting and burning the forests – are likely to have been rarest of all.
Think of the varying fortunes of grouse populations in Britain. The palaeontological evidence is extremely sparse, so this is guesswork, but during the Boreal and Atlantic phases, 9,000-5,000 years ago, when closed-canopy forest covered most of Britain, the commonent grouse species in this country might have been hazel hen. Perhaps the second commonest would have been capercaillie, followed by black grouse, followed by red grouse, which are likely to have been very scarce.
That likely sequence has now been reversed. Hazel hen is extinct, capercaillie extremely rare, black grouse are sparse and in severe decline and red grouse are bloody everywhere. The red grouse is the magpie of the uplands: it benefits from human intervention, which in this case means the clearing of land.
Arbitrarily, conservation groups in the uplands of England and Wales have decided that their priorities are, for example, dunlin and curlew, rather than capercaillie and pine martens. I’m not insisting that this is always the wrong decision. But it’s a decision that should be rigorously questioned, especially if this intensive management means the destruction of habitats which would have sheltered a much wider range of species.
Spend a couple of hours in an open upland nature reserve, and count the diversity and abundance of the birds you see. Then spend a couple of hours in a bushy suburban garden and do the same thing. In my experience you’re likely to see more birds of more species in the garden. That’s hardly surprising: most birds – indeed most wildlife – require cover to survive. Am I the only one who thinks that something has gone badly wrong here?
It’s not just common species I’m talking about. Many of those excluded by our brutal upland management are not just rare in Britain; they are extinct.
Whenever I meet a conservation manager, I find myself acting like a 3-year old: I keep asking “why?”. Why are you preserving this and not that? Why is this site designated for moorland flea beetle and pearl-bordered fritillary, rather than blue stag beetle and lynx? Why are you protecting the wretched scrapings of life that remain here, rather than reintroducing the species which would once have lived here, but have been excluded by the kind of interventions that you – the conservationists – have sustained?
When I worked in the Amazon, the conservationists I met were fighting to defend the rainforest against cattle ranching. In Britain the conservationists are – literally – defending cattle ranching against the rainforest. Britain was once covered by rainforest: woodland wet enough for epiphytes to grow. (Epiphytes are plants which root in the bark of trees). Our closed-canopy rainforest was likely to have been richer in species than any of our remaining habitats. Given half a chance, it would return. But it isn’t given half a chance, even in conservation sites, because conservationists keep clearing the land and running cattle on it, in case the wayward and irresponsible ecosystem does something that isn’t listed in the rules. In doing so, they preserve a burnt, blasted and largely empty land with the delightful ambience of a nuclear winter.
Conservation groups in this country are obsessed by heather. Heather is typical of the vegetation that colonises land which has been repeatedly deforested. You can see similar vegetation – low, scrubby, tough, thriving on burnt ground and depleted soils – covering deforested land all over the tropics. There, the dominance of these plants is lamented by ecologists, for it is rightly seen as a symptom of ecological destruction. Here it is fetishised and preserved.
Even in the Eastern Sheffield Moors management plan, published by the RSPB and the National Trust, “cutting and burning” are listed as the requisite tasks for managing heather(4). Imagine what a tropical ecologist would say if she saw that. “You people have been telling us for decades that we should stop cutting and burning. You’ve been sending us money and lobbying our governments to discourage us from doing it. And all the while you’ve been telling yourselves that cutting and burning are necessary for the protection of wildlife.” If she concluded that we are hypocrites, that we are unambitious, irrational, anally retentive and ecologically illiterate, she would not be far wrong.
The same plan reveals that these two august conservation bodies will maintain cattle on the moors at their current level, but keep them there for longer. “Their grazing and trampling will manage the vegetation in a way which should improve the condition of the habitats and benefit wildlife.”(5) What does this mean? Yes, it might benefit some wildlife, but only at the expense of other species. Yes, it might “improve the condition” of a habitat, if by improvement you mean a better representation of the state of arrested development you’ve chosen. It sounds uncomfortably close to the 19th Century agricultural meaning of “improvement”: which means draining and clearing land to make it more suitable for farming.
It astonishes me to see statements like this left unpacked. Asserted without qualification, they create the impression that all wildlife benefits from management of this kind. Of course, all interventions (including a complete cessation of management), are better for some species than for others. But in my view, the losses inflicted by cattle ranching – here, as in the Amazon – outweigh any gains.
An even starker example is provided by a report commissioned by the RSPB on changing livestock numbers. It contends that “undergrazing and loss of vegetation structure is now occurring in some areas, with adverse impacts for some species such as golden plover and other waders.”(6)
“Undergrazing” is an interesting concept. The report seems to be referring to “undergrazing” by sheep. How can a native ecosystem be undergrazed by an invasive ruminant from Mesopotamia? Is our wildlife underhunted by American mink? Are our verges underinfested by Japanese knotweed?
I would question what undergrazing by any domestic animal means. “Not farmed enough” is what the term appears to signify, “or not sufficiently damaged”. Sure, the golden plover is among a small group of species that benefit from scorched-earth policies, but a far greater number are harmed by them. So why is the golden plover the priority? And how can a report for a conservation organisation blithely use the term undergrazing without qualification or explanation?
Another RSPB report advocates “the eradication of invasive tree species” from the bare uplands of Wales and claims, without citing any evidence or explaining what this means, that “extensive grazing, ideally mixed grazing, is important in maintaining upland pastures in a state that benefits upland birds and other wildlife.”(7)
A document published by the Welsh government revealed something I have never seen in the RSPB’s literature: that the society advises farmers “to cut down trees to discourage buzzards which kill other birds.”(8)
I checked with the RSPB in Wales and it confirmed that it does “at times provide advice to landowners on the management of trees to reduce available vantage points and nest sites for some avian predators.”(9)
Isn’t that more or less what the British government wanted to do to protect pheasant shoots? And didn’t the society contest those efforts?(10)
I wonder whether, in their arbitrary choice of target species and target habitats, British conservationists are influenced by the legacy of hunting. Many of the birds on behalf of which this extreme and brutal simplification of the ecosystem takes place are those which, in the 19th Century, were pursued by gentlemen with guns. Perhaps we should see conservation efforts in Britain as a form of gamekeeping, which regards some of our native species as good and worthy of preservation, and others (such as trees and buzzards) as bad and in need of control.
Sometimes I receive coherent answers from the conservation managers I speak to, which are debatable but at least consistent. Sometimes the only answer I receive is “that’s what the rules say.” But isn’t it time we began to challenge the rules? Isn’t it time we began to question the way sites are designated, and to challenge the ecological blitzkreig required to maintain them in what is laughably called “favourable condition”? Isn’t it time we began asking why we have decided to privilege certain species over others? Isn’t it time we started wondering whether the collateral damage required to support them is worth it?
After all, how did nature cope before we came along? To judge by the actions of British conservation groups, it must have been in a pretty dismal state for the three billion years before humans arrived to look after it.
2. National Trust and RSPB, 2012. The Eastern Moors Management Plan summary, page 15. Eastern Moors Partnership, Curbar.
3. This, of course, is speculative, as palaeontology gives us few indications of numbers. But the circumstantial evidence seems powerful: the habitat required for breeding populations of these birds, many of which need to nest several hundred metres from the nearest woodland edge to avoid predation, was in short supply. See for example:
NJ Whitehouse and D Smith, 2010. How fragmented was the British Holocene wildwood? Perspectives on the ‘‘Vera’’ grazing debate from the fossil beetle record. Quaternary Science Reviews Vol. 29, nos. 3-4, pp539–553. doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.10.010
FJG Mitchell, 2005. How open were European primeval forests? Hypothesis testing using palaeoecological data. Journal of Ecology Vol. 93, 168–177
JHB Birks, 2005. Mind the gap: how open were European primeval forests? Trends in Ecology & Evolution Vol. 20, pp154-156.
R Fyfe, 2007. The importance of local-scale openness within regions dominated by closed woodland. Journal of Quaternary Science, Vol.22, no. 6, pp571–578. doi: 10.1002/jqs.1078
JC Svenning, 2002. A review of natural vegetation openness in northwestern Europe. Biological Conservation Vol 104: 133-148.
RHW Bradshaw, GE Hannon, AM Lister, 2003. A long-term perspective on ungulate-vegetation interactions. Forest Ecology and Management, Vol. 181: 267–280.
8. Welsh Government, 2010. Glastir: frequently asked questions, Section 13. This document is no longer available on the government site, but you can read it here: http://www.fuw.org.uk/glastir-faq-miscellaneous.html
9. Emma Roberts, RSPB Wales, 10th August 2011. By email.
John Hurlburt writing as ‘an old lamplighter‘ has been a regular contributor to Learning from Dogs. Indeed, just last Friday in my rather introspective post, Maybe home is found in our quietness, I included John’s beautiful Evening Meditation. The day before that post, John sent me the following (the picture below is my contribution to John’s essay!) It’s a reflection on both the absurdity of modern times and the simplicity of the answers.
oooOOOOoo
Our interconnected world.
Bird Seed!
In return for a local pet store patronage, today’s cost savings included free bird seed. Meanwhile, our economic system squanders our common wealth.
The agendas of rich and powerful people who don’t want anything to change are reflected by FAUX News. What we have on our hands is an absurd interpretation of reality, which is made up as they go along. Politics has become a game of “Can You Top This”; with no limits. There’s a question about our collective level of sanity.
Our shared crisis mounts as our demographic increases and our natural resources are depleted accordingly. The fact is that we’re beyond the carbon limits the atmosphere requires to maintain the inclusive well-being of life on earth. And we’re damaging the surface layer of the planet that sustains us all in the process.
The answers are simple and natural. Here are five quick examples and a conclusion of sorts.
1. Diesel fuels run the majority of the world’s heavy machinery. Switching from carbon-based diesel fuels to natural bio-fuels, as per the original design by Rudolf Diesel, would have a profound effect on carbon pollution as well as fostering green innovation and industry. No modification of any on-line diesel engines would be required. As a matter of fact, they’d probably run more efficiently.
Solution: Economic advantage of using bio-fuels.
2. Re-establishing human rights may be best accomplished through increased awareness of our fragile unity as a species. The openness, honesty and integrity of Creation lights the way each day and lends serenity to our reflections.
Solution: Accept that deliberate human war and related destruction of the earth is empty, has no future, and is contrary to the purpose of human life.
Incidentally, when we put a natural floor under the global economy we’ll save our collective bacon in the process. Transitioning military forces to support green economic development opportunities might be a possibility if we decide to take life seriously enough to make a real difference.
3. Re-establishing a realistic base for a global economy that’s swollen 25 times beyond any material planetary resource foundation may best be accomplished by transitioning to green industries that benefit our planet, nations, communities and the sanctity of life in general. A modification to our technically driven financial system is needed.
Solution: Isaac Asimov; “I Robot” (the laws of robotics)
4. Re-establishing common law with inclusive equality and justice may be best accomplished by an in-depth examination of personal beliefs values, motives and actions in terms of respect for whatever Higher Power we may believe there to Be, compassion for Creation and the realization that we’re all living in and on the same life boat.
Solution: Education, formation and transformation based upon the facts of reality that we know in our present state of development and the far greater Reality which transcends our being and our current understanding based upon reason alone.
For example, Einstein’s General and Special Theories of Relativity tell us that we are in the process of turning inside out without breaking. A phrase that comes to mind is “transrational reality”. When we step beyond “self” we see the world through new eyes.
5. Agreeing on an equitably interactive and enforceable world-wide corporate, government, labor, and service organization wage scale may best be accomplished by listening to the voices of economic reason which tell us that money is only a symbol.
Rationale: Everything fits together. Change is constant. Life needs to adapt to survive. In Unity there is strength. At our best, we care for the earth and each other.
Inclusive solution: Surrender to Reality. The global system is broken, Resources are limited. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to change. A sustainable and growing green economy benefits everyone on earth.
Bottom Line
Love lights the way
Faith is stronger than fear
Hope springs Eternal
Our truths, our home, our serenity; all flow from stillness.
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.
As is often the way, a number of disparate items came together for today’s post in a way of lovely connectivity.
A few weeks ago when meeting our local doctor for the first time since we moved to Oregon, I had grumbled about bouts of terrible short-term memory recall and more or less had shrugged my shoulders in resignation that there was nothing one could do: it was just part of getting older, I guessed!
“On the contrary”, responded Dr. Hurd, continuing, “There’s growing evidence that our information-crowded lives: cell phones; email; constant TV; constant news, is pumping too much for our brains to manage.”
Dr. Hurd continued, “Think about it! Our brains have to process every single sensory stimulus. The research is suggesting that our brains are being over-loaded and then the brain just dumps the excess data. If that is the case, and the evidence is pointing in that direction, then try thirty minutes of meditation each day; give your brain a chance to rest.”
So that was the first revelation.
The second was a recent science programme on the BBC under the Horizon series. The programme was called, The Truth About Personality.
Michael Mosley’s brain being measured.
Michael Mosley explores the latest science about how our personalities are created – and whether they can be changed.
Despite appearances, Mosley is a pessimist who constantly frets about the future. He wants to worry less and become more of an optimist.
He tries out two techniques to change this aspect of his personality – with surprising results.
And he travels to the frontiers of genetics and neuroscience to find out about the forces that shape all our personalities.
Within the programme came the astounding fact that even ten minutes a day meditation can help the brain achieve a more balanced personality (balance in terms of not being overly negative in one’s thoughts).
The third revelation came from Jean and me watching a TED Talk last night. Just 14 minutes long, please watch it – you will be transformed!
Published on Jul 17, 2013
More and more people worldwide are living in countries not considered their own. Writer Pico Iyer — who himself has three or four “origins” — meditates on the meaning of home, the joy of traveling and the serenity of standing still.
Then, just three days ago, John Hurlburt, a long-time supporter and regular contributor to Learning from Dogs, emailed me his reflection on meditation. John quickly gave permission for it to be published here.
oooOOOooo
The stillness of evening.
Evening Meditation
Our world is increasingly spiritually, morally, mentally, physically and economically bankrupt. Many people would like to change the world one way or another. Most don’t really know why. Some folks simply don’t care. The idea is to leave life a bit better than we found it when we were born.
The fact is we’re all intrinsically sacred in a universe we didn’t create. We tend to prioritize illusion and delusion above reality. Playing God is a precursor of evil. A supreme faith in Money is self contradictory and ultimately fatal. Arrogance compounds the problem.
We connect in unified awareness through serene meditation. We experience harmony within an emerging celestial symphony. Answers flow from the inside out as we surrender to the eternal energy flow.
Be still and know…
an old lamplighter
oooOOOooo
Finally, after having a real struggle to find the place, both psychologically and physically, where I could start my own relationship with meditation, on Wednesday afternoon, when walking the quarter-mile up to our mail-box, it struck me as obvious.
Embraced by nature.
This quiet place on our creek where the water trickles down from an old flood irrigation dam. Somewhere to sit under the shade of a tree, somewhere to be still, somewhere as perfect a home as anyone could ever find.
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
We are, above all, so intimately part of the natural world.
In yesterday’s post, I shared an email that I had sent to friend, Dan, that included:
I want to retreat from these areas and focus on what is most valuable to me.
Aspects of my life such as love, friendship with ‘old’ travelers, the natural world, being in the present, community, our animals (especially Pharaoh who is over 10), my writings, my book, our small world here at 4000 Hugo; you get my drift!
Well it didn’t take me long to come across an email that John Hurlburt had sent not so long ago recommending the following film.
Enjoy!
Published on May 5, 2012
Video by Scott Mckinley Productions, Produced for Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for Ad campaign. Licensed music by Kenny G.. This short video won Best of Category at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula Montana! The majority was shot on location in Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park and The National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Before you turn away from this, go across to the website of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Or do an image search on the ‘web’ where you will, for example, find this breathtaking picture:
*** If you are not into introspection, then look away and come back tomorrow! 😉 ***
Regular readers will know that quite frequently I write under a topic heading that could be regarded as within the classification of key subjects of our time. You know, such subjects as big government, big money, big power, and even climate change! 😉
Why has this been the case?
Well, because, a) most of my life I’ve tried to stay abreast of ‘current affairs’ and, b) within the broad label of ‘integrity’ it’s relevant to this blog. The sub-heading of the blog is after all: “Dogs are integrous animals. We have much to learn from them.” (Yes, I do know ‘integrous’ isn’t grammatically accurate! – Any suggestions for an alternative word?)
Stay with that while I go elsewhere.
Yesterday (Tuesday) a number of events ended up having a profound effect on me. On the face of it, utterly disconnected events.
The first was a post from Alex Jones on his blog The Liberated Way. The only common ground between Alex and me is that we both know Colchester in Essex, England. Alex because he lives there today, me because I used to have a business in Colchester in previous times. Other than that just a couple of bloggers separated by thousands of miles.
Anyway, the post was this one: Cycle of Life. Alex wrote:
Life seems like a cycle of birth, living and death.
I have the honour of following awesome bloggers on WordPress. I learn inspirational teachings from their intimate life experiences that they share with their readers. The cycle, for in my belief everything moves in cycles, of birth, life and death is if we are attentive to living life something we will often be reminded of in our interactions with others and nature.
Then later, adding:
Lijiun is a Buddhist who shares daily experiences from their own life with a Buddhist theme running through their blog. Lijiun has a cat called Little White who often acts as a teacher to them about the meaning of life and a reminder of Buddhist teachings. Little White two weeks ago brought home a stray kitten, which it adopted as like a surrogate parent. Yesterday Adik the kitten died, and a beautiful blog post by Lijiun in memory of Adik reminds us life is impermanent.
Almost absent-mindedly, I clicked on the link about the death of Adik and …… was shaken to my core; shaken by the power of the truth. I want to give you more than a link to the post – want to share some of the beautiful words.
IN MEMORY OF “ADIK”…
In memory of our little Kitten, “adik”….
Every moment in life is full of changes, this is a law of nature.
However, sometimes we might assume that everything unchanged.
“Adik”- Our stray kitten, so far, she was not showing a sign of sickness. Yesterday, in the evening, I discovered she was laid down under my neighbor car, not moving at all and look severe sick. We checked through her little body, no physical injuries and we tried our best to feed her water and Cat food. She refuse to take.
We need to send her to Veterinarian immediately as her condition was critical, however during Sunday, especially evening time. Most of the Veterinarian clinic is closed. We did our best to check through internet, we were able to locate one of the Vet and we rushed over.
In the journey, we played Mantra Chanting to our little kitten, We reached to the vet clinic, “Adik” was alive but in agony…. she was struggling for life. The only thing we can help was to keep chanting mantra, our only aspiration are for her to relieve from suffering, not to reborn in 3 lower realm, able to follow spiritual practice and attain enlightenment in the coming life.
“Adik” passed away in peace even before the Veterinarian came to treat her.
Then Lijiun went on to write that “This incident gave me a very clear insight on “death” and offered more of that insight: (These are extracts: Please read the full post.)
1. Impermanence Of life
Nothing is permanence , we need to live at now, not past or future.
When Death approached, no bargain time at all whether you are rich or poor, you are ready or not, you are healthy or sick, …
Do all good deeds when you are still alive, Follow spiritual path whenever you can, don’t give excuses that “I’ve plenty of time, I’ll do it when I am “FREE”? When You are Free, you might not able to do it…
2. Young or old…
Some of us, might assume that people died in old age. As such, we’ve a long journey in life.
Is It true???
I learned from “Adik” Sudden death – that death will happen in any age.
“Coffin is not meant for elderly people….” This is so profound.
Spend time with your family members, be filial piety to your parent, Pursuit your dream, Don’t wait until later day…. We are unsure we can survive until later day!
3. Breathing in & Out
Treasure every breath in & breath out…
Life is just in between Breath in & out.
Be Mindfulness in life!
4. What Can you bring???
What can you bring after death, “NOTHING”.
No matter, how much wealth, how much money, how many cars, how many bungalow, how high is your position, how lovely is your family… you can’t bring anything..
Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of life?”, “What do you want?”
5. Alone..
You, yourself need to face the death moment…
Nobody can help you… Don’t avoid the topic and say, “It’ll not happen to me so soon”..
Just get ready.
6. Love
“Adik” passed away at 8:30 pm.. according to my mom, Little White, Our lovely cat was “Meowing” loudly at home. He can sense that “Adik” was not longer around. Animals are just like us, they are loving. Please treat all beings well, no differentiation on form.
We are so touched that “Adik” came home before her death and spend her last moment with us.
Before we sent “Adik” to Vet, She “Meow” loudly to my mom as a good-bye & gratitude to my mom for taking care of her. It’s so touching!
Thank you to “Adik” for celebrating 16 happy day with us and leave behind a great lesson to us.
May “Adik” be relieved from suffering, not reborn in 3 lower realm and find the lasting happiness!
May all beings be Well and Happy!
Then also yesterday, I was chatting to someone who lives close to us; he and his partner-lady have become good friends. He was bemoaning the corruption of so much of his fine country and went on to say that the only way that he could function was to turn away from the big stuff, have no TV, ignore the constant news of this and that, the endless trials and tribulations in this world of ours. I listened in silence, only to find later that the words must have left a mark on me.
My dear friend, Dan Gomez, has known me for over 40 years. He was my Best Man at my wedding to Jean in November, 2010. He and I have been exchanging emails about the truth of the role of man in the raising of the temperature of the planet. I sent Dan the link to the death of Adik, the kitten. It seemed so much more important than the emails we had been exchanging about the ‘big’ subjects in life.
Then something happened overnight (Tuesday/Wednesday) because not long after I got to my PC this morning, I sent this email to Dan.
Dear Dan,
Yesterday was one of those days, one of those rare days I should have said, where my view of life was radically changed.
Partly because I’m still adjusting to Corinne’s death [my sister], partly because of something I read elsewhere, and other stuff best left for a phone call.
In essence, despite my anger at what is going on around us (big government, big money, big power, even climate change!) I want to retreat from these areas and focus on what is most valuable to me.
Aspects of my life such as love, friendship with ‘old’ travelers, the natural world, being in the present, community, our animals (especially Pharaoh who is over 10), my writings, my book, our small world here at 4000 Hugo; you get my drift!
I’m 70 in November, 2014. Corinne died in her 80th year. Time goes so quickly. No, life goes so quickly. Jean and I met 6 years ago this next December. I must turn away from the things over which I have little or no control and embrace the present. Just what dogs do so well. Live in the present.
It’s all about endeavouring to come to the end of one’s life hearing those immortal words of Edith Piaf, “Je regret rien.”
So dear reader of Learning from Dogs, if you are still ‘on frequency’ – Well done! You have stuck with my very long ramble!
Back to what gets written about in this place. If integrity means anything, it means I’m going to drop all the ‘big’ topics and focus entirely on what man can learn, nay, has to learn from dogs. Indeed, will close by republishing the full ‘home’ page below.
Pharaoh – just being a dog!
Dogs live in the present – they just are! Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value. Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years. That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.
Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
Last Friday, I published a post under the title of People, people, everywhere! Coincidentally, that same day over on Transition Town Payson‘s blog a post was published Urban Sprawl, a Vision from Space! It seemed like a fitting follow-on to that post on Learning from Dogs and is reproduced with the kind permission of the TTP team (thanks Rob).
Urban Sprawl has a major impact on all our Resources!
Urban Sprawl can be tracked
In the Sun Belt Areas of our country, phenomenal growth has occurred over the past 30 years. Satellite images from 1984 through 2012 show the impacts on the Landscape in a time lapse image that is a scary picture of what the next 30 years may bring.
A blog article from the Atlantic Cities website forwarded to me by my friend Dave H. It is a geographic time lapse of satellite images provided by Google. Their article titled “The Devastating Impact of 30 Years of Sprawl, as Seen From Space.” gives startling images of how our cities have grown.
“These GIFs were recorded from Google’s “Landsat Annual Time Lapse” tool by Samuel Aston Williams, a young Texas architect. Williams wanted to contribute something new to a startling series of showing three decades of human-landscape intervention recently produced by a collaboration of Google, NASA, TIME and others.”
The Atlantic Cities also published a blog titled “A Terrifying, Fascinating Time lapse of 30 Years Impact on Earth.” The images in this blog shows development in other places on the earth in a scary 30 year blink of an eye.
“Since the 1970s, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have been amassing satellite images of every inch of our planet as part of the Landsat program. Over time, the images reveal a record of change: of cities expanding, lakes and forests disappearing, new islands emerging from the sea off the coast of rising Middle East metropolises like Dubai.
If you could thumb through these historic pictures as if in a flip book, they would show stunning change across the earth’s surface, in both our natural environments and our man-made ones. Now, the digital equivalent of that experience is possible – three decades of global change as GIF – in a project unveiled today between NASA, the USGS, TIME, Google, and the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
Landsat images taken between 1984 and 2012 have been converted into a seamless, navigable animation built from millions of satellite photos. As Google wrote this morning on its blog: “We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.”
“October 11, 2002: While space technology was undergoing its spectacular birth during the 1950s and ’60s, and visionaries were predicting the spread of human colonies into space, another kind of human colony was spreading rapidly–right here on Earth!
It was the dawn of the modern suburb, a time of post-war prosperity when housing developments popped up across the landscape like mushrooms after a rain.
A half-century later, we now understand that many environmental problems accompany the outward spread of cities: fragmenting and destroying wildlife habitat, for example, and discharging polluted runoff water into streams and lakes.”
Urban Sprawl in the United States is covered in Photos by Christoph Gielen
The photo below was taken by Christoph Gielen. There is a symmetrical beauty to his aerial photos of Urban Areas. Please go to his Twisted Sifter website for phenomenal aerial photos of our Urban Centers.
A Great Aerial photo by Christoph Gielen of an Arizona Neighborhood
Urban Sprawl is defined in detail at the Wiki website;
An interesting phenomena is that Sprawl is a term only used in America for Urban Growth, “The term “sprawl” is most often associated with USland use; outside the US (and especially outside the Anglosphere), the term “peri-urbanisation” is often used to denote similar dynamics and phenomena.”
Smart Growth is the alternative to Urban Sprawl, unfortunately many people argue against high density living and it is still a contentious point. Do we continue to grow outward or upward. Will we feel more like rats trapped in a cage or free range rats. Read the following National Institute of Health article for their take on the impacts of Urban Sprawl vs. Smart Growth.
Urban Sprawl
“Urban sprawl in the United States has its origins in the flight to the suburbs that began in the 1950s. People wanted to live outside of city centers to avoid traffic, noise, crime, and other problems, and to have homes with more square footage and yard space. As suburban areas developed, cities expanded in geographic size faster than they grew in population. This trend has produced large metropolitan areas with low population densities, interconnected by roads. Residents of sprawling cities tend to live in single-family homes and commute to work, school, or other activities by automobile.”
“Although there is considerable evidence that urban sprawl has adverse environmental impacts and contributes to a variety of health problems—including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease implementation of policies designed to combat sprawl, such as smart growth, has proven to be difficult.”
Smart Growth
“Smart growth can be defined as a policy framework that promotes an urban development pattern characterized by high population density, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, preserved green spaces, mixed-use development (i.e., development projects that include both residential and commercial uses), available mass transit, and limited road construction.”
From Wiki these are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Urban Sprawl
Advantages
– More single family residences on larger lots.
– Lower land prices.
– Less experience of noise and pollution.
– Suburban areas generally associated with “sprawl” tend to have lower crime and higher-quality schools.
– Perceived overwhelming consumer preference for sprawl-type developments.
Disadvantages
– High car dependence.
– Inadequate facilities e.g.: cultural, emergency, health, etc.
– Higher per-person infrastructure costs.
– Inefficient street layouts.
– Low diversity of housing and business types.
– Higher per-capita use of energy, land, and water.
– Perceived low aesthetic value
Our Human Colonies seem to be spreading about as fast as our ice caps are melting. I wonder if there is any correlation?
Is it time for mankind to adapt to a new future? No, it’s past time. We have a lot of catching up to do in implementing new technologies to provide sustainable growth options in all areas; industry, transportation, energy production, carbon footprints, food supply, to taking care of our precious fresh water supplies.
How do we make our cities more sustainable and resilient? Start with telling your national, state and local politicians that you want a sustainable future. Let’s work together and make this happen.
Back last November, not long after Jean and I had moved up to Oregon, I saw this on the PRI website: The Sufficiency Economy – Envisioning a Prosperous Way Down. Very quickly I realised the importance of the essay and contacted the author requesting permission to republish on Learning from Dogs. That author was Dr. Samuel Alexander and permission was quickly given, leading to two essays: The simpler life and Where less is so much more.
Now fast forward to nearly a month ago and in came this email:
Samuel Alexander here, from the Simplicity Institute. I’ve recently published a new book, Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. Was wondering whether you were interested in posting either a review or an excerpt on your website?
I was flattered to have been asked and delighted to review the book.
First, some background. Dr. Alexander is a part-time lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia. He teaches a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Paradigm: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ in the Masters of Environment.
After the review was completed, I forwarded it to Sam just to check that I hadn’t made any technical errors. Within Sam’s reply to that email was his acknowledgement that his book fell into a genre that was not easily classified. Ergo, the book being fiction yet not a novel. Sam went on to muse that perhaps he should have been clearer about what the reader was going to get. He wondered if my review should mention that aspect. I said that I wouldn’t amend my review but would include an introduction to that effect, as now witnessed!
So to the review. (Note: For some reason, I was unable to prevent the paragraph spacing from being deleted in the published version. Hence the insertion of a single ‘-‘ after each paragraph.)
oooOOOooo
Entropia – Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation by Samuel Alexander
–
A review by Paul Handover
–
The title of the book didn’t offer this reader any clue about what might be coming. Nevertheless, very soon an experience of an ‘ah-ha’ moment arrived. Right on page one of the Acknowledgements when this sentence jumped off the page: “Henry Thoreau has been by far the greatest influence on my worldview, for it was he who awakened me to the insight that ‘superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only’.” [my emphasis] Wow, what an intriguing turn of phrase about wealth.
–
I plunged into the Prologue:
After the poets were banished from Plato’s Republic it is said that they set sail into unknown horizons in search of a new place to call home.
–
Shortly later reading:
But life proceeds in twists and turns, not straight lines. After losing consciousness in the midst of this perfect storm, the lost poets found themselves washed ashore on a small,fertile island, which was uninhabited and isolated entirely from the rest of civilisation. The boundless opportunities presented by this merciful twist of fate were immediately clear to all.
–
Some people believe this simple living community flourishes peacefully to this day, lost to the world in its own harmonious, aesthetic existence. But like Atlantis, the Isle of Furor Poeticus, as it has come to be known, has never been found.
* * *
The Isle of Furor Poeticus is a utopian romance of course – a myth. But we should remember that human existence has always been shaped and guided by myths and stories, so let us not dismiss the story of the lost poets too quickly or proudly. After all, we may not be so free from superstitions of our own. Modernity’s ‘myth of progress’ might itself just be a story we have been telling ourselves in recent centuries, one in fact that could soon be dismissed as a story no longer worth telling. Indeed, perhaps that book is closing before our very eyes – has already closed – leaving us to reflect on its themes from beyond as we step forth into unknown pages. And yet, it seems we have not found a new story by which to live. We are the generation in-between stories, desperately clinging to yesterday’s story but uncertain of tomorrow’s. Adrift in the cosmos, without a narrative in which to lay down new roots, humanity marches on – lost and directionless. But then again, perhaps the new words we need are already with us. Perhaps we just need to live them into existence.
–
Beautiful, magical writing right up to the closing sentences of the Prologue:
By choosing to do so we could again become the poets of our own lives and of a new generation, instead of merely reading out a pre-written script to an audience that is no longer listening. So open your mind, gentle reader, for the future is but clay in the hands of our imaginations.
–
We are being called to make things new. [again, my emphasis]
–
The novel, for it is a work of fiction, opens in substance with the account of Mortimer Flynn, a wealthy Texas oil magnate and son and only child of a Welsh coal industrialist, who having achieved “everything of which he had ever dreamed” comes to the realisation that he has no idea at all as to the purpose of his life. From this life-changing reassessment of his journey, his profound crisis of conscious, comes the purpose of the book. A story of a group of people who settle down in a remote South Pacific island, the island of Entropia. A “story about a community that became isolated on its small island in the wake of industrial civilisation’s collapse, during the third decade of the twenty-first century.”
–
Now, it’s fair to say that at this point I was truly hooked on the book. This was going to be the read of my life. Because it reflected my own belief that humanity was at the point, perhaps beyond the point, where the growing threats to our natural world threatened our moral obligations to the generations that follow.
–
However, somewhere during the second chapter, the style of writing started to intrude into my absorption of the story. At first the intrusion was more like a fly buzzing around; a minor irritation. Then it got to the stage where I had to stop reading and ponder on why I felt so uncomfortable with this reading experience. I was by now well into the third chapter.
–
Still couldn’t put my finger on what the problem was. Returned to the book but noticed that I was skim reading and had forcibly to focus on fully reading each page. After all, I was reading the book for review purposes!
–
Then it struck me. There were no characters coming to life off the page. Consequently, there was no dialogue. It didn’t read like a novel, much more like a report. That was the key to me re-establishing my relationship with the story; the book. Because despite the unusual style for a work of fiction, the value inherent in the pages was beyond measure. Here was a book that described in great detail the way a community discovered the reality of a sustainable way of life. How this group of a couple of thousand souls reinvented a society, a sustainable society, out of the ashes of a failed industrial civilisation.
–
I read on.
–
Later on the book described how the community looked at the way they governed themselves, how they set up representative systems and then, on page 119, came something that really punched me in the face, figuratively speaking. It was introduced, thus:
Eventually a short constitutional document was drafted by the Advisory Council and put to a referendum by the People’s Council, and this document received 94 per cent support. It is reproduced in its entirety below, as it serves as the best summary of our social, economic and political vision.
–
And proceeded:
Charter of the Deep Future
ENOUGH, FOR EVERYONE, FOREVER
.
We affirm that providing ‘enough, for everyone, forever’ is
the defining objective of our economy, which we seek to
achieve by working together in free association.
.
We affirm that everyone is free to create as an aesthetic
project the meaning of their own lives, while acknowledging
that this freedom legitimately extends only so far as others
can have the same freedom. Freedom thus implies restraint.
.
We affirm that our inclusive democracy does not
discriminate on such grounds as race, ethnicity, gender,
age, sexuality, politics, or faith.
.
We affirm that generations into the deep future are entitled
to the same freedoms as present generations.
.
We affirm that respecting the deep future requires maintaining
a healthy environment.
.
We affirm that technology can help to protect our
environment only if it is governed by an ethics of sufficiency,
not an ethics of growth. Efficiency without sufficiency is lost.
.
We affirm that maintaining a healthy environment requires
creating a stationary state economy that operates within
environmental and energy limits.
.
We affirm that a stationary state means stabilising
consumption and population, transitioning to renewable
sources of energy, and adapting to reduced energy supply.
.
We affirm that strict limits on material accumulation are
required if a stationary state is to maintain a just distribution
of resources and avoid corrosive inequalities.
.
We affirm that property rights are justifiable only to the
extent they serve the common good, including the overriding
interests of humanitarian and ecological justice.
.
We affirm that a stationary state economy depends on a
culture that embraces lifestyles of material sufficiency and
rejects lifestyles of material affluence.
.
We affirm that material sufficiency in a free society provides
the conditions for an infinite variety of meaningful, happy,
and fulfilling lives.
___________________________
–
Well that had such an impact on this reader. For this reason. The contrast between the reality of our present 21st Century life and the lives of those souls on Entropia was like night versus day. Enough, For everyone, Forever. If ever we needed a new cry from the heart, a new cry of hope and purpose, it was now and those are the words of that cry.
–
Entropia is a book you should read. It is a book that offers much hope, much guidance and much direction. As Samuel Alexander wrote on page 148, “Tranquillity and angst are both contagious, so it matters which of them we feed.”
Without doubt, President Obama’s recent speech on climate change was very welcome. I fervently hope this is a genuine commitment to change the course of the biggest and most powerful nation on our planet. Abandoning the Keystone XL pipeline would be the proof to my mind. UPDATE: But read this!
But the runaway, exponential growth in CO2 has a brother; huge growth in the world’s population.
I’m going to ‘smack you in the face‘ with this population chart.
To put that into context from a personal perspective, when I was born in 1944 the global population was 2.5 billion persons. Some 4.7 billion fewer people than today!
But that prediction from the U.S Census Bureau in June, 2011 is already out of date!
13 June 2013 – The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to increase by 1 billion over the next 12 years and reach 9.6 billion by 2050, according to a United Nations report launched today, which points out that growth will be mainly in developing countries, with more than half in Africa.
Now please humour me for a few moments. If the world population is presently 7.2 billion people and by 2050 the prediction is 9.2 billion people, that is an increase of 2,400,000,000 persons.
The end of 2050 is 438 months away. Now do the maths. That growth in population in that time period is the equivalent of an increase in population of 5,479,000 persons every single month!
Need to find a darkened room – I feel a headache coming on!
Learning from Dogs 