jamie no jaem

these friends accompanied me to get my testosterone this morning and, hunted recognizing hunted, we watched each other brave the cold sun

"We’re being pelted by the propaganda that people from other places have nothing to offer and nothing to teach us. May we remember the value of a neighbor from somewhere else."

"This place confounds us, because it’s full of contradictions. That’s something humans have a hard time with. Contradictions are uncomfortable. They require us to think and feel for ourselves and not just have an unexamined relationship with things. That’s what makes them rich.” He explains that learning to find comfort in paradoxes and difficult situations provides a direct path for understanding and embodying the nondual teachings of Vajrayana—like Dzogchen and Mahamudra—that are at the heart of his teaching and personal practice. These practices cultivate the ability to be present and at ease with challenging emotions and situations, allowing practitioners to navigate their circumstances with less resistance and fear."

"To grieve, whether for a person, a set of ideals, or our hopes and dreams, is to watch reality, once so solid-seeming, become molten. It’s hard to get oneself to take the next step in a dissolving world—where will our foot land when it seems nothing will support us? How do we move toward inner or outer change?"

"Brief moments in which we act with bravery and self-respect can have surprising effects on our own character and on those around us."

"So many of us—whether we were encouraged to be too self-focused or too other-focused—struggle to imagine what it would be like to feel capable of ushering in well-being for others while simultaneously honoring our own limits, time, and energy. Here, our feelings can be a trustworthy guide. With enlightenment mind, one feels motivated to awaken fully and begins to do so through increasingly hearing and responding to the experience of all, including ourselves, until we all feel freed up and on board with reality. Bodhicitta creates a sense of abundance, of having great capacity to open up, tap into deeper internal resources, and trust that these are shared resources of compassion, insight, and wisdom. Chronic sublimation and compulsive caretaking, in contrast, usually cause feelings of impingement and stress, or the fear that if you don’t offer care, the other person’s affection or respect will be withdrawn. It is important to know the difference between these two projects. Preserving yourself and knowing your boundaries is not the same thing as exclusively seeking your own happiness. It’s about the healing process of learning to skillfully discern what will and will not serve all beings, yourself included. This balance is beautifully illustrated by the image of Green Tara, sometimes called the Mother of all Buddhas. With regal humility, she sits with one leg extended, symbolizing her wish to join you in your efforts to establish and share well-being. Her other leg is tucked inward, symbolizing her continued commitment to containing and developing her own mind and body energies that offer sustenance in these efforts. So too, her hands symbolize both her generosity and her need for support from teachers, spiritual methods, and community. This image offers an inspiring symbol of enlightenment mind, letting us see what it looks like to be devoted to our collective well-being. Green Tara reminds us that bodhicitta doesn’t involve a minimization of our subjective experience, or require that our own needs be eclipsed; rather, it invites us to locate our spiritual efforts within a larger frame. Bodhicitta nurtures our sense of agency."

"Mindfulness practice engenders emotional honesty; we see more clearly what is truly happening in our hearts. When we start meditating, we may feel like we experience more afflictive emotions. Students say, ‘I was never angry before, and now I’m angry all the time.’ Well, we likely were angry before but repressed it or sublimated it into other emotions. Busy running around with a myriad of things to contend with, we easily miss what is true for us. When we sit down and connect directly with body, heart, and mind, we can feel our emotional life and heal, integrate, and free the heart."

quick snow day #lego build🎍❄️🧱

Spent most of last night at the hospital trying to control my most recent bout of pneumonia - and accompanying broken ribs - at the very least ideal time possible, of course. But here are some joyous photos from a couple of weeks ago, when life was a bit slower and better (in some ways, at least). I said I’d be deliberately posting more of my aging 35-year-old gay trans American chronically ill body here and on multiple platforms in 2025, and I meant it. No more lying low for me. No more asking nicely or hiding politely. My current corporeal form and very existence have been variously described as perverse, profane, demonic, criminal, unnatural, impossible, unAmerican, a burden, an inconvenience, a Problem, a Question, a Debate, a Danger, insanity, illegitimate, and evil by dozens of international and U.S. politicians and pundits in the last year alone. I have been denied basic healthcare by the government I’ve spent my entire life - including the majority of my childhood, in which I had no say or choice - serving. Recently, dozens of very powerful people have openly and repeatedly called for my “eradication” - and, in response, too many of my own “friends,” extended “family,” and fellow members of “the military community” and “the queer community” alike have unabashedly ignored, downplayed, or outright denied these very real, escalating, and heinous threats. We all have to make our own choices about these sorts of things, but I have decided I’d rather be consumed than erased. To my fellow queer and trans siblings - I’ll be out here for you as long as I draw breath (which is, to be fair, literally getting more difficult than it should be, these days). I promise you’ll know where and how to find me until I am no more. Reach out. I love you very much. It will be up to us to keep each other as safe and as comfortable as we possibly can be these next few years. We have done this for all of human history, and I know we can do it now. I love being trans, and I love you. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🎍

"When I began trying to 'heal' I was hoping to extinguish the chaos I felt inside. It seemed like inner peace would come from getting rid of my anxiety and grief, so that’s what I set out to do. I tried: to analyze, and overcome, and work through, and snap out of, and get over. But it just didn’t work. My pain did not want to be cured away; it wanted to be loved. Now it seems the best thing to do with my 'demons' is to say hello, offer them a blanket and make them feel at home. Now they are my friends. I welcome everything."

"A few years ago, after a colleague lost his home and all his possessions in the wildfires that swept through our part of northern California, he told me he was fed up with the phrase 'It’s just things.' And it’s true that again and again in the aftermath of the fires, people were bravely repeating to one another that what they had lost were 'just things.' The implication was that things—unlike people and pets—can always be replaced. 'But things aren’t just things!' my friend said.   Our conversation was interrupted before he could say more—but I felt I understood why he resisted the impulse to cushion a sense of loss by devaluing what was lost. (And actually, if you take this impulse to its extreme, doesn’t it lead to the place where people diminish the most acute forms of loss inflicted on other beings by devaluing those beings, seeing people as less than human, and animals as objects for human consumption?) Later, when I thought about it, I assumed that when my friend insisted that 'things aren’t just things,' he meant that many of his belongings held an emotional resonance for him, a resonance linked to memories of very specific people, places, and times in his life. In one way or another, they were souvenirs, and when I look around my own house, I can see many objects that carry an emotional charge in this way. Long ago, I learned about the tradition of give-away ceremonies among certain Native American tribes, like the Lakota of the Great Plains. I can remember my college professor explaining to us that the purpose of these ceremonies was, in part, to test and strengthen each person’s capacity to detach from material possessions. But it was also a way of keeping a highly prized object in circulation, giving it a new life in a new context, rather than allowing it to stagnate on some shelf, rack, or hook. In offering up a prized object, the giver could confer value upon the receiver—yet without creating a sense of obligation, as each receiver was simultaneously a giver, participating in the circle of mutual give-and-take. What strikes me now is that this ritual was a way of letting go of an object without devaluing it, without demeaning it by seeing it through the lens of 'just a thing.'

"Impermanence means nothing stays the same; nothing is static—not even the things you have labeled as true. If we have studied Buddhism or done any reflection on life, we really do know these things. They show up in our lives every day. What makes us foolish is that we act as if they aren’t true—that things should stay the same, that we should always be perfectly comfortable, and that we are a discrete, non-changing self. When living in an illusory world, we live our lives as if all our thoughts and emotions are the truth and our perspective of life IS reality. And that’s where all our troubles begin. It is why we suffer. It is why we are angry or afraid. It is why we see 'others' as the cause of our problems. The Buddha taught mindfulness so that we can catch ourselves in the act of characterizing the things that are happening to us based on our mental conditioning: This is bad and I need to push it away or react in fear, anger, or anxiety; this is good and I want to create more of the experience, ignoring or avoiding everything else that is happening; and this is neutral so I’ll let it pass through and completely forget it. If we apply mindfulness to the experiences that happen to us, rather than unconsciously riding the train of experiences and perceptions, and the judgment and reactivity of mental conditioning, then we will develop good sense. Western philosophers understood this power of mindfulness, too. Aristotle proposed the power of perception as the way to monitor and regulate the five senses and labeled it as 'common sense.'

"For me, solitude is not loneliness, but a space where I can be fully aware of the myriad ways that all things, myself included, are connected. This notion of profound interconnectedness, even in isolation, appears throughout Buddhist literature. In the 2nd century, Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism, discussed it in his teachings on sunyata, or emptiness, where he said that the existence of each individual thing relies on the existence of all things. This includes my own self, which is not a permanent and fixed identity, but like all other things a tentative and dynamic amalgam of interconnected elements. So, if I ever find myself alone and feel a pang of fear that I have been cast aside and removed from the world, I can remember that it is not even possible for me to be completely alone. I am inextricably woven into an ever-changing web of connections, many of which are too subtle or complex for me to understand."

"The history of queer people is one of not just surviving but thriving in the margins."

thanks for saving Christmas, Santa Fe. te amo ✨🩵🌶️🎄🌟