Guess what, friends? Tomorrow I turn 23. Normally I don’t ask for gifts, but this year my birthday wish is for you to answer this question:
What kind of person do you want to be?
Leave a comment, shoot me an email, post it on Facebook or Twitter, record a video, write a poem…or send a message in a bottle. Any way you please.
What kind of person do you want to be?
Tell me, and you’ll make my birthday the best one yet.
May y’all be happy (that’s my other birthday wish),
katie
NeEddra James’ blog, PARAMECultureWorks, entered my life at a great moment. She’s a sharp writer and an incredibly insightful soul — and the email conversation we recently struck up reminds me why Internet ‘connections’ can be worthwhile. You should check out her blog in its entirety, but here I wanted to crosspost a piece that’s been particularly helpful to me over the last few days.
NeEddra’s illustration of the value of wake-up calls gets at the heart of the Buddhist teaching that ultimately there is no good or bad, merit or demerit. Because every uncomfortable, unpleasant, or downright excruciating event has something to teach us. It’s a doorway leading to the higher dimension of consciousness attained through nonjudgmental acceptance of what is. Total awareness and presence of mind. So with the valuable teachings that moments like these can offer, how can we really label them “bad?”
Putting this understanding into practice is no easy feat, obviously. But little by little, moment to moment, and with the help of reminders like NeEddra’s parking ticket saga, we get there.
Hope you’re having a peaceful day, folks. Whatever catastrophes (a.k.a. opportunities) come your way.
Offering To The Döns
“Practice offering to the döns* by welcoming mishaps because they wake you up.”
I always read my monthly horoscope on the first day of the month. On Dec. 1 Susan Miller told me the full moon, which reaches its apex today on the 12th, would occur in my third house: the house of other people’s money. She went on to say that I’d be writing a big, non-negotiable check, and with “Saturn in hard angle to the moon…there will be no way to avoid acknowledging one’s responsibility or alternatively, accepting a loss and moving on.”
And so it is.
With this video.
Happy Tuesday, friends!
No, not birthday — Bastille Day! In honor of which, here’s some bikes, breakfast, babies, beads, and boats. French ones. And that’s about as deep as I plan to get about that. :)
Hey friends! Hope you had a fabulous weekend.
The recent exchange with Oh Please, here on the Twitter thread, reminded me of a wonderful story that I’ve been wanting to share with y’all for a long time. Paraphrased from my meditation teacher, S. N. Goenka, who heard or read it somewhere else, it’s been the single most helpful lesson I’ve learned from him so far, when it comes to dealing with everyday situations. I hope you might find it useful, too!
Here goes.
At the time of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama, not far from his ashram there lived an old brahmin and his family.
Phew! Okay folks, here’s the last of the Cap-Ferret photos. It is a wonderful place to be. Even better than it looks. My French could use some work, but at least I’ve still got the accent — and a good accent opens doors and hearts, let me tell you. Say “Hello, good morning” with the right cadence and people take you for a native.
But mostly, words have been unnecessary. The ocean and I are old friends. And you know what Khalil Gibran says about friends:
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
Enjoy the photos, enjoy the weekend, and take care, everyone!
Yo, isn’t it a fabulous feeling when one day you discover that a friend of yours has been…discovered? :D
Nyle Emerson and I met in the sweltering summer of 2006 while we were both volunteering for the Common Ground Collective in Post-Katrina New Orleans. There was an open mic night for the CG folks, and when Nyle got up to do his thing, he asked for a “beautiful, willing female from the audience,” or something like that, to come up and kind of adorn his performance. Ha! So when no one else volunteered, guess who stood up?
Funerals and memorials are such tremendous gifts.
And I’m reminded of another tribute…
Stevie and all the people make me cry every single time I watch this.
For folks who use it, you can find me @kloncke.
I’ll be updating regarding the blog posts, so people know what’s hap’nin here. I still have my reservations about the tool, mainly because I think it encourages extreme identification with thinking and doing at the expense of being and presence. The only way to tweet while being fully present would be to type something like, “I am typing the t key now the h key now the e key on my twitter.” And even that doesn’t cut it. You feel me? You can only really tweet about something you just did or something you’re going to do, both of which only exist in your mind (memory or projection), not in deeper reality. You can’t tweet about what you are doing right now. Impossible.
On the other hand, like TV, I think that if used wisely and cautiously, it can be helpful.
Tweet, tweet! Modernity.
Bonjour, mes amis! Those of you in the U.S., hope y’all had yourselves a fun Independence Day.
So here I was this morning in Cap Ferret (which, I now realize, is a kind of French version of the way I imagine the Hamptons would be). I’m back up on the blog, organizing my photos and getting ready to publish today’s post. Then I noticed a new email in my inbox.
At first I almost deleted it. I didn’t recognize the sender’s name or the names of other recipients, and the text preview showed only French. Who would send me an email all in French? But instead of erasing it, I opened it. Still uncomprehending, I clicked the link. Where was all this leading?
Watch the video (English with French subtitles), and you’ll hear the story of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her own “Independence Day.” From what tryant did she gain independence? Her own mind. Her “self.” Her ego. Thanks to a brain hemorrhage, the experience of which she describes in vivid and hilarious detail, this neuroscientist experienced what the Buddha called anatta — “no self.” For one day, in her words, she “found nirvana.”
I remember shelving Dr. Taylor’s memoir when I worked at Harvard Book Store. I never read it, though. Never even thumbed through it. Now I’m thankful to have had another chance to hear her story, which expresses, in essence, the aims of my own meditation practice, travels, blogging, and being. Thanks, Dr. Taylor. And to the French Email Angel, whoever you are, Merci Beaucoup. :)
Kloncke 