Gratitude Journal

It’s been a long time since my last “gratitude journal” and so here goes…

Ken Robinson. – a good friend of mine from my Bristol days (’04-05) is sick and in the hospital. Ken is a retired gentleman who has for years made the Centre for Buddhist Studies there a second home, regularly attending classes and our weekly tea gatherings. He has an enormous wealth of studies and life experience that he has generously offered to us students over the years. His mind has been as sharp as ever of late, as last spring when he and I discussed Vic Mansfield’s new book on Buddhism and Quantum Physics. Every time I returned to Bristol I looked forward to seeing him and discussing our latest life and academic adventures. I think we’re all very optimistic that he’ll be up and around soon, but for now I hold him in my heart with gratitude and well-wishes.
Innovation. – Sometimes I think my fundamental nature is laziness. But when I do do things, I tend to get them done quickly and well, so in general I do okay. On that note, I’m in the hunt for software, and hardware, that facilitates my studies. Two things in particular are a Tablet PC (or “convertible laptop” as they’re sometimes called) and pdf editing software.
After trying out three pdf editors last night, I’m sticking with Foxit Pdf. The only real downside I could find thus far ~~is difficulty placing text directly on pdfs~~ (it allows ‘notes’ but those wont come out in printing) update (2/8/09): It does in fact have a ‘typewriter tool’ for writing directly on documents that works like a charm.

It does a fine job of highlighting though, as well as copying to paste in text-to-speech software (essential for lazy people like me who would rather be read to than to actually read themselves). Also, in the free version it merely places a header at the top saying “Edited by Foxit Reader… Evaluation only” rather than an ugly dark streak of text across the middle of each page.

The plan is that with this and the tablet PC I’ll be able to whiz through the hundreds of journal articles currently sitting on my hard drive.
Longer days and Big Blue Skies. Winter in Montana can be a dreary time, waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark (not me, but people with real jobs), and coming home in the dark. But just as fast as the light seemed to dissapear in December, it is rushing back now in February. Thus far this month we’ve seen mostly blue skies and warm days (which, on a whole is bad because it means no moisture and early melt-off of snows and a greater likelyhood of an awful fire season, but….), so thoughts of spring can’t help but leap to mind.
Time for Real Learning. Utopian author and social critic Lewis Mumford once wrote:

One of the marks of the new school and the new university will be the provision of hours of withdrawal, not spent in classroom study or in sport, in the midst of its regular work day: a period of concentration and reflection, in which the work of active selection and spiritual assimilation can go on.

As usual I find myself yearning a bit for more of this time. One’s Ph.D. studies should, ideally, be filled abundantly with spiritual assimilation. As I move more and more into my studies, I find such time to be of increasing value. For now, Thursdays will be the days of assimilation and withdrawal for me. No work, no socializing, no lectures, just this (and leading meditation in the evening).
Bowing to my acquisitiveness. I’m not sure if my acquisitiveness belongs in a gratitude journal, but it’s been on my mind of late. In England I bought a new leather breifcase, a courier bag, and more; I have recently ordered a tripod, about five books, a power cord for my stereo (arrived today!), a new Mp3 player, and still want a new DSLR camera, a tablet PC, and a Mazda Miata. Anyone having a spare one of any of these is welcome to donate it to me 🙂
Something Dave W talked about in his talk last fall in MT on Buddhist Ethics was that in Buddhism it isn’t necessarily our wants that are a problem, but how we want them. There is craving (Pali: tanha) which is destructive, but there is also will or want (Pali: Chanda). There is almost a “taxonomy of want“; sometimes it’s good, sometimes bad… There is also apparently a section in Chapter five of A.J. Bahm’s Philosophy of the Buddha (see here)… dang, another book I must have…