Friday, May 21, 2010 - Cumberlnd MD
< previous day | archives | next day >
Are you guys sure it's a camera?, San Antonio NM, April 21, 2010
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Cumberland MD
Walmart Supercenter Store #2027, 12500 Country Club Mall Rd Sw, Lavale, MD 21502 - (301) 729-5081
- Good level parking lot
- Verizon cell phone service is good on extended network
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - none - internet access on extended network unusably slow.
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
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