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Friday, January 23, 2009

IDEOLOGY


IDEOLOGY

Here is a newspaper account of torture practised in modern concentration camps.
The victim is bound to a metal chair then electric shocks ore administered to him in increasing intensity till he confesses.
The torturer cups his hands and slaps the victim on the ear repeatedly till the eardrum breaks.
A dentist straps the prisoner to a chair and drills till he strikes a nerve.
The drilling goes on till the victim agrees to cooperate.

Human beings are not naturally cruel.
They become cruel when they are unhappy —
Or when they succumb to an ideology.
One ideology against another;
one religion against another.
And people crushed in between them.
The men who crucified Jesus could very well have bean gentle husbands and loving fathers who practised cruelty to maintain a religion or an ideology.
If religious people had always followed the instinct of their heart rather than the logic of their religion we would have been spared the sight of heretics burning at stakes, widows walking into funeral pyres and innocent people slaughtered in wars that are waged in’ the name of God.

Compassion has no ideology.


THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello S. J.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Certitude

Certitude


My reason is to lose all reason

My religion is indifference to religion

A simple answer is enough

After doubt, wine has borne my certitude

The day just broken is already done

Tomorrow is not yet here

Be happy today

Unceasingly fill your cup

And seize this

The sole chance of your existence

Although everything is born of ourselves

Yours and mine are

but two miserable lives

To be, is drunkenness and ecstasy

Tomorrow is the downfall of an age

Omar Khayyam

***

Omar Khayyam

(May 18, 1048 - December 4, 1122)

Was a Persian polymath: mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and above all poet.

As a poet, he is the most famous poet of the East in the West through various adaptations of his rather small number of quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

He has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. Recognized as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times as reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.

His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works have not received the same attention as have his scientific or poetic writings. Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have also testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nayshapur where Khayyam lived most of his life, breathed his last, and was buried and where his mausoleum remains today a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every yea.


Monday, January 19, 2009

Without nothing!



Without nothing!


Without nothing

I love you

Without nothing

In this love

There is no money

No dollars

No territories

No jewelers

Come… we sit

In the shade

None owns this shade

Love me and think a little at that

Without nothing

Only you

Without nothing

Without all kind of your clothes

Without makeup

Without all your friend’s friends

The Nasty and the nice ones

Come… we sit

In the shade

None owns this shade

Love me and think a little at that

Without your mommy and daddy group (choir)

without eyelid and mascara

without that women weave (chat)

without all this ridiculous masquerade

Come… we sit

In the shade

None owns this shade

Love me and think a little at that


Ziad Rahbani

Ziad Rahbani (also Ziyad al-Rahbany born 1956)
Is a Lebanese composer and writer for radio shows and theater, very famous in his native country as well as in many other regions of the Arab world.
Ziad Rahbani is the son of the Lebanese famous composer Assi Rahbani and Nuhad Haddad, the famous Lebanese female singer known as Fairouz.
He composed many songs for his mother Fairouz, as well as other singers, and he has released music albums of his own. Many of his musicals satirized the political situation in Lebanon during and after the civil war, often strongly critical of the traditional political establishment; others addressed more philosophical questions. He played the lead role in all his plays, and has generally been reluctant to allow the filming of his plays.
Ziad was married to Dalal Karam and had a son named "Assi Jr" with her. But his marriage was doomed to fail, and they got divorced. That led Dalal to write her life with Ziad in the gossip magazine "Ashabaka". Ziad composed some songs about their relationship like "Marba el Dalal" and "Bisaraha", amongst others.
After the divorce, Ziad had a well-publicized relationship with actress Carmen Lubbos that went on for 15 years before they agreed to separate.
Politically, Ziad Rahbani has a long standing relationship with Lebanese leftist movements, and is a self-declared communist. Being a Christian, his politics have meant that he has been at odds with some of his co-religionists. During the Lebanese civil war, Ziad resided in mainly Muslim West Beirut.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Murmur of the breeze



Murmur of the breeze


O murmur of the breeze

Go and tell the fawn to find sweet water

Only intensifies my thirst

I have a beloved whose love inhabits my insides

Should he so desire

He might trample my cheek underfoot

His spirit is my spirit

And my spirit is His spirit

When He feels desire, I feel desire

When I feel desire He feels desire


Mansur al-Hallaj
(c. 858-922)

Mansūr-e Hallāj; full name Abū al-Mughīth Husayn Mansūr al-Hallāj was a Persian mystic, writer and teacher of Sufism most famous for his apparent, but disputed, self-proclaimed divinity, his poetry and for his execution for heresy at the orders of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir after a long drawn investigation.

Living


Living
Every man Dies!
But
Not Every man Lives!