Author Archives: admin

the best gift ever

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the best gift ever, originally uploaded by mindonly.

On April 2nd, I turned 35. I had taken the day off so I could spend it with two of the most important people in my world. Dawn and Ian.

Dawn is lucky enough to be able to help at Ian’s school once a week; something I had been wanting to do. She mentioned it to the little man’s teacher the week before and they were able to make arrangements for me to go in and help on my birthday. So much fun!!! We got to help the teacher with tasks in the classroom, then, when we were done we were able to go in and watch a special science assembly they had. Half way through the presenter had all the kids stand up to do ‘the twist’ as a demonstration of getting the heart moving, and of course the teachers and parents had to dance along as well. His teacher giggled and asked “I bet you didn’t think you’d be doing this today”. I answered by telling her how much fun I was having. Once we got back into the classroom she went over a lesson by asking kids about their special assignment they had done the night before. After picking three kids that did not know the answer to the question, she picked Ian – who of course knew the answer!! So proud of him!

Later, we got to go spend the day at Disneyland as a family. Star Tours was my ride of choice (of course) and we had a blast all day.

But, before we left in the morning, my son handed me this card. Momma said he wrote it on his own without any help….. and yes, I’m not afraid to admit, a tear ran down my cheek.

……What a perfect gift to receive, I am the richest man in the world.

(more picks from the day here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindonly/sets/72157616490599968/)

Meditation: A simple starting point

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Recently, my little sister asked for some basic instruction on how she could begin meditating. I wrote up a simple how-to about it, and sent it off to her. I also put out a little Twitter update stating I wrote one up and IntegralChaotic, a friend on Twitter, said they would be interested to read it. So, I have added it here as well. Keep in mind, this is a very basic starting point. 

Much more detail can be put into a how-to of meditation, but I’ve always found this is a good place to start. And, even if you have meditated for years and get out of practice, this is a good beginning point.

If you would like to start – try this for 15 minutes:

- sit  (this could be on the floor, or on a chair [to start with])

- keep your back straight, like you are holding the ceiling with the top of your head (but don’t over do it, you want to be comfortable)

- let your eyelids relax a little, not closed, but relaxed.

- rest your hands together in your lap

- breathe in slowly

- breathe out slowly

- clear your mind. (believe it or not, this is the hardest thing to do.)an easy way to start is counting your breath.

This is one of the basics, and to me, one of the best ways to start.

To do so, you would inhale, then count the exhale. Inhale, then count the exhale. A full in, then out would be 1 cycle.

Next full in, then out would be 2. 

I’ve found that with my relaxed breathing, when I count my breath to 100, approximately 15 minutes have gone by. 

So, not only does the counting help with timing your 15 minutes, it also helps you clear your mind. If you are concentrating on breathing and counting, and nothing else, the mind is therefore nearly clear.  ;)

I am always open to additions, comments, and any replies. 

May it be helpful to you… …joining palms

My thoughts on being a vegetarian.

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The following is a comment I left on DailyBuddhism.com in response to his question: To Meat or Not to Meat?

These are just my own thoughts – I would love to know your thoughts as well. —-

For me, I believe it boils down to the teaching of ’skillful means’ as well as ‘intention’.

Intention: If you kill an animal just to eat it, or, if it is killed specifically for your meal, I feel it to go somewhat against the 1st Precept of No Killing. I have vowed to try and live by the 5 Precepts.

Skillful means: This is where it would be permissible, according to my view of the Dharma. But, it is also where one must ask themselves what their own life dictates.

Example: A monastic that sustains their life from alms, would likely do so by using what is offered. Sometimes meat would be offered. Also, monastics that live in certain areas of the world would have a harder time sustaining a vegetarian lifestyle. Just a reality of this world.

I happen to live in Southern California – it is quite simple and accessible to live a vegetarian lifestyle. Therefore, my skillful means allow me to be a vegetarian. However, when I travel, I do find it difficult in some areas. (When I traveled to New Orleans again years ago after becoming a vegetarian, we’ll just say I ate a lot of bread, salad, and cheese pizza. hahaha) I have also taken Bodhisattva vows for this lifetime. In doing so, I find it important for my path to work as hard as possible to keep a compassionate mind. I cannot do so by sustaining my own life from the suffering and killing of other sentient beings. This keeps me being a vegetarian.

Now, having said all that, both my wife and my son do eat meat. This is something I cannot and will not change. It is a decision each individual must make on their own.

The path of Buddhism does not prosper by forcing others into one’s own way of thinking, but rather through living a life of compassion and helping others either through actions or examples.

….joining palms.

Yes We Did!

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Barack Obama has won the race for President of the United States of America.

I’ve been impressed with him since the primaries. Even drove down to my old address to vote for him to hope he got the nomination. Something about him, his message just had always rung true to me.  I saw his campaign as actually being of the people, for the people, and by the people. The grassroots effort the organization built was amazing. Even when he won, I got an email from them. I had to share this quote: “We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next. ”   ….and I can’t wait.

Yes We Can

humbling. (Yes We Can)

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 http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0810/callie-bp.html


Keep clicking the ‘show more images’ at the bottom. I find these pictures amazing, and humbling to see, from him consoling the mother of a son who lost her son in Iraq, him cleaning up after himself, walking in his shoes until the soles wore out, to doing pull-ups, to watching his wonderful family look at him in preparation for a speech; simply put, this is a man, a father, a husband, and a person we need to rally along side of.

Obama ’08!

….Yes We Can…

friends and a new place to live

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Recently, some good friends moved away to Texas.  My son and their children had become great friends, and my wife and I were great friends with the husband and wife. (Something we always joked about too – the liberals (buddhist/agnostic) & the conservatives (catholics)… hahaha)

We had been renting an apartment, they owned a condo. When they moved, our lease had just ended, and they wanted someone they knew would take care of the place to live there, and we were very happy to be moving to a bigger place. Timing worked out well.

They are missed a lot, but we’re happy for them. Jonathan was my workout partner in the mornings, and now I’m lifting solo again. Oh well.

We’re also really happy that another set of friends are coming for Thanksgiving. They moved to Portland years ago, and are greatly missed. (My best friend since the 10th grade) I can’t wait to see them!!!

Life sneaks up on you

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Tomorrow my son starts Kindergarten. Already. I’m very much excited for him, I think he’s a little genius and know he’ll do great. (yes, I’m biased, live with it. haha) He’s already reading, and has been for a long time. He counts to 100. Writes all his letters, and is already writing words. Reads sentences. Yes, I’m proud and amazed all at the same time. I know he’ll do far better than me, and I love that I get to help him get there.

Still, he’s my little man, my perfect son, and sometimes it’s hard to see him grow up so fast. I hope to remain his best buddy for the rest of my life.

thanks for listening….

Sweetcron

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As many of you may know, Sweetcron has been released into the wild. Yongfook (Jon) had been working on this for quite some time; even had been running his own site on it for a while before announcing it would be released.

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I’ve installed a ‘beta site‘ with it, and am continuing to play around; time permitting.

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The installation went fairly well, but I did run into one unfortunate incedent. Some of the files use upper case as the first character in the name. The FTP client I used decided to not pay attention to that on certain directories, and a good deal of searching and replacing had to happen. While I personally would like to see them as lower case characters, it was easy to figure out, and not a huge deal.

So far, it updates rather well, and adding new streams into the items tab is easy enough. I would like to see the ability to change my password, but Jon is working on that in a new version. I anticipate updates to come quickly; he did well with 8apps. (I was a fan of the site, but understand why he did not take it forward. Well written, beautiful to use, but I’m sure something of that nature would have turned into a full time job.)

I agree with the concepts of lifestreaming; I know Sweetcron is not the first, but to me, it does the bext job I’ve seen in solving the issues. Those of us that spend a lot of time online have data scattered everywhere. It was something I’d been thinking about for quite some time. Pownce, Twitter, Flicker, & YouTube accounts that we post to. But no real way to connect them. Sure, there is FriendFeed, but in my opinion it just add to the problem. It’s still just another account with your data. Having your own domain for this to collect upon just seems proper.

Jon makes a good point in the beginning of a recent talk he gave (I’ve not watched it’s entirety, but plan to soon). How many of us update our blogs daily? HAHA ya, exactly, not unless we essentially are out to make money in doing so.

While I do plan to keep my WordPress blog around, I imagine it too will become just another feed in my Sweetcron lifestream. Yes, I know Sweetcron has a notes area, but for now the blog is staying – we’ll see long term. I do however, see this becoming the main page on my domain, blog taking or subdomain. I do post many places, and presenting this, on my own domain, is wonderful. (and Jon, if you read this, kudos again on the release of Sweetcron; you did not disappoint in the least – keep up the great work)

Twitter: woke up too early and now I…

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Twitter / Kris Freedain: woke up too early and now I…, originally uploaded by mindonly.

Not sure how or why, but lately I’ve really taken a liking to Twitter. For the longest time I just didn’t. The interface seemed hard to follow, seemed too random, just difficult to interact with. Then I gave it another chance. I’ve really grown to like it. It’s funny, though a bunch of it is just random chatter, it’s also a way to find out news; sometimes even quicker than traditional channels. Doing a search on earthquake the day one hit was remarkable. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=earthquake

If interested, I’m at:
http://twitter.com/mindonly