Welcome to Shunyata’s Apprentice Phase III.

My primary intention for this blog is to provide introduction, inspiration and maybe some perspective from my years of working on the path for people who are interested in meditation and how the (mostly) Buddhist teachings can be useful in navigating the often difficult path of everyday life.

There should be some help in here for those who want to learn to meditate or improve their meditation practice, or just generally find a better way through life, which is what the Buddhist teachings are all primarily about.

As part of this plan, I am posting ongoing notes – these are the Posts, and are stacked in reverse order as I add them – about current issues, problems and progress in my meditation practice. Also some Posts are other writers’ contributions, with their blessing, on the benefits and difficulties of finding a meditation practice. I’m also occasionally including a few tidbits from the teachings, such as the Lojong, that have been of great help to me along the way, though this is not primarily a theoretical or intellectual blog. As I have gone along, I’ve come up with a few categories, but these are only vaguely helpful, so explore however you feel led. Some of them include social and political commentary, as well as a few other random kinds of articles, such as reflections on the nature of reality and other science-inspired discussions.

The Pages are a more-or-less chronological narrative of my personal Way-finding – my journey to whatever liberation I have yet found, and how the events of my life affected that process, in the hopes that seeing how this has unfolded for you will be of help. They are arranged and numbered in time order. It’s a bit of a journey, and covers some six states and several traumatic developments. The therapist who helped me through PTSD more than a decade ago said that I had lived three different lives. Sorta feels that way at times. Maybe four or five at this point.

The Pages are listed first in the shaded column to the left of the text, and then the Recent Posts section lists a few posts. The categories are on down near the bottom. I have been adding the new entries to the Pages way-finding story as a post first, and then add it to the Pages list after a day or so. I have intended to go back and delete them from the posts, but I have recently not been doing that.

Please feel free to leave comments! I will try to respond, as I would love for this to create dialogue.