Up until now, my practice had, of course, considered suffering and self; after all, they make the obligatory appearance in most of my stories. But, they had always been an appetizer, maybe a big kale salad, sometimes the all important desert (I have a sweet tooth). But they were rarely the main course. That honor generally went to impermanence or other interesting Buddhisty stuff like karma and aggregates ( had…
As a recap: This blog is a continuation of the last in which I discovered gratitude for my mom after re-considering my memories of her. It was an exercise in which I made an effort to recall Mom’s good qualities as an antidote to my previous perspective which was to focus on negatives only. With my heart all mushysoft with gratitude for my mom, a troubling question came to mind —…
A recap: In the last blog I described how I used a simple tool ( A is better than B, B is Better than A, etc.) to begin considering some of the wrong views I held about my mom, particularly in comparison to my dad. I came to see that I had built an ‘image/memory’ of my mom that was based on my biases (of what characteristics are most valuable), in…
Click here for My Mom and I part One: It was the 2014 retreat and we were reviewing one of my favorite Dharma tools*, the one where you take 2 objects and compares them as follows: A is Better than B B is Better than A A and B are essentially the same, are they even worth comparing? A and B are so different from each other, are they worth…
After sharing my contemplations about value with Neecha, she offered me another homework assignment she thought might help me push my thinking a bit further. She told me to go and think about the 8 worldly conditions, how do they work, and what do they mean for all of us suckers who have already been born in this world? Before we get to the HW, a little Buddhisty Background might…
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted a fish tank. I’m not talking about the small bowl you throw a goldfish into, I am taking the mega fancy big tanks with the super colorful fish. My Mom used to take me to the fish store so I could stare in awe as a kid. Each tank its own little world, pretty, and orderly and perfectly balanced. When I moved…
So…we again have a mighty important, but mighty technical blog before us here. I will issue my standard caveat that I share some of these wonkier contemplations not to mess with your mind, nor as a model for anyone else’s practice to follow. They are here because they played a formative part in my own path, my evolution of thought, so I feel like I can’t really leave them out…
Introductory Note on Timing: As I was writing the last few blogs I noticed that I had accidentally skipped over this current entry, about yielding, that I had meant to post back in the ‘Odds and Ends’ period. It comes from summer 2013 and, since we are already a little out of order, I thought I would include it this week before we get back to our ‘regularly scheduled blog’……
So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part four in my blog about hate. Last week, we left off with a real shift, a lightening of my hate load brought about…
So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part three in my blog about hate. We left off last week with a moment of realization: Hate is not built into the situations where…