Thought For The Day

I'm still finishing up Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. If I tried to list all the memorable quotes and passages that have affected me, I would overload this blog. But the following passage belongs in these pages, I think. This is from the 1933 autobiography of Chief Luther Standing Bear (From the Land of the Spotted Eagle) , and appears on page 525 of Zinn's book:

True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?

I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization...

From this tipi, this is the Zen Hodgepodge, signing off for now.