Today I had my first experience of Zen Buddhism. I have been studying Shambala or Theravada, Vajrayana or Mahayana. This one places a lot of importance on the seating style, Zazen. It was quite relaxing and wonderful.

The proper attitude in zazen starts with the proper body position, and the proper breath.  To broaden  and deepen the level of our perception, we must let go of everything, but the present moment.  When our mind wanders to  the troubles or joys of yesterday, today or tomorrow, we must be careful not to scold ourselves, but gently return to the  present moment, and the present breath.  To help us achieve harmony with the present, we count our exhalations up to ten  and then begin the count again.  If we lose track of the count we very simply and gently return to the count of one.  Continue  this counting until the end of the sit, or until the counting naturally drops away of its own accord when we have achieved  harmony with our physical form and surroundings.  Sensations (thoughts, feelings, imaginings, sounds...) will naturally  arise internally or externally.  Do not discourage or encourage sensations, simply see them for what they are and let them  go.  Cut, cut, cut, do not follow thoughts or sounds, but do not exclude them.  Let them pass, and like the clouds of the sky,  they will periodically drift away leaving a clear blue-sky-mind.  The mind is like a pond, it is often disturbed, unreflective  and full of silt.  If we just let the pond be, the silt will eventually settle, and the pond will become calm and clearly reflect  reality.  Imagine what it would be like to try and force the water to quiet; it would only make things worse.  Don't try and  stop thoughts, it's impossible, but don't follow them (i.e. don’t judge, analyze, fix, solve or discriminate in any way). Leave  yourself alone, and your mind will eventually become naturally clear and illuminating.

History

Dai Bai Zan Cho Bo Zen Ji or "The Listening to the Dharma Zen Temple on Great Plum Mountain" was founded in Seattle,WA by Zen Master Genki Takabayashi. Genki Roshi was invited by the Seattle Zen Center (founded by Dr. Glenn Webb, at the time a University of Washington Art History professor) to become the resident teacher in the fall 1978.   He accepted, and by 1983 formalized his teaching style around a small group of students and founded Cho Bo Zen Ji.  Before Genki Roshi came to Seattle, he trained for nearly twenty years at Daitoku-Ji, the head Rinzai temple in Japan, founded in the fourteenth century. In addition Genki Roshi directed a Rinzai temple in Kamakura, Japan.  He entered the monastery when he was eleven years old.

After twenty years of tirelessly giving himself to the transmission of Buddha Dharma to the United States, in 1997 he retired as our teacher (see Retirement Teisho), got married and moved to Montana.  There he has planted the seeds for yet another American Zen group, and doing the activities he loves best, gardening, pottery, calligraphy, writing and cooking. In 1990, Genki Roshi fully ordained two priests, including Kokan Genjo Marinello Osho and Daiju Gentei Diedricks Osho, who now lives in the Bay Area. On April 8th, 2007, Genki Roshi also fully ordained Genko Ni Osho.

Genjo Osho began his Zen training in 1975, and was ordained an unsui(priest in training) in 1980. In 1981-82 he trained at RyutakuJi in Japan.  Genjo Osho is assisted by Genko Kathy Blackman Ni Osho.  Genjo Osho was formally installed as our second Abbot on Rinzai Zenji's (d.866) memorial day January 10th, 1999.  In addition to being our Abbot, Genjo Osho is a psychotherapist in private practice, a certificated spiritual director from a program affiliated with the Vancouver School of Theology, married to wife, Carolyn, and devoted father to daughter, Adrienne.  Our temple is in the Rinzai Zen Dharma Line, and now that Genki Roshi is retired, Genjo Marinello Osho trains under the tutelage of Ven. Eido T. Shimano Roshi, abbot of DaiBosatsu Monastery  in New York, who has certified Genjo Osho as a Dharma Teacher. Genjo Osho-san is a member of the American Zen Teachers Association.

Another wonderful article that mom sent me..

Love Thine Enemy

How do you find compassion for a difficult person? Verse 33 of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra offers some guidance.

By Judith Lasater

To many Americans, yoga is simply the practice of postures at the neighborhood health club. For others, it conjures up the image of a hermit perched in a cave high in the Himalayas. Either way, yoga practice is usually considered something fundamentally done to benefit your own development. Even if you are taking a yoga class with others, your practice is still solitary and focused on you, as is the time spent stretching your hamstrings on your sticky mat at home.

Reading the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali generally reinforces this understanding. This book, which many scholars consider the primary text of yoga, gives an in-depth description of yogic states and the practices associated with them. It is essentially about the internal process of learning how to disidentify with the causes of suffering and thus reach the goal of yoga, merging with the Divine.

Whether we choose a more casual view of yoga as the solitary practice of postures or the classical interpretation of yoga as a practice for escaping the bonds of avidya (ignorance) and entering the state of samadhi, the practice doesn't seem to directly address the day-to-day social relationships of those of us who live in the complex, busy world of families, jobs, and car pools. But if you look closely, the Sutra does offer advice about the social dimension of life. In Chapter 1, verse 33, Patanjali says, "By cultivating friendship, compassion, gladness, and indifference toward those who are comfortable, those suffering, the virtuous, and the non-virtuous, the mind is purified and made pleasant."

This verse is the second in a series of seven techniques suggested to reduce the chatterings of the mind, which are said to be the impediments to wholeness. In verse 33, Patanjali could just be presenting these practices as a form of meditation. But I think he is also suggesting that the way the practitioner acts toward others is an integral part of the practice of yoga. Whatever Patanjali may have intended, the verse is best understood when broken down into its basic parts. The actions we are to practice and the recipients of those respective actions are listed separately, but it is clear that they are meant to be paired in a one-to-one correspondence.

The first of the pairs implores us to practice friendship toward the comfortable. This would seem to be a natural thing, to give the happy and comfortable our friendship and love. But as a test, we can observe our feelings toward them when they are not so well off. Are we secretly a little glad that things have gone awry? Sometimes we may feel jealous or envious of others who are fortunate. This envy may even progress to self-pity because our life does not seem to have the ease we perceive in theirs. When we have such feelings, it becomes a real discipline to actively practice friendship toward those whom we see as happy.

The second pair suggests that we practice compassion toward those who are suffering. It may seem easy to feel compassion, and from a distance, it often is—when we observe the suffering of innocent victims of a tragedy, for example. But what about compassion for someone you perceive as a difficult person, even an enemy of sorts? There's a saying that helps me to understand this part of the verse: "If you could see your enemy's suffering back to the third generation, he would no longer be your enemy." When I can remember that those who are angry, revengeful, or violent are actually suffering greatly—otherwise, they couldn't act that way—then I can more easily access my compassionate feelings toward them. This shift in awareness is what the practice of compassion is all about.

This practice, I believe, is to be extended to oneself as well. As important as it is to offer compassion to others, it's just as crucial to be kind to ourselves when we are suffering. To see compassion only as something we give to others is to miss the transformational power of applying this sutra to our own thoughts and actions. In fact, all the practices suggested in this verse are as valuable directed toward ourselves as toward others.

In the third and fourth pairs, Patanjali suggests that we express gladness toward the virtuous and indifference toward the nonvirtuous. Even setting aside the difficult question of exactly what it means to be virtuous, these are challenging practices. Like friendliness toward the fortunate, gladness toward the virtuous can be sidetracked by jealousy, but the injunction to practice indifference is often the greater challenge.

Indifference is not something that is just to be acted; rather, it is to be felt. What we normally call indifference is just the refusal to show our disapproval or disdain. But Patanjali is not suggesting that. He is suggesting that we deeply and sincerely let go of attachment to our judgments. Specifically, we are to let go of our attachment to feeling superior to the nonvirtuous. We are to let go of feeling right, of feeling smug and superior, and instead to cultivate equanimity.

The moment I have the thought that someone else is a fool, an evil person, an incompetent, or have any other form of judgment, I have diminished my ability to observe that person. They no longer really exist for me in their full human complexity. What does exist is my concept of them. Not only am I no longer seeing and relating to a whole human being, I am no longer acting from the foundation of ahimsa (nonviolence), which is the first yama, or ethical precept, of Patanjali's yoga. And remember, it's just as violent to make such judgments about yourself as it is to make them of others.

To say this level of indifference is difficult to practice is an understatement. Self-righteousness and self-satisfaction can simply feel like so much fun. Indulging in these thoughts and feelings not only gives us a sense of power over others but also the false comfort of thinking, "I don't really have to change because I am so much better than so-and-so."

As children, we simply perceive our world. From those perceptions we create thoughts that gradually harden into beliefs. In turn, those beliefs narrow our window of perception. These narrowed perceptions interfere with our ability to see clearly—and so it goes, in a downward spiral of constricting awareness. Patanjali consistently teaches us that we are the prisoners of our beliefs; they create a prison as surely as if they were actual bars around us. Buddha stated it slightly differently when he said, "Do not seek enlightenment; rather cease to cherish beliefs."

It is this cherishing of beliefs, about ourselves as well as about others and their actions, that Patanjali addresses in verse 33. Ask most practitioners of yoga today, and they will say they took up yoga to be more flexible, calm, or centered. In short, to be more comfortable. But Patanjali's yoga is not about making us comfortable. On the contrary, it is about effecting a fundamental change in the way we perceive, think, and act. And this can be quite uncomfortable. I sometimes ask of myself whether what I am doing is healthy for me and others or whether it is just habit. At times the answer to this question has given me the incentive to choose what is initially more difficult—attempting to deepen my self-awareness.

Well-known Indian philosopher Krishnamurti once stated that "The highest form of human intelligence is the ability to observe without judging." In this sense of the word, verse 33 is about becoming more intelligent. It is about observing how our thoughts create prisons for ourselves and others. Even more importantly, verse 33 gives us specific practical techniques for extending our yoga practice into the relationships that are such a crucial part of our lives.

Author of Relax and Renew (Rodmell Press, 1995) and Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life (Rodmell Press, 2000), Judith Hanson Lasater has taught yoga since 1971 and is also married and the mother of three children.

Return to http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/627

This is hilarious and soo true!

Top Ten Signs You Work for a Consulting Company

1.    You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on ways to improve their process

2.    You get all excited when it's Saturday so you can wear sweats to work

3.    You refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as "deliverables"

4.    You find you really need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living

5.    You normally eat out of vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town within the same week

6.    You think that "progressing an action plan" and "calendarizing a project" are acceptable English phrases

7.    You know the people at airports and hotels better than your next door neighbors

8.    You ask your friends to "think out of the box" when making Friday night plans

9.      You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix

10. You think a "half-day" means leaving at 5 O'clock.

A friend just sent me this video, saying its hilarious and creepy. Just got done watching it. I dont think it was creepy or gross, or hilarious for that matter. It is sad how human interaction has reduced in such a cold and dreary place. I actually felt sorry for the guy (great acting by the way) who seemed like a nice person thirsting for some intimacy and had to instead talk to an inanimate object. A clear result of individualistic western society where people really go out of their way to develop that personal space.

Nice work, the music is the charm! It does most of the magic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVhkFkeZPJ4 

Its been a while since I wrote up an entry, just been busy with getting settled in Seattle. Just read the sample chapters and thought they were very insightful, for me crowdsourcing, though not a new concept is very interesting business plan. Here are the details:

Transform the promise of social networking into a profitable reality with We Are Smarter Than Me, the first book to show you how to profit from the wisdom of crowds. Examine insights and case studies from product development, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, finance, management, and beyond. Written by Barry Libert and Jon Spector, We Are Smarter Than Me also includes a foreword by Wikinomics author Don Tapscott.

We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business by Barry Libert, Jon Spector, and thousands of contributors List Price: $21.99 Purchase Now! Extra Savings Save an extra 10% off your purchase when you become a member on Whartonsp.com.

Audio Podcasts (.mp3)Our exclusive audio podcast series features interviews with the creators of the We Are Smarter projects, as well as the thought leaders of companies featured in the book. Download them to your portable audio player, or listen to them now on FTPress.com.

>> Click to Listen: Barry Libert, co-author of We Are Smarter Than Me Tim Moore, VP/Publisher of Pearson Education, and Barry Libert James Geshwiler, founder of Common Angels Steve Swasey, Dir. Corp. Communications for Netflix Anil Rathi, Idea Crossing CEO & Founder Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto EVP Angie Hicks, Founder of Angie's List Lyn Townshend, Strock Inventor Jasmine Antonick, Cambrian House VP of Communications Chris Larsen, CEO/Founder of Prosper.com

 
Free Sample Chapters

In Chapter 1, "Look What We Can Do," you'll learn the meaning of "crowdsourcing" and review milestones in mass collaboration with examples from Amazon.com, Cambrian House, Eli Lilly, and more. In Chapter 3, "How May We Help We?," you'll learn to use communities to improve service and increase customer satisfaction, with real-world case studies including Intuit, Cookshack, and Bradbury Software.
>> Click to Download: Chapter 1 • Chapter 3

I just got back from a fruitful week of touristy activities in California - San Francisco and Napa/Sonoma Valley Region.

To document on our daily activities... here goes:

Day 1- Thursday
Fly to San Francisco, pick up the car (Alamo, works the best for a week rental) and go to Four Points Sheraton in South San Francisco (probably the worst place we stayed in the whole trip). Lunch at Alladin in the super industrial area, good middle eastern food (Falafal Wraps.. yummy, reminds you of the kebab stands in Europe). After a little nap we headed out to check out most of the areas of San Francisco with a Car, mainly:

Haight Area
The Haight Area is reminiscent of the 1960s hippy culture that was so rampant in San Francisco. An eclectic blend of visitors and tourists are comfortable roaming the streets of the Haight, where nightclubs, cafes, movie theaters, restaurants and shops are found.

Chinatown San Francisco
	With its array of shops offering souvenirs and gifts, delicious pastries, and noodles, this is a great place to start a walking tour or meet friends for lunch. A natural destination for tourist, Chinatown provides a variety of cultural events

Nob Hill
Nob Hill is a prestigious community in San Francisco, located adjacent to the intersection of California and Powell Streets. This district is littered with up-scale hotels, exclusive clubs, large mansions and fantastic views.

North Beach Neighborhood
	Located midway between Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, the North Beach district of San Francisco is a diverse neighborhood filled with Italian restaurants, cafés and ice cream parlors. This area is also a hot-spot for major night clubs and has a thriving night life.

Pier 39
	One of San Francisco's most popular attractions. Dining, shopping, and entertainment. Address: Beach St. & The Embarcadero San Francisco  CA  USA  94119

Financial District
The Financial District is San Francisco's central business neighborhood. Marked by the bundle of high-rise towers, this area occupies some of the city' tallest buildings including the Bank of America and Transamerica Pyramid. The largest concentration of corporate headquarters, law firms, banks and other financial institutes also dwell in this district.

Civic Center
Bisected by Van Ness Avenue, the Civic Center is home to the city's stunning Public Library and City Hall, the massive Asian Art Museum and the world renowned War Memorial Opera House.

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South of Market is a huge district, sprawling from the Embarcadero to Eleventh Street, between Market and Townsend. The neighborhood is a patchwork of warehouses, swanky nightspots, residential hotels, art spaces, loft apartments, furniture showrooms and the tenacious Internet companies that survived the tech market collapse. Although a lot of building has gone on in recent years, it is still not densely developed. You can walk several desolate blocks before suddenly finding a hopping restaurant.
After all that driving we decided to have dinner in Castro:

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If only the Mexican land barons and European homesteaders who built the Castro district could see it -- and the price of its real estate -- today. What was once dairy farms and dirt roads is now one of the city's most vibrant and cohesive communities, saturated with stylish shops and bars so popular that patrons spill out onto the street. Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants came to the outskirts of San Francisco in search of cheap land, which became bona fide suburbs after 1887 when the Market Street Cable Railway linked Eureka Valley, as it was then called, with the rest of the city. Thanks to these homesteaders, who built large, handsome Victorian houses for their large families, today's residents have someplace to pour their money, and the vast majority of the neighborhood's classic homes have been lovingly and artfully restored.

Eureka Valley remained a quiet, working-class neighborhood until the postwar era, when large numbers of people started fleeing the city for the "suburbs." Finally, in the 1960s and '70s, gay men began buying the charming old Victorians at relatively low prices ($20,000-$40,000), and the neighborhood was soon named for its busiest thoroughfare, Castro Street. We had dinner at: Thailand Restaurant - Great Haloween decorations with all kinds of cobwebs and skulls and skeletons giving it a look of a very old deserted thai fort but the food left something to be desired. The basil Tofu was awesome but all the rice noodle dishes were pretty bland.

Day 2: Friday
Since we had seen most of Frisco (cursory glance) we wanted to hit two major spots before we head to Bay Area where we were meeting a bunch of peeps.

Muir Woods (pasted from website)

Get away from the city and relax at Muir Woods, just a short drive of under an hour from downtown San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge.  You can enjoy a beautiful, ancient redwood forest that is truly unique for just $3 per person.  The winding drive to the forest through the Marin Headland hills is truly special.  Make sure to dress a little warmer for the cool, shaded, moist area. 

The redwoods reach for all the sun they can get, and the forest floor tends to be cool and damp.  In this photo, a small amount of light has penetrated the redwoods to reach the ground.  There are 3 walks, from one-half hour to 1.5 hours, and much longer hikes if you wish.  The forest park is actually paved to make it easy for wheelchairs and mothers with strollers.   The longer hikes are unpaved.  The 560 acre park includes six miles of paved, mostly level trails on the canyon floor. 

Stroll on Relaxing Trails...My real excitement after the mile walk in these historic and gigantic trees was a softee :-) I managed to get a postcard for Dale and sent it to him, I bet he would really like this, being the environmental nut n'all.

Next we headed to Stanford University and walked around on the campus:

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of San Jose in Stanford, California, United States. Stanford is situated adjacent to the city of Palo Alto, near Silicon Valley.

And finally the best of all, Rodin statues in the Quad!

After this we headed to meet some of my Brother in Laws friends from India, I call them the future leaders of IT companies in the bay area, the Ciscos and the Yahoos.. We visited San Jose, Sunnyville and such areas.. that they call the 'bay area'.

Later that night we went to the most happening place in the bay area: Santana Row
We met another bunch of friends at the Hotel Valencia, rooftop bar: V Bar, which to me was like any bar in NYC but it was a big deal for the silicon valley folks, what was most interesting is that there was no dress code (which I loved) and people were so relaxed.. thats always a good feeling. It was pretty packed and we had to sit in the corridor, but then the size of the corridor was enough for couple of bars in NYC!

Whew! the first two days took a while, the next few were pretty relaxed.

Day 3: Sunday
Berkeley and Sonoma Harvest Festival

Sather tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais.




Day 4: Monday
Napa Wineries: We went to about 4-5 of them for free tastings. We bought two wines (chardonnay and Resling) from V. Satui and had a really nice lunch at one of them. Best architecture was at Dawrish, the iranian winery. See my picture for all of them,

Day 5: Tuesday
Fisherman's Wharf, Walk from Pier 39 to Ghiradelli to China Town to Little Italy to SOMA and Pub Quiz at The Cheftain. BART and MUNI rides all across town. check in at the swanky Crown Plaza in Burlingame

Day 6: Wednesday
Flew into LAX, interviewed with Cedar Sinai and back to Newark that night.

End of trip.

I just spent the day in The Morgan Library & Museum on 37th and Madison in New York. Very interesting place built by Pierpont Morgan and then richly added to by JP Morgan was a private library built for his reading (oh I wish I can have a library like that!).

" Mr. Morgan's library, as it was known in his lifetime, was built between 1902 and 1906 adjacent to his New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street. Designed by Charles McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the library was intended as something more than a repository of rare materials. Majestic in appearance yet intimate in scale, the structure was to reflect the nature and stature of its holdings. The result was an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo with three magnificent rooms epitomizing America's Age of Elegance. Completed three years before McKim's death, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece. In 1924, eleven years after Pierpont Morgan's death, his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943), known as Jack, realized that the library had become too important to remain in private hands. In what constituted one of the most momentous cultural gifts in U.S. history, he fulfilled his father's dream of making the library and its treasures available to scholars and the public alike by transforming it into a public institution." - From Website

I went to the most exquisite Morgan Dining Room which made me the best Gnocchi that I have ever had with Parmesan Foam, Collard Greens and Chards of Swiss. I also had the most creative drink - famously designed by Hemingway and called 'Death in the Afternoon' which was basically Champagne and Absinthe (I didnt know that was legal here!) which was deliciously strong.

Morgan Dining Room menus:
Brunch | Lunch | Dinner | Dessert | Cocktails & wine

"The Morgan Dining Room's menu draws inspiration from early-twentieth-century New York City cuisine. Guests dine in the original Morgan family dining room, located in the restored nineteenth-century brownstone." - From Website


The Morgan Dining Room

The exhibit that I spent most of my time in was the Van Gogh Letters to Emil Bernard which were juxtaposed with the paintings and a translated copy of the letters (originals were in french) were kept in a booklet guide so I stood there and read the letters (sometimes disturbed, sometimes ecstatic but always honest reflections for what he was feeling about people, paintings, sonnets, literary work, other artists like Rembrant and Vermeer) while I saw paintings by either artists and understood the lives and times during the impressionist era. They come with the most fascinating concepts to understand such widely popular euro-centric eras like impressionism. I loved the presentation and the work, the atmosphere was just right for studying history through art and words.

Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard
September 28, 2007, through January 6, 2008

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait: Three Quarters to the Right (detail), 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh, letter to Émile Bernard, Arles, 18 March 1888, Letter 2 (detail), Thaw Collection, The Pierpont Morgan Library; Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees (detail), 1889, National Gallery of Scotland.

"Painted with Words is a compelling look at Vincent van Gogh's correspondence to his young colleague Émile Bernard between 1887 and 1889. Van Gogh's words and sketches reveal his thoughts about art and life and communicate his groundbreaking work in Arles to his fellow painter. Unseen for nearly seventy years, and never before exhibited, the twenty letters document the close, vital friendship of the two artists.

Van Gogh's letters to Bernard reveal the tenor of their relationship. Van Gogh assumed the role of an older, wiser brother, offering praise or criticism of Bernard's paintings, drawings, and poems. At the same time the letters chronicle van Gogh's own struggles, as he reached his artistic maturity in isolation in Arles and St. Rémy. Throughout the letters are no less than twelve sketches by van Gogh meant to provide Bernard with an idea of his work in progress, including studies related to the paintings The Langlois Bridge, Houses at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Boats on the beach at Saintes-Maries, The Sower, and View of Arles at Sunset.

To complement the letters, more than twenty paintings, drawings, and watercolors by van Gogh and Bernard are on view. These works document their dynamic exchange of ideas—among them are paintings and drawings discussed and sketched by van Gogh in his letters to Bernard. The works of art are drawn mostly from collections outside of New York, and feature numerous works not recently shown in the U.S.

See seven letters in an online presentation of Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard" - From Website

Mom just sent me a very interesting article about Giving from here yoga journal, some very good things to act upon, I am hoping I can inculcate them in my daily life, here goes:
Gifts of the Heart

Its long but has a lot of info about where the claim of miscommunication started and how the study has been discredited since then, I always thought 'mars and venus' shit was too much crap, I believe in fluid gender boundaries and this claim stands:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,2181602,00.html

Thats very sad but whats worse many of the things do hit home even if they were brought about by the British. The poverty and the meaning of freedom to someone without basic needs rings true. The tone is very condescending but the audience is different. This needs to be seen in context of the time and audience, everyone has a different story and this is their version, however incorrect - there are no absolutes when it comes to media.

new desktop, this is surreal!


Jeff Koons’ spectacular Hanging Heart (Magenta and Gold), 1994-2006. © Sotheby's Images.

NEW YORK.- On the evening of November 14, 2007, Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary Art in New York will feature Jeff Koons’ spectacular Hanging Heart (Magenta and Gold), 1994-2006, one of the most important works by Koons ever offered at auction, from his famed Celebration series. The brilliant magenta heart and gold undulating bow, which took ten years from conception to completion, is one of five uniquely colored versions. The monumental heart’s perfect surface is coated in more than ten layers of paint. Executed in high chromium stainless steel, Hanging Heart weighs over 3,500 pounds, is almost nine feet tall and took over 6,000 man hours to produce. The dazzling work, which was installed overnight at Sotheby’s with painstaking detail and is suspended from the ceiling in its 10th floor galleries. It will be on view for the first time in the United States next week, from Monday, October 1st, through Sunday, October 8th, by private appointment only, and on publi...More

I just read Pankaj Mishra's article in Guardian and some really insightful comments regarding his use of the term 'militant atheists' which made me pause and read the sentence twice because it felt like it was deliberately slapped on to produce a reaction (of dislike in me!) and then something that I didnt notice but the comments picked up on was the use of Buddhism as a 'religion' to convey something that wouldn't be true for some of the more organized religions.

Both the article and comments have some new information:

The Burmese monks' spiritual strength proves religion has a role in politics : Buddhism and its values have inspired a tradition of non-violent protest more powerful than secularists understand

"In recent months, militant atheists have tried to convince us religion ought to be expelled from public as well as private life. It is not hard to imagine how their salon wisdom would have fared last week in the streets of Rangoon, where ordinary Burmese protesting against a military dictatorship rallied behind Buddhist monks - the "highly revered moral core", as the New York Times put it, of Burmese society."

One comment picking up on 'militant atheists' by annetan42:

"Pankaj Mishra
When a western atheist scientist like Dawkins campaigns against religion it is largely the Abrahamic faiths that he campaigns against, especially those who claim that creationism is a scientific theory and who have rigid rules that believers must not deviate from. Most atheists are against systems of thought that are forced down people's throats, sometimes at the end of a gun, but almost always under threat of social ostracism.

Your quote "All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth." is in fact very close to what those of us who accept the theory of evolution say about it - that it is not set in concrete it is currently the best explanation but new discoveries could change it. Creationism claims absolute truth.

And as for:
"Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination which lie within the heart of man."

I would agree with that as an ideal, changing hearts and minds is the method of first resort, ideally we change our world this way and indeed much change is achieved by this method.

I have long felt that the evils listed in your quote are, like child abuse self perpetuating down the generations. The real question is how do we prevent the child from growing into a dictatorial greedy hateful bully. In short how do we break the cycle.

Ultimately I think we sometimes have to stand and fight, but the best way to destroy an army is to convert it to your way of thinking, to persuade it not to fire on their brothers sisters parents and children. That's not easy but then nothing worthwhile is. I have to confess that my heart sank when I saw the phrase 'militant atheists' in your very first sentence. I think it's a pity you have climbed onto that particular bandwagon. Perhaps you do not understand coming as you do from a notably non dogmatic faith, how those of us from the Abrahamic traditions have had to fight for the right to even admit our beliefs. Many still fear to do so."