Sometimes you get an almost irresistible urge to go on living. Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? LAO-TZU, Tao-to-Ching You have slept for millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning? Kabir "the mental probabalistic map in one's mind is so geared toward the sesnational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news." - Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness A monk, o Monks, goes into a forest, or to the foot of a great tree, or to a lonely place, and there sits down, cross-legged, holding his body upright, and practises Introspection. He breaths in attentively, and attentively breathes out. Drawing in a long breath, he knows: 'I am drawing in a long breath,' exhaling a long breath, he knows: 'I am exhaling a long breath.' Drawing in a short breath, he knows: 'I am drawing in a short breath,' exhaling a short breath, he knows: 'I am exhaling a short breath.' 'Perceiving the whole body, will I breathe in, perceiving the whole body, will I breathe out,' thus he practises. 'Calming down this body compound, will I breathe in, calming down this body compound, will I breathe out,' thus he practises. 'Serenely feeling will I breathe in, serenely feeling will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Blissfully feeling will I breathe in, blissfully feeling will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Perceiving the thought connection, will I breathe in, perceiving the thought connection, will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Calming down this thought connection, will I breathe in, calming down this thought connection, will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Perceiving the thoughts will I breathe in, perceiving the thoughts will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Enlivening the thoughts will I breathe in, enlivening the thoughts will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Concentrating the thoughts will I breathe in, concentrating the thoughts will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Dissolving the thoughts will I breathe in, dissolving the thoughts will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Perceiving impermanence will I breathe in, perceiving impermanence will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Rejecting attraction will I breathe in, rejecting attraction will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Perceiving eradication will I breathe in, perceiving eradication will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. 'Perceiving estrangement will I breathe in, perceiving estrangement will I breathe out,' thus he trains himself. Thus, o Monks, must inhalation and exhalation be practised and cultivated introspectively that it may bestow high recompense, high advancement. "What's the secret of happiness? It is to fully understand that you will suffer and you will die" The guilt and shame perpetrators feel for their violent actions stem from their natural sense of kindness and caring, which they have blocked and are violating. Their attitude toward bystanders may even be indignation: “If you want to be a vegetarian, that’s fine, but don’t tell us what to do.” While at first blush this seems reasonable, we quickly see that it is only because of the disconnections and bias inherent in our culture. Perpetrators wouldn’t dare say, “If you don’t want to beat and stab your pet dog, that’s fine, but don’t tell me not to beat and stab mine.” We all recognize that we aren’t entitled to treat others, especially those who are defenseless, however we like, and that if we are responsible for doing harm, people have every right to ask us to stop. “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, then you have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi " We can argue that animals are largely unconscious, decreeing that because animals seem to lack the complex language that allows them to formulate thoughts in words as we do, their experience of suffering must therefore be less significant or intense for them. This same thinking, however, could be used to justify harming human infants and senile elderly people. If anything, beings who lack the ability to analyze their circumstances may suffer at our hands more intensely than we would because they are unable to put the distance of internal dialogue between themselves and their suffering. " - Will Tuttle What makes our actions good or bad is not their effects, but whether in acting we abide by our duties to others -- including above all a presumptive duty to let them pursue their happiness as they think best. - Jason Kuznicki “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein (verify) "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." - Alice Walker “At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.” ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Plutarch wrote, “When we clog and cloy our body with flesh, we also render our mind and intellect coarse. When the body’s clogged with unnatural food, the mind becomes confused and dull and loses its cheerfulness. Such minds engage in trivial pursuits, because they lack the clearness and vigor for higher thinking.” “It is no coincidence that the same diet that helps prevent or cure diabetes also causes effortless weight loss, lowers cholesterol and triglycerides, cleans out the arteries, and returns the body to excellent function. But no matter how much research appears saying the same thing over and over again, the tide is unlikely to change because of the economic incentives for the medical establishment of continued illness and profitable treatments.” ~ John McDougall, MD "all beings tremble before violence all love life all fear death see yourself in others then who can you hurt? what harm can you do?" - attributed to the Buddha "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “Vegetarianism serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.” ~ Count Leo Tolstoy “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” ~ Henry Beston, from “The Outermost House” “When we turn to the protection of animals, we sometimes hear it said that we ought to protect men first and animals afterwards. By condoning cruelty to animals, we perpetuate the very spirit which condones cruelty to men.” ~ Henry Salt "Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all it ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light injustice must be exposed with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured." - Martin Luther King Jr "there is such a thing as morality, and morality is higher than economics" - Robert Fogel