August 28, 2003

life at a retreat center

Life at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center is becoming more and more usual (for me, probably not usual in the outside world sense of the term) everyday. Some things, however, still catch me off guard. Things like standing in an office by myself and then having two nuns and a monk walk in. Suddenly I was surrounded by Sangha and the notion that this was not a usual situation to be in hit me. Two weeks ago I would have had to travel at least 400 miles to be surrounded by that many Sangha. The other night at Ven. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche’s teachings I was in a room with probably 25 (maybe more) Sangha members and four rinpoches. [The term rinpoche is Tibetan and literally means “precious one”, but has come to mean “one who is reincarnated” — or “one who has control over where they will be reborn”. The opportunity to be around just one is rare, four is nearly unheard of, especially in the West.]

[written on 8/28 as the post date reflects, posted on 9/18]

posted @ 7:54 AM

August 26, 2003

first day of my new job

Today I answered the phone, “Vajrapani, this is Tom,” for the first time. My official first day. It was great — learned a bunch, but also realize how much I need to learn... about everything. The office, Vajrapani in general, Dharma and many other aspects. On the other hand, it feels like all of my jobs have been training for this position. In fact, all of my life has been training for this experience.

When Christina and I were younger (maybe 14), we read an article in Rolling Stone magazine about the founder of Limpies, a clothing company. He was this surfer guy who lived in or around San Diego. It was an endless summer type deal for him and it seemed like a pretty appealing lifestyle choice to make. We decided that someday we would live in a little shack by the ocean. We would surf and figure out the answer. I was really into looking for the answer to life and these surfer guys seemed to have it. Well, life didn’t really work out like that for us. I can’t swim too good — let alone surf and I’m pretty sure that they may be close, but not dead on with that answer. The up side is that we now live in a little shack, fairly close to the ocean, with a plethora of Dharma related activities to keep us occupied.

[written on 8/28/03, as the post date reflects. posted on 9/15/03]

posted @ 5:45 PM

August 23, 2003

day two - formal teachings

With the truck completely unloaded and returned to Budget, we decided that we should take a little break from moving and go to some teachings given by Ven. Kirti Tensab Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha. We were told (correctly) that Lama Zopa Rinpoche would also be in attendance. The whole event was really quite spectacular. Our “host” for the evening was Diana, who’s job I will be taking over — she’s moving on to be the Spiritual Coordinator — and she was great. Showed us several different (and quicker!) ways to get to Santa Cruz from Boulder Creek. Plus gave us great directions to LMB, a little history of Vajrapani and a pretty complete rundown of all the Buddhist events taking place in the next month around the Santa Cruz area.

The teaching was on the King of Prayers, but Rinpoche started off with a little bit of Lam Rim as background. He (along with his amazing translator) had to speed through most of the verses, but it was still very informative. The presences of Lama Zopa was very nice and he made one little correction of a translation at the beginning of the teaching, but other than that was pretty silent most of the time. I’m told that he will be attending the teaching at Vajrapani in September, so maybe I’ll get to personally meet him then.

[This was written on the post date, but not posted until 9/13/03.]

posted @ 7:40 AM

August 22, 2003

day one @ vajrapani

No formal teachings, several informal teachings.

We arrived at 3 o’clock to unload our huge Ryder truck full of mostly useless things. They seemed perfectly necessary when we left Kalispell and only had to carry them a matter of feet to the back of the truck. We both grabbed a box and headed for the shack (it’s formally called the Old Bath House, for reasons unknown, but we call it the Shack for other reasons I’m sure I’ll mention latter). About a quarter of the way their we realized it was going to be a very long day. The trail from the road to our house is about (just a guess) a quarter of a mile. We remembered it to be only about 500 feet. Fortunately we were able to get some wheelbarrows and load them full of things which made life much easier. Lesson learned: non-attachment to material goods.

In the end we moved everything to our place by 10 pm and we are calling it a sucsess. Tom and Christina: 1 ; Vajrapani: 0.

[This was written on 8/22/03 — as the post date reflects — however, not posted until 9/11/03]

posted @ 6:42 PM

August 17, 2003

oh, to be young again

We helped Christina’s younger sister pack for her big move to Seattle. She’s going to go to school and play soccer. It took an hour and a half — including packing, loading the car and saying goodbye. We’re on about day twelve of our own packing and we still have boxes scattered around the house half filled with “possibly necessary things”. It’s ridiculous.

posted @ 8:21 AM

August 12, 2003

dharma punx

Just wanted to make a quick reference to an article I read yesterday on the Buddhist News Network about “punk monk” Noah Levine.

posted @ 12:37 PM

August 7, 2003

minimal posting

Nearly every minute of my day for the next two weeks has been filled with activities relating to either working, moving or spending time with friends and family before the move. Posts will be few and far between until at least August 25th... and possibly longer than that. Not because I don’t love you, I’m just crazy busy.

posted @ 5:36 PM

August 1, 2003

why, yes it does

This is good... from MacDesktops.com

posted @ 5:31 PM

we never said that...

[David Kay, a special adviser to the CIA] said that Iraqi scientists were revealing new secrets about work on WMDand progress was also being made to unravel the regime’s concealment tactics.

I can see it already... Bush will claim that he never said Iraq had WMDs — they were just working on them and that was threat enough.

posted @ 12:06 PM