Tag: Announcements

Quote This

Recently, someone decided to leave an uninvited comment, questioning my use of quotations in blog posts, and (therefore) my grasp of Zen.

This person has since been blocked.

Every one starts from somewhere, learns differently, and approaches things differently. People make mistakes, but they also grow. Constructive feedback is helpful, but “oneupmanship” is not.

Spock: Has it occurred to you that there’s a certain… inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you’ve already made up your mind about?

Star Trek, “The Corbomite Maneuver” (s1:ep10), Stardate 1512.2

Happy Holidays 2025

SPOCK: On my planet, to rest is to rest — to cease using energy.  To me, it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass, using energy, instead of saving it.

Star Trek, “Shore Leave”, stardate 3025.2

Unlike my 2024 post, I intend to really take time off this time.

The truth is, is that I am deeply burned out. My wife and discussed this recently, and the chaos of preparing our firstborn for college, and our second-born ready for middle school, plus work demands have left us deeply exhausted. When we described it to one another, we quickly concluded that we were not depressed, just burned out. As parents, we had been running at full speed for almost two years, and now that things have quieted down, the fatigue finally caught up to us.

So, for the rest of 2025, I want to just sit around and do nothing: no personal projects, blogging, etc. I do plan to do some light reading (including some new books I picked up), play more solo The One Ring RPG, watch more Star Trek,1 maybe finally finish painting some figurines that have sat half-completed for a year. I have one more blog post in the works, but otherwise, I’m taking some much needed personal downtime.

Just some of my unfinished painted figurines…

Thank you all for your understanding, and I wish you both a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!

1 I also recently picked up the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game from Modiphius as well, but I haven’t progressed very far in learning the game yet.

Blog Update for October 2025

Hello dear readers,

It’s been quite a few past months: graduation, getting my daughter setup for college, and also getting my son ready for middle school, plus lots of interesting side projects, and some work travel. This has been a truly chaotic summer, yet as Ohigan has passed, things are finally calming down.

The chaos of the summer meant that I was queueing up a lot of blog drafts. Like, 20 or more posts that were half done. It was hard to keep up the usual Monday-Thursday schedule because I got impatient and wanted to release some posts sooner than later before they got stale. In the same way, I’ve been making a number of updates over at the other blog too.

Thus, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been “cleaning house”: finishing blog drafts and posting them in quick succession. If you have been struggling to keep up, don’t worry things will slow down again to their usual pace. If you enjoyed the more frequent content, let me know. I still haven’t quite found a “sweet spot” between post frequency and finding new content to post.

Then again, maybe it’s better not to get locked into a particular schedule, and just post as needed.

Things will start to slow down again here on the blog (unless I get another burst of inspiration), and I have some fun topics coming up.

As always, thank you for reading!

P.S. I see a lot more international readers than past years (Ukraine, China, Italy, Denmark, etc), and I truly appreciate it. The purpose of this blog is (on the one hand) just personal musings, but also I want to share as much information about Buddhism and Asian culture as I can. The more we share the more we understand one another. 🙏

So, thank you everyone who reads. It is inspiring.

P.P.S. Features photo is from Star Trek, and referenced in a previous post. This is me fighting to keep up with my workload. 😅

April 2025 Updates

Hello Dear Readers, and Happy Earth Day! 🌎

Just a small update: Recently I was looking for some old Buddhist resources I used to rely upon a lot, and was shocked to discover that these resources have all but disappeared. Internet attrition has taken its toll, so many old websites I used can only be found on places like the Wayback Machine and such. This makes them pretty hard to find. Also, with modern web-technology, it is far easier now to post Japanese characters side by side with English text.

So, I’ve been working on a side project to “rescue” old information from obscurity and modernize it for easier study and (when possible) for other languages. So, the first one I have completed is Honen’s famous One Sheet Document or ichimai-kishōmon. I was able to use a good translation by the now-defunct JSRI (Jodo Shu Research Institute) and draw from Japanese-language sources too since I can now read such things, unlike 15 years ago. Please check out the link above. I also added Cyrillic text for Ukrainian/Russian Buddhists who might want to recite the document.

The other text I am trying to recover is larger, and taking more time: the Tannisho. The Tannisho is centrally important to the Jodo Shinshu tradition, but Taitetsu Unno’s fabulous translation is almost gone. I got a Japanese-language introduction at Tsukiji Honganji in 2023, and I’ve been using that, plus Dr Unno’s translation. It is only partially complete, but work is proceeding. I’ve also, thankfully been able to find more information in Japanese that helps explain the history, and so on.

That’s about it. I hope to rescue more resources soon, in particular some of Rennyo’s ofumi letters, but it’s slow and time-consuming, and my own resources are somewhat limited.

March 2025 Updates

Greetings, dear readers. Just a couple small updates:

  1. The blog has been updated and (afaik) all links to Amazon.com have been removed. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been meaning to remove them for a while (I regret using them in earlier posts), but in light of recent events, Amazon deserves none of our business. If I can deprive it of even a little income, so much the better. So, they’re links are finally gone.
  2. I am trying out a new schedule to help smooth out the cadence of blog posts. Tentatively, I am trying to post every Thursday and Monday at 10am local time. I will try this for a few weeks and maybe adjust as needed. I am open to feedback as well. Feel free to drop a comment.

Thanks all and happy March!

Happy 6th Blogoversary

I had almost forgotten: this blog is now 6 years old as of today. 🥳

This wasn’t the first blog I wrote on the subject, but I used to have bouts of Imposter Syndrome, followed by a habit of deleting old blogs, then inevitably starting new ones anyway. So, I think I am on blog number four or five.

That said, I am older, slightly wiser, and recognize self-doubt more than I used to. Instead of imposing a schedule like I used to, which wasn’t that sustainable anyway, I just write when time allows. It makes the experience more fun, and feels less like work.

As for the blog, I wrote three posts on the same day:

As for you, dear readers, thanks for making the experience worthwhile. The feedback, questions, comments and such are all appreciated, and even those who just read occasionally, it’s nice knowing that I have such a diverse audience of readers, and that people are genuinely interested in such topics.

Hopefully, like my other blog, this one will be around for a long time to come.