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When a massive wildfire surrounded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, five monks risked their lives to save it. A gripping narrative as well as a portrait of the Zen path and the ways of wildfire, Fire Monks reveals what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind.

Zen master and author of the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi established a monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs in 1967, drawn to the location's beauty, peace, and seclusion. Deep in the wilderness east of Big Sur, the center is connected to the outside world by a single unpaved road. The remoteness that makes it an oasis also makes it particularly vulnerable when disaster strikes. If fire entered the canyon, there would be no escape.

More than two thousand wildfires, all started by a single lightning storm, blazed across the state of California in June 2008. With resources stretched thin, firefighters advised residents at Tassajara to evacuate early. Most did. A small crew stayed behind, preparing to protect the monastery when the fire arrived.

But nothing could have prepared them for what came next. A treacherous shift in weather conditions prompted a final order to evacuate everyone, including all firefighters. As they caravanned up the road, five senior monks made the risky decision to turn back. Relying on their Zen training, they were able to remain in the moment and do the seemingly impossible-to greet the fire not as an enemy to defeat, but as a friend to guide.

Fire Monks pivots on the kind of moment some seek and some run from, when life and death hang in simultaneous view. Novices in fire but experts in readiness, the Tassajara monks summoned both intuition and wisdom to face crisis with startling clarity. The result is a profound lesson in the art of living.

Video by Mako Voelkel.

[video:https://youtu.be/nvlkaM6lwIE ]

Last week Snoopydawg let us know about how "The democrats called people in Montana who had signed the Green Party ballot and bullied them into recanting their signatures. The democrats also got the GP kicked off the ballot in Wisconsin."

at the bottom with Leon Panetta's comments in a recent German documentary on WikiLeaks.

John Goetz

Now that Judge Baraiter has told the defense to STFU about Julian’s extradition being ‘political’, in the second superceding indictment is his (WikiLeaks) having ‘put people in harm’s way’.  Now his Aussie attorney Jen Robinson said that i) if he had, there would have been reports of it, and two, even if anyone had been harmed, the issue was still moot under  his (their)  First Amendment rights to have done so.  As per Kevin Gostola yesterday, it was unclear whether or not Baraitser would allow Jen to testify for the defense.

Noteworthy is the fact that of all the media organizations who’d profited from publishing WikiLeaks work, Goetz is the only one willing to testify for the defense and tell the Truth.

‘Former Der Spiegel journalist exposes US government lies that Assange “failed to redact” and “put lives at risk”,  Laura Tiernan, 17 September 2020, wsws.org (Given permission, I’ll use it all, as he’s da bomb!)

Sometimes by the end of the day the totality of the global suckage really gets to ya, and then the next morning you find that while you slept stuff happened that puts a different focus on all that. Yeah, it all sucks, but it does get pretty freaking entertaining.

It's 7 am and isn't this a fun day already?

It’s really just more bellicose threats of war and war by other means for fun and profit, as Tehran and the Palestinians know all too well.

‘Trump stages sham Mideast “peace” ceremony on White House lawn’, Bill Van Auken, 16 September 2020, wsws.org (given permission, I’ll quote liberally, leaving out some of the earlier history Van Auken cites; my bolds.)

“The signing of agreements between Israel and the Sunni Persian Gulf monarchies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on the White House South Lawn Tuesday was proclaimed by US President Donald Trump as the advent of “peace in the Middle East without blood all over the sand,” and universally hailed by the media as “historic.”

We generally use the analytical part of our brain. However, when a jarring or shocking piece of information is presented the brain moves into the limbic system. The limbic system structures are involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival such as fear and anger. This mechanism is used in advertising and propaganda to trigger the “sleeper effect”.