Boy oh boy we have gone through quite a personal transformation here at the keyboard when I look back on it all. Five is beyond the terrible-twos (where I hear that wrathful deities can manifest).

Five is when a kidlet usually is sent off to kindergarten to learn life’s big lessons (many of these are similar to the paramitas).

That’s what I’d like to do with this blog and with myself. Get more serious about my practice and my life. Waste less time. Maybe it’s all of this New Year – New You hype and perhaps if I sift through some old posts, I’ll see this recurring theme of wanting to put my nose to the dharmic grindstone, but it’s time.

I do hope your holidays have been lovely – whatever you celebrate or shun. I haven’t been much of a Christmas person for some time. Not having kids, it feels a bit silly to run around buying up stuff and getting all stressed out trying to keep up appearances. I don’t look down on those who feel the the spirit of the holidays. If it feels good – do it.

As an offshoot of this, I do enjoy the media’s emphasis on all of the good works that are being done in the world during this time and hey – if this causes an increase in Bodhisattvic behaviours in our world, then I’m all for that.

What else has been going on? Things have been pretty quiet. Death and rebirth of certain areas of my life. The traditional introspection that goes along with the closing of a year. Recovering from a nasty set of sniffles and feeling the grip of a full-bodied Canadian winter.

I’m thoroughly enjoying participating in a book study group of this juicy bit of writing from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. It’s heady material but working through it with several others from the local Nalandabodhi sangha is helping me to analyze and process a bit better than I would if left to my own devices.

What other materials would you recommend supplementing this reading with to help me in my understanding of Mahamudra and Dzogchen? I know there isn’t a magic book out there, but are there any articles, books, audio or videos that you would recommend as supports, this girl would love to hear all about them.

I’ve been off for the past little bit. Something really was lacking for me and as much as I hate giving up on things, I’ve learned that resisting making a decision and hoping that things will either go away or improve magically never results in much aside from lost time and disappointment.

So I took a decision after beating myself up a bit over it. In trying to respect both being gentle with myself in taking steps to work on my situation and also trying to sit in the fire and deal with my negative emotions, I found myself really needing to act rather than waiting for some kind of divine signal.

Sadly sometimes I think that because of Buddhist studies, I get caught up in the “shoulds”. What would the Buddha do? Sometimes there is no right decision. Sometimes no decision is the best decision. Sometimes the wrong decision turns out to be the right one.

Just surrendering to being in the moment and cutting through the “shoulds” is like good advice from a welcoming friend.

I hope we didn’t disappoint… Visit here for the list of finalists.

On Wednesday December 8th, the finalists for the 2010 Blogisattva Awards will be announced. On Sunday December 12th, the winners will be made public. Woo!!

I was one of the ‘judges’ this year and I saw that as I really didn’t see the whole activity as judging. Judging sounds so judgmental. I prefer to see it as similar to meeting someone in real-life and making the subtle evaluation as to how I feel having spent time with them. In essence, I spent many lunch hours with the bloggers who were nominated in this project. Some that I lunched with talked incessantly about themselves, some made me cry, some were trying to sell me enlightenment or their specific brand of teachings, some were ordinary – but in that extra-ordinary way of telling good stories that make you want to refill your mug and promptly sit down to hear what happens next.

I can’t kid myself into thinking that the process does rely quite a bit on my judgments and preconceptions. That labeling mind and my specific interests may influence me in some way. I can only hope that the rest of the panel will help to balance my particular proclivities and make things just.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results. It’s as much of a surprise as it is for you.

Last weekend, I gave a presentation on meditation (say that 3 times fast) at the  NHC Institute in Montreal which again demonstrated that I am one hell of a fast talker. So strange to be talking about mindfulness and slowing down when you yourself are rattled because of a projector malfunction and  then start to speak like you’ve downed a bottle full of amphetamines.

So there’s one area that I know I need to refine. If my presentation style reflects my mind at the time of delivery, then hola I have a head full of a thousand monkeys all entering poop, text and images into PowerPoint slides.

Eeee Eeee Eeee. The monkeys are now blogging.

I’m going to go through mine and see what I can come up with. I hope you will do the same. If so, go over and leave Rod a message in the comments section of his post. It’s always great to see a chain reaction of awesomeness take place.

Check the description..

Buddhism Sucks:

It’s loaded with unnecessary preservatives, genetically engineered ingredients, red dye no. 9, corn syrup and way too much bullshit. Don’t read this blog if you want to be a good little Buddhist and you’re looking for an excuse to shave your head. I’m just a regular guy trying to give you a shot of some straight up Buddhism, free from all the saturated fat!

Question everything!