Before going into silent three-year meditation retreat in the desert, my teacher (Ven. Lobsang Chunzom) put me in charge of fundraising. Why? Because I was low on money, so she said I needed to create the causes for it...by helping other people get money. So I started a small fundraiser that scrambled together a few hundred dollars. And then I started another one, among my friends who were as broke as me. I also wanted to do a silent meditation retreat of my own but had no idea how that was going to happen. And then I started up a volunteer program in which I was...the first and only participant.
I was working MEALS ON WHEELS in Hells Kitchen on a rainy Saturday morning. I got an email invitation to an event. I went and collected $28,000. Just like that. It was a sudden ripening from all the seeds I had been planting the past several months.
I used $28k to pay off some of my debts, give to the charity, pay my rent for several months, and go back to Miami so I could take care of my Dad while my mom was having surgery. While I was sitting out on a Miami beach one day, I was wondering about the retreat...when I got a call from Sunshine Ross, who wanted me to come down to Nicaragua and use her house as a retreat space.
I went to Nicaragua with David and we did our first lerung meditation retreat. After I finished I hung out with Sunshine at a resort in the woods. I did yoga every day, ate incredibly healthy, and thought 'how the FREAK did this happen?!? A few months ago I was struggling to pay the rent, and now everything is taken care of, I did a meditation retreat, and now I'm at a luxury beach resort doing yoga at sunrise.
At the resort, I met someone who introduced me to A COURSE IN MIRACLES. I started reading that book and loved its message, which has a lot of Buddhist undertones.
When David and I returned to NYC, we had to do an extra ceremony to close out our lerung. So we rented a place in the Poconos for a fire puja. There were a lot of bears and nothing on the tv except old school sitcoms from the 1960s. We completed the fire offering and headed back home.
On the afternoon we arrived back in NYC, the city had its first tremor/earthquake in decades. I was sitting with a friend in a coffee shop in midtown when I felt a subway car rumbling beneath my seat...but we weren't near a subway line. it wasn't until we got out of the shop that we read the news about the very low tremor that rumbled through NYC.
I continue raising money and doing fundraisers, as more people joined in. I remember being on an upstate bus to go work at VISIONS camp (for the visually impaired), talking about Buddhism, and enjoying life when Rihanna's YOU DA ONE came on the radio for the first time. I ended the year back on the beach.
I was working MEALS ON WHEELS in Hells Kitchen on a rainy Saturday morning. I got an email invitation to an event. I went and collected $28,000. Just like that. It was a sudden ripening from all the seeds I had been planting the past several months.
I used $28k to pay off some of my debts, give to the charity, pay my rent for several months, and go back to Miami so I could take care of my Dad while my mom was having surgery. While I was sitting out on a Miami beach one day, I was wondering about the retreat...when I got a call from Sunshine Ross, who wanted me to come down to Nicaragua and use her house as a retreat space.
I went to Nicaragua with David and we did our first lerung meditation retreat. After I finished I hung out with Sunshine at a resort in the woods. I did yoga every day, ate incredibly healthy, and thought 'how the FREAK did this happen?!? A few months ago I was struggling to pay the rent, and now everything is taken care of, I did a meditation retreat, and now I'm at a luxury beach resort doing yoga at sunrise.
At the resort, I met someone who introduced me to A COURSE IN MIRACLES. I started reading that book and loved its message, which has a lot of Buddhist undertones.
When David and I returned to NYC, we had to do an extra ceremony to close out our lerung. So we rented a place in the Poconos for a fire puja. There were a lot of bears and nothing on the tv except old school sitcoms from the 1960s. We completed the fire offering and headed back home.
On the afternoon we arrived back in NYC, the city had its first tremor/earthquake in decades. I was sitting with a friend in a coffee shop in midtown when I felt a subway car rumbling beneath my seat...but we weren't near a subway line. it wasn't until we got out of the shop that we read the news about the very low tremor that rumbled through NYC.
I continue raising money and doing fundraisers, as more people joined in. I remember being on an upstate bus to go work at VISIONS camp (for the visually impaired), talking about Buddhism, and enjoying life when Rihanna's YOU DA ONE came on the radio for the first time. I ended the year back on the beach.
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