Back in Dec. 2013, my teacher, Mae Yo, began a Youtube Q & A series to answer questions that students submit about life, the universe and everything Buddhist (you can check-out her videos here https://www.youtube.com/user/KPYproductions/videos). Since my own knowledge on these topics could use a little work, I compiled a hefty list of questions. Generalized/public versions of these questions and formal answers can be found amongst the videos linked above. However, in this post, I would like to share my…

Read More Read More

As a kid my greatest Disney World love,  the thing that filled me with anticipation before each visit, was the ride  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember climbing down to take my seat on the submarine, watching out the window as we traveled deep under the ocean seeing mermaids, and giant squid, and other sea wonders. As soon as the ride ended all I wanted was to get back in line and do it again. As I got older,…

Read More Read More

This next story features our old friends Rupa (form, stuff) and control. It’s not so much that I ever stopped contemplating these topics, in fact I am currently contemplating them with renewed vigor, but they slipped into the background of a number of these stories. So here we have it front and center once again…. I was at the Wat shortly after the India trip and Mae Yo asked a group of us the question, “Why do we have so…

Read More Read More

I am waiting for a table at a cafe and when one opens-up the waiter tells me to have a seat and he will be over to clear the table in a few moments. I sit down and look at the last patron’s trash piled on the table and I feel disgusted. What a mess these folks left behind at my table. Of course, the waiter comes and cleans everything up, sets my heart at ease, and before I know…

Read More Read More

Aspirations are one of those ‘Big Buddhisty Things’; they cameo in all the liturgy, we are instructed to make them whenever we do something good, they even managed to make it onto the Buddha’s critical stuff shortlist (often poorly translated as ‘right thought’ in the the 8 fold path). So, naturally, I obsessed over my own. I crafted it, word-smithed it, revised it over time. But at around this point in my practice (late 2013) I had come-up with a…

Read More Read More

Since Dharma Practice Day One, Mae Yo has repeated one homework assignment to me over and over — “Alana, look at your stories, go and prove that all your problems really start from your sense of me and mine.” Somehow, I kept ignoring the assignment; just an empty space in my notebook again and again. Even though I had sort of figured-out that I was the one causing my problems (see the last section, Whoo Wait a Sec its Me…),…

Read More Read More

So, a little reminder, this entry is the third part of my homework assignment to use snippets of my life/experiences (a biopsy) to start evaluating what happiness is and if it’s worth it. Specifically I was told to: Figure out where my mind visits often, my memories/fantasies. See the suffering. How long is the suffering versus happiness? How do I repeat the cycle? ___________________________________________________________________________ A Slave to Fashion You see, I am a Fashionista it’s one of the places my…

Read More Read More

So, a little reminder, this entry is the second part of my homework assignment to use snippets of my life/experiences (a biopsy) to start evaluating what happiness is and if it’s worth it. Specifically I was told to: Figure out where my mind visits often, my memories/fantasies. See the suffering. How long is the suffering versus happiness? How do I repeat the cycle? ___________________________________________________________________________ Wonderfully Beautiful For Halloween a few years ago, I was intent on going to a party…

Read More Read More

I had only a brief moment of feeling triumphant —  having conquered Mae Yo’s seemingly impossible homework assignment about how the aggregates work — when I realized, I now had an even bigger question…Why? I mean seriously, why do I create  a sense of self and then bolster it using some crazy ass mental acrobatics ( i.e. aggregates of memory (3) and imagination (4))? Why bother with this self-stuff? Why bother getting born? Try as I might I was stumped…

Read More Read More

So, I am going to warn in advance that this is sure to be a mighty technical entry. This is about to get REALZ so, if you are having trouble, assume you’re in good company (even with this blogger) and do your best to follow along. Also note,  the stuff in this post is not a starting place for practice, this is not meant to fuel anyone else’s contemplations, though none of this is a great secret (there are no…

Read More Read More

I began this blog with the idea of Buddhism, of Bhuddistiness — what I said from the get-go remains entirely true: This blog, all my contemplations, my path, is firmly rooted in the path the Buddha himself laid-out, beginning with correcting our wrong views, to guide us to freedom from suffering. Simple as it sounds, this is the heart of my dharma practice — seeing the reality that everything is impermanent, subject to change, to cease, to die and that…

Read More Read More