The draft of this post is from Sept. 4. I can't believe it's the end of September already. Summer's well over, even in Taiwan, and I totally missed it. It's almost October. October, November . . . December. Just the thought of moving into the winter months is encouragement to get on with it already.
I've been in a state of limbo. I'm not moving. I know what's next, what has to come next, but it's still up to me to make it happen. No one else is going to do it for me, no one's gonna help make it happen. As such, I'm biding my time, not rushing into it.
I think one of Morrie's quotes regarding his view on life and terminal illness was, "Hold on, but don't hold on for too long". I don't have a terminal illness, but I know what has to be next. As for holding on for too long, I think I already have. It's kinda moot at this point.
I'm fine with "not rushing into it". This isn't "neurotic dysfunction". Before, I used to deride myself when I'd make excuses not to move on, that my plan and aspiration were fake and that it wasn't going to happen, and something would always come up for me to carry on for a bit longer, and that would occur in perpetuity because that was my psychological makeup.
I do feel now that where I am is my final end state. I'm in limbo in this final end state, stewing in it, continuing the meditations and observations. I have nothing new to say or observe. Everything that I've thought of to say recently, I've already said before. And as much as I do tend to repeat myself, I'll avoid it if I can go back into my archives and easily find that I've expressed it already.
There's only one direction to move from this final end state, not because of constraints or inabilities, but because it's what I want and it's where I've led and directed my life.
Sometimes I get pangs of "how did it get to be like this?" with hints of despondency, and I poke myself back to realization that it's because I created it this way, I made it this way; there's no reason to be despondent. This is exactly how it's meant to be. And I can relax and smile to myself and encourage myself to keep moving forwards toward what I want.
There is just this path that I'm on. There's just this path that I've engineered. I'm sure I've said this already, but whenever I think of alternatives and possible paths, I realize I don't want them.
I have to admit that before, there was always a sliver of a possibility of a different path, but I'm pretty confident that they have all dissolved now. Bah, I know I've written about this before.
Now I'm just writing to encourage myself. If I don't write, I might fall into complacency and that will just lead to pushing myself into a corner, and I don't want to do anything just because I've been pushed into a corner.
When I had those excruciating abdominal pains, I entertained the idea that I might be dying and I resisted it. Not because I have a fundamental problem with dying, but I have a problem with it not being on my own terms.
Monday, September 19, 2011
After watching the first 20 minutes of this film, I had a deja vu. Despite what I thought was a decent introductory narrative exposition and a concerted effort on my part to keep track of the characters and the parties and the alliances and motivations, I was totally confused and decided to look up the plot online.
This also happened when I watched Red Cliff, part 1, which is interesting because it turns out I wasn't wrong in noticing that a lot of names in this film sounded distinctly familiar. Like names of the characters from Red Cliff!
And surprise, surprise, they are indeed the same characters. Apparently there was a historical novel called Romance of the Three Kingdoms that is the source material for many modern fictionalizations of what happened during the Warring States period, roughly the first few centuries of the Common Era.
This film is about one of the exploits of Guan Yun Chang, the title character of the Chinese title (the English title is horrible in the anonymity of this great general; that a) he is "lost", and b) he is merely a "bladesman").
I vaguely do remember the character from Red Cliff. He's not a main character there, but he's portrayed as a great general and has a very distinct look, befitting a historical personage. Such as if Abraham Lincoln were portrayed, there are certain stock images whereby all Americans can identify him.
In this film, Guan Yun is an enemy general held captive by his benevolent captor Cao Cao (who in Red Cliff is the arrogant and power-hungry villain). Guan Yun is portrayed as extremely capable and righteous, and Cao Cao, who isn't exactly wholesome, but not the villain he's portrayed as in Red Cliff, acknowledges these virtues and hopes to gain his allegiance.
It turns out Guan Yun is a willing captive to protect and be close to his sworn brother's concubine, also being held captive, who he secretly loves. Actually, Guan Yun is such a fierce warrior, he could fight his way out any time he pleases.
When his sworn brother, Liu Bei, sends a message calling for him, Guan Yun decides to leave captivity. Cao Cao knows he can't stop him, and wanting to stay on his good side orders that he be allowed to leave unmolested.
However, the emperor, who is Cao Cao's puppet (the same relationship is shown in Red Cliff), thinks releasing Guan Yun is a bad idea and boldly goes against Cao Cao and orders Guan Yun killed en route.
The basic story as told in the records is Guan Yun's escape journey, encountering the resistance set up by the emperor.
It's a competent martial arts film, but not a remarkable one. The fight scenes are competent, but they're not remarkable. Donnie Yen as the title character does a great job portraying a man of impeccable virtue, but he seems to be doing a lot of that recently. OK, anyway, he's very good.
I'll pass this film with a nominal 6 out of 10 fresh tomatoes. It's not a great film, but definitely watchable for fans of Chinese period pieces. I also found it a fascinating counterpoint to Red Cliff with its different portrayal of the characters.
With a title like "Nowhere to Turn", I imagine someone who falls into dire straits, someone who has done everything she can and tries hard, but fate keeps dealing her all bad cards, none of which are her fault. In this film, the main character elicits no sympathy for having "nowhere to turn".
The main character wants to be a musician, but it's soon clear that she's delusional and is nowhere near where she needs to be to make it as a musician. She's not only delusional but she thinks the world owes her something while doing nothing herself. She's arrogant, self-righteous, smug, self-absorbed, unapologetic, and overall pathetic.
She wants her mother to send her abroad to pursue a career in music and blames her for refusing, while she herself is too lazy to consider getting a job and figuring out what it means to be responsible.
She mooches off people she knows, not sure they can be called "friends", and takes advantage of all of them, even stabbing them in the back. Whenever she's given a chance, she turns out to be a major disappointment because of her own selfishness and arrogance, and she ultimately blames everyone else for her failures. All she does is take and never gives.
Actually, that's wrong. At one point she "gives" when she loses her virginity to the guy she's mooching off, but complains and whines about it hurting throughout the whole 15 second ordeal.
I was hoping for some sort of redemption, transformation or self-realization in the character, but she remains unlikable to the end. Even a hint of being emotionally tortured or having a mental disease or that she sniffed glue through most of her elementary and high school years would have made her character a little bit palatable (in many scenes she is slack-jawed and looks like she's been sniffing glue, but there's no explanation for this unappealing portrayal).
The supporting "boyfriend" character isn't very strong and has almost as bad manners as she does, even though he does occasionally express himself in moments of truth that are few and far between, calling her crazy or having no conscience, and finally calling her a bitch, which she is.
I don't recommend this film to anyone. Rotten 2 out 10 tomatoes. Maybe the only good thing about this film is that it's an unintentional homage to Korean films in the 90s, which were unspeakably awful. This film would have fit perfectly amongst some of those films that I saw, and reminds me how far Korean film has come.
Friday, September 16, 2011
I guess I should've gone to the emergency room.
The thing is that I don't see doctors, I don't go to hospitals, much less emergency rooms. And it turns out the quote from Northern Exposure is really true that the human body is a wonderful healing machine and the role of doctors is often just to give a patient peace of mind (or to administer drugs to alleviate pain in modern society). I forget if it was Leonard or Uncle Anku who said it.
I don't even know how to go about "going to an emergency room". In the worst of it, when I thought it might be necessary, I had stuffed a few things in a backpack to be ready to grab to run out into the pouring rain and catch a cab and tell them to take me to the nearest hospital. Is that even right? Or is that the point when you call 911?
The rain was actually a really interesting part of the whole incident because it was a perfectly sunny day. I wasn't surprised when I started hearing rain outside because that would still be normal for Taipei weather, but it was raining pretty hard and it was still sunny outside. I kept walking out into the hallway where I can see outside, asking, "How is it raining?, it's totally sunny out there", and I looked for a rainbow and found it and assumed the rain would end shortly. But it didn't, and when the pain started it kept raining and poured through the whole 4-5 hour ordeal.
That kind of rain was strange and I wonder if it wasn't a factor in discouraging me from going to the hospital. But going to the hospital is simply unthinkable for me. Even when I was preparing for it just in case it got that bad, I didn't really think I would or could do it.
I started having sharp abdominal pains and at first I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was intestinal, not uncommon in Taiwan. It's worse when it occurs when I'm out, but I was still home. I figured I'd feel some sharp pain, go to the bathroom and it would clear up and I'd feel fine in short order.
It was just like the pain when that happens, but it didn't let up and started to increase. It was like someone was gripping and squeezing and twisting whatever internal organ – stomach, intestines, liver – and it also occurred to me it might be appendicitis, which if you don't take care of your appendix ruptures and you die.
The pain increased as twilight turned to night outside my window. I'm not a screamer. I would probably scream under torture, but not internal bodily pain. I groan and I writhe.
And then I found it true that meditation techniques do help manage pain. It wasn't a conscious thought process of, "Oh, this hurts, I think I'll go into meditational equipoise to manage the pain with my mind". It was more visceral. I was sweating so much from the pain that I had the air conditioner on even though the cold air was uncomfortable. But I found myself in a position on my bed with my palms flat on the mattress, and I started visualizing the pain as energy and then directing the energy through my palms into the mattress.
From a modern science point of view it's a distraction technique. You mentally occupy yourself in a way that makes you feel better by not thinking about the pain. But when you actually try the method and even marginally think you're succeeding, there is a sense that qigong, or taichi, or even Tibetan descriptions of energy flow are real and are an important part of our being.
I was basically in that meditational state for a good 3-4 hours, focusing on mind and controlling the pain energy and directing it into the mattress. It also occurred to me that before directing the pain energy into the mattress, I had to think of the energy positively since I didn't want to discharge negative energy anywhere, even into an inanimate object. So I reminded myself that pain is good, it tells us and warns us when we're in distress and we need to do something about it, so while discharging the pain energy into the mattress, I was also thanking it.
I don't know what I think of that now, that's just what was going through my mind at the time. It may be just an indication of my own subjective mind, rather than some objective reality. But then that's the way it would be for all of us.
It started to alleviate about 9 in the evening when there were clearer moments when the pain subsided. There were several trips to the bathroom through all this. I think the grand finale was vomiting when I hadn't eaten anything in almost 24 hours and what came up didn't look like the only thing I had ingested, which was coffee with cream. A lot of blackness.
If that incident was an earthquake, I continued to feel aftershocks for over 24 hours and even into today, but now it seems to be completely gone. I'm not sure what to make of it and since I didn't go to the emergency room like a normal person would have or if I lived with other people, I'll never know.
I don't know what triggered it. All through the 24 hour period of "aftershocks" when the pain would re-emerge and I'd get worried if it would get blown out of proportion again, I wondered if this was liver failure. I read that a stage of liver failure may include "pain on the liver" but it made no mention of "excruciating pain on the liver".
But now if it seems it's not continuing, then it's not liver failure. Actually, I'm not totally writing it off just yet. I'm not going to say that it's totally gone just yet. It just seems mostly gone at this point, but I still feel something. That said, if it's not liver failure, then the only thing I can identify as being a trigger is what I ingested right before it started, which is a single cup of bottled iced coffee with an artificial liquid creamer.
Focusing on the creamer, there was a recent scare in Taiwan in the past few months of unscrupulous foodmakers putting something bad in their products that caused health problems in a bunch of people. Some plasticizer. It was big news, but being a foreigner I only get the translated news. I worked at an English-language newspaper and can testify the most experienced Taiwanese writers of English-language news can only express at a level at least one step removed from a native English reporter.
I didn't think the news applied to me. From the TV reports it looked like it was mostly about bottled drinks and the store where I buy bottled drinks is reputable and posted signs that ostensibly said that their products had been inspected and were safe. I never saw non-dairy coffee creamer in those reports.
The thing is that I don't see doctors, I don't go to hospitals, much less emergency rooms. And it turns out the quote from Northern Exposure is really true that the human body is a wonderful healing machine and the role of doctors is often just to give a patient peace of mind (or to administer drugs to alleviate pain in modern society). I forget if it was Leonard or Uncle Anku who said it.
I don't even know how to go about "going to an emergency room". In the worst of it, when I thought it might be necessary, I had stuffed a few things in a backpack to be ready to grab to run out into the pouring rain and catch a cab and tell them to take me to the nearest hospital. Is that even right? Or is that the point when you call 911?
The rain was actually a really interesting part of the whole incident because it was a perfectly sunny day. I wasn't surprised when I started hearing rain outside because that would still be normal for Taipei weather, but it was raining pretty hard and it was still sunny outside. I kept walking out into the hallway where I can see outside, asking, "How is it raining?, it's totally sunny out there", and I looked for a rainbow and found it and assumed the rain would end shortly. But it didn't, and when the pain started it kept raining and poured through the whole 4-5 hour ordeal.
That kind of rain was strange and I wonder if it wasn't a factor in discouraging me from going to the hospital. But going to the hospital is simply unthinkable for me. Even when I was preparing for it just in case it got that bad, I didn't really think I would or could do it.
I started having sharp abdominal pains and at first I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was intestinal, not uncommon in Taiwan. It's worse when it occurs when I'm out, but I was still home. I figured I'd feel some sharp pain, go to the bathroom and it would clear up and I'd feel fine in short order.
It was just like the pain when that happens, but it didn't let up and started to increase. It was like someone was gripping and squeezing and twisting whatever internal organ – stomach, intestines, liver – and it also occurred to me it might be appendicitis, which if you don't take care of your appendix ruptures and you die.
The pain increased as twilight turned to night outside my window. I'm not a screamer. I would probably scream under torture, but not internal bodily pain. I groan and I writhe.
And then I found it true that meditation techniques do help manage pain. It wasn't a conscious thought process of, "Oh, this hurts, I think I'll go into meditational equipoise to manage the pain with my mind". It was more visceral. I was sweating so much from the pain that I had the air conditioner on even though the cold air was uncomfortable. But I found myself in a position on my bed with my palms flat on the mattress, and I started visualizing the pain as energy and then directing the energy through my palms into the mattress.
From a modern science point of view it's a distraction technique. You mentally occupy yourself in a way that makes you feel better by not thinking about the pain. But when you actually try the method and even marginally think you're succeeding, there is a sense that qigong, or taichi, or even Tibetan descriptions of energy flow are real and are an important part of our being.
I was basically in that meditational state for a good 3-4 hours, focusing on mind and controlling the pain energy and directing it into the mattress. It also occurred to me that before directing the pain energy into the mattress, I had to think of the energy positively since I didn't want to discharge negative energy anywhere, even into an inanimate object. So I reminded myself that pain is good, it tells us and warns us when we're in distress and we need to do something about it, so while discharging the pain energy into the mattress, I was also thanking it.
I don't know what I think of that now, that's just what was going through my mind at the time. It may be just an indication of my own subjective mind, rather than some objective reality. But then that's the way it would be for all of us.
It started to alleviate about 9 in the evening when there were clearer moments when the pain subsided. There were several trips to the bathroom through all this. I think the grand finale was vomiting when I hadn't eaten anything in almost 24 hours and what came up didn't look like the only thing I had ingested, which was coffee with cream. A lot of blackness.
If that incident was an earthquake, I continued to feel aftershocks for over 24 hours and even into today, but now it seems to be completely gone. I'm not sure what to make of it and since I didn't go to the emergency room like a normal person would have or if I lived with other people, I'll never know.
I don't know what triggered it. All through the 24 hour period of "aftershocks" when the pain would re-emerge and I'd get worried if it would get blown out of proportion again, I wondered if this was liver failure. I read that a stage of liver failure may include "pain on the liver" but it made no mention of "excruciating pain on the liver".
But now if it seems it's not continuing, then it's not liver failure. Actually, I'm not totally writing it off just yet. I'm not going to say that it's totally gone just yet. It just seems mostly gone at this point, but I still feel something. That said, if it's not liver failure, then the only thing I can identify as being a trigger is what I ingested right before it started, which is a single cup of bottled iced coffee with an artificial liquid creamer.
Focusing on the creamer, there was a recent scare in Taiwan in the past few months of unscrupulous foodmakers putting something bad in their products that caused health problems in a bunch of people. Some plasticizer. It was big news, but being a foreigner I only get the translated news. I worked at an English-language newspaper and can testify the most experienced Taiwanese writers of English-language news can only express at a level at least one step removed from a native English reporter.
I didn't think the news applied to me. From the TV reports it looked like it was mostly about bottled drinks and the store where I buy bottled drinks is reputable and posted signs that ostensibly said that their products had been inspected and were safe. I never saw non-dairy coffee creamer in those reports.
However, I now can imagine what it was like for those victims, that if some toxic substance was added to a food product and wreaked havoc on their liver or kidneys upon ingestion, that their family members would have rushed them to the emergency room.
If I was living with family in Kaohsiung, I might have successfully resisted being sent to the emergency room because I'm not a screamer. I can keep it in in a way that other people wouldn't panic, but otherwise I imagine that they would have called 911.
Then there were my thoughts that I might die . . .
If I was living with family in Kaohsiung, I might have successfully resisted being sent to the emergency room because I'm not a screamer. I can keep it in in a way that other people wouldn't panic, but otherwise I imagine that they would have called 911.
Then there were my thoughts that I might die . . .
email to a friend
Hey Madoka,
Thank me? I'm still thanking you for finally getting on the path. I always thought it was right for you, but it had to happen when you were ripe to start on it. I might say it's a little late, but actually it's not at all and I have a feeling you're going to be a formidable and nurturing teacher in years, hopefully decades, to come. Not me, though, that's not my path.
You're actually not lazy. Maybe you know what you're doing moment to moment and may think you're lazy, you feel you're lazy and that you're not doing enough, but the diligence is in the mind, and I can point right at your own message by your immediate reaction to the Kawasakis that your diligence is already there and deep within you. That's the diligence required and what they're talking about. It's the same diligence towards compassion that you felt when you saw "Schindler's List".
If you feel you need to connect your actions to it, that's fine and dandy to work on. But I'll take it a little farther and point out that actions aren't always necessary. With some people, their diligence comes out just from their very being, and you're one of them. If you can just accept that, get calm with it, keep practicing, and you will naturally offer the acts benefiting people on your path. Mind you, I'm not saying the path is easy, just be better at discerning the easy parts from the difficult. And who knows?, once you do that, you might find the difficult stuff a breeze!
And don't beat yourself up over bodhisattva "vows". In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we don't call them vows, but rather "mindfulness trainings". A lot of people have hang-ups over the word "vow", and if you break them, you've failed or are a sinner, and that's not the point of them. If everyone who took the vows could keep the vows, there's no reason to take them.
That's why TNH changed them to mindfulness trainings, we keep trainings, not "vows". When we come across a situation where we think we're going against the training, we're mindful about it. And if we do it anyway, the training is still there and becomes stronger hopefully for the next time we encounter it. But we don't berate ourselves for breaking a vow whereby we lose it. I'm just suggesting there's no reason to be apprehensive about the word "vow". Some people need that strict discipline/punishment aspect of a vow, but others can be more flexible according to their position. You don't need the discipline/punishment aspect. For you the "vow" is an inspiration, perhaps, or a guide.
I don't know what the implication of "vow" is in Japan, but if you think there's value in this, maybe you can discuss it with other people and your teacher and see what they say and decide for yourself.
I've always considered you on the bodhisattva path. I think a book you may come across eventually is Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life". It can be found online but I bought the Padmakara translation which was considered the best translation and commentary some years back. It's a daunting and elusive work, and I by no means get it, which just means I'm not ready for it and I should keep trying to go back to it. I guess it'll reach you if and when the time is right.
The bodhisattva path is a distinct "branch" or path of Buddhism, but I would argue it's not requisite to Buddhism. I think it is the right path for you because of your strong inclination to alleviate suffering. That's a hallmark of the bodhisattva path, I think. Call it karma, call it a calling. There may be aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that runs through all the other paths, but acting on the ideal is not requisite.
I think of myself as a "rogue" Buddhist, if I consider myself a Buddhist at all, and I've been getting some affirmation from writings by younger Tibetan lamas. One book I found was "Rebel Buddha", and that felt good because he was affirming that there isn't an orthodoxy. But that book is really basic and was telling something new to a general audience, but it wasn't all that new to me so I just skimmed it. Another book was "What Makes You NOT a Buddhist?" which was written by a Nepalese lama/filmmaker who did "The Cup" and "Travellers and Magicians", which I saw at the S.F. film festival, and just by being a filmmaker, he's a "rebel" Buddhist! That was a good book for me because he articulated some things in a new way for me that resonated.
A Thai friend I met in Taiwan also gave me a book that's more orthodox called "Heartwood from the Bo Tree" by a Theravadan Thai teacher, and I agree with him that the most basic idea to cultivate that is relevant to all paths of Buddhism that the Buddha directly taught is that "nothing whatsoever should be attached to". I agree that whatever path anyone is on, nothing whatsoever should be attached to and it's important to examine one's path to make sure you understand how it applies. The trick is that certain paths appeal to us and attract us because of who we are in the physical dimension, but it's still important not to be attached to them or anything about them on an ultimate level.
I'm going on and on like I have something to tell you, but like I said, I'm not saying anything like I think you don't already know, so if you want to go on and on about something, feel free.
love my teacher (um, that's you) always,
koji
Thank me? I'm still thanking you for finally getting on the path. I always thought it was right for you, but it had to happen when you were ripe to start on it. I might say it's a little late, but actually it's not at all and I have a feeling you're going to be a formidable and nurturing teacher in years, hopefully decades, to come. Not me, though, that's not my path.
You're actually not lazy. Maybe you know what you're doing moment to moment and may think you're lazy, you feel you're lazy and that you're not doing enough, but the diligence is in the mind, and I can point right at your own message by your immediate reaction to the Kawasakis that your diligence is already there and deep within you. That's the diligence required and what they're talking about. It's the same diligence towards compassion that you felt when you saw "Schindler's List".
If you feel you need to connect your actions to it, that's fine and dandy to work on. But I'll take it a little farther and point out that actions aren't always necessary. With some people, their diligence comes out just from their very being, and you're one of them. If you can just accept that, get calm with it, keep practicing, and you will naturally offer the acts benefiting people on your path. Mind you, I'm not saying the path is easy, just be better at discerning the easy parts from the difficult. And who knows?, once you do that, you might find the difficult stuff a breeze!
And don't beat yourself up over bodhisattva "vows". In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we don't call them vows, but rather "mindfulness trainings". A lot of people have hang-ups over the word "vow", and if you break them, you've failed or are a sinner, and that's not the point of them. If everyone who took the vows could keep the vows, there's no reason to take them.
That's why TNH changed them to mindfulness trainings, we keep trainings, not "vows". When we come across a situation where we think we're going against the training, we're mindful about it. And if we do it anyway, the training is still there and becomes stronger hopefully for the next time we encounter it. But we don't berate ourselves for breaking a vow whereby we lose it. I'm just suggesting there's no reason to be apprehensive about the word "vow". Some people need that strict discipline/punishment aspect of a vow, but others can be more flexible according to their position. You don't need the discipline/punishment aspect. For you the "vow" is an inspiration, perhaps, or a guide.
I don't know what the implication of "vow" is in Japan, but if you think there's value in this, maybe you can discuss it with other people and your teacher and see what they say and decide for yourself.
I've always considered you on the bodhisattva path. I think a book you may come across eventually is Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life". It can be found online but I bought the Padmakara translation which was considered the best translation and commentary some years back. It's a daunting and elusive work, and I by no means get it, which just means I'm not ready for it and I should keep trying to go back to it. I guess it'll reach you if and when the time is right.
The bodhisattva path is a distinct "branch" or path of Buddhism, but I would argue it's not requisite to Buddhism. I think it is the right path for you because of your strong inclination to alleviate suffering. That's a hallmark of the bodhisattva path, I think. Call it karma, call it a calling. There may be aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that runs through all the other paths, but acting on the ideal is not requisite.
I think of myself as a "rogue" Buddhist, if I consider myself a Buddhist at all, and I've been getting some affirmation from writings by younger Tibetan lamas. One book I found was "Rebel Buddha", and that felt good because he was affirming that there isn't an orthodoxy. But that book is really basic and was telling something new to a general audience, but it wasn't all that new to me so I just skimmed it. Another book was "What Makes You NOT a Buddhist?" which was written by a Nepalese lama/filmmaker who did "The Cup" and "Travellers and Magicians", which I saw at the S.F. film festival, and just by being a filmmaker, he's a "rebel" Buddhist! That was a good book for me because he articulated some things in a new way for me that resonated.
A Thai friend I met in Taiwan also gave me a book that's more orthodox called "Heartwood from the Bo Tree" by a Theravadan Thai teacher, and I agree with him that the most basic idea to cultivate that is relevant to all paths of Buddhism that the Buddha directly taught is that "nothing whatsoever should be attached to". I agree that whatever path anyone is on, nothing whatsoever should be attached to and it's important to examine one's path to make sure you understand how it applies. The trick is that certain paths appeal to us and attract us because of who we are in the physical dimension, but it's still important not to be attached to them or anything about them on an ultimate level.
I'm going on and on like I have something to tell you, but like I said, I'm not saying anything like I think you don't already know, so if you want to go on and on about something, feel free.
love my teacher (um, that's you) always,
koji
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
a personal communication
Hey,
M didn't really mention anything except that there was serious trouble between you and your wife because of another woman, in response to my prying about why you guys were moving. I think that's where the part about her being a bad parent slipped out.
As a parent, there are things that she should know or pry into or know when to get involved and how, and it just seemed par for the course that she couldn't answer any of the questions I was asking, so I finally told her I was going to email you, and she was surprised at that and reluctant because that would mean she talked about it to me, but said fine, and we got off the phone real fast, and needless to say, I don't expect her to be paying for anymore of my plane tickets.
Even if she knows more about what's going on, and for whatever reason felt she couldn't talk about it, that also goes to her inane parenting sense. Her idea of family dynamics is that you keep hush-hush about everything, and you don't help when that's the right thing to do. I don't think she has any conception of what it means to help out a family member, aside from sending over money. Wait, did she offer to send over money?
So I don't know any of the details or the dynamics.
It's good to hear that you're trying to work things out and are committed, there isn't a better starting point and it sounds like you're communicating, so that's excellent and keep it up. Obviously in a situation like this, repairing trust should also be number one on the agenda, so I encourage being vigilant and mindful about transparency. I don't mean you should divulge every little thing that's going on with you, I can see that getting annoying on her part, but if something needs to be said but you're not sure, lean towards saying it. Don't make assumptions about what she's thinking or feeling when you can clarify something on your part by just saying it or asking about it on her part.
It's good that it's foremost on your minds not to harm the kids. M's predictable mantra was that she hoped you guys would work things out for the sake of the kids, and that's fair. But I wouldn't make considering them a major part of the process. If you handle the process properly and well, the benefit to the kids will be automatic, you don't need to think or worry about them, aside from just raising and teaching them. If you can reach a place where you can look at yourself and say that you're alright, you fixed the marriage and B and the marriage is alright, then the kids will be fine. If you pay too much attention on not screwing up the kids, there's a risk that the process will be incomplete or flawed.
I think your focus should be on yourself and really look into yourself and why and how this happened. Go back through all of the stages that led up to this, and don't just focus on the drama after the shit hit the fan. You have to go back and ask what were your feelings and motivations, what was your analysis or lack of analysis. Locate that one moment when you did or felt or said something that should have tripped a wire indicating, "Oh shit, this is bad".
This idea isn't from the monastery but from a men's batterer program I trained in in San Francisco. We called that moment "fatal peril", it's the moment of decision where you reach the breaking point and you're going to do one thing or another. It's the danger point (peril) from where if you don't back down, there's no taking back what you do next. And it's going to be bad for everyone (fatal).
But it does relate to the monastic trainings in mindfulness and watching what our emotions are doing and what our thoughts are, and not just being caught up in the tide of emotions and other motivations.
I don't know if any of this is relevant, so I'm just going to throw out some ideas to consider, or to remind you if you've already considered them.
I think it's important to revisit the development of the events to understand yourself and what your motivations were. From my last visit there, you guys looked like you were doing great, I've gotten totally comfortable with B (and after seeing her sister in action, I thought you totally won out of the 3 sisters; T, too, but that's a different story), the kids were great, although I thought it may be time to instill C with some assertiveness and leadership skills and to be able to analyze things through and come up with his own opinion and enjoyment. S at this point has no problem with that as she knew what song she liked and she wanted to hear it over and over. And over and over. (I actually remember a similar memory, which I think may have been the start of my love of music (it was some Disney song while we were visiting Uncle Aki on a plastic record player and I couldn't get enough of it. If you have any insight on that memory, let me know)).
But then hearing this, it becomes apparent there was an underlying problem and it needs to be understood and addressed, and not brushed aside. A lot of people looking from the outside might look at a family and think that everything is perfect and they must be really happy. But maybe they're not.
So I also encourage you to do a happiness analysis. The Dalai Lama once observed that everyone says they want to be happy, but they keep doing things that lead to more suffering. And it's because many people's emotions are out of control or taken for granted as just being what they are. Their emotions just roam freely and they don't have the mindfulness to consider their actions and the consequences and ask, "will this make me happy, or will it likely lead to suffering?".
Instead of asking about happiness, we tend to just follow desire. Desire is the culprit that keeps us chasing after things which don't necessarily bring happiness, or ultimately brings about unhappiness and suffering for others. I think he's also pointing out that we all have the potential to be happy just as we are, but desire convinces us we're not happy and act in ways that bring about more unhappiness.
At the monastic mindfulness training level, this happiness analysis is brought all the way down to the smallest decisions we make any day that affect our emotions. Even if someone is walking too slow on the sidewalk in front of us and we can't get by and start feeling annoyed or angry, the analysis kicks in: "Is being annoyed and angry making me happy? They're not doing anything wrong, it's me that's being annoyed and angry. Can't I just pause and take a breath and be patient and walk slowly until I get an opportunity to pass and be happy with that?"
It's not easy, and I'll attest that it's a long, committed process, but I think it's fact that we can learn to control our emotions.
I'm not making any assumptions of what we're like now, but I do think you, T and me all have anger issues that we inherited from dad. M frequently talks about T's anger issues at the office, even with patients. I know that I have anger/negativity issues and dealing with them is part of the mindfulness practice I took from the monastery. It's a part of me now to identify anger/negativity the very moment they come up and to adjust myself away from them. By constantly doing this, I know I still experience anger and negativity, I'm not getting rid of them yet, but I'm training myself to be more peaceful by taking control of the emotions.
In general, anger is an important emotion to learn to be mindful of and control during difficult times since it's probably the easiest emotion to blind us and make us do something we otherwise wouldn't do. I recommend a book that's on my bookshelf by the window in New Jersey called "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. At times he goes a little simplistic, but he's writing on a very basic level for an introductory audience. And even though he incorporates Buddhist elements and language in some passages, it's because that's his background but he's not trying to push Buddhism on anyone. The book is also good because his discourse on anger also includes the basic ideas and methods behind mindfulness training.
If there are any issues you want to get out or bounce off someone else, you can totally let me know. If B's willing and you're comfortable with it, you can also let her know she can contact me to discuss what's on her mind. Obviously I'm not taking sides, the best interests of both of you are in my interest, so I'm only hoping to help keep lines of communication open.
I'm confident that both of you are smart enough and capable enough to achieve your goal since you're committed and working on it, but recognize that outside help may be necessary to keep things clear because it's easy to get myopic about these kinds of situations. Even if you can achieve your goal of staying together because you're being smart and capable, I still encourage identifying and dealing with all of the underlying issues. If you don't do that, there still may be problems with the foundation of your relationship here on in that might come up later.
I think by doing it in this way, you can strive to be confident of what you want and what are the most important things to you and neither of you will have doubts that things ended up alright for the wrong reasons. Ideally, I think the hope is that you'll end up in a situation where you can look around and realize this is not at all bad and certainly could be a lot worse, and you can put your efforts into making things better. What can I do for the kids? What can I do for B? What can I do for myself that will make me happy without bringing future suffering?
I recently read Ozzy Osbourne's biography because for someone brought up on rock music, his memoir is like reading history. And when asked about how he's been able to maintain his marriage to Sharon despite the long list of outrageous incidents to his name, he said, "I never stopped telling her I love her and I never stopped doing the little things for her". All the little things he constantly did ultimately likely meant a lot more than a grand gesture every once in a while would've meant. That's wisdom from a simple man.
If you come across difficult parts, I hope both of you avail yourself of the available network – her sisters and me and T – to figure out what's best for everyone. I think everyone cares and everyone is willing to help without judgment, even if not everyone has the ability and may be uncomfortable getting involved. I haven't emailed T in months so I don't know what he knows, but I hope you don't mind if I ask him as a means of sharing information and creating the best situation where we can come up with ideas or problem solve if any major issues come up. I'm not sure of T's current emotional availability, but during the course of his engagement and marriage, I've seen him shine and really come through on things I had doubts about, so I think he's also an important resource.
take care,
M didn't really mention anything except that there was serious trouble between you and your wife because of another woman, in response to my prying about why you guys were moving. I think that's where the part about her being a bad parent slipped out.
As a parent, there are things that she should know or pry into or know when to get involved and how, and it just seemed par for the course that she couldn't answer any of the questions I was asking, so I finally told her I was going to email you, and she was surprised at that and reluctant because that would mean she talked about it to me, but said fine, and we got off the phone real fast, and needless to say, I don't expect her to be paying for anymore of my plane tickets.
Even if she knows more about what's going on, and for whatever reason felt she couldn't talk about it, that also goes to her inane parenting sense. Her idea of family dynamics is that you keep hush-hush about everything, and you don't help when that's the right thing to do. I don't think she has any conception of what it means to help out a family member, aside from sending over money. Wait, did she offer to send over money?
So I don't know any of the details or the dynamics.
It's good to hear that you're trying to work things out and are committed, there isn't a better starting point and it sounds like you're communicating, so that's excellent and keep it up. Obviously in a situation like this, repairing trust should also be number one on the agenda, so I encourage being vigilant and mindful about transparency. I don't mean you should divulge every little thing that's going on with you, I can see that getting annoying on her part, but if something needs to be said but you're not sure, lean towards saying it. Don't make assumptions about what she's thinking or feeling when you can clarify something on your part by just saying it or asking about it on her part.
It's good that it's foremost on your minds not to harm the kids. M's predictable mantra was that she hoped you guys would work things out for the sake of the kids, and that's fair. But I wouldn't make considering them a major part of the process. If you handle the process properly and well, the benefit to the kids will be automatic, you don't need to think or worry about them, aside from just raising and teaching them. If you can reach a place where you can look at yourself and say that you're alright, you fixed the marriage and B and the marriage is alright, then the kids will be fine. If you pay too much attention on not screwing up the kids, there's a risk that the process will be incomplete or flawed.
I think your focus should be on yourself and really look into yourself and why and how this happened. Go back through all of the stages that led up to this, and don't just focus on the drama after the shit hit the fan. You have to go back and ask what were your feelings and motivations, what was your analysis or lack of analysis. Locate that one moment when you did or felt or said something that should have tripped a wire indicating, "Oh shit, this is bad".
This idea isn't from the monastery but from a men's batterer program I trained in in San Francisco. We called that moment "fatal peril", it's the moment of decision where you reach the breaking point and you're going to do one thing or another. It's the danger point (peril) from where if you don't back down, there's no taking back what you do next. And it's going to be bad for everyone (fatal).
But it does relate to the monastic trainings in mindfulness and watching what our emotions are doing and what our thoughts are, and not just being caught up in the tide of emotions and other motivations.
I don't know if any of this is relevant, so I'm just going to throw out some ideas to consider, or to remind you if you've already considered them.
I think it's important to revisit the development of the events to understand yourself and what your motivations were. From my last visit there, you guys looked like you were doing great, I've gotten totally comfortable with B (and after seeing her sister in action, I thought you totally won out of the 3 sisters; T, too, but that's a different story), the kids were great, although I thought it may be time to instill C with some assertiveness and leadership skills and to be able to analyze things through and come up with his own opinion and enjoyment. S at this point has no problem with that as she knew what song she liked and she wanted to hear it over and over. And over and over. (I actually remember a similar memory, which I think may have been the start of my love of music (it was some Disney song while we were visiting Uncle Aki on a plastic record player and I couldn't get enough of it. If you have any insight on that memory, let me know)).
But then hearing this, it becomes apparent there was an underlying problem and it needs to be understood and addressed, and not brushed aside. A lot of people looking from the outside might look at a family and think that everything is perfect and they must be really happy. But maybe they're not.
So I also encourage you to do a happiness analysis. The Dalai Lama once observed that everyone says they want to be happy, but they keep doing things that lead to more suffering. And it's because many people's emotions are out of control or taken for granted as just being what they are. Their emotions just roam freely and they don't have the mindfulness to consider their actions and the consequences and ask, "will this make me happy, or will it likely lead to suffering?".
Instead of asking about happiness, we tend to just follow desire. Desire is the culprit that keeps us chasing after things which don't necessarily bring happiness, or ultimately brings about unhappiness and suffering for others. I think he's also pointing out that we all have the potential to be happy just as we are, but desire convinces us we're not happy and act in ways that bring about more unhappiness.
At the monastic mindfulness training level, this happiness analysis is brought all the way down to the smallest decisions we make any day that affect our emotions. Even if someone is walking too slow on the sidewalk in front of us and we can't get by and start feeling annoyed or angry, the analysis kicks in: "Is being annoyed and angry making me happy? They're not doing anything wrong, it's me that's being annoyed and angry. Can't I just pause and take a breath and be patient and walk slowly until I get an opportunity to pass and be happy with that?"
It's not easy, and I'll attest that it's a long, committed process, but I think it's fact that we can learn to control our emotions.
I'm not making any assumptions of what we're like now, but I do think you, T and me all have anger issues that we inherited from dad. M frequently talks about T's anger issues at the office, even with patients. I know that I have anger/negativity issues and dealing with them is part of the mindfulness practice I took from the monastery. It's a part of me now to identify anger/negativity the very moment they come up and to adjust myself away from them. By constantly doing this, I know I still experience anger and negativity, I'm not getting rid of them yet, but I'm training myself to be more peaceful by taking control of the emotions.
In general, anger is an important emotion to learn to be mindful of and control during difficult times since it's probably the easiest emotion to blind us and make us do something we otherwise wouldn't do. I recommend a book that's on my bookshelf by the window in New Jersey called "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. At times he goes a little simplistic, but he's writing on a very basic level for an introductory audience. And even though he incorporates Buddhist elements and language in some passages, it's because that's his background but he's not trying to push Buddhism on anyone. The book is also good because his discourse on anger also includes the basic ideas and methods behind mindfulness training.
If there are any issues you want to get out or bounce off someone else, you can totally let me know. If B's willing and you're comfortable with it, you can also let her know she can contact me to discuss what's on her mind. Obviously I'm not taking sides, the best interests of both of you are in my interest, so I'm only hoping to help keep lines of communication open.
I'm confident that both of you are smart enough and capable enough to achieve your goal since you're committed and working on it, but recognize that outside help may be necessary to keep things clear because it's easy to get myopic about these kinds of situations. Even if you can achieve your goal of staying together because you're being smart and capable, I still encourage identifying and dealing with all of the underlying issues. If you don't do that, there still may be problems with the foundation of your relationship here on in that might come up later.
I think by doing it in this way, you can strive to be confident of what you want and what are the most important things to you and neither of you will have doubts that things ended up alright for the wrong reasons. Ideally, I think the hope is that you'll end up in a situation where you can look around and realize this is not at all bad and certainly could be a lot worse, and you can put your efforts into making things better. What can I do for the kids? What can I do for B? What can I do for myself that will make me happy without bringing future suffering?
I recently read Ozzy Osbourne's biography because for someone brought up on rock music, his memoir is like reading history. And when asked about how he's been able to maintain his marriage to Sharon despite the long list of outrageous incidents to his name, he said, "I never stopped telling her I love her and I never stopped doing the little things for her". All the little things he constantly did ultimately likely meant a lot more than a grand gesture every once in a while would've meant. That's wisdom from a simple man.
If you come across difficult parts, I hope both of you avail yourself of the available network – her sisters and me and T – to figure out what's best for everyone. I think everyone cares and everyone is willing to help without judgment, even if not everyone has the ability and may be uncomfortable getting involved. I haven't emailed T in months so I don't know what he knows, but I hope you don't mind if I ask him as a means of sharing information and creating the best situation where we can come up with ideas or problem solve if any major issues come up. I'm not sure of T's current emotional availability, but during the course of his engagement and marriage, I've seen him shine and really come through on things I had doubts about, so I think he's also an important resource.
take care,
NB: I'm sure he deleted this immediately and very probably didn't read the whole thing, at best skimmed it.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
I had seen this at Blockbusters, but it didn't appeal to me because of the creepy cover, but then decided to give it a go after I read that the main actor in Castaways on the Moon was in it, and that the movie had an interesting twist on the fairy tale idea.
Turns out it's in the dark fantasy/thriller/horror genre, of which I can't say I'm a huge fan, but my problem with the film was in the filmmaking and how poorly the visual narrative was handled. The story itself might actually work on paper, but the visual development of the story left a lot to be desired.
There are countless visual cues and clues that go no where. They're presented, suggesting something related will come out of it, and then nothing ever does. The film doesn't develop and build on what it presents and relies just on what's provided on the screen at the moment while just maintaining a basic, threadbare story arc.
It's not an intelligent film in that once you start thinking about all the narrative elements and try to put the parts together to figure the whole thing out, it makes absolutely no sense and thus wasn't satisfying. This film was made for fans of the genre who don't need the film to make narrative sense, and saying it that way it's an effective enough film. I would recommend it to fans of the genre. It's creepy and suspenseful, but that's all. It just makes no overall sense, and to be intelligent, it needs to make sense. If it doesn't make sense, it's a waste of my time.
Rotten 4 out 10 tomatoes.
As far as I'm concerned, this was a slasher film in the guise of a revenge-thriller. It's not an incompetent film, it was just not to my taste. I give it a thumbs down 4 out of 10 rotten tomato rating for misogyny and unnecessary and unrelenting violence.
It's about a serial killer who ostensibly kills one victim that launches a vengeance crusade by the victim's boyfriend/fiance. There's a lot of unmitigated evil portrayed in the film, which perhaps is hinted at in the title.
There may be a morality play suggesting that revenge is not an answer to a wrongdoing, but the message pales alongside the portrayals of evils why-do-we-even-want-to-imagine? can possibly occur in this world.
Furthermore, the moral message is further diluted by the fact that the protagonist goes way beyond revenge. He doesn't know when to stop and just come to terms with his grief, and his actions create even more harm to people around him. And in his own sadism, he crosses the line over to evil himself.
Unlike most rental DVDs, I only needed to watch this once. It was not something I needed to experience twice, although I did review the final scenes before I returned it to remind myself how the vengeance played out.
For me, part of the value of a film is the ability or desire to watch it multiple times. There was nothing redeeming in this film that warranted a second viewing.
Like I said, it's not an incompetent film, and I would hypothetically recommend it to fans of the genre – people who like gore, don't mind misogyny, or don't mind seeing the depths of human nature that can be reached.
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