TIL

The word "meme" is a shortening (modeled on "gene") of mimeme (from Ancientt Greek μίμημα mimēma, "something imitated", from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμος mimos "mime") and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

 

How to Build

from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Heart Sutra

Om Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom the Lovely, the Holy !


Avalokita, the Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond.



He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and He saw that in their own-being they were empty.



Here, O Sariputra,



form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form ;



emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form,



the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.



Here, O Sariputra,



all dharmas are marked with emptiness ;



they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.



Therefore, O Sariputra,



in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness ;



No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to :



No mind-consciousness element ; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to : There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path.



There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.



Therefore, O Sariputra,



it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble,



he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.



All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.



Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth -- for what could go wrong ? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this :



gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.



( Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail ! -- )



This completes the Heart of perfect Wisdom.



(Translated by E. Conze)



http://kr.buddhism.org/zen/sutras/conze.htm
 
http://dalailama.com/news/post/656-his-holiness-the-dalai-lama-expresses-his-sadness-over-the-recent-earthquake-and-tsunami-in-japan
 

True

Michael Moore made a statement this week in Wisconsin that  that 400 Americans "have more wealth than half of all Americans combined."

"Four hundred obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks -- most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 -- now have more cash, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined."





PolitiFact found that to be true.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/


Only 400 Americans have more wealth than half of of the 100 million households in the USA.

Only four years ago that was not true. Four years. wow

Now it Makes Sense

Why we're in a budget crisis: seems some people are still short $2 billion dollars.