In Pursuit of Mysteries

Meeting Up with Friends

My friend, Steve, aka “Teh Hotcrab,” had his 31st birthday party last night in the City (that’s “San Francisco” for you non-Californians). We went to a Japanese whiskey bar called “Nihon’s” in Soma. It was a cool place which served thirty or fifty different kinds of whiskey (though I had a “Bell View,” which was a vodka cocktail). Steve reserved the room upstairs, which was supposed to hold thirty people but we were all pretty skeptical of that.
It was good to see Steve since I haven’t seen him in the flesh in at least two years. We chat on IM every so often but he moved from Seattle a while back and I hadn’t really gotten around to seeing him before he left or on his occasional trips up. Steve works over at Macromedia…I mean Adobe… so I got to meet quite a few of his coworker friends as well as the San Francisco hipster crowd. I even got to talk shop with a few people.

On Wednesday, I also met with my friend, Mark, for the first time on our own since we moved here. Mark and I met at Pantheacon back in 2001 through mutual friends right after he moved to the Bay Area. He’s working as an applied anthropologist (he has the PhD and everything!) within the corporate world. If I would have actually made it to Anthropology graduate school as I had planned when I originally left college, I could very easily have wound up doing similar sort of work. It was interesting to hear about it and meet up.

So far, we haven’t spent much time with too many people down here. Between temporary housing, new jobs, and various tasks (along with my schoolwork), there just hasn’t been much time. Hopefully that will change soon.

Tomorrow, we move into our new loft space and our stuff arrives on Monday…

ASE Conference Pictures

My friend, Amy, has put some of her pictures from the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) conference online. Here are the only two currently containing me… :-)

John Crow, Amy, and Me

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

A month or two ago, I found the website for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. They are at http://www.contemplativemind.org/.

They describe themselves as follows:

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society is a 501-c(3) non-profit organization which works to integrate contemplative awareness and contemporary life, to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society.

Contemplative practices, including prayer, meditation, yoga, and many contemplative arts, help individuals regain balance and calm in the midst of challenging circumstances. This state of calm centeredness provides effective stress reduction and can also help address issues of meaning, values, and spirit. Contemplative practices can help people develop greater empathy and communication skills, improve focus and concentration, reduce stress and enhance creativity. In time, with sustained commitment, they cultivate insight, wise discernment, and a loving and compassionate approach to life.

While personal transformation does not guarantee the transformation of social institutions, the Center is grounded in the belief that contemplative awareness can assist individuals and groups in identifying the root causes of social problems and finding creative approaches to eliminating them.

I’m impressed by their approach and the overall vibe of the site. They have a tree of contemplative practices up that shows their emphasis as well.

This is definitely the kind of organization that I think our culture is more in need of with the current emphasis on consumerism and competition. They put their money where with their intentions as well. Along with the other work they do, they fund Contemplative Practice Fellowships:

…Approximately ten fellowships will be offered to support individual or collaborative research leading to the development of courses and teaching materials that integrate contemplative practices into courses. These fellowships are designed to advance scholarship in the field, to encourage a recognition of the role of contemplation in the intellectual life, and to inform educational practice and enhance course design. We invite proposals from the full range of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspectives in the arts, humanities, and humanities-related sciences and social sciences. Methodologies that include practical and experiential approaches to the subject matter are especially welcome.

I would encourage some of my Buddhist friends with the energy and motivation to create materials to think about applying for one of their fellowships.

This is all very good.