Here’s another one of those suicide note responses, edited for grammar, syntax, and spelling, so that the author sounds minimally educated, and the gist of it, because, sweet Jesus in an Easter basket, how these people ramble:

Date: 2003-09-25, 10:36AM
What exactly is the problem? Is this really the answer? Seriously, think about it. I don't think it can be that bad. Whatever it is, you have a job, you sound like you have a decent life, you have a computer at home since you're not at work today, and you have a home, so you're not homeless. You sound like an educated man judging from how you wrote your post.

Only you can help yourself. Why don't you pray for strength and hope? That's what you need right now. I just really think other people have it worse, but are simply stronger than you. Think about it. Go back to work tomorrow and try to see things from a more positive perspective. Try to sniff the air while you're driving and imagine people who are in coma who can barely breathe. Look at the blue sky, your surroundings and think about the blind people who would want to trade places with you. As you get out of your car and walk towards your work, think about the people in wheelchairs who can't even drive let alone walk. I could go on and on but you get my point, right? Try to live your life to the fullest. Let God decide when it will end. In the meantime, work on appreciating what you have that other people don’t.

Take care. I'll pray for you whoever you are. All I'd like to do is share my thoughts on this and just hope that my advice will be taken into consideration.

Basically, "don't kill yourself because you've got it pretty good, and other people have it worse than you". This writer is unable to put him/herself (I will alternate gender pronouns) into the suicide's shoes, and makes what are probably irrelevant assumptions and suggestions. As nice of sentiments they are, he simplifies the suicide's issues into a matter of perspective. He implores the suicide to consider a perspective that he presumably already has rejected. I think only the most superficial of suicides would be turned by this response.

For me, none of what the writer brings up is new or relevant. It seems a strange assumption that I wouldn't have considered those things, that I don't experience those things, the little things, the life things, perhaps more vividly day to day, rather than ignoring them or taking them for granted.

Strength and hope aren't issues either. Those are relative constructs anyway. From my view, staying is the copout. It's easy to stay, easy to just live my life in the material bliss I've been blessed with. Each period of my life I continue living feels like I'm failing or betraying something. Yet I'm still here because . . . I don't know, moths are equally attracted to the full moon as they are to candle flames.

It's the same with "hope". Maybe hope would be an issue if I was anguishing in despair, but that narrow, linear concept of hope within the specific, constrained matrix of phenomenal reality and living normative life is not part of my equations.

Shadows and screen. My apartment.

The responses to that person's suicide note are still rattling me. The negativity has put a cloud over me. The sentiments were loosely close to mine, so the responses, in a way, I can take as being directed towards me, too.

But here's another of the good responses:

Date: 2003-09-25, 10:36AM

listen:
you are on a beach. it is hot. the sand is warm and fine as you run your fingers through it. your lover turns to you and says, hey? hey?

listen:
at five a.m. on tuesday you decide to do laundry because you suddenly have an urge to wear the green shit with stripes. you search through your laundry hamper, but cannot find it. later you realized it is hanging in your closet.

listen:
you are at the library browsing through fiction. the air conditioning is up too high, it is freezing. you notice the person next to you is picking out a stephen king novel. you say, wait.

listen:
at the dinner table your youngest child refuses to eat the peas on her plate. you insist that she sit there until the plate is clean, but later relent and let her watch a tape of “barney”.

listen:
the tool shed has been a mess since you moved in to the new place. you invite a couple friends over to help you organize it. everyone drinks beer instead. the tool shed remains untouched.

listen:
in the middle of the night tonight you wake up from a bad dream.

-m

Cañada Road, either San Mateo or Redwood City. Down the Peninsula. Punch buggy blue.

Interesting string today on suicide in the Craig's List "Rant and Raves" section. People never cease to amaze me. And amuse me. It's not like we haven't heard it all before. 

What happened was that a person posted his suicide note in the Craig's List "Rants and Raves" section: 

Date: 2003-09-25, 9:18AM 

I have lived in this society for over 32 years and I am genuinely tired of it. All of the inanity and insanity has just driven me off the edge. I have stayed home from work today to make my final peace and make sure everything goes off without a hitch. 

I am sharing this with all of you for two reasons. First, I just did not want to pass entirely unnoticed. I know this is something of an ego-driven reason, but hey: I’m human. Second, I wanted to show you that some people out here do not simply snivel and bitch without doing anything about the problems. I have tried all of my life to improve things for myself and for others, largely to little or no success. My life has been relatively decent, especially when compared to others’ around this world, but it just has not come completely together. I am not sad and this is not a cry for help. Just a statement. 

When you complain about all of these ultimately unimportant subjects, just remember that unless YOU do something to improve that about which you complain, it is very likely nobody else will. Complaining really does not solve any problems. You need to either provide and execute solutions, or remove your self from that which bothers you so much. 

I have attempted the former perhaps more than I should have. Unfortunately I have found extreme apathy in those to whom I have extended my help. Therefore, I shall now remove myself from the problem. 

I will be ending this life later this evening in a quiet manner which will not require any assistance or clean-up. Again, this is not a cry for help, but I would appreciate your comments. Please be respectful. I have taken a long time to make my decision. 

Be well, and be sure. 

The sentiment sounds legit to me as a suicide note. I could have written this, but I wouldn't have and I certainly wouldn't feel any need to publicize it. Actually, the strongest reason why it's suspect is that real suicides generally do not publicize their intention, even if it's anonymous, and ask for comments. If you've made your decision, the discussion is over, you don't want or need "comments". If you've made your decision, your act is your expression, verbalizing and articulating your reasons to the general public is moot, you're gone, can't be helped, nothing's gonna change. But that is my uninformed doubt, this guy may be an exception as far as I know. I won't project on this guy the way so many people's responses did. 

There was a torrent of diverse responses. 

The best response, in my opinion, was one of the early ones: 

Date: 2003-09-25, 10:11AM 

I cannot begin to express the depth of my sympathy. I am quite impressed by how well you have expressed yourself. The very nature of your letter tells me that you are someone of intelligence and compassion. There are so many other people, entrenched in a process of anger and complaint with no intent of finding a solution to the problems of life, that would leave the world a better place if only they would have the courage to do what you intend. And it is sad that these useless bags of skin will remain and you will be gone. 

I know the feeling, as frustration with life begins to take it's toll and depression begins to sink in. I can tell you that, should you change your mind, there is effective treatment for depression. A combination of anti-depressants and cognitive therapy can help you find a better sense of peace in the face of the frustrations that life is full of. I, for one, can only hope that you will try this first and not leave me, and many others like us, to carry on in the face of the snivelling complainers without you. The world will be just a little bit lonelier. 

Should you decide to carry forth with you plans, I will mourn your passing. I will stand, tonight, in a moment of silence and feel the sadness as one more good soldier has left the battle field behind. 

Your comrade 

I admit there were other brilliant responses. Other responses gave advice or rational perspective. Some gave suggestions on how to get through another day. Others were understandably flippant, not knowing if this was a hoax or not, but benign. Some related their experience of sadness or pain, perhaps hoping it might mean something. Many were at least sympathetic, some extended helping hands.

Good intentions, but people who, from my perspective, can't put their feet into the shoes of a suicide. Even people who tried and failed couldn't necessarily put their feet into another suicide; it's too personally circumstantial. Still, I'm glad they posted just to show the level of compassion there is out there from total strangers.

Other responses were aggressively hostile, people who no doubt had been hurt and didn't/still don't know how to handle it. Responses that were insipidly moralistic and self-righteous, spouting about karma and what happens after death as if they knew; as if they knew for someone else. These included people who seemed read in Buddhism/Tibetan Buddhism, but that's all. Responses that berated him for being "selfish" or "cowardly". Some related their experience of how much their lives suck and how they, appropriately, "sucked it up", as if they thought that would mean something. Many were callous, hateful, jaded, and sarcastic. 

We live our lives, we make our choices, sometimes they're bad, sometimes they're mistakes. I find it fascinating that the choice, the possible mistake, of committing suicide raises such a level of bile and invective like no other. They made their choice, now you have to make choices on how to deal with it. 

For you, life is suffering; for them, life is suffering. They commit suicide, you "suck it up" to appreciate what you have. Yet you revile them for being cowardly and selfish because it causes more pain and suffering to people around them, and forecloses future "possibilities" and contributions the individual can make. 

I guess it's just offensive to these people for someone to consciously take control to put these tenuous chains of events in motion. They can't accept that someone made a decision and that there's more for them to do. They tell a potential suicide to "get over yourself", but then the same can be said to people who are hurt by suicide and condemn the person - "get over it". And really, you should because if you're hurt, then you need to heal. 

You can tell a potential suicide that they are responsible for their own fate and they can't blame anyone else for their life sucking (if it even sucks), but by the same logic, don't blame the suicide for "fucking up" other people's lives. One person blamed his father's suicide for fucking him up, when it was his fault for not taking measures to heal. The father could have died in a car accident, either way he's gone and you have to heal. But because it was by his own hand, it was offensive and "fucked up" the son. Father didn't take responsibility over the people his death would affect, son didn't take responsibility for himself by healing, instead blaming the father saying it didn't have to happen. 

How many deaths "don't have to happen"? Wrong place at the wrong time. We split hairs with fate and decide to call them accidents, tragedies. Suicides are condemned, selfish, immature, cowardly. Whatever. They're still dead. We're still alive. Why the invective? It's "someone took their own life and that's the end, it was their self-pity that ended in suicide, now let's begin our self-pity in the form of condemnation", rather than acknowledging, if not accepting, that someone made their decision, and now it's our turn to decide how to deal with it for ourselves. 

I've been writing this long enough, I've lost track of what I wanted to say. Time to give it a rest.

The Debate:
I voted for Peter Camejo (Green Party) in the last governor's race, I think I'll vote for him again. I was going to vote no on the recall, yes for Bustamante, but Camejo was serious and articulate and I agreed with his approach and values. I'll still vote no on the recall, because I think it's capricious and fiscally irresponsible and detrimental.

Half of what Cruz Bustamante said sounded like his commercials, scripted and contrived. As for his ideas, if Gray Davis was deemed unfit to govern, and the job fell to Bustamante, I think he would have gotten us to the next gubanatorial election adequately. But he still is part of the administration embroiled in this problem/fiasco.

Tom McClintock had a lot of intelligent things to say but he lost me on the race issue. He seems to believe as long as race is not a consideration in the law, it is not a consideration in society. And guess what? Race is a consideration in society.

Arianna and Arnold: They fight and bite, they fight and fight and bite, fight fight fight, bite bite bite, the Arnold and Arianna Show!! But I like Arianna second to Peter Camejo. But I demand satisfaction, she cannot leave this debate without calling someone "Dah-ling".

Arnold would govern this state in an arrogant manner, and represent a woeful minority of people. His closing statement was pretty much his commercial spots. The man knows how to learn his lines. He's only a front-runner in this race because Californians are starstruck, baby.

From The Conference of the Birds:

The Valley of Insight into Mystery
The next broad valley which the traveller sees
Brings insight into hidden mysteries;
Here every pilgrim takes a different way,
And different spirits different rules obey.
Each soul and body has its level here
And climbs or falls within its proper sphere -
There are so many roads, and each is fit
For that one pilgrim who must follow it.
How could a spider or a tiny ant
Tread the same path as some huge elephant?
Each pilgrim's progress is commensurate
With his specific qualities and state
(No matter how it strives, what gnat could fly
As swiftly as the winds that scour the sky?).
Our pathways differ - no bird ever knows
The secret route by which another goes.
Our insight comes to us by different signs;
One prays in mosques and one in idols' shrines -
But when Truth's sunlight clears the upper air,
Each pilgrim sees that he is welcomed there.
- by Farid Ud-Din Attar, pp. 179-180, Penguin Classics translation

I needed this passage today. I get tired of readings that seem to suggest that there is some uniform, linear path. That lines can be easily traced and summarized – this person drank alcohol and ended up in hell, that person committed adultery and is now in his fourth generation living as an animal. Be that as it may, and I don't want to just write off those accounts as wrong, but there are always other contributing factors; karma weighs and balances all karma creating events. That sort of moral summation is just so simplistic and it gets frustrating.

Something is supposed to have changed since August. No going back to the status quo. No going back to the mess of a life that was the status quo. So I hunkered down to a steady regimen of reading, studying, sitting, and general mindfulness. I think I done OK. Although it has made me hypersensitive to the lack of compassion I witness in every day life and through blog reads on the web. Makes me sad.

So no status quo. So now what? Oh, I got a response from the monastery, too, so I am now face-to-face with persuing that option, or . . . ? It should be a no-brainer, I got a response from the monastery, set those wheels moving, send in registration to begin my trial periods, get the medical check up and blood test they require. It's not that I'm balking, it's just . . .

The word that comes to mind from this past month is "obscurations". Karmic obscurations can have the effect of making moving forward or bettering karma difficult or even impossible in a given lifetime. That concept did resonate.

I'm sick of the norm, the matrix, this illusion we call life and living, and the only reason I'd want to live would be either to head down the monastic path or get locked up in a loony bin. Yet, there is something not resonating about the monastic path, it just isn't feeling right. I still have strong attachments to the material world. My life has been so much more about self-absorbed flailing and wandering aimlessly without the focus and discipline required for the monastic path. So now what?

So now what?

I'm not gonna re-live last month either. I won't subject anyone to any of that again.

Madoka just wrote me telling me that she's taking time off work and will be spending a significant portion of that in L.A. She didn't provide any more details and she's off of email for this entire week. That doesn't have anything to do with anything and won't affect anything I decide. But if she comes to the U.S. sooner rather than later, I would head down in a heartbeat to visit her.

Resting in Tiburon mid-ride:


My trusty ride:

For all I'm reading and for what I understand and in what I'm posting, I still have to say that I do not consider myself "Buddhist", in reference to identity.

The message may be coming in under the rubric, in the guise of Buddhist works, but it didn't have to. It could have been anything as long as it resonated. But if they are Buddhist works resonating, doesn't that make me Buddhist? My emphasis goes on the "could have been anything" rather than on what just so happened to have resonated.

You can build your world, your understanding, your cosmology around any religious fabric, you can build the world around you in the images and beliefs of the works that resonate, but the bottom line is the self as an accountable, responsible agent of whatever, hopefully something positive and "good" (unless you're a minion of Satan, in which case that would be counter-productive and could get you fired and sent to heaven).

I've heard people say that the Bible isn't supposed to be historical or literal, but metaphorical, and if you don't get the learning behind the stories, or if you're using them in decidedly un-Christian ways, it's of no use knowing them. I've also seen people offended by those claims.

And with Buddhism, you worship, you bow, you offer, you visualize, and there's a world of gods and deities you hope will guide you and support you, whose favor you must recognize, but all of this is a trap, these are all tools to accomplish what one can't accomplish without them – to realize they are all and only you, thirty dirty birds at the end of the journey.

I imagine Buddhists being offended by that distillation.

And I can't believe I tried to summarize the six existence realms of suffering in an earlier post. That was a miserable failure. I shouldn't even try to summarize shit, I suck at simplifying; I end up mucking it up (it makes sense to me).

It's interesting how liberation in the reality between matches the end of the journey in The Conference of the Bards Birds. Overlaying the birds' journey onto the journey through the betweens might work.

Perhaps the biggest fallacy I create about myself to the people around me is that I know what I want and I know what I'm doing, and I'm dogmatic and stubborn about doing it. Good.

In Muir Woods.

September 19, 2003; 3:44 P.M.

Maybe I, too, will shoot through the Reality Between, just to look for you again.

I'm a simple person. No, not simple, but a lazy person. I like things broken down into component parts, bullet lists and outlines are just fine by me. I prefer sound-bites over discourse, abstracts over articles. Bottom-line it for me, baby!

Getting to the part of the Tibetan Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between where one has missed all the chances of attaining liberation while in the reality between, no easy task mind you, and one finds oneself facing imminent rebirth while in the "existence between", I find myself where I started, with ideas from the book Illusions by Richard Bach.

The other side of the reality coin, as covered in Illusions, looks like it would be the existence between, and the bottom line is that for the spiritually adept, our lives are designed by our own choice while in that stage. Or that's how I would marry the concepts.

While in the existence between, we can choose the lives we are born into with attendant challenges we wish to overcome. The possibilities and motivations is a huge field of endless discussion. In fact, I shouldn't wonder some people die and let go and (their souls) totally blow through the reality between, where the most potent opportunities for liberation are presented, without even trying for liberation, just so they can reach the existence between and be re-born again. We are the otters of the universe.

However, the ability to choose lives and lifetimes isn't with everyone. Those who are not aware and have not cultivated their supra-reality abilities, provided they believe in these things deep down, are guided by karma to what they are re-born as.

I am also deciding that my understanding of the six realms of existence/beings are all on this physical plane. Including hell. My belief is that if there is hell, there are multiple levels of it. Further, if there are hells, then living a hellish existence on this physical plane is the highest level of them; it is the form in which we have the highest opportunity to change our karmic destinies. Even the lowest god levels, which are the lowest of the heavens, have a more limited capacity to change karmic destiny.

The book presents the different existences as being stratified and distinct. Above the hell-beings are preta or pretans or "hungry ghosts", which are beings with insatiable hunger/thirst with unbearably limited means of feeding them. Above them is the animal realm, and above that is the human realm.

Above the human realm is the lowest level of heaven, and there are two low-heaven existences that I would like to pull down into human form: gods and titans (who have god-like stature, but are driven by ambition or aggression). Other low-level heaven existences may be non-corporeal. In Western religion cosmologies, they might be low-level angels.

Those with spiritual aptitude to negotiate their re-birth in the Existence Between will always come back in a human form with nominal degrees of suffering, and always with potential to learn and grow. Folk without spiritual aptitude end up here if their accumulated karma is not bad enough to put them in lower realms, and is good enough so that they have another shot in the human realm to progress and further their karmic destinies. Or fuck it up as unfortunate cases may be.

I don't like the stratification that is in the book. I think maybe you can have the bad karma to end up in the animal or hungry ghost realms, but still be re-born as either animal or human. But if re-born as human, their suffering is great, and their aptitude to better their karmic destiny is extremely limited. Although possible, it would take herculean leaps to do so, and to further worsen their karmic destiny is extremely easy.

Hungry ghosts as humans, no matter what their station in life, suffer immensely from their inability to satiate whatever they hunger for, and may even kill in the attempt. Animals as humans suffer as animals do, generally ignorant, functioning wildly on instinct, and no awareness of karmic destiny. They can kill and have no remorse or feeling of wrong.

You can also have karma to end up in the human realm but be re-born as an animal. These animals are generally loved and have compassion poured on them, thereby protecting them from having no awareness of karmic destiny or from worsening their karmic destiny, and the next time around they may still be re-born in the human realm, or the equivalent level of the animal realm.

Gods and titans are born into the lowest level of heaven, and I believe they are corporeal heaven-dwellers, born as humans. The book presents gods as being placed in high or good positions, but their lofty existence prevents them from further pursuing the dharma or bettering their karmic destiny. The book posits that most gods will eventually end up being re-born as humans.

To me, this describes our celebrities. Good karmic destiny has given them riches and fame, but indulgent and unaware of the injustice of their lifestyle will eventually accumulate to bring them down, but rarely lower than the human realm. If the karma they create as gods is particularly bad, then they get really slammed down to even lower levels.

Titans are described as being born in the heaven realm, but with a propensity for aggression and war-like behavior. I corporealize these folks as powerful leaders, mostly government. It seems like a contradiction to say a person's karma is so "good" that they are re-born on a high level, but are pre-disposed to use their lofty position to kill and wage wars of aggression and create further suffering. In fact, the book posits that eventually most titans will be re-born lower than the human realm. Curious, huh? It kinda makes sense to me, but I couldn't convince anyone in an argument.

Mm, I guess that's it for this long-ass post. Oh wait, one last old chestnut of a thought on death that I got from the book The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I also believe that what we really deep down believe happens after death, is what happens. If we are deep down atheists and don't believe in a soul and the end of bodily functions signals the end of life, I believe that when they die, they're gone and totally cease to exist, regardless of what physics says about the conservation of energy.

But I also believe that just stating a belief does not make it so. I believe it is possible, and I absolutely don't impose this upon anyone, that someone might think they believe one thing, but deep down in their heart of hearts really believe something else. Like a hardcore atheist scientist stating he or she believes in God "just in case" there really is one. If in their heart of hearts, they are atheist, boom, that's it.

So it's halfway through September, seven months I've been unemployed, one month more than planned. I've stopped thinking that I'm waiting to hear from the monastics about monastic opportunities, but it's still in my mind that I'm due to hear from them shortly. What has changed in the last month?

I still do not want to return to the status quo of living a normal life. Getting a job is not in my plans. Moving to Tucson or Portland is not in my plans. Not being in San Francisco come the end of daylight savings is still in my plans.

I think my mad existential rantings and posts have been exchanged with religion-inspired posts. I've seriously curbed my drinking and I've switched my sleeping hours to something more "normal" and disciplined. Regular reading, sitting, contemplating, generally less mad.

Weird. Weird that after 15 years I'm not addicted to or dependent on alcohol. Weird that madness is my own mind game to turn on and off at will. Although there are always the underlying reasons to turn it on or off. I've stopped cutting completely and don't even think about it. Weird that all of these developments reinforce and still point me to the exact same conclusion.

This reality is not real. I'm not real. I don't need to be here.

Pac Bell Park photo series:

September 16, 6:55-6:56 p.m.

A lot of the Tibetan Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between has been resonating. It certainly hasn't been resonating negatively as being wrong or offensive to my pre-existing/primordial belief. You can't make shit like that up – that's one of the bases for my accepting it.

I've had my own imaginings on death. Once while in a Summer class on the top floor of Mudd Library at Oberlin, I thought it would be funny if someone walked in and interrupted, saying, "I'm sorry, something went terribly wrong with the library ventilation system, and you all died. You're dead." Dying without even knowing it, but then it soon becomes clear that we've left our bodies and the living can't see us anymore. Yea, that was my sense of humor way back then.

I still like to think that we remain in a non-corporeal form for a little while, but stripped of human judgments, feelings, and sentimentality, and in that stage we can touch upon or reflect upon our lives in a way that closes things out. We can "visit" the people who meant something to us, wherever they are, just see, touch, and go.

I also to some degree also believe in the "life flashing before our eyes" and the dark tunnel and the light, because so many near-death accounts include those.

But then I don't think there is one all-encompassing death experience either. I do believe in ghosthood for individuals who have received such psychic trauma that they can't move beyond this lifetime (i.e., they never make it to the clear-light reality between) until something resolves. Those individuals also have not accumulated enough bad karma to descend to the so-called "lower realms" of existence, which I vaguely accept.

I don't believe in karma as a moral system, or karma as punitive for bad action, thought, and words, or rewarding to good action, thought, and words. It is simply the law of cause and effect, and the "good" and "bad" effect for a given karma-creating causal event is interpretive. Ordinary humans can't understand karma enough to control it consciously or intentionally, but must be mindful of it, those who believe in it at least. There are different kinds or wheels of karma, too.

There are different kinds of death, too. I think infant deaths, violent deaths, suicides, and natural deaths are all qualitatively different, and those qualities all have some effect on navigating the between, but none of those qualities are dispositive as to the success or failure of navigating it to liberation.

Plugging in my own beliefs with this text on the betweens and vice versa.

I'm not sure I agree with Robert Thurman when he writes that it is clear that the Tibetan Book of Natural Liberation "deplores suicide". From what I'm gathering, death is death. Once you enter the processes of the death betweens, how you got there doesn't seem to be much of an issue.

How one navigates the betweens is affected by karma, spiritual guidance, spiritual aptitude, knowledge and practice, and other things. How one died may affect karma (and probably does more often than not), but how suicide affects one's karma may or may not affect one's navigation of the betweens. I'm not reading any indication that how dying from suicide is "deplored" in the between.

And we all know what a conundrum karma is whenever I start talking about it.

The only indication I can find that suicide is frowned upon is through the fact that one presumably does not have a guide or someone to recite to them when they die. And that's not true because if it's medically assisted, you can have someone recite to you. Also there are plenty of ways people die that don't allow for a guide or recitation.

Sorry, Donnie Darko, we do die alone. You can have someone recite to you and try to guide you through the betweens, but it's up to you and your karma to determine whether you can be liberated or you continue in the cycle of life and death. Liberation is hardly a sure thing. And the book itself states that you don't need a guide or a recitation if you can prepare yourself well enough to navigate the between, whatever that means.

For some reason I always thought of 'eternity' as time ever-lasting; for the rest of time, where ongoing time was part of the equation. Now I'm thinking that the only way that makes sense is by defining 'eternity' as the end of time, or the state where time no longer exists.

That makes me think of the concept in physics related to time travel, where the faster you go, closer to the speed of light, the slower time runs. It is also stated that nothing except light can travel at the speed of light. Hmph, how convenient. But theoretically, if something gets asymptotically closer to the speed of light, does it get correspondently slower in time? Maybe time stops altogether at the speed of light, i.e., eternity?

But I also already carry around the wacky notion that God=the speed of light.

It is clear that the Book of Natural Liberation (the so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead") deplores suicide unless the person has already attained liberation, or is confident he or she can do so in the between. - Robert Thurman translation, p. 90 (his own text).

If I'm not confident, I don't know what is.

I like Robert Thurman's full translation of the title, The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between. I like the translation of the "between" for the word "bardo" referring to the states we go through in life and death, although in the context of the book, the various "betweens" refer to the death states between dying and being re-born. Although maybe "bardo" specifically refers to those betweens, I don't know. Get off my back, do I look Tibetan?

Anyway, I like it because referring to these states as "betweens" helps envision the life-cycle as a circle where one is always between other states. It's a continuous progression with where you are coming from and where you are going all being connected.

Ocean Beach.


September 11 commemoration, I think.

I'm not suggesting anything, but I'm finding that the so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead" is the most important book for me to be reading at this point! Something just seems very natural about my reading it now, even though I've known about it for a long time. Death is a language and reality that I understand and relate to.

I really don't obsess about death or have a fixation on it. That our lives end in death has always had a profound impact on how I view life and the life-cycle. Death as the end of our lives didn't make much sense. So I think it was pretty early in my formulation of reality and existence that life isn't as finite or concrete as we tend to live it. It's one side of the coin, the trunk of the elephant (or the leg, or the body, or the tail), it's a cross-section under a microscope, it's one station on the radio dial.

I think perhaps my current lifetime is a meditation on the role of death in existence and the life-cycle, and the concept of self in death. That's why I'm drawn so strongly to suicide. Out of all the ways to die, how many focus so intently on the self?

It kinda fits – the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in brief, deals with the process upon dying and the Buddhist cosmology it fits in (although the techniques involved can be applied to any belief system), but it doesn't touch on getting to that point of dying. Much of my life has involved getting to that point.


Downtown San Francisco

Off:
It was one of those days where every decision I made felt wrong. Patience and tolerance levels were low, while anger, hate, and presumably fear were high. Random people were annoying the hell out of me right and left. I think this was largely the way I had been living my life. Today felt like an exception.

I felt impermeable today. Life and the world not entering into me, and me not getting out into it, being in it, being a part of it. All that I've learned and felt activated lately wasn't there. I wasn't giving anything to the world, and the world wasn't giving anything to me. Just a walking impermeable fleshbag of ego. It's good that today felt like the exception.

I ended up in Golden Gate Park and did some reading in the so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead". I re-read parts that I read in the morning and couldn't penetrate, and that's when the impermeability started melting away. I got the pages with a vengeance.


Reading with the pigeons in Golden Gate Park.

Off today. Woke up and was just "off". Even after a whole pot of coffee. Maybe it should be a "break" day. Every week should allow one break day, break the routine and not require anything, but I'll probably go out and read somewhere, seeing as today and tomorrow are supposed to be Bay Area versions of a heat wave. I already spent the entire morning watching anime.

Avoiding today's media smarm. Sure, we should remember, but all this media tugging at my heart-strings is inherently more cynical than anything I could artificially conjure, even if I tried. Stick to the facts and "remember" how the Bush Administration has cheapened the lives lost with its war-mongering and corporate profiteering. I recorded a three hour American Experience documentary a few days ago, chronicling the entire life cycle of the World Trade Center towers. I still flinched.

My problem with American Buddhism, even imported, is its need to explain or express things in dichotomies, mostly of positive and negative, as if Buddhism's only contribution to America is to help some suburban blonde office worker distinguish between what feels good or bad. I'm sure I have plenty to learn from American Buddhism.

But for now, it's the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. Finally, a flying carpet that I can jump on and ride.

I miss the feel of someone wrapping their arms around me from behind. I miss the feel of my face an inch away from a loved one's face. I miss running my hands through the hair at the back of her neck. I don't want it, I just miss it.

one year ago


I call this "rage, rage against the building of the new Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park". If you can think of a better title, let me know.

Inundating myself with Buddhism these days, I have to remember that these things, truths and beliefs, must be found and not fed by blind faith. In general, Buddhism as a language comes through the airwaves with the clearest reception, but there are other things I understand better when spoken in Islam or Judaism, with Native American and other indigenous cosmology and spiritual belief contributing not a little. There has even been affirmation from Christianity once I get past the historical, political, superior-moralistic, imperialistic obscurations.

Truths and beliefs must resonate, and I don't find all things in Buddhism resonating. It's not that I think those things are wrong or that I disagree with them, but to be added to my pantheon of personal truths, to affect how I think and live, it must resonate. And not resonating now, doesn't mean it won't resonate sometime in the future or in a future life. It may well be, and this part of Buddhism resonates lightly, that past karmic obscurations are preventing these things from resonating.

In the book Dharma that Every Buddhist Must Follow, the Buddhist cosmology presented does not resonate, nor does the presented heirarchy of the cosmos, and I find certain contradictions and inconsistencies in what is presented. And in general, the book is quite a downer, focusing on innumerable negatives, which ring counter-productive in my ear (NB: the book was given to me by my cousin, and the group she got it from she later acknowledged was a cult, that her future husband got her out of). Although it's not as annoying as a lot of Western Buddhism which seems to focus on the exact la-la opposite, peace, inner tranquility, bliss and happiness, bunnies and rainbows.

In general, I'm allergic to religious constructions speaking for "all of humankind". Even Buddhism speaks of saving all humankind, that bodhisattvas will not enter Nirvana until Kurt asks them to all humanity can enter at once, due to their unlimited compassion. All of that goes against my fundamental resonant belief that the belief system of any given person you meet on the street must be respected. You don't smack them in the face with a trout because they belief this or that, or don't believe this or that.


A rose Luyen gave me for my birthday in 1992. A box in which Diem gave me a jade Buddha necklace.

BART Station, East Bay. Post East Bay Ride.

The story so far: 

I had this fantasy: <fantasy> that there was a time when human conscience, the human collective unconscious, spirituality, was a cloud. Amorphous, substanceless, particulate. It was like the cloud of gas that formed our solar system, which then coalesced and spun and started to heat up and burn; spinning, orbiting clumps which avoided becoming part of the sun became planets. It was like the universe after the Big Bang, just extremely hot gas which would in time through the processes of physics, astrophysics, general relativity and quantum mechanics would become the universe as we see today. 

On this planet, Earth, God created life. God IS life. God is not a conscious entity. God is everything that is and isn't through multiple veils and dimensions that no thing in the universe can conceive. God, on this planet, took a form of the primordial human collective unconscious. It was just a cloud, and remained a cloud through billions of years of evolution of life on this planet, but as lifeforms became more animate, the cloud started to form clumps, and it was in the earliest form of humans, with the spark of conscience and primitive analytical and abstract understanding of the world, that the human collective unconscious came into concrete, separate existences. 

The human collective unconscious is in us all, it is God, it is what makes us all the same despite millennia of evolutionary difference and social, cultural, and political distinction. What is in me is also in you on a sublime level, we as humans share a cross-section of consciousness. If you believe in reincarnation, the cycle of birth and death, the law of cause and effect (karma), then Tibetan Buddhism suggests it is fact that every living being at one point was your family member. Start with one average family, and consider the possibility that time is not linear, through generations and generations through history past and future hence, at any given moment in history, every living being at one point was or "will be" your family member. 

That's too heavy for me. I can't conceive it and have no direct feeling or experience or insight into it, but I can't refute it and have no reason to doubt it, and at worst it's a good sentiment, it's a good thing to work with. And the value of "family member" to me in this life is only nominal, so I'm sure I'm missing the profundity anyway. Bringing it down a notch, it's all good and fine if every living being should be treated as one would treat a family member, but families tend not to get along. 

But in the vast amorphous pool of humanity out there who should be treated as family members, there are clumps. People who resonate – friends, loves, companions, teachers, mentors, guides, etc. The people that gravitate towards each other, people who have a magnetic bond, those are the ones that have met each other in multiple lifetimes with multiple relationships between them. Maybe there were promises made to always look for each other in subsequent lifetimes. If time is not linear, it's not always the easiest thing to be reborn in the same historic period, but when they are, they will somehow find each other, as parent-child, siblings, friends, lovers, mentors, etc., etc. 

In 2017, I will be 48. </fantasy>

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day: "It's just a theory." - Dr. Sigmund Freud.

OK, I admit it, I have hate and anger issues. They don't get expressed in a direct confrontational manner, so I don't think anyone would say that I have a temper, like my father did and at least one of my brothers does. But what I mentioned before about people annoying me and getting on my nerves, and responding to negativity with negativity. All those related behaviors are rooted in hate and anger, I shouldn't wonder.

I grew up hating and being angry at my parents. Eventually I stopped hating and being angry at them when I realized they had no more control over me, but I was still left with the feelings or issues of hate and anger. Nowhere to channel it. Nothing to hate and be angry at. Just internalize it.

I hate to admit this since I just saw "Donnie Darko", but fear is also in that equation (remember? the "fear-love" spectrum?). The hate and anger breeds fear. What am I afraid of? Probably a lot of things. And to cope with the fear, I'm publicly sarcastic, cynical, smug, and indifferent.

These things need to be focused on and grappled with. I want to get back to a more innocent and vulnerable mind. Absorb the negativity, look at it directly in the face when it's thrown at me, and don't respond or react. Process it and let it go.

The path is a fragile balanced thing. Progress must be humble without being discouraging, and it must be encouraging while not getting proud.

I went to Beale St. tonight, but I think I'm going to try to stop going. The drinking is not a big deal. My constant drinking has fallen off lately, so I consider the occasional round of beers with chums harmless. I also decided to stop buying alcohol, so although I'm allowing myself to finish off what I have in my apartment, I'm not replenishing my stock. The constant drinking while at home is over.

I still have some top shelf stuff that I'll sip through (you don't shoot the good stuff), and a bunch of liqueurs and a single bottle of wine. People rarely notice any difference between me drunk and not drunk. The key indicator has been smell, and not behavior.

And quite honestly, I haven't noticed much difference either, except that I spend a lot of time reading these days, and I can't concentrate on reading when I'm drinking. Before long, no one will even know how much I used to drink. Fortunately, I've never thought of being "alcoholic" as part of my identity, so no loss there if nobody acknowledges the loss.

But I also want to stop going to Beale St. because I can't seem to stop letting people annoy the hell out of me. It's a character flaw. It's not everyone, hell, it's not even a majority, but it's just one or two people who might momentarily bring out a part of me that I don't like. I'm still negative at the core, and when negativity is thrown at me, I resonate negative.

Aside from not solving anything, abandoning the Beale St. crowd is problematic because they are the only social group I have left!


Reflections in the pool at Yerba Buena Gardens.

So what's the story so far? I seem to have lost track and various bits and shards of narrative are scattered and flung about. I spend a lot of time looking back, years in huge swaths and chunks of meaninglessness. Most of it remnant, little of it extant. Astronomer aiming an ever more powerful telescope into the universe's past, what's the story so far? I'm sure the universe wouldn't want to change a thing, why should I?

Childhood, high school, college, and San Francisco Bay Area; my past in chunks, monolithic eras. Perusing the record, it's hard to find what was meaningful in any of it. And by meaningful, I mean lasting. Meaningful "moments" abounded, but not a whole lot has lasted; not a whole lot has been strong enough to last.

As for the future, I won't go back to the status quo. If the future treads out the same meaninglessness, it's really not worth it. The only thing that has lasted throughout my past has been my ideals, my personal search for the kind of person I want to be; my search for just a scratch of clarity; being true to my nature . . . and yeeks, what a seriously crap job I've been doing.

So I don't know what to say about the "future". I really, really, really don't know what I'm going to do and I'm not going to think about it. It's not worth getting wound up about it or getting people wound up about it. I'm vaguely thinking that I'm waiting to hear from the monastics, but I'm really not thinking about that concretely or seriously.

Truth to tell, these past few weeks I've been keeping disciplined, reading a lot, studying, sitting regularly, trying to keep my mind still and as singularly focused in the moment as possible. But I'm split on the monastery thing. On one hand, maybe this is simply the right time and I haven't been ready until now, and I'm ready now. Living a material life has nothing left to offer, and I needed to exhaust the options before getting to this point. And at this point, a structured environment is the next step.

On the other hand, what I've been concentrating on these past weeks, why haven't I been concentrating on it for the past ten years?! How sincere can I be when I only buckle down when I'm at my wit's end, story's end; only when I've exhausted my distractions and plot twists? If I can buckle down like this so quickly and easily, it means I could have done so for quite some time. A lot of what I'm reading and encountering isn't new, it's just been neglected, I've been lazy; I've had the key, just too lazy to put it to use. So part of me feels I don't deserve it.

But then there's Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, who had his moment when he acquired his burden and had to pursue the spiritual path from that moment on. He acquired his burden when he read that book (the Bible) and felt compelled right away. Is that immediacy the measure of sincerity for recognizing the burden? I don't think so. I think a person can be exposed to the path long before you recognize the burden of life and existence that compels you to follow the path. Like the birds in The Conference of the Birds, each bird is an excuse for not following the path, needing to be shed before embarking on the journey.

I need to keep putting another foot forward.


San Francisco Mime Troupe in Dolores Park on a particularly warm day (for San Francisco, that is).