Today we pick up with the number 6: Tuesday, 12/16, marks 6 days since Drew died just outside of Brattleboro, Vermont through their MAID (Death with Dignity) Program. He's still my top iMessage suggestion whenever I try to share something. Last night I downloaded his eBook-- I had it saved on a previous computer but had no luck finding it in my Google Drive or email-- and then wondered if my $6.99 would go to his wife? If it would light up on his phone as a notification? Her

-- 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