– Bertrand Russell

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

– Matthieu Ricard

The tragedies of Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Holocaust and Armenia all have anniversaries this month and so April is Genocide Prevention Month.  You can take the Pledge to Observe Genocide Prevention Month, which states:

Remarkably, six genocides have major anniversaries in the month of April – a tragic testament to the international community’s inexcusable failure to stop inhuman and barbarous acts.

This April, we – survivors of genocide and mass atrocities, their descendants, and anti-genocide advocates – will honor those who were lost and those who survived.  And we will urge immediate action to stop the ongoing Darfur genocide.

Our collective voices will remind the international community to make its commitment to mass atrocity prevention absolute.  Until we do, we are destined to repeat the most shameful chapters in human history.

We all share the rights enshrined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the UN in 1948, and it is up to each one of us to witness and act against those who would deny those basic rights to our fellow sisters and brothers.  There are many ways to help by making a donation, education, activism and volunteering.  Please consider making whatever commitment you can to be of benefit to all.

– Mahatma Gandhi

– Albert Einstein

Like many North Americans I grew up in a suburban neighbourhood where the automobile is treated like a pampered pet.  A few weeks before my family moved to Okinawa, not long after my 16th birthday, I received a driver’s licence and spent the next three years driving on the left hand side of the road.  Returning to the United States I thought nothing of purchasing a car for commuting to university and work.   Eleven years later I moved to New York, and chose to keep my small Mitsubishi pickup despite the nontrivial challenges of urban parking and over the course of those three and a half years my truck sat unused except for occasional trips to visit family and friends out of state.

At the end of the 90′s I got married, moved to Toronto and chose to do without a car.  Those few years of urban living in New York led to the realization that auto ownership was an unnecessary luxury for city dwellers, especially one who works from home.  Over the past decade I have driven a rented or borrowed car about a dozen times when travelling to places where public transport wasn’t an option.  And you know what, I don’t miss driving or auto ownership one bit.  If your circumstances allow it, why not give it a shot?

Student: You often criticize a film by saying that it is too aware of
the audience. But when people make films, especially in the West, the
point is to entertain people.

Chogyam Trungpa: If you are completely confident in yourself, you
don’t have to think about the audience at all. You just do your thing,
you just do it properly. This means YOU become the audience. What you
make is entertainment, but that needs a certain amount of wisdom. When
an artist does a painting for commission, there is a good likelihood
that his painting will be one-sided because he is aware of the
audience and he has to relate to the educational standards of the
audience. If he presents his own style without reference to the
audience, they will begin to react and automatically their
sophistication will develop and eventually will reach the level of the
artist….You see, we have the responsibility of raising the mentality
of the audience. People might have to reach out with a certain amount
of strain, but it’s worth it. The whole civilization then begins to
raise its level of sophistication….The beautiful thing about
Buddhism, if I may say so, is that Buddhists don’t try to con you.
They just present what they have to say as it is, take it or leave it.

– Chogyam Trungpa

Edward Abbey