misc.joy

In the first paragraph of Being Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh explains that for a practitioner, suffering is not enough:

Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time.

This Thursday evening I have been invited to lead the Still Water Sangha in Silver Spring (just outside Washington DC). After our sitting, we will explore together how we can be happy while acknowledging the pain that is in us and around us.

At the close of the annual teen retreat this week at Deer Park Monastery, I had the opportunity to talk with a 13-year old boy. He asked, “What does it mean to be happy?” He followed up with another question, “How do you be happy when a friend brings up an experience from the past that is difficult and still is painful?”

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As you may know, the June 2010 issue of Wired magazine is available as an iPad version. It will cost you $4.99 to try it out. I’ve been a subscriber and reader of Wired since its founding in the mid-90s, and continue to be a subscriber. I had already read the print version of the June issue before the release of the iPad version, so in reviewing the new product I primarily looked for added features. Here are my thoughts.

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I’ve been pondering the use of location-based social networking tools. For ALA Midwinter, there were a handful of people using these types of services. But, with the huge media coverage after SXSW Interactive this year, I’m expecting more adopters in Washington D.C. for ALA Annual. In fact, we may see some contests organized by ALA staff using one of these services. ALA Staff will be doing some things with Gowalla because that company has been responsive and interested in doing things with the Association. If you haven’t grabbed Gowalla yet, give it a try. Here’s something small to consider before you go…Washington DC Trips.

I’m giving my heavy use of Foursquare and Gowalla until the end of June. Part of my decision to continue using the service will depend on the ALA experience. Though I’m somewhat impartial to Gowalla, I’d like to use the service most widely used by ALA attendees. Please help me out and share, retweet, post of Facebook, etc.

Which service will you use, if any, in Washington DC for ALA Annual?

For the record, my user name on all the above services is kenleyneufeld.

I am writing with a request; a request to reflect about friends and family in your life who may benefit more from the practice.

For the past 6-8 years, the monastery at Deer Park has offered two retreats in the summer – one for teens only (ages 13-17) and another for families. I have attended both these retreats and have found them very nourishing and joyful. The family retreat is particularly diverse, and brings together people from many walks of life and with a wide variety of experience with the practice. The teen retreat is less diverse, but those who attend have reported a life changing experience, and often return the following year bringing more friends. For the teen retreat, no parents are allowed and the teens camp together for the entire retreat. It really is a blast!

If you are in a sangha, I encourage you to share about these retreats in your sangha. Think about people in your life who may benefit from such a retreat, even those who are not regular practitioners, and then invite them to attend. I think teens would particularly benefit. Each year these retreats grow and they are, in my opinion, the best retreats offered by Deer Park.

In the years our family has attended the Family Retreat, I have watched my children and the children of others grow from toddlers to young children and into early teens. Wow! And now, starting in the last year or so many of these families are starting to come to Deer Park at other times during the year. It is a real community.

Though the family retreat has many children in attendance (40-50 kids!), other types of family units also attend and participate. One year, a family came together with four generations! Another time an adult son came with his mom to spend time together on the mountain

Please consider joining us this year.

Teen Camp – Rebel Buddha!
June 16 – 20

Family Retreat – Opening the Family Up
June 30 – July 4

I was skeptical. Skeptical about the album, Scratch My Back, and skeptical about the May 7 concert at the Hollywood Bowl. A seasoned and talented musician releasing and touring a set of covers reinterpreted with orchestra is certainly different, but it’s still covers. Nonetheless, I bought the album and bought a ticket to the concert when they were released and I’ve not been disappointed. The tour was short, and only touched down in Montreal, New York and Los Angeles in North America. This was the last show of the tour. So, a treat.

For the record, I probably own every standard release by Peter Gabriel (including Ovo – which he performed two songs from this evening) and I’ve seen him once before in September 1993 at the Oakland Arena. A fan? Probably.

Mr. Gabriel performed with the 54-piece New Blood Orchestra. No guitars. No drums. A portion of the orchestra was composed of musicians traveling on the tour and the remainder were picked up in the cities of performance. The orchestra was led by Ben Foster, a young and entertaining conductor who was periodically viewed from a fishbowl camera on the screens throughout the evening.

Our seats weren’t in the fancy boxes or down in front, but we were front and center in the “super seats” (aka, non-benches) with a great view of the entire stage and behind the mixer. The performance began at 8:00pm and ended at 10:45pm (with a 20-minute intermission). The first set was all the songs from Scratch My Back (in order) and the second set was old Peter Gabriel songs. [Read more →]

During the months of March and April, I used the Lifestream plugin for WordPress to push my social media activities to my blog as a Daily Digest. The experiment is now complete and I am intending to return to my regular blog practices. Ironically, in the two months the number of regular blog posts did not change from prior practice (I usually post about 3 times per month). I hope to up the number a bit.

Why the end? First, it didn’t really generate any interaction with my readers. Without an interaction, it seems kind of pointless. Secondly, I couldn’t ever figure out to automatically do a “read more” option when the Digests got too long. Finally, it’s kind of weird to see all the media activity so tightly gathered into one place. Obviously, I can control what appears in the digest but my thought was to include everything. Maybe it’s FourSquare making it kind of weird?

I’m going to keep the plugin running in the background and possibly add a widget feed instead of the Daily Digest. This way it can stream by like Friendfeed or Facebook but the interactions can occur on the actual media site.