We’ll begin this entry with a little civics lesson about the San Francisco jury selection process. Basically, everyone eligible to serve on a jury can be called on once a year. If summoned, you don’t necessarily need to go to court, you get place on stand-by. Each day you call in and see if you were selected to serve on the jury pool, if not, you simply need to call…

In my Buckle-up Buddhisty period, I strengthened the foundations of my practice by building a scaffold to support my future contemplations. I took specifically Buddhist ideas and applied my experiences to understanding them. Thanks to this effort, I got a glimpse of the the inner workings, the systems, my own mind uses to keep me deluded (Alana’s 2s and 3s) and stuck suffering (Where my Mind Visits HW series) and…

Just a reminder, this entry is the final section in an email I sent to my teacher, Mae Yo, outlining what I see as a road map to practice. If you have not done so already, do go back and read the Last Blog before continuing: _______________________________________________________________________ Part 3: A Few Words on Ideas From the Buddha At risk of this email turning into a multi-volume desk set, I will try…

Dear Reader, this right here is a biggie Buddhist moment –Don’t miss this and the next blog!!! Around late 2013/ early 2014, I practiced with an acute fear that I would somehow fall off  the dharma path and end-up wandering in the weeds for countless more lifetimes; not exactly a comforting thought for a practitioner whose great aspiration is to reach enlightenment now, as quickly as possible, preferably in this…

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,…

On Karma On the first day of the trip, Mae Yo asked us to consider what kind of karma folks have to be living in a place like India, to be born into the conditions of poverty we see on the streets around us. (Present day note: a much more complete entry on Karma is coming-up, these are just a few thoughts from my trip). As I looked out the…

On Standards Last night we stayed at a hotel that was super dirty. The sheets were stained, there was hair everywhere, a peek in the kitchen revealed all kinds of creepy crawlies, the toilet was brown, as was the faucet water. It stank. I was soooo very uncomfortable. As I lay in my bed, I had no choice, no where else to go so I tried to fall asleep. I…

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…

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…