#47 Washington

 I attended Venerable Tan Nisobho's Livestream Dharma talk today from the Clear Mountain Monastery (under virtual construction) in Seattle Washington.   Venerable Nisobho graduated college in 2012 and was shortly thereafter off to Thailand for years of training and ordination in the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah.   Drop everything if you want a moving and soul-sorting education in Buddhist practice in under an hour, by listening to his talk from today on their Youtube channel. 

It was classic monastic insight stuff with a wink and a nod to the modern foibles of the heart.  A few quotes from this moving talk: 

• Our 'programs' (habits) are echoes in the conditionality of the vortex of change. 
• Through practice, our experience loses it's gravity (on us). 
• Advertising and modern life are set against the notion of appropriate attention. 
• The heart is hungry, it creates what it looks for, it enchants itself with objects. 
• In Sri Lanka, the monks chant 'Yavadeva', which means 'only for the sake of,'  such as 'I will wear this robe for the sake of modesty,'  or 'I will eat for the sake of living,' and so on.  
• The word 'dispassion' is translated from the Pali to be 'fading of color.' 
• (In our modern world,) the heart has nowhere to pour itself, no one deep nourishing streambed and so it flows into so many places here and there and never finds rest. 
• We are conduits for each other to a deeper purpose.  (Paging Ram Dass!)
• Aversion exists as a low level hum.
• Stop looking for nourishment from that which cannot provide it. 
• Who has lamented the veil dropping from the face it revealed?

I mean really.  

Twenty-five attendees.  

Reality is more accessible than delusion, but it doesn't look that way.