For the past several months I've been focusing morning sitting on the Tibetan Buddhist concepts of sem and rigpa. Both of those terms are translated as "mind", but distinguish between different types of mind. Sem is mind as manifested in our perceived reality and it is also divided in two. One aspect of sem mind is how we subjectively perceive things, what is received through our senses and how our brains integrate them and interpret reality. The other aspect of sem is what's out there, what's being perceived and is also a product of mind. It's not to say that without us being here that it would disappear, that would be a misinterpretation of it being "product of the mind", but rather establishing the non-duality between reality and mind – what's "out there" IS our mind. That takes a bit to get one's sem around. 

The focus on sem is also good for returning the wandering discursive mind back to the breath – Zen focus on breathing – that I perennially wrangle with. I start by identifying breath as being representative of sem, so as soon as I think "sem" my mind immediately goes to my breath and the sensation of breathing and then that expands to focusing on all senses and what they're doing, as well as the discursive mind and the thoughts which are also sem. It sometimes takes a while for the thought of sem to trigger the focus, sometimes it's there from the start or even before starting (although once it came to me literally right before the 46-minute timer went off (sem! *beep beep beep*), which wasn't ideal). Doesn't matter. And once the focus on the perceiving is there, it spreads to the objects of perception, the other side of sem.

Rigpa is a more elusive concept of mind; it is mind as the ground of all being. Sem mind is merely the projection or manifestation of rigpa. Sem is how mind appears as our perceived reality and with what and how we interact in our lives, but rigpa is the true mind, the true ground of existence. Imagine seeing the trees (sem) but being unable to see the forest (rigpa), or the waves but unable to see the ocean. You look as hard as you can and you can see the trees and the waves, but for the life of you you fail at the challenge of seeing the forest or the ocean. The problem with the analogy is that we can see the forest and the ocean, but that's also the conceptual difficulty of rigpa where everything is rigpa, rigpa is imbued through everything around us, but we can't see it or point to it. 

Rigpa can't be learned or taught, but must be experienced, it is said, and experiencing rigpa is akin to enlightenment. And as I understand it, it is the "clear light" or "pristine cognition" (or many other terms) described in the death-point between in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. There's a point in the death process where all beings experience enlightenment but it is so subtle that beings generally blow through it without any recognition or notice of it. It is possible to train oneself to try to recognize it, and enlightenment can be achieved during the death-point bardo if successful. 

Of course, not having a teacher I haven't received any instructions on it, but maybe while alive keeping a meditative focus on the understanding that rigpa is life and reality itself all around us and we are experiencing it, just not noticing it, will help recognize it when encountered in death. During the death process, not succumbing to the fear and tumult of the death process and concentrating on recognizing the clear light/pristine cognition so that when it occurs it's the most obvious thing because we just lived our entire life marinating in it. It's something that becomes obvious at that point along with the recognition, finally, that it's been there all along. 

Both of these focuses on sem and rigpa are ideally maintained or returned to throughout the day and not just for the cushion.

Recognition of experiencing rigpa is described as something very familiar, like the meeting of mother and child. I hope I can be forgiven if that analogy is somewhat lost on me. I mean, yeah, familiar – I've never failed to recognize my parents whenever they or I came out of customs at the airport no matter how many years have passed, but any implication of a pleasant familiar reunion would be pushing it. I suppose the analogy may have been a sentimental expression of what Tibetans believed was universal. Even Paul Simon wrote a song about it, so OK, fine. 

Me? I'd go for a familiarity that's less sentimental and perhaps even more universal than the mother and child reunion that's only a motion away. I'm thinking the familiarity more like whenever we wake up and we know who we are and that this is reality. We aren't repeatedly freaked whenever we wake up wondering who or where we are. It's just here immediately, not frightening, not necessarily comforting, just fact and possibly profoundly familiar if you think about it. I also like that familiarity being of oneself as similar to The Conference of the Birds when the thirty birds reach their stated goal of meeting the Simorgh, which we find can be translated to "thirty birds" in I think Persian or Farsi. You reach the clear light/pristine cognition state and its basically a mirror, yourself. 

Things have been unsettled lately. Hairy, even. All internal, mental space. Externally little has changed, same as it ever was; sometimes the external acts up and is annoying or my body reminds me about aging, other times it's calm and behaves but it's a comfort that I know can only be temporary. It's the uncertainty and anxiety when the feeling arises that something has to happen, something has to change. I don't know if anything's going to change, despite the press that something is looming. The comfortable pattern has been that nothing changes, but the reality I'm well aware of is that's impossible to continue in perpetuity. These disturbances, I should note, are also a part of the repeating pattern, lulling me into thinking things'll be alright. And they will be alright. Until they're not.

The internal space has been characterized by turmoil, dynamic and surreal. I've been trying to deal with it by bringing everything back to practice; mindfulness practice as well as Vajrayana-inspired practices that I've developed from instinct, what resonates and makes sense to me. Part of the turmoil is that in the background is a doubt about it, what if it doesn't describe a reality of life and death? And it doesn't. Or at least that's totally the wrong question or approach. The only certainty is death itself. The only question is my attitude towards it and how I'm existing approaching it whenever and however it comes.

So many practices that without a teacher sanctioning them, I know I may be running risks. Or not. What risks? I imagine they would be risks on such a subtle level (karma or energy) I wouldn't even know about them. On a mundane, this-world level I'm not too concerned about risks. Those would be risks of harming myself or other people or psychological or spiritual damage. I'm not worried about those, the normative narratives that define those concerns just don't apply anymore. Take psychology, if I spoke with a psychiatrist, we wouldn't even be speaking the same language. I mean I'd find an English-speaking one in Taiwan, but the assumptions would all be completely different. I may say I'm suicidal, but there is no concept of harming myself anymore. The psychiatrist would write a prescription for antidepressants (which I've always thought would be convenient to overdose on). Harming other people is necessarily a this-world consideration, but I've done all I can to minimize that. Any harm I cause would be indirect and more about them than me, and I don't know who "them" are anyway. Who am I causing harm? Who's here?

Mandala practice, dakini practice, bardo practice. Practices that are not practices because they are not sanctioned and therefore considered risky. Considered risky by whom? Of course there's only me, but my doubts in calling them risky are also my fail-safe. Can't be arrogant or self-assured about them. Always leave room for just being plain wrong.

Apparently "bardo practice" is a real thing, and what I'm doing is not it, but very strangely when I read about the real thing, it reminded me of a "winter term" project I did way back in college. Despite all the reading I've done about Tibetan Buddhism and the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, I only came across a description of a "bardo retreat" in relatively recent years in a book by Reginald Ray called Secret of the Vajra World. It's described as a retreat that was done in confined cells or mountain caves of Tibet and considered very advanced and even "dangerous". It's done in complete darkness and effectively complete solitude over a number of weeks. The retreat is supposed to help get an experience of the after-death bardo states and the instructions received for the retreat is essentially the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

At Oberlin, we had a "winter term" which was the month of January between fall and spring semesters where students could do anything they wanted and get credit for it as long as they framed it in terms of a project and got a faculty member to sign off on it as academically valuable. As one faculty member described it, you could raise a cactus and get credit as long as you designed it as a project.

My idea for my first winter term started with "solitary confinement". Mind you, this is so way back far in my past I have no idea about the motivation behind it nor the psychology that certainly was at play. I'm just describing how I remember it. I lived in a dorm which had a wing of apartments that were intended for guest stays by short-term faculty. I discovered that one was vacant and asked if I could use it for a winter term project. The idea was to hole myself not just in the apartment, but in the bathroom, which had a bathtub, of the apartment for winter term. Ideally complete isolation, no lights, no books, no music, no external distractions. The curtains of the apartment would be drawn so light couldn't seep in. I arranged for a friend to bring me easy-to-prepare light meals three times a day, emphasis on the easy as I didn't want to be a burden, but mind you hermits and retreatants in mountain caves in Tibet often had benefactors or supporters with arrangements for supplies.

How to get a faculty member to sign off on it? Well, I was considering being an East Asian Studies major and had taken classes to that effect, and in one Japanese history class the concept of "wabi/sabi" was introduced. That concept was expounded upon much later in a "King of the Hill" episode, so I'm going to assume everyone knows about it without my explaining it. But I went to that professor, a most illustrious and revered Ronald DiCenzo (RIP), and proposed my winter term project as exploring the wabi/sabi concept as "Beauty in Isolation". He bought it, god bless his heart, and signed off on it. Some lucky cactus got a reprieve from being raised by my lack of green thumb.

Actual extant memories: I forget if the project was three weeks or four weeks, but I made it for most part until the last week. In that time I stayed in the bathroom, mostly lying in the bathtub with the lights off. I only opened the door to take in the plate of prepared vegetables and leave it out. It wasn't complete isolation as I could still tell day from night since it was impossible for the bathroom to be completely light-proof, and I could still feel and hear activity because this was still in a dorm on a college campus. In the last week, I ventured out into the apartment. That's all I remember. I spent time outside the bathroom in the last week. The only actual memory of the weeks inside the bathroom was singing through the entire double album of Genesis' "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", just because I could. I knew all the lyrics (but if I forgot any I had all the time in the world to recall them). And it was confirmed later by dorm residents telling me they could hear me warbling through the vents like a ghost (you can only imagine my embarrassment)! Was I going slightly mad in there? It's hard to argue otherwise.

Reading about the actual existence of a "bardo retreat" and relating it to that winter term project made me wonder where the hell did that idea come from? Could it be from past life resonances whereby I had undergone those bardo retreats? Another brick in the wall of evidence that reincarnation is a thing?

Back to present tension, what I'm calling "bardo practice" now has more to do with envisioning present life and reality as a bardo, equivalent in reality as the death bardos. The death bardos are described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and practicing living as if in a bardo state is treating it in the same way. In living reality, I'm being buffeted uncontrollably by the winds of reality like a bird in a gale. I seem to feel I'm in control of myself, that I make decisions of what to do at any given moment, but that's just illusion and delusion of being swept through the dire straits of the walk of living bardo. I'm actually in no more control of my fate, direction and destiny as I envision I would be as described in the death bardos.

In ways it's an extension of what I described before as my version of what I call "mandala practice". Both emerging more prominently in times of internal tumult and disturbance, working to melt away the habit of perceiving reality as concrete and actual. Even when we're able to accept and embrace the teachings of impermanence and the constantly changing nature of our lives, I think we still tend to treat that impermanent and constantly changing nature of our lives as reality, as actual. Somewhere along the line I got it in my head from the teachings that it all has to melt away, the experience of enlightenment is an experience of non-duality, no difference between this ego-conceived concept of me who is here and everything else sensed and perceived around me. It can't be striven for so I'm not striving for it, but I hope to work around the edges and challenging my perceived notions and concepts of reality. The easy targets are negativity and dysfunction and the effects of self-imposed isolation.

It's hardly unexpected when the pitfalls of not having a teacher manifest, and I really don't mind it. It's good having to be careful and not be arrogant about not having a teacher/guru/master. I recognize the disadvantage at which I put myself by not having or looking for one, but I have my reasons that I've mentioned before. I opine there's a karmic basis for my attitude, and I also recognize the advantages of not having a teacher. Such as making mistakes. Lots of mistakes, but learning from them myself. 

For the past year and a half or so, I've been pretending to do "ear training", but for a while I've suspected that it's just been an excuse to listen to more K-pop. Basically I've been playing bass along with K-pop songs learning the root progressions and singing along with the root movements, concentrating on the intervals and trying to internalize and remember how they sound. Although I have noticed some progress, it's the laziest ear training possible.

Playing along with songs is marginally effective, if not useless. Admitting the real goal is to listen to more K-pop, the better way to pretend it's "ear training" is to not play along with a song, but rather listen to the movement and only play a note after hearing it. If you make a mistake guessing the interval, it's obvious and you know it, clap your hands. If you're playing along and make a mistake, you just kind of fudge over it and go on and there's zero mental correction. And playing along with a song, eventually I'll memorize the progression in my hands and my ear does nothing. Focusing on interval-to-interval, I force my ear to work and suddenly I'm making mistakes unless I learn the intervals aurally.

Real ear training would involve a better method that I would've found frustrating and boring (bored = not enough motivation to be a musician; frustration = not enough talent). None of this has any basis in reality, it's all theoretical musing; just an example of how I go about figuring things out for myself. 

I don't know how I feel about this second example since it's about sitting meditation, which I've been doing long enough that I've probably had this realization many times before. And it's the most basic thing, the first thing you learn about sitting. It's about focusing on breathing, and specifically about focusing on the tip of one's nose or the nostrils to concentrate the mind on the breathing in and breathing out.

What feels like a minor revelation recently was that you have to be tenacious about it, not lazy. A typical tendency might be to find it too difficult to continually focus on the breath without the mind wandering. The teaching is once you realize the mind is wandering, just clear out the thoughts and start over concentrating on breathing. Easy. Only to find the mind is wandering again within 20 seconds. It's even easier to eventually decide it's impossible and to just give up and let the mind wander and graze in the pasture.

Being tenacious, I think, is no small part of the method. It may be the only way to get something out of it. For a while, the main focus should be to tenaciously drag (I call it 'tenacious d') the mind back to the nose and the breathing. Forget about the focus on breathing and put that on the back-burner because the mind will start wandering again. Focus just on noticing it and bringing it back whether it's 30 seconds later or halfway through the sitting session. It doesn't matter that your mind has just spent 10 minutes running through an entire discourse about some inane news article you read or something someone said yesterday, just don't get frustrated or discouraged and focus on noticing it and start over. 

Although it's properly taught that nothing should be forced in sitting practice, it should also be emphasized that some sort of mastery of the method is eventually necessary. It may be the case that at some point it's too hard to keep the mind from wandering and it's frustrating to constantly try to rein it in. Then the teachings might say it's OK to let the mind wander, but it's not OK to just accept that permanently. Going back to working on the method is necessary. An example I've used before is that it's like learning how to ride up hills on bike. The first time you try riding up a hill, you're huffing and puffing and it's the hardest thing you've done since breakfast, and you strain and struggle and make it to the top and you're sweating and swear you'll never try that again. If you accept that and never try again, you won't find out that the next time you try it, it'll be easier and you'll be totally surprised how not hard it was to get to the top. 

What's more, tenacity has rewards. You will naturally be progressively successful at bringing the wandering mind back to the breathing, and something happens and it's almost automatic that the mind stabilizes and may start going deeper into states of concentration that might be confused with drowsiness, but might be the discursive mind fading out, or even heightened alertness and awareness, even getting to a near trance state.

I'm coming across this basic realization now, which is a bit woeful considering how long I've been sitting, but it very well may be I've come across this multiple times before. Having a teacher may have helped make it stick. There are the teachings written in books, but a skillful teacher would be able to expound on anything in the books, I've mentioned before. Maybe they don't write about being tenacious because that adds pressure and risks creating a mental goal for sitting where there shouldn't be any. But once practicing what's in the books, a teacher can guide a student to the tenacious-d according to what the student will respond to and without stress or goals.

Taking this concept into my current Vajrayana reading-inspired practice (i.e., not Vajrayana practice), I can have some confidence that I'm not completely going off the rails. Despite admonishments that a guru is necessary, I'm alright with the direction of my current practice, and even if it might take longer to land a particular concept or practice, I have reason to think I'll get it close to right eventually. Maybe I'm making excuses for not pursuing a guru. But maybe I'm right and a guru isn't strictly necessary as long as there's a sincere and dedicated (albeit mine being perhaps somewhat flaky) search and plenty of time to open up instinctively to the teachings and a healthy dose of critical self-doubt. And even inspired by Vajrayana, it's important to keep the core tenets in mind, first expounded in Theravadan Buddhism, which are that nothing whatsoever should be clung to as 'me' or 'mine', and that all practices should be in furtherance of reducing suffering.

Even if I were told by some mystical augur that I'm advanced enough that I would be guaranteed to attain enlightenment in this lifetime if I sought out a guru, I think I wouldn't do it. Because then enlightenment just became a goal to be attained, rather than a path to follow in order to learn and discover enlightenment as a reality. To seek a guru motivated by a guarantee of certain enlightenment would be an immediate failure for me. It's a paradox, a Catch-22, a test even. I'm totally open to the guru requirement, but it's just not for me in this lifetime. If that forecloses enlightenment in this lifetime, so be it. I have no problem with that. 

afterglow II (fin)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can say that "ordinary existence" has returned as my reality. Between October and sometime in January, some fundamental shift occurred and was noticeable and subjectively observable. And at some point I realized it wasn't the feel of reality anymore.

During it, there was a point I was afraid of "losing it", but realized that was a pointless thought. If I could lose it, then I didn't really have it. When it disappeared, I didn't feel I lost anything, but rather had a very helpful and encouraging experience.

Maybe I can say it was a sort of high. Some may suppose in the language of zen that I had a kensho experience; an initial, temporary enlightenment experience, well short of full enlightenment, but confirmation that the path yields results.

Bottom line is to accept that something happened, but then reality reverts to existence and existence is just reality, and keep practicing. Just keep practicing. By my own description, it felt like a long journey just to get to the shoreline and dip my toes in the ocean. The ocean is the real journey and everything before was just preparation.

So whatever that period was, there is no sitting on laurels thinking I accomplished anything. Now, keep practicing and sitting on cushions. Now, and again, as always, expect things to get worse before they get better.

So something happened in October. Since then I haven't said much about it. I want to be even-minded about it.

I'll say this: many a time I found myself overwhelmed by the feeling "what have I done to deserve this happiness". It's tongue-in-cheek, I know. It's not about 'deserving'. It's subjectively to me the culmination of practice.

It's not practice, practice, practice and someone rewards me with something because I 'deserve' it. It's practice, practice, practice and the practice itself finally leads to a realization, an awakening that completely shifts the theoretical teachings into reality.

Buddhism plainly teaches a perspective of reality, an enlightened perspective, but being taught that perspective doesn't do anything if it's just intellectual understanding. You can intellectually understand it without going through a fundamental shift in perspective. But from practice, once that fundamental shift is experienced, it's visceral and totally different from the intellectual version. It's emotional.

One landmark in processing the shift that happened in October was the "fear of losing it". I felt I had attained something and was afraid that one day I'd wake up and it would be gone. My feeling was that if I can lose it, then I never genuinely had it. And I did go through a string of . . . "bad days" when I seriously thought I had lost it. I touched something and then lost something.

But then feeling "bad" at a Starbucks on one rainy day of an entire month of rainy days, I realized that I hadn't lost anything. "It" was still here, and "feeling bad" was totally a part of it. When you "get it", that doesn't mean everything is hunky dory, wine and roses bliss here on in.

When you "get it", "feeling bad" is a part of it, and truly understanding the nature of "feeling bad" is a part of "getting it". "Feeling bad" is in the nature of our perceived reality. "Feeling bad" is normal, and there's nothing "wrong" with it. Accept it as it arises and reality has shifted.

Another landmark in processing what happened in October was to wait until it stopped being extraordinary. Wait until I stopped feeling joy that I wondered what I did to deserve it. I'm a human being, I'm living a life; what "realization" is still here when I come down from that high and the stink being an ordinary human being manifests.

I'm still squirming into that skin. It's not uncomfortable. In recent weeks, my life and lifestyle has trended back towards what was ordinary before and I've been watching and observing how I treat that in light of feeling something fundamentally shifted for me.

That's a work in progress, but something definitely has shifted. Something has changed. And some things need to be tested. Interactions with people possibly need to be tested. I'm feeling alcohol consumption might need to be tested, but I'm still feeling out the parameters of that test.

If I were to stop drinking, I'd have to devise a clever theoretical basis to aim towards and accomplish that. I know I can stop by myself with a certain motivation to which I can dedicate myself to stop, but figuring what that is will take cleverness. It's not merely a matter of physiological addiction, although shades of it may have its impact.

The ongoing process involves being confident that I've accomplished or attained something, while at the same time challenging and doubting what I think I've accomplished or attained.

So a major change occurred in early October. That's the what. But why? What happened?

There was a confluence of things that complicates and confuses what may have happened, and I'm deciding that all of the superficial, material things weren't it.

The change was much too sudden for any outside, material influences to be so effective. Including and especially cutting back on alcohol. That effectively happened afterwards; it wasn't it.

I'm tempted to pay attention to those days I thought I had succeeded in sabotaging my health and that liver/kidney failure was imminent, but . . . no. It felt momentous at the time, but maybe only as a superficial marker.

Any "facing my mortality" is not momentous, it's the norm. I didn't face my mortality and something in me changed. That would be sarcasm.

So I'm looking at the fringes.

In early October, I made contact with my cousin the day before she left for the U.S. to figure out where she was going to move with her children. I had known she was planning the trip for about a month, but I called right before she left, not knowing that fact. And she left. We got together the day she returned three weeks later, after the big change in my life had occurred.

Around that time, after my cousin left, I also read one or two chapters in a book that . . . did something. It's a book by a Tibetan lama of his commentary on teachings by one of the "greats" who basically is credited as one of the founders of one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

It doesn't matter what book it was, the commentary doesn't matter, the lineage doesn't necessarily matter. It was just the encountering it after all my years of reading, studying, sitting, searching. It's different for different people, but anyone who stays on the path for however long it takes may encounter it (if one must know, the book for me happened to be Confusion Arises as Wisdom by Ringu Tulku and is his commentary on the teachings of Gampopa, considered a founder of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism).

It was an "I get it" moment. It was a scratching of the surface, nothing deep, I had been exposed to the teaching countless times in countless ways, but it was this time, in this chapter of this book by this author when the "OMG, I get it" moment happened. Reality, or the perception of reality changed.

And it was just the start. I've felt like I've been on a spiritual journey for all these years, but all that was just preparation. I'm just barely reaching the shore now to begin. All those years I thought I had been advancing on the path was just setting up the prep station, the mise en place.

Again, it's not the teaching itself. I can repeat it, I can describe the realization, but it's the same information in countless numbers of books. All you can do is . . . keep practicing. Dedication is a must. Levity is a must, a careful balance between doubt and confidence.

I want to say to be true to oneself and to listen to one's heart, but those are cliched crocks. You can be true to yourself, but if it seems like shooting someone would be true to yourself, I'm not going to recommend being true to yourself, yo'm say'n? You can listen to your heart, but your heart may be telling you some off-the-wall shit.

I'm getting ahead of myself, I still have no idea what happened.

Tie to my cousin? Maybe. We haven't had the greatest relations or communications while I've been in Taiwan. She sure wasn't any help when I needed her most when I first arrived.

But I'm willing to accept that maybe we are "entangled" souls or beings. As she put it, "when I learn, you learn". Our current relationship doesn't mean a whole lot to me now, I'll help as much as I can in these trying times of hers, but the relationship that is important has nothing to do with her and I as we are in this human, corporeal form.

It's all good and fine to do the best one can in tackling mindfulness issues, one of mine being negativity, with one push-button issue of (karmic) violence and aggression. I'm generally not violent or aggressive in any way. Even when I feel an instance of anger flare up, I'm quick to extinguish it.

That instance of anger is important and I'll come back to it, but as to violence and aggression, I'm wary about this part of my mindstream that runs through scenarios where I encounter a confrontational situation where I take offense and lose any mindfulness or equilibrium and go ape shit on the other person.

Part of me says not to worry about it, it will never manifest, I'll never act on it. But then yesterday morning I had a dream where I did act on it. I don't remember specifics of the dream except that a situation arose, there was a sense of either offense or threat, and I went all out and attacked with the intention to destroy.

I don't remember the result, except that I came out fine, and that the person was somewhat reminiscent of someone I knew in my first year of college. That person was someone I had no problem with and totally respected.

She was an upperclassman, a bass player and a bit of a bull dyke. I think she was an East Asian Studies major and spoke Japanese, so maybe she was a bit of a lesbian rice queen. No problem there. And in reality she could've kicked my ass, as I think she also had some military experience in her background. No idea there.

The point about the dream, and the rest of it was also filled with my own fear and being threatened, is that it was scary because it establishes that violent and aggressive nature in my karma in a definitive way. The way I see it is that as it manifested in a dream, it was proven that it is something real in my subconscious that I have to worry about and deal with.

That flaky mindfulness thing about "I'll do the best I can" is not good enough. And I think this may be an important point about enlightenment, where serious transformation must be faced and achieved. Where doing the best you can is, quite frankly, easy. How about doing what you can't. Open your eyes and don't see. I can't. Well, do it.

I'm led to believe my karma has issues of violence and aggression, and it's rooted in anger. I've gotten good at clamping down on anger flaring up. As soon as I encounter a situation where I react in even the mildest offense of "What the hell are you doing?", I shut it down.

That's no reason to pat myself on the back. That may be doing the best I can. The impossible is wiping out any mote of anger flaring up at all, and that's what needs to be done in the scan of my perception of reality. Wipe out that karma completely. How do you wipe out karma that was created by someone else (previous life/lives)?!

It has become instinctual and immediate. It is part of my fabric. How do I not get angry for even a microsecond, how do I not react? But it has to be done no matter how impossible it seems. That's what may be considered transformational.

I have noticed that what I've been posting for the past year plus has been a lot of long-winded, boring, highly-detailed, navel-gazing, rambling minutiae. Nothing clever, funny nor particularly interesting, I shouldn't wonder, which is what someone would want to be in a public forum such as the internet.

But as I've said before, this isn't about readership. This blog is just my expression. There's no theme here; I just post about what sparks the neurons, whether it be movies, music, reads, Buddhism, suicide, spirituality, death, religion, mental health or whatever issue I want to spout on about (and believe me I'm leaving out a lot).

It occurs to me that this long-windedness has a lot to do with the isolation I've found myself in. I'm no hermit. I don't think there's any such thing as a "hermit with internet". But isolated I am. Recluse may be a better description of what I'm doing. A hermit is cut off, and that can't happen with internet. A recluse is withdrawn, and that I am.

If social interaction is a release outlet, then I don't have it, and the constant mind-stream of my thoughts is going on and on without outlet, and then when I decide to type something down, it just all trickles out in highly-detailed, rambling minutiae.

But this isolation also emphasizes the mind-stream of thoughts; that it's there. And that in Buddhist practice, that's an aspect that needs to be tackled with the idea of cutting it off. It relates to our ego-selves.

This mind-stream of thoughts is our ego-selves or, if not, is representative of it. And it's that attachment to our ego-selves that keeps us in cyclic samsaric existence, so theory goes.

I remember in early practice coming up with visualizations to break the mind-stream, or at least be mindful of it. Back then it was simply about stopping the mental chatter. Recognize it, and try to return to some mental quiet. Beyond that, I didn't know. But now, years and years later, there's much more urgency to tackling and cutting off the mind-stream once there's a realization of how it's connected to the ego-self.

I would go so far to say that it's a key step towards enlightenment. It's a breaking, smashing of the notion of subjectively conceived reality. And the hardest part of it is that we have this mental structure that perceives reality, and now it's a matter of using that mental structure to disassemble that same mental structure. Maybe that's why enlightenment is so friggin' hard.

This blog has gotten hits from two cryptic google searches: "suicide due to failure karma" and "suicide with least karma". Obviously I have no idea what was on these people's minds, but I'm intrigued enough to reflect and comment.

The most logical interpretation of "suicide due to failure karma" to me is, "what karma is attached to a suicide committed as a result of (some perceived personal) failure?".

And I think "suicide with least karma" might mean, "what kind of suicide has the least karmic effect?".

As always, I strongly disagree with any notion that karma is some moral model. It's not "what goes around comes around". Karma is just about mental imprints in our own consciousness (causes) that perpetuate themselves due to whatever effect they have on us (effects). Any irony or morality attributed to the concept of karma is all human projection.

And my favorite quote regarding karma is, "every moment is a karma creating moment; every moment is a karma manifesting moment". Everything any entity does relates to karma. Just being is karma because just the sensation or idea of being here, experiencing reality through our perceptions, perpetuates and maintains a concept that what we are and experience is reality.

Insects, animals, bacteria, humans – anything that lives in any perceived reality on this planet – perpetuates their own being as a result of karma. As sentient beings, any and every thought and experience is karma, both manifesting and creating.

To break out of the cycle of samsaric existence and the relentless cause and effect of karmic being, i.e. enlightenment, is to fundamentally break any idea or concept of one's being or any being that leads to continued ideas of perceived being or the reality of perceived being.

So regarding "what karma is attached to a suicide committed as a result of some perceived personal failure", I'd say it depends on one's own mental state, which includes "perceived personal failure". Actually, that might be the key karma involved.

No one is in fact a failure. Failure is a personal decision and judgment upon one's life. So as intense an experience as suicide may be, that perceived perception of failure may be very strong karma (or attachment), that can carry over to future existences.

If a person is concerned about karmic effects, I would advise against committing suicide. Karmically, a being would gain far more by confronting those negative issues and dealing with them and understanding them and how they relate towards being.

Regarding "suicide with least karma or least karmic effect", that's interesting to me because I do agree with the notion of greater or lesser karmic effect. Every thought, speech or act has karmic effect, but to lesser or greater degrees.

To that, though, I would state my belief that karma is personal. For any karmic creating moment (meaning all moments), there is a ripple effect, but the most important effect is on oneself. How anyone's actions create a reaction in other people is those other persons' karma.

Karma isn't some objective mechanism that decides between morally good or bad. So a suicide with the least karmic effect is one in which one truly realizes the essence of being, that nothing whatsoever should be clung to.

To the degree a being is attached to perceived reality, one's karma is affected by one's suicide. And very few suicides are committed with a true understanding of reality. Thich Nhat Hanh has argued that monks who have immolated themselves for political/humanitarian causes committed suicide with that true understanding of reality.

They're not martyrs, just examples of realization. They understand that in the ultimate dimension nothing should be clung to, including their own being.

But a strong humanitarian message can be conveyed to alleviate other people's suffering in the physically manifest reality by such an intense act. That sort of selflessness is required for a suicide with little negative karmic effect.

So suicide with the least karmic effect depends on the individual. If there is attachment, there will be varying degrees of karmic effect. If there is some degree of non-attachment, there will be lesser degrees of karma.

And quite honestly, most people contemplating suicide do not have that degree of non-attachment, so if Buddhism is some sort of guide to these people, I say don't do it. Work it out. Make it work.

From the Zohar:
"'When you walk, it shall lead you; when you lie down it shall keep you and when you awake, it shall talk with you.' (Proverbs 6:22) 'When you walk, it shall lead you,' refers to the Torah that goes before a man when he dies. 'When you lie down, it shall keep you,' refers to the interval when the body lies in the grave, for at that time the body is judged and sentenced and the Torah acts in its defense. 'And when you awake, it shall talk with you,' refers to the time at which the dead rise from the dust.

"Rabbi Elazar quoted the verse: 'It shall talk with you' (Proverbs 6:22). Although the dead have just risen from the dust, they remember the Torah they studied before their death. They will know all they studied before departing the world. And everything shall be clearer than it was before death, for whatever he strove to understand yet did not successfully grasp, is now clear in his innermost parts. And the Torah speaks within him." p. 190-191, The Essential Zohar

What I found fascinating about this passage is that Christians probably interpret the quote from Proverbs as referring to faith. It's a very simple, direct interpretation: when you walk (go forth or act in the world), faith will lead you (whatever you do will be righteous); when you lie down (rest) it shall keep (protect) you; and when you awake, it shall talk to you (ask you what you want for breakfast inform you how to act). Often even more narrowly interpreted: faith in Jesus or an exclusive Christian, white male God. That normative, bland Christian interpretation is fine and obvious regarding physical, material life, but nothing to go on and on about.

But the Zohar interprets it in a manner that I can re-interpret as squaring with the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Tibetan Buddhism describes the life and death cycle with three bardos of living (conscious life, sleep and meditation), and three death bardos (the point of death, the bardo of reality, and the bardo of becoming).

My reading of the death bardos and the guidance the Tibetan Book of the Dead counsels is that what we're striving for in the death bardos is the same as what we're striving for in the living bardos. Or striving for enlightenment in the living bardos is training for attaining enlightenment in the death bardos. Life and death are mirrored realities.

Actually the three elements of the quote from Proverbs can apply both to the three living bardos and the three death bardos, but what's fascinating to me is that I can interpret what the Zohar says to the death bardos at all.

Tibetan Buddhism is very meticulous about the death process and what happens between one death and the next incarnation of a . . . person, a soul, karmic energy. But there seems to be little in Judaism or Kabbalah about the mechanics of what happens after death. Just a far off resurrection and judgment that Christians took and ridiculously interpreted literally.

The book I've been reading, The Essential Zohar, doesn't explicitly state or endorse any theory of reincarnation, but the author seems pretty open-minded about the possibility of Buddhism-like multiple lifetimes and reincarnation.

The Zohar interprets Proverbs 6:22 not as some vague notion of faith leading us forth in life, but Torah, i.e., spiritual cultivation, leading us through the death experience. It doesn't explicitly say that the "when you awake"/"dead rise from the dust" is reincarnation, but that's how I read it, because it then fits in with Tibetan Buddhist ontology (alternatively it might not refer to reincarnation, but the awakening in a "mental body" in the bardo of becoming that precedes reincarnation).

Torah is what we do with spiritual energy in our lifetimes, how we cultivate it or not cultivate it. It's also karma. When we die, we take nothing with us except our karma, the energy patterns and habits that we've indelibly stamped on our manifestation of some primordial energy that is the basis of our consciousness through our behavior and thoughts.

We don't take our possessions, our body, or memories or anything that relies on brain matter for existence. Memories and thoughts rely on brain matter. Karmic energy doesn't. Our karma has no relation to our identity as a person, because our identities also rely on thought and brain matter.

So when we die, it is only Torah that leads us. All else falls away and dissolves. Tibetan Buddhism describes the death-point bardo as being so subtle that only the highest levels of practitioners can achieve realization/enlightenment in it.

For ordinary beings, the dissolution of awareness of the physical body elements and mental consciousness elements is so shocking and unfamiliar and disconcerting that it is impossible to maintain any stability to achieve realization, and it goes by like the snap of a finger.

The interval in the grave where the Torah acts as a defense can be likened to the bardo of reality where we are immersed in the primordial energy of the universe that is the substratum of what our human consciousness has become on this planet.

It is enlightenment, but we don't know it because of our conception of physical reality from having lived previous lives on this planet, karma. Even in the Tibetan description of the bardo of becoming/rebirth, a judgment takes place because that's what naturally emerges in this state as the wisps of karmic memory recall what occurred in our previous life and there is some recognition of "right" and "wrong". Enlightenment can occur in this bardo upon the realization that the judgment is itself mind, or created by "mind", and that right and wrong are manifestations of mind and not concrete or objective judgments.

What is Torah defending us against? Our spiritual cultivation defends us in the bardo states against the notion created by the karma from physically having existed that worldly manifestation was some ultimate reality.

The final bardo of becoming in Tibetan Buddhism describes the process by which reincarnation takes place. At some point there is a crux between a prior life and future life, and if enlightenment isn't attained, our karmic energy moves towards a future life.

Torah shall talk to you when you rise from the dust. If you cultivated yourself spiritually, that survives the death process whereby you lose everything that depends on material existence. With rebirth, your karma still applies, and if you studied the Torah, the Torah will remain with you. You can continue to undertake the spiritual path you were on in a previous life, provided you studied the Torah.

They will know all they studied before departing the world. And everything shall be clearer than it was before death, for whatever he strove to understand yet did not successfully grasp, is now clear in his innermost parts. That is literally exactly what is said in the Tibetan Book of the Dead regarding the death bardo states.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 7:44 p.m.

I had another lucid dream, but it was different from the previous time I was successful. This time I don't know if it was my dream. I'm pretty sure I wasn't me in it.

Also I don't remember whether the last time I came up into the lucid state from a lower dream state, but this time I felt I went down into it from a waking state. I was lying on my bed watching my breathing, aware of the constant chatter and internal conversation going on in my head, which gets more intense when you haven't had direct in-person social contact in months.

Then as I fell into a quasi-sleep state, I was aware of things in my mind becoming really vivid. I was only quasi-aware of this as well. I'm not sure what those things that were becoming vivid were, if it was my awareness, or my sense perceptions, or the thoughts.

But then I was in a dream state and still fully aware of myself, but the content of the dream suggested it wasn't me or my dream. I actually don't know how to describe it or what was going on. I was totally clueless in the dream.

All I can describe are the very basic impressions and those I'm really squeezing to interpret into physical words and are nothing like the experience.

There were two groups of people, one male and one female. The male portion came first and it was like some white boy institution, like a frat house or military academy. I did feel a basic fear being in that situation, but when I realized they weren't treating me differently or being racist, I just went along with the flow of the dream, the content of which I've completely forgotten.

I had no idea who I was and I don't think I said anything, I just played it cool, but at the same time I was fully aware I was dreaming and that as a dream it was completely unfamiliar territory.

Next I wandered "down the hall" or something to the female section of the dream, and when I walked in a door. A person behind the door closed the door and accosted me. At first I think it was a guy, but then it was clearly female and she was hostile and pinned me down, and I get the sense that it was some issue over a guy, and then I realized I must've been female.

I wasn't resisting or doing or saying anything. It wasn't my dream, I didn't know what to do so I just remained passive. But then I don't know if it was me consciously changing the tenor of the dream, but then the whole incident with this woman on top of me changed and started getting intimate. She was no longer pinning me down and there was a sexual energy beginning. This, no one should be surprised, I tried to encourage and maintain.

The way I came out of it was interesting, too, because the scene transitioned without me changing my position. Still on my back, I was suddenly in a room that had the atmosphere of maybe my uncle's house in Kaohsiung 30 years ago. I was lying on a bed trying to maintain the lucid dream and the feel of intimacy from the previous scene.

I think someone was there, maybe a cousin, bumping or making some noise on a bed next to mine and I was thinking, "darn, they're going to wake me up out of this", but I also thought that I was already awake and vainly trying to maintain the lucid dream.

But then I realized that no, this isn't my room. I tried to imagine my room but couldn't, so then I realized I was still in the dream. But trying to imagine my room was irresistible, and when I did, that's when I woke up.

I don't know if this has any significance, but right after I woke up, I started feeling a sharp pain in my gut, similar to several months ago, but then it resided. Then I felt I should go to the bathroom and surprisingly took the BIGGEST FUCKING DUMP EVER. It felt great, like all the pipes got cleaned out. If someone were to have told me I was full of shit, I would've replied, "Not anymore!!".

I've heard about people who practice lucid dreaming as a way to prepare for traveling through the death bardos. There's more than one source suggesting the closest to the Tibetan bardo experience we can come to while living is dreaming, and lucid dreaming is analogous to being in control through the bardos, rather than swept through like in a stormy current.

I did get the sense after this lucid dream that my reactions in the dream were the result of my practice and how I would ideally like to handle myself through the death bardos. However, my experience was still a duality, I still had a sense of me and everything else as other.

It is said that enlightenment comes when one realizes a non-dual oneness. If one can realize in the bardo that everything is a manifestation of oneself – no separation between oneself and everything perceived around us – that would be enlightenment. I didn't think of that in the lucid dream, but I did remain unattached to what was happening around me.

Short of enlightenment in the bardo, I think that's the best way to go through it: Not being pulled in by what you're perceiving, and not thinking it's real and reacting to it as if it were real, either positively or negatively, which is a function of one's basic karma, which is a function of one's experiences and actions during life.

If what I've been practicing and cultivating as I go about my daily life led to my reactions in this lucid dream, then I should have a good degree of confidence heading into the death bardos. It's not a cold detachment, which could lead to a lack of compassion, but a concerted effort to not be attached or feel aversion to my perceptions and experiences.

It's true that I'm not engaged in life going on around me, but I do think it's important to maintain a base attitude that's prepared to be engaged and to engage it with compassion. The fact that I'm not engaged is circumstantial. And I know it's a reality that I've created by myself.

I've been trying to email my brother for a while but it's the same as this blog, I open the draft and I got nothing. I just have nothing to say, nothing to express. That's not a negative statement. I'm just stuck. I'm not moving forward. But moving forward requires one thing first – next attempt. If the attempt fails, then I'll have to face whatever's next and presumably I'll have found whatever energy is required to go there.

I'm not sure "energy" is the right word there. Desperation maybe. And that is negative. But it's a numb desperation. Like when I left San Francisco after that attempt. I failed, plans to leave were already rolling so I just had to do it. Remembering that and the futility of everything since then points to how I really don't want to fail in the next attempt. It's what I hope to remind myself if I'm standing on the edge and having doubts whether this is going to happen or not.

My path has led me to this point and everything is in place again for a good attempt. What it boils down to is the only reason why I might balk is ego-attachment. This attachment to ME. I'M here. There is no 'no ME'. The universe is here because I'M here. Intellectually that's ridiculous, but perhaps here is where I'm really faced with my attachment to self, which is possibly the biggest obstacle towards true understanding, or liberation, or enlightenment. 

It's all process. Maybe what I'm doing can be described as balking, but maybe I'm just waiting for this understanding to ripen. I go back to what I've posted in the past few years and I have no idea what all that was about. It was process. There were a lot of things I was uncomfortable about regarding negativity that I was processing, and I think there was some degree of success there in that I can't relate to those posts at all now. Even though the karmic imprint is still recognizable, it's not an issue anymore.

And I go back to posts from way long ago, and I feel that this entire blog is unnecessary and irrelevant. But it's so irrelevant that it's not even worth deleting or making private. It's just what it was. I remember at one point in college, a few of my angsty and dramatic dormmates and I decided to ritually burn all our journals up to that point. But even in doing that there was a sense of self-importance. Even throwing our past thoughts and record into the fireplace was a big statement to ourselves. It was something worth it to us to burn it.

The value of maintaining this blog, or discontinuing it, or deleting it, is just . . . not. Nothing. And even that is fierce ego-clinging.

I'm numbing myself silly these days with YouTube, DVDs, iTunes, South Park, movie reviews and blogs to avoid facing myself and my past and studying Mandarin.

If I spent more time in meditative and reflective mode, action might more likely be forthcoming. I know that since whenever I do encounter my own truths in meditative and reflective mode, my course of action is not only obvious, but inviting. It's the proverbial right thing to do.

I definitely think I have become one of those people who have more worth in dying than in staying alive. And it's not a bad thing. Unless you make it into a self-pity party, that is. With only one person at the party.

Time in meditative mode recently is spent separating the different types of mind we have. Central to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy is the idea that the upper, conscious layers of mind, what we perceive as reality, is superficial and constructed, and distinct from subtler, subconscious layers of mind, which constitute the actual ground of our being and what actually is reality, maybe even a divine reality, but at least beyond what we think of as reality, which is constantly changing and whatever we try to grasp onto eventually disappears.

Even the concept of the human species will one day be gone. To me that's a simple, pure fact and to think otherwise is arrogance at the most unabashed and deluded level.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead has a wonderful section on how elusive the subtle mind is by pointing out all the different names various sects have given to it – clear light, ground of being, nature of reality, true unadulterated reality, etc., but they are all inadequate.

Tibetan Buddhism, according to Sogyal Rinpoche, whose "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" I'm currently re-reading, has separate terms for the outer mind and inner mind. Sem refers to the conscious mind, and rigpa refers to the universal ground of reality mind. All Buddhists of all sects, no matter what they call it – they all have their own set of words to try to impart it – strive to understand or encounter and recognize rigpa. To do so is enlightenment.

Just that description was very helpful to me to focus on the aggregate of my senses combining to form my thoughts and perception of reality.

Visual information is given to our mind in a cone in front of us, and I read somewhere our field of vision is about 60 degrees in all directions (I personally think my peripheral vision is better than that – it helps me from getting hit by buses while riding). Vision establishes what physical reality looks like. Whatever light bounces off of. And there's so much information our brains automatically distinguish between what is important information and what is not.

Aural information comes from 360 degrees around us, and isn't necessarily limited by physical structures such as walls. We can hear a source of sound behind us or out on the street. Various sounds may be superseded by louder sounds or may be dampened by physical structures.

Olfactory information is limited by distance and the strength of the odor given off. It has to suffuse the air around us. And interestingly, smells are strongly associated with memory and pleasure/displeasure. Whenever we notice a smell, there is at least a slight judgment of pleasure or displeasure, rarely is it neutral.

Taste information requires direct contact with the sense organ. Even an inch away from our mouth and we don't have the actual information to contribute to our perception of reality. And aside from special taste stimulation, i.e. food, we are constantly tasting . . . spit.

Likewise, tactile information also requires direct contact, and is in a way most profound because it provides a sense of our being. A physical manifestation of our otherwise elusive identity. Mentally we can concentrate on all parts of the skin sense organ – from our elbows to the soles of our feet to our balls or the tips of our boobs – and feel we are here.

And all this aggregate information combines to form a basis for our thoughts or our mind. And yet there still is the inner mind.

I think of the inner mind as like the unseen latticework for everything – our minds, perception, reality. It's the water that surrounds the fish if the fish were unaware of what water is. I don't know if a fish is unaware of water, I'm not a fish, it's just an analogy, geez.

It can be analogized by dark matter and dark energy, which current theory suggests comprise the vast majority of the universe, but we can't detect it nor do we have any direct evidence of its existence. I'm actually wary of the state of cosmology these days, mind you.

The things scientists are claiming as knowledge, I don't know, I think in 500 years, it will all be overturned – including possibly dark matter and dark energy. They make observations which make 100% of what they know and then make a conclusion and create a theory to support it, but that 100% of what they know ignores the unknown percentage of what they don't know, what they haven't or can't observe, which theoretically could dilute that "knowledge" to less than 1%. Yo'm sayin'?

Sogyal Rinpoche gave a description of rigpa that I liked, saying it is too close to us to detect. Like our faces are too close to us for our eyes to see. It's the ground of all reality, it is all around us, recognizing it equates to attaining enlightenment, so much so that enlightened ones have recognized that we are all already enlightened, but because of the dominance of sem, our perceptual mind that we insist is reality, we miss it.

I consider the concept that maybe I have been a Tibetan monk in past lives. I play with the possibility that I'm currently in a string of unordained lifetimes in such a way like they're an extended version of the Tibetan tradition in a single lifetime whereby a monk returns his robes and goes back to the outside world as a continuing part of the training.

So why do I expect no resonance to Tibet when I go? I don't think any one way or another for sure, but possibly my resonant reactions to the lands of Japan and Arizona were the result of an emotional attachment to those places in past lives. Whereas in Tibet, first of all as a monk, the practice of non-attachment is foremost. And maybe there just wasn't an emotional response to the land.

Under the theory of reincarnation, I doubt Japan and the southwestern U.S. desert were the only places I've been reborn, but rather countless places all over the world. But it would make sense to me that in the human sentient experience that karmic resonance, despite being the only thing that carries over from lifetime to lifetime, still fades or gets conditioned differently in another given lifetime. Maybe Japan and the desert were recent, Tibet a bit further back. Just throwing ideas at the wall.

I use the wording "human sentient experience" specifically because I'm striving to get out of this "human chauvinist" view of the universe, that somehow the universe was made for our journey and that we are somehow special and universal and will always be around. Even when our world dies, we believe we will have found ways to venture out into the universe and continue on in some super-inflated form of "manifest destiny".

It just doesn't make sense. When I mention spiritual or metaphysical theories and hypotheses that can't be proven and really can't be argued either, I often fall back on saying these things just make sense to me. Humanity continuing on in perpetuity just doesn't make any sense. It seems an absolute impossibility despite the idealism of some our great modern astronomers and cosmologists for whom I have a great deal of respect.

For me, we're on this human/spiritual journey, and we go through the cycle/circle of reincarnation and some people eventually got it in their existence that existence isn't all there is to it and strove towards something beyond it, and once achieving going beyond it, called it "enlightenment". It was something discovered by several seekers in different cultures. In Buddhism, it became the main point. In Christianity, its expression in the Gnostic Gospels was labeled heresy and stamped out and replaced by a hierarchy of  thought and spiritual control modeled on the Roman Empire and succeeded it. In Islam it became the marginal sect of Sufism.

But enlightenment wasn't created for the human sentient experience. I think it's just some natural, primordial state of energy that transcends the human experience in ways we can't normally conceive or perceive. It's something that "powerful". "Powerful", of course, being a subjective human interpretation, and is nothing about what it is.

Enlightenment doesn't care if we're enlightened or not. The universe doesn't care whether we're enlightened or not. Some people just happened to stumble upon it and tried to teach it to others.

So for me it's important to approach these concepts assuming that being human isn't necessarily part of the equation. It's convenient for us since it's the form we've taken on this planet, but it didn't necessarily need to happen. Let's presume the dinosaurs never knew of enlightenment and they ruled this planet for some 180 million years. Or let's say humanity as a species attains enlightenment, it's not going to stop us from becoming wiped out if a 10-mile asteroid hits the Earth.

I guess this is basic Buddhism – nothing whatsoever should be attached to. Including our concept of the human form. (or especially our concept of the human form).

Things, existence-wise, have progressively been getting increasingly "unbearable". Pretty much everything I do, everything I have to think about or consider has taken on varying degrees of the unbearable. A few moments in a day, I have totally senseless, mindless activities when I don't think, and then it's bearable until I think of what a load of time I'm wasting. Even bearable adds to the unbearable.

I still love listening to music. It brings me much joy. Even more so recently. Maybe because of the sheer span of music that I have to listen to. I still listen to music that first got me into music, I don't get sick of it. It's not nostalgia, that it reminded me of some other time; I love and appreciate it for what it is now to me. And I continue to find music that stirs me to my depths.

My cousin tried to get me to go on a retreat at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal, but in the end I'm flatly rejecting the suggestion. The timing is uncanny and it feels like it would just be an excuse to prolong things, procrastinate. And that is, in fact, exactly what I'm doing on a daily basis, btw, but going on a retreat seems like a shot in the dark to go on for an even longer time, and I need a suicide attempt or gesture right now. Her suggestion at an uncanny time is simply too late.

Procrastinating and prolonging. I want to finish reading a bunch of books that came to me. My cousin gave me a book entitled "Initiation", which is odd since I just used that word in my previous post. My cousin's suggested readings in the past have been dubious, and I'm not totally sold on this one, either, but the end philosophies are really right on; all the conclusions in the book I've come to as well, so I feel some affirmation, if not inspiration. The ideas are very good, the writing and the style not so much.

Another is entitled Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth by a Tibetan lama. He goes into more mechanics of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and it's been very intriguing.

I had this experience when I was reading the book in a crowded space when all the people . . . I just stopped conceiving them as people. They broke out into energies – vibrations – and mechanics, body mechanics. The people were just more than the bodies we deal with in our every day lives, that there is so much more to them that they may not even realize. It became like a din of spiritual humanity which was perfectly analogized by the aural din that all of those people were making by their incomprehensible speech.

And if I ain't foolin' myself, just pages later I came across that exact same experience told by some previous lama.

And, of course, the issue of death and a belief system that I'm really buying into, once I take away the cultural trappings which I take with a grain of salt – I'm feeling pushes and pulls of doubts and confidences that I didn't think I would be subject to.

These formulations don't mean much to me anymore, but I wonder if in a previous bardo, if you can humor me in engaging in the possibility of these bardos, I had glimpses and brushes into what is called the luminosity or clear light, which is the very ground of our being, which is the ground of reality, essentially god, total oneness – and I envision this as not some spiritual or mystical thing, but something in the natural world, just a part that science limits itself too much to acknowledge.

You see, I'm reading in this book that enlightenment in the bardos is not an all or nothing deal. It's not a matter of if you recognize the luminosity and your true nature of being that everything is yourself that, bam, you hit enlightenment, or you just miss and shoot through the bardos to your next life. But depending upon your training, while in the in-between bardos you can touch on it without fully recognizing it and attaining "enlightenment".

And even without attaining enlightenment, it is suggested there is much benefit in those glimpses, because it adds to comfort in the chaos in the bardos and in taking rebirth, it affects our karma and our being, as opposed to beings who are just shot through the bardos and end up in whatever existence their karma dictated.

So now me humoring these suggestions, I wonder if that has been in my experience, and in one of those times through the bardos I did touch on enlightenment and felt such a rush or inspiration that I got an impression that I want to come back through the bardos again as soon as possible. Which means in my next life . . . dying. Ergo the suicide imprint.

But suicide not being the despondent, end-of-life kind of suicide. But, of course, I've had to have a resistance to it in order to come across the teachings again and prepare myself for the roller coaster ride of the bardos. So it's something my entire life has been pointing to, but I still have been resisting. That explains the resistance all these years, even though I keep asking myself why resist what my entire life has been pointing to?

I'm not gonna "belief" this enough to claim it's reality, but I find it personally compelling for what it's worth.

In general, I've been pretty confident about my path, mainly because I just don't see any purpose in doubting myself. I just say what I say, and I do what I do. I follow what I follow, I'm not going to go into any spaces that I find uncomfortable or make me feel bad.

But this book has allowed me to touch the feeling that I haven't lived a worthy life. What have I done except live a selfish existence, where I just allow myself to do what I want to do, trusting in my karmic self-limitation to not engage into debauchery and mindlessness.

Sitting outside on a bench on a still-blazing hot Taiwan early evening, I notice how uncomfortable I am, and how I want to go buy a drink, and realizing that is karma. The desire to not be uncomfortable, the desire to satiate is karma creation. It felt like I've gotten no where in these years of practice. I'm still just following desire, it's still animal. I ended up staying there quite a while reading, just to spite my karma.

And the most important thing to focus on to realize in the bardo states is that all we are seeing and experiencing comes from ourselves, our own nature; they are our own projections. And that's what we should be focusing on during the living bardos (i.e., conscious life, dreams, and meditation).

I still grapple with negativity, even though it's gotten much better. But then I realize these negative situations are helping me train. I recognize these incidents and I tell myself my anger or negativity is not because of these people around or what they did or how I was offended by them, but the negativity is me, my own projection. They have nothing to do with it.

The idea being that this is all training, getting it to be habit so that in the death bardos, when consciousness is luminous but not concrete as is formed by our neural functions, our habitual tendencies can also do that – recognize that what we perceive is us, just our own projections of ourselves, even if our initial "reaction" in the bardo is a negative one.

And still focusing on practicing being positive, feeling love towards everyone and everything, on generating love and joy spontaneously, and practice and train that these things aren't dependent on . . . things.

Unbearable, but still putting all my positive effort to maintain an equilibrium. And there will be a time where I stop that effort and I let myself come to terms with the happy unbearable.

I chatted for a bit on Facebook with someone I met a few years back at Deer Park Monastery. He was an Olympic speed skater and he blew me away by his arrival at Deer Park, having ridden his bike from Oceanside to the monastery in Escondido, California.

After many, many moons, when he friended me on Facebook, I felt a little apprehensive since I ended up not ordaining and I'm just doing this ordinary selfish, self-absorbed thing, rather than making that final push towards enlightenment.

Enlightenment has its time. If it's not time, don't bother making the push for it. And both Dustin and I are simply on our own spiritual paths and we'll support each other when we can. The way we met was the connection and we are brothers. We don't judge each other, just give support and remind each other of our connection through the Plum Village monastic system.

I remember Dustin clearly at Deer Park. We were there with Joost and Brother Lai and those connections are solid and clear. They are my anchor if I go astray, but I don't think my path of exploring suicide is going astray.

December 3, 2004 - Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA. Me, Dustin and Joost (a doctor from Holland who volunteers his services whenever he could around the world, while also trying to elevate his spiritual level. great guy)

I'm dead. But I'm still living. I am among the living dead. I'm a zombie! Where do I register?

I don't know if it's my wonky sleeping – alternatively wrangling with insomnia or unable to peel myself off the mattress after over 9 hours – or if it's this rare heatwave we're in, but I don't feel like I'm alive. I'm not living like I'm alive. Time outside my apartment is out of necessity. What kind of life is that?

I don't know if it's officially a heatwave. Taiwan is already such a hot place that I don't know if they register "heatwaves". All I know is that I like hot weather, and it's been particularly brutal even for me.

I'm in full "I'm gonna die soon" mode. Because I can't possibly live that much longer. Come on! What can it possibly be that's keeping me alive? It sure ain't my positive attitude and good looks! But actually I consider it a good thing.

I keep impending death right in front of my nose and that reminds me it's not worth being upset or down about this or that. All of it is construction, so if it's all construction, I can construct that being happy can happen here and now, and isn't dependent on external circumstances.

I'm alright. I'm dead, I'm gonna die, I want to die, but I'm alright.

And I keep it right in front of me that reality itself is enlightenment, is an enlightened state just by its very nature. What else can I ask for? Another 10, 20, 30 years? A house and spouse and cats and rugrats?

But strangely I'm still asking for something.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 - Maishuai Bridge #2, Keelung riverside park. Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Kodak BW400CN.

MONDAY, AUGUST 3 - Alley 50, Lane 251, Nanjing East Road, Sec. 5

Peril suspended by the grace of the patience of operators of deadly machines of private transportation Cars waiting for pedestrians. Corner of Jiankang and Sanmin Rds.

I'm hoping I'm at a breakthrough point in sitting. Or not. I'm hoping that I've reached a point where I can endeavor to more successfully calm my mind on the way to letting it transform, wind it down from the torrent of thought it usually subjects me to.

It's not necessarily new, I don't think. I think I've touched on what I'm hoping to maintain now before. I'm hoping now won't be the same as before where I reach this sort of revelation, but then slink back into my habit of uncontrolled thoughts and wandering mind.

I think I've reached a point where I can maintain a struggle to clamp down on it and not get discouraged or frustrated, but keep the struggle going. It's nothing new, it's just reaching a point of development after years and years of sitting where I might actually get some consistency and discipline going.

The basics are the same. The focal point is breathing, concentrating on breathing as the foundation of practice. Second, moving out from the breath to body awareness; acutely aware of physical existence, being here, sitting here, focusing on it. Then sound is my third pillar, maybe because I'm very aural, but holding my concentration on breath, body and sound to maintain awareness of the moment. Pay attention to every sound. If my mind is wandering, sounds happen, but I'm not acutely aware and focused on them. If I'm acutely aware and focused on them, my mind isn't wandering. Finally, also maintain an awareness of time, or the concept of time, as each moment passes through.

For me, I have to be aggressive, I have to get 'angry', proactive. When thoughts form, they push concentration out of my mind, so I have to maintain concentration and force thoughts from forming, or shutting them down as soon as I'm aware that they're there. It's one or the other, either thoughts are formed or I can maintain concentration. Once thoughts start forming, concentration slips away. If concentration is maintained, thoughts don't form.

The practical side of this is that it's practice to shut down negative thoughts when I'm going about my business in life. Controlling thought formation obviously is a good skill for controlling negative thought formation.

In regard to "enlightenment", I'm thinking that it is not some great state of mind that people can reach with the proper effort. Enlightenment already surrounds us, it is the fabric of our very existence. We're steeped in it, swimming in it. Water is to fish what enlightenment is to us.

Maybe fish have no awareness of water, it's just fact, it's just there, it's the foundation of their existence and there's no questioning it until they're taken out of it. Maybe it's the same with humans and enlightenment, we're already fundamentally touching enlightenment, but we're taken out of it by our egos, attachments and aversions, and only then are we aware of it, but only as something separate from us.

Otherwise, enlightenment is already right here, it is every moment, but to get an idea of it, it's necessary to experience what a fundamental moment is, and a good technique towards that is sitting meditation.

Rainbow V toy camera, Solaris FGPlus 400 color film. March 21-26, Taipei and Kaohsiung:

Building the park along Park Road. The road came before the park, so maybe they should name it Road Park :p