Week Six Essay Question
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I believe from the discussions about the 5 Buddha families that I am Vajra/Karma. The personality characteristics for both were really ringing bells but the photos really helped narrow it down. Vajra is associated with the East, the dawn and the sun rising. Every day unless its pouring rain, I go out for a walk by 5:30 am for an hour. I love the solitude and quietness of this time of day but what I love most is dawn! I had a photo of Sunday morning’s sunrise but could not figure out a way to post it. Anyways, it is a photo taken from the end of a pier I walk to, looking east to the ocean with pink and orangey sky. Most of winter, the walk is in the darkness so early spring is always a special treat because now the sun comes up earlier.
I have found it so interesting between studying the enneagram and this course to find out who I really am at 69! No wonder I am the way I am…being a #1 on the enneagram scale and now Vajra/Karma. I like who I am but this information is very helpful in understanding my reactions during my daily life. -
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I immediately identified with padma. I have started a new position at a new place. This is a much more structured environment with pedigreed employees than my 28 year position at my previous employer. I am a 28 year veteran in my industry and prior to that lived in my car, was a sick patient and initially, in 1996 begged to be hired. I had a desire to protect others from being taken advantage of as I felt I was. I like to blame that history on my constant need for approval, or perhaps my upbringing in a competitive family of 5 girls, but the truth is, it almost feels like this need comes from fear. That is the situation in which I stop listening, caring, and lose my ability to be present. I love to be the magnet that helps make connections in many ways.
Lately, my practice chant that includes the Great Clouds of Blessings, is being said with grasping. I recognize this. This is a chant that continues to resonate with me and evolve for me almost as much as the heart sutra.
I often say, going the struggle of a lifetime, only to find the next situation, something I consider more challenging. During our IRL class time, I had my breast implants that were put in when I had breast cancer removed and the doctor did some fat transfer. I woke up from that surgery paralyzed from the left hip down. I was bed/wheelchair bound for about 5 days, then finally got some feeling back down to my knee. I was able to hobble around with a cane. Unfortunately, the situation I was told was temporary may not be so. The damaged nerve may/maynot be repairing and I have also developed compartmentalized regional pain syndrome. I am resorting to heavy pain and nerve meds that are certainly not my desire but I take them hoping they will help me get through a day. Each day when I get to the chant, I feel comforted, if only for a brief moment, that I am asking for help and it is coming.
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Joell, I am holding you in my heart as you traverse pain and healing. I am so sorry you are experiencing this and pray you get relief.
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One day this past week we had the biggest, loudest hail storm ever!! (I took photos but don’t know how to upload.) It was brief, but powerful. I link that with Vajra Family…blue, anger (it came down with a vengeance, shiny (mirror-like wisdom) and element of water.
This was a fun exercise to do.Betsy
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Thanks, Brenda, for the idea to change the profile picture!
This photo is of my bedroom. It feels like Buddha energy to me — very spacious and peaceful. A space that I can just be. Many rooms in my house have this feel. However, I intentionally added art with movement and pillows with color to create energy in the kitchen and my office.
I enjoyed learning about these families; Padma energy really resonates with me. I feel like I know that energy, and I am drawn to it. However, I also remember that in high school, my nickname was “Spacey” or something like that, and there was a period in my life where, several times, complete strangers would approach me and ask if I was lost. This seems more like confused Buddha energy! Maybe? I am new to this.
I agree with Betsy, this was fun.
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What lovely and expressive photos, Brenda and Penelope. A great way to communicate the energetic feeling that is so hard to put into words (at least for me).
Joell, thank you for explaining your connection to padma and sharing your experiences. So very sorry to hear about your recent surgery, complication, and pain. Keeping you in my practice, may your healing ultimately be complete, and may it be as speedy as possible.
Like you and Penelope, the Padma energy calls to me. My heart sings as the sun starts to descend in the west and send a golden glow over the late afternoon, and each sunset feels like magic.
Really wishing I could grab some Karma energy, in one of my sources it is described as all accomplishing and fearless! Maybe tomorrow…
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Hi everyone.
Brenda, I really felt transported to that dawn momment though your description, so happy you can enjoy that everyday; Joell, I truly wish you a steady recovery, and I send lots of patience and best wishes to you; Penelope, I absolutely feel the same way about your house, it transmits me a lot of armony, simplicity and elegance, very much in connection with the topic of this month in the OHP. So wonderful to read and contemplate all your musings and little or big pieces of your life.Continuing the description of our houses, I got a lot of padma energy when I thought about mine. I usually place along the rooms drawings of photogrphs that illulstrate my inner world, candles and inciense that create an inviting atmosphere, or gitfs and objects that are very significant and relevant to me. Though I heartfully adore all of these items, and seeing them in a daily basis works as a reminder of things and values that are important to me, I also realize that I like to create a “seductive” environment so when someone walks in feels attracted, intrigued and magnetized towards these pieces of decaration, and hence also to me. That tendency of instrospecting but also looking outward longing for connection felt really padm to me.
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I believe I am obviously (to myself and others) of the Padma/Vajra families. The photos Susan posted of the snow and ice and the fish and dahlia really hit home with me. I love seeing the nuances of color around me and the nuances in conversations taking place. I often express myself and find that other people don’t get “where I’m coming from”. Sometimes no matter how I re-word and explain, it’s like I’m speaking another language! I guess at that point, I actually am :-). I also identify with the poisons of anger (especially at the unjust) and desire (for deepening relationships). This was such an interesting class! Now I’m anxious to learn the Buddhist Enneagram!
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I had some surprises when confronting the five buddha families. I believe Susan and I share the same enneagram type, 4, and further, 4 (self preservation), and understanding some of the characteristics of this type would leave me to expect to find myself drawn to Padma and secondarily Karma, as I think Susan used as an example in class. But that in reality, that is not what drew me…
Again, I really like the explanation of the enneagram and of the buddha families as that everyone can experience and embody each energy, fluctuating and flowing, and though they may represent “home bases” for some, learning about these energies as a whole gives us an interesting array of tools to interact with and understand the world and each other. Expecting myself to be drawn to Padma, I instead felt a very strong pull to Ratna. This made me curious because it seemed that few others in the class were drawn to Ratna… perhaps being turned off by appearances of being “messy” or “materialistic”, seemingly anti-buddhist concepts, familiar with negative emotions associated with our heavily consumerist and materialist society. But I immediately resonated with the aspect of Ratna recognizing the incredible richness in everything that surrounds us, in every mundane moment. A large part of my spiritual journey (winding, bringing me eventually here to Tibetan buddhism) has been an exploration of the two connected feelings of a) the profound interconnectivity (emptiness) of phenomena, reality, beings, etc and b) the incredible richness to be found within each waking moment. The falsity of looking for “richness” in some other place, or some other time, or some other material circumstance, and the truth of the incredible richness in each moment, so rich that we cannot absorb, comprehend, or even realize it all. I feel Ratna in the summer afternoons sent sitting in my small backyard (messy, old, used) next to a crumbling treehouse, the coos of chickens, nearby highway sounds, ripening blueberries, a mishmash of grass and concrete and paved stones in a haphazard wall. I immediately felt Ratna during class, sitting next to my bedside table (which is my guitar amplifier) surrounded by candles and a tangle of guitar cords and stacked up books and clothes I should put away and my meditation cushion and tossed around pillows and my mala beads and plants and art notebooks and posters and paintings and pictures on the walls.
So I feel a sense of pride with this discovery of the Ratna family: the family of messy gardens in the afternoon, of an artist’s insanely cluttered studio, of a notebook filled with doodles and drawings and quick-written poems and taped-in plant parts and to-do lists and score tallies from card games.
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