Time Out

Be True To Yourself
There was an old Hermit from Hushan in China who called on Yen Cho at his home. But the scholar was not in. He was out walking around the countryside. Later in the day the old hermit caught up with him in the middle of a game. The hermit faulted the young man for wasting his time with people from a lower class. “You are a scholar, aren’t you?” asked the elder.
“Yes,” admitted Cho,” But what good is it if I were to treat these peasants as beneath my notice? What good is my scholarship where scholars must bow and scrape before piddling authority?” He had so many reasons to play backgammon with people he explained. He ended saying,
” Who knows I may find myself lucky.”
The hermit observed the game in progress. Yen Cho had lost. The hermit asked, “You call that luck?” Yen Cho got up from the game and said,” My luck may be that I found you instead!”
The man from Hushan said he had heard so much about him and stopped over with the purpose of meeting him. The hermit and the young scholar got on well. The elder over supper admitted that he was cross with him at first. “ Wandering so early,--does not that show a fickle nature to be contrary to the rest? When all remain in bed must you gad about the country?”
Later the hermit then explained that he had found a way to conserve his life- force and he could teach him how. Yen Cho politely refused his offer saying that his life- force ought to be expended by what he was and not by another.
benny
Beware of your gurus and god-men. Don't offer your precious self on a platter. Remember before whom you are casting pearls.

With this friendly caution let me sign off.

Season's Greetings-2007

A New Year is in the offing and it is time that gave myself a break. I stopped making new resolutions for the coming year. What is the point of making promises I do not intend to keep? So I shall simply take it easy.
Here is wishing all my readers all the best for the coming year.
If you have run out of gift ideas you can always go to www.lulu.com and check out the books available under the name benny thomas or bennymkje. Picture books for children in English, Dutch and Spanish you will find. An updated version of The Life of Aesop is now available. If you are looking for photo books you shall find New Country Style-India of interest. My wife provided the images and I wrote the text. Well if you want to know how we spent the first year in India you shall see it all there in our works.
Once again happy holidays to you all,
benny

Uneconomic Growth- 2050

On the day the last rain forest has been cut the earth dwellers calls up a conference. All the chiefs and their advisors are present while each tribe one after the other present the state of the planet: no water to drink; no clean air and no food to eat.
The Big Chief after hearing the litany of woes calls the economic growth analyst and asks for his papers. After poring over the growth chart he hollers : “ Economic growth forever you said! ”
The economic pundit defends his figures. The Big Chief has to say thus: “ You ought to have had Uneconomic growth charts as well to bring home the disaster of our policies.”
The economist can only mumble, “ Now it has come home to roost.”
benny

The Bali Summit-post mortem

The Age of Enlightenment in Europe made the author of the Bill of Rights to assert all men are equal. But Europe has fallen into the evil times where man is only as good as he can get to spend. I suppose the movement as sown in the USA, both in principle and in practice, was an ill wind that does us no good.
benny

Deft Definitions

A hermit: One who is in a state of denial.
A TV preacher: One who loves to be seen selling his God whom he sells dearly.
A hedge fund executive: a crook who has his finger in some one else’s pie and takes a cut as his due.
A blogger : A harmless drudge who dare not thank enough those whom he would rather not see.
One whose political savvy is so curiously constituted he dare not speak up when occasion calls for him to act; instead he writes graffiti on cyberspace blaming all the evils on others.
benny

Sermon on the Anthill

What is holiness?
A Greek Orthodox believer will have his definition as much as a Jewish fundamentalist will have his own. Does our practice of certain rituals make us any holier than another? From the theological point of view holiness is defined as being separated unto the purpose of the Lord God. Thus when God orders Moses to separate Aaron for his ministry He makes the meaning clear. He is set apart for communing with Him in the Most Holy Place. He is like every other Israelite in all respects except when he ministers for the Children of Israel in an appointed place. The believers of the early Church are urged by Apostle Paul to offer their bodies as a ‘reasonable service.’ In the words of Jesus his followers must be like a city that is set on a hill. It cannot be missed for it is so set and bears the image of the One who is its author and finisher.
Jesus of course had in mind Jerusalem when he compared his followers to a city. We Christians have literally taken Jesus at his words and made it a divided city. So words of Jesus has been made a mockery by those whose profess to be His children. Why should then we be surprised if the word ‘Holiness’ has become a byword for licentiousness?
2.
In short holiness can be interpreted any which way. Such a manner makes a travesty of holiness. Then the question arises who shall among man settle the question beyond doubt?
No one I am afraid.
In my lexicon whatever touched by Life is holy. The Holy Grail is holy because it was found use for the Son of man. My drinking cup is holy is holy because it is set apart for drinking. By that argument my spittoon also is holy since it is for a certain purpose. We are all holy since we are living beings. We are not made impure because some of us eat pork and some of us are die-hard vegans. All these distinctions are manmade and do not carry anything special.
I shall not be judged by what I eat or drink. From my youth up I have found the words of Paul rather inspiring. I hold no scruples to the kind of food I eat; neither I shall be a slave to this or that. May be as an Indian, detachment in all things was one trait I could easily latch on to.
Being inured to a life of simplicity all that has come as my baggage I can take it or leave it.
I shall sign off having said my thoughts on the subject:
Holy Brother of Anthill

Ecco Homo!

Righteousness of a Christian is in his deeds. He is freed from dead works that is what a mindless form of rituals would mean, and he has the choice to put his life on the line to show what is his essence. He may not hit the right note often but his life shows certain harmony of his beliefs and works. But his righteousness is entirely on something else. It is secure in the fact he is made of a right standing with God.
Being with God can only be proven in the way he respnds to the people he comes in contact on daily basis.
From such a position a good man will only do good. His goodness may fall by the wayside because of some reason or other. He may lose the game or he may be maligned for his unpopular stand. He may even be taken for a fool because he placed his trust wrongly on wrong cause or people. Whatever may be the case he is a man of like passions as any other; but his goodness is of a certain quality. This quality separates a hypocrite from the genuine.
A good man will strive to bring many complete layers of his life all together on the line. There is no other proof we have than of his actions. Whether in public or private his actions reveal the truth, the truth of his actions.
benny

Proof of the Pudding

Man is all things to another. If he were to be labeled he may fit under many categories. A father, pillar of the community, son and tax-payer and a keen golfer. It could go on. He may be a Sunday Christian and an incorrigible foul-mouthed malingerer. He could be a Christian every hour of the day, devoted father and a good husband.
Is there something that makes a Christian any better than another who may not believe in God? Strictly religion doesnot make any one better. Proof of the believer or non-believer is in his actions.
Answers I would like to hear:
“Oh I am a preacher.”
“ When I preach I thump Bible; and late nights when I ain’t preaching I thump you- know- who. Hey mister, I can let you ask your last question.”
“Of course I am a man of the Lord. I make millions don’t I?”
From the above what do you think the preacher is? Holy? Of course he is holy and also filthy minded whenever it suits him.
Is he a Christian? Of course he is. As much as those who die to hear things spiritual and pay to support his megachurch.
benny

Illogical Route of Events

Suppose I compare mankind to an ocean of humanity do you think I could be far from wrong? Each human being as a drop of water and could be as lethal and powerful as water in its full force would demonstrate. The analogy is apt I dare say, since we are part and parcel of collective experience. How we singly as individuals and as nations corrode or build up our future can be well seen from our post WWI history. The Balkans was a powder keg made up of many ethnic groups, the Albanians, Macedonians, the Jews, Serbians and Moslems and what not. The weakening of the Ottoman Empire at the end of 19th century had made the past history of conflicts, pogroms and ‘ethnic cleansing’ freely waged by lawless bandits from these groups a very volatile situation. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke was a reason for the event that we now know as the First World War. One answer I can hazard to give is this: so many little wars or bloodletting on ethnic lines coalesced into one major war. Another, a historian, and with all his persuasive power of scholarship and insight shall give yet another. I do not dispute the validity of his arguments or verdict as much as I am also right.
As in the case of ice that I cited in the outset there cannot be any simple cut and dried answer to most of our experience.
Tailpiece: given the interplay of so many layers to any event as WWI, a single answer may be too simplistic. Reason is a good guide for anyone to hold in one’s personal conduct but rarely works in practice.
benny

Multiple Choices

What is ice? You will say it is frozen water.
Suppose I say it is rock? Do you think I am wrong?
The wind sculpts ice and the Sun melts it. It however can be as hard as rock. Ice in the Alps demonstrates this fact. Soft freshly falling snow builds up shelves of ice over the time and the process may go on for millennia. Each layer of snow freshly falling at any given time compacts what has gone before by expelling air trapped in layers accumulated earlier. The character of water is not what the ice exhibits and it calls on air and the gravity to give the ice its rock hardness. Thus an answer one may give to explain the nature of ice does not state the full facts.
Coming back to the my premise at the outset, man is both cause and effect. Only that he is not both at the same time.
benny

A Fable

Mr. Death and Madame Fame
Mr. Death had a large household and he wanted a housekeeper to look after the house. Many came and he found all of them had either their credentials over inflated or they were by nature too ill-suited to the rigor of their office. In the end Madam Fame came with her CV and Mr. Death said,” Your work-experience is perfect. But I must decline.”
When asked why he explained: “ I gather all, while you scatter fame of all those whom I bring here.”
benny

A Conundrum:

'Arriving doesn't make a stop'.
As a child I had this question , " Why do I have to ask you every time, God?" but so many answers to my prayers make me ask thus, " If you have answered me every time what am I to you, God? A question?" Arriving at some conclusions, be it answers to our some specific need or something philosophical, God must set us chasing ever on something else. It is true with the concept of God as with a lowly thing as a flower.
Every question has probably thousand answers that are as convincing to which we may as well settle. But one answer is all that we can take or pursue with vigor. Doesn't that explain our human dilemma?
benny

The Hills Sing For Joy

Happiness like all feelings that we experience however brief or sustained, is rooted in Nature. As far as we are concerned we deem it so. It is like Life, as I said earlier, beyond circumstances.
Do we have any other key to unlock the mysteries of Life than from nature?
We make God as a father-figure and use symbols and worship ideas, which we represent by something we can point out from nature. Thus we explain elements as sinews and bones that hold up our existence. Love for God for instance. How do you think we are superior in our love than the law of attraction a magnet has for a piece of iron? Have we plumbed the depths of matter to have an iota of its experience pure, and can we divest from love everything that is not material?
Now let me ask this question: is an inanimate object like a stone happy?
Every object,- stone or metal is suffused with energy. It follows the laws of Nature. A stone cannot feel as Cain felt towards the Lord God or to his own brother. Cain must have soiled it by blood but it is no less manifestation of Nature. This being the case how can anyone think a stone is not happy?
benny

Comment on Da Vinci Code:

"Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code is like a flasher: We know it is out there on the loose. The shock value is not in itself but the moment when it is out like a Jack-in-the-box. Then it is a let down, as always."
benny

On Happiness

I met a rich wise man. He said he didn’t know if he were wise or not. But he knew he was certainly rich. He had much to show me around by way of his wealth. Then I met a poor wise man. He knew he had to be wise since he was not rich. All that he made up for his lack he displayed in our conversation and it was more of a monologue, I should say.
Much later I met a wise man sitting on a mat out in the open enjoying the setting Sun.
“Are you happy sir?” I asked him. He took time from his contemplation and said, “ I never got around to ask myself that.” He adjusted himself to face me and said, “ Now that you asked me let me tell you, sir, you make me happy.”
I spent a happy hour or two in his company and during which we would have hardly exchanged ten words. I knew I was a happy man.
benny

Truth Unchained

My Self or conscious self, must put every feature of my nature in terms of others in its place.
To be drawn into my self is a prison as well as a way of escape.
Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection; had he taken his eyes off for a moment to see the changing skies shown on the same pool he would have seen he was as changing as every cloud or as the light that fell on him. That would have sobered him if he cared to. Truth for him stopped with his own image.
benny

"A Plague On Your Both Houses..."

Plagues and pandemics of virus are of course calamities that denote symptoms rather than a natural course of life forms coexisting. Were not the killer viruses around from time immemorial? Did they pose the kind of threat in the dawn of time as they pose at present? If looked closely into the constant outbreaks of plagues, so would I assume, owe to our own kind for the root cause: we have interfered and impoverished the environment, in order to maintain our civilization. The appetite of the North or South is made all the more acute. Wisdom has become so altered in human kind that it is not reason but greed that dictates power.
Civilization requires large resources to maintain: large population essential to keep the fruits of civilization to themselves so many would also invite still more influx of labor. Clearing of woodlands, forests and changing the course of running streams are all for catering to the ever growing needs of civilizations on the march. In its wake comes the alterations to the environment: delicate balance of habitats are upset; levels of microclimate swing to extremes. Flora and fauna native to its natural habitats must take their chances. Under such uncontrolled changes the viruses also will find their way out.
(For further reading:
NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE
Date: December 30, 2005
Link Between Malaria Epidemics and Rainforest Destruction in the Peruvian Amazon
Amy Vittor, a Johns Hopkins graduate student and currently a medical student at Stanford University, under the supervision of Jonathan Patz, now at the University of Wisconsin, and other collaborators, carried out a field study in the Amazon region in northeastern Peru to examine the question whether the epidemic reappearance of malaria in the Peruvian Amazon in the 1990s was related to destruction of rainforest.
Over one year, the investigators collected mosquitoes at sites with varying amounts of deforestation and other anthropogenically-driven changes along a newly constructed road. The authors found that the abundance of a particularly dangerous mosquito, Anopheles darlingi, was over 200-fold higher in deforested locations compared to more pristine rainforest sites: a relationship that held up even after considering human population density. This mosquito species is the major vector of malaria in the Amazon basin and is particularly dangerous since, similar to its cousin in sub-Saharan Africa An. gambiae, An. darlingi is highly attracted to people. These results indicate that this major mosquito vector of malaria in the Amazon is significantly affected by habitat and land cover change due to deforestation.
Anopheles darlingi had not existed in western Amazonia as of the late 1980s, and had only moved westward across the Amazon basic from Brazil since that time. Rapid development, accompanied by deforestation brought humans into increased contact with a variety of emerging infectious diseases in the region including yellow fever, leishmaniasis, and leptospirosis, with the constant potential for new, previously unidentified diseases emerging such as mosquito and rodent borne hemorrhagic fevers. Man’s alteration of local landscape may now explain the parallel rapid rise of malaria cases in the Amazon region.
According to the senior author of this paper, Patz, accompanying analyses on mosquito-larval habitat and human epidemiology are forthcoming; he says that preliminary results confirm this link between deforestation and malaria risk in the Amazon.)
benny

Another Quote

"Fear makes you a sitting duck for quacks."
benny

A Quote:

"In our anything- goes society how come bills don't go away?"
benny

Moral Sense

Our self is the template to reconcile the living organisms in terms of our own kind. Each life form will hold in varying degrees a similar scale. A food chain is an example of this. Hummingbirds mean something to plants. If a plant would engineer its flowers to facilitate the birds to stop by it must speak of something else.
Largely consciousness gives each life form an idea larger than what it strictly represents. If a life form could serve my needs would it not in the fitness of Life as the medium, to think in what ways I could help it as a return? There could be no cause greater than furtherance of life all around considering Life as the Begetter. Cause and effect alike.
Moral sense is defined as the consciousness of obligations that Life imposes on each to preserve right conditions where other life forms may live and let live.
Wisdom coupled with power is a transcription a reasonable man should write from careful observation of Life. Nature still remains our greatest teacher.
benny