Updates

I know, I've been pretty slack lately. I'm going through another period of transition, and although I still don't have a whole blog post in my head, I just have to post something to get that picture of Sarah Palin off the top of the blog.

Also, in retrospect I think I played into the whole Sarah Palin thing. I mean, the incredible choice of her took the national political debate off any serious issue for what, two weeks? And only the recent inevitable meltdown of the financial industry (which is about all Americans do anymore) brought back any attention to a serious issue.

So I'm posting a few pics from the last sesshin at the ASZC, about two weeks ago. It was another physically hard one; at one point I snuck out for a chili cheese dog (that weird fake stuff that comes from a machine) from the local convenience store, and then later that night for some ice cream. It got easier after that. I probably shouldn't post that, because it'll probably get seen by the cook, who is one of my favorite people in the Buddhist world. And the food at these things is truly excellent. But there's a tradition of the food at these things being all vegetarian and healthy, and almost none of the Zen people I know are vegetarians (as opposed to the Theravadans). And zazen is very physically stressful; I did something to my legs this time that I still haven't recovered from, though it does give me an excuse to seek out a massage therapist. And either having your diet shift in that stressful situation, even if for the better (I could easily be vegetarian if there weren't any seafood in the world, which will happen soon) always leave me with a lack of energy; or I just got a psychological bump from sneaking out and violating the diet. So the chili cheese dog helped. Sorry, Terry.

Anyway, enough of that. These are just a few of the pics from the retreat; Richard of the ASZC put them all up on his Flickr site, and you can see them here.

Oh, and if you want absolute positive proof that the Bush family was behind the bombing of the World Trade Center , plus some naked pictures of Sarah Palin as a teenager, click here. I hope to post something more coherent soon.