Thursday, January 10, 2008 - Alpine TX
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Oil field supply companies have lots of new tanks and equipment in stock. Trucks are carrying oversize loads of fancy equipment about. The t(h)reat of $100.00 per barrel oil seems to have lit the entrepreneurial fires in these parts.
Today's journey
US 67 from San Angelo, Texas, Texas to Alpine, Texas.
Night camp
Pecan Grove RV Park, Alpine TX
Pecan Grove RV Park, Alpine TX
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups and a laundry.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here but I don't remember how strong the signal is.
- Find other references to Pecan Grove
- List the nights I've camped here
- Get a Google map and Street View of the park
- Check the weather
Emptiness
Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.
The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003