Suppose there was a green, sappy log, and it was lying in water. Then a person comes along with a drill-stick, thinking to light a fire and produce heat. What do you think, Aggivessana? By drilling the stick against that green, sappy log lying in the water, could they light a fire and produce heat?”
“No, Master Gotama. Why not? Because it’s a green, sappy log, and it’s lying in the water. That person will eventually get weary and frustrated.” …
“Whoever has not given up the defilements that are corrupting, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death is deluded, I say. For it’s not giving up the defilements that makes you deluded. Whoever has given up the defilements that are corrupting, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death—is not…
I attended a powerful session yesterday on the importance of remembering all the change that’s been accomplished to-date and moving forward more skillfully when discerning how these changes were made. Bernard Unti, PhD of Philosophy from the American University provided a rich history of animal protection progress starting in Europe and then through the U.S. Here’s a few highlights of what he said:
“Organized animal protection is now 200 years old … skillful use of our history can help us engage more supporters in the future.” Dr. Bernard Unti, presented on the four key themes from a historical and contemporary perspective and showed how these themes have led to real (but not-yet-complete) improvement in our human-animal relations.
The four themes are:
relationship between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence (e.g., how we treat non-human animals leads to how we treat fellow humans – beat your animals = beat your spouse, kids, elders, …)
connection between animal causes and other social justice causes (e.g., temperance, feminism, work safety …)
social values and communicating change (e.g., Black Beauty, Be Kind to Animals Week, Scouting …)
Bottom line: change comes from communicatingwhat we are for versus what we are against and wear our values gracefully (i.e., recognize incremental improvement and patiently win one person at a time).”
I am very fortunate to be investing much of this week at the Animal Care Expo in New Orleans, LA, USA. This 4-day event is an annual opportunity for educators and exhibitors to meet with over 2500 attendees to discuss what is happening to improve animal care, animal rescue and animal re-homing across the globe. Here’s what I did on Day 1:
Introduced to the Canine Assessment for Risk of Shelters (CARS) framework to assess a dog’s behavioral response to humans, other dogs, or other domesticated animals. This Learning Lab also included a Bite Assessment. This nearly 5-hour interactive session was excellently presented by Dorothy Baisly, Fernando Dias, Amanda Kowalski and Mara Velez.
The Welcome Keynote included the recognition of the 4,000 Beagles rescue program completed last year and the aspiration to do even more this year and years to come. This was followed by an inspirational presentation by Dr. Jyothi Robertson on how her interspecies family members (i.e. cats, dogs and a tortoise) help her (and can help us) look at life and our animal care challenges more courageously and lovingly.
Last, but not least, I was one of three animal chaplains staffing an exhibition booth for Compassion Consortium.
More good news to come!
Jill Angelo, Patrick Cole and (Rev) Sarah Bowen (award-winning author for Sacred Sendoffs and a founding director for Compassion Consortium)!
It’s Spring and I’m exploring the many types of deep friendships we encounter during our life. One reference I just discovered is reposted below from, believe it or not, the Brides website: written by Christine Coppa and referencing Dr. Michael Tobin.
Today’s senryu: Soul Friends and Soulmates
who are we today
who reminds us we are one
let’s begin anew
I’m interested in your comments on this topic. Do you have a soul friend and/or mate?
The idea of meeting your soulmate is the glorious stuff of rom-coms—and apparently real-life, everyday people, too.
What Is a Soulmate
According to Dr. Michael Tobin, a soulmate is someone who you feel deeply connected to, but not in a dependent or needy way. The guiding principle in a relationship between soulmates is that needs are equally met because a soulmate relationship should challenge you to move from selfishness to giving.
“It’s the realization that this person who shares your life is a part of yourself,” says family and marital psychologist Dr. Michael Tobin. “A soulmate is an individual that has a lasting impact on your life. Your soulmate is your fellow traveler on the journey of life—you need one another to grow beyond the limitations of your individual selves.”
If you’re wondering if you’ve met your soulmate—or are currently with your unique flame, Dr. Tobin has optimistic news for you: “I believe everyone could discover their soulmate. However, to find your soulmate, you must first understand that humans are not meant to be alone and that the purpose of a relationship is not merely to get our individual needs met—but rather as a challenge to grow—and to help our partners reach their potential.”
As for when you might meet your particular person, Dr. Tobin saysthat there isn’t a perfect age or life stage for discovering your soulmate—and that is exciting news. “I know a 74-year-old woman who reconnected with her high school flame after a 56-year separation. She calls him her soulmate. They were meant to be together during the later years of their lives.”
You might be wondering if you met your soulmate on a vacation, subway stop, or that time in the rain when a stranger invited you to share an umbrella—but didn’t realize it at the time. According to Dr. Tobin, yes, this is possible. “Everything in life is about timing. I believe it’s a matter of self-knowledge. When you understand that a relationship is not about control or the simple need of fulfillment but is essential to our psychological and spiritual development, then you’re open to the possibility of meeting your soulmate.”
If you’re curious about what to do if you feel like you’ve experienced a ships-in-the-night experience, Dr. Tobin suggests embracing it because it may actually have been what he says is known as a “soul crossing.” He explains that this is a brief encounter with someone who crosses our path and has a lasting impact on the direction we choose in life.
Knowing or understanding the signs you met your soulmate is interesting in itself because there isn’t just one generic type of soulmate out there. Most people equate the term “soulmate” with romantic love. Ahead, the types of soulmates that exist and how to know if you’ve found one.
Types of Soulmates
Not all soulmates are the stuff of life-long romance. Here are six different kinds to look out for in your own life.
Romantic Soulmates
“Romantic soulmates ignite one another’s passion throughout their time together,” explains Dr. Tobin. “They have the capacity to bring one another to heights of physical and emotional pleasure.” However, we’ve all experienced breakups, even if we were with someone who hit the hot and heavy marks. “Passion can be a brief flame that burns hot and then extinguishes. For those rare romantic soulmates, the flame burns continuously because they’re both committed to keeping the fire lit throughout their time together.”
Soul Partners
Has it been years since you connected with a friend from elementary school, but when you do, you just click? “A soul partner is that person who you haven’t seen in years, and when you reunite, feel like time and separation have no bearing on the depth of the connection,” explains Dr. Tobin.
Karmic Soulmates
You know you’ve met a karmic soulmate when you’re in sync about common purposes. “You’re both here together to make a difference in the world, and your skills complement one another—you’re ideal partners to fulfill a shared mission.” This kind of relationship doesn’t require love or intimacy and instead relies on putting your best selves forward to achieve something that matters.
Companion Soulmates
This is the yin to your yang, the peanut butter to your jelly—you get it. “Friends are an essential part of our lifetime journey, and those of the soulmate type help us laugh when we’re in pain, nurture us when we’re suffering, flow with us when we’re riding high, challenge us to be real, love us with our warts, and never abandon us in anger. And we do the same with them.”
Kindred Soulmates
You know you’ve found a kindred soulmate when you pretty much agree on all of the small and big stuff. “You love the same things; laugh at the same jokes; agree and disagree with love and affection; compete with gusto but without bitterness or jealousy. These people share the same journey toward truth and love,” Dr. Tobin says.
Soul Contracts
This is an interesting type of soulmate because it’s when two people are bound by a common commitment to speak the truth, be emotionally open with one another, own up to deceits, and be authentic. A soul contract might look like a married couple, where one spouse cheated, but they stay together, not for the kids or appearances but because there’s a deep law of attraction within pulling them together for their lifetime.
Signs You’ve Found Your Soulmate
The signs you’ve met your soulmate are kind of infinite and can overlap with the different kinds of soulmates you encounter in your lifetime. Dr. Tobin believes an important truth about relationships is that you have to create love and nurture soulmate connections. “Love isn’t delivered to us because we believe we deserve it. We must work at being loving and then we’ll receive love in return.”
They Give You a Sense of Calm and Storm
He also says that a sense of both calm and storm is an indicator light. “Sometimes a soulmate is here to shake us out of complacency, to challenge us to think and to act differently, to grow beyond our comfort zones. This is never smooth and peaceful. Yet with that same soulmate, there are and will be moments of exquisite connection, serenity, and harmony.”
You Feel One Another’s Pain
Another sign you’ve met your match is the way you react to their pain. “It’s hard to imagine soulmates who don’t bleed with one another, who don’t feel one another’s pain, who are absent of empathy and compassion,” Dr. Tobin says.
As a final note, “Soulmates may be like two strands of spaghetti entangled in such a way that they don’t know where one begins and the other ends,” says Dr. Tobin. And at the same time, some soulmate relationships serve their purpose and expire. The good news is we may all experience a soulmate connection at some point in our life.
It seems like Roald Dahl may have been onto something after all: if you hurt a plant, it screams.
Well, sort of. Not in the same way you or I might scream. Rather, they emit popping or clicking noises in ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing that increase when the plant becomes stressed. This, according to scientists, could be one of the ways in which plants communicate their distress to the world around them.
“Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don’t hear, and those sounds carry information. There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there is the possibility that a lot of acoustic interaction is occurring,” explains evolutionary biologist Lilach Hadany of Tel Aviv University in Israel.
“Plants interact with insects and other animals all the time, and many of these organisms use sound for communication, so it would be very suboptimal for plants to not use sound at all.”
Plants under stress aren’t as passive as you might think. They undergo some pretty dramatic changes, one of the most detectable of which (to us humans, at least) is the release of some pretty powerful aromas. They can also alter their color and shape.
However, whether plants emit other kinds of signals – such as sounds – has not been fully explored. A few years ago, Hadany and her colleagues found that plants can detect sound. The logical next question to ask was whether they can produce it, too.
To find out, they recorded tomato and tobacco plants in a number of conditions. First, they recorded unstressed plants, to get a baseline. Then they recorded plants that were dehydrated, and plants that had had their stems cut. These recordings took place first in a soundproofed acoustic chamber, then in a normal greenhouse environment.
Then, they trained a machine learning algorithm to differentiate between the sound produced by unstressed plants, cut plants, and dehydrated plants.
The sounds plants emit are like popping or clicking noises in a frequency far too high-pitched for humans to make out, detectable within a radius of over a meter (3.3 feet). Unstressed plants don’t make much noise at all; they just hang out, quietly doing their plant thing.
By contrast, stressed plants are much noisier, emitting an average up to around 40 clicks per hour depending on the species. And plants deprived of water have a noticeable sound profile. They start clicking more before they show visible signs of dehydrating, escalating as the plant grows more parched, before subsiding as the plant withers away.
The algorithm was able to distinguish between these sounds, as well as the species of plant that emitted them. And it’s not just tomato and tobacco plants. The team tested a variety of plants, and found that sound production appears to be a pretty common plant activity. Wheat, corn, grape, cactus, and henbit were all recorded making noise.
But there are still a few unknowns. For example, it’s not clear how the sounds are being produced. In previous research, dehydrated plants have been found to experience cavitation, a process whereby air bubbles in the stem form, expand and collapse. This, in human knuckle-cracking, produces an audible pop; something similar could be going on with plants.
We don’t know yet if other distress conditions can induce sound, either. Pathogens, attack, UV exposure, temperature extremes, and other adverse conditions could also induce the plants to start popping away like bubble wrap.
It’s also not clear whether sound production is an adaptive development in plants, or if it is just something that happens. The team showed, however, that an algorithm can learn to identify and distinguish between plant sounds. It’s certainly possible that other organisms could have done the same.
In addition, these organisms could have learned to respond to the noise of distressed plants in various ways. “For example, a moth that intends to lay eggs on a plant or an animal that intends to eat a plant could use the sounds to help guide their decision,” Hadany says. For us humans, the implications are pretty clear; we could tune into the distress calls of thirsty plants and water them before it becomes an issue.
“Now that we know that plants do emit sounds, the next question is – ‘who might be listening?'” Hadany says. “We are currently investigating the responses of other organisms, both animals and plants, to these sounds, and we’re also exploring our ability to identify and interpret the sounds in completely natural environments.”
Sometimes people find compassion practice the easiest entry to practicing mettā more generally. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu said, compassion is an extension of mettā that we feel when we encounter suffering. When we are confronted with suffering, especially in person, compassion (karunā) is a natural response, and if we give it space, it will grow. This can be experienced in every day life, but also if we seek out situations to support those in need: incarcerated people, support groups for people with mental challenges, people in aged care or hospice, even animal rescue and rehabilitation. All of these can inspire us to set aside our own petty concerns and listen patiently to others, with an open heart, whether they are talking or not.
The sense of presence that we can develop with mettā or karunā comes from devoting ourselves to observing and listening to others in a complete way…
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Spoken by Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
“Parker J. Palmer is an American author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He has published ten books and numerous essays and poems and is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Palmer
Only 117 pages, Palmer’s small book, Let Your Life Speak, (c) 2000 by Jossey-Bass, is filled with candor and wisdom about his (and our) search for right livelihood, for a meaningful vocation.
A couple of quotes from this book inspired by his Quaker practice are:
“there is much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does – maybe more.” p.39
“If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship – and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to do this particular ‘good’. … It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift to everyone who asks me for it. There are some relations in which I am capable of love and others in which I am not. To pretend otherwise, to put out promissory notes I am unable to honor, is to damage my own integrity and that of the person in need.” pp.47-48
“We can make choices about what we are going to project, and with those choices we help grow the world … Our complicity in world making is a source of awesome and sometimes painful responsibility – and a source of profound hope for change.” p.78
“Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility, for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that make the world seem hospitable again. … if you receive a gift, you keep it alive not by clinging to it but by passing it along.” pp.104-105
While Patrick is of course primarily associated with Ireland where he flourished as a missionary in the second half of the fifth century, he was not Irish to begin with. He seems to have been a shepherd on the mainland of Great Britain and was in fact captured there, at the age of sixteen, by raiding pirates and taken across the sea to Ireland where he was sold as a slave. He was six years in captivity before he finally made his escape and returned to Britain. And this is where the story takes a truly extraordinary turn. While he was enslaved in Ireland, working as a shepherd for his masters, Patrick became a Christian and when, having made good his escape, he returned home he had a vision in which a man gave him a letter headed ‘The Voice of Ireland’…
(Michele Constantini/Getty Images)
Life Matters 