The Burning Hand Beat
Viewspaper
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, and compassionate counterculture
where men are nonviolent, women are free, and everyone is wanted.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Dharma Bum, Catholic Worker,
Celtic-Heart, Broken-Vase Taoist, Bohemian-Transfiguration-View,
and Lifelong Student of Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Adjectives: Both / Neither
Blessed Be... In the Name of the Mother, and of the Earth, and of the Soul. Amen
"Ahimsa paramo dharma"
(The highest spiritual-life-practice is "ahimsa" nonviolence, universal
love for all living creatures and for the well-being of the entire planet)
Precepts for Transfiguration:
1. Do no harm
2. Do the least harm possible
Let the Beauty you love be what you do. -- Rumi
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, all praise is Yours
all glory, all honor and all blessings! -- St. Francis of Assisi
(From his poem Canticle of the Creatures)
Now is the time to full-stop believing in Jesus. Instead, it is the precise moment to believe
with Jesus: to live with a radical astonishment that we can experience life, we can give ourselves
over to living on the edge of grand possibilities, we can revere and regenerate this Blessed Earth,
we can liberate everyone from the scourges of violence, injustice, exploitation, sexism, racism,
nationalism, and the Unholy Trinity of Privilege, Profit, and Power. We can open ourselves into the
Jesus-Awe and adore all of Creation and One Another. We can embrace the Humble Beauty of the
Holy in every moment, everywhere-in-everything-always-available, in every Being and in every Person.
God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in love. Does that simple thought,
rather than erudite reasonings, offer solace to the human heart? Every saint who has
penetrated to the core of Reality has testified that a divine universal plan exists and that
it is beautiful and full of joy. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Instead of losing themselves in the Love of God and waging a war against the ego, religious
zealots fight other people, generating wave after wave of fear. -- Elif Shafak
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:
Father, according as I am able, I keep my
little rule, and my little fast, my prayer,
meditation and contemplative silence; and
according as I am able, I strive to cleanse
my heart of thoughts: now what more should
I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched
out his hands to heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire. He said:
Why not be totally changed into fire?
A new concept of celebration beneath the human underground must
emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be
formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the
revelation of unity for all mankind. -- Chris Brown, Refueled
(Referring back to the hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, 1967)
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though it
may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes
are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I desire to
become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulated utterances of
men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in
Nature -- this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to
find it somewhere. -- Oscar Wilde
There was one more change I needed to make. I saw my reflection in the mirror -- a gray flannel suit, white
shirt, and necktie, looking like a respectable middle-class white man. "That's not what I want to be... I threw
the necktie away and let my hair grow long. I began a new life."
-- Dennis Banks, Ojibwa Warrior
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love
and that love comes with community. -- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
Far into the night my dear friend discussed with me the need for world colonies founded on a spiritual basis... Utopia must
spring in the mind before it can flower in civic virtue. Man is a soul, not an institution... By stress on spiritual values, self
realization, a colony exemplifying world brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond its locale.
-- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
To make social changes is the job of the activist. We need activism that uses the power
of quantum physics. Quantum physics gives us ideas that are transformative, that can lead
us and our social institutions from separateness back to unity. -- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
There are love stories, and then there is obliteration into love. -- Rumi
No amount of well-meaning environmental legislation will halt the biological holocaust without people who live
where they are and work with their neighbors, taking responsibility for their place, and seeing to it: to be
inhabitants, and to not retreat. -- Gary Snyder
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. -- Audre Lorde
Viewspaper
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, and compassionate counterculture
where men are nonviolent, women are free, and everyone is wanted.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Dharma Bum, Catholic Worker,
Celtic-Heart, Broken-Vase Taoist, Bohemian-Transfiguration-View,
and Lifelong Student of Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Adjectives: Both / Neither
Blessed Be... In the Name of the Mother, and of the Earth, and of the Soul. Amen
"Ahimsa paramo dharma"
(The highest spiritual-life-practice is "ahimsa" nonviolence, universal
love for all living creatures and for the well-being of the entire planet)
Precepts for Transfiguration:
1. Do no harm
2. Do the least harm possible
Let the Beauty you love be what you do. -- Rumi
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, all praise is Yours
all glory, all honor and all blessings! -- St. Francis of Assisi
(From his poem Canticle of the Creatures)
Now is the time to full-stop believing in Jesus. Instead, it is the precise moment to believe
with Jesus: to live with a radical astonishment that we can experience life, we can give ourselves
over to living on the edge of grand possibilities, we can revere and regenerate this Blessed Earth,
we can liberate everyone from the scourges of violence, injustice, exploitation, sexism, racism,
nationalism, and the Unholy Trinity of Privilege, Profit, and Power. We can open ourselves into the
Jesus-Awe and adore all of Creation and One Another. We can embrace the Humble Beauty of the
Holy in every moment, everywhere-in-everything-always-available, in every Being and in every Person.
God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in love. Does that simple thought,
rather than erudite reasonings, offer solace to the human heart? Every saint who has
penetrated to the core of Reality has testified that a divine universal plan exists and that
it is beautiful and full of joy. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Instead of losing themselves in the Love of God and waging a war against the ego, religious
zealots fight other people, generating wave after wave of fear. -- Elif Shafak
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:
Father, according as I am able, I keep my
little rule, and my little fast, my prayer,
meditation and contemplative silence; and
according as I am able, I strive to cleanse
my heart of thoughts: now what more should
I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched
out his hands to heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire. He said:
Why not be totally changed into fire?
A new concept of celebration beneath the human underground must
emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be
formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the
revelation of unity for all mankind. -- Chris Brown, Refueled
(Referring back to the hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, 1967)
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though it
may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes
are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I desire to
become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulated utterances of
men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in
Nature -- this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to
find it somewhere. -- Oscar Wilde
There was one more change I needed to make. I saw my reflection in the mirror -- a gray flannel suit, white
shirt, and necktie, looking like a respectable middle-class white man. "That's not what I want to be... I threw
the necktie away and let my hair grow long. I began a new life."
-- Dennis Banks, Ojibwa Warrior
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love
and that love comes with community. -- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
Far into the night my dear friend discussed with me the need for world colonies founded on a spiritual basis... Utopia must
spring in the mind before it can flower in civic virtue. Man is a soul, not an institution... By stress on spiritual values, self
realization, a colony exemplifying world brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond its locale.
-- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
To make social changes is the job of the activist. We need activism that uses the power
of quantum physics. Quantum physics gives us ideas that are transformative, that can lead
us and our social institutions from separateness back to unity. -- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
There are love stories, and then there is obliteration into love. -- Rumi
No amount of well-meaning environmental legislation will halt the biological holocaust without people who live
where they are and work with their neighbors, taking responsibility for their place, and seeing to it: to be
inhabitants, and to not retreat. -- Gary Snyder
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. -- Audre Lorde
Icon of the Catholic Worker Movement
Wild Thought Fueling Station: Manifesto
personalist communitarian unitary nonviolent pansacramental
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
-- Jesus
See the world as a continuous field of matter and energy.
-- Eknath Easwaran
Love is the reality, and poetry is the drum that calls us to that. -- Rumi
Forming the new society in the shell of the old. -- IWW
It is the opportunity, and the challenge, for both women and men to
construct for ourselves and our children a world where pleasure rather
than pain can be primary -- a world where we can be both more free
and more interconnected, integrating spirituality and sexuality in a
new, more evolved understanding of and reverence for the miracles
of life and love. -- Riane Eisler
Poetry is the heart of the world. -- Tsung Tsai
Our strategy should not only to confront empire but to lay
siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it.
With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our
joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability
to tell our own stories. -- Arundhati Roy
It was Japhy standing on top of Matterhorn Peak letting out his
triumphant mountain-conquering Buddha Mountain Smashing song
of joy. -- Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)
Simple Gifts
'Tis the gift to be simple
'Tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of love
and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend
we will not be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning
we come round right.
-- Shaker Hymn
Mystery and reality emerge from the same source. -- Lao Tzu
Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.
-- St. John Chrysostom
Come, come, whoever you are
wanderer, fire worshiper, lover of leaving.
This is not a caravan of despair.
It does not matter that you have broken your vow
a thousand times, still come
and yet again come.
-- Rumi
As we grow in consciousness, there will be more compassion and
more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions,
between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the
separateness. -- Ram Dass
In the ultimate reality, the whole is present in every part
and every part participates in the being of the whole.
-- Fr. Bede Griffith
Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
-- George Fox
Life is holy, and every moment is precious. -- Jack Kerouac
We are Earthseed
The life that perceives itself
Changing.
-- Octavia Butler
Drink all your passion and be a disgrace. -- Rumi
If you want to become whole, first let yourself become broken.
-- Lao Tzu
(Hence, "Broken-Vase Taoism)
Belief initiates and guides action -- Or it does nothing.
-- Octavia Butler
Beat doesn't mean tired, or bushed, so much as it means beato, the Italian
for beatific: to be in a state of beatitude, like St. Francis, trying to love all
life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance,
kindness, cultivating joy of heart... What are you searching for? they asked
me. I answered that I was waiting for God to show his face.
-- Jack Kerouac
All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm. -- Henry Miller
Poets and dreamers and madmen, using language which was
clear, clear, clear. A language necessary to the life below our consciousness.
-- Anais Nin
I learned the sweetness of God in the aspect of Mother, or Divine Mercy.
-- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Embrace simplicity.
Put others first.
Desire little.
-- Lao Tzu
The way to happiness is: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from
worry. Live simply, give much. Fill your life with love. Do as you would be
done by. -- Gautama Buddha
Time to ignore sensible advice, to untie the knots our culture has tied us with. -- Rumi
The needs of the planet are the needs of the person,
and the rights of the person are the rights of the planet.
-- Theodore Roszak
All the freaky people make the beauty of the world.
-- Michael Franti
I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life. -- Zoe Saldana
Beat: "Kerouac (in various interviews and lectures) was trying to indicate
the correct sense of the word by pointing out its connection to words like
'beatitude' and 'beatific' -- the necessary beatness or darkness that preceeds
opening up to light, egolessness, giving room for religious illumination."
-- Allen Ginsberg
Beat literature sings against cynicism, apathy, injustice, deception, compromise,
racism, consumerism, war, evils and cons of all kinds. -- Anne Waldman
Stop demonizing pleasure... love up on each other...
-- adrienne maree brown
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
-- Diane di Prima
The greatest challenge of the day is:
how to bring about a revolution of heart,
a revolution that has to start with each one of us.
-- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.
-- Lao Tzu
Love is the vital core of the soul, and of all you see, only love is infinite. -- Rumi
The cosmos is an infinite and eternal intelligence... The ultimate purpose
of human existence is to consciously foster and further the transmission of the
unifying, embracing, and all-encompassing intelligence of the cosmos into the
universe. -- Ervin Laszlo
Ancient concepts of living peacefully as one while evolving in biologically and
culturally diverse trajectories cross our interconnected earth family and inspire
Earth Democracy. The ancient wisdom and tradition of non-separability and inter-
connectedness that we revive is evident in quantum theory, the space-time
continuum of general relativity, and the self-organized complexity of living
organisms. -- Vandana Shiva
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
-- Jesus
Saints of all religions have attained God-realization through the simple concept
of the Cosmic Beloved. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
On the uneven floor
we all lie down in layers,
a hologram of lovers...
-- Hettie Jones
you are beautiful / you are beautiful
you are a hundred times beautiful...
-- Lenore Kandel
There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit
on the body. -- Rumi
God is voluptuous and delicious! -- Meister Eckhart
Make love. Take a bath. Make love again. -- Frida Kahlo
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist,
every minute a chance to save the world.
-- Dolores Huerta, UFW Organizer
There's a crack in everything... that's how the light gets in...
-- Leonard Cohen
I'm continually astonished that people really don't love each other.
How can they do it?
-- Jack Kerouac
Our work today is evidence of the unfinished status of planetary
struggles for equality, justice and freedom.
-- Angela V. Davis
The philosophy of Tao embodies a cosmology rooted in that most primal and
wondrous presence: earth's mysterious generative force... this venerable
generative force appears most explicitly in Lao Tzu's recurring references to the
female principle, such as "mother of all beneath heaven," "nurturing mother,"
"valley spirit," "dark female-enigma." -- David Hinton
Devotees of all the ages, approaching the Mother in a childlike spirit, testify that they find Her
ever at play. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
We are clusters of vibration in-formed by the intelligence of the cosmos.
-- Ervin Laszlo
Every day: Chop Wood, Carry Water
-- Chinese Taoist Sage
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
All I know of spirit is this love. And do not call me a believer. Infidel is better.
-- Rumi
Our power is in our soils. They sustain our every need. They are the starting
place when we return to the land with a seed in hand.
-- Poppy Okotcha
And then I ate hot bread. -- Gertrude Stein
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. -- Leonard Cohen
I am your Mother. -- Our Lady of Guadalupe
Tao Magic
A secret
kept
sweetly hidden
a talisman-magic
but of no divine
consequence
like a chickadee
in winter
bitter cold
vulnerable-powerless
but for brief flight
this is true Tao
secret-hidden-gone
who would dare
live such bold
powerless-vulnerability
like a shy bird
like crazy Tao-man
maybe wander
maybe sit by river
maybe garden
maybe turn Tao-trans
like Tara
maybe breastfeed
invisible realms
maybe turn great lover
living world-identification
maybe endless tears
living always-vulnerable
always-available
no dollars in this Tao
Green-Tara-Tao-Home
nothing do
smile-sip hot tea
Simple Way-Ultimate Way
The kingdom of heaven within you
is the bare-naked admission
of no-thing out-side
but all-things jumping
through possibility
into here...
then returning
into there...
neither of which
is different or separate
from the other
always Mother
always birthing
always celebrating
always transforming
this is Simple Way
and
Is is the always-rising
from the empty-belly of Not
this is Ultimate Way
now-only
-- Robert Daniel Smith
Creation was fashioned to be adorned, to be showered, to be gifted with the love of the Creator. The entire world has been embraced by this kiss. Limitless love, from the depths to the stars, flooding all, loving all. It is the royal kiss of peace. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. -- St. Hildegard of Bingen
Imagine Paradise, Practice Beauty
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Soul goes to the center. Rubies appear in the begging bowl. -- Rumi
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience. Let nations ally themselves no longer
with death, but with life; not with destruction, but with construction; not with hate, but with the creative miracles
of love. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Living economics are processes and spaces where the earth's resources are shared equitably to provide for our food
and water needs and to create meaningful livelihoods. Earth Democracy evolves from the consciousness that while
we are rooted locally we are also connected to the world as a whole, and, in fact, to the entire universe.
-- Vandana Shiva
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how simple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is
companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that
the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
-- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
The love religion is all that is written here. -- Rumi
We have to make every effort to promote human affection. While we oppose violence
or war, we must show there is another way -- a nonviolent way. Now look at humanity
as a whole. Today's reality: whole world almost like one body. One thing happens
some distant place, the repercussions reach your own place, Destruction of your
neighbor as enemy is essentially destruction of yourself. Our future depends on global
well-being. -- H.H. Dalai Lama
Another world is not only possible, she's on her way.
Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on
a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her
breathing. -- Arundhati Roy
Dissolving into the Primordial Ecstasy:
Into the breath,
Into the garden,
Into the water,
Into the silence,
Into the music:
Everything fits exceedingly well...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
(from The Jewel In The Lotus)
After enlightenment, the laundry -- Gautama Buddha
"Under your mercy we take refuge
Mother of God; may
our petitions not be abandoned
into temptation, but from danger
deliver us, only pure and blessed."
-- Prayer to Mary found in Egyptian papyrus fragments
from the year 250 AD
I am different from ordinary people.
I nurse from the Great Mother's breasts.
-- Lao Tzu
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Soul goes to the center. Rubies appear in the begging bowl. -- Rumi
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience. Let nations ally themselves no longer
with death, but with life; not with destruction, but with construction; not with hate, but with the creative miracles
of love. -- Saint Paramahansa Yogananda
Living economics are processes and spaces where the earth's resources are shared equitably to provide for our food
and water needs and to create meaningful livelihoods. Earth Democracy evolves from the consciousness that while
we are rooted locally we are also connected to the world as a whole, and, in fact, to the entire universe.
-- Vandana Shiva
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how simple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is
companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that
the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
-- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
The love religion is all that is written here. -- Rumi
We have to make every effort to promote human affection. While we oppose violence
or war, we must show there is another way -- a nonviolent way. Now look at humanity
as a whole. Today's reality: whole world almost like one body. One thing happens
some distant place, the repercussions reach your own place, Destruction of your
neighbor as enemy is essentially destruction of yourself. Our future depends on global
well-being. -- H.H. Dalai Lama
Another world is not only possible, she's on her way.
Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on
a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her
breathing. -- Arundhati Roy
Dissolving into the Primordial Ecstasy:
Into the breath,
Into the garden,
Into the water,
Into the silence,
Into the music:
Everything fits exceedingly well...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
(from The Jewel In The Lotus)
After enlightenment, the laundry -- Gautama Buddha
"Under your mercy we take refuge
Mother of God; may
our petitions not be abandoned
into temptation, but from danger
deliver us, only pure and blessed."
-- Prayer to Mary found in Egyptian papyrus fragments
from the year 250 AD
I am different from ordinary people.
I nurse from the Great Mother's breasts.
-- Lao Tzu
If you come away from these pages more inclined to view the world about you with a magical vision that is
personalist, communitarian, unitary, nonviolent, and pan-sacramental, then the website has served its purpose.
personalist, communitarian, unitary, nonviolent, and pan-sacramental, then the website has served its purpose.