Posts by webadmin

In this newsletter #7, read about Joy’s thoughts on Annica & Annatta, Kidde Cafe, Sports Day, and Green Tara … Click to open/download pdf

Hello again, dear readers. Many of you are experiencing sub-zero temperatures up north, with blizzards. I wonder whether it is a form of cruelty to send these photos to your side of the world… although some of you are delighted with the snow, the quiet, the mysterious frost etchings on your window panes. I spent many wonderful winters in Montana and Wisconsin. I remember the gifts of splitting wood, stoking the stove,...

Hello again dear readers… or, more properly around here: Dhamma sawadhi kha 🙏 .(Greetings, in the spirit of Dhamma) My braincells are starting to seep back in ….and it’s such a relief! Someone please remind me if/when you hear me denigrating the mind…which is fairly fashionable in Buddhist circles. I slept well, and awoke to the sound of the nuns chanting next door, as they do every morning around 5:15. Such a charming wakeup...

Hola, dear readers. No, this is not a Mexican kitty..This is Tater Bug, seen here contemplating the sunset. She lives in Little Rock with my friend Becky. I’ve been thinking about aliens lately, and what that means…For instance, when I go down to the bay every morning before dawn, wearing my down jacket, a cap, leg warmers, an alpaca poncho and three layers of clothes beneath all that…. and I encounter these people: Which of us is the...

Hello again, dear readers. Thanks for your heartfelt response to the first Tales, dears. Some of you will probably receive duplicate copies, since my readership file is a glitch-filled rat’s-nest and seems to have lost or omitted about half of the original recipients… let me know if you receive several copies, please. A couple of you shared your own bobcat and panther tales, and of having your experience denied (especially regarding...

Hello again, dear readers. It’s been an extraordinarily long time since the last installment, hasn’t it? This is because I dropped the ball last year, after about four Tales…I was pretending that no one really had time to read them, and that I was just too busy to write them. However, an astounding number of you have mentioned to me, without rancor but with an irrefutable intensity, that you do indeed WAIT to hear the next...

Hello again, dear readers. I don’t know if I can describe the way that I am greeted here, all day long…like a beloved auntie who has finally returned… I am the oldest member of this community and therefore Pa Joy**, which means Auntie Joy, to all. Some of these relationships go back decades. We traveled Thailand together with Khun Mae and shared some challenges, too. It was my birthday last week…and I tend to be a...

Sawadhi kha, 🙏dear readers. My first day in Thailand felt quite significant, for myself and for the entire community. Some of you may recall from last year’s Tales: I reported a sense of physical and energetic deterioration in the S.D.S. (Bangkok) center’s vitality level.For one thing, Ajahn Chom’s work crew was spending all their time in the southern center, creating fantastic new water features and landscaping miracles every...

Hello again, dear readers. You all have reminded me why I write these Tales. Every year I experience prolonged labor and difficulty with Tales #1. My primary symptom is a sense of over-exposure… like I’m on YouTube giving birth. Then your responses come rolling in, almost immediately, bursting with the enthusiasm of shared confessions, and relief (this year) to be “not the only one” who is so damn crazy and strung out on...

Hola, my dear readers. Harvesting veggies in the community garden I like to imagine each year is totally different from the one preceding it…. But I do seem to recall that the exact same thing occurred last year …hmmmm: I arrived here in the lovely town of La Paz (Baja Sur) and sloughed into a pleasantly vegetative state, setting up my little 1950’s kitchen, getting my drinking water, renting a bicycle…. And revisiting my...