This is a glossary of ordinary words that I use in specific ways, or words I’ve invented to mean specific things.
This glossary takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including Buddhism, Soryu Forall, Peace Pilgrim, David Allen, Tiago Forte, Eliyahu Goldratt, Samo Burja, and others.
- ally: a long-term strategic partner who seeks mutual benefit, cooperation, coordination rather than competition
- bliss states: concentration states, jhānas—characterized by absorption and bliss
- bodhisattva: any hero who desires to serve others and the world with their life; one who has taken the Four Bodhisattva Vows from Mahāyāna Buddhism
- brahmavihārās: four virtues cultivated by bodhisattvas in heart-centered practice: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity
- cool: embodying positive qualities you resonate with so that others you like can find you too and you all can be happy being friends and building community together for fun and benefit
- couldness: a kind of moment by moment knowing that you could go anywhere, and do, say, think or feel anything; a way of accessing aliveness
- empowerment: the process of seeing someone, reflecting what you see, encouraging their efforts, helping them steer towards their vow for the benefit of all
- friend: an address towards another being, seen with an attitude of loving-kindness, compassion, good-will, and friendliness
- fun: the joy and delight one experiences when acting in accordance with one’s nature, one’s vow; in its truest form, invariably co-arising with benefit for self, other, and world (service)
- fun service project: a project that is intended to be both fun and beneficial; a quest
- funprofessional: neither professional nor unprofessional but a third, secret, fun, powerful thing; balancing excellence and fun, avoiding both rigid perfectionism and carelessness or sloppiness, aiming to do work that reflects a whole human, their heart and their lives
- generosity: giving one’s time, energy, skills as a gift, and receiving money and other forms of support as a gift; a relational form of earning a living that supports Right Livelihood; a translation of the Buddhist term Dāna
- headcanon: broadly, personal ideas about a resonant story or its world, that are unofficial/unapproved of by the creator but make sense and feel significant to the individual reading or otherwise engaging in the story; in my usage, also applicable to ideas about one’s own life, significant people or chapters in it, and ultimately the universe itself
- heartcanon: like a headcanon, but felt from, discovered with the heart rather than reasoned out by the head or intellect
- heart: the energetic heart, at the center of your chest; the locus of emotional experiences that stretch through the torso, the face, and the whole body; a metaphor, a synecdoche for the emotional body
- heartspace practice: intentionally exploring and cultivating connections between hearts, either in pairs or in larger groups
- heavenly realm: at the limit, a world where everyone is living in alignment with their vows
- hero: anyone with a vow (everyone), who is here to serve the world; a synonym for bodhisattva
- love: a wide spectrum of positive thoughts and feelings which can be cultivated in heart-centered practice, including but not limited to the Brahmavihārās
- magick: the view and practices associated with taking seriously that What You Do Matters, including your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs; a synonym of causality and prayer
- maximum deep benefit: aspiring to help as many people as possible, as deeply as possible
- mettāwave: a form of electronic music, like progressive trance or deep house, focused on developing love, mettā, and the Brahmavihārās
- mysticism: the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality; or the belief that such an experience is possible
- pilgrim: “A pilgrim is a wanderer with a purpose.” (Peace Pilgrim)
- power: the ability to hold to our own perspective, and to get people to do what we want them to do
- productivity: the ability to maintain and increase one’s own agency and throughput in achieving one’s goals and vision, and the creation or use of any system or habit that aids you in doing so
- project: a series of tasks associated with a desired outcome and a deadline or timeframe by which you’d like it done
- quest: a synonym for “fun service project”
- self-oriented: being motivated by one’s own benefit and interests, but in a way that does not harm others, and may even benefit them
- service: any action or activity aimed at benefitting self, others, and world, invariably co-arising in its truest form with deep enjoyment and fulfillment (fun)
- spirituality: the fundamental improvement of perception and behavior
- speciesism: the prejudicial belief that one species is higher or of more importance than another; often the specific belief that humans are more valuable than animals or plants
- strategy: “the means and methods required to satisfy the conditions necessary to achieving a system’s ultimate goal” (Dettmer); the bottleneck on effective coordination between individuals and groups for the benefit of all beings
- u: a way to remember and indicate that u are just as important as i am
- vow: a life purpose, emergent from the dance between self and world—your values, dreams, and skills, and the circumstances you find yourself in, the requests the world asks of you; your life—all of the actions you take, and the effects of those actions
- vulnerability hangover: like a hangover with alcohol after a night of heavy drinking, but for being emotionally vulnerable. when one took actions that caused embarrassement, vulnerability, awkwardness, not knowing how someone feels or thinks about them, fearing impending judgment or anger or shame
- wisdom: the ability to let go of all perspectives, holding to no perspective whatsoever; the intuitive and verbal discernment of insights based on the lessons one learns from life experience
- you-shaped: a variable word, to be used with your name—<your name>-shaped—meaning anything that is shaped like you, well suited to you; e.g. tasshin-shaped