Pristine Nature Quotes

The early dew-falls that did a pristine coating, over the woods with its finest transparency, glazed as like its wet white-glassy earrings that hung on the ears of wild flowers—unlatched my fancy.

I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty.

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they’re full of bicycle trails. And this is happening to the world, and I think it is very very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state, but it is in itself an act of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean? [from 'A Thousand Mornings' With Poet Mary Oliver for NPR Books]

How can we protect ourselves from a culture of manipulation, where tastes and flavors are re-created chemically in laboratories and given to us as natural food, where religion is packaged, televised and tweeted and commercials influence us to such an extent that they dictate not only what we eat, wear, read and want but what and how we dream. We need the pristine beauty of truth as revealed to us in fiction, poetry, music and the arts: we need to retrieve the third eye of imagination.

The gusty wind Khazri swept through Baku, scouring every crevice, leaving behind air so pristine that it sparkled in the ginger sun like my mama’s favorite crystal vase.

The terrible thing, the thought I cannot dislodge after all I have seen, is that I can no longer say with conviction that this is a bad thing. Not when looking at the pristine nature of Area X and then the world beyond, which we have altered so much.

Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. Oyster is telling this story. The sailors called this "seeding meat." Oyster says, "Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story?" Looking out the car window, he says, "You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?

Awakening of the kundalini is realization of your pure abstract intelligence, the type that is not conditioned by your fears, emotions and worries. It is your pristine nature. When you are able to tap into this latent source of energy, you truly become the master of your universe. You can manifest whatever you wish in your life because your scale of consciousness is no longer limited to your body alone; it envelops the whole universe. If

The modern human has taken a pristine natural environment and has obliterated it with pollution, technology and overpopulation.

Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?

..every time scientists try to observe the quantum world they disturb it. And because at least one quantum of energy must always be involved, there is no way the size of this disturbance can be reduced. Our acts of observing the universe, our attempts to gather knowledge, are no longer strictly objective because in seeking to know the universe we act to disturb it. Science prides itself on objectivity, but now Nature is telling us we never see a pure, pristine and objective quantum world. In every act of observation the observing subject enters into the cosmos and disturbs it in an irreducible way. Science is like photographing a series of close ups with your back to the sun. No matter which way you move, your shadow always falls across the scene you photograph. No matter what you do, you can never efface yourself from the photographed scene.

To Robinson Jeffers, craggy old California poet, beauty was an objective external reality, something which existed outside of us, in 'the pristine granite' of the cliffs and mountains, not simply a product of human aesthetics. 'The beauty of things was born before eyes,' he wrote, 'and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty / Will remain when there is no heart to break for it,

I took to numbers, their definiteness, their unyielding natures: even when you chop a number down to a half or a tenth or a millionth or a billionth part of its former self it still exists, it’s still whole and pristine and incorruptible. When everything else is gone, when the universe has collapsed back in on itself and time itself has stopped, there’ll still be numbers, frozen in the singularity, waiting for existence to push itself into being again, so they can put order on the great expansion, and tell it when it’s reached its terminal mass, its ineluctable point of return to its beginning.

Our faulty memories and relatively short lifespans have made us unreliable witnesses. We are unable to truly grasp how much of the natural world has been altered and destroyed by our actions because the baseline shifts over time and generations have rendered us blind. Our standards have been lowered almost unnoticeably. What we might regard as pristine nature today is a shadow of what once existed. We can't seem to remember how things used to be.

The joy of meditation is realization that is free from mental events, distractions, and dullness of mind. The joy of compassion is impartiality free from bias or prejudice. The joy of experience is one’s own Pristine Mind, free from distortions. The joy of generosity is freedom from the grasp of attachment and expectation. The joy of wealth is to realize that all possessions are illusions. If you know your own true nature, there’s no restlessness. This is effortless joy.

Despite our battered exterior and in spite of the festering scars and rank filth that overlays it, there is underneath it all the pristine likeness of God Himself. And we would be wise to cast an eye not on the marred exterior, but to be fixed on the glorious interior.

Though we're conditioned to identify with the thoughts that pass through our awareness rather than with awareness itself, the awareness that is our true nature is infinitely flexible. It is capable of any and every sort of experience - even misconceptions about itself as limited, trapped, ugly, anxious, lonely, or afraid. When we begin to identify with that timeless, pristine awareness rather than with the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that pass through it, we've taken the first step toward facing the freedom of our true nature.

The warm winter day brought out the geckos to bathe in the sun, and the world looked pristine, as if a team of cherubim had polished the hewn stone on the houses and the red and blue anemones carpeting the dells. Past Mount Scopus, pinkish-brown mountains fringed the Judean desert. To the southeast, the tip of the Dead Sea, set deep in a valley, shimmered gray like Bathsheba's looking glass.

Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves—Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions—and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency—On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not—let vigorous measures be adopted—not to limit the price of articles—for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself—but to punish speculators—forestallers—& extortioners—and above all—to sink the money by heavy Taxes—To promote public & private Œconomy—encourage Manufactures &ca—Measures of this sort gone heartily into by the several states will strike at once at the root of all our misfortunes, & give the coup-de-grace to British hope of subjugating this great Continent, either by their Arms or their Arts—The first as I have before observed they acknowledge is unequal to the task—the latter I am sure will be so if we are not lost to every thing that is good & virtuous.

To the Finnish, being outdoors in nature isn't about paying homage to nature or to ourselves, the way it tends to be for Americans. We fetishize are life lists, catalog peaks bagged and capture pristine scenes of grand wilderness It is largely an individual experience. For the Finnish, though, nature is about expressing a close-knit identity. Nature is where they can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry-picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming and Nordic skiing.

I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits? We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?

If you allow a creek to go back to being a creek, if you let the trees and the bramble get overgrown, and you let the stream overrun its banks whenever it wants to, the wetland will take care of itself. The water that trickles into the ocean will be clean and pristine if everything is just left alone to work the way it was designed to work. Earthworms have shown that they can take care of the soil in the same way that a wetland takes care of the water. Nature regenerates. It Cleans. It hides a multitude of sins.

Nature," instead of representing some pristine category or originary state of being, has taken on an entirely different function ... [it has become nothing more (or less) than an ordering factor--a construct by means of which we attempt to keep technology visible as something separate from our "natural" selves and our everyday lives. In other words, the category "nature," rather than referring to any object or category in the world, is a strategy for maintaining boundaries for political and economic ends, and thus a way of making meaning.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

Capitalism's geography has a distinctive pyrogeography, one that is part of the fossil record. Indigenous People had thoroughly modified New World landscapes through fire. In eastern North America, they coproduced the 'mosaic quality' of forest, savannah, and meadow that Europeans took for pristine nature. Between Columbus' arrival and around 1650, disease and colonial violence reduced Indigenous populations in the Americas by 95 percent. With fewer humans burning and cutting them down, forests recovered so vigorously that the New World became a planetary carbon sink. Forest growth cooled the planet so much that the Indigenous holocaust contributed to the Little Ice Age's severity....it would be wrong to characterize this episode of genocide and reforestation as anthropogenic. The colonial exterminations of Indigenous Peoples were the work not of all humans, but of conquerors and capitalists. *Capitalogenic* would be more appropriate. And if we are tempted to conflate capitalism with the Industrial Revolution, these transformations ought to serve notice that early capitalism's destruction was so profound that it changed planetary climate four centuries ago.

We want a world of beauty, not only that which the senses appreciate, but also the beauty perceived by an open heart and a clear mind. We want a pristine planet protected from all forms of aggression. We want a balanced and sustainable civilization based on mutual respect, and respect for other species and for nature. We want an inclusive and egalitarian civilization free of gender, race, class, and age discrimination, and any other classification that separates us. We want the kind of world where peace, empathy, decency, truth, and compassion prevail. Above all, we want a joyful world. That is what we, the good witches, want. It’s not a fantasy, it’s a project. Together we can achieve it.

[OBSERVATIONS RELATED TO EXAMINING THE NATURE OF MIND] Be certain that the nature of mind is empty and without foundation. One’s own mind is insubstantial, like an empty sky. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. Divorced from views which constructedly determine [the nature of] emptiness, Be certain that pristine cognition, naturally originating, is primordially radiant – Just like the nucleus of the sun, which is itself naturally originating. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that this awareness, which is pristine cognition, is uninterrupted, Like the coursing central torrent of a river which flows unceasingly. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that conceptual thoughts and fleeting memories are not strictly identifiable, But insubstantial in their motion, like the breezes of the atmosphere. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that all that appears is naturally manifest [in the mind], Like the images in a mirror which [also] appear naturally. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that all characteristics are liberated right where they are, Like the clouds of the atmosphere, naturally originating and naturally dissolving. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], now could there be anything on which to meditate apart from the mind? There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no modes of conduct to be undertaken extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no commitments to be kept extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no results to be attained extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], one should observe one’s own mind, looking into its nature again and again. If, upon looking outwards towards the external expanse of the sky, There are no projections emanated by the mind, And if, on looking inwards at one’s own mind, There is no projectionist who projects [thoughts] by thinking them, Then, one’s own mind, completely free from conceptual projections, will become luminously clear. [This] intrinsic awareness, [union of] inner radiance and emptiness, is the Buddha-body of Reality, [Appearing] like [the illumining effect of] a sunrise on a clear and cloudless sky,. It is clearly knowable, despite its lack of specific shape or form. There is a great distinction between those who understand and those who misunderstand this point. This naturally originating inner radiance, uncreated from the very beginning, Is the parentless child of awareness – how amazing! It is the naturally originating pristine cognition, uncreated by anyone – how amazing! [This radiant awareness] has never been born and will never die – how amazing! Though manifestly radiant, it lacks an [extraneous] perceiver – how amazing! Though it has roamed throughout cyclic existence, it does not degenerate – how amazing! Though it has seen buddhahood itself, it does not improve – how amazing! Though it is present in everyone, it remains unrecognised – how amazing! Still, one hopes for some attainment other than this – how amazing! Though it is present within oneself, one continues to seek it elsewhere – how amazing!

The environmental thought leaders’ opposition to fossil fuels is not a mistaken attempt at pursuing human life as their standard of value. They are too smart and knowledgeable to make such a mistake. Their opposition is a consistent attempt at pursuing their actual standard of value: a pristine environment, unaltered nature. Energy is our most powerful means of transforming our environment to meet our needs. If an unaltered, untransformed environment is our standard of value, then nothing could be worse than cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. I’m saying that if fossil fuels created no waste, including no CO2, if they were even cheaper, if they would last practically forever, if there were no resource-depletion concerns, the Green movement would still oppose them.

The religious utopian hides his pride behind the mask of humility; he recognizes God alone; he does not recognize ministers or sacraments since he puts himself in place of both. He ministers his own religious needs and he consecrates his inner self as a place of worship more worthy of receiving God than the churches. He substitutes his own sentiments and emotions for doctrine, because doctrines are man-made speculations unable to comprehend God's essence. He considers the sacramental, ceremonial and generally institutional aspects of religion as rigid and expendable molds which are adequate for the unthinking who need strong sensations and impressions to sustain their faith. He, on the other hand, puts his trust in his own individual inspiration, strengthens his faith through direct and permanent contact with the divine and so rises as a pure spirit to the level of a "truer" religion. The secular utopian also displays excessive pride. He believes that societies of the past were based on error since they yielded to the political principle of organization and hierarchy. The goal of the utopian is to create a society in its pristine purity, as it were, unsullied by laws and magistrates, functioning through its members' natural good will and cooperativeness. Laws, institutions, symbols, flags, armies, disciplines, patriotic encouragement and the like will all be abolished because, for pure social beings, their inner motivation of social living - togetherness - is quite sufficient and because they would serve to anchor the citizens, bodily and emotionally, in the soil and reality of the State just as pomp and ceremony, rules and institutions anchor the faithful in religion.

Witnessing the panoply of beauty in all of nature takes us out of our shell of self-absorption and makes us realize that we are merely bit players in the game of life. Witnessing the majesty of beauty confirms that the real show lies outside us to observe and appreciate and not inside us to transfix us. True beauty charms us into seeing the grandeur of goodness that surrounds us and by doing so, the pristine splendor of nature releases us from wallowing in the poverty of our self-idealization. The bewitching spell cast by the exquisiteness of nature levitates our souls and transforms our psyche. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch what is beautiful, we cannot suppress the urge to replicate its baffling texture by singing, dancing, painting, or writing. Opening our eye to the loveliness of a single flower is how we stay in touch with the glorious pageantry of living.

Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning. If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining? Heading into my sophomore summer, I applied for two jobs: as an intern at the highly scientific Yerkes Primate Research Center, in Atlanta, and as a prep chef at Sierra Camp, a family vacation spot for Stanford alumni on the pristine shores of Fallen Leaf Lake, abutting the stark beauty of Desolation Wilderness in Eldorado National Forest. The camp’s literature promised, simply, the best summer of your life. I was surprised and flattered to be accepted. Yet I had just learned that macaques had a rudimentary form of culture, and I was eager to go to Yerkes and see what could be the natural origin of meaning itself. In other words, I could either study meaning or I could experience it.

Even in her dark bombazine dress, as high-necked and pristine as a nun's habit, Larissa Crossland possessed a soft, elegant beauty. With her dark sable hair always seeming on the verge of tumbling from its pins, and sultry pale green eyes, she was original and striking. However, her looks generated little heat. She was often admired but never pursued... never flirted with or desired. Perhaps it was the way she used cheerfulness like a weapon, if such a thing were possible, keeping everyone at a distance. It seemed to many in the town of Market Hill that Lara was an almost saintly figure. A woman with her looks and position could have managed to snare a second husband, yet she had chosen to stay here and involve herself in charitable works. She was unfailingly gentle and compassionate, and her generosity extended to nobleman and beggar alike. Young had never heard Lady Hawksworth utter an unkind word about anyone, not the husband who had virtually abandoned her nor the relatives who treated her with contemptible stinginess.

The quarrel between the poet and the thinker could surely be composed if the thinker took the words of the poet not literally but symbolically, which is how the tongue of the poet desires to be understood. Can Schiller have misunderstood himself? It would almost seem so, otherwise he could not argue thus against himself. The poet speaks of a spring of unsullied beauty which flows beneath every age and generation, and is constantly welling up in every human heart. It is not the man of Greek antiquity whom the poet has in mind, but the old pagan in ourselves, that bit of eternally unspoiled nature and pristine beauty which lies unconscious but living within us, whose reflected splendour transfigures the shapes of the past, and for whose sake we fall into the error of thinking that those heroes actually possessed the beauty we seek. It is the archaic man in ourselves, who, rejected by our collectively oriented consciousness, appears to us as hideous and unacceptable, but who is nevertheless the bearer of that beauty we vainly seek elsewhere. This is the man the poet Schiller means, but the thinker mistakes him for his Greek prototype. What the thinker cannot deduce logically from his evidential material, what he labours for in vain, the poet in symbolic language reveals as the promised land.

I said to myself, This is going to be quick. I also thought: I’ll take the epidural now! Because the contractions were starting to demonstrate what the pain of birth is all about. The obstetrician came in. I smiled, ready for my shot. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “Your platelets are really, really low.” “Okay,” I said. I knew what platelets were-blood cells whose job it is to stop bleeding-but I had no idea why that was significant. “So, my epidural?” “You can’t have any medications.” “Come again?” “No drugs, no medications,” she said. “No epidural. I’ve called around to different anesthesiologists, and no one will touch you.” “No epidural?” “Nothing.” There are girls from third-world countries who do it with no drugs, I reminded myself. My mother elected for natural childbirth. How bad can it be? I got this. It started to hurt. I thought to myself, I am not going to cuss. Hell no! I am about to be a mother. I am bringing our baby into a positive environment and must be a good role model. Wow! The contractions built up quickly. My pristine vision of perfect, calm, quiet childbirth disappeared. A banshee snuck into the room and took over my body. Arrrgggh!!! No cursing! There was a rocking chair in the birth room. I went over and sat in it and began moving back and forth. Chris put on a CD by Enya that we’d brought to listen to: peaceful, pleasant music. I took a deep breath. Jeez, Louise! That one was a monster! Then, a breather. I’m doing goooooood! Breathe. Breathe… Wow! Then I said some other things. The banshee had a mind of her own. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I apologized to the nurses as I recovered from the surge of the contraction. “It’s okay,” said Chris. The pain surged again. Dang! Jiminy! And other things. Chris would watch the monitor. Suddenly he’d turn to look at me. “What?” I asked. “That was a strong one.” “Uh-huh.” The funny thing is, the stronger the contractions were on the monitor, the less they seemed to hurt. Maybe when things are really bad you focus more on being tough. Or perhaps my brain’s pain mechanism simply went on strike when the agony got too much.

I DON'T WANT to talk about me, of course, but it seems as though far too much attention has been lavished on you lately-that your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered to far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups. You don't even take pleasure in looking at nature photographs these days. Oh, they can be just as pretty as always, but don't they make you feel increasingly ... anxious? Filled with more trepidation than peace? So what's the point? You see the picture of the baby condor or the panda munching on a bamboo shoot, and your heart just sinks, doesn't it? A picture of a poor old sea turtle with barnacles on her back, all ancient and exhausted, depositing her five gallons of doomed eggs in the sand hardly fills you with joy, because you realize, quite rightly, that just outside the frame falls the shadow of the condo. What's cropped from the shot of ocean waves crashing on a pristine shore is the plastics plant, and just beyond the dunes lies a parking lot. Hidden from immediate view in the butterfly-bright meadow, in the dusky thicket, in the oak and holly wood, are the surveyors' stakes, for someone wants to build a mall exactly there-some gas stations and supermarkets, some pizza and video shops, a health club, maybe a bulimia treatment center. Those lovely pictures of leopards and herons and wild rivers-well, you just know they're going to be accompanied by a text that will serve only to bring you down. You don't want to think about it! It's all so uncool. And you don't want to feel guilty either. Guilt is uncool. Regret maybe you'll consider. Maybe. Regret is a possibility, but don't push me, you say. Nature photographs have become something of a problem, along with almost everything else. Even though they leave the bad stuff out-maybe because you know they're leaving all the bad stuff out-such pictures are making you increasingly aware that you're a little too late for Nature. Do you feel that? Twenty years too late? Maybe only ten? Not way too late, just a little too late? Well, it appears that you are. And since you are, you've decided you're just not going to attend this particular party.

So thorough was his inspection that he even peeped into the latrines and fined the men who neglected to wear their helmets while engaged in one of nature’s most pristine pursuits.

While we may not awaken to a perfect, pristine world in our natural bodies, we can awaken to a “brand-new day” in our minds and hearts.

Lucy: A great memory? Really? Sean: Yes. Really. His memory is faultless. Pristine. Immaculate. Lucy: That’s a shitty compliment. That’s like telling a person they don’t smell.   Is it odd that this made me laugh? I took gleeful satisfaction in the book-report nature of my compliment. Ronan is a man. He has very brown hair, and very brown eyes, and a very good memory.   Sean: No specification was made as to the quality of the compliment, only that one was required. Lucy: You’re a filthy cheat. 

Through the imagination and the human sense of creativity, the book will examine not only raw clinical data but philosophical perspectives as well. As within many moral fables, animals will be used, at times, to convey a a fundamental truth of human nature. More simply stated, animals that elicit human empathetic responses, will be examined in a religious context. So, starting with cats, dogs and ultimately other primates, as moral experiments of imagination, we can perhaps understand differing cognitive processes that could have shaped our religious purview. It might be even stated that they should shape our opinion, especially in a reevaluation of the spiritual present and coming future. When this happens, it will help humanity create a unique pristine outlook on its religious traditions.

Oh! The morning sun, I am grateful for your light and warmth. Oh! The pristine nature, I am grateful for your beauty and life sustaining air. Oh! The river and oceans, I am grateful for your generosity and water for thirst. Oh! The vast sky, I am grateful for your vastness and deepness of love.

These practices show us that everything is energy–anger, jealousy, pride–these emotions are all energy. You let them arise and even if you start with anger or other ‘bad’ emotions, you end up with a happy result. That’s what Karmamudra is all about. You don’t say "stop having anger, stop feeling this or that emotion." Instead, you become the master of your emotions, you realize you can work with their energy and use it. That’s the essence of Vajrayana. Vajrayana is the indestructible vehicle. What is it that is indestructible? The non-dualistic mind is indestructible, the bliss of its nature, of pristine awareness is indestructible. Nothing can destroy that bliss–suffering, pain, anger, jealousy, pride, these and all other poisons are no match for it. Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism thus offers very fine and precise teachings and methods that allow us to transform our emotions.

... Christmas... the apotheosis of the bourgeoisie, the season when with shining fable Heaven and Nature, in accord for once, edict and postulate us all husbands and fathers under our skins, when before an altar in the shape of a gold-plated cattle-trough man may with impunity prostrate himself in an orgy of unbridled sentimental obeisance to the fairy tale which conquered the Western world, when for seven days the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in amnesty: the whitewashing of a stipulated week leaving the page blank and pristine again for the chronicling of the fresh...

To begin the ending, we must end the beginning. Prevention will be the only compassionate, universally applicable cure. It is not prevention through lifestyle changes. Individuals with pristine eating and exercising habits get cancer because cancer-causing mutations accumulate as natural consequences of reproduction and aging of cells. The new strategy must go beyond early detection as practiced currently through mammograms and other routine screening tests. The prevention I am talking about is through identification and eradication of transformed cancerous cells at their inception, before they have had a chance to organize into a bona fide malignant, incurable disease. This may seem an unattainable, utopian dream, but it is achievable in a reasonable time. We are already using sophisticated technology to detect the residues of disease that linger after treatment, the last cancer cell. Can we not reverse the order of things and use the tests to detect the first?

3 Reasons Why You Should Visit Galapagos Islands Are you have been planning to spend their vacation in most of the beautiful place in the world. Then the Galapagos Islands is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The famous archipelago in the Pacific Ocean is a demand and desired destination for travelers all around the world. The Galapagos isn’t probably the easiest and cheapest accessible place in the world but still attracts huge numbers of visitors, although there is a limit on how many people can arrive in the Galapagos. These are not budget-friendly travel destination Islands, but there are some ways how to arrange your week in paradise from cruising the living onboard and archipelago to making the day trip from one of the islands. You have most already heard or read all superlatives Galapagos Island can offer many visitors. But if you hesitate if the time and money will be worth it, we’ve put a list of three reasons why we should visit the Galapagos Islands. After reading these reasons, we believe that there won’t be any hesitation. The Galapagos Legend should be on every traveler. Pristine beaches You come to Galapagos Island to see fantastic wildlife but firstly mention the beaches. The stretches of fine white sand are on every island, and although you won’t have that much time to relax and lay down here just because of that there is so much to do, so we are looking at you sea lions only walking on those beaches from one to another end is a great unforgettable experience. Never expect deck chairs, bars, or umbrellas beaches on the Galapagos have nothing familiar with those touristy and crowded places form travel catalogs. Wildlife When we think and talk about the Galapagos Islands, we have a suspicion that the wildlife would be something marvelous and unique. What we never know was that these superlatives would get a new dimension on the Galapagos. All the wildlife animal species from iguanas, birds, tortoises, sea lions crabs to fish are incredible, and nothing can make you on their natural behavior that is dissimilar from the animal's behavior we know from our countries. The Galapagos animals never feel fear human at all, so you can get close to them and take images of a lifetime. Island hikes There are many designed ways on islands of Galapagos that will help you to walk through a unique landscape and will also help you to understand the evaluation process better, evaluation of not only the islands but also of the flora and fauna which live here in unbelievable symbiosis. The hikes are short, so visitors are allowed to walk on the island on their own so that you want a certified guide to show you around. Hikes were one of the best activities we did on the Galapagos as it combined the exploration of almost barren volcanic islands and watching wildlife. Galapagos Legend help you plan the trip you have dreamed about. You can choose onshore activities that cater to your interests, from a wildlife safari to a side trip to the fabulous annual Carnival in Rio, Brazil. As you stay on shore before and after your trip, you have the option of staying at a delightful boutique-style hotel or in a 5-star hotel setting.

Much nature writing has emphasized the beauty, integrity, and necessity of wilderness. But the notions of wild and wilderness often have been accompanied by dichotomies: wilderness versus civilization, wild versus domesticated, pristine wilderness versus active human presence. While Western culture has traditionally given positive value to the second set of terms, there is a growing tendency to hold that wilderness has primary worth…but still this belief is often based on the old assumptions: that nature and humans are distinct, and that nature is healthy only when it is free of human interference. To think instead about being in place is to assume that there is at least the possibly of living with the land and its processes. How can we live in place, truly inhabit the earth, and become native to our lands? So we are engaged in an ongoing struggle, a search for a new relation to the earth. It is also an old relationship: to be in and of place, to truly inhabit the land rather than just live on it. Why is it important? The answer is all around us in the destruction of habitats, species, and individual beings…the answer also lies inside us, in a psychological rupture from the physical matrix of our life-nature, and our bodies. And the answer is in the way we treat each other: our debasement and abuse of nature is linked with our debasement and abuse of people. To heal the social and the psychological, we need to heal our relationship with the earth.

By elevating the conservation status of supposedly pristine parts of nature, and disregarding the rest – the new wild – conservationists end up complicit in forest destruction and biodiversity loss. *

The way forward is not simply to make corporations more accountable or to set up regulative bureaucracies; it is not even a matter of recognizing full citizenship for the 'coloured', 'elderly', 'disabled', 'women', or 'queer' through liberal pluralist policy. Likewise, the conservation of a few 'pristine' patches of nature at the margins of urban capitalism will have little effect on the collapse of biodiversity.

When we let the light of truth, reason, empathy, and altruism shine enough, the clouds will clear. When our arguments are naturally reflected in pristine thought, like water, we will have the rainbow we seek. This rainbow will not be one that somehow reaches a burning Bifrost of Asgard nor has leprechauns dressed in green. For even if there were leprechauns, they would wear red, not green.

How best to portray the story of Lydia---a woman who has mixed Japanese, Malaysian, and English heritage, and who is a vampire, a creature inherently half-demon, half-human---who is constantly trying to resist the temptation of her nature? I designed many versions of this cover; some depicted Lydia, while others focused on specific details from the story, like bite marks, or a pig whose blood she drinks in order to stave off her cravings for human blood. In the end, though, the most powerful visual was not one of Lydia herself, but of the novel's antagonist. Because Lydia is an artist, it felt fitting to use a painting on the cover, but it needed to be a piece that spoke to the story on multiple levels. Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit felt just right; the sidelong glance peering back at the viewer, the lush basket filled with food that Lydia can never eat, not to mention Caravaggio's own less-than-pristine reputation, not dissimilar to our antagonist's. The final touch: a perfectly-placed crack in the canvas---or is it a bite mark?

modern city-dwellers, surrounded by hot, baking concrete, imagine the environment as something pristine and paradisal, like a French impressionist landscape. Eco-activists, even more idealistic in their viewpoint, envision nature as harmoniously balanced and perfect, absent the disruptions and depredations of mankind. Unfortunately, “the environment” is also elephantiasis and guinea worms (don’t ask), anopheles mosquitoes and malaria, starvation-level droughts, AIDS and the Black Plague. We don’t fantasize about the beauty of these aspects of nature, although they are just as real as their Edenic counterparts.

For more than a hundred and fifty years, Peru and Ecuador were locked in a bitter territorial dispute over the Cordillera del Cóndor, an offshoot of the Andes rising between the two countries, leaving large areas undeveloped as a result: pristine forests unlogged and rich gold and copper seams unmined. Environmental surveys in the 1990s revealed the region to be one of the most biologically diverse (and least-studied) habitats in the world; almost every visit to its slopes reveals yet more species unknown to science. This environmental storehouse became a key plank of talks—something of significance that the two countries now shared—and, as part of the 1998 peace agreement, both sides committed to creating extensive reserves on both sides of the border. Transnational reserves of this sort are known as “peace parks”—powerful demonstrations of the healing power of nature, in more ways than one. One

There are two portals from Earth leading to worlds on which humanity has gone extinct. We propose that we gradually relocate ourselves to one of these worlds. To a pristine, unspoiled planet, with unlimited natural resources that have never been tapped. For ease of discussion, we’ll call this planet Haven.

Gulmarg in December is a winter wonderland nestled in the heart of the Indian Himalayas. As the first snowflakes blanket the landscape, the entire region transforms into a picturesque paradise. The quaint town of Gulmarg becomes a hub for snow enthusiasts, offering a myriad of activities such as skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing. The Gulmarg Gondola, one of the highest cable cars in the world, provides breathtaking views of the snow-capped peaks. Adventure-seekers can also explore the pristine forests on snowmobiles or enjoy a serene horse-drawn sledge ride. The cozy hotels and cottages offer warm hospitality and delicious Kashmiri cuisine, making Gulmarg in December an idyllic destination for a winter getaway amidst nature's splendor. click here to book now-

What draws my attention, however, is not the afterglow of pristine nature as it disappears over the horizon, but the narrow band of brightening sky that might indicate a fresh dawn of a new wild as, across the world, ever more land falls into abandonment.

The Allure of Impeccable Skin Across continents and cultures, from ancient civilisations to today’s digital age, our desire for flawless skin remains as strong as ever. It serves not merely as an emblem of one's outer beauty, but also as a reflection of one's health, vitality, and inner harmony. Although some are fortunate to possess naturally pristine complexions, many of us are in a constant battle with blemishes, each imperfection eroding our confidence and well-being. So today, journey with us as we delve into the timeless beauty standards that have shaped our perceptions of flawless skin, the modern remedies at our disposal, and one woman's gorgeous transformative experience. And if you're wondering where the best place is to achieve such results? Look no further than the exceptional Healand Clinic, a hub for these and many other treatments. Through Time’s Lens Historically, human beings have always been in pursuit of perfect beauty. The Ancient Egyptians, with their kohl-lined eyes and exquisite jewellery, weren't just embracing fashion; they were symbolising societal stature and their adoration of the divine. Similarly, Greeks cherished clear skin, turning to nature's gifts like honey and olive oil to retain youthfulness and fight off skin ailments. Fast forward to today, and with the flood of beauty influencers, trends, and products, the narrative is more nuanced than ever. We've started celebrating 'flaws' be it freckles, scars, or birthmarks. They’re seen as unique identifiers, personal badges of one’s journey. Yet, for some, blemishes become profound sources of insecurity, impacting their daily interactions, self-worth, and even mental health.

Aquinas and his followers could help, and did. In a pristine “state of nature,” they decided, man was totally free but totally unsafe. He was prey not only to the elements and wild animals, but to his fellow man, for whom freedom was license to act not as zoon politikon, but as homo lupus. In Thomas Hobbes’s famous formulation, life ends up being “nasty, brutish, and short.” To correct this, right reason dictates a solution. To avoid killing one another off, men make an agreement. They trade in their natural rights in exchange for civil rights, which are now recognized and protected by the community and those who wield authority in its name.

At this time, rumors of student drug use and sexual indiscretions at RVA…appeared to be confirmed as the number of students being suspended or expelled abruptly increased. At the peak of the crisis the school board expressed the belief that “twenty-five to thirty-five students (were) using drugs, possibly including some girls.” Based on student testimony and confiscations the board added that, “seven or eight different types of drugs, including opium, (are) apparently being used.” Added up, this number meant that anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the High School students were experimenting extensively with drugs – a shocking figure at any school, let alone this isolated and seemingly pristine missionary school. The fears of the school board and parents were confirmed when between December of 1973 and January of 1974 thirteen boys were expelled or suspended indefinitely or drug use or tobacco use… The response of the missionary parents to this rash of bad behavior was at once expected and ironic…when missionary children began to make bad decisions, parental affection often overwhelmed parental theology. Common to parents everywhere, this chosen blindness meant that because “my child is basically good” the cause of bad behavior must be found outside of the child…Thus, with the two most likely suspects exempted from blame (the children themselves and the American cultural revolution) many drew the next natural conclusion. The school was to blame.” p157, 158

By its very nature, tsok creates a sixfold satisfaction: the deities are satisfied by the offerings; the practitioners are satisfied by the food and drink; the wisdom mandala is satisfied by the subtle essence of nectar; the deities of one’s body are satisfied by the pristine awareness of bliss and emptiness; dakinis on the outer and inner levels are satisfied by the offering of song and dance; the dharma protectors who carry out activity are satisfied by the offering of remainders. The tsok is offered within the context of the three concepts: the lama is understood to be the heruka, that is, the embodiment of all phenomena, inseparable from emptiness; one’s fellow participants are understood to be masculine and feminine deities; the tsok substances are understood to be the substances that confer siddhis.

Neither Duncan nor I could see how to solve that problem by pure mathematics, so we used a computer to simulate the morph on networks of large but manageable size, starting from pristine rings with 1,000 nodes and 10 links per node. To chart the structural changes in the middle ground, we graphed both the average path length and the clustering as functions of the proportion of links that were randomly rewired. What we found amazed us. The slightest bit of randomness contracted the network tremendously. The average path length plummeted at first—with only 1 percent rewiring (meaning that only 1 out of every 100 links was randomized), the graph dropped by 85 percent from its original level. Further rewiring had only a minimal effect; the curve leveled off onto a low-lying plateau, indicating that the network had already gotten about as small as it could possibly get, as if it were completely random. Meanwhile, the clustering barely budged. With 1 percent rewiring, the clustering dropped by only 3 percent. Connections were being yanked out of well-ordered neighborhoods, yet the clustering hardly noticed. Only much later in the morph, long after the crash in path length, did clustering begin to drop significantly.

THE FIRST MORNING   What a joy it must have been for the first man and woman to awaken that first morning after their creation! Before them lay a beautiful garden without blemish, a harmonious creation without turmoil, an orderly environment without a weed or thorn. Most wonderful of all, they freely walked and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day. Wouldn’t you love to experience that glorious state for one morning! Eleanor Farjeon must have felt the same elation when she penned the words to her now internationally famous hymn: “Morning has broken like the first morning; Blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the Morning! Praise for them, springing fresh from the Word! Sweet the rain’s new fall sunlit from heaven, Like the first dew-fall on the first grass. Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, Spring in completeness where his feet pass. Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning Born of the one light Eden saw play! Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s recreation of the new day!”1 While we may not awaken to a perfect, pristine world in our natural bodies, we can awaken to a “brand-new day” in our minds and hearts. We can walk and talk with the Lord all day long. Each day the Lord presents to His beloved children wondrous possibilities to explore with Him. Let us always remember that He is the Creator and our loving Father. No matter what state we find ourselves in, He can create something new in us, for us, and through us. What cause for praise! His next act of creation is waiting to unfold as we yield our life to Him this morning and throughout our day!   HIS COMPASSIONS FAIL NOT. THEY ARE NEW EVERY MORNING. LAMENTATIONS 3:22-23 NKJV

One problem with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection, and therefore of responsibility, between our everyday acts and their real-world consequences. Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the back-breaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon. Specialization neatly hides our implication in all that is done on our behalf by unknown other specialists half a world away.

I seek to ascertain a way to breathe life back into my sunken chamber. I need to discover an incarnate means to replicate the meditative shadow that appears on the wall of my inner cave. I must eliminate the distorted manner that I look at the world through the falsifying mirrors of illusion and delusion. My innermost fear is that I wasted precious time, squandered opportunities, and the clock will expire before I create any worthy testament to the pristine beauty of nature or innate goodness of humankind. I shudder in the creeping shadows of the evening struck by the thought that I lack the discipline, talent, and fortitude as well as the crucial gift of evaluation and analysis demanded to add to the collective good. I fear that selfishly ensconced in a cosseted life I ignored the shaft of light that openly beckons each of us to unbolt. I am clueless of how to release the glorious expression of beauty that our nature seeks to burnish in our fleeting ambulation across the plains of time. Do I dare pull back the curtain and unmask the timid man that stands hidden behind the sheltering layers of untruth that conceal the demesne of his mangled personal thoughts, feelings, emotions, wants, and needs? Inside this crusted urn, is there a shard of anything that can be cultivated for goodness, if only I possessed the strength of mind and insight to will it into fruition? Does one know how to share their modest notions with other people who might yearn to hear that they too are not alone?

He might have addressed the same criticism to Billing's Monument to the Forefathers, which depicted a woman too severe and polite to be American. For the country - Bartholdi had realized on his journeys - was 'an adorable woman chewing tobacco.' America was a paradox; a beautiful woman with no manners; a filthy place filled with diabolic images of death and fire; but also one of pristine primordial nature and technological perfection; a place of moralism, but also of transgression. Eventually Bartholdi would have to confront this interpretation with Laboulaye's more idealistic portrait of the New World. But in the end, the Statue of Liberty, masculine and feminine, devilish and saintly at the same time, would be a close rendering of Bartholdi's original impression. She would not chew tobacco or smoke, but her build, her resolute face, her pose, and, as soon will be evident, her hidden weapon, would still betray much of the roughness that qualified and even characterized his vision of America as an 'adorable woman.

Some of us, understandably, do not wish to hear even this message of hope and personal growth. We wish to have our old world, our former assumptions and stratagems, reinstituted as quickly as possible. We are desperate to hear: “Yes, your marriage can be restored to its pristine assumptions; yes, your depression can be magically removed without understanding why it has come; yes, your old values and preferences still work.” This understandable desire for what is called “the regressive restoration of the persona” merely papers over the growing crevice within, and off we go in search of another palliative treatment, or another less demanding view of our difficulties. It is quite natural to cling to the known world and fear the unknown. We all do—even as that crevice between the false self and the natural self grows ever greater within, and the old attitudes more and more ineffectual. Most of us live our lives backing into our future, making the choices of each new moment from the data and agenda of the old—and then we wonder why repetitive patterns turn up in our lives. Our dilemma was best described in the nineteenth century by the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard when he noted in his journal the paradox that life must be remembered backward but lived forward. Is it not self-deluding, then, to keep doing the same thing but expecting different results? For those willing to stand in the heat of this transformational fire, the second half of life provides a shot at getting themselves back again. They might still fondly gaze at the old world, but they risk engaging a larger world, one more complex, less safe, more challenging, the one that is already irresistibly hurtling toward them.

Other Scots had it worse. David and Moira Milne lived near the coast. “Before the golf coast came here, this was a pristine, natural landscape, wild and untamed,” said David. “It was rough land, nature at its finest. Now, it's just a golf course. I'm bang in the middle of the estate, I'm afraid.” Trump's solution, as it so often is, was to build a wall, and then he sent the bill to the Milnes, who, like Mexico have promised, refused to pay up. Trump knew the Milnes valued their property's vista because previously Moira had taken Donald Trump Jnr around the front of the house to point out that they had an uninterrupted view of forty miles of coastline. So, to remove what the Milnes held most dear, Trump had his lackeys plant tall trees all around David's property. Nice guy.

There's a reason that Namibia is one of the top safari destinations in all of Africa. Miles and miles of untouched wilderness teeming with natural life waiting to be discovered. From the pristine coastlines to the ever flowing sand dunes, there is no end to the beauty of Namibia's landscapes. You haven't photographed wildlife until you've captured the beasts of Africa. You haven't truly photographed nature until you've done it on African safari. Come join us on your dream trip of a lifetime.