I was writing an email to my friend Jen, and decided to copy and paste some of the good parts here.
Poetry gardening is the cultivation of the self which results in the perennial blossoms of wisdom, happiness, and insight.
I was at DigiFest for a bit the other night, for a debate "Can Technology Save Us?". Well, the debate started rolling and 1 guy said we should actually be asking "can WE save technology, cause it's getting out of hand... It drags us along and not the other way around"... Another person said "we can't do anything good for the world until we prevent people from being greedy, but people like being greedy so that won't happen"... And anotehr lady said "technology can't save us, only people can... Social movements for change... But they won't happen because people are greedy and lazy"....
Sooooooo, when I got up to the mic I said:
"I believe we can save technology, and we can be greedy and socially conscious at the SAME time. The reason things are so bad is because things are poorly designed, and people aren't picky about what they buy. We CAN save technology by being greedy and buying things... We just have to purchase with our minds and buy the best designed things. If we all did that, the things that didn't work well and the technology that pollutes or isn't cost-effective would get phased out quickly. No profits for the company means the technology goes away -- it's evolutionary capitalism. Plus, if people purchased mindfully like that, that basically IS a social movement... A movement not to sit back and take the crap that is dished out to us"... Or something like that.... :)
Smiles are good for bringing the inner to the outer, because usually if someone sees you smiling, they also start to smile. A person at the temple asked the Zen master, Sunim, Why is there a buddha statue? I like buddhism because we're not worshipping idols, so why is there a statue of Buddha? I thought he was just a man. Sunim replied "yes, he was just a man, but he was a great man and a great example -- he is not there for us to worship, but human beings have this tendency to look outside themselves for answers instead of inside themselves, so we have the statue there, outside, to remind them that we are all good, and that they should sit quietly like Buddha and find the answers within -- so it is not about worshipping the statue, but being mindful of what the statue represents"
