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Text of the page (random words):
ly looked fairly puzzled doesn t everyone bring books with them on retreat oh god am i the only one of course i have read and heard teachers advise against reading or writing during retreats it breaks the continuity of mindfulness the oft used analogy is if you put a kettle of water on the stove and then take it off then put it back on and take it off the water is never going to boil same thing with our mindfulness if we keep losing it by getting lost in words written or being written it breaks the continuity of the mindfulness and we re never going to get the full benefit of the extended practice period ok yeah i get it but honestly now are people actually holding to that apparently people do tomorrow i m off on retreat again five days up at spirit rock at a silent retreat co lead by my golf club wielding teacher when i met with him yesterday i wanted to get some clarity on the reading thing he confirmed what i had heard before and whipped out the ol kettle analogy i get it but what i can t understand is what people do in their rooms after the last sitting and before they fall asleep we have no access to electronic media there is no cell or wifi signal out there and certainly no tv do people simply sit in their rooms staring mindfully at the walls my teacher looked at me rather gently as he told me the obvious after the last sitting people simply go to sleep oh right sleep at 9 30 at night sleep with no need to wind down no transition what a concept i have often marveled at how many of the dorm windows are dark when i come out of the last session at 10 or so i m usually one of the last to leave the sitting so i know all my fellow yogis aren t in the hall maybe they re down in the dining hall enjoying a nice rice cracker and a cup of tea doubtful so the only other option is that they are already in bed at 10 o clock does not compute as you may have surmised i m a night owl i tend to go to bed between midnight and 1 am trust me i ve tried to go to bed earlier but it doesn t work i even diagnosed myself with a mild case of delayed sleep phase disorder i m fortunate it doesn t impact my life that much since i tend to stay away from jobs where i have to be at work early or where my boss is a stickler about tardiness i m also one of those people who cannot simply hop into bed and fall asleep no matter how tired i am i need time to wind down even if i get home really late i watch a little tv to let the mind know it s time to stop thinking so on retreats with no access to mind numbing tv i will spend some time journalling and then take a dharma book with me to bed and try to read myself to sleep and even that doesn t always work especially when i m struck with anxiety or energy surges from a long day of meditation as much as i love spirit rock and being on retreat i ve had plenty long dark nights of the soul there when i ve found myself battling anxiety and sleeplessness since this is a short retreat and with my teacher co leading i ve decided to push myself a bit i m giving up the written word for the duration of the retreat no reading no writing i m going to keep my kettle on the stove if that means i m still in the hall meditating at 2am so be it basically i m going to meditate until i m exhausted and can hopefully fall asleep without my routines though don t expect me at the 6 30 am sit it sounds a bit extreme i realize but worry not i ll still have a book tucked away in my suitcase if my plan doesn t work out filed under buddhism dharma adventures dharma thoughts personal retreat sleep thoughts and tagged silent retreat spirit rock 2 comments aug 3 struck by the golf club of wisdom posted on august 3 2012 by lazybuddhist standard years ago now back when i was still deeply involved in the new kadampa tradition nkt i felt i was very firmly on the path i had my bags packed for enlightenment or at the very least some pure land i had my map which we chanted at the beginning of each class prayers for the stages of the path i trusted that my spiritual guide knew how to get to the top of the mountain i just had to be willing to make the schlep i was going was to a place beyond suffering where i would abide in bliss and emptiness and hang out and radiate blessings to all the poor suckers still stuck in samsara or at least i thought it was something like that the only model we had for enlightened beings were old tibetan dudes most of whom were dead enlightened beings never looked like me when i stepped off the mahayana path and started down the much more mindfulness oriented path of vipassana my spiritual goals changed i stopped fetishising enlightenment as the end all and be all that may come eventually but for now i was simply trying to stay present right in this moment and by going on retreats i was able to get a taste of some of the bliss that comes with a highly concentrated mind and experience the peace that comes from mindful attention to my moment by moment experience yet i still had this sense that i would never totally have my spiritual shit together all the teachers i had come to admire had traveled to burma thailand india etc and did long retreats instead of old tibetan dudes my new spiritual role models became the prototypical spirit rock teacher a marin dwelling jewish psychotherapist one day not so long ago i was on my way to see my therapist a marin dwelling jewish spirit rock teacher as i drove up to his home office i saw him remove a set of golf clubs from the back of his car golf clubs gurus don t play golf i was completely thrown we probably spent half the session talking about why i was having such an averse reaction to the fact that he played golf nay loved golf no conclusion was reached by the end of the session i left as baffled as i was when i arrived the next morning as i was driving to work i was still mulling my rather extreme reaction to the golf clubs then it hit me seeing my teacher with those golf clubs pretty much shattered the picture in my head of what a person who has their spiritual shit together is like so i mulled if that picture is false then who is to say that i can t have my spiritual shit together why does my awakening have to look like an old tibetan dude s or my marin dwelling jewish therapist teacher s those golf clubs struck me like a vajra for the rest of the trip into the office my ordinary view of other drivers and pedestrians shifted and i saw them as potential buddhas beings who totally have their spiritual shit together the hipster girl walking across the street talking on cell could have been a buddha the old chinese lady getting off the bus with her bag of groceries had a buddha nature even the cabbie who cut me off may have been fully enlightened so why not me i never realized how much i had been holding on to these pictures of what a person who had deep spiritual realizations looked or acted like nor did i know how much i had excluded myself from that picture but no more filed under buddhism dharma adventures dharma thoughts personal and tagged golf clubs spirit rock 6 comments jul 20 tears for aurora posted on july 20 2012 by lazybuddhist standard i blame my metta practice for how easily and frequently i find myself tearing up as i watched anderson cooper tonight interviewing victims of the aurora co theater shooting i noticed i had stopped breathing i recognize too well the look of shock and horror in the witnesses eyes my heart breaks for them i cry for them i know from experience their lives may never be the same a trust has been broken while there is no written contract stating that your life will never be touched by violence you certainly never expect to be just minding your own business in the relative safety of your home or a movie theater and then be confronted by someone with a gun that happened to me over 30 years ago and there are still reverberations i was at a friend s house and two men burst into the home threatening to shoot us they didn t they did other things my body still holds the memories the event still occasionally revisits me in my dreams this even after years of psychological and spiritual work i feel fortunate to have therapists and teachers who have helped me turned that shitty event into the manure in which to grow my compassion but through the tears there is also anger and outrage but it s not directed at the shooter i don t feel pity for him yet i know it takes a very sick deluded person to do what he did no my anger is at the nra and its supporters who think it s ok to be able to legally sell assault rifles to the general public and who have fought tooth and nail for people to be able to buy as many guns and as much ammunition as they please no red flags were raised about this guy and his recent weapon buying spree it was all legal and it makes me sick and i want to get on a soapbox i want to blame some other for allowing this but i know it will do no good already online i can read the gun control debates everyone just spouting i m right you re wrong with no true dialogue tonight as i was doing my metta practice i did a round for everyone affected by the events today in aurora and while i certainly wish them happiness and peace health and strength and ease of well being i wish with all my heart for them that one day that they may once again feel safe and protected it may take some work but i want to hold them and tell that it is indeed possible filed under buddhism personal thoughts and tagged aurora co metta senseless shootings violence 3 comments jul 15 coming clean posted on july 15 2012 by lazybuddhist standard recently i made a big decision not a particularly life changing one at this point in my life but it is a big commitment of time and finances it s a bit of unfinished business from a time in my life when everything went very very wrong it s a decision that under most circumstances should be applauded but instead this decision means i have to tell the truth and face the shame of having misrepresented myself for most of my adult life i have decided to go back to school to complete my bachelor s degree even now that s hard to write in telling even my closest friends it feels like a coming out of sorts it s hard to admit to others that i didn t finish my degree most people thought i have and i have made no effort to dissuade them from that notion when people talk about college i have always said with confidence i went to berkeley i don t say i graduated from berkeley nor do i tell the complete truth that i dropped out from berkeley in the latter half of my senior year well that s not entirely true either since i m being honest i have overtly lied about having a degree when i was much younger i lied on my resume and said i had my ba in film studies i figured a being only one semester away from graduating was close enough b they wouldn t check anyway and c no one was going to hire me based on a degree in film studies for fuck s sake but still it was a lie and lies have a way of weighing on your conscience the decision to go back to school was a relatively sudden one not something i ve been ruminating on for a long time it never seemed necessary i ve made my way through the working world based on my smarts and initiative not on a couple of letters after my name yet after some long deep discussions with a colleague of mine about our accidental careers i realized i had painted myself into a corner granted it was a comfy corner with good pay and benefits but it was still a corner will a ba open up whole new career horizons especially a ba in humanities maybe but probably not especially not at my age but at least i won t think twice about applying for jobs where a ba is required also should the foolish notion of graduate school cross my mind at least i will have met that whole graduated requirement i will be attending an evening ba completion program at a lovely small and well respected private university that is with only 7 5 miles away from my home rather than doing an online program i wanted to have that human touch after all my degree will be human ities and to be in an environment where studying non career enriching topics such as literature or art history is valued not questioned as in how on earth is that going to help you in the real world so far everyone i have chosen to tell has been very happy for me a couple of them were downright verklempt and as i have started to free myself from this lie i had to told to others but mostly to myself i am finding myself feeling oddly vulnerable i am stripping off a layer of identity berkeley graduate that i had taken on even though it was a lie and under this layer of faux identity i am finding the skin is very pink and tender and it s ok it s amazingly ok filed under personal thoughts and tagged coming clean middle age coed true confession 15 comments jun 7 2 bd 2 ba apt available dogs ok posted on june 7 2012 by lazybuddhist standard tonight as was i was fumbling with my keys to get into my house i was besieged by the frantic barking of the dogs in the apartment building next door jesus dogs i live here can t i come and go from my own house without you losing your shit i mutter to myself and yes i know it s not the dogs fault but the humans still it gets old really old it s not a new complaint these dogs are only the latest in a series of frantic dogs who have lived in that particular apartment over the years which got me musing about the occupancy criteria potential tenants pt we love it we ll take it landlord ll ok great but i need to ask you some questions first do you have a dog pt um we have two the ad said dogs were allowed ll no that s great how big are they pt oh they re small chihuahuas ll perfect do they bark a lot pt well they re protective yes i guess they can be a bit vocal at times ll but could you characterize them as yappy pt some might call them that but they re only like that when they get bored or lonely ll how often are they left alone pt we both work so they re alone pretty much all day and well frankly most of the evenings too ll are they territorial pt like we said they re protective if anyone comes close to the house they ll probably bark ll how close pt i don t know 50 yards yeah about half a football field in any direction sounds right ll perfect your dogs sound like they will continue the long distinguished history of bored psycho yappy dogs that have occupied this particular apartment i ll get you the paperwork and we ll get you moved in asap welcome to the neighborhood filed under fun furry bodhisattvas personal richmond uncategorized and tagged chihuahuas musings neighbors 4 comments post navigation span class meta nav span older span posts span top posts it s really over weird so i had this great idea quarterly check in school s out for summer the lack of adventures of a middle aged coed entering the path of do goodery there for the whole show giving up the written word struck by the golf club of wisdom tears for aurora what people are saying themeanderingmus...