I have suffered from the " Cassandra Complex ". It turns out that I am very good at seeing catastrophe coming. At least three times I have been fired from huge projects for predicting disaster. Once disaster actually struck, for some reason, nobody gets back to pat me on the back. When COVID struck, back in early 2020, my view of the future was very dark. I could see hundreds of millions of deaths, based on what we knew at that point. Back then, nobody expected a vaccine any time soon. For a time, the mRNA vaccines seemed to change the math. At first, the news was dominated by  epi curves . We all talked about 'flattening the curve", meaning driving down the exponential explosion of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Once the vaccine started to roll out, the focus became on getting everyone vaccinated. Although you may not have noticed, that phase ended today. The facts now seem to be: The delta variant is now dominating new cases; Existing vaccines do not protec

 Zen avoids making general prescriptions (although thousands of books make it seem that Zen is brain surgery). It's personal. Unique to each person. So in discussing my personal performance, the "art" of living, I need to be myself: to "ring my own bell". I consider the 8 fold path as great advice, though I update it considerably for the 21st century.  It's a set of "alarm bells" that go off when I have somehow wandered off the path of Zen. The classical image of a Zen master is one who doesn't care at all about appearances. He makes no effort to bridge the gap of understanding between himself (always male) and his students. Yet he *must* be presenting himself to his students and *must* convey the art of Zen by example  more  than words. Zen masters turn out to have a striking presence after all, deliberately intended to convey what will "go over" with their followers. OSHO - One of my early teachers For some of these guys, the image