Just my imagination, running away with me.
I would have left music at home. For the past however many many years I rarely, if ever, wasn't listening to music when I went out. I only turned it off when people were taking my money (but giving me something I wanted in return). It was such that there were times I would turn off the music and be fascinated by what the ambient world sounded like. It became such that I designated certain conditions whereby I would turn off the music and experience the world as it sounded (sometimes becoming bored with it and turning the music back on). But no music this time; leaving behind the habit, not taking the emotions and attachment that music embodies.
I wouldn't have left alcohol at home, but I wouldn't have been drinking, either. I'd have a cute half bottle of Jack Daniels along with other things, but I'd be keeping clear to keep calm, peaceful, positive, tapping into happiness. The ha'fifth because it, or something like it, has always been there. Not even just in case, it's just always been there. I've read it isn't ideal to be disoriented by substances like painkillers or things that dull the senses, but I'm going to create a loophole for that. I will disable, hamper, stymie my consciousness, but realize only my physiology is affected. The substances will be more of a facilitating device.
In this regard, years of mindful alcoholism(!) may prove to have been helpful. Mindful alcoholism, wtf? I don't think I've ever used the term "mindful alcoholism" before; I don't think I've ever even thought of it. Using it now surprises me because it suggests how dangerous the practice I've developed is. Alcoholism is not a legitimate mindfulness practice. There are aspects of my practice that are even more risky, I shouldn't wonder, in possibly deluding myself thinking I'm doing a practice with one targeted aim, when I may be doing something entirely different and destructive in my mindstream and karma. I would never suggest to anyone to practice "mindful alcoholism". At least not as a starting point. If yer a drunk already, might as well give it a shot, so to speak.
But my loophole is being aware that whatever happens that doesn't rely on bodily structures will not be substantially affected by the effects of the substances. It may be detrimental to be pumped full of morphine or other drugs by some clinician who's just doing a job based on their own assessment of what's preferred treatment. Consciously using substances oneself for the purposes of dying and being aware of the need to keep mind and body separate, especially when mind and body separate, may prevent detriment caused by disorientation.
Despite near-death accounts suggesting it's not necessarily painful, I expect pain, at least discomfort and unpleasantness. Like a prostate exam. I don't know why, just to be on the safe side maybe. It seems logical, might as well expect and brace for it. It won't be for long, but it will be pretty intense. I won't like it, but I'm hoping mindfulness practice will keep me from panicking and help me keep calm in an experience that I visualize as difficult and intense as being exposed in the midst of a violent hurricane in the middle of the night.
And I do practice it as much as I can. Whenever I find myself challenged in uncomfortable situations, I imagine it as a bardo experience and react accordingly with equanimity and calm. Not that in my daily life do I find myself in terribly challenging, uncomfortable situations. Crowded rush hour MRT, sweaty and sticky in torrential rain, noisy children in the library. Maybe I should schedule a prostate exam. Even amusement park rides and extremes of physical challenges I would practice as bardo preparation. Not that I can even remember the last time I've been to an amusement park, but I see it on Korean TV. I imagine I wouldn't be much fun to be with at an amusement park. I'd be on rides calmly contemplating how interesting the experience is.
There will be a loss of consciousness. That's obvious. It's hard to die if you don't lose consciousness at some point. It's even described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that after death there is no continuum of consciousness and whatever continues on is subject to "losing consciousness"; and logically the residual habit of past existence would include the experience of losing consciousness. Losing consciousness is no big deal, we do it at least once a day when we fall asleep. That may be to say that one of the most profound and frightening aspects of dying, going from awareness of being here to not being here, is something we regularly experience. The difference being the assumption of waking again when we sleep and the lack of said assumption when we die.
From asphyxiation to brief but intense pain to loss of consciousness, I expect death to occur fairly quickly. How quickly death occurs after loss of consciousness, I gather, depends on circumstances. Death can be immediate in cases of sudden or violent deaths, or it can be prolonged like my father who was kept alive by a machine, with zero prognosis of regaining consciousness, for a week. When the dissolutions occur, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is probably variable and individual. A straight-forward, starting point visualization of the dissolutions might have them occur sequentially after the loss of consciousness, but I have read other descriptions that describe the outer dissolutions as the dying process leading to the loss of consciousness, so occurring before death, rather than after. There's almost certainly not a uniform model of how or when they occur.
I take the descriptions of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's book as starting point templates, maybe ideal dying-at-home-surrounded-by-loved-ones-along-with-a-chanting-monk situation, and not literal nor universal. My impression of the descriptions of the dissolutions is that they are universally experienced in varying forms according to the individual and the circumstances, but that awareness of them differs between practitioners and non-practitioners, as well as degree or level of practice. Non-practitioners who haven't prepared experience them but in a more or less non-active manner, almost analogous to animal instinct, like a fish trapped in a net, with little to no understanding what's going on. If they were visible, they might look like me on an amusement park ride; something's happening, but no reaction.
If my mindfulness practice can kick in and weather the experience with some degree of awareness, I imagine the four outer dissolutions being very intense, almost as if they were happening all at once. Earth or ground (sensation of solidity) dissolution feeling like great crushing pressure all around, acutely felt at every point on the body where there is physical sense. Water (sensation of fluid elements) dissolution as feeling like being tossed uncontrollably around in a great torrent of my own bodily fluids, but not reacting in fear. The heat dissolution (remnant sensation of metabolism from being a living being) arising as a heat sensation while being tossed around by water, but then also dissipating. The wind/air dissolution is the end of breath and the movement of gas elements. The outer dissolutions signal the end of our subjective awareness of our physical existence of this life, separate from the continuation of the physical corpse left behind which will begin to decompose on a cellular level immediately.
Also the end of this exercise. The description of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead are found on pages 174-176 (chapter 8, sub-heading "Signs of Extremely Near Death") of the 2005 full translation (paperback), and pages 255-258 (chapter 15, sub-heading "The Outer Dissolution: The Senses and the Elements") in Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. They go into greater detail than I can imagine or understand, which is part of the purpose of this exercise. What am I getting out of their descriptions? If it's a personal experience, how do I personally envision it? It's no doubt inferior to the profundity of the actual experience, the nuances of which are suggested in the books, but it's worth it to try to be prepared. In any case, it's my death, not the bookses'.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2018
TBD (to be determined) II
Visualizing approaching death positively is super important as far as I'm concerned. I recall an old "happiness generating" practice I used to do and that comes in handy in this regard. It was cold generating happiness without relying on outside factors, the way we usually conceive happiness. Happiness is an energy that can be tapped by not being afflicted or attached and just letting it emerge, accepting it despite counter outside factors, including death.
I visualize or mentally rehearse the death process with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as guides or templates. I don't take them literally, but I use the descriptions to help envision what I think it might be like for me to die. I agree with the notion that the death experience is not the same for everybody, rather it is informed by the subjective person, including psychological make-up, beliefs, overall life experience, circumstances of death, what was eaten for lunch, etc. Someone dying peacefully in a hospital bed will have a different death experience from someone being murdered in a violent crime or in a war. Two people sitting next to each other in a crashing jetliner, one of whom is a long-time mindfulness practitioner, will have similarities in the death experience because of the manner, but how they go through it would be different. Just for the record, I don't think I know what I'm talking about.
Although I think subjectivity may inform various aspects all through the bardo experience from death to re-birth, I also think that maybe the overall structure of the bardos as described in the Tibetan Book of the Death is universal, and whenever something is described as happening, something is happening but how that something appears depends on the previous and future lives. As much as I dislike the idea of imposing my beliefs on the rest of humanity, if I believe in reincarnation because it just makes sense as a natural cycle, one of the many that we see in nature, then I'm positing that it happens to everyone. We're all part of nature, regardless of belief that we are not, that we are somehow special and above it. Even a bardo experience of going to heaven and meeting God can occur as a result of strong belief and expectation during life, but then it will melt away like a reincar-ception into the bardo of re-birth and the process of reincarnation, with the last remnant wisps of the previous life wiped away by or at the conception of the next life, only taking karmic imprints into the new life. I did mention that I don't really think I know what I'm talking about, right?
The many near-death and death-revival accounts that exist may suggest the subjectivity and diversity in experience in just approaching death. Those accounts, often described as varying degrees of peaceful, may just be skimming the surface, either going deep into death with critical functions stopped but not for long, or being clinically dead for a longer period but not so deep that they couldn't be revived. By nature they did not go so far where the brain structures that support life processes were destroyed. Still, I think our mode of existence and being is so habituated (ego) that there's a lot of momentum of subjectivity that goes deep into the bardo experience.
Beyond near-death and revival experiences, when brain and physical sensory processes definitively stop functioning, I think we go into what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes as the outer and inner dissolutions which may be less affected by subjective experience. I think even the habit consciousness of the vast majority of people fades to black, maybe because it can't handle what's happening to it. I might even say the dissolutions characterize the end of awareness. The only way to maintain awareness is through training and practice while alive to prepare and recognize it when it occurs. And even then the death experience as described may be so overwhelming and disorienting that recognition isn't necessarily possible (spontaneous recognition, however, is still possible because anything's possible).
The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes sense to me when it describes parts of the bardo experience as being extremely disorienting and confusing. I imagine it would be. Our habituated existence has always relied on sensory input processed through our brains to form all of subjective reality. Very stable. At death, the senses stop reception, the brain dies, reality fades away, and all that's left as described in the book is a non-corporeal habit of subjectivity feeling like it's blown about in hurricane force winds.
All of this is just my own little thought experiment; envisioning a scenario maybe a way of trying to be prepared. Everyone who does this might come up with something completely different. Very little is narrowly defined, I think, in the bardo. The subjectivity of the death experience might also include the sequence of events. They don't occur in one uniform way and may not be clear-cut. I heard one lama talking about the dissolutions starting even before death, and listening to that I couldn't say I disagreed or thought it was wrong. I thought it was interesting, a very broad interpretation. And the bright light many people attest to and the calm that comes with it may also be related to the dissolutions, which I've contemplated as beyond the point of revival.
All of this is contemplating just the death point bardo, the first of three death bardos. I couldn't do this sort of thought experiment with the remaining two bardos because I don't have any real insight into them to add to what the Tibetan Book of the Dead already presents. Doing a personalized version would be like doing a bardo version of the Divine Comedy, and as much of a big joke my life has been, I'm no Dante. The death point is something we're all eminently qualified to contemplate, because it's something we will imminently expect. No one has to believe in anything in particular to contemplate it.
I visualize or mentally rehearse the death process with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as guides or templates. I don't take them literally, but I use the descriptions to help envision what I think it might be like for me to die. I agree with the notion that the death experience is not the same for everybody, rather it is informed by the subjective person, including psychological make-up, beliefs, overall life experience, circumstances of death, what was eaten for lunch, etc. Someone dying peacefully in a hospital bed will have a different death experience from someone being murdered in a violent crime or in a war. Two people sitting next to each other in a crashing jetliner, one of whom is a long-time mindfulness practitioner, will have similarities in the death experience because of the manner, but how they go through it would be different. Just for the record, I don't think I know what I'm talking about.
Although I think subjectivity may inform various aspects all through the bardo experience from death to re-birth, I also think that maybe the overall structure of the bardos as described in the Tibetan Book of the Death is universal, and whenever something is described as happening, something is happening but how that something appears depends on the previous and future lives. As much as I dislike the idea of imposing my beliefs on the rest of humanity, if I believe in reincarnation because it just makes sense as a natural cycle, one of the many that we see in nature, then I'm positing that it happens to everyone. We're all part of nature, regardless of belief that we are not, that we are somehow special and above it. Even a bardo experience of going to heaven and meeting God can occur as a result of strong belief and expectation during life, but then it will melt away like a reincar-ception into the bardo of re-birth and the process of reincarnation, with the last remnant wisps of the previous life wiped away by or at the conception of the next life, only taking karmic imprints into the new life. I did mention that I don't really think I know what I'm talking about, right?
The many near-death and death-revival accounts that exist may suggest the subjectivity and diversity in experience in just approaching death. Those accounts, often described as varying degrees of peaceful, may just be skimming the surface, either going deep into death with critical functions stopped but not for long, or being clinically dead for a longer period but not so deep that they couldn't be revived. By nature they did not go so far where the brain structures that support life processes were destroyed. Still, I think our mode of existence and being is so habituated (ego) that there's a lot of momentum of subjectivity that goes deep into the bardo experience.
Beyond near-death and revival experiences, when brain and physical sensory processes definitively stop functioning, I think we go into what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes as the outer and inner dissolutions which may be less affected by subjective experience. I think even the habit consciousness of the vast majority of people fades to black, maybe because it can't handle what's happening to it. I might even say the dissolutions characterize the end of awareness. The only way to maintain awareness is through training and practice while alive to prepare and recognize it when it occurs. And even then the death experience as described may be so overwhelming and disorienting that recognition isn't necessarily possible (spontaneous recognition, however, is still possible because anything's possible).
The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes sense to me when it describes parts of the bardo experience as being extremely disorienting and confusing. I imagine it would be. Our habituated existence has always relied on sensory input processed through our brains to form all of subjective reality. Very stable. At death, the senses stop reception, the brain dies, reality fades away, and all that's left as described in the book is a non-corporeal habit of subjectivity feeling like it's blown about in hurricane force winds.
All of this is just my own little thought experiment; envisioning a scenario maybe a way of trying to be prepared. Everyone who does this might come up with something completely different. Very little is narrowly defined, I think, in the bardo. The subjectivity of the death experience might also include the sequence of events. They don't occur in one uniform way and may not be clear-cut. I heard one lama talking about the dissolutions starting even before death, and listening to that I couldn't say I disagreed or thought it was wrong. I thought it was interesting, a very broad interpretation. And the bright light many people attest to and the calm that comes with it may also be related to the dissolutions, which I've contemplated as beyond the point of revival.
All of this is contemplating just the death point bardo, the first of three death bardos. I couldn't do this sort of thought experiment with the remaining two bardos because I don't have any real insight into them to add to what the Tibetan Book of the Dead already presents. Doing a personalized version would be like doing a bardo version of the Divine Comedy, and as much of a big joke my life has been, I'm no Dante. The death point is something we're all eminently qualified to contemplate, because it's something we will imminently expect. No one has to believe in anything in particular to contemplate it.
Monday, August 20, 2018
tbd I
At any time this month I could have disappeared off the face of the earth and no one would have noticed anything amiss. Nary a shimmy nor a wiggle in the Force. So why am I still here? Am I deep down really afraid of death? I don't think so. I seriously entertained the possibility and concluded on one hand, yes, I think humans have a natural fear of death and I have it, too. I looked for it and, lo, there it was, that unsettling complete erasure of the sum total of all I am, all I know and all I have been. All this subjective experience and reality, the only existence I know of, irrevocably gone.
On the other hand, I'm also kinda looking forward to dying. What's been so great about being me anyway? Recognizing it as something inevitable, I'm fascinated by it and interested in venturing into the experience. That sort of tempers the fear, albeit an intellectual exercise tempering an innate, visceral reaction. In the end, I don't think it's a deep down fear.
Am I afraid of doing it myself? That would just be pathetic considering all I've written. I just don't think that's the case. I sure hope not. Am I lazy? That's actually closer to plausible. Pathetic, too, but not as pathetic as being afraid to do it myself.
Great, that's just faboo that I can pinpoint that out. Now what? It goes to the old questions how did Anthony Bourdain, Shinee's Jonghyun, Robin Williams know/decide it was time? But their answers would not be mine. And my motivation isn't like theirs, maybe isn't enough. Right, that whole "looming" thing. I'd be walking the plank and I'd turn around and go "What's my motivation?!", and the pirates would *poke* *poke* me with something sharp, and only then I'd finally realize I just have to do it.
I continue to mentally prepare through mindfulness practice and meditations and visualizations. I think approaching death should be joyful and positive. Like James Earl Jones's character, Terence Mann, giggling while walking into the cornfields at the end of "Field of Dreams" (there's a very loose theory out there suggesting that Terence Mann, like Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, is already dead and was a recycled soul for purposes of the "quest" and then is being reintroduced to the death realms).
On the other hand, I'm also kinda looking forward to dying. What's been so great about being me anyway? Recognizing it as something inevitable, I'm fascinated by it and interested in venturing into the experience. That sort of tempers the fear, albeit an intellectual exercise tempering an innate, visceral reaction. In the end, I don't think it's a deep down fear.
Am I afraid of doing it myself? That would just be pathetic considering all I've written. I just don't think that's the case. I sure hope not. Am I lazy? That's actually closer to plausible. Pathetic, too, but not as pathetic as being afraid to do it myself.
Thinking all of this out, the reason I'm still here is that I'm still in the thrall of the conveyor belt of daily mundanity delivering me from day to day, distracting and fooling me into thinking there's still stuff I want to do, that I'm not done or I'm not sick of it yet. Exactly the same as a year ago and probably beyond. I just marked exactly one year of absolutely no progress between realization and action.
Great, that's just faboo that I can pinpoint that out. Now what? It goes to the old questions how did Anthony Bourdain, Shinee's Jonghyun, Robin Williams know/decide it was time? But their answers would not be mine. And my motivation isn't like theirs, maybe isn't enough. Right, that whole "looming" thing. I'd be walking the plank and I'd turn around and go "What's my motivation?!", and the pirates would *poke* *poke* me with something sharp, and only then I'd finally realize I just have to do it.
I continue to mentally prepare through mindfulness practice and meditations and visualizations. I think approaching death should be joyful and positive. Like James Earl Jones's character, Terence Mann, giggling while walking into the cornfields at the end of "Field of Dreams" (there's a very loose theory out there suggesting that Terence Mann, like Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, is already dead and was a recycled soul for purposes of the "quest" and then is being reintroduced to the death realms).
Tuesday, August 07, 2018
I reckon it's safe to say there was little material worth in my being on this planet. I have no problem with that. To me, to have material worth means to have some appreciable presence to others, some contribution to their lives. It's not a high bar. If you have friends, you have material worth. If you have one good friend, you have material worth. If you have family to whom you mean something aside from just being family, you have material worth. It's not hard to have material worth. I was ultimately not much of anything to anyone; didn't try to be, didn't want to be. I do realize I'm tailoring the definition to fit me.
However, to me, I suppose mindfulness practice and any insights gained towards transformation was worth traveling the path of this my life. Transforming anger to calm, chaos to quietude, craving to questioning, negativity to . . . not being so negative (that's the best I can hope for), etc. This is the important stuff as far as I'm concerned.
The process over the past however many years has been to become less reactive to what the world presents to me. It just is, so let it be just as it is. Don't be thrown by the throes of emotion regarding things that are uncontrollable and just aren't that important and will simply come to pass in time. I'm so glad I have nothing to do with that stuff. I'm also glad to have nothing to do with stuff that actually can be perceived as important and will not simply pass if not handled wisely and mindfully. Child-rearing, for example. All of it, as the mantra goes, none of my business.
I daresay mindfulness practice has been effective through the years. I've written about my failings and discrepancies, but those weren't conclusions as much as goals to overcome. And I do astonish myself by progress I may have made when I look back and recognize things I no longer react to nor am swayed by mindlessly.
On the other hand, I also recognized that I shouldn't get comfortable with the benefits of mindfulness practice, thinking I've accomplished something. There still always were pitfalls if I didn't recognize the weaknesses in my practice and the need to maintain a high doubt regarding it. If I slipped, it's a slippery slope.
Among the most important things, I realized, is to not think I've accomplished anything. It's important to keep in touch with my entire life prior to engaging in mindfulness practice and remember how immediate in this life I was an extremely reactive, emotional being like everyone else; tossed and thrown by what I perceived reality presented and thinking it real and important and doing plenty of stupid shit in the process. Like arguing. Or falling in love.
It's important because any accomplishments in one life may not carry over into future lives if they haven't been so inculcated as to become a part of one's karma. Like, well, falling in love. I don't want it, don't need it, but I can't say it's out of my karmic stream. In this life, I'm confident I wouldn't get attached or even react to something like that. It would just be something to observe and not be emotionally swayed. I think I'd just be amused by it at this point.
Anger, too. Anger is more dangerous because I know I can still be pushed to anger. It's immediate, virulent and as seductive as love. Nothing amusing about it. It takes moments and mindfulness to recognize it and shut it down. To be able to do so is an accomplishment, but it's not necessarily something that will carry over as karma into future lives. It can with disciplined and effective practice, but otherwise anger is part of the human emotional software package because on an animal evolutionary level, it does have its use.
To be safe, taking a tack of self-doubt, these sorts of mindfulness practice accomplishments are just for this lifetime. When this my brain structure ceases to function and karmic energy is transferred to a fresh, new reincarnated infant brain, I don't think my practice has been so good that those things like love and anger, etc., won't be reset to default. Growing up, anger will again be the immediate reaction to anger stimulus. And as any hormonal teen, lust and love will have their effect and attraction. I shalt fornicate again.
Finding the suffering they cause will be things that would have to be re-learned by the person the karmic energy ends up in (I almost worded it like it would be me, it would not). And realizing that kind of suffering is something not desirable is a completely different step to re-learn, not to mention the realization that it's even possible to try to eradicate it, that there's a choice. Maybe that's where my practice in this life kicks in and makes it easier for that person to realize. Hey, maybe my current life is exactly that model. I am this way because it's what someone cultivated before.
Karma may be thought of as being like a message in a bottle to future lives. Doing positive things and keeping a positive mindset is the equivalent of sending positive karma into future lives. There needs to be purity in intent. If you do good for the purpose of getting positive future karma, the karma is more about being manipulative or doing things only if there's a benefit. Sending positive karma into future lives is about transforming into a positive being who does good things as a result of being a positive being. But each incident of doing something good for someone else helps into becoming a positive being, so each incident can contribute to the message that will be sent in the bottle.
On the other hand, maybe you get angry easily and lash out at people and argue a lot. You can think of it as having inherited it as karma from someone who was just like you and didn't do anything about it. You can't blame them for it, your actions are your own responsibility. But if they had tried to work on emotional control and being concerned about the suffering they caused, that karma may have come to you like a message in a bottle and it would be in you to be different or able to change.
However, to me, I suppose mindfulness practice and any insights gained towards transformation was worth traveling the path of this my life. Transforming anger to calm, chaos to quietude, craving to questioning, negativity to . . . not being so negative (that's the best I can hope for), etc. This is the important stuff as far as I'm concerned.
The process over the past however many years has been to become less reactive to what the world presents to me. It just is, so let it be just as it is. Don't be thrown by the throes of emotion regarding things that are uncontrollable and just aren't that important and will simply come to pass in time. I'm so glad I have nothing to do with that stuff. I'm also glad to have nothing to do with stuff that actually can be perceived as important and will not simply pass if not handled wisely and mindfully. Child-rearing, for example. All of it, as the mantra goes, none of my business.
I daresay mindfulness practice has been effective through the years. I've written about my failings and discrepancies, but those weren't conclusions as much as goals to overcome. And I do astonish myself by progress I may have made when I look back and recognize things I no longer react to nor am swayed by mindlessly.
On the other hand, I also recognized that I shouldn't get comfortable with the benefits of mindfulness practice, thinking I've accomplished something. There still always were pitfalls if I didn't recognize the weaknesses in my practice and the need to maintain a high doubt regarding it. If I slipped, it's a slippery slope.
Among the most important things, I realized, is to not think I've accomplished anything. It's important to keep in touch with my entire life prior to engaging in mindfulness practice and remember how immediate in this life I was an extremely reactive, emotional being like everyone else; tossed and thrown by what I perceived reality presented and thinking it real and important and doing plenty of stupid shit in the process. Like arguing. Or falling in love.
It's important because any accomplishments in one life may not carry over into future lives if they haven't been so inculcated as to become a part of one's karma. Like, well, falling in love. I don't want it, don't need it, but I can't say it's out of my karmic stream. In this life, I'm confident I wouldn't get attached or even react to something like that. It would just be something to observe and not be emotionally swayed. I think I'd just be amused by it at this point.
Anger, too. Anger is more dangerous because I know I can still be pushed to anger. It's immediate, virulent and as seductive as love. Nothing amusing about it. It takes moments and mindfulness to recognize it and shut it down. To be able to do so is an accomplishment, but it's not necessarily something that will carry over as karma into future lives. It can with disciplined and effective practice, but otherwise anger is part of the human emotional software package because on an animal evolutionary level, it does have its use.
To be safe, taking a tack of self-doubt, these sorts of mindfulness practice accomplishments are just for this lifetime. When this my brain structure ceases to function and karmic energy is transferred to a fresh, new reincarnated infant brain, I don't think my practice has been so good that those things like love and anger, etc., won't be reset to default. Growing up, anger will again be the immediate reaction to anger stimulus. And as any hormonal teen, lust and love will have their effect and attraction. I shalt fornicate again.
Finding the suffering they cause will be things that would have to be re-learned by the person the karmic energy ends up in (I almost worded it like it would be me, it would not). And realizing that kind of suffering is something not desirable is a completely different step to re-learn, not to mention the realization that it's even possible to try to eradicate it, that there's a choice. Maybe that's where my practice in this life kicks in and makes it easier for that person to realize. Hey, maybe my current life is exactly that model. I am this way because it's what someone cultivated before.
Karma may be thought of as being like a message in a bottle to future lives. Doing positive things and keeping a positive mindset is the equivalent of sending positive karma into future lives. There needs to be purity in intent. If you do good for the purpose of getting positive future karma, the karma is more about being manipulative or doing things only if there's a benefit. Sending positive karma into future lives is about transforming into a positive being who does good things as a result of being a positive being. But each incident of doing something good for someone else helps into becoming a positive being, so each incident can contribute to the message that will be sent in the bottle.
On the other hand, maybe you get angry easily and lash out at people and argue a lot. You can think of it as having inherited it as karma from someone who was just like you and didn't do anything about it. You can't blame them for it, your actions are your own responsibility. But if they had tried to work on emotional control and being concerned about the suffering they caused, that karma may have come to you like a message in a bottle and it would be in you to be different or able to change.
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
I look back at my life and wonder, 'what was that?' Was that worth living? Whatever. I was born and had to live it. Worth is subjective. It is what it was. Was it worth my while? Did I live up to my potential? How exactly did I spend my time here? What was I? What did it mean to be here?
I was nothing. I made myself nothing intentionally. That was my purpose, so I think I was reasonably successful, flatter myself not. What was the purpose of becoming nothing? Spiritual pursuit, I think it's safe to say. All is vanity. Even becoming nothing is vanity, but that's better, I think, than a foundation of vanity to build a life thinking it's something when it's really just vanity.
I'm just trying to make sense of the whole journey and the whole ego lens with which we go through our lives.
I was nothing very early on. Psychology is in the works here, but it eventually mixes in with the spiritual pursuit thing. Of course that feeling of being nothing starts with my parents in childhood, but that's not to blame them for anything since I have two brothers with the same upbringing who became something. We were all nothing to my parents to the extent that making money was more important to our parents. But since their making money became integral to my brothers' becoming something, the transition was natural.
And once the concept of suicide was introduced to me, I latched onto that as a formulation for my life and I never did get beyond that and only embellished the philosophy and rationale behind it as a goal. I was döömed. That was it. My life in a nutshell was about settling into a pattern of constantly sabotaging anything that people normally live for (I'ma call it identity), realizing it's all vanity.
Identity as vanity. My years of stripping away identity was trying to strip away the vanity. All those things I did along my journey that I tried to base my identity upon were just vanity, things to do. Look at me, I'm this or that and I feel pride about those things. Drummer, bassist, runner, cycling, cutter, alcoholic, English editor, all identities and matters of pride.
In the end because of my impulse to sabotage my life and identity partly by alienating everyone in my life, there was only me left. What use is there of an identity when there's no one there to show it to, to be it? Then I stopped being impressed by myself. There was only me left to tell me I sucked at all those things, and I did suck, and I did finally tell myself as much.
So what was this all worth? Just the fact of it? Maybe. The fact without vanity, without pretension or thinking there was any meaning to it. I was not known, no one knew me. Even being unknown or forgotten is folly and vanity thinking I was anything worth being unknown or forgotten! Not even that. That's a great freedom actually.
People try to be an identity, what they present to the world. People try to be somebody. If people can't be famous and remembered historically, they try to be someone and mean something to their friends and family. But it's all vanity. So you're remembered, people mention tales about you generations down. Tales that even inspire. Yay? Good for you? I don't get it. Just disappearing suits me fine. Which is why I suppose I think of myself as Buddhist (albeit different from how many Buddhists think of themselves, as an identity).
Or the alternate last sentence is: . . . disappearing suits me fine. And yet I have this blog.
I was nothing. I made myself nothing intentionally. That was my purpose, so I think I was reasonably successful, flatter myself not. What was the purpose of becoming nothing? Spiritual pursuit, I think it's safe to say. All is vanity. Even becoming nothing is vanity, but that's better, I think, than a foundation of vanity to build a life thinking it's something when it's really just vanity.
I'm just trying to make sense of the whole journey and the whole ego lens with which we go through our lives.
I was nothing very early on. Psychology is in the works here, but it eventually mixes in with the spiritual pursuit thing. Of course that feeling of being nothing starts with my parents in childhood, but that's not to blame them for anything since I have two brothers with the same upbringing who became something. We were all nothing to my parents to the extent that making money was more important to our parents. But since their making money became integral to my brothers' becoming something, the transition was natural.
And once the concept of suicide was introduced to me, I latched onto that as a formulation for my life and I never did get beyond that and only embellished the philosophy and rationale behind it as a goal. I was döömed. That was it. My life in a nutshell was about settling into a pattern of constantly sabotaging anything that people normally live for (I'ma call it identity), realizing it's all vanity.
Identity as vanity. My years of stripping away identity was trying to strip away the vanity. All those things I did along my journey that I tried to base my identity upon were just vanity, things to do. Look at me, I'm this or that and I feel pride about those things. Drummer, bassist, runner, cycling, cutter, alcoholic, English editor, all identities and matters of pride.
In the end because of my impulse to sabotage my life and identity partly by alienating everyone in my life, there was only me left. What use is there of an identity when there's no one there to show it to, to be it? Then I stopped being impressed by myself. There was only me left to tell me I sucked at all those things, and I did suck, and I did finally tell myself as much.
So what was this all worth? Just the fact of it? Maybe. The fact without vanity, without pretension or thinking there was any meaning to it. I was not known, no one knew me. Even being unknown or forgotten is folly and vanity thinking I was anything worth being unknown or forgotten! Not even that. That's a great freedom actually.
People try to be an identity, what they present to the world. People try to be somebody. If people can't be famous and remembered historically, they try to be someone and mean something to their friends and family. But it's all vanity. So you're remembered, people mention tales about you generations down. Tales that even inspire. Yay? Good for you? I don't get it. Just disappearing suits me fine. Which is why I suppose I think of myself as Buddhist (albeit different from how many Buddhists think of themselves, as an identity).
Or the alternate last sentence is: . . . disappearing suits me fine. And yet I have this blog.
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