Thursday, May 9, 2013

Random Notes from a Crank



The craft beer industry has exploded the last twenty years. There's no doubt about that. You could probably go into evan an IGA grocery store and find some manner of craft brew on the shelves. But the beer that began production in 1980 by a homebrewer with dreams is a hard beer to beat still to this day, thirty-three years later. That beer is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. A damn fine beer. And their Torpedo IPA and Ruthless Rye are outstanding. 

I started reading Lodro Rinzler's The Buddha Walks into a Bar... recently and got informed about the Four Dignities of Shambhala. As Rinzler explains them, they "are four mythical and nonmythical animals that represent different aspects of our training in wisdom and compassion. Of the real ones, they are the tiger and the snow lion. One of the mythical ones is, as you could probably guess, the dragon, but the other one is the garuda, which apparently is a creature that is part bird and part man. I don't remember reading about the garuda before, but maybe that's because I've read more in the other schools of Buddhism. 

  
So there you have it: Beer and Buddhism.

3 comments:

bimdude said...

We get Sierra Nevada in Australia and I agree it is a lovely frothy. I think Mr. Nasty may like "Little Creatures" which is brewed in Fremantle West Aus.
I first heard of garuda when I was little because it is what Indonesian Airways is called.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

That's a great name for a beer: "Little Creatures."

And that's one interesting corporate name.

Dr. K said...

wings and wisdom are a winning combination