Tales of Joy 2022 #3
Hello again, dear readers. Thanks again for your heartfelt response to the Tales. You might be surprised to know how very vulnerable I feel when I send them out. The mural (below) is new this year…. It is near my morning meditation spot on the bay. I’ve been studying the difference between looking and seeing, for decades. For instance, I had looked at the mural above and admired it a couple times before, but didn’t actually “see” it until after I had expanded my rainbow radius one morning last week. I finally saw that the man is...
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Hello again, dear readers. Thank you for your very kind response to the first Tales. This #2 will not be as action-packed. Like many Boomers my age, I am merely sitting out the winter, with very little human interaction, waiting for this insanely infectious Omicron variant to run its course. This is not a loss for me. I relish the time to invest in my own inner landscape….like my “Honeymoon with God” time during my solo summer meditation retreats. My wonderful hosts here are keeping quite a distance now, too, for their own sake and mine....
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Hello dear readers. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? So many of you, especially longtime readers, either sweetly or plaintively, inquired about the loss of these Tales the last two years…. Plus, my teacher and Astral Tour Guide, Anna Cox, made it abundantly clear in November that I WOULD resume this year. The ghoul in the photo above is Anna’s husband Jim. I visited them on Halloween, as I was passing through Little Rock on my way to Washington, D.C. (It is also, of course, a symbol of the “Maya”/delusion, in which so many are swirling these...
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Above is the Chinese dragon, on New Year’s Day. We are now in the year of the Metallic Rat. Below is my favorite “dragon,” and also my closest neighbor here at S.D.S. The photo is actually the baby. Mama appeared last month and posed for five minutes, but I didn’t have my camera with me…what a tease! Mama has grown to (at least) eight feet long now. For you left-brain readers, those brick tiles in the photo are approximately 14”. This winter in Thailand, my schedule has been filled to the brim with field trips, accompanying Khun-mae and Nawng...
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Greetings, dear readers. Hats. We all wear so many in these complicated times, huh? As the relentless dust and heat bore down, over six days of pickaxing holes in the dry rocky ground at SDS 2… I grew to love my Issan farmer’s hat. It became incredibly familiar and comforting as well. This is a strange disclosure for a “nudist Buddhist,” as I’ve often described myself. My sweet friend Maechee Wontawon is on the left (above photo). She’s been here at SDS 2 since its beginning eighteen months ago, and is the sole remaining founding resident....
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Hello again, dear readers. And full-moon greetings from the Green Tara. (It was fun to wait for the moon to rise to just the right spot.) Thanks so much for your heartfelt response to my Tales. There are many Zero Waste Warriors out there, who have been responding with consciousness since long before my nascent attempts. I often fail to avoid single-use plastic: people give me bottles of water, or I buy something that is otherwise unavailable without wrapping.. And I’m still learning about impeccability from Captain Zero Waste. Here (below)...
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Hello again, dear readers. Yes, this time I really am in Thailand, and back home at my retreat center, where I am the official International Volunteer. I can’t seem to resist featuring this fellow (above) that I found while gardening today, though he’s actually double that size. And below, little Maechee Pim, age 9, is showing me the onions that she waters every day. I was given a royal welcome and taken to “my” house, which is always saved for me. (I still don’t understand why or how I am given these absolutely unique blessings…. but I’ve...
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Hello, dears. I suspect that at least some of you are thinking: Hmmm, they have saguaro cactus in Thailand? The answer is: No. I spent twelve days at the tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico, before heading out to SE Asia.Last winter, I spontaneously made a reservation at an airbnb in Cabo San Jose, on the un-touristed side of town (I hoped). Never been there, don’t know anyone there… I’m going to re-print parts of a letter that I just sent to a few friends, because it seems to encapsulate the journey that I have been on this year:My darlings,...
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Hello, dear readers. I’m sorry to leave you hanging for so long, especially after suggesting that my health wasn’t robust. (It is now) The photo below is from two weeks ago, at the new S.D.S. organic farm, far south of Bangkok. The land was donated by Mei Oo, the woman on the right. She is also the leader of the Dhammachat Bambat/Nature Cure program, who will be fearlessly leading our expedition into rural Cambodia next week. Soon after we arrived at the new farmland, this woman came to pay her respects to Venerable Maichee Sansanee. She told...
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Hello again, friends. Thanks so much for your insightful and heartfelt responses to these Tales. Though I’m not able to respond personally, they are definitely appreciated, dears. Today, I have time to start the fifth Tale, even though I sent #4 out yesterday…because I’m sort of hiding out in my beautiful little kuti/house today. The truth: I haven’t been present for alms-walk or Kitchen Zen or my afternoon gardening sessions with Chom for three days now. I’m QUITE hesitant to admit it, but I am sick. Tales #4 was originally going to be about...
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Hello, dear readers.Honestly, I’m not sure where to take you, at this point in my journey. I’ve had too many adventures to relate them all…and I’m acutely aware of how easily I can sway your opinions just by turning my camera or perspective one direction or another. I’ve just returned from seven days in a rural orphanage in Kanchanaburi. It was pretty much pure chaos, since the staff and the director, MC Jutipak, were all away at a conference, leaving a struggling skeleton crew to maintain the 85 children. I don’t know if it was because of,...
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Kitchen Zen! A truly humbling experience…What a wonderful opportunity to fail so blatantly, on so many levels e.g. hand-slicing tarot chips with a simple grater for an hour. They’re supposed to be consistent…no two of mine look alike! And I keep switching hands, cause I’m a wimp! Or peeling hundreds of friggin’ quail eggs, until I’m cross-eyed. (Actually, I was the last one standing, in that particular event) Isn’t life fascinating!… (from a note I wrote to my pal Chef Tuesday last week.) I’d like to dedicate this issue to the many millions...
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Wattle Hollow is a relatively small retreat center (40 acres of woodlands on a mountainside in Northwest Arkansas) with capacity for 20 - 25 folks.