Titles are important. They tell us what your scope is about, even if it is just a chat. Viewers want to know what they are coming to see. So make sure it is not left blank. It will also help you focus on your content (and viewer’s perspective) as well.
Category: other
All posts that do not belong in the categories of buddhism or philosophy goes in here. Please check tags for more details about what the post is about.
Periscope Tip #1 – don’t get burnt out
Do not set unrealistic goals time schedules for yourself. Scope because you have something to say, not because you have fans to please. Do not make promises which you cannot keep (example: do not say “I will scope everyday” unless you can).
My thoughts on 10 years of sustainability dharma
1.
Has it been that long?
sustainability dharma started ten years ago on 17 February 2006. It was a critique of our lifestyles and a call to sustainability and a sustainable lifestyle. I still believe in these values but I myself have not achieved that. I am not even close. But this, as a log of who I am, is invaluable.
To live sustainably would mean to give up many things and to change my way of life. Blogging would most definitely be one. My work as an assistant professor would be another. They both use more energy than necessary. A lot of wastage.
But that is not a reason why I should quit. One must look at the overall situation. Do I lead an overall sustainable lifestyle? No, I do not. But perhaps the most sustainable part of my life is the farming, the growing of food. My wife estimates 80% of our vegetable come from our garden. It is grown organically and we probably have room to increase capacity.
My spiritual practice also has gotten better. More than anything my giving up of alcohol (for health rather than spiritual reasons) has made me a better and more controlled person, less likely to blow up and react inappropriately.
During this time I have watched my children grow up, grown older together with my partner, become a father and husband of sorts. I have taken on many more responsibilities, chosen to do things I have believed in, learned more than perhaps I have imparted.
2.
Blogging is not easy. You need to have something to say in order to blog. You could say a lot but whether they are worth saying is a different matter. Which is why I have less to say today than I did ten years ago.
Another difference is that the internet landscape has changed somewhat. Blogs made it easy for everyone to have an online voice. But it was relatively static. It took a long time to reach an audience and to get comments. In 2016, we have Twitter but I think more importantly we have Periscope. No other time have we had life broadcast with an interactive audience to boot. Anyone can show their world to an audience and get realtime feedback and interaction. Once I have done my live broadcast, my scope, I am finished. No more is necessary. No editing is needed. It is different and efficient. It is the future of communication.
3.
So is there a place for traditional blogs? Can we call them traditional even though they are no more than 15 years old? The time length for anything to become traditional has become shorter. These are stressful times. I would hate to be my son’s age. I would hate to be born now. It is so confusing and at the same time exciting in a strange kind of way.
We no longer surf the net with notebook or desktop computers. We go online with our mobile devices – our smartphones and tablets. The landscape has changed a lot. I no longer read about this morning’s protest at this afternoon’s website, I can now see it from four people’s perspective in realtime and even react to and with those people who are scoping.
But somewhere in there, still, is room to write these posts, albeit only once in a while rather than on a daily basis like in “the old days” when I had no other means.
2016 New Year’s resolutions
That time of the year again.
Reflecting on what I have done. This year I went back to my old temple to visit my teacher, Harada Tangen Roshi after a 25 year absence. Unfortunately, he has been weakened with age and I was not able to meet him. I hope to go back again soon and continue my practice. His disciple (I ashamed to say I have forgotten his name) met us and looked after us.
Zen is an important part of me. It has influenced my life and outlook. I even gave a talk on Zen and language learning this year. They are not so different. Indeed, Zen is part of everyday life, part of the ordinary. And this is what makes Zen extraordinary. I am still in awe of the understand of Zen.
So I guess that is why my resolutions always revolve around Zen.
This year, I resolve to focus like I (am supposed to) do in Zen. What happens on the cushion is no different to what happens off it. That is what Zen is about. If you think meditation is something done on the cushion that is a misunderstanding.
And because I shouldn’t make too many promises, too many resolutions, I will end it with just one.
Happy New Year and I hope 2016 will be more peaceful one for all. Let’s try to make the world a better place.
Nuclear versus fossil fuel power
In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident Japan had gone quite literally all non-nuclear for a while. The country had switched off all of its nuclear power plants in what amounts to a knee-jerk reaction to the disaster that still is happening now and will for many more decades to come. In its place we turned back to using coal importing more than we ever had. And all of the sudden nobody in Japan cared much about climate change and global warming anymore.
The question should never have been about whether we choose nuclear or fossil fuel for our energy needs, but rather how we can reduce our energy usage in the first place. Whichever we choose to use we are still using too much energy for the good of the planet.
And now that the dust (or is that nuclear dust) has settled from Fukuyama we have turned on the nuclear tap again to quench our nuclear thirst.
Nothing ever changes, does it.
The search
Doing things for humanity; now doing things for the planet – Sebastian Salgado
I love photography. I love photography for its power to contain what we feel in the stillness of a single moment. I particularly like black and white photography. I like it because by removing colour the photographer forces the viewer to focus on the details, on what is happening in the scene, on the content of the photograph. And no one does this better than one of my favourite photographers, Sebastian Salgado.
Salgado began as a social documentary photographer focusing on the people and societies, particularly that of the poor across the globe. But according to the following video he had seen too much violence, too much bloodshed, that so affected him that he literally became sick, mentally and physically.
At the advice of his doctor he had to stop putting himself through such torture. As a viewer we can close the books and stop viewing the photographs that he captures. We only have the moments of silence that he shows us, ones which we control as viewers. But for Salgado the tragedy is a streaming memory that does not stop with the shutter. It was for this reason that he gave up photography and returned to his hometown, to his family in Brazil.
The back story is that he grew up on a farm with his seven sisters that once was covered by 50 percent of rainforest. There they had abundant food needing only to go once a year on a 60-day round-trip journey to sell their cattle. But when he returned after his long absence as a globe trotting photographer what he had found was that almost all the rainforest had been destroyed, that the land had been left bare. This caused the rainwater to run off the land much quicker than is needed leading to desertification of the land (his analogy was that of his bald head which dries in seconds). And it was with this discovery back home that he began to work to reforest his land he had now inherited.
Salgado after this period in his life he had taken up his camera again and shifted his lens towards nature and animals. His message hasn’t change because he is still concerned about how we can arrive as a species. Only now he is doing this from the point of view of how we need to live in harmony with land and nature.
Salt of the Earth (page in Japanese) is showing in Hiroshima right now.
What you see is only in the frame
Life is like a camera lens – you only see the things in the frame. The rest beyond the edge of the frame is part of the world carefully shown to us, and sometimes we choose to ignore.
The pair of jeans says it all.
Ergo cogito sum
The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that Descartes has it wrong. It is not cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) but ergo cogito sum (I am therefore I think).
It is the sensing then perceiving that makes the world. Without this contact between the object world and the mind objects nothing would derive any meaning from an inanimate world.
All that I am is this perception of my relationship to the world.
Dragging the past into sports is an insult to us
It is unfortunate that someone had made this comment about the US’s win in the Women’s World Cup. How does a win in soccer equate to retaliation for war? Where does speech like this lead? Would it have been okay for the Japanese to gloat in their last win with tweets like “that one is for Hiroshima”?
The good thing about the Internet is that it is a place, in Francois Lyotard’s term, for the “little narratives” to be heard. But at the same it is a problem because of its noise where careless speech spirals uncontrollably.
For people to agree with such a tweet is to show how naive and reckless people are, not to mention how irresponsible it is to speak so lightly of two completely different things in the same breath.
It is an insult to the Japanese, to those who lost their lives or who have lost loved ones in war, to the survivors of war, and finally it is an insult to our general intelligence.
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