mea culpa

I'm no longer watching those "China watch" YouTube news channels I mentioned in prior posts and I've unlinked them. Don't get me wrong, I steadfastly think China is the biggest threat to the U.S. and believe they consider themselves already at total war with us (in all ways but military because they know they currently couldn't win), and are using all means necessary to remove the U.S. from its position of global dominance in the coming decades and take that place themselves. 

China is not a friend. It is no partner. Friends and cooperative partners don't say the things that China has said to any country that challenged them since the pandemic began (threats, warnings, bluster). The Chinese Communist Party is a mix of organized crime and a terrorist organization and diplomatically somewhere between a hostile competitor and outright enemy and should not be engaged without metaphorical blades close at hand. Taiwan's literal motto towards China is "we sleep with our swords next to our pillows". Taiwan's advantage is we know China is the enemy and that they want to make us the next Hong Kong.

The reason I'm disavowing the China watch news sites is that during the U.S. election and afterwards, it turns out they are shamelessly pro-Trump and willing to use their news platforms to disseminate misinformation about voter fraud and that Trump won. That makes them no longer news, but right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda and not much different from Fox News or the CCP propaganda machine. They came down on one side of an opinion and stamped themselves as biased and no longer reliable as news sources.

The irony is that growing anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is bilateral with both Democrats and Republicans realizing the China threat is real, present and active, and that their infiltration efforts have been going on since the 90s after the west rolled over and played dead after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Australia and Europe are also just coming to this realization based on evidence and experience. By siding with Trump, these formerly-considered "news channels" are shooting themselves in the foot, becoming deluded conspiracy theory channels with limited credibility. If they can't report the facts as they are about the election and keep insisting on idiotic fringe rantings, then what should I believe about their reporting on China? It's about character and credibility, and they lost it. Is their reportage on China also idiotic fringe rantings that I accepted because it was what I wanted to hear, but not actual reality?

Further irony is that Trump is a much greater immediate danger to U.S. values and democracy (the China threat is further down the road). By supporting Trump (thinking his hardline stance against China furthers their own reasonable, supported-by-evidence message that the CCP is evil), they're in effect supporting undermining U.S. values and democracy, which is exactly what China would love! And it's probably no coincidence that I've noticed Trump's tactics and actions to have been very similar to what the CCP uses. Trump seems to take a hard line against China, but in reality he exhibits behavior that mirrors them, despotic and authoritarian, intolerant of dissent or disagreement, eliminating perceived enemies (including former "friends" he previously showered with effusive praise) with just an order. Xi Jinping made it possible for him to be leader for life, Trump has hinted his administration going beyond second or even third terms. His propaganda tactics of lying and continue lying until people believe those lies is chapter one in the CCP playbook (possibly taken from Stalin or Hitler).

To be clear and undeluded, I don't think a single person latched onto those YouTube channels because I shared them. I don't think a single person who didn't already know about the insidious nature of the CCP learned something new or became concerned. That's a good thing since it means I didn't spread pro-Trump, basically anti-American channels in that they're trying to subvert democracy. It also means I won't be getting China news to fan the flame against the CCP, but that just means I'm becoming more the average American. The average American would do themselves well by paying attention to any news that makes it to the mainstream about China and the CCP. It's something about which Americans should stay informed. Heck, the average American already missed the boat with ManBearPig climate change more than 20 years ago.

WordsCharactersReading time

Guitar god Eddie Van Halen died on October 6. And I just found out that the Van Halen brothers are essentially Asian American! What the fuck?!

How I didn't know Eddie and Alex are Asian American is pretty frickin' mind-blowing. Their father was Dutch and mother Indonesian. I don't know a single American with one white parent and one Asian parent who doesn't consider him or herself Asian American, although I'm sure they're out there. Maybe the Van Halen brothers?! Maybe the Van Halen brothers themselves kept quiet about their Indonesian heritage for whatever reason which is why I never knew about it. I knew they were Dutch and that Van Halen is a Dutch name, either from reading it in a magazine or hearing it from a classmate who read it in a magazine. Not a word about Indonesia and I remember a classmate wondering why Alex had "Chinese eyes" in a rare photo where he wasn't wearing sunglasses. Brother Eddie looked "normal" so that was the end of our junior high inquisition.

Furthermore, in the past few days it has come to my attention that the brothers had immigrated from the Netherlands at an old enough age to be passably fluent in Dutch (young enough to not have a Dutch accent), enough to give interviews in American-accented Dutch. They were at least bilingual!! (I haven't come across anything definitive indicating they didn't know any Indonesian from their mother, maybe they did but mum's the word on the Asianyay ingthay). 

I grew up in upper-middle class, white suburbia where racism definitely existed but wasn't horribly overt or physically violent as it was for the Van Halen brothers. We idiotically didn't listen to black music and that closed-mindedness extended to sexism as we stupidly didn't think girls could rock and ignored the obvious evidence that they could. It also made us Grade A assholes making fun of foreigners and thinking a death-metal band called Stormtroopers of Death with an album titled Speak English or Die was a hoot. What a bunch of fucking idiots we were and represented. I'm not proud of it. I did my best to fit in and in return they did their best to ignore that I looked like the people we were making fun of (no one turned and looked to me at that Alex Van Halen "Chinese eyes" remark). 

If we had seen videos of our rock heroes speaking a foreign language, I bet our narrow little minds would've been blown! They're foreigners! But not nearly as much as if we had learned they were Asian American. I don't know what I would've done with that information. I probably would've distanced myself from it and dismissed it. At that age and in that place, there was no Asian pride, no "Asian American", and Indonesia wasn't even really part of Asia anyway, at least not the important part. There wasn't even awareness of racism; I didn't learn about it until college and only then did I realize it was there all along like rigpa. 

I'm very proud that Van Halen was the first ever rock concert I went to, still in junior high. Diver Down Tour, Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands, NJ. I remember being in the stands and not believing I was in the same space as Eddie Van Halen! He was right there before my eyes with his trademark 500-watt smile doing his bouncy multiple scissor kick jumps on the raised platform stage left and David Lee Roth with his acrobatic, martial arts kicks and infamous ass-less chaps. 

My first rock concert and there were Asian Americans in the band! In later pictures, his Indonesian heritage is facially more apparent and he could pass for an elder Southeast Asian gentleman. Alex can stop wearing sunglasses all the time.

If I knew they were Asian American, I probably would've made more of an effort to remain a fan after the first white guy David Lee Roth was fired. My mind would've been blown 30 years earlier as my Asian American awareness dawned and remembered Eddie and Alex were "half Indonesian". I had trouble getting into their post-DLR sound and didn't feel like chasing it. Even now in my iTunes collection I have all six David Lee Roth-fronted studio albums, but only two songs with Sammy Hagar. And then after the second white guy Sammy Hagar was fired/quit, the name Van Halen became more associated with ridiculous, ego-driven drama and I didn't need that kind of instability in my life. 

I couldn't say I was a fan anymore when the third (fourth?) white guy Michael Anthony was fired (white people being fired by Asians is a comic thrill you only understand if you laughed when Apu gleefully hired Homer to work at the Quik-E-Mart), but I couldn't imagine any legitimate reason for the bassist to be fired. They could spin the revolving door with singers, but Michael Anthony's solid playing and stratospheric backing vocal was the third key to the Van Halen sound. The only reason that makes sense is nepotism, Eddie wanted his son Wolfgang in the band and that's not a legitimate reason. May as well change the band's name to "Eddie & the Family Van Halen" (that would've taken balls). I dunno, maybe Wolfgang was too young at that point for this theory to hold, but when he was finally recruited, it didn't look good. At least Eddie may have been clearing the way for Wolfgang.

I actually have Van Halen's entire catalog of studio albums on my computer (even the reviled Van Halen III), unscrupulously downloaded many moons ago from some unscrupulous Brazilian or Russian site that had them all just in case I might someday be interested. They aren't loaded onto my iTunes and so I have to specifically choose to listen to them like in the old days of LPs and CDs, which is rare for me to do and most of it has gone unlistened to until recently. I have to admit the music is consistently good, Eddie and Alex kick ass no matter who is singing. But aside from them I'm still not thrilled by the writing or what's on top (nothing against Sammy, I wish I liked it more).

One of the greatest, game-changing electric guitarists of all time was black. The other was . . . Asian American?! I'm still trying to get my head around that one. I was born too late to appreciate Jimi Hendrix, but then got it when I realized what he did to electric guitar in the 60s is analogous to what Eddie Van Halen did in the 70s. I just couldn't hear it because I didn't experience it and everyone was standing on Jimi's shoulders by the time I came of age. They were like a two-stage rocket with Jimi taking off into space and then Eddie blasting into hyperdrive 10 years later.

14 min. clip from the Mean Street Tour supporting Fair Warning, a year and a half before I saw them. No ass-less chaps, but that's quite a bulge Diamond Dave is sporting.

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)

I was somewhat shocked when I saw the "L"-word in the headline of a local news story, some doctor calling for a total lockdown based on his assessment of how easily Taiwan's medical facilities could be overwhelmed if the CCP virus starts spreading here. My estimate is that's probably 75% irresponsible, alarmist bullshit and 25% legitimate warning for Taiwan to keep an eye on its resources and preparedness and beefing up our weaknesses. Actually, I think we're currently still in a comfortable enough position where I think we would be able to set up a task force just to do that as a smart thing to do (Come on, President Tsai, get with the program*) (edit: The government announced on April 7 that they were doing pretty much exactly this).

Calling for a lockdown is akin to calling for an economic shutdown, and looking at places where lockdowns have been warranted and implemented, their economies are being devastated. True, epidemics spread when people move, but when people stop moving, so does business. I haven't heard of any assessment of Taiwan's economic ability to handle an economic shutdown, but the prospects can't be good. Lockdowns are a last-ditch, desperate measure to fight a manifest threat. They shouldn't be used as a preventative measure when they aren't absolutely necessary. Bills need to be paid, money still needs to be moved, products still need to be consumed.

Currently, business is still going on in Taiwan, albeit not-quite-as-usual. People themselves seem to be refraining from "moving" if they don't need to and I've observed generally less people and traffic about. But people and cars are about and buses still running. Streets, parks and playgrounds aren't deserted. I still think about 60% of people wear masks out in public, and my personal opinion is that fewer actually need to, and "social distancing" isn't a mandate but only practiced when noticed and convenient. Higher mask-wearing percentages are observable on public transportation, work places and service businesses.

The mayors of Taipei and surrounding New Taipei City have both stated that lockdown procedures are coordinated and in place if ordered, although I imagine Taipei's mayor is getting excited in the groinal area at the thought of a lockdown as he's an authoritarian, control-freak moron. It would be the ultimate hard-wank for him to put Taipei on lockdown, but it's good, I suppose, that they have a plan. 

Me? I . . . actually don't know what a lockdown means or how I would be affected. I might be totally screwed. My main concerns are, of course, food and alcohol; being able to get out for food and alcohol and stores being open to get food and alcohol. Hopefully, it would be like the U.S. where essential businesses (including liquor stores!) would be allowed to stay open and I think convenient stores in Taiwan qualify. Hypermarts may qualify, which would be good. OR lockdown can mean more sitting meditation and less of this neurotic scanning the news for updates how things are going. Come to think of it, I should welcome an alcohol supply cutoff. 

* Just a joke. President Tsai's administration has been getting stunningly high approval ratings in regard to handling the CCP virus and mainland China. They didn't always get high ratings as it suffered some hiccups early on, most notably from a progressive, worker-friendly change to labor laws that didn't take into account the far-reaching effects that sent ripples of chaos and uncertainty down the supply chain. Some industries just don't work the way the law demanded, and many of the workers the law was supposed to protect were actually disadvantaged. There was a lot of backtracking (and face-palming) in the wake of that fiasco. 

Skimming the news feed these days is like watching the world burn while Taiwan is still a relatively safe haven where my daily routine has only slightly been inconvenienced. Taiwan has done a great job in slowing the spread of the CCP virus (Chinese Communist Party virus, i.e., the Winnie-the-Pooh* Wuhan Panda virus) and keeping the public safe and informed. It has been efficient and effective in implementing well-reasoned measures that has kept people calm and brought out civic-mindedness that by my measure is already at a pretty high level in society.

First off, Taiwan was extremely quick out of the gate at first hearing of a fast-spreading disease in Wuhan, China. Experts were sent to assess the situation and flights from Wuhan were immediately thermally screened for people with fever or signs of illness. That was being done by the end of December because the current Taiwan government is uniquely tuned into when the CCP is covering something up; whereas much of the world is willing to follow CCP propaganda (hopefully that will change now). At each point in escalation, Taiwan ramped up protective measures. Taiwan already had an emergency response system set up as a result of the SARS epidemic in 2003 which also started in China, and activated it giving us a centralized command post to specifically deal with it. Another unique feature about Taiwan is that the government was able to coordinate the immigration bureau and the national health system to identify who was returning to the country and using the health system. If they had come from China, and increasingly other hot spots, they were checked out.

Taiwan has also been impressive in identifying the sources of who was getting infected and quarantining the people who had been in contact and sending out warnings to people in places where there may have been exposure. For example, an Australian musician had come to Taiwan to perform and after he left he tested positive for the CCP virus. Taiwan traced his flight into the country and sent warnings to the passengers in his immediate vicinity on the flight, quarantined the local musicians and workers who had close contact with him for the concert, sent warnings to people with tickets in the front rows, they determined he had not taken public transportation at anytime and his local driver was identified and quarantined. All of this without scaring the shit out of people and causing a panic. Mind you, I'm just recalling what I read from a news article and not stating it as fact since I can't verify it with multiple sources.

Currently Taiwan still has less than 200 cases, each numbered and most sources identified and whether different contractions were related. Last week I noticed in the news that almost all the new cases were being imported and the next day the government closed the borders to foreigners and ordered all returnees to be quarantined for 14 days. And the quarantines are no joke, at least two people who flouted the quarantine displaying zero regard for the public's health were slapped with the maximum fine of US$33,000. Lesser fines have been levied upon quarantine breakers whose threat was not as egregious. One suspected quarantine breaker was found to have mistakenly given the wrong contact information, but was not fined because the hotel staff where he was staying vouched that he had not left his room. The authorities are being reasonable.

Most recently, the government rejected calls for general testing and responded that our situation didn't warrant it and might even be detrimental because of the high possibility for "false negatives". In South Korea and some places in the U.S. it was done because of how fast it had spread and because it had already reached the level of "community spread". The danger of false negatives was shown in the cruise ships where everyone was tested before the virus manifested, so there were people who tested negative and thought they were clear, but then it turned out they had it and possibly had contributed to spreading it. I'm only guessing here, but it seems our politicians are listening to medical experts and science.

I've been going about my days with heightened diligence as a matter of being civic-minded, but otherwise little is different. There are less people at the libraries which is great, and I get my temperature taken every time I go. At times I notice there are fewer products at the hypermart due to sporadic runs on certain items, but the shelves haven't been cleared since there was a run on toilet paper early on when an advertising agency announced that toilet paper material was being diverted for face masks. The government stepped in and stated toilet paper and face masks were made of different materials and there was no danger of a national toilet paper shortage, and they slapped the agency with a fine for misinformation. It still took several weeks to re-stock and a purchase limit has been imposed. I would have been shit out of luck if toilet paper was made out of alcohol.

I don't wear a mask mostly because it just seems such an inconvenience to buy them. I can always tell when a national health-affiliated pharmacy has them in stock because of the long lines out the door. I ride my bike to get around and the places I eat aren't in high volume areas where there's more chance of spread. I did eat once near Taipei Main Station, still a high volume area relatively, and they took my temperature and sprayed my hands with disinfectant; expected and reasonable precaution. On the streets, probably more than half of people I observe wear masks, but not everyone. On the few times I've taken a bus, 99% wore masks (I was the 1%).

I'm not being cavalier about it, thinking I'm not going to get it. I'm balancing my low-impact lifestyle as a low-impact soul with reasonable actual likelihood that I have it at any given moment and am pre-symptomatic. No one can be 0% positive, but I'm pretty low. Little to no interaction with people, mindful of surface areas I touch (I do carry a bandana and otherwise don't push buttons with my fingertips which are more likely to come in contact with my face), and "social distancing" can be the title of my fucking book! Although the actual title might be, "Yo! Keep the fuck away from me". And that has nothing to do with the CCP virus. I think the highest likelihood of me and transmission is exchanging money.

If I do feel cold symptoms, I'm pretty much screwed. I might consider it a too high a risk to go out, maybe even for food, and of course I have zero social support. I suppose I could use a bandana for a mask, maybe wear gloves although I wouldn't want to advertise that I was unwell, and only go out to get food at nearby convenient stores using my cashless payment card (called "yo-yo card" in Taiwan) so that nothing I touch is touched by someone else.

* CCP Chairman Xi Jinping has been likened to Winnie-the-Pooh which has led to a ban of the cartoon bear's image in China, believe it or not.

My water went off yesterday afternoon. Annoying and anxiety-inducing; I don't know when it'll come back on. I don't know if the landlord gave warning and I didn't get it because I don't have a phone. The last time it happened about 5 years ago, he knocked on my door and gave me an estimate for the outage so I was able to fill the bathtub beforehand for my water needs. I don't know if he didn't knock on my door this time because my cousin managed at some point to suggest to him that I "didn't want to be bothered", which is totally untrue and would be rude, and I told her to communicate to him that was not the case, but I don't know if she did that. Lots gets lost in translation in this family – and not just in language. 

And somehow, without going into any TMI detail, my gut knew about it and the accompanying inability to flush the toilet more than once, and the chronic issues with my digestive system over the past few years disappeared for the time being. It's a minor miracle maybe. 

So far, it's fair to consider it a minor disturbance and I tried to maintain my evening routine Saturday, but I did opt to not drink until way late. Maybe I didn't want to be distracted from the distraction of not having running water (and perhaps avoiding the need to pee more often). Not washing hands or brushing teeth are something I just had to endure, but not being able to take a shower triggered the neurotic in me. I won't crawl under the covers to sleep if I haven't showered. It's just not comfortable and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, so I knew I was going to sleep on top of the covers (which is no big deal since that's how I nap) and in that case why bother changing clothes to sleep? No different from crashing at someone's place when I was younger.

I did have trouble sleeping, which I anticipated and didn't set the timer on my CD player, but did slip into sleep at some point and had a pretty disturbing and harrowing dream. I was kidnapped and stabbed twice in the process. This is likely a reflection of my true anxiety about having no water; uncertainty and a hunkering down mentality. The kidnap situation lasted the whole dream through a variety of sundry scenarios including a blood-sport, fight club-ish free-for-all amongst the kidnappees. I mostly laid low and hoped not to be targeted while not expecting to survive. Towards the end of the dream there was rumor that lawyers were being sent for to deal with the situation and I thought, "Lawyers? What good are lawyers? That's even dangerous". At some point I established we were in Thailand as I (irrationally) wondered why kidnappings always happen in Thailand. But the lawyer arrived from England and came up the stairs asking about the "Yank", as in Yankee, as in me, and he took one look at me and continued to ask for the Yank. As he assumed I wasn't the droid American he was looking for, I waited for a few beats to let him hang in ignorance before I voiced up. 

Twenty five years ago that would've been racist. Nowadays it would be called "racist" but would also be stupid to call racist. I'm not gonna get into it, but from what I've witnessed in the progressive political scene from afar, the political left has really dropped the ball and gotten stupid, overreacting to every little thing and just putting people on the defensive instead of trying to educate and promote sensitivity. My dream British lawyer would've been racist before because it was institutionalized with negative assumptions and real effects. Today, the British lawyer should be recognized as having come from a certain background with his own experience that informs his subjective view of the world, and he may make assumptions and even mistakes, such as "American" equals "white" or Asian-looking equals "not American", but that doesn't necessarily make him racist now. Plurality needs to acknowledge that. Constantly putting people on the defensive for infractions they didn't even know of eventually leads to a backlash and them going on the offensive and that's pretty much where we are now; a cycle of brazen stupidity is complete with the true racists coming out the woodwork and proud of it.

And, yes, the lawyer in the dream was white and male. Would anyone imagine otherwise when I said "British lawyer"? Actually my true dream British lawyer would've been South Asian and female, but that's a different kind of dream (mm, that accent). He also had long hair and a ponytail, kinda like that Virgin Branson guy. This is all immaterial, mind you, I didn't need to bring it up but it was in the dream that he assumed I wasn't American and I noticed it. 

What I'm actually seriously curious or concerned about is why mindfulness practice doesn't come up when I'm dreaming? I noticed that afterwards. Is my practice not deep enough to have reached my subconscious? Are my reactions in dreams a more accurate reflection of the success of my practice? I kinda think so, maybe. In a dream, if I'm reacting to the dream situation like it was real, then that may indicate that in physical life I'm reacting to situations too much like they're real. The actual reaction should be appropriate, but in extreme and harrowing situations, I think a conscious acknowledgement of mindfulness practice should be present maybe. 

the guru, part two

The whole guru thing doesn't really occupy a lot of my thoughts. It's more an abstract side issue and I'm happy just to reiterate that my current attitude towards gurus may be a point of personal karma. It's conditional and will change with karma and conditions. I'll probably have to deal with it in some lifetime and I'll leave it at that.

That's all good and well since as soon as one touches on the issue of the guru, it does get really murky really quickly. It gets into psychology. It gets into controversy. It gets into history and cultures clashing. Who needs it? I don't. But people do get into the guru thing and the attendant issues and possible messes.

For example, I've read that when you've accepted a guru, you give yourself completely over and never doubt their teachings or methods or authority nor the compassion and wisdom behind it. But one part of my current attitude towards the guru is that I tell myself I could never give up critical observation over any purported guru. It's something hard-wired into me that I don't believe in never questioning something right in front of me that seems wrong, even if it's a teaching or method by a guru who I've accepted as legitimate.

Even though I think my attitude is healthy, independent thinking, maybe it's actually a block, a karmic obscuration, a negative result of something in past lives that's essentially impeding progress on the path. An unwillingness to submit, an attachment to ego. *Me*. I think that's questionable. I think that sounds wrong. It's seeing the form of something and thinking it's one thing because of my adherence to my subjective view and interpretation when the substance is something completely different. That's actually not a bad point. It's just the tip of the iceberg how messy it gets.

This exact issue is part of the heart of the controversies regarding allegations of sexual abuse by Tibetan Vajrayana gurus that have started to be reported. The truth can be very tricky in these cases because of the multiple levels of perspectives and subjectivity, which includes the "secret" aspect of some of the teachings.

One bottom-line starting point for me considering the issue is to believe the accuser, although various layers of nuance may be forthcoming. There's a power dynamic involved and the person in power, the guru, doesn't get immediate benefit of the doubt. It's the guru who is responsible for having proper discernment who is ready for whichever teaching.

It is proper discernment that when effectively applied prevents sexual abuse scandals. If a scandal arises, it's the guru's failure to protect the teachings, practice and vows. On the other hand, if a guru explains himself adequately, then the burden may shift to whether there were circumstances regarding the student that the guru wasn't aware of and was mistaken or misled. The subjective harm might still remain, but there might be no criminal or improper intent.

That power dynamic is a very poor foundation for a guru-student relationship, and may be related to why I'm so averse to the guru idea. The student wants something and perceives the guru as someone who can offer it. In a near-best case scenario, a qualified guru does have it, but it may turn out to be a minefield of figuring out how to deliver it.

It really breaks my heart to hear of these abuses because they just shouldn't be happening. It breaks my heart because it violates one of the most sacred and beautiful (and misunderstood) aspects of tantra. It confounds me why it's happening. Is it the teachers' fault? Is it the students' misunderstanding?

One thing seems clear to me is that there must be an immediate moratorium on any purported practice that even remotely touches on sex between teacher and student. There's just too much room for misunderstanding and abuse in the current climate where Tibetan gurus in exile can gain rock star status (which wouldn't exist in Tibet) and western sensibilities aren't fully understood and westerners are cultural newbies and susceptible to abuse.

My understanding is that the Tibetan tantric tradition and practice developed over centuries and became a thing. But that thing is not something that can be plunged into the deep end of the west without controversy, conflict and misunderstanding. Personally I do think these teachers have lost their way, confused by how westerners reacted and responded to them. They are being overcome by emotions of pride and lust brought on by wealth, fame and power that wouldn't emerge in traditional Tibetan contexts. There would've been self-/community-imposed checks.

Those checks are needed now and need to come from the larger Buddhist community. I thought the same thing when I was outraged by Buddhists in Myanmar using their position to practice violence and hate towards Muslim Rohingyas. I was thrilled when the larger community actually did speak up in a widely-circulated letter condemning what Buddhist monks were doing in Myanmar. They didn't have any authority, I'm not sure what effect the letter had (apparently not a lot), but it was important to say something.

The Dalai Lama would be an appropriate person to call for a moratorium since Sogyal Rinpoche, who he considers a friend, was involved in a scandal and has stepped down from all official roles. The Dalai Lama did the right thing in declaring that Sogyal Rinpoche had been disgraced/disgraced himself, which coming from the Dalai Lama was tantamount to a complete loss of credibility and authority to teach and that he should go into extended retreat. Mind you, as far as I know, Sogyal Rinpoche has never accepted fault nor expressed realization of his error.

Mind you further, that doesn't mean that Sogyal Rinpoche's international bestseller "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" has lost all credibility and is worthless. My detachment from the guru concept includes not being disillusioned by his downfall. The teachings are not the guru. People who were inspired by the book should not confuse the disgraced Sogyal Rinpoche with what they found so inspiring from the book, which was something inside themselves all along.

Despite a moratorium (which actually would have to be secret, an internal memo, because publicly it would draw all sorts of unwanted and misunderstood attention) on all sexual contact between teacher and student in the name of tantric teachings, the principles could still be taught to students who are ripe for them. The practice should be stopped even with students who are ripe for them and instead the scandals must be confronted and the teachings should focus on why the practice is being temporarily stopped. The errors of the teachers accused of abuse must be explored and explained where they went wrong. And truth to tell, I don't think it's all that complicated. Just go back to the very beginning and take a refresher course of Theravada Buddhism and review all basic, Mahayana and Samaya vows. It doesn't take a zen master to not get involved in a sex abuse scandal.

I don't know if the recent reports of sexual abuse in the Tibetan Vajrayana community is an outcropping of the #metoo movement, but reversing the disempowerment of women, I hope, is a global movement and I wouldn't expect Buddhist institutions to be immune. If there are problems Buddhist institutions perpetuate, they must be confronted and rectified.

The last book I read off the stacks in the public library was The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: A True Story About the Birth of Tyranny in North Korea (2016) by Blaine Harden. It juxtaposes the stories of Kim Il-Sung's rise to power and North Korean air force pilot No Kum Sok (whoever came up with the romanization of his name should be shot) who defected to South Korea at the tail end of the Korean War, delivering a Russian-made MiG-15 fighter jet in the process.

The juxtaposition is a gimmick as No Kum Sok has already published his memoir and I'm sure more in-depth and scholarly works exist about Kim Il-Sung. It makes for a pretty light read and excellent as an introduction to North Korean history. There's not a whole lot to say about the book beyond that, either you're interested in the topic or not. The story-telling is good and contains a lot of information and history about that time and place that I imagine many aren't aware of aside from in broad strokes.

There are things that I consider mistakes which may be small but I personally found glaring and highlight the white, male author telling other peoples' stories. There's nothing wrong with that. Whoever wants to write stories is free to write them, it's just that there are consequences, and always have been consequences, when a dominant hegemony writes the stories of a perceived other. There's always a skewed perspective, if not being plain wrong.

As far as I'm concerned Asians are a race. White people are a race, black people are a race. Differences between races are why we have the word "racism". Therefore only under specifically proscribed circumstances can Asians be racist against other Asians. Chinese and Japanese can't be "racist" against Koreans, as the author tells it, any more than Germans can be racist against the British. Calling the French "frogs" is not racist. It's funny. Even the French condescendingly find it amusing (<French accent> Ah, you styupit Americans are trying to insult me, how amusing </French accent>). Self-hating Asian American kids trying to fit into racist white society by making fun of other Asians is Asians being racist against other Asians. That was me in elementary school, by the way.

He also writes that leaflets were dropped by U.S. forces over MiG Alley on the North Korean and Chinese border that were written in Korean, Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese. So the author doesn't understand how the Chinese language works. You can speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but you don't write Mandarin or Cantonese. Irregardless of what dialect of Chinese is spoken, there is only one written Chinese language, simplified and traditional characters notwithstanding.

The simplified Chinese characters that Mainland China created was to promote literacy because the modern, common, Communist Chinese presumably lack the brain power to handle the rich meaning and art involved in traditional writing. Sounds about right. It likely wasn't in place yet during the Korean War, and even if it was, the U.S., as ignorant and racist as it was at the time, likely wouldn't have known about it.

Wow, I'm just insulting everyone today, ain't I?

WordsCharactersReading time

I don't know what came over me, but I recently read a flurry of WWII books. I guess I have a predilection for reading about harrowing ordeals and a fascination with the unimaginable extremes of the human experience. In this case during wartime. I've always thought it bonkers that we created these beautiful, graceful, elegant, powerful machines like planes and ships and then used them for destruction and killing and to get attacked and destroyed by some construct of "enemy". Well, no, not "and then used them for", but for the purpose of.

Ironically, the first book I read, Flyboys (2003) by James Bradley, is the one about which I'm most lukewarm. The premise was intriguing with the first chapter mentioning a recently declassified case regarding navy pilots who were shot down near a Pacific island not far from Iwo Jima and captured by the Japanese and executed. George H.W. Bush was shot down but was rescued by a U.S. sub before being captured.

It turns out it wasn't that extraordinary a story. It was just another incident of a wartime atrocity. Not to trivialize it, maybe all such stories should be told, but not all of them need an entire book for the telling. What was special about this story? What's the emotional take? Is anyone going to make a movie out of this story like Bradley's first book, Flags of Our Fathers? I doubt it.

Nothing really stands out except a future U.S. president participated in the mission and if he was captured and killed our history would be slightly different (he was a one-term president). This book would still have been written, with one less interview subject and his story as a victim would have been told in it, but we wouldn't know that he would become president, albeit one term, if he lived. I'm being snarky, as a navy flyer defending our country, I'm glad he survived.

(Holy shit! No, our history would be radically different because he wouldn't have spawned that idiot other Bush president who was probably the worst U.S. president ever at the time. Second worst now. Not only that, but I've always said that without Bush junior, there would be no Obama presidency. I had serious doubts that Obama could win because I knew how racist the U.S. is (NB: turns out it's even more racist than I thought it was), and I had trouble believing we'd elect a black man for president. But we did! That's how bad junior was!*)

To compensate for the lack of a book-length worthy story that tells itself, he writes about everything else he can to pad the book. He writes about the history of Japan-U.S. relations, Japan's modern history and militarization, the development of the U.S. air corp, U.S. aggression and racism, and more. It goes beyond just setting up context, but covers things only related with a huge stretch. I was waiting for a chapter on the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the war. It never came, but considering everything he writes about, it was fair game.

The way he writes had me leaving the library always in a sour mood. I'll give him benefit of the doubt that everything he writes is sourced, but I felt he shaded the facts in a way that emphasized the worst, the most negative, unredeeming, gory aspects of war. Maybe he's antiwar, which I have no problem with. If I had to take a stance I'd probably be antiwar, but this book didn't make me feel antiwar. It just filled me with disgust in general, and not at anything.

I have no great love for FDR. I agree that he was among the greatest U.S. presidents, but he's also the one who signed the order to imprison all Japanese Americans on the west coast during the war, a clearly racist act as German Americans weren't subjected to similar treatment and Hawaiian Japanese were exempted because they were too many and it would have been "impracticable". But Bradley's referring to him as "the Dutchman" definitely betrays something about his attitude towards the wartime president. That is not a term of respect. It's like writing a book about killing Osama bin Laden and constantly referring to Obama as "the Muslim" (even if FDR is of Dutch descent (I personally don't know), he was, I imagine, as Dutch as Obama is Muslim, i.e., not at all).


Left For Dead (2003) interested me because it's about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which I knew about already and many people recall from the movie "Jaws", which is mentioned in the book as a key inspiration for part of the story. One part of the story is, of course, what happened to the Indianapolis and how it was entrusted to deliver the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian Island and afterwards was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on its way to its next assignment. The tragedy was that no one came to rescue the survivors who floated three or four days, suffering death from exposure, shark attacks and hallucinations and delirium. Now that's a story that tells itself. No matter how you write it, it's harrowing and emotional.

The other part of the story is the redemption of Captain McVay who was court-martialed for the sinking and blamed for the deaths of his crew and committed suicide in 1968. His court-martial can be viewed as a big black eye on the face of the integrity of the U.S. Navy. It was the classic sacrificing a "lowly" captain to save the careers and egos of higher up generals. It shows the disgusting, shameful, cowardly effect of hubris of those in power who don't want to admit responsibility.

The book also dispelled a myth I held about the Indianapolis that the failure to be rescued was related to its top secret mission to deliver the atom bomb to Tinian. It simply was unrelated. That mission was completed and its next mission was just its next mission.


I found two books at one library that I ended up reading in tandem because they both involved B-17 raids in Europe in the second half of 1943. They sort of complemented each other, although one book was about a single mission involving many flight crews and its aftermath, and the other was about a single incident with the story surrounding one flight crew and one German fighter pilot.

To Kingdom Come (2011) is about the September 6, 1943 deep-penetration, daylight bombing mission on Stuttgart, Germany without fighter escort that one general thought was the road to winning the war. It was basically a "test of concept" mission. He was wrong, the mission was statistically a disaster and such missions would soon be abandoned until the development of the P-51 Mustang long-range fighter could be completed to provide escort all the way to targets and back.

The book is about the mission so it focuses on several crews who flew the mission and survived to tell the story, including crews that were downed and aided by the French Underground to get back to England. Extraordinary stories.

A Higher Call (2012) is centered on a bombing raid three months later in December 1943, so there is overlap between the stories of the two books (crews from To Kingdom Come were still trying to get back to England) as well as mention of same bomber groups. Some descriptions, such as bomber groups taking off and mustering in the sky, are virtually identical.

The subject incident in the book, the purpose for the book, is very simple. The subject B-17 was badly damaged in the bombing raid and against all odds managed to stay in flight. One German pilot was the last chance to make sure the enemy didn't get away, but he ended up deciding not to shoot them down and let them go over the English Channel, albeit certain they wouldn't make it all the way back to England. If the crew were able to see the damage that the German pilot saw, maybe they wouldn't have made it!

The rest of the book is all back story and aftermath, and like To Kingdom Come, which jumps from story to story, so does this book which made reading them in tandem feel perfect. And I have to admit I wasn't sure what to make of the author and his background, but it's a well-written book. Towards the beginning of the book he describes an incident of the German fighter pilot trying to find work after the war and then cuts it off to go into the back story. When he goes back to finish the incident much later in the book, I didn't need to go back and refresh myself what had happened. I remembered exactly what was happening and I attribute that to good writing.

The emotional take from this book was huge and profound. The pilots and surviving crew met decades later and it was amazing the gratitude of the descendants realizing if it weren't for this former Luftwaffe fighter pilot standing before them and his one act of mercy, none of them would be here.

No one forgets who they owe for their survival for generations. Even in To Kingdom Come, the B-17 crews remembered the brave French citizens who helped them survive, some of whom were later caught and executed by the Nazis. All of them doing their jobs and what they believe in. The German pilot didn't do his job, but did what he believed in, which is that you don't shoot a crippled, defenseless plane out of the sky.

This actually hearkens back to the book on the Armenian Genocide I read a few months ago. The granddaughter of the genocide survivor travels to Syria during her research to find the descendants of the Bedouin sheikh who saved her grandfather's life to thank them. They ask her how many people their father saved by saving her grandfather. She counts her relatives and replies 15, much to their dismay. Only 15? That's plenty for a U.S. lineage, but the sheikh's lineage was in the hundreds! It's still a funny anecdote.

It's crazy. The lives we lead are crazy. The world we live in is crazy. Who knows the effects of our actions? The Japanese narrowly missed killing two future U.S. presidents. But they illegally executed POWs whose future effect we'll never know. There's no way to judge it. It just is what it is. I say I'm glad Bush senior survived, but what if his spawn wasn't just a bungling moron and was a Hitler or a Trump? Then it becomes hard to say I wouldn't be glad he didn't survive. It's a conundrum that defies logic or morality. And that's the world we live in.


* more of my hare-brained political theory (a.k.a., the Busherfly Effect, yea I just made that up):

I don't know what came over me, it's probably another obsessive distraction, but I've started reading about World War I. While my childhood included World War II as a hobby, I never had any particular interest in WWI. My knowledge consists of scattered cursory bits of associated information like trench warfare, gas warfare, the first tanks, pointy German helmets, etc. I knew Franz Ferdinand was not the lead singer of the band (apparently there were fans who thought that).

I'm reading The First World War (1999) by John Keegan. As a supplement I also found at the library a rather massive photo book, The Great War, by Imperial War Museums (U.K.). Fortunate for me, since it's a visual reference to help picture how bleak and harrowing what I'm reading was. Fortunate also because it's not a reference that I'd otherwise come by casually. Only people really interested in the war would have it on their bookshelves, I shouldn't wonder.

I think anyone who doesn't know much about WWI but has any hint of interest in it or related subjects (and there are many) should read up on it. On one hand, it's very simple to describe and understand the contours of what happened and what led up to it. On another hand, it's an historical enigma that scholars are still debating about. You can point out all the various factors that contributed to the war, but adding them all up doesn't amount to the sheer magnitude of the horror and suffering caused and endured. You look at results and wonder why combatants weren't smacking themselves in the forehead asking what was going on and how it happened and why they didn't just yell "Stop! Wait a minute. What are we doing?". There were reasons. Many, many reasons, and none of them counters the insanity or incredulity of it.

Having nothing to compare it to, I found Keegan's book quite adequate and engaging. I felt I got a decent grasp of the contours of the conflict, but I would definitely look at other books for comparison if I find them. My major complaint was "white noise" information of troop movements which didn't help illustrate anything or mean anything in terms of strategy or intent. Same with eastern front fighting after the Russians withdrew. Oops, was I supposed to say *spoiler alert*?

I skimmed over those parts not feeling they were important, interesting or compelling to the narrative or knowledge of the war. Similarly, the Russian Revolution is covered so quickly it's almost laughable. That's not necessarily a problem or criticism. In a volume such as this, that's all that could be expected for a topic that deserves its own book. And I did laugh at the description of the Bolsheviks' frantic instruction to sign a peace treaty "at German dictation" when their delay tactics failed and Germany started invading.

Reading about the causes of WWI, it's easy and tempting, if not blindingly obvious, to draw parallels with the current world situation and whether a third world war is in the making. A lot of the debate over WWI is whether it was preventable or was it inevitable. Trying to answer that is to enter the quagmire.

I think the strongest argument today that WWIII is inevitable is the fact that WWI happened. The question whether it is preventable or inevitable is equally uncertain today and as much of a quagmire, and once you draw all the parallels of the fragile relations, belligerent stances and war readiness, the likelihood of a WWI situation goes way up. The scenario of a side conflict leading to an international crisis that no one will check because of self-interest, distractions, basic stupidity or any number of factors, then escalating into a worldwide conflagration is not so hard to imagine when reading about WWI.

Only the over-optimistic would doubt the world situation today is a powder keg waiting to blow. A pot coming to a boil. A powder keg in a pot coming to a boil. No wait, the boiling water would neutralize the powder. But seriously, with the presumptive main combatants being the U.S. and China or India and China or China and anyone but Russia, and non-presumptive but potential flashpoints of North Korea or Taiwan, that shit's gonna be hard to contain.

Forcing myself to read the Chinese newspaper when I go to the library is like sadomasochism for one. So when I find an interesting book in the stacks, it's easy to allow the temptation. At the closest public library (there are four within walking distance (under two miles)), I'm reading Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong.

It falls under world history among categories of reads that interest me; perhaps specifically human developmental history or human cultural evolution. It's a fascinating read that sweeps through various historical cultures in broad strokes, describing the relation between religiosity and violence.

Religion and violence, of course, go hand-in-hand, but the book is very well-researched and offers perspectives that aren't obvious nor common knowledge. There's room for disagreement, but she provides plenty of food for thought. I'd definitely recommend it.

Actually religion and violence don't "of course" go hand-in-hand, you still need human nature in the equation. You can just as easily say that economics and violence go hand-in-hand, and the same with politics and ideology. None of those, including religion, are inherently violent by nature or intent. Just add human nature and the potential for violence arises whenever conflict occurs and a clear "other" can be identified.

Despite reading the Chinese newspaper without understanding it being tedious and boring as hell (hard to stay awake), I'm only allowing reading books one at a time at any particular library. So when I go to one of the other three libraries, I have to read the newspaper. Only when I finish a book can I start another one at any library. Dumb rules I make for myself.

So by my estimation I've been more or less useless and/or worthless to anyone in any meaningful manner for at least a good five years. Anyone who theoretically may make a claim against that, my response is that I haven't tried to be of use or worth to anyone. It wasn't my effort that made that so. I haven't made any effort for anyone else.

But even with suicide as my intended end, I'm still here now wasting space, creating waste, still contributing nominally to the economy by consuming. So selfish as I've established I am, what's in it for me?

The one unadulterated enjoyment I maintain is listening to music. With everything else falling away, I still listen to music almost obsessively. And it's so appropriate that my one last admitted attachment is to something so necessarily ephemeral. Whether it's a 3-minute pop song, a 10-minute prog rock or jazz song, a 30-minute album side, or 15-minute classical movement, the song ends, the enjoyment passes.

As such, it's easy. If you take it away, I have no problem giving it up. But if it isn't taken away, I indulge in it in all its harmless glory. Listening to and enjoying music never hurt anyone. It's still karma, I'm aware, and if I don't cut off the attachment aspect of it, it's something I'll still have to deal with in future lives in any one or many of innumerable possible ways.

Aside from that, I suppose I've just been reading to add to my selected understanding of the human experience on this planet through its history.

I may have reached the limits of Buddhist readings available in English through libraries and bookstores. I've bought available books that I've deemed important and I constantly re-read those. I maintain my personal mindfulness/dharma practice. Despite being of no worth to anyone else, that has been of worth to myself.

Early Christianity has been of interest, how it was formed and how it came to be what it is today. Looking at the history of early Christianity, it's surprising how it became what it is today, and not. Reading academic and scholarly studies of early Christianity, it's clear that modern Christianity is based on artificial mythologies; nothing or little based on teachings of an itinerant, apocalyptic Jewish preacher and probable miracle worker named Jesus.

But if it's all myth, how could it have become hardwired, literal fact of the truths of the universe for so many people? No one takes Greek or Roman or other cultural myths as literal. Of course it's far more complicated than anyone can sum up, but the brilliant stroke of having the Roman Fucking Empire take up the cause is probably of no little consequence.

I'm under the impression that Europe as a whole doesn't take Christianity as fanatically literal as the U.S. does. Many are very sincere about their faith, but there are also many who assume the supposed truths of Christianity because it's woven into the fabric of their culture. They don't question it because it's not important to do so. If they delved into the scholarship, they would probably be able to look at it critically, admit ignorance and agree with much of it.

I don't suppose scholarship will affect faith for at least another 500 years. It may be more than a 1,000 years before the scholarship is common knowledge and human beings can process it for what it is. I don't think the scholarship showing that Christianity has little to do with Jesus is any threat to Christianity.

Just because it's based on myth doesn't mean it's worthless. It has become its own institution and as much harm as it has caused, it has done a lot of good on the profoundest levels. It's just admitting that it's based on myth will be a hard pill to swallow for many, many generations.

Other histories I've read up on include Auschwitz, the arrival of the so-called Pilgrims, religious extremists possibly, on the Mayflower, the U.S. treatment of Lakota Native Americans and how their land was stolen, and the assassination of Julius Caesar.

The Auschwitz book focused specifically on that camp in the context of the Holocaust and embodies all the horrors one might expect. Poorly edited, though. The Mayflower book seemed pretty comprehensive and balanced. It doesn't seem to play politics and realizes that self-interest is the driving force in dire circumstances.

As for the Lakota and the Black Hills, it's impossible to stay away from the impassioned politics of the issues. As an American I sympathize with Native Americans, but certain white people will defend their actions to the end. My main beef about the book is that although it seems to sympathize with the Native American cause, it constantly refers to white people as "Americans" as opposed to the Indians, who aren't American?

I don't know why I got interested in the Julius Caesar book as soon as I saw it. Probably because it is such a famous historical event, and as much as the Roman Empire played in the development of Christianity, I was looking for insight into it.

I live in a third floor one-room studio apartment with a window whose view is the apartment building opposite across a tiny alley. I never get direct sunlight; sometimes an oblique sunlight early in the morning when the sun is rising. I'm rarely fully awake at that time but catch it during insomnia.

Sounds coming out of other apartments are reflected in the alley and I can often hear activity in other apartments. Mostly conversations, sometimes arguments, that I can't understand or the sound of cooking and the attendant fragrance.

It's mostly non-intrusive, except for one apartment that I can't locate where some kid is having a horrible childhood. I've lived here for over six years and the child was born in that time. I remember hearing the infant cries. There may be a second infant by now.

But the first infant has grown somewhat, enough to have his disturbed, battleaxe of a grandmother, I'm guessing, hollering at him in a banshee screech whenever she perceives he's done something wrong. Even when the child starts wailing, she continues screaming at him. It's child abuse as far as I'm concerned, and this woman should be arrested and put into therapy.

As I mentioned, I can't locate the apartment. It might be the one directly above me. I know they have small children. I've seen the stroller, I've picked up tiny slippers that had fallen off in the stairwell and brought them up and put them outside their door.

But even if I could locate the apartment, what am I gonna do? I don't speak the language. And it's controversial whether calling the police is the best course of action, acknowledging the sad state of social services in this regard.

I thought of seeking out public social services which might have informational flyers on domestic violence and child abuse and suggestions on what to do. I've noticed that the main front doors of apartment buildings around here have clear plastic pockets where community notices can be posted.

I thought maybe if I could get informational flyers, I could put them on all the main doors in the area, which at least might put the abusive family on notice that someone notices. But even doing that seems way beyond my means to pursue. I'm still in touch with my last Mandarin teacher and we get together every once in a while. I suppose I'll brainstorm with her when we meet again.

Until then, I decided, if I ever hear abuse happening, I'm going to place my meditation bell right by the window and ring it at intervals in mindfulness fashion for the duration of the screaming and crying.

This should be interesting (albeit only to me). Sleep this weekend was good. Saturday was sufficient but too heavy in the end for sitting, but Sunday was also good and I got back to sitting. Still, for the rest of the day I wasn't able to break out of a general lethargy and deliberately cancelled going to the gym, considering it a good day for a break since Saturday was hard on my calves.

Right now, instead of battling what may have become a bout of back-end insomnia, knowing the U.S. Women's Golf Open was airing live, I'm forgoing trying to sleep and watching TV, pulling for Michelle Wie. I won't say much about that. I started watching LPGA golf during my years of torpor. Another inexplicable interest except to note that South Korean women have been doing really well in the field.

I know Michelle Wie is American, but she'll do. She has a lot of support from American fans of all stripes, but I'm sure there's a percentage of people who would prefer to see Stacy Lewis, a "real" American, win. I recognize that Stacy Lewis is currently the world number one and she will probably go down in history as one of the greats, but from hearing her talk, I think she might be unconsciously racist, no evidence of it being overt, I don't think she's aware of it or trying to be, but enough to make me love to see her lose or fail (my loving to see her lose is not begrudging her from being the champion she is). I'm sure none of her peers think she's racist. You have to be looking for it.

I'm still having trouble with my calves trying to build my running back up. After pulling a calf muscle a week after joining the gym, a month later, I'm still struggling to complete 3 miles at any pace without injury. Both calves are problematic, and I've been easing off runs on the treadmill at the first sign of trouble.

I'm not sure what the issue is, since even after not running for so long, calves are still important for cycling, so I don't know why they are this problematic going back to running. It seems I'll need a more gradual slope of improvement to build strength up in those muscles. But seriously, 10-minute miles are depressingly slow.

Future Life Resonances

So this blog has a label "future life resonances". To recap, "future life resonances" is a spin-off of "past life resonances", whereby under some flaky theory of reincarnation, we might suspect that aspects of our current lives and beings are the results, or resonances, of past lives by force of karma.

Karma, I very unscientifically propose, being an aspect of a natural energy substrate of the universe that is as unknown as the scientifically proposed dark energy. The form this natural energy substrate has taken with biological beings on this planet may be what we think of as consciousness or awareness. It's what enables all living beings to interact with our environment, from bacteria to human beings.

In the cycle of death and rebirth as envisioned by people who believe in reincarnation, karmic impressions are able to be transferred from one lifetime to future lifetimes. It's not scientifically testable. It is attested to by masters of various esoteric traditions. For laypeople, it's only intuitive in the most flaky way possible. "Intuitive in the most flaky way possible" is maybe a proper definition of "faith".

But whereas past life resonances look at our current lives and habits to think about what we might have been or what issues we might have dealt with in previous lives, future life resonances look at our current lives to imagine or project what or where we might be reincarnated in future lives.

Oh, and as far as I know, it's my creation. I didn't read or hear about it from anyone else, and it only occurred to me in relation to this Korea thing.

My implication is that my inexplicable attraction to South Korea so late in this life, and assuming this is late in my life (anyway it's later in my life), may be an indication that I'm angling towards a rebirth in South Korea, whether by choice or by force of karma.

I've had plenty of exposure to South Korean culture and people before, but never until now did it become a near obsessive focus. As early as college I had a Korean roommate for a semester, Myung Soo, and looking back at the people from whom I learned the most from college, he was one of them.

He had come to the U.S. when he was about 10 years old. He was very patriotic and spearheaded a Korean student movement to get Korea included in Oberlin's East Asian Studies department, which at the time only included Japan and China (I know, wtf?).

To the still marginal extent Korean studies are now included at Oberlin is because of his efforts and the stink that he raised. I know because I was at those meetings (drunk, if I remember correctly) with the all-white East Asian Studies faculty (I know, wtf?!) who tried to defend their hegemony.

How can you have an "East Asian" Studies department and not include Korea? Look at a map! They argued that most people were only interested in Japan and China, but that was probably more an expression that they, the all-white fetishizing faculty, were only interested in Japan and China. In the end, I think they realized they had to make more of an effort to promote Korean studies as well.

He was the kind of person who could change people's lives and he did. And he transformed himself, too. Initially, I was very unimpressed by him. He was very materialistic and superficial when I first met him, and I witnessed his changes over the years and after college he went back to L.A. and became a labor organizer. Far more impressive than anything I've done since college.

And, like all Koreans I've met, he was Christian. He actually turned my prejudice against Christianity around to realize all Christians weren't like mainstream white Americans, who I found to be frightening, hypocritical, racist bigots, spewing words of intolerance, hate and evil in God's name, while believing themselves to be righteous and godly.

My exposure to Christians had me thinking that it made sense to me that if Satan were to wage war against God, the most effective strategy would be to subvert and assume the word of God to spread evil, and Christianity was the very language of hate, intolerance and evil, while convincing the weak minded they were agents of God and good.

Myung Soo felled me on my ass just by saying, "Do you think I'm like that?". I hadn't thought of him as Christian, but he forced me to and to tear down that blanket view of Christians.

Still, nothing in my experience with him stirred any interest in Korea or Korean culture. For me at that time, it was all about Japan, a possible past life resonance. Aside from Myung Soo, I continued to have exposure to Korean culture and nothing about Korea resonated.

I met plenty of Korean/Korean Americans after moving to the Bay Area. Among them, I had a Korean American roommate who had graduated from Brown University and knew my brother ("You're Rob Li's brother?!", she said) and nothing Korean was inspired. I had a Korean co-worker who, when she called me inter-office, I would answer the phone in Korean (learned that from Myung Soo), and she swore my pronunciation was perfect.

Nothing until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and had a Korean classmate who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked.

WordsCharactersReading time

The Root of All Evil - The God Delusion

I wouldn't say the views in this documentary reflect my own, but it's worth the watch for anyone striving for a balanced interest in the human condition and the role of humanistic rationality in relation towards religion, dogmatic religion, and how its far-reaching influence has become a scourge of humankind.

Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and after watching this, I think it's fair to call him a fundamentalist atheist. His language is virulent and his attitude unforgiving and not totally unlike religious fundamentalists. Even though I generally agree with his content, I'm not really comfortable with his form.

Even fundamentalist atheism can start looking scary in this documentary.

Fundamentalism by nature breeds intolerance. Even though fundamentalist atheism is relatively benign compared to the other kinds of religious fundamentalism that plague our existences, there's still a gnawing darkness that if these views were the dominant hegemony, the intolerance would still lead to persecution and violence. That, I think, is the legacy, manifest or not, of any fundamentalism.

I'm glad that Richard Dawkins targets religion based on evidence rather than spirituality in general. If a scientific atheist attacked spirituality, he or she would be attacking something they don't know and have no evidence for or against.

Science makes no claim about understanding spirituality or defining it. Spirituality is not in the realm of scientific inquiry, therefore a scientific attack on spirituality itself would be invalid, unscientific and likely dogmatic. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "Absence of evidence (of god) is not evidence of absence (of god)".

Religion, on the other hand, provides plenty of evidence of its nature through human behavior and history. It is a human phenomena, and is reasonably subject to a science-like analysis and scrutiny. It's not hard science; no laws can be derived from Dawkin's inquiry. But he can rationally point to characteristics and concrete results of religion, and argue against its validity or value to humanity.

And I think what he portrays has a point. Religions, or aspects of religions manipulated in an aggressive, intolerant and dogmatic way, can rain untold suffering upon innocents who the general idea of religion are meant to protect.

If you're just trying to be good and make an honest living, that's no defense against religious fervor if something you do offends their religious sensibility. ( <-- I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, -ed.)

Carl Sagan: You Are Here (Pale Blue Dot)

Carl Sagan on the opening image, taken by NASA using the Voyager probe at his request:  

The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it might be a good idea just after Saturn to have them take one last glance homeward. 

From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would just be a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager would see – nearby planets, far-off suns. 

But precisely because of the obscurity of our world, thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having. It had been well-understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing cosmos. But no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

I dunno. It just seems sort of surreal or even insane that K-pop girl group Girls' Generation are going to be musical guests on the Late Show with David Letterman on the night of January 31st. Even as I type this at 3 AM in Taiwan on February 1st local (2 PM, Jan 31st, EST), I suspect they are preparing to head to the Ed Sullivan Theater for the performance.

True, Girls' Generation are the leading K-pop girl group in Korea and likely all of Asia. True, I'm a fan of their cult of personality and will watch any Korean variety or reality show that they appear on. True, I think most of the songs they promote are quite good and worthy, given what it is – pop music.

But I also know U.S. racism, and I also know the Letterman audience, and I wonder if SNSD know that this might be a make or break performance.

K-pop boy band Big Bang winning MTV's European world band award in Dublin and girl group 2NE1 winning MTV's Iggy award for best new band both make sense compared to any idea that SNSD will be well-accepted by Letterman's viewership.

Even Western pop music has no credibility on the Letterman stage.

No doubt they will be performing their latest track, The Boys, and since they recorded it in English for their last CD, I suspect they put in extra practice to perform it in English. As I've opined before, The Boys is the only song they've promoted after I got into them with "Gee" that I think isn't great. It's OK, it's alright, it's not great.

And aside from their promoted tracks, their albums and releases are largely filler. In my earlier days of being harsh about pop music, I would have considered the vast majority of their output, none of which they have any creative input or control over, total crap. There, I said it.

Like I said, I've been drawn into their cult of personality, I know what they're worth and I love them and wish upon them success, but I'm definitely worried about their reception.

I predict easily over 50% of the audience will view their performance slack-jawed thinking, "wtfits?". Some lesser percentage will be intrigued and go, "huh, that was interesting". Some unknown percentage factor will be the hardcore K-pop/SNSD fans in the New York/New Jersey area that no doubt heard about their appearance and did everything they could to get into the audience that evening.

I predict less than 1% will see the performance and be intrigued and interested enough to look into them more and become fans. If I never came to Asia and gotten into K-pop, and saw this performance of The Boys on Letterman, truth be told, I doubt I would be taken in either. Strangely, I would also consider that my loss.

I hope I'm wrong and that times have changed and people are more open, and I'm glad that if Letterman chooses to talk to them, members Tiffany and Jessica are both Korean American and would be able to field questions and respond in a way that doesn't make them appear completely foreign to the audience.

For some reason, I just didn't want to let December pass with only one entry posted. It shouldn't matter, and it doesn't. But this blog is the last connection I have with some existence outside of my head. It's the last place where I'm leaking into the material world, where there is any proof of my existence.

I'm not sure why any such proof is necessary. It's not for me, I know I'm still here. I'll know when I make a push to not be. It's like part of a contract with existence, having existed. It would be rude to existence, the privilege existence has given me, to not affirm it as long as I still exist.

I've continued to read interesting stuff that I've made strange connections with and between. Something about the Christmas season always has me ending up reflecting on Christianity, and this year I found and started reading Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity in a bookstore. I haven't finished it, and may not since the last time I was there I couldn't find it. 

It's a scholarly work, so it examines and questions and looks at evidence and facts objectively, as much as possible, to come to theories or conclusions. Reading Judas looks at the development of the writing of what became the canonical New Testament gospels, set against what was going on socially at the time, which was a lot of turmoil and disagreement and distress.

Any uniformity or consensus Christians today believe existed in the early Jesus movement was a brainwashing fiction that started as early as Paul, even while he himself was an extremely controversial figure in the movement. Scholars believe that rifts were huge between different groups who were preaching diverse meanings about the stories circulating around this Jesus character.

What I get out of it is that The Gospel of Judas was written from a certain political stance within the disparate Jesus movement, critical of an opposing stance on particular issues that were being argued. But in the same way, the canonical gospels were also doing the same thing, and the book analyzes how the Jesus story develops and gets embellished from gospel to gospel to support the stance of a particular side of the disagreements.

In the end, one side won and the other side lost. Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the 4th century and formed the Nicene Council to come up with the canon. The Roman Empire became the Roman Catholic Church (as Mission of Burma tells it) and an entire side of Christianity was suppressed and wiped from history and only recently recovered in the 20th century with the discovery of the library at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Judas and to some extent the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The emphasis is on the mess that was the Jesus movement in the first few centuries following Jesus's death. And because one side won and the other side lost, Christians today only know one side of the story and don't realize the diversity of belief into the meaning of Jesus's death that existed and was being argued. They've been brainwashed to completely reject those other works.

And I connect this to another book I read at the library, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In short, the book is a first person account of a disaster that occurred on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest in May 1996, when 12 people ultimately ended up losing their lives in relation to the incident.

The connection is that the description of events turned out to be very controversial with various parties claiming differing versions of events. Adding in the altitude that rendered rationality questionable at best, no one really knows what happened up there, just as no one can authoritatively define what was going on with the Jesus movement in those first few centuries.

The internet is rife with commentators taking sides and vehemently opining and pointing condemning fingers when . . . they weren't there. They don't even know what it's like to be in the Death Zone on Everest and exercise little imagination to try.

It was a mess on Everest. It was a tragedy and bad decisions were made, but I think every individual did his or her best at any given moment. Krakauer does point out bad decisions, but I don't think he was blaming anyone or pointing fingers, but that's how other parties took it and it became a very public feud (not part of the controversy is Krakauer's condemnation of the asshole South African team and the reckless and uncooperative Taiwanese team that were on the mountain at the time. I take it those are accepted facts).

It was very emotional. It was strangely emotional for me reading it. Part of it is the connection of Everest with Tibet. But more of it is the drive of some people to climb Mt. Everest. Are these people nuts?

Now I've did my share of doing dumb in my day, putting myself recklessly into situations that were potentially harmful or dangerous. I understand the drive to push oneself to one's limits or even beyond – my limit being meager compared to anyone who even thinks of attempting Everest.

That's what cycling was all about. I cycled to climb. It was all about climbing relentless hills and hammering on through any hurt, and it never stopped being a thrill getting to the top of some challenge. And once I stopped being able to do hills because of age or alcoholism or diet, cycling became boring. Or at least something different.

I've mentioned my two San Francisco Marathons before, on the course before the organizers changed it because elite runners were threatening to boycott because the course was so hard. I admitted to myself after the second one that I wasn't emotionally prepared for it (not to put too fine a point on it, I wasn't emotionally prepared to run that second marathon).

It wasn't traumatic, but it haunted me for a whole month hence, and every day I spent 45 minutes to an hour obsessively going through the entire course in my head. I think I even got on my commuter road bike once and rode the entire course through. And it did effectively put an end to my running. I started cycling because my knees weren't recovering.

But to climb Mt. Everest? That's really rolling dice with your life. You sign up to climb Mt. Everest, there is no guarantee you're coming down alive. There's no guarantee you're coming down at all.

And I'm making this strange connection in my mind that suicide is my Everest. Pushing into unknown territory that may end in tragedy or a pay-off that no one else but a select few can hope to appreciate. Pushing towards suicide for a spiritual goal is . . . gambling with my life.

I would never think to climb Everest, I've felt altitude sickness at 18,000 feet in Tibet and there's no way I can imagine attempting 20,000, 24,000, 29,028 feet. That would be . . . suicide. But that's where I understand the drive of these people. That's why I felt emotionally involved in their attempt and why it felt personal when it became a tragedy.

Another book I just found at the bookstore that I want to start reading is The Essential Gnostic Gospels, a compilation which includes the Gospel of Judas. This is a collection of works and ideas that existed in the early Jesus movement that was suppressed by Constantine, the Roman Empire and the Nicene Council. The ideological losers.

This is the book that makes me separate Jesus from what Christianity became, because the Jesus portrayed in what are now known as the Gnostic Gospels is a character that makes me realize Jesus was really a big fucking deal in his time. The things these followers recorded make me feel he was on an elevated spiritual plane.

When exposed to canonical Christianity, I feel like I'm trying to be brainwashed. I should be impressed by walking on water or miracles . . . why? If he did, then he did and if you saw it, you saw it. Maybe I'd be just as amazed as seeing someone dribble a football (American). I'm more impressed when Thich Nhat Hanh, who has a deep respect for Jesus, said, "The miracle isn't walking on water, it's walking on land". That's shocking!

I should want heaven why? I should fear hell why? Such simple delineations which made me feel like they were trying to hoodwink me into something that didn't make any sense. Good? Evil? What the fuck?

And I shouldn't wonder the teachings in the Gnostic Gospels are also kabbalistic and buddhistic. The antithesis of the closed-minded exclusivity of what became Christianity – you're either with us or against us.

So many ways that Jesus's effect on the world went wrong, but from my initial readings of some of the Gnostic Gospels, I'm more convinced of one thing Christians got right, which is that Jesus was a big fucking deal. If they got his true teachings embodied in the Gnostic Gospels, that would be even better.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 3:36 p.m.

Is it too late for my other useless thoughts?

Thoughts like about the Occupy Wall St. protests. My heart is with them, but I don't think they'll bring about any change. My feeling is that the fundamental flaw with modern Western capitalism is that it's driven by greed and a wealth incentive, and that the benchmark for success is perpetual growth. Only if an economy is constantly growing and growing is it considered to be healthy and successful.

On its face, that is not sustainable. It's not even taking sustainability into consideration; just growth, growth, growth. This kind of economic growth requires the population to continue growing to maintain a consumer and labor base. And the population is growing, but this constant population growth also means all these people need to be fed and supply chains need to be maintained and the waste they create needs to be managed on greater and greater scales. I just don't see how it's sustainable.

And when I hear about the growing and looming economic crisis in Europe and the U.S. and the solutions being put forth to solve it, the solutions are just to shore up the unsustainable status quo. Very few people are thinking that the entire way of thinking needs to be re-thought.

Thoughts like how Obama really dropped the ball and it looks like he may become a one-term president. He hasn't been the agent for change he proclaimed to be and at every turn he has just maintained the status quo.

I thought the bailouts of the auto and financial industries were mistakes. If they were businesses that were failing, there were reasons why they were failing, and as capitalism dictates business that don't have the wherewithal to succeed should be allowed to fail. The whole idea of businesses that are "too big to fail" excuse for bailing them out was a betrayal of capitalism and it applied socialism, if not selective communism, to the big corporations who least deserved it.

The hard part about analyzing that is the auto industry looks like it's being responsible with the bailout and getting themselves back on their feet and paying back the loan. But the same can't be said about the finance industry who took the bailout money and treated themselves to lavish retreats, and I don't think they ever thought it necessary to pay the loan back. For them, it was "woohoo, money, let's spend it".

In retrospect, those two different behaviors do make sense. The auto industry has a tangible product they're putting out and the companies themselves are something the corporate boards are invested in. They cared about the survival of their companies and realized what they'd be losing if they failed. The financial industry on the other hand, all they see is the money they are getting. They don't care about the companies or the industry. If they fail they just go find a job somewhere else.

So what? Do I think those companies should have failed bringing on the possible collapse of capitalism? Well, I don't think bailing those corporations out will prevent the fall of capitalism, and from the crisis happening in Europe and looming over the U.S. I don't think it's out of the question that capitalism may collapse. When Soviet communism collapsed, I remember some short-sighted commentator declaring it was the "end of history". Capitalism triumphs. At the time I remember thinking how arrogant and stupid that comment was and that capitalism could also fall, but I had no idea what it would look like or what would replace it.

Now with the debt crisis looming, I can see what capitalism collapsing looks like. Just look at Greece 2011 and apply it to everywhere. There's just no more money after years of partying on credit. Capitalism was a fairy tale that was maintained on a collective imagination that wealth will constantly grow and grow, sustainability be damned. But when everyone realizes there is no money, there's just no where to go but in debt, and I don't know what opposite of growth there is other than in debt.

Thoughts about cosmology that I haven't written about in a long time because I realized that there is a lot wanting in such a theoretical field where scientists push forward their findings as facts, but where many cosmological studies are based on our limited observational abilities from our one tiny perspective in the vastness of the universe and can't be directly experimented on and subjected to the scientific method. True, a lot can be verified. Einstein's theory of relativity has been verified through space missions and predictions and observational confirmation. The Large Hadron Collider will also no doubt make inroads into the veracity of more areas of quantum mechanics. 

But other fundamental theories that are generally accepted such as the Big Bang and Inflation theories, I don't know anymore. Cosmic acceleration has also been generally accepted just years after observational findings but I want to question the observational methodology. Might we be misreading the data? Five hundred years from now, the Big Bang, inflation, cosmic acceleration are all theories that may fall by the wayside, just as many ideas from five hundred years ago have now been disproven. We can't go somewhere and test those theories scientifically. We can only read the observational data and our readings may be chauvinistic and wrong. At the core of our error might be our human chauvinism. As humans, we have our senses to observe the universe, but our human senses are limited. They are not the only way to view the universe. Our senses evolved for survival on this planet, in this environment.

In a universal environment – the environment of the entire universe – what is ultimately, objectively "perceivable", or what is there, is not necessarily what can be perceived by us. We need special instruments to observe things in different electromagnetic wavelengths and that may just be the tip of the iceberg. There are things beyond our senses that we can build instruments to detect, but there also may be things completely beyond our understanding or conception. I've read theories about how there may be areas of the universe where the physics is completely different from ours in a multiverse within one "universe" and there's no way to prove or disprove these theories. And that's the point.

Science is currently unable to detect anything that may be considered "spiritual".

The scientific method is terrific for what can be subjected to it, but a lot of cosmology and astrophysics can't be subjected to it. We can't go to these far off places and observe the strange phenomena and definitively say it's scientific fact. We can only report what we observe from countless light years away and propose our best guess to explain what we observe. There's always the possibility that we're misreading the data and in centuries to come a better understanding with better proof will emerge.