> I think I'm transitioning. I am too. Is yours just kind of seeming to happen to you while you watch? Mine is. It's weird. I can point out recent instances that are totallyI started doing a time line once of my life, sort of similar to that... its > so incredible to me who I really am... some of it is a distantdream for me > too. Sometimes abuse, other times drugs, made it a haze. Each of those I don't think linearly about my life and happenings. I wish I could sometimes, and I've tried to put things down to see the 'evolving of me', but it starts jumping to another facet and it ends up like a muti-faceted cut gem, or a spider's web even. Too many connections that are not linear.NOW? What am I LEARNING? I've somehow slipped into a very quiet state of Like I say, "There is a lot of excitement I can easily do without nowdays." You're learning all the time, as is evident from your surges in new accomplishments. ;-) You don't mean "learning 'from' mistakes" do you? Nahhhh, that's something we can learn to grow out of and learn to forsee and/or avoid. ;-)
Are you suggesting that I could take a flower and, in a controlled experiment wherein it was able to receive the optimum amount of soil, water, sunlight, air and other nutrients needed (including the presence of other life forms), that we would witness immortality? That's the implication I read into this.
I subscribe to buddhism because it asks me to not accept but question >> everything. Sounds like science to me. >> That's why, if I was dying, I'd stop racing around trying to fix everything >> and go spend my last moments looking at life, living, and everything. >> samten zangmo -- excellent meditative concentration >I think that Buddhism is the only religion I can really respect,though I can't swallow the reincarnation bit. But you have the >best kind of life view, IMHO. I agree. Though I can buy the reincarnation bit, but in a more Taoist sense. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes. Take two equal cups of water, pour them into a bowl, then empty the bowl by pouring equal amounts back into the glasses. Is there water from glass one in glass two? Or is it simply, in the end, just water? DRINK!!

>>Think about a flower, or a tree. Could you say it is dying >>when it begins to sprout and reaches towards the sunlight? >This plant >is >in a state of living, and will continue to live >unless it no longer has nutrients, water, or sunlight. The >difference with humans, however, it >seems we are wired to >eventually die, regardless of what we feed >ourselves.

However, if all the parts work towards the common good, humanity will not die, but thrive eternally. Our present state of society may suggest we are slowly dying as a whole, but we must recognize that this may be a small part of a much bigger cycle of life. In any case, when we alone (the cell) die, we have almost always created another, whether through procreation, instructing, or what have you, and we keep the organism of humanity alive and therefore ourselves. I do not consider myself dying, now or ever.

Anyway, I am looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions on this letter because the subject sparked one of our most interesting and long-running threads to date, and I felt that I owed the list my best effort to do justice to our debate by capping it off with action. If you would like to sign it, you are welcome to let me know.

I used to think that, it makes >sense and all, but then think about this: We can't place ourselves in a >level of a certain state of being (namely death, here) solely because >we know that this state will eventually be reached. Think about a >flower, or a tree. Could you say it is dying when it begins to sprout >and reaches towards the sunlight? This plant is in a state of living, >and will continue to live unless it no longer has nutrients, water, or >sunlight. The difference with humans, however, it seems we are >wired to eventually die, regardless of what we feed ourselves. >However, in our defense we have creative minds which possess the >ability to overcome this. Not by technology, or science alone, but by >our offspring. We are not merely individual beings, but rather parts >of a much larger organism, humanity. If we let humanity become >malnourished with violence and ignorance and other such things, >society will slowly die.

I wouldn't count having financial wealth as God serving anyone. Sometimes the greatest spiritual experiences come in the places materialistic society has rejected. They come when the spirit is all people have to turn to. Just like that farmhouse I wrote about in the Irish mountains. It was wealth of a different kind.

>Not really, I mean that it is growing and thriving at that point, and >shows no sign or intention of ever dying. A small sprout just protruding >from the ground is about the most vibrant and alive sight. I'm not a >botanist, but I'm pretty sure all plants eventually die, however, it begs >the question that if plants truly had no outside detrimental forces, a >perfect and constant temperature, humidity, zero infestation, etc... just >how long could a plant live? In nature and even in "controlled" >greenhouse environments plants do not have perfect conditions all the >time. There are trees that live for hundreds of years (or even longer) >that do not have the benfit of a perfect environment, what if we gave one >such conditions. I'd be real interested to know, however, it would >surely outlive myself.

What about the conservation of energy? 'Side what gets reincarnated, according to what I have heard, is predilictions and habits. Not habits as in always getting up on the same side of the bed, but habitual perceptions, as in all people are intrinsically evil/good. Supposed some folks can project themselves through the bardo and see out the other side to where they'll show up. I dunno, I really dunno. Watching babies makes me think that we are born with some predilictions... and some things we learn. But, our perceptions affect our learning, so if we are a grumpy sort that affects how we perceive life (and I read a study where they were trying to either prove or disprove the idea that people get grumpy as they get older, they found that grumpy kids became grumpy adults who then grew old and became grumpy old farts). Mary had a rather idyllic childhood, but was a suspicious sort and still is a suspicious sort. I had a hellish childhood and am a rather pleasant sort. Comparatively speaking.

The difference with humans, however, it seems we are >wired to eventually die,regardless of what we feed ourselves. >However, in our defense we have creative minds which possess the >ability to overcome this. Not by technology, or science alone, but by >our offspring. We are not merely individual beings, but rather parts >of a much larger organism, humanity. If we let humanity become >malnourished with violence and ignorance and other such things, >society will slowly die.
I went to Zaca's deathbed last night and gave him a rose. I told him that I brought the rose petals for him, because he ate them for me when I spread them over my cake plate, a reminiscence of the scene in Like Water for Chocolate.
The girl is in love with her lover, who married her sister just to be near her. He gives her roses, but her mother forces her to throw them out. Instead she makes quail in rose petal sauce, and he looks at her at the table and eats the petals, because he is eating her soul.
Sean and I met Zaca and Mercedes when they were our neighbors in Queens. When they came over to our house, I had flowers in my salad. He couldn't get over that. He loved it. Then, I served chocolate cake on a white plate filled with red rose petals, and Zaca took one of the petals and looked at me and ate it, because he was an artist and he knew I had let him see the artist in me.
He was a ballet dancer, and he was Brazillian. The way he draped a coat scarf over his neck was regal. My father was a ballet conductor, and I spent my childhood watching 19th century ballet. We took our life's lessons from the same story source. He was my ballet prince.
My husband's family is from Ireland. When we go to Dublin, one of our favorite things is visiting Sean's sister Lorraine's fashionable architectural-statement apartment, with 5 Georgian windows overlooking the Liffey. Her dining room even has more windows, richly curtained with golden brocade. She is the essence of style, doing magical things with vegetables and olive oil, puff pastries, and lamb. I love looking out her windows at the night sky over the Liffey as kitchen smells waft throughout the apartment. This summer, driving through County Mayo, past the famine memorials, through vastly beautiful, rugged land that could almost speak to you about the bitterness buried beneath it, I came upon a bookshop. In it, I found a book about the Irish Civil War. And there, on page 56, I saw a picture of a mine exploded by retreating Republicans, which destroyed the Public Record Office and the rear of the Four Courts, and hung a cloud of smoke over the Liffey. It was the view outside Lorraine's window in May 1922. The fight was over the Treaty for an Irish Free State that Michael Collins had negotiated with the British. Michael Collins from Skibbereen, Co. Cork, had invented guerilla warfare and brought the British to their knees. Eamon de Valera wanted independence. The treaty Collins negotiated gave the North of Ireland to the British. This dispute split the Irish Republican Army and led to an Irish Civil War, which is still being fought today. Looking outside those windows today, the rage is hidden just like the bitter death of the famine victims is hidden in the Mayo mountains. The Liffey is calm. The district is now a growing residential and commerical area of Dublin. Economic development and hope covers the ghosts of the past. But I thought to myself, there must be history outside many windows. And don't we all have the windows that we stared out of when we were growing up, or when we looked for the answer to a tragedy, or when we first fell in love. Maybe someone has a story about a window that they would like to share. We all come from so many parts of the world. I am fascinated with what everyone saw outside their windows.

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