1. Play soccer
2. Expand writer’s pool on Brijabasi Spirit
3. Get New Vrindavan Bloggers feed aggregator functional (only 2 inches too short on that as of right now)
4. Improve ball handling skills in soccer
5. Get back to catching some air while dancing
6. Put more energy into cow protection
7. Improve stamina in order to play soccer longer
8. Visit the granddaughters
9. Improve my sadhana in some vague, indefinable way
10.Did I mention soccer yet?
December 2006
Monthly Archive
December 31, 2006
December 30, 2006
“I Am But A Traveler in This Land & Know Little of Its Ways” by Dean Young
Posted by Madhava Gosh under PoetryLeave a Comment
Is everything a field of energy caused
by human projection? From the crib bars
hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed
desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts
surrounds the soccer field of what if.
Sometimes it seems like a world where no one
knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes
both directions. How about a polymer
that contracts in response to electrical
charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor?
King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone
who has traveled here knows the discrepancies
between idea and fact. The idea is the worm
in the tequila and the next day is the fact.
In between may be the sacred—real blood
from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—
landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas
are best sprung from actions like the children
of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette,
another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable
wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams,
waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened
nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head:
good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.
The stranded whale, guided out of the cove
by tugboats, turns and swims back in.
The violinist will not let go her violin
which is 200 years old and still on the train
thus she is dragged down the track.
By what manner is the soul joined to the body?
Answer: an arm connecting a violin
to a violinist. According to Freud,
there are no accidents. Astrologists
and Presbyterians agree for different reasons.
You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake.
You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.
Human consciousness: is it the projector
or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits
and spray the grass so everything dies
but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka
what he thinks. Sometimes they give you
a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest
is your problem. In one version,
the beggar turns out to be a king and grants
the poor couple a castle and a moat and two
silver horses said to be sired by the wind.
That was before dentistry, which might have been
a better gift. You did not want to get sick
in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.
So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided
but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master
of the short story. After the kiss from whom
he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,
touches a bush in which birds are singing.
December 29, 2006
Mild Winter, Slavery, and Human Sacrifice Continues
Posted by Madhava Gosh under News, Ramblings or WhateverLeave a Comment
We had the temperature dip down to normal for a couple of days, but we have bounced back to 10 degrees above again. Average temperature for this date is 38 degrees (5 C), but it is back into the upper 40s and 50. It has been that way all month.
The strange thing is that in October into early November, we averaged around 40 degrees and never got up to average temperature for that time of year which is 50 deg. Hence, October was colder than December, which is backwards. Relative to average temperature, it is a 20 degree (11 C) swing.
Global warming is the wrong term for what is happening. That sounds sort of nice to us living in the temperate zones. Unfortunately, gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels, coupled with naturally occurring production of carbon dioxide, is accelerating climate change at an unnatural, unhealthy rate.
Climate chaos might be a better term. While I was still market gardening, the uneven nature of the weather was making growing food harder and harder. A grower needs to be able to rely on relatively predictable weather patterns in order to time his crops, and to choose appropriate crops. Naturally occuring plant and animal species are unable to shift the range of their sustainable areas to keep up with the geographical shifts in weather patterns. They are disappearing.
This is all a bit abstract for those whose connections to the earth have been so effectively severed by the oil related industries, so they ignorantly, blissfully, drive along after the carrot, dangling in front of them, of material happiness based on consumerism. This lifestyle is subsidized by the sacrificial spilling of human blood clotting the sands of oil rich regions and the slave labor of peasants forced into the cities by government subsidized agribusiness flooding third world countries with cheap grain.
What is a poor concerned person to do? Voluntary reduction of consumption is a big start. The wealth of a brahman is austerity. Wearing a string, don’t mean a thing. It isn’t mantra chanting and profile cutting that makes someone a brahman. It is austerity.
Vegetarianism is an example of austerity anyone can perform. Feeding grains produced by fossil fuels to meat animals who produce large amounts of greenhouse gases is a very inefficient way to get your protein.
Slow climate chaos: be a vegetarian and buy locally produced foodstuffs. Walk. Turn off the electronics and tune into the potential of your own brain. Wear a sweater and turn down the thermostat. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.
December 28, 2006
December 27, 2006
December 26, 2006
Denver Snowstorm Colored By Consciousness
Posted by Madhava Gosh under News, Ramblings or WhateverLeave a Comment
Material life is a reality only partially perceived. How we see things is limited and colored by our consciousness and our desires. Recently, two feet of snow fell on the Denver area. If you were traveling through the Denver airport
you may have seen it this way:
If you were somebody’s granddaughter Gracie who lives near Denver, you might have seen it this way:
December 25, 2006
But our objective is that religion means there is connection, relationship with God. Take, for example, Christian religion. They accept God: “God created this,” the beginning of Bible. That’s a fact. So the God consciousness is there. “God is great,” the God consciousness there. Now these Christmas holidays you have begun in your country. Throughout the whole month of December you’ll observe nice festivals, festivities. Why? Where it began? God consciousness. Lord Christ he came to give you God consciousness, and in his relationship these festivities are going on. It may be degraded in another form. The beginning is God consciousness, but we have lost it. So people cannot be happy without reviving God consciousness. It may be named in a different way — “Krsna consciousness.” That means God consciousness. That is the necessity. He’s trying to love somebody. That somebody’s love will be perfected when he loves Krsna or God.
Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.2.5 — Los Angeles, December 2, 1968
December 24, 2006
Brijabasi Spirit and Solstice
Posted by Madhava Gosh under Cows and Environment, News, Ramblings or WhateverLeave a Comment
In one of today’s posts on the Brijabasi Spirit, there is a thumbnail of the temple room taken from the entrance side showing the decorations for the the various Solistice time Holy Days. This includes, though is not limited to, Christmas. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size.
The celebration will be a typical devotee one. We are going to go to the temple for this evening; easier than doing something on our own. Another excuse for a festival, and there seems to be a lot of guests rolling in.
I suspect there isn’t much of a Solstice festival in Vedic tradition because in the tropics the day length variation isn’t as pronounced as it is in the Temperate zones.
Gopal drove over to Morgantown and picked up Marken and is bringing him home because Marken is having car trouble. Tulasi is in Pittsburgh working at a mall with Balabhadra and will be home late tonight. He says he has been working 15 hour days. FYI that is the reason why Balabhadra hasn’t been blogging. He makes his personal money doing a mall at Christmas, so he has been away from home. Then he uses all of the donations he gets for the cows directly for them.
I am going down to the temple to take a picture of the two new calves that were born at the barn during yesterday’s mangala arotik. I tried to yesterday, but when I took my camera out of its holster, the button slid to Macro, and the flash wouldn’t fire. I was home before I figured it out.
View From a New Vrindaban Ridge 
