current status

Alcohol: I haven't quit completely since August last year when I had that great, wonderous, earth-shaking revelation for the umpteenth time that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and it therefore served no purpose. I was drinking almost a bottle of liquor a day with some beer in the mix because beer make happy. I cut down to a bottle every three days or less plus beer still in the mix because beer. The plan was to eventually totally get off the sauce, but that didn't happen because alcoholism.

That makes me question my mindfulness practice which believes quitting completely is not only possible, but even easy when mindfully applied. On the other hand, the reduced consumption (a schedule I've been on many times before in the name of cutting back) hasn't been making me feel like crap like the bottle a day did. There just hasn't been anything compelling to make me quit completely, but like my months at a monastery, now well over a decade ago, I theoretically could stop completely if I had to and not even think about it. Same as it ever was.

Sleep: Insomnia really went away with the reduced consumption of alcohol. Coincidence? The thing is that I've been on this reduced schedule of consumption before during years I've had insomnia, so they shouldn't be related. Psychological? I still always need music on to fall asleep with a timer set to shut off. Sleep is unsettled towards the end with multiple waking in the morning, but I turn on the music and reset the timer and that gets me back to sleep. If I don't turn on music, I don't fall asleep. Average 6 hours sleep with lights out between 1:30 and 2 a.m. and getting up in the 8 o'clock hour for morning sitting.

Exercise: It was full stop on even any thought of running and cycling since August last in the same realization as stopping drinking. Why am I doing this? So much effort and maintenance required, so much pain and risk of injury, so little satisfaction as performance declines. My bike is covered with dust and cobwebs, tyres flat. I don't even want to check how the last pair of running shoes I bought are doing.

Interesting how stopping exercise and stopping drinking are totally different things. Entropy working differently in either case. Or not. I'm kidding, entropy isn't at play at all (or is it?), but I'm realizing my jokes are too abstract, obtuse or just not funny. I realize now I should've been pointing out all along when I'm joking, which is even less funnier. Yes, that was a grammar joke. Yes, that was me pointing out that it was a grammar joke. Yes, it wasn't funny initially and even less funnier pointing it out. Oy vey.

Eating: Appetite has remained completely stable since August last. Faboo. Also alcohol related? Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it was alcohol related at that time. Which still means it was. The Korean food obsession that started last November lasted until May or June when it relented. Literally Korean food almost every day. I still go for Korean when I think about it, but I no more have to think about where was the place I went least recently to decide where to go. Aigoo.

So what have I been doing? Reading and mindfulness practice has been the all-permeating focus. But mindfulness is more of a Zen thing and I've been playing and fiddling more with Vajrayana, so I should just say practice, mindfulness being a part of it. Pushing the teachings and my understanding the best I can without a guru. No great, mind-opening, satori-like breakthrough, but that's not a focus; not something I'm striving for. More slow immersion into my understanding with tangible, experiential moments of getting things. Applying whatever whenever, focusing on energies. Everything is energy. Energy equals emcee squared (on a total aside, to date there surprisingly has been no notable rock band that has named itself E=mc², but there was a white rapper who went under the name MC Squared).

K-pop girl group obsession and immersion has remained unabated. A lot of time spent watching YouTube videos. But with YouTube videos it's not just K-pop. I watch science lectures and documentaries. There's a "World Science Festival" channel where I watch videos on cosmology and astrophysics.

I watch a channel called "Asian Boss" which features vox pop videos in various Asian countries (at least once in the U.S.) asking people on the street about various topical topics. I think they edit videos for the most intelligent responses, which is refreshing and totally opposite of U.S. talk shows where they do the vox pop thing asking simple questions, but then air the most ridiculous, stupid-sounding people.

I also pay attention to a channel called "China Uncensored", which has sarcastic "news" videos about China-related topics, mostly pointing out China's hypocrisy and unfriendly or hostile relations with other countries. The sarcasm makes the outrage palatable. I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed. Wait! Was that sarcasm?! Was I being sarcastic talking about sarcasm?! Good grief. I'm having a crisis of (being) meta.

Back to the South Korea fetish, I follow a few South Korean YouTube vlogs. Apparently professional vloggers. They make money off of it. It's totally voyeuristic watching these people going through certain days they decide to video and narrate. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fascinating watching slices of these people's young women's lives, but it's not prurience. True, they are attractive but that's just the dressing, the bait, the aesthetic. It's the same with K-pop. I'm sure the boy groups are putting out just as good music as girl groups if it were just about the music, but for the pop genre, my aesthetic leans towards the girls. Same with golf, mind you. You couldn't pay me to watch men's golf, but I'll watch LPGA tournaments when sports channels choose to air them (NB: they won't if there's men's or motor sports or such boring bullshit to air).

It's the lives that interest me, the living life that they are doing which I'm not. The relating with other people, the moving through their cities/lives/world, neither of which I'm doing. They are reminders of what I'm not doing, what I may have used to have done when I was younger but don't even want anymore. And there is that tension between feeling I want to be a part of something and the reality that I totally don't.

Branching out of those videos, just recently I did a brief spate of watching videos of people showing their apartments in Seoul (still the Korean fetish). Again, it's just the look at and fascination of the lives going on. All those people doing something. Is there anyone doing the worthless nothingness I'm doing?

There's a class of apartments in Seoul that I don't think we have in Taiwan called goshiwon, which are tiny, basic apartments originally meant for students cramming for national exams. Mostly foreigners and students on a budget use them now, but they remind me of my ideal when I first moved to Taiwan. I wanted to live a simple hermit-like existence, and a goshiwon would've fit the ideal perfectly.

Now I look at my apartment and all the stuff I've accumulated and this is luxury compared to tiny goshiwons. This is my karma. I haven't torn myself and my ego down enough to deserve living in a goshiwon. I probably couldn't survive a goshiwon. I'd be like, "I gotta get out of this situation", and I could because I could afford it. I live in an apartment where I had the luxury of being an insomniac and baby it. Luxury of all my perceived problems without the added stresses of the perceived inconveniences of a goshiwon.

What made me think I could be a monk? I didn't deserve it. I haven't karmically earned it. My karma is still such "bad" enough that I tend towards comfort and luxury. In another life, I could easily become the hungry ghost my mother is in this life. That's the harsh possibility. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Last and least, since last December when cable TV went down for two months (I don't know if it's related; could be), I've been spending at least two hours a day with a bass in hand, plugged into my Korg PX5D and connected to iTunes and working on ear training along with K-pop songs. Why? I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything, it's not about making music or practicing bass or being a musician or anything. It may be closure to my discarded "musician" identity. I recognize now that I was never good enough to be a musician. I'm not talented, I never learned music nor got to know it, and I certainly never practiced near enough to be a musician. And if not any sort of "formal" musician, it behooves me to admit that despite my love of music and trying to make it, I was also not passionate enough to be any sort of musician.

Maybe it's an afterglow goodbye gesture towards musicianship. Ear training is one of those things I never got and never practiced as a skill. I'm just trying to see if I can improve my ear training, and that's it. It's not going to make me a musician, it's not going to make me know music. It's just training to listen to notes and develop a sense of what intervals sound like, where to go for the next note. I daresay it hasn't been a totally hopeless endeavor. It has been evidence that if I had started ear training early enough, in my teens, I could've been OK at it. I have good sessions where my fingers find the right notes without even thinking, and bad days where I feel hopelessly tone deaf and flounder about the fretboard hitting notes only after the second or third guess.

K-pop is particularly good for this because the songs are written by professional musicians applying theory, meaning there is a structure to the progressions, unlike rock which a lot is by feel and if theory is followed it's just happenstance. The theory-following structure makes a lot of K-pop predictable (they love their circle of fifths), which is good for ear training, but the writers are interesting enough to put in lots of twists and surprises to challenge ear training.

Ah, it all comes back to me. Another YouTube channel I pay attention to is ReacttotheK, a group of classical music students who react to K-pop. I generally avoid reaction videos as pointless and varying degrees of stupid, but it was interesting listening to people who know music, who pronounce "timbre" correctly, who know the difference between a piano, horns and an elbow, and had something intelligent to say about the songs.

Hearing them use music terms I recognize but have forgotten reminded me how lacking my music education has been, including ear training. That's what inspired me when cable TV went dark to at least try to do some ear training as a last gasp of musicianhood. I can grasp ear training, whereas I couldn't get music theory even if Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke Seoul unless I mastered music theory. I would pretend to try to do it and stall as long as I could to buy time for Seoul to be evacuated.

And bam, I found the gateway video that hooked me:

End of September. I read a local news article recently that confirmed what I felt about this summer that Taipei wasn't as hot as it has been for the past however many years; what I termed "hell hot". This summer was normal Taipei summer heat. It was blazing hot, but it was normal Taipei summer blazing hot. It wasn't hell hot and it turns out I can tell the difference. Because of the past few years, I would brace myself for hell hot heading out, but once outside there wasn't the immediate impulse to get out of the heat as fast as possible. It would be hot, but it was hot that I'd be taking my bike out for a ride in the years before the hell hot started.

Actually, weather has been rather unusual since winter, which was mild and dry compared to previous years in memory. And unusually dry weather continued to characterize the bulk of this year. Even during the springtime Plum Rains, there would be showers for a few days and then break. I'm usually griping about the solid blocks of rain for weeks in Taipei, but this year has not only been great and relatively dry, but there haven't been any drought warnings, either. No worries. Typhoons have been avoiding Taipei, either missing south and plowing into the Philippines or veering north towards recently disaster-prone Japan. Taipei has been grazed by non-events. Southern Taiwan hasn't been so lucky.

Rain has returned in the past month, so weather may be returning to normal crummy Taipei weather. The summer heat has broken with less drama than hell hot summers. Air conditioning has been turned off without fanfare, and even fan usage habit was easy to break. I anticipate within a week I'll sleep under covers for the first time in months. Change.

I wonder what change I'm prepared for. Earlier this year, I wrongly anticipated my bank account would run out not too long beyond June. A scenario developed that would keep me going without change well into next year. That scenario is on track, but hasn't manifested just yet; I'll see next month. If it doesn't manifest, no problem; I'll have loomage and change that I'm well-prepared for.

But since my life has a habit of not going my way, I have to think about change like . . . getting new eyeglasses. It's easily been over six or seven years that I've had this prescription and silly red frames that just don't suit me. I also need a new wardrobe of shirts. Early on, my uniform in Taiwan became light fabric, short-sleeve, button-down shirts. I never wore these in the U.S. Not only am I getting too fat for the shirts I have with paunch becoming embarrassingly obvious, but they're starting to fray and shred because of Taiwan's climate, I assume. I've never had shirts do that before. Fabric just disintegrating.

I'm not sure what other kind of change I expect in the coming year. Visiting the U.S.? Have things gotten so low that I'm willing to do that? Do I re-establish contact with . . . with whom? Audrey? If I haven't connected with her since we last connected, why would I in particular in the coming year? I do have to reply to an email from my sister-in-law, but that's not a change. We actually have a regular email correspondence: twice a year, I don't know if it's intentional. I don't know if she writes because she wants to or if she feels she has to and twice is the bare minimum she can manage. I don't know if she would like to write more but is too busy. But twice a year, one around the holidays and then another one further down the year; I respond roughly halfway in between those emails, so I'm currently a little tardy.

Nah, maybe I should just anticipate a forthcoming year with no change, keep floating along. If life wants to throw me a curve ball, whatever. See if I care. Or please!

afterglow II (fin)

When I first read the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994 Robert Thurman translation), perhaps what perplexed me most was what seemed to be repeated mentions of being able to attain "liberation" at sequential opportunities while in the between states. In the "reality" between, the second of three, there are repeated mention of "dissolving in rainbow light", "entering" various pure lands, and becoming a Buddha or attaining buddhahood. What does that mean? It doesn't say what that means, or I haven't encountered any explanation that satisfactorily explains it. So, me without a teacher, I'm left having to make something up myself. Funny how that works.

I have a hard time believing it means full enlightenment. However nice that result sounds, even logically it can't mean full enlightenment. The force of karma is said to be inexorable. It's hard to imagine how a person's accumulated karma over countless lifetimes can be expunged so simply and instantly. Further, there's possibly a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to enlightenment which may or may not be relevant. In the Mahayana tradition, part of the bodhisattva vow of compassion is to refuse to exit the cycle of samsara until all beings can attain enlightenment, like the captain of a sinking ship refusing to get into a lifeboat until everyone under his or her command is safe. That is to say an enlightened being will always choose re-birth in order to help beings reach enlightenment, which is counter to the idea of selfishly and individually dissolving and entering buddha-fields and escaping the cycle of re-birth.

My speculative interpretation to make this all work, without any sources to back me up, mind you, is that liberation or buddhahood attained in the bardos through these methods and means may be a partial enlightenment with the effect of slowing and delaying our passage through the bardos and into re-birth, which is inevitable due to either not being full enlightenment and the inexorable force of karma (if there still is karma, there will be re-birth), or the bodhisattva vow to be re-born to continue the work of assisting beings towards enlightenment. Viva la run-on sentence! Whenever I stop Englishing means don't take me seriously.

Delaying re-birth is basically a prolonged suspension in the non-corporeal bardo states, "buddha-fields" or pure lands possibly. This idea of delaying re-birth, albeit not explicitly mentioned, can actually be read into the Tibetan Book of the Dead. After the bardo of ground reality, it is said one enters the bardo of "existence", the third of three, also translated as the bardo of re-birth or "becoming". The bardo of existence is when we most identify with our previous incarnation and when our ego-habit of who we were is strongest. It's the most Dante-like experience and includes opportunities for liberation by recognizing the nature of mind. But as opportunities for enlightenment are missed, the force of karma draws us towards re-birth.

But even still, the book has instructions for "blocking the womb entrance" to prevent re-birth for those who have made it this far without recognition. Again, it's not explained what this means nor what the results of blocking the womb entrance are. I think the implication is that if this person has gotten this far, they are heading for re-birth, it's unavoidable. They didn't have the aptitude or cultivation or practice to recognize the nature of mind. But still these last-ditch instructions to block the womb entrance. Why? Attaining buddhahood or entering buddha lands are no longer mentioned. So maybe it's to delay re-birth for as long as possible.

I wonder if maybe the benefits of prolonged suspension in the non-corporeal bardo states is immense. I wonder if maybe prolonged being in the bardo states infuses karma with the nature of that state, in perhaps an analogy of acclimating to different environments such as altitude or temperature. I'm just making this shit up at this point, by the way. It's not only a non-corporeal state, but a state of non-duality, which is what teachers repeat over and over as the state practitioners aspire to recognize and understand. Non-duality is what practitioners all over the world scratch their heads trying to get their minds around. Our corporeal existences are by nature dualistic separation from enlightenment, the ground luminosity that characterizes enlightenment. All phenomena are pulled out of the ground luminosity into existence by our samsaric, habituated minds of duality, like waves out of the ocean. We can't see the ocean for the waves.

I wonder if maybe more time spent in the bardos can lead to a re-birth with a predilection (seeds, at least) towards higher states of spirituality embodied by the ideals of compassion, wisdom, cultivation and transformation. I think the Tibetan Book of the Dead applies to all levels of practice. The most advanced practitioners will attain realization early in the bardo states when opportunities are most potent, and will remain in the bardo states for longer periods. There is precedent for this idea in the literature, but I'm not arguing anything so I'm not going scrounging for cites. Lesser practitioners can more likely attain recognition in the existence bardo and resist re-birth for shorter periods. Those who only hear the instructions for blocking the womb entrances and are able to execute them can still benefit with certainty of finding themselves back on the path in their next life.

As for how long beings remain in the enlightened states of the bardo, it's tricky to say because time is a convention of our physical world. Within the experience of the bardo, time may be totally irrelevant. From the perspective of the physical world, I just have an anecdote my cousin Audrey mentioned. We didn't discuss this at length, this is just my thinking about her once reporting one of her daughters telling her when she was still an infant something like "don't worry, I'm your mother", the implication being clear to us that she was the reincarnation of Audrey's mother who died in 1993, some 11 years before the daughter was born.

Initially, I questioned the gap of time between Audrey's mother's death and her daughter's birth because my understanding was quite primitive. Now, it's not outrageous. Audrey's relationship with her mom included complications any mother-daughter relationship can have, but her mom's effect on her especially after death can be seen as that of a spiritual mentor. It's not outrageous that her mom was able to remain in the bardo state for that long in our measure of time until she could let karma bring her back specifically as Audrey's daughter. I'm not saying I absolutely believe this or that it has some great meaning to how Audrey or her daughter should live their lives. Just that I'm sure stranger lore has been told.

It may even not be too outrageous to question the parinirvana of the Buddha. It is said that when the Buddha died, he entered parinirvana: total, full, complete, absolute enlightenment, melting into the ground energy and reality of the universe, escaping the cycle of re-birth never to be born again.

First of all, when I said that I believe in reincarnation because it resembles cycles that occur in nature, there is nothing unnatural about parinirvana just because it breaks the cycle. That's not the reason to question the Buddha's parinirvana, which theoretically could be a character of nature. After all, reincarnation assumes the existence of people, and people haven't always existed and the continued, perpetual existence of humans is simply not something that can be assumed.

I'm saying the teaching of the Buddha's parinirvana may have been a sham to give humans a goal, because chicks humans love goals. Only Buddhists don't call these things "shams", it's the doctrine of "skillful means" explained in the Lotus Sutra. It's OK to lie if you're ultimately benefiting humankind.

The Buddha escaping the cycle of re-birth doesn't make sense because of that boddhisattva vow of compassion. It just doesn't make sense that the Buddha of infinite wisdom and compassion would enter parinirvana, unless he couldn't avoid it, when he could continue to benefit beings by continuing in the cycle of re-births. But such an enlightened being isn't continually re-born uncontrollably like we the rest of us are. The Buddha can choose selective re-births when moments are most opportune to the maximum benefit to humanity. Such as when the people who were living on what we call the Tibetan plateau became ripe to receive and develop the dharma. Tibetans consider Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, a second Buddha, a follow-up to the first, but I wonder if maybe Padmasambhava wasn't the actual re-incarnation of the actual Buddha after some 12-13 centuries. Stranger lore has been told.

tbd, afterglow I

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

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

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

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

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

to be determined III

Just my imagination, running away with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TBD (to be determined) II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tbd I

At any time this month I could have disappeared off the face of the earth and no one would have noticed anything amiss. Nary a shimmy nor a wiggle in the Force. So why am I still here? Am I deep down really afraid of death? I don't think so. I seriously entertained the possibility and concluded on one hand, yes, I think humans have a natural fear of death and I have it, too. I looked for it and, lo, there it was, that unsettling complete erasure of the sum total of all I am, all I know and all I have been. All this subjective experience and reality, the only existence I know of, irrevocably gone.

On the other hand, I'm also kinda looking forward to dying. What's been so great about being me anyway? Recognizing it as something inevitable, I'm fascinated by it and interested in venturing into the experience. That sort of tempers the fear, albeit an intellectual exercise tempering an innate, visceral reaction. In the end, I don't think it's a deep down fear.

Am I afraid of doing it myself? That would just be pathetic considering all I've written. I just don't think that's the case. I sure hope not. Am I lazy? That's actually closer to plausible. Pathetic, too, but not as pathetic as being afraid to do it myself.

Thinking all of this out, the reason I'm still here is that I'm still in the thrall of the conveyor belt of daily mundanity delivering me from day to day, distracting and fooling me into thinking there's still stuff I want to do, that I'm not done or I'm not sick of it yet. Exactly the same as a year ago and probably beyond. I just marked exactly one year of absolutely no progress between realization and action.

Great, that's just faboo that I can pinpoint that out. Now what? It goes to the old questions how did Anthony Bourdain, Shinee's Jonghyun, Robin Williams know/decide it was time? But their answers would not be mine. And my motivation isn't like theirs, maybe isn't enough. Right, that whole "looming" thing. I'd be walking the plank and I'd turn around and go "What's my motivation?!", and the pirates would *poke* *poke* me with something sharp, and only then I'd finally realize I just have to do it.

I continue to mentally prepare through mindfulness practice and meditations and visualizations. I think approaching death should be joyful and positive. Like James Earl Jones's character, Terence Mann, giggling while walking into the cornfields at the end of "Field of Dreams" (there's a very loose theory out there suggesting that Terence Mann, like Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, is already dead and was a recycled soul for purposes of the "quest" and then is being reintroduced to the death realms).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I look back at my life and wonder, 'what was that?' Was that worth living? Whatever. I was born and had to live it. Worth is subjective. It is what it was. Was it worth my while? Did I live up to my potential? How exactly did I spend my time here? What was I? What did it mean to be here?

I was nothing. I made myself nothing intentionally. That was my purpose, so I think I was reasonably successful, flatter myself not. What was the purpose of becoming nothing? Spiritual pursuit, I think it's safe to say. All is vanity. Even becoming nothing is vanity, but that's better, I think, than a foundation of vanity to build a life thinking it's something when it's really just vanity.

I'm just trying to make sense of the whole journey and the whole ego lens with which we go through our lives.

I was nothing very early on. Psychology is in the works here, but it eventually mixes in with the spiritual pursuit thing. Of course that feeling of being nothing starts with my parents in childhood, but that's not to blame them for anything since I have two brothers with the same upbringing who became something. We were all nothing to my parents to the extent that making money was more important to our parents. But since their making money became integral to my brothers' becoming something, the transition was natural.

And once the concept of suicide was introduced to me, I latched onto that as a formulation for my life and I never did get beyond that and only embellished the philosophy and rationale behind it as a goal. I was döömed. That was it. My life in a nutshell was about settling into a pattern of constantly sabotaging anything that people normally live for (I'ma call it identity), realizing it's all vanity.

Identity as vanity. My years of stripping away identity was trying to strip away the vanity. All those things I did along my journey that I tried to base my identity upon were just vanity, things to do. Look at me, I'm this or that and I feel pride about those things. Drummer, bassist, runner, cycling, cutter, alcoholic, English editor, all identities and matters of pride.

In the end because of my impulse to sabotage my life and identity partly by alienating everyone in my life, there was only me left. What use is there of an identity when there's no one there to show it to, to be it? Then I stopped being impressed by myself. There was only me left to tell me I sucked at all those things, and I did suck, and I did finally tell myself as much.

So what was this all worth? Just the fact of it? Maybe. The fact without vanity, without pretension or thinking there was any meaning to it. I was not known, no one knew me. Even being unknown or forgotten is folly and vanity thinking I was anything worth being unknown or forgotten! Not even that. That's a great freedom actually.

People try to be an identity, what they present to the world. People try to be somebody. If people can't be famous and remembered historically, they try to be someone and mean something to their friends and family. But it's all vanity. So you're remembered, people mention tales about you generations down. Tales that even inspire. Yay? Good for you? I don't get it. Just disappearing suits me fine. Which is why I suppose I think of myself as Buddhist (albeit different from how many Buddhists think of themselves, as an identity).

Or the alternate last sentence is: . . . disappearing suits me fine. And yet I have this blog.

There's no one in my life. That's no revelation, but in practical terms that means there was no one in my life to meet up with recently to ask, "oh my god, what's wrong with your leg?" And there was no one to whom I could answer, "I have no idea". One morning I awoke with a considerable pain in my right ankle with no apparent cause that had me limping for two days that had strangers looking at me sympathetically. I didn't care. If there was a cause, maybe I could have taken the sympathy (like when I pulled a muscle going to the airport once and was limping bad enough that an airport worker directed me to an expedited line), but since I couldn't identify a reason for it, I felt the pain didn't deserve any special attention and pretty much ignored it aside from the limp and continued to take stairs instead of elevators whenever I usually would. 

It's totally gone now. It's not like it was injured and healed. It just showed up one day painful enough to be a raison d'limp, and then went away just as suddenly without cause or reason. At no time was I concerned about it aside from its mystery. The incident did make me pay attention to my feet, though, especially since one of those days it hurt, my sneakers felt extra snug indicating my feet were probably swollen for some reason. And indeed, they look swollen even now. They used to have definition like a foot should have but now they look like Taco Bell grilled stuft burritos. mmm, taco bell.

elegy

I'm calling it "reverse ideation". Instead of mentally forming a suicide attempt, I visualize the aftermath, having already done it. I wouldn't have done it at home, I would've done it elsewhere, but I wake up in the morning at home and run it through my mind that I had done it the night before. I was gone. My waking up experience is incidental, hypothetical. Witnessing time and space that continues to happen, but I wouldn't be here.

Last month, June 8, Strasbourg, France. If Anthony Bourdain were to have done this reverse ideation, he would have woken up and imagined that he had hanged himself the night before. He knew he was there for work and was due to work that day. His award-winning crew was all there nearby, and he knew he was supposed to meet his friend, chef Eric Ripert, who would be co-hosting the episode, for breakfast. Only he wouldn't show up. He was hanging in the bathroom by a bathrobe sash.

It would be Eric who would be tasked with first noticing his absence and hunting him down. It would be Eric who would find him first, the first to know. The authorities would be called, the crew would be gathered and informed, his family would be contacted and informed. Then it would hit the headline news around the world.

Unfortunately, it wasn't reverse ideation. That's more or less how it might have happened.

So many layers that I can't understand. He was on location in the middle of a shoot, in the middle of a season of "Parts Unknown". His loyal and talented crew were all there prepared to work, to set up and capture the shots and scenes that had earned the show, and previous incarnations, several Emmy Awards. He had a daughter who was just coming of age with years ahead where she could really use him, might very well need him.

He was still making his mark on the world, he still had something to say, much more to discover around the world through the show and much more to show and deliver to his television audience. He was doing a job that he loved and felt blessed to have. And he was supposed to meet Eric Ripert for breakfast. Within all this, he decides it's the exact right time to get off the train. The ride, for him, was over.

I'm not even a super fan. I consider myself an ordinary fan, like tens of thousands ordinary fans around the world. Whenever I saw one of his books in the library, I read it. Whenever his show came on, I made a point to watch it, even re-runs. Whenever he appeared to me in media, he was prioritized. That's the hallmark of his ordinary fans.

When I was living in San Francisco, I had a flatmate who was a souz-chef and she lent me Bourdain's first book "Kitchen Confidential" soon after it came out to give me an idea what her life was like. His writing was incredible; irreverent, funny, insightful, sarcastic, eloquent, personable, scathing. Years later when I got cable TV (so this would be in Taiwan), I recognized his name instantly in the cable TV menu and since then I never missed his shows when they aired. Just this past December when my TV service went down for two months, I mentioned that it disrupted a season of Parts Unknown that was airing on TLC. When he died, season 10 was airing and still is.

It also turned out that he was an alumnus of my high school, Dwight Englewood, albeit some 13 years earlier when it was still called Englewood School for Boys. In his New Jersey episode early on in "No Reservations", some shots from the school in the opening teaser I recognized as being the cafeteria and hallways of Leggett Hall. Only people who went there would recognize that. He grew up in Leonia, where a girl I had a crush on during high school lived. I hate to say it, and it's easy to misunderstand this, but our formative years were probably not too much unlike each other. Obvious, distinct differences, but there was likely shared experience growing up towns apart, and a decade apart back then was closer than a decade apart now.

His suicide makes no sense, and in some ways I understand his better and feel more connected to his than others, even though there are aspects that are diametrically opposed. Even principally opposed. He was an active agent in this world, super-connected through his shows with friends literally all over the world. He had friends, family, he touched people in meaningful ways. He would return to places the show had been years and years before, and people would remember him and he them. He had responsibility, he was gifted and active, he had public worth. And apparently still suicidal. Killing himself may be seen as having been both bold and cold.

For me, being suicidal has meant the opposite; disconnect, be worthless to others (not worth keeping in touch, not worth contacting), don't do anything, have no responsibilities or attachments, affect as few people as possible. And mind you, I have thought of contacting various people through the years, but decided not to because of this principle. If I want to disappear, just disappear. Don't be something to someone and then mind-fuck them by disappearing.

When I die, I want people to react with indifference, an afterthought. I've traditionally overestimated my worth and angled for a soft landing. Truth to tell, I expect the vast majority of people with whom I've had the pleasure of acquaintance in my life to never even know. The news would just not cross their front porch. And if it did, it would be 'Wow, really? How? Wow! Really?! When? Wow! That long ago?! I had no idea'. That's as soft a landing as it gets for people who were never even off the ground. The hardest landing? Geez, what the hell did they expect?

Where I relate to him and feel connected to him is that few have mentioned depression or are suggesting he was depressed. Yes, there are simpletons who assume he was depressed because that's the easy way out of understanding something they're too dim to fathom. When no one in a position to know, including his mother, says he was depressed, the idiots can only comfort themselves by attributing his suicide to depression. Kate Spade was depressed, Chris Cornell and Shinee's Jonghyun battled with depression. These were established. Robin Williams is a little more complicated. He was subject to depression, but was battling all sorts of demons.

I don't think Anthony Bourdain was depressed, unless someone who would know comes out and definitively says so. He was morbid, had a dark sense of humor and probably had a close relationship with mortality that pervaded his existence. It shows in his shows, he jokes about death often, making fun of his own demise and conjuring it in humorous imagery and appropriate snark. There was even a previous episode featuring Eric Ripert (Swiss Alps, I think), who was plotting to murder Bourdain and trying to figure out how to get away with it. I saw it after he died and it was still hilarious. Ripert is Buddhist which made the premise even more ridiculous, but it shows how Bourdain's gestalt permeated the show.

I'm not depressed. I even tried to convince myself I am not long ago to befit my suicidal angst (not), but it didn't last long and was a total failure. That attempt was pretty ridiculous and ranged farcical (the skit in my head was hilarious). So if it wasn't depression, was Bourdain's suicide a little more like my theoretical forays into suicidal ideation? Based on some amorphous principle, rather than solely on emotions. An understanding of not wanting to be here anymore, not needing to be here anymore despite daughter coming of age. Perhaps an understanding of the vanity and fleeting nature of life. I mean true understanding. It's not a giving up. I love what I'm doing, I get feedback that I'm doing good, but nothing's permanent and I trust my daughter will land on her feet. I'm ready for what's next.

I'm not gonna pin any of that on Bourdain. That's what I'm hoping to see in myself, minus the loving what I'm doing and good feedback, and of course the daughter. In my view of the world, the daughter would preclude suicide. Of course I don't need to explain my reasons, the fact that I don't have one is the explanation enough. The fact that Bourdain had a daughter is testament to her worth and value to him enough, suicide notwithstanding. Sometimes some people just want to die. They just don't want to be here anymore.

Maybe that's what Anthony Bourdain found in all his travels and all the people he met and spoke and connected with, all the views and perspectives of this vast world that he uniquely internalized. He could present them to us in his shows in diluted, edited form, but he experienced those people first-hand. Was it too much? Maybe. Did it lead to a better understanding that few people, if any, could have without walking the path he walked? Likely.

All this in a world where issues are no longer discussed, where there's more often than not partisan digging in, digging in ideological trenches, digging in heels. People don't want to hear the other side, much less understand or experience it, and they're proud of that fact. All this in a world of emerging generational warfare where Bourdain had no choice but to be a partisan representative. However much he could empathize with both sides and tried to present them fairly, he was getting on in age. He was old guard. Whatever it was, it warranted pulling the emergency brake on the train because it was time to get off.

I wake up in the morning and in reverse ideation, I committed suicide the night before. I don't know exactly where my body is, but I hope it will simply return to nature without ever being discovered. In the reverse ideation, nothing in my apartment changes for the entire day except the external light from the window until it fades to darkness in the evening. It lightens up the next morning and changes through the day until it fades to darkness once again. This goes on for days. Then weeks. Months? Between weeks and months, there's a jiggle of the door knob that someone finds unlocked. Until then, no one noticed anything amiss. Mission accomplished.

After Anthony Bourdain died, TLC Asia posted a few of his early No Reservations episodes. It was pretty raw back then and there was still a sense of trying to appeal to an audience. The camera people were still finding their feet, but it was the beginning of what would become more than camera work. Later on, and fully established in Parts Unknown, it was no less than cinematography. It was no less remarkable than Bourdain's writing. The camera work on other shows is pretty utilitarian, union maybe, and just gets the job done. Zero Point Zero Productions camera work is pretty much art.

the guru, part two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

practice musing II: the guru, part one

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

practice musing I

I often express a disparaging, if not humble, view of my mindfulness practice. I've called it lazy and undisciplined, and without a teacher or community is perhaps dangerously unregulated. But I've been re-assessing my view of it in a positive self-affirming way so that it doesn't seem quite so bad.

I don't exactly live the hermit ideal, but I think living alone in urban isolation with minimal human contact is a good thing for the path. Or it has good aspects. It takes a lot of energy to interact socially with people, whether it's at work or for pleasure. I mean it takes lots and lots of energy that people don't notice because it's natural for them to expend energy in that way. I notice because I'm not.

During the few times I've gotten together with people over the past however many years, I've noticed that once engaged in social interaction, it's a steady stream of energy, of being "on". All the cogitating, processing, input, measuring responses and reacting is all energy expenditure. Again, all of it very natural and normal but a lot of fucking energy! Once good-byes are said, I can breathe and relax into myself into the state I'm in the rest of the time, virtually all the time. That state has benefits for practice.

It's hard to transform, as practice encourages, when so much energy is spent on normal, everyday social interactions. For me, without even noticing, I'm able to use that energy in self-observation and contemplation and allowing for transformation whenever opportunity arises in both affirming and challenging situations. And I think I have transformed a lot in positive ways on the path (and regressed mindfully on *ahem* occasion). One good indication is how terrible I am at interacting socially now. I used to be reasonably social, but now I couldn't meet a person and hold their interest for more than a few sentences. The opposite is true, too, mind you.

And not everyone can do that. Most don't even want that, I shouldn't wonder. They'd get lonely and start craving company. I daresay there's a lot I've cultivated being able to do in furtherance on the path that people would say is not for them. This is no point of pride nor tooting my own horn, mind you. It's just recognizing different ways of looking at things.

. . . a person's wisdom should be judged by the effect it has on his or her life. If that wisdom doesn't have the effect of settling the problems and difficulties in one's life – of creating a sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace, and freedom – then it cannot be the real thing. - Ajahn Brahm (The Art of Disappearing)

My immediate reaction was to ask myself whether whatever wisdom I have is the real thing, followed by a quick, emphatic nöpe! Mind you, I absolutely do not disagree with him. Reading things like that, it rings right. And I have no problem with anyone, myself included, telling me my wisdom is flawed.

But that was just my quick answer and pondering it with more nuance, it turns out to be more perplexing than that.

Does my purported wisdom or practice have an effect that settles the problems and difficulties in my life? What problems do I really have? Obviously it seems and feels like I have many, but when I have a goal of bringing my life to a close, my "problem" is just being here. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons why bringing my life to a close is the goal are not a problem.

Within being here, all the normative things that might be perceived as problems don't amount to much. The role mindfulness plays is that it keeps me from being overly neurotic or angsty about it like I have been in the past. It keeps negativity and negative reactions in focus and at bay and promotes the opposite, or at least neutrality. There has been a settling effect on the problems, but it may not look like it.

What difficulties do I have? I can't say I don't have difficulties. There are things that I find difficult, but they're mostly neurotic things that are difficult only because I create them or let them be difficult. Again, mindfulness just observes the perceived difficulties and tries to understand they're my own creation and not to get bent out of shape over them. Rainy days are difficult. My neurotic reaction about my neighbors is difficult. They're not really difficulties. If pressed, they fly out the window.

How about separately considering sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace and freedom? That's where it gets perplexing because contemplating dying brings exactly those feelings: sense of ease, well-being, space, openness, happiness, peace and freedom.

They aren't what psychiatrists might point out in some suicidal cases where there's a feeling of euphoria once they've made the decision to kill themselves. That's a false sense of those feelings because it's conditional on knowing they're going to be released from their pain, rather than having a settling effect on their problems and difficulties.

Contemplating death, those feelings are very real for me. The feelings aren't contingent on having made a final decision and looking forward to it as a relief. They are there with the very contemplation and vary in intensity depending on the depth of it. But are they connected to wisdom?

Some would say true wisdom would make me want to live. I would call that dogmatic, judgmental attachment to living just for the sake of preserving life that's ephemeral by nature. That's not wisdom, either. Wisdom is an understanding, it doesn't make people do or not do anything. It's morality's job to police behavior, not wisdom's, and I've never cared much for human or social constructs of morality.

I think it is very possible for practitioners to contemplate death and connect deeply with the reality that one day we will die and feel that sense of freedom and peace; that letting go. It's not an abandonment or a 'why bother?' letting go, but it's based on wisdom understanding, accompanied with mindfulness training to not be attached or overly sentimental about our lives.

(It resounds, reverberates and resonates: I don't need to be here anymore, I don't want to be here anymore. Same as it ever was.)

I broke out of my dearly-held daily routine today and did a recon of Taiwan's northwest coast. It only recently became easier to get to the northwest coast when the Taoyuan Airport MRT opened last year. I didn't pay much attention to it because it didn't affect me. From where I live, it's still easier and quicker to take the express bus from nearby Songshan Airport. But it turns out the MRT can be used to get to the coast.

My interest is in shorelines. Getting to the northeast coast is easy from Taipei, but the northeast coast is too cluttered and developed, too many people. From any point, look left, look right, there's something right there. The north coast is only realistically accessible for me by bike, and that's no longer an option. I doubt I have the fitness to even ride the 18 miles to Danshui, the start of the north coast. The north coast was ideal once, but only that once.

I have been to the northwest coast on bike before. Once, on what I remember as a pretty epic ride before I had a bike GPS so I don't have a record of it. It must have been among the longest rides I've gone on ever, riding up to the mouth of the Danshui River and then down the northwest coast and taking me past Taoyuan Airport to get back to Taipei. But the coastline struck me as very appealing as not so crowded with development. Just no way to get there.

The airport MRT came into my consciousness about a month ago when my mother was here, and I realized the last stop before reaching the airport is only about three miles from the coast, where I'd been on that bike ride years ago. Three miles, about an hour walk. I can manage that.

I decided to go today because there's been a dip in temperatures. The past month has been too hot to make the six mile round-trip walk realistic or without risk. I also got a bug in me to do something different from my dearly-held daily routine. I went out without full commitment to the journey and was prepared to turn back at any point. That was reflected in details that I missed: forgot to bring my GPS, wore the wrong sneakers, didn't do time calculations. I didn't even bother eating. Whatever I did, it was not supposed to be trying nor tribulating.

And there was nothing noteworthy about the trek except that it was way out beyond my daily life scope of the last many years. The MRT was just an MRT ride, the walk was just a walk. Good decision to go on a not flaming hot day, as that would've been quite miserable. On any other day this past month, I might have stepped out of the Kengkou MRT station and said, "nope". Not walking six miles in this.

My destination was Zhuwei Fishing Village. I didn't know about it on that bike ride years ago, but remember diverting there when I was passing by. There's a bright red bridge you can't miss, and on bike I couldn't resist exploring.

This time, once I got there I didn't linger. I underestimated the time and just did a quick walk-through before heading back to the MRT station. I didn't explore the coastline because it looked like there was work being done to it, perhaps development to make it more of a destination for visitors. Access wasn't immediately obvious.

I might do another recon in a month's time with better planning. Leaving early in the morning to avoid the heat and allowing for inspecting the shoreline further south of the fishing village. I also learned from this recon that Kengkou MRT isn't the best way to get to the coast. The stop before it, Shanbi MRT, has both YouBikes and buses that run to a stone's throw away from the fishing village. I think the bus is the better option.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My finances are secure beyond my prior estimate of not lasting much beyond June. Several more stopgap months have been added with a possible scenario that could push things well into next year. Nothing of my doing. Same as it ever was. No looming anytime soon. No hands are going to be forced. We all know what that means. Well, that my hands aren't going to be forced, and I know what that means.

It means despite my intentions and aspiration, my life will continue to chug along for the foreseen future. And that "possible scenario" I mentioned I'm just gonna assume will happen with as much certainty as me not dying from some alcohol-related health failure.

If it doesn't happen? Great, we have loomage! And if I do die from some alcohol-related health failure? Great, plan B worked. When the aspiration is to die, not even laziness is a deterrent.

I'm pretty disappointed with myself, writing like this. Last August was supposed to have been the great wake-up rallying call to stop floating by on the conveyor belt of daily routine to get me mindlessly from day to day. I even cut back on drinking as a result of that revelation. In February I flogged myself for betraying my aspiration by attempting that humiliating failed money injection into my bank account. That said a lot.

And now it sounds like I'm resigning myself once again that since I don't feel the looming need to execute my life plan to die, I won't. No matter how I feel, no matter what circumstances I can point to about how it's different this time and need to do it, I've been through that before. I know it's a pattern. Past patterns of my behavior suggest I will continue to go from day to day on the conveyor belt of routine as long as there is money left; i.e., no looming. Because that's how lame I am.

I'm trying not to be defeatist about it. I still have my theoretical plan in place with a time frame, but the likelihood that I'll actually go through with it is doubtful to the point that it can be dismissed. This disgusts and frightens me. Sort of. Mindfulness practice prevents actually feeling those things as something real.

Actually, my mindfulness practice has gotten suggestions that this entire scenario is my path. It's not a test or a challenge whether or not I'll do it or not nor that doing it means success or not doing it is failure. It may very well be that is completely not the point. The point is to exist in it now and not be pulled by attraction or aversion one way or another. It doesn't mean to be lazy about it, either, like whatever comes happens and just accept it. That's lazy. It's more recognize what's happening, as well as my reactions, and focus a laser-like attention to it to try to realize this is the path in the most profound and personal way.

I feel that suicide is my chosen path for this lifetime? Fine, keep pursuing that instinct. I know from experience that's not going to go away. Circumstances arise which make me decide not to do it right now? Fine, it's not a problem. It's not cognitive dissonance. Or if it is, that's the path.

I have a Tibetan Buddhist book I've read many times over which has a title that I never quite understood, Confusion Arises as Wisdom. So many times I've looked at that title and wondered 'what does that even mean?' Recently I feel that I'm starting to get it intuitively, if not realizing it's obviously the simplest iteration of what's at the heart of Mahamudra teachings. The ontological or existential confusion that arises in our experience contains the wisdom that is embodied in everything in and around us and is constantly being taught and manifest. But no one would buy a book with that title.

I recognize the cognitive dissonance of feeling the need to commit suicide in this lifetime (at least) to further myself on my path, while also thoroughly not minding all the little distractions and enjoyments of living. There's this big thing I want to accomplish, but there are all these little shiny things I love. I'm not suicidal, but that's what I really, genuinely want to do. My life, all things considered, is pointless just living it otherwise.

There's the dissonance of thinking I'm on a certain path while rejecting the idea of finding a teacher to help me advance on that path. But there is likely no teacher that would accept or advocate my aspiration to commit suicide. Nor should there be, I'm not complaining. That's why I don't have a teacher. I've chosen this course and know I can't find a teacher, mentor or advocate to help guide me. I can't even find a friend to drive me, finding a teacher is quite out of the question.

But these dissonances hold the wisdom that I can learn from as long as I keep the core values in place, which is to not cling or be attached to anything attractive, and not to be averse to anything repulsive. Whatever else is going on around me is karma playing out, ignore it, not my business. Family? Not my business, ignore it. Where the money's coming from? Not my bidness, ignore it.

But even clinging, attachment, aversion and revulsion are confusion arising as wisdom, or perhaps neurotic dysfunction arising as wisdom in my case. They happen. But then also recognize that those things clung or attached to will need to be cut loose and let go. It's in their nature to happen and to be discarded. Things that are avoided and create aversion will still happen and must be faced and dealt with. In their nature blah, blah, blah.