First Leaf

The first of this year's leaves lets go and drifts, no breeze to bear it. With lazy grace the leaf unwinds its growing season in a dancing downward spiral, lands in silence, making of itself a perfect offering to the altar of the earth.

- Anonymous

Single-Celled Elegance

Successful microbes mutate. They see an evolutionary need, become the seed that spawns a different being. They seize chance opportunities, try new paths, have no fear of changing appearances. These single cells hold the keys to transformation. They equate stagnation with death and see that releasing form is the only way to enter into essence.

Religion as a Framework

Religion is like a framework. Here is an excerpt from Rails and Ajax book about what frameworks do to creativity. I saw it analogous to what we talk about religion -

A framework can be seen as a set of constraints for your program. At first, that sounds like a bad thing—why constrain yourself? But it turns out that by embracing constraints for a specific purpose, you actually enable creativity, by focusing energy on the problem at hand. The Rails framework is a set of constraints that enables effective web development.

It is hip to be an atheist

Nowadays, it is fashionable, cool, hip and "in" to be an atheist.

I have volunteered for churches (for feeding the homeless), for Buddhist monasteries, for gurudwaras (for cleaning and cooking) and for Hindu temples. One thing I have noticed is the relative lack of good volunteer opportunities in Hindu temples.

Hindus are particularly notorious for blaming things on the priests and "others" for the bad situation in temples like the blogger below does regarding cleanliness. While on the other hand, followers of other religions volunteer to take things in their own hands and make a difference.

e.g. Look at this Blog post from a self-announced atheist who it looks like was born in a Hindu family. Now, as she puts it - she hates religions.

http://anjalix.blogspot.com/2007/06/leave-shoes-out.html

Disclaimer: I am a multi-religious person who appreciates and respects all the good and kind in all religions.