End of September. I read a local news article recently that confirmed what I felt about this summer that Taipei wasn't as hot as it has been for the past however many years; what I termed "hell hot". This summer was normal Taipei summer heat. It was blazing hot, but it was normal Taipei summer blazing hot. It wasn't hell hot and it turns out I can tell the difference. Because of the past few years, I would brace myself for hell hot heading out, but once outside there wasn't the immediate impulse to get out of the heat as fast as possible. It would be hot, but it was hot that I'd be taking my bike out for a ride in the years before the hell hot started.

Actually, weather has been rather unusual since winter, which was mild and dry compared to previous years in memory. And unusually dry weather continued to characterize the bulk of this year. Even during the springtime Plum Rains, there would be showers for a few days and then break. I'm usually griping about the solid blocks of rain for weeks in Taipei, but this year has not only been great and relatively dry, but there haven't been any drought warnings, either. No worries. Typhoons have been avoiding Taipei, either missing south and plowing into the Philippines or veering north towards recently disaster-prone Japan. Taipei has been grazed by non-events. Southern Taiwan hasn't been so lucky.

Rain has returned in the past month, so weather may be returning to normal crummy Taipei weather. The summer heat has broken with less drama than hell hot summers. Air conditioning has been turned off without fanfare, and even fan usage habit was easy to break. I anticipate within a week I'll sleep under covers for the first time in months. Change.

I wonder what change I'm prepared for. Earlier this year, I wrongly anticipated my bank account would run out not too long beyond June. A scenario developed that would keep me going without change well into next year. That scenario is on track, but hasn't manifested just yet; I'll see next month. If it doesn't manifest, no problem; I'll have loomage and change that I'm well-prepared for.

But since my life has a habit of not going my way, I have to think about change like . . . getting new eyeglasses. It's easily been over six or seven years that I've had this prescription and silly red frames that just don't suit me. I also need a new wardrobe of shirts. Early on, my uniform in Taiwan became light fabric, short-sleeve, button-down shirts. I never wore these in the U.S. Not only am I getting too fat for the shirts I have with paunch becoming embarrassingly obvious, but they're starting to fray and shred because of Taiwan's climate, I assume. I've never had shirts do that before. Fabric just disintegrating.

I'm not sure what other kind of change I expect in the coming year. Visiting the U.S.? Have things gotten so low that I'm willing to do that? Do I re-establish contact with . . . with whom? Audrey? If I haven't connected with her since we last connected, why would I in particular in the coming year? I do have to reply to an email from my sister-in-law, but that's not a change. We actually have a regular email correspondence: twice a year, I don't know if it's intentional. I don't know if she writes because she wants to or if she feels she has to and twice is the bare minimum she can manage. I don't know if she would like to write more but is too busy. But twice a year, one around the holidays and then another one further down the year; I respond roughly halfway in between those emails, so I'm currently a little tardy.

Nah, maybe I should just anticipate a forthcoming year with no change, keep floating along. If life wants to throw me a curve ball, whatever. See if I care. Or please!

afterglow II (fin)

When I first read the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994 Robert Thurman translation), perhaps what perplexed me most was what seemed to be repeated mentions of being able to attain "liberation" at sequential opportunities while in the between states. In the "reality" between, the second of three, there are repeated mention of "dissolving in rainbow light", "entering" various pure lands, and becoming a Buddha or attaining buddhahood. What does that mean? It doesn't say what that means, or I haven't encountered any explanation that satisfactorily explains it. So, me without a teacher, I'm left having to make something up myself. Funny how that works.

I have a hard time believing it means full enlightenment. However nice that result sounds, even logically it can't mean full enlightenment. The force of karma is said to be inexorable. It's hard to imagine how a person's accumulated karma over countless lifetimes can be expunged so simply and instantly. Further, there's possibly a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to enlightenment which may or may not be relevant. In the Mahayana tradition, part of the bodhisattva vow of compassion is to refuse to exit the cycle of samsara until all beings can attain enlightenment, like the captain of a sinking ship refusing to get into a lifeboat until everyone under his or her command is safe. That is to say an enlightened being will always choose re-birth in order to help beings reach enlightenment, which is counter to the idea of selfishly and individually dissolving and entering buddha-fields and escaping the cycle of re-birth.

My speculative interpretation to make this all work, without any sources to back me up, mind you, is that liberation or buddhahood attained in the bardos through these methods and means may be a partial enlightenment with the effect of slowing and delaying our passage through the bardos and into re-birth, which is inevitable due to either not being full enlightenment and the inexorable force of karma (if there still is karma, there will be re-birth), or the bodhisattva vow to be re-born to continue the work of assisting beings towards enlightenment. Viva la run-on sentence! Whenever I stop Englishing means don't take me seriously.

Delaying re-birth is basically a prolonged suspension in the non-corporeal bardo states, "buddha-fields" or pure lands possibly. This idea of delaying re-birth, albeit not explicitly mentioned, can actually be read into the Tibetan Book of the Dead. After the bardo of ground reality, it is said one enters the bardo of "existence", the third of three, also translated as the bardo of re-birth or "becoming". The bardo of existence is when we most identify with our previous incarnation and when our ego-habit of who we were is strongest. It's the most Dante-like experience and includes opportunities for liberation by recognizing the nature of mind. But as opportunities for enlightenment are missed, the force of karma draws us towards re-birth.

But even still, the book has instructions for "blocking the womb entrance" to prevent re-birth for those who have made it this far without recognition. Again, it's not explained what this means nor what the results of blocking the womb entrance are. I think the implication is that if this person has gotten this far, they are heading for re-birth, it's unavoidable. They didn't have the aptitude or cultivation or practice to recognize the nature of mind. But still these last-ditch instructions to block the womb entrance. Why? Attaining buddhahood or entering buddha lands are no longer mentioned. So maybe it's to delay re-birth for as long as possible.

I wonder if maybe the benefits of prolonged suspension in the non-corporeal bardo states is immense. I wonder if maybe prolonged being in the bardo states infuses karma with the nature of that state, in perhaps an analogy of acclimating to different environments such as altitude or temperature. I'm just making this shit up at this point, by the way. It's not only a non-corporeal state, but a state of non-duality, which is what teachers repeat over and over as the state practitioners aspire to recognize and understand. Non-duality is what practitioners all over the world scratch their heads trying to get their minds around. Our corporeal existences are by nature dualistic separation from enlightenment, the ground luminosity that characterizes enlightenment. All phenomena are pulled out of the ground luminosity into existence by our samsaric, habituated minds of duality, like waves out of the ocean. We can't see the ocean for the waves.

I wonder if maybe more time spent in the bardos can lead to a re-birth with a predilection (seeds, at least) towards higher states of spirituality embodied by the ideals of compassion, wisdom, cultivation and transformation. I think the Tibetan Book of the Dead applies to all levels of practice. The most advanced practitioners will attain realization early in the bardo states when opportunities are most potent, and will remain in the bardo states for longer periods. There is precedent for this idea in the literature, but I'm not arguing anything so I'm not going scrounging for cites. Lesser practitioners can more likely attain recognition in the existence bardo and resist re-birth for shorter periods. Those who only hear the instructions for blocking the womb entrances and are able to execute them can still benefit with certainty of finding themselves back on the path in their next life.

As for how long beings remain in the enlightened states of the bardo, it's tricky to say because time is a convention of our physical world. Within the experience of the bardo, time may be totally irrelevant. From the perspective of the physical world, I just have an anecdote my cousin Audrey mentioned. We didn't discuss this at length, this is just my thinking about her once reporting one of her daughters telling her when she was still an infant something like "don't worry, I'm your mother", the implication being clear to us that she was the reincarnation of Audrey's mother who died in 1993, some 11 years before the daughter was born.

Initially, I questioned the gap of time between Audrey's mother's death and her daughter's birth because my understanding was quite primitive. Now, it's not outrageous. Audrey's relationship with her mom included complications any mother-daughter relationship can have, but her mom's effect on her especially after death can be seen as that of a spiritual mentor. It's not outrageous that her mom was able to remain in the bardo state for that long in our measure of time until she could let karma bring her back specifically as Audrey's daughter. I'm not saying I absolutely believe this or that it has some great meaning to how Audrey or her daughter should live their lives. Just that I'm sure stranger lore has been told.

It may even not be too outrageous to question the parinirvana of the Buddha. It is said that when the Buddha died, he entered parinirvana: total, full, complete, absolute enlightenment, melting into the ground energy and reality of the universe, escaping the cycle of re-birth never to be born again.

First of all, when I said that I believe in reincarnation because it resembles cycles that occur in nature, there is nothing unnatural about parinirvana just because it breaks the cycle. That's not the reason to question the Buddha's parinirvana, which theoretically could be a character of nature. After all, reincarnation assumes the existence of people, and people haven't always existed and the continued, perpetual existence of humans is simply not something that can be assumed.

I'm saying the teaching of the Buddha's parinirvana may have been a sham to give humans a goal, because chicks humans love goals. Only Buddhists don't call these things "shams", it's the doctrine of "skillful means" explained in the Lotus Sutra. It's OK to lie if you're ultimately benefiting humankind.

The Buddha escaping the cycle of re-birth doesn't make sense because of that boddhisattva vow of compassion. It just doesn't make sense that the Buddha of infinite wisdom and compassion would enter parinirvana, unless he couldn't avoid it, when he could continue to benefit beings by continuing in the cycle of re-births. But such an enlightened being isn't continually re-born uncontrollably like we the rest of us are. The Buddha can choose selective re-births when moments are most opportune to the maximum benefit to humanity. Such as when the people who were living on what we call the Tibetan plateau became ripe to receive and develop the dharma. Tibetans consider Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, a second Buddha, a follow-up to the first, but I wonder if maybe Padmasambhava wasn't the actual re-incarnation of the actual Buddha after some 12-13 centuries. Stranger lore has been told.

tbd, afterglow I

According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, after the outer dissolutions come the inner dissolutions. I don't think it's entirely inappropriate for me or anyone to try envisioning the outer dissolutions without a guide. The way they are described still deal with senses that are in our experience. The inner dissolutions, on the other hand, are so subtle that I think they likely defy gross-level imagination or visualization. Maybe it's like remembering a dream and being tasked to describe all the gossamer details of the dream you weren't paying attention to because . . . it was a dream.

Something I find fascinating and profound on a philosophical level are the descriptions of the first two of the inner dissolutions, referred to as "redness" and "whiteness". In biology, life begins with the sperm and egg successfully mashing together after a man and woman have successfully mashed together sharing bodily fluids and all sorts of erotic noises, like ooh-ahh (하게) and uh-uhn. And that wet, slapping sound you can make by rapidly pulling both cheeks in and out with your mouth slightly open. Philosophically speaking.

In the Tibetan conception of conception, basically the male contributes his "white essence" and the female her "red essence" which separate in the newly-formed being to create the experience of duality to exist in the world. The white essence moves up the central energy channel to rest in the brain center for the duration of life, while the female red essence descends and resides in the bodily center, commonly referred to in Eastern spiritual physiology as the 'chi' center, a few clicks south of the navel and a few clicks back. I don't know what a 'click' is, but I find it funny when people use it as a term of distance. It doesn't seem to mean anything but everyone just pretends it does.

In the experience of the redness and whiteness stages of the inner dissolutions, it seems to me to be suggested that death involves the dissolution of the father and mother's contribution to a life. That is to say they themselves were necessary elements of the child's psyche, its psychic life. It's not like the father contributed sperm, the mother egg, and out came baby running helter skelter throughout life as a completely separate, individual being. Rather, in the child were always the father and mother essences, presences, for the whole of its life. There was no awareness when their essences were established, and it is only when awareness recedes to the subtlety of the inner dissolutions that they dissipate as part of the death process of the child, but they were there the whole time in between.

The color associations of the dissolutions are said to be the result of the end of the energy currents that existed while alive, including emotions, psychology, the sort of internal things yogic exercises deal with, i.e. chakras, nadis, bindus, etc. I'm obviously not writing from experience nor inspiration, just processing what I've read and don't really understand. The psychic elements kept the red and white essences in place, and after death the experience of whiteness is said to occur as the white essence descends in the central channel as the psychic winds weaken and redness occurs when the red essence ascends for the two of them to meet and dissolve at the heart center. So long mom, dad, thanks for all the fish. I never really liked seafood.