Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3h

looks like even experts are less than fully confident of their interpretation

bsky.app/profile/reic...

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 3h

If I’m reading this right — and I’m not 100% sure I am, given the split order — this would appear to bar Trump from *using* the National Guard in Illinois, but not prevent the Texas National Guard from being deployed to Illinois at the base they’re currently in. They don’t have to go home yet.

Jon Seidel @jonseidel.bsky.social · 4h

#BREAKING The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals PARTIALLY grants the stay sought by the Trump Administration.

The stay is GRANTED as to federalization of the National Guard.

But it is DENIED as to deployment.

So deployment still BLOCKED, but troops "do not need to return to their home states."

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 4h

not a mycologist ... but an images search ... and a couple discussion boards that that search links to ... strongly suggest it is indeed a morel

1 1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 6h

what you share is always beautiful and often, as in this case, touching

I'm grateful

5

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 7h

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

Journaling during a Zen sesshin (intensive silent retreat) is discouraged, but I typically jot down a few notes to come back to afterwards. I just had a look at my notes from last week's retreat, and find:

"Flow is worship."

(I'm not enraptured by Csikszentmihalyi's term "flow," but I like that^.)

2

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 9h

And insects can see ultraviolet — and many flowers "know" this. 🌼 🙏

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · May 28

I use this image a lot. On the left is an evening primrose as we see it. On the right is the same flower photographed with film that registers ultraviolet — bees, moths, and butterflies can perceive ultraviolet.

The very way we see the world is a kind of story, a poem, our eyes and minds tell us.

on the left, a yellow, four-petaled evening primrose flower, and on the right the same flower photographed with film that detects ultraviolet, and showing a star-like "nectar guide" pattern in the center of the flower

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 19h

There's a recent weeklong retreat's worth of background and context for further explaining this, but I'll keep it in a brief form and say:

In tonight's #meditation there was a sense for how it's less about something I do, and more about what is happening.

1 7

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 22h

legit LOL

4

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 1d

word

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 1d

bsky.app/profile/klas...

Adam Klasfeld @klasfeldreports.com · 1d

Ghana's foreign minister rejects DHS's reported plans to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to that country.

Eswatini's government previously made similar announcement on social media. h/t @garygrumbach.bsky.social

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 1d

bsky.app/profile/klas...

Adam Klasfeld @klasfeldreports.com · 1d

Ghana's foreign minister rejects DHS's reported plans to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to that country.

Eswatini's government previously made similar announcement on social media. h/t @garygrumbach.bsky.social

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 1d

Right. The Buddha's teaching alerts us to the fact that even pleasurable experience is *unsatisfactory* as long as we're not awake to the genuinely miraculous nature of experience per se.

translation of "Altura's" post:

It is necessary to understand, and not just on an intellectual level, why the Buddha's statement about the truth of dissatisfaction is not pessimistic news.

3 13

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 1d

❤️ 🙏

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

meanwhile...

bsky.app/profile/rbre...

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 2d

AI companies are spending billions on deals with each other, which boost their value.

This has helped twenty billionaires tied to AI add $450B to their fortunes in 2025.

Meanwhile, an MIT study found that 95% of companies using AI haven't seen returns on investment.

Be warned.

1 2 2

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · Apr 1

Reminds me of a survey years ago on effectiveness of different modalities of psychotherapy (psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive).

They found that respondents stated the most significant factor in whether they felt benefited by therapy was if they experienced the therapist as a warm person.

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

Was reminded that a "unified" conscious experience of, say, a car passing nearby — of which we have a visual awareness, and an auditory one, and a tactile one (air blowing on us) — that experience is a thing stitched together, with the sensory inputs arriving in the brain at different speeds...

... which is a reason John of the Cross suggested we should not become over-proud of spiritual experiences that we may have: by the time those reach our phenomenal awareness, what put them into motion has already occurred - we are, in effect, the last to know. [smiling emoji, praying hands emoji]

1 3 13

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

speaking of insurance plans in the U.S., I just sent this message to a friend here in NC re home insurance policies

www.ncrabbithole.com/p/why-are-so...

seeing a story that while everyone knows the NC Outer Banks ... which are essentially huge sandbars ... naturally move and that building on them is ultimately dumb ... NINE houses have fallen down in the past month ... in part due to a combo of things like a pair of hurricanes offshore (and climate change of course means more, and more severe, hurricanes will happen) ... but the piece notes that insurance companies will not pay for you to take your house down and rebuild elsewhere — they'll only pay when your house crashes down

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

I have a dear friend who I met online a couple years back. She lives in Europe and, we have come to realize, we both used to sit in the same meditation center in Austin, Texas, twenty years ago — only she sat there in the mornings and I sat there in the evenings, and we never met back then.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 3d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

I have a dear friend who I met online a couple years back. She lives in Europe and, we have come to realize, we both used to sit in the same meditation center in Austin, Texas, twenty years ago — only she sat there in the mornings and I sat there in the evenings, and we never met back then.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 3d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

1 7

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 2d

contemplative practice (meditation) as a kind-hearted honesty that is a path towards ... and an expression of ... how things really are

2 1 9

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

... something something about an ICE box ...

😬

7

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · Nov 1

The #Buddha was once walking with some of his followers, and he pointed to the ground and said, "This would be a good place to build a temple."

The god Indra placed a blade of grass in the ground and said, "The temple is built."

🙏 🙂

(~ Book of Serenity, case 4)

screenshot of text that says:

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

– Henry Miller

2

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

I don't pretend to be able to offer a full on diagnosis, but as a psychologist I've long been struck by how his statements are continually in line w/ *what he perceives can benefit him*—rather than true or false or legal or illegal or moral or immoral. And he appears to be getting worse cognitively.

1 2

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

"I see what you did there"

a scowling jack o' lantern with an eye patch

1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

For me a sign of a healthy relationship is when we like the person we ourselves can be in the context of that interaction.

1 1

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 3d

a closer view

bsky.app/profile/bodh...

bodhidave @bodhidave.bsky.social · 14d

I'm entering a weeklong silent retreat in a Zen Center north of #Asheville in the coming hour. This is the view from the back yard currently. 🙂 🙏

#BloomScrolling

bright blue skies with white clouds over blue mountains with a white moonflower and a lot of puffy flower seedlings in the foreground