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Change and Failure

“If you do what you’ve always done, your going to get what you’ve always gotten. Never let what you have never done stop you from doing something different.”
Kirbyjon Caldwell.

Thomas Edison, when working to perfect his light bulb, tried and experimented with over six thousand different materials to use for his filament before using carbonized thread.  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison

Do not regard failure as an embarrassment but as a learning process toward production.
Satoru

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Bushido

I am meditating on a deck above the beach looking east into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. My beach shack is on a tiny island a few hundred miles from the mainland. The wind off the sea is a strong twenty knots and the salt spray floats across the waters and settles on everything a salty mist. The churning waters are a milky blue opaque and the whitecaps run clear to the horizon. Swimming in the chop with only a mask and snorkel is like a sensory deprivation tank. You cannot see anything but the milky water, which acts as a mirror reflecting your thoughts, and there is nothing but the vast sea surrounding you with neutral buoyancy. Breathe deeply and inhale fresh clean air. There is life in every breath. This is the life of a Zen Buddhist. This is bushido the life of the warrior. So breathe deep and be grateful for the gift of life and all it entails as the sunset turns blood red.

Satoru

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Black out.

I was working on my next book A Way To Love. I wanted to print out a few pages to edit physically. Because the building I live in is at least seventy years old it does not have enough electric outlets. So I have to switch plugs from the external drive to the printer in the multiple jack when I want to print. I switched plugs and the computer dimmed. All at once all the lights in the apartment dimmed and I froze. I was at the window and saw the lights go out in my building. Click, Click, Click, the lights first flickered and went out in the six twenty story buildings around me and then in the entire valley of the Lower East Side up to thirty Fourth Street. Black, black, night and no communication. Was the hurricane Sandy responsible or was it the reality that global warming is here to stay? I went back and pulled the printer plug out of the multiple outlets. But I was too late and the three transformers exploded. Although I lived with some of your discomfort, no light, electricity, food, water, heat, phone, Internet, heat, etc. As A Zen Buddhist I feel extremely guilty. What can I say? I will adjust, be more aware of green technology, and reduce the use of my electricity. I sincerely apologize for the black out and take full responsibility. But please learn from my mistake. Be more prepared for future negative events since they are inevitable. Love always. Satoru

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Be determined but flexible.

Be careful of the computer age and the Internet information age. It is becoming easier to download information a second or third time then to memorize it. We no longer have to remember anything. Just Google it and the machine remembers for us. We are actually spending our lives in front of a screen mixing, mashing, downloading, uploading and feeding the network.
This magnified, collaborative interaction, complexly ebbed, into our environment and lives, is morphing into our identity. 

It used to be think Yiddish, dress British and talk Chinese. Now it’s, Talk Black, think White, love Yellow, and act Green.
Satoru 

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Change

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.
The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
“That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.”
Her husband looked on, but remained silent.
Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:
“Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.”
The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”
And so it is with life.
What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look.

Satoru