Skip to main content

Dhammapada December

Outside of work, it's been a long time since I've written anything in a blog, journal, or diary. For the last two years, I have enjoyed listening to the lectures of Alan Watts as well as reading some of his writings and his insights into consciousness and existence have me thinking back to the semester I read the Dhammapada.

For those not familiar, the Dhammapada is one of the most widely read Buddhist scriptures and contains sayings attributed to the Buddha. I have come to believe that a strong function of any scriptures is to get the reader or listener to reflect critically on their own experience and in so doing, they project their own meaning onto the text. So, that is what I propose to do in December - blog about how I reflect on the collection of 26 groupings in the Dhammapada as translated by Thomas Byrom.

There are 26 groupings of sayings that cover a lot of ground that I will attempt to explore in the coming days.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kids' Reward Charts and the Treasure Box

Being a parent to two children under 4 and caring a great deal about how our kids turn out with respect to manners and courtesy, I am so glad my lovely wife devised a daily rewards system ritual for the kids. The Process The kids need to behave a certain way consistently throughout the day and perform specific chores in order to get stickers. These stickers go into a chart or grid and at the end of the day we review and provide feedback on how the day went. If they fill up their charts, then they get to pick anything they want from the "Treasure Box". The Template Each child gets his or her own chart. The tasks or behaviors are "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Don't worry, we aren't trying to micromanage our children like the " anal retentive chef ". Here's a link to a PDF of our two kids' reward charts  if you're interested in trying this yourselves. The Review Process We tre

Collecting Words with The Daily-ism: a Word-a-Day Microblog

Several months ago I began the practical application of my Master's degree in Liberal Studies through the creation of a Tumblr blog entitled, The Daily-ism . The blog seeks to provide an ism word a day with a definition gleaned from Google without commentary. To date, I have posted 86 entries and garnered 17 followers. What has been most interesting to me is seeing how people respond. The most popular posts so far have been: egalitarianism (20 notes) prescriptivism (7 notes) I've identified enough words for almost an entire year's worth of content if I post five times per week. One thing I like about the functionality of Tumblr is the ability to schedule posts out in advance. This means that I can essentially plan out a month's worth of content in an hour of spare time.  Not that I have a ton of spare time, but I've discovered that micro-blogging is much easier to accomplish while working full-time and being a father of three. A great resource for catal

Teddy Bears at the Beach

Yesterday I was greeted home by my 3.5 year old son who was excited to say that he had been making me Teddy Bears at the Beach. I had no idea what he was talking about, but his enthusiasm was palpable. I entered the kitchen to find the following creation waiting for me at my seat at the table: I have to admit, I have an incredibly creative wife that would do this craft with our kids. Whether or not she found it on Pinterest  (or insert "mommy blog" name here), it was a fun thing to come home to and the kids and I both enjoyed the treat. I recommend it.