Probably no one but me would have thought how bleak life would become upon making a declaration of not committing suicide. And I did. I always considered it a fate worst than death to want to live. I'm such a barrel of laughs.

In any case, somehow I'm continuing to cultivate a positive mind. Maybe I'm deluding myself. Maybe it's the best I can do, and that's alright.

Continuing on the path of practice for whatever insight I might have on what I really believe this life and reality to be. Keep processing the elements I've brought into my life and look at what they are and what they mean to me.

The starting point is the same as it always has been as far back as I can remember (which says more about faults in my memory than any grand length of time), which is that physical reality is illusory, dream-like, a 3-D film screen that I can conceptually reach over and pull off.

It's real, no doubt, but the idea of "real" is subject to deconstruction. It's real in that it's here, but not real in terms of any inherent permanence or permanent agency. It's real in that we should live our lives, but not real as something to be attached to, or living it in a way not recognizing that it's a constantly changing flow.


November 10, 1996 - Market St., San Francisco