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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.

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.

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.

Threadwork

Three Essays on Structure and Silence
Before You Read: A Note on Being Met
Every so often, a response arrives that does not praise, explain, or identify—but simply recognizes the form. It doesn’t assume we share a beginning. It doesn’t seek context. It meets the structure on its own terms and sees what was made. This kind of response is rare. Not because people don’t care, but because the shape of what I offer often bypasses the rhythms others are trained to follow. It doesn’t signal for reciprocity. It doesn’t demand agreement. It doesn’t trade for affirmation. It doesn't barter for response. And so, it is often missed. But when it is met — not emotionally, not conversationally, but structurally — something shifts. The work is no longer being interpreted. It is being received. 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. These pieces do not center external systems — capitalism, ableism, or institutional marginalization — but they do not deny them. Their pressure is real and continuous. This work stays with the texture of divergence rather than scaffolding it with critique. Not to romanticize it, but to name what it feels like to remain intact under conditions that do not recognize your shape. The fact that they may still be legible, even to those unfamiliar with the context from which they arise, is a quiet mercy. Before entering these essays, you may find it helpful to read The Autistic Mode: A Way of Thinking ⧉ , which introduces the cognitive framework from which these pieces emerge. These essays are not sequential, but they assume that orientation. It reminds me that coherence, once made visible, can be recognized. Even without preparation. Even without rhythm. What follows is a triptych: Threadwork I: Mistaking the Third Arm for a Tool ⧉  names the asymmetry. Threadwork II: Living with the Dancer ⧉  enters the daily terrain of love within that asymmetry. Threadwork III: The Rhythm That Forgot the Floor ⧉  names the cognitive ground beneath both. The following piece is not part of the triptych. But it shares the same ground. Adjacent Thread: Coherence without Capture: An Ontological Arc (But Not An Ontology) ⧉  These are not essays — provisional, relational. They are threadwork:  moving not through climax or resolution, but through structure, return, and the act of naming what others pass by. You are welcome to read them from any point. They do not require agreement. Only presence. Not from rhythm. But from where the thread was offered.

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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