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Whoaaa..Things are a buzz here!! I thought the big thing for our Zen group this year would be the Weekend retreat in Monterey. However Ch’an Shifu, Miao Tian, Deputy Abbot of Shao Lin Temple is coming to or from Tawain to visit the Heart Zen main center in SoCa. He is on his way to or from some other country doing spiritual Shifu stuff. The last I heard in a matter of a few days notice they are expecting 100 people to show up for the one day retreat. At first just I was going, next it was my cousin and I, finally now Lady Z is also going. She was feeling a bit unsure since she had not been practicing. One does not gets a chance of meeting a major Spiritual leader often so I made the choice that she should go….. So we all are going.

Tian Shifu speaks some Japanese, so Lady Z can speak for her & me. I am suppose to do the face to face exchange with the master. whoa. There will also be another Japanese woman there who practices HeartZen so Lady Z can have a talk in Japanese with someone else. I see all this as a good thing and I have a couple hints that this is something I should go to, for whatever reason. So all this goes down in two weeks… The Zen Crew’s Excellant LA Zen Adventure…sugoii

What did you do last night?????

Here in the house of Zen we did our symbolic part for earth hour. We have all energy saving bulbs in our home anyway. Lady Z enjoyed doing the by candle evening. She says it should be done once a month.  Once a year is nothing. She would be even up for everyday lights off by 9:00 or 10:00 pm. With her it was not so much the energy saving but she just likes the feel of it. We ended up with the lights off for about 2.5 hours not just the one. She got to talk, I got to listen , and listen and listen…

here are a few things about global warming:

Sidney alone - everyone turning the lights off for one hour was equivelent to taking all the cars off the road for a year.

1.Human activities are changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
2.The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
3.An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
4.The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
5.Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.