Quick thoughts

My friend and boss at Harvard, Pete Conlin, sent me warm wishes via Facebook. My old friend Tim Koslowski and newer friend Sabra Fenske emailed me. I've spoken via a couple of cellphones to friends and family and am typing this on my iPad2. Inasmuch as this is a trip to the other side of a globe spinning at - the figure escapes me - 26,000 miles, I think - around the sun, itself rotating at incredible speed surrounded by other stars and cosmic particulate through a galaxy en route to outer reaches of the universe, I feel extremely connected to one and all.

  The connection as part of this vast cosmos and in the profoundest intimacy of all this wonder so amply given. I don't have a sense of any human insignificance because I see the immense promise each person embodies. And that each actually is.

  We are each other. Our selves refract and reflect each other in a luminous display. I may kvetch about politics or temporal inconveniences, but this is tempered, more than I'd care to let on, by a sense of the interdependence of oneself and the Other. As much as I love Sartre, I couldn't help but feel that he overlooked the depth of empathy that actually characterizes human existence.

  We may see a lot of sensorial and experiential evidence to the contrary; however, I truly feel that this is just another form of evolution, less about behavior than of thought. It is true that there is great discord in this world, but that discord is not part of our innate nature. It is not ultimate or lasting, and the cause of that discord can and is being met constantly.

  I'm going to India, not to "find myself". If anything, it is more to enhance what i have found in this life, so far. Of course, this is certainly a physical journey, but it is much more about paying my respect and engaging in fruitful dialogue with old teachers and new. It is a kind of Adult Spiritual Continuing Ed class!

  To my friends and family who follow this blog and to any and all others who might, I bid you only the sincerest best wishes. May all your virtuous actions ripen to fulfillment and may you abide in supreme ease and peace.
  Back to traveling notes with the next post!