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 "A modern astronomical view says that everything in the universe is moving uniformly away from everything else in all directions into space, so there is no center point in the cosmos at all. We live with no fixed reference point. From one perspective, this understanding produces the desolate feeling that there is no home. But from another perspective, this realization shows us directly that every point is home. We are free; we do not need to fix on a single center for refuge, for safety. This is love, this is happiness, where our refuge is unbounded, and we are always at home."
 Sharon Salzberg (From her book "Loving-kindness")

Loving-kindness

“Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings”

The Buddha’s words on loving-kindness

I love this quote by Buddha and I want to add that both a mother and a father love their child, and their love can be projected on to all living beings.

My hubby has cultivated a special interest in meditation and mindfulness. Six weeks ago he encouraged me to join a meditation retreat. I’m glad I followed his advice. Since I attended this retreat I’ve been practicing meditation every day.

I’m not going to discuss the benefits of meditation on this post. There is research on the psychological and medical effects of meditation, but I will focus on another dimension that is often overlooked. Yet it has the potential to permeate all aspects of our lives.

  After I expressed my interest in loving-kindness meditation, the kind lady who led the retreat gave me this book by Sharon Salzberg entitled “Loving-kindness”.

 You don’t need to practice meditation or to be a Buddhist to appreciate the power of this book.  It inspires you to build a fortress of loving-kindness, regardless of what you encounter.

 The wisdom on these pages is a harbor of peace, a beacon of hope.
 How do we find peace amid the chaos of the world?

 It is through metta that we take the power of love beyond the sphere of our thoughts.

 Metta is the sense of loving-kindness that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend that things are other than they way they are. It overcomes the illusion of separateness, of not being part of a whole.

 Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves as well as all parts of the world. We can open to everything with the healing force of loving-kindness. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains.

  

 The other root meaning for metta is “friend”. A good friend is someone who is constant in our times of happiness and also in our times of adversity or unhappiness. A friend will not forsake us when we are in trouble nor rejoice in our misfortune. The Buddha described a true friend as being a helper, someone who will protect us when we are unable to take care of ourselves, who will be refuge to us when we are afraid.

 The practice of metta is also about befriending ourselves and uncovering the force of love that is stronger than fear, anger and guilt.  It has nothing to do with sentimentality and desire.

 Desire says, “I will love you, I will take care of you, I will offer you this or that as long as you meet my expectations and satisfy my needs.” This kind of “love” is a bargain based on attachment and desire.

 "True happiness cannot be found in something or some person, because as everything changes, that level of happiness is bound to be temporary."
                  Sharon Salzberg

  

 Many human beings tend to live under the delusion of separation, and yet we are all interconnected. Those who cause suffering do so out of ignorance. Those who slander, gossip, kill, hate, rape, torture, do so without knowing that they are hurting themselves. But hate only perpetuates hate.

 Consider anger, for example. We don't have to deny it. Anger is something we have to acknowledge and accept. The energy of it can be turned into wisdom. It can encourage us to do something to change or improve a certain situation. 
 We have to remember, however, that anger is like the clouds over a mountain. It is temporary. The mountain symbolizes the strength of love: it is the solid foundation that does not disappear, even when the clouds are dense and seem to conceal the mountain.
  All dark emotions can be overpowered by love. 

 I picked the image of an ocean at the beginning of this post to symbolize our inner worlds. Our inner world is boundless. By meditating we tap into it and meet that spaciousness. The vastness of our interior worlds is a part of the outer world as a whole. We are all connected to a boundless universe. 
 When we sit to meditate we do so without expectations. We are not attached to the outcome of the practice.
 "Loving-kindness" tells us life anecdotes and delves into many subjects: kindness,  compassion, morality, suffering, judgments, envy, jealousy, forgiveness and many others.
  Sharon Salzberg explains the concept of mudita.  I sense that many people I've encountered have trouble understanding the concept of mudita. Interestingly,  I can't find a word in English for mudita. Mudita is the joy and happiness that we feel at other people's happiness. It is the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being. When I was writing this post I reflected on the concept of mudita. 
  Why do people find it so difficult to believe in mudita? Why do they treat it with distrust? Are their minds clouded by competition and judgments?

I will share some quotes from this book:

“We can give in so many ways. We give materially, in terms of goods and money. We give time, service, caring. Even to allow someone to be just the way they are is a kind of giving. We have endless opportunities every day to give.”

“As mudita grows, we see that the happiness of others is our happiness; sympathetic joy allows us to open further and further with loving-kindness, so more and more we really do want other people to be happy.”

"Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this commitment fills us with joy and love, and a great deal of self-respect."

“There is always blame in this world. If you say too much, some people will blame you. If you say a little bit, some people will blame you. If you say nothing at all, some people will blame you. This is the very nature of life. No one in this world experiences only pleasure and no pain, and no one experiences only gain and no loss. When we open to this truth, we discover that there is no need to hold on or push away.”

“Despite the hatred and monstrous egoism evident in some human actions, remembering the fortitude, courage and love people are capable of can awaken our appreciation. When we feel happy for others we feel happy and connected ourselves.”

"I have met beggars on the streets of India whose spirits were enormous. I have seen a beggar in Calcutta, with no arms or legs because of leprosy, crawling along the streets with a bucket in her mouth into which people dropped money. Despite her suffering, she wanted to live. "
"Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned. Love is not a matter of currency or exchange. Everyone has enough to cultivate it. Metta reunites us with what it means to be alive and unbound."

Thank you

"Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength."~ Sigmund Freud

 I want to thank all the people who took the time to read and comment on my previous post. It takes energy and wisdom to face the facts. I also appreciated your feedback. I replied to all your comments today.
  From now on I will be publishing a post every Saturday; my plan is to keep a regular schedule for this blog. (I may add a post on a weekday occasionally, but this is not going to happen very often.)
  This is the poem I selected this month. It was written by Karen Little. I also want to thank all the poets who submit to Southern Pacific Review.
 It is an honor to read your poetry.
    Till next Saturday.

The effects of prejudice in America

“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.”~ Aldous Huxley.

A prejudice is a silent evil demon; its voice is reality.

A study published by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues at Yale University provides some important facts that we should not ignore.

 In this study half the scientists were given the job application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the female applicants were rated significantly lower than the males in competence, how likely they were to be hired, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.

 The scientists also offered lower starting salaries to the “female” applicants: $26,507.94 compared to $ 30,238.10

  I also want to make clear that both male and female scientists were equally guilty of committing gender bias. (In other words, the gender bias has nothing to do with all the lies that we hear on a regular basis to justify the difference in salaries.)

 Four in ten American households with children under 18 include a mother who is the sole or primary earner for her family according to a Pew Research Center Analysis of Census and polling data. It has quadrupled since 1960.  Yet women in the US make an average of 0.77 cents to men’s $1.00 doing the same job.

  Women constitute over half of the United States population, but a woman has never been able to become president or vice-president. 

In 2013 women represented only 10% of all governors and held 18% of all US congressional seats.  

 Only 12 of the 100 largest cities have female mayors.
 Twenty-three states have never had a woman as a governor (California and New York are in this list).
 Do you think these figures reflect “equality”?

There is evidence of gender discrimination against female candidates. In 2008 an experiment was done where two congressional candidate credentials were presented to a sample of respondents: Republicans were more likely to say they would vote for a father with young children rather than a mother with young children. They were also more likely to vote for women without small children than with small children.  

   Not only do voters discriminate on the bias of gender, political parties do as well. When a sample of female state legislators was asked whether or not they believed that their political party encouraged women more, less or equally encouraged women and men, 44% of the sample responded that the party was more encouraging to men. Only 3% responded that the party encouraged women more than men.

  When I was preparing this post I came across the comment of a woman who had worked as an engineer in three countries: the United States of America, the UK and Norway. She said that she had endured sexism in the workplace in both US and UK, but not in Norway. She also shared this interesting article. As far as I know many women in Norway work part-time and the economy did not collapse.

 In Norway gender equality is taken so seriously that they recently passed a bill to make military service compulsory for women.This is not something I would recommend in the United States of America because  sexism is routine in American Military Academies according to the Pentagon. 

  A sexist culture is deeply ingrained there. Not surprisingly, Defense officials said that students at the academies see sexual assault and crude behaviors as an almost accepted part of their academy experience. Victims feel peer pressure not to report incidents.

  Sexism does not always happen on an unconscious level. It comes to the surface and speaks to us clearly when we hear remarks like the one made last year by Erick Erickson when he said that situations in which women are the breadwinners are “unnatural”. He also stated that the male is the one that has to dominate. 
   Sexism still exists, so why do so many people get mad when we talk about it? Why do they believe that we should ignore the matter and pretend that it does not exist?

 The US Constitution embraces equality and liberty, but reality has not caught up with it yet.

O Pioneers

O you daughters of the West!

O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!

Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,

Pioneers! O pioneers

Walt Whitman

 O Pioneers is about the life  of immigrants who settled down on the plains of Nebraska in the late 1800’s. Willa Cather deals with many fascinating themes that make this novel a timeless story:  love, friendship, social prejudices and the relationship of the immigrants with their new environment. (I fell in love with My Antonia three years ago and I didn't know I would love O Pioneers just as much).

 The heroine of this novel is Alexandra Bergson, a woman ahead of her times.  Before her father passed away, when she was still a teenager, he entreated Alexandra to be responsible for the land. Therefore, the financial future of her family fell upon her shoulders.

 Eking out a living in Nebraska meant making the land productive and sustainable.  Unlike her mother, who was unable to adjust to the demands of the new place, Alexandra found ways to make the land prosperous, enabling her siblings to make a living on their farms.  
 Alexandra had three younger brothers, and she was able to surpass her siblings in terms of financial accomplishments. However, she was not free of the gender inequalities that shaped the prejudices and behaviors.

   Willa Cather is skillful at showing how women were judged differently from men, and some of these judgments continue to resonate.  I will analyze these aspects of the story because I think they tend to be overlooked by the critics.

 Alexandra was confident and practical, but she did not have time or energy to devote to love. Her brothers were  ashamed of the fact that she was still single at age forty. On the other hand, her friend Marie was married. She fell in love with Frank and married him hastily, but she later found herself in an unhealthy relationship.

 Marie was outspoken, spontaneous and affectionate whereas her husband was possessive and short-tempered. He drank too much alcohol and often bullied her. This marital mismatch led Marie to withdraw from him and to fall in love with another man: Emil (Alexandra’s youngest brother).  

 Alexandra was too pragmatic to sense that Emil and Marie were in love with each other.  She was interested in her male friend Carl Linstrum, but her brothers Lou and Oscar opposed a potential love relationship with him because they were convinced that Carl was only attracted to her money. Besides, they hinted at the idea that a man would not care for a single woman once she is in her forties. Through this conflict Willa Cather shows how the male characters feel they have a right to her money and to opine about her personal affairs. They also imply that as  women age, society does not expect them to get married. 

Did the same idea apply to men? No; it is made clear in the novel that Carl was expected to marry somebody younger. Hence, this idea carries the innuendo that a woman is a kind of love object that only serves the purpose of marriage when she is young.

 I will share some extracts of their conversations to support my statements.

“Lou turned to his brother. ‘This is what comes of letting a woman meddle in business,’ he said bitterly. ‘We ought to have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her. We thought you had good sense, Alexandra. We never thought you’d do anything foolish.

“Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles. ‘Listen, Lou. Don’t talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your own hands years ago. I suppose you mean before you left home. But how could you take hold of what wasn’t there? I’ve got most of what I have now since we divided the property; I’ve built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with you.

“Oscar spoke up solemnly. ‘The property of a family really belongs to the men of the family, no matter about the title.”

“Everybody’s laughing to see you get took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he’s nearly five years younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Alexandra, you are forty years old!”

 ‘I only meant’, said Oscar, ‘that she is old enough to know better, and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it long ago, and not making a fool of herself now.’

Another reason why I believe Alexandra was ahead of her times was her understanding of Ivar.  Ivar was a sensitive compassionate man who probably had a mental condition that made him vulnerable. People did not understand him, so they criticized him and shunned him. Alexandra, on the other hand, knew that Ivar was in need of empathy:

“As Ivar talked, his gloom lifted. Alexandra had found that she could often break his fasts and long penances by talking to him and letting him pour out the thoughts that troubled him.”

  Alexandra stood up for him whenever people tried to have him sent to an asylum. She continued to let him work for her despite the rumors against him. She disregarded what other people said and endeavored to support him instead of getting rid of him.

 After something bad happened, Alexandra found out that Marie and Emil had been in love with each other, and she was very disappointed with Marie. Interestingly, she blames Marie for the love triangle, another sign of how the social dynamics played against women by making them guilty of situations that do not only involve the female sex. (After all, her brother Emil had never been blind to the fact that Marie was indeed a married woman).

 “She blamed Marie bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who loved her?  That was the strangest thing of all. Was there then, something wrong in being warmhearted and impulsive like that? Alexandra hated to think so.”

 Later in the story Carl would make her see that it had not been Marie’s fault. Yet there's still a tinge of blame in his statement:
 "It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra. I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs...they are too full of love, too full of life."

 Even though Alexandra and Marie were so different, they had something in common: their love for the land. This feeling for the land was a source of comfort and hope. Willa Cather describes this deep connection in her poetic prose:

“The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

  The metaphor of love seemed to be inscribed in the landscapes around them:

“There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.”

Have you read this literary classic? Share your thoughts.

On Freedom and banned books

"Think wrongly if you please but in all cases think for yourself."~ Doris Lessing

In this era of television screens everywhere, drones and cookies I think of George Orwell and conclude that he was indeed a visionary. Television screens are highly efficient at manipulating the masses, and then there is another issue that curbs freedom: censorship.

 Those who ban books may believe that they have a higher “sense of morality” but I doubt the morality of those who abuse their power by banning books.

 I believe censoring a book is a violation of people’s freedom: the decision to read or not to read a book belongs to each individual person.

  What does the act of banning a book entail? Let’s analyze it.

 When somebody bans a book or makes an attempt to ban it, they are taking for granted that their opinion is more relevant than anybody else’s opinions. They do not give others the chance to read the book themselves and to reach their own conclusions regarding the quality or the significance of it.

   Do the people who censor books believe they are superior to the rest of the population? They are certainly not an example of humility but the epitome of manipulation and control which George Orwell portrayed so well in “1984” and “Animal Farm”. Not surprisingly these books have been censored and are still censored in some places.

 Another term that I want to challenge is that of the “challenged books”. When they say that a book has been challenged, they mean that a group of persons made an attempt to censor it or to restrict the access to it in some way.
 Challenging a book should carry a different meaning, though. It should be about reading a book and having an open discussion about it. In order to grow and learn we should all be allowed to read the book first. Then we can have a healthy discussion on it.

 I appreciate the opportunity to read other people’s opinions on books I read.  I may agree or disagree with them, but in both cases I find it enriching to learn what other people think about the same stories I have read. It is also thrilling to discover the different paths that a book can take in the minds of different readers.

 When I was writing this post I came across the news that a blogger in Saudi Arabia will be flogged 50 times every Friday during 20 weeks in a public square because he criticized Islam on his blog. His name is Raif Badawi.
 Raif Badawi is also jailed for ten years  due to the fact that he was brave enough to express his opinion.  (George Orwell shows in his novel 1984 how  prisoners of conscience  are subjected to ill-treatment and boundless cruelty.)
   Raif should be in Canada with his family now, but he is currently in prison, suffering the consequences of this torture.
I have signed a petition to ask the authorities to release him and to drop the charges. Here is the link.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King Jr., who was born on this day in 1929.

Van Gogh's letters

 “And men are often faced with the impossibility of doing anything, imprisoned in some kind of horrible cage. There is also, I know, deliverance, eventual deliverance. A reputation ruined rightly or wrongly, embarrassment, circumstance, misfortune, all these make people prisoners. You can’t say what it is that shuts you up, what walls you in, what seems to bury you alive, but you still feel some kind of bars, some kind of cage, some kind of walls.

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? It is every deep, genuine affection. To be friends, brothers, to love, that opens the prison by its sovereign power, its powerful charm. Someone who does not have that remains bereft of life.

But where sympathy is reborn, life is reborn.

Sometimes the prison is called prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of this or that, distrust, false shame.”

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh’s words are rooted in a timeless universal truth. 
Reading his letters seems to make time come to a halt. It throws me into a deep meditative state of serenity. And it is also akin to the effects of connecting with a sincere friend.

 (I am not going to focus on his death here, but I want to clarify that van Gogh did NOT commit suicide. He was shot to death by another person. )

 I believe every person who endeavors to take an artistic discipline seriously will benefit from reading Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. There are various reasons why his deep insights and wisdom are of much relevance today.

  His letters reveal his self-taught journey in drawing and painting. The drawings and paintings that he enclosed in the letters are shown; they correlate with his musings, reflections and life anecdotes (some of them are funny!).

 Van Gogh shares his learning process with painstaking details. He also describes nature and people with great care, and from his unique interactions with them we learn about his exquisite sensitivity and intelligence. Being a keen observer of his surroundings was vital to his artworks.

 “The doctor is just as I would like him to be, he looks rather like some of the heads by Rembrandt: a magnificent forehead and a very sympathetic expression, I hope I have learned something from him, in the sense that I hope I will be able to deal with my models more or less in the same way he deals with his patients, that is, to be firm with them and to put them in the required position without further ado. It is marvelous with how much patience this man treats his patients himself by massaging, applying ointments, and handling them in all kinds of ways, infinitely more firmly than an attendant, and how he has the knack of removing the scruples and getting people in the position he needs them to be. There is an old man who would be superb as a St. Jerome: a thin, tall, wiry, brown and wrinkled body, with joints so fabulously clear and expressive that it makes me melancholy not to have him as a model.”

Through his delightful prose and images we witness how his work progressed over time; we can appreciate the skills that accrued as a result of his persistent dedication and passion. (Yes, he was talented, but talent alone wouldn't have been enough to accomplish what he accomplished). 
 Every time I contemplate his masterpieces I immerse myself in those places as if I were a real visitor. Not only do I see the settings he portrays but I also absorb their moods; I become a part of them.

  Last but not least, I admire his humility. The thoughts and feelings he expresses are humble and genuine. His letters unravel his soul and regale us with his deep introspection and friendly voice.

 I will share some of his quotes and I hope that the energy of his words spreads and becomes contagious.
Thank you, Vincent.

“How enormously pedantic it is really, how absurd, a man who thinks that he knows it all and that it will be as he thinks, as if there were not always in all things in life a je ne sais quoi of great good, and also an element of bad, from which we feel that there is something infinite above us, infinitely greater, mightier than we are.”

“A man who does not feel himself small, who does not realize that he is just a speck, how wrong he is basically.”
“Art demands a tenacious effort, an effort in spite of everything, and continuous observation. By tenacious effort I mean in the first place constant labor, but also not abandoning your views at someone else’s say-so.”
"In my view I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life."
"My moods vary, of course, but nevertheless I have on average acquired a certain serenity. I have a strong belief in art, a certain faith that it is a powerful current that carries a man to haven, although he himself has to put in an effort too. I think it is such a blessing when a man has found his metier, that I don't count myself among the unfortunates."