I’ve booked my flight back to New Jersey. I leave here on July 12, about three weeks from now. What has made the past 12 months worth living? Entering a monastery would not deal with the fundamental issues that resolve that nothing, nada, in the past 12 months makes life worth living. By extension, the last 12 years, by extension, the past 36 years. There is some basic, wonderful truth somewhere in that.

Why look for worth? Why look for meaning? What is meaning? Why can’t I just go to the root monastery and get back on the path to ordination? Why can’t I just let go? As I type this on my laptop, listening to 209 David Bowie songs shuffled on my iPod. Go to the root monastery and let go of everything, everything that pretends that I have an individual self, an identity, desires, wants, cravings.

I’m leaving here in about three weeks. I don’t know what I will be doing after my brother’s wedding a week and a half after that. I just know I told the community that I won’t be going directly to the root monastery because something is preventing me from whole-heartedly requesting aspirancy to become a monastic. Something is still blocking me. Becoming a monastic would not somehow miraculously make life worth living, make me want to live.

Maybe I’ll go to San Francisco, I’m still waiting to hear back from a Tibetan place where I heard I can rent a small room. San Francisco = suicide.

Maybe I’ll go to Nagasaki. But I realize out of all the things I want to do, which includes learning Japanese, nothing is more boring than language study. Nagasaki = what the hell?

Maybe it will kick in that I should just request aspirancy and go to the root monastery. Aspirancy = giving up.