Billy Collins' poems

network of spiritual progressives

I happened to catch this talk on Free Speech tv and found it very inspiring so I thought I'd share:



It fits in nicely with David Korten's The Turning Point and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.

World's Religions - Taoism

There is a section on Taoism on Beliefnet:
http://www.beliefnet.com/index/index_10037.html

My favorite introduction to Taoist principles is:

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

World's Religions - Confucianism

The meeting of The World's Religions Study group on Monday, April 23 at 7pm will discuss the chapter on Confucianism.

Confucianism isn't covered by BeliefNet but there is a fairly extensive entry in Wikipedia.

World's Religions - Buddhism

We set a date to discuss the chapter on Buddhism in The World's Religions by Huston Smith. We'll be meeting on Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30 pm. Sessions will run for 1 1/2 hours.

For another perspective:

Beliefnet Overview of Buddhism

One of the most accessible books on Buddhism that I've read recently is:

• Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen

I also enjoyed:

• Awakening the Buddha Within : Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World by Lama Surya Das

And you can't go wrong with just about anything by the Dalai Lama. You can watch one of his talks at UC Irvine

There are also a number or books giving a secular view of Buddhist precepts:

• Buddhism without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor
• Buddha in Your Rearview Mirror by Woody Hochswender

And if you're looking for more information on the Buddha himself...

• Buddha by Karen Armstrong

New Technologies Workshop

newtech2
Originally uploaded by sreymer.

Here is a photo of some of the participants at Saturday's New Technologies Workshop. This was taken to show how easy it is to take a photo, edit it, and post it on the internet. Unfortunately we ran into some problems when trying to post it to the blog from Picasa. But you can always go back in and fix things.

The PowerPoint presentation is available on the web:
http://www.uubillings.org/adultre/NewTechnologies.pdf

It requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) and is a fairly large file (2.6 MB) so it may take a while to download.

world's religions

The World's Religions by Huston Smith - book discussion
Wednesday, March 28th, 7:30 p.m. at the Fellowship

"The living tradition which we [UUs] share draws from many sources: Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life."

Did you ever wish you knew more about the world's major religions so you could better understand what might inspire us? Join us as the journey begins with a discussion of Hinduism on Wednesday, March 28th at 7:30pm at the fellowship. You will need to purchase a copy of the book prior to the first meeting. For a somewhat lighter overview of Hinduism, you might take a look at the section on Beliefnet.com:

http://www.beliefnet.com/index/index_10003.html

There's also an interesting interview with Huston Smith on Google Video