The Beginning Continues — and Some Things Come to an End

Burning Life ended yesterday with the official “burning” of the Man, and somehow I managed to forget about it. Oh well. Tomorrow, the twelve Burning Life sims go poof. I’ve constantly reminded myself about Impermanence, but yesterday was kinda tough. I went to my build to bundle things up, and I felt very sad. That build was like a second home for me. I actually spent more time there than my home parcel in Second Life. So, I decided to give all the build components away. The moment I posted a notice to the SL Buddhists group, I had three people drop in to look around. One decided to take a copy of just the stupa and courtyard, another didn’t have space, but wanted to come see it before the sims were deleted. Later on, another resident sent me a message asking about it, and I gave her a copy of everything except the Bodhi Tree, because when I bundled it up, I accidentally picked up some other stuff with it. She’ll be getting the tree soon. One exciting thing about giving away the stupa is that I’ve made some new friends. Both residents who took builds are just wonderful people. And the resident who just came to look around is an author who wrote a book on meditation! I can’t wait to get to know her better. I set up the kuti on a friend’s island near my house, and it looks perfect there. It’s nice to have a bit of the build close at hand, where I can continue to enjoy it. So, my build is disappearing, but it will live on in other locations in Second Life. Who knows, maybe I’ll recreate it on a new parcel somewhere myself, or maybe the Milarepa Land Trust will be endowed with a new parcel for a tranquil stupa and surroundings. As for the continuing beginning, I spent most of the day making massive modifications to the default Blogger “Scribe” template, turning it into what you see now. All the artwork is my own creation, with the exception of the saffron fabric in the header and footer, which is from iStockPhoto.com. I’m well pleased with the results.