Mt. Guanyin ride

2:54 p.m. - Crossing the Danshui River from Taipei to Sanchong township, Taipei County, on Taipei Bridge, looking north. The Yangmingshan range is on the right, but that pointy peak on the left, Mt. Guanyin is my destination on the day.

3:07 p.m. - Sanchong township, Taipei County. The first part of the ride is all urban. There is a way to avoid riding through urban Sanchong on the bikeways, but at this point I didn't know how long the ride would be, so cutting through Sanchong on city streets was a shortcut.

3:16 p.m. - Erchong/Shuhong reclaimed wetlands park. The bikeways reach here in a roundabout way without going through urban streets. Mt. Guanyin peak in the distance. The park also serves as a flood plain in case the river system overflows during storms. The foreground is the flood plain barrier to protect the township from flooding.

3:17 p.m. - Roads from Sanchong, to the left, access roads crossing the reclaimed wetlands park on the right via ramps over the flood barrier. To drivers, I imagine, it's just how the road runs without bringing attention to its function.

I may have covered some or much of this before, but those delog (returned from death) accounts from Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth got me thinking. Granted all kinds of death speculation puts my thinking into runaway train mode.

Again, it seems to me the various accounts of what happened during the death bardos were similar because the delogs were all taught in the Tibetan cultural and religious tradition. There were differences because all individuals have their own conceptions and interpretations, despite being taught the same source material.

But, again, it's still most important to keep in mind that the experiences are subjective projections, not objective universal experiences.

Reading the book, I did find myself getting caught up and worried about, among other things, the descriptions of being called before the "Lord of Death" where good and bad deeds are counted up using black and white pebbles and then judgment being proclaimed as to whether beings would go on to rebirths in "higher or lower realms".

I don't believe in a Lord of Death. I've never been taught that, it's never been instilled in me, it's not part of my tradition, it doesn't make any rational sense that there is one, and I don't believe in external judgment of the ultimate being of a person anyway.

So what I make of it for myself is that we have our life experience stored in our memory. Can we recall most of it? No, I think if any average person recalled every memory they could possibly dig up from their entire life, it would be some minuscule percentage of all experiences received through their 5 physical senses over however many years of life they've lived, and then also throw in dreams, thoughts, meditations and musings, etc.

The collective information of our experience, stored in our brain structure, is hyuge. And the reason why we store all that information is because it's inefficient for our brains to have memory recall of all of it.

Our consciousness, what we sometimes refer to as mind, in our human form is limited by our physical bodies, in particular the physical brain, and constrained by our senses. The manifestation of our consciousness in sentient bodily form is limited and defined by what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and otherwise process mentally.

What I envision from the delog accounts of encountering the Lord of Death is that once the brain structure biologically stops functioning, the limiting attribute of the physical structure ceases. What they describe as a state of clarity far greater than anything they had as a physical being is actually the unleashing of our consciousness – all of that information emerging into sudden, unlimited recall.

The biological function of our eyes have stopped, we no longer see with our eyes, it is all part of this omni-consciousness with visual formations being just habit from how our eyes functioned before, and so it is with all our senses. All of this information and memory emerging, I think, is the overwhelming overdrive experience of the bardo.

The Tibetan delogs had been taught, subconsciously or actually, to focus the images into a certain experience. My interpretation is that as all our memories of all our life experiences – the most current being most vivid, but I'm not opposed to any suggestion that elements of all our past life experiences are part of the mix in the background – are unleashed, they become the bardo experience.

All our positive memories come out and simultaneously all our negative memories also form again and become present in our unlimited consciousness. Loves, enjoyment, happiness, good deeds, arguments, fights, injuries, interactions, etc., etc. ad nauseum, all come out and this is what I think is the delog description of counting out good and bad deeds with black and white pebbles.

It's the force of this emergence of our experience which ultimately colors the bardo experience as positive or negative. If our human life was full of hardship and we characteristically had a bad attitude about it, ultimately the recall in the bardo is negative, and that affects the continuing journey through the bardo and ultimately our rebirth in our next life.

If we had a lot of good experiences and warm memories and a lot of recall of doing good things for other people, it colors our experience with positivity, which then affects how we move forward. This is not a moral judgment, but just a natural outcome of our own behavior. We're not rewarded for doing good or punished for doing bad.

When we remember good times in our lives, we feel relaxed and happy. When we recall bad events in our lives, we feel anxious and tense. In the bardo, it's like that, but it becomes all of reality. It's much more than just memory. And actually, we can say the same thing about our experience in the life bardos, but the experience is much more vivid and the consequences more dire in the death bardos.

These are just general parameters and the possible variations are endless. You can have a person who suffered greatly in his or her life, but mentally was even-keeled, and that was the most important character attribute carried into the bardo. That equanimity opens the possiblity of avoiding being affected by negative experience in the bardo.

Or someone could have led a cushy, pampered life, but underneath was always insecure and afraid.

I might be in trouble at that stage in the bardo, sometimes referred to as the "bardo of reality", which is the second of three death bardos, but . . . I don't know. Maybe not.

On one hand when I set myself to recalling my life's experience, it's just filled with unresolved negativity. There is very little I would like to re-live again, and when I see other people at various ages in their lives, I recall myself at those ages and I would not want to go through any of it again.

On the other hand, even though that sounds like negative aversion to the experience, it may be simple detachment or non-clinging, which is good. Objectively, I can't say my life has been all that bad, with few, if any, major traumas.

Also I don't rule out that I remember the negative experiences because they stand out, and I shouldn't discount that on a daily basis, part of the background of my life was a positive appreciation towards being and this experience of being alive and healthy and free. I might even be able to add the effort, I'd say huge effort, I placed into overcoming a lot of the negativity.

Under my theory, all of this comes out when the brain loses its constraints on consciousness.

I'm also vaguely confident about meditative trainings to prepare me if this paradigm of the death bardos is actually what happens. Without training or preparation, it makes sense that most people are naturally swept uncontrollably through the bardo experience and guided by their karma to their next rebirth.

A nagging question, though, is if the delogs and the descriptions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead are right about the death experience, if some sort of realization or attainment can be had in the death bardos, then what?

The Tibetan Book of the Dead itself is slippery about the issue. On one hand, it suggest that simple exposure to these teachings is enough, and once in the bardos, consciousness becomes so clear that the slightest recollection of the teachings will lead to non-rebirth and attainment of reality. Easy.

On the other hand, the bardo experience is overwhelming, thousands times more intense than being subjected to the worst hurricanes on earth. If we try to recall the latest dream we had and the difficulty of becoming lucid in it and realizing we were dreaming, then realization in the bardo states is that much more difficult.

And what is this realization? This attainment? Is anyone foolish enough to think it is the absolute enlightenment/extinction of the Buddha? Even if I can have a bit of confidence in my efforts, what is the best case scenario I can hope for in the bardos? I don't know and it's just not explained.

I do notice that the way I write about this is trying to hold onto a rationalist view, hoping to win over other rationalists' favor, but there's nothing really rational about this, is there? Death is death, suicide is suicide. If I commit suicide, that's pretty much it and I have nothing more to contribute.

On another hand, someone with a different point of view may be hoping that I will trust and have faith in Amitabha Buddha to be born in the Sukhavati pure land, even though I've expressed doubt about the idea of a separate pure land out there somewhere. Just because I can't get my head around such a place, when it comes right down to it, I shouldn't discount that perspective, either. I just don't know. If this life is such a fairy tale, what makes what sounds like a fairy tale any less valid?

Unmistaken Child (2008, Nepal)
This documentary chronicles the Tibetan Buddhist process of finding the reincarnation of a recently deceased high lama. Israeli director Nati Baratz was already working on a documentary – something with Tibet and Jewish connections – when world-renowned teacher and master Geshe Lama Konchog passed away in 2001 at the age of 74.

Baratz must have been thinking on his feet to get footage of the funeral and cremation, and eventually he changed the topic of his film and gained permission (and trust) to follow Lama Konchog's heart disciple/attendant, Geshe Tenzin Zopa (Geshe is a title indicating the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies), in the search for the reincarnation of his master.

I've already read things about the process, so it was familiar ground for me. So when the film shows a rainbow in the sky during the cremation scene and the smoke blowing, I knew that the imagery meant something to Tibetans, although it's not explicitly stated in the documentary. I haven't heard any confirmation that the rainbow filmed occurred during the cremation.

Nor is it explained that precious "relics" can be dug out of the cremated remains of a highly accomplished master. This is shown in the film as monks sift through the ashes with spoons, uncovering pearl-like "jewels" and collecting them. I'm not sure what the scientific explanation is for this, and I haven't looked into it, although I'm sure Tibetans wouldn't mind a scientific inquiry into what appears to be their miraculous nature. I think if it is shown in the film, Baratz should have included some explanation.

Also intriguing is the search and interrogation process to find the reincarnation in children "one to one-and-a-half years old". Even though Baratz is not a Buddhist and doesn't believe in reincarnation, he presents the process in a fairly straightforward way and without a lot of skepticism. As such he leaves a lot of questions and doubts about the process unanswered.

In the end, we get a straight-forward view and think, "ah, this is how they find the next Dalai Lama or Panchen Lama". But there are also a lot of "hey, wait a minute"s. Like I said, I was a little familiar with the process, and the process shown in this film was precisely to script.

I think Baratz did a great job and I commend the film, but I also question the constraints he may have placed on himself to withhold his possible skepticism. Obviously he was trying to be respectful to the subject matter, and I don't fault him for that. A little more in depth inquiry would have made this film a lot more fascinating and challenging.

For example, in the film the child they find is suddenly talking with the assumption that he is, in fact, the reincarnation of Lama Konchog, and there is no indication of how that transformation came about. The suggestion seems to be that he is so enlightened that he came to the realization himself, but I'm wondering how much the child was conditioned to believe this by his environment and everyone assuming and telling him he was the master's reincarnation.

That's an example of what would be along my line of inquiry, but I also watched a Q&A with the director after a screening in Greece, and the subject matter is so radical that other people's questions are totally different.

One person focused on whether the parents of the child felt pressured to give up the child to the monastery because there were cameras around, and I thought that was ridiculous. This is a documentary, not a reality show. Parents aren't going to give up their child just because cameras are around! Only such a vain, self-conscious modern industrialized world view would even think of that. But it is a difference in mindsets.

Maybe Baratz was showing his skepticism by presenting such a straight-forward view of the process. There are a lot of holes and I don't think the process is shown in a way that it's trying to convince the viewers they should believe in this. As respectfully as he handles the subject, supporters of Tibet will fall all over this film, but he also leaves it open for the skeptic to say, "This is total bunk".

I'm not going to rate this because I don't think my rating would have any meaning, due to the nature of the subject matter and the problems I had with the film, but I highly recommend this film to anyone interested in Tibet, Buddhism, or reincarnation (rather Tibetan reincarnation, as my beliefs on reincarnation fudges a little with the Tibetan orthodoxy). I don't recommend the film to anyone who doesn't have the slightest interest. It won't teach or reveal anything worthwhile.



Billu Barber (2008, India)
I've watched Bollywood music videos – the song and dance clips culled from Bollywood films – since "Namaste America" started airing on Saturday mornings sometime during my college years, but I've never watched a whole Bollywood movie before. So this is my introduction to the genre. And I know there must be crap Bollywood films, but this one was pretty excellent.

I am under the perception that Bollywood takes filmmaking very seriously, and whether a film is good or not, they are probably more often than not huge productions. Directors are amazing, cinematography is amazing, and . . . choreography is amazing. I think Bollywood films are characterized by their musical numbers (which is the reason why I watch Bollywood music videos – amazing Indian dance choreography). And "over the top" is to be expected.

"Billu Barber" is about a barber, Billu, who lives in a small village, and a huge film star, Sahir Khan, who decides he wants part of his next film shot in a small village. And he chooses the village in which Billu lives. However, Billu has made claims in the past that he knows Sahir and everyone starts pressuring him now to introduce them to him. But Billu is just a poor, lowly barber and resists saying he's sure Sahir has forgotten him and it would embarrass him if it was known he knew such a lowly person.

When I watched this film, I read a religious or spiritual message in the film, and I felt vindicated when I learned that the story was based on a story involving the Indian god, Krishna (a king in human form), and his relationship with Sudama, a poor Brahmin – a caste much lower than the royal Krishna.

But I liked the angle in Billu Barber better. The original story focuses on the greatness of Krishna and his all-enveloping love and acceptance, no matter what caste. Billu Barber, I think, focuses more on the humility of greatness, or godliness. Sahir is worshiped as a god, and everyone wants to use Billu to get closer to this god, when really the person with the true greatness is the virtuous, humble one among them.

Who's the prophet, who's the god? Does the prophet make the god, or does the god make the prophet? I'm gonna say I loved this film and give it 9 out of 10 tomatoes.

North coast Highway 2 ride

3:07-3:10 p.m. - Wanli 萬里 township on Taiwan's northeast coast, north of Yeliu 野柳, visible in the distance. I had ridden to Yeliu last month, so I didn't stop until I went past it, through a tunnel. I took a break here near Guoshengpu beach 26 miles and an hour and a half into the ride. The ride is Provincial Highway 2 from Keelung to Danshui. I had done this ride before at night going the opposite direction. 

3:12 p.m. - Facing northwest up the coastline towards Jinshan 金山, the next township up, with Candlestick Rock offshore not looking too impressive from this distance. When I did this ride before it totaled 66 miles, so I had 40 miles to go. Minus the final 18 miles from Danshui to home, all easy and familiar on bikeways, I had only 22 miles to go! Easy! At least that was my thinking to convince myself I could do this.

Again I'm back at the stage where I'm trying to start wrapping things up. I have to decide whether to go back to work or whatever, and before I make that decision, I have to see if I can even stand being here anymore. Perplexed. Not easy.

Again I'm back at this wall. Again I keep stepping back away. But a very loud voice inside me is telling me it's not a choice anymore. I must do this. I have to do this. There is no or. There is no delineating reasons, no justification. I've lived my life, I know my life, and I simply have to do this.

It's my duty, it's my responsibility, it's my sacrifice, it's my destiny, I have to do this, I have to let go, I have to not cling to this ego-perspective by making the ultimate sacrifice for my soul, my karma, and my future.

If I entered the monastery, I could be doing good, improving my karma, but I would still be clinging to this ego-perspective. I would because I would know it. When I was at the monastery before, I could talk the talk and walk the walk; I could fool anyone but myself that I was still clinging to this ego-perspective.

I do think I've reached a point of transformation like none other before. For the past few weeks, I've been focused on maintaining a positive mindset and outlook at all times and the result has been pretty remarkable. I don't feel like I'm struggling with negativity as much as I've written before, and that has made me feel lighter.

I don't let things bother me. I have my armor on. When you have your armor on, what can bring any harm? Someone may do something that might otherwise make me react negatively, but I'm wearing armor and I ask myself, "What harm does that bring me? None, so why react negatively at all?"

I chase away negative thoughts by analyzing them, thinking "This such-and-such feeling/reaction is an unenlightened expression of my natural being caused by such-and-such afflictive cause". And I can always identify some afflictive cause for the negative feeling/reaction.

For example, if someone fails to get out of my way on the sidewalk and I feel a flash of anger, I think, "This anger is an unenlightened expression of my natural being caused by ego-clinging (or righteousness – I had more of a right to be there than he did)". Or if I observe someone in traffic do something stupid, I think, "This critical mind (or judgmental mind) is an unenlightened expression of my natural being caused by arrogance (or ignorance)".

I'm not sure I could maintain this positive mindset perpetually. Part of the force behind being able to maintain it is this drive to succeed this time. I am really facing it, often staring at the wall and realizing there's no reason why not right now. Right now, shut up, go! And I answer back, "Wait!"

And I know it might as well be right now. I could be making the decision right now. It's a wrap. Wrap up those last few things and go. Wait!

If I don't? Yea, it's bad. Really bad. Everything is bad if I don't do it. It'll be dire if I don't put it a good attempt. I'll have to do something absolutely crazy. If I don't do it, it has to get bad.

Now, or soon, because the time is perfect. It doesn't matter that I still have enough in my bank account to last a bit longer. Part of now is about the unbearable; part is about not wanting to continue languishing, lingering. Mostly it's because the time is perfect. Again. I know I've been here before.

Undated but in roll sequence (frames 25 and 26) so earlier this month or late last month, Taipei. Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Ilford XP2 Super. 

THURSDAY, JULY 22 - Frame 27

Pingxi-Ruifang ride w/double climb

3:25 p.m. - Keelung River from Zhongxing Rd., Xizhi 汐止. Setting off on what turned out to be an arduous 60-mile ride. Heading east out of Taipei on the right (north) bank of the river, the bikeway in Xizhi requires crossing the river at Zhongxing Rd. onto the left bank to continue east. 

3:32 p.m. - Still on the bikeway in Xizhi, but approaching the end. After that river crossing at Zhongxing Rd., which also requires crossing car traffic to cross the road, the bikeway is contiguous and very nice to the end at Xinjiang N. Rd. bridge, near central Xizhi. 

3:55 p.m. - Xiping Rd. connecting Xizhi and Pingxi. From the end of the bikeway, it's all urban car traffic roads until getting on more rural mountain roads like this. This is at the bottom of the climb, pausing at about 230 feet to contemplate the 1,770 feet ahead, still not fully confident about it.

I'm pretty much done with the second book I've been reading, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, by a Tibetan lama. It's a very good companion piece to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, of which I've also just completed a reading.

For years, I had been reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead in a loop read – after completing it, I'd go back to the beginning and start over, usually after morning sitting. I stopped last year when I was in the throes of insomnia and that disrupted my morning sitting. This was the first full read-through since then.

I don't recommend either of these books generally. They should only be read by people who are ready for them. Back in the Bay Area, Nobuko, an Oberlin friend and former housemate, mentioned she had read it back in college or soon after, and she didn't get it, I think she said. The overall feeling I got from her about the work was not necessarily positive. She wasn't impressed, at least.

To me, I feel a certain degree of "initiation" is needed before being exposed to the ideas, and being introduced too early can have a negative impact, as it did with Nobuko. Curiosity about death is necessary, but also a degree of being able to really face death and the idea that one day we will die, cease to be here, leave all this – this ego-perspective – behind.

I would also add that a disenchantment with existing explanations and attitudes about death is required. If you're happy with whatever your tradition says or doesn't say about death or don't really care, I say don't bother looking into Tibetan Buddhist theory.

The meat of Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth is in the accounts of "delogs" – people who had died, had experiences in the death bardos, but then were revived and were able to relate their experiences. The important thing to note is that experiences in the bardo aren't objective, but projections of our own selves, experience and karma.

Many of the delogs had similar experiences because they are all Tibetan and were taught the same thing about the death bardos, and so that's what came out during their experience in them. So even their experiences themselves, if one chooses to believe these accounts, are not necessarily what is going to happen to everyone after death.

I do think the general framework and stages outlined in The Tibetan Book of the Dead make a lot of sense. The sensation of dying is probably universal – as I mentioned in Initiation, the chapter on the actual initiation has similarities to bardo descriptions, and one of them is she describes an experience which is close to the sensation of dying in the "time of death" bardo.

For people who have encountered this tradition and are positively intrigued or find it familiar, I highly recommend Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth. It likely will be helpful with interesting insights.

However, in general, most traditions don't have such an in-depth death tradition, and the vast majority of humanity, like other sentient beings, are just swept through the death bardos uncontrollably, pushed and pulled by the force of karma – their natural beings as expressed through attachments and aversions experienced in physical life – until they inevitably experience rebirth in their next life, with no recall, and no understanding that who they are is informed by what they were.

The later chapters of the book I had to take with a grain of salt. I was wary about the chapter on the Buddhist "Pure Land", which I think is largely doctrinal. To me, describing the pure land is like Christians describing heaven – how the hell do you know? I find the Christian description of heaven ludicrous and unattractive, so describing the Buddhist pure land(s) is equally useless.

I generally agree with the Zen take on the pure land. If the suggestion is that the pure land is some magical, other-worldly place, and not in the here and now, I'm not interested. If it's something to strive to get to or desire, that's kinda counter to the point of Buddhism, whereas if it's about transformation and realization and perspective in the here and now, that makes more sense to me.

On the other hand, by the time I finished reading the chapter, I think I can interpret it in a way that makes sense to me, which is that visualizing the pure land based on the doctrinal descriptions can help in cultivating positive visualized atmospheres.

Finally, the last chapter and appendixes on rituals for the dead or dying are directly linked to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and whereas earlier chapters might be interesting to anyone simply curious about different views on death, these later chapters are only for people in the tradition. They also don't add very much to an actual reading of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but offer a watered down version for people without the patience for the whole cycle of writings or can't get through the more esoteric sections.

I finished the book that my cousin lent me, Initiation.

There were aspects of the book I found astounding, and some aspects I found annoying and had me skipping whole sections, if not chapters.

My cousin also bought a copy for her husband, but he stopped reading it not far into it (he's an open-minded rationalistic agnostic, and tolerates many of my cousin's nutty out-there (even for me) ideas and wanderings. But not this book.). After I got further through the book, I recommended that he could start reading it again, but start at chapter 25, almost halfway into the book. That's when ideas start coming up that I found interesting, and thought he could appreciate in an intellectual way.

The book is supposedly autobiographical and vaguely outlines her spiritual journey in Europe in the early part of the 20th century, although context is never fully established. I didn't like her writing style and I didn't think she is a good storyteller. It felt very egotistical to me and aside from the astounding spiritual insights and ideas, I never got drawn in.

This (dead link) write up covers a lot of the book's faults and handles them more intelligently than I ever could (the book was intriguing enough for me to go looking things up about it). I think that website also helped me establish some context that made things make more sense, namely that she was in Germany during WWII, so when she talks about the "enemy", she means . . . us, the Allies, the winners, the people who weren't gassing Jews in death camps. And the post-war part, she is in what soon became East Germany, a-ha! It makes much more sense now!

Everything about geometrical shapes, astrology and "history" and races – Sons of Man and Sons of God – I thought was total, blood-boiling crap.

The bulk of the second half of the book is set in Egypt thousands of years ago, where ostensibly the author remembers in minute detail her previous life as the queen of a pharaoh and a spiritual "initiate". That's where a lot of the interesting stuff lies.

I think I might skim through the book again and pick out the bits that were particularly interesting. It may make a good summing up of my own thoughts and ideas.

But really, little of it was new to me. Most of the resonance was affirmation, rather than breakthrough. "Oh cool, she found that, too", "Well, duh!". Maybe if I read this 20 years ago, it may have made a much bigger impact. As it is, Richard Bach's Illusions, given to me by a woman named Darcy as a first year in college, was one of the first books that started opening doors for me, and I've given a copy of it to someone as late as this year.

There were a couple of new things that I got out of it, although different from how she experienced it.

I won't paraphrase her inspiration because it was completely different from what it inspired in me. But my idea was to visualize that it's not me that is breathing air that sustains my life, with an emphasis on me as the actor of living. But that I'm just a manifestation that formed out of the basic fabric of the universe, and that when I inhale, it's really the universe that is the actor that is exhaling a life force into me.

And the idea of just being a manifestation formed out of the basic fabric of the universe is analogized or symbolized by star formation or galaxy formation. The basic stuff of the universe is there, and when conditions are right, stars are formed. When enough stars are formed, conditions are right for them to interact to create a galaxy.

I don't know what the basic stuff is of what we are, but whatever that energy is, and no matter how it got married to physical forms, that's just the way it is, it is a part of the universe, whether in a manifested state or not. The physical form thing is just how the manifestation of the universe's energy occurred on this planet. It came from it, it goes back to it, and when the human species goes extinct, as the dinosaurs did, c'est la vie.

One last point of particular interest to me about the book was the chapter of the queen's actual initiation in ancient Egypt and how aspects of her description sounded to me very much like aspects of the death bardos as described in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I wonder if anyone has thought of that.

FRIDAY, JULY 16, 5:31 p.m.

Xizhi to Wuzhishan climb

3:55 p.m. - Crossing the Keelung River near my apartment at the start of a ride, looking at the mountains I was planning to climb. I knew I would generally be up in those mountains because the road I was going to come down on ends in Neihu District straight ahead.

Sick of bitching and moaning about being old and in bad fitness and suffering on climbs, so after the previous 55 mile ride - long for me - I decided I was ready to head up the bigger climbs I'd been avoiding and just go for it.

Sanzhi ride

55 mile Sanzhi ride, basically the loop on the left-hand side of the map comprised of the orange (101) and green (2) lines. It doesn't include the 18 mile ride up to this part of the ride (to Danshui) and back home. This map is at Qianshui Bay taken at 4:30 p.m.

3:10 p.m. - County road 101. I took the riverside bikeway towards Danshui but got off at the Hongshulin MRT station access and took provincial highway 2 until 101 and turned right. It's a climb, actually going higher than the Linkou plateau, but it's a very easy grade. 

3:14 p.m. - Wuji Tianyuan temple off County Rd. 101.

3:41 p.m. - I shot this previously on a night ride and wondered what it was. It's a cemetery in Sanzhi township. It's near the top of the climb which my altimeter watch indicated as 1,028 ft., so higher than Linkou. 

4:01 p.m. - Another shot I had taken previously on the night ride. The Sanzhi 三芝 township sign after descending into the town, but leaving it via Rte. 2.

4:07-4:10 p.m. - Gende Waterwheels Park. Definitely not something I would've noticed on the previous night ride. 

4:11-4:13 p.m. - The namesake waterwheels. I don't know what these waterwheels are or what the parks are about, but apparently this is not the only one in the area.

4:20-4:22 p.m. - Stopping just before Qianshui Bay to shoot this derelict building through barb wire. When I pass this again 11 days later on another ride, it will be obscured by black cloth wrapping the barb wire.

4:28 p.m. - Qianshui Bay 淺水灣 where I took the photo of the map. This is where the band used to gig in a restaurant on a stretch of road along the beach. It always was a haul getting here and this ride places it in context.

6:01-6:03 p.m. - Back on the Danshui riverside bikeway heading home. This is a new section that recently opened that runs closer to the water. It didn't take an hour and half to get here from Qianshui Bay. I stopped at Eddy's Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Danshui because with Mexican food so rare in Taiwan, no opportunity to go to a really good one should ever be missed. The girl in the bottom pic walked into a shot I was already composing. I swear I wasn't being a creeper.

6:29 p.m. - Sun setting behind Guanyin Mt. from Shilin District. I arrived home in the dark over a half hour later. I totally ran out of fuel and bonked about 4 miles from home along the Neihu bank of the Keelung River and limped the rest of the way home. Bonking sucks, but better to bonk closer to home than farther away.

Didn't find much to shoot on this ride in Taipei County west of Taipei. Getting out of Taipei to the west is more roundabout taking the riverside bikeways than heading east, which is a straight shot on the bikeways. To cut down on distances yet unknown, I prefer to take Minsheng Rd. directly across Taipei to the Danshui River and across to continue on whichever ride. This ride took me to parts unknown after first crossing between Sanchong and Luzhou townships and up County Road 108 to Linkou on a plateau. I'd never ridden to Taoyuan County and didn't know what to expect, so no photos. It was all very urban, all car traffic coming down the Linkou plateau in Taoyuan County, back to Taipei County to the Dahan River which was familiar territory for me to get home.

4:19 p.m. - Linkou township 林口, an undeserved rest at a 7/11 after a mere 795 foot climb up the ridiculously low grade of County Rd. 108. It was after this 45 mile ride that I realized I have to stop feeling sorry for my poor fitness and babying myself, and just start pushing myself on harder rides 

4:37 p.m. - After riding south through Linkou in Taipei County, I crossed the border to Guishan 龜山 township in Taoyuan County 桃園縣. It's not as far as it seems, but it just sounds far riding to Taoyuan County for the first time. The airport is in Taoyuan. No photos because it was all very urban and there were no obvious nor interesting places to stop. 

5:51 p.m. - It took more than an hour to find my way down from Linkou to the Dahan River in Xinzhuang township and north on the riverside bikeway to the new bridge in Sanchong, Taipei County. From here it's a quick crossing of the Danshui River back into Taipei.

Heh, my cousin withdrew her request to friend me on Facebook that she made almost a week ago at the same time she sent me a curious e-mail about having to face and deal with the issue of "us".

I didn't act on either of those things, because I measure carefully any overture she makes and my response to it. She finally called yesterday and asked about it, and I told her I was just about to respond to the e-mail, and since she called, I did right away. She hasn't responded to my e-mail and today she withdrew the friend request.

Her e-mail was curious because there is no "us". In my response, I didn't reference this "us", but tried to explain that we're on 2 different paths in 2 different worlds. Whatever she feels she needs to deal with, I don't and I'm not. If she was trying to bridge a gap, I was having none of it. She created the gap, she maintained the gap, and if she wants to bridge the gap now, I have no need for it.

Our previous closeness ended when I started planning to move to Taiwan, this I didn't say, and I got no help or support from her on how to have an easier time adjusting. And after all the difficulty I had adjusting, I held it against her and things were pretty chilly for a while. I don't think she noticed. If she noticed, why didn't she do anything? If you think something's wrong in a relationship, figure it out and address it. Otherwise, there's no relationship.

After a while, we warmed up and were able to be cordial, and that's all it's been since, so any business about "us" or "our relationship" is a non-issue for me.

Truth to tell, if this was years ago, I think I might have been offended by her bringing up the topic. What right did she have to even have this on her mind? What right did she have to think that there was anything between us? I'm not offended now because I'm so far removed from any idea of being close to anyone that I'm neither threatened nor affected.

I dealt with it in my own way a long time ago, and she had nothing to do with it. She has no right to embroil me in whatever lingering issues she has. She can deal with it on her own, so if she doesn't respond to what I wrote to her, that's fine, it's par for the course.

I don't understand how anyone could possibly think they have an "in" with me. No one I know really knows anything about me. No one knows what I'm doing. I'm not really a part of their lives, and they're not a part of mine. It's what I've created and so I have to live with that, but they've played their part, or lack of, and they have to live with that, too.

Things, existence-wise, have progressively been getting increasingly "unbearable". Pretty much everything I do, everything I have to think about or consider has taken on varying degrees of the unbearable. A few moments in a day, I have totally senseless, mindless activities when I don't think, and then it's bearable until I think of what a load of time I'm wasting. Even bearable adds to the unbearable.

I still love listening to music. It brings me much joy. Even more so recently. Maybe because of the sheer span of music that I have to listen to. I still listen to music that first got me into music, I don't get sick of it. It's not nostalgia, that it reminded me of some other time; I love and appreciate it for what it is now to me. And I continue to find music that stirs me to my depths.

My cousin tried to get me to go on a retreat at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal, but in the end I'm flatly rejecting the suggestion. The timing is uncanny and it feels like it would just be an excuse to prolong things, procrastinate. And that is, in fact, exactly what I'm doing on a daily basis, btw, but going on a retreat seems like a shot in the dark to go on for an even longer time, and I need a suicide attempt or gesture right now. Her suggestion at an uncanny time is simply too late.

Procrastinating and prolonging. I want to finish reading a bunch of books that came to me. My cousin gave me a book entitled "Initiation", which is odd since I just used that word in my previous post. My cousin's suggested readings in the past have been dubious, and I'm not totally sold on this one, either, but the end philosophies are really right on; all the conclusions in the book I've come to as well, so I feel some affirmation, if not inspiration. The ideas are very good, the writing and the style not so much.

Another is entitled Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth by a Tibetan lama. He goes into more mechanics of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and it's been very intriguing.

I had this experience when I was reading the book in a crowded space when all the people . . . I just stopped conceiving them as people. They broke out into energies – vibrations – and mechanics, body mechanics. The people were just more than the bodies we deal with in our every day lives, that there is so much more to them that they may not even realize. It became like a din of spiritual humanity which was perfectly analogized by the aural din that all of those people were making by their incomprehensible speech.

And if I ain't foolin' myself, just pages later I came across that exact same experience told by some previous lama.

And, of course, the issue of death and a belief system that I'm really buying into, once I take away the cultural trappings which I take with a grain of salt – I'm feeling pushes and pulls of doubts and confidences that I didn't think I would be subject to.

These formulations don't mean much to me anymore, but I wonder if in a previous bardo, if you can humor me in engaging in the possibility of these bardos, I had glimpses and brushes into what is called the luminosity or clear light, which is the very ground of our being, which is the ground of reality, essentially god, total oneness – and I envision this as not some spiritual or mystical thing, but something in the natural world, just a part that science limits itself too much to acknowledge.

You see, I'm reading in this book that enlightenment in the bardos is not an all or nothing deal. It's not a matter of if you recognize the luminosity and your true nature of being that everything is yourself that, bam, you hit enlightenment, or you just miss and shoot through the bardos to your next life. But depending upon your training, while in the in-between bardos you can touch on it without fully recognizing it and attaining "enlightenment".

And even without attaining enlightenment, it is suggested there is much benefit in those glimpses, because it adds to comfort in the chaos in the bardos and in taking rebirth, it affects our karma and our being, as opposed to beings who are just shot through the bardos and end up in whatever existence their karma dictated.

So now me humoring these suggestions, I wonder if that has been in my experience, and in one of those times through the bardos I did touch on enlightenment and felt such a rush or inspiration that I got an impression that I want to come back through the bardos again as soon as possible. Which means in my next life . . . dying. Ergo the suicide imprint.

But suicide not being the despondent, end-of-life kind of suicide. But, of course, I've had to have a resistance to it in order to come across the teachings again and prepare myself for the roller coaster ride of the bardos. So it's something my entire life has been pointing to, but I still have been resisting. That explains the resistance all these years, even though I keep asking myself why resist what my entire life has been pointing to?

I'm not gonna "belief" this enough to claim it's reality, but I find it personally compelling for what it's worth.

In general, I've been pretty confident about my path, mainly because I just don't see any purpose in doubting myself. I just say what I say, and I do what I do. I follow what I follow, I'm not going to go into any spaces that I find uncomfortable or make me feel bad.

But this book has allowed me to touch the feeling that I haven't lived a worthy life. What have I done except live a selfish existence, where I just allow myself to do what I want to do, trusting in my karmic self-limitation to not engage into debauchery and mindlessness.

Sitting outside on a bench on a still-blazing hot Taiwan early evening, I notice how uncomfortable I am, and how I want to go buy a drink, and realizing that is karma. The desire to not be uncomfortable, the desire to satiate is karma creation. It felt like I've gotten no where in these years of practice. I'm still just following desire, it's still animal. I ended up staying there quite a while reading, just to spite my karma.

And the most important thing to focus on to realize in the bardo states is that all we are seeing and experiencing comes from ourselves, our own nature; they are our own projections. And that's what we should be focusing on during the living bardos (i.e., conscious life, dreams, and meditation).

I still grapple with negativity, even though it's gotten much better. But then I realize these negative situations are helping me train. I recognize these incidents and I tell myself my anger or negativity is not because of these people around or what they did or how I was offended by them, but the negativity is me, my own projection. They have nothing to do with it.

The idea being that this is all training, getting it to be habit so that in the death bardos, when consciousness is luminous but not concrete as is formed by our neural functions, our habitual tendencies can also do that – recognize that what we perceive is us, just our own projections of ourselves, even if our initial "reaction" in the bardo is a negative one.

And still focusing on practicing being positive, feeling love towards everyone and everything, on generating love and joy spontaneously, and practice and train that these things aren't dependent on . . . things.

Unbearable, but still putting all my positive effort to maintain an equilibrium. And there will be a time where I stop that effort and I let myself come to terms with the happy unbearable.