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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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Bumper Room For Cát Tiên

The original 100-year old brick wall in our living space adds charm to our rowhouse, but will pose a hazard as Baby Cat learns to crawl and walk.

A solution has been percolating since I saw Kristen and Karl's "baby corral" for Cian in February. They used interlocking plastic baby gates secured to the floor. Cian couldn't be happier hanging out there.

Cát Tiên will be playing in our former dining space cushioned underfoot by a 7 foot by 7 foot rug from Ikea. I'd extend her play space all the way to the walls, and make some sort of doorway so adults can walk through the baby space to the living room area. Here's how everything would look:

At first, I thought about making frames and then attaching padding to these. These could be secured against the walls, or used as interlocking barriers.

Today, I got an inspiration from the New York Times in an article discussing how to liven up your bed with a headboard. A headboard! Of course! That was the perfect construction for the type of padded frames I was thinking of. It could be made of inexpensive plywood and fabric:
Fast and Economical Mattress Upgrades, Stephen Milioti, NYT 4/2/2009
For a bedroom in a 19th-century home outside Chicago, Jaymes Richardson and Don Raney, interior designers who own Civility Design, a Chicago firm, upholstered the wall behind the bed in bright orange silk punctuated with push-pin tufting buttons, an approach that can be replicated with less expensive fabric.
     For beginners who want to tackle the headboard-size version of this project, Mr. Richardson suggested starting with a quarter-inch-thick sheet of plywood cut to a size a little wider than the bed (“leave an inch on either side of the bed,” he said). Cover it with quarter- or half-inch-thick low-density foam wrapped around the back edges, and staple it to the plywood on the back at each corner. Then stretch fabric over the foam and around the back, and staple it about an inch from the edge all around.
     Tufting buttons, which can be custom made in the same fabric, will conceal the screws used to attach the board to the wall. Decide how many buttons you want and where you want them — Mr. Richardson suggests four (two toward the top and two closer to the bottom) — and mark the spots on the fabric with a pen.
     To keep the fabric from fraying when the board is screwed to the wall, cut small incisions at each pen mark with a blade. Then drill two-inch screws through the incisions (inserting sinkers for the screws should not be necessary, unless the walls are very thin or there are no studs). Once the board is hung, attach the buttons by pushing the pins into the wood around the screw heads.
Christina is, understandably, concerned about barriers to good flow. So, the solution will have to add to the pleasantness of our space.

Update (Friday, 4/3/09)
Unless I can make the barriers feel transparent, the above design might not be able to preserve flow. An alternative like the one below would be a decent compromise.
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Comments

  1. HorseygirlskyApril 02, 2009 10:02 PM

    Cat corral. Nice idea. How will you keep the flow, again?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Luu PhamApril 03, 2009 10:26 AM

    I don't know, maybe a skywalk overhead? :)

    ReplyDelete

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