Happy Birthday Dr.King!

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15,1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had been graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955 In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family. In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated. ~ From the Nobel Peace Prize Profile.

Scientific Meditation for Happiness

I watched an excellent episode of the Charlie Rose show - http://www.charlierose.com - last night where he interviewed a series of scientists and academics on the new scientific thinking on happiness. Yes, Americans are not the happiest people in the world and while buddhist monks did rate the highest in all studies, people in Latin American and Asian third world countries came out on top. The French and Japanes came out close to the bottom. A positive outlook on life it seems - no matter how bad things seem materially - is the secret to happiness! Martin Seligman, the Director of The Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania put forward an exercise they have developed that guranteed an increase in your happines quotient within a month. Every night, before going to sleep, write down 3 things that went well for you today (made you happy, raised a good feeling in you, felt succesful.) Do this religiously every night for four weeks and then assess your happiness levels. I started yesterday - let's give it a shot!

Giant ice slabs set for collision

Two giant slabs of ice are about to hit each other in Antarctica, possibly with spectacular results, say Nasa experts. A 160km-long iceberg is heading on a collision course with a huge floating glacier in the sea near the US McMurdo Research Station. The B-15A iceberg should collide with the Drygalski Ice Tongue no later than 15 January 2005, though it is slowing. US space agency scientists are studying the iceberg's progress by monitoring satellite images of the region. See the amazing/worrying photographs and story.

Ten days of the Hajj

For Muslims all over the world, these first ten days of the month (1/12 - 1/21) of Dhu al-Hijjah are the days of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, commemorating the journey of the Prophet Mohammed, his family and supporters from Mecca to Medina, to establish a new faith based on the revealed word of the Qu'ran. This solemn rite of pilgrimage, which every Muslim must make once during his or her life, emphasizes the central Muslim tenets of submission to divine will, brotherhood, and unity, and also commemorates the trials of the Prophet Abraham and his family in making their arduous, perilous God-directed journey into Egypt. The ten days of the Hajj are followed and climaxed by the holy days of Eid al-Adha. ~ From the Universal Festival Calendar by Dan Furst.

Self-expression or Self-control?

The Message of Self-control
by Swami Adiswarananda

Self-control is the control of the mind and its desires, urges, emotions and delusions. It is controlling the outgoing tendencies of the mind and the senses and bringing them back to our Self within. Self-control is the key to success in any field of life and it is an indispensable necessity for Self-realization, the goal of spiritual quest. Self-control is the message of the sages and saints. It is the exhortation of the scriptures and traditions, the foundation of all yogas and the very essence of all spiritual austerities and disciplines. In his Vivekachudamani Sri Shankaracharya says:

The mental sheath is the (sacrificial) fire, which, fed with the fuel of numerous desires by the five sense organs, which serve as priests, and set ablaze by the sense-objects, which act as the stream of oblations, brings about this phenomenal universe.

This is no ignorance (avidya) outside the mind. The mind alone is avidya, the cause of the bondage of transmigration. When that is destroyed, all else is destroyed, and when it is manifested, everything else is manifested.

Read the full essay here
Courtesy & copyright Prabuddha Bharata

'Answer' found to riddle of Sphinx

The riddle of the Sphinx has confounded generations of tourists and experts alike. Who built it, why, and what does it mean? Now a leading Egyptologist believes that he has pieced together the puzzle. After researching the pyramids of the Giza Plateau and their imposing half-human, half-animal guardian for 20 years, Vassil Dobrev of the French Archaeological Institute in Cairo has concluded that the Sphinx was the work of a forgotten pharaoh.

Read this article in the UK Independent

New Moon in Sagittarius

12/11 (Sat), 3:30pm HT; 12/12 (Sun), 1:30am UT

New Moon conjunct Sun in Sagittarius, traditionally considered one of the happiest and most harmonious New Moons of the year. As Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, bringer of wealth and hearty pleasures, the early weeks of December have been throughout the Northern hemisphere the time for enterprises of all kinds to celebrate the profits and achievements of the year, and gather the clans for feasts of love and friendship.

The Sagittarius New Moon has been interpreted as the annual waning of female energy as the male energy waxes now toward the birth of the solar hero child in late December. One mythic expression of this theme is the Greek tale of the annual descent of Persephone into the underworld until spring (see below). In fact, however, at this point the female does not actually weaken or decay. If anything, she reaches fruition with the gathering in of the harvest, creating the moment at which her cycle is productive and complete.

The nature of the harvest becomes evident in the relation of other planetary energies to the conjunction of Sun and Moon. It is very powerful this year, as Mercury and Pluto link with Sun and Moon in a four-planet conjunction that is quintile (72° from) both Jupiter in Libra and Uranus in Pisces. The result here is a harvest of not only the fruits of the Earth, but of the products of human imagination and creativity as well.

From the Universal Festival Calendar -by Dan Furst