Still Here In The Best Way

No photos…no background…not even much to say.

I apologize for the silence, for the absence. It’s been a bit selfish, honestly, all of the hum and buzz I haven’t been able to share because I’ve been so busy living it.

Karmapa arrives tomorrow. The kitchen is probably eighty-five percent of the way to its final state, but good enough for now. Some tiles to redo on the walls, a little bit of electrical work that we’ve temporarily sorted out with extension cords…we do what we can after all! Somehow, all of life feels more alive in these moments where we act together. Where the meaning is apparent because we act directly out of gratitude–for our teachers, for the teachings, for the path itself.

The garden is set up with tables for ninety. The fridges are full; the dishes are clean; the beds are made. The dining room could use a bit of dusting; the kitchen schedule needs to be printed, but all told…we’re ready.

Internally, as much as externally, I think. Karmapa coming is like a door opening wide…you just accept everything. Otherwise you lose yourself in the details–the organization, the expectation, the easy trap of busy-ness, stress and importance. And this is not point. After all, what’s the good of a bodhisattva if we don’t let his presence take us beyond the ordinary?

What that will turn out to be, this next week long, I can only imagine. But honestly, I’m trying not to, but rather just to let the moments come one by one and see what they become.

Apologies again for the silence, but guess what…other people are keeping up the good work! If you want to know more about the happenings, check out Dhagpo’s fortieth anniversary blog. There’ll be new articles every day. Not sure yet if English translation will be immediate or come a bit later, but at the very least there will be pictures and you can always Google translate if you’re curious for more. 😉

Promise to be back like usual when the blessing calms down just a little. Miss you guys. See you on the other side…

Looking For The Low Light

This mist of busyness plus the-rest-of-life-ness has been continuing. The kitchen project is racing forward all of a sudden it seems. Suffice to say that the kitchen I’ve known for the last two years is no more, just an empty space with shockingly dirty walls…I guess twenty-six years of life and action will do that to a place. In the meantime, we’re cooking in the new outdoor space, which is smaller but has all the joy of newness and a place created with care.

All of this means lots of spontaneous rearranging of affairs and minor kitchen panic from trying to prepare a meal without knowing where the hell anything is. This week feels like trying to stop sand from pouring down into the bottom of the hourglass. I feel like things may be slipping through the cracks and yet the sand pours down so smooth and soft that I stop paying attention to details and simply focus on the feeling.

There’s no way I’ll be able to write all the e-mails I want to write in a week, or have all the conversations that need to be had, accomplish all the tasks. And as each week gets closer to Karmapa’s visit I know that somehow in the time he is here, every thing I have not done before will land squarely on my head in those five days.

And I just think, okay. Things will slip through the cracks. Time is limited. And it keeps spilling out below me. So what to do but relax? Go to the lake and have a drink with friends when your brain can’t crunch any more numbers or formulate any more e-mails and the basics of your to-do list have been crossed off even if the non-basics are literally unending. Let it be a little. Play with your new prime lens and try to understand in life and in photography that place where everything glows a little before the sun disappears and it all goes dim. Every moment is a tiny flash of impermanence, in all its continuous glory. Every second a death from one moment to another, each grain of sand sliding down below us.

I can capture it in an image, but even the image I think have captured and can hold is a fiction. All things pass. So what is there to do but live them and let them go, and dedicate them when they are good?

Throw up one’s hands and laugh a little, perhaps.

Daily Recommended Values

A good frame [but which translates better into English as “framework”]

(…metaphorical, eh?)