for a while, in my mid twenties and through the mid thirties, i entertain the idea of taking refuge as a monk for a period of time. i think that idea is dead now. i’ve come to the realization\/karmic level, that i am fine with deepening the path in the context of a normal life. i still think of doing the 3 week, 3 month and 3 year retreat format but let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. i am only on day 31 of straight meditation days. only about 14K days to go. wow, i just did the math on 40 years and it’s only 14.5K days. it’s really not many days left in this lifetime. anyway, there’s a lot of numbers in Buddhism and because i am a data geek, it suits me well. the next big number is what, 10K prostrations? yeah, that is a pretty daunting number. i told my friend that i was going to take refuge this year and i am publicly making that statement as well. i had a chance a few years ago at a retreat and i didn’t. i tell myself my practice would be more serious if i took refuge. time will tell but i feel like being 40 is a turning point. i am sure i mention that 30 was a turning point for the ‘career’. now is a time for another pivot. it feels right and ripe. i think having a child kill the monk idea. i enjoy being a father too much and only seeing my daughter half time has made my time with her even more precious. i’ve been also thinking of my lost daughter recently as well. the sandy hook incident really stirred up all the emotions of losing a child. i think it really helps to have a personal anchor when you aspire to do ‘good’ for the world. one day, i hope to dedicate something worthy of the daughter that retaught my joy of life and the daughter that taught me impermanence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
for a while, in my mid twenties and through the mid thirties, i entertain the idea of taking refuge as a monk for a period of time. i think that idea is dead now. i’ve come to the realization\/karmic level, that i am fine with deepening the path in the context of a normal life. i still think of doing the 3 week, 3 month and 3 year retreat format but let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. i am only on day 31 of straight meditation days. only about 14K days to go. wow, i just did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb4m0Z-h9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5460,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions\/5460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jack.orangephotography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}