Went to Upaya in the morning, to listen to Stephen Batchelor give a talk.

He is the most brilliant speaker I have heard. He speaks “book-ready”. Things that stuck out for me – as I remember them:

The Pali language has neither an equivalent of the English “the” nor any capitalization, which means that when Buddha is translated as speaking about “the Unconditioned”, “the Truth” or “the Unborn”, those capitalizations are a deliberate choice, an edit if you will, of the translator.

Emptyness should really be translated as Emptying. Nothing stays empty for long. Things need to be emptied all the time. And then they fill up.

He also spoke of an ancient Tibetan, Dharmakirti. I will ask Stephen to suggest books that contain Dharmakirti’s thought, because Dharmakirti sounded very interesting.

Nirvana is not the end, but a means. There is no end.

After his talk Stephen Batchelor asked Roshi and me to take a few photos, as he needs a pic for his upcoming book. Here are a couple I took:

Here is DMV of the Buddha outside the hall… out-of-focus and in…

Sound-art on Vimeo: