July, 2003


31
Jul 03

The Fable of the Two Birds

“Like two birds of beautiful golden plumage–inseparable companions–
the individual self and the immortal Atman are perched on the branches of the
self-same tree. The former tastes the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree. The
latter remains motionless, calmly watching.”

“The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of its identity with the Divine
Atman, grieves, bewildered by its own helplessness. When it recognizes the
Lord–who alone is worthy of our worship–as its own Atman, and beholds its
own glory, it becomes free from all grief.”

“The fable of the two birds is intended to teach us the truth about Man’s real
and apparent nature. It teaches that Man suffers only because he is ignorant
of his true Being. God is. He is the absolute Reality, “ever-present in the
hearts of all.” He is the blissful Atman which sits, calmly watching the
restlessness of its companion. And the fable goes on to tell us that, at last,
the two birds merge into one. The Atman is all that exists.”

Two famous passages from the Mundaka Upanishad and an excerpt from an essay by Swami Prabhavananda.


28
Jul 03

Nature Boy

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”
~Eden Ahbez


27
Jul 03

Queer Quotes

Quotations

“The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.” ~Rita Mae Brown

“One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness.” ~Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964

“It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It’s like disapproving of rain.” ~Francis Maude

“The fact that we are all human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish humans from one another.”
~Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986)

“Romance and work are great diversions to keep you from dealing with yourself.”
~Cher

INTERVIEWER:
“How do you do?”
MAE WEST:
“How do you do what?”

“When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” ~From the tombstone of a gay Vietnam veteran

“The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision.” ~Lynn Lavner

“My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I’m giving them my share.” ~Rita Mae Brown

“Why can’t they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going: Who’d you call a faggot?” ~ John Stewart

“Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.”
~Don Marquis

“When water covers the head, a hundred fathoms are as one.”
~Persian Proverb

“Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons.” ~Letter to the editor, The Advocate

“If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?”
~Lily Tomlin

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?” ~Ernest Gaines

“If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work: Hello. Can’t work today, still queer.” ~Robin Tyler

“Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity…any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”
~John Updike

“War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays. Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting?” ~The Value of Families

“If time and space are curved, where do all of the straight people come from?” ~Unknown

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” ~Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947

“There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.” ~Elton John

“I’d rather be black than gay because when you’re black you don’t have to tell your mother.” ~Charles Pierce, 1980

“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”
~G.K.Chesterton

Continue reading →


27
Jul 03

A Myth by Alan Watts

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins.

Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can’t have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn’t be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-bide with black.

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn’t, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don’t. So because it doesn’t get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It’s like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It’s also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.

God also like to play hide-and-seek, but becaus there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. but that’s the whole fun of it–just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self–the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

Of course, you must remember that God isn’t shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside to him. The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as ‘he’ and not ’she,’ God isn’t a man or a woman. I didn’t say ‘it’ because we usually say ‘it’ for things that aren’t alive.

God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

You amy ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn’t really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world.
~Alan Watts


27
Jul 03

Nightmares Shout

Depressed and gay
doctors say
both in your genes
won’t go away.

Dreams grow dark
swirl about
visions begin
nightmares shout.

This the vision
had when lost
lost in darkness
lost in lost.

Queer little vision
slept in bed
oozed from fears
deep in head.

Began a question
wisely ignored
will I ever be lonely
homely bored?