I saw a great movie yesterday (again). The peaceful warrior. For those who don't know it, it's about a student athlete preparing for the Olympics qualifiers. He is just like most people, a thinker, restless and plagued by ambition and the fear of not being able to reach his goals. He finds a master in the gas station clerk, which he calls Socrates because he won't tell him his name. He shows him the way of living in the here and now, beyond the thoughts and feelings that trouble us and blind us. The gymnast is still quite rebellious and challenges Socrates ideas.   Read more...

Okay, I admit it, I’m up past my eyeballs in a new computer and things are not going as swimmingly as promised. Let’s leave brands and operating systems out of this equation. My situation prompted a question for me.

Does technology foster peace?   Read more...

"Are you looking for peace and harmony on the Internet? Enter Seiwa-en where you can experience such quietude. This garden is a project of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, designed by 'Koichi Kawana, M.F.A, Ph.D., a native of Japan and Principal Architecture Associate and lecturer in Japanese art, architecture and landscape design at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kawana Sensei not only designed Seiwa-en but also supervised its construction and development until his death in 1990. Here's your opportunity to experience this 'wet strolling garden' in the solitude of your home and maybe even develop a few ideas of your own for recreating a similar masterpiece in your own backyard!"   Read more...

Until the current global grain shortage the issue of hunger had largely slipped from the rich world’s consciousness. But the food crisis being reported in our papers and on our televisions isn’t a strange blip that will go away. It’s a reminder that hunger is a real and persistent issue for the billion people worldwide who live on less than a dollar a day.

Malnutrition in mothers and their young children will claim 3.5 million lives this year and millions more will survive but fail to thrive because of chronic food shortages.   Read more...

Ernest Holmes was the founder of a scientific, practical movement of Christianity called Science of Mind. He was a prolific student of all religions, all philosophies and all ideas of his time. The practice was a synthesis of his thinking. He wrote the words below.

In this peace that holds me so gently,
I find strength and protection from all fear or anxiety.
It is in the peace of God in which I feel the love of a Holy Presence.   Read more...

This is the final section of this series honoring my father. The reason I chose to write about him in the first place was because many of the values he espoused might do well being reinstated. They could possibly blend happily into today’s world, which in many ways is seeking a new identity and connection to its emerging soul.   Read more...

If you’re reading this post, like me you probably spend too much time on the internet, much of it contributing to online communities of shared interest. As exciting as it sometimes is to find people with similar views and interests online I’m not always confident that my virtual networks are going to amount to much.

Social Innovation Camp (www.sicamp.org) is interested in addressing exactly that issue: how the online world can be used to create better solutions to social problems in the real world.   Read more...

There's a thin line between action figure and father figure. And when it comes to kicking fatherly ass, Steven Seagal is your daddy. Off-screen he is an actual Aikido sensei, the first Gajin to open a dojo in Japan. He tests his students with the famous three man attack.

If we follow Seagal we learn that for young men anger and sometimes aggression are perfectly natural things. But they have been pushed to the edges of what we call civilization. It's great to want to be civilized, but what about the impulse? Violence dominates the media and we seem to have projected all our darkest urges onto 'the bad guy'. Only there are no protectors, no heroes, no rolemodels. Some critics complain that young men have lost their manhood. Have we no anger? Are we not men? What is a man? This lack of definition seems to be at the core of our current existential crisis. Let me answer that question, bluntly and honestly, the way real men do.   Read more...

I went to visit some friends this weekend. I live with my girlfriend in Campinas, Brasil, it’s an 1.5 hour drive to our friend’s house in Sao Paulo. There are three of them living together, two girls and a gay guy, right in the middle of this enormous city. It’s always great to go there, the atmosphere is really relaxed. When I visit I always get a specific feeling that I also got in the Netherlands when visiting another gay friend there.   Read more...

Rev. Jesse Jennings, writing in Science of Mind magazine, says, “The world is seeking to sow peace, not just as the ending of open hostilities, but as a durable, perpetual field of play in which mutual respect and understanding are the norm.”

I liked his idea particularly since it gives the world a soul. “The world itself is seeking to sow peace . . . .” Delicious.   Read more...