The Wheels of Samsara

Passing through yet another orbit of the sun on this planet is designated a birthday, well having just spun round uno mas i am contemplating the significance of it all. Birthday wishes from someone i love who has an incisive, humorous angle or two on meaning, amidst the pain & suffering, reminds me that we are like Hamsters in a cage eternally running on one of those spinning wheels. So today i went down to a pet shop to remind myself of the Hamsters world. While no Hamsters where engaged in this exercise i did get a good look at the cages and the wheels.
Fine pieces of work they are too, coming in many designs and colours, your upwardly mobile Hamster would be proud to call them home. And when ever they take to that wheel in a flurry of legs and arms peddling madly, they be sure to tell you that they are going somewhere, and somewhere important at that!

Well what's the difference with us humans? We are trapped in a kind of cage ( the fleshy mortal coil) confined to a world that appears to be important , where there is the illusion of freedom , where we go about year after year doing more or less the same thing, thinking we are getting somewhere. Deluding ourselves about what is important to do , to have , to be. What really matters when all of what you do happens inside a cage. So what is significant ?

This eternal spinning is what's significant. Just examine the physical set up for a clue or two. We are on a planet that is spinning on its axis while it spins around a sun that is spinning around a central point in our galaxy, a galaxy that is spinning around a central co ordinate in the cosmos. What's the cosmos spinning around? I wonder. Don't you ever get dizzy and want to get off?

On another level the Buddhists call it the wheel of Samsara. Its Karma that keeps the wheels turning. They have an 8 point plan to get you off the wheel and out of the cage. ACIM has got another 'No Spin' rescue pack. But there ain't no point in investigating these exit strategies until you realise that you are trapped , and going round and round in life, when you think you are going forwards to that eternal important something.

All these wheels within wheels, all this spinning. You know, a little Hamster in the pet shop told me that the business to be in here on earth is OIL. Keeps those wheels well lubricated, keeps those looney humans spinning around, birthday after birthday.

Lotus Petal Condo

Well i never thought i would be awarding a Lotus Petal for a Condo, especially after my polemic The CondoQuest of Paradise, still i am open to suprises and this development is, as i thought from outside of the fence the other day, a fine example of thoughtful creative Design Integration. A stricking fusion of Local ethnic La Palapa with international El Condo. Preliminary investigation revealed that it was a collaboration between a Mexican Architect & a Spanish Architect. Well done. Why isn't there more of this ?

'What we do in Life.......'

I wrote this on the Blackboard today. I asked the kids to recall a line that had stuck in their heads that meant something to them from a movie they had seen. I get ' Hasta la Vista Baby !' from Arnie's The Terminator and 'May the Force be with You' and Darth Vader's 'I am your Father 'from Star Wars and 'This is Sparta!' from The 300 & "My name is Bond, James Bond' & from ET 'Phone Home' & ' I will not die because of you , i will die to save Scotland' from Braveheart.
I wrote up Maximus's famous line to his Roman troops from the beginning of Gladiator or El Gladiador as it is spelt in Spanish. (thanks be to girl in Blockbuster who found me the DVD from which i will be teaching scene structure next week)
" What we do in Life Echoes in Eternity!" If these kids could only get the significance of that speech, In Europe I wrap a whole Leadership Retreat for business executives around those words.

Integrating Architecture - The Venacular

Well i began to smile when i first saw it , right near the school where i teach, finally an architect who had managed to integrate
local indigenous design & materials with a condo non the less. Hard to see whats been done here, i need to get better pics, (the bard wire high fence doesn't exactly endear you to investigate) but this looks like an ultra modern condominium that has incorporated The Yucatan Palapas structure on the roof. Not as some extra cheap sun shade but as a design feature. You see the Palapas all over the place here, on the beach for bar roofs, as car ports , as extensions to resturants, but this is the first time i have seen the thatched intricately woven roof design as a design feature. Its almost as if the Architect started with the Palapas shape first and designed top down.I will have to get a closer look next time i go back. Could be a Lotus Petal in the mail.

Hello Vera!

In the Australian Bush like in many cultures around the world,indigenous knowledge says that if you get bitten by some poisonous critter or stung by a toxic plant the first aid ER you need is within 25 metres of where it happened.I could be wrong on the radius of remedy but the point being that within nature is both pain & the pain relief, the cure. Now in most concrete jungles you are not going to be able to put this to the test but here in the Yucatan, you can find relief to a lot of skin ailments like burns, especially from the sun, stings of various kinds right outside on the street where you live. Aleo Vera (Sebilera del Mayab its called here) has been used medicinally for thousands of years especially for skin problems. You can drink it too. I have treated over exposure to sun on my face with the gel from this leaf many times, picked straight from the street, outside my hotel. I just step onto the road walk 25 metres and look for this long spiky green leaf plant.... "Hello Vera"

La Dulce Vida

There are some definate delights to living in the tropics, one is the availability and variety of exotic fruit that appear in the shops throughout the year. Now if you are following FIT for LIFE eating you know that its fruit in the morning, while your body is detoxing.In these latitudes i supplement my normal fruit intake (bananas apples gapes pears melon ect which you can buy anywhere) with some of the exotic tropical Mexican delicacies. I went on the hunt this morning for a Marme Sapote, a brown skinned fruit about the size of a big Avocado with a creamy orange flesh inside that tastes like would you believe chocolate suffle,unfortunately i didn't track one down . What i did find was these 2 : A Starfruit, The Carambola, its got a watery zingy taste to it that wakes up your taste buds, and a Sweet Prickly Pear called the Tuna here, its got a purple inside that tastes like a sweet beetroot , but its not a beet but a member of the Cactus family.

Another tropical delight on a balmy tropical night is the joy of smoking a Vainilla Cubanitos cigarello and sipping from a shot glass of chilled D'AARISTI a Yucatan Licor de Anis y Miel de Abejas. Honey & Anis ......Fit for Mayan Kings. I discovered this combination in the Grand Hotel Merida some years ago and have fond memories of sharing La Dulce Vida Yucatan & Vainillas.