PSA

astaraelweeper is awesome. When I whined about my taxes, she wrote:

Did you remember to file schedule M, which allows you to get the Making Work Pay credit?

$400 in your favor, assuming you have at least $7,000 (and no more than $95,000) in wage/salary income. You have to fill out an extra (very simple and short) form, and it's easy to miss it if you do your own taxes and aren't expecting it.

And now the federal government is giving me back some money. Yay!

(no subject)

Living and working in DC can be weird. The past few days have been the nuclear summit, with almost 50 heads of state downtown at the convention center, talking about how to make the world a safer place. So far, so good.

50 heads of state means a LOT of security. It means that a huge swathe of downtown is off-limits. (Not, incidentally, Metro; Metro still goes underneath the convention center, although you can't get off at that station, which was weird to me given that there have been subway bombings all over the world. I mean, I appreciate it, because it meant my morning commute was NOT fubar'ed, but still strange.) Residents around the convention center have to show ID, etc.

Tuesday nights after Buddhism class, I stay over at Holly's, cause class ends at 9:30 and Metro won't get me back to Greenbelt until 11, and the last bus from Greenbelt to anywhere near my house leaves at 10. Holly lives a few blocks from the convention center, but the summit ended at 5-ish, so we thought we'd be good. I know the summit ended at 5-ish, because when I left work, they were clearing the streets for Obama's motorcade (I work around the corner from the White House). (Which means the buses are all diverted, often annoying, but I can wait an extra ten minutes for my bus if it means the world is going to have fewer nukes; that's a good tradeoff, in my opinion.)

Nonetheless, at 10 last night, the convention center was still a secured zone. I didn't quite realize what that meant until I saw it. Police on every corner, armored trucks and camo and assault rifles, lights flashing everywhere. The armored trucks and barricades made the biggest impression. Heidi tried to figure out how to get close to Holly's to drop us off, but no such luck. We didn't want to try to walk through the secured neighborhood, since I don't live there and I had an overnight bag. We ended up skirting the security perimeter and avoiding contact with anyone, which was good. Pain in the ass; they damn well better have decided to have fewer nukes! :P

Today, walking from Holly's place to work, the signs were still up. "Nuclear Summit: No - weapons, ammunition, explosives." A year and a half ago, when guns were not allowed in DC, the signs would have been different, but since then there's been the Supreme Court case and now you can own guns. And it struck me as more than a little ironic that 50 heads of state from the whole world were meeting to talk about disarming, in a city of 600,000 that can't even manage to disarm.

(no subject)

Most of you know I've been studying Kadampa Buddhism for the past few years.

Our Spiritual Guide is Geshle-la Kelsang Gyatso. He retired as head of the International Kadampa Buddhist Union last summer at the end of Summer Festival in England. He gave us the blessing empowerments of Heruka and Vajrayogini over several days, and a teaching on the 11 Yogas of Vajrayogini, and then said goodbye. It was an emotional time, and there were a lot of tears.

Gen Khyenrab, who is awesome, was elected our Spiritual Director (not our Spiritual Guide, which is still Geshe-la). He has a great sense of humor and is very direct, and a wonderful teacher. Gen-la Dekyong, who is also one of the more wonderful people I have ever met in this lifetime, was the Deputy Spiritual Director. She was also the U.S. National Spiritual Director, which is how I got to meet her. She's one of those people who you meet, and you can just feel the love and the holiness pouring off of her. She came to our center last year to speak about faith, and it was quite a blessing.

Gen-la Khyenrab has fallen ill, and I found out yesterday he's stepped down as head of the New Kadampa Tradition, and Gen-la Dekyong is replacing him. I'm a little sad that she will no longer be the U.S. Spiritual Director -- my chances of ever meeting her in a group of less than 500 people again have gone down drastically, but I think it's awesome that we have a woman as the head of our organization. There's a big difference between having the *possibility* of a woman as the head, and it actually happening. We knew it would happen in three years (International Spiritual Director is a 4-year term, and you can't serve two consecutive terms, though you can be re-elected to a second term after waiting 4 years), but a lot can happen in three years.

One of the things that I love about the NKT is that anyone - gay or straight, male or female, lay or ordained, Tibetan or Western, young or old - anyone can go all the way to the top. What matters is your spiritual progress.

Long-term, I'm not sure about the viability of the New Kadampa Tradition. Our Spiritual Guide, who wrote beautifully clear books and gave wonderful teachings and empowerments, is going to die in the next few years. I don't know if we'll survive that. We might; we've got a solid infrastructure, temples all over the world, and very realized teachers. Still, so much of the organization owes its backbone to Geshe-la Kelsang Gyatso that I just don't know. It is a lesson in impermanence, I suppose.