For some reason, I just didn't want to let December pass with only one entry posted. It shouldn't matter, and it doesn't. But this blog is the last connection I have with some existence outside of my head. It's the last place where I'm leaking into the material world, where there is any proof of my existence.

I'm not sure why any such proof is necessary. It's not for me, I know I'm still here. I'll know when I make a push to not be. It's like part of a contract with existence, having existed. It would be rude to existence, the privilege existence has given me, to not affirm it as long as I still exist.

I've continued to read interesting stuff that I've made strange connections with and between. Something about the Christmas season always has me ending up reflecting on Christianity, and this year I found and started reading Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity in a bookstore. I haven't finished it, and may not since the last time I was there I couldn't find it. 

It's a scholarly work, so it examines and questions and looks at evidence and facts objectively, as much as possible, to come to theories or conclusions. Reading Judas looks at the development of the writing of what became the canonical New Testament gospels, set against what was going on socially at the time, which was a lot of turmoil and disagreement and distress.

Any uniformity or consensus Christians today believe existed in the early Jesus movement was a brainwashing fiction that started as early as Paul, even while he himself was an extremely controversial figure in the movement. Scholars believe that rifts were huge between different groups who were preaching diverse meanings about the stories circulating around this Jesus character.

What I get out of it is that The Gospel of Judas was written from a certain political stance within the disparate Jesus movement, critical of an opposing stance on particular issues that were being argued. But in the same way, the canonical gospels were also doing the same thing, and the book analyzes how the Jesus story develops and gets embellished from gospel to gospel to support the stance of a particular side of the disagreements.

In the end, one side won and the other side lost. Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the 4th century and formed the Nicene Council to come up with the canon. The Roman Empire became the Roman Catholic Church (as Mission of Burma tells it) and an entire side of Christianity was suppressed and wiped from history and only recently recovered in the 20th century with the discovery of the library at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Judas and to some extent the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The emphasis is on the mess that was the Jesus movement in the first few centuries following Jesus's death. And because one side won and the other side lost, Christians today only know one side of the story and don't realize the diversity of belief into the meaning of Jesus's death that existed and was being argued. They've been brainwashed to completely reject those other works.

And I connect this to another book I read at the library, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In short, the book is a first person account of a disaster that occurred on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest in May 1996, when 12 people ultimately ended up losing their lives in relation to the incident.

The connection is that the description of events turned out to be very controversial with various parties claiming differing versions of events. Adding in the altitude that rendered rationality questionable at best, no one really knows what happened up there, just as no one can authoritatively define what was going on with the Jesus movement in those first few centuries.

The internet is rife with commentators taking sides and vehemently opining and pointing condemning fingers when . . . they weren't there. They don't even know what it's like to be in the Death Zone on Everest and exercise little imagination to try.

It was a mess on Everest. It was a tragedy and bad decisions were made, but I think every individual did his or her best at any given moment. Krakauer does point out bad decisions, but I don't think he was blaming anyone or pointing fingers, but that's how other parties took it and it became a very public feud (not part of the controversy is Krakauer's condemnation of the asshole South African team and the reckless and uncooperative Taiwanese team that were on the mountain at the time. I take it those are accepted facts).

It was very emotional. It was strangely emotional for me reading it. Part of it is the connection of Everest with Tibet. But more of it is the drive of some people to climb Mt. Everest. Are these people nuts?

Now I've did my share of doing dumb in my day, putting myself recklessly into situations that were potentially harmful or dangerous. I understand the drive to push oneself to one's limits or even beyond – my limit being meager compared to anyone who even thinks of attempting Everest.

That's what cycling was all about. I cycled to climb. It was all about climbing relentless hills and hammering on through any hurt, and it never stopped being a thrill getting to the top of some challenge. And once I stopped being able to do hills because of age or alcoholism or diet, cycling became boring. Or at least something different.

I've mentioned my two San Francisco Marathons before, on the course before the organizers changed it because elite runners were threatening to boycott because the course was so hard. I admitted to myself after the second one that I wasn't emotionally prepared for it (not to put too fine a point on it, I wasn't emotionally prepared to run that second marathon).

It wasn't traumatic, but it haunted me for a whole month hence, and every day I spent 45 minutes to an hour obsessively going through the entire course in my head. I think I even got on my commuter road bike once and rode the entire course through. And it did effectively put an end to my running. I started cycling because my knees weren't recovering.

But to climb Mt. Everest? That's really rolling dice with your life. You sign up to climb Mt. Everest, there is no guarantee you're coming down alive. There's no guarantee you're coming down at all.

And I'm making this strange connection in my mind that suicide is my Everest. Pushing into unknown territory that may end in tragedy or a pay-off that no one else but a select few can hope to appreciate. Pushing towards suicide for a spiritual goal is . . . gambling with my life.

I would never think to climb Everest, I've felt altitude sickness at 18,000 feet in Tibet and there's no way I can imagine attempting 20,000, 24,000, 29,028 feet. That would be . . . suicide. But that's where I understand the drive of these people. That's why I felt emotionally involved in their attempt and why it felt personal when it became a tragedy.

Another book I just found at the bookstore that I want to start reading is The Essential Gnostic Gospels, a compilation which includes the Gospel of Judas. This is a collection of works and ideas that existed in the early Jesus movement that was suppressed by Constantine, the Roman Empire and the Nicene Council. The ideological losers.

This is the book that makes me separate Jesus from what Christianity became, because the Jesus portrayed in what are now known as the Gnostic Gospels is a character that makes me realize Jesus was really a big fucking deal in his time. The things these followers recorded make me feel he was on an elevated spiritual plane.

When exposed to canonical Christianity, I feel like I'm trying to be brainwashed. I should be impressed by walking on water or miracles . . . why? If he did, then he did and if you saw it, you saw it. Maybe I'd be just as amazed as seeing someone dribble a football (American). I'm more impressed when Thich Nhat Hanh, who has a deep respect for Jesus, said, "The miracle isn't walking on water, it's walking on land". That's shocking!

I should want heaven why? I should fear hell why? Such simple delineations which made me feel like they were trying to hoodwink me into something that didn't make any sense. Good? Evil? What the fuck?

And I shouldn't wonder the teachings in the Gnostic Gospels are also kabbalistic and buddhistic. The antithesis of the closed-minded exclusivity of what became Christianity – you're either with us or against us.

So many ways that Jesus's effect on the world went wrong, but from my initial readings of some of the Gnostic Gospels, I'm more convinced of one thing Christians got right, which is that Jesus was a big fucking deal. If they got his true teachings embodied in the Gnostic Gospels, that would be even better.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 3:36 p.m.

From the Zohar:
"'When you walk, it shall lead you; when you lie down it shall keep you and when you awake, it shall talk with you.' (Proverbs 6:22) 'When you walk, it shall lead you,' refers to the Torah that goes before a man when he dies. 'When you lie down, it shall keep you,' refers to the interval when the body lies in the grave, for at that time the body is judged and sentenced and the Torah acts in its defense. 'And when you awake, it shall talk with you,' refers to the time at which the dead rise from the dust.

"Rabbi Elazar quoted the verse: 'It shall talk with you' (Proverbs 6:22). Although the dead have just risen from the dust, they remember the Torah they studied before their death. They will know all they studied before departing the world. And everything shall be clearer than it was before death, for whatever he strove to understand yet did not successfully grasp, is now clear in his innermost parts. And the Torah speaks within him." p. 190-191, The Essential Zohar

What I found fascinating about this passage is that Christians probably interpret the quote from Proverbs as referring to faith. It's a very simple, direct interpretation: when you walk (go forth or act in the world), faith will lead you (whatever you do will be righteous); when you lie down (rest) it shall keep (protect) you; and when you awake, it shall talk to you (ask you what you want for breakfast inform you how to act). Often even more narrowly interpreted: faith in Jesus or an exclusive Christian, white male God. That normative, bland Christian interpretation is fine and obvious regarding physical, material life, but nothing to go on and on about.

But the Zohar interprets it in a manner that I can re-interpret as squaring with the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Tibetan Buddhism describes the life and death cycle with three bardos of living (conscious life, sleep and meditation), and three death bardos (the point of death, the bardo of reality, and the bardo of becoming).

My reading of the death bardos and the guidance the Tibetan Book of the Dead counsels is that what we're striving for in the death bardos is the same as what we're striving for in the living bardos. Or striving for enlightenment in the living bardos is training for attaining enlightenment in the death bardos. Life and death are mirrored realities.

Actually the three elements of the quote from Proverbs can apply both to the three living bardos and the three death bardos, but what's fascinating to me is that I can interpret what the Zohar says to the death bardos at all.

Tibetan Buddhism is very meticulous about the death process and what happens between one death and the next incarnation of a . . . person, a soul, karmic energy. But there seems to be little in Judaism or Kabbalah about the mechanics of what happens after death. Just a far off resurrection and judgment that Christians took and ridiculously interpreted literally.

The book I've been reading, The Essential Zohar, doesn't explicitly state or endorse any theory of reincarnation, but the author seems pretty open-minded about the possibility of Buddhism-like multiple lifetimes and reincarnation.

The Zohar interprets Proverbs 6:22 not as some vague notion of faith leading us forth in life, but Torah, i.e., spiritual cultivation, leading us through the death experience. It doesn't explicitly say that the "when you awake"/"dead rise from the dust" is reincarnation, but that's how I read it, because it then fits in with Tibetan Buddhist ontology (alternatively it might not refer to reincarnation, but the awakening in a "mental body" in the bardo of becoming that precedes reincarnation).

Torah is what we do with spiritual energy in our lifetimes, how we cultivate it or not cultivate it. It's also karma. When we die, we take nothing with us except our karma, the energy patterns and habits that we've indelibly stamped on our manifestation of some primordial energy that is the basis of our consciousness through our behavior and thoughts.

We don't take our possessions, our body, or memories or anything that relies on brain matter for existence. Memories and thoughts rely on brain matter. Karmic energy doesn't. Our karma has no relation to our identity as a person, because our identities also rely on thought and brain matter.

So when we die, it is only Torah that leads us. All else falls away and dissolves. Tibetan Buddhism describes the death-point bardo as being so subtle that only the highest levels of practitioners can achieve realization/enlightenment in it.

For ordinary beings, the dissolution of awareness of the physical body elements and mental consciousness elements is so shocking and unfamiliar and disconcerting that it is impossible to maintain any stability to achieve realization, and it goes by like the snap of a finger.

The interval in the grave where the Torah acts as a defense can be likened to the bardo of reality where we are immersed in the primordial energy of the universe that is the substratum of what our human consciousness has become on this planet.

It is enlightenment, but we don't know it because of our conception of physical reality from having lived previous lives on this planet, karma. Even in the Tibetan description of the bardo of becoming/rebirth, a judgment takes place because that's what naturally emerges in this state as the wisps of karmic memory recall what occurred in our previous life and there is some recognition of "right" and "wrong". Enlightenment can occur in this bardo upon the realization that the judgment is itself mind, or created by "mind", and that right and wrong are manifestations of mind and not concrete or objective judgments.

What is Torah defending us against? Our spiritual cultivation defends us in the bardo states against the notion created by the karma from physically having existed that worldly manifestation was some ultimate reality.

The final bardo of becoming in Tibetan Buddhism describes the process by which reincarnation takes place. At some point there is a crux between a prior life and future life, and if enlightenment isn't attained, our karmic energy moves towards a future life.

Torah shall talk to you when you rise from the dust. If you cultivated yourself spiritually, that survives the death process whereby you lose everything that depends on material existence. With rebirth, your karma still applies, and if you studied the Torah, the Torah will remain with you. You can continue to undertake the spiritual path you were on in a previous life, provided you studied the Torah.

They will know all they studied before departing the world. And everything shall be clearer than it was before death, for whatever he strove to understand yet did not successfully grasp, is now clear in his innermost parts. That is literally exactly what is said in the Tibetan Book of the Dead regarding the death bardo states.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 7:44 p.m.