Huichol art

Some Huichol yarn paintings.  Surprisingly, these art forms of using beads or yarn held in place by resin or wax didn't develop until the early 1960's supposedly at the suggestion of an American artist.  The original inspiration of many subjects is of course peyote visions.

Beaded figurines and "paintings."  There's even a VW "Bug" car covered with over 2 million beads in some museum. 

Some Crazy African Greys

Greys seem to pick up on telephone conversations really well.

More Alan Watts

Here he takes a somewhat Ram Dass-ian Hindu perspective of life as a game of hide and seek, or the divine disguised as oneself and the world.  This perspective is all fine and dandy but without an efficient technique of cultivating and making this realization an inner experience, it is likely to fade away during the daily grind of existence.  

I think what can remedy this is the daily discipline of sitting meditation.  All skills are acquired through disciplined practice of a proper technique, and the skill of becoming fully awake and staying that way is no exception.

Tara mantra

Tara is a female Buddha that comes in many forms, most common white or green.  White Tara represents compassion, long life, healing and serenity, while Green Tara is enlightened activity that removes obstacles, fears and worries.  All in all there are 21 emanations.  As John Blofeld points out, the Chinese Kuan Yin is not a female version of the male Avalokiteshvara but rather a Chinese version of the Tibetan Tara figure.

 

21 emanations of Tara above.

This Russian video about Tara certainly pulls out all the stops.

Roman Army

A few examples of Roman reenactments, the Germans and the British seem to be the most avid fans.

From the Sublime to the Silly

Having viewed a few blogs about pens I purchased a blue Kaweco Sport AL with medium nib a while back.  The AL I presume stands for aluminum, which is what the guy in the video is trying to remember at one point.  This is a fountain pen.  It is designed to hold their own ink cartridges only, and apparently many lamented there was no converter for it.  A converter is a device with a piston inside that enables one to use ink from a bottle, and is inserted in the pen where the original cartridge is located.  Recently I discovered Kaweco now makes a converter for its Sport pen, as explained in the video located at this site. For Kaweco Sport fans, this is a big deal as now they can use their favorite ink with it.

Kaweco sounds like a Japanese company but is actually German, it started in Heidelberg in the 1880's.  This particular pen is quite short but one can make it longer by placing the cap on the end when writing.

There are a lot of interesting pen blogs out there on the Internet, it seems that really good fountain pens quite often cost over a hundred dollars, so it can get to be an expensive hobby if one takes it seriously.  Another German pen that is popular but not so expensive is the Lamy Safari series, for example.  

 

Alan Watts on Buddhism

One of the great popularizers of Buddhism in the West, a man who like Allen Ginsberg created his own career out of his following his Muse. 

Yet More Moody Blues

"Have You Heard" track from 1969 album "On the Threshold of a Dream."  Some rather mellow lyrics:

Now you know that you are real,
Show your friends that you and me
Belong to the same world,
Turned on to the same word,
Have you heard?

Now you know that you are free,
Living all your life at ease.
Each day has it's always,
A look down life's hallways, doorways,
To lead you there.

Now you know how nice it feels,
Scatter good seed in the fields.
Life's ours for the making,
Eternity's waiting, waiting,
For you and me.
Now you know that you are real,
Show your friends that you and me
 
Belong to the same world,
Turned on to the same word,
Have you heard?


The verse: "Now you know that you are real," followed by "Now you know that you are free," and "Now you know how nice it feels" all sound almost like Gnostic or mystical sayings about some sort of spiritual realization.  Note the repetition of the word know.   It's not a statement of personal opinion but rather the certainty of some positive force one has encountered within and without oneself, presumably.  And as with many such numinous experiences, one encounters a sense of eternity that one would like to share with one's friends.  This might even be called the "eternal now" mystics talk about, as now is repeated just as often as the word know in the song.  One might say that nowness is the key to eternity.  For example: Living all your life at ease, Each day has it's always seems to reinforce this idea of the importance of living in the moment, the present blossoming into eternity.

Marcus Aurelius - The Stoic Emperor

Today is not only St. Patrick's Day but the anniversary of the death of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died from the same plague that wiped out millions in the Empire at that time.  This was at Vindobono, modern day Vienna, on the Danube River, when he died in 180 AD after four years of holding back a Germanic incursion into the heart of the Empire.  Thus he kept the Roman Empire breathing room for a century before further problems developed, leaving the Empire vulnerable to outside incursions.

Rome had a running battle with barbarians almost from its start: the Gauls sacked Rome in 387 BC, they invaded in 225 BC, in 113 Germanic tribes defeated Roman armies and invaded Gaul and Spain, in 102 BC Marius defeated part of them, in 9 AD an entire legion was lost in the Teutoburg Forest, in the years up to 180 AD we have Aurelius preventing a breakthrough by Germanic tribes, in 255 Goths invade Macedonia and later Greece, in 378 Visigoths defeat the Eastern Emperor at Adrianople,in 410 the sack Rome. 

So aside from being a brilliant advocate of Stoicism in his Meditations, Aurelius sacrificed his comfort and life to preserve civilization from the recurrent barbarian incursions and thus kept the flame of Greco-Roman culture going longer than it might have.

Falchion sword

 

 

The falchion sword was popular in Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries.  At first modern historians thought it was a poor man's weapon, but later realized it was often used by knights as well.  Being a single-edged one handed weapon, yet not overly heavy, it could be wielded like a large meat cleaver with great effect.  It was primarily a cutting weapon, and could hack off limbs, but the sharp tip could penetrate chain mail as well.