My wife Rie and I are going to Tahiti in March! We will actually be staying on the island of Moorea most of the time, although we will initially fly into Papeete, Tahiti. I can't wait to be in French Polynesia. This is our long-overdue honeymoon (we actually got married in June of 2002). So in the future I'll blog all about the trip, and I'm hoping to find a magazine where I can publish an article (with photos) about our trip. We'll be staying at the Intercontinental Beachcomber Resort on Moorea. For two nights, we actually splurged and got one of the overwater bungalows you hear so much about. I hope they are worth it! We thought about going to Hawaii, but that seemed too obvious since we live in California. Plus, we've both already been there before. Some European friends of Rie's told her we should go to Tahiti, so we took them at their word. I was also really interested in going to Fiji or Costa Rica. Apparently you can swim with live dolphins right at our hotel. We'll also be snorkeling a lot, hiking, and relaxing on the beach. I probably don't deserve this at all, but I'm going to try and enjoy the hell out of it.

The main reason for Zen's unexpectedness or incalculability comes from transcending conceptualization. It expresses itself in the most impossible or irrational manner; it does not allow anything to stand between itself and its expression. In fact, the only thing that limits Zen is its wanting to express itself. But this limitation is imposed upon everything human and indeed upon things divine as long as these are to be made intelligible.

The spirit of Zen is then the going beyond conceptualization, and this means to grasp the spirit of the most intimate manner. This in turn means the disregarding to a certain extent of all technique. The idea may be better expressed by stating that Zen holds in itself something which eludes all systematized technical skill but which is to be somehow grasped in order to come in the closest possible touch with Life, all-generating and all-pervading and all-invigorating.

--from "The Awakening of Zen" by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki