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I practice lovingkindness meditation, with the general goal of cultivating mindfulness and the brahmaviharas (lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity), integrating them into my life and mastering the Jhana’s to the point where I can experience the clear view on the mental links giving rise to suffering that I understand cessation to bring.

I tried a number of different approaches to learning meditation, but the most effective technique for me has been the one I learned from going to a Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation retreat in 2023 with Bhante Kusula, where I learned a combination of forgiveness practice and lovingkindess practice, supported by translation of “right effort” into the six Rs (recognize, relax, re-smile, return). It was not my first exposure of lovingkindnesss meditation, but it was the first time I was able to experience the practice in a deep enough way to unlock deep feelings of compassion and self-love.

I credit forgiveness meditation as taught by TWIM with softening my heart, helping me let go of personal baggage, and preparing me for this practice. Some extra color here is that I could only rarely cry before using this method, but now I regularly get moved to beautiful tears - “tears are the fruits of forgiveness,” as one teacher put it. Here is a great guided forgiveness meditation by Delson Armstrong, which teaches how to make the relief of forgiveness the object of meditation, and how to use right effort/4Rs to stay collected on it.

Another thing I really like about TWIM-style practice is that it doesn’t encourage meditation as escape; the point is to remain collected on the object as hindrances come up, which means that it is full of opportunities to observe how the minds attention moves from one object to another, for shifts in perspective to arise intuitively as a result.

I’m interested in clowning, and specifically Pochinko clowning, as an art form and spiritual practice. I participated in one of Sue Morrison’s “Clown through Mask” classes.

Pochinko taught clowning as a sort of "reverse therapy", in which instead of
ridding oneself of anxieties, the clown performer leans into their own
insecurities and foibles in order to package them as comedy.

I went to burning man for the first time this year (2024), had a great time, and am planning to go back.

There are a lot of misconceptions about burning man – often people think it’s a festival about sex, drugs and rock-and-roll tech-house. It can be those things, but it is so much more; it can provide nearly whatever experience you’re looking for. For me, it’s about participating in art, strange and genuine social connections, making and deepening friendships and living in a society that embodies the 10 principles of burning man.

Living in a culture that valued radical self-expression, participation and immediacy in the way Black Rock City did (see the 10 principles) re-socialized me to be less afraid of joining spontaneous social games with people. This meshes well with my experiences with clowning.

I also attended an interesting math lecture about embodied ways of approaching mathematical problem solving, which inspired me to work more on my mathematical problem solving skills with a tutor who is helping refactor both my understanding of foundational concepts, and improve my emotional relationship to problem-solving and mathematics overall.