Cavern House Temple: Dana

On Giving

Greetings Kind Readers:

It’s almost Halloween! Not really, but in my head it is because it’s ghost season. From August until late November, ghosts of all kinds wander and permeate our realm (traditionally in East Asia this ends in late September). This is the time to make offerings, to be giving.

I made this comic above in 2024 not as a call-out but to demonstrate what I was seeing as I raised money for mutual aid for families in Gaza, Palestine (while simultaneously keeping up pre-existing mutual aid efforts for incarcerated activists, struggling students and artists, etc). The people in my life who had the most privilege and highest incomes were the ones who gave the least, and gave reluctantly. Meanwhile there were small business owners risking their businesses, teachers risking their very lives. At the time, speaking about fundraising, challenges and successes was seen by the privileged as annoying, and, at times, as bragging. Meanwhile, holy people on the ground rejoice in each others recollection of holy acts. I use the word holy because these acts are in alignment with cosmic law, the ultimate reality that we return to after death, the Dhamma. I give thanks to those who showed me greed for they brought me closer to the Dhamma.

I also forgive those who are stingy and confused about being their own humanity; they do not understand that they are living hungry ghosts and hungry ghosts in the making. These ghosts have skinny throats and large bellies; they want to be fed the fruit that will release them from their suffering but their ignorance squeezes their throats. So, they are unable to eat the fruit of the Dhamma. They will inherit this greed in the next life, in a new configuration, not as a punishment but as the fruit of their own cultivation. From what I have seen in trance, this fact of karma is not a metaphor but a distinct fact with physical, painful properties.

I took my upasika vows this year. I’ve switched from Tantric Vajrayana studies to adamantly studying the Pali suttas. I incorporate Tantra with sutta studies, using my siddhis on behalf of monastics living in monasteries.

The majority of the people in my life stand with the marginalized and oppressed. I have deliberately surrounded myself with good people. My communities shine brightly because they have been generous for most of their lives, including in ‘past’ lives. They live generously. They are generous with their thoughts, energy, attention, effort, presence. Their generosity often puts themselves at risk in one way or another. They do not feel forced to choose between their safety and the safety of others who are confronted with a genocide playing out around them. This is living Dhamma, people behaving according to cosmic law. This is Engaged Dhamma, people using their own human practices to respond to the injustices of the world. When we grow our bodhicitta we align with the Dhamma, we resonate at its lofty height, its ever-present subtlety. We also bear the fruit in this life and the next.

If you could see what I see, you would see, without a telescope, the sprawling network of light that we are when we work together. We create the vast, great, cosmic filament that connects small beings to each other, and also to larger beings like planets, solar systems, galaxies.

In the Dana Sutta: Giving, the Buddha explains the different mental motivations behind giving. A person might give to gain status, out of attachment, or in hopes of a return. However, the highest form of giving is treated as an "ornament for the mind" and a "support for the mind" to cultivate serenity and advance along the spiritual path. Generosity unlocks parts of the mind that lead you to higher stages on the path of Awakening. Heart-centered generosity is one of the vehicles that drives you away from your own suffering.

If you have suffered in your life and you are on your healing path, please know that when you address the suffering in front of you, outside of you, that you are also addressing the suffering inside. There is no inside, no outside. There is No-Self.

Below are fundraising campaigns and organizations where we can practice Dana with a pure heart:

Nepal-Tibet Flash Floods: Barre Center for Buddhist Studies List of Donation Resources

Fundraiser: Bashar Kullab and his family in Gaza

Meal Train for Friend 01: Recovering from emergency surgery

Meal Train for Friend 02: Recovering from gender affirming surgery

Reminder: Make offerings to your ancestors, spiritual guides and teachers, angels, the devas, the nagas, the asuras, and to hungry ghosts. Make sense offerings of sound, incense, flowers, fruits, rice, wine or other alcohol depending on who you’re offering to, art, and so forth. Keep up your altars daily, observe the moon phases.

Lastly, a poem offering during these transitional times in the world:

My first blue hibiscus bloom in my garden, from back in July.

Lumbricus terrestris by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Lumbricus terrestris

November 13, 2022 by Rosemerry

On a day when the world is weighty,
   dark and dense with need,
       I want to be the earthworm
         that gives itself over to tunneling,
   its every movement an act
     of bringing spaciousness.
       And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,
   I want to meet the world wormlike,
     which is to say grounded,
       consistent, even slow.
   No matter how desperate the situation,
     the worm does not tunnel faster
       nor burrow more.
   It knows it can take decades
     to build fine soil.
       To whatever is compacted,
   the worm offers its good worm work,
     quietly bringing porosity
       to what is trodden,compressed.
   So often, in my rush to repair,
     I end up exhausted.
Let my gift to the world be
  my constancy, a devotion to openness,
     my willingness to be with what is.
       Let my gift to myself be patience
   as I tend what is dense and dark.

My son Prax (Kalayo) and I in front of the Mahabodhi Stupa.

Cavern House Temple: Birth Day

This week I celebrated my birthday. Ever since I fully entered the stream and saw this reality around me dissolve, I stopped caring about my birthday in a way. As a younger person, I used to get anxiety about people remembering my birthday or not, fearful that I would feel lonely around that time. As an adoptee it used to be hard growing up away from my family, always spending my birthday away from them. As a young adult, I would feel offended if my boyfriends or girlfriends didn’t remember my birthday or if they didn’t get me a gift. Now those anxieties have melted away and I laugh at myself. This lifetime I was born as Trinilyn and took on my mother’s name Trinidad so that the world would speak her name. I “made a name” for myself in the art world and made my mother so proud that she still cries every time that she talks about me to other people. With this joy I laugh at myself, too. The anxieties and joys are the same.

In another life I will be born again, a new person with a new birthday. The anxieties and joys will be similar. They are all illusions of the material world meant to shape us, grow us. When we grow a lot we then see that we are not “we” at all. And then we laugh at ourselves again. We are quite literally one. Our perceived loneliness, fears, sorrows here on Earth are miniature, reflected versions of what the Universe herself felt before she made the most ancient emanations of herself, the deities and us. Our joys are miniature versions of her profound, eternal joy because she makes Life, is Life itself. She is the original author, the artist of our consciousness and D.N.A., she is the womb, the aether, movement and change. When we make something that brings joy to others, when we give generously, she says, “See, how I create?”

On my birthday, I paid homage to the Buddha for transmitting the Dharma to his students and to those in the world who, centuries later, would listen for themselves.

Then, I paid my yearly voluntary land tax to the local indigenous tribe whose land I occupy. Although I am and adoptee and immigrant, I am also a settler because I never had my local tribe’s permission to live here. They are a marginalized people without federal recognition or financial support. Paying the land tax allows them to save money and over time buy back land that was stolen from them. This preserves their food practices and therefore their well-being.

I then made contributions (donations and volunteer work) to the Bhutan Nuns Foundation, the Songdhammakalyani Monastery in Thailand, the Tibetan Nuns Project in Northern India, and Dhammadharini Monastery and East Bay Meditation Center in California. Supporting women in Buddhist and Tantric communities is critical if Buddhists wish to keep the true diversity of the Dharma alive.

I made offerings to the sun, for she gifts to us warmth, inspiration, the Dharma itself. I watered the fragrant herbs and flowers in my summer garden. I thought of my friends behind bars, my friends unable to be outside with me because they stood up to injustice. I ate food with my parents, partner, and son in our backyard. My son fed barley to the pair of mourning doves who live on the side of our house and said prayers for my protection. I hope in my next life I will get glimpses of this life and remember the bittersweet moments of fleeting joy.

Cavern House Temple: Appointment With Life

The photos from the poem below were taken by my niece Mary Rose at the Abo-Abo river in Bataan.

I have an appointment with Life.

She stands in the river as my mother,

she is the river, too, her arms rippling streams

and the low-hanging branches of the willow trees.

She calls me to bathe

in the material realm.

A bath in the mud, a bath in a crystal pool,

it is all the same.

She embraces me as Tara,

my most miserable Self

sagging like fruit

on her loving vines.

I have an appointment with Life.

She sends me away from my Motherland

to the land of the Enemy so that I

can be a lotus sprouting from the muck.

She springs forth like Durga, a weapon in each hand,

at every turn on the Path.

I watch the debris float and settle around me,

as I reach for the sun, the mud a shadow

getting smaller behind me as I ascend.

I have an appointment with Life.

She tells me to watch my family

from across her ring of fire,

to witness their sorrows and joys,

to draft a map from their bodies

so that I may withstand the winds overhead.

It is this distance between my family and myself

that makes a great garden of the sea

from which the drowning find the sprawling roots

and hold on for dear Life.

Life braids the roots as Sarasvati, smiling,

as if to say, “See what we have created?”

Apart, far away, that is my duty in this appointment with Life.

To stand beside women and children the way my mother

emulates the Goddess, the river,

the willow tree, the prophet,

her singing voice translating the language of light

into the language of sound: all nourishment,

the cool shade and the cool water,

the delicate light of the sun

glittering the sound waves.

She lives in my fingers as Laxmi,

my hands waving in the blue-black sky, beacons

attracting the wild wanderers in the sobbing night.

— July 8, 2026

I honor my mother and bow at the seat of her altar for she is a fractal of Life from which I have gained all knowledge. I bow to all bodhisattvas who endure suffering so that we may awaken including my birth mother and my mother-in-law. Om tare tuttare ture svah. Om braam breem broum Budhaya namah. Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Shakyamuniye svah.

Cavern House Temple: Death

Snippets of the Cavern House Temple altar and some of our plants in the early summer morning.

We had a sudden death in our family this weekend. I witness my father’s grief and sorrow as he is shocked with the loss of his closest sibling, his best friend, his youngest brother. I honor my uncle for the kindness he showed in fleeting moments, and the long life he had with our family. My Catholic family struggles deeply with death and the general end-of-life transition. I give thanks to the deaths of my friends and other family because that pain led me closer to the Dharma. I give thanks to the Buddha for transmitting the Dharma so that death is never a true surprise or a confusing event for me. I give thanks for the ability to see beyond the material realm; I know that the spirit goes on, that this life here is a pinprick of light on a multidimensional spectrum that we might call a journey.

In this lifetime my uncle met a bodhisattva and the bodhisattva tested him. My uncle will purify in the realms that mirror what he made here on earth, and then return to some other form of life. My uncle is not separate from my father, from his children or grandchild, or from myself. We are consciousness together, shining and sharing our energies, doing our duties here for a time. May my family’s suffering be comforted by visions of my uncle in the enjoyment heaven and of emptiness beyond, and the sublime joy that comes with it. May our beloved dead visit us and then move on to the next part of their life cycle. May our spirits heal in this realm and the next.

We pray for the monks of Wat Roi Phra Phutthabat Phu Manorom in Mukdahan District, Thailand who were killed in the crash involving an 11-year-old driver. Check with your local Thai Buddhist temple to see how to safely donate to the monks who are recovering from their injuries.

Cavern House Temple: Tantric Paintings Set 01

Tantric paintings and illustrations June 2026. These were painted immediately after meditation sessions:

Phosphenes and geometric light patterns of the mind.

Spirit guides as they initially appear as well as emotions that appear as energetic light patterns, sounds, and sensations. These lights get brighter with more time and attention.

Revealing/shedding of false perception; perceiving the Source.

Growing the Source within; the “Self” magnetizing to the Light.

Emergence and revelation of the Sambhogakaya, or the enjoyment body of the Trikaya.

The Divine Spark of Jesus, the Ground Luminosity of Dzogchen, the Light and Breath of Sufism, Sophia or Wisdom of the ancient Greeks.

Matter spiraling like a serpent through the torus body of the cosmic egg or ergosphere from which we reincarnate or return to the Sambhogakaya or Dharmakaya.

Enjoyment body or realm where our ancestors, great masters, and other high spirits reside.

Vajrasattva’s healing wisdom light; Vairocana’s Pure Lands or Heaven.

Home. From here, all is accessible, all time is viewable.

A place for healing young spirits who were traumatized children on Earth, or other planets.

Spirits returning to the Sambhogakaya.

Dzogchen vision (Tantric Gnosis) revealing Samantabhadra, a single point of energy, the Source, pure emptiness.

Our interconnected electromagnetic bodies igniting each other with interactions in the material realm.

Close up of one kind of intricate light pattern of the mind. These patterns carry information, consciousness, etc.

We are never alone. There is beauty everywhere in the universes. The universe is beauty itself. Suffering exists only in material planes and therefore we must face suffering as it arises. More suffering is coming for all: for the poor people of the global south who will be subjected to the whims of the elites, and for the elites who cling desperately to status and materialism, for the animals and plants who die alongside us. All of the suffering is shared, all of it is each of our responsibility. I pray that we show up bravely and respond from our hearts.

Cavern House Temple: Go Inward

“My actions are the ground on which I stand.” - The Buddha

A Message From Spirit Guides

For Those Who Wish For An End:

I posted this message to Substack hoping to reach some people that popped into my brain during meditation recently. They just so happen to follow me on there, though I haven’t posted anything before. Thank you to the few readers who seek out my writing and comics. I am dedicated to standing with young people who feel helpless in this world when really they are all powerful. Click here to read.

When the Buddha says that his actions are the ground on which he stands, he means it. Our thoughts are the first part of creating the material world. Our actions are the thoughts materialized, reverberations of our thoughts. They are vibrations that become matter. The reality of our current world in turmoil is the collective consequence of our individual apathies, exhaustion, neglect, cruelty, desires and greed, ignorance over time. We are standing on the ground we have created. In our personal lives we must show up for the people who love us and the vulnerable people who those in power ignore. This sounds very instructional and it is. Some millions of people are facing years of famine because of the West’s greed. Some people will lose their children to what we have created. It is 100% our responsibility to show up, to Love and I do not mind at all if people find that corny. I am an artist and so are you and together we can make a life of peace. My imagination extends that far, does yours? We, the Awakened on Earth, persist despite ridicule and obstacles because apathy and inaction are no longer options if we do care about young people and the future of this planet. I hope that you read my article on Substack to understand what I am talking about. I hope that you share the resource below to any young LGBTQ people that you might know, and I hope that you read the poem at the end of this post. Why do I hope these things? For my own readership and following? For my own pride and ego? I hope because it is the most miraculous thing we can do as humans on this Earth. I invite the guides to imbue us with healing energy, with intellect so caring and fierce that no one can go hungry in our collective future, including emotional starvation. Simply voting for the right people will not solve the sadness that pervades our world right now. A cultural, worldwide revolution of Love, of Nature and Consciousness is critical and possible.

Resources and Links

The Youth Space is an organization that I used to volunteer for when it was a part of the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ Center. They are located in San Jose but help many teens and young people all over the Bay Area. Please click the link to learn more and get connected.

My friend, the poet Bashar Kullab, is in Gaza, Palestine, living in a tent. Please click this link to help me spread the word about his campaign for food and basic living necessities. He is the best friend of my best friend who was martyred last year, Mohammed Abu Jarad. So, I love him. Bashar receives 100% of the funds. Thank you for your Love and care.

The LGBTQ Youth Space, located at 452 South First Street, San Jose, Calif., is a safe and confidential drop-in center for youth and young adults ages 13-25. (Photo Jacqueline Ramseyer).

Bashar with a cute pet dog he met in the market. He loves animals.

Poets Are Prophets

James Wright

1927 –1980

Northern Pike

All right. Try this,

Then. Every body

I know and care for,

And every body

Else is going

To die in a loneliness

I can’t imagine and a pain

I don’t know. We had

To go on living. We

Untangled the net, we slit

The body of this fish

Open from the hinge of the tail

To a place beneath the chin

I wish I could sing of.

I would just as soon we let

The living go on living.

An old poet whom we believe in

Said the same thing, and so

We paused among the dark cattails and prayed

For the muskrats,

For the ripples below their tails,

For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making

under water,

For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.

We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.

We prayed for the road home.

We ate the fish.

There must be something very beautiful in my body,

I am so happy.

From Above the River: The Complete Poems by James Wright. Copyright © 1992 by the literary estate of James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.