OPWC Ch.11  –December 18, 2025, 10:01 pm to 10:42 pm Gestational time measured in musical time: during Yasodhara’s pregnancy, Siddhartha plays his flute beneath the moonlight and listens to it echo in the ether around him. When she goes into labor, gender divisions sharpen; only the women can attend her, while Siddhartha sits outside the door anxiously and listens to the whole birthing process. YIKES. No wonder they only end up having one kid! Here’s the relevant passage, wo

OWPC Ch. 10 – December 18, 2025, 8:07 to 8:42 pm  The womb and the tomb are inextricably linked—maybe through the practice of daily meditation. This is the gist of what I’ve learned from Chapters 10 and 11, so I’ll be writing responses to them in quick succession and approaching them as a two-part post.  First, Siddhartha follows up re: his concern about the sustainability of Yasodhara’s work. One day, calling her by a nickname, Gopa (no idea where the hell that comes from),

Building Trust on “The Path of Compassion”  OPWC Ch. 9 – December 18, 5:58 to 6:46 pm How do you build trust in a relationship—whether new or old, in the process of construction or reconstruction? We couldn’t have better teachers in our newlyweds, Siddhartha and Yasodhara, so let’s dive straight into the text.  The couple marry in a truly magnificent-sounding wedding with lots of bright colors, delicious foods, excessive pageantry, and all the signifiers of luxury. Similarly

– December 17, 2025, 7-Days-7 Posts #3, 3:50 to 4:20 pm (OPWC Ch. 8)  NEW FAVORITE CHARACTER: YASODHARA. Finally, a woman who brings a little more than milk to the table. Hopefully she sticks around longer.  Here’s what we learn about her in this short chapter, and why it matters:  He first encounters Yasodhara, a princess from Siddhartha’s general area, but far from the palace: “in a small, poor village… tending to the village children who were suffering from eye diseases, i

OWPC Ch. 7, 3:00 to 3:15 pm, Anniversary Post #2/7. Music stirs the sacred.  “the sound was so sublime that listeners felt as though they were being carried high above the clouds” (50).  Learning involves receiving instruction, engaging in deeper reflection about the meanings of the teachings, and then acting on the new knowledge/information.  Even at a young age, Siddhartha does ethnographic research to expand his love and understanding: he walks among “the people.”  The spl

OPWC Ch. 6, Weekly Anniversary Post #1/7: Morning Stretch, Warming Up for “The Sutras, According to Effie White,”   which will be today’s culminating point. Since this longer post is emerging from a multipronged inquiry, the anticipatory scaffolding and stretching both become essential elements of the journey. This morning’s study begins with the dream of Siddhartha’s mother/other—that led to his sublime birth—which a nine-year old Siddhartha subsequently restages while sitti

OWPC Chapter 5 – December 16, 2025, 10:03 to 10:51 pm The frame widens, breathes, and resets in this quietly revelatory chapter. Svasti falls into a daily rhythm of visiting Siddhartha in the forest, frequently encountering Sujata there as well, who becomes a close friend. Sujata tells Svasti how she first met Siddhartha a few months before he did, “and how she had since brought him food every day around noon” (35). She met him on a full moon day, carrying an offering to the

(OPWC Ch. 4) – December 16, 2025, 3:14 to 4:14 pm So far, my favorite chapter. I’m excited to dive into this one. Svasti returns to the forest to see Siddhartha, bringing some brown rice as an offering, and notices that he is already sharing rice with another child: Sujata. Several years older than Svasti, Sujata comes from a higher caste (her father is a local leader) and considerably more wealth than he does, so she has brought “fragrant white rice.” Siddhartha invites Svas

An Armful of Kusa Grass (OPWC Ch. 3) – December 16, 2025, 11:04 am to 11:48 am Another mode of temporal organization gets unlocked at the outset: as young Svasti meditates while seated by a tree, a new initiate at the Buddha’s training center, his mind returns to the moment nine years earlier when he first met the Buddha. While in Chapter 1, the narrative’s first propulsion comes as a result of Svasti’s decision to walk the path of the Buddha and study with him, in Chapter 3,

-- December 15, 2025, 7:52 to 9:00 pm Just as a buffalo boy protects his buffaloes from mosquito bites by building fires to create smoke, the bhikkhu uses the teaching of becoming awake to show those around him how to avoid the afflictions of body and mind.  Beautiful—from smoke shields to smoke signals. Spreading awareness, consciousness raising, building theories and detection systems about … the psychosomatic effects of gaslighting, as a “random” example of the noble work

– December 15, 2025 6:36 pm to 7:26 pm The second chapter begins by layering, expanding, and deepening the closing insight of the preceding chapter. In a direct counter to the causal relationship often established between age and wisdom, Svasti, although he is Rahula’s senior by several years, views him as a teacher because of his greater experience with and exposure to the Buddha’s path. Similarly, although Drew is my younger brother by just over a year, in the last several

(**taking it even more slowly; more chapters coming!) – December 15, 2025, ~4:39 pm to 5:10 pm.  The first frame: OPWC feels like comparative biomythography. As spiritual as it is literary and scholarly, the text hybridizes genre and speaks in a polyphonic, plurivocal register. Although it reads as deceptively simple—almost like short parables, or moral lessons—the text starts to shimmer the longer you take to receive it, and a deeper or more expansive layer of meaning opens