One of the cool things about our new age, so far as I’m concerned, is the astonishing web of communication that has emerged over the last two decades plus a little. For instance among my not quite seven hundred Facebook “friends” (one can question whether anyone can have seven hundred friends) are some quite real and indisputable friends. And because of it and other contemporary social networking opportunities I’ve renewed old and lost associations.
For instance Josh Baran. Josh and I each claim to have been the first student to join the British Zen master Jiyu Kennett after she came to America. I was actually the first, Josh arrived a couple of days later. His faulty memory has it going the other way…
We were ordained unsui together, and later with Mark Strathern received transmission one week after each other (Mark, then me, then Josh). A tree was planted at Mt Shasta to mark the event. It died not long after. My late son was named for Josh.
As life did what life does, we’d each left Shasta Abbey and fallen out of touch. After some wandering I settled into a different school of Zen. Josh followed a more independent path…
A long period of no connection.
And then somewhere along the line thanks to the miracle of contemporary social networking we’re back in touch.
On his Facebook account Josh just uploaded a video of Alan Watts lecturing on nothing, or more correctly on the idea of nothing.
Perhaps not the best lecture on the subject, but you know, not bad, either…
As Watts was also a figure from my young adulthood, and this is, you may have heard, the New Year, I’m feeling rather nostalgic about those good ol’ days (thanks in part for memory’s polishing away the nasty bits, mostly…).
And thoughts of nothing that got me going.
Oh, yes, here’s the video…
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