I think I’m far too distracted to be here sincerely as a monastic aspirant. That’s the key word for me at this moment: sincerely. At the end of my previous stint here, I was declared an aspirant, so I’m here as an aspirant now, but the question is whether I’m sincere about it. If not, I need to leave. The thing is that I don’t really know. It’s an assessment that will take time to form a definite conclusion.

I’m grappling with distractions, I’m grappling with negativity and doubt. I don’t know if I can make the transformation necessary to become a monk. I don’t know if I can put down the distractions far enough so that I’m not thinking of a future not as a monk. The timing of this past trip to Taiwan couldn’t have been worse (I’m allowing myself to go full-on negative in this weblog). I was so done with material life. I was so done with life. Now I’ve allowed even my core principles to be compromised (not that I was doing anything with them).

I’ve allowed my concept of my self to go beyond me during my time away from here. Now I have responsibility to others. Now my being has a responsibility to others. It’s not immutable, though. I can still retract it. It’s up to me. But I’m not thinking of that right now, I’m just pointing out the possibility.

For now, I breathe the clear Southern California desert mountain air, I walk calmly and peacefully, and I hold my mind in meditation to figure out the next part of this shebang.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
You're not gonna believe this shit. I'm back at the monastery, but temporarily distracted from my purpose here because of events of the past week.

Apparently, my cousin and I have a lot of repressed memories from whatever time we spent together in the early 90s. And it wasn't a lot of time because we were in school and our paths only crossed for days at a time when I returned to the New Jersey area. But whenever she stayed over at my parents' house, there was some sneaking around at night. Or to be precise, her sneaking into my room. Now don't get all grossed out on me, it was platonic, just wanting to be close.

But having repressed these memories freaks me out. Absolutely zero recall, completely excised. Both of us with different things.

I know we were very affectionate cousins and I know I've considered her special to me since very early on. However, it seems that although during the daytime and in front of family, we just behaved as close cousins, at night, a whole different emotional aspect played out.

Away from family, sometimes we acted like a couple. She has a memory of us in Washington Square Park one Winter day when her hands were cold and I put them in my coat pockets. I don't have a definite memory of that, but I don't have no memory of it, either. I can sort of feel the memory, even if I can't see it. I can't say it absolutely did not happen.

She's been getting actual memories back more readily than I have, albeit fuzzy. When she described this or that vague memory over this past week, I still couldn't recall it, but I could get an impression of it, that maybe it did happen, maybe we did do this or that. She correctly identified things that I know I do with girlfriends so what she's been saying is credible.

She had one powerful revelation/memory recall that was particularly painful and tainted her in her relationships for several years after. The emotions between us peaked out and . . . nothing happened. She says she was devastated by reaching that point we couldn't get past, and it pushed her along a pattern of habit behavior in relationships that she isn't proud of.

I had no idea that it happened, but it does explain why during one later trip to Taiwan to visit her, she treated me really coldly. She had completely forgotten that visit when I mentioned it to her, but I definitely remembered that one. On the other hand, I didn't think I repressed any memory of that visit, but it has started to come back to her, and apparently even though she was cold to me during the day, she would still sneak into my room at night to lie next to me to talk into the night.

But her recall of the painful memory and struggling through it and realizing how it affected her had a big effect on her. It was a dam blocking part of the flow of her being. The experience of having her kids through natural childbirth helped complete her as a person now, but as for reconciling herself in the past, this was still a block, and working through the emotions and figuring out how the incident with me affected her has allowed her to tie up those loose ends.

Dam broken, water returned to flow. I'm glad for her. She says that she's been progressively feeling better and clearer because of that, although it's been hard for me hearing that I hurt her so much.

Anyway, I'm back at the monastery and she'll be heading back to her life shortly. We've been continuing to hash things out over the phone and through email, but also discussing Buddhist practice which is central for both of us. She's been a guiding hand and has really good insight and wisdom about the practice. It's just another part of our closeness. But our closeness is a distraction, and once she leaves, I really need to and will immerse myself back into my current context, and all thoughts of her will be abstraction. Powerful abstraction, but abstraction nevertheless.

San Francisco, CA: Muddy Waters Cafe, 24th and Valencia

I've been irritable since, get this, not long after my parents returned yesterday. This morning, my brother came by at 5:00 to take me to the airport, and I turned off any vestiges of mindfulness practice and said, "Sometimes you just want them to shut up!". He laughed, but I was irritable at everything and was just glad to get on my flight to find I had a whole row to myself. I slept on the plane, but my hours are still wonky from jetlag, and I don't even want to figure out how flying to the West Coast will keep things wonky. Hopefully it'll make things all better.

It's been, what?, nine months since I left San Francisco. I've been cycling through emotions of being back. My adopted city, but no attachment to it, no sentimentality. My first emotion was revulsion. I hate San Francisco. Dreary, cold San Francisco. The jacket that I didn't need at 5:00 in the morning in New Jersey was now not enough in the middle of the day in San Francisco. I had a headache. I arrived at 9:00, and had over 10 hours to kill before my cousin and uncle's flight arrived. I sleptwalk through the airport figuring out what to do.

Things started looking up two hours later when I got the rental car my cousin had booked, and was heading towards San Francisco and the sun started coming out. What did I want to do? Where did I want to go?

I know this city, it's still my home. I drove north on 101, got off at Cesar Chavez, got into the wrong lane (the one that went to my last apartment here), got into the right lane and headed towards the Mission.

What happened? Where did all this parking come from?! Ample parking in the Mission and I got a burrito at Papalote. Good choice, since it's just around the corner from this coffeeshop, Muddy Waters. Oh, how I miss having options to Starbucks! Coffee so good.

I feel much better. Everything so familiar. Not weird at all, and not that I belong here.

I think I'll go catch Bride and Prejudice at 1:30, just to feast my eyes on the magnificent beauty of Aishwarya Rai. Then maybe a haircut on Irving Street. Not one of those cheap $10 places either. I wish I had learned 20 years ago that for my indistinct features and appearance, I should not be paying less than $20 for a haircut. Get someone who has some idea what they're doing.

Then maybe some walking meditation along Seacliffs. Ocean Beach? Golden Gate Park? Where else should I go to get my fix of being back. But knowing my uncle, instead of leaving tomorrow, we'll be here until Sunday. Breathe.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ
If stuck to my original plan, I would right now be waking up to get ready to go to the airport to catch a plane back to San Diego, arriving back at the monastery by late afternoon. My guestroom would have been left unlocked for me, and I would soon fall back into daily monastic routine as an aspirant.

As it is, I'm not leaving until tomorrow, even earlier, and I'm not flying to San Diego. I'm flying to San Francisco, and by tomorrow evening, I'll be with my cousin again, along with one of her kids, her father and stepmom, and eventually two of her brothers at different points. Eventually I'll end up back at the monastery.

My cousin and I will have bits and pieces of time during the week to figure out and temper our roles in each others' lives, and come to a better understanding about our paths and why we've met in this lifetime (if you believe in that sort of thing).

The intensity and emotion of this past week, and prior to leaving Taiwan, would so bore anyone reading this that I won't even bother.

Geez. Where have I been? I've been negotiating life. Deal's almost sealed. No new lease on life. Full ownership?

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

My parents are here and I couldn't avoid them. I really wanted to avoid them because I can't think of much else that creeps me out more than being in my parents' hometown with them. We don't have that kind of relationship.

We don't have the kind of relationship where they can take me around and show me places they remember or that were important to them. Places aren't important to them. Only money. We don't have the kind of relationship where I'm curious about this place where they grew up and have a lot of questions.

The kind of relationship we have is that they have their history in Kaohsiung and I have my experience in Kaohsiung, and they are totally, completely separate, and have nothing to do with each other.

I can even visit the house where my mother grew up, where one of my uncles still lives, and someone else can tell me about what happened there and what it was like, and I'd ask a lot of questions, but it has nothing to do with the kind of relationship we have now.

So it was supposed to be perfect when they said they'd be in Kaohsiung on Saturday and Sunday. I was planning to go to Taipei for the weekend to visit Dharma Drum Monastery for a one day retreat. But I not only came back early, they extended their stay until Tuesday. I'm leaving Taiwan on Wednesday.

No big deal. They have their things to do, and aren't pressing me to hang out with them. Ick. I had to help my cousin check out of the hospital, so it's been minimal time that I had to spend with my parents.

Both my cousin and my parents are encouraging me on the monastic path, but in completely different ways.

My cousin supports me wholeheartedly and said outright that it would be an honor to have a monk in the family. My parents are ashamed and asked me what they should tell their friends when they ask what I'm doing (I told them to lie and tell them I'm a lawyer, which is apparently what they've already been doing).

My cousin and I have talked a lot about it, and the feeling I get is how I really want to become a monk. It's a part of our path and our connection. What we find meaningful in life and in each other, that which is invisible to the eye, makes me view the monastic path joyfully.

A few minutes of talking with my parents and I'm so filled with heavily masked disgust and condescension that I realize I want nothing to do with the reality they live in and symbolize, and I really want to become a monk. I couldn't be surer of anything else in this life.

Wrong reason, but surely they encouraging me.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

With all the denial, selective memory, and revising the (hi)story between my cousin and me, whenever we get together and talk about our past and what happened in what particular year, surprises come up, along with incredulity that we don't remember something or another.

She knows about my scars, we talked about it back in 1995, but she's blocked it out. The funny thing is she asked me the exact same question she asked back then: why are they all on my left arm? I told her she already asked me that question. She managed to figure it out this time. Hello? Right-handed!

We discussed it anew, and she put me through the usual questions and reactions, and I gave my well-rehearsed answers and responses; albeit different from 1995, I shouldn't wonder. Cutting was more helpful than harming. I chose not to see it as harming. It was expression, it was getting something out. If it weren't for that outlet, things might have built up to something much more drastic. Blah, blah, blah.

She said it still bothered her and made her sad and she wished she could have been around for me. I told her it was definitely better that she wasn't around. She probably couldn't have changed anything. The issues are too deep and convoluted to be dealt with in a casual conversation. So she asked what I would do if the situation was reversed and she was the one doing it.

I said I would first have to make a committment to really engage the issues and deal with any consequences of delving into that emotional space. I would really have to care, and I really do care for her, so I would have been able to make that committment.

From there I would deal with the issues on her level. The starting point of everything she says would be that it was valid, and not something for me to pick apart and refute.

So if she used my same explanation that it did more good than harm, I wouldn't refute it. I would accept it and really try to understand it. But I would add that even though she felt it was more helpful than harmful, my support and encouragement for her to stop doing it was for me and not her, because it hurt me to know she was doing it.

She liked that part of my answer and said, yea, that's what she would do. I told her to go get her own answer.

Enlightenment is the easiest thing in the world. All you need is some basis in the practice of mindfulness and mindful living, and some idea of what you think enlightenment is. Once you have those, just stop thinking of it as something you can't attain. Stop thinking of it as something to attain, and just have it.

Some people think enlightenment is some breakthrough wisdom - just be wise; be mindful of wisdom and what it means and BE wise. I always said that all I wanted from this lifetime was to gain just a bit more clarity what it's all about. Just be clear; approach reality and each moment mindfully and BE clear. Some people think enlightenment is having the answers and knowing what to say and what to do. Stop worrying about saying the right thing, stop worrying about doing the right thing. Just assess whatever situation mindfully, and say or do, and if you act in mindfulness, then don't regret what you said or did, even if it appears to others that what you said or did wasn't right.

[incomplete entry]

Xinbeitou, Taipei, Taiwan.

There is no such thing as the Buddhadharma
On some educational channel, the narrator talked about some Dutch dude named Tasman who landed on and named New Zealand. The Maoris of New Zealand, it is said, sailed in a fleet of large canoes from Polynesia. Several families sailed in each canoe, and the families of each canoe, according to lore, became one of the Maori tribes of New Zealand. What did the Buddhadharma have to do with them?

I read on some Christian's blog about what a remarkable sight it was, back in early 2004, when Thich Nhat Hahn and the Plum Village community went on a symbolic alms round in Southern California during the Rains Retreat. And he wrote something like it was too bad that none of them would ever see Heaven unless they put their faith in Jesus Christ and stop leading others astray. What does the Buddhadharma have to do with Mr. Christian?

[incomplete entry]

take two:
There's no such thing as the Buddhadharma. I believe in it because I don't need to believe in it, because there's no such thing. It doesn't need me to believe in it. It just is. Or isn't. That's awesome!

take one:
There's no such thing as the Buddhadharma. That's what is so wonderful about it. If there was such a thing, I wouldn't go near it, wouldn't believe in it, wouldn't touch it. Get the hell away from me with that thing. But as long as there is no such thing as the Buddhadharma, it makes a whole lotta sense to me, and is swell. It is grand.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

It's time for me to seriously start thinking about returning to the U.S. and getting back to the monastery. And considering the way I procrastinate and put decisions off, "seriously start thinking" means "make a decision today and implement it tomorrow (because the actual decision made today will still happen too late in the day to implement)".

It's definitely time. I think I've done a good job maintaining my practice during this hiatus, and I feel I've moved along quite nicely since going to the monastery in November and then coming here while the monastics were out traveling. The right things have gotten clearer, and the right things have gotten fuzzier. Things just naturally happened internally without my doing anything or noticing, just realizing one day that something was a little different.

I am getting the distinct feeling that the monastery has been the safest and most supportive environment I've been in, even with all my reserve and guard, watching out for "cult-like behavior". My final conclusion is that there is very little about the Plum Village system that is dogmatic or cult-like. It's not perfect, there's a lot of room for improvement, but at least there is also a lot of room for discussion about things, including the problems.

I've really enjoyed my time in Taiwan, re-connecting with my cousin after so many years, and being with other family members even though we can't communicate, and even through moments of frustration. If there is one thing that really shook my mindfulness practice, it was my uncle's driving. Quelle horreur.

But the time is ripe for me to leave. The distractions are rubbing shoulders with confusion, and as I view the distractions as having no basis, any confusion stemming from them is not worth my time or effort. The irony is that the main distractions are coming from my cousin, who I love and trust, but who is the mouthpiece for any information and unwanted opinions from other family members.

Bottom line is that I have a commitment to return to the monastery to pursue aspirancy, but if I decide the monastic path isn't for me, I'm welcome to come here and ex-pat and forge out the quasi-hermit life that I realized might be better for me than monasticism anyway.

When a novice monk gets fully ordained, he becomes a bhikkshu. The joke at Deer Park when a novice returns to Plum Village for full ordination is that he's getting his "big shoes". I'm not sure in this lifetime that I can fill those big shoes. I still have little petty, hermit-life feet.

Love River, Kaohsiung, Taiwan from keauxgeigh.

Love River - Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I put the earphone of my iPod up to the mic on my camera to get the music on this clip.

I love walking around with my iPod on shuffle and having a string of songs come up that give me the feeling that what I'm hearing is the soundtrack to my walking, my observation, my experience walking. It's only disturbing when the string of songs make me feel like I'm walking around in a karaoke video, and I imagine myself in a bikini with long hair flowing in the breeze on some tropical beach, and . . . this is so wrong.

Gracie eating cell phone with Pie screaming in the background from keauxgeigh.

Anything that got into Gracie's hands, went into Gracie's mouth. That was Audrey's cell phone, and it had trouble working afterwards, so Audrey made me use it and made me give her the one I was using. I got it to work for most part eventually.

The sounds she makes when she drops the phone is so funny. You can hear Pie screaming in the background and Audrey scolding her. Gracie was such an angel, and Pie such a handful, but that's the way it goes when you have kids, I guess.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

I spent a lot of energy during my trip to Japan musing about Madoka's spiritual state, hoping to give her some encouragement to get out of her rut and some balance in her life. When I got back to Taiwan, I started to spend a lot of energy musing about my cousin's spiritual state, hoping to give her some encouragement to gain some balance, if not peace in her life or her method.

I didn't think of it as energy expenditure until Madoka mentioned it that way in an email. It totally changed the dynamic of what I thought I was doing. I didn't think I was helping them, I don't have anything to offer to help them in their situations, but I did think I was benignly putting out suggestions, one of which might have resonated and been useful to them.

When she described it as "energy", I realized it wasn't benign. I wasn't just floating ideas by like leaves on a stream for them to take or leave. I was shining annoying light into their faces, I was radiating unwanted heat.

So I realized that all that musing was for myself, not for them at all. And with that realization, I thought, "oh, I'm done". I got what I wanted out of it and didn't need to think about their situations anymore. So I'm stopping and getting along with my own life and problems.

Sheesh, who did I think I was after years of virtual absence from both their lives to think I had any clue to offer or suggest them anything? In retrospect, I feel it must have been annoying for Madoka for me to go on and on about nothing I knew anything about. I don't think I reached the point of annoyance with my cousin, who is a lot more tolerant of me and who doesn't need to focus on me while I'm here the way Madoka did.

It's all learning, and naturally it was Madoka who taught me. With ten times more stress in her life than I have in mine, she can still teach me more than I could ever hope to teach her, pouring out my vast wisdom and knowledge, and all she did was make a pithy observation. It doesn't matter whether she was trying to or not, and it's not clear that she wasn't.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Who am I kidding? Angry at either Madoka or my cousin for not being present in my life these past years? Not. Truth to tell, as I look at both of their lives now and notice parallels (more due to my perception than actual similarities), I can't say I could have been engaged in either of their difficulties as they were happening.

Would I even have wanted them to be involved in my own struggles leading to the monastery? With my own difficulty being honest with myself and the games I play with myself, who am I kidding? I can barely convince myself that it matters to them whether I'm here or not. Not that it matters.

Any divide is appropriate, and if things revert back after I head back to the U.S., that's OK, too. The important thing was that things were very cool with Madoka while I was visiting in Tokyo, and things are cool with my cousin as I'm visiting here. My stay here is limited and I must maintain my commitment to investigate monastic aspirancy.

The thing is . . . I'm not sure I want to go back to the monastery. When I think about it, I feel disheartened. Then I think I'm supposed to be disheartened, this is right. When I first got there in October, I expected things to get ugly and difficult, and things got ugly and difficult. By the time I left for hiatus, I was filled with negativity that I knew couldn't be right – it was me.

If it's right, I must stay on track and investigate it further, let it get uglier, immerse myself in it. Besides, when I think of not continuing monastic aspirancy, then what? What the hell, there is nothing else. The only thing left is this journey, this investigation. It's either monastery or investigating the death betweens.

How wonderful it would be to die. Drawing cards, suicide comes up every once in a while. Something came up, but it wasn't suicide this time. It was just dying. The card didn't say it's time to push the suicide thing again, it just said 'dying'. I'm not sure what that even means.

 

One thing I really loved about Japan was how it's so densely populated and how the train system is so extensive and goes right amidst huge apartment complexes filled with people's lives. It's like no other country I know of. 

You get on a train in Japan, and you go right by apartment buildings, face to face with them, many buildings, all different, close together, far apart, some modest, some huge. Buildings sub-divided into boxes, grids, all of them lives that I know nothing about, but imagine. 

Who comes home to that box? What do they do when they get there? Do they watch TV, do they cook, do they do laundry, do they crack open a beer? Do they have a family, are they happy? What is their job, what is their passion, who are they in love with, who are they fucking, are they lonely? 

Lonely in this Borg-like mesh of lives. The person in this box over here might have so much in common with the person in that box over there, but they'd never know it. So many people, so many lives, I love that country.