When I was a kid, a friend had a favorite saying:

Some days you bite the bear, and some days the bear bites you.

Sort of how I feel about technology right now. That blurry photo at the top of this page is a screen grab from this morning’s service at Myosho-ji. If a picture of the soundtrack were possible it would be even worse. After fading in an out throughout the service, the temple’s connection to the GoToMeeting server failed entirely and those of us online were left to chat among ourselves for five minutes as we waited for GoToMeeting to end the session.

Ryusho Shonin had just started explaining what sounded to me like an exciting multi-year project on the subject of realizing the Lotus Sutra in our daily lives when the connection to the temple disappeared.

I’m a big fan of technology. I’ve been one for decades.  But some times you just want to curse our reliance on it.

Oh, well.