“Communicate” comes to English from Latin, the word is the past-paticiple of Communicare, from the root “commune” meaning “to talk with”. The word is built from Cum (together) and Munis (obliging, binding by obligation).

We have a very poor understanding of our use of language at times and etymology can help us dig out the truth of it and how we relate to it. The idea that communication might involve some sort of obligation and binding would be quite alien to some people.

When you think about it though, if we really wish to communicate with another, there are many layers of obligation involved. We are first obliged to listen to the other intently and to quiet our own minds to do so. We are obliged to listen to ourselves intently and communicate ourselves honestly. To know oneself and to be able to empty oneself are surely the foundations of communicating deeply.

Communication often leads to friendship or more. What is the root of that word? Can it tell us anything? Friend from Middle English “frend” from Ancient Saxon “freond” meaning “loving”. So a friend is someone we love. And we do so mostly by doing the hard-work described above in making sure we communicate well with our friends.

Some people would say this is all bullshit, of course, and I am willing to listen to their reasoning. If they are not prepared to listen to mine that effort would be in vain, however, as communication and friendship - as we all surely accept - must be mutual to be anything.

If you think this post might be aimed at you, you are correct. It would have been appreciated if you could have made an attempt at honesty in communication - something I know you pride yourself on yet are significantly incapable of, in my very limited experience. Silence, cutting out, part truths, deceptions, these are all forms of “communication” for sure, and ones you employ more often than you would care to admit. They do not lead to friendship but undermine attempts to communicate. And, yes, I can take hints. I just prefer not to as I believe that mostly it forces more honest communication to ignore them.

Information on English Etymology in this article comes from Walter W. Skeat’s “Concise Dictionary of English Etymology”.

If you haven’t done so yet I can thoroughly recommend a trip to Google Earth to download and play with the internet giant’s latest offering.

“Google Earth – Explore, Search and Discover

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in — Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.

• Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.
• Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
• Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.
• Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

“

What’s really cool is that you can fly in from outer space and zoom right on in on your own house and then fly right back out again. The world is getting smaller.

Charles Clarke, British Home Secretary, today announces the new laws under which deportation of undesirables can take place. From the consultation papers, this is being framed thus:

“The list of unacceptable behaviours covers any non-UK citizen whether in the UK or abroad who uses any means or medium including writing, producing, publishing or distributing material; public speaking including preaching; running a website; using a position of responsibility such as teacher, community or youth leader to express views which the Government considers:

• Foment terrorism or seek to provoke others to terrorist acts
• Justify or glorify terrorism
• Foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts
• Foster hatred which may lead to intra community violence in the UK
• Advocate violence in furtherance of particular beliefs”

The last point is the most revealing. Could “advocat(ing) violence in furtherance of particular beliefs” include going to war against tin-pot Middle-Eastern dictators who happen to be in control of lots of oil? Who you happen to believe may hold stockpiles of dangerous chemical or biological agents? Who you happen to believe the world would be a better place without?

The answer is yes, these acts based on belief could come under this law. Only the British Government gets out of being subject to it’s own law because only non-UK citizens are covered. And they would quickly jump to say that states can not, by definition, be terrorist in such action because terrorism is defined as being against states whereas when states do such things they are wars.

Laws, secrecy on the grounds of security and semantics are the favoured routes to unnaccountability of our liar politician class. The priests of capitalist win/lose economics hide behind these things, they are the veil of secrecy they need to account for and justify their existence.

I do not advocate violence against anyone, but I understand why some people get caught in that trap. Were I not a Britsh Citizen, expressing these views could land me in deep trouble and on an aeroplane. How long before expressing them puts people like myself and Cherie Booth in prison or on the watch list of the spooks.

Pope Benedict The Last addressed a huge crowd in Germany at the weekend. He said particularly interesting things when he urged his congregation to stick with traditional Catholic values. He said that the do it yourself religion of modern spiritual approaches could not replace the living God of christianity.

The living God of christianity is of course the dead man Jesus. Catholic mysticism turned this human spiritual revolutionary into a glass of wine and slice of wafer but does not, in any real sense, keep this “God” alive. Jesus was, like all genuine spiritual leaders, a DIY person: “know thyself”, “the kingdom of heaven is within”, etc, etc.

It is this turning of truth on it’s head that Jesus railed against: Had he been present, he would, I suspect, have turned over the altar upon which Benedict took Eucharist, thrown the wine to the floor and stamped on the wafers. Then he might have turned to the crowd and shouted “If you don’t do it for yourself, who will do it for you?”.

It is this magick lie that is at the heart of christianity and Catholicism: Jesus was no more “God” than you are or I am. Neither he nor his name can save you, only you can do that. The attempt to make him into God rather than letting his life be a living example of a human life lead well is a political act. It may be an act of long ago and forgotten, but it was designed to reduce the revolutionary imperative that is at the heart of all true spirituality and it has successfully achieved this and continues to do so.

That is the heart of problem with christianity and catholicism: it’s all lies. And this why Benedict will be the last pope: He is a hard-liner when it comes to spiritual doctrine, which means he really believes all that nonsense, which in turn means the lies are coming home to roost.

Search Google for ‘Jesus Forgiveness’ - without the quotes - and freedomforall.net comes a respectable fourth. freedomforall.net punches above it’s weight on search engines, considering this is a site of Buddhist based alternative views that comes tenth at www.blogtopsites.com’s Religion section.

So why does the site often rate so highly at Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the other search engines: 1st, good content; 2nd, proper meta tags in the html; 3rd, lots of links out and lots of cultivated links in; 4th, hidden at the bottom of each page in very tiny letters is a list of keywords, visible and labelled as such. The search engines seem to love it; 5th, proper submissions everywhere possible.

Other bloggers have started linking here in increasing numbers and I update the site daily and often a few times a day which also keeps the robots coming back for more. I hope oneday that the small amount of google adwords advertising I have at the side of the page or clicks on the donate button will amount to an income to keep me walking and connected with a satellite or mobile link. That’s why I work to keep it up there and keep people visiting and coming back. I also make it easy for them to find their way around and search for stuff on the site which keeps them here and refines the advertising so they just might click, throwing a cent or two my way.

And I do it all because I believe one by one we can change the world, stop the hunger, heal the sick and mend our ways and our planet. And I want to be independent of the system of forced work and poverty, based on ancient and unlawful land enclosures, that means people have no time to listen to each other and watch the way things are.

I have to walk. It’s very painful and difficult, but I have to do it. It never occured to me that aged 39 I wiould be something of a cripple. To learn lessons of impermanance of the human flesh at such an early age has been salutory. I will myself to recover. I investigate reasonable avenues. I work to learn what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong.

Now I have to walk. I am seeing an Osteopath and to maximise the benefit of the adjustments he makes walking seems to do the trick. It can take me hours to walk what I would have done in a third of the time previously and it hurts like buggery at times, literally, as the muscles in my ass recover from a lifetimes misuse around the injuries inflicted on me as an infant.

The Buddha used to walk a lot. I think it is what some human bodies need. Mine can cope with buses and tubes at times but driving is easiest and walking healthiest. I can’t walk to Fulham though so I am going to buy a car. That way visiting the osteopath won’t bugger up my back.

This story may well win another nomination at pointlessandboring.org, but thats not the point. I did have a merry laugh yesterday when I discovered that searching google for them brings up freedomforall.net above the ofenders themselves. hehehe

Feedback is a beautiful thing.
(btw Shyloh is a beautiful woman).
Without feedback the writer wilts.
Like a flower in old water.

by Matthew.

Can you have Html in a poem? Does it form part of the verse? x Matthew

The Israelis pulling out of their Gaza homes this week are poorly served by their religion. When religion leads to constant war with one’s neighbours it can not be a good thing. It is particularly true now, when the impermanance of things is clear to see, that the good book of the Jews, or the Jewish interpretation of it, is flawed. How much better served would the Jews of Gaza be if their religion said “everything changes” rather than you are the people of God and Israel is your land.

God is a projection of the fears of the human mind, a vain attempt to make certain what is uncertain and make good what is perceived to be bad. The alignment of any group of people with this projection will only lead to trouble. The alignment of two opposing groups with a slightly different version of this projection will only lead to war.

Some Jews are left bravely, or stupidly, trying to defend their homes against their own army who will evict them. These persons have so identified with the certanties of the projection that they know they are right. They are so afraid of life on their own terms that they can’t see through their own fear to the open-hearted-ness that is the core of all beings. Their own hearts and minds are so closed they can not perceive another’s being open.

30,000 children die of starvation or curable disease every day. In a recent post of Buddha Dharma I quoted a text which explains a Buddhist understanding that all our suffering and happiness comes from our mind; that if we can control our mind we will have the source of happiness within us forevermore.

I can not say to a child starving to death that their suffering is the result of their untamed mind. I can not say that, if only they could learn to accept and be at peace with their situation, their suffering would end. I do not think this is what the Buddha meant either and I doubt he would be happy with this interpretation of his teachings. Indeed he only came to full realisation after he had eaten a bowl of milk rice offered him by a child and satiated his hunger, recognising that austere practices of self-denial were not the way to truth.

I am not sure how to resolve these two positions, both of which make a great deal of sense. Except to say that suffering of the sort the buddha was referring to is the suffering of our minds and that the body must be fed for the mind to be free to understand and heal it’s hurts. And this collective hurt we inflict on the world with our economics of starvation must end if we are to find a collective peace that allows individuals to come to terms with, be at peace with, themselves. For as long as one child dies, my humanity and yours die too, in a small but not insignificant way, as we bury our feelings of shame at the way things are done.

What is the meaning of life for Buddhists? There is no such thing. The meaning of life is not separated from the life itself. The life is the meaning in every small action, thought, word, every nuance. When we ascribe to life a meaning in words which we perceive as separate from life we are falling into ignorance born of habit and the tendency of the human mind to separate, categorise, measure and interpret.

I wrote a poem on the subject a while back, shortly before performing my first reading to a public audience of strangers. I enjoy these poems, and the audience did too. The poems don’t really spring from “me”, but more from that dark place I wrote of recently.

Out of that dark place comes “my” poetry and even that truth appeared in a poem some time ago where the last stanza reads: “And me, I write my worlds of truth, knowing they’re not mine. Trying not to try too hard, just letting justice shine”. The dark place, I am starting to realise, is very bright and luminous inside and not to be feared, though the journey there may involve uncontemplated perils.

Recently I noticed on my visitor stats for this site that I had received a visit from someone searching Google for ‘Buddhist meaning of life’ (without the quotes). As often when I discover these things I repeated the search myself to see where Google was ranking me on this one. Second out of about 734,000 webpages worldwide seemed pretty good going really. And My ego is content to come so close to a page quoting the Dalai Lama’s book “The Meaning of Life” that was first. That Search.

My personal “becoming buddha” project (aim: the ego decided to get rid of itself) must be coming to some sense of fruition, after all Google knows everything today: it’s the worlds encyclopedia and the sole source of repute. Of course, I don’t put much weight on such measurements, but my ego on the other hand, loves them to bits.