Tag: enlightenment

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The Straight Path, Route 321, Liebenthal, Saskatchewan, Canada

The Straight Path

The master told her students
This is the path to enlightenment

But it is so straight”, one replied

True, said the master

“I expected the path to be difficult!” 

The straight path is difficult

“How can it be?
There are no mountain passes to find!
No intersections or forks to choose from!
No sharp curves to negotiate!”

Many students nodded their agreement

The master shook her head

The straight path is difficult because
You want to climb mountains
You expect there to be many paths to choose from
You believe there should be sharp changes in direction

One student had sat quietly through all this
Listening while looking straight down the long path
As far as she could see
Finally, she spoke

“Walking the straight path is impossible
For one who seeks insight
From every roadside attraction”

The master smiled
I am your student! 

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The Touch of... A-Maze-ing Laughter, Yue Minjun, Morton Park, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Being ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #191

This is a bit of a rough sketch for a chapter in a series which began with Come It Said and continued to Like a Hammer on a Drum. These stories revolve around the idea of a sort of ‘electric Buddha’ I’ve been toying with for years.

Also, my apologies for the lateness of this week’s challenge. I had to work today, and then this much prose takes much longer to pen than a poem. 😉

The situational awareness of a Series 25 is pretty hard for a mere human to wrap their head around. While these battle droids are equipped with a pair of excellent optical sensors, positioned to replicate the appearance of a predator’s stereo vision, it is their internal sensors which provide the bulk of their operational data. These include radar (both atmospheric and ground-penetrating), with full sonic and electro-magnetic spectrum arrays. Their entire body acts as an antenna, collecting sensory data in a sphere up to a one kilometer radius. The Quantum Processing Unit parses and analyzes this data in real-time, determining all relevant threats in the sensory sphere and developing ongoing action plans for eliminating them.

I talked with a droid designer once who said there was really no way of putting an upper-limit on how fast a 25 can assess and respond to every situational detail of a battle in terms I could understand. “But,” she said, “if you can imagine beating Bobby Fisher at chess one hundred million times in a nanosecond while simultaneously playing every instrument for a full orchestra’s rendition of the William Tell Overture, you’ll have an inkling.”