Is this thing on, part 2

Life

It truly has been a really long time since I’ve posted a blog post. I am still not particularly motivated to blog again, but then I realized that we are coming up very quickly on the end of a whole decade! A WHOLE DECADE. So maybe I should post some kind of reflection something or other? It’s kind of been a tradition here to write about my year, and I kind of was thinking I’d skip it this year. But now that I’m realizing it’s almost the end of the 2010s, well, I kind of feel like I should do something to mark this occasion.

So yeah. Really kind of just thinking out loud here at the moment. I’ll think about this a bit and get back to you.

intention

Thoughts and Opinions

A few months ago one of my friends posted a photo on Twitter of what was (incorrectly) deemed to be the mission statement of a nutrition company: “Don’t Be A Dick.”

I often think about this phrase and how it can be a good motto in which to live one’s life (sexism aside).

In the lineage of Buddhism I practice, Soto Zen, we have a kind of code of ethics that we follow called the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts. In my (very limited) thinking, I feel like the precepts can be distilled down to the phrase, “don’t be a dick.” Or “don’t be a jerk (if that suits you better). If you are a jerk to people you will have to deal with the consequences of being a jerk, and it’s not fun and not going to produce happiness. Being a jerk causes suffering.

As I thought about this, I realized that I have been a jerk. In fact, I am often a jerk. I think we all are. I think being a jerk is a human condition and impossible to avoid.

So I think intention is what is really important. I think if you vow to not be a jerk, and do your best to practice not being a jerk, that is a noble path. Sometimes you will be a jerk, because you (we) are human and we make mistakes. But when that happens I think part of the practice is to be forgiving of yourself and others when you encounter jerky behavior.

My parent’s tables

Photography

I caught up on some backlog and I finally have some photography to share. Today I am going to share a couple of images I took while I was in Spokane visiting my family over the summer. They are both pinhole photos taken with a Reality So Subtle pinhole camera. One of them was taken at my dad’s and the other was taken at my mom’s.

https://flic.kr/p/2djgqJB
Breakfast at Mom’s
https://flic.kr/p/QWDtNa
breakfast at Dad’s