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…
I had been contemplating for a long time on how everything is suffering, so I decide to flip the issue a bit and ask a new question — what do I think happiness is? At some point it dawned on me that sukkah arises from a wrong perception of what things actually are. Happiness is just a misunderstanding. Back when I had my Porsche, it frequently made me happy. Cruising along, top down, wind blowing in my hair, I felt so alive,…
I was in the midst of planning a little getaway for Eric and me. As I picked activities, restaurants, fantasized about future fun, I stopped to consider my homework: Prove everything is dukkha. That is when it hit me — times of enjoyment are just times I ignore the suffering that is always there. Vacation is just a short while when I don’t let the reality of suffering intrude upon my fantasies. When I go on vacation, I simply ignore…
I came across an Atlantic article today, the upshot of which was that the secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff –the secret to satisfaction is wanting less. As I was reading, I stopped to look out the window at the sunlight so beautifully shimmering over the water in the bay below. I took a deep breath, enjoying the view and then realized that this thing — this view – that I enjoy so much…
Eric and I were spending 3 months in Miami to pass the winter and be close to my family. I was delighted, having the time of my life; I wanted to stay longer, to settle down, Eric who was not quite as enamored, was unsure. Still, because he loves me, Eric offered to buy me a place in Miami. He offered to commit to several months a year there. I, however, wanted more. I was upset, snippy with Eric, his…
I had been reading and editing the second part of LP Thoon’s Autobiography and I ended up going back to the first part to look more closely at the Ubai that ultimately helped him become enlightened: It was about a Skunk Vine. He had cleared a path for walking meditation, but the very next day a new skunk vine had begun to grow where it had already been cleared before. He saw that the cause of the skunk weed growing is in the…
It looked like Eric’s job was going to be fully remote. Besides, his contract was coming to an end in the next few years, and we hoped we would have enough it retire. It was time to consider where to put down roots and build a life. Connecticut, which neither of us were particularly fond of, was always meant to be temporary, just a place close to Eric’s office. We decided we would try out Pittsburgh – it was a…
