I was having a conversation with a couple of friends over dinner in NJ last week... one of them had just returned from a five-day leadership seminar.  At that seminar, a guy spoke (I don't have his name) about what he calls Level Zero, Level One, and Level Two learning.

    Level Zero learning is when you realize that something about you has to change.  Everyone can do this... we do it all the time.  This doesn't impress our speaker.

    Level One learning is when you realize that something about you has to change, and you actually make the change.

    Level Two learning is when you realize that something about you has to change, and you actually make the change, and you remain conscious and aware of yourself as you're changing.

    Level One and Level Two sound to me like Torbert's single-loop and double-loop learning, but that's an aside.

    So I was thinking about this, and thinking about how change takes place when you make new habits, or rituals.  Something about that word -- ritual -- struck me.  A ritual is commonly defined as something we do without thinking about it, or something automatic.  Even in a religious sense, it's something that we do because we're supposed to, whether it makes sense or not.  So many of us in the post-modern world reject the idea of rituals as we grow through levels, and with good reason.

    But I started thinking about recapturing the notion of rituals at a higher level, and what that might look like.  I'm starting to think that I've done enough thinking, and that all of the freedom I've set for myself, and been fortunate enough to have, in this life is starting to be detrimental.  I've overcome the Erich Fromm stuff... but I've taken the choices I have in terms of action and entertainment to the disservice of a sense of discipline.  There are things I need to do for myself that I haven't had the discipline to do, like exercise properly and eat in a more healthful way, because I overvalue freedom and devalue discipline, or, to use another word, ritual.

    I need to establish rituals of working out, rituals of eating, and rituals of meditation, and I need to do that from the sense that I am as sacred a creature as any other on this planet, and that I have a responsibility to take care of myself.  I don't think calling them habits reflects the energy I wish to put behind them.  I don't think it's enough just to book time for it all.  I need rituals in my life... nearly 25 years after I rejected the notion of rituals entirely, I find that I need them.

    This is how I move from Level Zero learning to Level One and Level Two.

    I'm still working on the form that these rituals will take, but I will hold myself to it all.  This is too important, and taking care of all beings includes oneself.

    You may recall that I purchased a Yamaha RX-V3800 in July.  As a Buddhist, I'm not supposed to love an object as much as I love this amplifier, but I do.  It's very simply the best use of money on a possession that I've ever had.

    Well, I recently finally bought a Blu-ray player, a Sony BDP-S350.  As a Blu-ray player, it's absolutely fine... it outputs full bitstream over HDMI to my amplifier, which has all of the required codecs on it, but if your amp doesn't, this player can do the conversion itself and then output PCM to your amp.  It also has the ability to upgrade the firmware over the Internet (and I do have it plugged into Ethernet) so that's cool.  So, you know, it's a fine player, nothing spectacular, and I'm sure that in a couple of years I'll be embarrassed that I spent so much on it.  Whatever.

    The point of this, though, is that although movie soundtracks on Blu-ray sound awesome, and the HD video is great... you haven't experienced Blu-ray until you pick up some concert videos using lossless codecs like Dolby DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby True-HD.

    So far, I've picked up Hall & Oates Live at the Troubador, Chris Botti: Live (With Orchestra and Special Guests), and of particular interest, Pat Metheny Group The Way Up - Live.  If you own Blu-ray, and you have a proper 5.1 system, you need to own The Way Up - Live.  It's the best-sounding, best-looking recording I've ever seen or heard.  I can't wait until classical starts to pick up on Blu-ray, because SACD classical is the shit, and Blu-ray DTS-HD Master Audio is even better.

    When I first got the amp, and I first had the chance to listen to DTS 5.1, I was blown away.  Now that I've heard what lossless codecs sound like, and how ridiculous they are, I can hear the difference when I listen to DTS 5.1 and how much information is missing.  DTS is only a maximum of 1.5Mbps... DTS-HD Master Audio and True-HD are something like 18Mbps.  It's insanely good sound.

    It's all of the sound.

    It's all of the sound you've been missing.

    You need to hear all of the sound.

    No big message here... it's just awesome when you flop a straight flush (odds ~20,000:1) and a guy hits a full house on the river so you get his entire stack.  I've had SF's before but I've never flopped one.  I expect it'll be a while before that happens again...

    I grew up with a dog, and I miss having one.  I admit it... I get all mushy when I see a cute puppy, and I'd love to have one of my own.

    And then my neighbor went home for Christmas, and I got to do some dog-sitting over the last few days.  Rosie the Dog is, well, I'm not sure what breed she is... kind of like a slightly smaller and sleeker Black Labrador.  She's really wonderful and very mellow, she just likes to lay around and relax at home, occasionally chew on a bone or whatever.  She doesn't eat much, doesn't bark at all (in fact, I've never heard her bark at anything), and actually sleeps late as long as she doesn't really have to go for a walk.

    And I have to say, I found myself constantly worried about her... thinking about my schedule, structuring things around making sure I could be home to walk her, wondering why she didn't eat right away when I put food out, worrying about loud noises from my stereo that would startle her, etc.

    It's kind of a relief that someone else has taken over the dog-sitting this afternoon... and I'm still thinking that she's laying on the couch.  It was only a few days, and apparently it'll take a little while to get used to not having her around, too.

    So, what does this mean?  It means that my "I want a dog" thinking is definitely calmed down right now.  There was no way on earth I was getting a dog anytime soon (my work and travel schedule doesn't allow for it) so in a sense, this experience has simply gotten me to lay down a fantasy rather than break off something that might actually happen.

    And I'd be happy to dog-sit again, but it's interesting how the reality is different than what I was expecting.  I sort-of wonder if I'd love a dog more if he/she had a personality more to my liking (Rosie is a bit too passive for me) but it's good to be able simply to appreciate other people's dogs now.