Minutes Tickin': "1,000 Buddhas"

"Well my soul checked out missing, as I sat listening
To the hours and minutes tickin away..."~from "Better Days" by Bruce Springsteen

Just two days of "work" left, although the real work activities ceased at around 11 a.m. this morning. Thanks to a poorly constructed school year, many of my colleagues and I are reduced to biding our time until we can officially be dismissed for Summer Recess. So, when the desks are washed, grades submitted, texts accounted for, and class supplies secured, there is really not much to do. Of course, thank goodness, there is the Internet, though more thought needs to be given to the "wheres" and whats" of where one searches.

After goofing around on my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball team roster, I checked out some of the Yahoo Daily Picks, and came across the Lens Culture Buddha Project, or 1,000 Buddhas:

Already, the collections boasts images of the deity posing in a shop window in Amsterdam and sitting on a table in New York. He towers over a garden in Thailand; hides in a collection of garden clippings in Berkeley, CA; and casts his legendary profile against a cloudy Japanese sky. Here, he appears in a colorful poster in a Beijing market; there, he manifests in the dark lines tattooed on a man's forearm. Sometimes, he looks angry, like the "stern Buddha" captured by Edward Galligan in "a small Buddhist temple in the hills of Coxsackie, NY." One picture reveals the "world's largest seated outdoor Buddha" on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Lens Culture ventures that the project "may well generate good karma for everyone involved, viewers and contributors, alike."

Since January 2007, the group has collected over 259 different Buddha photos (NOTE: The image to the upper right hand corner is NOT part of the Buddha Project).

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!