On to the Hard Stuff…This blog is a direct continuation of the last, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first. As a recap: the last few blogs have pivoted off of questions Mae Neecha had asked me early in our conversation: “Is hot and cold generally the same for humans? For instance, desert temperatures are hot, arctic temperatures are cold? Is human hot and cold the same is kangaroo hot and…
Rupa Beyond the Basics – How Rupa Lies at the Foundation of Concepts Like Safe, Clean, Good, Etc. If I understand what rupa is –alternating, shifting, decaying arrangements of 4es – and I am still consumed by desire for it, it points to another problem: I am dazzled by what I think rupa represents, what it MEANS, or what it guarantees. That, and I don’t truly see its shadow side, the pain and suffering it delivers to my life. I don’t yet feel exhausted by its impermanence, its unreliability…Ugh, clearly,…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. A little summery/context/extra info: The dialog below essentially captures the process through which I began to understand how the 4 elements work to make up every physical form in this world. Truth be told, for a long practicing Buddhist, I had a really poor grasp on this ‘101 topic’…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. A Roundabout Way to Discovering I Need to Understand Rupa+Nama MN: What do you feel about this? https://youtu.be/bMYGYY-WunE A: So on the video I feel nothing extreme. But the reason is I don’t, in my heart, view eggs as babies so no fodder to excited my heart. But…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. Following my big retreat contemplation, Mae Neecha was a massive help ‘course correcting ‘ and rounding out my contemplation. For the next week or so she was my virtual sherpa, helping prod me, guide me and answer questions through an ongoing Line Chat. There is so much content in…
Hello Dear Readers – If this blog looks familiar that is probably because it is; this, and the next few blogs, are republications of posting from early 2020. Here I will put these blogs back into chronological order, nestling them into the linear(ish) progression of my practice that this blog aims to capture. While the content may be old, I hope that now, with the context offered by the contemplations that served as a foundation for these entries, these posts take…
This next ‘chapter’ of my practice begins with a bang: A trance-like state that struck me, seemingly outta nowhere, on the last night of the 2019 retreat. As I tried to make sense out of what I had learned from the state afterwards, Mae Yo and Mae Neecha sent me on a course correction — a series of contemplations meant to round-out my practice by helping me understand rupa (the form aggregate), and its relationship to nama (non-form aggregates of…
Some dear friends had come to visit and I planned a day out for them, and their 2 kids ages 2 and 4, to the zoo. Its about an hour drive from my place to the zoo and in the car both kids fell asleep. My friend, looked back at the 2 sleeping tots and exhaled deeply, with a sigh of relief, admitting she was overjoyed just to have a few minutes of ‘adult time’ to herself. The truth is,…
To celebrate Eric’s birthday I booked us massages and hot cedar baths at a spa in Sebastopol. We arrived, and just stepping foot in the door made me feel at ease — there was soothing music playing, a lovely koi pond, and the smell of lavender hung in the air. Baths were our first adventure, and we were shown into a large room with 2 tubs filled with brownish mulch — cedar from japan. We both slipped our clothes off…
I walked into Starbucks today and there was a homeless man making a mess at his table near the door, I felt myself move to give him wide berth, going to stand as far from his table as I possibly could while still holding my place in line. The truth is, the man, his rupa (physical form), disgusted me — the smell of filth mixed with urine, the look of his matted hair and scabby skin, his behavior of strewing…
While not exactly a continuation of the last blog, this one does take-up one of it’s themes — my need to be prepared. If you haven’t already done so, you may want to return to the story of my Epic Wardrobe Struggles and start there before reading the current blog. On the tail end of my vacation, I started considering one of the key drivers behind my packing stresses — my need to feel like I am prepared. This is a…
Counting down days to an upcoming vacation to Seattle and Napa, and suddenly I start wondering to myself, “what the hell am I going to wear on this trip?” I would rather wear pants than skirts, in case we are hiking a lot, but then I feel like I don’t have a jacket to match most of my pants. Plus, what if we want to go to a fancy meal –I will probably need at least one skirt. Should I…
A song came on in the radio today —Lean On Me— and I started feeling nostalgic, missing my old summer camp, where every year we ended the camp season singing that song around the campfire. The irony of my missing camp is this: I went to the same summer camp for 8 years, for five of those eight years, I was miserable; I was so unpopular, the kids all made fun of me, I missed my folks, I hated a…
Lately I have been contemplating on beauty. It is a quality so dear to me, I dedicate so much of my time, my energy, my possessions in service of it. When I think of a moment I consider to be one of my ‘peak beauty moments’ — standing in front of the full length mirror, modeling my bright red wedding dress, my super-fit 20 something bod and flawless dewy skin — it seems all rainbows and candy canes, the joy and…
Pain/pleasure, censure/praise, gain loss, fame/insignificance, as I was considering the polarity of the worldly conditions, it dawned on me that their pairings are inevitable; they will always come together, unbreakably linked for all time. The reason is simple — whatever has the ability to move in one direction has the ability to move in the other: If something can accumulate it can dissipate, if it can grow it can whither, the quality that allows for gain is the same quality that…
This blog is a direct continuation of the previous entry — Its about me and me. If you have not already done so, please go back and read that entry before you proceed here. On the tail of realizing that my own standards/impossible desires –and my inability to uphold them — lay at the heart of my negative feelings about my Mom, I started considering a few other troubled relationships in my life to see if I could find the…
Today I was at Whole Foods and a call came over the loudspeaker, ” Can the owner of the silver BMW with plate number XYZ please come to the front”. That was me, “that is my car” I said, as I rushed to the front desk. It turns out I had parked crooked over the line and the person in the space next to me couldn’t get out. I hadn’t realized I had done it, and I was already feeling…
This morning I was walking down the street and suddenly my peaceful stroll was interrupted by a bevy of honking: A bus was stuck behind a tow truck that was blocking the road and the bus driver was relentlessly laying on the horn. The thing was, the tow truck had no other place it could possibly go. In order to be able to tow the car that needed towing, to remove it from blocking another road, the tow truck simply…
I was at a coffee shop and they asked if I wanted my drink for here or to go. I thought for a second and figured I have the time to sit and sip, so I might as well take my drink for here and save the paper cup. The truth is, I have been thinking a lot about how much I waste lately; it’s kinda hard not to when every other story in the news is about how we…
