Manifest Spontaneity

Here is some of the poetry I wrote just before and during the Ziji Collective leadership intensive at Karme Choling.  Before Having gone to bliss Hope & fear are like detours That end where they began. Dropping persona and facade, True creativity & interest Are exposed as the ever present      tidal-wave of nowness. Beginning Arriving is an abrupt      And gradual                           process. The drala of this land is      Instantly wakeful. Habitual holdings, guardings, evadings      Relax                slowly. Like a moon Caressing the meadow, Waxing one half A rich column of smoke      pirouetting its way               up      into an uncontrived blue sky. Enlightened Society      sounds like Nick's               unobstructed beating                       heart Introducing us to the ziji      of a shared flower petal.   in the Middle Heart break ice chest Not so cold, but so hard The Vidyadhara        Lone leaf lilt

I spent this last weekend at Karme Choling in Barnet, Vermont.  I was there for a leadership intensive with Shastri* Nick Kranz focusing on the practice of social meditation.  Already, I can feel myself being drawn into the role of the slightly detached explicator as I write this, wanting to explain the word ‘Shastri’ and what the practice of social meditation is.  That role is very comfortable to me.  I think I actually do that with myself as way to distance myself from difficult feelings.  Information and it’s accuracy is soothing to me; it’s how I get ground.   Last weekend was hard.  Social meditation is about creating a culture where the norms and customs nudge us toward being genuine and awake, in touch with our humanity.  Doing this practice and being around 55 other people doing it too makes any disingenuousness on my own part vivid.  Not always clear.  I didn’t always have a clear idea of what was going on, I just knew that I felt this pain.  I should also say that it

Last weekend I attended the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago.  I got to stay with Graceheart, which was good because I needed the support, and she’s a pro at support, especially when it involves letting me feel yucky feelings.  Yucky feelings there were a-plenty.  Right now I feel stuck.  The projects that I’ve worked on up until now, that I’m presently trying to finish up aren’t compelling to me.  When I look at them, I think something like, “Why would anybody want to devote part of their life to understanding THAT?”  Those projects are taking up most of my mental bandwidth right now.  The research that I’m more interested in right now, that I could see myself working on in a post doc, is not what I’ve been spending most of my time thinking about over the last month.  I was describing this to Graceheart’s flatmate, when she asked me why I got into this field in the first place.  I could not think of any compelling reason.  This is what I find most dish

This last three weeks I keep telling myself that I want to make a post here. With so much that’s so important happening in my life, there’s no shortage of material.  Three weeks ago I returned from an 8 day retreat called Enlightened Society Assembly at Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC).  I heartily recommend both.  Those 8 days marked a major shift for me — I’m still finding out exactly what that shift is entailing.  I know there’s a shift because I feel different.  Not quite so self-conscious and worried about whether I’m measuring up to expectations.  What’s really live for me today, though, is death.  I promise that I did not premeditate that sentence, but now that it’s out I’m going to have to leave it.                                                             Still life with skull and a writing quill by Pieter Claesz.                                                           (Apparently, I'm not the only one who associates                                        

The reason that Maitri and I travelled to <midwestern city> is for our sweethearts’ wedding.  It occurs to me that the plural possessive form in the object of that sentence requires some elaboration.  Maitri and I are polyamorous.  Basically, that means that our commitment to each other doesn’t include ‘forsaking all others’.  Polyamory (sometimes ‘poly' for short) comes in just about as many flavors as there are people practicing it.  Maybe in a future post I’ll elaborate on the specifics and ideological underpinnings of this way of conducting relationships, but for now I’m going to stick to how things actually play out in my experience.  I will emphasize one more point, though, which is that the relationships that occur under the umbrella of polyamory (or even more generally ethical non-monogamy) happen with the knowledge and consent of all involved.  So no deception, no secrets.  Maitri and I are each dating both members of the couple who got married this past weeke

Sometimes I feel betrayed by my own mind.  Right now is one of those times.  Coming back from the wedding last weekend and this entire week, I’ve felt like I overcame some basic obstacle.  I felt energized, and doing the work that I needed to do felt like turning on a faucet.  In the places I’ve lived, it’s been a given that when you turn on the faucet water comes out.  And it’s drinkable.  When I’m full lost in doubt, I hesitate to even touch the knob for fear that maybe nothing will come out or maybe bad water will come out.  Last Friday one of the other instructors for our sitting group was giving the instruction and she began by asking people to describe in a few words how they were feeling at that very moment.  The words that I chose were ‘unobstructed aliveness’.  She then asked me how it felt in my body to which I said that it felt like substantial-ness in the core of my torso with a feeling of buzzing out in my limbs.  As I said it though there was a little hang up.  At the

What. A. Weekend.  Began with rediscovering my inspiration to do science and is now ending with full and quivering heart.   I realized that I had lost touch with my inspiration to pursue a career as a scientist last week.  I didn’t lose it last week, rather I discovered last week that I’d lost it sometime back in February.  Interestingly, instead of feeling harrowing or stomach-pit-dropping, it was a relief.  It suddenly made sense why I was having such a hard time working on my disseration research lately.  I’ve found that when the task is sufficiently well defined, I can be confident in my ability to overcome difficulties, so long as I can hold my mind to the problem in a firm and open way.  Meditation seems to help with that.  A lot.     As I write this I’m not sure whether to talk about my process or the content.  One of my intentions for this blog is that it can be a place where I don’t have to think about whether this is the appropriate place to write what’s on my min

I’m a practicing Shambhala Buddhist.  Maybe the specifics of that aren’t super important, but it seems like good context to have.  For at least three years I’ve been longing for a group of younger folks to meditate and generally share community with.  The local group of practitioners is sufficiently small that I knew at those first pangs of longing that I would need to be a primary instigator of said group.  I have experienced a lot of hesitation around putting effort into starting a group like this.  What if it takes more energy than I’m able to give?  What if I try to get it going and no one is interested?  I’d like to introduce you all to my two familiars Failure and Rejection.  I’d like to call them friends in the kind of aspirational sense that I can accept them without letting my fears about them run the show, but that would be disingenuous.   In November in Boston I went to a 30’s and under meditation group thinking it would be nice to connect to 10 or 15 people who just

Welcome to Manifest Spontaneity!  (It's an aspirational title.) I am Vajra Sun, and I'll be your narrator and navigator for my life.  If you'd like to read more about what I'm up to with this blog please hop on over to the Beginnings and Vision page.