Recent Reading

The Buddha's Apprentice -- More Voices of Young Buddhists

"I was absent-minded partly because I was young, but I also realized that the cause of absent-mindedness was self-centeredness. Knowing this, I trained myself to always try to put others before myself. Whenever I met another person, I would think, 'what can I offer this person?' For me, the 'letting go ' of the self, in practice, became offering myself. I combined this with advice from Shifu to 'use the body like a rag; use your mind like a mirror.'"

From the chapter Clouds and Water - by Jimmy Yu

"I had plenty of questions and doubts about which rules, vows, precepts, and worldviews -- like beliefs in reincarnation, other worlds, invisible beings, the lower realms -- made sense and were worth adopting. The Dalai Lama encouraged me to ask these questions and explore Buddhism. He said that Buddhism would reveal itself."

From the chapter The Long and Winding Road - by Lama Surya Das

Recent Reading

The Art of Living - Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka

Recent Reading

The Annotated Alice - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (By Lewis Carroll, annotated by Martin Gardner)

Who knew that there really was an Alice? She may not have tumbled down the rabbit hole, but probably slipped down the narrow staircase in the back of Christ Church College's dining hall.

Alice's one major romance before she married, was with England's Prince Leopold, son of Queen Victoria. The relationship was not to last as Alice was a commoner. She eventually married Reginald Hargreaves. Alice wore a gift from the prince on her wedding gown and named her second son Leopold. A few weeks later, Prince Leopold, married to a princess, named a daughter Alice.

Thank You Shifu, For Everything.

「諸賢各自珍惜，
我們有這番同學菩薩道的善根福德因緣，
我們曾在無量諸佛座下同結善緣，
並將仍在無量諸佛會中同修無上菩提，同在正法門中互為眷屬。」

Master Sheng Yen (1930 - 2009)

Recent Reading

Bonfire Of The Vanities by Tom Wolfe

The timing is ironic -- Reading the book that coined the phrase "the Master of the Universe" in the midst of the financial crisis now sweeping the world. But the book is sheer genius.

Quotable Quote: "A liberal is a conservative that has been arrested."

快雪時晴帖

In Chinese calligraphy, the third century CE--corresponding to the Three Kingdoms (220-280) and Western Chin (265-316) period--witnessed the maturation of various script forms. Thereafter, applications for regular, running, and cursive scripts became increasingly widespread, flourishing to form a new trend. During the fourth century in the Eastern Chin dynasty (317-420), calligraphers thereupon strove to forge writing as an art form as they explored how to make brush strokes more natural and aesthetically pleasing. Pursuing the dual beauties of “skill” and “naturalness,” both ancient and modern forms of writing were combined to achieve a realm of utmost beauty and perfection in calligraphy. The most typical representative of this trend was Wang Hsi-chih (303-361), who was praised as the “Sage of Calligraphy” by later generations.

王羲之（303－361），祖籍山東，出身仕族世家，西晉末南渡，徙居浙江會稽。曾官右軍將軍，會稽內史，東晉永和年間（345－356）去職，與 東土名士盡山水之游。熱衷詩歌，音樂與書法。他學書歷程是由近而古，轉益多師，取資廣博，尤其精研體勢，將秦篆漢隸各種不同的筆法，融於真行草體中，形成 最佳體勢，所以唐朝人稱頌他「兼撮眾法，備成一家，為萬世宗師」。

這是一件行楷書短簡，前後都有署名具禮，內容是大雪之後 向友人問候。明代鑑賞家詹景鳳指出，此蹟筆法圓勁古雅，意態閑逸，對趙孟頫的行書有很深的影響。從用筆來看，此帖多圓鈍的用筆，點畫勾挑都不露鋒，結體平 穩勻稱，在優美的姿態之中，流露出質樸內斂的意韻。乾隆皇帝極珍愛此蹟，譽之為「天下無雙，古今鮮對」。乾隆十一年，他將此蹟與王獻之的「中秋帖」，王珣 的「伯遠帖」合稱「三希」，寶藏在「三希堂」中。此帖一般認為是唐代精摹本。

釋文：羲之頓首。快雪時晴。佳想安善。未果為結。力不次。王羲之頓首。山陰張侯。

Photo and text both by 國立故宮博物院 National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.

The City I've Loved and Will Always Love

"One constant in New York is the velocity of change. Attempts at freezing time here always fail. New York is too big, dense, various, too full of collisions large and small, artistic and commercial, too full of energy, desire and ambition, to ever remain the way it was. New York is not a museum disguised as a city. It's not Venice."

Pete Hamill, New York Magazine Oct. 6, 2008