Asian Road

Li Bai or Li Po (701-762) was a Chinese poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty.

Called the Poet Immortal, Li Bai is often regarded, along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in China's literary history. Approximately 1,100 of his poems remain today. The first translations in a Western language were published in 1862 by Marquis D'Hervey de Saint-Denys.

Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor. Like Du Fu, he spent much of his life travelling, although in his case it was because his wealth allowed him to, rather than because his poverty forced him. He is said to have drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.

Over a thousand poems are attributed to him, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for his yue fu poems, which are intense and often fantastic. He is often associated with Taoism: there is a strong element of this in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone. Nevertheless, his gufeng ("ancient airs") often adopt the perspective of the Confucian moralist, and many of his occasional verses are fairly conventional.

Much like the genius of Mozart there exist many legends on how effortlessly Li Bai composed his poetry; he was said to be able to compose at an astounding speed, without correction. His favorite form is the jueju (five- or seven-character quatrain), of which he composed some 160 pieces. Li Bai's use of language is not as erudite as Du Fu's but impresses equally through his extravagance of imagination and a direct correlation of his free-spirited persona with the reader. Li Bai's interactions with nature, friendship, his love of wine and his acute observations of life inform his best poems. Some, like Changgan xing (translated by Ezra Pound as The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter), record the hardships or emotions of common people. He also wrote a number of very oblique, allusive poems on women.

One of Li Bai's most famous poems is Drinking Alone under the Moon , which is a good example of some of the most famous aspects of his poetry -- a very spontaneous poem, full of natural imagery and anthropomorphism:

Among flowers with a pot of liquor;
I pour alone but with no friend at hand;
So I lift the cup to invite the shining moon;
Along with my shadow, a fellowship of three.

The moon understands not the art of drinking;
The shadow gingerly follows my movements;
Still I make the moon and the shadow my company;
To enjoy the springtime before too late.

The moon lingers while I am singing;
The shadow scatters while I am dancing;
We share the cheers of delight when sober;
We separate our ways after getting drunk;
Forever will we keep this unfettered friendship;
Til we meet again far in the Milky Way.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

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Why is love so much pain ?
Sitting on the roof starring at the stars
Thinking to myself how could i have fell for someone so hard
When all i was told was lies
Now that i think about it ,it makes me cry...

To know someone i gave my heart to
Just tore my heart apart
A love that is endless
Why did this love have to start
Feeling the love i have for you
Just rushes through my veins
Why does love have to be so much pain..

Memories no one can take away
The pain that i feel each and everyday
And it is going to be hard ,but i will pull myself through
Or else I'll never get over loving you..

To know someone i gave my heart to
Just tore my heart apart
A love that is endless
Why did this love have to start
Feeling the love i have for you
Just rushes through my veins
Why does love have to be so much pain

So much pain . ..
So many nights so many tears i've cried (cried)
No one to be by my side
Stuck with misery and pain you are the one to blame
Cause it hurts to know ...

To know someone i gave my heart to
Just tore my heart apart
A love that is endless
Why did this love have to start
Feeling the love i have for you
Just rushes through my veins
Why does love have to be so much pain

(Why does love have to be so much pain)
So much pain (so much pain)
Oh so much pain..

AMANDA PEREZ LYRICS

Aikido translated as "the way of harmonious spirit", is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Ueshiba's goal was to create an art practitioners could use to defend themselves without injuring their attacker.

The word aikido is formed of three Japanese characters:

- ai - joining
- ki - spirit
- do - way


Techniques

* Front-of-the-head strike - a vertical knife-hand strike to the head.
* Side-of-the-head strike - a diagonal knife-hand strike to the side of the head or neck.
* Chest thrust - a punch to the torso. Specific targets include the chest, abdomen, and solar plexus. Same as "middle-level thrust" , and "direct thrust".
* Face thrust - a punch to the face. Same as "upper-level thrust" .

Beginners in particular often practice techniques from grabs, both because they are safer and because it is easier to feel the energy and lines of force of a hold than a strike. Some grabs are historically derived from being held while trying to draw a weapon; a technique could then be used to free oneself and immobilize or strike the grabbing person. The following are examples of some basic grabs:

* Single-hand grab - one hand grabs one wrist.
* Both-hands grab - both hands grab one wrist.
* Both-hands grab - both hands grab both wrists. Same as "double single-handed grab".
* Shoulder grab a shoulder grab. 　"Both-shoulders-grab" is ryōkata-dori
* Chest grab grabbing the (clothing of the) chest. Same as "collar grab".



Aikido training is mental as well as physical, emphasizing the ability to relax the mind and body even under the stress of dangerous situations. This is necessary in order to enable the practitioner to perform the bold enter-and-blend movements that underlie aikido techniques, wherein an attack is met with confidence and directness. Morihei Ueshiba once remarked that one "must be willing to receive 99% of an opponent's attack and stare death in the face" in order to execute techniques without hesitation. As a martial art concerned not only with fighting proficiency but also with the betterment of daily life, this mental aspect is of key importance to aikido practitioners.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

Aojiru is a Japanese vegetable drink most commonly made from kale. The drink is also known as green drink or green juice in English, a direct translation of the Japanese meaning. (In modern Japanese, the character ao means "blue", but it is commonly still used in older contexts to refer to green vegetation.)

Aojiru was developed in October 1943 by Dr. Niro Endo , an army doctor who experimented with juices extracted from the discarded leaves of various vegetables in an attempt to supplement his family's meager wartime diet. He credited the cure of his son from pneumonia and of his wife from nephritis to aojiru, and in 1949 concluded that kale was the best ingredient for his juice.

Aojiru was popularized in 1983 by Q'SAI , who started marketing 100% kale aojiru in powdered form as a dietary supplement, and sales boomed after 2000 when cosmetics giant Fancl started mass retailing of the juice.Today, many Japanese companies manufacture aojiru, usually using kale, young barley or komatsuna leaves as the base of the drink, and the size of the aojiru market was well over $500 million in 2005.

Why has aojiru reached this extraordinary level of popularity in Japan? Not only does it contain the highly nutritious elements found in kale (including some 40 vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients), but these nutrients exist in almost perfect balance. With new medical evidence demonstrating the positive effects of drinking raw kale juice on a daily basis, aojiru has been dubbed a miracle drink.

The taste of aojiru is famously unpleasant, so much so that drinking a glass of the liquid is a common punishment on Japanese TV game shows. However, new formulations of aojiru have attempted to minimize the bitter taste of the original.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

Despite the fact that this is a super-slick action thriller with guns, swords, cars and martial arts, So Close is a refreshing and unusual movie. It's NICE, to put it simply. Lovely girls, dressed in white much of the time, hanging around their picturesque house messing around and eating cakes and having baths. Despite all the asses they kick, they actually behave like young women and not ultra-agressive 'I-want-to-be-a-man' type female heroes, like Xena or Sarah Connor.

Source : www.imdb.com

Buddha is perhaps one of the few sages for whom we have mention of his rather impressive physical characteristics. He was at least six feet tall. A kshatriya by birth, he had a military training in his upbringing, and by Sakyan tradition was required to pass tests to demonstrate his worthiness as a warrior in order to marry. He had a strong enough body to be noticed by one of the kings and was asked to join his army as a general. He is also believed by Buddhists to have "the 32 Signs of the Great Man".

Although the Buddha was not represented in human form until around the 1st century CE (see Buddhist art), his physical characteristics are described in one of the central texts of the traditional Pali canon, the Digha Nikaya. They help define the global aspect of the historical Buddha, his physical appearance is described by Yasodhara to his son Rahula upon Buddha's return in the scripture of the "Lion of Men".

Having been born a Kshatriya, he was probably of Indo-Aryan ethnic heritage and had the physical characteristics most common to the Aryan warrior castes of south-central Asia, typically found among the Vedic Aryans, Scythians and Persians. This stands in contrast to the depictions of him as East Asian looking, which are generally created by Buddhists in those areas, similar to the way Northern Europeans often portray Jesus as blonde and blue-eyed.

"The original teachings of the historical Buddha are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover or reconstruct." While there is disagreement amongst various Buddhist sects over more esoteric aspects of Buddha's teachings and over disciplinary rules for monks, there is generally agreement over these points, among many others:

* The Four Noble Truths: that suffering is an inherent part of existence; that the origin of suffering is ignorance and the main symptoms of that ignorance are attachment and craving; that attachment and craving can be ceased; and that following the Noble Eightfold Path will lead to the cessation of attachment and craving and therefore suffering.
* The Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
* The concept of dependent origination: that any phenomenon 'exists' only because of the ‘existence’ of other phenomena in a complex web of cause and effect covering time past, present and future. Because all things are thus conditioned and transient (anicca), they have no real independent identity (anatta).
* Rejection of the infallibility of accepted scripture: Teachings should not be accepted unless they are borne out by our experience and are praised by the wise. See the Kalama Sutta for details.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org