พระอาจารย์คึกฤทธิ์ โสตถผโล

Turned out that my Vaio notebook is more resilient than I thought. It still functions though the internet explorer is still weird. I'm planning to buy a new one anyway, but probably in a few months.

What I love about blogging is that I can keep my friends posted on what I'm up to. Just an electronic journal.

By the way, check out this new search engine: Wolfram Alpha.

Last night I went to Baan Aree to listen to Phra Ajarn Kiklit of Wat Napapong (วัดนาป่าพง). I've heard his sermons on tape before but never in person. His hands and feet are big for a person of his size. He exudes positive and kind energy. Inquisitive eyes. His assistant set up a notebook so he can put up Powerpoint slides on the excerpt from พระไตรปิฎก (Tripitaka, text of Buddha teaching) as LP Kiklit spoke. Also, he did a demo of running a search on พระไตรปิฎก to see if that particular word has been said by Buddha himself or if it existed during his lifetime.

Mostly he took people's questions, most of which I'm not so interested, e.g., on dark sciences (ไสยศาสตร์) or on how many times a person is born once he reaches a certain level of enlightenment (four levels). What I like is when he talked about karma and เจ้ากรรมนายเวร. I don't want to misquote him so I won't say what he said. His sermon is recorded and posted on Baan Aree web site.

I've heard before that we don't actually read every word when we read. We fill in the blank to speed up the reading. And I never experienced that first hand before until I typed a book in Braille. It requires me to memorize the words and type because I can't remember the keystrokes. Once I was in, at one time I simply replaced the authors's words with my own and mistyped. I realized that I co-authored the work when I didn't know where I was in the original text. I suppose it's the same mechanism when we listen. We reinterpret and store it somewhere in memory. Once the info is retrieved, it is already filtered to fit our own understanding or our whatever liking...