Ragukaki: Contemporary Music for Koto & Shakuhachi - "dedicated to the pursuit of Beauty and Life on this planet"

This gorgeous collection "dedicated to the pursuit of Beauty and Life on this planet" by Kim Oswalt and Helen Dryz is available for online listening.

Includes "Gymnopédies" by late 19th-century French composer Erik Satie, two compositions by the late Katsutoshi Nagasawa, and three compositions by the late Minoru Miki, who believed music can serve as an elevating and bridging force for humanity:

In a world powered by military muscle and crass materialism, music and the fine arts may seem weak and ineffectual, but they provide a way to raise consciousness and reverse the march toward increasing violence and intolerance.

"With music," Miki said, "we hope to lead the way in place of leaders who cannot be trusted."

"The history we carry is not just our own...what worries us is all ours...as the soul's call to human compassion."

After certain events, then—including The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011— a new energy from the universe churns what is collective into what is individual to produce the mix Jung called “collective unconscious” which we all share.

The history we carry is not just our own. What worries and gnaws at us, like a dog a bone, is all of ours, as shown by the soul’s call to human compassion.

- Alan Botsford, freedom in harmony

John Einarsen: In the Realm of the Bicycle

John Einarsen says this about his new book of photographs:

Each encounter I had with a member of this vast race revealed an individual with a personality all its own, the result of a history at once common and mysterious. Inevitably, I came to see them as they really were: creatures who populated the niches and nooks and corners and alleys of neighborhoods and streets and lives....

Most of the images in the book were taken in Kyoto over the years.

Cycle Kyoto adds this note:

Each photo in In the Realm of the Bicycle is a haiku, a brief fleeting moment that contains a larger truth.

To view a sample some of the pages, go to: blurb.com.

John Einarsen is the founding editor & art director of Kyoto Journal, an iconic English-language quarterly that emerged from Kyoto during the 1980's, about to embark a new incarnation online.

The cover is by Tiery Le.

Kai Keane's Heart Sutra

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire: "Around the world there are billions of people who say, 'WE WANT PEACE!'"

This partial transcript of a  2008 talk by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire (with the thousands of people outside the May 4-5, 2008 "Global Article 9 Conference for the Abolition of War" who were unable to join the 30,000 already inside of the conference hall)—reminds us of the vast support in Japan for its Peace Constitution.

"Everyone, I am very happy to be here with you all.

"The Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution — we have to all get together to protect this. It's important for the whole world today.

"Article 9 says very clearly, 'We want no war, no nuclear weapons.'

"Yes, we have hurt each other in the past. But we can reconcile and we can solve our problems by talking to the other.

"I am not surprised that today everyone couldn't get into the conference hall and that the place is overflowing with people, because around our world, there are billions of people who are saying, 'We want peace!"

"There are people who will try to make us afraid of each other. They will try to say we are different. We say, 'We are not afraid. We are the human family. Yes, we have differences, but we are all human beings. We want to act in a dignified, civilized way by refusing to kill each other...

"Forgiveness is so important. We have all hurt the Other. We have all been hurt. But we must forgive one another.

"Here in Japan, you have hurt through your wars of aggression many people, in Korea and China. Please remember to say you're sorry and ask their forgiveness. Only when you forgive can you find genuine happiness in yourself and can you find real peace."

"By upholding your Article 9, and reaching out your hand to your Korean, your Chinese, your Russian, your immediate neighbors and friends, you will serving peace in Japan, and setting an example to the world.

"You need to say to the American government, their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and their setting aside of the United Nations human rights and international law is not acceptable to the human family.

"You need to say to our friends in the Israeli government, lead the movement in the Middle East for a nuclear-free Middle East and end the occupation of Palestine where the people are suffering so much."

"We need our American friends – we need our Israeli friends – to adopt the Charter for a World Without Violence and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution."

(Originally posted at the Kyoto Journal website on May 20, 2008)

Kai Keane's Heart Sutra