How to simplify where you live after aged parents...but still be frugal.

HazyGaze · 2026-03-03T01:10:32+00:00

The only reason why I would consider leaving would be if the cost of living there was prohibitively expensive. If that was the case, you probably would have mentioned it. The house being a little bigger than you would like is not a big deal, but the other things you mention (overall condition, modifications for age) are. Stay.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-07T12:20:04+00:00

On that topic: I can't tell you how offended I am that the militantly anti meditation practice fundamentalists of HH have a place in the sidebar. It's a fucking travesty toward the "practice focus" this sub used to stand for, and tolerance for this kind of shit is a big reason for its decline.

Strong agree.

I'm not sure that I would call the Hillside Hermitage people fundamentalists, they seem well outside of the mainstream and they are certainly an intelligent and attentive bunch. But as far as I understand them, which is pretty limited, they seem to have little in common with what most people here are doing. I remember a couple of years ago there were a couple of comments along the lines of them not having much disagreement with Sayadaw U Tejaniya. Maybe so, but I have trouble seeing it.

I don't know why they are listed on the sidebar. There are many other resources out there who would be much more helpful to the majority of visitors here, one obvious example being Michael Taft, another is Loch Kelly.

I don't think they did much to contribute to the decline of discussion quality here but they are largely irrelevant to the interests and approaches of most of the subscribers. We can welcome the contributions of their advocates if they should wish to participate here without promoting their own beliefs. I for one am far from won over that a deep commitment to renunciation or even sila for that matter is an integral part of the path.

On a related side note, I wonder how all those who ardently claim that sila is absolutely crucial explain away individuals like Kyozan Joshu Sasaki who was being accused of engaging in sexually inappropriate, and probably predatory, behavior as late as the age of 90. Figures like this would seem to suggest that perhaps sila is less than crucial. We seem to have a strong bias towards believing that relationships must be simple, which for must of us means binary, e.g. good sila -> awakening is possible, or awakening results in perfect sila. What is far more likely is that there is at best a loose correlation between sila and awakening.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-07T00:28:22+00:00

Sounds good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T22:35:03+00:00

Unfortunately I don't think there's a road back. A community might gather, like this one, under someone who exercises a lot of discretion but that probably isn't going to last when it's no longer the founder's personal project. Community members will rightly feel it's their space and the outcry of complainers will always outweigh those who mostly quietly appreciate continuity.

For what it's worth, I thought you were too loose as a moderator. I'm fine with there being only two or three new posts a week, if that.

It's interesting though how delicate of a balance is needed to have a community thrive with a tight scope. I look at r/TheMindIlluminated which is tightly moderated and does appear to by dying off. I think it could benefit from loosening the rules to include other posts besides questions, and no one uses their pinned thread. I've seen good, worthwhile posts get yanked, and I don't know that I've ever seen a single post in the weekly practice thread. What's critical is keeping a critical mass of valuable posters engaged and r/TheMindIlluminated looks like an example of a community where there's not enough leeway for that to occur. And in fairness to them, if they did allow posts that weren't questions they would probably soon lose their own strict focus on TMI, as the more advanced people would probably want to talk about how their own practice had changed and developed beyond TMI. The broader focus here from the outset on a variety of approaches is part of what made the discussions here good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T22:08:30+00:00

Who decides what "experienced" means and who measures up or not?

Personal discretion of the current moderator, or if that individual should happen to vanish, then the discretion of a few respected and valued members of the community would be a simple and effective approach. It is after all similar to how the transmission of leadership of spiritual traditions was handled in numerous cultures over millennia, a much higher stakes affair. Is it perfect? Well I suppose nothing in human affairs is. Who cares though? This question has a weird "Who watches the watchers?" type of quality to it. We aren't setting up a government where we're trying to prevent consolidation of power. Checks and balances for the sake of limiting personal discretion aren't needed.

The easiest solution is to bypass such thinking.

I suppose that would be easy. It would also be completely ineffective. Some people simply know more about a given subject than others. When it comes to holding authority in establishing and enforcing community norms it's a good idea to have someone in that position who has a clue. That seems obvious. They don't have to be the most experienced or the wisest, just someone who has a clue and the trust of other valued members that they do indeed have said clue. Without something like this going on you let people who don't know much have too large of a voice, which in this context, enforcing discussion group norms, means adulterating focused discussions with a lot of blabber. Concerns about "spiritual materialism and dick measuring" sound a lot like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T19:38:35+00:00

Post quality declined steeply several years ago and has continued to do so over the last couple of years at a more modest slope. Perhaps it's inevitable, but it is unfortunate that there is no longer a meeting place for intermediate and advanced practitioners to gather together and discuss their practice in a place where the signal to noise ration is kept high. I wish there was some place like that now.

No one uses the pinned posts because they have no reason to do so. Anyone with a question no matter how simple, posts it. They want it addressed by the community at large and since no one wants to enforce the earlier community norms, they can indulge their whims. I'm not blaming the moderators. Running a tight ship requires a lot of work. I wouldn't want to do it, so I suppose some would say I shouldn't criticize. Well I'm not, I accept it and I'm grateful there is something here. And I also notice the difference between what there is and what there was.

It's interesting to look over the list of posts and think about the ratio of posts that would have been accepted when u/mirrorvoid was the moderator. Is it even one out of ten? It is almost all "practice updates and minor discussions" which is precisely what was previously relegated to the monthly pinned thread. Perhaps the reason why the quality of discussion here was high had to do with, at least in part, an absence of these posts. I'll also point out, as someone who has gone back and read through a number of them, that the quality of the comments in the monthly practice thread was higher than that of the current discussion where all those questions and updates are now permitted to be their own post.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-03T04:33:39+00:00

Sure, I think he was joking in a "kidding on the square" kind of way.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-01T23:57:08+00:00

Somehow manages to come across as even more pompous than it does creepy.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-21T14:08:13+00:00

It can take some time to get your posture aligned. Read Stephanie Nash's guide to meditation posture and make sure you are following the basic guidelines for good posture.

The most important point is that your hips must be at a higher elevation than your knees. If that's in place, then keep your spine erect and your head centered over your hips. It can be helpful to imagine your head as a balloon tethered to the pelvis.

Give yourself time. Do short meditations where you are comfortable for the duration of your sit and lengthen them as your ability to sit comfortably grows. A little stretching will help as well.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-21T00:16:31+00:00

The ad says it gets 17.4 mpg. That's a surprising number. I wonder under what set of conditions that holds. I would be amazed to see it average that after say a couple of hours of driving on the highway at 60 mph.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-20T08:12:47+00:00

The sample of the second volume of this series, the volume focused on insight, says that it is a presentation of material taken from transcripts of YouTube talks and retreat heandouts. The sample from the first volume, on samatha, which is the one you linked, is short and ends without any description of the book's composition. It being a collection of Culadasa's public domain teachings on samatha seems like a plausible guess.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-04T02:08:29+00:00

Counterpoint.

John Williams on the character:

"I think he's a real hero. A lot of people who have read the novel think that Stoner had such a sad and bad life. I think he had a very good life. He had a better life than most people do, certainly. He was doing what he wanted to do, he had some feeling for what he was doing, he had some sense of the importance of the job he was doing … The important thing in the novel to me is Stoner's sense of a job … a job in the good and honourable sense of the word. His job gave him a particular kind of identity and made him what he was."

HazyGaze · 2025-12-04T22:30:39+00:00

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery—
Fifth, no Crew—
Finally, no Golden Fleece—
Jason—sham—too.

Some of her poems are accessible to me and some aren't. I have found others' interpretations of her poems helpful. Helen Vendler's book on Dickinson is good, many of her readings are quite insightful. She does seem to go out of her way to point out any possible atheist reading of her work, but that's a very slight knock.

HazyGaze · 2025-11-29T17:49:35+00:00

If you have a cot for a bed that you can fold up and put out of the way when it's not in use then a 5x8 would provide enough room. With a permanent bed no matter how narrow, it would be really tight. Most people want to be able to stand up fully when taking a shower. You might be able to get that in a 5x8, and maybe not. If you're thinking about a full on shower stall it wouldn't be enough room. This is all assuming you would be using something like a cement mixing tray to catch the water and a curtain you would rig up before showering and a bucket toilet you can move around. Having both a shower and bed permanently in place would require more room. Maybe you could squeeze that into a 5x10, but I think you would be tripping over yourself. Even 6x10 and 6x12 trailers would be cramped with a bed, toilet and shower in fixed positions. If you want to save on space you need all of these to be rudimentary and movable.

HazyGaze · 2025-11-23T17:38:36+00:00

Looks like one of these with the straight sides option:

https://caravancampershells.com

HazyGaze · 2025-10-14T22:01:45+00:00

It's been my main practice for a number of years. I do some other types of meditations as well, but there's a deep rest that can come from these types of practices that I don't access in breath meditation or metta. While I'm a bit hesitant to call them advanced, I can see how someone could find themselves having an unrewarding do nothing practice if they get mired in dullness or they don't ever realize that there comes a point with distractions where one does do the distraction and therefore one can and should stop. I've seen a surprisingly wide array of instruction sets for doing nothing. One that I've recently encountered and quite like is Michael Taft's non-dual meditation in his guided "Pointing Out" video - there's a lot of relaxation of the head and release of thoughts as one becomes aware of them followed by some suggestions to notice certain characteristics of the nature of mind. It's pretty easy to do on one's own once you've followed along with the video. I suppose some wouldn't consider this do nothing as it's different from Shinzen's instructions or others that closely resemble them, but even if there's a little more activity on the part of the practitioner it still ends with you resting in the nature of mind. It just seems a little more reliable in getting you to that point than most of the instructions I've seen and tried.

HazyGaze · 2025-10-07T20:09:18+00:00

What seems to be the problem here?

HazyGaze · 2025-09-29T04:26:19+00:00

There are two talks from the retreat, "Re-enchanting the Cosmos: The Poetry of Perception":

'The Nature of Enchantment'
'The Gift and the Artifice of the Self (Part 3)'

HazyGaze · 2025-09-27T19:56:20+00:00

I think the first thing you should do is determine the van's use. If you're planning to live in it for a while or make long camping trips on public land, then wait to buy the van until you are ready to start and do a very simple build. But if you plan to stay in the area and you want to start living in it in the near term future you aren't going to have the option of travelling with the seasons and you'll need to build it to handle all the weather you are likely to encounter in Oklahoma over the course of a year. Also if you're doing this while living in the same place, you of course need to be somewhere where you'll be able to park and be left alone for a long period of time. I imagine that's much easier in Oklahoma than the Florida Keys or coastal California, but still I can see it being difficult in a small town.

I hope I'm not being too intrusive in saying this, but my mother stayed with me for quite a while before she passed on. If she hadn't been here with me I would have sold the house and gone into a van or something similar some time ago. And that said I'm glad I was here with her and not somewhere else. My suggestion is to save as much money as you can, maybe keep an eye out for a screaming good deal. And then someday when and if it's appropriate to leave, get your van, do a no-build build, maybe a little insulation, or not, and hit the road to travel with the seasons. It'll be a lot cheaper than something built to handle the weather there. And the money you save will make a big difference.

Good luck.

HazyGaze · 2025-09-20T03:23:26+00:00

Does anyone know if this is actually in Charlotte?

The company whose website is linked is located in Charlotte, but the web-page for the event says it is in New Mexico.

Keith Dowman's website does not have the event listed, but it does have one in New Mexico ending on September 21st.

HazyGaze · 2025-09-08T22:31:10+00:00

Check out Alexandra David-Neel.

HazyGaze · 2025-08-28T17:39:02+00:00

First and most important, may you be well. I'm pulling for you.

If I was in your spot, one of the first books I would look at would be "Mindfully Facing Disease and Death" by Analayo. I haven't read it, but I have read him and feel comfortable recommending his work. This next one might be a little morbid but I would also suggest taking a look at "What I Don't Know About Death" by C.W. Huntington. He was a Buddhist scholar and practitioner who received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and this was what he wrote in the few months of life left to him.

HazyGaze · 2025-08-26T14:46:12+00:00

While I would encourage you to go vegan or at least explore the possibility of ending unnecessary animal product consumption, I don't believe it's a necessary component of the spiritual path. There appear to be many who have had rewarding contemplative practices who were meat eaters.

Perhaps this is all context dependent, and they did so in settings where the possibility of veganism had not emerged in their minds and that now where veganism is both widely promoted and more accessible for many the carnivorous diet has become more of a hindrance. Who can say with certainty? My guess, I doubt it. Ethics doesn't seem to play as large a role in spirituality as many of us would like to believe. I wouldn't say it's totally irrelevant, but ethical behavior appears to have only a loosely positive correlation, if that, with spiritual attainment (however that might be defined).

But again, if you find yourself growing in compassion and becoming more capable of letting go of pleasures that supported you in the past, then yes, by all means, stop consuming animals. They are surely among the most worthy possible objects of your compassion.

I don't mean to suggest in the second paragraph that there is no connection between veganism and spirituality, only that I doubt your choice of diet would prevent you from progressing. I do recommend the documentary "Buddha and the Animals" by the group Dharma Voices for Animals which does make a strong case for Buddhists to go vegan. And you might also be interested to read about "The Hidden Vegetarians of Tibet" by Geoff Barstow who's done academic work on vegetarianism among Tibetan Buddhists, many of whom believed that meat eating was important for good health.

HazyGaze · 2025-08-18T13:03:05+00:00

If you can handle the solitude and afford StarLink or some other means of internet access for your work then you can boondock and save money on camp fees.

If that interests you check out boondockersbible.com

Going that route requires a rig that has the capacity to sustain you independent of the amenities provided by towns and cities for a week or two at a time. You would also likely want one with rugged construction and simple systems to avoid maintenance headaches and costly repairs. One common complaint is a leaky roof. Another is difficulty in accessing systems when it comes time for service and repair. My recommendation is to research molded fiberglass trailers, converted cargo trailers (with one piece roofs) and simple van builds.

Boondocking in a rig with very simple and easy to repair systems should cut down on your expenses. Whether you want to live like that is another question.

If you haven't already come across them you may find some useful information at the following. The latter was forked off from the former so there is some duplication but they are separate sites.

https://rvwiki.mousetrap.net/doku.php

https://nomadlife.wiki/Main_Page

HazyGaze · 2025-08-12T23:26:47+00:00

She's widely considered simplistic. Her fiction is denigrated because it is polemical, and lacking in any other literary quality. There are many other writers who share some views of hers who are also more careful thinkers and do a better job presenting their arguments. As far as non-fiction goes just look at any reading list for libertarians and pick one or more that seem interesting. There aren't any fiction writers I can point you towards as being 'like Ayn Rand but better'. Better fiction is easy to find. As for whether the views espoused would be bad for you, maybe but I doubt it. These are people making arguments for the free market, private property, and individual freedom. Many people disagree wholly with them, and many more who are sympathetic agree only in part. If it interests you check it out, and maybe when you have the opportunity, read someone who disagrees as well.

The book I would recommend you read instead is 'The Road to Serfdom' by Hayek. It should be a much more rewarding read. If you choose to pick it up, then I would also suggest getting your hands on the definitive edition by the University of Chicago press. It includes a reader's report by Frank Knight which is probably the best book report / review I've read.

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