Oh my god, people are fucking crazy....
Breathe...
Breathe...
Breathe...
(That's about it, for now).
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.
.
.
/\.
(Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh)
(Thanks to all the kind people at Blue Cliff Monastery)
Showing posts with label Buddhist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddhist. Show all posts
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Observations on returning to Philly/Facebook/etc. after a week in a Buddhist monastery
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.
.
.
/\.
(Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh)
(Thanks to all the kind people at Blue Cliff Monastery)
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Whatever You Wish to Keep...
You must leave now take what you need you think will last,
but whatever you wish to keep you better grab it fast...
Bob Dylan, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
...one last trip to the house where I grew up for any childhood or adolescent relics deemed worthy of occupying a storage locker corner until god-only-knows-when...(that's my dad's old guitar leaning against my official-document-of-bein'-real-smart, and boxed up pictures, paperbacks, comic books, letters, ticket stubs, and a couple Matchbox cars)...
...last week took my beloved mountain/city bike into the shop for a minor repair only to find out the frame was broken...tried to see it as a lesson in impermanence and non-attachment and even came up with a mantra for the experience...
om
shanti
fuck
...since, ultimately, the Philly boy I am values honest expression of feelings as highly as those more proper Buddhist-y yogi virtues....but now feelings are even more complex...leavin' nothin' much to say, for the moment, and nothin' much to fall back on but old rock lyrics...(with gratitude to the fearlessly non-traditional yoga playlists of the inimitable Sarah E.)...(kirtan? wha...?)...
Take me to the station,
and put me on a train,
I got no expectations
to pass through here, again...
Mick Jagger/Keith Richards, No Expectations
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
...maybe it's the Nerf ball....
Friday, July 11, 2008
Meditations on Nirvana
it was shortly after finishing the Appalachian Trail that I found Nirvana... 
oh...wait a second...excuse me...I meant the band...sorry for any confusion...as mentioned, I’d tumbled down from the mountains pretty hard...no money no job no home no girlfriend no plans no nothin’...worse yet, I felt I’d found my paradise only to realize I couldn’t stay there...which, I understand, is actually a common experience among those who’ve gone off to the Far East to do the Buddhist thing...at least that’s what Bill Murray said in The Razor’s Edge...so it was fitting that a friend I stopped in with in Boston on the way down to Philly from Maine took me to a series of bars and in, I think, the one after the strip club, put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the jukebox...hello hello hello how low...and then that, living at my parents’ house that Fall, reliving adolescence at 26, I bought the Nevermind CD, which was still new then... and anything else they put out as 26 turned to 27 and '92 became '93 and I really got into...I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned!...and I liked the fact that Kurt Cobain was about my age, when up to that point I’d mostly listened to people who were a good deal older...even though he was a rock star and I wasn’t...though he still seemed just about as miserable...I’m so ugly that’s okay cuz so are you...and that then, a year and a half or so later, when I was on my way out to Arizona to start grad school...leaving mid spring though school didn’t start till Fall...to spend a wasted summer in the high desert before starting the work of getting my life together...kinda thrilled and kinda revolted that the grunge thing had suddenly made my worn out jeans, flannel shirts, shaggy hair, and tendency not to shave too often stylish...when I stopped with some friends in Boulder and got snowed in at their geodesic dome in the mountains...I'm on a plain I can't complain...I heard that Kurt Cobain had blown his own face off...aqua seafoam shame...and felt like I’d dodged a bullet myself...
oh...wait a second...excuse me...I meant the band...sorry for any confusion...as mentioned, I’d tumbled down from the mountains pretty hard...no money no job no home no girlfriend no plans no nothin’...worse yet, I felt I’d found my paradise only to realize I couldn’t stay there...which, I understand, is actually a common experience among those who’ve gone off to the Far East to do the Buddhist thing...at least that’s what Bill Murray said in The Razor’s Edge...so it was fitting that a friend I stopped in with in Boston on the way down to Philly from Maine took me to a series of bars and in, I think, the one after the strip club, put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the jukebox...hello hello hello how low...and then that, living at my parents’ house that Fall, reliving adolescence at 26, I bought the Nevermind CD, which was still new then... and anything else they put out as 26 turned to 27 and '92 became '93 and I really got into...I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned!...and I liked the fact that Kurt Cobain was about my age, when up to that point I’d mostly listened to people who were a good deal older...even though he was a rock star and I wasn’t...though he still seemed just about as miserable...I’m so ugly that’s okay cuz so are you...and that then, a year and a half or so later, when I was on my way out to Arizona to start grad school...leaving mid spring though school didn’t start till Fall...to spend a wasted summer in the high desert before starting the work of getting my life together...kinda thrilled and kinda revolted that the grunge thing had suddenly made my worn out jeans, flannel shirts, shaggy hair, and tendency not to shave too often stylish...when I stopped with some friends in Boulder and got snowed in at their geodesic dome in the mountains...I'm on a plain I can't complain...I heard that Kurt Cobain had blown his own face off...aqua seafoam shame...and felt like I’d dodged a bullet myself...
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