It was that not fun time again; time to take my car in for servicing. Since the vehicle was under warranty, I had to go to a dealership and that left me with a tough choice to make — do I go to the far away dealer in the South Bay where I had bought the car? Or, ugh, to those assholes in Brisbane, a dealership a good 1 hour closer, but damn their customer service sucks. You see, I…
Background: There was a period of time in which LP Anan was using Aesop’s Fables as a tool to encourage students to think about Dharma; fables are a great way to help people see 2 sides of a story, to internalize, to become critical in identifying main points and themes. The contemplation I am sharing here was not one of these specific fable-related exercises, but rather my thoughts after hearing a Buddhism class recording in which students were discussing The…
This blog is a direct continuation of the last, Thoughts on Being Entitled Part 1, if you have not yet read that blog please go back and do so now before reading onward. Thoughts on Being Entitled Part 1 was from an email I sent to Neecha, in this blog I will share her response and some of my further thoughts. Neecha’s Response: It’s a crazy, complex cycle. I think that we carry a strong foundation of memory over…
This post is from an email I sent to Neecha summing-up some of my thoughts on expectations/ standards/ entitlement. The Situation: I overheard a donor asking my boss for a “favor”, which I thought was over the top, and my inside voice just said…”ugh, that donor is being such a &*%^. Just because they give a few thousand bucks, it doesn’t mean they deserve anything they want. They are acting so entitled.” So I went out on my lunch break…
I had been having a Line exchange with Neecha about how I am always trying to avoid ugliness and dirtiness in this world. About how I try to make the ugliness that does exist ‘over there’, i.e. not in my life. I gave the example of restaurants: I always check health code scores before I eat out and I am unwilling to go someplace ‘dirty’. Even still, I don’t ever want to sit facing the kitchen. I am afraid to…
I was walking down the street, a few days after New Years, and I saw tons of discarded Christmas trees on the curb. It occurred to me that just a few days ago, these trees were precious object. People went to a lot of work to buy their trees, hurl them home, set them up and lovingly decorate them. For a few weeks they were assigned such deep meaning — they were about family, celebration, traditions and joy. Now, they…
I’m general, I do hate to ‘over-share’, but I’m afraid I have to kick-off this blog with a mighty personal detail about my life — I have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It’s a disease with no known cause, no cure, and a not-so-fun set of symptoms that include surprise attacks of uncontrollable diarrhea that always seem to come at the most inopportune times. For example, when I’m walking through one of SF’s shadiest hoods (Tenderloin), already late for work, and…
I had been contemplating a question from LP Thoon for a few weeks — what techniques does desire use to persuade me? — admittedly, I wasn’t making a whole lot of progress. Frustrated, looking for something else to contemplate, I ‘tuned-in’ to the KPY Facebook page and saw a post from LP Anan: It was a video of a group of people preparing a meal of grilled octopus, only the octopus was still alive as they were grilling it. …
I was reading a book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about a group of WWII POWs who had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and forced to work hard labor in the jungle. They were tortured, beaten, starved — the details of their treatment were shocking to me; the fact that humans endure such horrors and that other humans inflict them… Anyway, it was one of those books that really made my heart raw. I was reading it…
A few years after my uncle had died of cancer my aunt began dating again. She met a guy she really liked, a fun companion and a good partner, and for around 2 years they were happy. And then, in less than 2 minutes, it was over. She had gone-out on a short errand and returned to a crime scene — her boyfriend had committed suicide by shooting himself. I felt utterly devastated for my aunt and I was utterly…
So I want to offer a bit of a caveat, a prenote, before I launch into the first few blog posts in my “Peeking over the Fence Period”. You see, usually, the KPY method takes stuff external to ourselves and immediately internalizes. We put ourselves in the situation and run from there. But my Peeking Over the Fence period started off a little differently. My goal was to start seeing the world, the ugly parts of it that I tend…
The main character of a book I was reading (The Orphan Master’s Son) was part of an elite unit of North Korean soldiers stationed to guard the country’s border. Other members of the unit used to like to go peek over the fence and peer into South Korea, to see what life was like there. But, the main character never looked: “He knew the televisions were huge and there was all the rice you could eat. Yet he wanted no…
Dear Reader – this blog is a direct continuation of the preceding blog, An Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Program – Goodbye Goyard Part 1. If you have not yet read that post then please go back and read it before you start on this next entry. I am looking around myself at all these items I have laid out to consign, each one telling me a truth about myself and about this world. A part of me so desperately wants to hang on to many of these items, a purse I may ‘need’ later, a pair of…
Dear Reader, I hope you will indulge me in one more present day (Oct. 2018) interruption, on the topic of self and self belonging, before we get on with our usual program… I was thinking about the upcoming Kathina ceremony, an important holiday in the Buddhist tradition, and decided I really wanted to make an offering to the temple – to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha – that means something special to me. It’s hard to explain, but I felt like money alone simply wouldn’t do. Sometimes, when I give money it feels like donating food when I am full; I wanted this gift to feel like donating when I’m…
Before I close-out the Suffering and Self – Yummy portion of this blog, I feel compelled to share a few modern-day (Aug 2018 and Oct. 2018) contemplations on the topic of myself and my belongings, while it is still ‘fresh’. Only, instead of focusing on how my belongings feed and care for the self, I observe how actually, I am a slave to these belongings. As with all the other Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Program blogs, we are, for…
Each morning, I get-up and take my asthma medication, a quick puff, a rinse of the mouth and I am good to go. Fit as a fiddle. Strong as an Ox. Healthy as a horse… My fit, healthy self, went to fill-out some insurance paperwork, and as I read their definitions of “excellent health”, I saw I didn’t qualify. With asthma, a chronic condition, the best I can be, according to the insurance company, is in “good health.” But wait…
The next two blogs, which will close-out the Suffering and Self –Yummy period of my practice, are a recap of the homework Mae Yo gave me to look at my own experiences to see how I use stuff to feed and sustain the self. Part 1 will be evidence gathered from my belongings. Part 2 will address my body directly. Fishing through my wardrobe I come across an outfit I love: tall black boots and a long jacket. Even just thinking of putting those two things on and I feel like…
I shared my reflections on the Green Purse with Mae Yo and she offered a few thoughts I will share here: Identity comes from what we are familiar with, we reiterate it, we become used to it and then, in our minds it becomes us and ours. We are repulsed by things we don’t like and attached to stuff we do. It all starts with me and the bag, but compliments from others, Eric’s comment that the bag reminds him of me, build my sense of specialness that…
Following the teaching I received from Phra Arjan Daeng, I began to try and incorporate his advice for practice into my contemplations. What follows is a homework contemplation about my Green Purse which I turned in to Phra Arjan Daeng upon our next meeting several weeks after his initial instruction. _______________________________________________________________________ The Story : I had been on the prowl for a new purse for a few weeks, I wanted something bright, in a neutral color, big enough to fit my gym clothes, cross body to help spare my shoulder and soft sided so it…
