On a sunny afternoon,..

While adoring

the million shades of green

in the coconut tree's crown,

basking in the midday sun,

against an azure blue sky,

I was ignoring

the magnificence of casuarinas

giving me a cooling shade,

whispering the sweet song

of the soft sea breeze,

that gently shook their leaves

Absolute closeness

I was about 5 years old
when I was diagnosed with appendicitis.

This meant an operation and 6 days of hospitalization
That time, even in the children's ward, there were strict visiting hours.
No-one was allowed to visit or stay with you unless it was visiting time.
Nurses were urging the children to finish the hospital food
often with a mild threat to keep you longer in the hospital if it was not finished.

My room looked out on the main entrance area
My mom arrived always the first, at least fifteen minutes before visiting time started
My heart was happy, I was proud my mom was always first.
As the crowd of visitors grew, she was standing closest to the door.
Then she came
It felt like heaven, Absolute love, absolute closeness
The two hours of heaven went all too fast
and soon it was time for another round of hospital food...

An acorn

An acorn that happens to be in the right place
can be the origin of a huge oak tree forest

The potential of a single acorn is huge,
provided it finds itself in the right place
in the right soil.

But whether the acorn falls in the right place,
in the right soil, depends completely on its luck
It cannot move by itself, it cannot choose the place.

The potential in each human being is like that in an acorn.
It is huge, hard to imagine how big the influence can be.
It needs the right place, the right nurturing, the right "soil".
We CAN make this world a huge "oak forest"
full of love, peace and harmony. Each of us CAN.

The big difference with the acorn, lies in our choice.
We have a choice. If the soil where we are is not good,
we can move.
We can move

We can move to a better place, with fertile soil
that awakens the potential, that fertilizes the potential
that let us grow, not only physically, but mentally, spiritually.
Let us move to a place, let us choose our friends and neighbors
from those who fertilize our potential
We can move
We can choose.

Inside

The door to wisdom opens towards the inside.
We have the habit to search it from outside.
Just let us open the door in the other direction
Amazing!

Energy

The energy flowing through the branches of the trees in spring
The energy flowing through the flowers and blossoms that bloom
The energy of the sea, ocean and its gusty winds
It gently flows through my veins and arteries too

The energy of painters, poets and bards making fun
The energy of wild tigers, lions and leopards too
The energy that flows through the rivers, moon and sun
It flows through my veins and also through those of you.

Aufie Zophy

If skies were water

If the sky were water

It would be a favorite diving site

The deep and bright green trees

Being wonderful corals

With birds as singing fishes

From the superb morning skies

One would not want to miss a cloud

Inviting would be the dark of the night

With its spectacle of moon and stars

But for now, skies are 'only' sky

How many of my more than 18K days here

did I not pay any attention to the skies?

Wealth and health

I want material wealth
I want spiritual wealth
One without the other
is perhaps not real wealth

I want bodily health
I want mental health
One without the other
is perhaps not real health

Wealth and health
both so important
without one or the other,
we are sick and poor

The wonderful thing is
if we help others towards
obtaining health and wealth
 the biggest possible peace of mind
and truest happiness becomes ours

That is why a kindness revolution is due so much
Kindness revolution is an idea whose time has come
Once an idea has its time coming,
it becomes an unstoppable thing.

Let us enjoy spiritual health, material health
bodily wealth, mental wealth
and help as many as possible others to get
spiritual and material wealth and a superb health too.

Life is often not easy,
but we can make it beautiful
Please enjoy the kindness revolution
that is not far away now.

A wonderful deal

The cost of kindness

is perhaps some vulnerability

but even then,

it is still an excellent deal

I was sitting in reflection at the border an almost perfectly peaceful lake, surrounded by  almost perfectly peaceful mountains in the northern Alps. Somehow, an all encompassing kindness revolution in the world, is a deep longing of my soul.

Once we start practicing kindness, it is so gratifying, so rewarding. We get so much peace of mind. We were born with a heart full of it and if we give it away, the universe showers bucket loads of it on us and refills our hearts within seconds. At the side of the lake, I reflected on why so many people were stingy with the kindness that is so abundantly sitting in their heart. Is there any negative to being kind? Or are we just forgetting to be kind so oftentimes?

If any negative is associated with kindness, it might generate a certain vulnerability. But then, if the kindness truly comes from our heart, the vulnerability tends to be extremely limited. Very few people will respond to genuine kindness with harshness or evil. I think the risk and vulnerability generated by unkind behavior is much bigger than that of kindness.

And here I am not talking about the so-called kindness of many politicians. I am talking about being kind, genuinely to our fellow human beings.

Truth

"Speak only words which are truthful and sincere.
Do not deceive either by word, look or gesture"
James Allen

The above wise words, I read today.
They really touched something inside of me:
A strong belief, a deep conviction, a principle.

The above wise words, that I read today,
I could have written them too.
They somehow resided in my soul,
but up to now I have failed to express them.

These very important words,
I hope, by sharing them here,
that they also touch something inside of you

All too often we hear the term white lies,
lies used for a good purpose.
Let me tell, there is no such a thing as a white lie.
Lies are always black.

I think in anyone's life there should be only few exceptions,
where telling the truth would be a highly irresponsible thing to d.o.
It would be better perhaps to say: lies are almost always black.

but the occasions where lies are not pure black but grey,
these should occur at most once per year
or better only very few times in a lifetime.

I love truth
You  love truth
He loves truth
She loves truth
We love truth
You love truth
They love truth

The old lady

I start here with a Haiku (for what a Haiku is, please see at bottom of this message):

A grey haired lady

sits between budding roses

in the city park

This afternoon, I was in Vienna's Volks garden, a wonderful park with so many flowers in the middle of the city. The smells of the flowers are wonderful and the colors are amazing.

Sitting there on a bench was a very old white haired lady,
sitting alone and lonely on a bench.
She was trying to enjoy the scenery
but a certain melancholy seemed to be present inside
a certain melancholy that even a smile could not hide.

Was she missing her beloved family?
Was she sad or worried because of a sickness
or other problems?
Was she just plain lonely?

I was feeling the urge to talk to her
but I found a cheap excuse: my German language was not good enough
Perhaps I should have tried anyhow. Perhaps she knew English
or just sharing her story, even though not fully understood by me,
could or would have perhaps lightened up the moment for her (?)
But I didn't. An opportunity to do good lost.
Everyday we get so many opportunities to do good,
but every day we tend to waste so many of them.

One of the ironic things was that two benches further
there was siting another old and apparently lonely lady.
And still another one was walking with a stick in front of us.
No one had talked or was talking to each other.
Maybe the silence of modern times.

Let us do something about the huge loneliness in the world
Let us approach a lonely person, today or tomorrow
or today and tomorrow



Short explanation about haiku
A haiku is a very interesting poem form.
Basically it is a 3 liner consisting of 5-7-5 spoken syllables (or less)
It should be containing factual images of nature
at least two juxtaposed to each other, 
preferably with an element of unexpectedness.
A classical contains no metaphors or similes,
no human feelings or interpretations 

A small challenge:
Please post your own haiku in the comments

Softness

Whenever the softness of my heart

cuts through the sharpness of my mind,

I manage to get a bit closer to my soul

Let softness reign over sharpness

Let kindness reign over harshness

We’ll get a bit closer to our God

In bliss

If we manage to live in the peace of God,
we become so sensitized to the beauty of everything
that there is impossibly any place or any time for hatred, revenge or worries.

If we manage to live in the bliss of God,
we fall in love with everyone we meet,
with the trees along the road,
with the clouds in the sky,
with the flowers in the grass,
with birds in the trees,
with sound of the wind,
with the feeling of our clothes,
with the touch of wood,
with the smell of  coffee,
with the taste of a sumptuous asparagus.

There will be simply no space or time to fret about anything from the past.

Yes, of course, I am not stupid

Did you have a peaceful day, today?
Or did you have a peaceful day, yesterday?

Many times for many of us the answer may be "no" to the above questions.

The next question is why our life tends not to be peaceful.
And then we come up with a thousand reasons.
All reasons tend to lie outside of ourselves: the happening in Nice,
the world economy, the cuts in the budget, the stress at work
the nasty traffic, the crossness of my spouse or children
the friends who are not real friends, and so on, etc. etc.

And yet Peace, the Peace with capital P,
is just present in the air around us.
If we manage to make our minds calm and serene,
we can always allow peace to enter our minds

As humans we were somehow endowed with a fantastic gift
We are capable of rising above the flight or fight response to our external circumstances.
Enslaved on our instincts, most of the time we do not make full use of this fantastic gift
If the world around seems to go against us, we can take a few seconds or a minute,
to assess the situation with a positive mindset and avoid to let the stress hormones
to  rush freely though our veins.

Peace is all around is all the time.
Just look at the sky, whether it is pristine blue or covered in a mass of grey clouds,
the peace in the sky is there. Look at a tree, a flower, a stretch of grass. Even if you are in a room where you can see none of these, think about the love, the friendship, the wonderful message on your Facebook, the joke that made you laugh out loud. Peace is really never far away. Even if you can find none of these, we can always make our mind quiet, look deep inside of our heart, our soul.

All we have to do, is open our mind, open our mind for peace and let it in.
Let it flow in from the beauty outside and
Let it flow into our mind from the beauty of our heart and soul.
Not letting peace flow into our mind,
is like a fish swimming in the water, but refusing to drink.
Soon if a fish does not drink, his body will hopelessly shrink.

And that is exactly what happens to peace:
if we refuse to drink the peace that is around us all the time
If we refuse to open our mind and let peace in
our minds will shrink under the pressure of stress.

We have to be busy with peace
We have to be motivated to make our life peaceful
Many religions have a wish of peace
But power sick religious leaders often give the extremely stupid direction
to use the wish of peace only to the people of the same religion.
This is clear nonsense. Give a wish of peace to everyone you meet.
Do not just do it as a routine, but do it mindfully
if we utter the wish of peace (for Muslims it is assalamualaikum)
really try to think about its meaning, try to feel the peace flowing.
Try to imagine for a while you sending a few electrons of peace
a few photons of peace from your mind to your friend's mind.
How wonderful the world will become!

Let us today be busy with peace.
Open our mind to the peace from the world
Open our mind to the peace from within
Drink it, as a fish is drinking water
do not allow our minds to shrink
under the pressure of stress.

Love, look for beauty, be grateful for what we have
and experience the peace
If tomorrow someone asks: did you have a peaceful day.
The answer will be; " yes of course, I am not stupid!"

The morning sun

The morning sun may not remember
how it has been shining yesterday
Did it show its rays warm and tender
or did it, behind clouds, shy away

It is not tired when it shone for long
It does not care about the days gone by
Today it has decided to sing its song
with color pearls in a super splendid sky

My dear friends,

No matter what happened yesterday
or the day before or the day before
Let us decide to put he past away
and do not worry anymore

Do we need Steve Jobs to use an I-phone?

If you are in a hurry, there is a summary in the last paragraph

Do we need Steve Jobs to use an I-phone?
Steve Jobs is dead and we still use an I phone
Even when Steve was alive perhaps a million people were using
I-phones and had not heard of Steve Jobs at all.
And still they did all the wonderful things with their phone, that I-phones can do.

Today I was reading a book of Tolstoy.
The issue he discussed that people can easily love themselves.
They can easily love their close family
Many even love their neighbourhood
Love for the nation does not seem too difficult.
But he claimed that for loving the whole world we really need to love God first.

I tend to disagree a bit with the last statement since some of the biggest humanitarians can be found among the atheists. The question remains why? If we do not practice high morals because of God, then why still people become superb humanitarians?

I think the answer lies in the way we were made.
Somehow we were made in a way that pure bliss can be found in altruism.
No matter how rich you are and how many cool drinks you can drink at the poolside,
while it is enjoyable for a short time, it will not give anyone the bliss and peace of mind that lies in selfless altruism. This is how God has created us. Yes we went through evolution and we are still evolving. Great minds have shown us us great examples, but at the time they lived, we were not ready. Soon we will be ready to all be aware that that whoever searches happiness, bliss, peace of mind (these three do go together and perhaps do not truly exist without one another) will have to find it in altruism, selfless altruism. I believe that this is God's way, and because it is His way, that is the way we were created.

Now coming back to the question whether we need to love God first before we can become great humanitarians. The answer is clearly no, we can enjoy the pure bliss and peace of mind created by altruism, even without knowing God. We can surely use whatever can be found in our heart, mind and soul and enjoy the great bliss it brings without knowing our Creator. Acknowledging God and trying to get in tune with that great source of wisdom and creative force in the Universe makes life easier, I think, but no matter what you believe, not being aware of what brings pure bliss and happiness and peace of mind means unacceptable ignorance.

Summary
If we try to tune in, into that ever present creative force and source of wisdom in the universe, many of us call God, we may find that he created us in a very special way. We find pleasure (short lasting) in food and other physical or material gains (like most animals do) but we can find bliss, happiness and lasting peace of mind through selfless altruism and random kind acts. More and more people are discovering this giant truth and whether or not they believe in God, they still get the enormous bliss from their humanitarian efforts.  The wisest among us are the biggest humanitarians, whether we believe in God or not. Just as we do not have to know Steve Jobs to use the I-phone, we do not have to know God to make full use of our heart and soul qualities. (I myself believe strongly in our God and I think it gives a whole extra dimension to life.)

Bacolod

I am on my way back from Bacolod City, Philippines
I went there for an accreditation visit of an ethics research committee.

I am writing this message as a form of appreciation to my Philippine friends.
Each time I am in the Philippines, I stand in a certain awe for the peace and joy
the people radiate.

There are so many talented people there, yet they tend to be humble and respectful.
There are many poor people and yet they tend to live in a certain harmony
There is a level of honesty in their dealings, not seen in many other places.

Of course we can not say all are good there.
But contrary to the many bad stories I heard about "the Philippines" before I went there for the first time, I can say it is a nation with many great people, loving peace and joy, dedicated to make things better in their own country.

I am coming back from Bacolod, with another fantastic experience of peace and dedication in my heart and my memory

Thoughts

A magical whiff of substance
glowing electrically in my brain
transmuting image to word
transforming word to feeling
never far from the universal Soul
permeating into reality
through action and perception.
Truth openly manifested
through a magnificent thought. 

Aufie Zophy

The rain

The rain was pouring down
Drops were hitting my head
And then I imagined the best possible case scenario
And the best possible case scenario is what happened.

When we are in some trouble
we tend to get so very worried,
that the worries are leaving us blind to the opportunities
that are lying hidden in the challenge that came our way

When things do not go
according to expectations
Accept that not always everything goes to expectation
Think for awhile about the best possible outcome

and chances are
that you will see
the opportunity
hidden in the challenge...

Rumi

Come
let's fall
in love
again
let's turn
all the dirt
in this world
to shiny gold

Is this not a wonderful quote of Rumi?

I love it

I think it is superb

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

A few more exceptional quotes from him:

Time

Our life is made up of time.
every second that ticks away,
a bit of our remaining time,
our remaining life on earth is gone.


And yet, how many hours, have I just wasted?

How often have I made the strong commitment
to read every day a few pages in
masterpieces of great teachers/authors
and yet so many days pass by, wasting time.

But what is passed, is passed,
Time gone is gone forever,
Now sitting and fuming over time already wasted is of no use.
Now is the time to plan better, not to waste time anymore
or at least to waste less than before. 

Breaking free

It is not abnormal
to be a slave of desire

and yet

I want to break free
from this normality

It is not abnormal to think
thoughts of negativity

and yet
I want to break free 
from this negativity

It is not abnormal
to conform to society
and yet
I want to break free
from blind conformity

Let's break free 
all of us together
now!