I was just a pawn. I, along with other grandchildren, inherited property from our grandfather many moons ago for some legal reason, probably to avoid taxes. Now our parents, who have the real interest in the real estate, need us to sign over power of attorney to them. None of my business, of course I'll do what needs to be done, even if it means departing from my dearly held daily routine.
However, the inconvenience was an opportunity to activate mindfulness practice outside of my dearly held daily routine. I was actually surprised how good I was at identifying everything I was feeling moment to moment and what was going on all throughout my body as energies and applying the practice. All of it illusory and easily brushed aside.
Stress? Nope, it's unreasonable (or I'm aware of it and allowing it). Worst case scenarios? Nope, wrong attitude. Just do the right thing given any situation. The one thing I had to be insistent upon was that I was returning to Taipei the same day, and I did the smart thing in buying a non-reserved seating return ticket as soon as I arrived in Kaohsiung. I could take any train home, but it had to be that day. I don't know why anyone would think I was staying for more than one day.
Watching energies is, I think, a Tibetan Vajrayana practice which requires a teacher and initiation, so I make no claim that I'm doing it right. I'm just going by intuition with a vague belief that I've received initiations in previous lives. All I'm doing in this life is trying to review and maintain them without screwing anything up until I go back to accepting the idea of a teacher.
Every experience, sensation and bodily/mental function is an energy that should not be assumed to just happen because we're human. Even hunger or lack of hunger, or digestion and waste excretion are all energies. Sexual impulse and reaction are among the strongest of energies. All of them should be vigilantly observed as they occur with an understanding of their empty and enlightened nature. That is definitely something I'm going on intuition since I can't explain what that means at all.
There's one important mantra that has been said to encapsulate the entirety of the Buddha's teaching: "Nothing whatsoever should be clung to (as me or mine)". An extension of that I use most often during sitting is, "No thought whatsoever is worth dwelling upon". Thoughts constantly arise, I can't help it with my monkey mind, but I can constantly remind myself that none of them are worth anything.
Now it's "May all enlightened energies embodied in each and every experience be ignited like a fire". Alliteration. The refuge of the destitute (Sondheim). It's ironic Sondheim calling alliteration the refuge of the destitute since his lyrics are literally littered with alliteration. And he's brilliant at it, no destitution there!
That they be ignited like a fire is to emphasize the active and potent nature of the energies, like a volatile gas. The fire of transformation. No idea. The fire leads to transformation? Transformation is somewhere in there. I just wanted to say the word because it sounds like it belongs somewhere in the equation.
It was a low-key, day-trip visit. My uncle and I took care of the legal stuff and we visited another aunt and uncle briefly. Then my uncle and aunt took me on the new Kaohsiung light rail to show me some of the many changes happening in the fast-developing city. I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say it's like Taipei years ago, but I hardly recognize Kaohsiung now, aside from the heat. Taipei, too, is now very, very different from what it was when I first got here.
A cousin, the son of the aunt and uncle we visited in the afternoon, showed up at the last moment and took me to the High Speed Rail station to return to Taipei. I also spoke on the phone with two other cousins who speak English reasonably well.
And that was Kaohsiung; the first I've been out of Taipei since my father died in Dec. 2016. First "disruption" to my dearly held daily routine in that time. During that time, in total, I've met up with my old Mandarin teacher once; a classmate from my first Mandarin language class, with whom I'm unusually still in touch, twice; and I saw my uncle twice in 2017 when he came up for two of my landlord's (a distant relative) children's weddings.
That's the story of all my personal contacts. I have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me. As they know nothing about me or what I'm doing or not doing with my life, I also have no idea what any of them has had to deal with in the past few years. One of my uncles died recently, the father of one of the cousins I spoke with on the phone, maybe even in the past year, and it was just information. I wasn't prompted to attend any funeral.
It's the worst kind of small talk when you know nothing about each other but have to force interest in their lives. Certainly they've had difficulties and other worries occupying their minds. I wouldn't be surprised if any of them has contemplated suicide. But that's not something that comes up in the small talk relationships I have with these people.
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