Buddhist practice-y stuff

In Tibetan Buddhism there's this series of preliminary practices called "ngundro" (which means, coincidentally, "early go" or ... preliminaries). It's an accumulation of 100,000 refuge practices with prostrations, 100,000 recitations of the vow of compassion, 100,000 generosity/offering practices called "mandala offerings," 100,000 confession practices with the long Vajrasattva mantra, and it closes with 1.2 million of the devotional practice mantra (fortunately it's a very short mantra).

Tibetans do all this in a six month retreat. Usually when they're kids.

Americans with their busy lives take a little longer.

I started in 1987. Stop laughing.

I finished the prostrations early, when I was 20. And oh, am I glad I did them when I was young and limber. I finished the confession practice around the same time, when I was 19, though this is my favorite practice and mantra and I do it all the time now:

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The recitation of the vow of compassion I finished when I was 21, and then I finished about 30,000 of the offering practice. I did 280,000 of the devotional practice when I was 23.

Then ... I didn't ngundro for years, except an insignificant amount here and there.

I'm finally got back to doing the mandala in an intensive way last year. It's a pretty practice.

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I have only 12,000 left of the full 100,000 to do. To put this in perspective, on a good day, with a half hour to open the practice and two hours to accumulate the mantra, I can do about 1,000.

I could finish mandala in 12 days. If I could just get my ass in gear. Trouble is, I've had 12,000 left to do for the last two months. Arrgh.

(no subject)

Now this is cool. They've got a rotating mantra around the medicine buddha: http://www.medicinebuddha.org/

This is a test. Can I just copy the code and paste it here?

Pern

Just finished re-reading the Pern series (dragons, oh dragons) by Anne McCaffrey, as prep/procrastination for my SGA/Pern crossover.

Wow. McCaffrey created a fascinating world with lurid sexual overtones and canon slash opportunities. A mind-to-mind permanent bond with a flying, fighting dragon! A quasi-military dragon defense force falling into disrepute!

She's also in dire need of a beta reader. She takes long treks into exposition land, forgets to describe what characters look like, leaves out the setting, and occasionally doesn't make sense. I'd give her to isis. Isis would take time to do line edits and guide her ("Yes, you say here they 'arrive at the Weyr.' The roof? A rocky ledge? Where are we?").

This would be forgivable (dragon mating flights! That send everyone into a sexual frenzy!) but McCaffrey spends her third book of the series (her best-written) tearing down the world she created. Instead of exploring the sexually fraught implications of the dragonrider's life, she writes about . Instead of developing her world, she has them rediscover electricity and the spaceships that brought them there. It wouldn't be so bad, except they immediately understand every object they find. "Oh, those three stationary stars in the sky, why, that doesn't disprove our new theories of star movement. Why no! We get instantly that they must be an orbiting space station." *eyeroll*

Yes, this is why I want to write an SGA/Pern fic that explores the life of a dragonrider -- before McC ran through her world with the wrecking ball of implausibility. Granted, an exploration of male dragonriders embracing in sexual frenzy as their dragons mate is probably something she couldn't get published ...

... but hey. that's what fandom's for.