Jundo: Beauty in a Time of Ugliness ...

[Daitetsu]

Words coming at the right time.
Thank you, Jundo!

Gassho, 大哲

Sat2day

[Onkai]

Gassho, Onkai
Sat lah

[Guest]

Nice talk Jundo, thanks for that. I'm not often able to attend zazenkai at the moment, having a small baby on the house, so I catch up when I can.

Something that has been a constant in my life, a sort of music that binds it all together in a basic unity, has been to go out at night and look up, see the stars overhead, the living universe out there for all to see, so far beyond us that out time on the stage here as something that has already passed, in comparison to those unfathomable depths of time and space.

Now winter is approaching, Orion and the Dog Star are prominent in the sky early in the mornings when I get up in the mornings to sit, I am reminded of this essential eternity that is at once constantly passing away.

Sattday,Lah

Dan

[Jundo]

Nice talk Jundo, thanks for that. I'm not often able to attend zazenkai at the moment, having a small baby on the house, so I catch up when I can.

Something that has been a constant in my life, a sort of music that binds it all together in a basic unity, has been to go out at night and look up, see the stars overhead, the living universe out there for all to see, so far beyond us that out time on the stage here as something that has already passed, in comparison to those unfathomable depths of time and space.

Now winter is approaching, Orion and the Dog Star are prominent in the sky early in the mornings when I get up in the mornings to sit, I am reminded of this essential eternity that is at once constantly passing away.

Sattday,Lah

Dan

I think a biologist, like you, Dan, would have to have a special sense of this.

Nature, up close, might be sometimes violent, not what humans might wish, fire and flood, something out of balance for awhile. Yet, pulling back far, or looking deep, one finds incredible majesty.

Gassho, J

stlah

PS - I think I told you once, I wanted to be a biologist ... but somehow ended in law school. Maybe it is not too late to take some courses.

[Guest]

I think a biologist, like you, Dan, would have to have a special sense of this.

Nature, up close, might be sometimes violent, not what humans might wish, fire and flood, something out of balance for awhile. Yet, pulling back far, or looking deep, one finds incredible majesty.

Gassho, J

stlah

PS - I think I told you once, I wanted to be a biologist ... but somehow ended in law school. Maybe it is not too late to take some courses.

Yes, I remember that conversation, it's never too late until you're in the ground.

Nature, red in tooth and claw, Tennyson said that I think, but that's been my perception for as long as I can recall, life eats life to beget more life and suffering is part of it.

To use another analogy; if you look up close at an oil painting all you see is untidy brushwork, but you need to stand back to see the composition. For me that means getting outside, somewhere where I can see the sky and stars. The eternal hymn of starlight (which we are literally made up of and have our lives from), of which we are a single note of a single stanza, yet every note matters.

Of course we lose track of this, involved in our daily lives, lost in our hopeless little screens, as uncle Leonard put it. By evolution we tend to look for signs of trouble, this is a survival trait. Animals without anxiety don't survive, just ask the Dodos, but having the red warning light on day and night due to media and clickbait is something that I'm sure contributes to this, keeping people on edge, and people on edge turn to violence, by looking for danger we tend to find it, or else make it. Better I think to be peace, and spread that instead.

Gassho,

Sattday/lah