Walking through the U of T campus with nyxie at about 10 PM last night, we came across a sundial on a plinth with a plaque on the plinth:

nyxie: What's this thing?
mendel: Sundial.
mendel: Too dark, can't read it.
nyxie: ...
mendel: THE PLAQUE. I CAN'T READ THE PLAQUE.

I get no credit at all.

On a bench overlooking a lower floor in the Eaton Centre:

nyxie: We could totes throw things on all the people down there, like monkeys.
mendel: But we don't have any monkeys.
nyxie: In the manner of monkeys.
mendel: Oh, like flinging poo.
nyxie: Right. Poo.

Generosity, or dana, is one of the ten paramitas of Buddhism. This quote opens an article on it in this month's Tricycle:

When you are practicing generosity, you should feel a little pinch when you give something away. That pinch is your stinginess protesting. If you give away your old, worn-out coat that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing, that is ( Read more... )

"[F]or Nietzsche, the concept of guilt emerges when we draw a distinction between intention and action. 'I didn't mean to do that,' we will say. In this sense, guilt is a total abstraction, for it presupposes that doing is different from choosing."

- Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Free (which I'm very much enjoying generally).

I realize it must seem like I'm just posting everything that gets posted to the Meditation Matters blog or Tricycle's Daily Dharma newsletter, but they just have lots of good in them. Like this, from Saturday's Daily Dharma (emphasis and square brackets mine):

Each MomentWhat primarily concerns me is the necessity for a student to learn to be as ( Read more... )

From perennial favorite Meditation Matters, where Ellie Finlay notes, "this is an excellent way of clarifying the distinction between letting go and indifference:"

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

From today's Tricycle daily email:
Master Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, was asked by a student, “What should you do if you find yourself in an argument? Should you try to win the argument or should you concede, even though you feel you’re right?” Dogen advised neither path. Become disinterested, he told the student, ( Read more... )

I need to post to see if a tumblr import thingy I set up works like I expect. So have a quote I found earlier today:

"Attachment is the very opposite of love. Love says, 'I want you to be
happy.' Attachment says, 'I want you to make me happy.'"

- Jetsuma Tenzin Palmo in Tricycle, Winter 2009

On the subject of Albert Low and To Know Yourself, a couple of things I wrote down while reading today, both from the chapter in which he explains why he recommends his students, especially those with Christian upbringings, read St John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul.

First,One of the questions frequently asked is, Why does it take so long ( Read more... )