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Beginner's Heart

I started this blog so I could learn about love — the Buddhist idea of it, the kind that inflects and colours every action. Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa kind of love. Impossible love ~ Yesterday I realised: I’m getting better at it! I found myself brimming with love as I drove to the…

I travel to the  Portland, Oregon airport a lot. My older son & his wife live in Portland, my younger son in  Lake Oswego , and my best friend in Tillamook. It’s one of the nicer American airports I’ve been in: clean, full of light (even in the grey rain of Oregon). Great bookstores (Powell’s,…

I adore fireworks. And although Americans associate them w/ the Fourth, I grew up in places where fireworks might happen on any holiday. Where there are large Chinese communities, there are often fireworks. For seasonal festivals, for New Year’s, to frighten away evil spirits and bad luck. Generally good things to have around! It always…

Today’s the day Buddhists remember when the Buddha began his teaching journey: the full moon of the 8th lunar month (usually July). Also known as Asalha Puja Day, with this first teaching the Buddha moved one of his first five followers to enlightenment. This is the beginning not only of the Buddha’s teachings, but also…

Elsewhere I’ve written about gratitude journals. They help me see how many things happen every day to be grateful for. And also? Just how many tangible material pleasures I take for granted. Today, for instance, I made fruit salad. Normally, I’m a big fan of farmer’s markets, and local food. Especially in the summer, when…

I’m crazy about dragons.  It’s at least partly because I was born in the year of the dragon (a very auspicious year, just in case you were wondering). And it’s also because I was raised in Southeast Asia, where dragons have a far richer and better-known mythology. When I was little, not many kids talked…

I bought Mayuree as a puppy from a woman in Bangkok. She was a South African-bred Afghan hound, as sweet-tempered as honey. Her name meant ‘female peacock’ in Thai. But she was never much of a preener. Always more of a curl-her-long-legs-in-your-lap-and-nest kind of girl. Each year, books are published about life dogs: dogs you…

I’m one of those people who need down time. Not simply distraction time, like reading — although tI need that, too. 🙂 But mindless time spent staring out windows, or at birds, or the blue prairie sky. Time w/ out structure — a kind of  time w/out skeletal framework. Invertebrate time — both it and…

My cousin’s son died this past weekend. Killed instantly, with his best friend, in a tragic car accident. He was 25. A funeral is no celebration of life when the dead are young. Their lives cut short by the snick snick snick of the third sister’s scissors — Atropos, the eldest sister Fate. I dread…

For Buddhists, the world is a web. Everything is connected, and everyone as well. Long before I knew there was a word for this — interconnectedness — I believed in it. What I did, I knew even as a child, had consequences. For me, certainly. But also for everyone and everything around me. Facebook is a…
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