My life has been a complete non-starter since getting back from the U.S. in mid-September. Injury and illness were the excuses for about a month. Almost a month later, I . . . I was going to say that I've been able to get back to the gym, but what useless shite crap that is.

Truth is I don't really care. And that's great. I don't want to care, and that's great. It's liberating. It makes me breathe, relax and feel alright with myself. My life has always had suicide at its core, so my ideals, values and goals are not the usual ones people have. When my life starts to really plow into the muck and the mire, that's a good thing. My ideal age to die was 34 and I've blown waaaay past that. Even Ritu managed to die at 34. Albeit her reasons, if she in fact committed suicide, wouldn't be reasons that I would consider valid for me. Not judging her. Her reasons were good enough for her.

I wonder how long I've been living such a useless, worthless life. How far back can I go to determine when if I died, I would have had no impact by my own estimation? I'm glad about my time and efforts at Deer Park. I left there in spring 2005, so if I committed suicide then, what have I done afterwards that might have been missed?

My oldest brother got married that summer. Through the years, maybe I gave him and his wife a certain amount of support and encouragement, maybe? It's dubious, but possible, and giving benefit of doubt, I'll allow a few years of value to my continuing living. That said, my non-abstract value to them has long since ended. They have four children now ranging from 9 to 3 so their daily concerns have long superseded any theoretical support I've offered. To put a value on it, I think I can safely say my value to them has been zero since 2009 or 2010. And I think that's being generous. As for my other brother, I think our recent interaction is an indication of negation of any value I've had to him and his family. If I had committed suicide in 2005, I don't think there would have been any loss to him or his family. It would have just been an experience to go through.

What value has any of my time in Taiwan, since February 2006, had? Not extended family, that's all gone, including my cousin Audrey. Friends don't matter. No one feels the loss of someone they never meet, so even if I did add value to anyone, that's still arbitrary. I refute anyone suggesting I was at all significant to them. Anyone thinking I was significant to them is just ridiculous. Seriously, if I thought I was significant to someone, I'd know.

I stopped working in January 2010 and some may argue that if you're working, you're contributing to society. I don't think my time at the China Post was worthless. If no one else, the editor-in-chief Paul Chen seemed to appreciate me. I'd say that's significant enough.

So for five years, I've only been living selfishly for myself. Insignificant to anyone else. And my lack of interaction with other people is proof of said insignificance. I realize all this is a flawed assessment, and maybe says more what I feel towards other people than they towards me. But it's probably not that far off.

"How might a Buddhist make sense of an unexpected tragedy such as the loss of a child?"

I haven't done one of these in a while since most Google searches on Buddhism that have landed on this blog have been about jury duty, to which my answer was: If called for jury duty, go. Why are people who are interested in Buddhism so hung up about jury duty? Sheesh. Buddhism and organ donation is a legitimate topic. Buddhism and paying taxes is not. Do your civic duty.

This search is a little more compelling. It's a toughy. And just tonight, I found "Sophie's World" in the local municipal library and started reading it, and it contained this passage:

The red house was surrounded by a large garden with lots of flowerbeds, fruit bushes, fruit trees of different kinds, a spacious lawn with a glider and a little gazebo that Granddad built for Granny when she lost their first child a few weeks after it was born. The child's name was Marie. On her gravestone were the words: "Little Marie to us came, greeted us, and left again."

That is a very Zen attitude, a good Zen answer, but probably isn't very satisfactory for a question that should be handled seriously and delicately, and there are answers on many levels of Buddhism. Not that I'm speaking for Buddhism or Buddhists, just my own reflections.

The first thing that comes to my mind is to look at the question itself: "Unexpected tragedy" and "loss of a child" (and I'm assuming loss of a child means an infant, as the loss of a child, any child, is a less challenging subject as everyone is someone's child).

The question posits "unexpected tragedy" = "loss of a child", which is fair enough. But it automatically divides the issue into 1) an emotional one (unexpected tragedy), and 2) an objective fact (loss of a child).

If it's a question of making sense of the emotional impact, the tragedy of the loss of a child, then Buddhism has one approach which deals with our own selves and how we deal with our own emotions. There really isn't any sense to be made, only how we handle it among any other hardships and tragedies we naturally and normatively encounter in our (samsaric) human lives.

There are plenty of books by the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh among others, those are just the ones I know, that can help guide people through such hardship. Too often we only think of tragedies when they happen and that they're bad, without considering or facing the possibility during other times that they might happen.

Buddhism teaches to consider the possibility of those things happening as part of the transiency of life and to constantly prepare for them through meditation and contemplation. It even goes so far as to teach that there are always positive perspectives to any situation that we sometimes must search for.

And by "prepare", it can be retroactive. Even if you come to Buddhist teachings after a tragedy, they may still help make sense of it.

<tangent> During my time at Deer Park, there was a nun who was . . . if you remembered one nun, it was her. She was so peaceful and compassionate and wise and giving. Just being around her put everyone at ease. 

I forget how I fell into a conversation with her, but she told me her story, although I'm sure I'm forgetting details and making other stuff up, but the point is still the same. She told me that when she arrived at Plum Village, she was anything but peaceful. She cried every day, she was a mess. The senior nuns didn't know what to do with her.

She had been a medical student in San Francisco and she had a fiance. During that period, she had made a visit to Plum Village in France and returned gushing about the place. Her fiance told her that if that was a path that she was interested in, she could pursue it. But she was in love and was looking forward to a life with him.

Then one day much later, after she earned her medical degree and license, her fiance went on a day trip down the northern California coast, and while climbing along rocks on the coastline, a wave came up and swept him away.

She was devastated and inconsolable and the only thing she could think of doing was returning to Plum Village. Which she did. And ordained and never left.

There is a lesson for me in her telling me her story, but that's a different story. At the time, I was trying to be delicate about her telling me her personal story, but I wanted to tell her my impression of it and said something along the lines, afraid of saying something offensive, suggesting that it was his sacrifice that led her to become a nun. She smiled at me and knowingly said, "I know".

If you don't know what spiritual love is, if you met this nun, you'd learn.</tangent>

However, if the question is about making sense of the death of a child as an objective fact, then it's more of a metaphysical question and the first idea that comes up for me is karma. I've always wondered about the karma of people who die in infancy or in group disasters like plane crashes.

Contemplating karma is partly about making sense, joining point A to point B. My basic statement on karma is: every moment is a moment of karma manifestation; every moment is a moment of karma creation. This is because that was, that will be because this is. It's not "what comes around goes around".

But what's the sense in the untimely death of an innocent? Someone who hasn't done enough of anything to warrant a "karmic manifestation" of the end of his or her life. Well, that's partly the point. And it's not something anyone can know or be comforted by.

If it's karma, it's from previous lives, something we don't know anything about. Speculative reasons of why a child should die in infancy due to karmic reasons runs in the thousands. All we can do is deal with it in the present tense.

The child had his or her own karma. We have ours. The child died and it hurts like hell, but how we handle ourselves and our own emotions and reactions is also karma. It's not only our own karma, but can influence the child's karma. The effect of the compassion we put out, replacing grief, shouldn't be underestimated. I don't know the effect, but it's a matter of faith.

You lost a child you loved. Don't focus on the lost, but the love.

That's all.

However, I'm still a little intrigued by the wording of the Google search, "unexpected tragedy". What tragedies do we expect? Japan and individual citizens are currently facing a tragedy, was it expected? They expect earthquakes and tsunamis and prepare for them as best as possible. But when it happens, does it matter whether they expected it or not? It's still a tragedy.

And even in our own daily lives we don't know what tragedy might befall us, whether we will receive news of a loved one dying, or dying ourselves. Or an infant child dying. The nature of our human lives has unexpected tragedies assumed.

Whether they manifest or not, Buddhism teaches to prepare for them by looking deeply into the impermanent nature of our human lives. That may not be making sense of it, but rather how to cope.

Blue Cliff Monastery

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

It was as if nearly four years hadn't passed. I went up to Blue Cliff this past weekend. Didn't jump off of it, either. Three of the monks I knew from Deer Park were there; two of them I was particularly close to, and the third also recognized me right away.

I was actually worried about going, even on the drive up. I hit a lot of traffic and then ran into a thundering hailstorm that reduced visibility to a few feet and slowed traffic to a crawl, and my first reaction was this was a sure sign for me to turn around and head back.

But then I realized, no, this was about right. There always has to be at least a symbolic ordeal on any journey, and I figured once I got to my destination, the skies would clear and it would be all rainbows and bunnies, and it turned out that was pretty close. No rainbow.

Such a short visit, but by Saturday afternoon, I was already in the rhythm. It felt like I had never left Deer Park, only it was Blue Cliff – a much smaller landscape and monastery. Time was spanning, and my departure on Sunday and then eventual return to Taipei seemed a fairyland away.

Those two monks I knew from before certainly helped, and our chemistry, for better or worse, was exactly the same as before. It may have prevented me from getting to know the other monks better. At Deer Park, I eventually gravitated to certain monks, but I was initially exposed to them all equally, so I knew who all of them were.

Anyway, I told them, and the community in less detail, about the troubles I've been encountering in my practice recently. Being with the community was wonderful – it did wonders – but certainly not enough, I shouldn't wonder.

During Saturday work meditation, I was aware of the chatter in my head, but I realized that in that setting, it was softer, not oppressive – happy chatter. In the outside world, the chatter had taken an aggressively negative character and would amplify just by being in the outside world. Negative karmic seeds would be fed and grow, and that's the advantage of being in a monastic setting.

It, of course, came up whether I was still considering ordaining, and I told them it was never out of the question. And they reminded me that the cut off age was 50, which to my ears sounded like I have plenty of time to decide – which was good. The Plum Village system has one of the oldest cut-off ages for ordaining.

Needless to say it was great hooking up with them and they did give my batteries some charge. I took exactly two weeks break from sitting, and they jump started that. I'm still unsure where things are going or how things will turn out, but I'm glad for the positive spin they gave me.

FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 5:57 p.m. - From the guesthouse balcony shortly after arriving and registering; main meditation hall across the street in the distance. That's a public road that splits the monastery grounds. 

8:26 p.m. - Registration and administrative building at the left. The guesthouse is off-screen left. Straight ahead leads to the monastics' quarters. Off-screen right is a little house that I don't know what it was, but that little stone fountain-like thing will locate it in other pics.

8:30 p.m. - Main meditation hall across the street.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 7:08 a.m. - Main meditation hall photostitch.

7:17 a.m. - Entrance hall. Thich Nhat Hanh's calligraphy above the door says, "Look deeply" and "Listen with compassion".

7:19 a.m. - The sitting rows are separated by gender. The main bell moves back and forth depending on whether a monk or nun leads the session. The main altar is by the window to the left with a teeny-tiny Buddha statue.

7:21 a.m. - Yea, so I don't know how I feel about this. Such a grand hall, but a puny Buddha that's not much bigger than the one on my modest home altar. Deer Park also had issues with Buddha statues. They had ordered an appropriate statue for their meditation hall, but then it was too big to fit through the doors. They put it up on a plateau overlooking the monastery and an arrangement of orchids was used in the meditation hall.

Reverse angle. Actually I think they based the architecture on Deer Park's meditation hall; they're very similar. It was designed by the current abbot of Deer Park who was an architect prior to becoming a monk.

7:37 a.m. - Macro photography, vaguely recalling the diamond net of Indra.

9:12 a.m. - Guesthouse, where I took the first pic, at the left, admin building center. Main meditation hall is off-screen right across the street.

11:50 a.m. - Another view of the meditation hall with other structures. I think that's "Thay's hut" on the left. "Thay" is what Thich Nhat Hanh is called in the respectful but familiar. I think it just means "teacher" and can be used generally. I think all of the satellite monasteries in the Plum Village system have a "Thay's hut" for when he visits. I've never referred to him as "Thay".

1:38 p.m. - Clouds start to loom, thus quote the raven crow.

3:15 p.m. - The much smaller landscape of Blue Cliff. Deer Park's surroundings accommodate weeks or months of exploration, but Blue Cliff can be covered in an hour. But 43 minutes later:

3:58 p.m. - Thus quote the crow: "I told you so".

4:23 p.m. - Listening to a dharma talk.

5:43 p.m.

7:45 p.m. - And there's the little house with the stone fountain-like thing marking it, making a pretty little picture.

Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera. Kodak BW400CN. There's that stone fountain-like thing again. Earlier in the day.

Site of the day's work meditation.

SUNDAY, JUNE 28 - From the main meditation hall road, looking at the other monastery facilities across the street.

2:09 p.m. - A group of Koreans visiting for a few hours to experience the monastery and a sitting session.

2:36 p.m. - Preparing to leave. However, I delayed leaving because I was told there would be a visiting contingent from a newly-created Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM) facility just down the road. DDM from Taiwan, with whom I'd been attending sitting sessions with their Int'l Meditation Group. I knew the guy! I kinda stopped going after he left to return to the U.S. to establish the facility. His successors were Taiwanese and too "Chinese Buddhism" for my taste. Unfortunately he didn't recognize me, no doubt in part because he had absolutely zero expectations of running into me in the U.S., much less at Blue Cliff. I could see him trying very hard to place me.

2:53 p.m. - With Brother Phap Lai, who I knew from Deer Park. He's originally from England.

3:31 p.m. - Phap Khoi, also from Deer Park. He's been on the monastic path for many lifetimes and becoming a monk early was the easiest decision he made in his life. He's from Seattle and is one of Thich Nhat Hanh's Vietnamese-English translators when he's traveling to places where he'd speak in Vietnamese.

Before I left New Jersey, I was searching for guidance and I opened up the 20th Anniversary book of the Plum Village monastery system (the root monastery of Deer Park) and read a story about a monk who came to an impasse in his practice and wanted to go to a retreat in Germany with his brother. The retreat was with a teacher he had studied with before he ordained at Plum Village, and for whom he still had a lot of respect. The monk asked for permission to leave, and was refused. The story continued on about how this monk was grateful for the teacher's insight in not allowing him to leave, and that the teacher knew what was best for him.

I read this on two levels.

I do believe in insight. I do believe in a teacher's insight. I'm fully willing to take this story at face value, and that there was harmony between the teacher and the monk, and that the teacher saw something in the monk and knew it was not right for him to leave. Under different circumstances, if the teacher saw it was right for him to leave, he would have accepted his leaving.

As an internal matter, I don't doubt it. But once it's published in a book, it becomes an external matter. You're telling this story why? You're trying to convince me of something?

No. Your experience is not my experience. And when this internal story is told to me, an outsider, it reeks of brainwashing, not compassionate guidance. If I come to an impasse in my practice and say I want to leave, I want to leave. I don't want someone telling me, "No, you don't want to leave. These are not the 'droids you're looking for. The boy can go on his business."

I like to think that the teacher would have the insight into my personality enough to know if I say "I want to leave", that means I want to leave, whether it is the right thing for me spiritually or not. But I don't know.

So instead of finding comforting guidance, I was given something that really bothered me. I almost entered this system. And I'm not ruling out that I won't in the future. It's still the place where I had more connection than anywhere else. But at this point in time, my interpretation of this story was telling me to continue on the outside.

11:28-11:50 a.m. - Floral exhibition in Da'an Park across the street from me.

I killed a mosquito yesterday. It was a calculated and efficient mid-air killing. It didn’t have a chance. It didn’t know what hit it. It has been on my mind since then, not because of guilt, just turning the act and the concept over and over in my mind.

One of the mindfulness trainings I accepted at Deer Park was not to take life. Other traditions call it a precept or a vow, and if I saw it that way, I would have violated it, failed. In the tradition of Deer Park, it’s a training. It’s good to not take life, but it’s even better to understand why not take life, any life, even if it means taking a life, breaking the precept, to learn it.

In this training, killing the mosquito was still a big deal. It was a life. Here it was, just in this lifetime, a culmination of a life process, existing, metabolizing, functional. In an instant, in one swift act of god-like arrogance, I unilaterally chose to remove this life. Not to be overly dramatic, I realize that the majority consensus of the world would find no fault in swatting a mosquito. After all, no one would fault Noah if he had swatted those two mosquitoes.

Maybe no one cared about this mosquito in the way we cherish our loved ones, but cherishing our loved ones can be seen as an artificial construct. The effort going into creating a life, whether mosquito or human, and the value of that effort can be seen as the same. Who is to say that it wasn’t a precious life? How many precious human and animal lives have been taken throughout history in a manner no different than swatting a mosquito?

I also considered my killing of this mosquito as a relationship. My relationship with this mosquito. What was my role in killing it? I was the killer, it was the kill-ee. What was its role in being killed by me? From its point of view, it wasn’t a thought, there were no ideas involved. It was bzz-bzz-bzz *thwack*, and that’s all, she wrote.

As a student of the ideas in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I have to consider what I possibly set in motion in that context. I sent it through another cycle of death and re-birth. Karma kicks in. Ordinarily, a mosquito is killed, you have your karma and it has its karma, both go on your merry way.

In this case, I have my karma, it has its karma, but now they are intertwined because of how much thought I’m putting into it, because of mindfulness. To me, it’s death wasn’t worthless. If I let it live, that would have been good, but no further thought would have gone into it, a different kind of worth but not as focused, and eventually it would have died anyway.

In meditation, I consider the life that was the mosquito. I consider our lives as energy, and I imagine generating positive energy towards this life I took and sent again through the bardo states. I don’t know the karma it’s living out, as far as I imagine it has been a mosquito or an insect since that sort of life form evolved on this planet, with no dharma affecting it to change its karma. Until now, perhaps. Just perhaps.

Walking down a street today, I saw a woman limping with some leg defect. I felt fortunate to have this human life with good health and good circumstances. I felt and generated compassion towards her. Then I sarcastically thought, “where was this great compassion towards that mosquito?”

Indeed.

April 5, riding north on the riverside bikeways to the Keelung River (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super film).

Danshui River

The problem with taking a red-eye flight is that I'm basically waiting all day for my flight.

Actually, according to my original plan, the one in which I take a series of four buses to the airport, I would need to be leaving right about now, having begged one of the brothers to drive me off the mountain to the nearest bus stop, three miles away.

Instead, when one of the monks – my former mentor, actually – heard last night that I was planning to take the bus to the airport, he insisted on driving me, a superbly nice gesture that wowed even me. So now I'm waiting into the evening to leave. Two or three monks are taking me.

Last Night:
Apparently I missed my farewell party last night. I brought my Baby Taylor guitar and a shakuhachi with me to dinner, and right after I washed my dishes, I headed up the mountain to watch one last Southern California sunset.

Only after I returned was I informed of my farewell party, and that all the senior monks showed up. That certainly raised my eyebrows. For weeks, I felt that I had been put out to pasture. The biggest problem I've had here has been about communication. Even if it wasn't definite, how hard would it have been for someone to mention to me that there might be something for me that evening?

Apparently, I have the monks' full support to go to the root monastery after my time out in the material world. If they had communicated that to me three weeks ago, that would be my plan. Instead my mindset is so turned outward, that this new information is just a footnote to remind me that I'm welcome back if nothing else pans out out there. Instead of being my first choice, it's my last.

But I bitch.

Really, I recognize their support and it's not completely out of the question that I'll come back. If you like someone, it doesn't hurt every now and then to let them know it or feel it.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Maggie: She's suffered an appalling tragedy and in her despair and her darkest hour of life, she comes to you, knowing how much resistance she's going to meet, knowing that in all likelihood she's going to have to bear the brunt of your suppressed rage. Still she comes to see you, Joel Fleischman, that's how important you are to her. She's reaching out, Fleischman, for a familiar shoulder for compassion. Just let her know she still has a friend. Be a mansch.
Joel: I believe the word you're looking for is "mensch".

It’s still sinking in that I got rejected from the one monastic system that simply does not reject people from becoming aspirants unless they are clearly unfit for it. In general, if someone asks to be an aspirant and demonstrates an ability to live in harmony with the community, they’re in. But I didn’t ask to be an aspirant in my letter.

In retrospect, it occurs to me how incredibly clever my letter was to perpetuate my own karma. My letter was the paper embodiment of how I live my life. I don’t make decisions about my life. I put indirect factors in motion and then let fate decide the main issue. If that doesn’t work, I wait until the last moment and flip a coin.

I cleverly worded my letter so that it was up to the monks to decide whether I was an aspirant or not. I made it a matter of interpretation. Although in principle the monks will never make that decision – it has to come from the aspirant – they could have read the letter and seen that I clearly considered myself an aspirant. They could have said they weren’t making a decision for me, it’s on the face of the letter that I see myself as an aspirant . . . man, I’m fucking brilliant.

And I was ambivalent when I wrote the letter, I remember writing it and being ambivalent. What’s so fucking genius about the letter is that I can go back to the letter now and be outraged that they rejected it when clearly it could have been interpreted that I wanted to be an aspirant.

It’s not just the letter, though. Their lack of communication and the role of my so-called mentor also contributed. He did not act as an effective liaison between me and the community. He didn’t try to get me to my true heart and expression of it, so he couldn’t understand me or my position and communicate it to the community.

He also did a poor job at communicating to me the thoughts, feelings, and reservations of the community, or offer any guidance of any sort so that any issues could be resolved with mutual understanding.

It’s all my karma. It’s perfect. Incredible. I take full responsibility for it, and nothing that happens to me hereafter should be attributed to what the monks did or didn’t do. Psychologically speaking, it has nothing to do with karma, and I manipulated all the conditions to have a high probability of turning out this way.

Dear Madoka,
Thank you so much for the links and putting time into it! It was much more than I could ask for, especially since you're busy again. I will peruse them more thoroughly after I get back to New Jersey when I have more unlimited internet time (provided the people across the street haven't secured their wireless connection). I move slowly with things concerning my life, so I imagine I'll be in New Jersey well into September.

I'm thinking I'm pretty much done with Deer Park and Plum Village. It was a surprise to realize my aspirancy letter was rejected, but also not so much of a surprise in retrospect. I did bait the possibility, and the monastics bit, and it's surprisingly consistent with my past karma and patterns in my life. It's almost exciting. Not even they know how uncanny it is, especially since what I'm interpreting as rejection was totally arbitrary. They could have just as easily accepted my letter. I'm not projecting on the future really, anything can happen including ending up in Plum Village, but the mindset I'm forming now is that I was rejected, now move on without looking back or mulling on it. I don't like taking control of my life and prefer to let outside factors occur and see how I react to them. People seem to have a hard time understanding that, but they are not my problem.

So I'm back to where I was before I first visited Deer Park. I'm an aspirant in general, no where specific. Deer Park just fell into the picture at an opportune moment, and I'm not going to go out and look for another monastery that fits my style and would accept someone as incomprehensible as me. That would be basically a crap shoot. I'd rather just wait to see what falls into my lap next, and until then I just continue to walk my karma.

I met an old Oberlin acquaintance at a retreat this past weekend. Her name is Pamila Lew and we were pretty good friends for a few months and then we started getting on each other's nerves. I didn't recognize her at all, but she was wearing an Oberlin sweatshirt, and after I indicated that I went there, too, she said, "Yea, I know you", but I didn't recognize her until she said her name. People really look different after 15 years!
much love,
koji

Becoming an aspirant at this monastery is the easiest thing in the world. People have become aspirants with one sentence letters. No joke. Literally. I heard one sister wrote something to the extent of, "I would like to ordain as a nun". Easy. And my statement of aspirancy got rejected!

I told a monk that I considered the monks' reaction a rejection, even though I understood that they didn't mean it that way. He seemed genuinely upset that I felt that way. We boiled it down to misunderstanding and miscommunication, but it was my turn to see things in black and white. I submitted a letter of aspirancy. The letter itself was supposed to act as my letter of aspirancy, regardless of what it said or didn't say, and my so-called mentor received it with the understanding that it was my letter of aspirancy.

But no, the act of submitting the letter was not prima facie evidence that I wanted to be an aspirant. I could have written the letter in fucking semaphore, and as long as it said, "I want to be a monk", it would pass muster. But the three page letter I submitted, including background information that I wrote exclusively for the benefit of the monks at the root temple since they don't know me, said everything except those scant, few words. Rejected.

From my point of view, I submitted my letter of aspirancy, it didn't matter what technical form it took. They had the choice to accept it or reject it. They said it wasn't clear. I wasn't unclear about it. I was clear about it, that's why I submitted the letter. They could have read it for its intent, that even without the words, everything about it looked like an aspirancy letter.

OK, he's an aspirant. We send him to the root monastery after his brother's wedding. We inform him what we expect of him as an aspirant. If they said that, I'd be an aspirant, expecting to go to the root monastery in August, and abiding by whatever guidelines they set for me, on the road towards ordination.

In my opinion, the de facto rejection was totally arbitrary. And it's consistent with the patterns in my life. My karma. The monk I talked to reminded me that we all have the power to change our karma, too, but that's theory. Practice is very different. Sometimes the rolling tide of karma is an undertow.

I leave here in less than two weeks a monastic reject because it is the path I've chosen. Other factors could have changed that path, but I probably engineered it to be this way. I couldn't predict that the monks would reject my aspirancy, but from the way I worded the letter, I set in motion the possibility.

In the meantime, I'm getting myself back on track and enjoying my last two weeks here and tightening up my practice and attitude, and continuing to nourish as many positive seeds as possible, pebbles as they may be. Never mind thoughts of nothing special, nothing elaborate, a short train ride down to the Jersey Shore, no excuses, no note.

I feel like I’ve fallen out of the practice here. I’m feeling that I don’t want to become a monk. Here, at least. Let’s call it by its true name: they rejected my statement of aspirancy. They won’t say they rejected me. They say I haven’t even requested aspirancy, so they couldn’t reject me. I say I submitted a statement of aspirancy, although not a request, and they rejected it.

For a monastic system that prides itself on its looseness and non-adherence to convention and rules, I don’t know why it should matter so much whether I make a request or a statement. Either way they had a choice to accept or reject it.

What I’m concerned about now is losing the practice completely. Sitting has gotten really bad, very distracted and unfocused, even dozing. It got frustrating and I’m taking a two day break. Last night was a lazy evening and today is a lazy day, so to minimize the sessions missed, I just skipped yesterday morning’s session. Usually I sit on my own during lazy periods.

It has also become an effort to participate in community activities. Yesterday I walked out of a Dharma Talk because the Dharma Teacher, one of the senior monks here, is a terrible public speaker. There are no standards of public speaking to become a Dharma Teacher.

I started counting how many times he said “er…um”, what he was discussing made no logical connection between one point and another, he repeatedly said the dreaded words (a pet peeve of mine), “Our teacher says…”, and when he started recycling concepts formulated by TNH almost verbatim, I walked out.

I’m glad I did, too, as later reports said that he went on too long. He went on so long that the lunch crew sounded the lunch bell without waiting for him to finish, and he still went on for 10-15 minutes. I call it ‘killing the Dharma’.

But I’m trying re-tool my attitude towards the monks. They are just ordinary people, and they have their faults like the rest of us, and just because they are monks, it doesn’t mean that their practice is any better than anyone else’s. However, the difference is that they’ve taken the bodhisattva vows, and that makes all the difference in the world.

At least I’m intentionally impressing upon myself what a big deal it is to take the bodhisattva vows and cultivate a mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta) or mind of compassion, and to embark on the path. Cultivating this attitude in myself has even been inspiring to me to stay on the path, this one or otherwise.

I’m thinking of a hermit path, though, not a community path. My natural tendency is towards solitude, so if there is nothing to pull me onto a monastic community path, why should I go there?

There is still the suicide path. Nothing I have encountered has changed my philosophy on that or shown that it is inconsistent with my beliefs. As long as suicide is not based on anything temporary, such as immediate feelings or circumstances. In fact, death is constantly pointed to as a reason to not hold onto the meaningless fruits of ordinary human endeavor. Being philosophically suicidal constantly puts death and non-attachment to life at the forefront of my thoughts.

There is a warning for me to not be attached to death, but that’s another conundrum of how can you tell if you’re attached to death or life, or not attached to death or life. In practice, we strive to be non-attached to life, without becoming attached to death. But what is the standard? Is life the default just because we’re alive? Why can’t death be the default since we’re all going to die? Who can tell me to not be attached to death without me telling them not to be attached to suicide, the concept? I’d tell them to let it go, too.

I still feel that suicide is part of my path. It is a path that I’ve chosen. I’m even inclined to believe that it is in furtherance of my monastic aspirations over the course of many lifetimes, if you believe in that sort of thing. It’s possible that I’ve already ordained in previous lifetimes and this is a continuation of my exploration into life and existence, trying to really understand the entire circle.

Tibetan Buddhism stresses the preciousness of this human form and how difficult it is to obtain it in order to follow the path. I don’t think suicide for me violates that. Suicide is not nihilistic for me, and I’m trying to make it not negative. I’m trying to make my living not negative as well. It’s all a whole, it’s all the same thing.

Three weeks until I leave. One of the senior Vietnamese monks mentioned having tea with me before I leave. That’s nice. I’ve kinda been feeling like they’ve given up on me and they’re just waiting for me to leave. Which is totally wrong. They're not thinking about it one way or another. Zen monastery, remember?

I don't think the monks here have really gotten me. I don’t think they’ve really tried. That’s fine, it’s not their place to pry. It should have been my responsibility to be more forthcoming, but that’s just not my personality. But really, they didn’t try at all and communication has been terrible. They never let me know what they were thinking and they didn’t ask any questions or give me any guidance.

I think they think that I don't know if I want to become a monk or not, that there is something else that I want to do aside from becoming a monk and I’m not sure because of that. They don't understand that I do want to become a monk, that I can make that decision, but what I don't know is why I can't make the definite commitment in language they can accept that I want to become a monk. It's a deep "not knowing" that I don't know the source of. They don't understand that is where I needed guidance.

It is partly their lack of guidance that has led me to decide to leave. If they listened deeply to me to understand what the issue is, and told me that they think I should just stay on the path and continue my aspirant training, I would have. It is too late now, though. There's already too much momentum propelling me to leave. This is the way I run my life. I've already put other things into motion, and a recommendation now that I go to the root monastery would become my third or fourth option.

That would still be better than nothing. At this point I don’t know if I will come back at all, and if I do, it might be out of desperation and even more abject failure. I’m a little disappointed in them for not accepting me as an aspirant the way I stated it, and I’m questioning their compassion and insight as it pertains to my case. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been an “aspirant” since college, and when I leave here, I will still be aspiring for something on this same path. They really had a chance to help me, but that’s not my karma. My karma is to have no help at all whatever I do. Which is how I like it anyway.

I’ve booked my flight back to New Jersey. I leave here on July 12, about three weeks from now. What has made the past 12 months worth living? Entering a monastery would not deal with the fundamental issues that resolve that nothing, nada, in the past 12 months makes life worth living. By extension, the last 12 years, by extension, the past 36 years. There is some basic, wonderful truth somewhere in that.

Why look for worth? Why look for meaning? What is meaning? Why can’t I just go to the root monastery and get back on the path to ordination? Why can’t I just let go? As I type this on my laptop, listening to 209 David Bowie songs shuffled on my iPod. Go to the root monastery and let go of everything, everything that pretends that I have an individual self, an identity, desires, wants, cravings.

I’m leaving here in about three weeks. I don’t know what I will be doing after my brother’s wedding a week and a half after that. I just know I told the community that I won’t be going directly to the root monastery because something is preventing me from whole-heartedly requesting aspirancy to become a monastic. Something is still blocking me. Becoming a monastic would not somehow miraculously make life worth living, make me want to live.

Maybe I’ll go to San Francisco, I’m still waiting to hear back from a Tibetan place where I heard I can rent a small room. San Francisco = suicide.

Maybe I’ll go to Nagasaki. But I realize out of all the things I want to do, which includes learning Japanese, nothing is more boring than language study. Nagasaki = what the hell?

Maybe it will kick in that I should just request aspirancy and go to the root monastery. Aspirancy = giving up.

Draft:

Dear Thay, dear respected Sangha,

I am writing this letter because several brothers have indicated their concern to me regarding the ambiguity of my aspirancy. I have been working on my own to understand the nature of this perception, and have, finally, been able to arrive at the same conclusion for myself.

I do feel that I am on an aspirant path, in that I am walking on a path that looks to be heading towards ordination, but I recognize now that it appears to be a flaky aspirant path. I do not appear clear on the aspirant path to myself in that I do not have a proactive reason why I am on this path that I can present to myself and others. I theoretically feel the pull towards ordination for the purpose of living my life in a way that benefits all sentient beings. I directly understand the push from behind towards ordination to leave ordinary, mundane, material life and cut the attendant attachments in pursuit of a deeper understanding and experience of life and existence. But I do not have an answer for why me? and why now? Why is this so urgent that I can make a life decision about it? What is my true understanding of what I am doing? How am I going to find these answers?

However, I do not believe the source of my ambiguity in requesting aspirancy necessarily lies in the nature of the path or anything about it, or my relationship or attitude on it. Rather, it is a simple but tedious personality issue. Something in me needs to transform so that I can get clear, confident, and solid and express that clarity, confidence, and solidity.

Currently, I am considering not going directly to Plum Village after my brother’s wedding in July, but staying out in material life for 3-5 months before going to Plum Village, with the express purpose of holding it in my mind why I am not clear about my aspirancy, and getting to that point of clarity, whereby I can go to Plum Village and request without reservation or ambiguity to be considered an aspirant for the purpose of ordaining as a monk.

In making this decision, I am considering whether, for me, this transformation can get the proper stimulus at Deer Park or Plum Village to occur, and if not, why? What, if anything, am I unable to let go of now that might be obscuring the issue for me? Why do I feel that the transformation can occur through several months out in material life if it can’t happen here?

I welcome and request the community’s feedback and wisdom regarding these issues. I realize that the final decision is my own, but I would like to know where the community’s support and blessing would lie for either going directly to Plum Village or delaying going there for 3-5 months.

With deep gratitude and respect,
June 2, 2005, Deer Park Monastery

One of the brothers didn't get my brand of subtlety in this letter. Another liked this one better than the one I ended up submitting.

I’m happy. I’m fucking happy. The atmosphere at this monastery is just fucking incredible and is very conducive to being happy and joyful. You don’t know where the happiness is coming from, it’s just in the fabric of the place. Unity, community, harmony, brotherhood and sisterhood, also known as “bristerhood”, and sometimes it’s just downright playful.

A brother related an incident once when a Tibetan monk stayed here for a week, and at the end, he really lit into the brothers here. He criticized the monastic philosophy here for too much emphasis on happiness. My comment on the anecdote was that I understand where the Tibetan monk was coming from, but that he was also missing the point.

I think the point of the Tibetan monk was that, as monks, practice should be more austere, more serious, more concentrated and contemplative, and it should go deeper into the mind and the nature of existence and being. I actually agree with that. There’s a whole pantheon of esoteric practice in the Tibetan tradition that is available, and the monks here don’t even touch it. We don’t even deal with death very effectively.

But on the other hand, it seemed like what he was saying might be restated as, “As monks, you should be working towards enlightenment, not happiness”. The monks here took what he said to heart, but in the end, what’s wrong with happiness? Can you have too much happiness? What were the monks supposed to say? "Sorry"?

Besides, the Tibetan monk was only here for a week, and that’s not enough to really get to know a practice. If the Tibetan monk stayed for several months, a year, or several years, who knows if he might end up finding it difficult to leave. And we have had monks from other traditions who have come to visit for a week and were blown away by the atmosphere and practice here. They didn’t want to leave after only a week. But again, you still can’t know a practice after one week, and we would caution that it may be great after one week, but after two weeks or three weeks, or longer, they might start itching to get back to their own tradition, the one they’re familiar with and the path they’ve found.

In the end, these are all Dharma doors, different paths for different types of people to think through the nature of reality, of being here, of living; get under the skin of the big questions we have about life that has led us to the practice, with no guarantee that we’ll find the answer. There is a reason for the esoteric practices of Tibetan schools, but there is also a reason for the cultivation of mindfulness, harmony, and happiness of this school of Zen. There’s a reason to remain lay practitioners or to become academics to learn about and spread the teachings and philosophies. You don’t even need to be acquainted with the Buddhadharma. You don't need to be "Buddhist".

This is all coming from someone whose personal proclamation is that happiness is not a goal in life. But as the quote goes There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There’s a permutation of the quote using “peace” (There is no way to peace, peace is the way). And one with burritos.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

It occurred to me this morning that the whole 'aspirant' issue for me here at the monastery has just been a mindgame, a test, perhaps intentionally exacerbated by the monastics, but mostly my own creation.

I do think the monastics' treatment of the issue was organic, though. They didn't create it as an issue to test me, but listened to me, identified it as an issue from my own words, and then shaped their answers to my inquiries to test me on the issue.

In retrospect, I do think the issue caused me a bit of distress, and their answers and guidance didn't really help any – but they weren't supposed to help except to test me to find my own true feelings.

Of course I only realize this after it has been confirmed that when I return, I'll be an aspirant. One of the monks hinted before I really pressed the issue that I was 'already considered an aspirant'. The joke was on me. I could have requested aspirancy a month ago, but I was left stewing in it because of my own hang-ups!

Their teaching/guidance came in the form of not being clear on what aspirancy was or what it meant. That was the information I kept on trying to get from them. So I got answers like aspirancy being 100% certain on the monastic path. Not a lie, but I interpreted that to mean if you request aspirancy, you're looking to ordain eventually. Period.

Now I realize that can't be right, it doesn't make sense and would be irresponsible of them to expect that. There are things I can't know about the monastic path until I become an aspirant. But to know those things, I need to request aspirancy. Catch-22.

I finally pressed the issue because of financial reasons, and they finally gave in and said, "yea, you'll be an aspirant when you come back", but they've considered me an aspirant all along. And when I come back on the aspirant path, that doesn't mean 100% committal to the monastic path. At any point, I might come across the one thing I can't get past and will have to leave the mountain.

I'm learning. The confusion on the issue was my own creation. If I had just looked at it logically and come to a certain decision on my own, I could have avoided any distress over the issue. Or if I just had a positive mindset about it.

Emil (moving portrait), a fellow guest at Deer Park Monastery.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

After being cancelled in October, Thich Nhat Hahn's trip to Vietnam is back on, so it looks like most of the monastics here will be gone from January 8, 2005 to mid-April. I have to consider what that might mean for me, even though it depends on what the monastics decide for me, too.

Someone mentioned that it's possible that I might be declared an aspirant before then and invited to go on the trip expenses paid (there's no way I can afford to go otherwise). That means I would not only be definitely on the road to monkhood, but I would feel somewhat indebted to become a monk. I don't feel so great about that, commitment-phobe that I am.

I might be told I can stay at the monastery with the remaining monastics, continuing on as a paying guest. If that happened, my money would run out by late February at the latest, calculating in a little bit of buffer to get back into secular life. If that happens, that happens. But if monkdom is out and leaving becomes inevitable, why would I continue staying for so long, why wouldn't I leave on January 9?

But what am I talking about going back to secular life at all? Becoming a monk is supposed to be my only living option. What about plan A? If plan A goes back into effect, might that be implemented on January 9? Might I stay beyond late February and let more money run out before implementing plan A? I confuse myself on this one.

I might be told that I can stay at the monastery, but also be declared an aspirant, meaning I wouldn't have to pay anymore. In that case, I suppose I would just continue on this path investigating monasticism on my own terms. I would be least averse to this happening because it involves the least for me to do or think about.

Does anyone still believe that I'm suicidal (plan A)?! Doubt it. I'm sure there are people, maybe experts in the field, who if they read this would easily determine that I never was suicidal. I just don't fit the profile. That's fine, bully for them. As for my entertaining the thoughts, I realize that as I go on, my life touches more people, and so would my suicide. Bully for them, too. I'm responsible for my life, they're responsible for theirs.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

I have to be careful not to get too comfortable with my stay at the monastery and settle into the rhythm of life here. I need to remember I'm here for a reason, that there is a purpose to this. I woke up this morning thinking that I'm at the monastery, this is not my bed, this is not my room, this is not normal, and every day needs to be walked in single-pointed mindfulness that I'm figuring out if I really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to be a monk. Really.

There's a movie I like called Bagdad Cafe. There's a character who has only one line in the entire movie. In the third act of the movie, she's standing outside the door of her room with her bags all packed to leave. The rest of the characters gather around wondering what's going on, why is she leaving? She says, "Too much harmony".

I've never fit into a group. And almost every group I've been a part of eventually fell to pieces. Point being I'm just not a group-oriented personality.

On Sunday evening, the community gathered to watch a two-hour video of the community's visit to Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park this past August. They went for five days at the invitation of the YMCA, who donated their facilities for the visit. The video was edited down from six hours of digital video they shot with one camera, and one of the monks skillfully and tastefully added music.

I was prepared to watch maybe 30 minutes of it, thinking it would be like a home video type of thing, but I ended up staying for the whole thing. It could have been shorter, and the editing did get sloppy towards the end, and personally I would have slam-dunked the ending with abbreviated shots of the entire trip to recap the experience to leave the viewer with the warm and fuzzies.

It was really moving, and it led me to feel that there really is something magical about this community and the joy that they generate and bring. There was a moving scene in the video where the monks and nuns formed a ring around one of the Giant Sequoias in a mass hug. The editor humorously cut to a shot of one of the nuns hugging a tiny little sapling.

And these monks have fun, too. At one of the waterfalls, one of the monks climbed up a precipice and was sitting cross-legged like a mountain sage, and the camera caught another monk reverently going up to him and performing prostrations, both of them ending up chuckling. And another shot of two monks getting into heated martial arts posturing at each other and then ending in a spontaneous hug.

The end sequence was the final meal and the YMCA director who invited the community and donated the facilities for five days (at an estimated cost in the thousands, more than you think), and she was crying through the speeches and the singing because she was so moved and touched by their visit. It's a strong community. And I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

I can't envision myself being a part of something this special. If it's magic, I'm more on the witnessing, interpreting end, not the generating of it. (The children in the film Hook, Maggie and Jack = magic = Peter Pan's happy thought). But it's a real possibility that if I start down this path, I will be accepted and supported to succeed. I just need to take the first step, and I'm still balking while the community waits and watches.

People talk of wanting enlightenment, not realizing that if they're shown what it takes to be enlightened, they'd probably pass. Even if it's distinctly possible. People talk of heaven as if they had any idea what heaven is, but if they stood at the gates of heaven and were given the option to come back to earth, they'd probably choose earth.

I look around me at this great community. I recall my path getting here, my life, why I'm here, what my life was, my identity, my desires, my attachments, my death. I look ahead at going to France for ordination and training, eventually hoping to be sent back here after the two years required stay at Plum Village (sometimes one). And that would be it. My new identity, my new name, I'd be a part of this. So what's stopping me? Too much harmony.

Escondido, CA

I'm down in town again typing this, even though I have permission to use the internet at the monastery for one hour on Friday afternoons for communications, which blogging arguably is. 

My request for an extended stay at the monastery was approved last week, and I asked for one hour of internet per week. It's not a lot of time, I was exercising self-restraint and it got summary approval, but it should be enough to upload postings that I can compose on a community computer during the week. 

It has all been a blur, for blog purposes, not expecting to have any internet access, then finding this internet cafe, then getting access at the monastery. I'm still figuring out how to focus and redefine the direction of this blog. The whole monastic thing is new ground and warrants description, but this blog has been so much internal space, so much darker stuff, that I don't want to just start taking it in a totally different direction. 

And man, already so much internal space has been covered in the past three weeks, and there's no way I even want to try to recount it all. Like I said, lots of great conversations, lots of like-minded people, sparks and wind energy flowing, and hugging other men like I've never hugged other men before! 

The nuns scare me, though, for some reason. I just feel that they are due a higher amount of respect and decorum, even though that's probably wrong. I avoid them and always bow to them politely when I can't. 

Three weeks. OK, maybe just a bit on the situation: 

I had been reading so much that when I arrived at the monastery, I had all this head knowledge. But then as I walked up the mountain to the monastery, *zoop*, it just all went away, my brain wiped clean. Every time I tried to think some concept through, I just couldn't do it – a good sign, really. Slowly, it has come back, though. 

Another thing I felt early on was that I realized I had no heart. I couldn't find it anywhere. It made me think of how I told Madoka that she was a role model for being for me, but couldn't explain what that meant. I think part of it was me projecting on her having a big enough heart for me, too. 

Life here is pretty varied. Sometimes it has been slow and peaceful when I was the only guest. Right now, there are several guests who will be here for up to several weeks. Weekends often see groups of people coming up for one reason or another. 

I live in a guestroom with six beds, but I have some say as to who gets put in with me, since one of my impromptu duties has become hospitality for guests. I've been able to reject long-term guests in my room, but I'm totally open to week-long guests and over-nighters. I try not to abuse my authorita. 

Daily schedule includes waking up at 5:30 and sitting for 45 minutes at 6:00. Three meals a day with rotating duties. Other blocks of time are spent in working meditation, Dharma talks (lectures by Thich Nhat Hahn that are sent same-day over the internet from the root monastery in France; they have a pretty sophisticated production facility to burn CDs and DVDs that are also sold in the book store), in-house lectures, and other monastery-related things one might expect. I also have a lot of down time to go exploring and hiking in the surrounding mountains. 

It's just a great, loving, compassionate community. Very laid back, very permissive. The practice here focuses on mindfulness and developing awareness of every moment at all times. It is both very simple, and very subtle and sophisticated at the same time. It's also very deceptive because the insight and wisdom of the monks and the community is jaw-dropping. 

What does this all mean to my life? I don't know. I don't need to know. From time to time I go back and forth between thoughts of becoming a monk, which would mean being shipped off to the root monastery in France for at least a year for training, and not, but I just let these thoughts come in and wander and then leave when they want to, because ultimately, I think my decision will just manifest itself. I'll just know. The decision will be there like an arrow shot straight and true. 

I'm not confused about any decision. Either I become a monk or not. I'm still me. I do hope to encounter some demons along the way. If I don't hit some dark times between now and making a final decision, I'd be concerned about being numb. But maybe I won't need to, I've had my share of dramatics in the past. 

I do have a mentor now that I've been accepted for an extended stay and expressed interest in a monastic path. I don't expect to burden him at all with problems. I think we're a good match because I'm not needy and I don't think he wants to mentor someone who is needy (that's probably wrong). 

We've had a good rapport all along, ever since last year, and we may play spiritual racquetball every once in a while and he can shed some insight on my path and give me direction here and there, but I anticipate our sessions will be casual. The joke is that he's my tormentor, being tormented by his tormentee.

Wooha! Internet cafe! I'm being a bad boy.

Monday is "lazy day" at the monastery and I hitched a ride to town (Escondido) and found this internet cafe. I'm not sure it's within the spirit of my stay at the monastery, but I don't think there are explicit prohibitions either. I might be making regular trips to town on Mondays! It's a six mile walk, but I think there is a bus line that goes half the trip.

Anyway, I'm sure you're dying to hear about monastic life.

After staying for two weeks, I submitted a letter to the monastic community informing them of my desire for an extended stay, and my intentions and aspirations and what I might contribute to the community.

Someone told me it was a good letter and there should be no problem, although as a mental exercise I pondered what I would do if I got rejected. Where would I go? What would I do? You can probably guess what would cross my mind, though.

In the same vein, when I visited this same monastery last year, there was another long term resident on a possible monastic path. Eventually, he asked if he could be ordained and they, in the most nicest, wisest, compassionate way, turned him down, telling him he wasn't ready.

It's incredible the insight these monks have. He didn't feel rejected at all, and in the end, he feels they were right. So becoming a monk isn't a shoo in. After however many months I'm here, I may ask what they think and they might also tell me the monastic path isn't for me, and I implicitly trust their insight. What I would do then is another discussion and I don't have time now since this internet cafe closes in fifteen minutes.

It's been an incredible two weeks. The first two weekends I was here, there were retreats, and I made some great, if temporary, connections with people passing through. Great conversations. I have more to say about that, too, but alas, no time. Next time I come to town, I'll try to come earlier.