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

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 

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

I walked over the dune bridge and onto the beach. I laughed out loud and happiness flowed through me when I saw for miles in each direction that there were only a few people on the entire beach. The waves were high for two hundred feet off the shore and the breeze is strong and salty. I walked down to the edge where the water came up to the dry sand. I closed my eyes and walked very slowly keeping one foot on the dry sand and the other on the high water mark. I cleared my mind and concentrated on walking in a straight line and deeply breathing. The time it passes it passes. How long the Zen walk took I do not know. I opened my eyes and just down the beach a beautiful naked women sat washing herself with the fine sand.