38 posts tagged “naropa”

I just found out that one of my monastic classmates is an abbot of a monastery.

How fucking cool is that--to be learning the Dharma in this setting, alongside advanced practitioners and beginners alike?

I love taking classes with and working with and socializing with Buddhists nuns and monks.  It's such a breath of fresh air to continually encounter people who are so present, gentle, attentive and sharp of mind.

This year, I have classes with three: one Zen from ZCSF, one from Thich Naht Hanh's lineage, and a Theravadin from Sri Lanka (who also spent time studying in Burma).  I hope we can develop more full and partial scholarships for the monastics.

I wish there was a non-gender specifying term.  "Monastic" means "monk" means "male." Not all of the above are male...but we use the term "monastic" generically, like "mankind".  Peh!

This morning I woke up with a head full of stickiness, scratchy throat and all manner of mucus, and yet I knew I was on the mend, feeling somewhere beneath and behind the ill-health a sense of self untouched by the flu and beginning to re-emerge from the ground she's gone to.

The sunrise I stepped out to was spectacular, not to be captured by any lens but the naked eye (yet I took photos anyway).

My morning progressed uneventfully, and yet everything just happened to fall together with perfect timing (I can never get the timing with my eggs and toast right, but today it just happened).  I felt unhurried, despite waking an hour late, and left on time, despite seeming to dawdle over the colors of dawn, my eggs, sharing yogurt with the cat, drinking tea, sluicing my sinuses with a neti pot.

As I drove to work, I saw in glimpses through cottonwood and aspen the full moon setting over the recently snow-sprinkled peaks of the continental divide.  It was pale enough to be mistaken for a wisp of cloud.  Save for its circularity, I might have been fooled.  As I approached Boulder, I watched it disappear all the faster as my approach hastened the size of the front range. 

When I arrived in my cube, I had a voice mail from a dear teacher whom I realized I'd been thinking of when I fell asleep last night.

Now at work/school, I realize I am home.  I genuinely like what I do here, despite it not being my ideal work in the field of gender studies.  I really appreciate the camaraderie of my office and the committees I sit on.  I love the cheeky little squirrels who live off of the meal leavings of cafe food, the crows who peck through dumpsters, the cinnamon-like scent of the sycamores, and the quirkiness of the various impromptu gatherings of students.  I'm inspired by the classes I attend, perhaps moreso for the challenge they offer academically and spiritually.

Today is just the beginning.

At Naropa, squirrels often drag food out of the trash (which could have been tossed in the compost bin) and sit noshing happily.  I sometimes wonder if they then proceed to bury their leftover in a cache. 

So it turns out that grad school isn't easy because it requires a depth of interest in and engagement with the material of study which I have previously reserved only for the topic of third (fourth?) wave feminism (race, class, gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexuality, all in the contexts of power, privilege and difference).  Right now, I'm enamored of the historical approach and the emphasis on cultural context and shifting it away from the actual Buddhist content...but I would not, frankly, give a flying fuck through a rolling donut for the content of sutras.  Bleh.

Of course, I'm predisposed to the academic perspective.  I'd rather read about the sutras than read the sutras.  It's kind of like I'd prefer a litcrit view of The Canterbury Tales than actually read the translated Middle English.  Part of it is the pain of slogging through archaic language, part of it is the distance between myself and the time/culture out of which the sutras came. For me, it's that the modern individual (i.e. me) needs a different model of the enlightened being for all of these reasons as well.  Because of all of this, I'll probably end up being a rather good student of the sutras.

I wonder if the sutras ever have a character like the Wife of Bath.

On the upside, I am increasingly fond of my two professors, and one has unequivocally identified himself as a feminist.  One teaches context and method with an eye toward the content, the other teaches content with an eye on context and method.  The way their two classes intersect is rather a stroke of genius.

Summer is often a quiet time for university work, but despite this regular slow-down, I became far more engaged in my professional work than I had been previously. In part, I'd noticed my blog reading trends according to Google Reader--I could find out easily how often I read at what times of day.  It was privately embarrassing, so I stopped, cold turkey, and turned to what I could focus on at work while at work.  Strange notion, eh?

Another part of the shift was an opportunity to participate in a strategic planning committee, which gave me lots to do during a quiet time of the year.  The particular committee incorporates within its scope a broad swath of the research, statistics, planning and policy proposing I've done within the usual range of just my one lone job role.  However, the committee brings some institutional support with it, so it's rather exciting to be involved in--facing the prospect of having an effect, making changes, rather than just proposing stuff.  It's not actually exciting like motorcycling or sex or the prospect of a month-long meditation retreat, but it is exciting insofar as it's new, different, and challenging.

Another part of the shift was that I simply wanted to be more effective, regardless of efficiency.  Throughout my career as a system administrator/programmer/analyst, I usually concentrated on being more efficient--getting things done quickly with minimal effort.  This left me with free time in which to generally goof off, with the rationale that so long as I got all of my work done and met all of my responsibilities and everyone was pleased with my responsiveness, consistency and performance, then I'd earned the goofing-off time.  And usually, my goofing-off time as a sysadmin involved many aspects of keeping up with technology by reading blogs/websites devoted to the areas of my expertise--usually high performance computing, software development, and hardware offerings from preferred vendors--and not always purely my non-work-related interests.

But, here's the thing--there are no blogs or websites devoted to the areas of my current expertise.  So, even though I'm consistent high-performer in my work (really--I'm overqualified for this position and I know my sup' and boss knew that when they hired me) and I'm not in any way shirking my duties, slowing down, or taking less time with things that need my attention, I wasn't contributing to a general range of knowledge applicable to my work.  I was still efficient, but my slacking didn't help with my effectiveness (except for when it comes to my awareness of multiple diversities and my capacity to advocate and create inclusivity--I read blogs about gender, race and class concerns).

Around the same time, I wanted to get more stuff done at my apartment.  I'd moved, but not settled in, and had many things to unpack and organize.  I kept not getting to it, as I usually found myself waylaid by immediate things that had piled up and needed to be taken care of (the cat box, the dishes, laundry, cleaning). 

At work, my slack time is framed by incoming work.  Aside from when I'm actually working on a project, I'm usually in interruptible mode, in which I'm responding to calls or emails or assigned tasks within the overall range of my responsibilities.  This interrupt mode carried over into my home life, where I waited for triggers (a pile of dishes, a smelly cat box, running out of underwear) to indicate that it was time to tackle a task.  But unlike scheduling, where tasks are usually about 5-10 minutes of work, home tasks are 30-90 minutes each when they reach warning size.

I can be really efficient in getting my laundry done, for example, while also doing the dishes and cleaning the cat box and taking out the trash and recycling, and vacuum the floors and clean the bathroom, but it's a big chunk of my time all at once.  And since it's a huge interleaved task, I tend to procrastinate on the whole thing.  It has grown into a project from a set of otherwise unrelated smaller tasks.  I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with this approach to home work--it's efficient and effective--everything gets done all at once.  It takes about 5 hours on a weekend morning, including some time for breakfast and a few breaks. 

I started to think strategically about this stuff while otherwise getting caught up with the overload--how can I make the upkeep of my space an ongoing and not-too-time-consuming task, so I can get to other things that either I need to do or want to do, like go bicycling for those 5 hours, or do a more intensive meditation on Sundays?

Strategic thinking about the management and utilization of space at the university and the management of my stuff at home are unavoidably interrelated, since the thinking about them is going on in the same one mind.  One of the goals of my committee is to develop a comprehensive space utilization plan, which will support the maximization of space for class and Naropa community use, as well as identify the upper threshold of what we can actively support in terms of class size and numbers of classes.  The main goal of figuring out how to manage my personal space is to maximize the availability of time to devote to my academic study, my meditation practice, my creative writing and other personal projects, as well as to determine what the upper threshold of my personal productivity is (i.e. maintaining regular and effective downtime).

It all comes down to being effective in both work and play.  Efficient is great, but not if I'm not doing the things I want to do.  We use space rather efficiently here at Naropa, but it's not accomplishing all of our goals.  I'm getting my shit done at my apartment, but I'm still feeling pinched around what I need for downtime, study time, practice, exercise, and affection/relationship (my lady friend, my cat, my friends).  I want to be more effective.

I find that, over the summer, I've developed a specialization.  The thing about system administration/analysis is that it requires a broad, general knowledge with the ability to go deep into an area as required, but not exactly specialized.  While working in that subfield of IT, I resisted specialization because I didn't want to pigeon-hole my abilities in such a rapidly-growing and changing field.  To specialize might mean to reduce my employability and narrow my job prospects after Tech Bubble burst.  But the work that I do now is rather specific, quite nestled in the particulars of this university.  My systems analysis skills have been translated from looking at hardware systems to systems of human interaction within the scope of producing academic classes at a tuition-driven small private liberal arts school.

Since I'm committed to sticking around here for the next four years (the time it'll take to complete my MA part-time), I'm unconcerned about this specialization.  This work is also so very different from IT work that my former concerns around specialization are irrelevant.

So, now that I'm decidedly specialized in both this job role and analyzing it and the systems in which it participates, how can I make this position more effective?  Here are some things I've been doing this summer:

• when I'm actively working on something, I stop answering the phone
• I check voicemail at regular intervals, responding to things with as-needed timeliness.
  
• I ignore my email when I'm actively working on something
• I work in interruptible mode only when needed
  
• respective of timelines and due-dates, I do whatever project or task seems the most interesting at the moment, and work on it for 20-40 minutes, ignoring all else
• Get up and move around, even if just to stretch, when switching tasks or projects.  Also, move around after being interrupted (I usually forget whatever it was I was doing previously--movement helps my recall)
• set reminders and rewards to condition my response-ability
• take advantage of super-busy times to recondition my work habits (it's been super-busy for the past two weeks and will remain so until the end of next week, and so I have a completely different structure in my day)

How can I be more effective at home in order to create the time I need to do other things?

• do my dishes every day, preferably right after I've used them.
• go to bed early and get up early and stick to those times, except for when going to bed earlier because I'm just sleepy.
• do laundry once a week and put it all away as soon as it's dry (I'm still working on this -- there's clean/dry clothes in my dryer right now from this past weekend)
• scoop the cat box at least every other day. it keeps the cat happy
• do all of my class reading on Tues and Thurs evenings, with some carried over into Weds and Fri
  
• include time on Weds night to prep the trash and recycling to be taken out the next morning
  
• leave for work around 7:30 each day
  

I'm still figuring out how and when to tackle the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning.  It seems like it's needed every three weeks, but I don't want to do them on the same weekend.  I'm planing to create a monthly plan of these sorts of tasks, so I can check 'em off regularly.

It's kind of annoying to schedule my whole life, but it's more effective at this point that just going through my day ad-hoc.

I'm officially a grad student.

Today, I applied for the MA Indo-Tibetan Buddhism program @Naropa.  I hope everything falls into place.  Here's my statement of intent (aka application letter):

Student: Do you think a new kind of tantric tradition might develop here in the West, if it's being practiced by Buddhist meditator artists, so that a new imagery, based on personal experience might emerge?

Chogyam Trungpa: I very much hope so. In fact, what we are doing right now [at Naropa Institute] is to inspire such a situation. Only American Buddhists, who are inspired and who have their understanding together, can work with the Western world. That is necessary. There is only so long we can live on imports. There is some point where we had better manufacture for ourselves rather than borrowing from somebody else. Otherwise, we will be in enormous debt.[1]

        I want to create and articulate a comprehensive understanding of what may be named Queer Dharma.  This Queer Dharma, as I understand it so far, is heavily based on my personal experience; now I seek to develop it further through study.  In order to do so, I must integrate my spiritual practice, academic learning and contemplative engagement with the world with the rigor of my effort and the mindfulness of my intent, all within the context of my personal experience and through the lens of Queer Theory.  I do not know yet what form it will take, but I am and have been deeply inspired by this seedling idea since I first came to in the fall of 2004.  I see the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism program at as the most fitting next step in this larger movement of which I find myself an agent: the flowering of the Dharma in the West.
        Thus far in my academic career, I have only begun to skim the surface of postmodern theories, which contain the subset of Queer Theory.  However, it is deeply relevant to my personal experience as a woman, as a lesbian-identified queer, as an ally in the lives and struggles of people of color and the transgendered.  My understanding comes from an intimate knowing of myself and facing the boundaries of self and other within the power and privilege structures of human society.  I do not expect that I will be able to concentrate within this particular arena of study while at Naropa, but I do wish to continually inform my learning of Buddhism with the insights of postmodernism as I study it on my own.
        I come to Naropa for the Dharma, as it has been revealed in the East and taught to the West by Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.  If there is one thing I am certain of after my three years at Naropa is that this university stands firmly planted at the crossroads of not just those two broadly-sketched systems of thought, but also the crossroads of popular understanding, misconception, genuine transformative practice and spiritual materialism.  Naropa is at full boil with a ever-mixing, self-reflecting, co-contributing soup of creative contrast.  Our differences in every angle of origin and our willingness to engage that difference, over and over, are the vital heart of this little school.  I can find no better place to study the Dharma as an American Buddhist.

        In order to move further in the trajectory of my academic career, which ideally will be a PhD program in Rhetoric at University of California at Berkeley with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality, I need solid rooting in the more scholarly piece of Buddhism, as well as a deepening of my practice.  I’ve compared Naropa’s program to similar programs at other universities, only to find that practice is de-emphasized, if it is  mentioned at all.  I cannot see how one can possibly study Buddhism without a genuine attempt at its methods, and so I am glad that Naropa excels in this regard.
        Likewise, I cannot see how one can study Buddhism and engage its methods without truly grappling with the content of the self who is the practitioner.  Western academia is largely unprepared to address the unquantifiable nature of subjectivity, but I know from personal experience at Naropa that I can expect to receive space to actively work with and integrate the friction between myself as practitioner, myself as scholar, myself as no-self and myself as all possible manifestation into a more comprehensive understanding, whether in meditation instruction, the classroom, or in related discussion with classmates.  At Naropa, I feel the full spectrum of being is openly invited to participate, to learn, to contribute.
        Without this particular angle of education, of practice, of engagement, as offered at Naropa, I am certain that any further attempts to create a comprehensive Queer Dharma will flounder and fail.  Likewise, my intent for future study will be fall short of the measures I set if I cannot study gender, sexuality and postmodern theory with the insights of a Buddhist perspective.  I have begun with developing a method for personal discovery of what Queer Dharma might mean for an individual, as can be seen in my BA Contemplative Psychology senior thesis (submitted with this application as my writing sample).  I seek entrance to this program to take this much further, to discover and address the shortfalls of my thought, to discover new views and insights, and to craft the rough method into a consistent approach.  I am inspired to create a new kind of tantric tradition; I want to pull my understanding together so that I might articulate it in a way that outlives me.

This startled me a bit when I arrived at work this morning and saw this from a distance.  There's a lot of river rock in front of the admin building, in which there are often cairns like these, usually different ones each week. 

Today we're having a potluck picnic at work, and so I came up with something I could serve cold on a hot day.  Here's the rundown of ingredients: