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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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Featured

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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The Rhythm of Vow

Preface to Naikan Class 4 This reflection is part of a four-part series titled Naikan in Four Movements, which explores the arc of relational practice through receiving, giving, harm, and vow. In the first three classes, we practiced turning the light inward. We asked:  What have I received? ⧉ ,  What have I given? ⧉ ,  What troubles have I caused? ⧉ , These are the questions of Naikan — but also, in a broader sense, the questions of karma. Karma is not punishment. It is pattern. It is what continues. What repeats. And at a certain point, no amount of insight can unravel it. The mind softens, but the pattern remains. In Mahayana Buddhism, this is where vow arises ⧉ . Not as self-improvement, not as ambition — but as a steady rhythm of showing up differently, even when the result is uncertain. The Four Bodhisattva Vows do not ask us to fix the world. They ask us to stay in relationship with it. To remain intimate with what we cannot resolve. To keep returning, not because we’re certain, but because we are committed. This class is not about completing the Naikan arc. It is about entering a different orientation — from analysis to presence, from insight to vow. With bows, Dōmon 道門 Luu Pham 2025 This rhythm carries forward in Holding Vow Sutra: An Introduction, a new sutra in three movements.
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Vow, Karma and the Cloth
By this point, we’ve seen some things. We’ve seen that we are always receiving — from people, from structures that benefit us at cost to others, from the unseen labor of others. We’ve seen that we give — sometimes with love, sometimes without knowing how to receive in return. We’ve seen the places where we cause trouble. Where we missed something. Where we did what we could, and still, there was harm. At the beginning of our sitting, we chant the Verse of Atonement — opening our heart to whatever is there. And at the end, we offer the Four Vows — in order not to close what’s been seen, but to stay in relationship with it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. The Buddha Way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it. It may sound at first like a set of promises — another list of shoulds. Read that way, it’s an impossibility. But look more closely. These vows do not arise from obligation. They arise from depth — from what remains when you pass beyond your conditioning, identity, and self-concept. Not a better version of you — but what is untouched by biography. To take them as personal ambition limits what they’re actually pointing toward. In Mahayana practice, vow is what arises when the illusion of separation begins to fall away. Not: “I will save you.” But: “I cannot awaken without you—because we are not two.” We are not apart from all beings. So our awakening cannot be ours alone. This is bodhicitta—mind of awakening—neither spontaneous nor self-made, but forged in intimacy with all that lives, and directed through vow. I remember Esho Gambert — my friend, mentor, and the founder of the Baltimore Dharma Group. In the final weeks of her life, when her body was swollen from cancer treatment and her energy fading, I sat with her in silence. She smiled at me, held my hand, and said softly: “Take care of the children. Nothing else matters.” Later, we learned her final words were: “Take care of all the beings.” These are not different. At the time, I was caught in the delusion that it was mine to hold everything together — the Sangha, the right words, the shape of practice. The shoulds piled up. But she snapped me back. She reoriented me toward reality. Take care of all the beings. Take care of your children. Take care of what is here. “Children” can mean many things. Not everyone has children — but everyone is entrusted with something. A relationship, a community, a body, a piece of art, a part of yourself still forming. Your actions, your livelihood, the tone of your voice, the wake you leave behind. These are your children. These are your karma. Take care of that. Be intimate with it. Whatever depends on your presence — that is what you are being asked to stay with. I’ve come to understand this through my own life. For many years, I was with my children every day. I homeschooled them, sat beside them, watched them unfold. The beauty of that closeness was so complete, I began to believe it would always be there. But their reality began changing faster than I could follow. I didn’t feel them turning away so much as bristling — as if my presence, once seamless, had become a kind of friction. I kept trying to restore what had been, not yet understanding that it had already become something else. My whole body resisted what was happening. Not just the change in them — but the change in how they saw me. How they reinterpreted our earlier years. How they pulled back from the closeness that had once felt so natural. I wanted it to mean what it had meant before. I didn’t want to lose the shape of something I loved. Eventually, I saw I’d been living inside a dream of unchanging relationship. When I let that go — not in bitterness, but in clarity — something shifted. I showed up differently. Listened more. Wanted less. And the relationship became rich again. Not the same kind of rich. A new one — a recognition even with space between us. That, too, is karma. Not just what we carry forward, but how we stay ⧉  with what has changed. I think about my time as a jisha—a personal attendant to my teacher. Setting out her shoes. Pouring tea. Anticipating without controlling. Not centering myself, not erasing myself. Just staying attuned, without demand. The outer form was service. The inner practice was attention. To take care wasn’t to manage, or correct, or even to understand. It was to hold presence without clinging. To become trustworthy, not through certainty, but through contact. I think of that now, when I hear the words: take care of all the beings. It is not a command to fix. It is a call to remain. We don’t practice to escape the world. We practice so we don’t vanish into it ⧉ . The world moves quickly. Urgently. The rhythm around us is full of signals: something is wrong, someone is to blame, you’re not enough. And if we are not grounded, we start moving with it. Not because we agree, but because it’s loud. After meals in the monastery, we clean our bowls. We place our drying cloth on the rim of the bowl, set our hands on the edges. The bowl, solid, rigid, rotates clockwise. This is the world. Our cloth, flexible, gentle, moves counter-clockwise. This is the vow. Not resistance. Not rejection. But a different rhythm. Slower, listening, able to absorb and be permeable. A rhythm that touches without grasping. Then, with the cloth balled gently in our hand, we wipe the bottom interior of the bowl — Three strokes. Like the character for river — 川, Flowing, unending, ordinary. We don’t avoid the river. We don’t float aimlessly in it. We meet it, deliberately. Karma is what repeats. Vow is what lets us return differently. The vow is to stay within it — not to be carried off, not to harden against it — but to move in it, without vanishing. Sometimes that looks like not answering the email right away. Or letting a child’s silence be enough. Or remembering that clarity doesn’t need to arrive quickly. These aren’t solutions. They’re small ways of not leaving ourselves. This is what the Four Vows make possible. Not escape. Not resolution. Just a life of turning toward what’s already here — with care.
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Vow, Rhythm, and the Disappearance of Harm
A reflection on rhythm, repair, and vow. He told me he gets enraged sometimes. He can’t always say why. It comes quickly, and just as quickly, it passes. He’s made peace with it, more or less. Tries not to be too harsh on himself. And he believes the people around him are okay with it too. He’s probably right, in a way. In many relationships — especially in neurotypical social fields — repair happens not through apology or explanation, but through rhythm. The conversation resumes. A laugh returns. The tone evens out. Nothing more is said — and nothing more is needed. That’s what it means to “move on.” But that isn’t the same as remaining. For a long time, I didn’t know how to name the difference. I just knew that something didn’t feel whole — not because I was holding a grudge, but because I could still feel the edge of something that hadn’t been seen. Not by him. Not by anyone else. Just by me. And even I couldn’t always explain what it was. I only knew it hadn’t disappeared. It had just become unspeakable. In neurotypical social rhythms, this is often where the loop closes. If no one names it, it isn’t there. If the rhythm resumes, repair is assumed. But in vow-based presence, something else is being tracked: Not whether people are okay, but whether the relationship has ceased to hold what really happened. And when that holding disappears — whether through silence, dismissal, or even good-natured laughter — something isn’t just unresolved. It’s disappeared. Not because of malice. But because the rhythm is strong, and rhythm moves fast, and to pause would mean to stay where no one else is staying. This isn’t about blame. It’s about orientation. And this is where vow becomes necessary. Because if repair happens automatically — if rhythm is enough — then vow is unnecessary. We wouldn’t need to vow to free beings, or end delusions, or enter dharma gates, or walk the path. We could just wait for things to settle. But vow says: Do not wait. Because the world moves on too quickly. And in that movement, something gets erased. Something that mattered. Something that still exists. Vow is not a protest against the world. It is a refusal to let meaning vanish just because the signal has softened. It does not ask others to return with you. It simply says: I will not disappear from this field. Not because it’s unresolved. But because it’s still true.
~ End ~
There is no question this week. You may notice something that doesn’t respond to insight or clarity. Something you’ve looked at before — carefully, even lovingly — but it remains. A pattern, a person, a silence. If you’ve reached the edge of problem-solving, and clarity no longer helps, you may be nearing vow. Vow doesn’t resolve. It remains.
This Week’s Intention When the pace around me quickens, I will not rush to match it. When I am unsure, I will not fill the space. I will remember the cloth — the vow that moves gently, counter to urgency, staying close without grasping. And vow begins here: When there is nothing to extract — no insight, no closure — and still, I refuse to treat it as disposable. I don’t make peace with it. I make room for it. I remain in relationship. Not to fix. Not to withdraw. Just to remain.
Thank you for walking through  Naikan in Four Movements .
Each piece stands alone, but together they form a rhythm.
You’re welcome to return to any point, in any order.
• Noticing What Holds You ⧉ 
• What Flows Without Return ⧉ 
• What I Couldn't Undo ⧉ 
• The Rhythm of Vow ⧉ 
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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