Following a great talk from Gil Fronsdel on how self is constructed, I had a nice insight yesterday about personal identity. Fronsdel says that when something happens, there are three things going on: There is the reality There is what we think about the reality There is the “I” that is thinking. These are conditional, that is, they depend on and arise from each other. When I see something, I think something about it and my self in strengthened. For example: It’s raining today I hate rainy days. I’m not suited to living in a rainforest! In Buddhism, …
This is my son Finn, one of my teachers, facing huge waves at Ka’anapali on Maui last week. He plays in these waves with no fear at all. Waves that are two or three times taller than he is simply wash over him. He knows what to do, how to dive under the wave, how to swim in and out of currents, how to watch and read the sea, and his fear becomes play. He taught himself to bodysurf. Fear does funny things to us. It makes us change sizes, for example. When we …
Today in our planning for the 2009 Food and Society gathering, one of our young core team members made a bold declaration. She agreed to step up to be a target for any blame that might be generated during our work. When I later asked her out of which practice her commitment came, she said it was from the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong mind training, in which one of the slogans is “Drive all blames into one.” Trungpa Rinpoche comments on that slogan: The text says “drive all blames into one”. the reason you have to do that is …
John Dumbrille on our recent efforts here on Bowen Island: That self governance will be better enabled using web tools is probable. After all, there are economic drivers (‘more for less’) propelling it. But probable success factors are all about money and efficiency and intention, spirit and design. Thinking the litmus test is – does this BOWEGOV etc help people come home to themselves. How to measure this may be ‘happy’ indices, or, put another way – ‘spirit of giving/sharing’ indices. I am dedicated to the face to face. Inasmuch as these tools bring us into generous relationship with …
Tenneson Woolf from a harvest poem called How Are You Navigating in the Time of Dramatic Change?: I sound like I don’t know what I am doing, but I do know. I find my way in the immediately infront, the next simple elegant step. The next simple elegant step describes my approach to action. Recently, in our little consulting firm we have adopted a project status process that involves writing down only the next step for each of our projects. When you take the to do list and write it as one thing to do only, one elegant …