The Secret of Time

• Don't let people waste your time. It reinforces bad habits for you and for them
• Learn to say no
• Do what's important and commit to it
  
• Have gratitude every day and appreciate all the amazing gifts you've been given. Even if your life is a living hell, everything is impermanent, even hell is impermanent. So appreciate these moments you are having right now. As in, right now :-)
  

Practice and Insights

There's a one to one correlation between my practice and having insights:

Wed - no practice, no insights to report
Th - no practice, no insights to report
Fri - a little practice, small insights, nothing to write home about
Sat - no practice, no insights to report
Sun - a little practice, small insights nothing to write home about

Garlic Scapes

Today I enjoyed the fruits of my mom's (sometimes questionable) labor. She's planted like 1000 bulbs of garlic and shallots. Insane. But that's my mom and now you know where I get my tendencies.

As a result, we have bags full of garlic scapes, which are the flowering part of the garlic plant. It's the curly thing in the picture. You have to cut them off so the garlic bulb in the ground grows bigger and so the garlic seeds don't sprout and grow. The garlic that grows from seeds ends up being way to small to use. You have to plant the cloves instead.

Koreans eat garlic scapes like vegetables and yes, they are seriously garlicy tasting. During this total slacker day, I found http://foodgawker.com and made garlic scape pesto, garlic scape white bean dip, and roasted garlic scapes, all with fresh thyme, which is now flowering.

I also made Andrea Ngyuen's Lemongrass Pork and sliced it and we had it in Bun Salad Bowls with mint, orange mint, and perilla leaves for the herbs, also from the garden. Everyone was very happy, including Anorexic Alex.

It was a complete waste of a day. How could something so wrong feel so right? :=)

The good news is, I have not listened to, googled for, or watched any Adam Lambert videos today! So I guess this is better than how I spent last Saturday.

Recipe for Misery

My mom is raising my cousin's son, Alex. Alex played some of my old CD's while I was doing my am practice, which was distracting.

I wanted to tell him, "Don't do it!"

It took me back to when I was a kid in this very same house. As adolescents, we struggle to assume an identity. We sample everything and decide "I like this," "I don't like that," or "I don't care." We present this collection of opinions and feelings to the world and say, "This is who I am."

Isn't it?

Alex is relentlessly in the "I don't care" camp about everything. It's very strenuous for him to constantly embody "I don't care."

I wish I could tell him, "Don't do it, you'll just have to undo all this later in order to find peace."

Buddhist Exercising

My mom thinks I'm doing prostrations to lose weight and doesn't know I'm actually doing my meditation practice, so she heartily endorses them. Otherwise, she would say, "Stop wasting time, do something productive!"

Here's a teaching from what must be the most entertaining Rinpoche ever. It's not how we are taught to do them, but the general idea is the same.

One reason we take refuge in the Buddha is because he is free from the 4 obscurations: karmic, emotional, conceptual, and habitual.

I realized that those four things are, indeed, obscurations. They lie in front of everything we see, think, and do, blocking our view of what actually is.

We can't think our problems away or solve other peoples' problems for them. Everything we do has to come from the heart. Not the emotion-laden heart filled with hope and fear. The heart of compassion.

Curing Glambertitis

I dived into watching a backlog of dharma teachings that I needed to watch. It's the one thing I love more than watching Glambert.

“Everything is perfect as it is, in it’s intrinsic nature. Having nothing to do with good or bad, or acceptance and rejection. One might simply burst out laughing.” --Longchenpa

"Meditation is the process of getting to know your mind." -- Sogyal Rinpoche

In the Tibetan teachings, the mind is the same as the heart.

Weekends Suck

Weekends are bad when you are mistress of your own time. It's taking me forever to finish my meditation practice. Instead, I am taking breaks to hunt for and devour new Glambert tidbits on the web. There is something good to be said about having many demanding people in your face time all the time.

"Through being impelled to by others, we discover Dharma
And find the essential meaning. Thank you, all who drive us on!"
- Longchenpa, from "The Words of My Perfect Teacher" p181

Glambert Time

Help!

I am addicted to Adam Lambert! It's ruining my life.

I hate Rolling Stone. However, I bought my first one today.

Even worse, I discovered I was a Cougar. For more mortification, check out this Cougar TV show. Women must be allowed to embarass themselves in all the same ways as men.

Unfortunately, NPR cannot save us from this fate.

Slacking is Good

Being a 46 year old living at home with mom is cool.

Here's my new schedule. So far it's awesome, but I'm only on Day 1! HAHA!!!

5:00 am - 9:00 am

• Meditation practice

9:00 am - 4:00 pm

• Day trading

12:30 pm - 3:00 pm

• Meetings & appointments
• Phone calls
• Personal paperwork
• Help mom with stuff
• Take Alex to tutor and play soccer mom
  

5:00 pm - 10:00 pm

• Volunteer work for Rigpa Fellowship