Meanwhile

Walking home from gaming, I catch flashes of white through the trees. I turn my head this way and that, never slowing my pace, as I try to glimpse the moon.

And then, just as the distant noise of traffic lulls momentarily, I step into a break in the park and see it, suspended mere millimetres over Salisbury Crags, a handsbreadth from Arthur's Seat, huge and numinous.

And this, this I think, is what it feels like to be alive. This is good.

I spend the rest of the walk home, of course, wording and re-wording, trying to find the correct way of phrasing my description to get across the emotion involved in the situation.

And that's pretty darn good too.

Jewish Zen

*If you wish to know The Way, don't ask for directions.
Argue.

*Take only what is given. Own nothing but your robes and an alms bowl.
Unless, of course, you have the closet space.

*Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the
wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Budhha with
posture like that.

*There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you
never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

*Wherever you go, there you are.
Your luggage is another story.

*To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the
following: get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

*Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that
not every physical sensation is a symptom of a illness.

*If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

*Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and
attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

*Whenever you feel anger, you should say, "May I be free of this anger!"
This rarely works, but talking to yourself in public will encourage
others to leave you alone.

*Drink tea and nourish life.
With the first sip, joy.
With the second, satisfaction.
With the third, Danish.

*Be patient and achieve all things.
Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

*Be here now.
Be someplace else later.
Is that so complicated?


from Subtle Shadow via Monique

I hate all music

Go here to have yours slagged off.

The future looks bright

Remember the Richard Dawkins rebranding of "materialist/non-supernatural"as "Bright"?

It just got a positive NY Times editorial.

I'm beginning to think this one will run for a bit.

I just scared myself

I just added an LJ friend to ICQ. It showed me their real name as part of their profile. Ten seconds with bt.com and google gave me their home address and their website. I felt vaguely worried.

Of course, all of my information is on my userinfo page, but it was a bit of a shock to see how easily I could go from a userinfo page to a website, address, phone number and number of highers.

Update - oh in the interest of scientific enquiry, just found a photo, a sibling and various other bits and pieces.

Of course, thinking more sanely, googling for Andrew Ducker will find you a lot of information on me, and I can't see any way to link back from theirname to their LJ account.

I'm probably worrying over nothing.

Things you never want to see...