IntentBlog

Dear ATCA Colleagues

The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
____________________________________________________________________________

Posted by DK Matai at 08:00 AM | Comments (25)

How to Know God

The Video's now working!Watch the trailer for the film, How To Know God with Deepak Chopra. Coming this Fall on DVD.

Posted by Intent at 07:02 AM | Comments (34)

Open Thread

Posted by Intent at 06:50 AM | Comments (44)

August 30, 2006

Beyond the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955: The Potsdam Denkschrift for the 21st Century

"Beyond the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955: The Potsdam Denkschrift" is probably one of the most thought provoking and meaningful think-pieces of our time, which has been developed by the world famous nuclear-physicist and Alternative Nobel Prize Winner Prof Hans-Peter Duerr based in Munich, Germany.

Prof Hans-Peter Duerr

The Potsdam Denkschrift's ground-breaking thoughts -- based on the "ab initio" deeper understanding of modern science in general and nuclear physics in particular over a century -- are particularly relevant in today's day and age.

All of the 10 complex global challenges of the 21st century identified -- climate chaos, radical poverty, organised crime, extremism, informatics, nanotechnology, robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence and financial systems -- depend on the way humankind thinks and acts to address and to begin to resolve some of the seemingly intractable yet interlinked confrontations. As those inherent confrontations accelerate and feed off each other's momentum they possess the capability to damage and to disrupt the delicate global dynamic equilibrium. Faced with this unpalatable prospect for humanity in the coming two to three decades or less, it is necessary to rethink strategically because "He who is not busy being born, is busy dying."

The Potsdam Denkschrift is a declaration of Hans-Peter Dürr, J Daniel Dahm and Rudolf zur Lippe under the patronage of the Federation of German Scientists -- Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler (VDW). It is the basis of the abstract condensed version, the Potsdam Manifesto‚ "We have to learn to think in a new way" which has been signed by more than 130 scientists and distinguished personalities from across the world.

Prof Hans-Peter Dürr is a well-known German nuclear physicist and philosopher. He worked closely with the nuclear physicist, Edward Teller, and the inventor of quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg. He is a former Director of the Max-Planck-Institute of Physics, Munich, whose first Director was Albert Einstein. In 1987 he founded the Global Challenges Network, a global network for sustainable development initiatives and socially responsible uses of technology. He is Chairman of the German Association of Scientists and is a key advocate of the development of a holistic science in the 21st century. He is the author of many scientific papers and books. In 1987 he received the Right Livelihood Award, the Alternative Nobel Prize. In 2002 the Cambridge Biographical Centre proclaimed him International Scientist of the Year. In 2004 he received the highest Award of the German Government, Das Grosse Bundesverdienstkreuz. He is a Founding Councillor of The World Future Council, on whose advisory board I also sit. His Potsdam Denkschrift follows within a personalised letter:

Dear DK

Re: Beyond the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955: The Potsdam Denkschrift

I was asked by my science friends to write a kind of an "update" of the old Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955, an impossible task in view of the multitude of the present problems beyond the nuclear weapons of mass destruction of the old time.

I offered to write something more radical than "to think in a new way" and more "to think beyond present thinking" on the basis of the radical change of our world view due to the revolutionary insights of modern science at the beginning of the last century: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli...

Einstein, as you know, was the first director of the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics. I worked for nearly twenty years with Heisenberg at the same institute.

I submit The Potsdam “DENKSCHRIFT”:

"All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood,
there is hope that they may collectively avert it.
We have to learn to think in a new way."

From the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 1955

The introductory title of The Potsdam Denkschrift has been taken from the important sentence in the "Russell-Einstein Manifesto 1955", which was signed by Einstein only two weeks before he died. "Denkschrift" translated into English would be "Memorandum" referring more to "Thinking back", rather than what it actually is, a "Thinking ahead or beyond" which is contained precisely in the German word -- hence we left it un-translated.

I. Starting Situation

Justifiably worried that Hitler’s Germany could get the upper hand in building an atomic bomb, the convinced pacifist Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt shortly before the beginning of World War II, adding his voice to what led the President to initiate America’s Manhattan Project. The resulting fission bombs were used sixty years ago in 1945, soon after Germany’s capitulation, against Japan. In great consternation, Einstein called for a fundamental political re-orientation to make wars impossible in the future. But without visible success. The development of fusion bombs (hydrogen bombs) increased the deadly potential of nuclear weapons of mass destruction to almost unlimited dimensions and, in the escalating confrontation between East and West, became a mortal danger for all of humanity.

Fifty years ago, prominent oppositional movements formed all over the world to stop this arms race. Bertrand Russell formulated a manifesto, and Einstein signed it shortly before his death. It was an ultimatum calling for a new way of thinking that would ensure that, in the future, war would be completely banned as an instrument of politics and conflict resolution.

What has become of this urgent call today, fifty years later? In particular, it awakened groups of citizens, a civil society, that gained attention and launched its own international initiatives all over the world as the peace movement, later as the environmental and third-world movement, and as the cultural-critical women’s movement. In many ways, they courageously practiced a new way of thinking. They thus took outstanding part in the exemplary process of reconciliation among the once bitterly hostile European nations and in particular, to a much greater degree than yet publicly acknowledged, in the surprisingly successful non-violent ending of the Cold War. Their insights and experience are the fertile soil for this Denkschrift. That the triumphant authoritative political powers learned nothing and did not want to learn anything from this peaceful change was frighteningly evident in later developments, in which none of the many hoped-for, trailblazing options were taken up.

The history of the last fifty years has clearly showed that military strategy, with its preliminary culmination in weapons of mass destruction –- and today, not only nuclear, but also chemical and biological WMDs, as well as their special use against sensitive targets –- is only an especially spectacular, but in no way the only or most important realization of much more far-reaching and deeper-based power strategies with new military, political, and above all economic components. These have led to an escalation of structural violence and terrorist reactions.

Probably the most important factor today is the structural violence exerted by the highly-centralized physical economy and by the financial industry, which is closely networked around the world. Economic power has managed to seize primacy over military power and to make the latter its complete servant, with equally deleterious consequences. And this has not happened coincidentally, but consciously and intentionally. For it is an unfortunately widespread opinion that a growing concentration of power is a precondition for a reliable world order, whereby that order’s neutral international anchoring, formerly regarded as an indispensable prerequisite, is in danger of becoming meaningless.

Structural violence in economic life arises, first, from the power interests of the hegemonic powers and, second, from the worldwide hegemony of international finance capital, which must not be equated with the market economy. The geopolitical, socio-cultural, and economic power strategies, as well as the unlimited expansion strategies of modern business and production, necessarily provoke and create incompatibilities with the fundamental spatial and material limits of our biosphere. These are expressed in life-threatening ways in the changes in micro- and macroclimatic conditions around the world, in the deterioration of soils and vegetation complexes over broad regions, in damage to the hydrosphere that is irreversible on a human scale, and in the rapid, destructive exploitation of exhaustible mineral and energy resources. Particularly dangerous thereby is the destruction of biodiversity, which is proceeding at an accelerated rate seemingly unique in the history of the earth. For the annihilation of the bio-ecological diversity of whole complexes of life is an irreversible loss for the geo-biosphere and, within it, above all for us humans as the “top rider” of the meta-stable pyramid of life and the final link in a long and complicatedly branched food chain. But the variety of human ways of life and the treasure store of the cultures are being similarly irreversibly reduced –- and with their loss, the spectrum of possible future strategies and lifestyles, necessary changes and developments, is narrowed and diminished.

But such recognitions remain superficial, because they reveal only dangerous symptoms and existence-threatening syndromes, which must be specifically corrected in the short term and healed in the long term. The investigation and uncovering of the deeper causes of these dangerous developments has been neglected. The increasingly globally adapted power strategies and the image of humankind associated with them are closely tied to our materialistic-mechanistic worldview, which is meanwhile favoured all over the world, and with the way of thinking that results from the spirit of doing and that provokes action in conformity with power considerations. This view of the world, in which the world resembles a material clockwork operating in accordance with strict laws (also called the classical Cartesian-Newtonian worldview) is not the real cause, of course. It is itself the result of and legitimisation for a historical development in which patriarchal hierarchies and power-seeking organizational strategies, as well as a narrow monotheism, play an important role in separating humankind from the realm of nature. But the strategies believing that there are no limits to what can be done, are based on the increase in the precision of these materialistic-mechanistic ideas of the world and on the thereby enabled successful scientific-technological development of our civilization. The (controllable) instrumental knowledge necessary for this is provided primarily by the empirical sciences, which, in the context of this worldview, orient themselves toward the fundamental principle of an asserted causal closure of the material world as “reality” (a reality of objects) and which project it (especially via the political, social, and economic sciences) onto all aspects and processes of life on earth. This in turn leads to forms of action whose results seem, in the short term, strictly to legitimise this reality.

The full version of "Beyond the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955: The Potsdam Denkschrift" is available by clicking here.

I am life

The ground on which this new sustainable, organismic cultural diversity is to grow has been well prepared. For why do political and economic decision-makers invoke freedom and democracy, when most of them seem to have abandoned this trust in a fundamental commonality? Because they secretly know and feel that deeply anchored in people’s hearts is the longing to strengthen their own physical, emotional, and spiritual abilities and to further develop their personalities; and this is possible only in relative freedom. But the great majority of people do not want to use their empowerment against others who are trying to do similar things, but rather, together with them and motivated by the deeper connection, to create a more comprehensive commonality on a higher level. A new, but in truth long-proven view of the human beings is becoming visible, one that assumes a person capable of love and empathy. We should not be misled by the excesses of our modern civilization. The human being is capable of much more than being an aggressive, avaricious “wolf” (in Thomas Hobbes’ sense): freedom to strengthen oneself, not for the sake of victory in struggle against the others, but responsible for strengthening one’s own contribution in favour of the whole. Co-liberality is needed to achieve an optimal, vibrant coexistence in the sense implied by Albert Schweitzer’s remark, ”I am life that wants to live, amid life that wants to live.”

All this may sound unachievably utopian. But we should remember: The mere fact of our existence -- as people today should show us -- that we are the successful result of a similar development that has already gone on for billions of years. We must continue to create new knowledge that allows more vibrancy to flower. We can trust that this power is effective in us. For omni-connectedness, which we can call love and which germinates from vitality, is inherent in the core of us and of everything else.

Sincerely and with warm regards

Hans-Peter Dürr

[ENDS]

We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.

Best wishes

DK

DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net

Posted by DK Matai at 04:31 AM | Comments (25)

August 29, 2006

Srinagar, Jammu, Delhi

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live: Theodor Adorno

Two days ago I saw
My land like a tourist
On the Discovery channel

My father shouted and
Told my niece:
Look that is the Dal lake
Where lotus stems come from

In his shikara
Gulla carried
Bunches of Narcissus
Which we would decorate
In a brass plate

Along with a pen
And a coin to
Welcome the spring

Now springs are spent
In colouring rusted coolers
To enable them to
Provide succour in heat

Relatives from Jammu
Arrive every few months
Bringing with them
Souvenirs of my land
Green saag with roots
And local sesame bread

My father and mother
Arrived in Delhi
A few years ago
From Jammu

And now when
He refers to Jammu
My father says:
Back in Srinagar

And then he stops
When he realises
That Srinagar was
What he left
Sixteen years ago

And then for days
He keeps silent
He keeps on staring
At the ceiling
He also does not
Then read newspapers

Posted by Rahul Pandita at 08:33 AM | Comments (111)

August 28, 2006

The Untouchable in the Room

When the North Koreans picked the Fourth of July to test six missiles, the date wasn't randomly chosen. Those missiles were rhetorically aimed at us, even if they can't literally reach our shores. The Kim Jon-il regime

takes every opportunity to paint the United States in demonic terms. One saw masses of North Korean citizens lined up in blocs like soldiers while officials harangued them with propaganda, the chief item being that America had a nuclear strike poised against their country at this moment. To us, this sounds all but insane, and so does the anti-Semitic, anti-U.S., pro-nuclear ranting of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Our approach to the "axis of evil," which includes both countries, is to regard them as pariahs. We refuse to talk one-on-one with either Iran or North Korea. We demonize them almost as much as they demonize us. Coming from India, I can't help but be reminded that 'pariah' comes from a Hindu word for outcast, in other words, an untouchable. Iran and North Korea are untouchables on the international scene. Untouchables were tolerated in India as long as they kept their place. Yet the last thing these two countries want to do is remain low profile and out of sight. They strut their intentions to make big noise and big trouble.

Isn't that how outcasts naturally act? I know it's easy to think that we are dealing with madmen, but even the most insane dictatorship harbors a multitude of people who want to end the insanity. They just don't know how. There was a long-held superstition in India that if the untouchables ever took charge of the government, the world would come to an end. Therefore, they weren't granted even a whiff of power until the era of Gandhi, and when the wheels kept turning and the untouchables gained real power, you know what happened?

The world didn't come to an end. The extremism in Iran and North Korea has many roots, but what outcasts most resent, what drives them into paranoia, is being seen as nobodies. The only thing that makes Iran a somebody is its oil and its wild anti-Americanism. What makes North Korea a somebody is its status as a nuclear renegade and its wild anti-Americanism. From the outside, we see them as rebels without a cause. What's the point of establishing an entire nation on anti-Americanism? I don't think you can answer that question until you've been a nobody and an outcast yourself.

Rather than trumpeting how dangerous these pariahs are, why can't we begin to talk to them? They're totally fixated on the United States , and that means what they crave is our attention. They want to feel like somebodies, so let's begin an effort to engage in dialogue with them. I am not suggesting that this is a panacea, and I'm well aware of potential nuclear threats. But if we learned anything from the Cold War, it was that rattling the nuclear saber may engender fear, but in the end we're never going to use nuclear weapons. There is no real stand-off between us and these rogue nations because they aren't in imminent danger from us. It's a war of posturing and words that the United State should try to end by bringing North Korea and Iran back into the fold in ways that help reshape the conversation from extremist rhetoric to constructive action. By reducing the volume of public antagonism. we can start a process towards negotiation. Realistically, Iran and North Korea have problems of poverty, trade, and internal political discord that anti-Americanism is used to disguise. We should help them with their real problems, opening up regular trade talks. Right now trade is used as a bargaining chip in a pointless game of cat and mouse with two extremist regimes that manipulate the West with threats so that they can get a few carrots at the same time as we brandish our sticks.

It may take a generation to end this mini-Cold War, but so what? We need to show both countries that there are opportunities for dialogue and a path to their nation's future that doesn't consist of making us their Great Satan.

Love,
Deepak

Posted by Deepak Chopra at 04:19 PM | Comments (90)

August 27, 2006

New Orleans Anniversary & Ernesto hits Florida

Excerpt reproduced with permission of the ATCA Council: On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which battered the US Gulf Coast and swamped New Orleans last year, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Officials and residents are mindful of nature's force a year to the day since Hurricane Katrina flooded most of New Orleans, killing 1,500 people and causing over USD 80 billion in damage.

The image is from August 29th, 9:00am GMT

Dear IntentBloggers

I am just posting important alerts which have been issued by ATCA, with the permission of their Council. The reasons being: humanitarian and to alert everybody to the upcoming hurricane Ernesto's likely path which is now targeting Florida as New Orleans remembers the devastation on 29th August last year. The victims from last year are in our prayers.

All well wishes

DK

DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net

Dear ATCA Colleagues

The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
____________________________________________________________________________

27th August 2006

Dear ATCA Colleagues

For and on behalf of DK Matai, Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)____________________________________________________________________________

ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to understand and to address complex global challenges. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos, radical poverty, organised crime, extremism, informatics, nanotechnology, robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.

The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
____________________________________________________________________________

Posted by DK Matai at 06:59 AM | Comments (22)

Is Love Enough?

Or is monogamy

On its way out?
As many of you who have browsed my site know I dabble in astrology. In the past couple of years, I have received several calls and emails from clients who were predominantly women-involved with married men. They of course wanted to get their charts done and wanted to know if the man they were in love with, would leave his wife and be with them. These women are of South Asian origin, from well educated, well to do families. Not as an astrologer, but as an investigative journalist, I began asking them about their stories. It was pretty interesting to see a regular pattern emerge. The man in question, had a standard line-“My wife doesn’t understand me, but you do. I can’t leave her because of family commitments.” The women chose to fall for it every time.

I have also seen many married men hitting on single women when their wives weren’t around. Of course I have also seen some married women flirting with other men, but the cases where they have gone beyond light hearted verbal flirting have been fewer than those where the predator is a man. Is it because women are more emotionally needy and don’t want to give up a secure life style, so they don’t cross limits?

Another interesting phenomenon has been extra marital affairs while still preferring to staying married. About three people in the past two weeks have contacted me from India, 2 from Europe and five in the US and Canada, telling me they are married but have arrangements with their also married lovers to meet once or twice a month in a neutral place, have fun and then go back to whatever it is they were doing.

In one instance, about a year ago, I had met this one guy who had left his wife for another married woman. The woman’s husband and the boy friend would call me almost every day trying to find where she was, since she had become a good friend once she showed up with the boyfriend to get their charts done. It was sad that the only person she never lied to was me. I would know where she was, what was going on in her mind, but I would see her lie through her teeth to her husband and the boyfriend. She was petrified of the husband who was physically abusive and afraid to hurt the boyfriend who had done so much for her. In the end both men left her. Many of these women were physically intimate with both men, claiming they didn’t love their husbands and yet didn’t mind sleeping with them- and with that went my theory that you can only be intimate with someone you are in love with, out the window.

The large number of women involved with married men were single. Only one claimed the guy she was with never made a sexual pass at her, has nurtured her through bad times and tells her he is in love with her but wont leave his wife.. It’s well known that as more and more women join the work force, extra marital affairs are on the rise. Interestingly also very few wives leave when they find out about their husbands’ infidelity. In about three cases, I have also seen the husbands not leave, after finding out that their wives had been unfaithful.
An interesting observation by Dr Joyce Brothers had me thinking as well. She said that most men can’t handle the guilt of an extra-marital affair and want to be caught. Women on the other hand can and often don’t tell and move on with their lives as if nothing had happened once their affairs got over. In fact she said she would advice women not to tell, if they don’t plan to marry the other guy but rejuvenate their marriages after that.

Some of the men who have had extra marital affairs and are in their late 40s, 50s and sixties tell me they had arranged marriages and realized very soon, that they were very incompatible with their wives. Then came the kids and they couldn’t leave because of that. Many admitted that they were very conscious of what people will say, or that their parents would be devastated, and of course their careers would be adversely affected if they were in any kind of political office or had aspirations to be in the lime light.
But these days I see younger men and women getting married after a long courtship and then going on to have a fling.
Many men and women tell me they are liberated, marriage is not the be all for them, so if they find a like minded person of the opposite sex who enjoys their company and physical intimacy, they don’t mind having a fling, just for the novelty. Many men tell me the woman of today is more liberated, because she is financially independent. No one seems to think about the heartbreak that often follows such affairs.
I have also seen many marriages of convenience where the wife likes her life style, and being known as Mrs. so and so, and turns a blind eye to her husband’s flings.
I guess I’m a hopeless romantic and I believe in monogamy and commitment. I think sometimes it takes more than a life time to really discover the many facets of one person that you choose to be with, and if there were things you liked about them in the first place, why not nurture those qualities and discover new things together.

And yet in today’s world why is monogamy such a monotony after a while?
Why do so many people set themselves up for heartbreak, going after someone unattainable?
Why does the dish on somebody else’s menu look more mouth watering than what you ordered on your plate?
I’d love to read your thoughts on it!

Posted by Kavita Chhibber at 06:38 AM | Comments (79)

Is God real, daddy ?

It's late in the night
I hold your little hand in mine
we lie in bed as u stare at the ceiling
what is God, Daddy
is God real ?

of course my love
God is real
God is love

but does God exist, Daddy
or is he in my imagination ?

both, my love
God is real
and in your imagination
God is a feeling
an emotion
the most powerful emotion in the world
God is love

I don't understand, daddy

do u love your little white bunny
that you cuddle up with every night ?

Yes, daddy

Is the bunny real, or
is it a doll ?

It is a doll, daddy

But in your arms at night,
your love for the bunny is real ?

Yes, daddy

That love,
my love
is God
for God can make
anything real
if there is love

Did God make me
and you and mummy ?

Yes my love,
God is like a vast ocean
and all of us are drops
from that ocean
which makes you God too

And mummy ?

Yes mummy too
and everything you see
and hear
and feel
and imagine
is God

I don't understand, daddy

Neither do I, my love
how do I tell u
that God is not answer
but a Question
and always will be ?

How do I tell u,
that you knew God
before
the world is teaching you
to define everything ?

How do I tell u
that your Daddy
does not know anything
but that God is the connection
between the real and imagined ?

How do I tell u
that God is Love
a Love
that holds the entire Universe
in an eternal embrace ?

Shekhar

Posted by Shekhar Kapur at 05:22 AM | Comments (42)

Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path & The Paradox of our Times

The Noble Eightfold Path, re-discovered by The Buddha and other great holy Saints, is often described as the way to Nirvana, ie, rising above the Physical and Astral planes towards the Causal. Nirvana is desribed as the ineffable ultimate in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion. There are the two other planes beyond that -- Par Brahamand and Sach Khand -- as Perfect Masters explain.

The Buddha literally means the Awakened or Enlightened One; Seer of the Inner Light up to Nirvana, which is the Causal plane. The title Buddha was given to Prince Siddhartha Gautama (583-463 BC), founder of Buddhism. Beyond the Causal plane, of course, is the need for The Perfect Spiritual Master to continue to show the way forwards on the inner journey of self-manifestation of the universal consciousness towards the fourth and fifth planes: Par Brahm and Sachkhand, ie, the True Home, where as Socrates in ancient Greece, stated, "Logos" or the Creating "Word" resides. The Buddhists refer to the two planes beyond Nirvana as Para-Nirvana and Mahapara-Nirvana.

The Noble Eightfold Path avoids the extreme of self-torture that weakens ones intellect and the extreme of self-indulgence that retards ones spiritual progress. It consists of the following eight factors:

1. Balanced Understanding
2. Balanced Thoughts
3. Balanced Speech
4. Balanced Action
5. Balanced Livelihood
6. Balanced Effort
7. Balanced Mindfulness
8. Balanced Concentration

1. Balanced Understanding is the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. In other words, it is the understanding of oneself as one really is. The keynote of Buddhism is this Balanced Understanding. Buddhism is based, as much, on knowledge and not on unreasonable belief.

2. Balanced Thoughts are threefold. They are:

(a) The thoughts of renunciation which are opposed to sense-pleasures.
(b) Kind thoughts which are opposed to ill-will.
(c) Thoughts of harmlessness which are opposed to cruelty.

These tend to purify the mind.

3. Balanced Speech deals with refraining from falsehood, stealing, slandering, harsh words and frivolous talks

4. Balanced Action deals with refraining from killing, stealing and unchastity. It helps one to develop a character that is self-controlled and mindful of right of others.

5. Balanced Livelihood deals with the five kinds of trades which should be avoided by a lay disciple. They are:

(a) trade in deadly weapons
(b) trade in animals for slaughter
(c) trade in slavery
(d) trade in intoxicants
(e) trade in poisons

Balanced Livelihood means earning ones living in a way that is not harmful to others.

6. Balanced Effort is fourfold, namely:

(a) the endeavour to discard evil that has already arisen.
(b) the endeavour to prevent the arising of unrisen evil.
(c) the endeavour to develop that good which has already arisen.
(d) the endeavour to promote that good which has not already arisen.

Effort is needed to cultivate Good Conduct or develop one's mind, because one is often distracted or tempted to take the easy way out of things. The Buddha teaches that attaining happiness and Enlightenment depends upon one's own efforts. Effort is the root of all achievement. If one wants to get to the top of a mountain, just sitting at the foot thinking about it will not bring one there. It is by making the effort of climbing up the mountain, step by step, that one eventually reaches the summit. Thus, no matter how great the Buddha's achievement may be, or how excellent His Teaching is, one must put the Teaching into practice before one can expect to obtain the desired result.

7. Balanced Mindfulness is also fourfold:

(a) mindfulness with regard to body
(b) mindfulness with regard to feeling
(c) mindfulness with regard to mind
(d) mindfulness with regard to mental objects.

Balanced Mindfulness is the awareness of one's deeds, words and thoughts.

8. Balanced Meditation

Meditation means the gradual process of training the mind to focus on a single inner eye and to remain fixed upon that without wavering. The constant practice of meditation helps one to develop a calm and concentrated mind and help to prepare one for the attainment of Wisdom and Enlightenment ultimately.
________________________________

Why is there a need for The Noble Eightfold Path in the 21st century?

This is because of "The Paradox of our Time" (attributed to a number of different sources)

1. The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider motorways, but narrower viewpoints.

2. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time.

3. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

4. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

5. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too