{"id":215,"date":"2008-03-17T05:14:41","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T10:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/?p=215"},"modified":"2008-03-19T05:15:10","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T10:15:10","slug":"thinking-about-buddha-and-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/17\/thinking-about-buddha-and-boats\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About Buddha and Boats"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t been to church for several weeks…busy traveling and working. But, I went yesterday, mostly to hear The Delvers<\/a>. They are a local group that plays folks, jazz and western swing. One of the band members belongs to my church and I arranged for them to play. As we were getting set up, one of them asked what I was going to do when I finished my degree. I’m not sure, but for several years now, I’ve been talking about building a kayak from a kit.<\/p>\n

The sermon was about the use of metaphor in our spiritual journey, and I was pleasantly surprised when the minister told the parable of the Buddha. You can read the whole story here<\/a>, but the main point is that a man collects materials to build a raft and cross a river. Then, however, he decides to carry the boat with him over his head even though there is no more water to cross. The point: sometimes we carry metaphors with us when they are no longer useful. I couldn’t help but relate this to my own life and that very real kayak I want to build.<\/p>\n

Now that I’m getting ready to do my dissertation research, I’ve been asked a lot what I’m going to do when I’m done. Well, first, I’m going to take a break! Read trashy novels, work in the garden, play music, make movies, etc. etc. And, build that kayak…perhaps it’s my own metaphor for moving onto the next phase of my life. I have not ever really built anything and I thought it would be much different from the cerebral work I’ve been doing.<\/p>\n

I met with my advisor after church and then went home and submitted my institutional review board request. I may have approval by the end of the week! I’m trying to finish what work I can so my time is free for research. It’s very exciting to be getting started.<\/p>\n

Watched the first two parts of John Adams <\/strong>last night on HBO. It was good: I particularly liked Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. In fact, of the two, she’s my favorite in general historically. He was gone so often and for so long that she was running the farm and educating the children herself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t been to church for several weeks…busy traveling and working. But, I went yesterday, mostly to hear The Delvers. They are a local group that plays folks, jazz and western swing. One of the band members belongs to my church and I arranged for them to play. As we \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4,13,10,21],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31UVs-3t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}