We had a meeting at work to talk through a multi-team project, but I was feeling a little philosophical and started talking about a ‘big picture’ problem I hoped the project might solve — poor communication in my workplace.  I gave around 3 examples to illustrate my ‘poor communications’ point, one of which involved a mistake by the Marketing Team, made months ago,  communicating survey results. I left the meeting feeling like I had brilliantly ‘illuminated’ everyone. The next day…

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I was out to dinner with a friend and when the waiter came to take our order, my friend invited me to go first. “I’ll take a salad and a side of fries” I said. My friend proceeded to order her meal, but –wah wah wah — she did not order fries. “Fuck” I thought, “I can’t believe she didn’t order fries, she loves fries and now she is totally going to hoover down mine.” Sure enough, no sooner had…

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I was in Thai class today and we read this soppy-Thai story that went something like this:  A teenager fights with his mom over something little. Then, to hurt her, he runs out of the house and runs away. As it gets dark the kid gets hungry but has no money for food.  A noodle shop owner,  who sees the kid standing outside looking longingly at the food, feels bad for the kid and invites him inside for something to eat. The…

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After a stressful day at the office I decided to stop by my favorite thrift shop on the way home for  a little ‘retail therapy’. I found myself walking down the aisle, looking at each frilly, fancy, colourful dress and thinking to myself, “Will this one preserve me?” “Will this one make me stay young? Return my lost beauty? Make me thin?”   I watched how my imagination went to work conjuring images of the party I would wear the…

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As I was reviewing past notes, I came across a teaching from LP Thoon that had always really moved me — it is a story in which he instructs a man named Singh on a specific set of contemplations/questions that ultimately result in Singh becoming a Stream Enterer. After re-reading the story, I had a new set of insights on the way my objects cause me suffering. Those insights are presented in the blog below. For those of you who…

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My car had to go  to the garage for servicing so the garage offered to let me borrow one of their loaner cars until mine was ready for pickup. I gave them a credit card, I signed the paperwork, I took the keys and before I knew it I was cruising down highway 101 on my way back home. The car I borrowed was the same make as my own and I noticed quite quickly how easy it was to get used to; all the…

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As I started the process of organizing my thoughts, my notes and my stories to write this blog, something became abundantly clear: My practice is a path, it has a particular progression to it. I suppose, on some level, I always understood that practice wasn’t just a random series of flashes from the darkness. But, it wasn’t until I started to really outline the first chapters of this blog that I saw that new stories built on old stories, new skills…

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Once I had decided to become a Dharma Blogger, I faced an interesting question: What the heck was I going to write about? I started by going back through my very first notebook: reviewing, rehashing, rewriting old stories to turn them into blogs. As I immersed myself in all the old stuff, something crazy happened, I started powerfully seeing so much new stuff in all my old stories; it was like my practice was supercharged, like I was looking at everything…

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