Tunnel vision. It's February 2006 and I'm afraid I'm losing sight of what's important to me, what makes me me.

I'm still waiting to hear about studying in a language program in Taiwan. Everything is closed in Taiwan for the New Years holiday, so I won't know until next week. But going to Taiwan shouldn't be contingent upon getting into this program. I should go anyway and find a job teaching English if I don't get into the program. But I know that starting over's not what life's about.

Where's my practice? My practice of existence.

I wandered in a mall today, shopping for a new digi. Focusing on Sony Cybershots. The consumer instinct, the consumer impulse. I roamed the magazine rack in the bookstore and read the cover story about Alex Lifeson and his career as the guitarist for Rush. I came home pulled out my electric. But I know that starting over is not what life's about.

Thich Nhat Hanh is the cover story in the current issue of Shambhala Sun magazine. The interview was conducted during the 2005 fall tour at the monastery, after I had left. The photos were shot in Thay's hut in Clarity Hamlet. I recognized one of the monks in other photos and remembered his parting sentiment to me was to come back to complete my Jedi training.

No, that monastic system is not for me. Reading the interview, I am familiar with his teachings. Good teachings. But said over and over again, read over and over again, for me, would be attaching to a dogma. It's good dogma, very positive, and exactly what many people need to hear, but this life is my playground, and I want my learning on the outside, and wary of any dogma, benign as it may be.

I'll get back to a monastery. In my own time, but I'll get there. My time at that monastery, in that sort of community, was the last time I connected with people. Where I felt I was known, where it didn't take any effort. Since then, my social contacts have been empty; meaningless. They didn't have to be, but they were.

I'm dumbing it down, but there's a part of the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" where we "choose" where to be born next. In this theoretical belief system, it's not a conscious choice for most beings. Most beings are drawn blindly, to varying degrees, by the habits and attachments we've cultivated in our living lives and karma we've developed by our actions to what is most familiar on the most basic and primordial level.

If you want to know something about your past or future life, look at your present life. Your present life says something about your past life, it is where you came from. How you analyze and treat your present life will say something about your future life, and it is in your power to transform it if you notice something wrong with it.

Looking at my present life, I feel huge potential and great advancement on the path, along with heavy karmic obscurations bullying me around and distracting me from my goal. I look at the patterns, the people around me, my family, and it's just unbelievable. The desert landscape of meaningfulness of my life. I can work with this. I have to work with this. This is me that I have to work with.

I have to work with hungry ghost parents, zen capitalists and materialists. Catholic brother who went to Catholicism, not grown up in it. With his almost scientific background, squelched by our parents, he has no excuse for going there. But he did, and he is, I have to work with that. Accept it. The Roman Empire never died/It just became the Catholic Church - Mission of Burma.

I have to work with these paper-thin social relationships that have potential but don't go anywhere. I have to work with this drive towards these teachings, but not able to dedicate my life to them, barely even a few hours per day.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Kwaimanumu Bukumaisi Kulegasi ("Betel Nuts" compilation) Taiwanese/polynesian aboriginal
2. To the Kill (Violent Femmes)
3. Neal and Jack and Me (King Crimson)
4. 12-Bar Original (The Beatles)
5. Anticipation (Blonde Redhead)
6. Let It Die (Feist)
7. Ballerina 12/24 (Steve Vai)
8. I Want You (She's So Heavy) (The Beatles)
9. Love You To (The Beatles)
10. Asylum (live)(Supertramp)