lazyyogi:

Samsara

mysticmementos:

The Eye of Horus: Signifying awakening, higher-consciousness, godhead, or God-consciousness; awareness. Symbolic of the third eye chakra and the pituitary gland, which many think are one in the same. The Pituitary gland is also the place where DMT the spirit molecule is produced, which…

overlookingtibet:

freetibetorg:

Alan Rickman reads the torture testimony of a Tibetan monk. Happy birthday Alan.

Whenever a big name celebrity comes out in support of a cause that I believe in, it makes me happy. I think that it can often put the cause into the spotlight, for however brief of a time.

It also does tremendous damage. The celebrity usually stops talking about it and not much more is done. Or, if on the other hand, they continue their support, they are eventually lambasted and ridiculed by society. (I’d like to call it the Richard Gere Syndrome.)

I think it’s incredibly distasteful to post something as this in “honor” of Alan Rickman’s birthday. It makes a mockery of the actual testimony by putting it on a level with a personal holiday that comes once a year. I understand that the point was to thank a celebrity for his support of the Tibetan cause but the juxtaposition here is cruel. “Thank you for your support and happy birthday” would have been better, but it is a small note to the more encompassing issue of celebrities (and ordinary people) co-opting other voices for their own.

This video and audio file isn’t something akin to a living, modern-day poet reading the work of a now-dead poet they were inspired by. As far as we are aware, the monk who was tortured is still alive. While certain things should be taken into consideration, such as translation issues and privacy of the individual*, more often than not, we see Westerners co-opting voices of the oppressed in order to “raise awareness” of their plight. We, quite literally, speak over them.

I refuse to thank Mr. Rickman for merely reading from a script—that’s his job.

*The translation issue could easily be fixed by allowing individuals to speak in whatever language they feel most comfortable in and then adding subtitles. I’d prefer this to hearing a dubbed version. Additionally, it is possible that the person did not want to be identified in any way, and thus, celebrities were brought in to read translated versions of their experiences. We do not know whether or not these individuals were aware of how their words were used—it can be assumed they agreed to speak their harrowing tales, but who knows if they knew anything beyond that.

This is so heartbreaking to me, monks out of all human beings being abused and killed and forced to flee there home lands. They have no voice, we here in America is lucky to have the freedom for choice to speak out load. So please Reblog this and spread awareness and you be that voice! - Namaste

liliezencoach:

nice principles