4-28-16 - Bali Vipassana Retreat Report April 2016

3-14-16 - Is and Isn't

3-12-16 - Another Discovery

3-20-15 - Cherry Wood

3-15-15 - Posted on cuke blog as That Last Trip

I remember on my last acid trip in 1967 February on a hillside above Muir Woods,

Tamara Robertson my quiet guide or guardian - she walked down to talk to a ranger who was passing in the early morning - the only person in our 20 or so hours there. Had fasted and meditated beforehand. I had sat full lotus for many hours. Felt no pain. Coming down from celestial highs of the night, I saw my life and the habit of thinking of spiritual practice as something in the future when it was always right here. I had an urge to communicate that to Tammy, the only words I remember speaking - raising my right hand, index finger protruding to make a point, saying the first few of the sentence I wished to utter which was to start something like, "I was living under the notion that..."  but I only got as far as "I was living..." and an explosion of miraculous light literally blew me back on the ground. As it subsided I righted myself to a vision of a ring of beings above calling me onward, beyond them Suzuki and Katagiri in their brown robes standing. The word "angfanger" appeared and took on various forms and continued to be there. That's the last I remember, the word anfanger which seemed to hold great meaning though I neither knew what it meant or cared. It's German for "beginner."

3-03-15 - Posted on cuke blog as A Neat Story from Ramblin' Jack

Remembering the Panama Hotel and Restaurant in San Rafael. My mate Katrinka worked there for six years or so up to a couple of months before we left for Asia. She booked people into the hotel, hosted, and was in charge of the music which was great. Mainly jazz but some folk and mixed. One person I enjoyed seeing there was Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Ramblin' Jack lives in Marshall over on the coast in Marin County. He came in every few months to hear a band and usually played something with them at the end of the night. I think the lead singer is his girlfriend. He used to hang out in the bar at Marshall and had a reputation as a heavy drinker. Think he got over that because he was always clear and fun to talk with at the Panama. We talked about legendary producer Bob Johnston whom I've known and who helped me out with music and Jack said he'd done an album with Bob. I told him Bob and I had had dinner there not long before. Bob was an early producer of Dylan and Jack was a mentor to Dylan and a protégé of Woody Guthrie. I asked him if he read much and he said he read a lot. Another sign of not drinking. He gave me his address so I could send him a copy of Crooked Cucumber, a PO Box with RJE for the name. I don't do that much cause I have to buy them. He said he didn't know much about Zen but that Woody Guthrie had taken him to a home in Topanga Canyon in about 1956 where they met a guy who was into Zen.

I said I'd heard a story about him and Mic Jagger and wondered if it was true. I told him the way I'd heard it and he said that was close and told it this way. He had been bumming around Europe for five years or so with his mate, being a busker and getting by, and one evening late in London he was standing on a platform waiting for a train and there were some boys on the other side waiting for their train. Just them and the waiting. He said he took out his guitar from the case and played them a half dozen cowboy songs and then waved and rode off. Twenty years later he met Mick Jagger who told him he'd been one of those boys and that the next day he'd gone out and bought his first guitar.

2-15-15 - Valentines Day Poem 2015 (for Katrinka)

1-08-15 - As for the tooth found in McDonald's fries in Japan, I'd say that was the healthiest part of it.

12-29-14 - One way to look at the body with its nervous system and brain is as a filter of awareness assisting us in our pretending. - Kabumpkan

12-27-14 - Further comment on yesterday's post on The Science Delusion by Robert Sheldrake (see below). Again, it might be that every example he gives is flawed, but that's not the point. See Steve Stark's comment of March 8th on the Ted Talk Conversations on this subject. When I look at news I tend to glance at the headlines and sometimes read into one, but am eager to read the science reports. To me the more science the better but I can't help but notice if they get into claiming too much or criticizing areas they don't understand - as Neil de Grasse Tyson did when he rightly praised an historic precise scientific prediction and then compared it with obvious disdain to the predictions of profits and mystics, seeming to dismiss them en masse and anyone who follows them as pre-scientific fools. The word prophet has come to be understood as someone who tells the future but that's not the key meaning. Here's an Orthodox view. His inclusion of mystics seems to enlarge the scope of the put down. To me, prophets and mystics are (or should be) those who are aware of big reality, emptiness, god, dao, etc. I'm into prophets and mystics but if one of them predicts the future I wouldn't bet on it. To me the fascinating world of science is reporting on the vast and marvelous small reality, the appearance or seeming reality, the convincing illusion (Einstein's term). I don't see it as unimportant, quite the opposite, when viewed in the light of what Ramana and Suzuki call reality, the phenomenal takes on greater meaning. Einstein ridiculed both literalist religion and atheistic materialism, saying he preferred the former to the latter since at least there was a sense of transcendence. Atheism is not inconsistent with the big picture, just atheistic materialism which holds there is this and nothing more. To me it's all a mystery and all these words only hints handed down to us from the empirical evidence personally realized and referred to by countless wise and awakened ones with vastly varying approaches.

12-26-14 - Heard a Ted Talk about The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake and thought it's about time. Then I discovered that it was yanked from the Ted Talk list. Didn't surprised me. Read that as a Ted Talk it got 35,000 views and as a banned Ted Talk it's now been viewed by over half a million. It's the sort of stuff I think when I watch the great science shows I have linked to. Love em but to me they really buy into the material realm as all there is unless there's more material realm. Not saying I agree with anything in particular that Sheldrake says either. - DC -  

See it on Rupert Sheldrakes site with relevant links and follow-up

On YouTube

Ted Talk Conversations on this - really interesting

12-13-14 - Have been looking forward to writing this date. - dc

12-08-14 - Happy Buddha's Enlightenment Day - in  the Japanese tradition anyway.

Who da buddha you da buddha da who da buddha. - Kabumpkan

12-01-14 - When we finally get what we've longed for, we enjoy it best if we simultaneously let it go. - Kambumpkan

11-23-14 - I've got the weirdest problem with my antique Front Page 2002 (which is what I use to make cuke) giving me an System Exception Access Violation message ever since the last MS update. So far I have figured out how to get around it but it's definitely in the way. Pray for me.

11-21-14 - A footnote on Einstein's ideas on religion. I remember his writings on this being criticized as naive and suggestions that he should stick to science. I think they hold up quite well when matched with the Perennial Philosophy as opposed to superstitious literalism. As with his science, his instincts on religion are impressive. He also had a sense of humility and the limits of our ability to comprehend such matters. He believed in a cosmos of laws and knew the laws of science were not in accord with common sense and surely knew that the laws of spirit were also beyond figuring out with our normal thinking or imagination. He said he didn't get his science that way or with math even as I understand it. Don't know how he did it. Maybe inspiration as with Tesla who said that the idea for the motor just occurred to him all at once, not as a result of logical process. But it all had to check out however it came to him. And really Buddhism is that way to. As Buddha said, Don't take my word for it. Inquire for yourself. - or something like that. Here's more from Stanford (not easy): Einstein's Philosophy of Science

11-20-14 - Einstein's religous ideas - Wikipedia - great stuff - thanks Gene Whitman for reminding me. I remember reading Einsteins's Ideas and Opinions when I was a teenager. Quite resonant with how I was raised - body and mind are one, no personal god, transcendental. We didn't have the science stuff down like him and were basically into a mind only approach, but I've always thought, like he says, there's no possible conflict between scientific and spiritual truth. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Of course he was no fan of organized religion as he'd known it but he found plenty to praise in the Torah, Bible, New Testament, and even mentioned Buddhism. - dc

While we're on the subject of body and mind as one, I'll link to a past post that includes an experience from the catacombs of my past called Mind And? Body?

That's the tail end of a real equation in the photo - something that applies only to the speed of light.

11-18-14 - See today's post in Harm Reduction.

11-10-04 - Watched the first episode of the new Cosmos: a Space-time Odyssey with Neil deGrasse Tyson and loved it. It was great. I loved how he started it with the basic scientific approach of questioning and testing and continuing without sticking to anything - don't remember how he said it but seemed to me it was a good rule of how to approach spiritual pursuits too. Look at our assumptions. Then naturally I watched his show with a critical eye while eating up all the great stuff he was saying. I remembered how when he came out of the film Gravity he tweeted some scientific errors in the film before saying that he enjoyed it and got some heat for that. So - hey Niel - your space ship makes a sound in space when it travels. No biggie. I'd say he should be careful about assuming what people on earth have known and not known and how they've seen things. I've heard him say before for instance that before a certain date everyone thought the earth was flat and I doubt that. Also he made it seem like only one person other than Copernicus challenged the idea that the earth was the center of the universe (though there was another exception included in  a ten minute cartoon about that one person). Here are three links to rather interesting rebuttals to that presentation. Patheos with a Catholic historical perspective, Discover Mag, and Wired. I'm too ignorant to do more than say, wait a minute - you're just talking about European history and missing a bunch of folks in that. He also assumes that Guido came by chance, by a lucky guess, to see the earth as revolving around the sun and the stars as more suns. Sounded to me like Guido had some sort of deep visionary spiritual experience that was the source. I love how Tyson expands our picture of the immensity, complexity of the physical universe and natural selection but he doesn't know anything about any other levels like say, Hua Yen Buddhism or so many examples from so many traditions. Oh well. I can't wait to watch the next one.

11-06-14 - Fascinating research (thanks Gregory) on how magic mushrooms affect the brain. As with the 10-28-14 link to the Tricycle interview with Even Thompson, there's stuff on where consciousness is located. He said in the body and not just the brain but this research is looking at networks and networks of networks within the brain. I think a few things when I read this. One is wow how good it is they're doing this research and how if the human race survives we'll keep learning more and more about how things work. And I think about how it's just evil bad wrong that it's illegal to eat these mushrooms and that people are persecuted for it. And I think how neat it is how the various sciences keep showing both he interconnections and all that there is to be interconnected. I think about how along the way there will surely be new discoveries and inventions leading to more than mere weapons and consumer products. I look at my own naive, dualistic ideas of what consciousness is and how it ultimately has no location or substance, that it's one of the five skandas marked as empty and toss it all away marveling at how mysterious everything is.

11-05-14 - Kids and babies do so many things the same though they're from very different cultures - especially notice the sounds - laughing, crying, complaining, urging, enjoying and think, 'That could be a kid anywhere.' And same with adults but less. Essentially we're all the same it seems. Mooji says that all beings have the same basic thought: I am. That's ancient wisdom and like the perennial core wisdom from the ancients to us, it's not derived from speculation, rumination, cogitation, or objective observation, but from alonely empirical inquiry deep into the root of being and non being. Also - can't be proven except by tapping that core. Can't prove that either.  - dc

Only that which involves what isn't fundamentally real can be proven by the scientific method. - Kabumpkan

 - also posted in today's Saunters

10-14-14 - A tennis story.

10-06-14 - Chris Pirsig was a student at the San Francisco Zen Center who was murdered in a random killing while he was walking down the Laguna Street in 1979. I wrote a song after his funeral. Here's a page on Defuser Music for that song with the words and a link to a recording I made at the time. It's called And We'll Miss You. - DC

10-02-14 - Thinking about ISIS or IS or ISIL in light of having just read Brian Victoria's War on Zen --- (Brian Victoria cuke page).

I have noticed certain unwholesome thoughts arising that I don't think are helpful. So I'm making an effort to replace them with the visualization of all the weapons disappearing. That won't be much help to people who are being massacred but that's the best I can do now. When I was in high school I'd say I'd let someone kill me before I'd fight back. I never have been in a fight. I hit a kid once in the sixth grade just to see what it was like and I still feel bad about it. A dear friend of mine who shared my thoughts that Pres Reagan was causing a lot of suffering said she wished he were dead and I said I don't think that's a good thing to wish for anyone. So I have a history of pacifist leanings but also of thoughts of extinction which I give in to at times but which once again I'm wishing to extinguish. I do think that there is a general world-wide tendency to use violence to solve problems. That seems to keep proving that violence leads to violence. I also think that Gandhi's methods would not have worked so well with ISIS or Sadam Husein or Hitler. We never know what we're going to do until a moment arrives but we do take aim with intentions and thought habits. There have been pilots who reported they tried to shoot down a UFO and that their controls wouldn't work - so see - there's proof positive that such technology can be developed here. That's what I'm visualizing. - also posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events

9-30-14 -  Think of the following quote a lot from Hamlet, ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

9-22-14 - Looking at a kids book with maps of the provinces and islands of Indonesia. So many islands. Can't see all 1300 in the book but it still is dizzying to contemplate it all, all the towns and roads and imagining all the little places along the side, the jungles, the undiscovered places, the animals, plants, the swirling life in the seas around. It's a seeming eternity. And focusing on any spot zooms in on another seeming eternity of detail all the way to the elusive insides of particles.. Then there's the rest of the world, another seeming eternity of eternities. Looking up at the sky which I know that way and through science shows - seeming eternities within others beyond counting. We perceive and discuss some slices of a seemingly limitless pie with what number of unknown eternities, eternities of all types, forgotten eternities. Endless thoughts, feelings, fears, visions. Countless mind opening into mind, multiplicities and singularities. Any aspect of it all fractally unfolding. All of this fathomlessness contained within any tiniest seeming part, seeming slice, seeming individual. Looking down down, listening deep deep. An eternity of final frontiers. Turn the page. 

9-13-14 - A good article on global warming from the Houston Chron - posted in Climate Change

Incidentally, my 2nd cousin is about to become governor there. - DC

9-08-14 - New Galaxy Map Relocates The Milky Way To A Ginormous Supercluster Called Laniakea - Huff Post

DC Posted this comment there: Don't agree this is "A Reminder That We Are Small And Insignificant (the Huff Post text on home page link to this)," Maybe our idea of what we are is that, but I see everything as interconnected, the parts containing the whole, the whole a convincing space-time illusion to use Einstein's term, a hint at our shared greatness.

The post before mine was:

So we are already in Heaven. [Laniakea is Hawaiian for "immeasurable heaven"] I swear- the observable reality of our universe is so much more awesome than the drivel in bibles and Korans and Talmuds.

DC replied to that: They're not comparable. That old stuff is myth not intended to be taken literally and the new stuff is today's best measurement of matter and space. But the Abrahamic myths and legends didn't impress Joseph Campbell much either

Another reply to the post before mine: But what about the unobservable? Isn't it possible that spirituality is the admission that we are fallible, and that there are things in the universe that we cannot possibly comprehend? I find the thought that we've figured everything out - whether scientific or spiritual - to take just as much unmitigated hubris as the thought that observable reality is all there is.

DC hit "like" on that one. [I rarely leave comments anywhere but cuke. - dc]

8-27-14 - Reading about the upcoming UN report on climate change, I worried about the fate of beings on planet earth, considered how I'm not worried about anything now or in the short term and not worried about anything in the big picture in which space and time float or do whatever it does. So:

Short term OK
Mid term worry
Long term OK

Realized have to do some work on attitude toward the mid term which obviously is included in the long thus it's OK too. Just doesn't seem that way.

8-19-14 - Lizard People sending messages via film.

8-10-14 - Fifty Billion Dollars - a very short story

8-05-14 - Today's vocabulary: Umbra, penumbra and antumbra

7-30-14 - Wondered what happened to Werner Erhard. Used to see him now and then in the Bay Area at Greens, when he'd meet with Richard Baker, he graciously invited my mother into his personal box at the SF Opera. He let SFZC Zen students do EST training for free. I never did and all this stuff is over my head but it's impressive from my pea-brained distance. Thought he'd been discredited but that's all been dealt with. Thought he'd disappeared - but that's cause I'm out of touch - it was only into academia. His work on leadership and personal growth has influenced millions, he's highly regarded as a brilliant, effective, original thinker in academia and business. His recent associations include Harvard Business School.. Read Wikipedia on Erhard. Here's his website. The Hunger Project which he co-founded continues to do good work around the world and has high ratings from independent charity watchers.

7-28-14 - Emptiness doesn't suggest nothing matters but shows that everything matters infinitely in a new way. - Kabumpkan

7-24-14 - Thinking about the Four Difficulties or something like that read in Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. They are the answer as to why it's so hard to wake up to reality if that's all there is and there's no obstacle and so forth. As I recall it's so difficult because of what we can't imagine:

It's so close.

 

It's so subtle.

 

It's so profound.

 

It's so wonderful.

7-23-14 - The road to hell is paved with trite phrases. - Kabumpkan

7-20-14 - No need to make any profound observations. - Kabumpkan

7-16-14 - Really don't think it's my role to make comments about film and video media, but we do at times relax at the end of a grueling day with a movie or TV series or documentary - as in I drink tea at times in the morning. I notice little movieisms as do many people. There have been books and many articles written about them - like not closing doors and hanging up on phone calls without saying goodbye. I've been aware of a particular phrase recently and since then I've noticed it in every movie and TV series, sometimes being used up to four times. That phrase is, "Are you OK?" or sometimes "Are you alright?" Yesterday I heard "Everything OK?" which is the same thing. I don't see it listed in a couple of lists of most used phrases in film. Nor did I see the ubiquitous "Yes!" in triumph or the irritated, "What?" I know the last two single word phrases are somewhat recent, but don't have an idea how far back Are you OK? goes.

7-11-14 - See today's comment in Death and Dying

7-10-14 - For Women Who Saw Combat, a Place to Find Inner Peace - NY Times article on Tassajara retreat

Some thoughts on this.

The name of this retreat is Honoring the Path of the Warrior. When I saw that name on a notice in the SFZC Sangha News, I wondered about the wording and intent. I sent a link to the notice to Kaz Tanahashi and Alan Senauka asking them what they thought. We all trusted Lee Klinger and Chris Fortin who've been working with veterans for years. I also sent one to Brian Victoria who surprised me by assuming that the underlying intent was good. There are many Buddhist and other groups extending themselves to veterans. There are many veterans who are Buddhists and so forth. My thought was that I honor the people, care about the people, but I don't know about the warrior's path except that I've stayed away from being part of it but not stayed away from those who were part of it. I certainly have friends and acquaintances who are veterans and who would say they honored the path of the warrior and of course many scenarios where defense is compelling can be pointed out. None to me in recent history as far as the US is concerned. Zen especially has a long association with warriors and the sword and Buddhism and Hinduism with the sword as a symbol.

I guess it's because I've been spending time in Japan and with Brian Victoria who recently showed Katrinka and me the film Zen and War [see Victoria link], and I've just linked to some writings of Brian, that I'm more aware than usual of times when Zen institutions and people have enthusiastically supported military conquest and provided propaganda and soldiers for the Japanese military. I liked Harada Shodo's point in that film that is something along the lines of war can seem quite justified so before that happens let us state now that we will not be involved no matter how justified it seems. He of course didn't mean not honoring soldiers as people and being there for them. It's so much more a bigger deal in Japan with it's recent history and culture of going along and not questioning. I can remember a Japanese school teacher saying to me, "We have to be careful not to take the first step. For us it's a slippery slope."

To me America has been down its own slippery slope for a long time, but in America the military isn't  the problem - nor is the intelligence community. It's the politicians. Or, as Eisenhower saw it, the military, industrial, congressional complex - the congress part was edited out of his famous farewell talk. But the military in America follows orders. They don't give them. In Japan they took over.

Extreme examples can be sited to justify anything. Like the torture arguments. There is so much violence, violence is used as a solution so quickly. Revenge is a virtue in many cultures. Still I read that violence of all kinds keeps going down word-wide and has for centuries. May that trend continue. And may Lee and Chris continue their good work of honoring veterans.

 - also linked to from Engaged Buddhism

7-09-10 - Can't control, can't figure out, can't make sense of. What a relief. - Kabumpkan

7-06-14 - Phlosophy is Not a Luxury PODCAST EPISODE 3: ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE - thanks Loring

In almost all fields of knowledge I just sit back and admire how much other people know. Many don't realize that this book was not about Zen as we think of it, but Pirsig's thoughts on and a review of Western philosophy. Enjoyed this podcast on Pirsig on classical and romantic philosophy and the difficulty of reconciling  the two. Maybe I take an ignorant, easy way out of this dilemma. I don't latch on to any philosophy and tend not to completely reject any either. I think, oh that's interesting. To me things and non things can be looked at from different points of view and the reconciliation is mind which includes all contradictions. I think the same about the unified field theory. What's the solution to the incongruity between relativity and quantum mechanics? Mind. I could also just say I don't know.

7-04-14 - Happy Birthday USA - read the NYTimes obit on former Marine and hippy commune founder Steve Gaskin linked to yesterday to get his comments on the USA constitution and so forth.

Two old time Zennies remember Steve Gaskin - looking for more

7-01-14 - Today makes ten years without one puff or anything of the dread demon nicotine. - DC

6-25-14 - Yesterday in note below Shunryu Suzuki Wind Bell lecture post, had a note where mentioned am always finding mistakes in posts here and fixing them. One mistake didn't mention is misspellings. Thanks to spell-check can usually tell when have misspelled because the word is underlined as I write. Sometimes have to go to internet to check. Just write it on the URL line and can see correct spelling quickly. Used to be needed reference books, even a library to check proper nouns. Not now. Right now connection so bad don't do that. Anyway, what I notice is that I have a poor learning curve in spelling, misspell the same words over and over for decades. Sometimes I learn a word like altar not alter for the religious thing - spell-check of course doesn't help if the misspelling is correct for another use as in homonyms. What I've noticed is that some people spell and some don't so well. There are reasons. I don't care much. I usually know if I don't know so that's when I check. I check definitions too - in a sec - often for words whose meaning I've checked before. Have a poor learning curve on some word meanings. Like jejune. I just can't remember it. I guess I just don't care about it. I don't want to use it. I remember Richard Baker using it at a dinner table and I said oh that's a word we used to impress girls with in high school. Now that wasn't nice of me. I don't learn right and left or east west easily either. I may have mentioned that before. I may have read more bridge (card game) columns than anything and I don't get confused on which hands are north and south but I have to stop and think about east an west - even more than once in the same reading. And right left a little bit. We're doing yoga every day now and we go up and down off the floor a lot and have to turn around. I try to alternate getting up and turning around left and right. If it was forwards and backwards, no problem, but I have to think for a second before going left or right and sometimes I get confused. It might be that I could reprogram myself if I worked on this stuff but maybe not. I don't care enough anyway. It seems sort of normal and lovable to me.

Note from yesterday: Opps - Every issue of the Wind Bell in volume 3 was 1964, not 1963 as was indicated till it was just fixed. I find mistakes on cuke everyday. After uploading I try to check all the links and quickly read what was written and no matter how simple what was posted I always find something to fix, sometimes many fixes - wrong dates among the most common. But since I hold to the "Everything we are taught is false" doctrine. More on that later.

I could have mentioned typos too.

Oh - that "Everything we are taught is false," comes from Rimbaud. I verified that on the Internet and found Karl Shapiro also attributing it to Whitman and Rilke, maybe in other words. Rimbaud's use of it is quoted all over. Shapiro said that Henry Miller wanted it on his tombstone. I've found it to be true since my late teens. Or almost true. Google it and you'll find some neat lists of things that aren't true. Like blood isn't blue it just looks blue. Same for the sky. But water is blue. And so forth.

6-14-14 - Broke my USB modem. Am uploading via Katrinka's computer. Bit of a hassle. Not in big city now. May be able to replace or might have to wait a week. Love, dc

6-04-14 - We can look at time as space being constantly born. - Kabumpkan

5-20-14 - See DC opinion on Privacy  - in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events for this date.

5-19-14 - It is so weird to receive so many emails offering me fortunes, more this year than ever before. Sometimes a dozen in a day. - Millions, sometimes hundreds of millions just waiting for me to respond. Loan offers, businesses mine. Attachments to open, forms to fill out with bank account #s and soc. sec. # so they can wire the $ to me. From former princes and government officials and institutions saying my name has been selected. I guess they must be able to send a zillion of these out all over the world for very little cost looking for that new to email person who might bite. I'm tempted to get an email address and computer just for responding to them and see what happens. There are people who've done that, even gone to Nigeria to call them on it. I think I posted about that years ago. Still amazed after all these years. But here's an article that explained Why 'Nigerian scammers' say they're from Nigeria - and more.-

5-14-14 - See today's post in Saunters for more comment related to Tyson's Inexplicable Universe - observed while riding on a train to Nara.

5-12-14 - Surely the last comment on Tyson's Inexplicable Universe. Why this mixing of spiritual stuff with science seems off limits? Science is about observed phenomena that can be tested confirmed and so forth and spiritual stuff is about waking up to the fundamental nature of mind/body/self/other/phenomena/relative/absolute/one/many/blah-blah. Aren't they incompatible systems? Tyson gets into a lot of speculative science like string theory that can't be tested. Seems that all scientific results are suspect forever so there could be room for other suspects. And relativity and quantum mechanics aren't compatible and scientists accept both of them as part of the mix. For one thing, Buddhism and what I'd call reality based religion cannot be in conflict with science so it can't get in the way of finding out more about the big and the small. Buddha wouldn't get into metaphysical or science type questions saying we should focus on pulling the arrow out and not in asking how much it weighs and what direction it came from etc. Science in the past used to ascribe what it couldn't explain to a super-being called God. To me that's not reality based religion, it's just literalist superstition. I'm not sure how the experience of mystics and masters, Nagarjuna and Hua Yen, the Upanishads and shamans could be of help. I just think it's funny that it seems almost taboo to bring any of that up in a science discussion. It's also funny that in my type of religion - how I see it - Prajna Paramita and Advaita Vedanta - everything is a subset of awareness and in modern science, awareness is seen as an accident not worth including in the formulas.

5-11-14 - More mere speculation on Inexplicable Universe. Tyson mentions human and chimp only 1% DNA difference and yet their smartest are about at our toddler level. He then wonders if we met life that was 1% beyond us what would it be like. Would their toddlers be as smart as Stephen Hawking, would they be doing calculus. I thought, wow, his idea of greater intelligence is someone who's ahead in his field. To me, greater intelligence would mean working together better to bring about a peaceful, more equitable world, greater awareness, not so self-destructive, not so destructive of fellow creatures and the environment, happier, cooperative, and so forth. In other words - my hippie paradise.

5-10-14 - More Inexplicable Universe comment. Love the way Tyson is into what physicists don't understand and how great what they don't understand is. His approach is scientifically humble. He says some day long from now there will be no stars or galaxies visible from earth and if people or intelligent life were to look into the sky there would be no hint of what the universe was like and he wonders what other information might be missing that would open up a whole new world to him. I immediately thought, how about mind, like big mind, buddha mind, the dao, god, emptiness, the wisdom of the ages, the perennial philosophy. It's amazing that what has been central to every culture's understanding of the cosmos up to a couple hundred years ago, plays no part in the view of so many great scientists and famous thinkers or at least in what I hear and read from them. Maybe it's because superstitious literalism has so dominated the idea of what all that is about that it's discounted. That and institutional religions' role in supporting mass murder and so forth. That and all the power trips and bad conduct of priests of all sorts. Scientists are not blameless though. Science, while flying the banner of the scientific method, of rational empirical thinking, of no truth being too holy to question, has done what religious fanatics have not been able to - bring us to the brink of extinction. But on a more positive note, what science seems to lack in what I hear these days, is a deep experience of the wonder of creation and the uncreated beyond thinking about it. As Meister Eckhart wrote (in German), "The eye with which I see god, is the same eye with which god sees me." That's a hint into the nature of the cosmos.

5-09-14 - Here more thoughts on the why just one beginning of life riff from yesterday. Maybe life is beginning all the time everywhere and isn't killed off instantly but assimilated instantly in some way we haven't noticed. I'm in the everything's alive in some way school of thought as intimated yesterday. More conjecture from this school: And all this aliveness and dying including consciousness empty as Avolokiteshivara says to Shariputra in an imaginary conversation. This empty being full, not born or dieable, aware. The form in the empty otherwise known as the known has endless beginnings. I think Buddha said something like 80,000 times in the snap of a finger. The big bang just another day on the job.

Spent two days just fixing link on this site. Now for some other housekeeping - backups and more too tedious to mention. - dc

5-08-14 - Due to the wonders of Hide My Ass, have been able to watch Neil deGrasse Tyson's Inexplicable Universe from Japan. Love this science stuff though most of it I can't really comprehend. Had some thoughts.

One thing he brought up that I'd never heard before or thought of is that life began on earth about as soon as it could have, within 200 million years of the planet getting cool enough to support life as we know it. And yet it seems to have begun only once -  all life we know of is in the same DNA tree. Why didn't it keep beginning with other DNA trees? He said there's no evidence of any other beginning. This seems to me like fodder for the fundamentalist creationists, but that aside, he mentioned that it might have come from Mars because extreme (something) life can survive in space and it looks like there at least used to be life on Mars and asteroid impacts have sent Mars rocks to earth. Or it could have come in with an asteroid which he didn't mention. I wondered if maybe life is beginning in other ways on earth and just gets killed right away by our DNA type life on a molecular level before it's detectable. More cool stuff in this Wikipedia article. But whatever life came from, I have this simplistic, naive view of life and the whole cosmos as always arising in awareness dreamlike, awareness within which life and seemingly lifeless lies, and that it can all be seen from other and various points of view and that infinite almost realities co-exist and co-disappear like a reflection in the unnameable.

5-06-14 - Got an answer from a member of Bozeman Dharma Center concerning looking for Buddhist's in Bozeman. It's under the guidance of Anam Thubten whom Katrinka and I went to hear talk several times before leaving the Bay Area. He would be one of the best reasons to return.

***

In response to a letter complaining that the SFZC charges for zazen, let me assure you that it does not. Maybe they have a sign that suggests a donation but anyone can sit zazen at the SF Zen Center or any of its affiliates or any Zen Center or other Buddhist center that I know of for free. Checked with the treasurer and the secretary to make sure. - dc

Jordan Thorn assured me that zazen in the three centers was free and added:

This is the web page for city center zazen periods, note that there is no reference to any fees. If we have an all day sitting or a workshop that includes meals, there can be a fee. But even then anyone can come into the zendo and sit zazen, for free. I'm the treasurer, and I know what I say is the way things are.

5-05-14 - Another Creation Myth - Dreamed I went to a meeting of a group that says that our reality was created by a Japanese amateur scientist, Hitoshi Nakaguma, six years ago. All our memories and history and the whole universe that we know came with it. I asked how did he create it if it wasn't here for him to be in to create it. Where would his desk and laboratory go and so forth? I learned that he exists in another reality and that his desk and laboratory was there though he does have that here too. He's the only one in both realities. I asked if they worshiped him and was told, no, it's just good to know where we came from.

5-04-14 - Relatively, what we've all got in common is we're born and we die. Everything in between varies. - Kabumpkan

5-01-14 - Others - various contributions by others - as of 12/07

Was showing someone some of the places to go on cuke and realized that the Others section like so much that is here would be vary hard for someone to know it is there. Added it to Places to Go. This site really lacks good organization. It's a big mess. - feel free to make a better map. - dc posting this in dc misc 4

4-24-14 - Quote attributed to the Dalai Lama on Facebook and elsewhere obviously not from him.

Here's one discussion of it with the quote.

He'd never say something so complicated, slick, and organized. Why would someone do this, put his name on this? This isn't this first time this has been done with other quotes too - and other people. It's fairly rampant.

Just looked at a Dalai Lama Quotes page on Facebook to which I posted:

Some of these quotes are surely not the Dalai Lama. Is anyone fact checking these? I think this page should be called Quotes with the Dalai Lama's Name Put Under Them.

4-21-14 - Didn't put up the happy Easter post till later in the day yesterday. Also forgot to note the 4-20 significance for pot smokers and neo Nazis but we can't keep up with everything.

4-20-14 - Happy Easter which I see as Christian enlightenment day, death of the small self day. - dc