Big Mind

August 18-20, 2006
The Essence of Big Mind
Instructor: Genpo Roshi and special concert by Ottmar Liebert

http://upaya.org/

Photography

As practices, both meditation and photography demand commitment, discipline and technical skill. Possession of these qualities does not, however, guarantee that meditation will lead to great wisdom any more than photography will culminate in great art. To go beyond mere expertise in either domain requires a capacity to see the world in a new way. Such seeing originates in a penetrating and insatiable curiosity about things. It entails recovering an innocent, childlike wonder at life while suspending the adult’s conviction that the world is simply the way it appears.
- Stephen Batchelor

Turtles all the way down

Turtles all the way down - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.'

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'

'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'

New Year

It's interesting that the Tibetan word for "Buddhist" is nangpa. It means "insider": someone who seeks the truth not outside but within the nature of his or her mind.
(Via Glimpse of the Day)

Zazen at Upaya from 10PM until after midnight on the first. Very nice way to start the new year.

Happy New Year.

It's January 2nd and we have 56F. Feels very warm and very strange.

When wishing each other a good year... what is a good year?
In fertile soil weeds and flowers grow, and sometimes weeds will grow easier and faster. That should be encouraging, because once the flowers are established they too will grow well.

YES.