10,000 Voices

I've finally found the camera cable and I've discovered how to create and embed a slideshow for you here. After I did so, I realized that I've been so immersed in life between the sangha house and the zendo, that I don't have many pictures! But it's a start. I'll take more and post them later. In the meantime, I'm rather pleased with myself to have discovered how to do this. This can have all kinds of great possibilities for the Shalom Mountain website that I maintain.

Today was a great day with Roshi and crew. Today Diane taught us how to use Big Mind during our individual meditations. Alistair has already been doing this, so I decided to give it a try tonight during our meditation which was 1.5 hours long. Both Roshi and Diane keep emphasizing that if we want to learn how to facilitate Big Mind (and I do) that we/I need to learn these voices within myself very, very well. So the trick -- if that's what you call it -- is to do Big Mind dialogue with yourself, playing both the facilitator and the voices. Well, it was an incredible experience. I talked to a whole slew of voices, some of whom were very vocal, and others timid, more emergent. I discovered those who were allies to one another, those who were saboteurs. I also knew when I had a transformative conversation with some particular voice, because my body responded with released energy in the form of heat and sweating. And no, they're not hot flashes! -- remember, the zendo's cold.

This coming weekend Roshi's offering a workshop called The Path of the Human Being. To Roshi, the truly transcendent being is the human being, not the Christian transcendent perfection dream that I used to know as a former born again Christian. So I'm more than a little intrigued.

I've put the slideshow on the left hand side bar. I'm adding pictures to it regularly now.