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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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Holding Vow Sutra

The Sutra Text
Orientation A vow is not like will-power. It is an energy gradient within the structure of self — a realignment within the dynamic field of the skandhas — like a seed turning toward light, or a cell aligning its membrane to preserve form. Turning toward vow is not because of preference, but because turning sustains coherence. Vow is not outside causality; it is causality brought into continuity — the quiet pressure that draws self into integrity when memory fails and rhythm would dissolve. Through vow, form remembers its purpose without needing to be told.
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Holding Vow Sutra
Invocation
With this incense, we bow to Kṣitigarbha, who descends into realms of forgetting and does not retreat. Who remains when vow is no longer visible, and still does not release it. With this incense, we bow to Samantabhadra, whose Ten Great Vows offer each moment again, because bodhicitta awakens in the moment of need. Who turns each breath into practice, and each return into a beginning. With this incense, we bow to Vajrapāṇi, who guards the ground of what is real. Who does not permit disappearance to be mistaken for peace, or the rhythm of the three poisons to be mistaken for truth.
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Homage
Homage to śūnyatā — where all things arise and vanish without conclusion. Homage to bodhicitta — still breathing beneath forgetting. Homage to the vow that moves without center — held by no one, yet holding all.
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I. The Three Seeds of Vow
1. Contact that Does Not Dissolve
I have been touched— not as a self, but as a tremor in the field. And I remain— not apart, but not yet erased.
2. Recognition that Cannot Be Unseen
Something has come into view. Not as a thought, but as the end of forgetting. I cannot return to pretending. Not because I grasp it, but because nothing now covers it.
3. Relationship that Refuses to Vanish
I do not exit this field. Not for reward. Not even for peace. This echo of contact still reverberates. Not as obligation— but as vow without origin.
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II. The Four Counter-Rhythms of Vow
1. Four Pressures of the World
Conditions urge us to fix. Consensus urges us to explain. Fear urges us to harden. Time urges us to vanish.
2. Four Tendencies of the Untrained Heart
To grasp what is pleasant. To flee what is painful. To drift from what is neutral. To turn from what is unresolved.
3. Four Turnings Toward Vow
To feel without forming. To notice without dividing. To remain without enclosing. To care without centering.
4. Four Practices of Remaining
I move gently, against urgency. I touch what others erase. I breathe where others rush. I remain in what preceded the story.
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III. Vows of Remaining
I vow not to grasp what is empty of self. I vow not to flee what is marked by dukkha. I vow not to mistake the reflection for substance. I vow not to vanish into the hush of cessation. I remain; in contact. I remain; without retreat. I remain; even when unseen. I remain; until no vow is needed.
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IV. Vow Dedication
May this vow be sufficient when clarity fails. May this vow be intact when rhythm forgets. May this vow be soft enough to stay, and strong enough to return. Thus may this vow return in the moment of forgetting. Thus may the ground hold when nothing else remains.
~ End ~
Explore the arc of the  Holding Vow Sutra (Orientation) :
•Holding Vow Sutra ⧉ 
•Commentary: Holding Vow Sutra ⧉ 
•What Remains (Poem) ⧉ 
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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