In Which I am Fed

I heard a wonderful story the other day....

In the version told to me, one of the Buddha's disciples went to him and asked to be shown Heaven.

The Buddha said: "If you want to see Heaven, you will have to see Hell first."

The disciple agreed.

The Buddha took them to Hell, where an enormous banquet table was set up, piled high with fabulously delicious food.

Unfortunatley, all of the diners had, instead of hands, enormously long forks on the end of their wrists, and they kept trying to get the food into their own mouths, but could not reach them.

They wailed and gnashed their teeth in misery.

The Buddha then took his disciple to Heaven.

Heaven was exactly the same situation--diners at a sumptuous banquet table, with long forks on their wrists instead of hands.

The only difference was that, in Heaven, everybody was feeding each other.

True Trudell

As a person who has always said the place and time I would most want to live is the United States before colonization; who truly thinks that the best thing for humankind is to go back to living in tribes, and who actually thinks it's quite possible that I was a Native American in another life, this week I saw the most moving and honest documentary about a Native American man I never knew existed: John Trudell.

"In 1979, while protesting the US government's policy on American Indian affairs, John Trudell burned an American Flag on the steps of FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Within a matter of hours his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in a suspicious fire on a Nevada reservation. This ended his role in the movement, but his voice would not be silenced. From the late 1960’s occupation of Alcatraz Island to the current international stage of politics and performance, Heather Rae’s provocative and poignant film reveals the essence of a true American original."

Trailer is here.

The insights are phenomenal, and so so True.