Murakami on memory

Korogi stands there holding the remote control.

"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking, 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel."

Korogi nods to herself. Then she goes on:

"You know, I think if I didn't have that fuel, if I didn't have these memory drawers inside me, I would've snapped a long time ago. I would've curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. It's because I can pull the memories out of the drawers when I have to--the important ones and the useless ones--that I can go on living this nightmare of a life. I might think I can't take it anymore, that I can't go on anymore, but one way or another I get past that."

-- from After Dark (2007)

For those plagued by self-doubt despite ardent effort

Sayadaw U Pandita offers this, from his meditation manual In This Very Life:

In Burma there is a saying to encourage these people. "The more the anagārika loses his way, the more rice he or she gets." An anagārika is a kind of renunciate that exists in Buddhist countries. Such a person takes eight or ten precepts, puts on a white coat, and shaves his or her head. Having renounced the world, anagārikas live in monasteries, maintaining the compound and aiding the monks in various ways. One of their duties is to go into town every few days and ask for donations. In Burma, donations often come in the form of uncooked rice. The anagārika goes through the streets shouldering a bamboo pole that has a basket hanging from each end.

Perhaps he or she is unfamiliar with the village byways and, when it is time to go home, cannot find the way back to the monastery. The poor renunciate bumps into this dead end, turns around in an alley, gets stuck in that back lane. And all the while people think that this is part of the rounds and keep making donations. By the time the anagārika finds the way home, he or she has a big pile of loot.

Those of you who get lost and sidetracked now and then can reflect that you will end up with a really big bag of Dhamma.

wtf

In the men's bathroom here at my office, on the wall above the urinals one will find:

1. dried boogers (lots)
   
2. black ink smears, apparently from newspapers used in a hasty attempt to remove #1
   (the NY Post can usually be found on the bathroom floor in various stalls throughout the day)
   

I mean, I leave my socks on the floor like any other self-respecting guy, but that's just ridiculous.

6 years hence....

My bitches,

Hatred never ceases through hatred, but by love alone.
- Buddha

It's easy to hate your enemies.
It requires bravery to try and find love for them.
The question of whether they "deserve it" is empty.
Don't close off your heart to the human condition....

The Sound of Enlightenment

Even after so many years of hearing it, Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)" still kills me every time. I close my eyes, and instantly, I've transcended this world. Sounds gay, but I'm not kidding.

There are other pieces of music that have a similar effect, but what's so freakin amazing about Eno is that he does it with just one simple synthesizer phrase looped over four and a half minutes.

If you don't have it ... go find it!!!

On a related note, my favorite stream: the Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast. Good selection of ambient and minimal experimental music, low cheese factor.

Patience vs Inertia pt 2 a.k.a. skillful action, rules

Continuing the discussion from the first installment & comments:
http://polyfusia.blogspot.com/2007/07/patience-vs-inertia.html

On the idea of having rules to guide skillful action, JC writes:

i like the idea of having rules like that, but the problem with an external system is that my state of denial will affect how i apply it. it still comes back to a sincere effort to make the best decisions i can, based on the self-awareness i have today.

Yes, very true-- in all practicality, you can't separate the rule (or more specifically the interpretation and application of the rule) from the rule-follower. However, I think there are varying degrees of objectivity you can instill into a rule.

An example of a pretty objective rule I try to follow these days is, "no more than one alcoholic drink per evening (two if it's Thursday night) when I'm working the next day." No getting around that one. Superficial, yes, but I mention it just for an example of simple objectivity.

I'm trying out another rule that's more relevant to the current discussion (distinguishing patience & inertia, etc), though it's more like a general guide than a rule, and it's two-fold:

(1) choose the option that makes your heart grow bigger rather than contract
(2) choose that which opens your eyes further to the truth rather than shuts them in delusion

Yes, there's a lot of room for interpretation there, but the rule definitely helps. I can see sometimes what is the right action even though I really want to choose the other option. Oh, and that yields the third part of the rule:

(3) whichever the more challenging option is, it is probably the better one

Ok, back to work for me....

Have you ever noticed...

... that despite whatever you think makes an attractive or unattractive face:

... that everyone has an attractive smile?
... that, up close, everyone has interesting eyes?

This sentiment may be totally gizzay, but it's really helpful for my metta (loving-kindness) practice as I'm walking down the streets of NYC. I see all kinds of people, all walks of life, and I can open up my heart that much more by looking at their eyes and imagining them smiling (if they aren't smiling already).

It's also amazing how hard it seems for the average New Yorker to crack a smile at a complete stranger. I'm trying as much as I can these days to do exactly that. I still find it easier to do with women. It's a bit harder with guys, I'm guessing, because I haven't yet gotten over the possibility that they're mistaking me for (a) a flirt, (b) a tourist, (c) a stoner/candy flipper, or (d) a plain idiot. Thus there's also the question of whether by smiling at women I'm actually seeking their affirmation that they find me attractive as much as I'm wishing them happiness, even if I'm not ogling their bodies or craving sex at the time.

This is all the same thing -- my EGO is still involved. I'm working on it!!! (Don't judge myself, don't judge myself, don't judge myself) However, I know I'm on the right track because I've gotten to the point where I don't feel worse about myself when people don't smile back.

illusion & suffering

"People who will not let go of their illusions are the ones who suffer the most."

This quotation comes not from a Buddhist text but from a book on trading the financial markets (Trading Rules That Work by Jason Alan Jankovsky.)

It bewilders me how much the markets are the pressure-cooker equivalents of regular daily emotional life. It amazes me how much of what I'm learning about Buddhism can be used therapeutically for an ailing trader such as myself. For all the same reasons, however, I'm a little scared that I might not be able to make progress with my issues while duking it out in the middle of the financial battlefield every day. I wonder if the high-pressure nature of my work negates the safe space I create for myself with meditation and dharma talks.

I have problems with doubt. To some extent this is merely a classic Hindrance. As my teacher on retreat Steve Armstrong said, "Doubt is fear masquerading as logic." But I really want to make sure I'm moving in the right direction as I'm committing myself.

Perhaps finding a teacher is the answer. Faith comes from knowing somebody who has seen success on the path and can understand where you are in relation to the path.

A Structured Path

I can't help but be a little excited.

I left the 10-day meditation retreat in Barre, MA without having had the religious experience (of rapture/catharsis) that I'm pretty sure is common at these kinds of things. No obvious life-changing experience, no new chest-beating resolution to be this or that from now on. Just, perhaps, a temporarily enhanced sense of ease and a subtle shift in understanding.

But like a bottle of Korean soju, it just crept up on me and suddenly I'm drunk. I will explain.

First the subtle shifts--

One of the things that struck me at the retreat was the power of noble silence. With noone saying nary a word to one another (except in officially sanctioned teacher Q&A sessions) I could feel the safety and protection of being free from gossip and collective judging. Thus I developed a more kinesthetic appreciation of morality -- in this case, right speech -- as essential to one's quest for happiness. That is to say, I came to understand happiness as a positive motivation for being moral, as opposed to our culturally normal understanding of morality requiring negative motivation (to avoid blame and guilt).

To be sure, I've always been a generally moral person, perhaps more so than the average guy -- but the extra striving for some higher level of morality I never got around to, because the question was always felt, "What's in it for me?" This question has now been answered. Morality (right speech, right action, right livelihood) purifies the mind and opens the heart, thereby aiding them in receiving true understanding about the nature of suffering and how to achieve liberation from that suffering -- happiness.

The second subtle shift was a small triumph by which I finally managed to experience some emotional satisfaction through faithful execution of process despite unpleasant results. It was one of the many 45-minute [meditation] sits; in this particular one, I had spent an egregious 98% of the time lost in fantasy, managing to bring myself back to the present moment only 2-3 times. After the sit ended, I felt the old familiar feelings of self-judgment, worthlessness and doubt creeping in, but I remembered something from a dharma talk the other night -- a teacher said that the US space shuttle, on its way to the space station, is off-course 98% of the time, yet it manages to reach its destination without fail. (Except when it blows up.) And so I learned to feel good about the process of getting back on track. After all, this is the way it is with any kind of growth -- physical training, learning to play an instrument, etc. -- it is during those times when you feel most weak but are still trying that you are growing the most. The trick is to be able to draw enough emotional strength from that to keep yourself going despite discouraging results from time to time.

Attachment to results is one of those things that has been fucking me in the ass for years, so this is a small source of hope for me.

I know these sound pretty big, and I guess they are, but the reason I called them subtle shifts in understanding is that I considered them to be just the acquisition of more tools in the same quest for personal growth that I've alway had.

But it's kind of like I just took a second look in the mirror and, what the -- I'm now a Buddhist. That is to say, I'm no longer interested in meditation for just the mental training -- but I have perhaps unconsciously taken the Buddha's invitation, Ehi Passiko ("come and see for yourself [what is true]"), and I have gotten a much clearer glimpse of what I can make of this life. The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path -- I'm in. I mean, it's still the same quest, but Buddhism has given it a whole lot more structure than it had before. Structure is good.

So, not too shabby. Still a lot of details to figure out, like how I'm going to stop eating meat and killing mosquitoes, and what the hell I'm gonna do about my work.

my new baby

A long story short: the image was inspired by A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami.

The longer story: the image from that book -- a white adult sheep with a star on its back -- stuck with me for years after reading the novel. I wasn't even sure what it was supposed to represent. As a tattoo, though, I wanted it to be a black sheep. (The usual crap about growing up feeling like an outsider, "you're born alone and you die alone," etc.) The fact that it's a cuddly-wuddly lamb rather than an adult sheep is supposed to remind me that (a) I need to be kind and nurturing/forgiving with myself, not harsh and judgmental; (b) I must be vigilant about thinking independently, lest I fall into herd-like conformity; and (c) [as suggested by the star] I'm marked to do/experience great things. (Gay or not gay?)

patience vs inertia

A few weeks ago, I began attending Tuesday night teacher-led sits at New York Insight Meditation Center. A recent one was led by a charismatic older guy who bore a passing resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones -- which would have kept me entertained no matter what he said -- and his dharma talk for the evening was about patience, the noblest or highest of four or six something-or-others. (Buddhism has a number of lists, apparently, and I'm not really familiar with any of them yet.)

Anyway, patience seems to amount to a sort of skillful inaction, where we are presented with an offending stimulus and the usual reaction might be one of anger, indignation or perhaps even violence. Exercising patience doesn't entail just remaining silent while fuming underneath or desperately trying to keep the lid on a boiling cauldron -- it is tantamount to giving a gift of love, forgiveness or what-have-you. I am all for this. The temptation is to react (a la scratching an itch), and the skillful response is one of non-reaction.

However, when talking about this stuff I think it's easy to lose sight that judgments are often difficult to make in the heat of the moment, and that non-action (or a delayed action) isn't necessarily the best decision even in a Buddhist context.

For example, one will witness an injustice being done, and the temptation might be to lash out at the offending party, to crush them and make them feel small. Teach them a lesson. Tit for tat. Equally misguided, however, might be to stand there and do nothing, which I think is the more tempting option when one's own well-being isn't directly threatened.

It doesn't even have to be a question of intervention; often we'll be presented with opportunities to get closer to our goals somehow -- business/networking opportunities, or a potential connection with a great girl, for example -- and the temptation for introverts like myself is to do nothing. Perhaps we could justify non-action after the fact by claiming patience; after all, we don't want to react with greed or lust. If it's gonna happen, it'll happen. In due time. This is called inertia -- in physics, the tendency for an object at rest to resist motion.

I hope I'm starting to make clear what my dilemma is. It is all too easy to say, this was an example of patience, that was an example of inertia, and how do we tell? Well, patience is skillful inaction while inertia is unskillful inaction. Okay, then what is skillful? Well, skillful decisions yield better results than unskillful ones. Now we are talking about results, which is dangerous because using results to evaluate process retrospectively merely begs the question and sheds no light on how we can be skillful in the uncertainty of here and now.

To be sure, Buddhist meditation can help us liberate ourselves from the regrets caused by inertia -- but I am more interested in constructing a guide for action, not just a better way of interpreting the past.

Life tends to present to us certain gifts and opportunities when we least expect them and are least prepared to accept them -- for they are often shrouded in apparent risk. However, it is perhaps only with the cultivation of mindfulness and self-love that we can learn to see through the apparent threats to self and recognize: these are gifts (for a limited time only) and for freak's sake, we deserve them.

So, how can we know if we are being skillful without relying upon the lens of results? That is really what it comes down to. To be continued....

gross

people never fucking cover their mouths when they cough. fucking disgusting germ factory motherfuckers.