Crappy hostess

I'm never going to win any Martha Stewart awards. I'm just not cut out for this hostess business. Perhaps I am in a rut? It's all about practice and reading and simple everyday things for me. My idea of a great evening is something to the effect of: early dinner, a little relaxing, early bedtime. Just call me Grandma ;-)

Irishseoul came along to led class on Friday and Saturday. Actually, we got up at 4:30 and headed over to Mysore practice on Friday, but when we got there, the doors were locked. Uh oh, apparently there was a change to the schedule due to the holiday. Fine. We just went back for the special post-holiday led class at 9 AM.

Not too many participants on Friday, and even fewer on Saturday. Suzie Columbus, participant on the infamous ezBoard, was in attendance. Sanskrit Scholar pointed her out to me and I went to say hi. It's a riot meeting people you "know" from cyberspace. And then to practice with her in the same room just underscores the fact that the sangha is bigger than any individual roomful of people practicing together.

I picked up a book yesterday (bookstore visits count as good hostessing, don't they?): Hardcore Zen, by Brad Warner. A pop-culture post-punk reading of Zen. I wasn't sure who I was getting it for: me? The Cop? My Gift? I'm finishing it up so I can send it back to northern Arizona with My Gift when she drives back to school today.

Here's a little quote about emptiness:

Emptiness is the single most misunderstood word in all of Buddhism. The original Sanskrit word for this is shunyata, which ultimately points to the as-it-is-ness of things, the state of things being as they are without being colored by our views and ideas.

Emptiness is not a nihilistic concept of voidness. Emptiness is not meaninglessness. Emptiness is that condition which is free from our conceptions and our perceptions. It's the world as it is before we come along and start complaining about the stuff we don't like.

Warner goes on to give examples, using David Cronenberg's movie The Fly as a frame of reference. All this in his essay on the Heart Sutra. Also included: quotes from Gene Simmons, Isaac Asimov, and Eric Cartman of South Park. I am amused.