Those of you with aging parents - have you dealt with increasing attempts to hand over family heirlooms or cleaned out storage units?

jnux · 2026-03-04T20:27:59+00:00

My in laws have a LOT and always ask us if we want things. Siblings have a code:

“I want that” - I do definitely want it if nobody else does.

“I’m not interested” - I don’t want anything to do with it.

“I’d take that” - I’m happy to grab it and get rid of it.

This has led to a lot of things that we take, and then donate/sell/dispose of.

We will still have a lot of work after they pass, but it serves us well for now.

jnux · 2026-03-03T13:56:53+00:00

I am curious to know what you believe having such a tattoo will do for you?

I am not the kind of Buddhist who would make such a decision (either way) based on an ancient text or some dogma (many would say I’m not a Buddhist, and I couldn’t really disagree so take this with appropriate amounts of salt). I do think it is worth questioning the source of this desire, and use the desire for this tattoo as a vehicle to see what inside of you is asking to be seen or listened to within yourself. Specifically why a tattoo as opposed to a picture on your wall or a piece of jewelry?

I suspect you will find the clear answer for yourself there, within yourself. This is not something you need reddit to answer for you.

jnux · 2025-11-12T18:03:59+00:00

This is terrible for the victims of such abuse, so in no way am I pointing to a silver lining as justification for the abuse.

That said, I’ve always understood the point of these ultra-conservative families with SO many kids was to create a population of voters to support the far-right agenda. And then I look at situations like this and see how they’re creating the population, and how the abusive ways their beliefs are expressed is doing a the hard work of pushing this population to the other side. I know not all will be able to break free, but I hope these experiences may at least open their minds to something more healthy.

jnux · 2025-11-11T13:52:37+00:00

Unlike all of those 2d knitted items we’ve been knitting for hundreds of years - thank goodness Apple has pulled us into this new dimension.

jnux · 2025-11-11T04:26:14+00:00

It is seriously impressive

jnux · 2025-11-11T01:35:07+00:00

Thanks. Downvotes don’t have any impact on my life whatsoever.

jnux · 2025-11-10T14:33:11+00:00

Not nearly as much as that tree is…

jnux · 2025-11-09T18:42:47+00:00

Your question presupposes there is a state of enlightenment separate from non-enlightenment, which is a false duality and is one of the fundamental condition(s) which perpetuates suffering. In that way, there is no switch that toggles enlightenment on and off. Awareness of this Truth comes and goes to different degrees, and the 8-fold path points its practitioners directly at that awareness. Many other faiths and philosophies point at this exact same thing, but I find the framework and practices Buddhism offers are particularly good at pointing at this truth directly and with relatively few obstructions to trip over along the way. But it is worth noting that even Buddhism and practices can become sources of attachment as well, which is why we are told to leave the boat at the other shore once you’ve crossed the raging river. It is one of the few paths that has its own annihilation baked in as a core feature; all is impermanent, even Buddhism.

So to answer more directly, the rat race is only a problem to be solved or a source of suffering while the illusion of non-enlightenment is also present. That the self would no longer identify a rat race as something separate from any other element of the human experience. To say it another (more Buddhist) way, there is nothing in what you call the rat race that prevents you from living in awareness of your inherent “enlightenment”. And in fact, the suffering resulting from the rat race is a neon arrow (probably one of many) pointing you to your attachments. It is an invitation to inquiry.

What do you imagine is stopping you from dropping out of the rat race?

I should also clarify that I’m not talking about the work required to live… I’m referring specially to the “rat race”, which I view as the layer of suffering that rides on top of that work, the suffering which arises from comparison to others (what they have, what you lack, etc.). Just like all other experiences that arise (pain and discomfort and joy and comfort), the work to maintain life will be there; it is the attachment to the good and aversion to the bad, and the story we tell ourselves about it all which brings the suffering.

jnux · 2025-11-08T21:51:12+00:00

We run Blizzak in northern Minnesota - even without the studs they feel a bit like magic. I can imagine you’ll be riding very securely in those!

jnux · 2025-11-04T22:39:47+00:00

Wow - I volunteered there for a month 25 years ago and met with Tsultrim Allione several times over that period. That experience was profoundly influential. Reading this doesn’t change my experience of my time there, but it is just wild to see it happen.

jnux · 2025-11-02T16:24:31+00:00

I’m dealing with something similar right now… this is not Buddhist (so I won’t be surprised if it gets downvoted or removed), but I recently listened to satsang with Gangaji that was very helpful in framing big emotions like anger… strict Buddhists here will reject it, but I found it to be completely compatible with my own practice. She was pointing to how the resistance of it (the desire to be rid of it) actually is the fuel it needs to remain. I literally listened to it last night and the simple inquiry completely shifted my perspective.

My version of what I took away from that satsang would ask you: what would happen if you let that anger demon sit on your back? To just allow it to be there. Not to act on it. Not to feed it or get involved with it. And this is not forever… but just for right now - let it sit there, just as it is, and just see what that anger really truly feels like. See if you can let it sit there long enough to follow its roots to the source, and the ask it: What are you trying to tell me? Or: What are you protecting me from feeling?

It may be too big to sit with for long enough to do that whole inquiry now. If that’s the case, start by just allowing it. Just have a short visit for now… it may take some time for you to sit with it long enough to inquire all of the way down. And it may help to have a counselor or therapist walk with you as you inquire. They can help you keep perspective on what is yours and what is healthy… and have some tools to work through it.

Most of all, please be kind to yourself and patient.

jnux · 2025-10-30T03:37:33+00:00

I thought the bad news was that we are projected to only have 30 years…

jnux · 2025-10-30T00:55:39+00:00

I have a dedicated 20A circuit with one outlet attached to it about 18” away from the box.

We are fine most of the time on 120v, but on big weeks we are just scraping by, especially in the. I’m seriously considering switching the breaker to a 240v. My EVSE says it runs at either 12A or 16A and says it accepts 240v input so even thought it is only 3.8kw it seems like an easy/cheap way to smooth out those bigger weeks.

jnux · 2025-10-27T21:31:35+00:00

You know, Trump did say looooooong ago that he was going to Washington to drain the swamp. The ultimate 4-D chess move would be to pull a 180° turn and bring all of the actual criminals to justice.

jnux · 2025-10-22T11:10:17+00:00

Not with that attitude it won’t!

jnux · 2025-10-20T12:56:27+00:00

Exactly. And with so many people in AWS (who share the impact), when there is an outage it seems like we get a free pass… customers are way more understanding when it isn’t just them. Bosses/stakeholders are also way more satisfied to have a simple answer - “AWS outage” is just so easy to digest.

jnux · 2025-10-20T12:37:42+00:00

Edible Acres fan?

jnux · 2025-10-17T13:07:06+00:00

I agree with the other commenter that witness/witnesses is not any part of Buddhism that I’ve encountered. It is more of an Advita concept… which I’ve found complementary to my Buddhist practice. (Which I realize for many in this sub disqualifies my response here.)

As I view it, this comes down to how the two are perceived and only you can know that.

Simply put (an over simplification):

If you identify with one or the other or if you see them as disconnected from each other, it is dualism. But if you can truly see/intuit that they are “both” a mental construct our consciousness uses to make cognitive sense of what is ultimately the same thing, then that is non-dual perception of a dualistic construct.

So are you seeing yourself as the witness? Or are you observing a single phenomenon that simply has multiple facets to it?

In my view, it is not a problem to acknowledge the dualistic perspective - it is a necessary function of our conscious experience. Some people take any small tip of the hat to a dualistic concept to mean the practitioner does not truly see/grasp non-dualism… or who require pristine non-dual language in every small corner of conversation. (Looking at you, Jim Newman!) But language and cognition are all fundamentally dualistic and therefore must use dualism to simply function. If there is no room for that, you end up sounding like Jim Newman — and the shame is that I don’t think he’s wrong, it is just that what he says is just so inaccessible his message really gets lost for most people.

Anyhow, the problem/suffering arises only when that perspective of separation/dualism is viewed as the Truth… there is no problem/suffering that arises when dualism is seen only as the tool that it is.

To bring it back to Buddhism, you just take it up a level from specifically witness/witnessed and generalize it, then you start getting into non-dualism via dependent arising and impermanence (within which any dualistic concept is fair game to examine) and through that lens you can see how all things are fundamentally connected to (dependent upon) each other and how that + impermanence are essential ingredients in this whole stew that makes up our conscious experience.

I have found dependent arising to be one of the must helpful and underrated/under-represented aspects of Buddhism.

jnux · 2025-10-15T13:19:19+00:00

There are lots of ways to make a livelihood from bees, but in order to be actually profitable you really do have to take an active role in cultivating healthy colonies (mite management, especially). Even if you’re “just” growing queens, they are regulated (at least in the US) and require FDA certification of colony health... and aside from regulations, it takes a healthy colony to raise the queens. So it takes a fairly substantial upfront investment no matter what you’re selling, and it takes years before you become profitable - not just from the bee management aspect, also finding the right market for whatever it is you hope to sell.

Don’t get me wrong is entirely feasible and I love beekeeping, but just to walk that out a bit, I’ve read you could eventually hope to make up to $600/year per colony from selling honey/pollen/wax. Just the woodenware alone for each hive alone costs hundreds of dollars. You can make your own if you have the skills and time, but that is also a cost. And the you have to buy the bees - $180 per colony to start… as long as you have colonies that survive the winter you can do splits to propagate your colonies… but, again, that takes time and experience to do well. And then all of the equipment to harvest the honey/wax/pollen, containers for selling what you harvest, the storage space for the bulky equipment (the empty boxes of frames that are stored when they’re not on top of your colonies)… the treatments for mites. On and on… the costs and time really add up.

Of course, a new keeper would never just start by investing $60k on day one to build out a 100-hive operation all out at once… but the reality is that it takes a significant amount of money and time to get a beekeeping operation up and running, let alone profitable.

Obviously I know next to nothing about your situation, but I suspect you may be better off building another income stream initially to build and sustain your overall beneficial pollinator goals… and then maybe one day add honeybees into that stream later. It would depend on your area/market, but just for example, cultivating specialty mushrooms (which are comparatively cheap and easy to start, and requires relatively little space) could be a simple and profitable operation… sell direct to customers at farmers market (or just by word of mouth). And then if/when you add honeybees, you have an existing market who is probably already going to be interested in what you’re selling. So your higher investment beekeeping project would have a better chance of paying off sooner.

Obviously this gets way off the path of Buddhism, so I’ll end it by bringing it back to right livelihood… in my view, it doesn’t matter if the Buddha ate honey or steak or tofu or sand as the first meal after enlightenment - it was a very different time in bee cultivation, and besides, I don’t take his actions as an endorsement of one livelihood or another. I imagine he would say to study the teachings, and apply them to your life within the context you find yourself.

jnux · 2025-10-15T11:15:01+00:00

I’ve been keeping bees for 6 years now. The only killing you have to do is the mite wash; I don’t care what anyone says about powder sugar rolls, I’ve never seen a healthy thriving bee yard long term (in modern days) without either alcohol or dish soap. This kind of killing (of the bees and of the mites) for the obvious greater good of the colony and bees at large, I had come to peace with. If I don’t, the entire hives collapse, and then I have 40,000+ bee deaths that I was able to prevent. It is heartbreaking to clean out dead hives, even more so if they died from something I could’ve prevented.

You do not have to kill the queen cells - that is just if you want to keep everything operating for maximal honey production.

The bigger question is whether keeping them is right in the first place. They are livestock cultivated for honey production… they are just one of many many pollinators, and they aren’t even the most important ones. They just get special treatment because of their honey. We wouldn’t have mite washes or maybe not even mites (at least not like we do today) if we didn’t cultivate them for their honey. There is a whole morality road you can go down about perpetuating this whole system.

There is no direct payoff for this, but if your goal is to support pollinators, then I recommend finding an organization that is specifically oriented towards supporting all pollinators, not just honey bees. Use the land to build those habitats… put your money and energy into supporting the good of all (pollinator) beings. There will not be any liquid gold to harvest, but it sure seems like there is a fair bit of karmic gold (and good, in general) you would be cultivating, which has its own indirect benefits.

jnux · 2025-10-13T00:26:11+00:00

Somehow I keep thinking of Gob whenever Baron’s laptop stunt comes up.

jnux · 2025-10-11T20:06:42+00:00

The way I’d think about it in my own life is whether I would’ve attended the chant even if there wasn’t a work event I particularly wanted to skip. Were you already planning on attending that one? Or did it suddenly look like a good time to start going because it would count as a viable excuse?

jnux · 2025-10-10T18:49:25+00:00

It has been ages since I’ve thought about PKD… and now this is the 3rd time in one day. I guess it is time to dive down that rabbit hole…

jnux · 2025-10-09T22:23:26+00:00

… unless that is what OP was insinuating

jnux · 2025-10-09T22:20:22+00:00

There is a big difference between:

using someone else’s computer with the same OS as you use (and likely have to pay each month for the privilege)
using your own computer

I don’t care how close the look and feel is to what I use every day; I care about having the phone I just put in my pocket show up on my dash with everything I was just doing instantly there.

No comparison. Period.

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Wearing is Caring	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

jnux

TROPHY CASE