I'm wondering what I'm holding onto as my life unravels and falls apart. I put down my thoughts and ideas while realizing none of this has any meaning. I look at my life from all kinds of different angles and I can't see any meaning. I know my time on this planet hasn't been useless, I do think I have impacted some people's lives, but that doesn't mean it has meaning.
It's just plain ridiculous that I'm still here, letting things get bleaker and bleaker. I never would've guessed I would go out so pathetically, wasting away in my apartment.
My health may be taking a nosedive. My body feels like it's becoming unable to cope with my drinking (it's about time). I'm noticing more changes, but insomnia has also hit hard recently and isn't showing signs of relenting, and insomnia fucks you up real good.
The weather isn't helping, either. Relentless drear contributing to the decline.
Lots of nausea recently. Lots of feeling like throwing up, but having nothing to throw up as I don't have any appetite left, so there's not much in my stomach to throw up.
Not helping that matter is that I am forcing myself to continue drinking. My body is starting to resist. I don't know if it's psychological or physiological, but my body is trying to tell me to stop. It's getting hard to get shots down, and gagging has become part of the process as I force the poison down.
Generally feeling bad all the time. I'm not complaining, it's what I want, it's what I've caused. I just wish I can get it over with.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
This autumn has been a boon for K-pop girl groups with a plethora of comebacks by top acts. In Korean entertainment, "comeback" doesn't refer to a return from some fall from grace. It just means a new song from a group that has already debuted.
They're called "idol" groups, which I think has become a palatable term because of shows like "American Idol". In Korea it just refers to pop music celebrities, and it's a term adopted from the Japanese pop music scene, "idoru", which of course is taken from "idol".
When I first heard the Japanese use of the word several decades back, I didn't like it because the idea of an "idol" or something that is idolized was an afront to respectable musicianship. An idol was something superficial and glossy; an image that could be manufactured. "Real" musicians and songwriters garnered respect.
For the Japanese, any singer or music group popular enough to appear on TV shows was considered an "idoru", including what I consider legitimate rock bands that aren't corporately manufactured, and who write their own music and play their own instruments.
In Korea, that latter group, from what I gather as an outsider, doesn't get much international exposure or attention. Music is almost all corporate and manufactured with relatively few national artists who write and create their own product. And even though that's something that generally offends me everywhere else, I've somehow accepted it in Korea.
I tell myself it's because the songwriting is good. I still think I'm a discerning listener. Otherwise, I'm not sure where my change of heart occurred. It may be midlife crisis, watching these girls half my age strut their stuff, but I insist it's not prurient interest. If the music isn't good, I'm not going to watch or follow them no matter how "sexy" they are.
And I think I've mentioned before that I still can't stand Western, Japanese or Taiwanese pop music on the basis that the songwriting is still offensively bad. I'm still not discounting the possibility of the future life resonance idea, and the fact that I've out of the blue honed in specifically to Korean music and no other, adding that music is my big love in this life, might speak to that.
So be warned, major K-pop girl group geeking out follows, stop reading if it's not a place to which you're willing to go:
So far, this autumn has seen four top acts make their comeback stages. Kara was the first, followed by Brown Eyed Girls a few weeks later, and then finally Secret and Girls' Generation (SNSD) simultaneously began their new promotions head-to-head (note my consistency: members of all four groups were on Invincible Youth).
My personal tastes rate Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense" as the best quality of these comebacks. The lead track off their album was actually a song called "Hot Shot" which I initially liked better for its Latin groove, but their main promotion was for "Sixth Sense".
Brown Eyed Girls are a bit of an anomaly in the idol scene because three of the four members are considered advanced in age at 30. Only one member is 24 (Ga-in). But they are with a smaller agency and I gather they have a lot more creative and artistic control than younger idol groups on bigger labels. I also heard that Je-a and Miryo earn copyright royalties because Je-a writes and Miryo takes credit for her own raps.
And even though their stage performances have choreography, they are recognized for their vocal talents, and the media has covered their vocal skills during this comeback, highlighted towards the end of "Sixth Sense" after Miryo's rap section when first Je-a hits a big note, followed by Ga-in and Narsha hitting high falsetto notes (I would also note the subtle background vocals during those high notes which are pretty cool, but not necessarily noticeable unless paying attention to them).
When top acts first make their comeback stages, they're usually allowed to perform two songs, one a truncated version of a second song (in this case "Hot Shot") before going into their main promotion:
Secret's "Love is Move" hooked me immediately, so I would rate it as a very close second.
I thought the only thing that would prevent it from taking number one spots on TV programs is that it was directly going against SNSD's comeback, a Daniel and Goliath battle where Secret didn't have a chance. The thing is that SNSD's comeback was supposed to come a few weeks earlier, but then they changed their plans and ended up releasing simultaneously with Secret.
I applaud Secret for not changing their plans as other groups did to avoid competition with SNSD. Secret and their management seemed confident about their product and even if they wouldn't get number ones on the TV programs, they weren't going to change their plans. That I respect.
It's just a rocking, bopping romp that's a lot of fun.
Kara made a splash with the first autumn comeback, "Step", and I rate it third best among them. The synth blare kinda put me off at first, but the track grew on me:
Finally, SNSD came out with their much-hyped comeback, but it was quite a disappointment for me, if not for SNSD fans. The song is still dominating, but to my ears it isn't great. Certainly not as catchy as their two previously promoted songs, the Japanese language Mr. Taxi and last year's Hoot.
The song was hyped as being created by Teddy Riley who was behind Michael Jackson's "Dangerous", but to me that's a big so what? and indicative of what I don't like about corporate pop music in general.
This track has some good qualities and has grown on me through the promotions, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to or watch this track. I'm not a big fan of the fact that there is no bass, and therefore lacks oomph.
I can't fault SNSD's execution as they present their parts and choreography professionally and flawlessly. But in the end I think the success of this track lies in the fact that it's SNSD.
Autumn comebacks are still anticipated by Wonder Girls and T-ara (another Invincible Youth member group).
They're called "idol" groups, which I think has become a palatable term because of shows like "American Idol". In Korea it just refers to pop music celebrities, and it's a term adopted from the Japanese pop music scene, "idoru", which of course is taken from "idol".
When I first heard the Japanese use of the word several decades back, I didn't like it because the idea of an "idol" or something that is idolized was an afront to respectable musicianship. An idol was something superficial and glossy; an image that could be manufactured. "Real" musicians and songwriters garnered respect.
For the Japanese, any singer or music group popular enough to appear on TV shows was considered an "idoru", including what I consider legitimate rock bands that aren't corporately manufactured, and who write their own music and play their own instruments.
In Korea, that latter group, from what I gather as an outsider, doesn't get much international exposure or attention. Music is almost all corporate and manufactured with relatively few national artists who write and create their own product. And even though that's something that generally offends me everywhere else, I've somehow accepted it in Korea.
I tell myself it's because the songwriting is good. I still think I'm a discerning listener. Otherwise, I'm not sure where my change of heart occurred. It may be midlife crisis, watching these girls half my age strut their stuff, but I insist it's not prurient interest. If the music isn't good, I'm not going to watch or follow them no matter how "sexy" they are.
And I think I've mentioned before that I still can't stand Western, Japanese or Taiwanese pop music on the basis that the songwriting is still offensively bad. I'm still not discounting the possibility of the future life resonance idea, and the fact that I've out of the blue honed in specifically to Korean music and no other, adding that music is my big love in this life, might speak to that.
So be warned, major K-pop girl group geeking out follows, stop reading if it's not a place to which you're willing to go:
So far, this autumn has seen four top acts make their comeback stages. Kara was the first, followed by Brown Eyed Girls a few weeks later, and then finally Secret and Girls' Generation (SNSD) simultaneously began their new promotions head-to-head (note my consistency: members of all four groups were on Invincible Youth).
My personal tastes rate Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense" as the best quality of these comebacks. The lead track off their album was actually a song called "Hot Shot" which I initially liked better for its Latin groove, but their main promotion was for "Sixth Sense".
Brown Eyed Girls are a bit of an anomaly in the idol scene because three of the four members are considered advanced in age at 30. Only one member is 24 (Ga-in). But they are with a smaller agency and I gather they have a lot more creative and artistic control than younger idol groups on bigger labels. I also heard that Je-a and Miryo earn copyright royalties because Je-a writes and Miryo takes credit for her own raps.
And even though their stage performances have choreography, they are recognized for their vocal talents, and the media has covered their vocal skills during this comeback, highlighted towards the end of "Sixth Sense" after Miryo's rap section when first Je-a hits a big note, followed by Ga-in and Narsha hitting high falsetto notes (I would also note the subtle background vocals during those high notes which are pretty cool, but not necessarily noticeable unless paying attention to them).
When top acts first make their comeback stages, they're usually allowed to perform two songs, one a truncated version of a second song (in this case "Hot Shot") before going into their main promotion:
Secret's "Love is Move" hooked me immediately, so I would rate it as a very close second.
I thought the only thing that would prevent it from taking number one spots on TV programs is that it was directly going against SNSD's comeback, a Daniel and Goliath battle where Secret didn't have a chance. The thing is that SNSD's comeback was supposed to come a few weeks earlier, but then they changed their plans and ended up releasing simultaneously with Secret.
I applaud Secret for not changing their plans as other groups did to avoid competition with SNSD. Secret and their management seemed confident about their product and even if they wouldn't get number ones on the TV programs, they weren't going to change their plans. That I respect.
It's just a rocking, bopping romp that's a lot of fun.
Kara made a splash with the first autumn comeback, "Step", and I rate it third best among them. The synth blare kinda put me off at first, but the track grew on me:
Finally, SNSD came out with their much-hyped comeback, but it was quite a disappointment for me, if not for SNSD fans. The song is still dominating, but to my ears it isn't great. Certainly not as catchy as their two previously promoted songs, the Japanese language Mr. Taxi and last year's Hoot.
The song was hyped as being created by Teddy Riley who was behind Michael Jackson's "Dangerous", but to me that's a big so what? and indicative of what I don't like about corporate pop music in general.
This track has some good qualities and has grown on me through the promotions, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to or watch this track. I'm not a big fan of the fact that there is no bass, and therefore lacks oomph.
I can't fault SNSD's execution as they present their parts and choreography professionally and flawlessly. But in the end I think the success of this track lies in the fact that it's SNSD.
Autumn comebacks are still anticipated by Wonder Girls and T-ara (another Invincible Youth member group).
Saturday, November 05, 2011
It is just a decision I just have to make now. Nothing's pushing me, nothing's pulling me.
I'm just here, just existing in a basic metabolizing human existence without any social function or meaning, waiting for myself to make a simple yes-no decision. Or rather a when decision, which will then determine the yes-no decision which I can't make until I'm at the brink again.
Then there's my fallback position of cowardly hoping that renal failure comes swiftly. "Cowardly"? Yea, I'll own up to that being cowardly, as it would be the result I've forced indirectly because of the failure of being proactive in this aspiration.
Letting go of this life in an affirmative act of deeply acknowledging the impermanence of any given human lifetime, with faith that it is an understanding and a step towards enlightenment and the belief that reincarnation is a natural cycle that has developed on this planet until enlightenment is attained to escape that cycle. Enlightenment possibly just a natural energy state of the universe.
That's a whole nother discussion, though, about why we live our lives, why we exist, why we suffer, why not, what's wrong with living life even if there's suffering, why should we try to escape, what's so great about enlightenment, etc., etc.
Me, I can barely get out of bed. When I get out of bed, I can barely get off the internet. When I get off the internet and don't go back to lying on my bed, I barely can get out of my apartment. I get out of my apartment to get something to eat and buy alcohol.
But I've more or less lost my appetite. When I do get something to eat, I feel bloated and nauseous afterwards. I'm thinking of trying an even unhealthier diet of just snacking out of convenient stores. Sandwiches, onigiri and salads.
My alcohol consumption has increased, and my general habit of buying a bottle of liquor every other day has slightly increased, whereby every few days I end up buying a bottle on a consecutive day. I'll determine I need to buy a new bottle while looking at a bottle that I just bought yesterday.
And I'm starting to feel the effects of alcohol more acutely. It's making me feel sicker. Sometimes it's hard to drink, sometimes the smell makes me nauseous. Sometimes I feel some sort of alcoholic lethargy in which I just crash and end up lying in bed drifting in and out of consciousness or sleep while the TV drones on in the background for hours until I recover and then get back on the internet and drink again. Woof, maybe a little too honest here.
I mentioned the constant cloudy and rainy weather here, but these past two days have been bright, sunny and warm, and even with constant self-entreaties to just get out into the sunlight, I've been unable to.
So all I have left is this one decision to make. The decision of when I'm going to go out to the brink and either do it or face up that I can't do it. And realize that if I don't do it, things get bleak. Nothing about living on looks in the least appealing. Going back to the U.S. would signal the start of some sort of nightmare. Yet, it's strangely possible.
I'm just here, just existing in a basic metabolizing human existence without any social function or meaning, waiting for myself to make a simple yes-no decision. Or rather a when decision, which will then determine the yes-no decision which I can't make until I'm at the brink again.
Then there's my fallback position of cowardly hoping that renal failure comes swiftly. "Cowardly"? Yea, I'll own up to that being cowardly, as it would be the result I've forced indirectly because of the failure of being proactive in this aspiration.
Letting go of this life in an affirmative act of deeply acknowledging the impermanence of any given human lifetime, with faith that it is an understanding and a step towards enlightenment and the belief that reincarnation is a natural cycle that has developed on this planet until enlightenment is attained to escape that cycle. Enlightenment possibly just a natural energy state of the universe.
That's a whole nother discussion, though, about why we live our lives, why we exist, why we suffer, why not, what's wrong with living life even if there's suffering, why should we try to escape, what's so great about enlightenment, etc., etc.
Me, I can barely get out of bed. When I get out of bed, I can barely get off the internet. When I get off the internet and don't go back to lying on my bed, I barely can get out of my apartment. I get out of my apartment to get something to eat and buy alcohol.
But I've more or less lost my appetite. When I do get something to eat, I feel bloated and nauseous afterwards. I'm thinking of trying an even unhealthier diet of just snacking out of convenient stores. Sandwiches, onigiri and salads.
My alcohol consumption has increased, and my general habit of buying a bottle of liquor every other day has slightly increased, whereby every few days I end up buying a bottle on a consecutive day. I'll determine I need to buy a new bottle while looking at a bottle that I just bought yesterday.
And I'm starting to feel the effects of alcohol more acutely. It's making me feel sicker. Sometimes it's hard to drink, sometimes the smell makes me nauseous. Sometimes I feel some sort of alcoholic lethargy in which I just crash and end up lying in bed drifting in and out of consciousness or sleep while the TV drones on in the background for hours until I recover and then get back on the internet and drink again. Woof, maybe a little too honest here.
I mentioned the constant cloudy and rainy weather here, but these past two days have been bright, sunny and warm, and even with constant self-entreaties to just get out into the sunlight, I've been unable to.
So all I have left is this one decision to make. The decision of when I'm going to go out to the brink and either do it or face up that I can't do it. And realize that if I don't do it, things get bleak. Nothing about living on looks in the least appealing. Going back to the U.S. would signal the start of some sort of nightmare. Yet, it's strangely possible.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
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.
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.
WordsCharactersReading time
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
I wonder if the La Niña phenomena is the reason for particularly rainy years in Taiwan. This year has been one of them, similar to my first two years here. The interim two years weren't rainy and I remember them being pretty nice. This summer it rained just about every day in the afternoon like monsoon rains. And personally, I haven't seen much sunlight in quite a while. I suspect it has something to do with La Niña.
The past few weeks – I haven't been counting – but at least two weeks have been block cloudy or rainy. Yesterday was a rare sunny day and I decided to take my road bike out in the evening. Even riding has become a bore to me, but I just rode casual out to the confluence where the Keelung River empties into the Danshui River, which then continues northward to empty into the Taiwan Strait.
The significance of going to the confluence of those rivers is that it feels like a large body of water there. The Danshui is already pretty wide by then, being the end result of the Dahan, Xindian and Jingmei rivers; and where the Keelung River waters are finally added, it's quite a large basin and feels more oceanic than just sitting by a riverside.
Confusion. Conflict. Don't want. Must. Where I've led my life.
I stayed there for a while, taking in the vibe of being by the water, simulating the feeling of what I want to do. I was conflicted. I don't want to do this. I have to do this. It is where I've led my life. If I decide against it, all roads forward look bad. Really bad.
Not just difficult, not just challenging, but they put me in a bad place. They take me out of the light and into the darkness. It's not that I don't think I can handle the darkness with these years of mindfulness training, but I don't think I have the strength to maintain myself in this kind of darkness that can get worse and worse to the point where I can get lost in mental illness and lose all the training.
I'm reading a book I found in the public library on Kabbalah, the so-called mystical aspect of Judaism. The book is The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom and it's been a while since I've read a book that made me feel spiritual after reading it.
What's special about this book is that it explains the Zohar, the main book of Kabbalah, as applying outside the Jewish tradition while still drawing on the Jewish references of the Torah. The difference between this book and other books on Kabbalah and Zohar is that it's not just Jewish. There isn't an insider-outsider aspect. This book emphasizes that Kabbalah wisdom applies to anyone seeking divine truths, and with this kind of premise in the author's mind I found from a Buddhistic perspective this all fits in perfectly with my understanding of Buddhist understanding. It's a universal teaching of spiritual or divine wisdom.
An interesting aspect of this book is that the Zohar claims that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the first part of which is the Torah, is coded wisdom. If you just read it straight, it's possible to get nothing out of it but ancient stories (the first five books of the Christian Old Testament is pretty much the Torah verbatim, distorting it out of its Jewish origins and transplanting it in a Christian context). The Zohar decodes the Tanakh and explains all the symbolism in terms of what the Creator intended. This book in a way is a decoding of Zohar to apply to spirituality in general so that it is inclusive of anyone on a spiritual path. As such, the decoded Tanakh, via the decoded Zohar fits in suitably well with a Tibetan Buddhistic understanding of the universe.
I wish I could go into some detail but that might lead to a need for a deeper explication and that would just be a burden, I shouldn't wonder. You have to take my word for it. But a recent moment I had with the book is a passage where the author says that divine blessings will only come to anyone who sincerely studies the Torah (paraphrasing). I'm not Jewish, I don't study the Torah in any conventional sense, but I thought that if that statement were right, then I should consider myself as someone who studies the Torah. And in the next sentence, the author confirms that by studying the Torah, it's not literally studying the pages of the Torah, but anyone seeking truth to the light of the divine (paraphrasing).
The Jewish scriptures are all code according to the Zohar. Which means when the Jews are "the chosen people", Jews are code for people on the spiritual path no matter what faith. And Jews who aren't on the spiritual path can't be considered of "the chosen people". It's pretty radical stuff which rings very true to me, but then I remember that Kabbalah is described as "mystical", and as opposed to religious orthodoxies, mysticism has generally been looked down upon through the ages.
Sufism, the mystic sect of Islam is largely discarded and persecuted by Shiites and Sunnis. Christianity's Gnostic Gospels are ignored by the mainstreams, but I've read some of the Gnostic Gospels, including the recently discovered and published Gospel of Judas, and if they had taken hold or had been included in the canon, I'd have a different opinion about Christianity. The Gnostic Gospels describe the Jesus story in terms of the divine, rather than . . . blind faith towards what facially just doesn't make any sense. For me, the Jesus story as described in the Gnostic Gospels makes divine sense.
The past few weeks – I haven't been counting – but at least two weeks have been block cloudy or rainy. Yesterday was a rare sunny day and I decided to take my road bike out in the evening. Even riding has become a bore to me, but I just rode casual out to the confluence where the Keelung River empties into the Danshui River, which then continues northward to empty into the Taiwan Strait.
The significance of going to the confluence of those rivers is that it feels like a large body of water there. The Danshui is already pretty wide by then, being the end result of the Dahan, Xindian and Jingmei rivers; and where the Keelung River waters are finally added, it's quite a large basin and feels more oceanic than just sitting by a riverside.
Confusion. Conflict. Don't want. Must. Where I've led my life.
I stayed there for a while, taking in the vibe of being by the water, simulating the feeling of what I want to do. I was conflicted. I don't want to do this. I have to do this. It is where I've led my life. If I decide against it, all roads forward look bad. Really bad.
Not just difficult, not just challenging, but they put me in a bad place. They take me out of the light and into the darkness. It's not that I don't think I can handle the darkness with these years of mindfulness training, but I don't think I have the strength to maintain myself in this kind of darkness that can get worse and worse to the point where I can get lost in mental illness and lose all the training.
I'm reading a book I found in the public library on Kabbalah, the so-called mystical aspect of Judaism. The book is The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom and it's been a while since I've read a book that made me feel spiritual after reading it.
What's special about this book is that it explains the Zohar, the main book of Kabbalah, as applying outside the Jewish tradition while still drawing on the Jewish references of the Torah. The difference between this book and other books on Kabbalah and Zohar is that it's not just Jewish. There isn't an insider-outsider aspect. This book emphasizes that Kabbalah wisdom applies to anyone seeking divine truths, and with this kind of premise in the author's mind I found from a Buddhistic perspective this all fits in perfectly with my understanding of Buddhist understanding. It's a universal teaching of spiritual or divine wisdom.
An interesting aspect of this book is that the Zohar claims that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the first part of which is the Torah, is coded wisdom. If you just read it straight, it's possible to get nothing out of it but ancient stories (the first five books of the Christian Old Testament is pretty much the Torah verbatim, distorting it out of its Jewish origins and transplanting it in a Christian context). The Zohar decodes the Tanakh and explains all the symbolism in terms of what the Creator intended. This book in a way is a decoding of Zohar to apply to spirituality in general so that it is inclusive of anyone on a spiritual path. As such, the decoded Tanakh, via the decoded Zohar fits in suitably well with a Tibetan Buddhistic understanding of the universe.
I wish I could go into some detail but that might lead to a need for a deeper explication and that would just be a burden, I shouldn't wonder. You have to take my word for it. But a recent moment I had with the book is a passage where the author says that divine blessings will only come to anyone who sincerely studies the Torah (paraphrasing). I'm not Jewish, I don't study the Torah in any conventional sense, but I thought that if that statement were right, then I should consider myself as someone who studies the Torah. And in the next sentence, the author confirms that by studying the Torah, it's not literally studying the pages of the Torah, but anyone seeking truth to the light of the divine (paraphrasing).
The Jewish scriptures are all code according to the Zohar. Which means when the Jews are "the chosen people", Jews are code for people on the spiritual path no matter what faith. And Jews who aren't on the spiritual path can't be considered of "the chosen people". It's pretty radical stuff which rings very true to me, but then I remember that Kabbalah is described as "mystical", and as opposed to religious orthodoxies, mysticism has generally been looked down upon through the ages.
Sufism, the mystic sect of Islam is largely discarded and persecuted by Shiites and Sunnis. Christianity's Gnostic Gospels are ignored by the mainstreams, but I've read some of the Gnostic Gospels, including the recently discovered and published Gospel of Judas, and if they had taken hold or had been included in the canon, I'd have a different opinion about Christianity. The Gnostic Gospels describe the Jesus story in terms of the divine, rather than . . . blind faith towards what facially just doesn't make any sense. For me, the Jesus story as described in the Gnostic Gospels makes divine sense.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Why haven't I done what I want to do? My head is still too filled up with things that I'm attached to. There's still just too much superficial stuff going on around and around in my head...
Some of the worst thoughts about not wanting to pursue this aspiration come to me when I first wake up. Then as I gain more normative consciousness, a more rational mindset occurs, for better or worse. Worse, because I find myself confused or conflicted.
Regarding all this stuff in my head, I hold to the mantra that nothing whatsoever should be clung to. So even if I have certain mental preoccupations and tendencies that suggest that I'm still attached to certain things, I'm still constantly telling myself to not be attached to these things.
Experience them, but don't be attached. And I hope the mental karma of the tendency of telling myself not to be attached is stronger than the mental karma of the suggestion of attachment. By karma, I mean anything experienced through the senses which contributes to the unenlightened notion that I'm an independent, continuous, self-existing entity in the universe.
Furthermore, I'm still impressed from going way back into my archives and realizing my goal has been constant over years and years. OK, decades, I'm old! It's possible that a tendency towards suicide as a mental illness can persist across the span of time as it has for me, but in those cases, I think there are always signs of mental illness that manifest that other people can recognize.
I don't think I'm mentally ill, although I may exhibit behaviors that are symptomatic of mental illness. I even recognize them myself (which in an inverted Catch-22 confirms I'm not mentally ill). For me the symptoms are kind of a pathway to my unorthodox goal. Other people get there from being mentally ill, which I suppose is too bad and warrants sympathy.
There must be a peer group somewhere in the world for people like me. It would be a whole lot easier if I had a support group. Not just one willing to send me off, but also understands the reasons I'm doing this. I also wouldn't mind a ride if anyone has a car.
I'm sure I've said this before, but I know if I don't do this, it's not going to go away, and it will continually come up as an issue. I'd like it to be now. I'm trying for now. For the past several months I've kept it just a few days ahead. Walls, I'm thinking of calling them. And they've all been soft walls as I've just blown through them.
I'm starting to face hard walls now, meaning that if I continue to blow past the days without doing anything, it's getting more and more dire, ultimately ending in a decision to return to the States. By year's end at the latest.
Hard walls because if I don't go through with it, everything looks bad. From the simple logistics of moving back to the States to the long term realization that I'm not resolving anything and will end up back in this position again.
Hm, "not resolving". . . life is about solving problems and resolving issues. It's not that I'm trying to resolve anything. If I continue living, then resolution becomes an issue, a necessity. My paradigm is that it is not an issue. Or not supposed to be an issue. Or learning on the spiritual path that it's really not an issue.
My paradigm is that this just has to happen. This is what I need to do. I'm not supposed to need to resolve anything!
Some of the worst thoughts about not wanting to pursue this aspiration come to me when I first wake up. Then as I gain more normative consciousness, a more rational mindset occurs, for better or worse. Worse, because I find myself confused or conflicted.
Regarding all this stuff in my head, I hold to the mantra that nothing whatsoever should be clung to. So even if I have certain mental preoccupations and tendencies that suggest that I'm still attached to certain things, I'm still constantly telling myself to not be attached to these things.
Experience them, but don't be attached. And I hope the mental karma of the tendency of telling myself not to be attached is stronger than the mental karma of the suggestion of attachment. By karma, I mean anything experienced through the senses which contributes to the unenlightened notion that I'm an independent, continuous, self-existing entity in the universe.
Furthermore, I'm still impressed from going way back into my archives and realizing my goal has been constant over years and years. OK, decades, I'm old! It's possible that a tendency towards suicide as a mental illness can persist across the span of time as it has for me, but in those cases, I think there are always signs of mental illness that manifest that other people can recognize.
I don't think I'm mentally ill, although I may exhibit behaviors that are symptomatic of mental illness. I even recognize them myself (which in an inverted Catch-22 confirms I'm not mentally ill). For me the symptoms are kind of a pathway to my unorthodox goal. Other people get there from being mentally ill, which I suppose is too bad and warrants sympathy.
There must be a peer group somewhere in the world for people like me. It would be a whole lot easier if I had a support group. Not just one willing to send me off, but also understands the reasons I'm doing this. I also wouldn't mind a ride if anyone has a car.
I'm sure I've said this before, but I know if I don't do this, it's not going to go away, and it will continually come up as an issue. I'd like it to be now. I'm trying for now. For the past several months I've kept it just a few days ahead. Walls, I'm thinking of calling them. And they've all been soft walls as I've just blown through them.
I'm starting to face hard walls now, meaning that if I continue to blow past the days without doing anything, it's getting more and more dire, ultimately ending in a decision to return to the States. By year's end at the latest.
Hard walls because if I don't go through with it, everything looks bad. From the simple logistics of moving back to the States to the long term realization that I'm not resolving anything and will end up back in this position again.
Hm, "not resolving". . . life is about solving problems and resolving issues. It's not that I'm trying to resolve anything. If I continue living, then resolution becomes an issue, a necessity. My paradigm is that it is not an issue. Or not supposed to be an issue. Or learning on the spiritual path that it's really not an issue.
My paradigm is that this just has to happen. This is what I need to do. I'm not supposed to need to resolve anything!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
If for some reason I'm able to achieve what I want, no one will know what the last months of my life were like. Which is actually all for the better. No one needs to know. Just trying to maintain practice while not actually practicing.
No real highs, aside from the regular highs of mindful awareness of being alive and breathing, and in particular positive emotions through human expression through media . . . specifically Korean media, which seems really superficial, but that's where I ended up. Emotional highs also in listening to music.
No real lows, aside from a growing ennui and difficulty of getting through each day to day and wondering how I got to this point, which inevitably leads me to remind myself that I got here by leading myself here. No mystery.
No real highs, aside from the regular highs of mindful awareness of being alive and breathing, and in particular positive emotions through human expression through media . . . specifically Korean media, which seems really superficial, but that's where I ended up. Emotional highs also in listening to music.
No real lows, aside from a growing ennui and difficulty of getting through each day to day and wondering how I got to this point, which inevitably leads me to remind myself that I got here by leading myself here. No mystery.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Where I am may perhaps look bleak, but I keep reminding myself that this is where I've brought myself, and as such I can just accept it and keep looking at what I'm trying to do in the face.
I don't know when was the last time I saw someone I know. I'm pretty sure it was my former Mandarin teacher for a language exchange. I think that might have been in June. She asked about meeting up maybe a month or two ago, but I declined. I was already in my groove. I don't owe anyone anything. Not even meeting up. And I've completely given up on even pretending to study Mandarin. No matter what happens, there's just no point to it.
Tako, a former Taipei acquaintance, messaged me about meeting up about a month ago. She said she wanted to meet with me before she left for Australia. I had no idea that she was going to Australia. I think I last saw her in March. I declined. I told her I didn't want to meet up just to say goodbye. That may have been just a dramatic way of covering up how I don't feel comfortable in any social situation anymore. I don't think I could keep a simple conversation, perhaps merely for the reason that I'd get too bored even trying to maintain one.
I've lost interest in my web presence. One by one, each of my sites have fallen by the wayside. There's just this one last blog here and a very meager presence on Facebook. Photography is now totally gone. No interest, no seeing.
I keep my phone turned off for most part because I got sick of it reminding me to recharge it every few days. I turned it on today and found 2 text messages from cousins. I'll respond to one because all she wants to know is that everything is alright. I'll tell her everything is alright and that should be the end of that. The other message isn't even worth consideration. It was an obligatory text that I'm guessing some other family member pushed him to send because he's in Taipei. I really don't know what these people are doing. If they wanted to be in contact with me, they should've contacted me before. Now I'm simply not interested.
Insomnia still occasionally visits, as do spells of drowning in sleep. The bottle-of-alcohol-every-other-day buying persists. Lying on my bed for long periods of time while unable to do anything else listening to music on my iPod sounds like depressive behavior, but music is still such a joy. I'm still working on the illusion of music being a source of anything substantial. Certainly not something that should or could be clung to.
I still don't know why I'm balking at the next attempt. It's definitely the only thing what's next.
I don't know when was the last time I saw someone I know. I'm pretty sure it was my former Mandarin teacher for a language exchange. I think that might have been in June. She asked about meeting up maybe a month or two ago, but I declined. I was already in my groove. I don't owe anyone anything. Not even meeting up. And I've completely given up on even pretending to study Mandarin. No matter what happens, there's just no point to it.
Tako, a former Taipei acquaintance, messaged me about meeting up about a month ago. She said she wanted to meet with me before she left for Australia. I had no idea that she was going to Australia. I think I last saw her in March. I declined. I told her I didn't want to meet up just to say goodbye. That may have been just a dramatic way of covering up how I don't feel comfortable in any social situation anymore. I don't think I could keep a simple conversation, perhaps merely for the reason that I'd get too bored even trying to maintain one.
I've lost interest in my web presence. One by one, each of my sites have fallen by the wayside. There's just this one last blog here and a very meager presence on Facebook. Photography is now totally gone. No interest, no seeing.
I keep my phone turned off for most part because I got sick of it reminding me to recharge it every few days. I turned it on today and found 2 text messages from cousins. I'll respond to one because all she wants to know is that everything is alright. I'll tell her everything is alright and that should be the end of that. The other message isn't even worth consideration. It was an obligatory text that I'm guessing some other family member pushed him to send because he's in Taipei. I really don't know what these people are doing. If they wanted to be in contact with me, they should've contacted me before. Now I'm simply not interested.
Insomnia still occasionally visits, as do spells of drowning in sleep. The bottle-of-alcohol-every-other-day buying persists. Lying on my bed for long periods of time while unable to do anything else listening to music on my iPod sounds like depressive behavior, but music is still such a joy. I'm still working on the illusion of music being a source of anything substantial. Certainly not something that should or could be clung to.
I still don't know why I'm balking at the next attempt. It's definitely the only thing what's next.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
I've completely stopped morning sitting under the realization that what usually goes on during morning sitting now – considering my day-to-day life – occurs all day long. Even at the monastery, morning sitting had its place to set a precedent for the day ahead, which was a mindset that still engaged the world and physical reality. There still was a separation there. I'm so disengaged from the world now, my entire days are spent in the same mindset as sitting. To the extent that I get distracted throughout a day from general mindfulness, I also experienced those distractions during sitting.
I also continue to engage in the Tibetan teachings of the bardo and Dzogchen trainings. I'm not sure of the efficacy of reading about them without a teacher, but pursuing a teacher in this lifetime is something I've long rejected. I didn't even realize I'd been exposed to Dzogchen trainings until I started picking through random books on Tibetan teachings and finding remarkably similar things being said. That's because they've all received the same training and are trying to convey the efficacy of that training, and it is the Dzogchen method, philosophy and teachings.
Am I a Dzogchen practitioner? Without a teacher I'll err on the side of not (er . . . no). But still, I'm open to the idea that in past lives I've had a teacher and I've already been initiated in these practices and that's why they resonate or are acceptable to me in this life.
Most recently I've been attacking the concept of "I". "ME". Mindfulness training teaches to be aware of oneself – what we're doing, what we're feeling – at all times. Aware of external stimuli from all five senses and aware of the amalgam of the stimuli which renders our perception and consciousness. At each point of awareness I tell myself to not be attached to it, not be attached to this, not to cling to any idea that this is "ME". It's all construct like in "The Matrix", but in reality there is no malevolent force or a war against artificial intelligence. It's just the nature of physical, manifested reality that has naturally developed on this planet.
It's a matter of focusing on my senses and abiding in how my perception of "I", myself, is falsely created by my senses. Is what I'm perceiving through sight me? Is it me? Is it my identity? Same with sound, smell, taste and touch. I have these perceptions and they create my picture of reality, but what is the "I" they seem to be feeding? When these senses are destroyed, the perception is gone and then what is reality?
It's not easy. I'm still here, so I'm still very attached to something.
I've also been attacking my attachment to music and the desire that emanates from listening to music – the idea that music is a source of enjoyment. This is the hardest thing possible for me. Other people may have trouble detaching from the concept of self and I, which most people consider absolute reality, but their trouble with that translates to me in my perception and reaction towards enjoyment of music. One main thing that I have not been able to remove from my perception of SELF is that music is a source of great enjoyment. It may be this enjoyment that is my greatest failing, which is that I'm still here. But this enjoyment of music is not ultimate reality. It's subjective, it's constructed, it should be the easiest of things that can be taken apart under scrutiny of the nature of reality and mind.
I also continue to engage in the Tibetan teachings of the bardo and Dzogchen trainings. I'm not sure of the efficacy of reading about them without a teacher, but pursuing a teacher in this lifetime is something I've long rejected. I didn't even realize I'd been exposed to Dzogchen trainings until I started picking through random books on Tibetan teachings and finding remarkably similar things being said. That's because they've all received the same training and are trying to convey the efficacy of that training, and it is the Dzogchen method, philosophy and teachings.
Am I a Dzogchen practitioner? Without a teacher I'll err on the side of not (er . . . no). But still, I'm open to the idea that in past lives I've had a teacher and I've already been initiated in these practices and that's why they resonate or are acceptable to me in this life.
Most recently I've been attacking the concept of "I". "ME". Mindfulness training teaches to be aware of oneself – what we're doing, what we're feeling – at all times. Aware of external stimuli from all five senses and aware of the amalgam of the stimuli which renders our perception and consciousness. At each point of awareness I tell myself to not be attached to it, not be attached to this, not to cling to any idea that this is "ME". It's all construct like in "The Matrix", but in reality there is no malevolent force or a war against artificial intelligence. It's just the nature of physical, manifested reality that has naturally developed on this planet.
It's a matter of focusing on my senses and abiding in how my perception of "I", myself, is falsely created by my senses. Is what I'm perceiving through sight me? Is it me? Is it my identity? Same with sound, smell, taste and touch. I have these perceptions and they create my picture of reality, but what is the "I" they seem to be feeding? When these senses are destroyed, the perception is gone and then what is reality?
It's not easy. I'm still here, so I'm still very attached to something.
I've also been attacking my attachment to music and the desire that emanates from listening to music – the idea that music is a source of enjoyment. This is the hardest thing possible for me. Other people may have trouble detaching from the concept of self and I, which most people consider absolute reality, but their trouble with that translates to me in my perception and reaction towards enjoyment of music. One main thing that I have not been able to remove from my perception of SELF is that music is a source of great enjoyment. It may be this enjoyment that is my greatest failing, which is that I'm still here. But this enjoyment of music is not ultimate reality. It's subjective, it's constructed, it should be the easiest of things that can be taken apart under scrutiny of the nature of reality and mind.
I've been using the techniques to analyze other areas of attachment to and debunking of perceived, physical reality to music. What is it that I'm listening to? What is my reaction? Why am I reacting this way? Why do I find this pleasure in what I'm listening to? I take music apart, focusing on the rhythm, the melody, the individual instruments and how they come together and there is nothing I can point to that I can attach with the feeling of "enjoyment". That enjoyment is just fact, separate from any deconstruction or analysis.
Yet, I know it is not like that. Enjoyment is fleeting. This kind of enjoyment is by its nature also suffering. The intellectual answer is clear: there is no reason. Music and the pleasure I take from it isn't some objective phenomena that is able to be recreated and passed on and explained. My emotional response is something I need to take apart and understand for what it is. It doesn't mean not enjoying it, but rather not being attached to it.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The draft of this post is from Sept. 4. I can't believe it's the end of September already. Summer's well over, even in Taiwan, and I totally missed it. It's almost October. October, November . . . December. Just the thought of moving into the winter months is encouragement to get on with it already.
I've been in a state of limbo. I'm not moving. I know what's next, what has to come next, but it's still up to me to make it happen. No one else is going to do it for me, no one's gonna help make it happen. As such, I'm biding my time, not rushing into it.
I think one of Morrie's quotes regarding his view on life and terminal illness was, "Hold on, but don't hold on for too long". I don't have a terminal illness, but I know what has to be next. As for holding on for too long, I think I already have. It's kinda moot at this point.
I'm fine with "not rushing into it". This isn't "neurotic dysfunction". Before, I used to deride myself when I'd make excuses not to move on, that my plan and aspiration were fake and that it wasn't going to happen, and something would always come up for me to carry on for a bit longer, and that would occur in perpetuity because that was my psychological makeup.
I do feel now that where I am is my final end state. I'm in limbo in this final end state, stewing in it, continuing the meditations and observations. I have nothing new to say or observe. Everything that I've thought of to say recently, I've already said before. And as much as I do tend to repeat myself, I'll avoid it if I can go back into my archives and easily find that I've expressed it already.
There's only one direction to move from this final end state, not because of constraints or inabilities, but because it's what I want and it's where I've led and directed my life.
Sometimes I get pangs of "how did it get to be like this?" with hints of despondency, and I poke myself back to realization that it's because I created it this way, I made it this way; there's no reason to be despondent. This is exactly how it's meant to be. And I can relax and smile to myself and encourage myself to keep moving forwards toward what I want.
There is just this path that I'm on. There's just this path that I've engineered. I'm sure I've said this already, but whenever I think of alternatives and possible paths, I realize I don't want them.
I have to admit that before, there was always a sliver of a possibility of a different path, but I'm pretty confident that they have all dissolved now. Bah, I know I've written about this before.
Now I'm just writing to encourage myself. If I don't write, I might fall into complacency and that will just lead to pushing myself into a corner, and I don't want to do anything just because I've been pushed into a corner.
When I had those excruciating abdominal pains, I entertained the idea that I might be dying and I resisted it. Not because I have a fundamental problem with dying, but I have a problem with it not being on my own terms.
I've been in a state of limbo. I'm not moving. I know what's next, what has to come next, but it's still up to me to make it happen. No one else is going to do it for me, no one's gonna help make it happen. As such, I'm biding my time, not rushing into it.
I think one of Morrie's quotes regarding his view on life and terminal illness was, "Hold on, but don't hold on for too long". I don't have a terminal illness, but I know what has to be next. As for holding on for too long, I think I already have. It's kinda moot at this point.
I'm fine with "not rushing into it". This isn't "neurotic dysfunction". Before, I used to deride myself when I'd make excuses not to move on, that my plan and aspiration were fake and that it wasn't going to happen, and something would always come up for me to carry on for a bit longer, and that would occur in perpetuity because that was my psychological makeup.
I do feel now that where I am is my final end state. I'm in limbo in this final end state, stewing in it, continuing the meditations and observations. I have nothing new to say or observe. Everything that I've thought of to say recently, I've already said before. And as much as I do tend to repeat myself, I'll avoid it if I can go back into my archives and easily find that I've expressed it already.
There's only one direction to move from this final end state, not because of constraints or inabilities, but because it's what I want and it's where I've led and directed my life.
Sometimes I get pangs of "how did it get to be like this?" with hints of despondency, and I poke myself back to realization that it's because I created it this way, I made it this way; there's no reason to be despondent. This is exactly how it's meant to be. And I can relax and smile to myself and encourage myself to keep moving forwards toward what I want.
There is just this path that I'm on. There's just this path that I've engineered. I'm sure I've said this already, but whenever I think of alternatives and possible paths, I realize I don't want them.
I have to admit that before, there was always a sliver of a possibility of a different path, but I'm pretty confident that they have all dissolved now. Bah, I know I've written about this before.
Now I'm just writing to encourage myself. If I don't write, I might fall into complacency and that will just lead to pushing myself into a corner, and I don't want to do anything just because I've been pushed into a corner.
When I had those excruciating abdominal pains, I entertained the idea that I might be dying and I resisted it. Not because I have a fundamental problem with dying, but I have a problem with it not being on my own terms.
Monday, September 19, 2011
After watching the first 20 minutes of this film, I had a deja vu. Despite what I thought was a decent introductory narrative exposition and a concerted effort on my part to keep track of the characters and the parties and the alliances and motivations, I was totally confused and decided to look up the plot online.
This also happened when I watched Red Cliff, part 1, which is interesting because it turns out I wasn't wrong in noticing that a lot of names in this film sounded distinctly familiar. Like names of the characters from Red Cliff!
And surprise, surprise, they are indeed the same characters. Apparently there was a historical novel called Romance of the Three Kingdoms that is the source material for many modern fictionalizations of what happened during the Warring States period, roughly the first few centuries of the Common Era.
This film is about one of the exploits of Guan Yun Chang, the title character of the Chinese title (the English title is horrible in the anonymity of this great general; that a) he is "lost", and b) he is merely a "bladesman").
I vaguely do remember the character from Red Cliff. He's not a main character there, but he's portrayed as a great general and has a very distinct look, befitting a historical personage. Such as if Abraham Lincoln were portrayed, there are certain stock images whereby all Americans can identify him.
In this film, Guan Yun is an enemy general held captive by his benevolent captor Cao Cao (who in Red Cliff is the arrogant and power-hungry villain). Guan Yun is portrayed as extremely capable and righteous, and Cao Cao, who isn't exactly wholesome, but not the villain he's portrayed as in Red Cliff, acknowledges these virtues and hopes to gain his allegiance.
It turns out Guan Yun is a willing captive to protect and be close to his sworn brother's concubine, also being held captive, who he secretly loves. Actually, Guan Yun is such a fierce warrior, he could fight his way out any time he pleases.
When his sworn brother, Liu Bei, sends a message calling for him, Guan Yun decides to leave captivity. Cao Cao knows he can't stop him, and wanting to stay on his good side orders that he be allowed to leave unmolested.
However, the emperor, who is Cao Cao's puppet (the same relationship is shown in Red Cliff), thinks releasing Guan Yun is a bad idea and boldly goes against Cao Cao and orders Guan Yun killed en route.
The basic story as told in the records is Guan Yun's escape journey, encountering the resistance set up by the emperor.
It's a competent martial arts film, but not a remarkable one. The fight scenes are competent, but they're not remarkable. Donnie Yen as the title character does a great job portraying a man of impeccable virtue, but he seems to be doing a lot of that recently. OK, anyway, he's very good.
I'll pass this film with a nominal 6 out of 10 fresh tomatoes. It's not a great film, but definitely watchable for fans of Chinese period pieces. I also found it a fascinating counterpoint to Red Cliff with its different portrayal of the characters.
With a title like "Nowhere to Turn", I imagine someone who falls into dire straits, someone who has done everything she can and tries hard, but fate keeps dealing her all bad cards, none of which are her fault. In this film, the main character elicits no sympathy for having "nowhere to turn".
The main character wants to be a musician, but it's soon clear that she's delusional and is nowhere near where she needs to be to make it as a musician. She's not only delusional but she thinks the world owes her something while doing nothing herself. She's arrogant, self-righteous, smug, self-absorbed, unapologetic, and overall pathetic.
She wants her mother to send her abroad to pursue a career in music and blames her for refusing, while she herself is too lazy to consider getting a job and figuring out what it means to be responsible.
She mooches off people she knows, not sure they can be called "friends", and takes advantage of all of them, even stabbing them in the back. Whenever she's given a chance, she turns out to be a major disappointment because of her own selfishness and arrogance, and she ultimately blames everyone else for her failures. All she does is take and never gives.
Actually, that's wrong. At one point she "gives" when she loses her virginity to the guy she's mooching off, but complains and whines about it hurting throughout the whole 15 second ordeal.
I was hoping for some sort of redemption, transformation or self-realization in the character, but she remains unlikable to the end. Even a hint of being emotionally tortured or having a mental disease or that she sniffed glue through most of her elementary and high school years would have made her character a little bit palatable (in many scenes she is slack-jawed and looks like she's been sniffing glue, but there's no explanation for this unappealing portrayal).
The supporting "boyfriend" character isn't very strong and has almost as bad manners as she does, even though he does occasionally express himself in moments of truth that are few and far between, calling her crazy or having no conscience, and finally calling her a bitch, which she is.
I don't recommend this film to anyone. Rotten 2 out 10 tomatoes. Maybe the only good thing about this film is that it's an unintentional homage to Korean films in the 90s, which were unspeakably awful. This film would have fit perfectly amongst some of those films that I saw, and reminds me how far Korean film has come.
Friday, September 16, 2011
I guess I should've gone to the emergency room.
The thing is that I don't see doctors, I don't go to hospitals, much less emergency rooms. And it turns out the quote from Northern Exposure is really true that the human body is a wonderful healing machine and the role of doctors is often just to give a patient peace of mind (or to administer drugs to alleviate pain in modern society). I forget if it was Leonard or Uncle Anku who said it.
I don't even know how to go about "going to an emergency room". In the worst of it, when I thought it might be necessary, I had stuffed a few things in a backpack to be ready to grab to run out into the pouring rain and catch a cab and tell them to take me to the nearest hospital. Is that even right? Or is that the point when you call 911?
The rain was actually a really interesting part of the whole incident because it was a perfectly sunny day. I wasn't surprised when I started hearing rain outside because that would still be normal for Taipei weather, but it was raining pretty hard and it was still sunny outside. I kept walking out into the hallway where I can see outside, asking, "How is it raining?, it's totally sunny out there", and I looked for a rainbow and found it and assumed the rain would end shortly. But it didn't, and when the pain started it kept raining and poured through the whole 4-5 hour ordeal.
That kind of rain was strange and I wonder if it wasn't a factor in discouraging me from going to the hospital. But going to the hospital is simply unthinkable for me. Even when I was preparing for it just in case it got that bad, I didn't really think I would or could do it.
I started having sharp abdominal pains and at first I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was intestinal, not uncommon in Taiwan. It's worse when it occurs when I'm out, but I was still home. I figured I'd feel some sharp pain, go to the bathroom and it would clear up and I'd feel fine in short order.
It was just like the pain when that happens, but it didn't let up and started to increase. It was like someone was gripping and squeezing and twisting whatever internal organ – stomach, intestines, liver – and it also occurred to me it might be appendicitis, which if you don't take care of your appendix ruptures and you die.
The pain increased as twilight turned to night outside my window. I'm not a screamer. I would probably scream under torture, but not internal bodily pain. I groan and I writhe.
And then I found it true that meditation techniques do help manage pain. It wasn't a conscious thought process of, "Oh, this hurts, I think I'll go into meditational equipoise to manage the pain with my mind". It was more visceral. I was sweating so much from the pain that I had the air conditioner on even though the cold air was uncomfortable. But I found myself in a position on my bed with my palms flat on the mattress, and I started visualizing the pain as energy and then directing the energy through my palms into the mattress.
From a modern science point of view it's a distraction technique. You mentally occupy yourself in a way that makes you feel better by not thinking about the pain. But when you actually try the method and even marginally think you're succeeding, there is a sense that qigong, or taichi, or even Tibetan descriptions of energy flow are real and are an important part of our being.
I was basically in that meditational state for a good 3-4 hours, focusing on mind and controlling the pain energy and directing it into the mattress. It also occurred to me that before directing the pain energy into the mattress, I had to think of the energy positively since I didn't want to discharge negative energy anywhere, even into an inanimate object. So I reminded myself that pain is good, it tells us and warns us when we're in distress and we need to do something about it, so while discharging the pain energy into the mattress, I was also thanking it.
I don't know what I think of that now, that's just what was going through my mind at the time. It may be just an indication of my own subjective mind, rather than some objective reality. But then that's the way it would be for all of us.
It started to alleviate about 9 in the evening when there were clearer moments when the pain subsided. There were several trips to the bathroom through all this. I think the grand finale was vomiting when I hadn't eaten anything in almost 24 hours and what came up didn't look like the only thing I had ingested, which was coffee with cream. A lot of blackness.
If that incident was an earthquake, I continued to feel aftershocks for over 24 hours and even into today, but now it seems to be completely gone. I'm not sure what to make of it and since I didn't go to the emergency room like a normal person would have or if I lived with other people, I'll never know.
I don't know what triggered it. All through the 24 hour period of "aftershocks" when the pain would re-emerge and I'd get worried if it would get blown out of proportion again, I wondered if this was liver failure. I read that a stage of liver failure may include "pain on the liver" but it made no mention of "excruciating pain on the liver".
But now if it seems it's not continuing, then it's not liver failure. Actually, I'm not totally writing it off just yet. I'm not going to say that it's totally gone just yet. It just seems mostly gone at this point, but I still feel something. That said, if it's not liver failure, then the only thing I can identify as being a trigger is what I ingested right before it started, which is a single cup of bottled iced coffee with an artificial liquid creamer.
Focusing on the creamer, there was a recent scare in Taiwan in the past few months of unscrupulous foodmakers putting something bad in their products that caused health problems in a bunch of people. Some plasticizer. It was big news, but being a foreigner I only get the translated news. I worked at an English-language newspaper and can testify the most experienced Taiwanese writers of English-language news can only express at a level at least one step removed from a native English reporter.
I didn't think the news applied to me. From the TV reports it looked like it was mostly about bottled drinks and the store where I buy bottled drinks is reputable and posted signs that ostensibly said that their products had been inspected and were safe. I never saw non-dairy coffee creamer in those reports.
The thing is that I don't see doctors, I don't go to hospitals, much less emergency rooms. And it turns out the quote from Northern Exposure is really true that the human body is a wonderful healing machine and the role of doctors is often just to give a patient peace of mind (or to administer drugs to alleviate pain in modern society). I forget if it was Leonard or Uncle Anku who said it.
I don't even know how to go about "going to an emergency room". In the worst of it, when I thought it might be necessary, I had stuffed a few things in a backpack to be ready to grab to run out into the pouring rain and catch a cab and tell them to take me to the nearest hospital. Is that even right? Or is that the point when you call 911?
The rain was actually a really interesting part of the whole incident because it was a perfectly sunny day. I wasn't surprised when I started hearing rain outside because that would still be normal for Taipei weather, but it was raining pretty hard and it was still sunny outside. I kept walking out into the hallway where I can see outside, asking, "How is it raining?, it's totally sunny out there", and I looked for a rainbow and found it and assumed the rain would end shortly. But it didn't, and when the pain started it kept raining and poured through the whole 4-5 hour ordeal.
That kind of rain was strange and I wonder if it wasn't a factor in discouraging me from going to the hospital. But going to the hospital is simply unthinkable for me. Even when I was preparing for it just in case it got that bad, I didn't really think I would or could do it.
I started having sharp abdominal pains and at first I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was intestinal, not uncommon in Taiwan. It's worse when it occurs when I'm out, but I was still home. I figured I'd feel some sharp pain, go to the bathroom and it would clear up and I'd feel fine in short order.
It was just like the pain when that happens, but it didn't let up and started to increase. It was like someone was gripping and squeezing and twisting whatever internal organ – stomach, intestines, liver – and it also occurred to me it might be appendicitis, which if you don't take care of your appendix ruptures and you die.
The pain increased as twilight turned to night outside my window. I'm not a screamer. I would probably scream under torture, but not internal bodily pain. I groan and I writhe.
And then I found it true that meditation techniques do help manage pain. It wasn't a conscious thought process of, "Oh, this hurts, I think I'll go into meditational equipoise to manage the pain with my mind". It was more visceral. I was sweating so much from the pain that I had the air conditioner on even though the cold air was uncomfortable. But I found myself in a position on my bed with my palms flat on the mattress, and I started visualizing the pain as energy and then directing the energy through my palms into the mattress.
From a modern science point of view it's a distraction technique. You mentally occupy yourself in a way that makes you feel better by not thinking about the pain. But when you actually try the method and even marginally think you're succeeding, there is a sense that qigong, or taichi, or even Tibetan descriptions of energy flow are real and are an important part of our being.
I was basically in that meditational state for a good 3-4 hours, focusing on mind and controlling the pain energy and directing it into the mattress. It also occurred to me that before directing the pain energy into the mattress, I had to think of the energy positively since I didn't want to discharge negative energy anywhere, even into an inanimate object. So I reminded myself that pain is good, it tells us and warns us when we're in distress and we need to do something about it, so while discharging the pain energy into the mattress, I was also thanking it.
I don't know what I think of that now, that's just what was going through my mind at the time. It may be just an indication of my own subjective mind, rather than some objective reality. But then that's the way it would be for all of us.
It started to alleviate about 9 in the evening when there were clearer moments when the pain subsided. There were several trips to the bathroom through all this. I think the grand finale was vomiting when I hadn't eaten anything in almost 24 hours and what came up didn't look like the only thing I had ingested, which was coffee with cream. A lot of blackness.
If that incident was an earthquake, I continued to feel aftershocks for over 24 hours and even into today, but now it seems to be completely gone. I'm not sure what to make of it and since I didn't go to the emergency room like a normal person would have or if I lived with other people, I'll never know.
I don't know what triggered it. All through the 24 hour period of "aftershocks" when the pain would re-emerge and I'd get worried if it would get blown out of proportion again, I wondered if this was liver failure. I read that a stage of liver failure may include "pain on the liver" but it made no mention of "excruciating pain on the liver".
But now if it seems it's not continuing, then it's not liver failure. Actually, I'm not totally writing it off just yet. I'm not going to say that it's totally gone just yet. It just seems mostly gone at this point, but I still feel something. That said, if it's not liver failure, then the only thing I can identify as being a trigger is what I ingested right before it started, which is a single cup of bottled iced coffee with an artificial liquid creamer.
Focusing on the creamer, there was a recent scare in Taiwan in the past few months of unscrupulous foodmakers putting something bad in their products that caused health problems in a bunch of people. Some plasticizer. It was big news, but being a foreigner I only get the translated news. I worked at an English-language newspaper and can testify the most experienced Taiwanese writers of English-language news can only express at a level at least one step removed from a native English reporter.
I didn't think the news applied to me. From the TV reports it looked like it was mostly about bottled drinks and the store where I buy bottled drinks is reputable and posted signs that ostensibly said that their products had been inspected and were safe. I never saw non-dairy coffee creamer in those reports.
However, I now can imagine what it was like for those victims, that if some toxic substance was added to a food product and wreaked havoc on their liver or kidneys upon ingestion, that their family members would have rushed them to the emergency room.
If I was living with family in Kaohsiung, I might have successfully resisted being sent to the emergency room because I'm not a screamer. I can keep it in in a way that other people wouldn't panic, but otherwise I imagine that they would have called 911.
Then there were my thoughts that I might die . . .
If I was living with family in Kaohsiung, I might have successfully resisted being sent to the emergency room because I'm not a screamer. I can keep it in in a way that other people wouldn't panic, but otherwise I imagine that they would have called 911.
Then there were my thoughts that I might die . . .
email to a friend
Hey Madoka,
Thank me? I'm still thanking you for finally getting on the path. I always thought it was right for you, but it had to happen when you were ripe to start on it. I might say it's a little late, but actually it's not at all and I have a feeling you're going to be a formidable and nurturing teacher in years, hopefully decades, to come. Not me, though, that's not my path.
You're actually not lazy. Maybe you know what you're doing moment to moment and may think you're lazy, you feel you're lazy and that you're not doing enough, but the diligence is in the mind, and I can point right at your own message by your immediate reaction to the Kawasakis that your diligence is already there and deep within you. That's the diligence required and what they're talking about. It's the same diligence towards compassion that you felt when you saw "Schindler's List".
If you feel you need to connect your actions to it, that's fine and dandy to work on. But I'll take it a little farther and point out that actions aren't always necessary. With some people, their diligence comes out just from their very being, and you're one of them. If you can just accept that, get calm with it, keep practicing, and you will naturally offer the acts benefiting people on your path. Mind you, I'm not saying the path is easy, just be better at discerning the easy parts from the difficult. And who knows?, once you do that, you might find the difficult stuff a breeze!
And don't beat yourself up over bodhisattva "vows". In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we don't call them vows, but rather "mindfulness trainings". A lot of people have hang-ups over the word "vow", and if you break them, you've failed or are a sinner, and that's not the point of them. If everyone who took the vows could keep the vows, there's no reason to take them.
That's why TNH changed them to mindfulness trainings, we keep trainings, not "vows". When we come across a situation where we think we're going against the training, we're mindful about it. And if we do it anyway, the training is still there and becomes stronger hopefully for the next time we encounter it. But we don't berate ourselves for breaking a vow whereby we lose it. I'm just suggesting there's no reason to be apprehensive about the word "vow". Some people need that strict discipline/punishment aspect of a vow, but others can be more flexible according to their position. You don't need the discipline/punishment aspect. For you the "vow" is an inspiration, perhaps, or a guide.
I don't know what the implication of "vow" is in Japan, but if you think there's value in this, maybe you can discuss it with other people and your teacher and see what they say and decide for yourself.
I've always considered you on the bodhisattva path. I think a book you may come across eventually is Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life". It can be found online but I bought the Padmakara translation which was considered the best translation and commentary some years back. It's a daunting and elusive work, and I by no means get it, which just means I'm not ready for it and I should keep trying to go back to it. I guess it'll reach you if and when the time is right.
The bodhisattva path is a distinct "branch" or path of Buddhism, but I would argue it's not requisite to Buddhism. I think it is the right path for you because of your strong inclination to alleviate suffering. That's a hallmark of the bodhisattva path, I think. Call it karma, call it a calling. There may be aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that runs through all the other paths, but acting on the ideal is not requisite.
I think of myself as a "rogue" Buddhist, if I consider myself a Buddhist at all, and I've been getting some affirmation from writings by younger Tibetan lamas. One book I found was "Rebel Buddha", and that felt good because he was affirming that there isn't an orthodoxy. But that book is really basic and was telling something new to a general audience, but it wasn't all that new to me so I just skimmed it. Another book was "What Makes You NOT a Buddhist?" which was written by a Nepalese lama/filmmaker who did "The Cup" and "Travellers and Magicians", which I saw at the S.F. film festival, and just by being a filmmaker, he's a "rebel" Buddhist! That was a good book for me because he articulated some things in a new way for me that resonated.
A Thai friend I met in Taiwan also gave me a book that's more orthodox called "Heartwood from the Bo Tree" by a Theravadan Thai teacher, and I agree with him that the most basic idea to cultivate that is relevant to all paths of Buddhism that the Buddha directly taught is that "nothing whatsoever should be attached to". I agree that whatever path anyone is on, nothing whatsoever should be attached to and it's important to examine one's path to make sure you understand how it applies. The trick is that certain paths appeal to us and attract us because of who we are in the physical dimension, but it's still important not to be attached to them or anything about them on an ultimate level.
I'm going on and on like I have something to tell you, but like I said, I'm not saying anything like I think you don't already know, so if you want to go on and on about something, feel free.
love my teacher (um, that's you) always,
koji
Thank me? I'm still thanking you for finally getting on the path. I always thought it was right for you, but it had to happen when you were ripe to start on it. I might say it's a little late, but actually it's not at all and I have a feeling you're going to be a formidable and nurturing teacher in years, hopefully decades, to come. Not me, though, that's not my path.
You're actually not lazy. Maybe you know what you're doing moment to moment and may think you're lazy, you feel you're lazy and that you're not doing enough, but the diligence is in the mind, and I can point right at your own message by your immediate reaction to the Kawasakis that your diligence is already there and deep within you. That's the diligence required and what they're talking about. It's the same diligence towards compassion that you felt when you saw "Schindler's List".
If you feel you need to connect your actions to it, that's fine and dandy to work on. But I'll take it a little farther and point out that actions aren't always necessary. With some people, their diligence comes out just from their very being, and you're one of them. If you can just accept that, get calm with it, keep practicing, and you will naturally offer the acts benefiting people on your path. Mind you, I'm not saying the path is easy, just be better at discerning the easy parts from the difficult. And who knows?, once you do that, you might find the difficult stuff a breeze!
And don't beat yourself up over bodhisattva "vows". In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we don't call them vows, but rather "mindfulness trainings". A lot of people have hang-ups over the word "vow", and if you break them, you've failed or are a sinner, and that's not the point of them. If everyone who took the vows could keep the vows, there's no reason to take them.
That's why TNH changed them to mindfulness trainings, we keep trainings, not "vows". When we come across a situation where we think we're going against the training, we're mindful about it. And if we do it anyway, the training is still there and becomes stronger hopefully for the next time we encounter it. But we don't berate ourselves for breaking a vow whereby we lose it. I'm just suggesting there's no reason to be apprehensive about the word "vow". Some people need that strict discipline/punishment aspect of a vow, but others can be more flexible according to their position. You don't need the discipline/punishment aspect. For you the "vow" is an inspiration, perhaps, or a guide.
I don't know what the implication of "vow" is in Japan, but if you think there's value in this, maybe you can discuss it with other people and your teacher and see what they say and decide for yourself.
I've always considered you on the bodhisattva path. I think a book you may come across eventually is Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life". It can be found online but I bought the Padmakara translation which was considered the best translation and commentary some years back. It's a daunting and elusive work, and I by no means get it, which just means I'm not ready for it and I should keep trying to go back to it. I guess it'll reach you if and when the time is right.
The bodhisattva path is a distinct "branch" or path of Buddhism, but I would argue it's not requisite to Buddhism. I think it is the right path for you because of your strong inclination to alleviate suffering. That's a hallmark of the bodhisattva path, I think. Call it karma, call it a calling. There may be aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that runs through all the other paths, but acting on the ideal is not requisite.
I think of myself as a "rogue" Buddhist, if I consider myself a Buddhist at all, and I've been getting some affirmation from writings by younger Tibetan lamas. One book I found was "Rebel Buddha", and that felt good because he was affirming that there isn't an orthodoxy. But that book is really basic and was telling something new to a general audience, but it wasn't all that new to me so I just skimmed it. Another book was "What Makes You NOT a Buddhist?" which was written by a Nepalese lama/filmmaker who did "The Cup" and "Travellers and Magicians", which I saw at the S.F. film festival, and just by being a filmmaker, he's a "rebel" Buddhist! That was a good book for me because he articulated some things in a new way for me that resonated.
A Thai friend I met in Taiwan also gave me a book that's more orthodox called "Heartwood from the Bo Tree" by a Theravadan Thai teacher, and I agree with him that the most basic idea to cultivate that is relevant to all paths of Buddhism that the Buddha directly taught is that "nothing whatsoever should be attached to". I agree that whatever path anyone is on, nothing whatsoever should be attached to and it's important to examine one's path to make sure you understand how it applies. The trick is that certain paths appeal to us and attract us because of who we are in the physical dimension, but it's still important not to be attached to them or anything about them on an ultimate level.
I'm going on and on like I have something to tell you, but like I said, I'm not saying anything like I think you don't already know, so if you want to go on and on about something, feel free.
love my teacher (um, that's you) always,
koji
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
a personal communication
Hey,
M didn't really mention anything except that there was serious trouble between you and your wife because of another woman, in response to my prying about why you guys were moving. I think that's where the part about her being a bad parent slipped out.
As a parent, there are things that she should know or pry into or know when to get involved and how, and it just seemed par for the course that she couldn't answer any of the questions I was asking, so I finally told her I was going to email you, and she was surprised at that and reluctant because that would mean she talked about it to me, but said fine, and we got off the phone real fast, and needless to say, I don't expect her to be paying for anymore of my plane tickets.
Even if she knows more about what's going on, and for whatever reason felt she couldn't talk about it, that also goes to her inane parenting sense. Her idea of family dynamics is that you keep hush-hush about everything, and you don't help when that's the right thing to do. I don't think she has any conception of what it means to help out a family member, aside from sending over money. Wait, did she offer to send over money?
So I don't know any of the details or the dynamics.
It's good to hear that you're trying to work things out and are committed, there isn't a better starting point and it sounds like you're communicating, so that's excellent and keep it up. Obviously in a situation like this, repairing trust should also be number one on the agenda, so I encourage being vigilant and mindful about transparency. I don't mean you should divulge every little thing that's going on with you, I can see that getting annoying on her part, but if something needs to be said but you're not sure, lean towards saying it. Don't make assumptions about what she's thinking or feeling when you can clarify something on your part by just saying it or asking about it on her part.
It's good that it's foremost on your minds not to harm the kids. M's predictable mantra was that she hoped you guys would work things out for the sake of the kids, and that's fair. But I wouldn't make considering them a major part of the process. If you handle the process properly and well, the benefit to the kids will be automatic, you don't need to think or worry about them, aside from just raising and teaching them. If you can reach a place where you can look at yourself and say that you're alright, you fixed the marriage and B and the marriage is alright, then the kids will be fine. If you pay too much attention on not screwing up the kids, there's a risk that the process will be incomplete or flawed.
I think your focus should be on yourself and really look into yourself and why and how this happened. Go back through all of the stages that led up to this, and don't just focus on the drama after the shit hit the fan. You have to go back and ask what were your feelings and motivations, what was your analysis or lack of analysis. Locate that one moment when you did or felt or said something that should have tripped a wire indicating, "Oh shit, this is bad".
This idea isn't from the monastery but from a men's batterer program I trained in in San Francisco. We called that moment "fatal peril", it's the moment of decision where you reach the breaking point and you're going to do one thing or another. It's the danger point (peril) from where if you don't back down, there's no taking back what you do next. And it's going to be bad for everyone (fatal).
But it does relate to the monastic trainings in mindfulness and watching what our emotions are doing and what our thoughts are, and not just being caught up in the tide of emotions and other motivations.
I don't know if any of this is relevant, so I'm just going to throw out some ideas to consider, or to remind you if you've already considered them.
I think it's important to revisit the development of the events to understand yourself and what your motivations were. From my last visit there, you guys looked like you were doing great, I've gotten totally comfortable with B (and after seeing her sister in action, I thought you totally won out of the 3 sisters; T, too, but that's a different story), the kids were great, although I thought it may be time to instill C with some assertiveness and leadership skills and to be able to analyze things through and come up with his own opinion and enjoyment. S at this point has no problem with that as she knew what song she liked and she wanted to hear it over and over. And over and over. (I actually remember a similar memory, which I think may have been the start of my love of music (it was some Disney song while we were visiting Uncle Aki on a plastic record player and I couldn't get enough of it. If you have any insight on that memory, let me know)).
But then hearing this, it becomes apparent there was an underlying problem and it needs to be understood and addressed, and not brushed aside. A lot of people looking from the outside might look at a family and think that everything is perfect and they must be really happy. But maybe they're not.
So I also encourage you to do a happiness analysis. The Dalai Lama once observed that everyone says they want to be happy, but they keep doing things that lead to more suffering. And it's because many people's emotions are out of control or taken for granted as just being what they are. Their emotions just roam freely and they don't have the mindfulness to consider their actions and the consequences and ask, "will this make me happy, or will it likely lead to suffering?".
Instead of asking about happiness, we tend to just follow desire. Desire is the culprit that keeps us chasing after things which don't necessarily bring happiness, or ultimately brings about unhappiness and suffering for others. I think he's also pointing out that we all have the potential to be happy just as we are, but desire convinces us we're not happy and act in ways that bring about more unhappiness.
At the monastic mindfulness training level, this happiness analysis is brought all the way down to the smallest decisions we make any day that affect our emotions. Even if someone is walking too slow on the sidewalk in front of us and we can't get by and start feeling annoyed or angry, the analysis kicks in: "Is being annoyed and angry making me happy? They're not doing anything wrong, it's me that's being annoyed and angry. Can't I just pause and take a breath and be patient and walk slowly until I get an opportunity to pass and be happy with that?"
It's not easy, and I'll attest that it's a long, committed process, but I think it's fact that we can learn to control our emotions.
I'm not making any assumptions of what we're like now, but I do think you, T and me all have anger issues that we inherited from dad. M frequently talks about T's anger issues at the office, even with patients. I know that I have anger/negativity issues and dealing with them is part of the mindfulness practice I took from the monastery. It's a part of me now to identify anger/negativity the very moment they come up and to adjust myself away from them. By constantly doing this, I know I still experience anger and negativity, I'm not getting rid of them yet, but I'm training myself to be more peaceful by taking control of the emotions.
In general, anger is an important emotion to learn to be mindful of and control during difficult times since it's probably the easiest emotion to blind us and make us do something we otherwise wouldn't do. I recommend a book that's on my bookshelf by the window in New Jersey called "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. At times he goes a little simplistic, but he's writing on a very basic level for an introductory audience. And even though he incorporates Buddhist elements and language in some passages, it's because that's his background but he's not trying to push Buddhism on anyone. The book is also good because his discourse on anger also includes the basic ideas and methods behind mindfulness training.
If there are any issues you want to get out or bounce off someone else, you can totally let me know. If B's willing and you're comfortable with it, you can also let her know she can contact me to discuss what's on her mind. Obviously I'm not taking sides, the best interests of both of you are in my interest, so I'm only hoping to help keep lines of communication open.
I'm confident that both of you are smart enough and capable enough to achieve your goal since you're committed and working on it, but recognize that outside help may be necessary to keep things clear because it's easy to get myopic about these kinds of situations. Even if you can achieve your goal of staying together because you're being smart and capable, I still encourage identifying and dealing with all of the underlying issues. If you don't do that, there still may be problems with the foundation of your relationship here on in that might come up later.
I think by doing it in this way, you can strive to be confident of what you want and what are the most important things to you and neither of you will have doubts that things ended up alright for the wrong reasons. Ideally, I think the hope is that you'll end up in a situation where you can look around and realize this is not at all bad and certainly could be a lot worse, and you can put your efforts into making things better. What can I do for the kids? What can I do for B? What can I do for myself that will make me happy without bringing future suffering?
I recently read Ozzy Osbourne's biography because for someone brought up on rock music, his memoir is like reading history. And when asked about how he's been able to maintain his marriage to Sharon despite the long list of outrageous incidents to his name, he said, "I never stopped telling her I love her and I never stopped doing the little things for her". All the little things he constantly did ultimately likely meant a lot more than a grand gesture every once in a while would've meant. That's wisdom from a simple man.
If you come across difficult parts, I hope both of you avail yourself of the available network – her sisters and me and T – to figure out what's best for everyone. I think everyone cares and everyone is willing to help without judgment, even if not everyone has the ability and may be uncomfortable getting involved. I haven't emailed T in months so I don't know what he knows, but I hope you don't mind if I ask him as a means of sharing information and creating the best situation where we can come up with ideas or problem solve if any major issues come up. I'm not sure of T's current emotional availability, but during the course of his engagement and marriage, I've seen him shine and really come through on things I had doubts about, so I think he's also an important resource.
take care,
M didn't really mention anything except that there was serious trouble between you and your wife because of another woman, in response to my prying about why you guys were moving. I think that's where the part about her being a bad parent slipped out.
As a parent, there are things that she should know or pry into or know when to get involved and how, and it just seemed par for the course that she couldn't answer any of the questions I was asking, so I finally told her I was going to email you, and she was surprised at that and reluctant because that would mean she talked about it to me, but said fine, and we got off the phone real fast, and needless to say, I don't expect her to be paying for anymore of my plane tickets.
Even if she knows more about what's going on, and for whatever reason felt she couldn't talk about it, that also goes to her inane parenting sense. Her idea of family dynamics is that you keep hush-hush about everything, and you don't help when that's the right thing to do. I don't think she has any conception of what it means to help out a family member, aside from sending over money. Wait, did she offer to send over money?
So I don't know any of the details or the dynamics.
It's good to hear that you're trying to work things out and are committed, there isn't a better starting point and it sounds like you're communicating, so that's excellent and keep it up. Obviously in a situation like this, repairing trust should also be number one on the agenda, so I encourage being vigilant and mindful about transparency. I don't mean you should divulge every little thing that's going on with you, I can see that getting annoying on her part, but if something needs to be said but you're not sure, lean towards saying it. Don't make assumptions about what she's thinking or feeling when you can clarify something on your part by just saying it or asking about it on her part.
It's good that it's foremost on your minds not to harm the kids. M's predictable mantra was that she hoped you guys would work things out for the sake of the kids, and that's fair. But I wouldn't make considering them a major part of the process. If you handle the process properly and well, the benefit to the kids will be automatic, you don't need to think or worry about them, aside from just raising and teaching them. If you can reach a place where you can look at yourself and say that you're alright, you fixed the marriage and B and the marriage is alright, then the kids will be fine. If you pay too much attention on not screwing up the kids, there's a risk that the process will be incomplete or flawed.
I think your focus should be on yourself and really look into yourself and why and how this happened. Go back through all of the stages that led up to this, and don't just focus on the drama after the shit hit the fan. You have to go back and ask what were your feelings and motivations, what was your analysis or lack of analysis. Locate that one moment when you did or felt or said something that should have tripped a wire indicating, "Oh shit, this is bad".
This idea isn't from the monastery but from a men's batterer program I trained in in San Francisco. We called that moment "fatal peril", it's the moment of decision where you reach the breaking point and you're going to do one thing or another. It's the danger point (peril) from where if you don't back down, there's no taking back what you do next. And it's going to be bad for everyone (fatal).
But it does relate to the monastic trainings in mindfulness and watching what our emotions are doing and what our thoughts are, and not just being caught up in the tide of emotions and other motivations.
I don't know if any of this is relevant, so I'm just going to throw out some ideas to consider, or to remind you if you've already considered them.
I think it's important to revisit the development of the events to understand yourself and what your motivations were. From my last visit there, you guys looked like you were doing great, I've gotten totally comfortable with B (and after seeing her sister in action, I thought you totally won out of the 3 sisters; T, too, but that's a different story), the kids were great, although I thought it may be time to instill C with some assertiveness and leadership skills and to be able to analyze things through and come up with his own opinion and enjoyment. S at this point has no problem with that as she knew what song she liked and she wanted to hear it over and over. And over and over. (I actually remember a similar memory, which I think may have been the start of my love of music (it was some Disney song while we were visiting Uncle Aki on a plastic record player and I couldn't get enough of it. If you have any insight on that memory, let me know)).
But then hearing this, it becomes apparent there was an underlying problem and it needs to be understood and addressed, and not brushed aside. A lot of people looking from the outside might look at a family and think that everything is perfect and they must be really happy. But maybe they're not.
So I also encourage you to do a happiness analysis. The Dalai Lama once observed that everyone says they want to be happy, but they keep doing things that lead to more suffering. And it's because many people's emotions are out of control or taken for granted as just being what they are. Their emotions just roam freely and they don't have the mindfulness to consider their actions and the consequences and ask, "will this make me happy, or will it likely lead to suffering?".
Instead of asking about happiness, we tend to just follow desire. Desire is the culprit that keeps us chasing after things which don't necessarily bring happiness, or ultimately brings about unhappiness and suffering for others. I think he's also pointing out that we all have the potential to be happy just as we are, but desire convinces us we're not happy and act in ways that bring about more unhappiness.
At the monastic mindfulness training level, this happiness analysis is brought all the way down to the smallest decisions we make any day that affect our emotions. Even if someone is walking too slow on the sidewalk in front of us and we can't get by and start feeling annoyed or angry, the analysis kicks in: "Is being annoyed and angry making me happy? They're not doing anything wrong, it's me that's being annoyed and angry. Can't I just pause and take a breath and be patient and walk slowly until I get an opportunity to pass and be happy with that?"
It's not easy, and I'll attest that it's a long, committed process, but I think it's fact that we can learn to control our emotions.
I'm not making any assumptions of what we're like now, but I do think you, T and me all have anger issues that we inherited from dad. M frequently talks about T's anger issues at the office, even with patients. I know that I have anger/negativity issues and dealing with them is part of the mindfulness practice I took from the monastery. It's a part of me now to identify anger/negativity the very moment they come up and to adjust myself away from them. By constantly doing this, I know I still experience anger and negativity, I'm not getting rid of them yet, but I'm training myself to be more peaceful by taking control of the emotions.
In general, anger is an important emotion to learn to be mindful of and control during difficult times since it's probably the easiest emotion to blind us and make us do something we otherwise wouldn't do. I recommend a book that's on my bookshelf by the window in New Jersey called "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. At times he goes a little simplistic, but he's writing on a very basic level for an introductory audience. And even though he incorporates Buddhist elements and language in some passages, it's because that's his background but he's not trying to push Buddhism on anyone. The book is also good because his discourse on anger also includes the basic ideas and methods behind mindfulness training.
If there are any issues you want to get out or bounce off someone else, you can totally let me know. If B's willing and you're comfortable with it, you can also let her know she can contact me to discuss what's on her mind. Obviously I'm not taking sides, the best interests of both of you are in my interest, so I'm only hoping to help keep lines of communication open.
I'm confident that both of you are smart enough and capable enough to achieve your goal since you're committed and working on it, but recognize that outside help may be necessary to keep things clear because it's easy to get myopic about these kinds of situations. Even if you can achieve your goal of staying together because you're being smart and capable, I still encourage identifying and dealing with all of the underlying issues. If you don't do that, there still may be problems with the foundation of your relationship here on in that might come up later.
I think by doing it in this way, you can strive to be confident of what you want and what are the most important things to you and neither of you will have doubts that things ended up alright for the wrong reasons. Ideally, I think the hope is that you'll end up in a situation where you can look around and realize this is not at all bad and certainly could be a lot worse, and you can put your efforts into making things better. What can I do for the kids? What can I do for B? What can I do for myself that will make me happy without bringing future suffering?
I recently read Ozzy Osbourne's biography because for someone brought up on rock music, his memoir is like reading history. And when asked about how he's been able to maintain his marriage to Sharon despite the long list of outrageous incidents to his name, he said, "I never stopped telling her I love her and I never stopped doing the little things for her". All the little things he constantly did ultimately likely meant a lot more than a grand gesture every once in a while would've meant. That's wisdom from a simple man.
If you come across difficult parts, I hope both of you avail yourself of the available network – her sisters and me and T – to figure out what's best for everyone. I think everyone cares and everyone is willing to help without judgment, even if not everyone has the ability and may be uncomfortable getting involved. I haven't emailed T in months so I don't know what he knows, but I hope you don't mind if I ask him as a means of sharing information and creating the best situation where we can come up with ideas or problem solve if any major issues come up. I'm not sure of T's current emotional availability, but during the course of his engagement and marriage, I've seen him shine and really come through on things I had doubts about, so I think he's also an important resource.
take care,
NB: I'm sure he deleted this immediately and very probably didn't read the whole thing, at best skimmed it.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
I had seen this at Blockbusters, but it didn't appeal to me because of the creepy cover, but then decided to give it a go after I read that the main actor in Castaways on the Moon was in it, and that the movie had an interesting twist on the fairy tale idea.
Turns out it's in the dark fantasy/thriller/horror genre, of which I can't say I'm a huge fan, but my problem with the film was in the filmmaking and how poorly the visual narrative was handled. The story itself might actually work on paper, but the visual development of the story left a lot to be desired.
There are countless visual cues and clues that go no where. They're presented, suggesting something related will come out of it, and then nothing ever does. The film doesn't develop and build on what it presents and relies just on what's provided on the screen at the moment while just maintaining a basic, threadbare story arc.
It's not an intelligent film in that once you start thinking about all the narrative elements and try to put the parts together to figure the whole thing out, it makes absolutely no sense and thus wasn't satisfying. This film was made for fans of the genre who don't need the film to make narrative sense, and saying it that way it's an effective enough film. I would recommend it to fans of the genre. It's creepy and suspenseful, but that's all. It just makes no overall sense, and to be intelligent, it needs to make sense. If it doesn't make sense, it's a waste of my time.
Rotten 4 out 10 tomatoes.
As far as I'm concerned, this was a slasher film in the guise of a revenge-thriller. It's not an incompetent film, it was just not to my taste. I give it a thumbs down 4 out of 10 rotten tomato rating for misogyny and unnecessary and unrelenting violence.
It's about a serial killer who ostensibly kills one victim that launches a vengeance crusade by the victim's boyfriend/fiance. There's a lot of unmitigated evil portrayed in the film, which perhaps is hinted at in the title.
There may be a morality play suggesting that revenge is not an answer to a wrongdoing, but the message pales alongside the portrayals of evils why-do-we-even-want-to-imagine? can possibly occur in this world.
Furthermore, the moral message is further diluted by the fact that the protagonist goes way beyond revenge. He doesn't know when to stop and just come to terms with his grief, and his actions create even more harm to people around him. And in his own sadism, he crosses the line over to evil himself.
Unlike most rental DVDs, I only needed to watch this once. It was not something I needed to experience twice, although I did review the final scenes before I returned it to remind myself how the vengeance played out.
For me, part of the value of a film is the ability or desire to watch it multiple times. There was nothing redeeming in this film that warranted a second viewing.
Like I said, it's not an incompetent film, and I would hypothetically recommend it to fans of the genre – people who like gore, don't mind misogyny, or don't mind seeing the depths of human nature that can be reached.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
There are no words for how much I hate this Asus laptop. I'm not a computer person. I don't know the first thing about computers. Maybe a computer person could fix the things I have gripes about in 15 minutes, but I'm just an ordinary person who wants to be able to take a laptop out of the box and have the very basics work competently, if not flawlessly.
I used a Compaq laptop running Windows XP for 6 years with a hard drive upgrade after 4.5 of those years. When it finally died completely I bought this Asus K42J running Windows 7, and it's just loaded to the rafters with annoyances and inconveniences that someone in the developed world buying a brand new laptop shouldn't have to deal with.
Again, I can't really say anything since I don't know what the source of the problem is because I don't know computers. But if you also don't know computers and couldn't figure out a load of annoying behaviors if your computer displays them, then I would blanket stay away from Asus computers, if not all Taiwanese computers. Apparently they are good computer companies with good reputations, but if you don't know about computers and want to avoid frustration, look at other companies first. From one user's experience, I will be looking into getting rid of this in the long run and Asus gets the big donkey shaft from me.
I used a Compaq laptop running Windows XP for 6 years with a hard drive upgrade after 4.5 of those years. When it finally died completely I bought this Asus K42J running Windows 7, and it's just loaded to the rafters with annoyances and inconveniences that someone in the developed world buying a brand new laptop shouldn't have to deal with.
Again, I can't really say anything since I don't know what the source of the problem is because I don't know computers. But if you also don't know computers and couldn't figure out a load of annoying behaviors if your computer displays them, then I would blanket stay away from Asus computers, if not all Taiwanese computers. Apparently they are good computer companies with good reputations, but if you don't know about computers and want to avoid frustration, look at other companies first. From one user's experience, I will be looking into getting rid of this in the long run and Asus gets the big donkey shaft from me.
I've been trying to email my brother for a while but it's the same as this blog, I open the draft and I got nothing. I just have nothing to say, nothing to express. That's not a negative statement. I'm just stuck. I'm not moving forward. But moving forward requires one thing first – next attempt. If the attempt fails, then I'll have to face whatever's next and presumably I'll have found whatever energy is required to go there.
I'm not sure "energy" is the right word there. Desperation maybe. And that is negative. But it's a numb desperation. Like when I left San Francisco after that attempt. I failed, plans to leave were already rolling so I just had to do it. Remembering that and the futility of everything since then points to how I really don't want to fail in the next attempt. It's what I hope to remind myself if I'm standing on the edge and having doubts whether this is going to happen or not.
My path has led me to this point and everything is in place again for a good attempt. What it boils down to is the only reason why I might balk is ego-attachment. This attachment to ME. I'M here. There is no 'no ME'. The universe is here because I'M here. Intellectually that's ridiculous, but perhaps here is where I'm really faced with my attachment to self, which is possibly the biggest obstacle towards true understanding, or liberation, or enlightenment.
I'm not sure "energy" is the right word there. Desperation maybe. And that is negative. But it's a numb desperation. Like when I left San Francisco after that attempt. I failed, plans to leave were already rolling so I just had to do it. Remembering that and the futility of everything since then points to how I really don't want to fail in the next attempt. It's what I hope to remind myself if I'm standing on the edge and having doubts whether this is going to happen or not.
My path has led me to this point and everything is in place again for a good attempt. What it boils down to is the only reason why I might balk is ego-attachment. This attachment to ME. I'M here. There is no 'no ME'. The universe is here because I'M here. Intellectually that's ridiculous, but perhaps here is where I'm really faced with my attachment to self, which is possibly the biggest obstacle towards true understanding, or liberation, or enlightenment.
It's all process. Maybe what I'm doing can be described as balking, but maybe I'm just waiting for this understanding to ripen. I go back to what I've posted in the past few years and I have no idea what all that was about. It was process. There were a lot of things I was uncomfortable about regarding negativity that I was processing, and I think there was some degree of success there in that I can't relate to those posts at all now. Even though the karmic imprint is still recognizable, it's not an issue anymore.
And I go back to posts from way long ago, and I feel that this entire blog is unnecessary and irrelevant. But it's so irrelevant that it's not even worth deleting or making private. It's just what it was. I remember at one point in college, a few of my angsty and dramatic dormmates and I decided to ritually burn all our journals up to that point. But even in doing that there was a sense of self-importance. Even throwing our past thoughts and record into the fireplace was a big statement to ourselves. It was something worth it to us to burn it.
The value of maintaining this blog, or discontinuing it, or deleting it, is just . . . not. Nothing. And even that is fierce ego-clinging.
And I go back to posts from way long ago, and I feel that this entire blog is unnecessary and irrelevant. But it's so irrelevant that it's not even worth deleting or making private. It's just what it was. I remember at one point in college, a few of my angsty and dramatic dormmates and I decided to ritually burn all our journals up to that point. But even in doing that there was a sense of self-importance. Even throwing our past thoughts and record into the fireplace was a big statement to ourselves. It was something worth it to us to burn it.
The value of maintaining this blog, or discontinuing it, or deleting it, is just . . . not. Nothing. And even that is fierce ego-clinging.
Monday, August 22, 2011
I've even gotten bored of blogging. Actually, a blog I was following and inspired by became private and blocked and I think that may be a reason I haven't felt like writing anything here. That blog made me want to get more stuff out earlier this year, although that mostly meant a lot more random nothing posts.
I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I sorta do. It was a slap in the face after turning the other cheek after the last post before going private, which was a slap in the face to her readership. She sounded like she was starting to melt down anyway, so maybe it's all for the better.
I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I sorta do. It was a slap in the face after turning the other cheek after the last post before going private, which was a slap in the face to her readership. She sounded like she was starting to melt down anyway, so maybe it's all for the better.
Oh well, easy come, easy go. Little high, little low. Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me. Tooo meeee. I can stop pretending and get back to my next attempt, which isn't forthcoming but I'm still convinced it's imminent.
My boredom of things I used to be passionate about has been systematic and feels like it's a part of my dying process. I have been dying slowly all along and this boredom may be a sign that it's seriously speeding up. The big thing was a few months ago when I realized I could no longer consider myself a musician. Part of me really felt like it had died. It was something alive or a life energy for my identity or something and then it was gone. And it's not the technique, the being able to pick up an instrument and make a joyful noise. It's still in my hands, but it's gone out of my heart. I get bored quick every time I try now.
My bike hasn't left the apartment for months. Every time I think of it, I just feel a withering emptiness. Physical activity used to represent survival. My mantra to keep going when I was suffering while running was, "you don't stop", á là rap records from the late 80s/early 90s.
My appetite's gone, too. I can only eat one modest meal a day and sometimes I'm not even hungry when I do. Also a lot of things I used to like aren't all that appealing anymore. A lot of this sounds like depression and I'm not going to try to refute that. It may be so. It may be a necessary part of the dying process when the death is a projected suicide. It's a prognosis. Even though depression is not a reason for suicide for me, the symptoms of it may be a necessary part of getting to it. Anyone wanna study me yet?
Morrie was a dying man. Truth to tell, a lot of the insights he offered as he was dying I felt were old hat to me. I think maybe because my goal of suicide means facing my mortality as a dying person would. My life has been a prolonged dying process. At least a facsimile. Truth to tell, I also thought that Morrie's insights would largely fall on deaf ears, despite maybe millions of people being touched by his story. He's right, but they're just pretty expressions about life that don't have any meaningful, long-term effect until you're finally in that position yourself. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Like a dying process, every day is pretty hard for me. Every day is a waste and each wasted day makes it even harder. Aside from watching Korean TV shows, I've been doing a lot of catching up and cramming of Tibetan death theory not only to review, but to see if I can eke out one little bit morsel of insight into what I believe. I'm actually pretty confident about my level of preparedness because when I think about the question of my confidence, there's no other way for me to be. I am what I am and I know what I know. I don't doubt, I'm not afraid.
I run through the trainings, visualizations and meditations and work on insight into the nature of mind and consciousness in a state where there are no physical senses to feed sensory perception for the mind to form concepts, and no physical brain structure to organize the information into the cohesive, ordinary reality we experience every day.
I reject the idea that if there is anything after death, that our consciousness and perception is just like it is when we're alive. Once the physical structures are dead, whatever intangible essence of what we naturally are is unleashed in what I imagine to be quite a storm. But it's a storm that can be prepared for á là the Tibetan teachings and theory.
And if I fail at the attempt? I said before that it looks bad, and it still looks bad. But I'll probably have to decide to head back to New Jersey. New Jersey where my parents will no doubt continue to test my mindfulness training. The optimist in me tells me that I can participate in raising my nephews and nieces and help avoid them getting screwed up. It also sounds like both of my brothers are having issues now. So the sooner this next attempt, the better.
Maybe I should enter a doctoral program in psychiatry and study myself for my thesis.
My boredom of things I used to be passionate about has been systematic and feels like it's a part of my dying process. I have been dying slowly all along and this boredom may be a sign that it's seriously speeding up. The big thing was a few months ago when I realized I could no longer consider myself a musician. Part of me really felt like it had died. It was something alive or a life energy for my identity or something and then it was gone. And it's not the technique, the being able to pick up an instrument and make a joyful noise. It's still in my hands, but it's gone out of my heart. I get bored quick every time I try now.
My bike hasn't left the apartment for months. Every time I think of it, I just feel a withering emptiness. Physical activity used to represent survival. My mantra to keep going when I was suffering while running was, "you don't stop", á là rap records from the late 80s/early 90s.
My appetite's gone, too. I can only eat one modest meal a day and sometimes I'm not even hungry when I do. Also a lot of things I used to like aren't all that appealing anymore. A lot of this sounds like depression and I'm not going to try to refute that. It may be so. It may be a necessary part of the dying process when the death is a projected suicide. It's a prognosis. Even though depression is not a reason for suicide for me, the symptoms of it may be a necessary part of getting to it. Anyone wanna study me yet?
Morrie was a dying man. Truth to tell, a lot of the insights he offered as he was dying I felt were old hat to me. I think maybe because my goal of suicide means facing my mortality as a dying person would. My life has been a prolonged dying process. At least a facsimile. Truth to tell, I also thought that Morrie's insights would largely fall on deaf ears, despite maybe millions of people being touched by his story. He's right, but they're just pretty expressions about life that don't have any meaningful, long-term effect until you're finally in that position yourself. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Like a dying process, every day is pretty hard for me. Every day is a waste and each wasted day makes it even harder. Aside from watching Korean TV shows, I've been doing a lot of catching up and cramming of Tibetan death theory not only to review, but to see if I can eke out one little bit morsel of insight into what I believe. I'm actually pretty confident about my level of preparedness because when I think about the question of my confidence, there's no other way for me to be. I am what I am and I know what I know. I don't doubt, I'm not afraid.
I run through the trainings, visualizations and meditations and work on insight into the nature of mind and consciousness in a state where there are no physical senses to feed sensory perception for the mind to form concepts, and no physical brain structure to organize the information into the cohesive, ordinary reality we experience every day.
I reject the idea that if there is anything after death, that our consciousness and perception is just like it is when we're alive. Once the physical structures are dead, whatever intangible essence of what we naturally are is unleashed in what I imagine to be quite a storm. But it's a storm that can be prepared for á là the Tibetan teachings and theory.
And if I fail at the attempt? I said before that it looks bad, and it still looks bad. But I'll probably have to decide to head back to New Jersey. New Jersey where my parents will no doubt continue to test my mindfulness training. The optimist in me tells me that I can participate in raising my nephews and nieces and help avoid them getting screwed up. It also sounds like both of my brothers are having issues now. So the sooner this next attempt, the better.
Maybe I should enter a doctoral program in psychiatry and study myself for my thesis.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Not a dry eye in the house. The last section of the last episode of Invincible Youth.
It was hard when three of the original members left in episode 32, but this was the end of the series, after only one season – a little over a year, starting in autumn 2009 and ending in December 2010. The TV company has said that it wants to continue the series, but since then there hasn't been any news of a second season.
One of the reasons I love this show is because it shows transition and transformation. It shows growth that is part of the natural cycle in our lives. If we don't grow, if we don't learn, if we don't challenge ourselves, then what the hell are we doing? I don't think there are many variety/reality shows that express that.
It's no surprise the TV company hasn't been able to start a second season, ostensibly with a new group of 7 girl group members. This program was unique and special and it demanded a lot from its participants. There aren't a lot of members of K-pop girl groups that can put this sort of commitment to a TV series now, despite the personal and emotional rewards.
It impresses me how hard celebrities have to work in the South Korean entertainment industry. If celebrities in the West can be viewed as pampered (being valued for their talent), South Korean celebrities might be viewed as slave labor (being valued for their dedication and training).
These girls and the hosts had to devote a day or more of hard labor and entertainment each week to the filming of this show, and still had to maintain their schedules of recording and promotion by their respective groups. And no matter how tired they were from this show, they still had to perform during their promotions.
I'm glad to have come across this show. It has a lot of heart and embodies many values that I also hold dear. It also pinpoints values that we should also value, such as organic farming and community, and that the survival of the human species depends on these things.
It was hard when three of the original members left in episode 32, but this was the end of the series, after only one season – a little over a year, starting in autumn 2009 and ending in December 2010. The TV company has said that it wants to continue the series, but since then there hasn't been any news of a second season.
One of the reasons I love this show is because it shows transition and transformation. It shows growth that is part of the natural cycle in our lives. If we don't grow, if we don't learn, if we don't challenge ourselves, then what the hell are we doing? I don't think there are many variety/reality shows that express that.
It's no surprise the TV company hasn't been able to start a second season, ostensibly with a new group of 7 girl group members. This program was unique and special and it demanded a lot from its participants. There aren't a lot of members of K-pop girl groups that can put this sort of commitment to a TV series now, despite the personal and emotional rewards.
It impresses me how hard celebrities have to work in the South Korean entertainment industry. If celebrities in the West can be viewed as pampered (being valued for their talent), South Korean celebrities might be viewed as slave labor (being valued for their dedication and training).
These girls and the hosts had to devote a day or more of hard labor and entertainment each week to the filming of this show, and still had to maintain their schedules of recording and promotion by their respective groups. And no matter how tired they were from this show, they still had to perform during their promotions.
I'm glad to have come across this show. It has a lot of heart and embodies many values that I also hold dear. It also pinpoints values that we should also value, such as organic farming and community, and that the survival of the human species depends on these things.
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