my fav place to sit

in the travel section last week, ny times wrote Meditation Retreats Calm Those Jangled Nerves and mentioned karme choling, my fav place to sit and meditate.

If you're new here, thanks for visiting! Please subscribe to my RSS feed and consider visiting my design-related blog and my personal blog.

do things exist?

the buddhist scholar nagarjuna starts with this comment on whether things exist:

not from self, not from other, not from both, nor without cause;
things do not arise at any place, at any time.

but what does he mean by “things” and that they are not “arising”? there are various ways that we think that things exist (’bhava’ in sanskrit). in this context, we mean things exist if they are distinct, separable, and lasting as they are. but is anything really like that? if we look closely, it seems that everything is constantly changing. the appearance of things not changing is simply a matter of time scale and our lack of detail. the closer you look, the less solid things become. everything is changing and interacting with the environment, though some less quickly or with less drama.

Read more »