Four big questions,

What is your understanding of suffering?

What are the causes of suffering?

How do you suffer?

How can you open to your suffering?

Questions taken from a dharma talk "Opening to Suffering" presented by Berget Jelane.

Along this topic is also a talk by Andrea Fella called "Understanding Suffering."

Did anyone know my secret aspiration is to be a singer of songs and writer of poetry? Hmm... More the latter than the former, I suppose. Even if most of my poems come out like angsty crap.

Without Title I

Through bitter cold of frozen fields,
with wandering soul which never yields.
To seek aimless dreams past each hill,
I search my world for meaning still.
With heavy heart that's led astray,
by yearnings of mind and soul every day,
I long for a sign upon the horizon
that will dispel the misery road I walk on.
But forever looking forward still confounds,
since a warmth can now be felt near by me.
And though my mind is led away,
my heart beats closer in each way
to this answer to the soul and mind,
both of which still cannot find
this sight before me that could fill the void-
with a happy heart and a smiling joy.
My mind has blinded my eyes to her,
and my souls cries in a spiritual blur.
But the heart cannot deny what it sees,
within this shining effigy of hope
who could bring sight to my mind,
and wipe my soul clean.

And now, one of my favorite lyrics from one of my favorite songs.

"Been draggin' this past
all over town
with my life still in it
Every single minute-"

- "Southwestern State" - Seven Mary Three

I recently saw an anime called Cat Soup. Actually, it barely qualifies as an anime. Oh, it was Japanese, yes indeed it was, but it wasn't anime. It's really an art film, or should I say, art turned into a 30 minute film. Watching it was like seeing a Salvador Dali painting come alive and start wrigling and flopping right there in the museum. And if you know a lot about the body of Dali's works, then you can imagine the horror, nay the danger, of some of those offering coming alive in the presence of things smaller than they are. Better to keep small children away from the things that would pull off their arms and squeeze the blood juices from their bodies. So, yeah, this animated whutzit was pretty messed up, but surprisingly not excesively vulgar. If you like weird stuff happening to cute little characters (Or want to see a guy in a dominatrixesque rodent outfit have his arms cut off with a giant pair of scissors)...umm....watch Cat Soup!

Overall I give the movie a pencil and a tube of anti-biotic ointment... no... wait... those things are possibly useful, instead, I give this movie an empty keychain (Inherently useless, unless one puts a key on it.)

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	66.04% Enjoys the occasional head-lopping	53.5%
Sensitive Roleplaying	50.63% "But what's my motivation for this scene?"	54.6%
GM Experience	79.71% Ran a module once or twice	69.5%
Systems Knowledge	88.84% Played in a couple of campaigns	90.4%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	65.52% Goes nuts on the weekends	63.3%
You are 73% pure Average Score: 68.8%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up! (By The Ferrett)

"The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and I,
until only the mountain remains." - Li Po