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still chugging away on our upcoming product release. our test team keeps finding good things that need to be fixed, and marketing keeps upping the ante on how much security needs to be in the product on the first release.
i’m implementing the dynamic side of our web site, and there seems to be an endless list of things to do. so i haven’t had any time to write in my journal lately.
quick updates:
- last sunday we restarted the silicon valley shambhala group and nine people came to meditate.
- i keep checking with the local megaplex about buying a group of tickets or a whole theater for the upcoming Matrix Revolutions release. But they seem to have fewer prints of the film than they did for the last release, and haven’t been able to give me an answer yet with less than two weeks away.
- i did manage to get a ticket for the upcoming all day Lord of the Rings, back to back showing of all three films on December 16th. That is going to be brilliant but arduous.
- i’m setting up my large Moroccan tent this Saturday for a wedding. The wedding is on the beach just before sunset with a procession down to the water. Then there is a reception and party planned just off the beach, and my tent will serve as a space for the party with a DJ setup.
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although not Jewish, over the years I’ve occasionally participated in Jewish holidays to experience them and understand them better. today is Yom Kippur. i wouldn’t feel comfortable completely engaging in this one, and i can’t take off work today to go to a synagogue and pray. but i haven’t eaten anything or had anything to drink since yesterday before sunset and i’ve been thinking about what it means to ask for forgiveness and repenting.
mostly though i’ve just been thinking about food! i’m starving.
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when His Holiness was on the east coast, he met with a panel of scientists. the washington post had a really interesting article about the exchange.
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ok, i only posted the first half of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s quote last week. He lived from 1882 to 1926 by the way, so his language and view is from that context.
“We learn from this that both opinions are right. We are evolving, and yet at the same time, going backward… This brings us ot the philosophical conception that it is not only the world that is round, but that every thing is round: that everythign moves in circles. For instance the early dawn is not very different from the late evening, age is not very different from infancy, when we realize how innocence develops as one grows old and arrives at a stage where one shows the same expression of the angelic spheres which one had as an infant. It is just like the octave: seven notes and then the key-note comes again. It is not going upward or downward, it is going in a circle… Progress means going upward and downward at the same time; progress should be described by a circle and not a straight line. If we look at it from this point of view, everything in the world has a circular aspect, for the real picture of motion, of movement, is a circle.”
what’s your take on this confusing answer?
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I found this thoughtful quote from Hazrat Inayat Khan to share:
“It is most interesting to notice that the East and West have a different or perhaps contrary opinion on the subject of the world’s evolution. While in the West, man thinks that we are becoming more evolved, that we have progressed and are going forward compared with our forefathers, in the East man believes that we are going backward and downward, that we are worse. What is the truth about this?
From the point of view that there has never been such good communication in the world as nowadays… uniting mankind in one moment at any distance; besides the development that is taking place in every branch of science… When one looks at all this and cannot doubt for one moment… that the world is evolving.
But when it comes to delicate thought and sentiment, good manners, knightly chivalry, kingly attitude, nobleness of spirit, and generosity of heart, the tendency to sacrifice, depth of feeling, and keenness of insight, we are certain that what the man of the East says is true.”
what do you think?
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baking bread or making cheese is so last century. these monks are keeping up with the times.
i went to a small sufi coffee shop today, which opened near work. best cup of drip coffee i’ve had in awhile, and i bought a sufi magazine to read. here are some quotes that I particularly enjoyed from the periodical:
“Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon preserved in a museum. Only when we find the spring of wisdom in our own life can it flow to future generations.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
“Leave behind your cleverness, O lover of God:
go crazy instead!
Become a moth: enter the flame!”
- Rumi
“It is said a great Zen teacher asked an initiate to sit by a stream until he heard all the water had to teach. After the initiate had spent days bending his mind around the scene, a small monkey happened by and, in one seeming bound of joy, splashed about in the stream. The initiate wept and returned to his teacher who scolded him lovingly, ‘The monkey heard. You just listened.’” -from The Book of Awakening by Conari Press.
sitting monkey is place where