Metta

Gagaite:

I enjoyed Dorothy's poem.

but this part...


when we live life
asking
we will be answered
in heaven


...there it is again!

the immortality thing that i keep bringing up.. it's everwhere...this higher purpose thing puts people at ease and offers solice, giving believers some meaning to their lives. i wish that i were among them!

Gaga sez:

Nice job on spotting that little problem in Dorothy's poem. We come to a brick wall trying to figure out the "answer" after we are dead. It's ingrained in us to hope for such an answer long after it is possible to get one...no doubt a cultural artifact.

The more counter-intuitive, and harder to see because of the subtlety to see it, is that we are answering the question of life by living...every single moment.

What is life's purpose? To live!!

The idea to want a prize at the end of it is a totally wacky notion. It probably came up because of class separation in a culture...you know... you get enough people together and then you start to notice differences ("hey..that guy's got more money than me", " she's uglier than me", and so on). We compare and contrast ourselves and then no end of trouble starts. To compensate for the differences that we think are our inadequacies, we say, "well, the next time around (in heaven) I'll get it my way."

The psychology seems to be hard-wired into our mind (a meme). Perhaps millions of years of evolutionary processes formed this concept of "heaven". It is not real or true. It is just an idea.

I will say this however: faith is important to a fulfilling life-- a faith in... something.

It doesn't really matter what it is, because if you stick with faith in something, life becomes very fulfilling. Problems occur when suddenly you doubt your belief in faith...and so thoughts in the direction away from faith need to be reined in. Maybe choose more wisely in what you believe in.

I suppose if we expect someone to hand us a faith on a plate it might be easier...but it doesn't work that way. It is up to the individual to cultivate faith. The analogy of growing a plant or having a pet is useful: if you give a plant or a pet love and nourishment, it will grow up beautifully. If you neglect it, it won't.

What's a good thing to have faith in?

Hmm. Love. Loving kindness seems to work. The kind that is like the sunshine, which is distributed evenly to everyone and everything.

I had a real dilemma with this issue of faith and love up at the retreat in Thunder Bay in August...how to activate love. I found a method that was useful. It was the same technique as when I was a kid.

Before bed my parents made us say prayers to bless everyone in the family. So I tried that again, but expanded it out to people and things that percolated up in consciousness...not just folks I knew and loved, but people I had neutral feelings for, right on to those I truly despised. After a few days of this, I noticed a softening. The connection between the heart, love, and faith had an effect on my condition. I noticed how the body and mind felt when I applied loving kindness. This was the focus: loving kindness as a mind/body conditioner to restore faith.

Here is a link to cultivate a loving kindness meditation, which might be useful to try.

It might seem silly or embarrassing at first, but the effects of practicing loving kindness prayer/meditation/reflection do have a great soothing and calming effect, and helps to restore faith.

Think of this: when you get angry and scream and yell at someone, BOY, can others ever feel the strength of your emotion! And it also conditions your own mind to be agitated, harsh, coarse, impatient, unrefined, violent...and so on and so forth. So, if you radiate the opposite of anger and rage, that is... loving kindness ... through gentle, soft, quiet practice, that has got to have the opposite effect. It makes perfect sense.

Check it out. I think loving kindness is something to use to develop faith and let go of the "worldy ways" of hoping for redemption in some other time in the future.

Better than nothing!

Wrong Question...Bad Answer

Gagaite:

Hey gaga brain!

Good thoughts about humans questioning the big "why?" But I'm still perplexed as to 'why' we have this in our make-up; this yearning to figure things out, to make some special meaning out of our lives.

If you come to the logical conclusion that there is no God, that's it's merely a construct to give our lives some greater purpose, what is it in our being that makes us want to figure out the meaning of life? I suppose that we can be zen about it and say that life is just the way it is - a bunch of happy accidents if you will, but if that's the case, I'd put forward that we can change our realities. For example, if I choose not to fly on a commercial aircraft, I'll never die in a plane accident. I'll die eventually, but my conscious decision eliminating flight as the way that I'm going to meet my end, changed this outcome. I'd put forward that our conscious and unconscious decisions creates these "happy accidents" in life, if you will.

I'm also curious about where the inherent goodness in people comes from. The desire to save someone - both literally and figuratively. If God isn't part of our equation, then why are we essentially good people?

Gaga Sez:

The path I've been on about recently, that being the investigation of life, human beings, consciousness, evolution, what have you, suggests that we learn to ask "why" questions from our ancestors, from our environment, and from our experience. It doesn't make it a valid question, nonetheless.

I think you've got the beacon going on this one too from your comments.

If you want to get into as plausible account of life as it is framed in evolutionary terms, pick up The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins at your local library (I say library because it's no use buying this book...unless you like collecting books, of course).

About our inherent "goodness". The state of "good" is actually hardwired into our genes. It's the same idea as "if I do this good thing it will indirectly do good for me" thought. It's good to consult Dawkins about this. But we must be careful about how "selfish" is interpreted here. A gene is selfish only in the way it sets up conditions for survival of genes in general, not a personal "self". Good then becomes synonymous with survival of genes.

There is a strange paradoxical way of thinking about this stuff: bodies are formed by genes as places for genes to live. It's not that we have genes, rather genes made us to keep themselves going.

"Goodness" helps the genes to replicate in enough quantity and for long enough to replicate again and again and again. That seems to be what is going on in life. All else is add-on, or coincidental, features that emerged over huge quantities of time. A wonderful and awe-inspiring dance.

You are quite right to say we have options and decisions about life...that we have the power to decide where this one life goes. It certainly is not up to some "God" or "fate". We are responsible for our decisions in life. This is a very subtle thing actually--in the coarse way we equate ourselves with having the power of creation. From this thought actions follow; however, this is not quite true. We are creations of creation, not super-creation itself. Life follows in a long chain reaction: arising, living, passing away...we are simply in this.

The human being is an extremely fine and sensitive existence. An amazing culmination of conditions and volitions.

All religions hint at some sort of purpose of life, like some way to escape the current conditions...that on some other plane all sorts of unsatisfactoriness, incompleteness, ignorance, and suffering will no longer plague us (notions of "heaven" somewhere other than here and now). They also talk of methods to achieve the opposite of "suffering"--by doing "good", praying, being moral, reaching ecstatic states of mind... and so on and so forth.

In Buddhism it is said if you personally look at the way things are, as opposed to believing what others say, and you follow the method suggested by the Buddha, you'll get the insight to see how things are. The way things are is this: conditions form dependent on karma (karma is neither a good or bad thing, it sort of means "action" see http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/karma.html for more). Once you end karma (action) things won't arise, therefore it's the end of suffering.

In your example of not flying, you illustrate precisely the law of karma!

If you don't fly, you won't die that way.

Sometimes because of our conditioning here in this culture we conceive of karma that effects this notion of "self"-this current entity that was born, lives, and will die. But you can easily see from the above example, karma can occur in thought, and the whole cycle is resolved in a microsecond.

If you end the karma, you end the cycle. Once the cycle is ended, there is no more arising, and therefore no more suffering.

It's really that simple to say. It's more difficult to understand and practice. It becomes a challenge to be mindful of this truth in every single thought, movement, or volition we have. Once we get a grip on all these subtle levels, we have the power in this lifetime to once and for all end karma.

Then again, past conditions have formed the present, and so whatever was handed on our plate when we are born must be dealt with. We don't need to analyze it or make sense out of it, but simply see it as it is, free it from the roots of consciousness, and let it go. Then we are truly free to "act" in whatever way we want.

It goes on and on. I'm getting a headache just thinking like this ;-)

More?

Millennium Bugs (BKK 23)

Originally written Sunday January 9, 2000.

I
Time passes unhindered.

When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well. Therefore, if when our final day comes we are able to look back and see that we have lived full, productive and meaningful lives, that will at least be of some comfort. If we cannot, we may be very sad. But which of these we experience is up to us.

The best way to ensure that when we approach death we do so without remorse is to ensure that in the present moment we conduct ourselves responsibly and with compassion for others. Actually, this is in our own interest, and not just because it will benefit us in the future. As we have seen, compassion is what makes our life meaningful. It is the source of lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart, the heart of one who acts out of a desire to help others. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice towards all oters we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter of complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense. There is no denying that consideration of others is worthwhile. There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers, we ourselves suffer. Nor is there any denying that the more our hearts and minds are afflicted with ill-will, the more miserable we become. Thus we can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.

Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy.

Why, then, if it is so simple to be happy, do we find it so hard? Unfortunately, though most of us think of ourselves as compassionate, we tend to ignore these common-sense truths. We neglect to confront our negative thoughts and emotions. Unlike the farmer who follows the seasons and does not hesitate to cultivate the land when the moment comes, we waste so much of our time in meaningless activity. We feel deep regret over trivial matters like losing money while keeping from doing what is genuinely important without the slightest feeling of remorse. Instead of rejoicing in the opportunity we have to contribute to others' well being, we merely take our pleasures where we can. We shrink from considering others on the grounds that we are too busy. We run left and right, making calculations and telephone calls and thinking that this would be better than that. We do one thing but worry that if someone else comes along we had better do another. But in this, we engage only the coarsest and most elementary levels of the human spirit. Moreover, by being inattentive to the needs of others, inevitably we end up harming them. . .

. . . If you cannot, for whatever reason, be of help to others, at least don't harm them. Consider yourself a tourist. Think of the world as it is seen from space, so small and insignificant yet so beautiful. Could there really be anything gained from harming others during our stay here? Is it not preferable, and more reasonable, to relax and enjoy ourselves quietly, just as if it were visiting a different neighborhood? Therefore, in the midst of your enjoyment of the world you have a moment, try to help in however small a way those who are downtrodden and those who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not help themselves. Try not to turn away from those whose appearance is disturbing, from the ragged and the unwell. Try never to think of them as inferior to yourself. If you can, try not even think of yourself as better than the humblest beggar. You will look the same in your grave.

To close with, I would like to share a short prayer which gives me great inspiration in my quest to benefit others:

May I become at all times, both now and forever A protector for those without protection A guide for those who have lost their way A ship for those with oceans to cross A bridge for those with rivers to cross A sanctuary for those in danger A lamp for those without light A place of refuge for those who lack shelter And a servant to all in need.

--Segment from the last chapter of the book by Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama (1999), entitled Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics For A New Millennium.

II
Well, believe it or not, we got one more year of the grind before the next millennium begins. And how are this year's new year's resolutions holding up? Quit smoking (again)? Tummy firming (again)? Other stuff? I really didn't think of anything for a resolution, not that I don't need to change things about myself. I suppose the tourist approach mentioned above is where I am at for the moment. I sorta dropped out and just hope like hell that I can swing through quietly like. I stepped on some toes last year, made people angry at me, and have been warned on lots of occasions I should watch my mouth (hand?), 'cuz it tends to raise the ire of others, if not simply annoy them. Well, then again others said they still want this prose-- so, I'll keep working on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Of course by now you've heard about those old folks in Taiwan conned into buying a Y2K liquid medicine in fear of catching the bug. Boy-- wasn't that a lot of baloney all that Y2K stuff? A slight oversight in a two digit date made in the 70s turned into a gizillion dollar industry for all those connected with Gates' products. Well, in the spirit of the message above, I won't rag on dear ol' Bill. He is quoted as being the world's biggest philanthropist (giving product away at retail value thereby making people even more dependent on him). OK, OK, he's a visionary, and I use his products. It's just that the world just shouldn't stop on his account. It's like Disney. It is awe-inspiring to see how a cartoon mouse became a multi-billion dollar industry. Is it just me, or does the Disney aesthetic seem to be like a full frontal lobotomy and being neutered all at once?

About being kindly or abusive to things. When I went to Chiang Mai last year, at the cottage along the Ping River (or is it Bing?--maybe it's Bping--that weird transliteration of Thai into English at play here) there were two dogs. For the most part they were well behaved and jovial. One was the mother and the other the son, an adolescent. They were very affectionate toward me for some reason. The others in the group pointed it out and found it remarkable. Well, that affection translated into a sexual affinity the teenager displayed for all on my leg. Sheesh. And you think it only happens in movies. It was a bit unnerving after a while. And subsequently, any time I would sit down to read by the river, the dog would playfully want to hump. It was all so innocuous actually--nature doing its thing. But, being the socially proprietous beings we are, I tried to avoid going where the dogs were. One time eating breakfast, a dog came up and stood by my leg under the picnic table. Without hesitation, I flicked the dog hard with my finger, and caught it at the bone surrounding the eye. What happened was most remarkable-- the dog did not change expression, nor run off or attack me or anything. It just stood there happily, but you could see that the blow caused the eyes to wince. It was as if the dog had no recollection of being in pain or of feeling any sort of sense that it was doing something wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first time in the dog's life it was actually hit!

Immediately, I felt remorse. A pang of terror and bad feelings rushed into my mind. The dog was only wanting to be kind and affectionate, and here I was scolding it to the point of striking the animal, for having happy feelings because of my presence. How utterly selfish! I suppose at these types of moments one should retain the mindfulness training. What a failure on my part, huh?

And so that will be worthy of more exploration, now and for the years to come: how to best handle everyday situations with a little more thoughtfulness, and not to harm others.

(The Dalai Lama's stuff- I dunno; mine- 653 words in 30 minutes.)

Spin in the Cycle...San Francisco

It all rolls into one
And nothing comes for free,
There's nothing you can hold, for very long.
And when you hear that song Come crying like the wind, It seems like all this life was just a dream.
-Robert Hunter/ Jerry Garcia- Stella Blue

I use this lyric in connection to what Larry wrote to say about this "impermanence" I keep mentioning. He suggested that there were tunes in his head that have been there forever, for infinity--so where's the impermanence in that?

Well, the tune does last forever. The musicians change shape--how's that? The same it seems for baseball, buildings, boats, and battles. The same tune, a different shape. And so on ad infinitum. Such is dhamma. Just don't go holding on that Joe Dimaggio is the be all and end all of baseball players... it ain't so (there, I said it ain't so). Who he is and what he is is immaterial (in every way!)--what counts is the swing of the bat, the slide into homeplate, the running/diving catch.

Well, onto San Francisco now.

There is something very weird about flying. Time just becomes mushy going horizontally across the earth at a rapid speed. Relativity becomes stone cold reality when you fly. Depending on which direction you fly in and how far you go, you either lose an entire day, or you gain one. From Bangkok to San Francisco--I left at noon March 22 and arrived at 11:50 am March 22. I arrived 10 minutes before I left. I'm too lazy right now to sort it out exactly, but if you were to go around twice and twice as fast, would you arrive two days earlier? Hmm. Spin in the cycle.

The other thing about flying--it seems to be dead time. Who really remembers much about time in an airplane? Well, sure, the time you puked, or the guy beside you was drunk and obnoxious (or maybe that was you before you puked!), the smell of baby barf and orange juice, the baaaaaaddd foooooddd, and the time you joined the mile-high club (I did just before landing at Heathrow in 1984!). But I mean, there's 12 hours or more to account for--what happened to that? I guess the same can be said about the time we sleep, standing in line at the bank machine, sitting in a car during rush hour, walking to school, brushing your teeth... what happens to the mind then? It's part of life right? We breathe during these moments, so they must be of some significance to our lives. So next time you're on the crapper, don't read, think about what you're doing, feel your breath, and really be there. Try that in line at the bank, or turn off the car radio and just sit there and breathe, or when you walk, just walk... don't think of where you're going, what you will do, what you did before, who you love, who you hate...just walk. There, a friendly lesson in insight meditation.

Arriving at SF, it was a gorgeously sunny morning. It's great coming to a place where English is spoken fluently and you kinda know the ropes. Customs was a breeze as usual, one reason was because I only had one small bag. I inquired how to get downtown and grabbed a communal minivan to Bush Street, where the Juliana Hotel is. Tony had arranged it so that I could stay with him. I grabbed a big green apple offered at the front desk and went to the room. The room was done up in sort of Mediterranean French/Italian style. Bright yellow and oranges with Hepplewhite chairs in ochre and off white broad stripes, and cherrywood and titanium-white painted furniture. It was a large double bed. I dropped my gear, took a shower and headed out to feel the United States!

Walking down Powell I noticed everyone was talking really loud. People were decked out in all sorts of clothes and fashions. Noone was nonplussed about where they were and who they were, or so it seemed. The air was crisp, a cool 17c, but invigorating. One thing you notice is the homeless folks. Mostly black. All ranting with a pitch. A fat guy held a sign that read, "Why lie? ... I want beer." Some lady screeched really loudly as people walked past, "Gimme a dollar!" There is danger in the air, clearly. You could easily turn a corner and end up in a really bad part of town. By bad, I guess you could be really hassled to give up some money... it could even be by force. I wandered around Market Street and made one wrong turn up one of the bad streets. It didn't take much to figure it out...it stank of urine. It kinda reminded me of the time last June when I helped my brother-in-law install lights in a Toronto prison. We arrived before the criminals did to await trial, but it took about a half hour after they arrived and then the place stunk like piss, sweat, and feces--just really strong animal/testosterone smells. Gals-- does this turn you on? It must because the fragrance industry has resorted to attack our olfactory senses with smells like this. I'm serious. They've done market research on it, and have instilled a little bit of sweaty man smell in the latest Calvin Klein stink. It's bad--so bad that a school in Halifax banned kids from wearing that shit to school. One kid didn't, and they got the R.C.M. P to stop the kid from coming to school. Well, I've ranted at length about the current stink craze people wipe on their bodies already. You know my position on it.

I turned around and headed back to Market and did a little window shopping. The best thing about America is that clothes and that stuff are cheap, compared to Canada anyway (that's where I'm from, remember?)--at least things seemed to be on perennial "sale". Taxes were pretty hefty, which was surprising. Service sucked. I went into get some razor blades and it was a fat black chick who was pretty bored at the cash. She did her job in a bored, perfunctionary manner. I spent a term teaching at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and there service was excellent! People didn't hassle you to buy stuff, but when you wanted service, they were there ready and eager. There were guarantees for all the purchases I did such that I could return stuff, even shoes, if I didn't like them. What a difference in SF.

I headed back to the hotel, but still no Tony. I turned on the TV, which was a real treat. Recall I don't have a TV in Bangkok, so it's a real trip to watch TV (for that fact, I rarely use a phone-- I haven't really owned a phone for over three years. I did have a phone in Nagoya in 1997, but I only used it to send messages to my Baba. That was the last time I owned a phone). I saw some old Saturday Night sketches (the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!) and some NBA and NCAA action. Then the hotel phone rang! Buddies from Kanda were in the lobby, so I went downstairs and we headed out. We went to the "Irish Bank", a pub just down the way, and had some nice Guinness and made up for the lost years.

Recall that the sole purpose for going to SF was for this Kanda reunion party. At this point I want to backtrack and lay down a little background of how this came to be.

Tony and I were sitting around the pool at the Federal Hotel in Bangkok, spring, 1996. Tony mentioned he had talked to a few people about the party he was planning. He called it the Kanda Bash 2000. He solicited my help to contribute ideas and set up the website. I made the site in August, but it was lost when my account at the University of Toronto expired. About a half a year later, Tony got the Kanda folks to make one up again. All that was on it was a guestbook and some target dates. No plans were made, noone else coopted into the project. It sat like that for a while, and then Tony got more and more people involved to help out, both in San Francisco and anywhere else people were. To make a long story short, everything came together as projected, and the Kanda Bash 2000 become a reality. In fact , the date March 25, 2000 was officially proclaimed as "Kanda Day" in San Francisco by the City Mayor. Not bad huh!

I don't think I said this, so I'll say it now: Tony, thanks!

It was your committment and hard efforts to get people turned onto this party, and it just would never have happened without you. Some may have scorned the idea, some were blase, but you never let go of your vision--and it actually happened, warts and all. It indeed was a re-union, a bringing together of friends past and present, and it rekindled a spirit that one can only describe as "family". Whatever sentimental thoughts one might have of such moments, the most important thing in our lives is the recognition that all moments of our lives are significant. Sure Kanda was a job, but it was a place where vast amounts of people spent years being together, for better or for worse. And so Kanda was worth celebrating as much as any other event in our lives. For that fact, sitting on the can, standing in line for the cash machine, sitting in traffic, and the million and one other events we do unconsciously day in and day out are worthy of celebration. Our very presence, our lives, and the lives of all things here right now merit our undivided attention and equanimous, unconditioned love. Then it can be said we truly lived this life, fully awake.

And when you are awake, you are playin', playin' in the band.

May all of you play.

Satisfied?

I can't get no...Satisfaction
-Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

Another dialog that explores some angst-riddled issues of life.

Useful?

Gagaite:

...in more philosophical in nature. what does this all MEAN? as jeffrey lee pierce, the lead singer of the Gun Club said before he immigrated from los angeles to southeast Asia, "it's a money culture here.. everything's based on how much money you have." i'm pretty sure that getting rich isn't the answer and neither is the fame (a rather shallow pursuit). i know that places exist in the world where less emphasis is placed on your bank account and i'm all for that.. give me a beach, some coconuts, rum punch, and i could be set for a really LONG time."

Gaga sez:

"What does it all mean?" as you say, is a useful epiphany, one of those realizations that can only be appreciated when circumstances present themselves to the individual. Everyone gets this revelation sooner of later, undoubtedly when we are shocked out of some delusional state, when the verity of the way life truly is hits us upside the head, but for the most part, this question is tucked away in the back of our minds, and ignored.

Some seek solace through drowning further and further in delusion, propelled by confusion, and fear. Clearly, as you note, the model of "fame and fortune" amounts to a vapid quest for something that will never be satisfactory. In a large way, Western society, particularly the model the United States propagates, that being a consumer society that lives on the pretense of freedom, wealth, health, and happiness, is actually a denial and a whitewash of the fundamental problem of living, which is that to be alive (born) means nothing will be totally satisfactory, all things are impermanent, and that this "self" we are so proud of doesn't really exist--it is a byproduct of the body/mind, which seems permanent and unique because of conditions in this time/space. All these concepts require unpacking to fully understand, and my writing here can only point to these truths, which to fully appreciate requires appropriate tutelage, or an instantaneous flash of insight. In short, however, it is ignorance and fear of the fundamental truths that propels much of our cravings.

That said, you will not be able to find a place on this earth where you can find refuge. You can run to the mountain, to the ocean, the city... but unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, and no-self will follow you around as long as you live. AND, you will also find that whatever place you go, the indigenous culture will have organized itself around some form of delusion, maybe just as insidious as your own.

So... what to do?

Granted, there are places, as you say, where there is "less emphasis placed on your bank account", primarily because they haven't invested so much into the material state of being, and hence have developed down a different path. Better? Hmm. They still have the same problem of unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, and delusion of self. If you go to India, for example, the initial shock of hoards of humanity living in squalor can be overwhelming. It was for me. Not only is it overwhelming, but you are mobbed by people that want something from you, notably your money. In this way it is not much different than New York!

Thailand might be one of the most corrupt societies you'll ever find. Government officials, police, politicians, school teachers, Buddhist monks-- right down to that begging leper on the street (which is common...those who have been there know what I am talking about) are on the take. Not only are they corrupt, but it's a class-based society, and that plays itself out like the British-- where sectors of society look down their noses at others, based on certain social status. As a 'farang' (foreigner-- a white one mind you), you have the luxury of entering the country as middle class, and are treated with some respect. This will play itself out in a nice way, as long as you got the cash.

So, once again, what to do?

It takes some determined effort to penetrate any culture to find 'pockets' where people have discovered the problem of life and dedicate themselves to living in ways in harmony with it. These pockets are worth seeking out and exploring, particularly if you initial question keeps gnawing at you. It helps to have a teacher in this regard, and good friends. If you can't find a teacher or good friends, then you have to do it by yourself.

As cheesy as that sounds, that's what faces all of us in this life. Life is about 1) recognizing that there is such a thing as unsatisfactoriness in all things here 2) find the causes of the unsatisfactoriness, 3) realize there is an end to the insatiable, and 4) follow the path to overcome it.

Easy to write, easy to read, more difficult to understand, most difficult to do (without trying)!

Be well

Fire in Action

Men are divided into a number of classes and have different ranks in this life. Through combat and effort, some of them reach a station whereby no matter what they may desire inwardly and in thought, they do not act on that desire. This is within a man's power. But that there should not be within man the itch of desire and thought -- that is not within his power. Nothing save God's attraction can eliminate that from him.

(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi)

As counterintuitive as it may seem, non-action is more difficult than action--unless under the influence of laziness and torpor--which are yet more defilements to realize.

It is extremely difficult to non-act. Most are rushing to act in some way. Layers and layers of delusion are added, more and more confusion, difficulty, suffering we take on as burdens-- and yet we keep on walking into the fire .

There is no refuge in action. Take refuge in realizing the dhamma.

The never ending mystery

Gagaite:

I am trying to think positive using a Catholic prayer guide and Biblical readings at the start of the day and it helps. I use it as a way to make myself think about the texts that seem negative to me as well as the clearly inspirational ones. There is real social commentary and inspiration to be found in e.g. Isaiah. try chapters 59, 60. Arise and shine! are real words of comfort. Let's be cheerful, he says, because all those cretin moron psychos cannot possibly win out in the end.

i think that the early church fathers as it were hijacked some of these writings and invented legends about Jesus to make the prophecies fit with his life. Still, what does one make of an honest guy like John the Baptist saying Jesus is the Lamb of God and the Son of God? Or was he hijacked too? And at the least, both John and Jesus were good guys who got no support when they personally needed defenders, which gives us a fair insight into the reality of society.

Have hope and faith that indeed goodness will prevail.

Gaga Sez:

Aha! So the Catholics are influencing you huh? Well, I could think of a lot of other sects that are far worse than them. After all, most Christians come from that tradition, that is, if you come from the European world, notably the Western part.

I was raised a Catholic, but had no proper training in it other than my mom until I went to Catholic High School (which abruptly was cut short due to changes in government funding).

What I learned mostly was a sense of community, a sense of belonging to something bigger than any one individual. It was a comforting 3 years. I did take up the study again at McGill, for in order to be certified as a teacher for the Separate school board, you needed Catholic educational training, and approval from a Catholic priest.

Actually, my sense of faith was instilled at a young age by both my parents (my dad's a Jew; my mom a Catholic), and although I waffle and wiggle on whose story to believe, I do believe in life being a good thing--a challenge of sorts given each and every one of us. The mystery of faith remains just that, a mystery, and we might as bank on the mystery as anything else "others" suggest is the true meaning of life.

I see a lot of parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, although almost diametrically opposed in the object of worship, but the similarities are interesting. Lots has been written about this partnership--Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist and current Ecumenical Buddhist, follows in a long line of folks that write of the parallels between Jesus and Buddha.

The Bible is as wonder-ful as anything else out there. It does contain everything, for those that seek. It works at whatever level you want to take it... this is what St. Augustine discovered in the 5th century.

As a young man, in the Halycon daze of his licentious youth, he scoffed at its simplistic style, but later realized he was the fool for not seeing clearly what it actually said. As so much in life, "we ain't gonna learn what we don't wanna know" (Bobby Weir and John Barlow's Lyric from "Black Throated Wind") .

For me the form of Buddhist meditation has added a dimension to practice I didn't know about--meditation is a non-intellectual affair of faith. It defies reason and logic. It brings us in touch with Sunnyata-- the void from whence all things are.

This summer I delved into cosmological physics, for work mostly, but in the process I read widely enough to get a clearer picture that at the very large and the very small levels of the universe, things are even more mysterious and unconventional than we ever imagined--reality being more complex and wonder-ful than anything our imaginations can lead us to.

Recently I am turned onto biology, because this adds another dimension to the universe--life! All this recent talk of genetic moulding and that is the reification of man's thought--it has nothing to do with the nature of life. What comes first--the idea or the "reality"? Social, economic, and political pressures give rise to ways of seeing and comprehending the universe that match the ideals of a particular society. We witness this every day, and unless you are awake and alert, you will be swallowed by such ideals that you won't even know what you do and don't know.

So this is what Jesus and Buddha were on about. Wake up! Don't take anything for granted. Always be aware and awake, don't let complacency dull you down to going along with the program (these are the Buddha's last words: "Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation. Do your best").

Keep your faith firmly rooted in the mystery, for it is the source of everything. What better place to put your faith than in the never ending mystery? Use whatever means you need to get you there.

The End of Sympathy

There is this sort of morbid fascination I have when looking upon acquaintances who, as I think you have correctly stated, have not found their own selves; but where is the humanity in such contrast and comparison to one's own life?

I ask this to myself really. A pang of guilt envelopes me at the same time I relish the thought of these folks' suffering. Is this sick? Where's my compassion?

At times when I get on my high horse and preach the stuff I do I am met with disdain and denouncement, like, who the fuck do I think I am to have such thoughts?

One can get very smug indeed in the cocoon of self. I crawled back in a few years ago and it's been difficult to step out of it. What happens is that those who go forth on their paths seem pathetic fools for doing so--yet perhaps the fool is I for not even venturing forth and making committments as they.

Well, one does have to wonder about decisions based on passion--marriages to women, money, things--seem pretty untenuous--actually ARE untenuous-- because they really are delusions in the first place. One moment of glorious, ecstatic pleasure does not a lifetime make, yet we cling to some memory of these moments we share it is always a sharing--no one, not even the Buddha, reached ecstatic self enlightenment without communicating the experience with others and try to retain it, hold on to some fuzzy, fading memory of passion.

And then comes the crying, the illness, the temper, the cancer, the endurance, the waiting, the sadness. The illusion broken, yet maintained far longer... I intended to say far longer than necessary...but obviously it is necessary to work it out until exhausted in some form--either abandoned, or seen to the end.

This is what is trumped up as being noble--holding onto a conviction, seeing something through to the end, thick and thin, locked and loaded on a singular fancy, based on some ephemeral moment that occurred that seemed right at the moment, and now dragged on and on and on as the noble thing to do.

I cannot fathom this type of thought. Hence I can easily remove myself from unpleasantness--a job, a city, a situation, a relationship. I am perhaps a Hedonist after all.

And so it makes it possible to look to other nobles folks who stuck it out, to see the decay of their dreams-- the harsh reality of dreams shattered by disillusionment-- a curious gap between the passion that drives them and the reality of what they are applying it to--which makes them neurotic messes. So in comes the booze, the sex, the drugs, the rock 'N' roll, the excuses, to escape the sheer weight of their self-prescribed burdens.

I am at a loss as to how to feel. I feel strangely cold to their plight, which isn't very nice from a moral standpoint. I am reminded of Camus' antihero in "L'estranger" who didn't even cry when his own mother died--which was the impetus for society to throw him away forever. Where is the humanity and compassion in not feeling for people?

Aha! But one must recall the first noble truth--there is suffering. Not life is suffering, or that we must suffer. Just there is suffering. This is a feature of life, as much as there is blue sky, air, and lungs to breathe it.

Can these titillating tales of human plight be a form of entertainment--in that at least it is them and not I that suffers. But in reality, we all have suffering in our lives. So am I any better off?

And this makes me feel smug and elated. Not a very useful feeling actually, for it makes my heart harder and harder to "feel" real humans.

At least I know that much.

So, what to do about it?

Wish all well. Wish all that their burdens can be discarded. May they find their way, blameless, at ease, and in peace

Karma

1
One thing I note about being in Bangkok is how affluent Thailand is compared to many of the other southeast Asian neighbors. With affluence comes corruption, of course, and recently Taksin Shinawatra, the Prime Minister (who himself had some very shady dealings to rise to wealth and power in the telecommunications industry) is on a few draconian campaigns to wipe out 1) drug trafficking, and 2) mafia-style corruption.

The war on drugs lasted three months and left 2,000 people dead (it ended April 30). The police claimed to have killed 47 of these, the rest being in-fighting vendettas.

The war on organized crime (i.e, those who gain a living through extortion, racketeering, gambling, prostitution, at every layer of society, including the police and government) has just begun, and already Taksin has to be heavily guarded because of threats on his life. Little by little, the range of corruption is being exposed in the newspapers, which to us who have visited here a lot comes as no surprise...but it's new to see it fleshed out in public forums.

While the rank and file Thai people praise Taksin's efforts, as they include active strategies to eliminate "bad guys", it has those on the human rights side, and those looking at the legalities on these war campaigns, wondering what happened to due process of the law.

Taksin has become more dictatorial in his campaign, even refusing to speak to the press at times, which has the United Nations human rights officials in town observing the goings on.

These recent events will then have to be weighed using the age old rhetorical resolve: "do the means justify the end?"

2
If we look at what happened recently in Iraq, the fallout from the unilateral efforts of the United States and its lackeys Britain, Spain, and Australia, we note the problem of terrorism wasn't eliminated through aggression; if anything, it has added fuel to the fire of hatred, suspicion, and fear, creating a world which is braced for disaster at every turn.

The fact that the United States switched focus from the terrorists that bombed its soil to Saddam and Iraq was questionable from the start. Saddam, as we are learning now, never posed an imminent threat to US security, didn't have purported weapons of mass destruction or the means to use them, and certainly the claims that the removal of Saddam would stabilize the region are yet to be seen. If recent events in Saudi Arabia, and the bombings which have become typical in Palestine-Israel are any indication, we are in for a long period of instability, fear, and terror.

3
Those that play around with words like "Karma", as people do, who really don't fully understand, miss an opportunity to gain some wisdom. Recent world events are really wonderful opportunities to gain insights into karma at work.

Karma simply means action: actions being initiated through conditions, the results of which create more conditions, causes, and further results. The image used to depict this chain of events is a wheel forever spinning--so powerful is this image it is the official symbol on the flag of India, the world's most populous nation.

People talk of "good" karma and "bad" karma, but ultimately the insight gained though careful insight is that karma is karma--not knowing fully that action is the result of conditions lies in ignorance, and the chain of events of karma keep spinning and spinning, like a dog chasing its tail. What is the usefulness of such ignorance?

Our only hope, then, is to understand this wheel of cause and effect, to see clearly the rising and falling of all conditioned things, to see through ignorance and to end it. How? By not indulging in karma at all! By not being prey to conditions, by remaining unmoved in the swirl of conditioned things, we gain insight into the unconditioned.

What is all this stuff anyway?

An anecdote for explanation:
A samurai, (Japanese feudal warrior) came upon a monk sitting in meditation. Being irritated with him, he asked the monk, "you who sit there like that, what use do you have? If you know something I demand to know what it is. Tell me where heaven and hell are!"

The monk sat still, unmoved, fully concentrated, calm, and clear-minded. This irritated the samurai, and he angrily screamed, "Hey! You! Didn't you hear me! Tell me where heaven and hell are--you useless thing!"

The monk remained calm. The samurai was so angered by the monk he drew his sword, held it above his head and said, "Monk! If you do not say something I will cut you into pieces!"

The monk opened his eyes and looked up and said, "There! You have opened the gates of hell."

At that moment the samurai had a flash of insight and was enlightened.
~~

Heaven and hell are not places, they are states of mind brought upon us by karma. In every moment you breathe, you have the choice of being in heaven or being in hell, or, by not picking up karma at all, being fully enlightened in Nibbana (Nirvana).

Augustine of Hippo

You have walked everywhere at my side, O Truth, teaching me what to seek and what to avoid, whenever I laid before you the things that I was able to see in this world and asked you to counsel me. As far as my senses enabled me to do so, I surveyed the world about me and explored both the life which my body has from me and the senses themselves. Next I probed the depths of my memory, so vast in its ramifications and filled in so wonderful a way with riches beyond number. I scrutinized all these things and stood back in awe, for without you I could see none of them, and I found that none of them was you. Nor was I the truth, I who found them, I who explored them all and tried to distinguish and appraise each according to its worth. Some of them were conveyed to me by means of my physical senses, and I subjected them to question. Others, which closely concerned my own self, I encountered in my feelings. I enumerated the various means by which their messages were brought to me and distinguished between them. And in the great treasury of my memory there were yet other things that I examined. Some of them I returned to the keeping of my memory, others I picked out for study. But when I was doing all this, I was not myself the truth; that is, the power by which I did it was no the truth; for you, the Truth, are an unfailing Light from which I sought counsel upon all these things, asking whether they were, what they were, and how they were to be valued. But I heard you teaching me and I heard the commands you gave.

Often I do this. I find pleasure in it, and whenever I can relax from my necessary duties, I take refuge in this pleasure. But in all the regions I thread my way, seeking your guidance, only in you do I find a safe haven for my mind, a gathering-place for my scattered parts, where no portion of me can depart from you. And sometimes you allow me to experience a feeling quite unlike my normal state, and inward sense of delight which, if it were to reach perfection in me, would be something not encountered in this life, though what it is I cannot tell. But my heavy burden of distress drags me down again to earth. Again I become prey to my habits, which hold me fast. Such is the price we pay for the burden of custom! In this state I am fit to stay, unwilling though I am; in that other state, where I wish to stay, I am not fit to be. I have double cause for sorrow.

-Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430)

This is the sort of thing that gives your Gaga a great sense of brotherhood in this human condition. It is so rare to hear the bold and the brave humbled to contemplate the Truth. Usually, we just don't bother, or, well, where do we find the time for such 'idleness'.

Hmm....

You Gaga appreciates all those who look to these questions. Your Gaga doesn't care when or where or color or ism it comes from. Your Gaga looks to you, too!

Shunryu Suzuki

Suzuki: Life is impossible.
Student: If it's imposible, how can we do it?
Suzuki: You do it everyday.
~~

Student: Is enlightenment a complete remedy? Suzuki: No.
~~

Suzuki: Zen is hard. It's at least as hard as quitting smoking.
~~

And for my dear Japanese friends:
Student: What is Hell? Suzuki: Hell is having to read out loud in English.

Need Your Diaper Changed?

You know, I forgot to say something to you about what you said on Saturday night about your mom. I really am sincere in this: it must have been quite painful and tragic to see the suffering your mom (and father) went through when they passed away. My talking on Sat night might have seemed callous or flip when I was adamantly defending life to lead to its ultimate end, but I didn't mean to offend you.

The point was made by X that one of the qualities of a good life was a long one, and I argued that was hardly a condition to consider life 'good'. A long life is just that...long.

Our modern medicines and health practices see longevity as a desirable thing, and we do go to great lengths to preserve, maintain, or save lives to continue living as a matter of routine. However, at what price longevity for quality and happiness?

Clearly in your parents' cases, longevity was no substitution for quality, and the suffering it caused them and those who loved them.

I am not for euthanasia, because it does seem that those who practice it are playing 'God' in some way--that somehow we have the right and power to control life and how it shall be lived according to the conventions of society; I for one have grave doubts about man's ability or right to make these pronouncements.

However, things get very complicated when, on the one hand, there is this assumption that a longer life is a better life, and so we will go to great lengths to preserve it. Your folks, if this is correct, were artificially 'preserved' in life through some technology. Clearly that was a decision that went against the very nature of what was actually occurring to their lives at the time, which was a slow degenerative condition that would eventually lead to their passing away. Preserving them in a state of agony was not really helping them or you, so then the question is raised, why bother to preserve life in this case?

Things get very odd indeed when the law stipulates once on such machines or medications to preserve life, taking them off constitutes a criminal act of murder. Ha! Now what is going on in our society?

I stick to my original point: clearly longevity is by no means a substitute for quality of life. Us playing God just mucks it up and we cannot see the forest for the trees.

Obviously, we will all eventually get to a stage of old age, sickness and death, and this we all share, no matter how much we don't want to face it. I don't know how I will feel about life when I lose my faculties, or when I shit myself all the time, or wander the streets without wearing any clothes, but I still think life itself is precious and dignified no matter what state it appears to be in. Life is life (although talk to me when I am in these aformentioned states--maybe my ideas will change).

When we start entertaining the idea that life is this, or life is that, such as life is when we are in full control of our faculties, when we are young, sprite, sexy, and disease-free, then we have fallen into a trap that will eventually make living true suffering, and that will occur when we inevitably slide into those conditions we deem unsavory.

So often popular media color and influence our understanding of living in such a way we actually cut ourselves off from 'life'. It is not something that we groom, coddle, pose, pretend, or make excuses for: it just is. The problems that cause us great suffering are how our attitudes to it make it seem this way or that, when in fact it just is.

Anyway, no matter where I try to hide or forget about this stuff, it always remains central to my existence. There is suffering in this life. Yes. This is a fundamental truth...but the way to understand this suffering is to really look at life in all its aspects. I don't know if this will make the suffering go away, but it certainly might lead one to live it with some wisdom and hope.

Anyway, if you ever need your diaper changed, I'll be there for you.

Watts...Again?

Perhaps my last entry on the Alan Watts theme. Again, from "The Essential Alan Watts" (1977).

...imagine what it would be like to regress, as it's called in psychotherapeutic language, to babyhood. And, here you are. You really don't know anything about anything. All you know is what you feel. You've no sense of time. You don't know the difference between who you are and what you see. You don't know anything. You don't know any language, no words in your head. Now consider what it would be like to stop thinking, stop talking to yourself, and simply be aware. You hear all the sound going on but you don't put names on them. You see all these colors and forms buzzing at you, but you don't call them anything. You just experience.

That's a pretty crazy state of consciousness because there's no past, there's no future, there's no difference between you and what you're aware of. It's all one, or none, or both, or neither--there are no words. You would be in a state which in yoga iscalled nirvikalpa samadhi, a very high consciousness in which illusions vanish--Eternal Now. It is a kind of metaphorical death. It is the death of your self-image, your idea of yourself, your concept of yourself.

Literal death, or the immediate prospect thereof, can bring a person into that state of consciousness. This state of consciousness is highly invigorating, because all the energy which you were wasting on worrying is now available for other things. All the energy you were wasting on trying to hold onto yourself is now available for things that can be done, and so people, paradoxically, are pepped up by the acceptance of death in its various senses. So a hospital, where many people are in one way or another dying, should be a place of immense joy.

But we don't allow it to be like that, because we have the fixed idea that people in the hospital are in trouble, and we show them by the way we attend and relate to them emotionally: "Yes, you are in trouble." Well then, of course they feel in trouble. They have to play that role.

There is nothing that causes more trouble to people than helping them. The moment you take the attitude of, "you are sick," people learn to eat pity, and thrive on it, and play sick as a role to get attention, sympathy, care, and to engage in a masochism of gaining a sense of identity through being in peril or misfortune.

When I was an Anglican minister, I once had a woman come to me when her husband died of a heart attack and her son was killed in a terrible accident. She was beside herself with grief. Understandably. I took a look at this woman and I thought, I'm not going to give her any bullshit. So I asked her to explore her grief. What is it to grieve? Where do you feel grief? What part of your body is it in? What sort of feeling is it? What images are connected with it? In every way we explored grief. And by God, she got over it. Because eventually, concentrating on it as a sensation, she stopped talking to herself and saying, "Poor little me, I've lost my son, I've lost my husband," and repeating these words over and over which hypnotize you and perpetuate a feeling of being important because you're in a state of grief.

So it seems to me that anybody in the the hospital professions, the healing professions, must get the hang of this somehow, and stop running unskillful institutions. There's no reason why hospitals should be designed the way they are. Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick. Dying only happens once to you, so it should be a great event. Special "sanitariums", which means "a place of sanity" should be arranged for different methods of dying. How would you like to die? Do you want a very, very marvelous religious ceremony? Do you want to invite all your friends to a champagne party? Do you want to be among flowers? How would you like to die if you really had a choice?

You could take an extremely positive attitude to death as the greatest opportunity you'll ever have to experience what it's like to let go of yourself... that which there is no greater bliss.

...Jung once made a joke, "Life is a disease with a very bad prognosis. It lingers on for years and invariably ends in death."

So death is most important. Westerners, particularly, are scared of it. It's the one awful awful that mustn't happen, because, well...why are we afraid of it? Some of us say, "It's not death I'm afraid of, it's dying." Well that makes sense, but then medicine doesn't help: medicine prolongs dying. It doesn't really prolong life, I mean, it sometimes does, but for old people particularly, it prolongs dying. Terminal cancer is prolonged dying.

Still, there is something spooky about death. even if you're not religious and you don't believe in an afterlife which might be awful, I mean, who knows? But supposing death is like going to sleep and never waking up. That's quite something to think about. I find thinking about death is one of the most creative things one can do. To go to sleep and never wake up. Fancy that. It won't be like going into the dark forever, it won't be like being buried forever. There'll be no problems at all: there's no regret. It will be as if you had never existed at all, and not only you, everything else as well. It never was there. No further problems.

~~~~

Gaga Sez:

This summer I spent reading about cosmological physics (sort of part of my job as a test designer actually). What this is all about is the science of the phsyical universe...how big it is, how it moves, how it began, and where it is going.

But even without going into the measurements and all that, I look out into the sky at night, and see all these little dots of light, and they tell me most of these dots are stars. The stars are so very far away that the light of some of them takes 4 billion years to reach my eyes. Imagine that. It's almost impossible to give any kind of meaning to 4 billion years.

But if this were true as they say it is (it's all based on scientific observation) it means that as I look out at the night sky, I am seeing events that took place 4 billion years ago. And yet, these events are unfolding now. Further, tomorrow, I will see more light from 4 billion years ago... and tomorrow has not even happened!

So when I look out at he night sky, I am in the now moment, seeing events that took place in the far, far, past, and yet tomorrow this light will be in the future.

Further, they say that the universe is infinite. That it is even to hard for us to imagine at all. It means it goes on forever and ever.

If this were true, then wherever you are right now, you are in the middle of the universe. Everything is in the middle. Wherever you position is, it is the center.

It just keeps on getting juicier...

Meditate... to death?

Tim Ward, a fellow Ottawan, who was on the gringo trail to enlightenment on a trek to Northeast Thailand in the mid-80s, wrote a very interesting book entitled, "What the Buddha never taught."

For those of you who have entertained thoughts of cashing in the chips and heading to a monastery to seek enlightenment, it's a great book to give you some insight on what one person's experience was like. For me, at least, much of what he writes about parallels my own journey into the Thai Forest tradition of Theravadan Buddhism. His insights are fun and a useful guide to when too much is too much.

Here is a very engaging excerpt. In it the author and fellow novitiate contemplate a photograph which depicts a human skeleton in full lotus position-- the meditation practitioner seemed to have meditated himself to death!

"What about this?" I pointed to a photograph, framed in black wood. It was a black and white picture of a naked meditator sitting crosslegged in the lotus position, grnning. It seemed at first glance that he he must have been sitting that way for a long time. The ascetic was emaciated. I looked more closely and noticed that the skin had come away between his ribs. The pelvic cavity was just a big gaping black hole. Each toe bone could be seen clearly. So could the joints where his elbows joined his forearms. The head was a skull wrapped in leather. The blissful but insane smile on his face was there because his lips had pulled back and withered away.

"They think he was a monk", said Ruk. "They found his body alone in a cave a few hundred km north of here. He died in samadhi [calm concentration]. His posture was so perfect, his body did not fall."

"Sure looks like he died happy" I said.

"It's hard not to smile when you don't have any lips" Jim said.

Did the monk die a natural death,I wondered, or did his meditation kill him? Ajahn Chah warned his disciples of the danger of addiction to samadhi:


That which is most harmful to the meditator is absorption samadhi, the samadhi with deep, sustained calm. This samadhi brings great peace. Where there is peace, there is happiness. When there is happiness, attachment and clinging to that happiness arise. The meditator doesn't want to contemplate anything else, he just wants to indulge in that pleasant feeling. When we have been practicing for a long time we may become adept at this samadhi very quickly. As soon as we start to note our meditation object, the mind enters calm, and we don't want to come out to investigate anything. We just get stuck on that happiness. This is the danger of one who is practicing meditation.


Perhaps the cave monk became addicted to absorption samadhi and never came back. I imagine him in perfect bliss, perfect contemplation, while his body stiffened in the lotus position and began to dehydrate. As an aware meditator he would have noted these events as they arose but they would not have disturbed him. There would have come an instant when he knew his limbs were about to lock in place, that there would be no more help for him, lone hermit, if he did not move at once. He would have watched the instant come and pass without abandoning his calm. As the days passed he may have noted the gradual deadening of sensation as the life dried from his extremities. Circulation would begin to clog. Toxins would slowly poison his body. Some masters of meditation can greatly reduce their rate of metabolism. Perhaps the hermit lived like this for many months, well past the time of natural death. He may not have been emaciated when he first took his seat and entered this fatal samadhi, observing the whole process of death and decay from the beginning. Was he still aware as his skin began to crack and rot, as his bowels hardened and the veins closed in his folded legs? His body continued to sit erect and balanced while his spine fused to a petrified rod. He watched his breath, inbreathing, outbreathing, until there was no more moisture left to wet his lips or tongue and the passing of air turned to a dry rasping over dead flesh. After his lungs collapsed, after his heart sagged in his chest, ceased pulsing and finally fell loosely from its place into the decaying mess below, perhaps even then there were a few flashing electrical impulses inside
his skull observing pure bliss until the day some rude photographer took his picture and his bones were carried out to the cremation grounds and burned. It could have been the monk's intention,when he first took his seat, to meditate on death by living through the event. This knowledge he would carry into the next rebirth.

...

The Khandas

When they say the inner journey into oneself is full of difficulties, such as the feelings of doubt, fear, anxiety, ambition, restlessness, laziness, and so on, they mean it!

It is only when we have these experiences do we find the truth of how difficult it really is to be calm, clear, and cool. It is the doer that faces these things...and no amount of writing or fancy words will take over and get you out of it. You gotta go right through it.

The key here is to just keep on trying. There is no right or wrong methods... as long you can be conscious of when these Kandas (the Pali word which means hindrances to practice) arise.

What are the 5 Kandas?

1. Sensual desire (wanting to please the senses).
2. Ill-will (wishing harm to others or to oneself)
3. Sloth/torpor (laziness)
4. Restlessness/remorse (worry)
5. Sceptical doubt (disbelief that you efforts will be rewarded with the ultimate goal of calm, cool peace)

Lucky for us, people have gone through these problems before, and their advice is useful...which is ultimately just to keep on trying.

Sometimes it's really useful to name the feelings that arise when they occur. When you feel the tightness in your body,your shortness of breath, the way you might want to fidget or move to escape the feeling, watch this point carefully. Like you would do with your son when he seems annoyed or upset, give yourself love at that moment! Touch gently your mind with soothing words. Just say, "Hello there my old friend Ms.
Doubt! How are you today. You've come to visit me again...what is it this time?"

This might seem silly, but really, by naming the problems, we can actually start a conversation with them--get to know them very well. Remember, these feelings are NOT you...they are hindrances. So we can do a lot of good by not giving them so much control by seeing them as visitors and not an integral part of your person. Treat them with respect, be patient, and then ask them to leave when necessary. This does wonders for our well-being. It takes some practice, but once you get into the routine of noticing when these feelings arise, greeting them as friends and teachers (they show us there is something awry in our thinking), and then sending them off on their way each time after they visit, we can go back to the calm and cool mind.

Thomas Merton, the Christian mystic and Zen afficionado, said some useful things about this stuff. He said when praying or in meditation, the mind will wander. During the few minutes of calm practice you might find your mind wandering off to other thoughts, feelings, and distractions of sound, sight, touch, smell, taste. Each time that occurs, just gently nudge the mind back to the breath. Never be angry or beat yourself up for being distracted! It's like your baby...you treat him with loving kindness when he pouts and cries, so do it for yourself. You need that same love too!

Merton said, "in sitting meditation, even if you have to nudge your mind back to concentration 10,000 times in one minute, this is true practice."

Like I say, these words are easy to write, easy to read, the most difficult to do!

Keep on trying! The benefits accumulate in time.

The Zen of Alan Watts

Not to be preachy in the least, I've been reading through Alan Watts once again and I find his insights into the meaning of Zen quite useful, and so I thought I'd pass some along to you.

As you know, I do practice the Thai forest tradition of Buddhism. It is a rather rigid discipline, which more or less emphasizes "sila" (morality) and then moves to samadhi (concentration) and panna (wisdom). My understanding why the emphasis on morality in this tradition is a big deal has to do with cultivating socially beneficial behaviour, perhaps because of the tendency for societies to get lost in so many of the distractions that catch our senses.

That said, morality has nothing to do with liberation or happiness; but it is a useful grounding by which a society can conduct itself in harmonious ways.

Anyway, reading through the Zen doctrine has been quite useful to me. It is a much less "sila" focused discipline, perhaps because it is a later variation of the original forms of Buddhist practice. I learned the Theravadan variation, which is a strain originally practiced by Gautama Buddha and passed along orally in India for abut 250 years; at that time it was written down as the "Pali Canon" and is currently practiced in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Much of its focus is on self-liberation through renouncing the world and moral behaviour. Later variations separated from the original much in the same way as protestant movements moved from the Roman Catholic church.

The separation has more to do with the practicalities of social groupings and more accomodating forms of religious expression, for example, if you have a job and a family, it's really not "fair" nor practical to abandon them to live in a cave and meditate for self-liberation. Seems rather self-ish than self-less.

The quandary is felt by anyone intent on pursuing a spiritual path following this tradition...as for me, gee, I like cheetohs and a beer when I watch a ball game... alas, in the strict sense of practice in the Thai forest tradition, one must stop eating at noon, not take intoxicants (which just cloud and delude the mind from seeing clearly) and not engage in any sort of fantasy worship (including listening to music, wearing fancy clothes, putting on jewelry or perfumes, watching plays or movies, and so on and so forth). Heavy stuff, and indeed, this is what can cause a dualistic view of life (i.e., if I do this, it's bad, if I do that, it's good) which is the antithesis of what the Buddha taught!

So, what the hell am I onto here?

Reading over Watts, I find contained in his description some very neat ways of describing Zen practice which I find useful (lest we forget however--a practice means a practice! That is to say, should one want to engage in any sort of endeavour, one has to actually do it, rather than read or thing about it!).

That all said as premise, here then is a passage from Watts I thought useful:

(from "The way of zen" by Alan Watts, 1957)

...human experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of the senses as by external objects whose presence the mind reveals. People feel themselves to be victims or puppets of their experience because they separate "themselves" from their minds, thinking that the nature of the mind-body is something involuntarily thrust upon "them". They think that they did not ask to be born, did not ask to be "given" a sensitive organism to be frustrated by alternatiing pleasure and pain. But Zen asks us to find out "who" is that "has" this mind, and "who" it was that did not ask to be born before mother and father conceived us. Thence it appears that the entire sense of subjective isolation, of being the one who was "given" a mind and to whom experience happens, is an illusion of bad semantics--the hypnotic suggestion of repeated wrong thinking. For there is no "myself" apart from the mind-body which gives structure to my experience. It is likewise ridiculous to talk of this mind-body as something which was passively and involuntarily "given" a certain structure. It is that structure, and before the structure arose there was no mind-body.


Our problem is that the power of thought enables us to construct symbols of things apart from the things themselves. This includes the ability to make a symbol, an idea of ourselves apart from ourselves. Because the idea is so much more comprehensible than the reality, the symbol so much more stable than the fact, we learn to identify ourselves with our idea of ourselves. Hence the subjective feeling of a "self" which "has" a mind, of an inwardly isolated subject to whom experiences involuntarily happen. With its characteristic emphasis on the concrete, Zen points out that our precious "self" is just an idea, useful and legitimate enough if seen for what it is, but disastrous if identified with our real nature. The unnatural awkwardness of a certain type of self-consciousness comes into being when we are aware of conflict or contrast between the idea of ourselves, on the one hand, and the immediate, concrete feeling of ourselves, on the other.

When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, the entire relationship between subject and object, knower and known, undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change. It becomes a real relationship, a mutuality in which the subject creates the object just as much as the object creates the subject. The knower no longer feels himself to be independent of the known; the experiencer no longer feels himself to stand apart from the experience. Consequently, the whole notion of getting something "out" of life, of seeking something "from" expereince, becomes absurd. To put it another way, it becomes vividly clear that in concrete fact I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

...We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision, and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if decision were voluntary, every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide--an infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide because decision "happens". We just decide without the faintest understanding of how we do it. In fact, it is neither voluntary or involuntary. For a decision--the freest of my
actions--just happens like hiccups inside me or a bird singing outside me.

Useful?

Wiggly

Wonderful greetings to you, this first week of August, from Stittsville, the small farm community outside Ottawa, where we are in the sultry waves of glimmering summer! May the warmth of the sun remind you of how truly connected we all are. As you feel the warmth, know full well this warmth embraces everyone equally-- with no fear, prejudice or good and bad. Let us strive to act like the sun and make everyone who we greet a little warmer.

I'm a little back-logged on reports about Montreal (saw 4 Expos games there, and what a town!), Toronto (in a word-- expensive), and the mundane.

But this one is in keeping with the sunlight (i.e, the dhamma). From Thich Nhat Hanh ("Living Buddha, Living Christ"):


...it is important to look deeply into things and discover their nature of impermanence and non-self. Impermanence and non-self are not negative. They are the doors that open to the true nature of reality. They are not the causes of our pain. It is our delusion that causes us to suffer. Regarding something that is impermanent as permanent, holding to something that is without self as having a self, we suffer. Impermanence is the same as non-self. Since phenomena are impermanent, they do not possess a permanent identity. Non-self is also emptiness. emptiness of what? Empty of a permanent self. Non-self means also inter-being. Because everything is made of everything else, nothing can be by itself alone. Non-self is also interpenetration, because everything contains everything else. Each thing depends on all other things to be. That is interdependence. Nothing can be by itself alone. It has to inter-be with other things. This is non-self...


There is a Buddhist saying that goes "see the rain cloud in a piece of paper." If you really look carefully (insight), you will know the truth of interconnectedness. In a piece of paper you will see everything.

Here's a wonderful insight based on something I read from Alan Watts: How big is the sun? To determine its size, the first one would do is find a method of measurement, which arises arbitrarily from the human mind. It would be perfectly reasonable to measure the mass of the gases that make up the sun. So we can say the sun is "X" big based on the amount of gas it contains.

Now we can also measure it in other ways. How about the measurement of its heat? How big is that? The heat radiating from the sun extends at least as far as to us here on Earth, because I know when I go outside on these sultry summer days I can feel it. So it would be reasonable to say the sun made up of all the planets by the heat it generates. Now, here's another form of measurement... the light the sun gives off. Light, as we know, can be seen for billions of light years, right back to the beginning of the universe. So it would be reasonable to say the sun's size is as big as the universe, which extends backward from near the beginning of the universe's creation, and will continue to exist for a long duration in the future. So, how big is the sun then? It really doesn't matter, because anytime we answer this question we make up the rules for measurement, which are based on some arbitrary form of measurement we invented. In reality, the sun is the sun. It extends to everything and goes everywhere. It doesn't matter what the human mind makes of it.

Recently I've been reading cosmological physics, the writings of Kip Thorne, Paul Davies, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Robert Price, Richard Feynman, and so on. It's a whole area we've (I've?) been fascinated in, but mostly don't really have a clue about how this stuff impacts on our conceptions of the universe. I finally decided I was "old" enough to read these adult books! Luckily, their publishers have asked them to tone down the math to try to explain what they are working on, so there is a body of literature on cosmological physics that is approachable by the mere human being, such as you and I.

What I enjoy so much about this topic is how much wiggliness there is! For all their calculations and seriousness on what they do, they are a humble lot who know the lines they invent are arbitrary while being of some utility. But what concepts!

Enjoy the sun in your fresh, new understanding of it!

Some Watts Fantasies

Fantasy #1

*The Myth*

We are the sum total of our past actions. That is, the way we are today is governed by what happened in the past.

*The Reality*

If you think you are governed by things that took place before in some "time" that is past, you are saying the tail wags the dog, or that there is nothing you can possibly do that is not predetermined.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate how untenable this myth is, let's look at a boat plowing through the water. We will agree that a boat creates waves. As the boat sails through the water, the boat is navigated by a pilot. The pilot looks ahead and then navigates a course through the water. The swirls and eddies the boat gives rise to do not govern the direction of the boat; rather, they are the result of the forward mtion as directed by the pilot.

In life then, we can also see that the past actions really have no bearing on the movement of our lives. Life maneuvers through life at the discretion of the life that guides it. Some people continually examine their past lives to see where they are going. this is completely backwards to what happens in life, be it the physical or tangible affairs of the body, or the more subtle movements of the mind.

*The Upshot*

Take hold of the steering wheel of your life. Determine the direction to go; but bear in mind nothing in the past has anything to do with where you CAN go from now on.

Fantasy #2

*The Myth*

Mankind is going in some direction that had a beginning and will eventually end.

*The Reality*

There is no such thing as a beginning and an end. There is just a continuous series of events within a whole that doesn't end.

If you happen to be at a slat fence and you happened to see a snake go by, you would observe its head slither first, then a bit of body, and then you'd see its tail. If the snake were to slither by in the opposite direction, you would see its head, then the body, and finally the tail. You interpretation, based on observation would be that the snake has a beginning (a head), then there is a body part, and it ends with a tail. you would base your impression on your perception through the slat fence.

In reality, we often confuse events as being governed by durations ("time"). In effect, there is not time. Time is a relative value we place on reality simply because we have a faculty of memory. Events "seem" to take place over a duration, when in fact in reality they don't.

Take for instance the universe. Today we have that Hubble telescope that can see very far away (that is, far from our relative position. Some of these star/events took place, according to our perception as happening perhaps millions of light years before. Yet we still see these events occurring.

You do not need to be an astronomer to look out into the night sky to appreciate that the light emanating from the closest star to earth took 4 light years to reach us. Yet, we still see it. Did this star event really occur in some distant PAST, or is it not occurring at the present?

In short, we draw arbitrary lines of measurement (lines in the sand), use them for some utility, and the FORGET we drew the lines there in the first place!

Much confusion occurs when we mistake these lines for reality. It cause no end of suffering for us. That is the misuse of memory, our faculty of reason, and our ability to calculate and infer.

*The Upshot*

We can know very well the universe the way it really is. You do not need to imagine or go out into the galaxy to understand its true nature. Just look at it with your eyes. Do not be misguided by the senses or the emotion into thinking it is anything other than what it is, which is a never ending event.

For that fact, if you really want to get weird in this fantasy, we are actually going BACKWARD in "time". For the beginning seems to have been a big bang. This is the prime event of the universe. This is the BOAT navigating forward. the result, our universe, galaxy, planet, us and al the creatures, are the swirls and eddies long past the beginning (if you can see it that way).

The Wisdom of the Body

-excerpt from chapter iv from the book "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan W. Watts (1951). Rider Press, London.

…It was suggested at the end of the last chapter that this ultimate something which cannot be defined or fixed can be represented by the word God. If this be true, we know God all the time—but when we begin to think about it we don’t. For when we begin to think about experience we try to fix it in rigid forms and ideas. It is the old problem of trying to tie up a rushing river in parcels, or attempting to shut the wind in a box.

Yet it has always been taught in religion that “God” is something from which one can expect wisdom and guidance. We have become accustomed to the idea that wisdom—that is, knowledge, advice, and information—can be expressed in verbal statements consisting of specific directions. If this be true, it is hard to see how any wisdom can be extracted from something impossible to define.

But in fact the kind of wisdom which can be put in the form of specific directions amounts to very little, and most of the wisdom which we employ in everyday life never came to us as verbal information. It was not through statements that we learned how to breath, swallow, see, circulate the blood, digest food, or resist diseases. Yet these are performed by the most complex and marvelous processes which no amount of book-learning and technical skill can reproduce. This is the real wisdom—but our brains have little to do with it. This is the kind of wisdom which we need in solving the real, practical problems of human life. It has done wonders for us already, and there is no reason why it should not do much more.

The “instruments” that achieve these feats are, indeed, organs and processes of the body—that is to say, a mysterious pattern of movements which we do not really understand and cannot actually define. In general, however, human beings have ceased to develop the instruments of the body. More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious “know-how”. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.

There are, for instance, “primitive” women who can deliver themselves a child while working out in the fields, and, after doing the few things necessary to see that the baby is safe, warm, and comfortable, resume their work as before. On the other hand, the civilized woman has to be moved to a complicated hospital, and there, surrounded by doctors, nurses, and innumerable gadgets, force the poor thing into the world with prolonged contortions and excruciating pains. It is true that the antiseptic conditions prevent many mothers and babies from dying, but why can’t we have the antiseptic conditions and the natural, easy way of birth?

The answer to this, and many similar questions, is that we have been taught to neglect, despise, and violate our bodies, and to put all faith in our brains.
…we have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives out of all proportion to “instinctual wisdom”, which we are allowing to slump into atrophy. As a consequence, we are at war with ourselves—the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot understand.

In one way or another civilized man agrees with St. Francis in thinking of the body as Brother Ass. But even theologians have recognized that the source of evil and stupidity lies not in the physical organism as a whole, but in the cut-off, dissociated brain which they will term the “will”.

When we compare human and animal desire we find many extraordinary differences. The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal’s stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification. This is largely due to anxiety, to the knowledge that a constant supply of food is uncertain. Therefore eat as much as you can while you can. It is due, also, to the knowledge that, in an insecure world, pleasure of eating must be exploited to the full, even though it is in violation to the digestion.

Human desire tends to be insatiable. We are so anxious for pleasure that we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive, so that if pleasure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants…. The brain is in pursuit of happiness, and because the brain is more concerned about the future than the present, it conceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of pleasures. Yet the brain also knows that it does not have an indefinitely long future, so that, to be happy, it must try to crowd all the pleasures of Paradise and eternity into the span of a few years.

This is why modern civilization is in almost every respect a vicious circle. It is insatiably hungry because its way of life condemns it to perpetual frustration. As we have seen, the root of this frustration is that we live for the future, and the future is an abstraction, a rational inference from experience, which exists only for the brain. The “primary consciousness,” the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and perceives nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., “everyone will die”) that the future assumes a high degree of reality—so high that the present loses its value.

But the future is still not here, and cannot become a part of experienced reality until the present. Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abstract and logical elements—inferences, guesses, deductions—it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a constantly retreating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead. This is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will consist, not of solid or substantial realities, but of such abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances.

Thus the “brainy” economy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse—providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends and visual distractions. The perfect “subject” for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio, preferably using the portable kind which can go with him all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper, to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-without-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with shock treatments of “human interest” shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature of discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire.

For this stream of stimulants is designed to produce cravings for more and more of the same, though louder and faster, and these cravings drive us to do work which is of no interest save for the money it pays—to buy more lavish radios, television sets, all of which somehow conspire to persuade us that happiness lies just around the corner if we buy one more.

…

It isn’t that the people who submit to this kind of thing are immoral. It isn’t that the people who provide it are wicked exploiters; most of them are of the same mind as the exploited, if only on a more expensive horse on this sorry-go-round. The real trouble is that they are all totally frustrated, for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink though your ears. Thus they are incapable of real pleasure, insensitive to the most acute and subtle joys of life which are in fact extremely common and simple.

…

Generally speaking, the civilized man does not know what he wants. He works for success, fame, a happy marriage, fun, to help other people, or to be a “real person.” But these are not real wants because they are not actual things. They are all by-products, the flavors and atmosphere of real things—shadows which have no existence apart from some substance.

It is therefore far from correct to say that modern civilization is materialistic, that is, if a materialist is a person who loves matter. The brainy modern loves not matter but measures, not solids but surfaces. He drinks for the percentage of alcohol (“spirit”) and not for the “body” and taste of the liquid. He builds to put up an impressive “front” rather than to provide a space for living….

We are perpetually frustrated because the verbal and abstract thinking of the brain gives us false impression of being able to cut loose from all finite limitations. It forgets that an infinity of anything is not a reality but an abstract concept, and persuades us that we desire this fantasy as a real goal of living.

The externalized symbol of this way of thinking is that almost entirely rational and inorganic object, the machine, which gives us the sense of being able to approach infinity. Useful as it would be as a tool and a servant, we worship its rationality, its efficiency, and its power to abolish limitations in time and space, and thus permit it to regulate our lives. Thus the working inhabitants of a modern city are people who live inside a machine to be batted around by its wheels. They live in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes.

Already the human computer is widely displaced by mechanical and electrical computers of far greater speed and efficiency. If, then, man’s principal asset and value is his brain and his ability to calculate, he will become an unsaleable commodity in an era when the mechanical operation of reasoning can be done more effectively than machines.

Already man uses innumerable gadgets to displace the work done by bodily organs in the animals, and it would surely be in line with this tendency to externalize the reasoning functions of the brain—and thus hand over the government of life to electro-magnetic monsters. In other words, the interests and goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism. If we are to continue to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork.

…

The brain is clever enough to see this vicious circle which it has made for itself. But it can do nothing about it. Seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worrying; rather, you worry more at being unreasonable. It is unreasonable to wage a modern war in which everybody loses. Neither side actually wants a war, and yet, because we live in a vicious circle, we start the war to prevent the other side from starting first. We arm ourselves knowing that if we do not, the other side will—which is quite true, because if we do not arm the other side will do so to gain advantage without actually fighting.

There are few grounds for hoping that, in any immediate future, there will be any recovery of social sanity. It would seem that the vicious circle must become yet more intolerable, more blatantly and desperately circular before any large numbers of human beings awaken from this tragic trick which they are playing on themselves. But for those who see clearly that it is a circle and why it is a circle, there is no alternative but to stop circling. For as soon as you see the whole circle, the illusion that the head is separate from the tail disappears.

And then, when experience stops oscillating and writhing, it can again become sensitive to the wisdom of the body, to the hidden depths of its own substance….

After all this, the brain deserves a word for itself! For the brain, including its reasoning and calculating centers, is a part and product of the body. It is as natural as the heart and the stomach, and rightly used, is anything but an enemy of man. But to be used rightly it must be put in its place, for the brain is made for man, not man for his brain. In other words, the function of the brain is to serve the present and the real, not to send man chasing wildly after the phantom of the future.

…

The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between “I” and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behaviour when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.