what will they say of you?

from paulo coelho's blog:

As a boy, Abin-Alsar overheard a conversation between his father and a dervish.
“Careful with your work”, said the dervish. “Think of what future generations will say about you.”
“So what?”, replied his father, “When I die, everything shall end, and it will not matter what they say.”

Abin-Alsar never forgot that conversation. His whole life, he made an effort to do good, to help people and go about his work with enthusiasm. He became well-known for his concern for others; when he died, he left behind a great number of things which improved the quality of life in his town.
On his tombstone, he had the following epitaph engraved:

“A life which ends with death, is a life not well spent.”

day 1

today is day 1. in spirit of my previous post and the reference to not saying too much, I'll leave it at that. I just wanted to officially record it somewhere. so there we go. done :)

I have a new favorite blog

alright, derek sivers seems to be an all around generally awesome guy: "Derek Sivers, bequeathed his company to a charitable trust for music education, and had them sell it. This agreement allows him to receive only 5% of the company's profits for living expenses, while the rest of the money (22 million) went into the trust."

I just read up a little bit on his blog today, but check out posts such as this about shutting up, and a recent one about not putting any speed limit to yourself. very interesting ideas and thoughts, and I just recommend it to everyone!

letting go of the past

I just finished reading a new earth, a book well worth reading. I actually recommend it to more or less everyone. am re-reading it again, and will probably write some more once I finish it, but for now, here's a nice story from it:

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross at an intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Now imagine what life would be like for someone who lived like Ekido all the time, unable or unwilling to let go internally of situations, accumulating more and more "stuff" inside, and you get a sense of what life is like for the majority of people on the planet. What a heavy burden of past they carry around with them in their minds.

(I copied the story from wikipedia, and the final paragraph from the book.)

ice ice baby

we accidentally spilled some ice on the table at a dinner. quick to realize the power of the close-up, I took some shots.

on a soap bar

"if you want to be free, learn to live simply."

I like it :)

empowering junior youth

the age of 12-15 is often seen as a troublesome age. the kids are starting to grow up, not knowing exactly what is expected of them or where they belong. the Bahá'í juniour youth programs aim to bring some coherence into the lives of junior youth. see more here:


you can read more here or here.

charice

wow. all I can say is wow.

moving closer

looking through my drafts, here's something I found that I had written long ago but never done anything with. lazy as I am to write up my thoughts, I'll just publish it.

When Ketu turned twelve years old he was sent to a master, with whom he studied until he was twenty-four. Upon finishing his training, he came back home filled with pride.
His father asked him:
“How can we know what we can’t see? How can we know that God the Almighty is everywhere?”
The young man began to recite the sacred scriptures, but his father interrupted him:
“That’s all too complicated. Isn’t there an easier way for us to learn about the existence of God?”
“Not that I know of, my father. Today I am a learned man and I need this knowledge to explain the mysteries of divine wisdom.”
“I have wasted my time and money sending my son to the monastery,” complained the father.
And taking Ketu by the hand, he led him to the kitchen. There he filled a basin with water and poured in a little salt. Then they went for a stroll in the city.
When they came back home, the father told Ketu:
“Bring the salt that I put in the basin.”
Ketu looked for the salt but did not find it because it had already dissolved in the water.
“So you can’t see the salt any more?” asked the father.
“No, the salt’s invisible.”
“Then taste a little of the water that’s on the surface of the basin. How does it taste?”
“Salty.”
“Try a little of the water in the middle: how does it taste?”
“As salty as on the surface.”
“Now taste the water at the bottom of the basin and tell me what it tastes like.”
Ketu tried it and it had the same taste as he had felt before.
“You have studied for many years and can’t explain simply how Invisible God is in all parts,” said the father. “Using a basin of water, and calling God “salt”, I could make any peasant understand that. Please, dear son, forget the wisdom that moves us away from men and look again for the Inspiration that draws us closer.”

paulo coelho's blog

The Prophets and Chosen Ones have all been commissioned by the One True God, magnified be His glory, to nurture the trees of human existence with the living waters of uprightness and understanding, that there may appear from them that which God hath deposited within their inmost selves. As may be readily observed, each tree yieldeth a certain fruit, and a barren tree is but fit for fire.

Kitab-i-Aqdas, q106

Existence is like a tree, and man is the fruit. If the fruit be sweet and agreeable, all is well, but if it be bitter it were far better there were none. Every man who has known the celestial bestowals is verily a treasury; if he remain ignorant of them, his non-existence were better than his existence. The tree which does not bring forth fruit is fit only for the fire. Strive night and day to change men into fruitful trees, virgin forests into divine orchards and deserts into rose gardens of significance. Light these lamps, that the dark world may become illumined.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 110)

moments of epiphany

I recently read the book Art & Fear, and here's an extract from it:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they had produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded by quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

it is interesting to combine the story with the book Genius explained, which I also read some time ago, where Michael Howe explains how most of the people we perceive as geniuses, simply worked long and hard and persistently, and in many cases happened to be at the right place at the right time. that brings us to quite an interesting conclusion about anything we want to do in this world and be successful at - work hard, work long, practice, practice, practice, learn, and then do some more. if we expect ourselves or others to be experts at day 1, we clearly won't be, and will want to give up because we're not where we want to be.

if you do a search for 10000 hours to become an expert, you will see what the general trend seems to be... are we willing to spend the time and effort to get there or do we just expect to be there automatically?

light upon light

here's what we did for youth presents a while ago. the theme was light upon light:

true story

this just happened, after some time of silence and work...
me: wow, I suddenly feel like an idiot!
officemate: any reason in particular?
me: no.

needless to say, we both laughed quite a lot... :)

prayer

this is one of my favorite prayers at the moment:

O seeker of Truth! If thou desirest that God my open thine eye, thou must supplicate unto God, pray to and commune with Him at midnight, saying:

O Lord, I have turned my face unto Thy kingdom of oneness and am immersed in the sea of Thy mercy. O Lord, enlighten my sight by beholding Thy lights in this dark night, and make me happy by the wine of Thy love in this wonderful age. O Lord, make me hear Thy call, and open before my face the doors of Thy heaven, so that I may see the light of Thy glory and become attracted to Thy beauty. Verily, Thou art the Giver, the Generous, the Merciful, the Forgiving.

- 'Abdu'l-Bahá

one word for everything

this is just a good summary:

the whole world in my hands

took this one a while ago... such a beautiful sunset:

the power of "yes, and..."

a friend and I were sitting earlier today trying to figure out a script for another movie. I can't tell the full details just yet, but it was very interesting to see how we helped each other's creativity. four of us had basically done some brainstorming yesterday, came up with a couple of possible ideas on how to go ahead, but hadn't really gotten anywhere with it. so we sat down today, the two of us, and in my mind I tried to keep the "yes, and" idea, not to shoot any of the ideas down, but to try to help out, ask questions and push him along whenever he came up with anything. and I must say it was amazing to see how far we got! we helped build on each other's creativity, we nailed down a couple of ideas, ironed out the details, and have a whole lot to work with, in just two hours! not only for a first episode, but an overarching story and theme for the future as well, which will help give us a framework and make it easier to come up with more ideas.

if you haven't heard of "yes, and...", read this on wikipedia, it's all about improvisation.

and it's finally done!

it's been more than a year since I first announced the creation of my website, theaqdas.org, and now it is time again.

after having papers like this:

and my friend looking like this:

we are finally done. the new version of theaqdas.org is online, and I must say that I am quite excited about this. besides studying everything again and reconnecting the synopsis to the verses, questions and answers and notes, there are some site design improvements, and added functionality: admonitions, concordance and paragraph summary.

it's been an amazing journey, learning a lot of code and programming techniques, and also all the studying that's been done. I can only hope that other people get some sort of benefit from this, for me it's been absolutely amazing. hoping to do more in the future... :)

it's been a year and a half

wow. that's all I can say.

Akko day!

yesterday was the Akko open day, to celebrate the recognition of the Baha'i Holy Places and gardens as UNESCO world heritage sites. as Bahji was open to the public to wander around and see the beautiful gardens, we were asked to help out as ushers to make sure people could get directions and help, answers to their questions, and everything else that might happen. there were some exhibitions, children's playing area and more. unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the event, but I'm sure there will be something coming up here and there soon. it was a really beautiful day, and it was really enjoyable to be standing around watching people come.

as a source of encouragement, we were given this quotation to read:

Be ye sincerely kind, not in appearance only. Let each one of God's loved ones centre his attention on this: to be the Lord's mercy to man; to be the Lord's grace. Let him do some good to every person whose path he crosseth, and be of some benefit to him. Let him improve the character of each and all, and reorient the minds of men. In this way, the light of divine guidance will shine forth, and the blessings of God will cradle all mankind: for love is light, no matter in what abode it dwelleth; and hate is darkness, no matter where it may make its nest.
- 'Abdu'l-Bahá

as there was quite a bit of free time at first (we made sure to be on our posts ahead of time), I had the time to learn this quotation by heart. and it very much served as a reminder during the day, whenever someone came and asked anything, I tried to remember the "let him do some good to every person whose path he crosseth". hopefully I did!

I also figured out why we went to daylight savings yesterday and not tonight, as (in my mind) would make more sense. it started raining a little bit at approximately 4.30, and then about 10-15 minutes later it got heavier and heavier. the program was supposed to continue until 5, but with this we had to close down everything and start packing up. had we not gone over to daylight savings but waited a day, we would've closed another hour earlier, which would've meant less people coming...

already looking forward to next week, open day in Haifa! :)

someone has way too much time on their hands

I just got this sent to me... utterly hilarious, check it out:

absolutely beautiful site

do check out ganbahai.org.il, which is a newly created site for the Baha'i gardens in Haifa and Akka... all I can say is wow, it's stunningly beautiful.

and yes, it's even better actually being here... :)

a good description

nerd:
1. someone who is boring and unfashionable
2. someone who is extremely interested in computers

hits home on both fronts with me ;)

this one hit home

hilarious:

and yes, I'll probably start being more active here soon...

the beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I usually don't do this kind of stuff, but I'm bored, so here goes nothing...

It's harder than it looks! Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag ten people. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real - nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. What is your name: borna
2. A four Letter Word: born (is that boring?)
3. A boy's Name: bob
4. A girl's Name: bernadette
5. An occupation: beatboxer
6. A color: blue
7. Something you'll wear: boxers
9. A food: biscuits
10. Something found in the bathroom: brush
11. A place: bed!
12. A reason for being late: (I wanna say bed, but that's not allowed, so...) books
13. Something you'd shout: BOOOOM! or BUUUUUFF!!! (can't make up my mind...)
14. A movie title: black adder (it's a series, but come on)
15. Something you drink: banana shake
16. A musical group: black eyed peas
17. An animal: bear
18. A street name: ben gurion
19. A type of car: bee em double-u
20. The title of a song: bumbro!

the wayfarer

I'd heard about this one a long time ago, even talked to one of my friends who helped edit it, but just never had time to watch the trailer... you should do it:


The Wayfarer (promotional trailer) from Jess Firth on Vimeo.

a happy, crazy, laughing farewell

one of the challenges of being here, and something that one simply has to get used to, is people leaving. all the time. last week I went to the airport to drop off a friend, and this week again. but this time it was different... we had fun. lots of fun.

as we reached the airport, we decided to go to McD, grab a bite, hook up his laptop and watch some football. he goes to check in, after about 30 mins I get a call from him - they're going to check through all his handluggage and carry-ons and stuff. so we pack it down, go there and while they're going through all his stuff, we're just standing talking to each other and laughing all the time. they must've thought that we're rather crazy, instead of worrying about what's going on we're just cracking up and having fun. somewhere halfways through all this checking his mom calls to make sure everything's okay, and he hands over the phone to me, having me relay what they're saying to each other. it turned quite interesting when he had to walk away to have his shoes, clothes, belt and stuff checked... I kept on talking :)

the best was yet to come though... since they were going to escort him through the security and everything, there was always a security girl with us, to make sure I didn't give him anything that they hadn't checked. so as we're going to say good bye, he wants to make sure that it's okay for us to hug and say good bye. how he asked could perhaps have been put a bit better though: he turns to the security girl and asks "are we allowed to touch each other?"

at this point, all three of us simply cracked up... I turned around and walked back a few meters, he doubled over, and the security girl was laughing quite a lot too. she gave permission, we hugged, and also asked her to take a picture of us:

as I left, I was smiling and laughing... have never had a better good bye!

me, me, me, me version 2009

I started my annual "me"-wikipedia update last year. here's today's results:

Borna, a town in Saxony, Germany - maybe I should go visit myself? :)

A part of Bahretal in the Sächsische Schweiz district, Saxony, Germany - has apparently changed owners quite a lot...

Borna disease, an infection neurological of warm-blooded animals caused by the Borna virus

Borna Bartolović, a Croatian breakdancer - this article is empty right now [no update 2009]

Borna of Croatia, a Medieval Slavic Prince of Dalmatia - wow!

A Persian word meaning "young." Can also be used as a name. - yupps, that's me

and the new entry of 2009:

The Rabha name of Channa amphibeus - apparently a rare species of snakehead