The amount and degree of miserableness continues to compound, and it's not even just personal anymore as the CCP pandemic is finally starting to get out of hand in Taiwan and stifling summer heat has arrived early. This is compound misery. 

It's been a long time since I've heard anyone call it anything aside from "Covid-19" since I no longer watch those China-watch YouTube channels (because they turned out to be unabashed pro-Trump conspiracy theorists during the election) which regularly called it the "CCP virus", placing descriptive attribution most accurately where it belonged. Even Taiwan media sometimes calls it "Covid-19" aside from the usual "Wuhan virus" or "coronavirus". That's how thorough Chinese Communist Party brainwashing and propaganda is with the collusion of the WHO. Don't kid yourself, if you call it "Covid-19", you're doing it because of the Chinese government whether that bothers you or not and there's nothing you can do about it. All the variants are named after source locations, i.e., India, South Africa, Brazil, UK variants, but where did the whole thing start? Of course . . . Covid, Estonia (*insert Chinese news source*). 

In a textbook example of "well that escalated quickly", northern Taiwan went straight to Level 3 (out of 4, which is lockdown) in a matter of days late last week. Masks must be worn at all times in public, limits on gatherings, recreation and nightlife shut down, and name and telephone information must be submitted wherever you go in case contact tracing becomes necessary. 

That last one is the point of anxiety for me, ergo misery, since I don't have a phone. I've been using my invalid old phone number just to get by, but that defeats the purpose and eats at my willingness to do my part. My account-less iPhone that my aunt gave me does receive emergency government texts and has a number associated with it, but it doesn't look like a Taiwanese number and I don't know if it can receive calls or texts sent to it. I once wrote down my email address, but even though that is the only way to contact me if my locations are traced, it also may draw unwanted attention and suspicion that might uncover the fact that I don't have a smartphone, which I've mentioned before ordinary people find incomprehensible to the point of being criminal or indicative of insanity. 

Of course, no one in my family has reached out asking how I'm getting by without a phone. I'd have to come to mind first before they reached out. That's all fine, I've given them no reason to come to mind and I'm neither their business nor responsibility and I have no expectations of them either. If they heard the news from northern Taiwan and thought of me, I'd be touched and grateful but contacting me would be unwarranted and likely awkward and uncomfortable and bottom line it's not like they could do anything anyway. 

And it's not like they don't have problems and anxieties of their own. Southern Taiwan is experiencing a crushing drought with water in their reservoirs beyond disturbingly, desperately low. I don't think Kaohsiung quite yet, but other places down south are already having their water turned off two days per week since April. They ironically need a typhoon direct hit which would fill their reservoirs (last year was the first year in about 56 years where Taiwan was not hit by a single typhoon). They need a potential disaster to prevent an impending disaster.

In a contrast in misery, the early arrival of summer heat is more of an ambient misery. Merely existing sucks once out of the constant air stream of a fan. I even turned on the A/C last week way earlier than usual, albeit only long enough to see if it still works and to take the edge off the heat in that moment when it got unbearable. After the no hot water and broken space heater debacle this past winter, I fully expected the A/C to not work and I still expect my fan to break at any moment. 

So many things compound to add to the list affirming "I don't want to be here anymore", but that's a list long in compilation and I'm still here so it can't mean much of anything until it does. But also long in development is that the misery isn't anything negative anymore. There may be an emotional component to it, but it's not dominant. Take away the emotional component and all that's left is the description or the fact of the misery. I'm not sure that makes sense or how it even really works. 

Mindfulness practice triggers a stop, breathe, and investigate the emotion and the rationality behind the negativity caused by misery. There is no rationality for negativity when the whole spectrum of life experiences are taken as having value, which I think might be a Vajrayana approach. It can suck but I don't have to be all negative about it. I do find myself stopping and breathing and investigating emotions quite a lot these days.

WordsCharactersReading time

WordsCharactersReading time

After what I said about not doing email communication with my parents, I'm actually copying and pasting (unedited) an email my mother sent recently that I didn't delete right away as I usual do:

How are you ?Last night I dream about you.You were planning to go out,I asked you that you need money but you didn’t answer, I started to search at master bedroom, I couldn’t find any money for you,Then I thought I could call Dad to help,but when I picked up the phone I found Dad already died in the mean time I waked up. I will send the check to you soon.Stay safe and healthy and happy.

She sent something worth mentioning? 

Well, no, not quite. More as a demonstration of how my mind works, my first thought was she had a premonition of my suicide, lol! The "planning to go out" and "didn't answer" is the symbolism for my leaving this life. Do I really think this is prescience or premonition? No. There are no mystical energy waves she's picking up about what's going on over here (trab pu kcip, trab pu kcip, yenom erom dnes, nemow sdeen sram, sorry my Malay incantations are really rusty). There is no deep mother-child connection giving her insight into something "only a mother would know". To suggest she suddenly is in tune or developed an intuitive *fifth sense* that she's never had before is just pretty funny if not ridiculous. 

So how is she interpreting the dream that she feels the unusual need to tell me about it and send money? I have no idea and can only speculate. It could be pretty mundane. It could be subconscious passive-aggression remnant from the past, not as virulent as it used to be but still part of her habit energies (probably not totally benign, but not at all malicious this late in the game and age). I'm pretty sure there's not a glimmer of thought in her mind that suicide is anywhere in my reality. 

Her automatic reaction to send money would be funny if it weren't just tiresome, and could also suggest possible habitual machinations that are old news and not worth delving into. Or not, I have no idea. I still have a bunch of undated checks from long ago that I decided not to act upon, and she sent something at the turn of the year, presumably a check, that she tried to guilt me for ingratitude because I hadn't acknowledged receiving it and thanking her for it. The truth was she sent it without telling me, and she doesn't know that no one here expects to receive anything through the post so the mailbox is perpetually filled with junkmail that gets cleared out maybe once a month. After I confirmed receiving it and thanked her, I tucked it aside without even opening it. 

So now because of that dream or whatever subconsciously-triggered reason, she's sending more checks and I'll be sure to look out for them this time and acknowledge receipt and thank her; I wasn't committing to suicide in the next week anyway. Anyway at this point, if I went to the bank now to try to execute the overseas transfer of money through a check, it wouldn't go through before my current funds run out, so these checks are monetarily worthless (although I do actually appreciate the gesture). 

If my parents had wanted to be monetarily worth something, they shouldn't have taken back that huge amount they deposited into my bank account many years ago. That's an old story, but a long time ago they sold their stock in my grandfather's bus company or something and had my aunt put the money into my bank account, presumably to avoid taxes. They put it in my account so I simply considered it a huge windfall, but I didn't go crazy and start living a life of luxury or indulge in that Lambo I've always coveted (OK, maybe it wasn't that much money but I didn't even buy a new bike). 

If they had left it there, it was an amount that would have sustained me way beyond their lifetimes, nevermind mine. But it just wasn't in their habitual capitalist character to have a chunk of money laying around somewhere and not have it working for them in some way. It took several years during which I lived off of it, but they eventually took it back, as was their completely fair right to do so, to buy some building of rare family sentimental value in Kaohsiung. I've never known my parents to be sentimental about anything, not even their own lives or history. At the time they talked about what the building was and what it meant to them more extensively than they needed to, as if they were justifying to me why they were taking their money back. They didn't need to justify anything, it was their money! 

I didn't feel anything against them when they took it back and cooperated fully once they made it clear they were removing the money from my account. However, I think it was at that point that I started calculating how much time I had left based on what was left in my bank account (US$1000/NT$30,000 = 1 month). I haven't heard anything about that building since, and the "time I had left" since then has only been extended by their contributions that required me going to the bank and transferring money from the States. I stopped doing that when it became too frustrating and humiliating even for me.

Maybe I'm the one sounding passive-aggressive here, maybe so, but these are also simply my facts as I know them. To the extent I'm being passive-aggressive is just supposed to be ironic and/or sarcastic.

But wow, if they had left the money (or any significant amount) in my account, what a nightmare or personal disaster it would be for me now (no sarcasm here). Well, it's possible I'd just continue cruising along as long as there was money and I wouldn't think of it as a disaster. I would just deal with the total pathetic mess my life appears to be looking around me, falling apart or deteriorating in multiple facets, misery symbolized perhaps by no hot water during the winter and the broken toe (which still hurts three weeks later but is much better, I can even savor this level of pain, thanks for asking). Looking at my life situation that way, running out of money has an aspect of great relief.

As I've opined before, money may karmically not be a consideration in this current lifetime; maybe in the past, maybe in the future but not now. So it's either ironic or poetic that money is the ultimate trigger to bring chronic suicidal ideation to fruition. Well, if it happens. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, I actually still have over US$6,000 cash in hand but it's too old to convert. The cash is inconvertible. It is incontrovertible that the cash is inconvertible! The bills are so old – lacking all the fancy holographic watermarks and colored fibers that make them hard to counterfeit – that banks here won't accept them. Their machines can't count them. They need to go back to where they came from to a bank in the U.S. to be exchanged for new, modern bills. I'll leave a note on the stash to that effect and however whoever wants to handle what happens is otherwise out of my hands. None of my business.

The six grand is useless to me, but that's OK since it's also meaningless. Six grand would've just been more buffer that I neither need nor want. I appreciate that six grand may be a considerable amount for someone just getting by and wants to live, but my history suggests I would not use it nobly nor to the benefit of anyone else, but rather just exhaust it like I have all my funds before it just to live a few months longer only to arrive where I am now. None of my business. 

WordsCharactersReading time

middle-age chronicles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

strange parents

In addition to "chronic suicidal ideation", I also recently learned about parental estrangement from a blog! Parental estrangement is not so much a psychological defect or condition (unless you're coming from the specific perspective of either the parent or child in the arrangement, and it's always the other that has it), but rather seems to be a phenomenon that mental health experts observe and explain to parents who experience it and describe it during therapy. 

I, of course, am not on the receiving end of parental estrangement, but rather the giver, the creator, the . . . disher of it. It's interesting to read about a parent (one in my age range no less) on the receiving end, although any parent who blogs about it is already cooler and perhaps less deserving of it than one who is clueless and feels indignant self-pity when a child finally says, "fuh dis shit, later for you". 

I'm not judging, but the author of the linked post seems halfway in between. She's aware and funny with the "slap her upside her head and tell her to call her mother" line, which seems to be the type that would make me roll my eyes and call, but she also admits to red lines crossed that if you don't recognize are intolerable it's hard to gain sympathy regarding whatever reaction manifests and you might never understand it to your own detriment (i.e., you may be smart and funny, but you still crazy (or in adult language, you don't respect what they want respected)). 

I'd also be wary about the estrangement "for no apparent reason" line. My robot vacuum cleaner comes right at me every single time I stop paying attention to it for no apparent reason. I focus on the computer screen for 15 seconds and suddenly it's bumping against my heel. True, I don't know what its childhood trauma is, but I assure you it does this for no apparent reason. Of course the line isn't implying there's no reason, just no apparent reason; a reason indiscernible to a parent. The reason is boldly there right on its face. 

I suppose reading about the phenomena from the "other side" point of view makes me feel the slightest bit of sympathy towards my own mother, but not really. Just the slightest bit. More like "OK there's another side, but I don't really care". Furthermore, I haven't really ghosted my mother, per se. Never when I had a phone did I have a blanket policy of not answering when she called, that's too rude even for me. I had a selective policy of not answering.

It just so happened by total coincidence that a few months after my father died in late 2016, Taiwan discontinued 2G phone service and I simply had no reason or desire to upgrade to 4G, ergo no more phone communication with or phone anything for me. I don't know whether my father's dying had anything to do with my abandoning phone services, I rarely if ever talked to him on the phone. Nevertheless it's possible if not probable, such are the complications of parent-child relations. I consider my parents a single entity and his presence/absence certainly must have had some influence/impact.

Instead she eventually took to sending emails. This part is too fuzzy and convoluted to go into, but email communication between us was just never going to happen. My parents never established that sort of relationship between us and it was just too awkward to react to emails in any other way than to skim in case of anything important and immediately delete them. If something she sent required some direct response, I'd respond with the absolute minimum of what needed to be said. 

It's a reap what you sow thing. We simply effectively have no history of written communication, and she simply doesn't have the English skills for it. I already dumb down my speaking for her, but I wouldn't extend that to writing where I can't get immediate feedback on how much she's not understanding. And when conversations can become infuriating simply by merely brushing a taboo subject (i.e., my life) or questioning what is not in her realm or rights to question (i.e., asking "why?" in response to anything), why prolong them by carrying them out in writing? I may be self-destructive but I'm not masochistic.

This all is perhaps an example of what I meant about "psychological defect or disorder" imputed to the "specific perspective of either parent or child". This is old news and hardly a dear topic, yet I still get sucked into it and go a little crazy just from someone blogging about it as something new to my ears. 

It's an age-old waltz, a futile game of guilt and blame. I purportedly don't feel any guilt regarding my role, but here I am feeling like explaining myself as if I have something to convince. I tell myself I don't blame my parents and would prefer to not carry that karma into future lifetimes, but I obviously haven't released all attachment to the issues. I'm hoping to release the karma partly through intent and reminding myself not to blame anyone for anything, but I probably could do more to manifest it in this present lifetime (i.e., stop carrying it around like a stone by blogging about it). 

Likewise, I don't expect my parents to feel guilty about anything and I have no evidence that they do aside from being unsuccessful in making me become a doctor or lawyer. Whether they blame me for anything is not my business and wouldn't elicit any reaction in me anyway. I don't know what my mother would think about this thing called "parental estrangement", whether she'd feel validated or disassociate from it since it has any relationship with the mental health field. She of course is the model of perfect normalcy for whom the suggestion of therapy is a deep insult. There I go again. And I'm not about to solve or resolve anything for myself or anyone else by writing about it so . . . better to stop while I'm behind.

WordsCharactersReading time

WordsCharactersReading time

I've been re-reading "John's 'WTF? I've got cancer?' Blog" for a second time through. My methodology this time (instead of reading by month) was to start at the first entry and then click and read individual posts in sequence, and when I stop reading I'd bookmark the next entry for where to start the next time. His Blogger template is one where links change color after they're clicked, making it easy to know where I'd left off in the archives/entries list on the right. 

The first time I read the blog, it was a first impression thing and I think I made observations that probably don't hold up. Maybe I was nit-picking critical and making unfounded assessments that I'm not feeling this time (except the lack of editing, especially when he writes something had been edited). But if I was unfairly judgy it was probably because of an observation I did make before, which is that a lot of what I read in his personality resonated as being a lot like me. He was hitting too close to home. John, in some aspects, was me. And that bugged me (guess I'm not unique).

I think I made the unfair observation before that maybe he wasn't all that popular or likeable? He got a cat that avoided him far longer than the time it usually takes an adopted pet to adapt (kitty don't like you, holmes*). If I did make any such assessment, that is truly cringe-worthy since I'm very much at the bottom of any barrel of likeability. I'm in no one's consideration to even contact which I think is a fair measure of whether people like you or not.  

* My theory is that animals and babies don't lie. If they don't like you, i.e., you're unlikeable, they'll let you know. They can sense your dark clouds. That's why I stay away from people's pets and babies lest they call out and confirm my unlikeability. The closest I have is a robot vacuum cleaner that hates my guts and never goes where I want it to go or it comes right at me when I'm not looking, the fucker.

It's nice to read it for what it is without being judgy and I'm getting more nuances this time, recognizing when he's covering up freaking out or melting down, and he doesn't always try to cover it up. I probably got how funny he could be as his sense of humor is similar to mine (I'd be surprised if I didn't mention that before), and I still appreciate it. 

More prominent in my reading is the sense that I'm reading the thoughts of someone who is doomed. His uncertainty as to when and moments of hope are profound in light of the terminal diagnosis with a fairly absolute cap on how long he can be expected to live in the best of scenarios. But when hope peeked through, he jumped on the hope. He seemed to be a pessimistic skeptic, but willing to latch onto unlikely hope when it happened to manifest. He wanted to live. 

And he continued to live as much as possible despite being doomed and despite the misery of treatment. He continued to travel and worked on a bucket list. He still engaged with people and worked on projects like fixing up his condo when he could've just said screw this, what's the point? 

Actually it seems that he was cherry-picking his treatment to minimize the misery, even if that meant the treatment was less effectual (advantage: cancer). And even though he declined treatment that would be debilitating or would be so miserable that he couldn't enjoy what little life was left for him to enjoy . . . what he describes still seems pretty miserable to me. It was a very fine line he was delineating. I wouldn't be willing to go through even what he went through. 

I wonder if there are people who wouldn't be willing to go through even what I'm going through. People for whom my life and issues might be purely mental health issues and wouldn't suffer the idiotic, flimsy mind games I play with myself to keep living. They might have taken life more seriously than I do and ended this kind of miserable life long ago as I should have, except . . . I want to live. Don't get me wrong, I also do want to die, I view it as a great adventure that awaits, as moving on. I would even say I'm looking forward to it. But I'm still here, so logically, if not obviously, I want to live; my ego-self is still attached to my life despite how illusory and fleeting I know it is. My life isn't miserable, it's profound! (my god, did he really just say that?😧😒😲)

I also view my life as doomed since I still haven't gone to the bank to try adding funds and still don't plan to. I haven't panicked yet despite seeing the finite and dwindling amount of money I physically have left (actually less than I thought since the remainder is US$ that I have to convert and it just so happens that the NT$ is currently at record strength against the US$, so compared to any other time in history I'm getting the least amount of NT for every dollar I convert. Coincidence?! . . . I think not). However, realizing viscerally what it means I do sometimes feel my gut tighten and a dark cloud in my head and at least briefly question my constitution. Actually I think the amount of time I have left is comparable to the time John had left after totally giving up on treatment. 

I'm not projecting anything as definite. I obviously don't know what I might end up doing. As I've said, I just don't know myself that well. The evidence of my life is that I'll try to continue on, but I've always had the money to continue on. This is the first time the money is really coming to an end. This is looming. It's dire, but it's also great. It's by design, mind you; this is exactly how it was supposed to happen if I didn't end my life in the ideal way, without external pressure. 

Doomed, John slogged on until he couldn't. What else is he supposed to do? Same here, just no travel on my agenda. Forget riding a bike around the island. Not even revisiting old haunts and places I've been to in the Taipei area that surely may have changed. I hear they've started construction on a bridge across the mouth of the Danshui River, an incredible project that I would have thought unthinkable. That's a bridge I'll never cross. I have no bucket list. Suicide is my bucket list. No adopting a cat, I'm allergic anyway. Daily cat YouTube videos, though. 

All I have to do is not go to the bank. It's that simple. I don't need to do something, I just need to not do something. I'm expert at not doing something. Don't transfer anymore money from the States and face the fact that all I have left is all there is. It's a little bit like John's WTF I've Got Cancer? blog when he decided to stop chemo. He had Stage IV terminal colon cancer so he accepted statistically that he was going to die. Chemo just gave him increments of extra time to live, but he was never willing to sacrifice quality of life (subjective and fluidly assessed) to live longer. And it was when he decided dealing with the U.S. health care-pharmaceutical juggernaut was too complicated, farcical and frustrating, and that the emotional, mental effect on his quality of life was intolerable, he said 'fuck it', no more chemo. Even when the drugs came through, he was resolved to not take them. Fuck it. He was done with all that.

I think I've reached that level of resignation where it is no longer worth it to keep trying to get injections into my bank account that allow me to live a little longer, just to maintain . . . *this* (you have to imagine me spreading my hands in sarcastic presentation of my studio apartment that represents all my shattered hopes and, um, dreams). Going to the bank and dealing with the joyless and permanently cranky workers in the foreign exchange was always unpleasant. I'm sure not a single one of them listens to show tunes. It was also personally humiliating since it's not my money, I'm just mooching, and I'm constantly bitching and moaning about my worthless life when suicide is my affirmative goal. Even I can't sympathize with myself!

I should now consider the current remaining reserve funds definitely finite. We have loomage. Mind you, I haven't crossed the point of know return yet, meaning if I went to the bank today I wouldn't run out of reserves before the expected 2-4 months for funds to go through. So I'm still just spouting theory. But the more I just don't do anything, it will become reality. All I have to do is not do anything. Don't even think, even though thinking about it does remind me of the miserable experience of going to the bank and how I'd rather not. 

And remember (me, myself) I don't even want to be here anymore, I don't like being me, and any moment I focus on during the day just reminds me how worthless and undesirable every bit of this is (in a non-negative, not-depressing paradigm, believe it or not). Really the only thing I'm attached to is the habit. The habit of being me, of existence. The habit of being attached, the habit that resets every day just to go around and do it again; every day's little annoyances of things not going quite how I want, fixing the bits that I can and bits where they turn out fine, then shower, wash the shot glass, brush-a da teeth, lights out and reset. It's great! Just not my aspiration.

Oh yeah, and the alcoholism. Nothing going right there anytime soon. Or ever at all. You know what? I'ma take issue with alcoholism. I look up alcoholism and read up on it and I really don't fall under the definition of alcoholic. I only accede to the label to avoid being accused of being in denial. But no one's accusing me of anything, no one's even here, so I opine for the record that I wasn't really alcoholic.

Heavy drinker? That's harder to dismiss. I ration a third of a bottle of liquor per day, plus limited dipping into reserve bottles which also happens every day after the third runs out, usually the next morning. I look at a third of a bottle and it just doesn't look like much. But then I asked someone if he thought it was a lot, and for him he said that was a LOT. Mind you, I don't know about now but he was a pothead when I knew him, as much as a Ph.D.-former-NASA-employee astrophysicist can be a pothead. He now sells kalimbas for a living and the Grateful Dead is his favorite band of all time as much as Genesis is mine (he only quit NASA because they shut down their Socorro, NM, field station and he didn't want to relocate to D.C. to stay with the agency). I don't think he was a drinker, but he wasn't substance-free.

I'll settle for heavy drinker. I drink to detriment in that I can't deny ill health effects of alcohol consumption. I'm pretty sure my engorged gut is alcohol-related ascites without going to doctor and facing a bevy of tests saying that's probably so. And I'll attribute my gastrointestinal issues to alcohol, too. Alcohol wreaks havoc on the liver and the liver provides bile to the intestines to help with digestion, so if my liver function is presumably being compromised, then it's not a stretch to think that the gastrointestinal issues are alcohol related, even without an examination and a bevy of tests to probably tell me the obvious. 

I'm trying to not get paralyzed, confused and directionless by the discord in my psychology. It's annoying. For the past few months I've been letting myself get too wrapped up in worldly affairs, letting them get to my head and my ego, when ultimately those things are of the nature of "none of my business".

The root of the mess in the U.S. is obvious, so much of it could've been prevented or managed by strong, clear leadership. There's no use trying to sum it up beyond that or analyze it or even express anything about it. No one cares. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and thinks everyone else's stinks. There's a lot of suffering and it would be good to be compassionate about it, but there's also a lot of stupidity which makes compassion a challenge. And it's none of my business.

On this side of the world we have the China evil. There's too much to say about that so I won't even bother. I've been saying too much in YouTube comments, which I know is a stupid thing in itself to do, but fortunately nothing I've said has gotten any response so hopefully none of it was read. I only posted analysis supporting or supplementing something specific in the video where most comments are the typical and predictable rhetoric and vitriol against the CCP, which is fine and good in showing how much support there is against them. Still, none of my business.

But posting comments on YouTube is stupid and I stopped, mostly because I realized whatever I have to say is coming from a place of Big Ego. Is what I have to say sooo important? Stop. Actually I've been doing an affirmative anti-ego practice of drafting comments if the compulsion arises and then deleting them after asking if it's something that really needs to be said (almost never). The Big Ego makes me think I have something to express, but then I slap it down and that time I spent was wasted; the price of being tempted by Big Ego. That is my business!

As offensive an affront as China's CCP has unleashed upon the world amid the pandemic they themselves started, their domestic situation has been worse! Relentless rainfall and massive flooding, droughts and locusts (read: Biblical) wiping out crops, threats of a dam collapsing that could kill millions, grain stores rotting and the threat of famine, skies in Beijing turning dark as night in the middle of the afternoon, snow in June, large coronavirus-shaped hail falling, dogs and cats mating, not to mention the political arena of reports of concentration camps to wipe out the Muslim Uighur population in northwest China and reports of live organ harvesting finally reaching the west and being accepted as credible, internal power struggles and rampant corruption in the Communist Party . . . I'm telling you, this is what you're missing if you're not following the China YouTube channels* and I'm hardly scratching the surface!

But just the natural disasters besetting China, some people mentioning the Mandate of Heaven being lost (a Chinese history thing), others claiming God is angry at China or that the apocalypse is nigh. But really, it is hard not to view the natural disasters happening all at once in China as not being supernatural. If there is supernatural attribution, I would imagine it not being God, but decades of Tibetan lamas who were tortured and murdered in Chinese prisons. High-level lamas who "decided" to delay reincarnating, and remain in the bardo in-between states to try to enact change on earthly realms. That can't be considered lightly. I imagine it would be extremely difficult for the spiritual realm to directly affect the earthly realm. The spiritual realm is energy, the earthly realm matter. We already know how difficult it is to convert matter into energy (E=mc²) but we can do it. Energy to matter? It would involve massive amounts of energy for even small effects, but I play with the idea that's what the lamas have been trying to do for decades (in human time frames), trying to concentrate energy to have physical manifestation in the world in the form of unleashing natural catastrophe upon China. It doesn't violate vows of compassion because it recognizes the need for extreme suffering by ordinary Chinese people for there to be change. It's not revenge or anger, but recognition of the need for suffering towards a compassionate goal. My mention of physics is a joke, not even a "stranger things have happened" consideration. Just an analogy of an idea.

Ultimately for me personally, these are all earthly, worldly matters that fall completely in the sphere of "none of my business".

* China Uncensored (sarcastic and snarky but serious) Hearsay that companion channel is pro-Trump.
NTD - China in Focus (the most mainstream-style news) Turned into a pro-Trump channel at elections, i.e., unable to maintain objective reporting.

Crossroads with Joshua Phillipps (good analysis into what's going on with certain news stories) Realized it was an egregious and shameless pro-Trump channel when he defended Trump as "not a racist" and that he was merely taken out of context.
China Observer - Vision Times (good analysis and including historical context) Nope, pro-Trump/conspiracy theories

WION (India-based international news currently covering a lot about China because of the China threat)

On one hand, I play with the possibility that elements in my two previous posts are causal and related. I wrote about something I "shouldn't have" because I don't have a guru and have no idea what I'm talking about, and that could have led to repercussions. Obviously, this is speculation about phenomena not on this physical plane of existence, which would just be plain silly; albeit arguably not too far removed from psychosomatic reactions and phenomena. It's the difference between psychology affecting physical reality vs. spirituality affecting physical reality. We've started to accept the power of psychology on reality; spirituality not quite yet but perhaps in the future when understanding or assumptions are different.

On the other hand, I remind myself that the dharma is fundamentally benign and non-judgmental. Whatever I'm reading into physical reality is my own interpretation and creation and a reflection of my own (spiritual) psychology. There may easily be no actual infractions or repercussions except as tools in furtherance of the primary dharma aim, which is to cut through delusions. The potential problem is attaching to the tools and not realizing they are delusions anew.

There are stories in Vajrayana lore of dakinis or deities appearing to practitioners and scolding them for "doing it wrong" and correcting errors in practice or rituals. They may be just stories to express something about the teachings. To put it in perspective, some hypothetical storyteller or dharma raconteur could look at what I've experienced and subjectively reported in blog and be inspired to re-work it into a story about how so-and-so practitioner arrogantly created bogus meditations without a guru thinking they were methods of cutting through delusion, so some dakini or deity decided to send a warning affliction to . . . whatever; do whatever for whatever purpose. The aim of the teaching would dictate how the story is told. And who knows?, maybe the actual stories that were the sources for the lore were quite mundane. And yet it may still be taught that on other planes or aspects of existence, they are to be taken literally. It might not be either-or how the stories were created and passed down, or even how they're intended to be taught or understood.

From what I've read it appears that a fundamental flaw in my practice is that I don't have a guru, a guide, but that's an intuitive decision I've made for myself. In this lifetime I don't want a teacher, I don't want to look for a teacher, I don't think I could form a relationship with a teacher. Whatever pitfalls I encounter by going it alone I'm willing to accept as part of my path experience. And the universe goes, "Well, OK then". And the fundamental flaw is still there, but also isn't. If that's the decision I made, I shouldn't worry too much about it. I read warnings about dangers, pitfalls, spiritual damage and harm to karma on a subtle level that's hard to repair. But I don't think that's too different from the analogous things on a physical reality level – the things we do in the course of our lives that are harmful on all sorts of levels.

Also from what I've read, intent is of paramount importance in practice. If that's the case (and I have to take it with a grain of salt) I'm good with where I am with intent, acknowledging I still have faults and failings and am no where near perfect in that regard. The part where I have to add seasoning is that I once had an argument in college with a dear friend, Diem, a Vietnamese Buddhist (I wasn't calling myself Buddhist at the time, but the language Buddhism used spoke most clearly to me), over the primacy of intent. She said intent was all that matters, if your intentions are good then you are doing good. That is echoed in some of my recent readings. But for me, I thought that was naive and argued that consequence is also important, if not more important. If you do something with good intentions but fail to consider the consequence and that leads to bad results, you can't say what you did was a good act (that would be delusion). It's an old argument of nuance that was resolved by adding wisdom to intent. Good intent isn't blind, just allowing for feeling good about oneself, but includes and requires wisdom and foresight.

As for why the pain in my lower back, which I expected to go away after 2-3 days, has continued to linger is still a mystery. Is it psychosomatic? Spiritsomatic? At all related? Age related? Am I still missing something I should have learned? That probably goes without saying. The pain certainly has decreased and I'm not impeded in most things. I still can't sneeze, believe it or not. Actually, in the past sneezing has occasionally triggered the pain. My best guess is that sneezing requires healthy lower back muscles, and the way mine are now, whenever I start or want to sneeze my lower back goes, "Nope, not gonna happen" and the sneeze dissipates unrequited, disappointed, unsatisfied *sigh*. Maybe a good thing these days since if you sneeze or cough in public, people look at you to see if you look sick and might have the Xi Jinping Wuhan Panda virus.

Interesting. There is a topic of personal belief I have about Vajrayana practice, a theory actually, which is that this sort of practice, in my case merely inspired by Vajrayana but still applies, requires or involves a heightened sense of responsibility, levity or vigilance; what I've perhaps suggested as the dangers of not having the guidance and security of a guru or teacher. 

It's not a fully formed theory and I had no idea how to approach it. Basically, any sort of practice even hinting or striving for the Vajrayana level is not a laissez-faire spirituality. Personal doubt must remain high and real repercussions should be expected in case of infractions or violations. In the abstract, any idea of disrespect towards the dakini, or feminine principle, or what any human woman potentially represents, is a no-no. Just don't do it or catch yourself and stop. Obviously that's a less of an issue for female practitioners, albeit with qualifications. It's just an example.

Slightly less abstract would be something like losing one's temper. Any approach to Vajrayana practice assumes a certain level of self-control developed through ordinary mindfulness practice supported by daily sitting. Losing one's temper is not just getting angry, which is part of human experience even in Vajrayana practitioners, but it's negative energy unleashed and lashing out, getting out of control. It doesn't have to be directed at or witnessed by another person. It could happen in oneself even alone and there theoretically can be damage done and repercussions, possibly in the form of health problems or instant negative karma that brings about negative, harmful views, perceptions or even actual incidences that might not seem related, but are. Of course, there's the argument that losing one's temper does just as much damage in a non-practitioner, but there's a higher degree of awareness and responsibility of an infraction in a practitioner.

I wasn't sure about publishing my previous post. There seemed to be a risk in exposing or describing aspects of my not-Vajrayana, Vajrayana-inspired practice that I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Then promptly after posting that, I went into an unidentifiable, physiologically ambiguous physical decline (if I had more contact with people I might have suspected the Xi Jinping Wuhan Panda virus that is all the rage in global epidemic circles) that culminated in debilitating lower back pain. 

I'm no stranger to this lower back pain, it's chronic and I've experienced it sporadically for many years. But usually I feel it triggered, I feel the twinge and know right it away it ain't good and spend the next day or so with a heating pad, Advil and Salonpas menthol patches which I always have in my apartment. I'm dealing with this the same way. I'm expecting it to go away as usual, but this does feel a little different, particularly debilitated, like it has something to do with that post. Energy repercussions. A teaching maybe. 

I mentioned physical discomfort and strife and mental struggles like they were big deals, and there's no problem with that from a personal perception view. We feel what we do and if we feel it as shit, we describe it as shit. But this lower back pain puts those physical problems in the realm of annoyances and inconvenience. They weren't "I can't get up", "I can't go out" constant, excruciating pain problems. And this kind of physical pain overrides and overwhelms any perceived "mental struggles or challenges". I'm not dealing with those when I'm mentally struggling to even sit up or lie down or change clothes or put on shoes!

And debilitating lower back pain?! What if the mandala world decides to send me cancer, or a car to hit me and send me to the hospital or a major earthquake? "I can't get up/I can't get out constant, excruciating pain"? Something can always come up and put that into perspective as nothing, preferable even. But this is my Vajrayana-inspired practice, so yes, it becomes a teaching. I don't mean this as a gloom and doom, it-can-always-be-worse-and-eventually-will-be post, but more of a mindfulness, preparedness post, because the opposite side of the same coin encourages positive mindsets and their power and appreciation for things as they are.

So yea, I've been slipping my 10+ year-old 8 megapixel (huge when I bought it) Canon point-and-shoot into a backpack pocket and taking pics when fancy strikes. I'm not doing anything by doing it. It might be something like a last hurrah, similar with music and playing bass along with K-pop tunes for ear-training less than 2 hours everyday for the past two years, revisiting it as something I "used to do" while letting go any idea of it as a part of any identity. It's just something familiar and not a function of ego and as soon as it's not fun, I'll stop.

I've also found myself perusing photography books in the libraries and bookstores. Not sure why, perhaps for inspiration for what I'm not doing, but also investigating what it was and why it once was something I did. I discovered several photographers that I'd never heard of, despite them being apparently famous. I'm also fascinated by the text and commentary accompanying these books as they look into the psychology and character traits of the photographers, suggested by their photographs. Stuff that I recognize in myself or not, stuff that I agree with or not, but agreement or not it's all out there and valid or not. Quite frustrating, actually.

I guess the bottom line for me is that it's just personal, like this blog, and not for anyone else. It's just what I'm finding out about myself. 

Ansel Adams writes in his autobiography: Photographers who frequently travel photograph with less than full knowledge of their subjects. I believe one must live in a region for a considerable time and absorb its character and spirit before the work can truly reflect the experience of the place. In my own case, hasty visits have usually resulted in inconsequential images; perhaps an occasional flash of insight, or a remembrance of an earlier place or time helped in visualizing a photograph. 

Me, I've lived in Taiwan for over 13 years and I haven't absorbed the character and spirit of this place. I lived in San Francisco 11 years and didn't absorb the character and spirit of the place. So what is he talking about? That was it for him, that was important to him. Me, not so much. I'm a permanent outsider and I shoot as an outsider, never absorbing the character and spirit of a place. I actually identify more as an exile.

Or not (Josef Koudelka became an exile from his native Czechoslovakia a few years after the Soviet invasion in 1968):

"I didn't want to have what people call a 'home.' I didn't want to have the desire to return somewhere, I needed to know that nothing was waiting for me anywhere, that the place I was supposed to be was where I was at the moment. I once met a great guy, a Yugoslavian gypsy. We became friends. One day he told me, 'Josef, you've traveled for so many years, never stopped; you've seen lots of people and countries, all sorts of places. Tell me which place is the best. Where would you like to stay?' I didn't say anything. Just as I was about to leave, he asked again. I didn't want to answer him, but he kept on insisting. Finally he said, 'You know, I've figured it out! You don't want to answer because you still haven't found the best place. You travel because you're still trying to find it.' 'My friend,' I replied, 'you've got it all wrong. I'm desperately trying not to find that place.'"

If I posit myself as an urban hermit, I pale to his example. I'm stuck in neurotic, useless routines and my "best place" is my apartment where I'm meaninglessly complacently doing nothing for nobody, and which becomes a prison or a deeply egoistic sanctuary. There's no hint that he'd read even a word of Buddhism or Zen or enlightenment, but he was kinda living that path. Of course I don't know what drove him, but for my purposes I wish I could be like that.

Garry Winogrand was similarly an enigma:

. . . preferring to spend another day shooting rather than processing his film or editing his pictures. No prints existed of many of the best photographs he made in his first decades, and he left behind over sixty-five hundred rolls of film from his later years that he had never processed, or that he processed but never proofed, and whose content he had therefore never seen . . . and though his negatives and proof sheets . . . were numbered, there was no indication where one year ended and another began or where in the world Winogrand was when he exposed any given roll of film. 

That leaves me aghast 😱, as I'm the complete opposite with all my proof sheets and files meticulously numbered and dated. Is that a reflection of ego? Was his M.O. a function of non-ego? Not necessarily, probably not, who knows? But he was a photographer who didn't seem particularly interested in the photo. Was it that he was more interested in the process rather than the result? Was it not even that but the energy of being on the city streets and the flow of humanity and snapping photos in some ineffable effort to capture or see things that are otherwise fleeting and unnoticed?

To be sure, I couldn't shoot like he did, getting in close and shooting without permission or respect even. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Hong Kong/Londoner (his accent sounds too British to be Hong Kong British English) named Kai who was shooting like that in Taiwan and it just seemed rude and disrespectful, often confirmed by the videoed subjects' alarmed reactions. I'm not criticizing it, and the photos themselves were quite good. They did what they did to get their shots, I'm just unwilling to go there and would therefore never get those kinds of shots. 

Back to Winogrand, Ansel Adams, an early advocate (and perhaps paragon) of photography as fine art, would never entrust someone else to print his negatives without meticulous instruction on how he wanted it. That's another school of thought, where the artist's vision is emphasized. There's no art in shooting and then leaving printing or editing, which to Adams is interpretation, to someone else. There's also nothing wrong with that, either. Frustrating, see.

I found a Pablo Ortiz Monasterio monograph in the library that I think is a limited edition. It was printed on a specially selected Japanese paper that Ansel Adams would've appreciated. Adams was also concerned about reproductions of his work and that they reflected the quality of his original prints as much as possible.

Needless to say, all of these monographs are incredible and thought-provoking. There is a ridiculously broad range of even just street photography that is legitimate and valid, despite conflicts and contradictions and arguments for or against whatever. Like for me, context is important. Photography involves a mix of abstraction and reality. The image is actually quite abstract, which is why I always flipped black & white images unless there were words prominent that would call attention to that fact. There's the confinement of the frame, there's the loss of the depth dimension, there's the loss of color, and flipping the image was one more degree of abstracting the image; another way of saying what I saw didn't look like this at all. Context emphasizes the reality; this happened at an identifiable location, facing a certain direction with elements that were observable in the real world. Others may hate that and want to just appreciate the image on its own if it's worth it. It's like songwriters who never say what a song is about because once they do, that meaning is frozen and no one else can interpret it and give it meaning for themselves. Fair 'nuff, but out of all the descriptions, analyses and critiques of photos and photography, ain't nothin' gonna stop people shooting the way they do.

I'm under the description of photographers who try to be anonymous and discrete. Composition is important, but sometimes varying degrees of speed and spontaneity are necessary. If people are in the shot, their attention is not drawn to that fact. I'm not aggressive and in-your-face like Winogrand or that Hong Kong Kai guy. No doubt mine is a very common, pedestrian approach.

I finished reading that blog by the person who had terminal cancer, and unfortunately his final post, entitled "My Final Post", was not to report a miracle cure and that the cancer was gone and there was no more need to maintain the blog. I'm sure the hope he was hoping against was more than mine.

All that was done and dusted 3 years ago, and it was still sad when the end came and how. Actually no, it didn't matter how, just that the end came. There was a lot that was left out in his last days, I shouldn't wonder, but he would be forgiven if the pain he was in precluded blogging about it. It's not clear if the cancer killed him or if he "died with dignity", taking the killer drugs that under state law allowed him to end his life himself when the suffering became too great.

Ironically, he created what I think is a valuable document. One of his gripes early on when obsessively researching cancer after he was diagnosed (a quite common reaction), was that all of the testimony regarding treatment and drug therapies were by survivors. People testifying this or that was great or worked, but what about the people for whom those treatments didn't work? His blog now exists as a voice of someone who didn't survive, and even as his was stage 4 terminal cancer with little chance of long-term survival, he voices an experience of the various treatments he underwent, while clearly stating the kind of patient he was: a cancer specialist's nightmare, i.e., one who wasn't willing to sacrifice quality of life. He was willing to forego treatment, i.e., die sooner, if it meant day-to-day present moment pain was more manageable, rather than subject himself to the mercy (or lack thereof) of the medical/big pharma/insurance industry and their mess of a system with whatever treatment they conjure to live longer but in considerably more misery. What's worth what to whom is totally subjective and up to the individual.

And it should not be missed that the big turning point in his decision about continuing treatment, which was to not continue treatment, i.e., give up, i.e., fuckitall, was because of the mental frustrations dealing with the quixotic clown show (or goat rodeo, as he might call it but actually doesn't) of the health care industry and its administrative system (not the hands-on medical professionals trying to treat him).

My personal take from his experience is that I'm pretty confident I'm not fooling myself about my attitude towards death or dying. He would write things distinctly from the perspective of someone facing death, and I would recognize it as the reality-perspective I steep in. To him it was something new he was facing and realizing. It's my normal. Like from his normal, he would forewarn readers when he would be writing about death and dying, assuming it was unpleasant and depressing, but for me that was the stuff I wanted to know. It was my version of what a cancer patient starts researching obsessively once diagnosed. It's the distinction between someone living an ordinary life and suddenly coming to terms that this life must end, and having that as an acknowledged assumption from the start. Am I dying of anything? Not that I know of. Am I dying? We all are, honey.

Another take away from his blog is that personal blogs can endure! It's been almost three years since his last post and still I found his blog and read it and found it meaningful and worthy (even with its shortcomings). I don't remember how I found it. Sometimes after I do a web search I'll do the same search with "blog" added at the end. I think that's how I found his, but I forget the search term and haven't been able to re-create it. And anyway that technique of looking for blogs has become less effective as search engines, especially "evil is OK!" Google, gear and funnel results towards corporate, profitable or trending hits. Web searches are no longer democratic emphasizing the actual search terms (otherwise when you search "patagonia", for example, you'd get the place first, not the company. If someone created a successful company called "Suicide, Inc.", their website would probably end up superseding the topic), and it's almost impossible to find personal blogs worth reading; little voices who are just stating their experience and reality. It was hard enough even when Blogger had a "Next Blog" function that led to a random Blogger blog, but Google removed that citing "lack of use", ensuring absolute "non-use".

A possible good thing about that is that it's more safe to maintain a personal blog because the chances are low that someone they know will randomly find it. A lot of people I knew ended their blogs over concerns about what they were putting out and who might find it and possible unexpected and unpredictable consequences. I was never concerned about that because I never felt anyone would care about anything I put out.

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. 

There actually is a thread that runs through the last two posts. It doesn't tie them together, it's just there, hidden, noticeable only by me. The book I quoted, Dakini's Warm Breath, was a relatively recent purchase but I had seen it years ago in Eslite, a local chain of bookstores, when they carried a respectable selection of English language books. However, it was always shrinkwrapped so I couldn't sample it to see if it was any good. By the time I thought I might buy it anyway, it had disappeared from the shelves.

Part of how society has changed and passed me by and is no longer something familiar might be exemplified by changes in Eslite. I used to spend hours there. If bored, going there was always an option to pass time. It's different now; barely an afterthought as an option to pass time and more often than not passed as an option. For one, with only a mention of the decimation of its previously massive CD/DVD section, the English language religion and spirituality section has been severely trimmed down from what they had before. They used to have wall-sized bookshelves full, but now just a few shelves on a much smaller bookshelf. This applies to all of Taipei and life. What I'd be attracted to and familiar with isn't in demand anymore. What does exist now is boring to me.

Back to the book, perhaps it was strange that it reappeared on the shelves this year amid all the downsizing of shiny things that get my attention. I didn't know it before, but now I consider it an essential read for my learning and I'm going through it for the third time already. I wouldn't argue against the suggestion that it reappeared only when I was ready for it. When it reappeared, I didn't hesitate again, I bought it that day. My hesitation before was partly measured doubt about shelling out for a book I couldn't sample, but it may have also been partly intuition that I wasn't ready for it. After all, this time I still couldn't sample it and shelled out right away.

And at over US$30, it's not a cheap book, especially one with so many typos in it. I've probably mentioned before that a side effect of my prior job as a copy editor is that I, for most part, can't not see mistakes anymore. It's like a sub-conscious habit to look for them now. I don't think I ever noticed books having mistakes before, but now I often find at least one typo per book and it always makes my eyes roll (that's also probably a side-effect of copy editing). This book had 5 or 6 mistakes, 5 of them in a 30 page stretch, so it's possible that section was (not) edited by one person. My favorite mistake was "iconography" misspelled as "ironography". Someone really needs to develop a system of categorizing irony. 

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.

Nice these late autumn days in Taipei. There was a spell of cooler weather earlier with some rain but warmer again currently. I suppose this is the equivalent of Indian summer. Aboriginal summer. Last gasp of warm weather before however we get into winter, ease or plunge I forget.

Yesterday was so nice that after lunch I started wandering and meandering on my bike, thinking of all the possibilities where I could go just casually riding before heading back to my own neighborhood. I didn't get far. With each pedal, the prospect of going further became more unattractive. I've done this before. I know Taipei and there's nothing new to discover by going on; nothing interesting, nothing fascinating, only familiar nothing. Dead to me city.

It's been years and years that I've been doing nothing, never venturing beyond about a two mile radius of my neighborhood. There's been infrequent reason to go beyond that. I know any changes I notice will be changes of the same things. In a similar vein, I can jump on the MRT to some random station to see how things are different in that area and I'll end up feeling how pointless that was.

I used to get on my faithful Giant road bike and go on "rides", so long ago in the past that I can reference them as something I used to do. I would get out of Taipei and ride in the surrounding townships, in the mountains, in what used to be Taipei County. All of those towns and cities are now districts with their same names in one consolidated entity called New North City, literally translated, or New Taipei City otherwise. I explored as much as I wanted to and as much as I want to. There's nowhere I haven't been or want to revisit.

And retreading old ground, supposedly and theoretically this would all be different if there were someone else in my life that I might enjoy doing . . . things. Finding something new somehow becomes fun when it's with someone whose company is enjoyable. Even going somewhere familiar with someone is enjoyable because it's about the company. Even going somewhere familiar with the same person because it's about us going there this time. How charming.

But no, I get bored. Boredom is how I got to where I am now. Even enjoyable company will eventually become boring to me, and that makes it pointless. It's pointless to continually find new enjoyable company who I know will eventually bore me. That pursuit, knowing its pointlessness, would become an attachment to enjoyable company. I dislike that kind of pointless more than I like enjoyable company. The kind of pointless into which you have to put energy. I'm fine with the pointlessness of my life in general because I don't have to put much energy into it.

I do remember when Taipei wasn't boring, when there was always somewhere new to go and discover, whether by street bike in Taipei proper, road bike further afield, or MRT or bus along whichever lines they went. Early on, some of it was done with classmates or that Korean chick, but most of it was on my own. Then there was that visit by Sadie in 2013 where it was that enjoyable company thing.

Now I look at google maps and I'm not even curious about anywhere. I just look for food places in and around a two mile radius. Hell, when I first got here there was no google maps, I bought a paper map at a bookstore to decide where to explore. That's indicative of the changes, but the changes are more than that. The world and society has changed and moved on to become a place that isn't mine anymore and doesn't interest me.

I haven't kept up with changes. Mind you, I still don't have a so-called "smart phone". I put that in quotation marks, but for most people that would be like saying I don't have "lights" at home. What do you mean you don't have lights at home? (I don't have lights at home). What do you do for light at home? (I just don't need lights at home). You just sit in the dark? (Computer and TV screens provide all the light I need). I do have lights, but transpose that to a phone.

What do you mean you don't have a smartphone? How do you live? How do you breathe? How do you exist? Are you even here? In a few decades, that may not be hyperbole. And "smartphone" is a word, it's not spell checked as an error. That's how much the world is passing me by. I may not even be a qualified English editor anymore.

I imagine a virus that is only transmitted through staring at smart phone screens and which is time activated and then kills the user. There would be a mass die-off of humanity. I would survive. Who else? You? Would I be the only adult surrounded waist-high in children. Not even, as I read an article about how most kids have phones now. Me and homeless people shall inherit the earth. I haven't seen any homeless people with smartphones. Yet.

I digress. Whoa, do I digress. Well, never mind. I was just going on about how the world and society has changed and transformed and I didn't even notice nor care. Come to think of it, I totally saw it coming, too. And still don't care. It's not judgment, just description.

practice musing II: the guru, part one

I've been very mindful of the fact that I don't have a teacher, a guru, nor am I pursuing one, even though I've read many times that a teacher is considered absolutely necessary in Vajrayana. If you don't have a teacher, the path is fraught with dangers and uncertainty. These are things I accept as fact and would never go against and would parrot as being fundamental to the teachings. It's part of my self-doubt, fail-safe system against ego or any ego-driven "I don't need a guru" sensibility. It's part of the balance of my unorthodox path where I'm forging ahead on my own but won't let ego off the leash at the risk of megalomania or falling on the wrong side of delusions and dangers with which the path is fraught.

Still, I have no teacher nor am I pursuing one. I do recognize I'm solely relying on what is said in books about the necessity of a guru. It isn't something in my practical experience or intuition. I've never had the feeling that I'm stuck, I can't go on without a teacher, I need to find a teacher. Obviously I think I'm alright going about it alone for the time being and can still learn and progress; that I'm not doing too badly slogging it out on my own. I think it both has to be this way and is supposed to be this way. And this is my intuition. I think, to some degree feel, that with my current karma, my thinking and attitude, it would be fruitless to search for a teacher.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot. I'm sure there are tangible benefits of having a teacher. But on the other hand, I'm pretty confident and surprised about the things I'm getting without a teacher. There's a lot I get that I feel is karmic holdover from previous life practice; I get it because I've gotten it before. Even in the field of tantra and its focus on energies, I'm being extremely cautious and circumspect with the unorthodox practice I've developed, but I'm following intuition about something that is not intuitive. Intuitive would be taking the blue pill.

And with both tantra and Mahamudra, neither of which, despite my mentioning them, do I think I'm really practicing since I don't have a teacher, the inspirations are slow-coming, revealing themselves very gradually. These things have been years and years in the unfolding. Maybe the time makes up for the lack of guru. A guru might be able to tell I'm ripe for a practice and give proper instructions. Without a guru, I have to wait for inspiration and intuition, and still have to go through the process of figuring out a practice and doubting whether it is valid or not and developing safeguards to not overstep my ability or aptitude.

I daresay it's been a fascinating journey in itself without a guru. Again, not a point of pride or ego, just a lot of wow. Perhaps it would be even better with a guru, but that not being my current path, it's fine.

What about a worst case scenario whereby my guru were to suddenly appear and look at my practice and say it's completely wrong and I've totally lost the way? That's actually funny. I wouldn't contradict that assessment, but my path is still my path. If it's completely wrong and lost, that's part of my path. And if my guru were there to make such an assessment, then he or she is there to set me straight, no problem. Being told it's wrong is total fantasy. Unless, of course, it turns out that I'm the guru who suddenly appears and tells me my practice is completely wrong. Then it's not so funny. But still workable, I'd hope.

And I gather that's just Mahamudra right there. It's not striving for enlightenment nor cognitive over-analyzing, but looking around and realizing this is it, it's been right here all along. Confusion arising as wisdom. Wisdom arising as confusion maybe? But for me that's just scratching the surface, I'm just intellectually looking around and realizing this is it, which is different from actually experiencing it. That's what I've read. Not having experienced it, I can't personally attest to it. Then there are many more layers deep of the wisdom to unfold, even as confusion. Or even more confusing.

On the surface level, it's fine for it being even the music arising as wisdom. Listening to music has come to dominate my existence. It's totally superficial and ephemeral and meaningless, but it's still a dominant energy in my existence. If life is practice itself, then it's just practice whatever I'm doing. Even if it's something stupid as listening to music, I'm gonna suggest it's still beneficial as practice.

It's not lazy, passive listening to music for mere distraction or pleasure; turn it off and it's gone. It's focused engagement with the energies evoked and recognizing the reality in those emotions. Aural energy converted to psychic energy and manifesting as potent emotion. It doesn't disappear when it's turned off, but lingers as meditation, as reality but not permanent. If it's what makes up my existence, then it's not nothing. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing.

These are some positive spins on my practice. I know I can be accused of inventing practices and making things up as I go along based on dubious, unverifiable inspiration. That's definitely not ideal. What if everyone decided they could do that? Then I'd be a fool to do any different. Not good. I drop terms like Mahamudra and tantra just because they are what I come across while reading and they describe things I find inspiring, but I should be under no impression that's what I'm doing.

Notably lacking in my practice still are cultivating compassion, freedom and openness to the world and sacrifice. There are limits to practice when there is no human engagement and challenge. Not that I'm not working on them. Putting them down in words may make it seem like I don't have those things, but they're works in progress. As is the whole shebang.