In Pursuit of Mysteries

B. Alan Wallace Meditation Weekend Coming Up

B. Alan Wallace is doing a retreat weekend locally, in Alameda, next week focusing on meditation. I’ve blogged about Wallace before (see here, here, here, and here) and I have a lot of admiration for his work on meditation and his dedication to advancing both meditation and the study of meditation here in the United States.

The official event information is as follows:

Orgyen Dorje Den is pleased to welcome Dr. B. Alan Wallace back to ODD for teachings and practice!

Alan will offer teachings on Friday, February 29th in the evening and lead a weekend meditation retreat March 1 & 2, described below.

These programs are open to all people with a sincere interest in learning ways to settle down ones mind, and cultivate compassion.

Meditation for Settling the Mind: Finding Happiness from Within

Friday Evening, February 29th, 2008, from 7 to 9pm

On Friday evening Alan Wallace will give an overview presentation into the meditation techniques & the development of a loving heart described below. These methods will be explored in depth over the weekend and participants will be guided in their implementation. Both of these programs are open to all.

Requested donation is $20.

Balancing the Heart & Mind: A Weekend Meditation Seminar

Retreat Schedule:
Saturday, March 1, 9am to noon & 2 to 5pm, with an optional session on Saturday from 7 to 9pm.
Sunday, March 2, 9am to noon & 2 to 5pm

In this weekend retreat Alan will focus on two methods for cultivating meditative quiescence, or shamatha. He will teach the practice of “mindfulness of breathing”, which is an effective approach to soothing the body and calming the discursive mind. He will also introduce a method that is both a shamatha practice and a preliminary to Dzogchen, called “settling the mind in its natural state.” The attainment of shamatha is widely regarded in the Buddhist tradition as an indispensable foundation for the cultivation of contemplative insight (vipashyana), and this retreat is designed to provide participants with a sufficient theoretical understanding and a basis in experience to enable them to proceed effectively toward this extraordinary state of mental and physical balance.

In addition, instruction will be offered on the cultivation of the four immeasurables: loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. These qualities of the heart are so powerful that they can break down all the barriers that are created by attachment and aversion, opening our hearts boundlessly to all beings which brings peace and happiness. Lectures and guided meditations will be interspersed with periods for group discussions and will focus on the practical applications of these practices in daily life. Participants are welcome to practice meditation in both the sitting (cross-legged or on a chair) position or in the supine position.

Requested donation is $100 and Alan has asked that people attend all the sessions.

Biography of Alan Wallace

Dr. B. Alan Wallace, a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism, has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he continually seeks innovative ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind. Dr. Wallace is one of the most prolific writers and translators of books on Tibetan Buddhism in the West. His most recent books include the following: The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (2006), Genuine Happiness: Meditation as a Path to Fulfillment (2005) and The Four Immeasurables: Cultivating a Boundless Heart (2004). Wallace completed his undergraduate studies in Physics and the Philosophy of Science at Amherst College, and earned a Ph. D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University. During 1995-1997, he was a Visiting Scholar in the departments of Religious Studies and Psychology at Stanford, and from 1997 to 2001 he taught in the Department of Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. For more detailed info about Alan & his programs and activities, please visit: http://alanwallace.org & http://sbinstitute.com.

I also wanted to link to a presentation by Wallace that he did over at Google in 2006 for those that haven’t read his work or seen him speak.

Mysterious Creatures Found in Antarctica

Am I the only one that read this story and has my mind immediately turn to H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness“? After all, his horrors were found in Antartica and lived originally within the waters there, millions of years ago…

From the news article:

Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said Tuesday they have collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths.

[...]

Some of the animals far under the sea grow to unusually large sizes, a phenomenon called gigantism that scientists still do not fully understand.

“Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters,” Martin Riddle, the Australian Antarctic Division scientist who led the expedition, said in a statement. “We have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates.”

“Not all of the creatures that we found could be identified and it is very likely that some new species will be recorded as a result of these voyages,” said Graham Hosie, head of the census project.

[...]

Among the bizarre-looking creatures the scientists spotted were tunicates, plankton-eating animals that resemble slender glass structures up to a yard tall “standing in fields like poppies,” Riddle said.

Other animals were equally baffling.

“They had fins in various places, they had funny dangly bits around their mouths,” Riddle told reporters. “They were all bottom dwellers so they were all evolved in different ways to live down on the sea bed in the dark. So many of them had very large eyes — very strange looking fish.”

And to quote Lovecraft’s work:

“10:15 P.M. Important discovery. Orrendorf and Watkins, working underground at 9:45 with light, found monstrous barrel-shaped fossil of wholly unknown nature; probably vegetable unless overgrown specimen of unknown marine radiata. Tissue evidently preserved by mineral salts. Tough as leather, but astonishing flexibility retained in places. Marks of broken-off parts at ends and around sides. Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths - combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. All greatly damaged but one, which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in Necronomicon.

“Their wings seem to be membranous, stretched on frame work of glandular tubing. Apparent minute orifices in frame tubing at wing tips. Ends of body shriveled, giving no clue to interior or to what has been broken off there. Must dissect when we get back to camp. Can’t decide whether vegetable or animal. Many features obviously of almost incredible primitiveness.

[...]

“Objects are eight feet long all over. Six-foot, five-ridged barrel torso three and five-tenths feet central diameter, one foot end diameters. Dark gray, flexible, and infinitely tough. Seven-foot membranous wings of same color, found folded, spread out of furrows between ridges. Wing framework tubular or glandular, of lighter gray, with orifices at wing tips. Spread wings have serrated edge. Around equator, one at central apex of each of the five vertical, stave-like ridges are five systems of light gray flexible arms or tentacles found tightly folded to torso but expansible to maximum length of over three feet. Like arms of primitive crinoid. Single stalks three inches diameter branch after six inches into five substalks, each of which branches after eight inches into small, tapering tentacles or tendrils, giving each stalk a total of twenty-five tentacles.

“At top of torso blunt, bulbous neck of lighter gray, with gill-like suggestions, holds yellowish five-pointed starfish-shaped apparent head covered with three-inch wiry cilia of various prismatic colors.

“Head thick and puffy, about two feet point to point, with three-inch flexible yellowish tubes projecting from each point. Slit in exact center of top probably breathing aperture. At end of each tube is spherical expansion where yellowish membrane rolls back on handling to reveal glassy, red-irised globe, evidently an eye.

“Five slightly longer reddish tubes start from inner angles of starfish-shaped head and end in saclike swellings of same color which, upon pressure, open to bell-shaped orifices two inches maximum diameter and lined with sharp, white tooth like projections - probably mouths. All these tubes, cilia, and points of starfish head, found folded tightly down; tubes and points clinging to bulbous neck and torso. Flexibility surprising despite vast toughness.

“At bottom of torso, rough but dissimilarly functioning counterparts of head arrangements exist. Bulbous light-gray pseudo-neck, without gill suggestions, holds greenish five-pointed starfish arrangement.

“Tough, muscular arms four feet long and tapering from seven inches diameter at base to about two and five-tenths at point. To each point is attached small end of a greenish five-veined membranous triangle eight inches long and six wide at farther end. This is the paddle, fin, or pseudofoot which has made prints in rocks from a thousand million to fifty or sixty million years old.

“From inner angles of starfish arrangement project two-foot reddish tubes tapering from three inches diameter at base to one at tip. Orifices at tips. All these parts infinitely tough and leathery, but extremely flexible. Four-foot arms with paddles undoubtedly used for locomotion of some sort, marine or otherwise. When moved, display suggestions of exaggerated muscularity. As found, all these projections tightly folded over pseudoneck and end of torso, corresponding to projections at other end.

Woohoo! Mozilla’s “MailCo” is now “Mozilla Messaging”!

It was announced a number of months back that the Mozilla Corporation would be spinning off Thunderbird development into a new company. This company was code-named “MailCo” at the time. You can read posts about this by Mitchell Baker on her blog here, here, and here for background on why MailCo was formed and its importance.

The company now has an official name and site. It is “Mozilla Messaging” and the site is up at www.mozillamessaging.com now. The mission of Mozilla Messaging is stated on the site as:

We subscribe to the Mozilla Manifesto. Furthermore, we believe that email is the killer app of the Internet, a vital tool in modern society, and one which has not evolved as much or as fast as it should have. We’re driven to improve the experience of people communicating with each other on the Internet.

Our first tool in this endeavor is the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, which is already in use by millions of people worldwide. Using a collaborative, participatory process, we will work to make Thunderbird the most useful, enjoyable communications tool possible. It’s a huge challenge, but we believe that by finding like-minded people who want to help, we can have a real impact, and have a lot of fun doing it.

In order to provide as many opportunities for participation as possible, we strive to be open and transparent in our operations.

Davis Ascher, who is the CEO of Mozilla Messaging, has a new post up on his blog about it as well. He goes into the current plan a bit and the post is worth taking the time to read for those that care about Thunderbird and what is going on in this space.

I’m glad to see that this is finally off the ground and I’m hoping to see some decent coverage by this in the Open Source community over the next day.

As someone who has been on the Internet since I was a teen in the late 1980s, e-mail has always been the first and last kill app for me. While I’ve worked with browsers since I was at Spry in 1994, I really do live through the use of my e-mail and through e-mail lists especially. I’m really looking forward to improvements in Thunderbird and also in the potential for new directions in messaging in this current time on the Internet. It isn’t like it used to be but e-mail is still an incredibly important part of what people do. I expect that I’ll have much more to say about what MoMess is doing as time goes on and plans become more developed.