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“All Praises Due To Allah”

An Interview With Brother Yusuf Salim

The music is just a vehicle. I can look around and see better musicians all around me who aren’t getting all the publicity that I’m getting. That makes me realize that it’s not the music. The music just puts me on the stage in a position to reach out. My real profession is human relations. I just happen to play a little piano.

Hitchhiking And Other Tales Of The Road

The shade of a lightpole, the glittering goose, Marc Chagal

Prepare To Die

It’s an ongoing process of opening to life. The more you open to life, the less death becomes the enemy. When you start using death as a means of focusing on life, then everything becomes just as it is, just this moment, an extraordinary opportunity to be really alive.

Sunbeams

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things. To us what matters is the individual. To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.

Mother Teresa

Karma

Every thought, word, and deed in our lives is a seed which we plant in the world. All our lives, we harvest the fruits of those seeds. If the seeds are full of anger, fear, greed, desire, and doubt, then so will our lives be. If the seeds contain love, kindness and understanding, then our lives will as well.

Death On The Wind

Letters From A Prisoner

I’m presently in the Idaho State prison for first degree murder, two counts. I was arrested in November of 1974, taken to trial, found guilty and sentenced to death, March of 1976. In October of 1977, the Idaho Supreme Court vacated my death penalty, but I’m under review to receive a newly enacted death penalty in May of this year. At that time the courts will decide if I can be given the new death penalty or a double life sentence. These two charges in Idaho aren’t the only ones I have. There are seven more in other states. Please let me explain why I did these cold-blooded, without any mercy, killings. In April of 1974, 11 men entered my home in Portland, Oregon, raped my 17 year old wife, who was three months pregnant at the time, then threw her four stories out our apartment window.

Sunbeams

I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.

Eugene Debs

How To Really Change Society

A beautiful omelet, one little pure sparrow, a new peace corps

We’re All Doing Time

An Interview With Bo And Sita Lozoff

People ask me about getting gang-raped and whether they should defend themselves or submit. I can’t say to somebody, “Submit and don’t worry about it,” and I also can’t say, “Defend yourself and die.” That’s his choice to make. Mahatma Gandhi could and would have submitted because he was so non-attached to his body there was no degradation there, there was no undignity. And yet on the other hand, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce wouldn’t have submitted, he would have said, “Ah, this is a wonderful day to die.”

An Evening With Ram Dass

When you finally want to become free, because you’re tired of getting high and coming down, then you become appreciative of everything in your life. And then you’re going towards hotter and hotter fires. You’re looking for those things that catch you. You’re actually looking to find out where your anger and lust and greed and doubt are, because you want to clean up your act. Not because you’re a goody-goody gumshoes. Not even because you ought to. Not even because you better or else! Just because you’ve got to.