2019 mix CDs

Yes indeedy, yet another addition to my vanity project of making a mix CD for every year I've been alive! And same as since 2012, it's a double-disc collection filled with K-pop! Yay! Of course there's no reason on multiple levels for doing this. There's no reason for most of my life, what's your point? The CD medium itself is an artificial and/or obsolete construct. Who even uses CDs anymore? (oh yeah, me) But for me the physical limit is important (if allowing for a second CD can be called "limiting"), as is the concept of a "collection" with track order, segues and flow and contours. Who even thinks that way anymore? (oh yeah, me)

What a long, strange trip it's been in just these mix CDs. The extreme left turn that is K-pop so late in my life still confounds me to the point that I still can't dismiss mystical attribution of future life resonance – that my next life will be in Korea. FLR might also be why I'm primarily attracted to girl groups, whereas if it was just about the music genre I should be equally accepting of the boy groups. I'm drawing analogies with passages in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead that describe the bardo of rebirth whereby individuals that are to be reborn as male will feel jealousy towards the father and attraction to the mother and vice versa for females (that's just the basic template while, as my theory goes, genetics also play a part; the gender-"determining" experience in the bardo primarily affects subjective identity and may influence physically being born one gender or another (or yet another these days) but can't counter genetics dictating otherwise. It explains a lot if you think about it). So the Korean thing may be a resonance as to where I'm to be reborn, while the focus on the female may be sticking with current karma that I'll be born male (getting XX chromosomes notwithstanding). What the hell am I talking about?

Back on planet earth I've tried to explain the K-pop in other ways – that it's about songwriting, really good melodies, tight backing-track arrangements, the progressions, the gestalt and other musical/production attributes – but I feel like I'm trying to legitimize something that doesn't need legitimizing. I've always trusted my musical tastes and rarely have I made the blunder of thinking something was good only to realize there really wasn't much substance (mostly when I was trying too hard). But I suppose maybe none of this matters if it's future life resonance at play. It's no longer my musical tastes in this lifetime, but echoes from a future that hasn't happened yet or is supposed to be happening if I had kept to script and departed for that life long ago. My music listening has been hijacked. And I've mentioned before that the Korean thing is the future life resonance, not K-pop. The K-pop is because of love of music in this current life. In future lifetimes I may not be interested in music at all. Theoretically, if I had some other strong interest, it would be some other aspect of Korea that would be inexplicably manifesting.

I wonder what I would've been listening to for the past decade if K-pop hadn't happened. Anything good coming out of the west aside from Hamilton? I haven't noticed anything. I wouldn't need anything new since all the music I acquired in those hard-drive exchanges in 2009-2010 may have taken 10 years to get familiar with; as I mentioned, it's good stuff, I like it, but I frustratingly just don't know it. 

*sigh* Music show video clips from 2019 still had live audiences. Because of the CCP pandemic, there have been no audiences for the music shows in 2020 and there's a palpable difference in energy without the screaming audiences and fanchants. 

Disc One: (zip download)

1. All Mine (Coast of Azure) (GWSN) (choreo video)
2. Bing Bing (Nature)
3. Uh-Oh ((g)I-dle)
4. Umpah Umpah (Red Velvet)
5. Tiki-Taka (99%) (Weki Meki)
6. Butterfly (LOOΠΔ) (music video) (choreo vid)
7. %% Eung Eung (Apink)
8. One Blue Night (Jiyeon (ex-T-ara)) (lyric video) (audio only)
9. Sunrise (Gfriend)
10. Bbyong (Saturday) (choreo vid)
11. Well Come to the BOM (Berry Good) (official audio)
12. Kill You (Hot Place) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Hip (Mamamoo)
14. Dalla Dalla (ITZY)
15. How You Doin'? (EXID) (lyric video) (official audio)
16. Lalalay (Sunmi (ex-Wonder Girls))
17. 1, 2 (Lee Hi) (unofficial upload) (lyric video)
18. 5 More Minutes (DIA)
19. Sugar Pop (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (lyric video) (music students react)
20. Turn It Up (Twice) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. yeah yeah (Kisum) (audio only)
22. Guerilla (Oh My Girl)
23. This Winter (Berry Good)

Disc Two:
1. Picky Picky (Weki Meki)
2. Woowa (DIA)
3. Devil (CLC)
4. Thumbs Up (Momoland) (choreo video)
5. Hakuna Matata (DreamNote) (choreo video)

6. Late Autumn (Heize) (lyric video) (official audio)

7. Hush (Everglow) (lyric video) (official audio)

8. Underwater Love (Oh My Girl) (lyric video) (official audio)

9. Kkili Kkili (G-reyish)
10. Fever (Gfriend) (choreo video)

11. Boogie Up (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (full-stage fancam)

12. You Don't Know Me (Yoomin (ex-Melody Day)) (audio only)

13. New Day (Ladies' Code) (lyric video) (audio only)
14. Hocus Pocus (Bvndit)
15. Fancy (Twice)
16. Lion ((g)I-dle)
17. XX (Bolbbalgan4) (lyric video) (official audio)
18. Moonlight (Lovelyz)
19. Goblin (Sulli (ex-f(x)))
20. Recipe ~ For Simon (GWSN) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. LP (Red Velvet) (lyric video) (official audio)
22. Memories (Apink) (lyric video) (official audio)
23. Love RumPumPum (fromis_9) (unofficial stage mix)
24. Ruddy (Cherry Bullet) (official audio)

2018 mix CDs

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I reckon it's safe to say there was little material worth in my being on this planet. I have no problem with that. To me, to have material worth means to have some appreciable presence to others, some contribution to their lives. It's not a high bar. If you have friends, you have material worth. If you have one good friend, you have material worth. If you have family to whom you mean something aside from just being family, you have material worth. It's not hard to have material worth. I was ultimately not much of anything to anyone; didn't try to be, didn't want to be. I do realize I'm tailoring the definition to fit me.

However, to me, I suppose mindfulness practice and any insights gained towards transformation was worth traveling the path of this my life. Transforming anger to calm, chaos to quietude, craving to questioning, negativity to . . . not being so negative (that's the best I can hope for), etc. This is the important stuff as far as I'm concerned.

The process over the past however many years has been to become less reactive to what the world presents to me. It just is, so let it be just as it is. Don't be thrown by the throes of emotion regarding things that are uncontrollable and just aren't that important and will simply come to pass in time. I'm so glad I have nothing to do with that stuff. I'm also glad to have nothing to do with stuff that actually can be perceived as important and will not simply pass if not handled wisely and mindfully. Child-rearing, for example. All of it, as the mantra goes, none of my business.

I daresay mindfulness practice has been effective through the years. I've written about my failings and discrepancies, but those weren't conclusions as much as goals to overcome. And I do astonish myself by progress I may have made when I look back and recognize things I no longer react to nor am swayed by mindlessly.

On the other hand, I also recognized that I shouldn't get comfortable with the benefits of mindfulness practice, thinking I've accomplished something. There still always were pitfalls if I didn't recognize the weaknesses in my practice and the need to maintain a high doubt regarding it. If I slipped, it's a slippery slope.

Among the most important things, I realized, is to not think I've accomplished anything. It's important to keep in touch with my entire life prior to engaging in mindfulness practice and remember how immediate in this life I was an extremely reactive, emotional being like everyone else; tossed and thrown by what I perceived reality presented and thinking it real and important and doing plenty of stupid shit in the process. Like arguing. Or falling in love.

It's important because any accomplishments in one life may not carry over into future lives if they haven't been so inculcated as to become a part of one's karma. Like, well, falling in love. I don't want it, don't need it, but I can't say it's out of my karmic stream. In this life, I'm confident I wouldn't get attached or even react to something like that. It would just be something to observe and not be emotionally swayed. I think I'd just be amused by it at this point.

Anger, too. Anger is more dangerous because I know I can still be pushed to anger. It's immediate, virulent and as seductive as love. Nothing amusing about it. It takes moments and mindfulness to recognize it and shut it down. To be able to do so is an accomplishment, but it's not necessarily something that will carry over as karma into future lives. It can with disciplined and effective practice, but otherwise anger is part of the human emotional software package because on an animal evolutionary level, it does have its use.

To be safe, taking a tack of self-doubt, these sorts of mindfulness practice accomplishments are just for this lifetime. When this my brain structure ceases to function and karmic energy is transferred to a fresh, new reincarnated infant brain, I don't think my practice has been so good that those things like love and anger, etc., won't be reset to default. Growing up, anger will again be the immediate reaction to anger stimulus. And as any hormonal teen, lust and love will have their effect and attraction. I shalt fornicate again.

Finding the suffering they cause will be things that would have to be re-learned by the person the karmic energy ends up in (I almost worded it like it would be me, it would not). And realizing that kind of suffering is something not desirable is a completely different step to re-learn, not to mention the realization that it's even possible to try to eradicate it, that there's a choice. Maybe that's where my practice in this life kicks in and makes it easier for that person to realize. Hey, maybe my current life is exactly that model. I am this way because it's what someone cultivated before.

Karma may be thought of as being like a message in a bottle to future lives. Doing positive things and keeping a positive mindset is the equivalent of sending positive karma into future lives. There needs to be purity in intent. If you do good for the purpose of getting positive future karma, the karma is more about being manipulative or doing things only if there's a benefit. Sending positive karma into future lives is about transforming into a positive being who does good things as a result of being a positive being. But each incident of doing something good for someone else helps into becoming a positive being, so each incident can contribute to the message that will be sent in the bottle.

On the other hand, maybe you get angry easily and lash out at people and argue a lot. You can think of it as having inherited it as karma from someone who was just like you and didn't do anything about it. You can't blame them for it, your actions are your own responsibility. But if they had tried to work on emotional control and being concerned about the suffering they caused, that karma may have come to you like a message in a bottle and it would be in you to be different or able to change.

2017 mix CDs

It seems like there should have been a sea change in the K-pop girl group scene in 2017 with the epidemic I mentioned before of girl groups disbanding, losing members or falling into limbo with inactivity or no news to the point of potential irrelevance. It was shocking. Yet here I am with no problem still filling two CDs for 2017. New groups have emerged amidst new trends and new top groups. Same as it ever was.

All the extra video links are supplementary videos that I enjoy. The full stage "camcorders" are room sound quality (poor), but they capture the full choreography and the audience noise, and are the closest facsimile of what it might be like to actually be there. I started linking the unofficial stage mixes by a user whose editing skills are amazing in 2016 and continue here (they also serve as a terrific review of fashions and variations girl groups go through in the course of a promotion). And then other various and sundry videos that I like.

(updated 1/15/2019)
2017 mix CD, part one (zip download):
1. Girl Front (Odd Eye Circle (LOOΠΔ)) (music video)
2. Baby Face (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (official audio)
3. Rookie (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, stage mix)
4. I Don't Like Your Girlfriend (Weki Meki) (live version, full stage camcorder, funny relay version)
5. Excuse Me (AOA) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Irony (Park Bo Ram) (audio only)
7. Bippity Boppity Boo (Berry Good) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
8. Yes I Am (Mamamoo) (full stage camcorder, ad-lib compilation stage mix (captions recommended), unofficial stage mix)
9. No Thanxxx (Epic High) (lyric video) (audio only)
10. The Weatherforecastors (All Day Sunny) (Grace) (audio only)
11. Aloha (Pristin)
12. Signal (Twice) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
13. Gashina (Sunmi) (dancers gender reversed version)
14. Love Me (Lee Hyori) (audio only)
15. Jealousy (Baek Ah Yeon)
16. Night Rather Than Day (EXID) (full stage camcorder, live version)
17. Love Cherry Motion (Choerry (LOOΠΔ))
18. Some (Bolbbalgan4)
19. Listen to This Song (DIA) (official audio)
20. I Think I Love U (Sonamoo) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
21. Nalari (S.E.T) (full stage camcorder)
22. Only U (Laboum) (full stage camcorder)
23. Roopretelcham (Elris)

2017 mix CD, part two:
1. WoW! (Lovelyz) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
2. Happy (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
3. Heart Attack (Chuu (LOOΠΔ))
4. Bing Bing (AOA) (full stage camcorder)
5. Wee Woo (Pristin) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Will You Go Out With Me? (DIA) (full stage camcorder, live stage, Eunchae focus cam because super cute, unofficial stage mix)
7. Red Flavor (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, Seulgi focus cam, unofficial stage mix)
8. Dlwlma (IU)
9. Stars (Rothy)
10. In the Rain (Kisum)
11. Pow Pow (Elris) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
12. Would You Like? (Tymee) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Rolly (Good Day)
14. DDD (EXID) (full stage camcorder, funny parts switch version, even funnier parts switch audio over live version)
15. Last Carnival (Juniel)
16. Pastry (Nine Muses) (audio only)
17. Kiss on the Lips (Melody Day)
18. Love is Sudden (MIXX)
19. Everyday I Love You (feat. Haseul) (Vivi (LOOΠΔ))
20. Glass Shoes (fromis_9)
21. Twinkle (Lovelyz) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
22. Hz (Hashtag) (audio only)
23. Heart Shaker (Twice) (live version, full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
24. Hwi Hwi (Laboum) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)

2016 mix CDs

I had another odd dream that may suggest that my brothers and I have been siblings in past lives and that I may have been the eldest. The odd part is that instead of a random, unfamiliar setting, this dream was set in this lifetime during the 80s at my parents' house.

Of course, we had our established places at the dinner table. I came down to the dinner table as me, the youngest, and I sat at my oldest brother's place and started eating. Then realizing I was eating my oldest brother's dinner, I felt guilty, faux pas, and slightly panicked at what I should do.

Also interesting about the dream is that there was only one other dinner at the table, not two others. So even though the setting was familiar, it might have been a past life resonance of just two brothers and I was the older one. I was actually eating the right dinner.

My brothers, either one or the other or both, have been appearing in my dreams frequently as of late. Not necessarily with any specific impression that they have anything to do with past lives. However, just that they've been appearing in my dreams may suggest that these dreams may be past life resonances.

Of course, in this lifetime we have no particular affinity towards each other. We grew up fighting like dogs, and when the fighting stopped, the detente has mostly been only cordial, albeit kind and supportive when called for. Not much that can be called close. There has never been any going out of our way to meet up, nor any interaction just because we like each other. Truth to tell, I don't even know if we do.

It might support the suggestion that there is an aspect of karma that is out of our hands. Karmic attachments aren't necessarily a matter of choice, but a matter of course, driven by cause and effect. And in this case, if we are connected by karma, it's not necessarily positive karma. Negative karma often can connect people to each other. Even as little as habit can connect people by karma. Even if the habit is hating each other.

Other than that, something about my dreams I've started to notice, going back for quite a while, is that a subtle focus of a vast majority of them is a domestic scene; my residence, where I'm living. The characters change, the actual domiciles are totally different, and the action in the dreams vary widely, but on a subtle level, there is a focus on the living quarters.

There's always an awareness of the physical space, the rooms, the layout, the construction, the style, the decor. No opinion about them, just awareness of what they are. I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe it's a reflection of the lack of home in my life.

I've never considered Taiwan home. Nor New Jersey, which if it was "home" when I was younger, it was always a hostile place. No people I consider home. I tried for home in San Francisco, but it was always undermined by dissatisfaction and the impulse towards suicide. 

I had a second dream about my brothers and I having been siblings before in a past life. The first dream was a while ago, I can't remember when or whether I mentioned it, but in that dream, I felt I was the oldest and had the most power, and may not have been particularly liked because of that.

The dream I had this morning was more impressionistic. It required post-wakem interpretation to think it had anything to do with a past life. What was happening in the dream was more about how I was feeling, rather than any visuals.

My interpretation was that I was very sick, possibly about to die. I was on medication. Walking was very difficult and precarious. And I was on a ventilator.

The on medication part I got from an early part of the dream where I was floating. This part may have been a semi-conscious dream that I had some control of and was struggling not to come out of. Actually, it may have started as a full dream.

The dream started in what felt like San Francisco, Richmond District, and might have involved a police car chase coming right off the Golden Gate Bridge and turning left. It didn't look like any of that (except the left turn), it just felt like that.

And there wasn't any real chase, it was rushing down a straight, grey, concrete, fluorescent-lit industrial corridor that felt like Clement or California Street, one of those long streets that run the length of the Richmond.

I was hanging off the side of the car, or it may have been a medical cart, hoping not to get slammed against the wall or by the swinging doors it was crashing through. When it stopped, that's when the semi-conscious floating part began, me trying to navigate back up through the corridor without waking up.

The next part was full dream. There was an image, perhaps a still image, of me and my brothers as children sitting in the back seat of our parents' car back in the 70s. There was some panning and recognition of who would be who of these children. The outside of the car looked like New York City.

The dream then switched to like a construction or demolition site (a pile of rubble) that was in the side of a building. It wasn't a restricted site as other people were making their way through and there were construction workers. My brothers and I were navigating our way through, I was having difficulty with my footing. This is the metaphor of a medical patient having difficulty walking.

My brothers were simultaneously helping me and getting frustrated at my inability. I remember a huge gloop of snot dripping out of my nose and trying to maintain my dignity. That's the first suggestion that I was ill.

The dream ended with me noticing a package of tissue on some rubble and trying to get a tissue to wipe my nose, but for some reason I couldn't do it. I kept getting thwarted or the tissue turned into something else and I actually got frustrated. All through this later part of the dream, and this was something I noticed semi-consciously, that my breathing was heavily labored and loud like trying to breathe through mucous, and that's where I get the ventilator part from.

When I woke up, I could still hear that raspy, labored breathing.

It's all interpretation. None of the imagery was about sickness, but after I woke up, that's the first thing that came to mind and that's how I put it together and tied it to my previous dream that suggested that my brothers and I were siblings in a past life.

Another morning of back-end insomnia. I set the timer on my electric fan to turn off after three hours. When I awoke, the fan was still on and I wondered why, and then it dawned on me that three hours hadn't passed. I looked at the clock and estimated that it was just about to shut off and it did within five minutes.

I hardly even tried to get back to sleep. I listened to one of my mix CDs then got to sitting.

I've begun a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, focusing on RiSe and EunB.

I used to, as part of practice, loop read the Tibetan Book of the Dead cycle. I don't know how many times I've read the thing trying to make sense of it in light of my scientific faith, which allows for quasi-logical spirituality (or quasi-spiritual logic) that hard science can't touch.

The last time I tried to do a recitation with a specific focus was in April after the Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea. It was less than a week through when I got a very bad feeling about it, purely intuitive. I felt that what I was doing could spiritually be doing more harm than good and I stopped. Maybe it was that I had no idea about the energies I was dealing with on such a massive scale.

On the first day for RiSe and EunB, just as I started there was a roar of thunder and rain started pouring down at a time of day that was totally unusual for recent weather patterns. I took that as a good sign.

I don't think I'm seriously reciting the book for them, I remind myself the recitation is for myself. If there is any efficacy in helping them, it's beyond my knowledge, figuring or belief. It is solely within my hope.

It's been a long time since I've written anything about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and anything I've written before may be outdated by my constantly evolving thoughts on it. Or it may remain valid if it was at all valid in the first place, who knows?

The basic framework of the book, specifically the Natural Liberation Through Hearing chapter, is that after death, the mind separates from the body. The body is dead, and what is released is the unenlightened karmic energy "habits" of the deceased. The habits are primarily the ego, the sense of "I" and identity of who we were in the form of a naturally existing cosmic energy, something that pervades the universe.

This basic energy is what carries a being to their next re-birth as a cycle of nature. More specific in the energy is imprinted the strongest psychological baggage from previous lives. My favorite example to explain it is fear of spiders.

My theory being that my fear of spiders is from past lives of being bugs getting caught in spiders' webs and being eaten. Imagine yourself as a bug and getting caught in a web, and then imagine a spider relative to your size (the thing can be eight feet in size) coming at you to wrap you up in its web and sucking the life out of you

Bugs don't have the emotions that humans do, they don't have the analytical capability that we do. But when they're flailing in the web with that huge spider coming at them, there is something in their reaction. It's still energy, and that energy is karma that carries over. It's what we call terrifying and is strongly imprinted.

Lifetime after lifetime of evolution until reaching the level of acquiring a human body, that imprint is still there for the experiencing and analyzing. My brother hates cockroaches; so maybe he was a cockroach in previous lives and the imprint was something unpleasant. I think cockroaches are disgusting, but I don't react to them as viscerally as he does. On the other hand, I have an affection for cats, possibly indicating lifetimes as cats that were pleasant.

Getting back on track to what I was talking about, the physical body dies and the mind-energy is separated and released from it and enters a state of being the Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to as the intermediate states, the bardos.

The description of the experience in the bardos is like being in a storm, but without solid reality and an identifiable ego body, it's extremely disorienting and confusing. My recitation is a calling out to the energies of RiSe and EunB, but it's a call into a hurricane an ocean away.

Theoretically, having no exposure to this sort of practice or spirituality and being nominally Christian in this life, there's only a small chance that my call would reach them. Rather they would be buffeted by their previous habitual tendencies, experience and attachments and aversions within the storm of the bardos.

The hope is that my small voice does attract their attention. Tibetans describe the disembodied energy body of those deceased as experiencing a highly clarified reality. If my voice can cut through the storm, with no barriers of form or language, it's possible to hook them and bring them to my recitation. And if they can be just slightly touched by teachings of compassion, it might do worlds of good for them. That's the hope.

It's not an affront to whatever closely-held Christian beliefs they may have had. Personally, I think the Tibetan version as metaphorical, describing archetypes. There is the Buddhistic language and imagery, but they are just archetypes.

My metaphor is of a multicultural, multilingual nation living in a land bordered by a mountain range. No one thinks of crossing the range to see what's on the other side. But then one person decides to try and accomplishes it and sends back directions on how to cross the mountain range. But only people who understand that language can follow the directions. Anyone who speaks another language can't.

So it may have been that the "psychonauts" (a Robert Thurman term) of Tibetan spirituality investigated the death process and through reincarnations subsequently described the process. But the process is in Tibetan Buddhistic terms. It doesn't mean the experience is just for Tibetan Buddhists. It's just described in subjective terms. It's unclear what Padmasambhava, credited for authoring the Tibetan Book of the Dead, knew about other spiritual paradigms.

So so far I'm comfortable doing this recitation for RiSe and EunB. Through my days I try to remain positive and in times that I think of their deaths and that they're gone and start to feel sad, I try to transform the feeling into joy. Just something positive for them, that their memory doesn't lead to sadness but to joy. Joy that they existed and chased their dream and brought joy and entertainment to their fans and their industry.

Before the Music Dies

I have a few more cable channels thanks to my landlord upgrading the telecom around here. Shouldn't complicate things too much. I now have an extra Korean entertainment channel, expanded Discovery, news and HBO channels and Sundance Channel.

A primary gain from the extra Korean entertainment channel is a program which highlights working South Korean bands of various genres. With my recent unhealthy and unholy penchant towards K-pop girl groups, this program makes it clear that the Korean music scene is, in fact, more variegated and diverse.

Rock, live music, musicianship and people who are likely not so impressed by the international popularity of K-pop are alive and well in Korea, granted none of the bands on the show, albeit listenable and not terrible, have grabbed me. It's still good to know it's there.

And irony not missed, one of the first films I watched on the Sundance Channel was a documentary called Before the Music Dies, generally about the commercialization of the music industry in the U.S. The important point to me is that everything disparaging that is said or described about how bad music is manufactured in the U.S. is precisely how it's done in Korea.

The difference, I might defensively flail, is that there's no question about the nature of K-pop in Korea. There is no argument about art vs. commerce. I'm a fan of K-pop girl groups and not once has it crossed my mind that this is art or has integrity in any way.

K-pop idols are people who want to be performers, but don't have the artistic inspiration or wherewithal to make it on their own from the ground up. They have talents and are highly trainable. The entertainment agencies aren't interested in art. They're not trying to make good music. They only want to make money.

To the process vs. product argument, by process, K-pop is by definition bad music. As for product, as I've mentioned over and over again, I don't know why I like K-pop and no other manufactured pop from other countries. I put it to better songwriting, but that's hardly quantifiable.

I might mention, if I haven't already, it is essential to my fandom that I can't understand the lyrics, which I'm sure are so banal as to be insulting. That's a given. I'm only a fan because I can't understand the lyrics.

Another given is that if I saw the music collections of the celebrity idols of whom I'm a fan, I would cringe and wilt and scream in anguish to the skies, "whhhhyyyyy?!!!". I'm sure they listen to shit that I despise and would likely not be impressed by my music collection, either.

Mind you that's very different from musicians I genuinely respect. I would want to know their sources and I'd likely listen to and respect, if not personally like, what they listen to. Fuck, I don't even like Eric Clapton, totally overrated, but he's real enough that I'd totally be interested in who his influences were.

This is future life projecting. If the Hinduistic/Buddhistic model of reincarnation is somewhat valid, and if it is Korea to where I'm angling a rebirth, then maybe it's not a place that will be jolting or shocking towards my samsaric karma.

That is to say that if I am reborn in Korea, it would be the result of attachments and not-quite-enlightened views of being that would manifest, but I'd still be OK to find myself on my path. Penchant towards K-pop girl groups notwithstanding.

Sadie arrived in town. Sadie from San Francisco. Sadie who I haven't seen in almost 9 years. Sadie the last person I saw in San Francisco. She hung out with me the night before I left, after my apartment was empty and all my stuff was sitting in a Ryder truck outside.

I think she asked me at some point back then if there wasn't anything she could've said that could have made me stay. I said no, but she could have, but it was just that the time was wrong.

She asked me recently if it was alright if she visited, and I distinctly, resoundingly didn't say yes.

She has a job where she telecommutes, and she realized she could telecommute from anywhere. So she realized she could travel to places and all she had to do was maintain the discipline to work a 40 hour work week and everything was cool and she could experience living in different places.

I didn't say it would be cool to visit me. I didn't say I wanted her to visit me. I did say she couldn't stay with me, as my apartment is inadequate for that. I did remind her of my current state of social isolation and that there were a lot of unknowns involving me suddenly interacting with people.

I did say that if she happened to decide to come to Taipei as a destination to do her work thing, I would make sure she landed on her feet to do her work thing, and that I would make myself available at every possibility to hang out with her and show her my Taipei.

I honestly didn't think she'd come here. All the signs I was giving should have been construed as warnings. I told her she could come but to have no expectations. And she came with no expectations.

She'll be here for three weeks figuring out her own living situation and work situation, and I'll make myself available for her to have a good experience.

She's an old friend now. I love her like I loved her back in San Francisco, and I'm sure she loves me like she loved me back in San Francisco, but we were only good friends then. Now we're old friends, with that much more comfort and weight to our interactions.

I think we'll generally have a great time. I think she'll generally have a great experience. But I really, really, really want to tell her at some point before she leaves that all I want from life now is to experience death, and bringing faith into the picture, to not come back at all (Buddhism is the faith, but the actual "faith" is in the unknowing whether it's a reasonable projection of what else there is beyond our physical lives and reality).

I really feel done with the human experience (for now, perhaps), and nothing is as disheartening as the idea of reincarnation and going through all of something like this again and hoping to be exposed to and re-learn all the stuff (due to karma) that was so inspiring before to get me on the path.

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

I need to get serious about this as things may be starting to come to a head.

A recent thought that has been playing in my head is the realization that my suicide is an integral part of my parents' journey. I know there is a psychological aspect of this suggesting these thoughts are a way of attaching meaning or responsibility of committing suicide to some fictional "higher" or external purpose, therefore I have to do this, and I'm not going to try to refute them.

I'm just acknowledging them as valid counterpoints. I'll just admit that there are parallel viewpoints. They may be even intertwining viewpoints.

One thing my personal cosmology and theory of everything has not been able to account for is why was I born to these spiritually bankrupt parents?

Previously I've chalked it up to a mistake. That my ability to navigate the death bardos was faulty from my previous life, and although I was accurately able to manage a target of Japan, where I was conceived, I wasn't able to discern appropriate parents.

Instead of being born Japanese, preferably to dharma-friendly parents as perhaps was my target, I was born to a spiritually bankrupt Taiwanese couple temporarily living in Japan, who then immigrated to the U.S. Fuck me.

But calling it a metaphysical mistake is an easy way out. And even though such an incident would not be beyond my karmic theory, I have to consider what is more likely in that same theory. And that is there is more to the bond of the parent-child relationship.

In reincarnation, karma not only draws us to a species of organism we're previously familiar with, but also to specific karmic matter, people, with whom we were acquainted. That's behind the metaphysical concept that we're drawn to certain people, or that certain people are in our lives for a reason.

So even though it's possible that my being born to my parents was a great metaphysical blunder on my part, I still have to examine the possibility of a substantive relationship, no matter how onerous that is to me.

As I said, they are spiritually bankrupt. I've documented before that I almost got my parents to admit that money is more important to them than family, and I backed off at the last moment because I realized I didn't want to hold that mirror to their faces.

That might be the extreme of it, but even in all other aspects of their lives, they are mere simple, primitive, unimaginative beings living normative lives just because they were born, and they question nothing about the reality that surrounds them. There is no mystery to the life cycle to them.

Even further, within the Tibetan Buddhist description of types of karmic existence, I describe my parents falling under the category of "hungry ghosts". Tibetan iconography depicts hungry ghosts as beings who have enormous stomachs but throats that are as thin as a coffee stirrer. Their desire is huge, but there is no way to satisfy it, so they constantly crave and strive for things in a meaningless, futile way.

How can I have been born to these people? From whoever I was in a previous life, did I guide myself to these people? In my grand scheme of things, informed by Tibetan Buddhist ideas, this is not impossible to do. And if I guided myself to them, then why? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew.

Perhaps from a Zoharic point of view, I may suggest that there isn't a direct meaning or connection, but that all beings are at their own spiritual energy level between the material and divine, and even if my parents are firmly mired in the lowest, material realm of malchut, they still are on their spiritual path.

Even if I have a hard time conceiving of any karmic connection with my parents, the Zohar suggests that spiritual energies are still affected by our relationship. We're worlds apart and they can't change me or even conceive of the reality I live in, and I sure can't change them, but their energy on their path is still there, and my energy on my path is still here.

And I seem to be firmly fixated that suicide is my path, even as that path keeps being distracted. And to compound that fixation, my parents (and everyone else around me for that matter) inadvertently keep pushing me towards suicide. "Do what your heart tells you to", "Do what makes you happy", "You're the only one to decide your own future". Suicide is my response to all of those well-intended platitudes.

I want to say my parents need this for their spiritual growth, and I've probably said that before already. And of course that's where the psychological conundrum comes in because you always have to look at psychology whenever someone feels compelled to do something.

Actually, no, I don't need to do this. It's my choice, whether I do it or not. But I am convinced that from a Zoharic point of view, they would be the better for it. They would have to face a challenge they are unequipped to face, and those are the best kinds of challenges for our spiritual states.

And recently, as they've always done, they're trying to push me down a normative path that conforms to what they envision to be life. That's a path I've well-established for myself as virtual death. But that pushing may just be the catalyst to actualize my goal of suicide, which is not death. I'm not going to go all out and call it life, knowing who I am it may or may not be, but it's more life than what my parents can envision.

I don't know what my parents would go through if I disappeared. Quite honestly, there might not be any of the emotional trauma that often accompanies people who lose a loved one.

Well, a child in this case, I don't think my parents are qualified to consider me a "loved one". To them, I consider myself an "acquired attachment". Aside from the accident of being born to them, there is nothing about me they could possibly reasonably love.

If they go through a period of some distress and then accept it and move on in the manner that they handled their own parents' death, then there was nothing I could do for them by living. But if they are challenged and really have to struggle, then I think there is benefit.

But god forbid our karmic energies are linked beyond this lifetime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abraham is a pure embodiment of kindness and generosity. In kabbalistic terminology, his connection is with the Sefirah of Chesed. The energy of judgment and severity associated with the Sefirah of Gvurah is foreign to him – and that is precisely what the Adversary has revealed as an opening. As a foundation of the spiritual circuitry that must be flawlessly constructed if the redemption of humanity is ever to be realized, Abraham must be made a complete soul. That is the purpose of this last trial, as the Zohar makes clear.

"There was no judgment in Abraham previously. He had consisted entirely of kindness (Chesed). Now water was mixed with fire; kindness was mixed with judgment (Gvurah). Abraham did not achieve perfection until he prepared to execute judgment and establish it in its place." – The Essential Zohar, p. 148

This passage is in regard to the story of Abraham whereby the Creator demands that he make a sacrifice of his son, Isaac. I think – I'm no expert on biblical stories. I just have vague recollections of bits and pieces I've heard. And in "The Essential Zohar", the chapter name is "The Binding of Isaac".

The Sefirah (or Sephirot) mentioned are described differently by different sources, but I gather that they are energy states between the ultimate divine and material, human existence. They describe humanity's "distance from God", which is also a concept in Sufism. So they separate human from the divine.

There are about 10 Sephirot, and from the divine down, they each describe an energy state removed from the divine state. Or in reverse, they are like a ladder to be climbed towards the divine. Several of the Sephirot are directly associated with certain Jewish patriarchs, and here, Abraham is associated with Chesed, or mercy, sharing, loving-kindness.

Abraham is described as incomplete because he is purely Chesed, without a drop of Chesed's "negative" counterpart Sefirah, Gvurah, which is judgment or restriction.

The Adversary mentioned above is part of the divine mechanisms. Angels who are testing God's creation, partly out of spite for being told that Adam was closer to God than the angels. The Essential Zohar likens them to criminal defense attorneys, who might seem to be despicable, defending criminals and degenerates, but they serve a vital function in the justice system by creating balance. They ensure the legal process maintains the highest standards to protect citizens from possible abuses or over-zealous prosecution.

They see Abraham's perfect Chesed as a possible fault and request permission from the Creator to test his faith – would he maintain his faith when asked to do the unthinkable? So the Creator commands this perfect believer to make the ultimate sacrifice of his own son, who was born after much difficulty.

Abraham passes the test with flying colors, but in doing so, his being is infused with Gvurah, which was necessary to offer Isaac as a sacrifice until the Creator stopped him at the last second. Having the energy states of Chesed and Gvurah, Abraham is described as having his soul complete.

I love the description of the Sefirah as divine circuitry to connect humanity with the divine, angling for the ultimate redemption of humankind in the Garden of Eden.

What I get out of these concepts is that the Jewish patriarchs created the circuit pathways up the ladder of Sephirot for all humanity, all following generations. Abraham completed that particular connection for all of us so that we don't have to by ourselves. All we have to do is acknowledge Abraham's accomplishment within ourselves.

For example, living in a major urban city, I witness a lot of behavior that can be described as unmindful or even stupid. If I were 100% compassionate, I would cow down to such behaviors and just let them be and not be critical or judgmental.

But that's not necessarily the best course of action. Sometimes it's better to act in a way that's rude to them or even threatening to try to bring to their attention that they need to be mindful, too. That's Gvurah.

The intention must be correct, i.e. balanced with Chesed. If it's just Gvurah, then it's aggression or spite or anger. If the intention is compassionate, then an aggressive act is balanced with Chesed.

Abraham completed that circuit for me, and to the extent that I have it, I am grateful to Abraham.

I think these ideas can be linked with karma. Regarding the theory of reincarnation and karma, we don't take anything with us from one life to a subsequent one except our karma. And the establishment and recognition of the sephirotic circuitry is karma. It's one more step up the tree of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, actually it's true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in Buddhistic terms, Abraham was certainly a bodhisattva.

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

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