Stealing beauty

A mother sloth bear and cub discovered unexpectedly in an abandoned hut at the edge of the Navegaon National Park in Maharashtra, India, March 2010. The mother and cub moved out of their denning site after they were discovered.

Photo: Ankur Kali

Thoreau's Ecstasy

"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before, a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mists by the sun. Man cannot Know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun."

~ Henry David Thoreau, "Walking," The Writings of HDT

Photo: Robert Kruh

"There's a Latin expression that I love... ex nihilo nihil fit... nothing comes out of nothing... you just don't get it cheap."

~ Jonathan Kozol, BookTV.org interview, Advice to Young Writers, 9/6/09

Crime against nature

17-month-old male tigers killed in India's Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in early March after consuming a poisoned goat carcass put in the reserve by local villagers.

For more information, see Aditya Singh's website, or to contribute to the struggle to protect Ranthambhore's tigers: Tiger Watch.

Photos: Aditya Singh

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

~ Mary Oliver

Photo: Jess Lee

Recommended viewing -- a superb climate change video

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Highly recommended viewing for high school classrooms, etc!

Join World Wildlife Fund for the 3rd annual "Lights out for 60 minutes on behalf of the planet!" event on March 27, at 8:30 p.m. local time. Check out the WWF EarthHour website for videos about lights out all over the world, 3 years running, and sign up to join in. It's one small (but fun and effective) step to call attention to the need to return to 350!

Photos & Quotes

"As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job."

~ Jane Goodall

"There is no practical alternative to hope."

~ Unknown

Photos are of George Schaller. The top photo, taken by Jonathan Waterman, shows Schaller near Atigun Gorge in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, examining an Arctic ground squirrel Spermophilus parryii. In the long Arctic winters, this animal drops its body temperature to minus three degrees Celsius, during the world's deepest mammalian hibernation. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge exists in large part because of research conducted in the region by Schaller in the earliest days of his career.

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up In Her Nest With a Plough

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

~ Robert Burns, 1785

Photo: Alex Sukonkin

from Worldwatch:

Empowering Women Worldwide

In recognition of International Women’s Day, Worldwatch acknowledges the key role that women can play in solving many of the world’s sustainability challenges. Our population research shows that empowering women to determine their own reproductive healthcare can help slow population growth, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and improve adaptation to a changing climate. And our Nourishing the Planet project recognizes the importance of making women’s voices heard in agriculture and other areas: although women comprise the majority of the world’s farmers, they remain underrepresented in farmers groups, associations, and unions. Learn more about Worldwatch’s efforts to boost women’s roles in addressing population growth and food insecurity.

Read:

More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want by Robert Engelman

and Access to Water Improves Quality of Life for Women and Children by Molly Theobald

Making the rounds on the Internet currently, this photo evolution is, needless to say, an overstatement, and yet...

From wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to lack of principled leadership on healthcare reform (single payer??) and education, to weak-kneed economic "reform," to "pardoning" of Bush era torture architects, to business as usual on the nuclear weapons front, to "the only good wolf is a dead wolf," to near-ZERO leadership on climate change, the single most pressing issue of our time...

America needs systemic constitutional and electoral change. And more than better leaders, it needs courageous "followers," who will initiate and sustain change from the bottom up.

Exquisitely beautiful, terrifyingly vulnerable

Photo: A young male in the Ranthambhore Tiger reserve, Rajasthan, that has taken refuge from the mid-day heat within the cool stone walls and banyan roots of one of the many medieval ruins of the reserve.

2009

Your book takes an autobiographical turn; it’s not just about your beliefs, but how they evolved. Why?

I find I am less and less comfortable with assuming you can make such a clear-cut distinction between the ideas that you hold and the life that you have lived. I don’t think the two are really separable, especially if you see Buddhism as a practice rather than just an object of academic interest. None of these texts and practices can be understood apart from their impact on your own subjective experience as a human being living in a particular place, being of a certain age, being in a particular situation. Buddhism has never flourished in a vacuum. ‚

~ Stephen Batchelor's response to a question about his latest book, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, posed by Tricycle magazine, Spring 2010

Photo: Stephen Batchelor during his time as a Tibetan monk, circa 1978

(Wendell) Berry fragments

To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it -- a clarity that men
depend on men to make.

~ The Mad Farmer's Declaration

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

~ Wild Geese

Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

~ How To Be a Poet (to remind myself)

... When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.
My purpose is a language that can make us whole,
Though mortal, ignorant, and small.
The world is whole beyond human knowing.

~ Some Further Words

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives awhile in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

~ Untitled, from A Timbered Choir

Stealing beauty

Asiatic leopard cub orphaned when hunters in Myanmar's Hukawng Valley killed its mother to sell her body parts for use in traditional medicine.

~ Photo: Steve Winter - National Geographic Image Collection

Tigers in the Times

Please take a moment to read an important article in yesterday's New York Times ("Fretting about the Last of the World's Big Cats") on the reasons for the tiger's plummeting wild populations. It is not too late to save this iconic creature, but it stands once again at the precipice of extinction. Several times the number of tigers in the wild exist in captivity.

Make your voice heard: go to the Mutts comics blog for a concrete list of suggestions for helping this iconic species. Scroll down several news items to: "In the year of the tiger, tigers need you!"

If you are looking for an organization to donate to, my recommendation would be Panthera.org, the big cat conservation organization headed by Alan Rabinowitz, George Schaller, Luke Hunter...

Essential interviews

This one is with wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz, president/CEO of Panthera, for the superb Yale Environment 360 journal... a must read on the current state of tigers in the wild and tiger conservation.

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2242

Recommended reading

Brilliant insight into the "true nature" of Buddhism, Batchelor dispenses with the elaborate metaphysics that have come to overlay Buddhism, and discusses the Buddha's core teachings. A gripping read for anyone interested in Buddhism, from curious "beginner" to long-time "follower." Batchelor's book is part travelogue, part personal memoir, part scholarly but personal and impassioned exploration of Siddhatta Gotama's insights and injunctions for a more loving and compassionate way for Homo sapiens to live on the earth.

If this is your first exposure to Batchelor, you have a wealth of fascinating reading ahead of you. You might want to turn next to his earlier book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, which suggests the need to topple some of the superstructure that now overlays Buddh-ism around the world.

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
by Stephen Batchelor
Spiegel & Grau, 2010

"... we fail to see that the socially problematic spontaneity of little children is as yet uncoordinated and 'embryonic.' We then make the mistake of socializing children, not by developing their spontaneity, but by developing a system of resistances and fears which splits the organism into a spontaneous center and an inhibiting center. Thus it is rare indeed to find an integrated person capable of self-controlling spontaneity, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. It is as if we were teaching our children to walk by lifting up their feet with their own hands instead of moving their legs from within. We do not see that before spontaneity can control itself it must be able to function. The legs must have full freedom of movement before they can acquire the disciplines of walking and running or dancing... Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity - the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation...

... Thus a Hindu sage has remarked that the first thing he has to teach Westerners who come to him is how to cry..."

~ Alan W. Watts, Nature, Man and Woman, 1958

... Rather than seek God, Gotama suggested that you turn your attention to what is most far from God, the anguish and pain of life on this earth. In a contingent world, change and suffering are inevitable... To embrace the contingency of one's life is to embrace one's fate as an ephemeral but sentient being... one can come to love that fate. But to do so one must first embrace it, though one instinctively recoils at such a prospect. To steady one's gaze on the finitude, contingency, and anguish of one's existence is not easy: it requires mindfulness and concentration. One needs to make a conscious shift from delight in a fixed place to awareness of a contingent ground. Places to which I am instinctively attracted are places where I imagine suffering to be absent. 'There,' I think, 'if only I could get there, then I would suffer no more.' The groundless ground of contingency, however, holds out no such hope. For this is the ground where you are born and die, get sick and grow old, are disappointed and frustrated.

To fully know suffering goes against the grain of what I am primed to desire. Yet a contingent, impermanent world does not exist in order to gratify my desires. It cannot provide the non-contingent, permanent well-being I crave...

The aim of mindfulness is to know suffering fully. It entails paying calm, unflinching attention... To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love."

~ Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Spiegel & Grau, 2010

Photo: Cal Vornberger, Muskrat Feeding, Jamaica Bay, Queens, New York, 2006

Lesson

"A female wolf left four or five pups alone in a rendezvous area in the Brooks Range one morning and set off down a trail away from them. When she was well out of sight, she turned around and lay flat in the path, watching her back trail. After a few moments, a pup who had left the rendezvous area trotted briskly over a rise in the trail and came face to face with her. She gave a low bark. He stopped short, looked about as though preoccupied with something else, then, with a dissembling air, began to edge back the way he had come. His mother escorted him to the rendezvous site and departed again. This time she didn't bother watching her back trail. Apparently the lesson had taken, for all the pups stayed put until she returned that evening."

~ Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men

Vic Bearcroft

The Tiger in Art ~ China

Photos & Quotes

"Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees - all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related."

~ Thomas Berry

Photo: Marty Ostrow

St. Francis and the Birds, sculpture by Frederick Franck, donated to Green Mountain Monastery in honor of Thomas Berry (1914-2009)

Recommended reading

Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species
by Alan Green
Publisher: Public Affairs, 1999

Recommended reading

Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos
Text by Derrick Jensen, Photographs by Karen Tweedy-Holmes
Publisher: No Voice Unheard, 2007 (www.NoVoiceUnheard.org)

~ From A Note from the Publisher:

"This book was turned down by numerous commercial publishers. Because we have all been taught for decades-for our entire lifetimes-that zoos are good and necessary places, making a case otherwise is not a popular, or 'marketable,' stand. And so it falls to a small, non-profit organization to send this voice out into the world..."

Awakening from the Nightmare

"Who would have thought ten years ago that whales and dolphins could be captured, trained, displayed to an interested public and sent on air journeys of many hours' duration?... Who would have thought ten years ago that big game, like elephants, rhinos, hippos, and the swift gazelles and antelopes, could be captured alive by a shot of a hypodermic needle from a gun? The possibilities opened by this invention should be obvious to everyone.

Instead of going on safari for weeks at a time with a large column of porters, the modern collector takes to the car and has a much easier time. In former days, the elephant mothers had to be killed if the young was to be taken because it was impossible to get close to a herd of elephants or rhinos on foot on on horseback. Though not without risk, the car can be used to separate the mother from her offsping. Zebras, antelopes and giraffes have no chance of escape when they are pursued not only by one horse but by 100 horse power... but unless it is skillfully done, capture by car may lead to overstrain or even complete exhaustion. Much experience, good cars, and a certain amount of imagination are essential.

Nocturnal animals have no chance of escape when they are hunted with strong headlamps and searchlights, which dazzle their eyes so that they cannot see the hunter. For many years this method of catching the shy and swift antelopes and gazelles, and even rhinos and hippos, was strictly prohibited, but today it is in common use.

A sheer accident taught the natives of the wooded slopes of Mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru in Tanzania how to catch colobus or guereza monkeys, still relatively rarely seen in captivity. At weekends the natives would drink a home-brewed beer called pombe... the dregs are simply thrown away. Since guerezas very rarely climb down to the ground, the natives were amazed to see a whole colony of these monkeys climb down from the trees and crowd round the dregs, possibly attracted by the smell of alcohol. ... they liked it and ate as much as they could. When the natives came closer, the monkeys were so drunk that they were unable to reach the trees, let alone climb them, and a large number of them had to sleep off their hangover in a European capture station, on their way to the zoo."

~ a modern zoo trader quoted in Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos, by Derrick Jensen and Karen Tweedy-Holmes