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Orientation 2

Naikan In Four Movements

This four-part Naikan series grew out of a course I offered at Baltimore Dharma Group in Spring 2025. While Naikan is often framed as a tool for self-reflection, I came to see it as something more relational: not a system of correction, but a practice of returning—again and again—to what holds us, what flows through us, what we leave behind, and what we remain with.
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Orientation 3

Threadwork

Here, in language, is the closest I have come to tracing the patterns I live inside — and the patterns I see others living inside, too. ...That, to me, is the heart of this offering: not to win empathy through performance, but to make coherence inhabitable — even when the pattern isn't matched. These pieces are not arguments. They do not aim to persuade. They exist to demonstrate — without explanation. To resonate — without claiming universality. To name the cost of asymmetry — without blaming the other. To hold clarity — without self-erasure.
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Orientation 4

Holding Vow Sutra: An Introduction

Introduction and Intention:  This is a sutra, but not a sutra in the traditional sense. It is not part of the Buddhist canon, nor is it offered from a seat of transmission or formal authority. It is, rather, a thread — woven from lived practice, shaped by fidelity, and rooted in a vow that did not begin with me and does not end with me.
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The Autistic Mode: A Way Of Thinking

We all have moments of deep concentration—those times when we are so absorbed in something that the world recedes. A musician practicing alone, refining a passage with exquisite focus. A philosopher turning an argument over in their mind, testing its weight from every angle. A scientist working through the layers of an equation, adjusting variables, refining the logic until it holds. In these moments, the noise of the world fades, and what remains is a kind of clarity, a steady presence of thought moving toward resolution.

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Threshold to Threadwork

Introduction: There are two doors into this work. The one below meets the moment. It is written in accessible language—for those seeking clarity about autistic experience, and especially about how it differs in rhythm, in structure, and in the invisible labor it asks of those who must translate themselves to be understood. But this isn’t the only way in. There is another door—quieter, less translated, more interior. If you're looking not just for insight, but for shape—if you’ve ever sensed that what goes unspoken is sometimes the most coherent thing there is—you may find yourself at home there.
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Musings from the Meta-Verse: Tip of the Iceberg Cosmologies

Before you begin: please take a moment, settle in, enjoy the image above—of me holding my baby daughter as a first-time dad, tune into the frequency of restful wonder. Now allow your mind to wander outward from the edges of that image: to the room, to the street outside, to the vast sky beyond the vast sky. Further—past the solar system, past the galaxy’s edge, past everything known—to the edge of the cosmos. And then…

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Woven

I never stopped making art. I just didn’t always call it that. What I made with you, my loves — in those days we shared — was the most embodied form of relational creation. Art was us — there was no interruption. Something Luu Li and and I talked about yesterday landed deeply. She said, “Wow Papa, 54 years! I'm so glad you’re starting to do art again.” And I told her — honestly — it’s never left me. But after that, I found myself thinking: when I was homeschooling Luu Li and CT, I wasn’t just not doing art — I was expressing my creativity through my life with them.
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Preamble to the Green Economy

The recession of '08 - '10, '11, '12? is going to be more than a cyclical downturn. The industrial revolution of the 19th century was the last great shift. We're about to experience the next one.
Where we're going is a result of where we came from.

The causes have been around for a long, long time. Unchecked consumption. Manufacturing gone. Consumerism and the "service economy" turning out to be a sham[1]. We're waking up at long last to the interconnected world that has always existed. This President understands that the country has no choice but to find a new way forward.

The economic refugees of our era are blue collar workers and service economy workers who aren't going to find the same kinds of jobs to replace the ones they just lost.

We can see a hint of what might be around the corner by keeping an eye out for Van Jones, who's been appointed Special Advisor for Green Jobs. He's been a lone voice for a while at Green for All. Now his ideas are championed by this administration.

I don't know what a "green job" actually looks like, but it sure sounds like the future. Green job appears to speak to the fundamental needs of our society, unlike the trendy "service jobs" and "tech jobs" which are disappearing quickly. We won't know for a while what the real deal will be. Green for All takes a stab at a definition of a green job. Still it's little more than a first clause of a first draft of a vision statement:
     What's the best way to give Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds a tangible stake in fighting for issues like global warming?
     Easy: Make it their livelihood. Every day, about 135 million people go to work in the U.S. Imagine what would happen if millions of those jobs — plus new ones created for people who are currently unemployed — were in fields like renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and green building.
     Our two crucial concerns about survival — the environment and making a living — would be combined. A person's commitment to their job would also be their commitment to the planet.
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[1] Update (4/3/09)
Index of Services Sector Shrinks for 6th Month (AP, 4/3/09)

I've long been a skeptic:
There are structural realities of our era which make upward mobility more difficult than in the industrial era. Globalization is often cited and, with it, the loss of stable employment with better than subsistence income. The nascent service economy has yet to mature into something that can replace the security provided by manufacturing jobs for working people.
footnote [2] of "Looking For An Explanation" (10/9/2007)
"Service" neither makes anything, nor gives you a sense of place in the social ecology. It amounts to a kind of indentured servitude to corporate behemoths like Starbuck's and McDonalds. Giving up your effort for $8 an hour, the least you need in return is the chance for satisfaction of accomplishment.

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