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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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What To Do With My New Cellphone?

Sans iPhone, I'm still trying to figure out the best use of my new Sony Ericsson cellphone.

"Silly. It's obvious," you say, "Phone calls, what else?"

Well, after Chrisina bought me the iPhone (with the money she made from teaching yoga. Have I said what a wonderful wife I have? ), I found myself making fewer and fewer calls, and spending 90% of the time on the iPhone using the cellular network, the camera, and the ipod.

Out of habit I'm still pulling out my new cellphone expecting stuff to do on it besides phoning. I bought a piece of software called Fonelink for my Mac so I could sync up contacts and calendars the way I was able to with ease by just plugging the iPhone into my Powerbook. The software works and does kind of sync up with iTunes and iPhoto, but it's slow-ish and not as easy as iTunes. The speed might be remedied by updating my 3+ year-old Mac.

I've been trying out the 2 megapixel camera which is touted as being better than Apple's. The picture below is a blow-up taken 1) with the Sony Ericsson in Normal Mode, 2) with the Sony Ericsson in High Quality Mode, and 3) with the iPhone:
I'll take my 25 year-old Nikon FE, thank you.

On the spectrum of Instant-gratification/Low-quality to Delayed-gratification/High-quality, I'd say the Sony Ericsson is far on the instant-gratification side. My Nikon FE 35mm far on the high quality side. The iPhone is a happy medium, which made it infinitely usable on an everyday basis. As you can see above, Apple figured out how to capture detail, while Sony fudges smoothness by blurring out details.

I'll be going back to my Nikon for Cat's baby pictures.

After a few days, I'm realizing that my new cellphone is really best suited for making phone calls (what an idea).

But, guess what? I now have 90% of my time back, that I used to devote to surfing the web, taking pictures, and watching videos on the iphone. I could read, spend more time adoring my baby and wife...

Oh, seems I'm using that newly freed-up time to blog. ;)

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Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 26, 2009 8:13 PM

    Thanks to the new cell phone, we can enjoy reading your blogs now.
    Chi Le

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