Scala, Java, Unix, MacOS tutorials (page 10)

Ram Dass quotes about The Witness and witnessing (and awareness)

Mostly because of Ram Dass books, and also more recently because of the book I Am That, I have been digging deeper than ever into the spiritual concept of “The Witness.” By that I mean both in terms of how we use the witness as a mindfulness and meditation technique, and also what that really means.

To that end I have started collecting Ram Dass quotes about the witness and the process of witnessing as a form of mindfulness, and the following are the Ram Dass quotes about the witness that I’ve found so far.

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story

Enhancing meditation and mindfulness with transcranial focused ultrasound neuromodulation

Shinzen Young and other researchers are trying to raise money to fund a study that may one day help everyone meditate more easily:

“Imagine attending a meditation retreat where cutting-edge brain stimulation technology lowers the barriers to meditation, allowing you to access its benefits more deeply. This is our vision, using transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) neuromodulation. We need your support to bring to life the first ever ultrasound-enhanced meditation retreat.”

Enhancing meditation and mindfulness with transcranial focused ultrasound neuromodulation

When Zen Master Seung Sahn says, “Only go straight, don’t know”, what does that mean?

When Zen Master Seung Sahn says, “Go straight, only don’t know”, what does that mean?

When Zen Master Seung Sahn (ZMSS) says, “Only go straight, don’t know,” he is pointing to a fundamental teaching in Zen, which emphasizes the importance of maintaining a mind that is clear, focused, and free from preconceived notions. The following is a detailed breakdown of what I believe this quote means.

(1) Only Go Straight

First, “Go straight” emphasizes directness in action and perception. It means to act without hesitation, doubt, or unnecessary deliberation. In a sense it means “don’t check” — another phrase ZMSS used, and I interpret as “Don’t second-guess.”

A.I. Painting: Zen Master Seung Sahn: “Zen means not holding onto anything”

This is an A.I. faux painting based on the following quote by Zen Master Seung Sahn: “Zen means not holding onto anything. If you are holding something, or making something, or attached to something, you are not practicing Zen.”

Watching the movie Easy Rider in a small theater in New Mexico

August 23, 2023: When I became aware in a dream this morning, I was sitting in a small movie theater in New Mexico, watching the movie Easy Rider.

After watching the movie for a few moments, I looked around and noticed the theater was a bit larger than a large coffee shop. There’s a large coffee shop in Palmer, Alaska, they also use for events, and it reminded me of that.

I also saw that there were only three of us in the theater. To my right was a man I didn’t know, and when I looked to my left, Peter Fonda was sitting there. He looked back at me and nodded. I nodded back, and we both went back to watching the movie.

A.I. Painting: Don’t expect the next moment (Shunryu Suzuki quote)

This is an A.I “monochrome ink drawing” based on the Shunryu Suzuki quote, “Don’t expect the next moment.”

With the right motivation, you might have discovered functional programming techniques yourself

As I mention in my free functional programming videos, if you had the desire to see your code as math, you might have discovered FP techniques yourself.

As an example, 20 years ago I couldn’t get my sysadmin to install a server-side spam filter at my consulting firm because he was always “too busy.”

So I wrote my own spam-filtering algorithm, and then someone with a CS degree looked at it and said, “That’s a Bayesian algorithm.” I had no idea what that was, I just knew that I was sick and tired of seeing spam all the time.

I later presented this solution at the 2004 Borland Conference (demonstrating how JBuilder helped at that time).

A.I. Painting: D.T. Suzuki: Think only of the infinite (merge with the infinite)

This A.I. painting is based on a quote by D.T. Suzuki. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said that when you meditate you should be extremely still, and “think of nothing but the infinite.” I remember that someone else also said to “merge with the infinite” when meditating, so those are the inspiration for this art.

Painting: The only currency you take with you when you leave this world is the love you have given and received

I’ve been working with ChatGPT lately to create images that go with “spiritual quotes,” and it generated this image for the quote, “The only currency you take with you when you leave this world is the love you have given and received.”

ZMSS: He was outside chanting and hitting the moktak when suddenly his body disappeared

Here’s a little quote from the book, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, about Zen Master Seung Sahn:

“Finally it was the last day. He was outside chanting and hitting the moktak (wooden drum) when suddenly his body disappeared. From far away he could hear the beat of the moktak and the sound of his own voice. After some time in this state, he returned to his body, and he understood: the rocks, the river, everything he could see and hear, all were his true self. The truth is just like this.”

ZMSS: If you can break the wall of your self, you will become infinite in time and space

Not to go too “New Age” on you, I gave ChatGPT the following quote from Zen Master Seung Sahn, and this is the first image it produced, which I thought was pretty good.

“If you can break the wall of your self,
you will become infinite in time and space.”

Insight could have torn me to pieces and killed me and I could not have cared less so long as I got stream entry

This is another great quote from Daniel Ingram:

“I knew I was beaten, but I ‘noted’. I felt I was cracking at the seams, but I noted. By this point, Insight could have torn me to pieces and killed me and I could not have cared less so long as I got stream entry.”

I feel like I’m following his path, albeit in slow motion because of the other requirements of my life.

If you can break the wall of your self, you will become infinite in time and space ~ Zen Master Seung Sahn

“If you can break the wall of your self, you will become infinite in time and space.”

~ Zen Master Seung Sahn

Functional Programming, Simplified: 1,000 free PDF downloads and counting

On August 18, 2024, I made the PDF version of Functional Programming, Simplified free, and on August 21st I’m glad to say that we just passed 1,000 free downloads.

The PDF version of “Functional Programming, Simplified” is free (at least for now)

August 18, 2024: The PDF version of “Functional Programming, Simplified” is free, at least for now.

The more you are motivated by love ...

“The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your action will be.”

~ The Dalai Lama

If we do not practice mindfulness while carrying a bucket of water (Thich Nhat Hanh)

“If we do not practice mindfulness while carrying a bucket of water, it is a waste of time to seclude ourselves in a monastery.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Yogi Bear Eats Here (Estes Park, Colorado)

I saw this “Yogi Bear Eats Here” sign at the cherry pie place on the drive up to Estes Park, Colorado. Apparently they had been having some problems with one or more bears eating out of their garbage dumpsters.

Scala examples: Reading HOCON configuration files, and screen-scraping with JSoup and Sttp

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I’ve been trying to fix the pages for my free Scala and functional programming video courses, and to that end I needed to do some things with reading HOCON configuration files, and screen-scraping of my own website pages.

Therefore, without much explanation, here is some source code that I wrote over the last day or two, with the help of an A.I. tool or two. One thing to note is that the quality of the code isn’t very good, because I let the A.I. tools generate most of it, and I didn’t bother to clean it up.

How to use Scala 3 and scala-cli to read an array of values from a Typesafe HOCON file example

As a brief note today, this post includes an example that uses Scala 3, scala-cli, and a Typesafe HOCON configuration file. As a bit of an aside, I’m using Scala code like this to create “video” tags for the HTML files in my Scala 3 and ZIO 2 video training courses.

First, here’s the HOCON configuration file, which I named videos.conf: