my cats dressed in polar bear suits

what the song asks

The question it asks is clear: Should those we knew and loved be forgotten and never thought of? Should old times past be forgotten? No, says the song, they shouldn't be. We'll remember those times and those people, we'll toast them now and always, we'll keep them close. "We'll take a cup of kindness yet."

- Peggy Noonan, "Days of Auld Lang What?: 

The Origin of the New Year's Anthem and What it Means to Us"

Kiran Bedi - Director General of Indian Police Service and Vipassana Meditator

Kiran Bedi transformed the largest and most violent prison in India, Tihar Prison, population 10,000, by instituting ten-day courses in Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka. Crime and violence in the prison dropped dramatically. See the Israeli film Doing Time, Doing Vipassana about Vipassana in Tihar Prison.

While she was police chief in the city of New Delhi, she had every police officer in the New Delhi Police Force sit a ten-day course in Vipassana Meditation. It completely changed the feel of the entire city of New Delhi.

"Kiran Bedi influenced several decisions of the Indian Police Service, particularly in the areas of narcotics control, traffic management, and VIP security. During her stint as the Inspector General of Prisons, in Tihar Jail (Delhi) (1993–1995), she instituted a number of reforms in the management of the prison, and initiated a number of measures such as detoxification programs, yoga, vipassana meditation, redressing of complaints by prisoners and literacy programs.[12][13] For this she won the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award, and the 'Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship', to write about her work at Tihar Jail."

"[The DSM-IV] fostered an increasing tendency to chalk up life’s difficulties to mental illness and then treat them with psychiatric drugs." 

- Gary Greenberg 

on the doubts of Allen Frances (lead editor of the DSM-IV) 

and the increasing insurgency among psychiatrists against the DSM-5, due out in 2013, and its even laxer criteria for mental illness

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

"The endlessness of reality / as the consequence / of the closeness of persons, / and the end of loneliness, / between or within persons, / is declared"

- Charles Olson is one hundred years today

[hat tip B Friedlander]

"Maria Glymour, an assistant professor of Society, Human Development and Health at Harvard, and her colleagues reported their findings on emotional support in stroke in the journal Neuroepidemiology. In this article, they reported that emotional support led to better thinking ability six months down the line and also greater improvement in thinking at the same time. This suggests that the mental stimulation offered by "emotional support" somehow affected the brain, such that even when there was significant damage to a brain region, the associated brain changes improve thinking."

in point of fact there is no Virginia either

[Forget whether there's a Santa. That's just an honored {and, in the below case, sanctimonious} ruse. What's really a puzzle is the stories we tell ourselves, almost w/out awareness, about our own existence.]

Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon

115 W. 95th St.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except (what) they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

- The New York Sun, 1897

"Food is one part. Love is another part."

Day 10 Illinois Vipassana Meditation Center

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

mittānukampako

Here again we find affinity with Heidegger, who claimed that the authentic discourse with the other is in fact silence. [fn., For Heidegger, the reason is that abolishing communication (in the daily sense of this expression) is the essential moment that accompanies authenticity, since it directs Dasein to his inwardness.]

- Dana Freibach-Heifetz

“Pure Air and Solitude and Bread and Medicine: Nietzsche’s Conception of Friendship" Philosophy Today (fall 2005), vol. 49 (3), 245-255.

"even there I was laughing"

"I never hate and I have never hated. Hatred brings only hatred."

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

- Pooh's Little Instruction Book

sour adversity

Sukarāni asādhūni,
attano ahitāni ca.
Yaṃ ve hitañca sādhuñca,
taṃ ve paramadukkaraṃ.

Easy to do are things

that are bad and harmful to oneself.

But exceedingly difficult to do

are things that are good and beneficial.

Dhammapada 12.163

L et me em
b ra ce t
h ee so ur ad
ver sit
y

fo r w i s e m
en sa y it is t
he w ise st co
u r s e.

The idea that depression and other mental health conditions are caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it seems almost sacrilegious to question it....

It is, after all, a neat theory. It takes a complex and heterogeneous condition (depression) and boils it down to a simple imbalance of two to three neurotransmitters (out of more than 100 that have been identified), which, as it happens, can be “corrected” by long-term drug treatment. This clear and easy-to-follow theory is the driving force behind the $12 billion worth of antidepressant drugs sold each year.

However, there is one (rather large) problem with this theory: there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Recent reviews of the research have demonstrated no link between depression, or any other mental disorder, and an imbalance of chemicals in the brain (Lacasse & Leo, 2005; (Valenstein, 1998).

- Chris Kresser, "The Healthy Skeptic"