You might have read many times in the media, that a terrible genocide is going on in Darfur, Sudan. To date about 2,500,000 civilians, targeted because of their ethnic or racial identity, have been driven from their homes, more than 300,000 people killed, and more than 1,600 villages destroyed by Sudanese government soldiers and government-backed militias. Nevertheless the public reaction of governments is still quite low.

Google and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum have just started an unprecedented online mapping initiative to visualise the systematic destruction of tens of thousands of homes, schools, mosques etc. by using satellite images: All users of the free Google Earth™ can now download a mapping layer prepared by the museum, which gives detailed information on the situation.

Here you find suggestions of the museum what you can do with this mapping and also other ways to help rising the awareness for the atrocities going in in Darfur. So you can add placemarks on locations in Darfur and Chad identifying destroyed villages, refugee camps, or other evidence that helps people understand the crisis. An innovative approach to collect, share and visually present to the world critical information on emerging crises and to sensitise the public!

Google/USHMM

See also the online-game “Darfur is Dying” as well as the blogpost on “Computer Games against Disasters“.

I yesterday got some invitations to a conference end of May, of the Maitreya Sangha, to be held at the University of Redlands, Southern California. It’s a bit far away and I’m at an other event at that time… The title of the conference is: “A Cultural Renaissance. The Dynamic Power of Right Human Relations in Solving the Problems of Humanity“.

I appreciate activities furthering good will – if they lead to a practical commitment and not get stuck in talks about lofty ideals. For the invitation stirred up old memories:
I once met the initiator of this Maitreya Sangha, Keith Bailey, 12 years ago at a conference in Santa Fe, USA. He is a musician – drums and percussion – and he gave an impressive concert. He has a masonic background and is also founder of the Grand Lodge AUM.
The conference at that time was full of lofty talks “about” spirituality, and I myself had given a toplofty speech. Since then I have come down into into the “valleys” of a much more practical spirituality, casting off much ballast of spiritual concepts.

This conference seems to be based on more sound grounds: In the invitation it says:
“The questions of motive, purpose and group usefulness determine the spiritual nature of an activity. To work for the good of the whole, to be cognizant of the One Life pulsating through all forms, and to work in the consciousness that all men are brothers are the initial qualities which a citizen of the spiritual kingdom must demonstrate…
Goodwill nourishes the spirit of understanding and fosters the manifestation of the principle of cooperation…
A sense of personal responsibility – for group, community and national affairs…
Serving the common good – through the sacrifice of selfishness. Only that which is good for all is good for each one—one for all and all for one! These are spiritual values, inspiring the conscience and the consciousness of those who serve to create a better future and way of life.”

May this conference – and these thoughts – be an inspiration for the work for “A Cultural Renaissance”.

From the website of Maitreya Sangha.

As per Maitreya you might like to read the Lunar Messenger on Lord Maitreya.

I just came across the Fractal World Gallery, where you can find many beautiful images created with Fractal Flames. The gallery is run by Cory and Catska Ench, who have done many interesting paintings, also big wall painting.

Fractal Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. The shape of each image is specified by a long string of numbers – a genetic code of sorts. You can create your own flames for example with the Apophysis interactive designer. Or you can download the Electric Sheep, a free, open source screen saver which can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac.

P.S.: Here you also find beautiful images of fractals.

(c) C. Ench

There are so many impressions and impulses from nearby and afar arriving in a single day. Observing them by close gives you a field of a multitude of flowers.

Spring flowers on the garden lawn

Calls and e-mails from friends living overseas, requests, answers, notes. What is distance, what is nearness? An attentive awareness takes in and transforms into presence.

This morning I remembered an e-mail I yesterday got from a friend in Argentina. It was a powerpoint with a cry for help stopping the slaughter of baby seals. I first put it into the trash, after having seen several videos in the last time about cruel animal massacres, and having published several blog-posts about them. There could have been many more about incredible atrocities of humans against other fellow humans, with which I’m confronted at my professional work. A feeling of palsy and insensibility could creep in, a compassion fatigue.

I then read this morning in the Vaisakh Newsletter of this month: “Be not complacent of evil. Do not be blind to it. Evil cannot be eliminated. It is the by-product of the creation. It exists as along as creation exists…”

So I decided to do an English translation of the file about killing the baby seals, here is it as a powerpoint (with music) or as pdf (without).

The text in the Vaisakh Newsletter went on: “Remember! It is not wise to hate evil. If you hate evil you attract it faster… Prayers done in love and for welfare of mankind can open the vaults of heaven to normalise the situation and such prayers have to be done with greater effectiveness.”

Walking through a little nearby forest yesterday I everywhere felt the strong urge of nature to come out with fresh green leaves. The trees were mostly still empty, but in a month’s time everything is supposed to be clad in green. In these latitudes spring is really a time of sprouting and springing up. After this Easter weekend, the eggs and rabbits in the shops, however, will have to make place for new decorations, so here is a souvenir of a colourful shop-window reflection:

The eggs are said to be symbols of new life, of a new creation. Do the unfertilised eggs in the shops symbolise the same vital power, or the infertility of mass reproduction?
The Cosmic Egg of ancient wisdom is described as manifesting out of the darkness of the background, and the vernal equinox as the annual analogy of this creative happening. So the Easter festival, at the first Sunday after spring full moon, is really a symbol for the deep spiritual reality of the cosmic seed principle – besides and beyond its well-known Christian connotation of the resurrection.

Here is an Easter Bunny in its nest, at a farm-house near Berne.

We yesterday had a visit of an American professor of engineering of Indian origin with his wife. After having given some lectures at a Swiss university they were doing some sight-seeing and I have shown them the old town of Berne. Afterwards they stayed with us at home till the evening.

We had some fascinating conversations. He was telling events from his youth time in India, coming from a poor family, how he started on the one hand his spiritual path and on the other his technical career, which by now made him head of the engineering department of a big US university. We both have a certain similar background with the same spiritual teachers, though my wife’s and my socialisation took place in Europe, while his one started in India and continued in the US. He told us about some so-called super-natural or miraculous events he had been a witness of during his youth in India, from our present teacher’s teacher, Dr. Krishnamacharya. I had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the stories, for I heard parts of them from another side before.

He said that through these experiences and the spiritual teachings he had overcome intellectual barriers in his mind. In the West, however, he normally keeps silent about his experiences and practices, because the people in his surroundings don’t like getting out of their materialistic belief system. Through his life in the States he has come to a much deeper appreciation of his spiritual roots than he would have had if he had stayed in India. There was a gap of about 20 years between the beginnings of his path in India and the focused continuation in the West. Seeds might germinate for a long time in the ground before sprouting and giving rise to a powerful tree.

Buddhas meditating in a western shop – a picture from yesterday’s sight-seeing.

I got an e-mail from friends about dolphin massacres in Japan and a petition to the Prime Minister of Japan:

“Dear Friends and lovers of the ocean. Sometimes the ocean needs our help, and this is one of them To view the video is very disturbing, to not act in stopping such behaviour would be a travesty … At the very least please sign this online petition. Lovers of the ocean and it’s inhabitants – this is a clear call to action. To do nothing is to approve of it.

Please take the time to look at the video and sign the online petition. From little things, big things grow…….. And then send it on to as many like minded people that you know. If we build the numbers, we will be heard eventually and things will change, one way or the other. Please help! We must change the way people think about their oceans and inhabitants for the good of us all.”

See also our blogposts on the killing the baby seals, A Glimpse of a Life-Size Whale, “Earthlings” – Dealing with Animals, Vegetarianism – A Contribution to Fighting Climate Change and Ideas of World’s Most Brilliant Scientists for the Future.

In the last times I witnessed a few cases where friends came into a burnout. Certain patterns seemed me to be similar: Over a long time there had been quite a commitment to a voluntary activity. With the time the work load had increased, and they felt responsible for running the activity they were committed to, and also for the general situation around the activity. Were there signs of a “helper syndrome”? Difficulties were overcome with enthusiasm, which, with the time, mixed with frustration and exhaustion. Suddenly they drew back from their commitment and the related contacts. I suppose, followed by a crisis. A case of compassion fatigue?

There is an underlying structure: A pendulum in motion swings from one side to the other. An over-activity leads in the long run to an under-activity. Only an inner equilibrium can also create an outer balance. In the wisdom teachings, such as those of Pythagoras, the over-activity is called an acute angle:

the under-activity an obtuse angle: and the well-balanced activity a right angle: When you are in the acute angle, you tend to overdo things, even with a good motive. Aggression, haste, nervousness cause a state of tension. When you are in the obtuse angle, you tend to be late in doing things, being slow in understanding and acting or reacting. Both angles are counter-acting. In the right angle, you find the middle path of an adequate reaction. In order to be balanced in a stable way, you need to be well aligned vertically, meaning in a stable connection with your inner, the soul or the higher self, and active horizontally, into the world. In the sign of the equilateral cross you see four right angles, having a stable stand in the world:In this position you are unlikely to fall victim, even of a burnout. A burnout means that before you have burnt. The burning fire is the symbol of life force. At Easter they use to burn fires as a sign of new life coming with spring, or with the resurrection. The following picture of a fire ritual is a beautiful illustration of the fully burning vital force.

This blog-post has been translated into Spanish, together with some other posts of this series.

A San Francisco company has taken the idea of microfinance, which has become popular through the� Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus,� and upgraded it for the Web. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence.

Thus Kiva is using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously very expensive. The individuals featured on the Kiva website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals to lend them money.

Sponsoring Small Businesses to Help the World’s Working Poor Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back. From there you can cash out, or lend it out again to another person in need.

Kiva, which means “agreement” or “unity” in Swahili, would allow people with a little bit of extra cash to use their credit card or the online money transfer company, PayPal, to lend directly to African entrepreneurs. Kiva got its start a little more than a year ago in Uganda, where it forged partnerships with local microfinance institutes so that each business would be vetted and approved before being posted on the site. It has given out more than $400,000 in loans. And what started in one small village in Uganda has spread to 11 other countries just in its first year.

Here you can see a video on the project. Since everything has more than one side, there are also people criticizing the approach of Kiva by pointing out that other microfinance organisations take loan interests to cover the costs and that Kiva with their interest free loans is destroying the local banking organisations.