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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

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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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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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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Metta to the Multitudes Within: An Autistic Reframing of Lovingkindness

Ephemeral

In traditional Buddhist practice, the Metta Prayer begins with these words: May I be filled with lovingkindness. It’s a wish for oneself, expanding gradually to include all beings.

But as an autistic person, I’ve often experienced the world as something that moves through me rather than something I reach out toward. “Aut” means self. Self-contained. For me, that doesn’t mean isolation—it means the multitudes, all beings, are already inside me.

So I’ve reworded the Metta Prayer in a way that speaks more directly to that truth:

May I be allowed to be who I am.
(Instead of “May I be filled with lovingkindness”)

May I know myself to be connected and a part of all of Life.
(Instead of “May I be safe from inner and outer dangers”)

May I be at peace, never need to negate anything in myself or in others.
(Instead of “May I be well in body and mind”)

May I experience simple joy, gratitude, and happiness in this moment.
(Instead of “May I be at ease and happy”)

This version isn’t meant to replace the traditional form—it’s just another doorway in. A way to meet ourselves where we are. A way to name our wholeness without forcing ourselves into borrowed language.

If this speaks to you, you're welcome to to sit with these words, revise them, or find your own. The heart of Metta is presence—and presence, for many of us, starts right here, with being allowed to be exactly who we are.

For orientation beyond this page, you may enter through:
•The Vibrating Thread: From the Field of Redibility
•Naikan in Four Movements
•Threadwork (or begin with  Threshold to Threadwork ⧉  for a gentler entry)
•The Holding Vow Sutra (drawn from the arc of  Naikan: The Rhythm of Vow ⧉ , but arriving later)
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