The Vernal Equinox

Happy first day of spring everybody!

The March equinox signals the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. It marks that special moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator going from south to north. In 2012, this equinox comes early. It’ll be on March 20 at 5:14 UTC, or 12:14 a.m. Central Daylight Time for us in the central U.S. 

Zen Poetry

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.
But sages don't consider the past.
And they don't worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
 Bodhidharma

Buddhism, Cosmology, and Evolution

An interesting article at Huffpost about the origins and nature of the universe according to modern science and Buddhism. When quantum physics meets Buddhism, interesting things happen:

Quantum electrodynamics is a powerfully predictive theory developed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. It proposes that virtual particles, electrons and photons appear and disappear from a zero-point field, the quantum vacuum that pervades the universe. This is eerily similar to how Buddhist cosmology describes the nature of the cosmos, originating within a luminous space that is the ground of consciousness itself...


As Thomas Berry pointed out, if we restore the fundamental unity of spirit and matter, artificially split apart by scientific materialism, the scientific story of the universe can also serve beautifully as our new sacred story. For Buddhist cosmology, biological evolution presents no problem at all: natural history and spiritual history are two sides of the same coin. The beginningless consciousness of luminous space gave rise to this evolving universe and from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.  

We. Are. Tiny.

Ethan Siegal contemplates our universe:

Although "only" about 250,000 galaxies are shown in the above image, the entire Universe is estimated to have at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, spread out over a spherical region about a million times larger in diameter than our galaxy is. In other words, you and everything you know resides on a tiny, wet rock nearly a million times less massive than the star that powers it, in a solar system one ten-millionth the diameter of our galaxy, which contains at least hundreds of billions of stars not so different from ours, in a Universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, and maybe perhaps more.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen