Got this great little piece from Killing the Buddha by way of wood s lot:

There is a difference between being lost in thought and meditating that opens one’s awareness. In meditation, as in other activities in which the flow state is so important, one must remain in contact with the environment, in fact the purpose of the activity is to enhance connections with the environment, both inner and outer.

To do this, to have this luxury of developing a practice that expands our awareness, it is necessary to embrace the external reminders of the real world, for those are ultimately the things that seed our practice.

For more on Buddhist perspectives on working with our own reactions to disturbances outside of us, have a look at the practice of lojong mind training, a practice of working with the messiness in the world by developing our own compassion. Especially useful in this respect is Pema Chodron’s book, Start Where You Are.

For a while in the mid nineties, CBC ran a satire called “The Great Eastern” which billed itself as “Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine,” aired by arrangement with the fictitious Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland. While looking for something else, I stumbled over their website, featuring a bunch of episodes:

This was one of the best shows ever to air on the CBC in the mid nineties. Absolutely brilliant writing, and very subtle humour. Very much in the British tradition (see People Like Us, for example). Rumours are that the GE crew will be back in some guise in the summer, but not as The Great Eastern.

Another installment of linkage for your perusal:

Just got a phone call from my friend Mike Mearns, who is the Executive Director of the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of BC, an organization that supports First Nations financial and management capacity through training and workshops. They are looking for an Executive Assistant, but don’t let the job title fool you. The main duties are developing training materials and organizing workshops for First Nations administrators working “at the coal face” as it were:

There may be those of you out there who have an interest in facilitation. adult learning, management and administration training and First Nations issues that might want to consider this one. The competition is closing very soon, and they are still looking to fill out their candidate field.

Contact Mike through the AFOA website and let him know I sent you.

I was facilitating a very difficult process last week with a complex group. Over three days, my plan for the work changed constantly, responding to the internal and external pressures that were flowing all around us. At the end of the second day, I felt slain, as if anything I tried to do had the opposite of its intended effect. It was a tough day for all of us.

On the third day, during which some remarkable transformations came forward from the group, one group member told me a story in a break. He was a commercial fisherman, who has fished salmon his whole life out in the Georgia Strait and around the mouth of the Fraser River. He described a time once when he cast his net and it got taken by the current and hung up around the jetty at the mouth of the Fraser. Thinking he was going to lose his net (or worse, capsize his boat), he carefully began to bring it in and was relieved to find that the net was not only intact, but it was also full of ling cod.

He was thankful for his good fortune, and has always had half a mind to try and do it again, but worried that he would lose his net. In short, it’s not the kind of good luck that can be easily repeated without major risks.

It took me close to a week to fully understand the reason for this story (sometimes Elders teach so subtly, THEY aren’t even aware they are doing so! And sometimes, the students are so preoccupied that we’re plain THICK…not sure which was the case here!)). So sometimes we make mistakes and once we realize them, a little attention and care can save our basic tools, and perhaps, even gather in a completely unexpected catch. It’s all about being open to the situation you are in RIGHT NOW, and not getting cocky when you pull out of it with a hold full of cod. For it is not always US that controls these things…sometimnes it is just the flow of the currents and the group mind of the ling cod.