DukkhaGirl
What is this?
Is this a Buddhist blog, or what?
What!
DukkhaGirl was a blog I started sometime in the 2000s, when blogging wasn’t “dead,” as it is now.
It was my own commentary on trying to practice Buddhist tenets as a woman, wife, and mom in America, with a lot of personal stuff thrown in the mix.
Its former tagline, “One woman’s search for everything here and now and in her own backyard,” was a riff on the subtitle of “Eat, Pray, Love,” which was popular at the time and which I both enjoyed reading and was irritated by; mostly because I was envious of her being able to take off and have adventures. I was working out how to be happy in the present and with what I have. I still am working that out.
I was both enthralled and horrified to find that the blog had a readership. Certainly, if you’re posting things online, you want someone to read them. There’s no getting around that. I enjoyed getting commentary on my writing. But I’ve never wanted to be “Internet famous,” as my daughter would say. I don’t enjoy making videos of myself, getting on TikTok, or anything like that. I do like writing. And I do like WordPress.
So, here I am…again.
I’m finding that I’m starting to post some stuff elsewhere that belongs on DukkhaGirl, so I’ve decided to bring this blog back. Eventually, maybe I’ll recover some of the better stuff I wrote before. But I’m not limiting myself to strictly writing about things Buddhist or “Zen-adjacent,” as I like to put it. You might also find fantasy book reviews here, for instance. Or poetry. Or essays about non-Zen-ish stuff. Who knows?
What is Dukkha?
Dukkha is a word most commonly translated to “suffering” in English. By reading some texts, you might find that the Buddha said life is suffering. But from things I read long ago, the word has more of a sense of something being off kilter. Like a pottery wheel being uncentered and throwing the pot you’re trying to make out of whack. So, while some of life is truly suffering, for many of us, a lot of our suffering is more akin to getting froyo instead of ice cream, like on The Good Place!
So, I once said I was “DukkhaGirl” if life is dukkha. My Buddhist anti-hero’s name. I wasn’t a “girl” when I started writing the blog in the first place, and I’m less of one now, except in the sense that I’ll hopefully always have at least some small part of me that has a sense of childlike wonder. I’m now starting to experience the particular Dukkha of being over the hill.
“Wow…here’s another distraction for you!”
Recently Posted
Puppy Metta
by: DukkhaGirl
An essay about Buddhist metta (Lovingkindness) meditation practice and how I found the perfect first “target” to practice it upon.
Sewing a Zafu
by: DukkhaGirl
This post is an image with instructions on how to sew a Zafu that I saved long ago. It is not a pattern and calls on you to cut your own out of paper. But it’s what I used, for a long time, to sew zafus. Includes a short list of purchasable Zafus that I’ve tried and can recommend.
In: Meditation , Buddhism and Zen
My Evil Magic 8 Ball
by: DukkhaGirl
When I was a kid, a neighbor convinced me that my beloved “Magic 8 Ball” toy was evil and should be disposed of. This is a personal essay about that…experience.
In: Personal Essays , Skepticism, Atheism, Agnoticism , Weird Ideas
Keep up on the lastest dukkha *
I don’t post a lot to social media, in most cases. If you’d like to keep up on what I’m adding, you can subscribe to email newsletters and notifications. It’s sort of like a Gumpian box of chocolates…but not as good as a real one!
From the Glossary
Glossary Index
by: DukkhaGirl
This is the main A-Z glossary index page. I may add more specific indeces in the future, but this is the one showing any and every category.