The History of Iran, formerly Persia, is rich and wondrous. Among the many strongest features of Cyrus the Great's powerful (Achaemenid) Empire is its enduring love of poetry. One need only to think of one of the world's greatest poets, Rumi (aka Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī).
Zionist Israelis and American imperialists, who together are trying to establish a Western beachhead in the center of the Middle East and calling it "Greater Israel," may hate Iran, but we love it and Iranians, the original Aryans.
The Buddha's father, Scythian King or Tribal Chieftain Suddhodana, was a Central Asian from Kabul and Bamiyan, it would seem. But even if the historical Buddha and his biological parents bore no relation to the region, modern Iran is still a magnificent ancient society and a power to reckon with in the region.
It is a horror and a travesty that the CIA, NSA, NSC, Mossad, Israel, UK, TC, and USA meddle in it so much since at least the time of the Shah of Iran and U.S. puppet dictator gone rogue Saddam Hussein.
What is the difference between anger and hate? These are passionate times, and we might find many emotions flowing through us. Every emotion is a part of us, calling to be felt and seen.
When we choose to feel our emotions fully, when we choose to lean into our emotions with self-witnessing, self-kindness, self-gentleness, and self-love, while wrapping the deeper self, the inner self, the childlike self with our compassion, we complete the experience of that emotion and return to a zero point.
We can, at that zero point, consciously choose our actions. If we want, we can choose actions that build a peaceful world.
We can do this because we have held ourselves with kindness and support, and we have honored and experienced our emotions, and we have returned to our own center, healed and loved and empowered.
We build with our point of focus. We build with our beliefs. We build with our thoughts, with what we focus on. That's how we build the future.
We can experience the whole range of challenging emotions—anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration—and we can do it with profound self-love and self-kindness and self-gratitude. And when we do, we complete that experience and step into our power.
Building peace is about understanding that there is nothing more powerful than the individual because the individual builds the world by way of its point of focus. What is a powerful group but many powerful individuals all sharing focus at once?
We are more powerful than any collective force around us. The world is built by way of the individual: by us. Nothing is more powerful in our system than the focal-point of an individual. There is nothing more powerful than us. We get to choose whether we focus a more peaceful world into being.
What is the full range of emotions? We can go through challenging emotions, like anger and disappointment and frustration, and we can stay in our power by experiencing these emotions lovingly, embracing self while experiencing feelings.
We can get to a zero point, then choose consciously. The other option is to let these emotions carry us like trains that we are not consciously directing into something like hate.
Hate is not an emotion; it is an action. Hate builds a warring future. It builds powerfully, whether or not our hate was chosen consciously. It builds a violent future through us.
There is a profound difference between anger and hate. Anger is an emotion indicating that there is a part of the self calling to be felt, calling to be loved, calling to be witnessed. Therefore, anger -- like all emotions -- is holy. Anger, like all emotions, is natural. We can respond to its call for self-love by supplying it with self-love. Then that anger has done its job.
Anger is the baby of the self loudly crying out. Just like a baby cries when it needs to be fed, or have its diaper changed, or to be held, anger is the inner self calling for our own self-soothing, our own self-compassion, our own self-love.
When we feel anger, we are being asked to supply that unconditional love to the self at that moment. And when we do, we heal the self. We prove to the self that our love is there.
Just as a caring parent who responds to a crying baby proves it is there to care for that baby, we can respond to the crying baby of the self with love, and we can heal and soothe that self.
We can show the self we are loved-without-end. That is the opportunity of anger.
If we do not respond to that anger with self-love, it can become a train-car that carries us towards hate. Hatred builds future violence, and future war, when it enters the collective consciousness. If we want to build a world with more violence in it, hate is the tool to use.
But if we want to build a peaceful world and a compassionate world and a loving world, then listen to emotions. Listen to the self calling out for love, and supply that love. Be the loving parent to the holy self. Supply that love and soothe that self.
Every challenging emotion is simply an invitation for self-love. We can deliver that self-love. When we do, we complete the emotion's cycle, step into our empowerment, and then we can say, "Great, I've had that emotion, and I've responded with self-love. I've completed that cycle. Now, what do I want to build with my power?"
If we want to build a peaceful world, compassion-for-all-beings will get us there. Love-for-all-beings will get us there. A peaceful mind, an empty mind, an open mind, a silent mind will get us there. Love of nature will get us there.
Hate unites us (with other haters)
Remember, hate is an action, not an emotion, and it builds something. It builds future violence. Carrying hate is a choice. Harsh judgment of others is a choice.
If we engage hate, let's be aware of what we are building. If we engage in cruel judgments of others, let's know what we're building. If we know our tools and choose consciously what we want, that's what we are working to build consciously. (Otherwise, we're building something quite unconsciously).
We are here to exercise freewill. And we are observed by way of the universe with compassion and love and non-judgment. We are safe to choose, and we are free to choose. We can build a compassionate world by carrying compassion, and we can build a peaceful world by carrying peace. We can build a compassionate world by ogling the ocean, by looking at the soil, by witnessing a stand of trees. Just gazing at a forest with love builds a loving future.
If today is a hard day, sit under a tree and let that tree offer its support. Mother Nature is love-without-end. We are so loved in all our emotions. Emotions are natural.
It is natural that there is a part of us that is calling for love, and it is natural that there are parts of our neighbors that are calling for love. If we answer this moment with compassion-for-all-beings, we build a compassionate world.
A moment of division is the most potent and possible time for peacebuilding because it allows the largest opportunity for change.
If we are interested in building a peaceful future, consider planting compassion-for-all-beings into this moment of division. Consider carrying compassion-for-all-beings within, even as many around us carry something quite different.
The Buddha taught peace? - Yes!
The Buddha often gave his closest disciples (nuns and monks) a reflection: We will be love in a world of hate, we will be honest in a world of lies (dishonesty), we will be gathered and still in a world of scattering and distraction. He used nicer words, but this is the gist of it.
This historic moment is fertile soil for worldbuilding, for peacebuilding, for compassion-building, for loving change.
Even in challenging times, we can hold the self in love, and we can hold our neighbors in compassion. When we do that consciously, we choose our future consciously. And we do it with our full power.
Peace Class, which normally meets Wednesdays at 6:00 pm (Pacific) is now on summer break until September. To join us, click on Zoom link when we return. Until then, be in peace.
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's 100th birthday is being marked by celebrations around the world – an appreciation of his importance to poetry and how his influence on the medium continues.
"Howl," also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon," is a poem composed by drug-addled Allen Ginsberg (who had shot himself up with methamphetamine or what Hitler's doctor shot up the Fuhrer with under the German pharmaceutical name Pervitin, possibly linked to words like perky and perverted) in 1954–1955.
Gay Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in autumn of 1954. He performed it at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in Oct. 1955. Fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books was at the performance and published the work in the 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems.
Upon its release, Ferlinghetti and City Lights Bookstore Manager (Japanese Buddhist) Shigeyoshi Murao were charged with disseminating obscene literature. Both perverts were arrested.
On Oct. 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene [1], and the heroic publishers were hailed as innovative geniuses and brave publishing mavericks for spotting Ginsberg's talent.
Highly controversial at first and for years excluded from the academic canon, "Howl" has gradually come to be regarded as a great work of 20th-century American literature [2].
This poem is an account of a sojourn (trip) with Jack Kerouac in a railroad yard, the discovery of a sunflower covered in dirt and soot from the railroad yard, and the subsequent revelation that this is a metaphor for all humanity: "We are not our skin of grime."
This relates to his vision, an auditory hallucination of poet William Blake reading "Ah, Sunflower": "Blake, my visions." (See also line in Howl: "Blake-light tragedies" and references in other poems).
The theme of the poem is consistent with Ginsberg's revelation in his original vision of Blake: the revelation that all of humanity is interconnected. (See also the line in "Footnote to Howl": "The world is holy!").
The structure of this poem relates to "Howl" both in its use of the long line and its repetition of the "eyeball kick" (paratactical juxtapositions) at the end. Ginsberg says in relating his thought process after the experiments of "Howl":
"What about a poem with rhythmic buildup power equal to Howl without use of repetitive base to sustain it? The Sunflower Sutra...did that, it surprised me, one long who" [6].More
Friends, Peace Class meets on Wednesdays, but tonight we take a deep dive. On Tuesday (May 26, 2026) the Deep Dive Poetry reading series returns to Manly P. Hall's Library of World Religions at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), with the next poetry presentation taking place in September. The last Peace Class was about Loving Boundaries, found below.
WHAT HAPPENED?
More than 40 people showed up, so many that we ran out of chairs. But there's a gallery to the side, and a few folding chairs later, Mandy Kahn got up to read. A new poem about being a "Kahn" (German Jewish Cohen) delighted readers. But the one about Mara (Death) really caught our attention:
I Do Not Fear Death, Yet Go On Living
I do not fear death, yet go on living.
I know choirs wait for me to finish,
waiting to paint this clear air with their singing,
Mandy’s youthful, but one is reminded of Jen Moxley and her contemplations: When people lie awake with their thoughts, their mind often turns to how life has changed and what may come. Spinning in the dark hours, thoughts swirl with fears, hopes, and reflections. People change as they pass through time. So, too, does the world they live in, their friends and their environment and the society they live in. The Midnight Work, Jennifer Moxley’s eighth book of poetry, contemplates these changes as she enters and experiences midlife. UMaine.edu/news/2026.
Then self-described “moribund" Callie Siskel stepped up to the podium, asking, Does loss define us, or do we define loss?
Tracing the duality of grief as it reverberates through a family, she wrestles with questions of identity and inheritance in precise, lucid language. Her book of poetry, Two Minds, indulges and therefore exposes the vanity of turning private pain into art and the pursuit of self-revelation.
Drawing on ekphrasis, ars poetica, and prose poetry, Siskel expands the elegy and elegiac genre as she oscillates between childhood and adulthood, art and mythology, as well as the natural and domestic world. At once cerebral and emotional, Amazon describes Two Minds as “an essential meditation on the ways that loss cleaves and doubles our perceptive power.” Her poem about Jean says it all, reflecting on her own appearance as she sees it through the eyes of a great portraitist who repeatedly painted his wife. Who would ever guess she was once Time'sperson of the year? She explains in her other "Narcissus" (The Paris Review):
Time’s Person of the Year was “You.” I was a sophomore in college. I held the mirror up to my friend. Outside a fraternity, I stood in a circle of women telling each other how pretty they were. On the walk back to my room, I passed a monument: water running over granite. The man I loved wanted me in his bed, so I could tell him he was exceptional. There is a difference between Echo and the spring: one repeats, one colludes. More
"The Concept of Immediacy"
I fell asleep with an idea, but when I woke up, I’d lost it,
as when, approaching the rabbit on the trail,
it took off into the brush.
I followed, clearing the warblers,
fixing their gaze.
Ruining something felt like a reason to proceed.
Looking out at the view—
dense swaths of pine, the bay, all three bridges
half-submerged—
I waited for a sign to go back, the mind saying enough
Paralleling how celebrated artists create and are consumed, this book of poetry maps a zone of contact between artistic creation and the dangers of identification. A neo-baroque, lyrical treatise on encountering the Other, the poems in Strange Signatures reverse the colonial gaze and transform it into scenes of conflicted recognition.
At the origin of the Other is a queer Bluebeard, an emblem of imperialist violence and savage injustice. Resisting the patriarchy and its colonizing powers are Bluebeard's feminist phantom brides, a "bride brotherhood," the guerrilla-muses of solidarity and revolution. In poems that open the secret chambers of individual and collective histories, Bluebeard's survivors continue a phantom afterlife by way of dislocated avatars: modernist artists, estranged Latin American poets, pop stars, a taxidermized parrot and a Peruvian mummy.
This book is an international, cinematic montage of the phantasmatic and the all-too-real, locating social transformation in memory, crime and the allegorical biographies of celebrated artists and poets. More
Who could write a whole poem about a commonplace mirror? Sylvia Plath did.
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Then two veteran poets and friends came to the podium, the well-known Gail Wronsky and David St. John. While her readings were the highlight of a very uplifting night, he did more explaining and prefacing, bringing us into the interior life of a poet. Then he went to a touching early piece, "From a Bridge."
We are here to learn to choose peace. Choosing peace looks like choosing to honor the Earth and her holy forests and waters. It is choosing to honor others with love, kindness, gentleness, and choosing to honor ourselves with self-love, self-kindness, self-gentleness.
As an aspect of this project of learning to choose peace, all will eventually learn how to share mettaor universal love-without-end while still maintaining boundaries that honor self.
Only the lower mind thinks that one must choose between honoring others and honoring oneself.
Only the lower mind thinks, “Should I take an action that benefits me or one that benefits others?”
From the perspective of the higher mind, the Peace Mind, one can see that there is always an action (karma) available that both honors the self and all others.
When we are operating from the Peace Mind, we see with the Peace Mind's faculties. The Peace Mind is the place of infinite options, infinite opportunities.
Only someone outside of the Peace Mind could believe that a choice between self and others could be required.
Often, the options that honor both self and others will look like kindness with loving boundaries, or unconditional love with loving boundaries.
The gate that guards my garden of loving
Now, these boundaries are not limits on the amount of love expressed; one can express love-without-end, love-without-condition, and still engage loving boundaries.
These are boundaries that protect the individual even as s/he shares love-without-end, universal, limitless love. What does it look like? Imagine a cottage surrounded by a tall garden wall with a locked gate.
Can I be safe in my garden AND share it?
To visualize love-without-end being expressed while maintaining loving boundaries, imagine being the inhabitant of that cottage. You send love-without-end over the wall, into the town, all the while still maintaining a protective wall. The inhabitant keeps her/his ground safe.
All day, every day, we can flow our love over the wall. It can flow from us without ceasing, and it can be a love without judgment, a love that surrounds and supports everyone equally, a love that enriches and heals and purifies all who are touched by it.
Our love can heal others, support others, care for others, and can still keep this boundary in place.
Because we are a part of others, it never honors others when we dishonor ourselves or give of ourselves in a way that does not serve us as we serve them. Over-giving harms others, even as it harms us.
Regardless of how others react to our boundaries in the moment, know that our lack-of-boundaries never serves others in the long run. Why? It hinders our ability to be of service to them and to everyone, and to ourselves in the future.
Service to self and service to others are aspects of the same thing. One's highest action always serves both self and others simultaneously.
Participating in service to others that does not honor self is simply a phase that many will pass through before choosing forms of service that also honor self.
Serving others feels so good to us, so right to us, that sometimes we experience “service rapture.” That selfless “service rapture” can be a kind of high. We can love the joy of serving so much that we over-give and burn out. This is simply a lesson to be learned.
When we give from grace, from strength, from fullness, we refill even as we give, and burnout is not reached. We give, fill, give, fill, give, in a harmonic flow—and when we do, we can feel when it is time to rest, and we can feel when it is time to act, and we naturally do what is called for, knowing that serving self by resting is also an aspect of serving others.
What was I doing way up there?
This flow state of service is always eventually learned by every evolving being.
Honoring self and honoring others is one. We are one. We are one in separate bodies. When we realize this, we begin to serve all parts of self—the self that appears to be us as well as the self that appears to be others—in harmonic flow.
When we learn this flow, when this flow becomes natural to us, we are of highest service.
Different situations and different relationships require different forms of loving boundaries from us.
The easiest way to see what kind of boundaries are required in any situation is to gaze at it from the place of our Peace Mind. From here, it is clear how to both honor ourselves with boundaries and to send love-without-end over our garden walls.
Even in a private magic garden, I love everyone
We will know that we have learned these lessons as a society when kindness is expressed in our penal system.
Now we live in a society that maintains a penal system that attempts to “scare people straight”—to use punishment, fear, cruelty, and harshness to build fear into an individual in an attempt to reform that penitent.
This system is based on the belief that fear could ever inspire inmates in such a system to choose more loving actions. It will not. It cannot.
Fear-based reform tactics build fear, hatred, resentment, anger, and frustration in an inmate, and those things flow back toward all of us in the collective, where such things affect everyone to our detriment.
One cannot build fear in another and not also build fear into the collective. We are all part of the collective consciousness.
But a separated mind believes, “As I punish this person, I make myself safe from punishment.” That can never be true. We are too connected for that to be possible.
That which we put into others we put into ourselves and into all whom we love and hope to protect.
When we understand this, it becomes natural for us to treat all people, even those who have acted in ways that are less than loving, with love. But we learn to do this while maintaining loving boundaries.
This is what we will learn to express in our penal system.
When we have learned this completely, when we have treated all inmates with love, while maintaining needed physical boundaries, we will have evolved to a place wherein no penal system is needed.
On the way to the experience of no penal system being required, we must first learn how to share love and maintain boundaries. That is the next lesson for us to learn.
Yes, high, thick walls may be required to create general safety. But cruelty and torture behind those walls is never required. We can have those walls, and we can send love over them. We are never safe from our own cruelty.
When there is a place within our town or our state or our country or our world where people are treated with cruelty, aspects of that cruelty affect us and those we love most.
Once we understand this, we can begin to look at the penal system as a place of opportunity. Our opportunity is to consider this question: "How can I express my love-without-end here while still maintaining needed boundaries?"
True transformation is inspired by the Peace Mind witnessing acts of peace.
If our goal is to see fewer unloving acts taking place in our society, we can only reach that goal by modeling acts of peace: acts of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
If our penal systems become places in which acts of true peace can be observed, they will become places of true and permanent transformation.
Transformation must be chosen by the individual; it cannot be enforced. After witnessing acts of peace, some will choose transformation.
Our job, then, is to give people the opportunity to witness acts of peace.
We can give people these opportunities, and we can treat them with respect, honoring and love, and we can still create needed boundaries that protect others, and ourselves.
Fear-based “reform” tactics do not only affect those who find themselves on the receiving end of them. They also build guilt, shame, regret, and resentment in their practitioners because these practitioners will always, on some level, recognize that actions of cruelty towards others are not their highest actions.
Love-based tactics heal. They heal those who carry them out, and they heal those who are on the receiving end of them.
They heal the relationship between practitioner and recipient in the moment, and they begin to heal the resentment, anger, and sadness that centuries of cruelty-based reform tactics have built up in our collective consciousness.
One act of love-based interaction in this format heals many levels of trauma left over from old cruelty-based strategies. As they heal old trauma, these love-based tactics create new possibilities of peace-on-earth for all beings.
Our penal systems are wonderful places to practice kindness-without-end with loving boundaries. Our lives are also wonderful places to practice this.
Where is life giving us the opportunity to both share unconditional love and to honor—and enforce—the space, the protection, and the boundaries that we require?
Special thx to Seven for helping me express this!
Once we can create loving boundaries in our own lives, we can safely flow more love-without-end into our world.
In brief, the better our boundaries, the more fully we can be an instrument of pure and ever-flowing metta and grace.
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