First off a very funny video my friend Steve sent me. Does anyone know how to copy a video from YouTube? Cuz I'm sure they'll pull this one off the site.
So I got up this morning and looked out the window of the place they're putting me up here in Saskatoon and it snowed last night!
I've heard it can snow up here any month of the year and it's true! I bet it is not snowing in Santa Monica.
Last night's talk at McNally Robinson Bookstore went very well. I actually read out of Zen Wrapped in Karma, which is something I don't normally do. I chose the chapter called "In Which I Have to Take a Pee Really Bad." One of the less embarrassing ones for me personally. The audience responded well and I got a lot of good questions. This one made it on tape. But I chose not to tape the reading itself and just got the Q&A session.
One of these days I have to do something with all these tapes. But I haven't decided what. I've been handing the camera over to someone brave enough to film each event and taking whatever I get. Some of the resulting tapes are better than others. I could extract the audio and use them as podcasts, in which case the video quality doesn't really matter much. I've also thought of selling them as DVD-R's. Though I don't know if there's an audience for that.
I've had some lovely Northern hospitality while I've been here in the prairie lands of Canada. I'll be here a few more days doing some fairly low-key classes and suchlike. But the major events of the first leg of the tour are now complete. Next it's back home for a bit and then a short jump to New Mexico after which I get to rest up a little for the trip to Europe.
Someone yesterday asked me about a certain uber famous Zen Master's rewording of the precept that usually goes "No selling of wine, no drinking of wine." Nishijima gives this one as, "Don't live by selling liquor." Apparently the Zen Superstar in question has expanded this to include intoxicating mental stimuli such as "bad" TV shows, "bad" music, "bad" books and so on.
I can understand this. Sometimes I visit peoples' houses and they've got a TV blaring away in every bedroom and a radio tuned to some kind of inflammatory shock jock in the kitchen. They get in their car and the radio goes on again. They stimulate themselves wherever they go. Then they wonder why their minds won't ever settle down. But if you keep poking and prodding at that lump of hamburger in your head 24/7 there's gonna be a residual effect.
So to that extent it may be better to eliminate some of that stimulation. It's not sinful to view or listen to anything. It's just that you gotta know it has some effect on you. This is why I don't read the comments section here anymore. I didn't want or need that manner of stimulation.
But I'll tell you one thing. Damn straight tonight I'm gonna go see the new Star Trek!
