OK, stop being so negative about the parents. Try to stop being so negative about the parents. Even when I focus on the positive, look at the positive, rationalize and justify with the positive, I still feel with the negative. It's a hard habit to break, but I think it's possible.

I even started feeling the negative at my uncle, at whose apartment I'm staying in Taiwan. I won't go into description or explanation because that would be self-reinforcing and justifying the negativity. I want to describe what happened because I think if I describe it, I would show that I'm right. And I'm not. And even if I am, who cares? He's my uncle, and even if we can't communicate, he's great. It's not his fault that he's forced to do my parents' evil bidding in the first place.

Oops.

Right, so I need to work on stopping the negativity by going straight through all the rationalization and description for the negativity and working on it at the source – the negativity itself, the seed of all the rationalization and description. It's self-perpetuating. The negativity that creates negative thoughts which feed the negativity that creates negative thoughts.

If I'm doing it at my uncle, then I know there's something wrong with me. If it's something I think is wrong with me, then I can apply the same solution or attitude towards my parents. It's not about them. It's not the point that they are devious, scheming, conniving, controlling, materialistic, money-grubbing simpletons.

Oops.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Ooh, baby, I love it here. I would totally expat in Taiwan, but I bet that's what my parents are banking on. Back to the question of their ploy, right before I left, they mentioned that if I enter a "temple" – they don't know what a monastery is – better that I join one in Taiwan. My internal reaction was a resounding, "wtf!"

They are great parents for practicing non-attachment. I need to focus on their suffering, which they are unaware of, and their ignorance in order to not feel anger, but my natural reaction to them tends towards anger. It's hard separating fact from feeling.

The fact is that they have no bearing on my decisions or my life. They have no awareness or knowledge of it, nor have they made any effort to know it or understand it or anything different than their idea of it.

The feeling is that they are insulting me by implying I don't know what I'm doing or what I want. And maybe I don't, but they do?!! It also ventures on their having no right. If their philosophy on children is a non-participatory one, then they should remain non-participants. Except for that control issue they have.

So they encourage me to join Plum Village by insulting my decision to join Plum Village. In fact, they guarantee it because even if I wanted to do something else, I wouldn't want to give them the satisfaction. Mm, that's not it, either.

Conclusion: laugh them off and continue on my path. Whatever I do has nothing to do with them. My practice isn't that weak even if I try to make it so.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

if i should stumble
and what if this monastery charade is just another ploy; a sidetrack. what if there is no transformation. what if this is the same thing i've always done. i look down into the well of my psychology and the laugh echoes and echoes and echoes on on on on on.

i don't need to enter the monastery to accomplish the purported reasons for which i'm entering the monastery. everything is already complete. the answers manifest. there is no attaining enlightenment, everything all is enlightenment.

i don't think the path is wrong or deluded. i think the monastery is right, i think they're onto something, but what do i want. maybe i'm not ready for the monastery, maybe i'm way beyond the monastery. maybe i haven't even begun to climb the mountain, maybe i'm on my way back down the mountain, maybe there is no mountain. who knows. who cares. what do i want.

the patterns of my life swirl around me and i might be shamming myself with this idea about the monastery and what it's supposed to do. but do i believe in the core of my being, do i trust myself. how many more times do i let other people test me as to whether i'm a fucking aspirant or not.

next stop: taiwan.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Chris: The fact that we don't know this man isn't important really, because his experience is our experience, and his fate - up here - is our fate. "Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas", says the preacher. All is vanity. I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we're stripped of all our worldly possessions, and all our fame and family and friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but it's just the way things are. Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. Only when we understand all is vanity, only then it isn't.
Maurice: Sometimes I have trouble following his train of thought.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Maggie: What's the matter, Fleischman, you're a doctor, haven't you seen dead bodies before?
Joel: Yea, and I'm still rattled, I don't like people committing suicide. All the ethical considerations aside, it's just plain bad for business.
Maggie: He was doing fine until you told him to think about his future.
Joel: ...I was talking about a walker!

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

God, I've been totally remiss on the Northern Exposure quotes, it's been a long time and there are so many, and it's such a good show. This is probably a good time to mention that the second season has been released on DVD. All my friends have already gone out and bought or rented first and second seasons, or they're planning to. This is because that's a requisite for being my friend. Right, friends? Hm, I'm sure they're out there.

It's still cold. I haven't lived in this kind of bitter cold since 1992. California has thinned my blood and it's a hard acclimation, but in a few days I'll be in Taiwan where I'm told by unreliable sources (parents) that it should be warming up like Springtime quite nicely.

Yup, and since I hadn't been here in Winter for so long, I forgot that my parents aren't such big fans of spending money on heating the house. It's a brisk 62 degrees in my room, which is colder than the rest of the house so I never close the door.

Of course it's below 20 degrees outside, which brings back a vague memory from high school years when, in order to warm up, I'd go stand outside or in the garage for five minutes. Coming back in was just as good as coming into a well-heated room.

In New York:
Walking from 8th Avenue to 12th Avenue (and back) on 42nd street in 20 degree temps, 0 degrees with wind chill = the longest four blocks I've ever walked (in recent memory).

Even worse, the cause was hardly noble: getting a visa to visit the P.R. China, walking past brave Falun Gong protestors against the Chinese government. Any cause worth braving that cold is a noble cause. Or is a cult.

I would not have stood out there like they did for true love.

I would not for Thich Nhat Hanh.

Ordinarily I wouldn't be caught dead going to China, but I've got an unplanned month with an uncle in Taiwan and if he offers to take me to China to visit some cousins (Taiwanese doing business in China), I go. What can you do?

My parents are being very nice. When I told them a while ago that I wanted to enter the monastery, I offered to visit them for some months before doing so, because the monks were leaving for a while. They declined.

Then they came up with this hare-brained idea for me to go to Taiwan before entering. So I'm at their house for two weeks before flying off to Taiwan. Really they're just waiting for me to be out of their house again. Haha, what a fucking idiot I've been all my life!

I'm being distracted these days fitting over 600 CDs into my pocket.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

At the monastery, I had to bend over backwards to not say that my parents don't care about my decision to enter the monastery. I didn't want to sound whiny or self-pitying or give the impression that I was deluded about my parents' concern for me.

But folks, it's very simple. It's not malicious, it's not neglect or lack of concern for that matter, but it's philosophical. Glossing nothing over, no finessing, my parents really couldn't care less about whether I enter the monastery or not. They don't give a rats ass, and that's OK!

Don't ask me what the philosophy is, you'd have to ask them. I don't understand it, but I accept it. It makes sense with everything else about them I've observed and experienced. They're not sentimental, nor do they have lofty ideas about their roles as parents.

They farted us out and they viewed parenting as a financial obligation. They had to provide for us and do what was reasonably necessary for us to be alright in the world. That's not neglect or lack of concern, it's totally concern; that's their twisted version of parental love, but it's still parental love. I know plenty of parents who are unable to even have a concept of parental love.

But having completed their obligations and more, such as continuing to allow us into their house, whatever we do with our lives is not anything they can really be bothered with.

I'm not saying they're in any way normal, hell no they're not normal. I really think my parents are unique or rare in the world. But then I think I have a unique brand of fucked-upness which could only come from a uniquely twisted upbringing. Yay me.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

It occurred to me this morning that the whole 'aspirant' issue for me here at the monastery has just been a mindgame, a test, perhaps intentionally exacerbated by the monastics, but mostly my own creation.

I do think the monastics' treatment of the issue was organic, though. They didn't create it as an issue to test me, but listened to me, identified it as an issue from my own words, and then shaped their answers to my inquiries to test me on the issue.

In retrospect, I do think the issue caused me a bit of distress, and their answers and guidance didn't really help any – but they weren't supposed to help except to test me to find my own true feelings.

Of course I only realize this after it has been confirmed that when I return, I'll be an aspirant. One of the monks hinted before I really pressed the issue that I was 'already considered an aspirant'. The joke was on me. I could have requested aspirancy a month ago, but I was left stewing in it because of my own hang-ups!

Their teaching/guidance came in the form of not being clear on what aspirancy was or what it meant. That was the information I kept on trying to get from them. So I got answers like aspirancy being 100% certain on the monastic path. Not a lie, but I interpreted that to mean if you request aspirancy, you're looking to ordain eventually. Period.

Now I realize that can't be right, it doesn't make sense and would be irresponsible of them to expect that. There are things I can't know about the monastic path until I become an aspirant. But to know those things, I need to request aspirancy. Catch-22.

I finally pressed the issue because of financial reasons, and they finally gave in and said, "yea, you'll be an aspirant when you come back", but they've considered me an aspirant all along. And when I come back on the aspirant path, that doesn't mean 100% committal to the monastic path. At any point, I might come across the one thing I can't get past and will have to leave the mountain.

I'm learning. The confusion on the issue was my own creation. If I had just looked at it logically and come to a certain decision on my own, I could have avoided any distress over the issue. Or if I just had a positive mindset about it.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

Counting down, yes, counting down once again. Once again posting with location heading to indicate location changes, and counting down to it. Counting down to leaving the monastery on Sunday, the same day the monastics leave for Vietnam, to fly to New Jersey on Monday. When will I stop counting down?

It has been confirmed that when if I return here in March or April, I will officially be an aspirant to become a monk (ie, won't have to pay anymore). I'm not sure if this place is what I always imagined monasticism to be, and that has its good points and it has its bad points, and I have to take the good with the bad, the bad with the good.

The bad is well-documented. The good is that I will be able to have a laptop and a guitar, and I'm hm-hm-hming over an iPod. Self-discipline and self-restraint are the rules of the day, though, and I fashion myself to be reasonable in that department.

I'm a little concerned about the two and a half months I'll be gone. I can't expect the comfortable little niche I've carved out for myself to be here when I return. That's probably for the better, though. And I'll get by with a little help from my friends.

I still wonder about that romantic, diary-narrated hermit life I could live in San Francisco. One of the guests here told me about a place where she lived for several years, a Tibetan place near Balboa Park, near where the band I was in used to rehearse, where you can rent a tiny room for $300 a month. She described the Dharma talks there to be very heady and theoretical – right up my alley.

I could live my hermit life, be immersed in a tradition more aligned with my own philosophy, probably land a similar job as I had before. I would be able to afford a shared room in that rehearsal space! All to myself. Bring my drums back out from New Jersey. No joining bands, though.

Snap out of fantasy. That's not reality. New Jersey on Monday. Taiwan two weeks later. No agenda, no fluent English speaking relatives. I have no idea why I'm going to Taiwan, but if my relatives don't have a plan, I'm committed to making something up on my own. Make it up as we go along. Something breaking out of any past travel habits.

Emil (moving portrait), a fellow guest at Deer Park Monastery.

New Years Revelation
When did my own negativity become such a monster? It's not even real, it's just subjective mental formation. It means that I will never be happy, and no matter what great situation I find myself in, no matter what great relationship I enter, I will eventually become critical, dissatisfied, discontented, disillusioned.

My criticism of this monastery has reached a fevered pitch. I started to say that it's not even a monastery, it's just a practice center catering to the needs of laypeople with no standards of quality or behavior. I started to say that the practice here has very little of what I consider the hallmarks of monasticism.

I started thinking that this branch monastery is no where near the ideal, and I started looking forward to going to the root monastery in Plum Village, France, or the other branch monastery in Vermont, thinking those places would be more to my liking because they are far removed from the surrounding lay community and were more conducive to a monastic environment. The incredible desert climate here was no longer such an important, determining factor of appeal.

My critical thinking attacked the administration and implementation of the monastic philosophy here and analyzed how it contradicted the very principle of mindfulness. I was standing on a soapbox, yelling at any passerby who bothered to stop and listen to me rant about what's wrong with this place.

No one agreed.

They told me they loved this place. This place was special, it was magical. They are so happy and grateful that this place is here for them. With the stresses and problems of their daily lives, they could come up here and they could relax, they could let go of their mind and be surrounded by nature, and smiles from other people were almost guaranteed. That's how I used to feel.

Suddenly my criticisms and negative view of the place became a mirror. Only I saw it and all I saw was myself in them. This has to stop.

True to my own philosophy, I was happy before with my relationship with my life, even if it was discontent or dissatisfaction. If I was discontented or dissatisfied, I told myself that I was happy being discontented and dissatisfied, and as such it was perfect. That doesn't fly here. This place is special and I don't want it marred by the negativity of my artificial mental constructs.

Even if my criticisms are valid, the expression of them can be not negative. I may not have control over the things I'm being critical about, but I do have control over how I deal with them myself.

For example, and this isn't really a criticism of mine, but more of an ideal in my mind, it would be nice to have a well-kept monastery, where the grounds are tended to and appears neat, pleasing, and pleasant, without leaves and flotsam scattered about every which way.

I have it worked out in my mind exactly how I would accomplish this in a mindful, community-oriented way, but it will never happen like that because I don't have control over the situation. What I can do is implement it in myself. After morning sitting, I can mindfully walk up and tend to the tea room or sweep the grounds until breakfast. Not even having it as a goal to clean the place, it's a meditation, just sweep in mindfulness until the breakfast bell is rung.

I'm sure if I think of all the criticisms my critical mind has created and sculpted, I can find a creative way to transform them or think of better ways to handle them aside from getting frustrated or angry.

No Coming, No Going
Buddhas or bodhisattvas, enlightened ones, don't die. They have seen to the heart of existence, of being, of reality, so how can they die? Enlightened ones don't confuse natural, organic metabolizing with life, or living, or truth, or reality.

Imagine an enlightened person, perhaps you've been fortunate to know one personally. Imagine them dead, having died, maybe cremated, and imagine their skull, holding their skull in your hands. Is this the enlightened person that you knew?

So you have their skull, their actual skeleton, and you attach layers and layers of organic material onto it, muscles, tissue, ligaments, organs, systems, and you put them into metabolic movement, and you have biology, life. Not uncommon, we all share this biology and in principle this is extended to all life metabolizing on this planet.

Add consciousness, intelligence, wisdom, insight, and personality so that you have your enlightened person whole again. So what is that skull that you were holding at the beginning?

What does it matter if an enlightened person is comprised of organic matter or not. Not comprised – represented by organic matter. Organic matter does what organic matter does – it metabolizes. It is created, it develops, it matures, it ages, and it dies.

The consciousness of an ordinary being is related to that biology, that physiology, regulated by it, maybe limited by it, controlled by it, and often people suffer because of their representative organic matter, but enlightenment is liberation from attachment to that biology and suffering because of it.

Organic matter isn't special. Even galaxy clusters, galaxies, star clusters, and stars go through a process that is organic. Our sun is metabolizing in an analogous way that our biological lives are. Our planet is also metabolizing in its own way with its numerous systems and transformation. The mountains are walking in meditation.

Enlightenment is recognition of the indestructible whole, the entirety of the cosmos that is one functioning organism or system, nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, there is no coming into being, there is no going out of being, there is just transformation. Even the shamans we call "physicists" describe that.

In the here and now of our actual lives, it is happening all around us. Enlightenment doesn't mean that all this happening around us is insignificant. It means that it is rich with the stuff of enlightenment. Enlightenment is found all around us in the here and the now.

The enlightenment of the Buddhadharma is not dependent on human existence (lots of humans have a problem with this concept. Bully). If humans didn't exist, the Buddhadharma still continues. It existed before humans evolved sentience, it will exist after humans are no longer here. The universe had no problem envisioning itself without humans for 99.999% of its existence. The earth will have no problem imagining itself when we are gone; basically the same as before we appeared. What is dependent upon human existence is its relevance, so we might as well take advantage of it while we're here and strive to live more enlightened lives.