Monkey Mind

Happy Saturday friends!

Did you see the Walk for Peace monks arrive in Washington, DC on Wednesday? We changed up our Wednesday Women's Circle just to watch Bhikku Pannakara speak on tv together!

And of course their sweet Aloka was there with them 💜

During his talk, Bhikku Pannakara spoke about the monkey mind which made me remember a digital illustration I did a couple of years ago about just that. This is what my brain feels like a lot:

He describes the monkey mind, "It will jump here and there, go here and there, grab this and that."

How to calm it? Mindfulness that starts with ignoring your phone first thing in the morning. I'm thinking about getting an old fashioned alarm clock and leaving my phone plugged in on the other side of my room at night.

"Every time when you touch your phone, your mind starts wandering," he said. "So don't touch your phone in the morning when you wake up. Instead, make your bed nice and neat. Go to the bathroom, still no phone. 

"Next step is to take a pen and a piece of paper and write, "Today is going to be my peaceful day." Writing it down is important, when your hand is pairing with your mind, it makes a big difference."

I couldn't find the transcript for when the monks were at the Washington National Cathedral, which is what we all watched but I did find one for the speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the words were similar:

Visit: Kerstin Zilm did a transcription of the speech by the Venerable Bhikku Pannakara at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, February 11, 2026.

There was something so sweet and familiar about the sound of his voice, the way he spoke English...and then I remembered—the children I grew up with in southern California, many of them were from Vietnam, and the sound of his voice reminded me of them. My first "boyfriend" in 4th grade was named Vinh Nguyen. He gave me this necklace with my name on it (still in my memory box):

THE RANCH:

Mom used to call me on days like this and say, "Oh! You should see the Carolina blue sky today!"

I stood there and watched these two before realizing they were not actually stuck in the ice but just laying on top:

I'm 5'7", my feet are size 10.5-11. With shoes, my foot is almost a foot long. Look how big this oak leaf is!

Also, I'm SO done with Keens. Just a couple of months after I bought these, the leather just disintegrated on the sides. Luckily that white fabric is still keeping the water out.

B-Rad, getting some serious donkey snuggles in:

A few times this week, I took the littles out separately for a walk around the pond to do some clicker training. The rest of the herd was not happy when one of their friends was away, even though I stayed within sight the whole time! Later I came out to find the Duchess of Cashmere as close as she could get to her best friends:

Brad is moving along on the grape arbor redo, all the vines are off the posts, now moving on to taking them all down. Next he will put new posts in and install wire for the grapes to grow on:

We will also be able to double our parking in this area when it's all done!

Caught a fabulous peachy pink sunset while driving back from getting the mail:

My little boys:

My little girl, hanging out with me, eating hay bits while I stuff bags:

ART THIS WEEK:

Last week I created the middle harvest mouse and thought it was too cute, so I decided to paint a couple more and turn it into a fun little trio!

The next session of the Wednesday Women's Circle is starting this coming week and along with meditation, circle time where each woman gets to speak without interruption, tea and cookies, there is time for art. I will be teaching how to do these 3 little paintings for this session. If you'd like to be on the waiting list for the next one that starts April 14th, send me an email.

Other ways to work with me: equine partnered coaching, neurofeedback, 1:1 or group art classes (online or in person), and Reiki. Click here for more info.

Thank you to all who responded to my post last week, I so appreciate you! I'm still getting back to each of you, I haven't forgotten!

THE MEMES:

And finally, a new Facebook friend painted something fabulous this week:

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This is an AI-free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-)

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Thank you for reading :-)

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