Here are some elements of a healthy relationship with food.

1. You feel happy and fully engaged in life when you are not eating. (Food is not your only reliable source of pleasure and satisfaction.) [Yes]

2. If you are not feeling hungry, you don’t eat. [No]

3. You stop eating when you feel full and are able to leave food on the plate. [No]

4. You have intervals of at least several hours when you are not hungry or thinking about food, punctuated by (meal) times when you do feel hungry and take enjoyment in eating. [No]

5. You enjoy eating many different kinds of foods. [Yes]

6. You maintain a healthy weight that is steady and fluctuates within a range of five to seven pounds. You don’t need to weigh yourself more than once every few months or years. [No]

7. You don’t obsess about food or count calories in order to decide if you can “afford” to eat something or not. p. 9

From Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Mano Singham writes:

[The End of Hypocrisy: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Leaks] is an article well worth reading in full. It not only shows once again why Edward Snowden has done the entire world a valuable public service, it explains why the US and UK governments are so furious about it. It is not just about the leaks or that the leaks are harming the government’s ‘war on terrorism’. It is that by conclusively exposing the massive lies that undergird US policy at home and abroad in a way that cannot be denied, it has curbed the US’s ability to secretly subvert democracy and the rights of people while pretending to uphold them. The US and UK governments feel they have to throw the book at leakers because of fears of the damage to them if the “hundreds of thousands of Americans today [who] have access to classified documents that would embarrass the country” emulate Snowden and Manning and decide that it is in the public interest to release them.

Because of Snowden, there is no going back. The days of the US preaching to other countries about how they should behave, something that I found gratingly sanctimonious at the best of times, are over. The US can never again regain the moral high ground. Now it has to deal with other countries on the basic of balancing political interests, just like every other nation.

I agree.

Right Thinking is thinking that embodies the insight of nonduality, emptiness and interbeing. It is possible for us to produce thoughts that go along with this kind of insight. Such thoughts will heal us and heal the world, because they remove separation and despair. p. 81

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Everyone sits up and takes notice!

Mom, may I take the dog for a walk around the block?”

Mom replies, “No, because she is in heat.”

“What’s that mean?” asked the child.

“Go ask your father. I think he’s in the garage.”

The little girl goes to the garage and says, “Dad, may I take Belle for a walk around the block? I asked Mom, but she said the dog was in heat, and to come to you.”

Dad said, “Bring Belle over here.” Being old school he took a rag, soaked it with a little gasoline, and dabbed the dog’s backside with it to disguise the scent, and said, “OK, you can go now, but keep Belle on the leash and only go one time round the block.”

The little girl left and returned a few minutes later with no dog on the leash. Surprised, Dad asked, “Where’s Belle?”

The little girl said, “She ran out of gas about halfway down the block, so another dog is pushing her home.

From my dad, of course…

In defense of retaining cursive instruction in schools, Linden Bateman (Idaho, R-33) said,

The Constitution of the United States is written in cursive. Think about that.

You know what Linden? Our constitution was also written on parchment using a quill pen dipped in an ink well. Think about that.

Sheesh, are ALL Republicans congenitally stupid?

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has:

unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback… and …an inflated view of oneself. A great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.

Poor GYPSYs…

Mano Singham laments,

No, we cannot [let these elections happen without reporters telling us ahead of time who’s supposed to win]. Because readers and viewers of political news have got addicted to ‘analyses’ that consist of certain phrases strung together leading to predictions about who is going to win the next election that are entirely valueless, and don’t seem to care if the prognosticators are almost always wrong.

In response, I left this comment:

TAKE THE PLEDGE…!

I hereby swear that I will not write or blog about presidential politics nor read any such articles or blog posts before 2016.

In the tradition of Arlo Guthrie:

One person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and
They won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
They may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an
Organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said
Fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and
Walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

The movement starts here…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Here are two multi-million Cleveland projects that show that racism is very much alive in this city and cost doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to pursuing it.

Neither project is necessary or an improvement. Just costly.

Opportunity Corridor, a $350 or so million is an escape hatch for some people to travel from west to Cleveland Clinic and University Circle. It will slice through a black neighborhood. Even though there are ordinary city streets that course the same path. Perfectly useable.

Disgusting.

Public Square, a $40-million project, is to get buses and the riff-raff they carry (black people to our leaders) off the square and away from Tower City and the Dan Gilbert’s gambling joint.

Disgusting.

But the lack of political leadership in town and the almost absence of citizen action plus the total sellout of the Plain Dealer and so-called television Continue Reading »

From The Guardian:

Some people think George W Bush did as much as he could to bring about Armageddon with his earlier interventions in the Middle East. But not the man himself, apparently. He has signed up for a fundraising event for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, an organisation which aims to promote the second coming by converting Jews to Christianity, and will speak today at their fundraiser in Irving, Texas.

Such “Messianic Jews” – who accept that Jesus was the promised Messiah – are loathed by most other Jews, and regarded with great suspicion by mainstream Christian denominations. If Jesus really was the promised Messiah, this would restore much of the traditional basis for Christian anti-semitism, which most Christians have struggled against for the last 50 years.

But a belief in the necessary conversion of the Jews still flourishes on the wilder shores of American Christianity. Portions of Biblical prophecy seem to require it. And there is widespread confusion among evangelicals about whether Israel is really a kind of America overseas – a recent poll for the Pew Foundation found that twice as many American Evangelicals as American Jews were unwavering in their support for Israel. This is something that successive Israeli governments have deliberately cultivated.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

What absolute gall. Ask for $120 million but refuse to answer questions.

Up yours, paying public. Up yours, says Jimmy Haslam and the boys.

Haslam, dodging indictments, comes to Cleveland wanting the city to provide another $120 million – much of it for non-essential gimmickry that however is revenue-producing for Haslam – after he just walked away with $100 million in naming rights on the city-owned stadium.

What utter gall. The media greets these chiselers with velvet gloves.

The city/county will have to borrow so the true costs will maybe $150-175 million. Without overruns.

Billionaire Haslam doesn’t pay any property taxes to the schools, city or county on the stadium, which sits on city land he got Continue Reading »

Via Mano Singham…

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In my hometown paper, Jerry Theobald writes:

Some people have too much time on their hands. Such as the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis, saying that the Washington Redskins should change their name.

First of all, maybe these guys should apologize to the Scandinavians for using the Viking name as a sporting name. Possibly Florida state needs to change their Seminoles mascot name. Or, perhaps the San Francisco Giants should change their name to the “Average Size Guys,” so they wouldn’t insult anyone of the height challenged variety. Is this not a whole lot of witch hunting? This system has been OK for years. Why let so called “political correctness” try to fix something that’s not even broken. By the way, I doubt if these nosy people even know why they are called ‘Redskins.” Look it up, read the history, quite interesting.

And I replied this morning:

Would those upset by protests regarding the racial epitaph used in the name for the football team in our nation’s capital be equally indignant over objections to the Boston Bog-Trotters, the Honolulu Hoopies, the Chicago Chinks, the Baltimore Bible Thumpers, the Kansas City Krauts, the Washington Wops, the Raleigh Rednecks, the Houston Honkies, the Columbus Coons, the Wichita White Trash or the Cleveland Kikes?

Those are also all names with interesting histories.

Jeff Hess

Stephen Colbert takes his licks as well:

To be mindful means to have the mind full, completely full, of what is happening now. When you’re chopping vegetables with a large sharp knife, the faster you slice, the more attentive you have to be, if you want to keep your fingers. p. 8

From Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Robert Olen Butler writes:

Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.

Found in From Where You Dream: The Process Of Writing Fiction.

The notion of being and the notion of nonbeing both create a lot of fear. But with Right View we overcome both notions and we become fearless. p. 73

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

[Eating mindfully] depends upon what our mind is doing as we eat. Are we just eating or are we thinking and eating? Is our mind in our mouth, or somewhere else? This is the crucial difference. p. 8

From Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.Zen, Jan Chozen Bays, Buddhism, Mindfulness, Eating, Food, Mindful Eating