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Mindful saturday

Today, a beautiful spring day, we had a Day of Mindfulness at the Spiritual Centre. As usual, I participated for half the day, staying till lunch. Two nuns from Plum Village, who happened to be in the country, led the retreat. The DVD excerpt from a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, from the Breath of the Buddha retreat in 2006, was very good. The subject was the 3 doors of liberation – Emptiness, Signlessness, Aimlessness. All explained very well. The explanation of emptiness was most meaningful to me. “When we speak of emptiness, we need to ask ’empty of what?’. The flower is not empty of sunshine, or of the cloud that formed it. It is empty of its independent existence.”

After lunch I watched an interesting presentation which Yonatan sent me, http://www.storyofstuff.com/. That’s definitely food for thought – everybody should see this marvelous explanation of our insane consumer society and figure out what they can do to lessen the size of their footprint on the earth.

We spent the evening talking to the two nuns, since they are staying till tomorrow. We know Thay Nim a long time, from her days in the Israeli sangha. She has grown more gentle as a nun. Then we had to work on a proposal which was due today. Finished at four minutes to midnight. Worked on the proposal while listening to Abida Parveen, a wonderful singer of sufi music from Pakistan.