BBC News: Buddhist kung fu nuns

This week I've been working fanatically on my chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy - I'm making a quilt), and I don't know where the time has gone. I can't believe it's almost the weekend again - and back to my job. So I'm cutting corners tonight and sharing this article from BBC News, which I found particularly interesting as a woman, Buddhist practitioner, and martial arts student - Buddhist nuns in Nepal are studying kung fu to promote self-confidence as well as concentration. As the article explains, Buddhist nuns have never enjoyed the same degree of respect that monks have, but new opportunities like this give me hope that the future will be better for them.

One take on Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse"

Tonight I was rewatching last week's Dollhouse episode, "Instincts," on Fox.com, and I came across a profound realization. You see, thanks to my dear fiance, I am a devoted Joss Whedon fan (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and now Dollhouse - I love them all!), and Joss's shows are so well-constructed that you basically HAVE to watch them at least twice to really get what he's saying. And tonight's rewatching did not leave me disappointed.

I was watching the scene where Echo and Paul Ballard are at the deserted park, after Echo realizes that the baby she's been programmed to love as her own isn't truly hers. She tells him how she still feels everything, even in her "wiped" state - the love for her baby and the pain of losing him. She tells him how "they" make everything so real; she was not pretending to feel love or suffering, she truly felt them. When Ballard tries to reassure her that once she's wiped again she won't remember any of the pain, she responds that feeling pain is better than feeling nothing.

At some point while watching that exchange, something clicked with me: the situation the actives are in isn't unlike the situation that, according to Buddhist thought, we are all in. When an active is programmed with a certain personality and life history, he or she believes fully that that is his or her true identity. At the end of each engagement, the active's brain is wiped clean and all traces of that particular life and identity are removed. They remain in an in-between, bardo-like state until they are programmed with a completely new history and personality.

Like these actives, with each life we're "programmed" with a certain identity, which is constructed by the world around us, our life experiences, and our own ideas about who we should be. We go through our lives fully believing that the identity we know is our true, real identity. We love, we hurt - we experience genuine feelings. At the end of our life, we're - theoretically - wiped clean and ready to begin a new life, with a new identity that we fully believe is ours.

But, like the actives, we never really lose the identities we've been programmed with; we just forget about them. They get buried somewhere beneath the layers of each new life. The tabula rasa idea doesn't really work because, as Caroline (soon to be Echo) says, if you try to clean an actual slate, you can still see what was on it before.

The show "Dollhouse" is centered on Echo's awakening to her true identity. As Echo becomes aware of the different people she has been, she is at a loss to tell which one is truly her. Ballard, in this respect, serves as her spiritual guide: he encourages her on her path of self-discovery and reminds her of her true identity as Caroline. He is concerned with helping her break down the barriers of illusions that obscure her true self.

Like Echo, we've had many identities placed upon us, all of which we fully believed were true, though none of them were. And though all of these identities are a part of us, our own true identity is something quite different. And like Echo, our task is to awaken to our true self.

Why "empty" knits?

I think the best way to begin this blog would be to tell how it got its name, thus answering the question I'm frequently asked: why did you choose the name EmptyKnits?

This question is in response to my starting an online store, www.emptyknits.etsy.com. I'm a knitting fanatic - and have been since I taught myself the art a year and a half ago - and I also crochet, sew, embroider, quilt, and weave tapestry. I channel my love for textiles through making things for friends and family, making things for sale, and knitting for my two favorite charities (both of which I highly recommend knitters/crocheters and non-knitters/crocheters check out): Mother Bear Project (www.motherbearproject.org) and Afghans for Afghans (www.afghansforafghans.org).

I am also a practicing Buddhist, primarily in the Tibetan tradition. (I say "primarily" because I don't yet have a teacher, which is essential to Vajrayana.) One of the fundamental ideas in Buddhism is that of "emptiness," which Thich Nhat Hanh explains beautifully and concisely:

"Because form is emptiness, form is possible. In form we find everything else - feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. 'Emptiness' means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life... To be empty does not mean nonexistent... Emptiness is the ground of everything. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible" (Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Berkeley, Cal.: Parallax Press, 1988, pp. 16-17).

When I knit, I am made aware of emptiness, of interbeing. Knitting is a way of expressing love, both for people I know and people I don't know. Knitting a teddy bear for a child in Africa or a pair of socks for a baby in Afghanistan makes me feel closer to them than does anything else in the world; through it, I can express my love for them as fellow beings. For me, it's a palpable reminder of how we as sentient beings inter-are.

So, at the risk of being labeled a Dharma-burger by The Worst Horse (actually, I'd be rather flattered if they did!), my shop name - and now my blog name - became EmptyKnits.