The realization about what Zen does in relation to other teachings I've come across has to do with the Zen idea of "no mind". That's a poor translation and is the source of the misinterpretation that Zen seeks nihilation, emptying the mind so that there is nothing there. In that way, having an "empty mind" is not the goal, neither is achieving a state of "no mind".

The conception of the "empty mind" that results from that poor terminology of "empty mind" is impossible. There is no such thing as an empty mind. Even during sitting, we are aware of our bodies and our surroundings. These things are fact, these things are in our minds just by our beings, so just by our existence, our minds cannot be "empty".

Furthermore, by being alive, it is impossible for thoughts not to arise in our minds. That's the brain's functioning, to give rise to cognitive thought. Again, "empty mind" is not possible.

The better term for the idea is "non-clinging mind" (Teflon mind?), and that is what Zen practice trains. Thoughts arise, but we don't cling to them, we let them go.

But that's not the end of the practice. That is the practice for something else. Practicing non-clinging in our minds and thoughts is training to not cling to desires, to attachments, or to aversions. Even not cling to our lives as if they were something permanent and could be held onto by will.

Maybe I ate a particularly delicious apple fritter. Then during sitting, the memory of the apple fritter arises and I think about it. I remember how delicious it was and how satisfied I felt while eating it. Maybe I'll look forward in anticipation to the next apple fritter I eat. Or worst case scenario, I break sitting to seek the apple fritter . . .

OK, I'm back. Man, that was good fritter.

Anyway, the rise of the memory of the apple fritter could not have been prevented. It happened, it went into our memory as a strong pleasurable feeling, it would inevitably arise again. That it happens during sitting gives us the opportunity for it to arise and let it go, not cling to it. That's practice, training.

It's not that we don't enjoy the apple fritter when we eat it, but when the clinging thoughts and desire arise later, we train ourselves to not suffer from them by letting them go, using some symbolic or metaphorical visualization, such as putting the leaf back into the stream and letting it flow away.

It all seems so obvious and sophomoric when I write it out. I just enjoyed the returning to Zen and realizing that things from other schools fit in very well. For the purpose of the other philosophies, Zen is a viable tool. Maybe not for everyone, but it's a legitimate, viable tool.

WordsCharactersReading time

trying to unmuck. going into incoherent mode.

Whent to DDM's international practice session yesterday. for the first time since April. it was good because there were only three of us aside from the monk leading. prolly a good thing i missed last week when they said 10 people showed up. too many for my tastes. Will probably go again next week. no prognosis on after that. trying to open my heart but people tend to make me shut it down. you have that affect on me.

Zen is still a good tool. After wandering away from zen for a while and finding other teachings, going back to it I find it is doing what I learned in other teachings also. What I don't like is dogma such as saying zen is the most direct way. everyone says that. even the Dali Llama says that about Tibetan Buddhism. I think they're all right, I just think it's useless making such pronouncements. and not.

Even my Thai classmate. He lent me a book that I'm finding to be really good. It's of the Theravadan tradition – Thai, forest tradition, conservatively sticking to direct teachings sourced to the Buddha. It purports to get to the heart of the teachings and practice, it's all we need to know, the most basic and pure teaching. I think it's right. or not. either way I just don't care about such characterizations. just makes me think you're trying to convince me of something, yo'm sayin' homeslice?

All these people who think they know what they're talking about.

Or. no. All these people talking like they think they know me.

no.

All these people talking, and me thinking they think they know what they're talking about me.

bastards. no one knows what they're talking about.

actually, at the DDM session, I brought up my recent thoughts about service, and the monk didn't respond or say anything like he knew exactly what I was talking about and knew what to say. I appreciated that.

Molting. I feel like peeling my muscles out from under my skin.

I'm second guessing my motivation behind that stuff about service, which I highly doubt I will implement seeing as I'm a lame-ass and would rather kill myself than help other people or stop my negativity. I'm wondering how much is psychological, how much of the motivation is something I'm not aware of.

I close my eyes, breathe, and the world goes on around me when I'm not here.

My body is a huge space. When I die, images will emerge into this space. I will remember everything. I will know things that I didn't know. And the relevance will all depend on what I'm able to cultivate while I'm in this living life part of the life-death cycle.

Outside of this huge space is the illusory world, projections like light and shadow in a movie theater. Manifestation of something called pristine cognition, pure consciousness. Appearances are a distillation of it, wisps and vapors.

I can do as I please with this space and this world. Who will be affected? Let's see how far I can throw a rock.

What a mess, I don't have anything to say, I don't have anything to think. All the same questions remain and loom, I'm not solving or resolving anything.

The issue of service has come up. There are many things in this lifetime that I have identified as "not an issue", but the idea of service has been coming lately and red flags have been going up in my mind indicating – this is an issue.

Things like eating meat – not an issue. Entering a monastery – turns out not an issue. "Moral" aspects of suicide – not an issue. Etc., etc. But service . . . resonating recently has been the teaching, as well as a resonant sense, that karmic or negative obscurations can be cleared through service. Negative obscurations specifically being identified as an issue when I was at Deer Park.

Service, what does it mean? It means acting in an official capacity for the benefit of others. Service doesn't mean just doing good or being good.

Several months ago I was riding along on my bike when I saw an old man on a bike loaded with flattened cardboard tip over in the street, blocking some traffic. He might have been nudged by a car, no surprise there.

I didn't think, I just came around and started helping get this guy upright, out of traffic and on his way. Another woman who was also there helped out, too. The old guy was engaged with the person who might have nudged him, who was telling him it wasn't safe to be riding with his bike so heavily loaded.

No one paid me any mind, no words or looks were exchanged, but we got his bike upright and traffic flowing. I quickly discerned there was nothing left for me to do, and I took off without any acknowledgement, not expecting any or any gratitude. It's supposed to be a selfless act, sponging for gratitude would've been cheap.

I rode away disgusted with myself. So I helped this guy out selflessly, so I was supposed to feel good about myself? I'm such a good person? Negative obscurations. There's something right in all this, as well as something twisted. And that sort of so-called selfless help to one particular individual is not what service is about.

I'm still trying to work out what it is about, and I feel the resistance inside me. It's not my style, I just want to be alone, I don't want to serve. But service is the one way to help clear these obscurations. Furthermore, I'm constantly telling myself to cultivate breaking habits. Do what I automatically wouldn't do. Service is something I naturally am not inclined to do.

The pathetic part is that service is the easiest thing in the world. What I recently mentioned about being something to someone. That would be service. It's different from helping that one old guy because it's an ongoing commitment. Being a school teacher, a parent, part of the PTA is service.

All I have are lines running down the back of my legs, bleeding.

7:07 p.m. - From my studio window. People waiting for the garbage truck. That's the way it works here. Garbage trucks come to collection points at appointed times and households have to bring out their own garbage. 

7:09 p.m. - Oh wait, that's a recycling truck. Same idea. Long zoom, low light, blurry is alright when it's expected.

June 15-18

FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1:18 p.m. - Oft-shot subject, Xindian riverside bikeway to school. Treasure Hill to the right, Yongfu Bridge to the left, elevated freeway above that becomes double-decker behind me from this vantage point under the Fuhe Bridge.

1:19 p.m. - Taking shelter from the rain under the Fuhe Bridge. To the left of the column with the numbers, a person across the river is visible. Some might say a unique quality of photography is to capture details that were unseen at the time and that other mediums such as painting would overlook. Painters might say photography lacks imagination and a good painter would have included such details whether they were there or not, including the white dog right of center.

SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 12:11 p.m. - Birds hangin' around in a crick. I took a bus from Taipei Main Station to Jinshan township on the northeastern coast of Taiwan to visit Dharma Drum Mountain monastery. Jinshan, an hour and a half away by bus with lots of stops, is fairly considered rural.

Jinshan street shooting. I got off the bus in Jinshan town, neglecting to notice the bus actually goes all the way to Dharma Drum Mountain. It became an opportunity to shoot the walk to DDM. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

I do try to include a human element in photos when available. There's a person on the right-hand side of the photo. Some might say a unique qua . . . oh, nevermind.

I'm fighting the rain with chocolate. Lots of it. I bought a bulk pack of 10 bars of some Hershey's knock off. Don't know if it's working, but at least it will fatten me up. That was sarcasm.

The most memorable image for me from Pan's Labrynth is when Ofelia is eating the grapes. She just looks so smug and self-satisfied and it's a total break from the character the rest of the time. Popping bits of broken up chocolate bars into my mouth makes me feel smug and self-satisfied. It also makes me swat away the fairies flying around me trying to get me to stop.

Rain. Is that all it takes to take me out? To turn me into a withering, simpering, sad excuse of existence, even more pathetic than usual? If that's so, then I really don't deserve to be here. See? All roads lead in one direction. For all of us really.

Watching clips from a bunch of graduation speeches at Commencements around the country made me wonder about what it takes to be somebody worthy to give a Commencement pep talk. Stars and luminaries telling these fresh-faced graduates about what's actually not ahead of them, but that they should strive for it anyway.

But then I thought, all they're saying is to be someone. Be someone to somebody. And that is the easiest thing in the world. Be someone to somebody, and you can make a world of difference, and even if it's just one life, it's worth it. You're just as worthy.

And wow, it's the easiest thing in the world, and I can't even do it. I can't accomplish being anything to anybody. I'm not saying I haven't been something to people, that I haven't made a difference to someone. Just based on odds, I must have.

But the world I've created for myself, I can just walk away and no one would notice. That's by design. Even people I've made a difference to in the past wouldn't know if I disappeared, because I already did. That's by design. Why don't I take advantage of it?

Let the rain keep coming, and I just might. The rain just doesn't stop, and I feel every drop that hits the ground.

Not sure what this blog is supposed to be doing now. It's not quite tracing any decline as it purports to, as it should. It's not tracing any progress as I'd like it to. Taiwan is no longer new, so no explorations to muse about. Nothing happening.

If I were to write anything, it would just be tracing my complacency.

It's been raining for seven days. It was on the sixth day that it finally got to me, like wires wrapped around my bones, suddenly tightening, gripping. I was doing so well, too. The weather had been a marked improvement over last year. Not as much rain, just hot. And when it rained, it squalled then stopped.

But this has been real rain, days of drear, and after raining for more than 24 hours straight, today it's off and on, sometimes hard, sometimes a lighter drizzle, sometimes even almost stopping. Whenever it comes down hard I feel the tightening.

I let my apartment run out of alcohol, and I've been resisting going out for the sole purpose of making sure that doesn't happen again. I'm trying for only when I go out anyway. And what I said before about the rain guaranteeing something – that still feels like it holds. It's just a feeling. The feeling.

SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 9:49 a.m. - Sunny, west-southwest from my window.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3 - New ways of shooting Taipei 101. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 9:31-9:32 a.m. - Rain, south-southeast and west-southwest out my window.

6:11 p.m. - Jingmei River under Roosevelt Rd.

JUNE 9 - Roadside shrine. ISO 800.