Best Of
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
Sweaty zazen?
I have noticed a pattern where I will go back into no zazen at all periods and then return. They are now shorter gaps in between these shikantaza cycles. However, the beginning is always so demanding. It seems I have been going way too fast. It is like I'm slowing down and leaving traffic through a specific path designed for this case scenario. All thought about. No worries, just sit down!
The beginning: the back ache, noticing the left shoulder rising -as if contracted, with a muscleknot or something- and a sensation of inner heat. Quensland, harsh summer heat sweat...
Hope you are all having a great practice and life. It is incredible how much tension we can build up sometimes... and how much is avoidable. Some not so much.
Kotishka
Re: Should a Buddhist own a gun ?
I will be in the minority who does own guns. That said, I've never bought a single one. They are all hunting guns that were handed down in my and my husband's families. We live in a very rural area, and I grew up hunting, fishing, foraging, and gardening to supplement our food and income. I don't remember the last time I hunted, so we just have them, locked up. If I ever needed one for self defense, I'd be in big trouble 😂
Growing up, they were tools like anything else and that is how we learned about them. pretty much every kid here takes gun safety training. When I was a kid (late 80s in this case) we took at as part of our schooling. We took our rifles to school, on the bus, and put them in our lockers until the end of the day where we went to the gun range in our school basement to learn safe gun handling. Crazy 🤯 But I am grateful for it, and I feel safer overall among rural people who don't treat guns like status symbols or fun toys or whatever people think of them otherwise.
I can also say I am grateful for the knowledge and skill. If I had to provide for my family, I would know how to do so and living in a rural area, it's a valuable thing to know. Despite being (partially) Buddhist, I do still eat meat. I often tell myself I should do better to connect with my food than to buy it from the store, but I haven't gotten there yet. Just can't bring myself to it.
karasti