middle-age chronicles

Whodda thunk that a simple trip and fall could cause so much pain? It's no surprise that the end of youth brings a loss of resilience and longer recovery times post-workout/physical activity. When you're young, you take a dive and hit the deck and your chums lose their shit and laugh at you and post the video on YouTube, but you get up and dust yourself off. If you see middle-aged people or god forbid elderly go over, there may be a better chance there's significant pain involved. I think maybe the older you get, loss of equilibrium becomes more dire for whatever reason.

Well, I guess it depends on the situation. Before this instance, it wasn't that long ago that I went over like a lead dirigible out in public for no reason and it's true I was in serious pain, but mostly to my pride. I got up quick and dusted my embarrassment off, was thankful no Google Maps car was passing by and continued on my way pretending nothing happened. 

This time I fell walking UP the stairs to my apartment so gravity was even in my favor. I didn't fall as far as that time in public. It was just a stumble that slow motion would reveal how it progressively got worse in microseconds. Multiple impact points, the most obvious and immediate was my right knee that I thought took the brunt of it. My left foot jammed against a step, both palms hit the landing trying to break the fall with my backpack getting tossed over my shoulder. The top side of my left ankle was the only place where a little bit of blood was drawn so that hit something, too. 

But the PAIN. When the fall was over after a second or so, I was shocked, stunned by the full-body pain and had to pause because I couldn't move because of it washing over in waves (mind you, I still had the presence of mind/YouTube awareness to look up and around the stairwell to confirm there was no camera in sight). Not wanting to be seen like this if a neighbor happened to be leaving or coming home just then, I pried myself up and proceeded limping to my room and tended to the knee which looked like there was a major contusion but just turned out to be some dirt and took an Advil for the pain. In short order I determined the fall was nothing and dwelling any more upon it would be symptomatic of chronic hypochondria.

The next part I don't understand. Two full days later (of normal activity) the pain in my left big toe which had jammed against the step in the fall bloömed. The pain and the swelling probably indicating a fracture. If it is a fracture, why would it take two days for the effect to manifest? Psychological? The pain is incredible (befitting a fracture), but why didn't it hurt like this right away? 

I took Advil, first one pill and then two, but the pain didn't go away and if it wasn't going to work I decided to not waste it and not take anymore. Then the next day without Advil the pain was ridiculous, just moving my foot or changing position was excruciating. I tried the Advil again and found that it was working just fine, it's just that the pain was so intense that ibuprofen could only dial it down, not eradicate it. It still hurt, I was still limping on it, but at least I could manage moving around. That was a huge relief. 

With the big toe swollen like a mini sausage, I couldn't wear sneakers for a few days. The first time I tried, I took one step and immediately switched to Birkenstocks. No brainer. Fortunately Taiwan isn't as fashion-forward as the U.S. and there's no career/social life-ending taboo against wearing socks with sandals. Even if I weren't already wearing socks when I switched footwear, I'd rather not have Birkenstock shaped tan lines on my feet. If my fellow Americans are fine with those tan lines, well that's an idiotic look, too, btw. Me, I don't care what anyone thinks about the way I look wearing sandals with socks, but Birkenstock tan lines I'm the one who has to look at and one annoying summer to autumn to winter until they finally faded was enough.

I gotta admit it's annoying and frustrating having to deal with this physical pain at a time when I would prefer to just cruise unperturbed towards the purported end of this life path. It's more annoying than the two incidences of knee pain in the past few months because I don't know what caused that, whereas this was my own unmindful, clumsy undoing. But actually it's a good reminder of how fragile this physical body is and that it's pretty much downhill from here. Actually this is a great reminder of the nature of the body and I should be treating it as part of my path. 

In fact, there have been several things popping up in my daily life recently that I would do well to consider challenges on my path. Not on my path, but as my path. I should consider these as final tests of learning the universe is throwing at me, and taking that view I'm not doing so great; could really be doing better. Maybe not tests because then I'd be failing. More like reviews of what I should have learned and mastered and should continue to try and drive home.

Like little money things. The irony is so rich that I'm finally running out of money and all of a sudden (really!) I'm losing little bits of money right and left on random, trivial things. It's not about amounts (negligible), and the specifics are so random and petty as to be absurd and even embarrassing to mention. But the fact that they're happening and I'm noticing and getting a little bit wtf? annoyed instead of laughing at the big joke means I should probably be paying more attention to something! Come to think of it, the amounts are mostly in the range of what I should be willing to give to panhandlers. And there aren't many panhandlers in Taipei, but I came across one about a month ago and thought about it but ultimately failed to lighten myself of coinage. I don't know if that's it, but why not? That's the path for you.

Other things I've noticed popping up for improvement include being unpleasant or feeling like I'm being unpleasant to random people (lack of compassion); having at least one moment every day that puts me in a bad mood (bad attitude); not being able to smile just because I'm here and breathing without feeling sarcastic. It keeps turning into a smirk or a sneer whenever I try (negativity). If the aim is to be joyful at the end, it's much more convincing if I can learn to be joyful leading up to the end.

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)

addendum 2:  I don't know if there's any connection between my dreams and efforts to generate compassion, but in a strange turn-around I had a full night sleep with positive feel-good dreams. That's strange because this is insomnia recovery sleep, which should be dead sleep with no dream recollection.

The two dreams I remembered were love related, both involved women I can't identify and were probably just archetypes; one or both may have been K-pop idols as the archetypes.

One was in a college dorm room-like setting, clean (in contrast to recent dream patterns) and there were other people there. I was lying in a bed when a woman crawled in basically saying she had gotten hints that I had feelings for her and she knew what her feelings were for me and she wanted to make things clear. That's it.

The other dream was like a date in an urban setting, a feel like Philadelphia, and the feelings were more ambiguous. We were on a date, buying tickets for something but she insisting on going dutch and not allowing me to cover, so there was no feeling of commitment or that she even liked me. It's just that it was a date.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have no desire for love or to have or pursue any "love interest". Dreams involving love I think are more a product of a basic human desire to be loved. I imagine on a basic level there is not a human being, however self-hating or cynical but without psychopathic pathologies, that doesn't mind being loved.

And I'm not that self-hating or cynical. It's just that on a practical level, it's not something I desire nor something I'd pursue or succumb to as an attachment. I accept and don't reject that love is a very important and powerful human component, including on spiritual and psychological levels.

So if there's a subconscious, psychological battle going on regarding compassion and manifesting in my dreams, I'd say my mind is fairly equivocal and flexible. Dreams can be hostile or they can be pleasant; either can manifest from trying to engage compassion. And considering my psychology, that makes perfect sense.

About cultivating compassion, the only interaction I have with other people is when I'm out and about in public. The only direct contact I have with people is when ordering food or buying something at a convenient store.

I don't have friends, I don't work, I only know one person in Taipei with whom I meet about three or four times per year for coffee or a hike. I don't have to deal with any interpersonal conflicts at all.

Virtually all my interactions with other people are indirect and abstract. When I'm out and about in public, I'm always listening to music (I turn it off when I interact directly with people). It is with these people that I gauge my ability to cultivate compassion.

What does it mean to cultivate compassion? First of all, it doesn't come naturally for me. I'm quick to judge (which is bad) and quick to be critical (which is bad). Since it's not natural, it's not visceral but more intellectual.

But that's not even right. When I say it doesn't come naturally for me, that's the result of current situation and experience and the cynicism that comes with experience. I look at my behavior and attitudes when I was younger, and I think it's fair to say I had a natural compassion towards people. I even used to consider myself a romantic, just to emphasize how much I've changed.

In my current situation, cultivating compassion is to look inside myself and locate and examine the energies of how I feel towards other people, and bending them towards the positive. To not be hostile, to want non-harm towards other people; to not be an agent of negativity in other people's interactions.

I've found that cultivating compassion is also key towards loosening my grip on my own ego and sense of the importance of myself. It's kind of embarrassing noting that this is something I struggle with when for many people it's natural and obvious.

Very important to the cultivation of compassion is recognizing emotions as energies within our bodies. That's also part of mindfulness training. When you feel an emotion, locate and identify it as an internal energy that is just as real as heartbeats, blood flowing and breathing in and out.

Once you do that, you can put a rein on emotions and not let them control behavior. It's no longer a matter of feeling anger or any emotion and accepting the emotion for what it feels like and reacting no matter how irrationally.

When you recognize it as energy, you can think of it as E. As in the equivalent of mass times the speed of light squared. How emotions fit in with Einstein's equation may make no sense, and that's fine. It kinda doesn't. But if you can visualize emotions as energy and abstractly consider it against E=mc², then you can start processing it as a physical property of the universe, as something controllable and not so mysterious.

According to the equation, a small amount of mass transferred into energy yields a huge amount of energy. So thinking of emotions as energy, that can be looked upon as a huge amount of energy. None of this to be taken literally, just to think about.

Full insomnia last night. I stopped posting about insomnia because I thought what I had posted already got the point across. It has never stopped and has been recurrent (and likely a continued detriment to any employment). What was different about this bout is that in the few times I slipped into dreams, the dreams were particularly brutal.

I mention this in conjunction with my previous post where I mentioned dreams having become unpleasant and distasteful. This time they felt downright persecutorial and hostile, like my mind conspiring against me and attacking me.

I don't know if there's any relationship with the compassion meditation I recently employed, whereby I go about trying to generate compassion in any, even the most superficial, interaction with people when I go out. The meditation is even preemptive, trying to anticipate a normally negative reaction and steeling myself to be compassionate (not hostile) no matter what happens.

I found it feels great! I'm still forcing it as a meditation, where my normal, natural psychological state would be negative. But really, it feels so much better to force myself to generate compassion than to naturally accept being negative.

(I have a feeling if I looked far back into the archives of this blog, I'll find that I've already posted something pretty much exactly like this before).

It just seems suspect that I experience unpleasant dreams that prompt me to want to develop more compassion, only to be followed by overtly hostile dreams. Maybe it's a psychological, subconscious battle going on. That would be interesting. As it is, I'll stick to compassion and if it's my subconscious reacting against it, I'll give it time to get used to it.

addendum: Maybe I couldn't control irritability as a result of the insomnia, but on this day the attempt at compassion/non-hostility was a total fail. Impatience, intolerance, self-righteousness ruled. Not that anyone noticed, it's not like anyone turned and looked at me like "what an asshole", but I noticed.

I've noticed common themes in my dreams lately. Like messy living quarters, even bordering on squalid. Disgusting floors, old buildings. Internal conflicts with other people in the dream that aren't confronted or resolved. General dissonance, chaos, mess. Dissonance with my environs. Dissonance with the absence of people in my life.

One recent morning, the feeling from the dreams was so distasteful that when I awoke, I finally didn't try to push myself back into a dream state even though I was having trouble sleeping. I was like, "fuck it, I'm not going back into that", and got up.

That's what I do when I have trouble staying asleep in the morning; when I can't just fall back to sleep and it's pretty much back-end insomnia. I can force my consciousness back down into a dream state, which is and isn't the same as getting back to sleep. When I wake up again, it seems like I was asleep, but it's not to be mistaken with restful sleep. It's very shallow and dominated by the dream state.

The nature of these dreams suggest that I'm obviously still disturbed by many things on unconscious levels despite mindfulness training and striving for Buddhist ideals of cultivating wisdom and compassion. No surprise there, since despite trying to cultivate transformation, I clearly cling to many negative conceptions and habits (karma).

I can still resort to being an asshole. Or if not overtly exhibiting asshole behavior, I act in a way that makes me feel like I was being an asshole. I was thinking like an asshole. I judge people by their behavior. In my mind I impose how I feel people should behave in this world on other people. Even giving someone a cold, judgmental stare is no good. And I did that recently.

I connect this with the dissonance in my subconscious. This outward hostility and judgment has very much to do with all the subtler levels of mind and stains them and makes them ugly. I need to make compassion and kindness more of a daily mindfulness meditation.

It has to be happening at every moment every day when I have to interact with other people even in the most superficial way. At every moment when I'm out, I have to be generating compassion to any and everyone around me. There can be no let up, even when I'm not interacting with anyone.

It's not easy. In the past, I've justified aggressive and asshole behavior by thinking of it as a "fierce" element which can be compassionate, especially when safety is involved. Sometimes being mean or presenting an illusion of danger alerts people of the need to pay attention, the theory goes.

But maybe that was just an excuse to allow primitive anger emotions to arise, despite being mindful of my emotions and claiming to myself I wasn't being angry. So many complex levels of conceptual thinking may be preventing progress. However I justify negative behavior, the bottom line is those excuses aren't in my job description.

My dreams are telling me something. I can't fool myself with sitting meditation and mindfulness practice and think there isn't a lot of ugliness in my karma that I can't work on. Even with limited time in my life, even with the implicit negativity of placing a limit on the time in my life, I can work on the ugliness and put compassion and positivity as a foremost meditation in my daily life.

So my father had a stroke recently. And my sister-in-law's mother died recently. Illness, old age, death are naturally occurring sufferings in life, all becoming expected if not inevitable by the big bang of birth.

What attachment do I have left with people over there? My sister-in-law at least told me of her mother's death in a mass email. Nothing after that. I've already summed up the state of my relations with my brothers and mother. There's nothing to say about my father. He might die soon, he might recover. I hope he recovers, but that's a generic sentiment; there's no emotion involved in saying that.

I was being literal when I said that I'm just waiting to die, and they know nothing about my health and they're not asking, nor would I tell. I'm still not carrying my ID with me so if I die outside my apartment, no one's going to notice for months, probably long after the authorities require my John Doe (or whatever is the equivalent here) remains be disposed of.

Personally, I just can't bring myself to care about that or any effect my not caring might have on anyone. Part of me feels this exhibits a severe lack in compassion, but even wanting to develop compassion, this isn't something I can force. It's just not there.

There's no reason for me to ever go back to New Jersey. I can't imagine them asking me to come back for some vacation and my agreeing to it.

In fact, recently I've been wondering why I never pulled a Cindy on my parents. Cindy is my sister-in-law's oldest sister. Cindy is a medical doctor, has a supportive and present husband and two sons who seem to be turning out well in a normative way.

As the story goes, several years ago the mother made a comment on Cindy's weight and something just snapped. Mind you, from what I've seen there is no issue regarding Cindy's weight. But at that point, Cindy cut off all ties and communication with her mother. It was over, done. It wasn't about her weight, that was just a trigger for something long built up between them.

My sister-in-law hasn't always been able to stay out of the cross-fire. Not too long ago, there was some celebration for one of her children and she naively invited both her mother and Cindy, who baked a cake (on top of being a doctor, she's amazing in the kitchen). Apparently she was hoping for some rapprochement without any basis for that hope, and it ended badly. Cindy simply left and my sister-in-law went on her shit list.

When my sister-in-law told me the story, I sided with Cindy. What was she thinking? Since then, I've been open about my support for Cindy. Apparently I understood Cindy in a way that the other sisters struggled with. That aforementioned incident was a matter of respect, and my sister-in-law didn't show respect for either her feelings or experience. Cindy did not go to their mother's funeral.

I, however, had my own relationship with their mother, enough to perform a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead for her after I got the news. It's not a reflection of what I think about their relationship. I don't think anything about their relationship, except that I accept Cindy's subjective view of it. I understand Cindy, but I had my own connection with their mother.

I absolutely don't know anything about the relationship between Cindy and her mother or how my relationship with my parents might be parallel or analogous. One thing I would like to point out is that Cindy did owe her education and career, even possibly any social or family status, to her parents' support.

My parents cannot claim even that. The previous blowout over the phone with my parents was partly about that. I had to spell it out to them that going to law school was the worst thing that ever happened to me. In their ultra-materialistic view of the world, they couldn't even grasp that concept.

I did make a principled decision not to blame them for my going to law school and I emphasized that it was the worst decision I ever made. I don't want that blame towards them in my karma. I want it cut if possible. I take full responsibility for my own life and decisions.

I didn't put any responsibility on them that it was something they pushed on me, even though without them I would never have even thought of going to law school. If they want to accept their role, it's up to them, I couldn't care less whether they do or not. It just is what it is.

The trade off is that whatever decisions I make about my own life now, including ever visiting them again or committing suicide, I really couldn't care less about their opinion or feelings about it. People do what they do, and there are always consequences.

Anyway, with no substantive, meaningful relations with people over there, I also have to let go of my relations with myself and my past. I've left my "relics" over there, but what would they care about any of that?

I guess I previously thought of my parents' house as a repository for my past. All the stuff that meant something to me or represented something of me is there. Photographs, CDs, instruments, books. I always assumed I would die before them and what happens to my stuff is not my issue. If they felt anything about me, they could do what they please with what I left behind.

But with my father's stroke, it becomes clear that they are also nearing death, and something is going to have to be done with my "stuff". And if I outlive them, then people are going to ask me what I want to do with my stuff.

Bottom line, it's all headed for the garbage. No legacy, no future influence. No one would care about what I left behind, or wonder what it meant. The instruments wouldn't be something available to the nieces and nephews if they take up any interest in music. No one there cares about my music collection or the books that were my education about the world. And actually, neither do I.

What I also loved about the book on Kabbalah I just read is that the Zohar indicates that the scripture is all about symbols and metaphor that must be decoded to be correctly interpreted towards a divine understanding. It's not what it seems on its face.

That's the way I was taught to watch films in a religion class I took in college that had a film syllabus. Always look for the symbols (of course you have to know what the symbols are to spot them), and look for a subtext of what a director's message might be, expressed through metaphor.

Actually that second part I learned in law school in a class that also used a film syllabus making parallels between trends happening in law and society at the time certain films were made and how the films reflected those trends.

Basically those two classes taught me to view films broadly and look for subtle meaning that might not be obvious if just watching the film as entertainment. Looking for meaning in films is about the same as always being on the look out for learning in life. It's a metaphor. Bam.

If we're going through life without learning, but just to be entertained, it's sort of condemning ourselves to meaningless existence and ignorance. We can put on our tombstones, "He/She was entertained". Or as Roger Waters put it, "Amused to death".

It's like having and raising children without any thought that there's so much to learn from them. Easily equally as much as they have to learn from you.

I also like the idea of looking at our own lives and the lives of the people around us as metaphors or having a larger meaning than we might realize; a reason.

There was a funny story in "The Essential Zohar" about a deluge starting to come down looking like it could challenge the great flood of Noah fame. It rains so hard for several days that it starts to flood. The police send out a car to a pious old man in the country to evacuate him, but the old man refuses to leave, saying, "I have faith in God. God will protect me from harm".

Several days later, the water has risen up to the first floor ceiling and the police arrive in a boat to evacuate him, but he says, "I have faith in God". After a few more days, the old man's house is inundated and he's sitting on top of the chimney, and the authorities send a helicopter to airlift him, but he's adamant in his faith, "God will protect me".

Finally, the waters keep rising and the man drowns. When the man meets his maker, he implores the Creator, "I had such faith in you, why didn't you protect me?", to which the Creator replied, "What do you think the police car, the boat and the helicopter were?!!"

I dunno. Earlier this year, I read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and wasn't impressed. One of the main themes in that book is that when your heart truly desires something, the world conspires to help manifest it.

I sarcastically thought, "Oh great, I really want to commit suicide, so according to this book's insight, the world is conspiring for me to kill myself".

Well, actually it's true.

I myself have personally led my life to where I am now, and I've set up the conditions and situation that is perfect for me to go ahead and execute it. Not only all the conditions favor it, but all the people in my life are all complicit in encouraging it, without them even knowing it.

You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard the same message from everyone in recent memory: "Follow your heart", "Do what your heart tells you to do". I even asked, "What if what my heart tells me to do is something that other people would have a lot of trouble accepting?". The answer: "You're only accountable to yourself". And I can't argue with that.

The type of parents I have and my relationship with them, and the nature of all of my relationships all feature such a disconnect that they are of no consideration or impediment. I've wounded myself emotionally and fractured and shattered my reality to the extent that re-integration into any kind of living life would be traumatic.

Everyone wants me to be happy. Fulfilling this life's mission to kill myself would make me happy, because I believe it will advance me on the spiritual path. I'm too attached to a notion of self or ego to advance further, I've hit a wall, and the symbolic gesture of intentionally throwing a lifetime away would help impress upon my karma that any particular self, any particular incarnation, is impermanent and shouldn't be attached to.

It would be better if I could sacrifice myself for some cause, for the good of other people. The stories of the Buddha recount how he recalls his previous lives and in many of them he sacrificed his life for the benefit of others, but I'm doing this for starters. Just end this life, don't be attached to it.

It's also good to remember that I do believe that death is not an end. Death as an end is just a perception. Another interpretation is that it's a transformation or a passage. Jews don't overtly expound reincarnation, but "The Essential Zohar" repeatedly implies that reincarnation is a feature of how the world was created.

Once I get past this wall, I hope that I can develop more compassion, or bodhicitta, so that sacrificing myself for others will be a more stable concept. Bodhicitta is a concept in Kabbalah, too, but it's called "desire for the sake of sharing", as opposed to desire for the sake of oneself, which is the normative human attitude.

And in Buddhistic terms, Abraham was certainly a bodhisattva.

Me, I'm just here being attached to this selfish existence.

WordsCharactersReading time

Gah, what a confusing, wonderful mess my life has become. It's going nowhere, but it came from nowhere, so that's perfect. I just want to smear my life along a wall like graffiti, or like a mental patient smearing shit on a wall.

I'm trying to get things to come to an end, I'm driving things towards coming to an end, and in doing so I feel like a sprinter getting ready in the starting blocks. Nothing makes sense anymore, and that's just perfect, wonderful. Enlightened?

Enlightenment is nothing. A sure sign of not attaining enlightenment is thinking enlightenment is an accomplishment, that it is something. But what is enlightenment? What was the enlightenment of the Buddha?

I think I already covered this. My opinion is that the Buddha's enlightenment was that he touched on the primordial essence and energy of the universe, the actual ground of being. Existence is but shit smeared on a wall, a medium that we call the universe.

The truth of the matter is that everything that manifests is illusion, it arises from the energy for no other reason than it is a random natural course of arbitrary being. Enlightenment is getting back to that fundamental being. But then what is the meaning of enlightenment?

Enlightenment has no meaning unless being is manifest. But enlightenment can't be reached until the lack of meaning of existence is attained. It's a pair of ducks. It's totally awesome!

However, enlightenment does have its manifestation in existence, embodied in a certain lifestyle and attitude. The attitude is more important than the lifestyle. Both are a matter of understanding and compassion. But that's just a manifestation. Understanding and compassion also have no meaning, otherwise they are further attachment to the illusion of reality. That's just awesome.

I'm going slightly mad, haha!

People I don't know putting me into a bad mood. People I know putting me into a bad mood. Situations putting me into a bad mood. Me putting me into a bad mood.

And I walk with hostility and I catch myself, but negative thoughts bloom in my mind like mold spores in a petri dish. And I catch myself.

Why the negative thought directed towards that person who is just living his or her life, just going from one place to another on the MRT? This thought is not objective, it's not real. It's the result of my bad mood, but then why does he or she need to be the target of it?

The target should be me.

I weigh down the negative thought by turning it to stone and it falls to the ground, and I walk and leave it behind. I turn the energy of what was the negative thought into a positive thought towards this person or everyone around me.

I stand in the MRT car, still affected by the negative thought. It occurred naturally, it's still there, visualizing it as something else doesn't get rid of the fact that it occurred or the situation or my being that created it.

The MRT doors close and the train starts to move. I feel the inertia and I let go the thoughts in my head and they flow out of my head as they get left behind as I move with the MRT car.

This movement through space and time. The energy of space and time rush through me as the MRT blue line moves westward from Zhongxiao Fuxing to Taipei Main Station. I'm not even here. This is literal, not figurative. We already know of energies in the universe, cosmic rays, that bombard our planet and us, but are so energetic that they pass right through matter.

How much more so is it possible that dark energy is of this nature, what I'm postulating is the equivalent nature of our own consciousnesses? All flowing through with every movement, all seamless and connected. I move and the energy of the universe flows through me.

"My destiny is not to shoot you, the universe can't be that lame"
-Claire Bennet, "Heroes"


My new Canon IXUS 860 IS has this cool stitch feature that takes a bunch of pictures and uses a computer program to assemble them into panoramas:

3:34 p.m. - Xindian, from my rooftop deck. The road below is Rte. 106 and goes straight east to west. Just about every shot I took from my apartment window was somewhere in this one shot.

5:48 p.m. - The new apartment I'm moving into in Taipei.

6:18 p.m. - My first picture in my new neighborhood as a (soon-to-be) resident.