busy day

instead of taking an excerpt from my 'in buddha's words' book, tonight ill be taking 2 things from a book a buddhist monk gave me that was his own, called 'how to practice' by the dalai lama. that was a long sentence..anyway

"I have had the opportunity to meet several people who have attained extraordinary spiritual development. There was a not very scholarly monk from my Namgyel monastery who came out of Tibet to India around 1980. Since we knew eachother we were casually chatting one day. He told me that while he was in a Chinese Communist gulag for almost eighteen years, he faced danger on a few occasions. I thought he was referring to a threat to his own life. But when asked, "What danger?" he answered "Losing compassion toward the Chinese." He considered this to be the danger!" pg. 62, Refraining from Harm
"You too can come to see the hardships you endure as deepening your practice." pg. 79, Extending Help

these are from 2 different chapters. the first one is just so touching an inspiring, ive already remembered it a few times since reading it to help dispel some bad thoughts..and the second illustrates the complete compassion of the dalai lama, who is a model for everyone. if you dont know what hes been through and had to be responsible for, i suggest you do some reading. lets just say the weight of our 'hardships' arent much compared to his..yet he doesnt view it that way. any little struggle, like the bad thoughts i had, are of enough concern to him that he would not only write all of these books for us, but say things like that that put what we endure on a level with him. to truly care and find significance in our little troubles, and to illustrate with his own experiences how we can help ourselves..this is why this is what ive chosen. i want to become more loving and kind. really think about what this prayer means and suggests:
As long as the sky exists
And as long as there are sentient beings,
May I remain to help
Relieve them of all their pain.
i have such anger towards people for what theyre doing to the earth, and what theyre not doing, i know any good buddhist would tell me i should just have compassion for them, these ideas of theirs doesnt make them any different from me, there is no reason at all for anger towards these people, and anger towards the situation wont help any. i just need to always keep these things in my mind, along with the story of the gulag prisoner.


as for today, it was busy and towards the end i got rather stressed and then me and heidi had a talk and now i feel frazzled..i want to go to bed, i really dont know if michael makes the same effort as i do every day to try to get a chance to talk to him, but that doesnt really matter, i know he loves me..i got stressed from hurrying to finish cleaning this car before dark or supper was ready, i thought more time had passed than did and i was freaking out thinking heidi would be done by the time i was back in the house and i knew i wasnt doing a great job cause i was hurrying and UGH but it turns out i made it back in surprisingly good time...but on top of that i didnt do any homework all week, i created a little stress pickle for myself today. but it was a prodective day, i think i made heidi a little proud, i got to spend some awesome time with the neighbors' dogs which also made them happy probably, i got offered to be able to come help out cooking at this little youth group thing (i wonder if theyd still let me if they knew about my flamboyant atheism LOL well they never asked). yesterday im almost positive i found out what a certain monthly problem is, and am making good progress on my fursuit head. this post seemingly has contradictions in it, but i assure you i am aware of things and that makes it a little better im sure :)

a find while researching hyenas

from "Life o the Ancient Egyptians" by Evžen Strouhal-
(on other domestic animals they kept)
"..They took pleasure in breeding them successfully, but did not see them merely as utilities. We know from many illustrations what care they took of them. When a flock had to ford a canal or creek, the shepherds would pick up the little ones gently in their arms and carry them across. We can see men stroking an animal's muzzle when feeding it. In Kagemni's mastaba in Saqqara we can even see a farmer feeding a piglet from his own mouth. It was part of the moral code that (other) animals should be humanely treated and adequately fed.
"A balanced relationship between people and beasts was seen by the ancient Egyptians as one element in the eternal global and cosmic order. ... In contrast to Graeco-Roman civilization and Judaic and Christian culture, which placed homo sapiens on a pedestal as a privileged being distinct from the rest of creation, the ancient Egyptians saw themselves as the children of nature, members of a single, remarkable whole along with the (other) animals and plants."
i added the bold and parentheticals :P

well just last night i admit to laying in bed crying over the earth's plight. i've read about how there were other mass extinctions happening before, and some people even believe this is why we shouldnt be bothered by the enormous amount of life we are destroying. what they dont understand is, since we aren't doing much to stop and reverse this, its just going to accelerate. this in itself wasnt what upset me so much as the fact that hardly anybody cares about the truly amazing amount of beauty thats going to be lost..all of these results of billions of years of life and change wasted, such an incredible amount of variety and beauty and the majority of people dont for one reason or another care. it made me so sad to think about all of these lives cut short, and what did they do to deserve it? they dont even know whats happening, i watched a show about how elephants are going insane as a result of human intrusion, so then we just go and kill them. i cried because i just watched all these videos of cheetahs, and i realized they dont have a chance or choice in anything. because the majority of people are too full of themselves to truly care and the ones who do don't have any power to change anything.
its simply not fair to destroy the world we live in, but i suppose that would be better than continuing on with the mindsets our society tells us we need to have.

spring break

"Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart, and then strike him immediately afterward with a second dart, so that the man would feel a feeling caused by two darts. So too, when the uninstructed wordling experiences a painful feeling, he feels two feelings-a bodily one and a mental one.

"while experiencing that same painful feeling, he harbors aversion toward it. When he harbors aversion toward painful feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion toward painful feeling lies behind this. While experiencing painful feeling, he seeks delight in sensual (of the senses) pleasure. For what reason? Because the uninstructed worldling does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure. ...

"If he feels a pleasant feeling, he feels it attached. If he feels a painful feeling, he feels it attached. This, monks, is called an uninstructed worldling who is attached to birth, aging, and death; who is attached to sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair; who is attached to suffering, I say.

"Monks, when the instructed noble disciple experiences a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling-a bodily one. ...

"While experiencing that same painful feeling, he harbors no aversion toward it. ...

"If he feels a pleasant feeling, he feels it detached. If he feels a painful feeling, he feels it detached."

whew

well as the title implies it is now spring break. i was positive i was going to get to see michael (my one and only :D~) but thats not looking so good now, which is very sad..and it just occurred to me today that mom wanted to come and get me to bring me home for the week if he didnt come, but i told her he definitely would..so now im not only stuck in the city, but probably basically alone for a week..uuuggh. im really hoping by some miracle he can come, either of those options for this week would have made being here alot better.

but other than that, things are good. nothing incredibly new or interesting other than that. oh except i found out im a furry. thats one way im going to spend my week, scouting out supplies. i have a 50 dollar walmart card, i was gonna buy pokemon black but im thinking now ill get some odds and ends for my future fursuit. id really really like to make it to anthrocon, which is in pittsbugh, in june i believe. im a brown hyena.