A. Month of April

Although I was not there, I can say with some confidence, that it was a bright sunny day in Rieul as the first session of Play as Being officially began as planned on April 1, 2008 at 7:00 am SLT with five participants who remain anonymous. Storm was present at the 13:00 pm session with Pema and two others. The 19:00 session included Maxine, Friedrich, Dakini, Bunun and Pema. Unsurprisingly the main topic of these sessions was the 9-second approach and maintaining a log of the observations. At the end of the evening session, Maxine noted:

Maxine Walden: I can see hanging around here will really widen my horizons :-)

The second day began the posting of the full log for the session and a discussion of blogs. There is a great amount of enthusiasm among the first attendees and many were keeping logs or writing blogs. Some of the people attending these first sessions came into Second Life to come to the group so some discusssion touches on how to do things. Storm was a great source of information. Dakini had been very gracious in inviting the group into the teahouse and the group is first a bit tentative in its usage. Dakini put them at ease about that insisting it was the group's teahouse too. On the fourth day it is surprising to see Pema wonder about how this experiment will turn out:

Pema Pera: no idea where this is going to
Pema Pera: in the long run
Pema Pera: we’ll see!

Throughout the month of April, PaB met three times a day and Pema was the guardian for almost all of them. The enthusiasm lasted as many of the early attendees attended so many sessions, some more than one session a day. The group sat the tone and style for the sessions to come. The groups are generally small in this month, the conversations right on subject, the participants very frank about their experiences. There was a recognizable enthusiasm and people often come to multiple sessions a day. It is fun reading these early logs.

The Hall of Appearance was born on April 7. The plan was to use one of the smaller room for sessions and move into the large hall when there were many visitors. Pema noted the following about his name for the building:

The background is formed by a favorite sentence of mine: “appreciate the presence of appearance as a presentation by Being” — appearance as what appears, raw, direct, before turning it into ex-perience, by a subject of an object.

Throughout the month there is discussion about how to use the building including making consideration of turning it into a library. There is consideration of creating a bar within sight of the teahouse.

On April 11 at the 1:00 session, Stim appears at PaB for the first time. There is no record of the conversation then. The first recorded conversation is a discussion between Riddle and Stim about the awareness exercises of PaB and QWAQ. Some of the participants are meeting with Steven in QWAQ in between the sessions in PaB.

Just a taste from April 15:

Pema Pera: you don’t have to “practice” to remember the one you have fallen in love with (^_^)
Pema Pera: or if you are really gripped by a fascinating research problem that just doesn’t leave you alone . . . .
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, these are the things that are perhaps felt as the active agents
Pema Pera: or by a problem that just keeps nagging you . . .
Maxine Walden: these seem to be the background things that are ‘playing’ with us?
Pema Pera: so if you can let the question “if I shift focus from what I have to what I am” keep bugging you . . . .
Pema Pera: that will then fill the background of the 891 seconds in between the 9 seconds, every quarter of an hour
Pema Pera: but “if I shift focus from what I have to what I am” is too long a sentence to keep in mind
Pema Pera: “what am I” is much easier
Pema Pera: or “who am i”
Pema Pera: or “am”
Pema Pera: I personally find “am” nice and compact
Pema Pera: very portable

4/15

Pema Pera: You are interested in Buddhism?
Moondust Sella: yes I am
Pema Pera: we are too
Pema Pera: and at the same time
Pema Pera: we are also interested in trying to find ways
Pema Pera: to share the core of Buddhist insights with those who don’t like religion
Pema Pera: and don’t like to call themselves anything-ists

Later....

Pema Pera: May I quote a short poem, by an Indian master, Tilopa, a hundred years ago?
Pema Pera: only six lines
Pema Pera: not much information in that ;>)
Moondust Sella: of course….
Pema Pera: Let go of what has passed
Pema Pera: Let go of what may come
Pema Pera: Let go of what is happening now
Pema Pera: Don’t try to figure anything out
Pema Pera: Don’t try to make anything happen
Pema Pera: Relax, right now, and rest

On April 28, Pema sent out an email to seven of the regular attendees, inviting each of them to be guardian at one session a week. All seven accepted. The original PaB-7 were Storm, Dakini, Sky, Genesis, Caledonia, Solobill and Maxine. Each would take one day a week starting on Monday May 5.

The following is Pema's summary of the meeting:

That afternoon, some of us got together an hour early, in preparation for the new schedule, starting next week. The idea was to spread out from three to four meetings a day, now including the night shift as well. Given that I would be awake during the SLT night, while in Japan, it would be natural for me to take the 1 am, 7 am, and 7 pm shifts. The afternoon shift, at 1 pm, would be at 5 am in Japan, so I will happily leave that to others.

To fill the afternoon slot, seven regular participants had volunteered to each take responsibility for one day of the week. During that day the person responsible would act as a kind of greeter, making sure no one would come to an empty tea house between 1:00 pm and 1:30 pm, SLT. And instead of greeter, we had dreamt up a better term: guardian, guarding the mid-day time in the heat house. Each guardian had agreed to either be there on his or her day, or else to make sure someone else would be there, in case he or she would have a conflicting schedule.

Storm had come up with a few alternative naming for the days, depending on who would be on duty, and I added a few more names to the list, so that we wound up with the following new names for the seven days of the week, starting with Monday (our new schedule will start on Monday, 5/5): Skyday, Genday, Calday, Stormday, Soloday, Dakday and Maxday.

The new google guardian group was created on April 30.

Stim Morane also joined as a guardian at the end of the month.