A magic ring that can push gestures to your smartphone, an egg tray that can tell you when you should have eaten all the eggs. There are many inventive ways to make sure you can be a part of the IoT wave. Unfortunately a good part of the devices end up in the trash can due to many reasons. Flaky, unusable and intrusive are terms that often describe these devices.

Are we trying to hard to put every device on the internet or is it the fallacy of the next big thing?

The world could sure use some enhancement, but that doesn’t mean that every device in our home should be on the internet. Some of the most pushed devices are activity tracking and home automation, but we need to go even further. We will venture through the devices that can help us, and not skip the entire security aspect. How can can we mix and match sensors to create new and awesome things…behold IoT is coming.

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This is the second talk offered by Thay in the second week of the Summer Opening Retreat, given in the New Hamlet of Plum Village on Saturday, July 16th, 2011. Thay teaches about the 5 skandhas as the river of body and mind: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. He continues into the steps of practice based on the Mindfulness of Breathing Sutra: 1) recognizing the in and out breath, 2) following the in and out breath, 3) mindful of the body, 4) calming the body, 5) recognizing joy, 6) recognizing happiness, 7) aware of painful feelings, 8) embracing painful feelings, 9) selective watering of good seeds, 10) recognizing negative mental formations, 11) concentrate the mind, 12) free the mind. There are three principal concentrations that we practice: 1) the concentration on emptiness, 2) the concentration on signlessness, 3) the concentration on aimlessness. What is happiness?

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