I'm trying to not get paralyzed, confused and directionless by the discord in my psychology. It's annoying. For the past few months I've been letting myself get too wrapped up in worldly affairs, letting them get to my head and my ego, when ultimately those things are of the nature of "none of my business".

The root of the mess in the U.S. is obvious, so much of it could've been prevented or managed by strong, clear leadership. There's no use trying to sum it up beyond that or analyze it or even express anything about it. No one cares. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and thinks everyone else's stinks. There's a lot of suffering and it would be good to be compassionate about it, but there's also a lot of stupidity which makes compassion a challenge. And it's none of my business.

On this side of the world we have the China evil. There's too much to say about that so I won't even bother. I've been saying too much in YouTube comments, which I know is a stupid thing in itself to do, but fortunately nothing I've said has gotten any response so hopefully none of it was read. I only posted analysis supporting or supplementing something specific in the video where most comments are the typical and predictable rhetoric and vitriol against the CCP, which is fine and good in showing how much support there is against them. Still, none of my business.

But posting comments on YouTube is stupid and I stopped, mostly because I realized whatever I have to say is coming from a place of Big Ego. Is what I have to say sooo important? Stop. Actually I've been doing an affirmative anti-ego practice of drafting comments if the compulsion arises and then deleting them after asking if it's something that really needs to be said (almost never). The Big Ego makes me think I have something to express, but then I slap it down and that time I spent was wasted; the price of being tempted by Big Ego. That is my business!

As offensive an affront as China's CCP has unleashed upon the world amid the pandemic they themselves started, their domestic situation has been worse! Relentless rainfall and massive flooding, droughts and locusts (read: Biblical) wiping out crops, threats of a dam collapsing that could kill millions, grain stores rotting and the threat of famine, skies in Beijing turning dark as night in the middle of the afternoon, snow in June, large coronavirus-shaped hail falling, dogs and cats mating, not to mention the political arena of reports of concentration camps to wipe out the Muslim Uighur population in northwest China and reports of live organ harvesting finally reaching the west and being accepted as credible, internal power struggles and rampant corruption in the Communist Party . . . I'm telling you, this is what you're missing if you're not following the China YouTube channels* and I'm hardly scratching the surface!

But just the natural disasters besetting China, some people mentioning the Mandate of Heaven being lost (a Chinese history thing), others claiming God is angry at China or that the apocalypse is nigh. But really, it is hard not to view the natural disasters happening all at once in China as not being supernatural. If there is supernatural attribution, I would imagine it not being God, but decades of Tibetan lamas who were tortured and murdered in Chinese prisons. High-level lamas who "decided" to delay reincarnating, and remain in the bardo in-between states to try to enact change on earthly realms. That can't be considered lightly. I imagine it would be extremely difficult for the spiritual realm to directly affect the earthly realm. The spiritual realm is energy, the earthly realm matter. We already know how difficult it is to convert matter into energy (E=mc²) but we can do it. Energy to matter? It would involve massive amounts of energy for even small effects, but I play with the idea that's what the lamas have been trying to do for decades (in human time frames), trying to concentrate energy to have physical manifestation in the world in the form of unleashing natural catastrophe upon China. It doesn't violate vows of compassion because it recognizes the need for extreme suffering by ordinary Chinese people for there to be change. It's not revenge or anger, but recognition of the need for suffering towards a compassionate goal. My mention of physics is a joke, not even a "stranger things have happened" consideration. Just an analogy of an idea.

Ultimately for me personally, these are all earthly, worldly matters that fall completely in the sphere of "none of my business".

* China Uncensored (sarcastic and snarky but serious) Hearsay that companion channel is pro-Trump.
NTD - China in Focus (the most mainstream-style news) Turned into a pro-Trump channel at elections, i.e., unable to maintain objective reporting.

Crossroads with Joshua Phillipps (good analysis into what's going on with certain news stories) Realized it was an egregious and shameless pro-Trump channel when he defended Trump as "not a racist" and that he was merely taken out of context.
China Observer - Vision Times (good analysis and including historical context) Nope, pro-Trump/conspiracy theories

WION (India-based international news currently covering a lot about China because of the China threat)

This is a pretty miserable life I'm wasting away. I'm just rehashing here, nothing new (August always seems to be the "wake-up call" month). There's little to nothing redeeming about my being here; little of any real worth. There's little that I actually like about being here or being me; it's just habit and attachment, two things Buddhism specifically tries to tackle on the road to enlightenment. I profess to not even want to be here, and yet here I am long beyond my expiration date. All of this old news.

I'm starting to wonder whether mindfulness practice in my specific situation is actually counter-productive (I'm sure I've gone through this before). Everyday I've been able to identify a moment when I emphatically think this sucks or I hate this or fuck me or fiddlesticks! (normal people call it "life"). And yet mindfulness practice immediately identifies those as descriptive and not feelings to attach to as significant or permanent. Any negativity borne out of those sentiments gets immediately dialed down. And as disgruntled or annoyed as I get or scowl-y my eyebrows furrow, the benchmark of my life is how equilibrium snaps back and somehow everyday starts anew pretty much in the same vaguely intolerably tolerable place (even my broken bike became serviceable again, as after the seat tube completely tore I merely knocked the adjustment clamp off with a wrench and jammed the seat post into the tube. I just can't adjust the height).

I'd been watching the HBO show Westworld whose third season aired earlier this year, and my life experience is what are referred to as "loops" in Westworld lingo. Loops are repeated programs for the AI to live out in the show, variation provided by the human guests, but it turns out humans in the outside world are also pretty much living out programmed loops believing they have freewill, and it doesn't take much imagination to extend that out into the real outside world we live in and realize we're more or less doing something similar, believing we have freewill. 

Mindfulness practice seems to be keeping me in my loop, which means I'm doing it wrong because I think mindfulness practice itself is pretty solid and the pathways to freedom well laid out. It's only wrong because of my "deviant" goal; something very different. Mindfulness practice is good for people trying to stay alive because it's a means to stay alive, sane, reasonable, productive and hopefully compassionate. If that's not the goal, then it's not so great. Ergo moi.

Not just mindfulness practices, but teachings of Mahamudra ("great seal" (not walrus)) of Buddhism's Vajrayana also play a part. A central realization being that practice is anything and everything here right now. Whatever is being experienced at any given moment, practice is applied; perhaps "living in the moment" in Zen terms, but also not quite. It's not a flaky term of art to chill out, but a realization that requires disciplined time sitting on a cushion, I think. I'm not saying I have any realization, but I also have to be careful to not unnecessarily downplay my practice in the name of humility. Without a teacher to tell me whether what I'm doing is on or off, I need to be positive and optimistic about what I'm doing or else I'm totally wasting my time and that would be idiotic.

So general mindfulness practice makes me put my miserable life into perspective and keeps everyday on an even keel, and Mahamudra philosophy pushes me to practice in a way that welcomes the misery and use it as applied practice, while all I want is to be decidedly miserable and do something in accordance with that!

This is all just rehashing, reviewing the situation, even just marking time. I don't expect anything to come out of dishing through this anew, maybe it's just renewing hope that some day something will.