108 Beads

dear bloggy,

one month into the Dharma Gar daily practice commitment. it has been an interesting month. the way i would describe the turbulent ebbs and gentle flows is that i brought a new layer into my life, that of daily practice, and plopped it down on top of my regular life--meaning on top of my habits and patterns, my grooves, my stuck places, my body holding and guarding, my non-schedule, unfamiliarity with discipline. and since we were to do the first month of "just sitting," i have had to work at it. i would say i started strongly, tapering down like a candle, but not as steadily. by the end of the second week i believe i had my first body-mind meltdown--or more like a breakdown, or freeze-up. i so craved to be escaping from that--that intensity of body-mind training. i picked back up quickly, but then cycled back to meltdown in about a week. regardless, i have say almost every day of the month, ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hrs of "just sitting" (not all at once! in increments of 10 minutes or more, generally around 20 minutes. my schedule is changing soon, and i will be able to be lavish in scheduling my sitting, which i'm looking forward to.

i've never known exactly what causes the pain i experience in my trapezius muscles & neck, especially "the spot" that i have thought of naming, though it is elusive. but i do know that it is really something to work with in sitting meditation.

right now my sides hurt. last night when i went to bed, the soles of my feet hurt. also, last night when i was experiencing widespread pain in the left trapezius (home of "the spot")all the way down my left side i became a little fixated on the thought that it's liver-related, which i certainly have wondered before. or lung. or trauma. or nerve impingement. systemic!

not sure why i'm blogging in the dark corner. what i mean is, why blog if no one will read it? if it's just my journal, couldn't it just as well just be on my hard drive? i'm thinking about copying and saving all my posts (because it is, in fact, a journal, and mostly a practice journal) and doing just that--saving them and closing down this blog.

for now--at least one more 20 minute sit tonight, which, from a hope and fear perspective, i hope will be comfortable but fear it will not!

i wonder why i can't budge out of my samsaric stupor. it's sort of like knowing the things i need to be doing, but protesting and not doing any but the most basic things. i was thinking, "why do i feel like a bad person sometimes?" for no apparent reason, kind of out of the blue. maybe a pms factor, too. little voices in my head (just normal ones though, not the kind that someone with chemical imbalances hear) might say, "well, you are bad, because you did blah blah blah," or maybe just, "well, you're not doing anything you say you need or want to do, and that's bad enough..."

there's nobody here to tell me to do something, or expect me to (except i am expected to do my job) or criticize me if i don't/praise me if i do. hmmmmm. maybe i'm still functioning on about a 15 year old level. i need self-motivation, but where does one get it if one doesn't have it? if they had it in thrift stores, i would've found it, because i can easily motivate to shop in thrift stores. let's see, what else can i easily motivate to do? hmmmmm. drink morning latte! okay, what else??? check my email? (pitiful really, considering the dearth of actual communication i get via email.) there has to be more that i can easily motivate to do! if not, i'm in trouble! this has been a long-running, broken record with me. maybe i should try something just very basic, very do-able in the realm of dharma practice: aspiration prayers. aspire to aspire. aspire to aspire to motivate. just simple. find a prayer (i know i have some), warm up the shrine room, light some incense, set my butt down, say it like i mean it. don't worry about if i believe it or am doing it right, or my miniscule motivation is pure or correct.

then, something not so much dharma but not outside of dharma: make a list. list the things that, if i were doing them, i think i would feel better about myself. start doing them, instead of what i'm doing. i am suddenly full of many tired cliches, like, "there's no time like the present" and such. but what else am i to do? i can't figure out what's making me miserable until i take a break from it, after all.

i recall that the most consistently i have blogged is when my longtime companion, jim was traveling. as he just left for an around-the-world journey, maybe that will happen again. i got directed here by the fact that i needed to pick an identity while posting on someone else's blog: hardcorezen.blogspot.com (author, musician, godzilla buff) and didn't want to choose a blogspot account i never really developed.

so, checking in, don't even know if i have any "friends" left here, or if i'm talking to myself! february 14, DJKR ("my" teacher) kicks off Dharma Gar North America. read about it at siddharthasintent.org
and i will be joining it. basically, it's a practice commitment of 2 hrs a day; the practice that would be condensed in a traditional 3-year silent retreat will be stretched out over a 10-year period, to allow people to study/practice the same stuff, yet continue living where they are doing what they do. i'm not sure of the details yet, but i know it's designed to allow you to live pretty much like you normally do, but without the harder bits: silence for 3 years, being out of contact with family, etc. Not sure at all about the "etc." right now, but know that, for instance i'll continue to work. I'm curious if precepts will be part of the program. i hope so, and expect that they will be the flex-version. i appreciate brad warner sharing the version of precepts his teacher uses (reading warner's book: zen wrapped in karma dipped in chocolate); i especially like "don't desire too much" instead of "misusing sex," since it's so easy to tell oneself "i'm not misusing sex!" when in fact, it may be the case. this covers way more, and allows a less heavy-handed version of "don't use intoxicants" because it covers that, too. (however, "don't make your living by selling liquor" doesn't really seem to be all that useful to taking a look at one's own personal use of intoxicants.) i recognize that the versions i'm using above are not any more "the originals" than are warner's teacher's, but hey, those were probably written in pali, right?

anyway. the Gar. i applied, was accepted, am awaiting callup. ("we've got you now!" a warner quote from the same book.) i find the timing perfect--jim is traveling around the world, a long-awaited dream realized, and i am committing to a long-term practice goal in a stronger way than i've been able to manifest on my own. in other words, had i practiced two hours a day since i began these tibetan buddhist practices, i would have finished them by now. but, as DJKR has said, famously (and senior students have echoed, ad nauseum), "so what?" i would still have a practice, and that's what i'd be doing. jim asked the other day, "does practice make perfect?" and i had to say, "not really." but it does make practice.

since the kickoff is via the web (i suppose some of us will be gathering in seattle around a big screen), i'm contemplating doing a 3-day zen sesshin here in town with norman fischer, so that i have some real, live practice with people in a zendo beforehand. funny how my during my earliest steps on the buddhist path, i was struggling with tibetan or zen? zen or tibetan?, and now i don't see any problem. yes, if i were going to fully claim zen, i would not be doing the preliminary tibetan practices. but having fully claimed vajrayana, the zen support is fully compatible. sitting. oryoki. beginner's mind. the words of those who practice and transmit zen. i'm happy to be here, with this mind.

i may try to change my login name to match my siddhartha's intent name, if that feature is supported here.

peace out!
donna aka ngondrogirl aka vittachitta

hello world,
i am still on the planet.
still have a ngondro practice.
still in love with DJKR: www.siddharthasintent.org
still teaching english at a community college.
still dealing with health issues...
but still alive and well!

greetings ngondroids!

love,
donna

tashi delek la!
wow, cyberspace is weird; my blog is still here, even though i haven't been here all year.
it will be interesting to reread my entries, and see what others are doing (if you're still around!). if you are a Ngondro practitioner, check out siddharthasintent.org which is a site coordinating the community of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche; there is a community forum there which is mellow and has some good resources.
cheers,
donna/aka ngondrogirl

hello anyone?

i'm back here at livejournal, simply because i now have technology working once again, and actually remembered my password!

i'm interested in talking with anyone who is still around who is doing any part of ngondro, studying or practicing buddhism, interested in mongolia (i just spent some time there this summer, and plan to go back next summer), and in general, just talk path.

i'm not very adept at figuring out how to network, but maybe i'll have a little time to figure this out! i'm working less next quarter so that i can work on health issues, practice more, and figure out some life changes.

cheers!
ngondrogirl / aka vittachitta / aka donna

below this blog is a pantoum, a form poem, which i realize shows a reoccurring theme in my life this past year. the first time a robin, as in the poem, and the second time, more dramatically, an owl (short ear?) hit the roof of a stepvan in front of me on a rural route. i saw a span of wings falling, circling, and then a creature hit the ground. i turned my car around, as it had fallen into the other lane of traffic. i didn't know what to do, but sit in my car and watch it, with my open door between us (window down) so that it didn't feel threatened by me, and chant om mani padme hum. then a guy in a truck came, all radioing in to animal authorities and parking in the road and directing traffic and people going by real slow taking pictures of it with their cellphones and a man walking up with his little girl right up to it ("you might not want to do that; it has talons and it's in shock...") the owl passed out, started to topple over and awoke repeatedly through all this. when its eyes were open, we had the most amazing eye contact. finally the truck guy said he had to go back to work and i said, "i'm staying here 'til someone comes or it flies away. right then, the owl turned, looked around with awareness, and flew up into the top limbs of a tree in a grove with the rising full moon right behind it.

okay, here's the pantoum.
---

The Bird, My Heart

Scrounging for tobacco
the thump of a bird
hitting the kitchen window
startles me awake

The thump of the bird
echoes my beating heart,
startles me awake,
but only for an instant.

Echoes of my beating heart
fly away, stunned,
but only for an instant
do I forget I need a light

Flying away, stunned,
the bird, my heart,
forgets it was headed for light
before it hit the glass.

Remembered dream from this morning:

I am riding down a long asphalt throughway, sitting on a skateboard--one of those longboards that all the guys around here have. The road is really wide, going through sort of a downtown area, but way more mellow, and it is all downhill, so that I have pretty good speed. On the sides of the road, I am aware of groups of boys--teens, I guess--watching me, admiringly, I think in the dream, self-consciously aware of my age. Soon the road leaves the town area and curves into a parking lot which is full of cars and trucks and covered with ice and snow. No people are around. I concentrate on turning the board without crashing, carving nicely into the ice (and still self-conscious that I'm being watched, somehow). I make a safe curve and am heading in a new direction, when I see, perched on a truck's side mirror, a white and black owl. Immediately I recognize it as one I encountered this past year in waking life, an owl I think of as "my" owl, because I intervened when it was in danger.

My owl flies over towards me, and our eyes meet. I'm still skating along on my board, I guess, at a high speed--but now it just feels like I'm moving without the board--and the owl flies ahead of me, inches from my face. I am so happy, and I can feel the wind and the cold air, and the connection with the owl. This goes on for a while, then she flies away.

Next I am without the owl, without the board, back in a frozen parking lot, and walking towards a town. I have an appointment with my therapist, Robin. I meet two friends (who?), and we walk together. I point out that I've forgotten my shoes somehow, and here I am barefoot in the snow. We eventually reach the town, and I know, still, that I have to find Robin and make my appointment. There ae various scenes in which I'm trying to contact her. In one, I'm in an office, trying to call her on my cell, but the phone keeps shape-shifting and I don't understand the functions. Someone, a man, tries to help me (I remember his wife is there, too), but I can't get through. In another scene I am walking up ramps and stairs with a lot of people, and can see that her office is just a couple of blocks away, but I can't get there from where I am. I briefly consider going over the railings, but it doesn't look safe. In another scene I am on a trolley, going right past the building I need, but the trolley won't stop. I wait until it slows down for traffic, and then jump off, even though we're still moving pretty fast, still I'm barefoot, but I land safely. In another scene, I'm saying goodbye to two people I've been hanging out with, a man (in real life he's a coffee shop owner, very cute) and a young woman who is with him. We are all sitting on the sidewalk, next to a sort of open air train station or something, and I sit on his lap, yab-yum style and we hug goodbye. I realize I might not have a shirt on. The hug is really, really warm and nice. Then I hug the girl sideways, and say goodbye. As I'm leaving, she calls out to me, "I love you!" I blow her a kiss, and then tell her I love her, at her insistence.

Well, if I talked about it here, that would just make it worse, right? My partner says I should just tell people up front, "I'm not a good person to tell something that you don't want anyone else to know." I told him, it doesn't work like that. People tend to tell me all their stuff, and THEN say, don't tell anyone. Certain kinds of things I have no trouble not spreading like a sexually transmitted disease, and others I can't seem to contain. I think it's because stories are very important to my sense of the world, and I'm often sharing someone's most important details--name excluded--in the context of processing with another (almost always female) friend. We thrive on these details, these stories; we learn from them.

That said, I wish I could've kept my big mouth shut in Florida: NOT told B. that M. didn't want her in every stinkin' family picture because she didn't consider her to be her sister (she's not, actually), and even though M. isn't sorry that she told me the history between the disconnect between the K. girls and the S. boys (because ultimately, I told B. in trying to heal the rift between us, some of what M. told me), I'm kind of sorry she told me. Because now I know some truths that are hard, and affect me.

hello y'all,

as i mentioned in my ngondro group post, it's my bday friday, and so it's a new year for me. armed with new technology--a new laptop and clearwire--i will actually be able to post without crashing aborting all attempts.

so here i am, sporting the coin of hope and fear as i end one year on the planet and begin another. my intentions, i pray, can be matched by true motivation fired by devotion for the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

if i'm going to quit smoking before my birthday, then this is it: i have on ciggie left, then if i begin again as a nonsmoker tomorrow (today, actually, after i go to bed and wake up in the a.m.) then i will have a day under my belt for my bday.

practice prozzies, not puffing! what a concept!

well, let me know how you're all doin'. i looked at your recent posts, and you're all as cute as ever.

love,
ngondrogirl