Eric and I decided to take a day trip up to the ‘country’; we went to visit a little town in Northern Connecticut where a famous Manhattan architect, Philip Johnson, had built his getaway home, The Glass House. The home, as the name suggested, was a midcentury style glass box, surrounded by other architectural marvels, nestled in lush woods. The place was stunning — a home, and a setting, on which fantasies are built. We joined a tour to learn a…
Seeing a homeless person on the street on my way to work, I decided on a different path, one that let me steer clear of the guy and his panhandling. It annoys me so much to feel pressured to produce change, to give just because I am asked; the truth is, I don’t think those random homeless folks deserve my money. Of course, this begs another question — why do I feel I deserve my money? Is the money even…
Eric and I decided to do a spa day at a fancy hotel in Miami. As we entered through the spa doors it felt like we were transported to a Spanish palace garden– a candle-lit courtyard dotted with lush trees, surrounding a fountain. A deep wave of relaxation washed over me, I hadn’t even had a spa treatment yet and I was already feeling as pampered as royalty. And then, suddenly I “sobered-up” and realized we were still indoors. My…
I was on vacation in Japan, sitting in a hot spring bath and thinking about something LP Thoon said in the sermon I was editing — he said we are reborn for the things that satisfy us, that we love and are enamored with. I realized that my own experiences clearly bear this out, that even in this life I can find the proof that this statement is true, that I really do keep coming back to/for the things I love, that…
I had a dream/vision –one of those almost asleep , but still awake and thinking states that can be a real boon to practice. In it I saw a huge tower of stuff –my stuff– piled high, like bricks, but precariously balanced. I felt like it might topple at anytime. There were physical items like clothes, cars, pictures, people, jewelry, money, my body. There were also items that represented more abstract stuff, my college diploma that stood in for my…
I was reading a comic book version of the story of Ananda. In it, he and a number or his noble friends decided to depart from their worldly lives and go ordain as monks to follow the Buddha. Heading out into the forest to find the Buddha they stop along the way and decide to disrobe of all their finery. In the story it says that since they are going to become monks, they don’t need these things any more. …
In the sermon I was editing for Mae Neecha, LP Thoon says: “When we are at home, we are concerned about our home; but we are overly concerned. Our concern for our children and grandchildren is also in excess. The same goes for just about anything else we are concerned about. Our soul is tied up with concerns and worries, and the soul that is to assume a life-form or birth goes straight to the thing it cares most about….
By the end of 2019, my contemplations around rupa that had begun during the retreat, had grown increasingly more refined. While at times those contemplations seemed stunted or fragmented, I had moments where they really began to gel into a cohesive understanding. Though self and self belonging –grounded in rupa — are a prevalent theme of the time, I also began to expand my considerations and explore the role of nama, particularly imagination, in bolstering my wrong views of ownership. In…
Around the time Mae Yo was peppering me with video clips, I saw something of my own that really pierced my heart. I had started watching True Bloods on HBO and the opening credit sequence just blew me away. I have attached the video here for reference: While many of my contemplations are technical: An exploration of worldly or mental processes, or cause and effect, when I saw this video my response was just visceral. This is how the world…
In Nov 2019 Mae Yo sent me a number of YouTube videos to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations, this is the forth and final in a series of blogs that documents my conversation with her/insights on the videos she sent. Again, I will link the videos she shared below, I would encourage you to watch the clips prior to reading the rest of the blog. On the spaceship video: The boy works so hard for years to…
In Nov 2019 Mae Yo sent me a number of YouTube videos to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations, this is the third in a series of blogs that documents my conversation with her/insights on the videos she sent. These are not as long as the pervious few conversations so I will combine several videos/comments in this post. Again, I will link the videos she shared below, I would encourage you to watch the clips prior to reading the…
In Nov 2019 Mae Yo sent me a number of YouTube videos to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations, this is the second in a series of blogs that documents my conversation with her/insights on the videos she sent. Again, I will link the video she shared below, I would encourage you to watch the clip prior to reading the rest of the blog. In addition to the video/comments, this blog recounts my pressing Mae Yo to share her…
In Nov 2019 Mae Yo sent me a number of YouTube videos to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations. I am going to share the videos and my replies to Mae Yo, as well as her comments back to me. I intend to leave this conversations entirely unaltered. I am creating a new tag/section for these particular entries so they are easily delineated, searched and found. Nonetheless they also fit firmly in time, and content, within the Rupa For…
This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Part 16’. My Dear Reader, I thank you for bearing with me on this looooonnnggg recap of my early 2020 “interruption in our regularly scheduled program (an orderlyish, linearish blog tracing my meandering dhamma path)”, this here was the final recap post of that Post-Retreat Interruption Series. It is simply a brief reflection of what I had come to understand my path…
This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Part 15’. In this blog, I will begin just after the last blog left off and end with a much more recent contemplation, from 6 months later, when I circled back to the topic of meaning in rupa and found a new depth and clarity. If you recall, in the last blog I came to realize a big mistake: All this time, I looked…
This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Part 14’. As a recap: My contemplations had landed me in another ‘stuck spot.’ Namely, I had come to recognize that every arrangement of rupa contains only 4 elements. But, somehow, I still believed that there was a deeper meaning — loved/just/fair/safe/etc. — reflected by rupa. Moreover, it seemed like rupa could portends the future, if only I could ‘interpret’ it correctly……
In the wake of my cake baking contemplation and seeing the extreme limits on my control/tendency to use rupa arrangements to define who I am, I had gone to get my nails done. About a week later, looking down at them, I caught myself feeling surprised that the polish had started chipping so soon. At lightning speed, I caught myself thinking, “I have been being so careful with them.” Then it hit me– it’s not about me. My actions are…
After all of my contemplations I was beginning to see that there was nothing innately special in my objects or my body. Just varying, shifting arrangements of 4 elements. I knew I was not my arrangements, and yet, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, must prove something about ME. Alana the great arranger! I knew I had a huge wrong view remaining – that because I am a partial cause for an outcome, that…
This blog is a direct continuation on the previous blog, “Interruption Part 11: A Major Breakthrough Part 1”. If you have not read that blog yet please go ahead and read it first before you continue on with this one. Does rupa do what I think/ want/imagine in an absolute sense or in relation to myself? Is a quality fixed/innate in myself — Again I started thinking about beauty. I realized that if my 20 year old self saw my 40 year…
