SOOOOO GOOOOOOOD!!

I'm feelin' sooooo gooooood! (yeah, it's a Homestar reference) right now!

First of all, I just got into University of Scotland, Stirling for next semester's study abroad program. I rock. And I'm SO excited to go! I have to make sure all of my grad requirements are in order, and that we'll be able to afford the program some how, and I'm set! It's going to be so cool. I can tell.

That's all the real NEWS I have lately, so I shall supplement this post with more things I've been thinking about.

- Yesterday the Raptor Center people were flying two hawks out on the quad, and I was watching from a distance away. All of a sudden this shadow came over me, and I looked up to see a WILD red-tail land right above me on a tree limb. Apparently he (or she) had seen the new arrivals and wanted to make friends. The Raptor Center workers were a bit startled by this, but carried on anyway. I stood for a few minutes, watching the interactions between these huge birds of prey, right in the middle of the city.

- I've been reminding myself a lot of a Native American story or parable that I read a while ago. It tells about a grandson who once asked his grandfather why he spent time sitting quietly (or meditating) every day. The grandfather answered that there are two natures within us, one that is creative, and one that is destructive; one generous and one selfish; one of love and one of hate. He said that the two natures were like two wolves that fight within us for the upper hand. The grandson was a little scared, and asked which wolf would win in the end. The grandfather answered "Whichever one we feed."

- I picked up a new book at the library yesterday called "How Shall I Live My Life." It's a compilation of several interviews with people in the ecological and philosophical communities, and it's fascinating. There are a few points that I disagree with, and a couple of times I've thought "gosh, this is a little too 'conspiracy theory' for me," but there are some very good ideas and principles raised. A lot of the first chapter which I'm currently reading is about "waking up" to the world and taking a step out of culture to look at things from a different point of view.
This is my current favorite phrase:

"Compassion is the desire to remove the suffering of others, and love is the desire to reinforce and preserve their happiness. So the two are related. Anyway, by reinforcing our capacity for compassion and love, by concentrating on other people's needs rather than ourselves, we can remove the sort of energy system which creates selective inattention, which creates the capacity for self-deception. This is what the Buddhists have been saying for some two and a half thousand years: compassion and kindness and love empower reason, because you're taking away the energy that drives selfishness and the selective inattention."

I believe that all actions should spring from compassion and love. I'm working on living that out.

-I went to Tai Chi yesterday for the first time! It was a lot of fun, and we get taught by two Chinese guys who don't speak much English at all, so two of the students had to translate. It's facinating getting the meaning and explanation for the movements in the context of the culture that created them. Unfortunatly, I probably won't get to go again, since they changed the meeting time from Sunday to Tuesday, during my night class, but I got to go last night since class was canceled. I plan on working on the Yang Short Form by myself, and then joining up to practice with then again sometime.

Ah! Class time! Gotta go.