What are your feelings on plantains?
Hidden treasure. Looks like a meh banana until you taste aloko, then there's no going back, you'll crave more of it
1) How has life been since you were last here? I hope it's going well for you!
A lot happened xD Both good and bad, but that's what life is. I left the big city (finally) and settled in a beautiful region with beautiful nature, good food and good people ! The **** economy made me start cultivating my own food too, and I loved it. With some elbow grease I grew a lot of veggies last year, which made us eat good and save a surprising lot of money. Can't wait for the winter to end and start my seedlings again
All those years working my butt off in the big city paid off also. I am a homeowner ! It's been hectic but starting to settle in the new place, small steps.
I dunno what tomorrow will bring next, but we'll see in time
2) What has renewed your interest in RF?
I missed people from back then and I'm happy to see some still around
It's also becoming more rare to find forums on the internet, even more active ones. I tried meeting people on Discord for a while but dropped it. The instant chat format is just too time and life consuming. Forum format is chill, you take time to read, to ponder, to talk to people.
3) How would you describe your religious, political, and philosophical leanings?
A few years ago I hit a wall in my religion for a lot of reasons. What I had interest into and what I wanted to learn was inaccessible to me: because I'm a woman, because I'm white and because there are extremely few genuine lineages that are still alive in an ocean of con-artists and fake gurus. I ended up finding a legit teacher, only catch was that he is Buddhist, not Hindu. But I got accepted and treated the very same as a man or a tibetan person. No discrimation and equal opportunities to learn and grow ... So I jumped in and started everything over.
Long story short, it went very well since then. I took my vows and became an ordained ngakma, traveled to the US and France for rituals and retreats... Preparing to attend more in Nepal and also getting involved in learning traditional thangka painting as well as donating and taking care of nuns and refugee kids in India and Nepal. I also met my current teacher and completed a Dzogchen retreat, moved to Bön religion practices. Which wasn't very well received by some sangha people but I also decided to not care anymore about those opinions.
Spiritual life is good, fulfilling, but so busy now xD
Politically and philosophically... Nothing much changed. I've always been saying that I didn't want to get involved in politics or "take a side" but apparently being anti-corruption and wanting fair and equal treatments for everyone to be happy, healthy and wealthy enough to life is being a leftist. So I guess I'm a leftist ? I don't know. People with extreme left view tell me I'm not leftist enough for them, or whatever. My political stance is more like finding the middle way. All that I know is that whatever political side you look at, there are almost only corrupt people. Current governement here is a perfect exemple of that... Macron is a disaster, but at the same time the left is too busy with petty internal fights to really be of importance. Shame. Feeling like France will not be far ending up with a far right president next and it's going to be an absolute ****show. x_x