Monday, December 08, 2008 - Twiltley Branch Campground, Collinsville MS
< previous day | archives | next day >
Sunrise at Okatibbee Lake, Twiltley Branch Campground, Collinsville MS, Dec 08, 2008
Night camp
Site 39 - Twiltley Branch Campground, Collinsville MS
- This is a quiet, well maintained COE campground with level gravel sites, reservoir views, electric & water
- There is good biking on the park roads
- Most sites are wooded so solar gain is limited for those with solar panels
- Good Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies from slow to barely useable
- Find other references to Twiltley Branch
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather
- Reserve a site
- Get a map
Emptiness
Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.
The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003