Big thanks to Chade Meng (aka the Buddha in the Googleplex) for making this happen. I hope that someday Shinzen’s approach and style of teaching meditation be taught in universities as part of the humanities, health, and science departments.

Thanks, Shinzen! Today, Google Talks. Tomorrow, TED Talks… moment by moment, just this…

Take your time, son. Keep on dreaming of ten million fireflies. Your mom and I are just right here waiting and dreaming with you.

Last night I tweeted this question to all my geeky Buddhist cyber friends.

“to all geeky Buddhists out there, here’s a question: What did the Buddha awaken to?”

I’ve received a lot of interesting answers on Twitter and Facebook.

Tweet responses:

jimcollins: Venus

erisb: The realization of his own mind.

SamTheButcher: Things as they are instead of how we want them to be.

majidrazvi: I’m not sure that question is truly answerable from this side of the dream.

thedazman: I think he basically decompiled reality.

nivarasa: To the nature of suffering, and to the path which leads to its cessation.

hovila: This

MonstrousVermin: The four noble truths.

crazywisdom: imho he awoke to the truth about our existence which is fundamentally one of suffering: the diagnosis,cause,prognosis & treatment

necroichthus: One answer I like is the “lack of truth” a-la: http://bit.ly/90fimp

VincentHorn: Can’t say.

ZenDirtZenDust: A Hangover

dkcarey: ME a cup of coffee?

hokaisobol: A useful answer must be 2fold. Conventionally speaking, to dependent origination. Ultimately, awakening has no distinct object.> >jointly thus, one is directly awake to suchness, allowing recognition of dependent origination everywhere, in many ways.

fivedirections: no self… no separation…the emptiness that’s fully of everything.

will_simpson: 4NobleTruths

jimparedes: MU!

Replies on Facebook:

Eric Calhoun: identity

Gary Sanders: Freedom from clinging….freedom from suffering.

Adam Richards: The 4 noble truths & his own nature

Mila Jake Stetser: being.

Ryan Oelke: this discussion wouldn’t be fun without paradox, so let’s reword the question – What did the Buddha awaken from? in, out, in, out.

Tara Bisgaard: the reality of now

Mike Redmer: to what he couldn’t not be.

Eileen Workman: what is.

Joel Morrison: the integration of the relative and absolute

Aley Crooker Martin: Now, being. Both sounds right.

Scott Zimmerle: mu

As you can see, the responses range from the ineffable (“Mu”), to reality, to “a hangover.” At first glance the answer to the question should be very straightforward. The Buddha, after all, is the icon of awakening. So how come geeky Buddhists have different concepts and assumptions with regards to the question?

Frankly, I don’t know the answer. I would’ve probably answered, “self as no thing,” or as a corollary to that, the Buddha awoke from “separation.”

So what is the “right” answer to the question, “What did the Buddha awoke to?”

I would refer to Stephen Batchelor for the “right” answer to this question. According to Stephen the Buddha awoke to the Four Noble Truths. He has an excellent discourse on this. Listen to the audio below from Upaya Dharma Podcast.

Godless Religion or Devout Atheism? Part 8 of 14 – Session 4

Stephen looks at the Buddha’s central metaphor of “awakening.” According to early Pali texts, the Buddha awoke to the Four Noble Truths. Often, we are taught that the Buddha awoke to original nature, or the Truth. The Four Noble Truths are alive, and they challenge our lives to act appropriately at every moment. In this seminar, Stephen also discusses the meaning of “dukkha,” and that the Buddha urges everyone to fully know it, to go directly into the darkness, where we may ultimately know a deep beauty.

So a few of my geeky Buddhist cyber friends nailed the answer to the question. Nice. Very geeky.

I highly recommend listening to the entire Godless Religion or Devout Atheism series for more context on Stephen’s discourse. I think mainstream Western Buddhists could learn a lot from Stephen’s careful reading and radical interpretation of the original Buddhist texts. In addition, Martine Batchelor (Stephen’s wife) presented a very heart-warming and insightful dharma talks in the series, with emphasis on lovingkindness and compassion.

Readers who are not familiar with Stephen Batchelor might ask why I consider his interpretation to be the “right” answer. First of, I don’t know if there’s even a “right” answer to the question. But given Stephen’s background — long-time practitioner of different Buddhist traditions, scholar, translator of dharma texts — I think he deeply knows what he’s talking about. To me, Stephen’s interpretation is the most probable and logical answer since he carefully quoted, analyzed, and cross-checked the sources from the earliest Buddhist texts.

Finally, Stephen’s interpretation of the recursive and fractal nature of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path appeals to my intellect and my intuition. For Stephen, the Four Noble Truths lead to the Eightfold Path, and the Eightfold Path leads to the Four Noble Truths — hence its recursive and fractal nature.

In short, the Buddha awoke to a process, not to a static metaphysical transcendent ultimate absolute nature of reality. Nirvana is not some ultimate state or stage. Nirvana is a verb. Nirvana is a continuous process. I like that.

Here’s to all our awakening to the Four Noble Truths.

it is official
hello, Mr. President
please be more ballsy

i think i’m ready
my geeky teacher appeared
with kick ass dharma

sitting, lying down,
surfing on impermanence
this Open Practice

migraine headaches suck
i’ve found a temporal cure
mindfulness it is

joined Toastmasters club
delivered an ice breaker
voted best speaker

riding a hybrid
like flying in a blue dream
Optimus Prius

our little buddha
Francis Raven is his name
free as a black bird

Shinzen once said that, “When the teacher is ready, the students appear.” I guess Shinzen is ready for me. For those who are wondering why I picked Shinzen as my main dharma teacher, here’s a welcoming video wherein he summarized the reasons.

Another reason is that I like his geeky approach to the dharma and his unique interactive meditation style. But most importantly, he’s a no non-sense teacher who’s not afraid to talk about enlightenment and his first-hand experience as a “liberated” person (Shinzen never calls himself liberated or enlightened, but I believe him to be, otherwise I won’t pick him as a dharma teacher. but that’s just me.).

Finally, on top of it all, his humility and honesty is disarming and he laughs like a geeky kid.

Most you of who are following this blog, my (hyper)stream, and tweets are probably sick of me pimping out Shinzen. But what can I say? I find tremendous value in his teaching so I’m just paying it forward. I hope you find value in them as well. And if you do find value in them, please pay it forward. It’s good karma

May you be safe, be healthy, live with ease… and may Happiness be.

P.S. As of this writing more videos of Shinzen Young are being added to his YouTube channel (big thanks to HPK for recording and uploading these videos). There’s also another YouTube channel with Shinzen’s up-close interviews conducted by Stephanie Nash. Collectively, these videos contain all the up-to-date version of Shinzen’s teachings condensed from his four decades of experience. As an example, here’s the technical foundation of Shinzen’s contemporary reworking of the Buddha’s five aggregates – see The Human Sensory (TSSFIT) System.

I’m glad that Shinzen is doing this “brain dump” online so that many more people will benefit from his style of teaching (which in my opinion is the best that I’ve encountered out there). The best part is that, from what I know, whatever Shinzen talks about in those videos are the same things he teaches in his home-based retreats. This means that Shinzen is making his teachings available as “open source”. You don’t have to pay him anyting to get the gist of his teachings. You don’t have to buy any of his books (though I highly recommend The Science of Enlightenment). You don’t have to pay him squat to benefit from his teachings. You can basically just watch all the available videos and implement it in your daily practice. That’s essentially what I’ve done. I have never met Shinzen in person. I have never attended (yet) any of his residential retreats. Yet, I feel that he’s provided me with all the information I need through his free videos. If that is not Open Source Enlightenment, then I don’t know what Open Source Enlightenment is.

Thank you, Shinzen for your teaching, generosity, humility, and openness. May you live long and kick more ass.

(via Flickr ~ davidwoodfx)

It would be another three months before we officially become parents, but my wife and I already picked a name for our little buddha. It didn’t take us long to come up with a name. We did it over Thanksgiving weekend. We wanted to give our baby boy a cool-sounding, relatively unique, and meaningful name. We picked “Francis Raven.” Here’s why…

After going through hundreds of baby names online my wife liked the name “Francis.” It has good meaning and it goes well with our last name. But for some reason I’m attracted to the name “Raven” (maybe because I had a weird dream about them). To me it sounds cool, masculine, mysterious and mystical. But after doing further research, although Raven can be used for both sexes, I found out that it’s more popular as a girl’s name here in the U.S. So I asked my wife, “What if we used Raven as a middle name instead?”  She liked the idea. But what really sold me is the serendipitous and complimentary meaning of the two names.

Francis in Latin is “Frenchman; or free man.” Some famous people: St. Francis, Francis Bacon. Raven is “a large black bird in the crow family” with a high level of intelligence.  Also, the raven holds a special role in mythologies. In Norse mythology there are two ravens that sit on the shoulders of the god Odin. Their names are thought and memory. In Native American mythology the raven is depicted as “Creator of the world.”  So while Francis is a famous Catholic name (i.e. St. Francis is patron saint of animals), Raven, on the other hand, is an enigmatic Pagan symbol (i.e. symbolizes protection, initiation and healing, change in consciousness, wisdom, messages from spirit). I like the tension

Finally, when put together, Francis Raven can literally mean “free as a black bird”, or symbolically mean as, “free to think and remember”, “free from thought and memory”, and “free to create.” Very cool. We like it.

After we’ve decided on a name I went ahead and secured his online presence. Good thing FrancisRaven.com and FrancisRaven.me were still available. Not anymore   I also set up his Gmail, YouTube, and Twitter accounts. Then we announced our baby boy’s name to family, relatives, and close friends using his Facebook account, by friending all of them.

My wife was shaking her head while I was doing all the online set up. She probably thought I was crazy, but for someone like me who has an online persona, and who had been living and breathing online in the past six years, it’s just a natural thing to do. I think our son will thank me for this someday, assuming that social networks are still around by the time he’s old enough to use (or wear) a computer.

So dear Francis Raven, now you know why your Mom and I picked your name. By the time you read this we’ve already taught you well enough how to be playful and responsible, online and offline. I hope you don’t get embarrassed by your dad’s online presence. Always remember that your Mom and I care for you with all our hearts, with all our minds, with Love from a timeless and boundless space…. Now go forth and kick some ass.

~Your Dad, Teacher, and Dharma Buddy.

However, I had some questions on how to continue with my meditation practice whenever I find myself lucid in my dream. After all, the purpose of my lucid dream practice is to extend my meditative awareness within the dream and flow from there. So I submitted a question to Shinzen so that he could shed some light on it.

Question: When doing the Five Ways in a lucid dream, should I label the experience Touch, Sight, Sound or Image/Talk ? (For those who are not familiar with Shinzen’s lingo [pdf], I’m asking Shinzen whether to note lucid dream sensory experiences as “objective” reality or “subjective” reality.) See Shinzen’s answer in this video.

Thanks to HPK and Shinzen for entertaining my questions. May happiness be.

Below is the transcript of my speech. I added some links for more context and opportunity for deeper exploration by curious readers. Enjoy.

Toastmasters Speech #2: One Sweet Ride

“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe.” ~ Nikola Tesla, 1892

My wife and I are expecting a baby soon. That’s why a baby-friendly ride has become a necessity. So we’ve finally decided get a new car. Just last week we bought a 2010 3rd Generation Toyota Prius Hybrid. Its biggest selling point: fuel economy. With EPA rating of 51 miles city and 48 miles highway, the 3rd generation Prius is the most fuel-efficient mass-produced car on the market today.

I’ve been driving it for a week now and the mileage is just awesome. It could actually run more than 500 miles on a full tank of gas (11.9 gallons). To give you a better picture, consider this: I can fill it up on a weekend, drive from Kirkland to Vancouver, Canada, and back, twice, and still have enough gas to drive back and forth to work, for the whole week! As you can see, in just one week I’ve become a certified agog Prius geek.

However, as much as I love our new hybrid car, I can’t help but feel disappointed about the state of the automotive industry. Hybrid cars are like fax machines. It’s transitory technology. The future of cars is really electric — zero emission; zero fuel consumption. Why we’re still dependent on fossil fuels to power our cars, I can only guess. But according to the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, the U.S. had its chance to transition to electric cars during the 1990s, but it blew the opportunity.

The implication of the documentary is that politicians, General Motors, and the oil industry all conspired to bury the EV1 — GM’s electric vehicle. It’s a tragic story. Go see it and weep.

But then again there’s no need cry. Fortunately for us, there’s a new breed of hot shot young entrepreneurs who understand that our dependence on fossil fuels is not only unsustainable, but also quite insane. That’s why electric cars are coming back with a vengeance.

Take for example, Tesla Motors. In 2006 Tesla Motors unveiled the Tesla Roadster. It’s a fully electric sports car that could go up to 244 miles in single charge. Base Price: $109,000. Too pricey for me. But just last March (2009) Tesla Motors unveiled Model S, a fully electric sedan that could go up to 300 miles per charge. They plan to mass-produce it in late 2011 with a base price of $57,000. I don’t know about you, but it’s still too pricey for me. But, hey, rich people are falling in line to buy them. So bless them all for keeping the electric dream alive.

Electric cars are good. Electric cars are beautiful. But by itself it’s not enough of a solution. If we want to have an impact on global emissions, electric cars not only have to scale, but the whole transportation infrastructure also has to radically change. Thanks to people like Shai Agassi, CEO of a company called Better Place, for leading the way in turning the transportation infrastructure on its head. His company has radical plans to take entire countries oil-free by 2020. If and when Better Place succeeds, maybe then we could retire our Toyota hybrids.

Call me a dreamer, but with the exponential pace of technology, I believe that someday our children’s children’s grandchildren will finally live in a world that Nikola Tesla had envisioned — a world where machines are powered by energy obtainable at any point in the universe.

But, until then, by driving a hybrid car, I believe that we’re doing our share, no matter how small, or even negligible the impact is. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no hippie. I’m no die-hard environmentalist. I’m just a happy owner of a Toyota Prius. It’s not fully electric, but I still love it. My wife loves it. And I’m sure that our baby boy will soon appreciate its smooth, safe, environmentally-friendly, one hell of a sweet ride.

P.S. Speaking of Shai Agassi, check out this video on FORA.TV – The Electric Horizon.

we shall call you... Optimus

I’m a utilitarian when it comes to stuff, especially cars. The last time I bought a car was 12 years ago. It was my first car. His name is Mitsu. I still drive it. He’s been my faithful road buddy ever since. He’s been good to me. He protected me from accidents, and still in top condition. If it’s just me, I’ll keep him until he turns to dust. But the reality is that he can no longer serve my our needs as a family. With the addition of our little buddha we soon need a baby-friendly ride. So out we went yesterday to finally get our dream car.

We’ve been eyeing the 2010 Toyota Prius for some time now. I’ve been reading reviews, looking at pricing, all the while salivating. That’s why it didn’t take us long to decide to drive off with one from the dealer. We ended up buying a 2010 T0yota Prius IV Hybrid (with a cool Blue Ribbon Metallic color). I picked the Prius IV package because of the solar sun roof and navigation options.

I was nervous buying a new car. I’m no longer used to paying monthly car payments. But we bit the bullet because of our need for it and, of course, to spoil ourselves after working our asses off. Fortunately, we got a really good deal on the base price. Considering the additional options, we got it for about $1K less than invoice (based on the TMV Pricing via Edmunds). Sweet.

The next thing for me to do is to RTFM (read the friggin’ manual) and watch some 2010 Prius hybrid driving tips so I can start driving our new car with ease. With its 51/48 MPG rating, I’ll be spending a lot of joy riding with this rock star of the hybrid world. My wife loves it and I’m sure that our little buddha will appreciate the smooth, safe, and environmentally-friendly ride.

We like to name our cars. We treat them as if they’re our friends. So from this day forward, we shall call our new road buddy… Optimus.

P.S. Here’s a fan video I made just for the heck of it.

P.P.S. Here’s a good review from CNET.