Pema Pera was the guardian for this meeting and the comments are his.
I logged in a bit earlier than I usually do, since I had noticed in my email that I had received some Japanese IMs from Second Life. They are easier to read in-world, rather than in external email, given the ambiguities of various Japanese kanji fonts. The emails were from one of my neighbors in Paduk, who indicated that she was willing to sell a piece of land, helping me connect some of my own disjunct pieces.
A nice side effect of thus being drawn into SL sooner was the fact that I met joseph, who was just passing by my house, about ten minutes before the hour.
joseph Ruhig: hello!
joseph Ruhig: where are you from?
joseph Ruhig: cultivador
joseph Ruhig: are you ok?
Pema Pera: Hi Joseph
joseph Ruhig: Hi!
joseph Ruhig: Where are you from?
Pema Pera: sorry
Pema Pera: I was afk
Pema Pera: welcome!
Pema Pera: I am from Holland originally
joseph Ruhig: this is your home?
Pema Pera: yes
joseph Ruhig: but cultivador is spanish or portuguesich
Pema Pera: I recently bought this land
joseph Ruhig: Do you have built this land??
Pema Pera: this is my first little home that I created here
Pema Pera: I bought it
joseph Ruhig: ow, congratulations!
joseph Ruhig: I love this place!
Pema Pera: thank you!
joseph Ruhig: do you speak portuguese?
Pema Pera: poje falar mais devagar
This was one of the few sentences in Portuguese that I remembered, and I guess I said it correctly, since joseph immediately responded and quickly reached beyond my level of fluency.
joseph Ruhig: eu adoro esse lugar!
joseph Ruhig: eu venho aqui sempre!
Pema Pera: obrigado
Pema Pera: but my portuguese is not very good
Pema Pera: would you like to see a tea house that my friend built nearby?
joseph Ruhig: yes!
joseph Ruhig: I can follow you
Pema Pera: I learned french and german and english in high school
joseph Ruhig: german can I too
Pema Pera: but my own language is Dutch
Pema Pera: the language of Holland.
Pema Pera: Ich spreche auch Deutsch ja
Pema Pera: where are you from?
joseph Ruhig: Yes, I Know. I was in Strijen
Pema Pera: ah!!!
Pema Pera: small town!!!
joseph Ruhig: Ich bin brasilianer aber ich wohne in Deutschland
Pema Pera: ach so
Pema Pera: dann werde ich dich etwas zeigen
joseph Ruhig: ok!
Pema Pera: aber erstmal lassen wir nach dem Tea House spazieren gehen
joseph Ruhig: yes
I was glad to hear that joseph spoke German as well as English, besides Portuguese, so I could point him to the newly translated German version of the PaB web site. We quickly reached the tea house, and it was exactly the time to start our morning session. Maxine was already waiting for us.
Pema Pera: Please feel free to sit down on one of the cushions
Pema Pera: we meet here every day a few times.
joseph Ruhig: this is perfect!
joseph Ruhig: This place is the best of SL!
Pema Pera: We have a blog on http://playasbeing.wordpress.com/
Pema Pera: and also a German translation of part of it on http://playasbeing.wordpress.com/summary/einfuehrung/
Pema Pera: Hi Maxine!
Maxine Walden: hi, Pema
Pema Pera: Maxine, I just met Joseph, when he was walking around near here
Maxine Walden: hello, Joseph, nice to meet you
joseph Ruhig: hello!
joseph Ruhig: Nice to meet you too!
joseph Ruhig: Do you come hier frequently, Maxime?
Pema Pera: Maxine is a regular here, Joseph
Pema Pera: Maxine can you tell Joseph briefly what we are doing here?
joseph Ruhig: ach so
Pema Pera: I have to send an IM about land soon
Maxine Walden: yes, I come regularly, and we mostly talk about our practice of Being, which I understand to be
joseph Ruhig: which practice? Buddhismus?
Maxine Walden: our efforts to open to our elemental selves
Maxine Walden: It is probably very close to Buddhism, which I am not an expert in, but
Maxine Walden: feel a kinship with
joseph Ruhig: I would like to learn some things with you
Maxine Walden: that would be wonderful, I am sure we can learn from each other, that always seems to happen here…
joseph Ruhig: This is crazy, do you know? I think that matrix would be different…
joseph Ruhig: I think that Neo, in the real world, would wake up to other reality..
Maxine Walden: could you say more?
joseph Ruhig: yes..
joseph Ruhig: We are in SL… We can wake up to our real lifes
joseph Ruhig: and in our real lifes, we can wake up to other real life. Can you understand me?
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, I do understand, isn’t that interesting, a kind of binocular vision of ourselves
joseph Ruhig: I question to myself, maybe my spirit is playing a game with me, like me with joseph Ruhig
Sky dropped in as well, so there were now four of us in the tea room.
Maxine Walden: hi, Sky
joseph Ruhig: hello, Sky!
Sky Szimmer: hello!
Maxine Walden: and if we have binocular vision of our various selves it may be that we can play and observe these aspects more deeply
joseph Ruhig: can you explain me about a binocular vision?
Pema Pera: Hi Sky, and sorry Joseph and Maxine!
Pema Pera: I had to answer an IM about the land sales I was interested in
joseph Ruhig: Freund. Das ist kein Problem!
Pema Pera: Danke schoen!
Sky Szimmer: hey pema.. like the new look!
Sky was refering to my newly acquired mohawk.
Pema Pera: Joseph, that is so interesting what you just said
Pema Pera: That we can wake up from SL to RL to something more real
Pema Pera: I call that Being, ultimately, to give it a word
joseph Ruhig: und so weiter!
Pema Pera: ja
Pema Pera: und endgultig Sein
Pema Pera: sorry to lapse into German
Pema Pera: ;>)
Maxine Walden: for me that means being able to look not with just one eye, as it were, but with both , as from two slightly different angles, as the various aspects of ourselves are toward each other..and that allows depth perception as occurs when we use our two eyes to look at something instead of just one eye.
Maxine Walden: sorry, that may be too confusing a description
joseph Ruhig: Points of vision
Sky Szimmer: sorry, but i have to check out a bit. will be back soon.
joseph Ruhig: change the point, change the vision
Maxine Walden: yes, points of view
Maxine Walden: ok, Sky, cu
joseph Ruhig: We see us!
joseph Ruhig: :-)
Maxine Walden: yes, change the view
Maxine Walden: we see us, but at every moment we may see something of us slightly differently
Maxine Walden: as we are never quite the same in the next moment as we were in the last moment
joseph Ruhig: this is crazy! These idee about the time, unlimited and unretornabled time
joseph Ruhig: Sometimes I ask: Does the time exist? I don´t know, I really don´t know
Maxine Walden: yes, the notions of time and timelessness do seem hard to fully understand when we look at them from our everyday experience
joseph Ruhig: People can break this cicle
Maxine Walden: and I agree, that I do not know either. Maybe Pema has something to say here
Pema Pera: you are asking very interesting questions Joseph!
Pema Pera: I think that is right, in some way
Pema Pera: but who is breaking the circle?
Pema Pera: probably not the person who is being played
joseph Ruhig: Me, you..
Pema Pera: but to use your image of the matrix it is what we really are that can break the circle
joseph Ruhig: Deja vu
Pema Pera: it starts with what Maxine said, about looking from different angles
Pema Pera: yes, you can say that ;>)
joseph Ruhig: binocular view! :-)
Pema Pera: and then it becomes possible to see more and more who we really are
Pema Pera: it is a kind of waking up
joseph Ruhig: I had an experience in Brazil, with a tea
Pema Pera: and I’m glad you have the same intuition that I had, about the SLto RL to beyond transitions
Maxine then talked about a kind of stepping back.
Maxine Walden: the other day, I had an experience of being caught up
Maxine Walden: with a concern, which occupied me a lot, and then
Maxine Walden: when I could view myself ‘outside’ that concern, that is
Maxine Walden: from a wider perspective, then I could
Maxine Walden: get a better vision of the limits of my concern, not to
Maxine Walden: diminish the concern, but just to see that it was not the
Maxine Walden: whole world of me…
Maxine Walden: that was useful in terms of ‘binocular’ vision in that
Maxine Walden: I got to know this edge of ‘concern’ part of me, that which can get very
Maxine Walden: worried about an issue or a responsibility…and the wider view
Maxine Walden: could keep a perspective of the ‘concern’ as just one aspect of me in the ‘world
joseph Ruhig: This was deep, but I can understand you. We are a lot of different things together
Maxine Walden: yes, a lot of different things together, when sometimes something wants to grab my attention and say ‘no, no, there is only ONE thing’;
joseph Ruhig: exactly! This happen when I´m in meditation!
Maxine Walden: it feels so valuable to be able to keep the perspective that there is almost never just ‘one thing’ of concern
Maxine Walden: oh, please say more
joseph Ruhig: These ´power´, that keep me involved with superficial things, or with only one aspect of my life, becomes clearly when I keep the meditation
Maxine Walden: yes, that is interesting to be able to keep the clarity about that ‘power’ isn’t it?
Maxine Walden: to become freed from the power
Maxine Walden: by observing it
Maxine Walden: from another angle, such as meditation allows
The conversation moved to the land I had bought recently.
Maxine Walden: Pema, may I ask briefly how the land issues are going”
Maxine Walden: going?
Pema Pera: they are going very well
Pema Pera: yesterday I bought 5 plots in Paduk, each 1,024 sq.m, relatively big in itself
Pema Pera: and four were together in a square
Pema Pera: but the fifth one touched at one point only
Pema Pera: so you could not walk from that one to the rest
Pema Pera: and if we want to create a forest, you should be able to walk
Pema Pera: from one to the other
Pema Pera: so I send a message to a neighbor, whether he wanted to sell a plot adjacent to both of my pieces, yesterday
Pema Pera: I sent it in Japanese, because he was Japanese
Pema Pera: this morning I got an answer, and yes, he is happy to sell for a very reasonable price
Pema Pera: that is why I was distracted the first few minutes of this session
joseph Ruhig: (we can build our reality - this is an amazing idea)
Pema Pera: Yes, Joseph it is amazing isn’t it!
Pema Pera: Are you relatively new to SL?
joseph Ruhig: i feel me here in my world!
joseph Ruhig: yes. 2 days
Maxine Walden: I thought you were probably occupied in that way, Pema. Very lovely how things seem to be coming together
Pema Pera: yes!
Maxine Walden: yes, Joseph, I have been in SL just over a month and it still feels very new, but amazingly versatile
And we talked about our plans with the land.
Pema Pera: Joseph, we are going to create a large forest here
Pema Pera: with hills and streams and little paths
joseph Ruhig: wow!
Pema Pera: so I am now buying the land for that
Pema Pera: In a few weeks and months, this will all look even better than it does now
joseph Ruhig: Oh.. I have only 6 L$
Pema Pera: haha, that is fine!
Pema Pera: you don’t have to pay us anything
joseph Ruhig: but I will make camping to help this land
Pema Pera: we are happy to have visitors
Pema Pera: Oh, you don’t have to worry about that — but thank you for your kind offer!
joseph Ruhig: but this place is wonderful
Pema Pera: what we need more than money is time
Pema Pera: Sky here and Maxine also, both of them, are sometimes here when I cannot be here.
Pema Pera: I really appreciate the way they give some of their time.
joseph Ruhig: ah, yes. I understand you.. i think that be a programming is very difficult.
Maxine Walden: I have been wondering about offering resources as well, yes I also agree that time is the most precious commodity…and maybe if useful we can talk about contributions of other resources another time, Pema
Pema Pera: Yes, Maxine, time is my most precious resource, by far
I suddenly realized that it was quite a special day.
Pema Pera: Sky and Maxine, do you realize that today is a kind of birthday?
Pema Pera: We started exactly one month ago . . . .
Maxine Walden: yes, it is May, just a month ago, was thinking about that
Sky Szimmer: Oh? it feels much longer
Pema Pera: yes!!!
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, much longer…
Maxine Walden: that is another interesting perspective about time
Maxine Walden: when one’s life feels very full it seems
Sky Szimmer: I am grateful for this opportunity. Often I feel so lonely not to be able to share and discuss about this aspect of my life that is so important to me
Pema Pera: thank you, Sky!
Sky Szimmer: it is great to have a community of people whom I can learn from
Maxine Walden: like time flies, but also that so much gets lived in a short time that the time span seems very long…
Pema Pera: yes, it is!
Pema Pera: yes, Maxine!
Pema Pera: time seems to speed up a lot in SL ;>)
Sky Szimmer: yes. that aspect of SL is interesting indeed
Maxine Walden: perhaps times become a measure of how we feel about our internal living space
Pema Pera: and yes, Sky, isn’t it nice that we can all come here, every day?
Maxine Walden: as if we regard time a kind of boundary of a space or container of our experience
Pema Pera: And what is more, that we know that at any given time, within six hours we can meet at least some friends here?
Sky Szimmer: yes! Pema. It is like that bar on Cheers
Pema Pera: bar on cheers??
Saron dropped in, litterally, on Sky.
Pema Pera: Hi Saron!
Sky Szimmer: uh oh. saron straddled me : )
Saron Heron: hi
Maxine Walden: hi, Saron
Pema Pera: Our friend Joseph here is from Brasil
Pema Pera: but lives in Germany now
joseph Ruhig: saron, would you like to sit here?
Pema Pera: Does anyone here speak Portuguese?
Saron Heron: no
joseph Ruhig: ok.
Maxine Walden: no, wish I did
Pema Pera: please take any cushion you like, Saron
Saron Heron: cheers
Maxine Walden: cheers
Saron Heron: I am learning Japanese from a SL friend
Pema Pera: great!
joseph Ruhig: Saron, genki desu ka?
Pema Pera: wow!
Saron Heron: はい
Saron Heron: げんきです
Pema Pera: we all speak Japanese
Saron Heron: ｗ
Pema Pera: すごいなあ！！
Maxine Walden: well, not quite everyone…
joseph Ruhig: sugoiii!!!
Pema Pera: 本当に日本語！
joseph Ruhig: shikashi nihongo wa tottemo muzukashii desu!
Pema Pera: そうですよねえ。。。
Saron Heron: そうですね
Pema Pera: well, half of us seem to speak Japanese
Pema Pera: after all
Pema Pera: this is a Japanese tea house
Pema Pera: ;.)
Sky Szimmer: I love this international exchange!
joseph Ruhig: yes!
Sky Szimmer: I feel like I am at the airport!
Yes, that was a nice comparison. I was really surprised to see both Joseph and Saron speaking Japanese.
joseph Ruhig: one only world!
Pema Pera: I spoke only one sentence Portuguese with Joseph
Saron Heron: みなさんはなすのはつづけてくださいね
Pema Pera: and he spoke back and I could understand only half ;>)
Sky Szimmer: I understand a bit of german and japanese but not enough to converse.
joseph Ruhig: hanasu no zusukete kudasai. I can understand!
joseph Ruhig: hehe
Pema Pera: yes, continue talking
Pema Pera: you see, most of us speak some Japanese
Pema Pera: well, Maxine
Pema Pera: you’ll have to learn a few words!
Pema Pera: hahaha
Maxine Walden: this may be another thing i will have to learn, yes,
joseph Ruhig: hahha
Maxine Walden: in such an international crowd
joseph Ruhig: i´m learning english, german and now, japanese!
joseph Ruhig: I will do daimoku sancho and come soon
butu-rei poseball: joseph Ruhig, say ‘/1 Hide’ to hide me, or ‘/1 Show’ to make me show. Or just right-click and sit on me to use me.
Pema Pera: yes, it does feel like an airport . . . .
Maxine Walden: this is so interesting to experience the edges of what we know…and to be comfortable or uncomfortable as the case may be
Pema Pera: yes, in many ways, indeed, Maxine, thinking talking expressing and “reading” each other . . . . .
Maxine Walden: the edges, being when I cannot understand what you all are saying, but to stay within myself and waiting til I can again understand you…and not to feel
Maxine Walden: smaller than you speaking the wider array of languages
Pema Pera: actually it is like an airport also in that people come flying in ;>)
Maxine Walden: speak only English, I fear
joseph Ruhig: Can you borrow your english to mee?? I have to do a First Certificate English…
Maxine Walden: at this point anyway
Maxine Walden: it would be a pleasure to give you some of my English but it seems to me that you are doing very well
Maxine Walden: as it is
joseph Ruhig: I´m afraid about that.
joseph Ruhig: My master depends that
Maxine Walden: afraid?
Pema Pera: it would be nice if we could “borrow” our language skills from each other (^_^)
joseph Ruhig: yes… I need this certificate
joseph Ruhig: lend is better, isn´t?
Maxine Walden: our talking here may lend you the skills you need
joseph Ruhig: yes..
joseph Ruhig: borrow is the other side
Maxine Walden: right
joseph Ruhig: ok.. Sorry!
Maxine Walden: not at all…appreciate you letting us observe your learning
Maxine Walden: that is one of the things, the openness we have with each other, rare in RL
For good measure, I tried out another Portuguese sentence I remembered.
Pema Pera: Tenho muitas saudades de conversar contigo, muitas mesmo.
joseph Ruhig: where do you learnt Portuguese?
Pema Pera: haha, I picked up some expressions from a few friends
Pema Pera: both from Portugal and Brasil
joseph Ruhig: aham
Pema Pera: Did I say that right?
joseph Ruhig: yes. Perfect
Pema Pera: I just love the expression “saudades”
joseph Ruhig: can you understand what you did say?
Pema Pera: every language has its own special words
joseph Ruhig: yes…
Pema Pera: how would you say “saudades” in English?
Maxine Walden: what does that mean
joseph Ruhig: saudade is very typical.
joseph Ruhig: more or less. ” I miss you”
Pema Pera: “contigo” is very nice too . . . .
joseph Ruhig: or something like that
Pema Pera: but more general
joseph Ruhig: yes, exactly
joseph Ruhig: saudade is a feeling
Pema Pera: a feeling of how to say . . . .
Maxine Walden: (I have 5 minutes before I have to go). Oh, a tender comment about a feeling, saudade…
Pema Pera: something like the fleetingness of the world
Pema Pera: of all encounters
Pema Pera: can be romantic too but can be much wider like in this case
Pema Pera: that we sit here
Pema Pera: that this moment is unique
Pema Pera: will never come back
Pema Pera: is that “saudades” Joseph?
joseph Ruhig: yes! Like the wather behind us
joseph Ruhig: so…
joseph Ruhig: I will try to explain
Pema Pera: Please do!
joseph Ruhig: I´m in German and my mamma is in Brazil.
joseph Ruhig: I´m feeling saudades for my mamma
joseph Ruhig: nicht for.. das ist von auf deutsch
Maxine Walden: yes, that conveys the emotion very well
Pema Pera: auch gut!
Pema Pera: Ich kann das uebersetzen, Joseph
joseph Ruhig: good! :-)
joseph Ruhig: and contigo is with you
Pema Pera: but more than that . . .
Maxine Walden: I must go, very nice to meet you Joseph and hope to see you again soon. Bye, Pema and Sky
Pema Pera: bye Maxine!
Pema Pera: And sometime soon we will talk about Being and beings!
Pema Pera: we will keep that on the back burner
Maxine Walden: always, the back burner is always on…
joseph Ruhig: This was a prayer to me!
joseph Ruhig: I hope see you soon too!
Maxine Walden: yes, I would like that…
Sky Szimmer: got to go all. auf wiedersehen. cu later.
joseph Ruhig: bis bald!
Pema Pera: thanks for stopping by, Sky!
Joseph and I found ourselves where we had started: just the two of us.
joseph Ruhig: so.. There we are!
Pema Pera: you see, Joseph, many friendly people stop by here every day, a few times a day
joseph Ruhig: this is increduble
joseph Ruhig: I was here several times but I have never seen somebody here
Pema Pera: now you know how to find us!
joseph Ruhig: :-)
joseph Ruhig: My fiend. I have to go.
Pema Pera: Thank you for stopping by, Joseph!
Pema Pera: We will be here every day at 7 am and 1 pm and 7 pm, SL time
Pema Pera: You are in Germany now, right?
joseph Ruhig: Ich bedanke mich, und ich werde helfen mit wenig geld
joseph Ruhig: yes
Pema Pera: That will be 16:00 and 22:00
Pema Pera: and soon, starting next week, also 10:00
Pema Pera: and also 4:00 aber dann schlafst du wahrscheinlich
Pema Pera: vier Mal jeder Tag
joseph Ruhig: ja, denke ich
joseph Ruhig: ok. Alles klar
Pema Pera: aber diese Woche noch nicht 10:00
Pema Pera: 10:00 fangt naechste Woche an
joseph Ruhig: verstanden
Pema Pera: bis bald!
joseph Ruhig: bis bald!
joseph Ruhig: Danke für alles!
Pema Pera: Danke auch!
Pema Pera: gut dich hier zu sehen