BE LIKE A DOG

Having a nested thought that due to its sensitivity I am inclined to put behind a paywall.

Just started wondering what it might feel like to apply my friend’s recounting of a teaching from Pema Chödrön, about BEING LIKE A DOG WITH A TREAT ON ITS NOSE, to every time I look someone in the eyes?

My friend Gyendon was an ordained Tibetan Buddhist monastic living and working at Gampo Abbey where author and nun Pema Chödrön was the head teacher for a long while. The monastery is located at the rugged tip of the eastern coast, in Nova Scotia, where, incidentally, my favorite rocks, fairy stones, are from.

I just remembered that I happened to give a fairy stone to Meredith Monk, because I had learned she also had a relationship with Pema and with the site where fairy stones are from by way of the monastery. Somehow almost a decade ago when I was all too deeply enmeshed in the Yale Union project, I was looking into organizing a performance of Meredith Monk’s, and YU subsidized my trip to Arizona, so I could meet with Meredith and discuss this possibility.