Ed Batista

Bay Bridge

Cold, rainy, dark, perfect.

Golden Gate

Some days--not every day, but today, for example--I'm amazed at my good fortune.

Kagyu Droden Kunchab

A few blocks down the street from me is Kagyu Droden Kunchab, a "Center for the Study and Practice of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism," according to their site.  I often see Lama Lodru Kinpoche and other monks in burgundy robes walking by on Fell Street.

They recently painted the center orange (ORANGE!), and moved their prayer flags from the roof to the front of the building, which I suppose is as close as Buddhists get to proselytising.

The new visibility made me want to learn a bit more about them, so I discovered and explored their site the other day.  The lama's bio is amazing--Parts One, Two, Four, Five and Six are online, but Part Three seems to be missing.  Still a great read:

I was born in 1942 in the small village of Martam in Sikkim, which was at that time an independent kingdom, located in the foothills of the Himalayas between India and Tibet...

...from about the age of 13 to 16. I was experiencing the pain and suffering that must be what an animal feels, without understanding or any sense of meaning. I had gone in a very short time from what seemed like the life of a prince to what felt like the life of a dog...

I began preparations to leave for Bhutan, where Kalu Rinpoche was conducting traditional three-year retreats close to the Tibetan border. I sold the only things of value that I owned: a Tibetan carpet, a silver bowl, and the retreat hut that I had built. These brought in about 50 rupees-not much!

...After completing six months of preparatory training at Bhutia Busty Monastery in Darjeeling, I began the next leg of my journey in the company of about 20 Bhutanese monks who, like me, were headed for the three-year retreat that was to take place at Chang Chub Ling in Bhutan...

My Bhutanese companions had made this journey before and were used to rigorous travel. They would start out before dawn, rest and eat lunch at mid-day, walk until evening, stop for dinner, then continue on until well after midnight, making the most progress at night. For me, it was an ordeal. Even in the best of health, I would have found it difficult to keep up with these swift-footed mountaineers, but because I had been weakened by tuberculosis, I constantly fell behind, especially at night, and had to struggle to catch up...

What took me two days of travel and every ounce of strength I had left took the Bhutanese monks only a few hours. Several of them made the trip to Chang Chub Ling and back several times, visiting with friends and family, and then taking turns to come back and help me through the remaining mountainous miles...

When I finally arrived, there was a festival honoring and welcoming my group to the monastery. There was abundant food and a wonderful atmosphere of homecoming. I remember feeling amazed that I, a complete stranger to these people, could be welcomed like a family member. Of course this was because I came with the recommendation and blessings of His Holiness Karmapa and His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche.

Even though I was greatly enjoying our happy arrival, throughout those festive days there was really only one thing on my mind: the three-year retreat. I felt I could hardly wait another day.

Unfortunately, that's where it ends.  It's a Buddhist cliffhanger!  The suspense is killing me.  How'd the retreat go?  And how'd he get to the States?  I'll either have to wait for the next installment, or stop him on the street next time I see him.

San Francisco Bay Trail

Last month the SF Chronicle ran a great article by Carl Hall on the San Francisco Bay Trail, a wonderfully ambitious effort to ring the Bay with a continuous 500-mile walking and bicycle trail.  The project is being led by the Association of Bay Area Governments, which estimates that it'll take another $188 million and 15 years to complete.  (It'll actually cost a lot more when you factor in pedestrian and bike access paths on all the bridges around and across the Bay.)

A steep price tag, yes, particularly at a time when there are so many other urgent needs.  But it's still worth our support.  The Bay is an incredible natural treasure in the middle (literally) of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country.  Despite the Bay Area's phenomenal growth over the past few decades, the shoreline is surprisingly undeveloped and accessible, but only a project like the Bay Trail will keep it that way.

tags: san francisco bay trail san francisco bay san francisco

Golden Gate Bridge, Up Close

Golden Gate Bridge, Up Close,
originally uploaded by edbatista.

Another Flickr upload (see the previous post).

Worked well again, although it doesn't appear that I can categorize photos when posting from within Flickr--I had to log in to TypePad again.  Ah, well.  One nice thing is that posting to a blog apparently doesn't count toward the 10 MB monthly bandwidth allowance that comes with my free Flickr account.  The worst thing about it is that it's sort of a pain to type f-l-i-c-k-r.  Sort of sad when you consider what someone's doing with f-l-i-c-k-e-r.com.  Very '98.

United States of Apple

United States of Apple,
originally uploaded by edbatista.

I'm trying out Flickr, a photo-sharing service that's getting increasingly popular. Plenty of not-really-useful features (captions and that sort of thing), but what I'm really interested in is the ability to tag photos, search for and identify photos using tags (yours and others'), and create an community that makes it easy to share images with others.

What's also interesting about Flickr is the integration with your blogging application.  This photo and the paragraph above were posted directly from within Flickr--I had to configure my Flickr account so that it could access my TypePad account, but I didn't have to use TypePad at all.  (If I were slicker with HTML/CSS, I could do a lot more with the photo and text format, but I'll leave that for another day.)  Another upside is that the photo's hosted at Flickr, so it doesn't count against my TypePad storage limit.  (With a free Flickr account, you can upload a total of 10 MB a month, and you have unlimited storage capacity.)  A downside is that I don't think I can select a category for the blog entry--I had to categorize this entry while writing this paragraph from within TypePad, but there may be a workaround.