Random Nuggets, and an Invitation
on this new moon
Welcome to The Practice of Life — a place to slow down, befriend yourself, and connect with the world from kindness and awareness. If you’re just arriving for the first time, you may appreciate this introduction.
Everything here is freely offered without paywalls. If you appreciate what you find, please consider a free or paid subscription, or a one-time donation. Your financial support creates possibilities for me to spend more time on writing, including a memoir-in-progress. It also really helps if you give this post a ‘like’ (click the heart at the end) and share it. Thank you!
Regular readers know that usually I put together a polished essay for these new and full moon letters. Topics can vary widely — grief, travel, cultural critique, Buddhism, engagement with the world, and more — so you may not immediately see it, but there is an overarching theme here: grounding our lives in intention and awareness, so that we can live with integrity and kindness.
That intention and awareness comes from committing ourselves to a practice of some sort. It might be sitting meditation, but it could also be yoga, art, gardening, crocheting, chanting. In fact I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. Check out “What is This Thing Called Practice,” if you haven’t already.
Today I don’t have a polished essay for you, my mind just doesn’t seem to be working like that in this moment. Fighting fascism takes energy, there’s a gopher in my backyard that needs to be deal with, and I recently crawled out from under the cloak of tax preparation and filing. Among other things.
But I do have thoughts! And quotes! And photos! Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from long-form writing and I imagine you as a reader might appreciate a break as well. So here goes with random nuggets…
A few quotes I’ve been loving lately:
“In a time of destruction, create something.”
- Maxine Hong Kingston
“The enlightened person is simply the person who isn’t selfish, who sees things as they really are, loves them, and acts out of that love.”
- Norman Fischer
“Despair is what happens when you fight sadness. Compassion is what happens when you don’t.”
-
Images from my world…
Random Thoughts
• Are you watching Andor? The second season of this most unusual Star Wars story is now on Disney+. A couple of years ago I saw the first season and found it to be a very powerful tale of resistance against tyranny. How timely, right? I may have to sign up again to Disney+ just to watch this new season. I love this line from the New York Times review of the series: “In ‘Andor,’ rebellion is more than a joyride: It is a construction project.”
• I am not a fan of AI. I’ve been pretty staunchly against it, seeing it as a tech tool that is supplanting human creativity, is stealing our work, and will displace countless people from their jobs. It’s not that I think of AI as inherently evil. As with almost everything, it’s not the tool itself as how it gets exploited by predatory capitalism, and then is used to exploit us.
So here’s my surprise for this week. Some of you know I’ve been at work on a memoir for the past year. I made good progress over the past year, then took some time off in January and have had difficulty finding the flow again. This week I read
’s excellent article, “Why Every Substack Creator Should Disclose Their AI Usage Policy.” Mine is simple: I don’t use it! But Sarah’s piece was helpful in breaking down the ways that AI could be used at various points in the writing process. She also raved about Claude, an AI tool that she uses as a…“personal assistant, personal shopper (you must—he’ll search the web and find you the highest rated platform bed in a nano second), sounding board for my business, proofreader, research assistant (though only with cited sources I fact-check), SEO generator, and therapist (he’s a great listener).”
I was intrigued, so I went to the Anthropic website and tried Claude out. I asked if he (?) could help me create a workplan to continue and finish my memoir. Much to my surprise, the information Claude gave me was incredibly helpful. Now I feel like I’ve got a path to find my way back into the writing process and to see this project through to completion.
To be clear, I will never rely on AI to write for me. But I’m now finding that there are other ways it can be helpful, both in writing and life. Keeping an open mind is a good thing!
• I’ve been writing quite a lot in other places. Here are a couple of articles you might enjoy:
“Española: A Day in the Life” (from my other Substack, Postcards from New Mexico) This reflection on a day in my hometown originally started as a Note that went viral. I think it carried something about hope in the darkest circumstances that people needed to be reminded of.
“The Mandala of Socially Engaged Buddhism: A Tool for Sustainable Activism” (on Buddhist Door Global)
The Mandala is a tool that helps people connect with ways of engagement that may resonate more authentically for them. I’ve been sharing it for many years, and I love to watch people find the archetype that resonates for them and energizes their activism.
Finally… an Invitation
This week I’m doing a kind of a Spring fundraising drive for my Substack. I’ll just come right out and say it: I would be very very VERY happy if you’d considering signing up for a paid subscription to The Practice of Life, or alternately making a one-time donation as a way to say “thank you” for the time and effort I put into these pieces (you can find an archive of my writing here). This is also a material way to support my livelihood as a writer.
This Substack has no paywalls, so the reason you’d do this is not to access articles that others can’t. You’d do it out of pure generosity — and that can feel really good. Also, for every five paid subscribers, I “pay it forward” by paying for a subscription of Substack writers that I appreciate.
Right now there are more than 3,000 subscribers here – which is amazing! The vast majority of you are free subscribers, and I appreciate every one of you. Fifty of you are paid subscribers, and I am deeply grateful for your support. Fifty out of 3,000 is a pretty small percentage, and I would love to see that number at least double this year so that I make the 100 mark.
While I will always keep The Practice of Life free for everyone to read, I do plan to create a special thank-you offering for paid subscribers in the near future. I’ll be turning that Mandala of Socially Engaged Buddhism (also known as The Four Ways of Engagement) into an online course/journey for paid subscribers to access and benefit from. Also, I currently offer one complimentary Guidance and Encouragement session a year to founding members.
Please consider entering into this circle of giving and receiving with either a paid subscription, if that is doable, or a one-time donation. Thank you so much!
In kindness,
Maia
Thank you dear Maia.
There are many reasons not to use AI in any way.
Yet there are now quite clearly many reasons to use it also. In medicine, it is bringing about swift diagnoses in areas where the human diagosis frequently fallible. And most of us use spell checker, I have since 1995 when I first used a computer, less so now, as spelling is not a major failing for me, at least for now. There will be other examples we could find.
I feel it's important that we remain open to the potential practical uses and benefits from AI. And equally open eyes to discern when we are being tricked by it, in the case of still and moving images, voices etc.
I too use Claude. Claude's success, as with any AI (although I'm yet to find one as good, and friendly as Claude), depends on us. Because like any good teacher, they are only as good as the questions we ask, and on use being prepared to say when we feel they are mistaken. From this position, there are great practical benefits from using Claude. For example, I tell Claude what tools and resources I have, or think I need, for any given project, and then a conversation ensues on what is unnecessary because I'm seeking minimalism, and new ways of using what I already have. I have learned more about creating meditative ambient music from conversations with Claude over the past month, than I could have in years in online forums and groups, often avoiding many of them due to the many trolls that frequent them. With Claude, it is a conversation.
Give Claude a manual for something, and it is read in seconds. Then you can ask any question of that manual, through Claude. Folks are building new, interactive manuals, so suddenly we can find answers on everything from cars to computers and washing machines, in seconds, without having to process a massive amount of irrelevant data. Claude saves us from all of that.
And yes, there is still plenty of time for serendipity too. All the time that Claude saves me by seeking information for me, I can spend in silence, sitting, praying, resting, writing, or recording. I don't see much of an issue with that, for sure.
I also asked Claude for guidance on how to create a book outline, for another project. It is up to me to choose what to keep, and what to throw away. And Claude never tires. But he will not be writing my Substack, books, or meditations any time soon. That is where I come in. But even I am only a form of basic intelligence, most certainly other than the divine flow that weaves my writing.
Thanks for raising this important subject Maia, and thank you for all your beautiful writings here.
I have no interest in AI as a creative tool. While it appears to have useful applications, it learned everything it knows from humans, and we are a mess of contradictions and bad choices.