In a video on Anatta, Mae Yo talked about a mango seed, how while it is still a seed it is not yet anatta, but when it is planted and becomes a tree then it is anatta. I was able to follow her description, but something about it troubled me… The starting point of my practice had been impermanence – anicca – the first of the 3 common characteristics. With just a little consideration, it quickly became clear that everything…
A few nights in a clean hotel had proven to me that it was time to figure-out a new living arrangement: Construction across from my apartment was making me sick. As I considered my situation, my mind just kept coming back to the topic of self and self-belonging: The apartment that I had considered mine till just a few days ago was something I was now eager to ‘dis-own’. It was literally making me sick, it was unlivable, assaulting my…
My asthma suddenly became much worse when I returned to Connecticut from Miami. I went outside to get the mail one morning and I saw a cloud of dust enveloping the construction site across the street; standing there hacking, I got to figuring the construction project might be making me sick. To test the theory, I rented an airbnb for the weekend in a rural town about 2 hours north of my house. I got to the rental and the…
MN: I love what you’ve done in contemplating arbitrariness and this email contemplation. It is something that needs to be considered throughout practice, from the beginning to ultimate end…arbirariness is just sammuti-nothing is significant or real. We build these gigantic mountains out of arbitrariness, and then suffer so profoundly when something comes into contact with those atta mountains. The amazing thing is, if we are able to pinpoint and destroy wrong viewpoints, those atta mountains can be exploded. AD: I…
this is a direct continuation of the previous blog post Deep Personality Traits Part 1. If you have not already done so, please go back there to read the first part of this contemplation: A stab at the 2022 retreat home work which I turned into Mae Neecha. Now…back to… Goodness has utility… Goodness has a utility, namely safety: A good alana ( especially one with the effort and willpower to pwn my body and life) gets cookies instead of…
Still in Miami, caring for my mother, I was unable to attend the 2022 retreat. I did however follow along as much as I was able with webcasts and recordings. I decided to try my hand at one of the Retreat HW assignments, to explore our sandans or our deep personality traits/habits. Below is the homework assignment I ‘turned-in’ to Mae Neecha via email. The next few blogs will cover our back-and-forth conversation. _______________________________ I have been following the broadcast…
Several times, over the last few weeks, friends of my mom’s would come to visit her and upon meeting me they would pull down their masks and then ask me to pull down mine, demanding to let them see my face. This is in the ICU, hospitals, nursing care facilities –high risk places for myself, for my mom, for countless other folks around. To be honest, it made me angry at first, violated, that someone would ask me to incur…
At the core of Buddha’s teachings are the 3 common characteristics: Dukkha, impermanence (anicca) and no self (anatta). These, as their name implies, are the fabric of this world, the fundamental truths to which everyone and everything is subject. All of our ignorance, and the resulting dukkha we experience, arises because we don’t understand the 3 common characteristics, we don’t see how we are subject to them. I catch myself all the time, imagining there is some workaround, some way…
After I had sent Mae Yo and Mae Neecha my uber-long synopsis on everything is suffering, they send back a reply that had a simple question: “The Buddha said that there are two kinds of suffering – physical suffering that we cannot avoid and mental suffering that we can avoid. In order to avoid that suffering, we need to know the cause of it. Mae Yo asked, do you know what the cause of suffering is?” On the tail of…
Just a a little recap: Below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukkha. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it is about the nature…
Just a a little recap of the previous post: Below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukkha. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it…
Ok Dear Reader, here we are, the moment we have all been waiting for, the big conclusion of my everything is dukkha contemplations. In fact, as you have seen from my most recent interruptions — “The Pandemic is Over and Still there is no Shelter to Be Found” — this is hardly a conclusion; my understanding of dukkha has continued to grown and deepen. It has become a tool, a cornerstone, of my practice in a way it really couldn’t…
My mom had survived her big surgery, her road to recovery was long and painful, but she was on it. After things settled down a bit, I reached out to Mae Neecha just to let her know how things were going. Our conversation was short, but really captured a lot of my contemplations from that super difficult time. I will share our exchange here, in full: A: Just on a personal note — my mom is exiting the hospital for…
In April 2022, after spending a lovely winter in Miami with my family, I was making the drive back to Connecticut when my brother called: My mom had been hit by a car, she was in critical condition at the hospital, the situation was life and death. I turned the car around and started driving back to Miami right away. The next few days were a bit of a blur and I wasn’t really able to contemplate in those early…
I spend so much time stressing and fearing, arranging and hoarding, I cling to this tendency for vigilance because of this over inflated sense of self. I can’t put down the idea that this time might just be about me. I MIGHT, in any given circumstance, be able to do just the right thing to cause the effect I want. Be damned all those times that the opposite has been true; I was a cause all right, in getting things…
All righty Dear Reader – I am once again going to mix things up and get a little out of order for this sorta-temporally-linear blog; I am adding in a contemplation from this past week, late Sept. 2024. Why? Well for starters, it is so clearly rooted in the topic of ‘the world offers no shelter’, it is almost a natural extension of the last blog. An extension that shows how my dukkha contemplations have progressed, and how the topic…
I have spent many hours over the years contemplating the Four Dhamma Summaries, I have read and re-read the Ratthapala Sutta, which goes into a beautiful explanation of the summaries. These short, pithy truths have always deeply resonated with me. None more so than the second Dhamma Summary – The world offers no shelter, there is no protector. The truth is, I am desperate for shelter, for protection. When I look at my sandan, those niggling tendencies, beliefs and resultant…
A long time ago, my old Vajrayana teacher was visiting San Fran. We were walking in Golden Gate Park, on a beautiful day and she smiled and said, “the Bay Area is the peak of samsara”. It is a comment that has really stuck with me over the years and it came back to me again recently. When my teacher made her comment, my mind focused immediately on the ‘peak’ part — SF was tops of this world for pleasure/ comfort…
As my winter in Miami was winding down to an end, I started to think ahead about my return to Greenwich. In my mind, homecomings should be happy occasions, but in this case, I feared disappointment: For my last 5 months in Greenwich, I would wake-up every morning, save Sunday, to a cacophony of construction so close it sounded like there were bulldozers in my bedroom. When I left for Miami, the work was not even halfway done, I considered the fact…
