In Pursuit of Mysteries

St. Augustine Quote

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,… and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”

– St. Augustine, “De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim”
(The Literal Meaning of Genesis)

Saturday Night in Portland

I’m sitting in Powell’s in Portland drinking a latte and using their free wifi. Powell’s is about 50 yards from my hotel so it seems to be a good place to hang out.

Unfortunately, I’m being forced to listen to music very loudly from my Ipod when I’d rather night. There is a nutter at the next table ranting about how the Cold War didn’t happen, how the Rothchilds (sp?) assassinated Lincoln because of the desire to create and maintain the Federal Reserve, etc. He’s using all of the common silly debate tricks to twist arguments, create straw men, etc. He’s “debating” with a 20-something (who is suckered by all of this) and a 50-something who looks like he should know better. They’ve been going at it for 30 minutes now and I’m tempted to get involved just to shut it down.

I realize that it wouldn’t be terribly compassionate to do so and also that the nut might decide to focus on me instead so I’m resisting the urge. I do wish he’d shut up so I could turn my music off. Everyone else in the room is gradually moving further away… :-)

I had a nice dinner at Jake’s Grill but decided I’d rather be out for the evening than hanging out in my hotel room.

The teachings have been going well. All the detail about ngondro that you could ever want but from a Bon perspective. It’s been fun and Rinpoche is a good teacher. His English is noticeably improving over time so he has no need of a translator anymore. I’ll be retaking my refuge vows tomorrow.

I did pick up some books as well (surprise!). R and I had a $50 gift card for Powell’s from friends as a wedding gift. I spent $50.78 last night without doing the math on my own so it was a good sign. I bought two John Shirley novels, Crawlers and City Come A-Walkin’, a book on Kashmir Shaivite philosophy, a book by Eva Wong on some Taoist contemplative practices (I’ve been reading some of her stuff lately), and a book on Masonic origins from the set of ones that Aquarian published back in the late 80s.

I should be back in Seattle by tomorrow evening at some point.

Whoa! Geek Points Alert! The EKG from Hell

This has got to be the coolest thing that I’ve seen in a while with tech.

http://www.monkeyview.net/kal@seemen.org/biomorphic_input_machines/index.vhtml

EKG UNIT triggering flaming ring

I BUILT AN EKG UNIT and cannibalized into it and hooked it up to this fire ring. So, AS YOUR HEART BEATS THE FIRE RING PULSES WITH IT! QUITE AMBIANT AND MEDITATIVE. TRUE BIOFEEDBACK.

http://seemen.org/