rehashing

The most important thing in my life has been mindfulness practice. Not music, which I acknowledge is fleeting, ephemeral and meaningless except in the context of appreciating this physical, material life. Obviously not relations or people, which I take as a personal fault. Not endeavors or enjoyments.

Mindfulness practice is the only thing that has made my life worth living this long without regret (music made it tolerable and enjoyable, so is still up there in importance). It includes morning sitting practice, which should be the basic practice on any Buddhist path and once trained on it by qualified monastics it's hard to do without. For me personally it also includes Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhist) teachings which among other things deals heavily with death as a part of life, which is something I was ready for. Capping it all off have been Sadhguru videos in the past few months that have given some affirmation that I'm not totally off the rails, barking up the wrong tree, paddling furiously with one oar. Vajrayana came from India, so Tibetan teachings slot in well with the more expansive view of Sadhguru.

It has been worth getting emotions under control, particularly negative ones, using mindfulness training by just noticing them, watching them and not acting on or reacting to them. It's been worth it not being a slave to them and tossed wildly about by them. They still happen and they're still at times troubling or bothersome, but it's great not getting carried away or overwhelmed by them. 

Emotions become something "tangible" and able to be manipulated, not just something that happens because we're human. I understand a lot of people like that, the spontaneity of emotions is what makes them human and makes them feel. What they're essentially saying is they like suffering, or they'll take the suffering with the pleasures, but they just don't want to look at it or say it that way. Fair 'nuff. 

Then Vajrayana-inspired visualizations can take that manipulation a step further and transform negative emotions into something else as soon as they happen. There's a "bounce" that can be trained to happen: once negativity or anger or despair occur you can recognize it, identify it and bounce it into something positive like realization or wisdom or a mandala or the exact opposite emotion. And it's not fake. Like the negative emotion was real? It's the same raw emotion, that's still there, but seen in a different or wider perspective. Maybe that's why Tibetan lamas are so easy to laugh even at something that seems so dire to the rest of us. 

It probably wouldn't be inaccurate to say mindfulness training and practice was the meaning of the whole journey. As karma I'm very happy to have it potentially as a tool that carries over into future lives. There's certainly a lot of other stuff that still will carry over as karma since I don't know if I've worked through them well enough, including neurotic nuttiness and general attachments, but there's always the possibility and hope to be able to continue working on them in whatever way because the seeds of mindfulness practice are also there. 

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. 

Sometimes I still get helplessly wrapped up in negativity and nothing seems to be going my way and everything everyone is doing annoys me, and even traffic lights are conspiring against me whether I'm walking, on bike, bus or MRT. I know it's beyond irrational and is downright stupid, but there I am stewing in grumpiness and being peeved at everything around me. Mindfulness practice is supposed to kick in and I'm supposed to look at this from the outside and be aware of it. I'm supposed to look carefully at each element and rationally ask myself what is annoying? Is there something inherent in this that's annoying? Is this a permanent condition that is worth my energy or being negative about? 

Nah, that's not working, I already said I knew it was stupid and irrational but the feelings and thoughts are still there, I'm still stewing. So then Vajrayana-related practices kick in. Accept the negative feelings and thoughts and work with them, don't try to get rid of them, don't try to rationalize them. This is a mandala I'm traveling through where everything has a purpose and there's always something to work on. 

I ended up with the toxic negativity becoming a big fart cloud surrounding me. All I could do is wait for it to dissipate, but for the meanwhile I had to sit in this cloud of my own stinking fart. That's important, not someone else's flatulence because that may be too much. That's just disgusting, but we don't mind our own farts even though they stink and we wouldn't choose to make a scratch 'n sniff out of it. When we were kids we would run for the hills if someone else farted, but our own farts we would lean in and take a whiff. As adults sometimes we'd try to figure out what it was we had eaten. Not me, I mean, I don't do that but some people do. Probably. I think I saw it in a movie.

So there I'd be on the backseat of a crowded bus, miserable and grumpy with a facial expression like I just smelled shit because I'm surrounded in a cloud of fart, hoping and waiting for it to dissipate, but at least no one else is bothering me anymore. 

It's been about two and a half years since I had a personal landmark realization. I wrote about it at the time, but I don't think I made much of it because despite being a landmark personal realization, it also didn't seem to be a very big deal. Part of it was OK'ing for myself to just maintain my lazy status quo; no dramatics. Key ideas were about the conveyor belt of routine getting me from day to day, accepting that alcoholism was not going to kill me and cutting back as a result (somewhat), and "looming" as a requirement for getting on with my life and/or death.

Looking back, it indeed was a landmark realization that has conditioned the way I've been living my life and applying my Vajrayana-inspired practice, and it has been personally certifiable as transformative. There were struggles, successes, failures – all internal space, mind you. Swamped in karmic negativity, there was a lot of qualified positive that came out of it. 

Two and a half years that went by just like *that*; not unlike how many of the years prior in the past decade also went by just like *that*, basically biding my time, wasting my life by normative measures of the value of our lives. I don't regret any of it, mind you, as I'm not the regretting kind and I don't give a rat's ass about other people's standards. 

I'm quite happy not to be involved or entangled in anything, and I'm grateful beyond words that I haven't taken the path of relationships or, god forbid, marriage and family. My life has become just about keeping things simple, not getting involved, and just dealing with my own issues. My view of the way so many people live their lives is that they thrive on mess and complication and wouldn't know what to do without it to the point it's not only normal, but almost desirable because the mess and complication is so integrated to the pursuits of their desire. And then they still have to deal with their own issues amidst that tumult! Braver souls than I, indeed, but it's just my projection and most likely doesn't describe how they view their lives. Fine :p

My well-being and health aren't really considerations, they shouldn't be considerations when dying and/or suicide is the goal, although I've still found myself caught up in trying not to feel awful physically and avoiding discomfort. That's an attachment I haven't let go of. Dedicated seekers on the path have. On the other hand, feeling awful and physical discomfort is inevitable as a human being and I have employed Vajrayana-inspired practices when they occur. 

Instead of feeling miserable and accepting the feeling as miserable as fact and suffering as a result, investigating the sensation and the judgment involved in its "miserableness", its miserable nature. There's the sensation. I want to call it miserable. Do I really need to suffer because of it? Expanding Vajrayana-inspired mental "Buddha-fields" to understand this is all practice and my mental attitude is a reflection of how well I'm understanding "the result" aspect of practice. If I'm suffering and feeling I'm suffering and define it as suffering, then the result is that I'm suffering. If I experience physical misery but establish the result is that this is a natural condition of being human and how I live my life and treat my body, then a higher level of acceptance is possible and it's not so much an affliction to suffer but an understanding of the natural course of things. 

The mental stuff I've found is easier (who said that? did I just say that?). And I attribute this to years and years of sitting meditation and mindfulness practice. I don't think it's something you can just tell yourself "it's all mental" and write it off. But that might be what it looks like in describing it. Feelings of sadness, melancholy, depression, even waves of them. I get them in their gripping reality, they come up and mindfulness practice looks at them and goes, "what the hell you doing here?". 

I attribute much of this, perhaps, to insight into teachings on the enlightened nature of all things; the enlightened nature of mind, both the subjective perceiving/processing mind and the objective mind projected in what is perceived by our senses. It's taught over and over again in all schools of Buddhism that our nature is inherently enlightened to the point that it's intellectually meaningless (like many things zen), and requires a non-intellectual realization to push through its meaning (including/especially in zen). And once you do, a lot of the mental stuff doesn't make any sense treating it as what it seems like. 

We treat sadness, melancholy and depression as negative things that are undesirable, but that doesn't square with insight into the enlightened nature of reality and all things. To square it requires realizing those undesirable things are still a part of enlightened nature. It's the result-orientation of Mahamudra practice (as opposed to path-orientation of other approaches like zen, none of which are right or wrong; different tools for different people). Sadness, melancholy and depression are all enlightened expression when you don't attach to those concepts being what they seem to be. 

Great! Fine! Faboo! What about "looming"? I don't know. I don't know if I'm facing a reckoning in 2020 or if nothing's going to change despite the perpetual feeling that something has to. I've recently been taking to heart the saying "If you're going through tough times, keep going". Keep going and you will get through it. Just keep going. But then what awaits having gotten through it? The saying assumes an end of the tough times. For me, "getting through it" means being able to end all of this. And it's not end of tough times because of ending it all, it's a positive ending it all because of understanding and fulfillment.

I may be facing a financial reckoning, or looming, with just a few months into summer left of finances if I don't do anything. I got sick of those monetary injections into my bank account. I was begrudgingly willing as long as there were no problems, but the last attempted injection didn't go through, and I'm so sick of it that I'm unwilling to investigate why. If that didn't go through, there's no reason to believe any other will, so just stop. They were humiliating in themselves, but looking into why it didn't go through becomes desperation and defines desire to live. This is a terrible, horrible, insensitive analogy, but it's like I have cancer of the life and those monetary injections were the chemo keeping me alive. But I've gotten to the point I'm unwilling to go through it anymore. If the chemo isn't working, why keep going through with it? It's a terrible analogy, but it's my mindset.

I think I'll also attribute to mindfulness practice that this looming isn't sending me into a mental tailspin as it did before. May the Buddha-fields, the mandalas, be evermore encompassing.

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. 

I was wrong about the two previous posts not needing to have been writ. They were actually helpful. Sometimes you need to go some place to realize it's not a place you want to go. Oh. That's kinda the story of my life.

The conveyor belt/treadmill metaphor was useless, albeit accurate, but realizing that still requires formation of some other paradigm. New paradigm. Different paradigm. What was wasn't working.

Nothing should be comfortable about my existence, considering how it has to end. Well, how it has to end for all of us, but trying or pretending to choose to in my case. Itsa big difference. For people in general, we all have to die but that's no reason to not get comfortable about existence as much as we can. Let it come when it does. Don't go where you're not invited until you're invited.

For people like me with the realization of death as a focus, there is no getting comfortable with existence. Death is a reality that can't be put aside because putting it aside is ignoring the obvious, and existence is by nature uncomfortable because it's fleeting and needs to be explored and understood as such. Maybe that's what the great adepts were getting at. Maybe they were as bad at it as me. Probably not.

I'm thinking I have to tap into sadness and despair, not as emotions but as concepts, which is a bit ironic since Buddhism teaches to do away with concepts. In this case, the concept is a tool in furtherance of doing away with concepts. Which in many ways is exactly what many Buddhistic methods necessarily are.

Sadness and despair are useful in that those are the normative emotions, tools, concepts that ordinary people avoid or are given as reasons or explanations for suicide. But I'm not ordinary, I'm not necessarily suicidal, it's just what I want to do and will eventually have to do since that's the way I set my life up. Not being suicidal makes it hard to commit suicide. Tapping into sadness and despair just as concepts, and not as the things humans generally attach to as real and things to avoid, can help. 

There's a lot of blurring that goes on. All the beauty in the things I love and appreciate become sadness and despair because they are fleeting. They won't last no matter how much I want them to be loved. Dig deep and deeper into those emotions of love and appreciation and they become sadness and despair because they all come to pass. It's still love, and joy is still joy, laughter is still laughter, but they take on more dimensions, they become multi-faceted. Anger is no longer a feeling but an energy that's pretty useless and can be stopped when recognized as an energy. Lust is no longer some base animal impulse for desire and self-gratification, but a very powerful energy that is very useful if controlled. Despair and sadness don't mean depression. Everything starts getting transformed in practice.

I don't know when it will be time, I don't know how others knew it was time, but I've come to imagine it's a full-body realization. I've never had that before. I used to talk about being at 100% or getting to 100%. As a full-body realization, I doubt I've ever been near 100%. I won't project on what I think I was, I may have never even been 1%, I may have gotten to 80%, I just don't know myself that well. 

Why am I still here, alive? The question has started to almost haunt this month, arising in my mind, whispering in my ear with everything I do. I ask it of the universe during morning sitting and to send me something I could interpret as a sign. Like a winning lottery ticket. It might not quite answer the question, but as signs sent by the universe go I wouldn't complain too much.

August last year I was hoping to hop off the conveyor belt of routine that took me from day to day in furtherance of getting to my goal of exiting this illusory existence. Not only was that endeavor a complete failure, but the conveyor belt has morphed into a veritable treadmill. I have no responsibilities; no job, family or friends to whom I'm accountable, yet every day is filled with inconsequentialities that make me feel I don't have enough time. It's totally neurotic.

At the same time, there is no "haunting". There is neither conveyor belt nor treadmill. Those are mental formations and descriptions that only describe assumptions about reality that can't be assumed; the illusory life. It's just neurotic.

"Neurotic" is a word that I've noticed popping up quite a lot in my Vajrayana readings the past few years, referring, I gather, to our conditioned thinking, reactions and behavior. Basically, a vast majority of our thoughts and behaviors are pretty much neurotic, with not just a hint of irrationality implied. Perhaps from a pure Vajrayana point of view, whatever that is, all. If we're mired in treating reality as it's presented as absolutely real, all of our reactions and interactions are neurotic. It's irrational to treat reality as presented as definitively real, solid, permanent. But that's a little extreme since only a slight percentage of humanity has been exposed to Vajrayana teachings and even a slighter percentage, including real Vajrayana practitioners, whoever they are, would consider all of their conditioned thoughts and actions as irrational.

A larger slice of humanity have family, and therein lies the low-hanging fruit to demonstrate how afflicted we are with our neuroses. We can choose our friends and form our social tribes who understand us better and who don't step on our every last nerve, but go home to blood family for the holidays (I'm no where near them, mind you) and see how fast you become neurotic about various things they say, do, imply and/or insinuate. With our friends, it may be to a lesser degree, but it's there. I'm here alone with neither friends, family nor acquaintance and the neurotic is totally right here, front and center.

I'm trying to start working on lessening my neurotic. Emphasis on the 'try' and 'start'. I haven't even started, and I'm only trying to do that. It's not enough to know myself that it's nutty and irrational. I already know it and that's not doing anything. It's not cognitive. I'm searching for the starting point.

For years I've been working on myself to reduce negativity and confront internal anger issues. It's ongoing work, but I think I can feel alright about being a lot better than I was. It's not like I was a gloomy Gus or a hair-trigger rager. It's in my personality to give and take my share of laughter and I don't think anyone would describe me as a particularly angry person. My bar for anger or negativity is pretty low, though. I don't want any of it; it's all bad, shut it down. As soon as I recognize it, it's *stahp!*. That happens all the time.

Those techniques were Vajrayana-inspired, if I dare say so, but a good deal of it was cognitive mindfulness, watching the energies and processing them to cognitively transform them rationally. Working on transforming neurotic obscurations is a lot trickier since they are by nature to some degree irrational. Rationalization isn't going to help because I already know they're irrational, yet freely maintain them.

I appeal to the energies to help purify or clear obscurations – karmic obscurations, negative obscurations, neurotic obscurations. The energies are the many intangible things about us, but subjectively verifiably real. All thoughts and feelings are energies, but feelings are more potent. I think we think of feelings as things that just happen and pass, but recognizing them as energies makes them something to tap into to enact change on subtle levels. 

Anger is a favorite example. If when angry we can stop being angry for a second and examine the feeling, it's an energy. You might even be able to locate where the energy is in your body. Once you stop and examine it and recognize it as an energy, . . . well, you've already just stopped being angry and you're in new territory. It's now a lab experiment and you can go, oh yea, there it is. What's it doing there? I don't like it. It feels bad. That's how it starts getting transformed. 

Sexual energy I've mentioned before as possibly the most potent human energy, but working with it requires a high level of discipline, removing all animal aspects of it and any idea or conception of desire, lust, attachment, self-gratification. Focus on just the energy aspect of it. Very difficult to do, but the same principle applies. When the energy arises, arousal, you stop and identify it and try to get to the point where you realize desire is not what you want. Lust is not what you want. Attachment is not what you want. Self-gratification is not what you want. Needless to say, spouse, house, mortgage, rug rats, etc. are not what you want. It's not about sticking your dick in someone else or someone sticking their dick into you. They may seem to be what you want, but where does it get you? If those are what you wanted, fine, you're there. If you're trying to get beyond it, then you have to realize they don't get anywhere and they're not what you want. I think I've said too much already. But it doesn't take too much to recognize that feeling as a very potent energy. Surprisingly it isn't located where one might obviously think, but activates the entire central energy channel. Oh, and the energy is subjectively pleasing. That's alright for some reason! There's no throwing out the pleasing aspect as something you don't want, but there's still no attachment and no object of pleasure. It's more like a communion or oneness of masculine and feminine energies.

This is not Vajrayana. It's my own personal voodoo. It might even be psychological self-brain washing. I don't know if the results I've noticed are an actual result of practice, or the obvious result of concentrated, psychological mind power. But even in Vajrayana practice, I think, whatever methods, techniques or visualizations are used, whatever deities or dakinis are entreated upon, it is emphasized that any results stem from not any outside source. Whatever outside source used is just oneself, and there's no separation from the self and the "outside" source. 

I dabble in Vajrayana. I don't claim to practice it. I'll impose on myself from what I've read that if I don't have a guru, I'm not practicing Vajrayana and whatever "dabbling" I'm doing, I hope I'm respecting that. On the other hand, there are many books now expounding upon Vajrayana and its teachings. Perhaps they are just teasers to encourage people to find and follow a guru? I don't know, I've come across a lot of what seem to be substantive teachings.

But I get it, the personal touch of a guru (not the type in recent scandals reported). For even substantive teachings written in books, ideally a guru could go on at length about any, and teach how they should be practiced and even tailor specific instructions for an individual. But I haven't met any such guru and I don't think finding a teacher is something that's going to happen in my current lifetime.

Instead I'm going by my own intuition. And intuition vs. guru, I wouldn't bet on intuition, but it's all I've got. Anyway, according to the Mahamudra view of Vajrayana that I've read, whatever path I'm on and whatever I'm doing on it, that is my path. It might be flawed, it might not be ideal, but if I understand it as my path and treat it as such, I can still learn. A teacher might groan laugh in exasperation, "that's not what that teaching means". Well, then I'm just fucked, ain't I?

I'm currently re-reading a book that I bought . . . earlier this year or last year, I forget, and I latched onto a part regarding mandalas as an example of how intuition kicks in. Mandalas are 2-D or 3-D depictions of Buddha fields or worlds, very symmetrical and include representative characters in Buddhist mythology and various levels and positions of being. They aid in imagination and creating mental images of what's described in the literature.

The author writes:  . . . from an awakened perspective, all pain and confusion are merely the play of wisdom. And that play has a recognizable pattern called the mandala principle. If one can identify difficult situations as mandalas, then transformation of painful circumstances is possible. The mandala principle lies at the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism and is the sacred realm of the inner dakini. Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (2001), Judith Simmer-Brown, p. 118.

She writes that all pain and confusion are plays of wisdom, and that hearkens back to the title of a book I recently mentioned, Confusion Arises as Wisdom, which I only recently started to understand as the basic thesis statement of Mahamudra. She then ties that basic thesis of Mahamudra to the mandala principle and expresses its potential.

She goes on: From a Vajrayana perspective, we live in many mandalas at the same time: our career or livelihood, our leisure activities, our family, our spiritual community, our neighborhood, town, city, country. In Vajrayana, . . .  the most intimate mandala in which we live is our own personal one, in which all of these parts play a role, adding the dimensions of our physical bodies, health, and state of mind. In each of these mandalas, there is a similar dynamic in which we do not customarily acknowledge the sacredness of every part of our circumstances, and because of this we experience constant struggle and pain. Ibid., p. 119

My reaction to passages such as this is intuitive. It's not an intellectual processing regarding whether it makes sense or if I think it's right or wrong. It's an immediate almost emotional whoosh of all reality around me suddenly becoming a mandala, a matrix that I'm navigating through in furtherance of wisdom understanding. And it makes sense to me. Suddenly my world around me is one of those 2-D mandala depictions I have on my altar, and how I travel through it is very important, guided by mindfulness and wisdom and compassion.

The body is a mandala with all its biological systems functioning and metabolizing. Mental space is a mandala with all its neurotic processing and useless thoughts and judgments. K-pop obsession is a mandala that I have to figure out what it means and that I'm not just mindlessly wasting my time in enjoyment. Family relations are mandalas. Your lover is a mandala. Everywhere I go during the day is navigating the mandala and everyone I see is part of it. And the idea of space and position, inner and outer/center and fringe, is important in the mandala visualization. Wherever I might position myself in whichever layer of mandala, there's always the other interlocking and interconnected spaces and positions. Is this getting heady? I don't know. It's how intuition takes over.

Seeing the world as mandala makes it possible for Vajrayana practitioners to drop their habitual ways of relating to events and aspects of life and to engage directly. When this is done everything is accentuated, whether it is pleasurable or painful, and there is nowhere to go. The central seat of the mandala may be a throne, but it may also be a prison cell. When we feel the inescapability of our life circumstances true practice is finally possible. Ibid., p. 120.

Well I sure hope so. Anyway, that's how my intuition works.

tbd, afterglow I

According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, after the outer dissolutions come the inner dissolutions. I don't think it's entirely inappropriate for me or anyone to try envisioning the outer dissolutions without a guide. The way they are described still deal with senses that are in our experience. The inner dissolutions, on the other hand, are so subtle that I think they likely defy gross-level imagination or visualization. Maybe it's like remembering a dream and being tasked to describe all the gossamer details of the dream you weren't paying attention to because . . . it was a dream.

Something I find fascinating and profound on a philosophical level are the descriptions of the first two of the inner dissolutions, referred to as "redness" and "whiteness". In biology, life begins with the sperm and egg successfully mashing together after a man and woman have successfully mashed together sharing bodily fluids and all sorts of erotic noises, like ooh-ahh (하게) and uh-uhn. And that wet, slapping sound you can make by rapidly pulling both cheeks in and out with your mouth slightly open. Philosophically speaking.

In the Tibetan conception of conception, basically the male contributes his "white essence" and the female her "red essence" which separate in the newly-formed being to create the experience of duality to exist in the world. The white essence moves up the central energy channel to rest in the brain center for the duration of life, while the female red essence descends and resides in the bodily center, commonly referred to in Eastern spiritual physiology as the 'chi' center, a few clicks south of the navel and a few clicks back. I don't know what a 'click' is, but I find it funny when people use it as a term of distance. It doesn't seem to mean anything but everyone just pretends it does.

In the experience of the redness and whiteness stages of the inner dissolutions, it seems to me to be suggested that death involves the dissolution of the father and mother's contribution to a life. That is to say they themselves were necessary elements of the child's psyche, its psychic life. It's not like the father contributed sperm, the mother egg, and out came baby running helter skelter throughout life as a completely separate, individual being. Rather, in the child were always the father and mother essences, presences, for the whole of its life. There was no awareness when their essences were established, and it is only when awareness recedes to the subtlety of the inner dissolutions that they dissipate as part of the death process of the child, but they were there the whole time in between.

The color associations of the dissolutions are said to be the result of the end of the energy currents that existed while alive, including emotions, psychology, the sort of internal things yogic exercises deal with, i.e. chakras, nadis, bindus, etc. I'm obviously not writing from experience nor inspiration, just processing what I've read and don't really understand. The psychic elements kept the red and white essences in place, and after death the experience of whiteness is said to occur as the white essence descends in the central channel as the psychic winds weaken and redness occurs when the red essence ascends for the two of them to meet and dissolve at the heart center. So long mom, dad, thanks for all the fish. I never really liked seafood.

to be determined III

Just my imagination, running away with me.

I would have left music at home. For the past however many many years I rarely, if ever, wasn't listening to music when I went out. I only turned it off when people were taking my money (but giving me something I wanted in return). It was such that there were times I would turn off the music and be fascinated by what the ambient world sounded like. It became such that I designated certain conditions whereby I would turn off the music and experience the world as it sounded (sometimes becoming bored with it and turning the music back on). But no music this time; leaving behind the habit, not taking the emotions and attachment that music embodies.

I wouldn't have left alcohol at home, but I wouldn't have been drinking, either. I'd have a cute half bottle of Jack Daniels along with other things, but I'd be keeping clear to keep calm, peaceful, positive, tapping into happiness. The ha'fifth because it, or something like it, has always been there. Not even just in case, it's just always been there. I've read it isn't ideal to be disoriented by substances like painkillers or things that dull the senses, but I'm going to create a loophole for that. I will disable, hamper, stymie my consciousness, but realize only my physiology is affected. The substances will be more of a facilitating device.

In this regard, years of mindful alcoholism(!) may prove to have been helpful. Mindful alcoholism, wtf? I don't think I've ever used the term "mindful alcoholism" before; I don't think I've ever even thought of it. Using it now surprises me because it suggests how dangerous the practice I've developed is. Alcoholism is not a legitimate mindfulness practice. There are aspects of my practice that are even more risky, I shouldn't wonder, in possibly deluding myself thinking I'm doing a practice with one targeted aim, when I may be doing something entirely different and destructive in my mindstream and karma. I would never suggest to anyone to practice "mindful alcoholism". At least not as a starting point. If yer a drunk already, might as well give it a shot, so to speak.

But my loophole is being aware that whatever happens that doesn't rely on bodily structures will not be substantially affected by the effects of the substances. It may be detrimental to be pumped full of morphine or other drugs by some clinician who's just doing a job based on their own assessment of what's preferred treatment. Consciously using substances oneself for the purposes of dying and being aware of the need to keep mind and body separate, especially when mind and body separate, may prevent detriment caused by disorientation.

Despite near-death accounts suggesting it's not necessarily painful, I expect pain, at least discomfort and unpleasantness. Like a prostate exam. I don't know why, just to be on the safe side maybe. It seems logical, might as well expect and brace for it. It won't be for long, but it will be pretty intense. I won't like it, but I'm hoping mindfulness practice will keep me from panicking and help me keep calm in an experience that I visualize as difficult and intense as being exposed in the midst of a violent hurricane in the middle of the night.

And I do practice it as much as I can. Whenever I find myself challenged in uncomfortable situations, I imagine it as a bardo experience and react accordingly with equanimity and calm. Not that in my daily life do I find myself in terribly challenging, uncomfortable situations. Crowded rush hour MRT, sweaty and sticky in torrential rain, noisy children in the library. Maybe I should schedule a prostate exam. Even amusement park rides and extremes of physical challenges I would practice as bardo preparation. Not that I can even remember the last time I've been to an amusement park, but I see it on Korean TV. I imagine I wouldn't be much fun to be with at an amusement park. I'd be on rides calmly contemplating how interesting the experience is.

There will be a loss of consciousness. That's obvious. It's hard to die if you don't lose consciousness at some point. It's even described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that after death there is no continuum of consciousness and whatever continues on is subject to "losing consciousness"; and logically the residual habit of past existence would include the experience of losing consciousness. Losing consciousness is no big deal, we do it at least once a day when we fall asleep. That may be to say that one of the most profound and frightening aspects of dying, going from awareness of being here to not being here, is something we regularly experience. The difference being the assumption of waking again when we sleep and the lack of said assumption when we die.

From asphyxiation to brief but intense pain to loss of consciousness, I expect death to occur fairly quickly. How quickly death occurs after loss of consciousness, I gather, depends on circumstances. Death can be immediate in cases of sudden or violent deaths, or it can be prolonged like my father who was kept alive by a machine, with zero prognosis of regaining consciousness, for a week. When the dissolutions occur, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is probably variable and individual. A straight-forward, starting point visualization of the dissolutions might have them occur sequentially after the loss of consciousness, but I have read other descriptions that describe the outer dissolutions as the dying process leading to the loss of consciousness, so occurring before death, rather than after. There's almost certainly not a uniform model of how or when they occur.

I take the descriptions of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's book as starting point templates, maybe ideal dying-at-home-surrounded-by-loved-ones-along-with-a-chanting-monk situation, and not literal nor universal. My impression of the descriptions of the dissolutions is that they are universally experienced in varying forms according to the individual and the circumstances, but that awareness of them differs between practitioners and non-practitioners, as well as degree or level of practice. Non-practitioners who haven't prepared experience them but in a more or less non-active manner, almost analogous to animal instinct, like a fish trapped in a net, with little to no understanding what's going on. If they were visible, they might look like me on an amusement park ride; something's happening, but no reaction.

If my mindfulness practice can kick in and weather the experience with some degree of awareness, I imagine the four outer dissolutions being very intense, almost as if they were happening all at once. Earth or ground (sensation of solidity) dissolution feeling like great crushing pressure all around, acutely felt at every point on the body where there is physical sense. Water (sensation of fluid elements) dissolution as feeling like being tossed uncontrollably around in a great torrent of my own bodily fluids, but not reacting in fear. The heat dissolution (remnant sensation of metabolism from being a living being) arising as a heat sensation while being tossed around by water, but then also dissipating. The wind/air dissolution is the end of breath and the movement of gas elements. The outer dissolutions signal the end of our subjective awareness of our physical existence of this life, separate from the continuation of the physical corpse left behind which will begin to decompose on a cellular level immediately.

Also the end of this exercise. The description of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead are found on pages 174-176 (chapter 8, sub-heading "Signs of Extremely Near Death") of the 2005 full translation (paperback), and pages 255-258 (chapter 15, sub-heading "The Outer Dissolution: The Senses and the Elements") in Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. They go into greater detail than I can imagine or understand, which is part of the purpose of this exercise. What am I getting out of their descriptions? If it's a personal experience, how do I personally envision it? It's no doubt inferior to the profundity of the actual experience, the nuances of which are suggested in the books, but it's worth it to try to be prepared. In any case, it's my death, not the bookses'.

TBD (to be determined) II

Visualizing approaching death positively is super important as far as I'm concerned. I recall an old "happiness generating" practice I used to do and that comes in handy in this regard. It was cold generating happiness without relying on outside factors, the way we usually conceive happiness. Happiness is an energy that can be tapped by not being afflicted or attached and just letting it emerge, accepting it despite counter outside factors, including death.

I visualize or mentally rehearse the death process with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as guides or templates. I don't take them literally, but I use the descriptions to help envision what I think it might be like for me to die. I agree with the notion that the death experience is not the same for everybody, rather it is informed by the subjective person, including psychological make-up, beliefs, overall life experience, circumstances of death, what was eaten for lunch, etc. Someone dying peacefully in a hospital bed will have a different death experience from someone being murdered in a violent crime or in a war. Two people sitting next to each other in a crashing jetliner, one of whom is a long-time mindfulness practitioner, will have similarities in the death experience because of the manner, but how they go through it would be different. Just for the record, I don't think I know what I'm talking about.

Although I think subjectivity may inform various aspects all through the bardo experience from death to re-birth, I also think that maybe the overall structure of the bardos as described in the Tibetan Book of the Death is universal, and whenever something is described as happening, something is happening but how that something appears depends on the previous and future lives. As much as I dislike the idea of imposing my beliefs on the rest of humanity, if I believe in reincarnation because it just makes sense as a natural cycle, one of the many that we see in nature, then I'm positing that it happens to everyone. We're all part of nature, regardless of belief that we are not, that we are somehow special and above it. Even a bardo experience of going to heaven and meeting God can occur as a result of strong belief and expectation during life, but then it will melt away like a reincar-ception into the bardo of re-birth and the process of reincarnation, with the last remnant wisps of the previous life wiped away by or at the conception of the next life, only taking karmic imprints into the new life. I did mention that I don't really think I know what I'm talking about, right?

The many near-death and death-revival accounts that exist may suggest the subjectivity and diversity in experience in just approaching death. Those accounts, often described as varying degrees of peaceful, may just be skimming the surface, either going deep into death with critical functions stopped but not for long, or being clinically dead for a longer period but not so deep that they couldn't be revived. By nature they did not go so far where the brain structures that support life processes were destroyed. Still, I think our mode of existence and being is so habituated (ego) that there's a lot of momentum of subjectivity that goes deep into the bardo experience.

Beyond near-death and revival experiences, when brain and physical sensory processes definitively stop functioning, I think we go into what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes as the outer and inner dissolutions which may be less affected by subjective experience. I think even the habit consciousness of the vast majority of people fades to black, maybe because it can't handle what's happening to it. I might even say the dissolutions characterize the end of awareness. The only way to maintain awareness is through training and practice while alive to prepare and recognize it when it occurs. And even then the death experience as described may be so overwhelming and disorienting that recognition isn't necessarily possible (spontaneous recognition, however, is still possible because anything's possible).

The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes sense to me when it describes parts of the bardo experience as being extremely disorienting and confusing. I imagine it would be. Our habituated existence has always relied on sensory input processed through our brains to form all of subjective reality. Very stable. At death, the senses stop reception, the brain dies, reality fades away, and all that's left as described in the book is a non-corporeal habit of subjectivity feeling like it's blown about in hurricane force winds.

All of this is just my own little thought experiment; envisioning a scenario maybe a way of trying to be prepared. Everyone who does this might come up with something completely different. Very little is narrowly defined, I think, in the bardo. The subjectivity of the death experience might also include the sequence of events. They don't occur in one uniform way and may not be clear-cut. I heard one lama talking about the dissolutions starting even before death, and listening to that I couldn't say I disagreed or thought it was wrong. I thought it was interesting, a very broad interpretation. And the bright light many people attest to and the calm that comes with it may also be related to the dissolutions, which I've contemplated as beyond the point of revival.

All of this is contemplating just the death point bardo, the first of three death bardos. I couldn't do this sort of thought experiment with the remaining two bardos because I don't have any real insight into them to add to what the Tibetan Book of the Dead already presents. Doing a personalized version would be like doing a bardo version of the Divine Comedy, and as much of a big joke my life has been, I'm no Dante. The death point is something we're all eminently qualified to contemplate, because it's something we will imminently expect. No one has to believe in anything in particular to contemplate it.

I live on the third floor of a residential low-rise in a flat sub-divided into four discrete apartments. I don't know any of my neighbors. I don't know what they look like. Very rarely we might pass one another coming or going. I wouldn't recognize them passing on the street. I don't know anything about them except their audible departure routines in the morning or when they deviate from it.

When I contemplate my demise scenarios, it's safe to say there would be little impact on them except in the unfortunate circumstance if I bite it in my apartment. If I don't leave a body in my apartment, there would be little to no disruption or disturbance in their lives beyond the bustle of the disposal of my belongings.

They know just as little about me, and flipping the scenario I would experience little disruption or disturbance if any of them were to no longer be among the living. If they died in their apartment, I don't think any of them are so disconnected and isolated like me that people wouldn't come looking for them before olfactory factors became necessary to alert the world of their passing. Whatever the scenario, the bottom line is I wouldn't be very much affected.

There are two people in Taipei that I know and have met with socially in the past . . . let's say five years, albeit rarely. If either of them died, I don't know how the news would even get to me, and it's not a stretch that it just wouldn't. I just wouldn't find out. Exactly the same if I were to die.

I have a nominal facebook presence. Again, no one there would know if I died unless someone plied my computer post-mortem and stumbled across my page and were to tactlessly and tastelessly announce it to a reply chorus of "aw gee, that's too bad" at best. Any announcement to inform my contacts would have to be made on my page, so that's pretty freaky. Speaking from the grave. That's actually a great idea. Write the announcement in my voice. Get creative.

And on the flipside, if any of most of the couple dozen contacts I have were to die, . . . well, I'd probably at least know about it. Some are as active as me on facebook or even less and maybe there would be no one to mention them dying. But my response couldn't be much more than "aw gee, that's too bad". I'm not involved in their lives. I don't make contact with them or try to be more than an abstract, internet presence. Even people I've known from long ago who were much more than "facebook friends", we're not present to each other now. Effectively "aw gee, that's too bad" friends.

Finally, all that's left to contemplate is a few family members. What if Audrey or any of my cousins or either of my brothers committed suicide? There's no reason for me to think any of them would, but none of them thinks I would, either. It's impossible to really know what it would feel like, even going deep into the scenario in meditation, but I'm having trouble imagining myself reacting much differently than how I would expect them to react if I died.

Whatever impact there is, it would be something to experience and then pass. It would pass. Again, there's no involvement in each other's lives. If I died, what difference would there be in their lives except the knowledge that I'm now dead? If any of them died, what difference would there be in my life? Only the expectation that they're out there and available for a possible hypothetical future meeting up? Not good enough. If they care, they should be present. If I care, I should be present. We're not present, so we don't care. Voilá, we have a meeting of the minds.

A Certain Kind of Death

(tip: watching documentaries at higher speeds saves time)

Charnel grounds, in some societies, used to be where unclaimed corpses were taken and left to the elements or to be consumed by vultures and wild animals. Certain types of yogins and adepts would go there to meditate and confront human death and decomposition. We don't have charnel grounds.

We have documentary filmmakers. This sort of documentary is certainly no equivalent to charnel grounds, but still has meditational value in contemplating the raw reality of one kind of death, especially since there's no censorship. So yea, *warning* graphic images of corpses. It's not intentionally gruesome and it's neither unduly respectful nor disrespectful. Just the facts, ma'am.

I'm glad they didn't censor anything. It's important to see death as it really is, not prettied up to be presentable and "alive looking" at funerals. That's just a way of being in denial about death, I think. When you see a dead body, there should be a visceral reaction. This is everyone, how we all essentially end up naturally. After a mortician gets done with a body, we can look at it and think, "It's not so bad". I call that a certain kind of denial.

Still, don't even consider watching this if you have any inkling it's something you don't want to see. And if you don't know and just want to "take a look", be prepared to stop as soon as you realize you don't want to go there. It's like at the first realization I'm hearing a Celine Dion or Justin Beaver song, I shut it down immediately by any means necessary short of murder (bodily harm is acceptable). Although I wouldn't know right away if it was a Justin Beaver song since I've never heard enough to recognize it. I've heard just enough to know I'd rather look at human corpses than listen to that. Unfortunately, I do know what Celine Dion's unspeakable devil-howling sounds like.

Mind you, the documentary is not about the dead bodies. The dead bodies are just part of the narrative of people who die without friends or family to check in on them. People who die and have to be discovered, rather than surrounded by loved ones or relatives at least. They become cases for the government to deal with. The fact that they died is just part of the cases and that aspect is shown.

I contemplate the possibility of ending up like this. It's my worst case scenario to die in my apartment of some medical or health failure and needing to be discovered after neighbors, strangers, are alerted by the foul smell. I won't go unclaimed, at least. Personally I don't care at all about that. I just don't like the inconvenience and disturbance to other people.

If I die outside of my apartment by some accident or health failure, then I'll likely go unclaimed and end up in Taiwan's version of this kind of fate. No one would be able to ID me and no one would notice me missing for a while. The first person to notice, I've mentioned before, would be my landlord after several months of missed rent and not posting the gas meter reading, which I have to do every other month.

In my ideal situation, I would disappear without leaving a body for anyone to deal with. After it's clear that I've disappeared and not coming back (this blog found?), there would just be my meager possessions for which I'll leave a holographic will instructing that my things be taken by anyone interested and otherwise donated if there's no interest. The rest will be disposed of and I'm sorry for the inconvenience that will cause. Hopefully someone can be hired, like in the documentary ("drayage" I think they called it), using my remaining funds to take care of that.

I have to remember to specifically state that if I leave bodily remains, control of them is absolutely, under no circumstances to be given to my mother. That's the only aspect of leaving a body that I care about. My final wish is that my complete cremated ashes be scattered in the ocean.

I doubt holographic wills exist legally in Taiwan, but for that reason they might be respected. There's probably little reason for holographic wills in Taiwan. A holographic will is one that's written by the decedent but not notarized nor legally overseen or represented. They're enforceable in California and other states where they are statutorily supported in cases where property disputes arise.

I had to go down to Kaohsiung yesterday for some family bullshit issue. It falls under the category of "none of my business" and was at worst an inconvenience pulling me away from my dearly held daily routine. It wasn't the type of family chaos my mother embodies. It's the kind of thing likely many people have to go through at some point, so I'm not complaining.

I was just a pawn. I, along with other grandchildren, inherited property from our grandfather many moons ago for some legal reason, probably to avoid taxes. Now our parents, who have the real interest in the real estate, need us to sign over power of attorney to them. None of my business, of course I'll do what needs to be done, even if it means departing from my dearly held daily routine.

However, the inconvenience was an opportunity to activate mindfulness practice outside of my dearly held daily routine. I was actually surprised how good I was at identifying everything I was feeling moment to moment and what was going on all throughout my body as energies and applying the practice. All of it illusory and easily brushed aside.

Stress? Nope, it's unreasonable (or I'm aware of it and allowing it). Worst case scenarios? Nope, wrong attitude. Just do the right thing given any situation. The one thing I had to be insistent upon was that I was returning to Taipei the same day, and I did the smart thing in buying a non-reserved seating return ticket as soon as I arrived in Kaohsiung. I could take any train home, but it had to be that day. I don't know why anyone would think I was staying for more than one day.

Watching energies is, I think, a Tibetan Vajrayana practice which requires a teacher and initiation, so I make no claim that I'm doing it right. I'm just going by intuition with a vague belief that I've received initiations in previous lives. All I'm doing in this life is trying to review and maintain them without screwing anything up until I go back to accepting the idea of a teacher.

Every experience, sensation and bodily/mental function is an energy that should not be assumed to just happen because we're human. Even hunger or lack of hunger, or digestion and waste excretion are all energies. Sexual impulse and reaction are among the strongest of energies. All of them should be vigilantly observed as they occur with an understanding of their empty and enlightened nature. That is definitely something I'm going on intuition since I can't explain what that means at all.

There's one important mantra that has been said to encapsulate the entirety of the Buddha's teaching: "Nothing whatsoever should be clung to (as me or mine)". An extension of that I use most often during sitting is, "No thought whatsoever is worth dwelling upon". Thoughts constantly arise, I can't help it with my monkey mind, but I can constantly remind myself that none of them are worth anything.

Now it's "May all enlightened energies embodied in each and every experience be ignited like a fire". Alliteration. The refuge of the destitute (Sondheim). It's ironic Sondheim calling alliteration the refuge of the destitute since his lyrics are literally littered with alliteration. And he's brilliant at it, no destitution there!

That they be ignited like a fire is to emphasize the active and potent nature of the energies, like a volatile gas. The fire of transformation. No idea. The fire leads to transformation? Transformation is somewhere in there. I just wanted to say the word because it sounds like it belongs somewhere in the equation.

It was a low-key, day-trip visit. My uncle and I took care of the legal stuff and we visited another aunt and uncle briefly. Then my uncle and aunt took me on the new Kaohsiung light rail to show me some of the many changes happening in the fast-developing city. I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say it's like Taipei years ago, but I hardly recognize Kaohsiung now, aside from the heat. Taipei, too, is now very, very different from what it was when I first got here.

A cousin, the son of the aunt and uncle we visited in the afternoon, showed up at the last moment and took me to the High Speed Rail station to return to Taipei. I also spoke on the phone with two other cousins who speak English reasonably well.

And that was Kaohsiung; the first I've been out of Taipei since my father died in Dec. 2016. First "disruption" to my dearly held daily routine in that time. During that time, in total, I've met up with my old Mandarin teacher once; a classmate from my first Mandarin language class, with whom I'm unusually still in touch, twice; and I saw my uncle twice in 2017 when he came up for two of my landlord's (a distant relative) children's weddings.

That's the story of all my personal contacts. I have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me. As they know nothing about me or what I'm doing or not doing with my life, I also have no idea what any of them has had to deal with in the past few years. One of my uncles died recently, the father of one of the cousins I spoke with on the phone, maybe even in the past year, and it was just information. I wasn't prompted to attend any funeral.

It's the worst kind of small talk when you know nothing about each other but have to force interest in their lives. Certainly they've had difficulties and other worries occupying their minds. I wouldn't be surprised if any of them has contemplated suicide. But that's not something that comes up in the small talk relationships I have with these people.

WordsCharactersReading time

This is the dashcam of South Korean actor Kim Joo Hyuk in late October in the moments before he suffered some medical problem and crashed, dying later at the hospital. The full clip starts at 0:21.

After traffic goes through the intersection, pay attention to the black SUV to the right and then the black sedan that passes on the right. That's when Kim starts having (or noticing) problems and is either trying to get to the side of the road or has already started losing control of his functioning. It looks like he probably sideswipes the black sedan (not caught on the dashcam), who is probably honking like mad (no audio), alerting the SUV in front, who presumably seeing the collision in his mirror, steps on the gas and speeds away to not get involved.

As Kim's control further deteriorates, the cam shows a black sedan (presumably the one he hit) come up on the left, partially blocking Kim's car. Presumably, logically, the sedan driver only knows that he's been hit and Kim's car didn't show any sign of stopping because of the accident, and therefore he wants to prevent Kim from leaving the scene. That's when Kim loses all control of his functions and presumably his foot falls heavy on the accelerator leading him to hit the sedan again, careen towards the sidewalk and crashing. The last image before cutting off is Kim's vehicle flipping over. He had to be extracted before being sent to the hospital. From my very limited layman's experience and knowledge, I might profer he suffered either a seizure, heart attack or stroke. The autopsy was inconclusive.

What's sad and profound to me is that the dashcam includes the last things Kim Joo Hyuk saw of this world. He probably didn't wake up that morning and consider he might die that day. He may have, but I daresay most of us don't. He certainly didn't get into his car thinking he was about to die.

Everything was going normal until it wasn't. A late afternoon commute, driving from one place to another as he does every day. That's the profound part of the clip, not the accident but the normalcy leading up to it.

Death is a universal experience, but so are the moments of each of our lives leading up to dying that the dashcam so poignantly captures. And since we generally don't know when or how death comes, we don't know when those last moments of normalcy are being experienced. So breathe.

Then again, there was Elvis who died on the crapper.

All those things I was griping about have been abating. So . . . that wasn't how it was all going to end. Sleep has been returning, but not perfect. It's not relentless insomnia anymore. Recovery sleep still wrecking.

I've been able to eat, but limited. Gastrointestinal issues, the least I know anything about, are likely chronic but have abated.

I may even try exercising again after the debacle last time over two weeks ago. There's a psychological barrier that appears when something unpleasant like that happens. There's both the unpleasantness aspect as well as the feeling that I shouldn't be doing this anymore because I can't. Which in my defense, at my age, is fair.

If I can't manage even 3 miles at a super slow pace, whatever. I have no problem quitting trying. I don't even know why I'm even trying.

When I was younger it was impulse. Craving. I grew up in places where winter was cold, and I couldn't run in cold weather because I'd get asthma. But once spring came along, I would get antsy if I didn't start running. It felt like something I had to do.

It's definitely not something I need to do now. As for cycling, I filled the tires on my bike two weeks ago, telling myself if I hadn't gone on a ride in two days, I'd deflate them. I've done neither, but I think I'll be deflating them this evening.

Whatever I do, it'll wait until the end of the Tour de France which I've been following on TV. The last stage is tomorrow. When I was younger, but older than running days, watching the TdF would have inspired me to get on my bike, but not now. Tackling climbs? Why?!! Looks painful, and I know how painful it is.

Morning sitting is still out. It wasn't too long ago that I would wake up and think of not sitting, but then think it was the most important thing I'd be doing that day and proceed with it.

I, of course, wouldn't mind getting back to it once the impulse or inspiration hits, but so far I haven't noticed anything different in my daily mindfulness whether I sit or not.

I don't think I could ever abandon or decry the benefits of sitting meditation, but perhaps the lifestyle I've chosen whereby I'm just waiting to die and have no social contacts or substantive attachments is by nature mindfulness practice. Don't need to pull myself out of something I'm not even sucked into.

The question still persists why I'm still alive, though. I'm still working on that. I've taken to focusing on certain body parts – a finger joint, or where an internal organ likely is – and asking what it has to do with me. There's a bone in here, is it me? No. Why should it exist? Why is it in any way important? It's not.

I still stare into mirrors and visualize and imagine the skull that is the basis for my head appearance. Strip off the outer flesh and all skulls look the same. You can't look at a skull and identify the person it was. It's the vanity of identity.

And as I've done many times before, I remind myself that the purpose of distancing myself from any and everyone has been to lessen any impact of my death. To make it theoretical, rather than emotional.

I hear about people dying and the emotional response by their loved ones, and I've worked to minimize that for when I die. There's just no proximity of any kind whereby anyone can be substantively affected by my dying.

Not physical, emotional, not even communication, any sort of connection, there's no proximity by which anyone could claim to be affected by my death. I've done well I must say so myself.

I'm having trouble just chilling with insomnia these days. It feels like I'm under attack, and along with eating and stomach issues and the questionable continuation of trying to run, quality of life has taken a dip.

Weather, too. Every year a benchmark is when air conditioning is turned on and off for the season. It came on the last week of June, which means it's starting get buttcrack hot in Taipei. And that's a plumber's buttcrack, not a lingerie model's.

And to be even clearer with the visual, that's a male plumber and female lingerie model, not the other way around. Can't make assumptions these days, for better or worse.

It's been more than a year since I tried to start running again. I didn't expect much, but then surprisingly started showing signs of improvement in speed and distance by last October.

That was all interrupted by having to go to New Jersey in November, and when I got back I pulled my Achilles tendon my first time out. Since then it's all been bad with no improvement in speed or distance, long periods of rest trying to recover, and shin splints on top of Achilles threats.

I'm ready to call it. Weather is clearing for one more attempt and even though my cardiovascular fitness has been holding me back for the past few months, I'm not going to baby my legs from injury. Any shin splints or tendinitis, I'm done.

Finally, morning sitting has stopped for what feels like weeks. If I put my mind to it, I can probably start up again, but part of me is wondering what's the point?

I haven't noticed any difference in my mind or days whether I sit or not, but I'm sure there's a difference, and it's a matter of noticing it. One sitting may do that.

Things not as bad as I mentioned before. Negativity has eased off, but inspiration is still blah. As a fellow practitioner said years ago, "stick to your method".

It means when you've affirmed a certain method works, if things start going off, just stick to the method and it will get you back on or point you in a new direction.

It's a matter of faith, but it's faith in something that you've tested yourself. Not blind faith. It's not something pushed on you. You stop, stay calm, and let yourself figure out what the dissonance is and how to get through it.

It's actually no different from a physical training regime. Everyone is different physiologically and regimes that work for some may not work for others.

A book I'm re-reading and slogging through trying to absorb again is Happiness by Matthieu Ricard. I had no trouble with it before. I've even considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way.

I've considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way even though happiness is not a consideration for me. Happiness is not a goal for me, nor is it even possible. But I got what he was writing about.

It's still a meditation. Even if it isn't practically attainable, much less something to pursue, happiness is worth contemplating and analyzing. I mean even living an ordinary life, there's the Tibetan saying that everyone strives for happiness, but so many act in ways that curtails it.

And I'm not living an ordinary life. My life has always been all about multiple layers of sabotaging it and any happiness that may accompany it. It also hasn't been about being miserable, so there's that dissonance.

In re-reading "Happiness", I recognize that everything he's saying is right, but it doesn't apply to me. I don't fit into any of his descriptions or examples or metaphors or parables. The paradigms are normative, and I have no idea what to say after saying something like that.

The paradigms are normative. So what? I'm outside the paradigms of an accomplished monk who has translated for the Dalai Lama? Maybe, his writings are obviously for a general audience, but it's still dissonance. Stick to my method.

What do I do in my daily life to promote happiness? In my daily life, I distract myself a lot with entertainments. That's not happiness. I avoid suffering. That may be as close to what I can conceive of as happiness.

Various levels of contentment. If I'm not suffering physical ailments, I consider myself happy. But that's defined as a negative, an absence. I really, really, really enjoy listening to music. But that's not happiness. It's temporary enjoyment.

Needless to say, the bottom line is that I have no idea about "happiness". It's not a pursuit or a goal, just something to contemplate. At this point, I'd be happy to just dispel the dissonances. Still, it's not nothing. It's not unimportant. Maybe as an unattainable, it's more important to consider.

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.