Why
do I consider it so crucial to balance the outer aspects of nonviolence
and compassion with the inner support of contemplative practice?
Because in the end, all politics are local, and we cannot love life and
humanity if we do not love each other, one on one.
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Silence
arrests flight, so that in its refuge, the need to flee the chaos of
noise diminishes. We let the world creep closer, we drop to our knees,
as if to let the heart, like a small animal, get its legs on the ground.
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At
our best, we muddle ahead together, hoping to get things right
occasionally and trying not to do too much damage along the way. It is
in the muddling that we find our humanity, and in doing so, if we are
lucky, we find each other.
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Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad became the first person to swim the treacherous waters from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage on Monday, arriving in Key West two days after starting her 110-mile trek. Nyad, 64, unsuccessfully tried to swim the Florida Strait four times, mostly recently in 2012. The New York City native’s latest journey began Saturday morning when she jumped from the seawall of the Hemingway Marina into the warm waters off Havana. As she closed in on the Key West shores, a couple of hundred people gathered on the beach to watch her make the final leg of the swim.Nyad's first notable swim came in 1975 when she swam the 28 miles around Manhattan in under eight hours.
Following his cancellation of a bilateral meeting with President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama may infuriate the Kremlin further by meeting Russian human rights activists, including LGBT rights groups, during his upcoming trip to St Petersburg for the G20 summit. Four Russian non-governmental organizations told BuzzFeed Monday they had been invited to the meeting, scheduled for this Thursday at St. Petersburg’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. The groups include veteran human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, legal aid NGO director Pavel Chikov, and Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT organization. Another local LGBT group, the LGBT Network, is believed to be attending, though director Igor Kochetkov declined to comment to BuzzFeed, saying that he had been “asked not to say anything.”This should prove quite interesting.
If
you are not leading a morally upright life, you cannot expect to sit
down on a little pillow and find yourself secluded from sense desires,
secluded from unwholesome states of mind. If there is not sufficient
morality, there is too much to desire, too much hate or fear, too much
to worry about.
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It’s
not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is
the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our
resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our
discomfort arises from all of our effort to put ground under our feet,
to realize our dream of constant okayness.
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Dear representatives of the state and City of New York, We would like to confirm receipt of your letter of 9 August to IOC President Rogge. Thank you for having shared with us your concerns and proposals on the important topic of LGBT rights in Russia in the context of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.The letter is signed by Christophe De Kepper, Director General of the IOC.
The IOC agrees that the Olympic Games should be free of any kind of discrimination and I can reassure you that we work hard to make this a reality at each of the games. However, it is important to stress that the IOC remit is limited to the scope of the Games. For instance, the IOC cannot influence national legislation and has to respect the law of any host country.
In regard to Sochi 2014, the IOC is currently in close discussions with the highest government level in Russia and has received a number of assurances, but we are continuing the dialogue with Russian authorities on this important topic. As you will understand, it would be inappropriate and counterproductive to comment publicly on the details of the discussions while they are on-going.
However, we have widely communicated our position which was also published on our website at the end of July. Rest assured that the safety of athletes, spectators and others attending the Games remains a top priority for the IOC and we will continue to work to ensure that this will be the case in Sochi and future editions of the Games. I hope you find this background information helpful. Thank you for your important work and for your commitment to ensuring an environment free of discrimination.
