01-03 - Yes

Yes!!  Here we go, a series of outtakes.... building up the juice to write again, look for me next time round...   

2009.07.01 01:00 - Trees and Ponds

nature helps a lot to quiet our minds

an interesting variation on the 9-sec exploration is to do it explicitly in a noisy and disturbing situation as well -- to see whether we can drop our tendency to fixate on the noise

the easiest way to drop something is to avoid it -- a more interesting way to drop our problems is to try not to be bothered by them

it is best to start in the simplest way

Often the pressure we feel is self-imposed

2009.07.01 07:00 - Competing with Stillness

awareness is as fundamtental and irreducible as space, time, energy

we can find our root nature, or play in it, right where we are

finding openness within appearance and play in the interdependence of perceiver / perception : that's tunable, so playable you can create forms for openness, that open the perceiver

2009.07.01 13:00 - The Challenge of Maintaining a Daily Practice

heart and mind

one insight can be, for example, when you see that the words someone is saying to you are not the reason you get angry or when you manage to let go of one thing 'view, view of a person, etc.' that made you suffer, and then it is comletely gone

maybe one more thing to see, is that getting angry is not helping, it is you paying for their deeds and there is even a way to act decisively and effectively, without getting the anger involved

2009.07.01 19:00 - Sharing Immediacy

I wondered how we can encourage more of us to talk more freely about our own experiences

a theme can draw out those experiences

breath can give us a connection between mind and body

appreciate the presence of what appears

ultimately we are all kind of one thing .. sharing is a way back to that reality

2009.07.02 01:00 - The reasons for clothes

thinking all know how the 'clothing' effects

it's fun to use different looks

2009.07.02 07:00 - Eye of Peace

the pauses within those huge storms...the eye of peace

A love for learning/reading/sharing ideas is far different from schooling

do you think the pauses might be a sort of heartbeat, in a way?

we all love to go out an appreciate the world around us

Deep Appreciation...the kind wherein one is not as aware of 'self as apart' comes alive within real pauses...

lots and lots of very silly sentences in the logs

so we started with "the recording can suggest a need for profundity" and then "maybe silly is best" so in the first case there is a sense that profound is best, and in the second case there is a sense that silly is best

greet everything that arises with fresh eyes

2009.07.02 13:00 - Attachment is about ideas, not objects

surrender. Resistance is futile

question what is real and what is appearance

2009.07.02 19:00 - Time, Space, and Knowledge

I am in the midst of reading "Time, Space and Knowledge" by Tarthang Tulka

are your discussions on reality buddhist in nature?...sometimes, yes,...and there are also people here who are not interested in any system of religion or philosophy

Space, Time and Knowledge are essences of Being

i believe there is no division there is no me and reality

while we seem to live in "lower" time, space and knowledge, from a "higher" point of view, the "lower" bits are equally part of reality, and the whole lower-higher division is like drawing lines on water -- so from the "lower" point of view there is no "higher" view possible; and from the "higher" point of view there is no separate "lower" realm, it's all part of the same "higher" realm, reality as such

the "you", i.e. the "I" that I normally identify with is a role I am playing within the first or "lower" realm -- and that "I" or "you" cannot be catapulted to another realm, as little as a comic figure can be cut out of a comic strip and made to walk on the street . . . :-)

2009.07.03 01:00 - Ten thousand hours

"play" does not mean "trivial" or "idle"

the apparent radical split between play and not-play is an illusion

it can be loose and friendly and malleable, while still being taken seriously by those who do it

play can be disciplined too

what I buy is a thing called "hope" which lies out there, away from me, somewhere entirely else

2009.07.03 07:00 - Solo

Had all the time to calm down and sit nice and quietly at the fountain and ponder

2009.07.03 13:00 - God as a Source and Stories

Being as a resource

I once thought that God could affect my life

Sometimes it is a matter of looking at ourselves from a different direction

reality is a strange thing

If the flame of a candle behind a window three hundred yards away can warm a person, surely the same flame will boil this pot which is only three inches away.

2009.07.03 19:00 - Openness

emptiness is a very important concept, but it is often misunderstood at first, I like to call it "openness" which sounds a lot more accessible and positive than "nothingness"

I have also tried out their "beliefs", but I prefer the word "hypothesis" rather than "belief"

rituals can also be very powerful, if their function is understood correctly, as a kind of magnifying glass, but it is important to know what rituals stand for, and to really get into the spirit of them, the sense of them