wars: big and small ones

If you ask anybody, most people would be completely against war. They do not understand how they could happen. They would blame some evil people that manipulate other people......

This morning at work, some of my colleagues were talking about another one in a really bad way, and gathering signatures against her, planning a meeting to discuss ways to remove her, etc......there was a lot of violence, disrespect and ill feelings.

I think I remember Krishnamurti saying that war was not only the one between countries, but the war with our neighbours, our wives, our co-workers, even ourselves. The big wars "mirror" the small ones......

(Picture above: Phan Thi Kim Phúc, center left, running naked down a road near Trang Bang after a napalm attack in Vietnam on 8th June 1972. In an interview many years later, she recalled she was yelling "Nóng quá, nóng quá" ("too hot, too hot") in the picture. After a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, however, she was able to return home.)

Hari Om Tat Sat

I was sitting at a table and somebody asked "what does it mean Hari Om Tat Sat?"

I had never heard that expression.

My friend answered: "I think it means: what is now is all there is"

Nature and technology

It has some kind of beauty to see that a volcano can stop quite a "solid" and sophisticated human activity, as flying.

The eruption of Eyjafjall volcano on Iceland on 14 April 2010 threw volcanic ash several kilometres up in the atmosphere which led to air travel disruptions in Northwest Europe on April 15-17, including the closure of airspace over most of Europe.

Only on friday the 16th, 17,000 flights, more than half of Europe's average 28,000 daily flights, had to be cancelled.

28,000 daily flights, just in Europe?.....that was the news.....but how many flights are there daily in the whole world?

This has been difficult to research on the net. According to NATCA, the US National Air Traffic Controllers Association, only in the US, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies on any given day. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights.

I could not find a good source in Internet that would tell me the total flight number in the world per day. But if there are 87,000 in the USA and 28,000 just in Europe, let's guess another 30,000 for the rest of the world......that sums around 150,000 for the whole world...in a single day !! (isn't that a bit too much?...)

While researching the above figures, I found a study by scientists in the Zurich School of Applied Sciences. They traced every flight in the world over a 24-hour period and plotted them onto an impressive video map. (Each yellow dot represents a flight. A moving haze was then added to resemble the shifting darkness of night)
See the video here

Where is all this people going? to do what?
What moves us?

"They desired to help but were themselves helpless"

"When I went to Europe for the first time I lived among people who were wealthy and well educated, who held positions of social authority; but whatever their dignities or distinctions, they could not satisfy me. I was in revolt also against theosophists with all their jargon, their theories, their meetings, and their explanations of life. When I went to a meeting, the lecturers repeated the same ideas which did not satisfy me or make me happy. I went to fewer and fewer meetings, I saw less and less of the people who merely repeated the ideas of Theosophy. I questioned everything because I wanted to find out for myself.

I walked about the streets, watching the faces of people who perhaps watched me with even greater interest. I went to theatres; I saw how people amused themselves, trying to forget their unhappiness, thinking that they were solving their problems by drugging their hearts and minds with superficial excitement.

I saw people with political, social or religious power - and yet they did not have that one essential thing in their lives, which is happiness.

I attended labour meetings, communist meetings, and listened to what their leaders had to say. They were generally protesting against something. I was interested, but they did not give me satisfaction.

By observation of one type and another I gathered experience vicariously. Within everyone there was a latent volcano of unhappiness and discontentment. I passed from one pleasure to another, from one amusement to another, in search of happiness and found it not. I watched the amusements of the young people, their dances, their dresses, their extravagances, and I saw that they were not happy with the happiness which I was seeking. I watched people who had very little in life, who wanted to tear down those things which others had built up. They thought that they were solving life by destroying and building differently and yet they were unhappy.

I saw people who desired to serve going into those quarters where the poor and the degraded live. They desired to help but were themselves helpless. How can you cure another of disease if you are yourself a victim of that disease?

I saw people satisfied with the stagnation which is unproductive, uncreative - the bourgeois type which never struggles to be above the surface or falls below it and so feels its weight.

I read books on philosophy, on religion, biographies of great people and yet they could not give me what I wanted. I wanted to be so certain, so positive, in my attitude towards life that nothing could disturb me.

Then I came to India and I saw that the people there were deluding themselves equally, carrying on the same old traditions treating women cruelly. At the same time they called themselves very religious and painted their faces with ashes. In India they may have the most sacred books in the world, they may have the greatest philosophies, they may have constructed wonderful temples in the past, but none of these was able to give me what I wanted. Neither in Europe nor in India could I find happiness."

(J. Krishnamurti. "Life in Freedom". 1928)