Scrawled in a toilet stall with a black sharpie: “separation -> anxiety”. That’s it—dukkha in a nutshell. Crave it, grab it, hold it tight and make it yours. Never let it go. But here’s the news: everybody leaves. Everybody dies. Everybody forgets, and everyone is forgotten. Time is fleeting and opportunity is lost. Opportunity isn’t …
Category: Aging & Dying
Me and my breasts
At age 10 my early-blooming boobies made me a freak and a victim. I’ve spent my life hating them, hiding them, and fantasizing them pared away. So last week I got a message from my doctor in Vancouver. My routine mammogram showed some vague abnormality. The good folks at Upaya directed me to a benevolent …
Freedom’s just another word
We all suffer from liberphobia, the fear of freedom. – Lama Sumati Marut Everyone says they want to be FREE. Oh really, I say. You want to be free. And what does freedom mean to you? Do you want to be free of possessions, or possessiveness, or attachments – free of baggage, free of stuff? …
Get a life
What is my place in this unruly world? Wake up anxious, tumbleweed in belly. What use am I, what is the point, why was I born? Get up, get dressed. Get a job. Get a coffee. Get a life. Turn on the computer – a message: Robin Wheeler has a cancerous tumor on her pancreas. …
The Law of Dreams
Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed? That there is a path to be followed, literally to the death? Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware, never sensing a path. Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends. Better …