Northern Exposure Quote of the Day: Good lord, you're only a doctor. Tell me, do you reproach yourself when Winter comes, when the grass dies and the leaves fall from the trees? Nedra died because it was her time. And she died well. She died with all her wits about her and with her loved ones by her side. She said all her good-byes. You and I should only be so fortunate, Joel. – Ruth Anne, after a disconsolate Joel loses a patient he couldn't find anything wrong with.

I've been engrossed in the so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead" (again) lately. It was written in the 8th or 9th century by the great Indian adept, Padma Sambhava, who had come to Tibet, and who later hid the text in a period of turmoil and decline. It remained hidden until it was re-discovered in the 14th century.

The text of the book is a guide to be recited to/for the recently deceased, or to be familiarized for one's own death. Apparently there were adepts like Padma Sambhava who focused on the experience of death and reincarnation using yogic, esoteric, tantric, or whatever methods, and through countless many lifetimes were able to not only figure out what happened between death and rebirth, but were able to navigate and retain the experience.

I do believe in that continuity, that strong or recurrent elements in our current lives are resonances and remnants from previous lives. There's a reason for my fear of spiders and heights, and my attraction towards trains and . . . well, heights.

It is not only the Dalai Lama, who is discovered by a child's ability to correctly identify objects and elements relevant to the previous Dalai Lama, who can manifest retention of past knowledge. It is not because he is "holy". We all have that potential if we commit to cultivating it. Over countless many lifetimes, that is.

My thing about the book is, having been educated in white liberalist and critical thought, that the death experience is universal. So for credibility to be placed in it requires an ability for it to be applied universally. And, of course, if you read it, it's filled with Buddhistic deities and icons and Indian imagery.

The book was written in a cultural context and references a specific region's mythology, belief, and aesthetic, just as Biblical mysticism draws on ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology, belief, and aesthetic. So to bring it into the 21st century multicultural context, even just for myself, the text would need to be able to be re-envisioned to apply to various and different belief systems (mind you, it just needs the ability to be re-envisioned, it doesn't necessarily need to be).

I don't have a deep background in Buddhist deities. For me, I go by what the book itself makes a point of – that the deities encountered, or whatever is encountered after death, are a projection of our own true self.

That works for me really well, since it's an extension of my belief about physical reality, too – that it's a projection of my own imagination and self. The world around me is a reflection of my own emotional landscape. I'm my own "archetype deity", although I have to leave it open what that means or looks like. I get it intellectually, but I'm still working on the deep understanding part.

And as modernist practice, I use falling asleep to plot and map the loss of consciousness to the dream realm. It's highly fascinating and I recommend trying it, insomnia notwithstanding.

I lie flat on my back in bed, arms at my side, and try to bring my consciousness into sharp focus. My eyes can be open, half-open, or closed, it can vary. I concentrate on my body and track my breathing and think about my blood pumping.

I try to be aware of the room, the objects, the sounds, and the light and shadows. I try not to change position when it gets uncomfortable because I found that whenever I do that, I plunge into sleep and recall very little after changing positions. Go figure.

And then I track my consciousness and be aware what's happening as it slips away. The next morning, I try to remember what I remember and recall any dreams and imagine having been lucid in the dream.

What's up with all these long entries?

Encore:
Practice period came, and nine weeks later, it went; ending yesterday after evening sitting. No fanfare, no recognition that anything happened. Story of my life.

The highlight of the nine week period was the bike thief.

At the end of December, I bought a new Cannondale mountain bike. I had a feeling about what I was getting into, knowing that my new bike would be primo targetum for bike thieves, but the reality didn't hit me until the end of the first week of practice period when someone tried to unsuccesfully steal it at around six in the morning, during morning sitting.

If you lock up your bike at 5:15 in the morning, as far as a bike thief is concerned, it's been there all night. It's still dark, and there is not a lot of people around. After that, I started triple locking my bike - two kryptonites and a cable. I figured that would be enough to discourage any bike thief, even at six in the morning.

The only thing I didn't lock was my underseat bag. I thought about it but decided it was worthless to me, until I got out of morning sitting one morning and found the contents of it emptied. The thief took an inner tube, a depleted patch kit, and a set of tire levers - notably not a tragedy. This was either second or third week of practice period in early February.

I thought, "fuckin' A, people will steal anything". But the more I thought about it, the less it bothered me. My feelings of feeling violated bothered me more because it was so minor and there are bigger fish to throw rocks at. So I left a note in the otherwise empty underseat bag. It read:

You took everything in the bag, but you left the bag
Now I think you have nothing to keep the stuff you took
Please take the bag and accept it as a gift

I'm not sure what my intention was. A part of me thought that the thief would never get the note. Part of me wanted to express that I wasn't going to be bothered, that I wasn't going to show fear to this thief. Part of me meant it and expected to find the bag gone one morning.

About a week later, I just happened to have locked my bike near a window of the meditation hall where I was sitting for evening session. During sitting, I heard something outside and waited for a telltale sound indicating that someone was trying to steal my bike (since there are more people around in the evening, I only double locked it). But no wrenching sound of metal on metal came through the window, and short of that, I wasn't going to disrupt sitting.

When I returned to my bike after sitting, the first thing I noticed was that the straps of the underseat bag were undone, but the bag was still there. I checked the bag, and on the reverse side of the note that I had left, the thief wrote:

...thanx but...
no thanx
I didn't have much to give you ...
but I hope for you to be blessed further...smart rider to use a kryptonite
I may be a thief
sometimes I give :)

In the bag, he left a nice monkey wrench with a short handle (definitely useful), a different set of tire levers, and a complete patch kit!

That's a good story in itself, don't you think? Too bad, I didn't get the closure I wanted.

After that, I didn't remove the bag to avoid it being stolen. Instead I left a follow up note, thanking him for letting me know that he wasn't black and white, but grey as we all are. Stealing the contents of the bag was black and white, it was bad. There's not much argument in favor of what he did being "good". But then his gesture made him grey. I couldn't judge him by this one bad act that he did. He wasn't a bad person. People do what they do, who knows why they do it?

I don't know his motivation for stealing the contents of the bag or trying to steal my bike (I think it was the same person because of his mention of the kryptonite in his note). I don't know his motivation for not taking the bag and leaving that stuff for me in the bag. I just know that he did one thing, and then he did another, and that's good enough for me, I'm OK with it.

We do things that harm other people when we don't see the other person as human. But once we see the other person as human, we no longer wish to harm them. I went out on a limb to see him as human, and in return, he saw me as human.

Along with my note, I left a Powerbar and a Twix. But stupid me, one morning I left sitting but didn't notice that the note and the Powerbar and Twix were gone until after I had stopped off at Safeway. So I don't know if he got the note at Zen Center that morning, or if someone completely random stole the candy when I locked my bike outside of the Safeway.

Damn. I was kicking myself for not paying attention. Part of me thinks I would have noticed the empty bag at Zen Center, but I really don't know, I'm really not as attentive as I think. Anyway, practice period is over and my bike will no longer be there from 5:15 to 6:40 every morning, or from 5:30 to 6:45 in the evening. Am I any richer for viewing a bike thief as human? Let's hope so.

Dear sempai,
I made it to America like I said I would! Did I say I was trying to come to America? Or did I say Japan? I'm not sure, because actually I did find Japan, but then my family moved to America before I was born. Bastards. So maybe I was trying to come to America. But since I've inexplicably always tried to get to Japan, maybe I was trying to reach Japan in the first place. Is that funny?

In fact, "sempai" is a Japanese word for "senior". I am using it because that is what I feel you are, and I don't remember what I called you in our previous common language. We don't have something like that in English. It suggests respect for someone older or more experienced, perhaps like a mentor, but it can also suggest closeness, informality, familiarity. And I feel we were close, so it feels like it fits.

Were we supposed to meet in Japan? If so, I'm sorry. I failed. Maybe you are looking for me and not finding me. Psych! Sorry, just kidding. Maybe my recurrent impulse to leave this life is really a subconscious desire to give ending up in Japan a second try to find you. It would be a stretch, but in this realm, who knows?

We are lucky. We know not to be deceived by appearances, and that death is just a passage. How many countless lives have we already lived and died, and how many more will we? You and I, we know our journey and that we will always meet again eventually. Do you remember when I was re-born as a spider and you helped me come back as human by showing me mercy and sparing me? No? Neither do I.

But I also understand if you wouldn't want me to go through that needlessly. I don't have any clear recollections, but I have an imagination (something imagined/imaged, it's not a real word, I'm making it up) that the dying process is never a walk on the beach, no matter how many times we go through it or how well we prepare for it. And those damn spiders always creep the fuck out of me! If I could get over my fear of spiders, I think the spiders would stop appearing, wouldn't they? I'm working on it.

I also had a wonderful imagination of flying through the sky, across the world, and finding a place (Japan?) and falling from the sky like an unseen star to be re-born. That part of death is fun once you get the hang of it and it stops being like crashing an airplane and ending up being re-born in Sri Lanka.

America isn't that bad, truth to tell. The environment has been very good for learning, some great ideas, but there are also many distractions and a high potential for confusion. There are things that I feel I shouldn't be doubting, but I doubt because of the mentality with which people are raised here. I can think of better places we could have agreed to look for each other. But I can think of worse. And I've already used up my quota of using "Sri Lanka" once in this letter.

I'll try to write again, even though I have no idea who you are or how this could possibly reach you. But the internet is great, it goes everywhere and who knows how much farther? Ten years ago I would have written this on paper, burned it, and tossed the ashes in the river! Haha, I can't even imagine how that would have gotten to you. With the internet, I hope this digitized information will seep out into some sub-space realm and reach you subconsciously or telepathically *weeooweeooweeoo*, trab pu kcip, trab pu kcip, red rum! Nevermind, ignore that if you didn't get it. I'll explain later.

Maybe we should just screw Japan and meet up back at home. Eventually ;)

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day: "Spring, spring, spring, spring. Naturally, this young man's fancy turns to thoughts of death. Not death in the "that's all, folks" kinda death, but death in the cyclical sense, like high tide/low tide, sunrise/sunset, that sorta thing" - Chris in the Morning

Needless to say, if I ever decide definitively against suicide, this weblog would end. Same thing, although for a different reason, if I decide definitively in favor of it.

This morning, it was all about wondering about living. Not because living is such a great idea over dying (in the long run, that is), but because of how vague "living" and "dying" have become for me. Particularly "dying", as of late. It's gotten much less tangible. Almost as intangible as "living", in fact.

Dying has always been a fixation of mine; sometimes morbid, sometimes existential, sometimes just fact. Living my life; living my life out without a forseeable end has never been my reality.

Living and dying is like breathing in and breathing out, two parts of a whole. Yin-Yang, day-night, left hand-right hand, sunrise-sunset, high tide-low tide, sleeping-waking, spring-summer-fall-winter. I believe. If our lives are the breath of god, living is just one half of it.

Why not live while alive, die when dead? Death seeps into our living anyway; we live, but death is always there. And in dying, if you believe in reincarnation, living is still the focus, still the goal, where you came from and where you're going. My absolutes have broken down, and I'm not so sure anymore how dying now, or foreseeably, necessarily . . . serves that little, clear, blinding light that is my true self and purpose.

But to decide to live now? After scuttling every possible future where I may have landed and have been remotely happy functional?

Let's just say I'm having a crisis of confidence. I don't know what to do. And that's worse for me than knowing I want to do what everyone else doesn't want me to do. This, my friends, was my posting on living.

One should never commit suicide as a last resort, i.e. when there's absolutely no hope. There are already too many people living in this world with no hope. If you're going to leave on your own accord, against the wishes of most people who know you and probably just about everyone who don't have a clue, at least go knowing you had some hope remaining.

Yea.

What I said.

The universe thinks it's growing, but it's really just spreading itself thin into non-existence. And the longer it exists, the faster it spreads itself out.

As long as I'm writing about metaphor, a hot topic floating around these days is "how will the universe end", given recent observations that suggest that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Here's an article on how will the universe end that dumbs down the various theories enough for me to grasp. The title of the article, for those who don't want to bother with the link is: "How Will the Universe End?"

One of my attractions to my reading of Buddhism (aside from it being my reading) was how it didn't conflict with cosmology. Or was my attraction to cosmology that it didn't conflict with Buddhism? No, I was staring at the sky long before I was staring at my navel, and when I read the Lotus Sutra for the first time and about Buddha ages arising and ending, and these hyuuge spans of time between appearances of Buddhas, I was envisioning the oscillating model of the universe.

Back then, the search was for whether there was enough mass in the universe so that it would eventually stop expanding and the collective gravity of the universe would cause it to contract into a Big Crunch billyuns and billyuns of years down the line, or if there wasn't and the universe would expand forever. My money was on there being enough mass, and the cycles of Big Bang to Big Crunch to Big Bang acting as Buddha ages. All of it tasty metaphor, sure, fine.

But now the evidence points to a universe that is accelerating from the influence of some dark energy, which might potentially increase to a point where everything in the universe will be accelerating away from everything else so fast and so far, that information itself, saying nothing about matter, will eventually piddle out, leaving the universe a <reverb>cold, dark void-d</reverb>.

If I were to subscribe to that theory, I would think that it's not only matter that becomes so spread out that the contents of the universe is effectively zero, but the fabric of space itself would also lose cohesion to bring the universe to its final resting state.

(Even if the observations are correct that the universe is accelerating, I don't necessarily believe the universe is static and that it would remain accelerating. In fact, I would even suggest that we haven't looked deeply enough into what we mean by "accelerating". The acceleration theory/observation is based on the linear notion that the universe is a certain space that is expanding in some sort of fashion, and the velocity at which it is expanding is getting faster and faster. I think things might be much weirder way out there, and what we're calling acceleration might be something else. I mean, really, we have no idea what's going on in the White House, how can we have any certainty about something 10 billion light years away?)

But even with this change in leading theories regarding what's going on with the universe, another recent theory, featured in the cover story of the February 2004 issue of Discover, emerged that still fits the metaphor because it suggests a cyclical nature of the life-cycle of the universe. It even draws on ideas from Superstring theory, which is always a bonus these days.

Basically, our three dimensional observable universe is geometrically flat, and it exists on a "brane" that is floating around in a higher dimensional space, along with other universes, also on branes. These branes are like slices in a loaf of bread and may have different laws of physics and dimensional space.

Every trillion trillion years or so, enough time for our universe to accelerate itself out of effective existence, our brane interacts and collides with another brane. All the quantum and dimensional causes and conditions are just so that all the potential energy still stored in our universe reacts and is shocked or energized into something that looks, hey, something like the Big Bang.

Of course this model does rain on the fractal model I like so much, the one whereby new universes are created at the point of black holes in other universes in a higher dimensional space, but even that model contained a nice metaphor for the various and sundry infinite Buddha worlds.

But I digress. It's the metaphor that matters. It doesn't even matter which is a metaphor for which. One shouldn't say things like "Physics is finding only now in Superstring theory what the Buddha taught regarding formlessness 2,500 years ago". Theories change, and so should the metaphors; whatever aids in current understanding.

Besides, both "ultimate dimension" Buddhism (as opposed to historical or engaged Buddhism) and cosmological eschatology can be both read as mythologies (bringing it back to "Haibane Renmei"), explanations for things we just can't know, but help us along in feeling connected to something larger.

And at the very least, I like that physics can at least have a conversation with Buddhism, unlike with other theologies, as suggested by the aforelinked Slate article.

Anime III:
As long as I'm writing about anime DVDs (and whiling my way in the metaphor fringe), Haibane Renmei is one of my favorites. It's wonderfully chock full o' metaphor. Maybe. It's a lovely, pastoral anime that's more of a character study of a fantasy town; definitely not your usual anime fare.

It's about a group of beings called Haibane, born out of cocoons, and they curiously have wings and halos, but not religious icon, glow around the head halos. More like 5th grade Christmas pageant, ring floating above the head halos. The angelic reference is obvious, but although they live monk-like existences, they aren't angels, just ordinary beings. It seems their background is rooted more in some unknown, living mythology than an obvious spirituality.

The Haibane live with humans within a walled city from which neither humans nor Haibane are allowed to leave, all of this smacking with metaphor. They live harmoniously, with the humans tolerating the Haibane, whose existence and livelihood are guaranteed by a mysterious association called the Haibane Renmei. The Haibane "work" for humans but don't get paid, they don't use money, and the rule is that Haibane can only acquire things that have been discarded by humans.

A lot of anime that I like is either just darn silly eye-candy, or high-concept mind-fucks. I hate everything in between (just kidding, not really). "Haibane Renmei" is unique because it very simply deals with the life cycle, or sections of it, arcs. It covers things that are real to us, but it's strictly metaphor. Birth, death, change, beliefs, myth, harmony, conflict, salvation. It's a very idealized world, almost heavenly.

I love it in the same way I love that old TV show "Northern Exposure". It makes me feel, albeit superficially. But it's not everyone's cup of tea. There's no real plot, although it tries to scrounge one up for the end. If you don't like it from the first episode, you probably won't like the rest of the series. If you love the first episode, you'll love the rest of the series, with all its faults. If you're lukewarm about the first episode, I doubt that the rest of the series will pull most people in, but will some.


Haibane Renmei - Rakka getting her halo ^^

Anime II:
The End of Evangelion was a much better ending for that anime series. The original series had 26 episodes, but the last two episodes were incomprehensible in terms of story arc. They totally cut the story off and were two long, pseudo-philosophical montages delving into the psyches of a few of the main characters, and then ended on an equally incomprehensible uplifting, pseudo-feel-good note.

The director received death threats by whacko fans, and the production company's offices were vandalized.

The director relented and created "The End of Evangelion", a feature length, alternative ending movie intended to replace episodes 25 and 26 of the series. I think it was brilliant in completing the story arc. I don't know how much of it was a response to the extreme audience reaction to the original ending, but the alternative ending was pretty extreme itself. But, true to anime, even the alternative ending kept its ambiguity.

Just as an example of the ambiguity involved, the very last words of the movie, and I'm not going to spoil anything here, according to the commentary track, the translators had a bitch of a time deciding what the English translation should be. It's a basic phrase in Japanese, so I'm familiar with it, but I recognized that in context, the English translation depends on how a viewer interprets the movie (I would have chosen a different translation, but the phrase they chose keeps the ambiguity, and was probably the best choice).

What I liked about the movie, and this is interpretation so I don't think it's spoiler, is the depiction of souls as like drops of water. We are individuals because the matrix of form creates a reality where we can exist and interact as individuals.

Our physical, psychological manifestations, our ego-barriers, make our lives on this planet possible. Once those are removed, we are in essence like drops of water falling into the ocean. It is, for one, a very Buddhist idea for an anime that draws heavily on mystical Biblical (and related) references and imagery for its story.

And leave it to shallow me to let the influence of an anime put me in a mindset and mood that emphasizes the apocalypse and an "ultimate dimension" rather than real life around me - what I'm gonna eat, what I'm gonna wear, when should I shower, when should I start sending out my resume?

I would hope that Sarah Brightman is as creepy in person as she looks in concert. Otherwise she'd just be pretentious.

Apparently she's coming to town for a concert and they're advertising on TV.

I have to say
Death is not such a bad thing.

Dying is not such a bad thing.

One more star above the clouds is

not

such

a

bad

thing.

Well, as practice period rounds into week eight out of nine, I must say that it really has been . . . I dunno. It's been good. Even though I didn't join into an "official" practice period, I think it was appropriate, if not symbolic, me doing my own thing. No guidance, no feedback, no progress interviews, no Wednesday "teas" . . .

God, I hate modern/white liberals and intellectuals over-analyzing abstractions in front of a group of people. Modern or Western or "white" liberalism being a mode of thought, no longer having much to do with race, as I was educated under white liberalism. I've developed a serious beef about it, though.

The aspect of liberalism I can't stand is the assumption that humans can "know" by intellectualizing or discussing. Liberalism, I think, is marked by thinking itself as an enlightened approach, open and accepting, when it has become an arrogant form of personal colonization of ideas. Whenever people start nit-picking at abstractions and try to analyze and define things, I just want to go, "Shhhhh", and I would if they were addressing me.

And there's also something arrogant about doing it in front of a group of people who may not get or give a crap about your intellectualized, sophomoric abstractions about, I dunno, whatever, breathing, sitting, concentration, ssshhhhh.

Like you're enlightening everyone by creating a discourse with your brilliant questions and abstract thought. But that's just me, I might be totally off, and I may be saying more about myself than the folk waxing philosophical about abstract shit.

I wish I had something to say about this practice period, but no, it's just been cruise control. In fact, practice period may be the reason I have nothing to say about it. No analyzing or intellectualizing abstracts, right?

Top 10 movies in my Netflix queue (an examination into my priorities):

Current DVDs out:
1. Bob Marley: The Legend Live (shipping today)
2. Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi: Vol. 3
3. The End of Evangelion

DVDs in Queue
4. Tibetan Book of the Dead (this was actually above the Bob Marley DVD, but Netflix went fritz)
5. Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Vol. 1
6. Nuku Nuku TV: All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl: Vol. 1
7. Robert Thurman on Buddhism
8. Robert Thurman on Tibet
9. God and Buddha: A Dialogue (a conversation between Deepak Chopra and . . . you guessed it, Robert Thurman!)
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5: Disc 1

I didn't make it out to morning sitting this morning.

At 4:28, I woke up from a dream that I clearly remembered. It was an Amina dream, a good one. A happy one. In the dream, what actually happened in real life may or may not have happened, but it looked like we were going to be friends again.

At 4:55 my alarm went off.

At 4:59, usually the time I'd be finishing putting on clothes to be able to get out of the apartment by 5:05-5:07, I decided I wasn't going, and went back to sleep.

At 6:37, I woke up and thought that sitting would be ending, and we'd be heading up to the Buddha Hall for the student talk. I got out of bed, and instead of home sitting, or going to the bathroom, or making coffee, I put on the "End of Evangelion" DVD to watch it with the commentary track to see if I'd like it any better than when I watched it yesterday. I did.

At 8:43, I began first sitting, and realized that the reason I wasn't able to get out for morning sitting was because of the dream. Even a happy Amina dream sends the echoes screaming.

In the waking world, what's done is done, and I'm even glad that Amina is no longer in my life. But emotionally, she was the ground zero of what would become a ravaged wasteland. And subconsciously, I wouldn't deny that I'm still devastated. It's a landscape I would explore if I knew how to.

So I've been meditating on my brain. Thinking about it, contemplating it, keeping it in as sharp focus as possible. Grey matter, curved and looped, wrinkly, squishy, encased in my skull, in my cranium. Trillions, or in my case billions, of simultaneous electrical impulses, buzzing with life, like ants, to organize perception and reality.

I've been meditating on consciousness. Focusing on thoughts, the nature of thoughts, what are thoughts?, of perceptions, sensations. What is their reality? I don't want to take this for granted, I want to know. Or at least think about it or die trying.

I've been meditating on memory. Take an old photograph of, oh I don't know, let's say Amina. In my memory I recall the elements of the photo, what it looks like, but can I actually visualize it from this information in my mind? No, I can't. I can't close my eyes, and in the darkness see the photograph floating there, but then I draw on memory to recall the photograph, and I know precisely what it looks like, down to the moment I took it.

How about sound? Um, I've been listening to ELO's masterpiece "Out of the Blue" lately, so let's try the song "Turn to Stone". Queue it up in my memory and press play. Fade in, flanged synth, Jeff Lynne's trademark crisp acoustic guitar, hi-hat shuffling, enter vocals. That's interesting, it's all there. Vocals are loud and clear. The mid-range is a bit muddy with the guitars, but it's there. The bass is a little indistinct, and since bass below 70hz or so, I think, is more something you feel than can recall from memory, that's completely gone.

Well, that was an interesting, if inconclusive experiment.

Back to consciousness, I'm re-reading the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, Robert Thurman's translation with oodles of interesting background information. Try to get at consciousness by meditating on ultimately losing it. So many ways to die. A peaceful dying in sleep is the easiest to imagine reading the book.

I also entertain a gunshot wound to the head like Kurt Cobain, drowning after jumping off the Staten Island Ferry like Spalding Gray, having flesh flayed from bones like Hypatia, being in an unfortunate city targeted for a live human nuclear bomb experiment in the waning days of a war, being bled to death in a Khmer Rouge prison hospital, being mauled by a neighbor's Presa Canario dogs, and this can go on for a while, but that's about as long as I want this paragraph to go.

Death, the final loss of consciousness only occurs when some vital part of our physical mechanism fails to sustain what it's supposed to, fundamentally coming down to the brain, the heart, the lungs, or blood. I wonder what happens to time when we die. The so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead delineates a specific progression in the final loss of consciousness to death, but is it affected by the speed or violence of the interruption to the brain, heart, lungs, or blood?

What is it that I've had my entire waking life that fades and leaves? I used to look at my legs and toes and muse about how far away they looked. I wiggle my toes, and I just did that. What just did that? What was the connection from up here to down there?, what identifies that as my leg? This is when I still lived in New Jersey.

Now, what exactly was my point? Oh yea, fuck meditation. OMG, did I just use ELO in a meditation?!

I don't like the term "meditation" used in reference to sitting. Zen "sitting" might be a term of art. I wonder if it's a specific thing to the Zen school that can be considered meditation, but not solely identifiable as meditation. Maybe in Tibetan Buddhism, meditation is something more specific, so the term may be appropriate.

And as I've said before, I think of Zen as only a tool for Buddhism; Zen does not equal Buddhism. Zen is learning how to hammer a nail straight into a piece of wood. Buddhism is something you can build using Zen. If you only learn and follow Zen, you're just continually hammering nails into a board.

But even this isn't right, because in ways Zen is Buddhism just fine. In some ways, it's all just looking at the same thing from different angles and perspectives. I actually don't know a whole lot about Tibetan Buddhism, and so I defer a lot in terms of respect and sophistication. And that isn't always fair to the tradition that resonates more clearly with me.

I sometimes think of Tibetan Buddhism as like a particle accelerator, where scientists can take a single atom and zip it around this circular course and control it to smash into another particle and learn about it from the ensuing collision.

Zen is more like neutrino hunting, whereby scientists take this huge vat of super pure water, so pure that it's undrinkable, line it with special sensors, and bury it deep in a mine or under water to eradicate all other sources of cosmic and terrestrial radiation. Then they wait for a chance neutrino to pass through the earth and through the vat of water, setting off the sensors. Neutrinos are notoriously hard to detect because they would be able to pass unhindered through hundreds of thousands of miles of solid lead, or something like that.

Whispers, echoes, impressions, resonances. That's what makes up the bulk of my reality now. No events forming new memories, no concrete substance or matter, no defined acts.

Just as in more maddening phases when I believed it was possible to reach out to the edge of my field of vision, grab hold of it like it was a movie screen, and peel it away. Reality perceived was just a three dimensional interactive projection created by my imagination.

And if I could create it, I could destroy it. I still basically believe that is the essential nature of physical reality. It's not substance.

Action is no less amorphous. Or there are different levels of action.

Someone reminded me about an old Zen nugget: A monk was asked, "What are you doing?", "I'm sitting", "Why are you sitting?", "So that I can become a Buddha". The first monk then picked up a tile and started polishing it. After a while, the second monk could no longer contain his curiosity and asked, "What are you doing?", "I'm polishing this tile", "Why?", "So that I can make a mirror", "How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?", "How can you become a Buddha by sitting?"

What are we doing when we sit? Who knows? That's why I dislike the term "meditation" in reference to sitting. When strangers ask me, "Do you meditate?", I find I can't answer that. I've come to respond with, "That's a good question, do I meditate?", as if I'm asking them.

If they ask "Are you meditating?", that's easier to respond to. "I'm trying", "I try", "Oh, thanks for reminding me". But "Do you meditate?", suggesting a concrete act that starts at one point and ends at another is just inaccurate. It's an inaccurate assumption so loaded and basic that I'm uncomfortable clarifying it. "Do you sit?", "Yes". It's incomplete, but at least it's accurate. "Is the sky blue?", "Of course not".

Crap, I lost my train of thought. I'm gonna go play video games.

I've dismantled my life. But I did a half-assed job about it. No matter.

When my brother was in high school, he used to disassemble his bike and put it back together for fun. He got to know bikes well enough that when he joined his college cycling team, he was their defacto mechanic.

In contrast, I failed to take apart my guitars to get to know them better. I was able to remove strings, remove the neck, and open up the control cavity. But I never took apart the machine heads or the pickups or the pots, never removed the bridge, or learned the wiring and electronics. I still can't adjust the action or intonation.

And that's pretty much the extent of what I've done with my life. I've made a nominal gesture of taking it apart, but not enough to understand any mechanics. I still have so much stuffis. This is just observational fact, not self-pity or regret, not intended to elicit any feeling.

And I still get pangs when I read about other people doing stuff, going to NoisePop shows or film festivals, and I want to be getting together with people and doing stuff. But I can't. Because I dismantled all of that, too, and I'm stuck examining the bits and pieces of desire and attachment, and work through them intellectually, emotionally, and viscerally; wondering if I really understand it.

And then I'm OK. Then I remember the path I'm on. Then I remember the scheme of things and that I gave all those things a try. I've tried living that way, and it was fine for then, but things have changed. It doesn't even matter that I've dismantled my past, present, and future, and saying that doesn't even include the doom and drama it might once have had.

Crap, what the hell was I talking about?

current soundtrack: ELO - "Out of the Blue"

Back inside
This chamber of so many doors;
I've nowhere, nowhere to hide.
I'd give you all of my dreams, if you'd help me,
Find a door
That doesn't lead me back again
- take me away
"The Chamber of 32 Doors" (Genesis)

Is it possible that Peter Gabriel was writing with a reincarnation subtext back in 1974? Nah. But metaphor, it'll get you every time.

Anime I:
Starting last year, an anime series called RahXephon was released on DVD in the US, but my viewing of the series was sporadic due to the vagaries of Netflix availability and the staggered nature of the release of the 7-disc series. Now I'm near obsessing. I'll do my best to avoid spoilers.

My viewing of the series was so sporadic that by the middle discs, the already complex story was incomprehensible because I couldn't recall details from previous discs. By the end of the 6th disc, I was rating the series pretty low. But then the 7th disc came out and intrigued me enough (alright, it blew me away) to give the entire series another try, so I queued up the whole series in a row on Netflix and watched it in a week.

After the 7th disc, I thought, "I have no idea what just happened here, but it was brilliant!", and gave it five stars.

It is a brilliant anime from start to finish, even though I still haven't quite figured out the very complex storyline, and the interpersonal relationships are also mad complicated. But it's anime, different standards are required. An open mind is required. Allowing for artistic license is required. Remembering that we're dealing with wacked-out Japanese creativity is required. Even the director stated that his hope was that people don't think too much about it, and that it would evoke certain feelings without explanation. Kind of a cop-out for poor plot plotting, but alright.

But I like thinking and putting pieces together. And yes, there are huge holes in the plot and the logic, but the parts that can be put together to reveal something about a larger whole are brilliant. There are a lot of things to put together over the span of several episodes, including characters, back story, names, and even the music (a music theme is central to the concept), so unfortunately, this is a fan anime, not conducive to watching it only once. And I do accept the director's emphasis on the emotional impact. They did the emotional impact well enough for me to overlook the plot and logic holes.

I've heard RahXephon compared to another anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was released 10 years ago and I think it's already considered a classic. It's true, the comparison is uncanny. It's possible to draw direct lines between various characters in the two anime, and the whole giant-robot-defeating-approaching-nasties thing is pretty stock in anime; almost tired.

RahXephon definitely owes a lot to Evangelion, but Evangelion's storyline is linear* compared to RahXephon. There's one episode in RahXephon that was totally heart-wrenching, and I don't think Evangelion had a comparable episode. And whereas Evangelion ultimately focuses on the theme of the individual*, RahXephon takes on a much wider view, one involving our planet as a whole, and I found that much more intriguing and challenging.

*original series ending. the alternate ending in the separate "The End of Evangelion" changes the focus and feel of the entire series. for the better in my opinion.

Oh, and being a conservatory-trained musician, I have one pet peeve. The proper pronounciation of the word "timbre", the identifying characteristics or "color" of a sound, is "tamber". I think pronouncing it "timber" is accepted in the dictionary, but you would be in "the know" to pronounce it "correctly". I prefer watching anime in the original Japanese with subtitles, but when I saw the word "timbre", I had to rewind and check the English dub to see if they got it right. They didn't. Gr.

OK, I'm not conservatory-trained, but I did go to school right next door to a conservatory.

Not to be afraid.
All the people I've ever known.
all the lives that have touched mine
brushed against mine
grasped mine.
And it all goes on.
It all transforms.
it all passes and continues.
Different dimensions, different realities
they all go on and continue.
You can stay stuck in the one
you're conditioned in,
the one you know.
Or jump dimensions, or
jump timelines.
You can even be granted to
live in the memory you
most cherish.

Haruka, the moment she...

I like to think of myself as having been an alcoholic for at least 10 years. It's fine if people don't believe me since I never got addicted, per se, and it never seriously interfered with other aspects of my life like job, relationships, and activities. So when I decided to stop my constant drinking last year, it was not a big deal.

But there are times, after going to a party and drinking more than I usually do now, the next day I'll feel the craving. But it's not just a craving, it's the "I want to feel sick like that". Ill. Bad.