I took a leave of absence this semester, so I don't have to start classes tomorrow.

Wednesday, December 5, 3:59 p.m. - Taida campus. The sound of the camera's optical zoom sounds like a can opener (j/k, not really).  

The reason I took a leave of absence is because I'm going traveling with my uncle and aunt for a week, and then I decided I want to do this passport thing, this Taiwanese citizenship thing right away, so I'm going back to the U.S. in the middle of December. I decided if I'm going back to the U.S., I don't want to go back for a short trip, so instead of missing so much class, I'm taking the whole semester off.

I don't know the status of the band I auditioned for, but they asked me to come by their last gig tonight to pick up a CD of their live performance to get a feel for it, so that means I'm still in the running. I honestly don't think I'll get the gig, but in case I do, I want to go back to the U.S. now because they want to start rehearsals in January and start gigging in February. I can also bring back my cymbals, drum pedal, and PZM microphone for the bass drum.

If I get the gig, it'll be fine. I'll just continue classes in Taipei, and the gig seems like a lot of fun and good exposure. If I don't get the gig, it'll be fine, because I'm leaning towards wanting to move to Kaohsiung anyway, and once I have permanent residency with my Taiwanese passport, the only thing to keep me in Taipei is this gig.

I had a great week in Kaohsiung last week. Since so many of my relatives don't speak English, it really forced me to speak Mandarin, and I think living there would really help improve things.

My cousin has a friend that I met earlier this year who turns out works in a music store, so I already made some music contact down there. I even helped try sell a guitar to an American who happened into the store while I was there – maybe I can get a job there, haha!

I met a woman up here in Taipei recently that I thought had potential as a social contact. We met through a meditation group, so we had that in common to connect with, but in our most recent meet-up, the truth came out. No way.

Yeah, that's it. No way. It was our third meeting, and our first two meetings were like she was refraining herself as anyone should when getting to know someone, being tactful and finessing. This time I got a glimpse of what she's probably really like. Inflexible, egotistical, and arrogant in her practice.

After a while I had nothing to say to her, because she's always right. And I don't doubt that she is always right. I just have nothing to contribute to someone who has already decided is always right, and as soon as someone disagrees with her, they're wrong.

For example when discussing what someone else thinks (which for me is something we can never really be sure of), her exact words were, "I know, I just know". OK. Maybe she does. Maybe she's right. But she wouldn't even entertain any doubts or any other perspective or explanation to suggest she might be wrong, and to me there's something wrong with that. It's inflexible, and whenever you have inflexibility, you have intolerance and dogma.

She's dogmatic about the practice, and I'm not into dogma. If you talk to me about dharma from a dogmatic point of view, I'm bored. She even listened to me only with dogmatic ears, so she wasn't really listening to me. And worst of all, she thinks she's open-minded and liberal about the dharma, but she's simply not.

The monastery this practice is affiliated with is Dharma Drum Mountain. Of the four major systems in Taiwan, this attracts me the most because it's Zen, and closely resembles the Plum Village system that I found so attractive in the U.S.

I found out that the Plum Village branch monastery in Vermont has closed, and relocated to upstate New York, just an hour and a half from where my parents live. They're in retreat now, so I don't know if I can visit for just a weekend, but I think I'll try to make contact with them and see. Maybe I'll stay for a week. And as monastics are shuffled among the branches, maybe I'll run into some that I knew at Deer Park. It's been more than a year since I last made contact.

Regarding practice, I agree about the importance of finding a teacher, but I think in a past lifetime I had a break from that system, and now I'm wandering a while before I go back. I'm not looking for my teacher in this lifetime, and I'm pretty sure I won't find that person in this lifetime. Or if I found him or her, for example Madoka or Nobuko, I wouldn't recognize her as my teacher. Not Nobuko, she's more very close dharma friend, not even speaking dharma in this lifetime.

As such, since I entered a gate through Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village monastic system, I accept him as my nominal teacher. I never met him and although his writings are lovely and wonderful, they don't blow me away. So even while practicing with Dharma Drum Mountain, I consider Thich Nhat Hanh as my teacher, and Plum Village/Deer Park as my home monastery. It's just like that.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 9:20 a.m. - Dharma Drum Mountain practice center in Beitou District.

10:39 a.m. - Danshui township.

11:08 a.m.

Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. All of the black & white pics this month are from one roll that came back really contrast-y. I don't know if it was in the C-41 processing (the negatives) or in the scanning to CD (the person scanning/scanner settings), I honestly know nothing about the process. It made the pics hard to work with, but you work with what you get, badda-bing:

Beitou:

Danshui:

Mt. Guanyin across the mouth of Danshui River in Bali township.