12 Years later

In 1996 I went to India, and there I met a meditation teacher that had a profound effect on me. In fact, 'Godwin' as we knew him, was well liked by my classmates as well. We had the opportunity to study with him for about 3 weeks, and I still remember that time vividly.
It was sad to hear that later, in 2000, he passed away. Acarya Godwin Samararatne was by no means an old man, but he did live life to its fullest I believe, and touched more lives than most of us could hope to.
Godwin was not a monk or priest or anything of the sort. He was a "layman" in his trade, which means he was a regular householder like you or I. The time I spent with him he proved to be a down-to-earth, friendly and humble man. My classmates and I would often relish the times we sat on the front porch of his residence in India after dinner and chat. He was always open to share his time in this way.
I recently found this website dedicated to Godwin and his teachings, so I thought I would provide it here on my blog.



Godwin's page

An Eye-opener

Yesterday J and I went to go see a movie with some friends. I had suggested the new Indiana Jones movie, but my friend suggested a documentary, and since Indy tickets are hard to get (official opening is next weekend and this weekend was a special preview) I agreed to see "Black Gold" (see trailer below), a movie about an Ethiopian coffee cooperative of farmers and how the world price is set for something I, personally, drink every morning.

Actually, I was already aware of most of these issues before seeing the film. I've also bought Fair Trade coffee before, or bought from cooperatives at international fairs to get coffee from Uganda, Laos, Colombia and other bean growers. The thing I liked about this movie was that they focused on one group, in Ethiopia, and did a good job at explaining the issues, particularly the point that Africa needs more "trade", not just "aid".

TED: not the airline

My favorite website these days is TED.com: Ideas worth spreading. I can't say enough good things about it. The site features over 200 amazing speakers, thinkers and doers of our time giving talks on an amazing variety of subjects. The other day I watched a new speech by Al Gore to follow up his famous "Inconvenient Truth" talk. I also saw Steven Levitt (Economist), William McDonough (Architect), and Richard Dawkins (Scientist), and am looking forward to watching the talks by Chris Anderson ("Long Tail" market guru), J.J. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield, etc) and others. The list of speakers they've had over the past 2+ decades is truly impressive, but even better is that these talks can be downloaded as a video podcast or posted and shared on blogs freely. The first one I saw that really got me hooked, though, was Jill Bolte Taylor. Check out her video at this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229