Best Of
Re: Buddhist quotes
"Since we were born, we have let our mind do what it likes, like a spoiled child, and we have to admit that nothing really positive has come of it. To take control of it is indispensable. That is something worth spending time on, even if it is just a little bit each day."
JIGME KHYENTSE RINPOCHE (b. 1964)
marcitko
Re: For the coming year
I’m finding some days my breath feels kind of ‘open to the elements’, and then I am better off breathing high in the chest and the nose, other days I take the breath deeper. I usually connect better to the breath in the morning or in the evening.
Usually in the first few seconds I find I can just observe.
I approach the breath with friendliness, as if it were a skittish animal.
Then usually it melts away and I find myself in control.
I breathe in a less shallow way then.
Jeroen
Re: Seven Factors of Awakening
Ajahn Sona was my second Buddhist teacher! I still tune in Birken Monastery Livestream from time to time. Thanks. I will re-watch 
Kotishka
Re: Seven Factors of Awakening
For anyone interested, here is a full playlist of an English-language virtual retreat on the Seven Factors of Awakening - both talks and Q&As.
The speaker is Ajahn Sonna, the Abbot of Birken Thai Forrest Monastery in Canada.
For those audio-only inclined, the same content is available on Spotify and iTunes.
I've been relatively obsessively listening to his various talks, during walks, in bed, and at other times, and can definitely recommend.
marcitko
Re: Islam: The Rough Diamond?
@Jeroen said:
But then you can never really say. I’ve not done a deep dive on the World Trade Center collapse, but there were some very strange things about those events, like the Building 7 collapse. The US went after Al’Qaeda hard after that, and they picked up a whole lot of terrorist suspects and put them in Guantanamo, it would be quite something if the original thing all turned out to be some sort of intelligence operation.
They didn't really. Al Qaeda was flown out of Afghanistan prior to Invasion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift
Then later Al Qaeda fought wars for the USA in Libya & Syria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Islamic_Fighting_Group
Al Qaeda leader in Libya was given award by USA Senators: https://x.com/timand2037/status/1156465447853707264?lang=bg
Waked
Re: Should a Buddhist own a gun ?
I think you’d make a great moderator @karasti, you always struck me as thoroughly practical and able to see the many sides of an argument.
Jeroen
Re: Should a Buddhist own a gun ?
@Jeroen My beliefs have always been constantly evolving. I still firmly believe in the foundations of Buddhism. But I am also pretty pagan and the core of my beliefs is centered on the laws of nature, primarily. They work well together, for me. But for other people, they wouldn't. Ie, I know a lot of Official Buddhists who dislike Thay's teachings on interconnectedness with nature as "not Buddhist." I believe very strongly in that. So, it really depends on the details which is always where things get murky IMO 😂
@lobster thanks for the reminder, I will send a note about the moderator title, as that happened right before I took an extended internet break and I thought I had made clear I did not wish to be a moderator but apparently it is still there!
karasti
Re: Space - the final frontier
I have been very enthusiastically following the news about the new ground-based Vera Rubin Telescope in Chile. From what I can tell, it has excited astronomers worldwide on par with the launch of Hubble or James Webb.
It has a mirror of 8.4 meters, which is like the largest ground-based telescopes, so nothing special. But it has a HUGE field of view, something like 500-1000x the field of view of other ground-based telescopes. So the idea is to image the whole sky visible from Chile every 3 days, by making many short exposures of 30 seconds, and to keep surveying the whole sky like that for 10 years.
The effect will be that everything that changes will be detected like never before: asteroids, interstellar objects (that we have only begun to detect), supernovae, novae, variable stars... It will also make the largest catalogue of galaxies and stars to date (10 billion of each).
I was already geeking out, but then I found out that the Director of Construction, and once the telescope is operational the Director of Science, is Željko Ivezić, a Croatian who went.. to my high-school! He's really great in terms of getting people excited but staying scientific and at explaining the science behind it in simple terms but without dumbing it down too much.
To be clear: Since it will be making many very short exposures, we should not expect "beautiful pictures", like eg. Hubble or Keck. However, after 10 years, since the images can be "stacked", it will be possible to have both "beautiful pictures" (stacked images of the region over 10 years) AND a "movie" of the whole sky (a time-series of a region of sky or the whole sky).
A few photos have already been unveiled and the actual survey should start in a few months.
First photos unveiling text:
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-first-pictures-from-vera-rubin-are-here
First photos unveiling press-conference:
marcitko
Re: Space - the final frontier
I do miss the night sky of Lanzarote. Nothing compared to what I see (nothing) in the city centre here..!
Kotishka