Rushing into Being

I know when I start to spin on all I need to do, and I get less and less efficient. It is time to get back into my body. So, when a friend agreed to go to the country for a drive I suggested the night before, I leap at it the opportunity, dropping everything for the day. I immediately felt relief with this distraction to breathe some more space into life. I really needed to sit with myself in nature as opposed to in my house, which will soon not be, and just see what was coming up. I know deep down one never gets it all done, and I am kind of waiting for that big sign that this is it and I can finally just rock with it. We drove to an area not far from us, but one he had never been to. I could experience his relief upon seeing beauty that he forgot was out there when one gets so trapped in their thoughts. We drove for quite a while to an unused park in the middle of nowhere and I just settled in for an hour of meditation and silence, knowing that a nap would just be escapist. With birds and a rabbit around, and a warm wind blowing to cool the psyche it was easy to sit with myself. I laughed, because the area which I have liked for years, now seems like it wants me here and now my mind wants to figure out how to have a piece of it.

Find some stability in a world and life that never has any. Sensual pleasures do have their hook, but it is about avoiding what is currently present in the mind. After my hour meditation I talked with my friend about the fact that whenever I get so involved in life, spinning and being busy the more I lean towards meditation and the wisdom that comes from it. It is not the answer, I am the answer.

Act Like How You Want to Feel

For the longest time, I used to think that positive upbeat people were the product of good parenting, extra cash, or born on the right day. What was I missing? Whatever it was, I did not have it. Looking in all the wrong places for so many years, and it was right in front of me. Just look in the mirror and smile ....taking yourself too seriously puts off a negative vibe. I thought that I had a great excuse why not, since I've had two strokes leaving me with facial weakness and numbness. Bullshit! Even smiling with a kooky, crooked smile is infectious and immediately relaxes others and they will laugh with you....and not at you. Give it up and go over to a mirror and smile, we are all soon dead and it is so hard to smile with a mouthful of dirt.

A by-product of relaxing the self, is one carries less tension in their body. Today in yoga class, I smiled at myself(not out of pride) and whenever I slipped from a pose laughed. After class finished, a woman came up to me who is constantly negative, smiling and said her new nickname for me is "rubber band man." That was a change for her, so it helps others.

Sometimes it's good to give up the driver's seat

I understand his point, but my best recovery was done when I chose to be the “decider.” Now, maybe it is all a delusion, that once I chose to survive, the outcome was a natural progression with my new found mental state. When, on occasion, people say to me they could not have one what I did, I say but you would do the same. I think they under-estimate the will to survive, and that giving up leaves nothing to be desired (only but a few realized Buddhas have let go of desire), and is a let-down for those around you who spend long and difficult days praying for you to live. 
So, is there really a choice at all?

No One Asked for My Opinion

I felt it is about time to apologize... to everyone I have thrown my opinion out at warp speed, never giving him or her the chance to duck. I caught myself, early today with someone, and it was never burped up.....the miracle of consciousness.  This provided the almost instant feedback of making the other person happier, because I approached the day with joy with the idea of spreading joy instead of smearing them with one of my opinions ( cleverly disguised negativity, NOT ). I took it further all day, to set aside my happiness for others all day…the self took a back seat, if it just a bit at first. This will take vigilance to be aware and continue. This was born out of years of meditation...a hint of the wisdom that lies dormant inside of us. The feedback with strangers was pleasant and connected, they felt my intention...yup, I am a slow learner. Far more strangers engaged with me...Bingo! I had the key, but misplaced it for so many years.

My apology, based on how novice monks/nuns atone to Bhikkhu/Bhukkhuni’s:

All harmful acts, words and thoughts, ever committed by me since of old…on account of beginning-less greed, anger and ignorance… born of my body, speech and mind… Now, I atone for them all.

"wisdom grows" Wat Pak Nam

We all born into this life, and move towards happiness in our own way based on what we have been exposed to and karma. My path is NEVER anyone else’s way and to top it off, they never asked me. I will try better, and will keep the fact in mind that if I want more joy in life, then it starts right here.

Pointing Upward

In my home-office in an older 30’s building in classic Spanish style. It has open stairs to the roof, totally open to the sky with pillars about 8 ft high all around to shade some of the sun. In one corner of this roof deck shoots a Moorish minerat.

The building is white-washed, fading and peeling in the hot sun. I was online doing a search, and scrolled past a real estate agents’ photo who I had talked to the night before. She curiously left her camera on, so her photo was still live on this particular site. She was angry with client who she was talking to. I scrolled back to see her, kind of shocked at her behavior and how funny this looked on a web page. She noticed midway through that she was broadcasting this, or perhaps she saw me on my camera and leaned forward and clicked it off. In the background and out of open staircase to the roof, I heard a man, saying out loud, “I will see if I can destroy this thing!” with a Czech accent. I can hear a guy beating away at my building with his hand, when he decides to ram it with his body. Guessing it was the minerat, I ran up the stairs to the roof.  On the way up, I decide that no matter how threatening he is and how mad I am, that I will be kind in my approach.

I get to the roof, and say with a curiously sweet face, “Now, why would like to destroy my old building, exactly?” I walk casually towards him and put out my hand. He is already confused by my reaction and stops banging, and I walk closer even though I see he is carrying a gun with his nice cameras. He softens enough that upon touching his hand, all stream has blown out of his idea. I say, put your hand on my chest to know I am a breathing human being just like you. He reaches out, and I have already touched his shoulder. Although bigger than I am, he is blond and slightly sweating and feels warm to touch. I defused the whole situation by not meeting his anger with anger. He did not really know it was my building. I get a close look at his gun and nice cameras, and compliment him on his good taste in cameras, as I walk him across the roof and down towards my steps off the roof. But then I notice, all these framed photos I took years ago, laid out on the roof deck, like a gallery display. I say, this is curious in my head, while moving a few aside, not to step on them. I look at the man with a slightly surprised face, and can see he can provide no answers, either.

I am beginning to put it all together, that I am dead and my old photos I have taken over the years have been laid out by my family or my partner.  With a warm feeling and no panic, it is was done for me, and then I roll over and wake up from my morning dream. I usually fall asleep after my pre-dawn hour meditation, and I must be working out some part of my unconscious with a little flare.


A little aside, if I die or any else close to you dies in your presence — tap three times firmly on the third eye(between the eye brow) to help mine or their spirit leave their body, instead of lingering around. 

"Radhe Radhe" Signals Peace

When I noticed myself spinning in agitation, I got back on the cushion 2 hours a day. One hour before dawn, and one after early dinner. In talking to my partner, he told me not to ordain again. I can be a lay in white with 8 precepts, but as his partner he feels that we will never stop thinking about one another and being a monk is a move away from us. It was nice to hear why he was so firm about this, "I am still waiting to marry you." He has brought me much more joy and wisdom, and no heartache. The miracle spoke.

In Silence, Do We Really Exist?

After about 4 days in a silent retreat with 10-11 hours of meditation per day the mind really does not stop thinking, it just gets a little less interesting to involve yourself in your many thoughts.  If you are lucky to develop the body-mind to realize that the bad feelings and anger don’t feel so good, you stop going there. Not that you can really control what you spin on, but that is what we work on. Then, in time, everything that composes your “real” life slowly becomes foggy and less substantial. You have no net, phone, or speech and immersed in silence and darkness of the cells or even a quiet hall of other long-term meditators with eyes closed…..what confirms your existence? There is, of course, no eye contact in breaks, and everyone there knows nothing of your life or of you. It is not really disturbing, and it is actually sublime living without all connections to your past. It is all stories anyway, and when we die those particulars of your life disappear with you. No matter how close people are to you they will never be able together all the pieces that are your life and idiosyncrasies, no matter how significant they feel at this time. And what does it mean? Why should we put so much importance on the small stuff or even the hard stuff we encounter in life? No one else does it for us. When I talked to Jac O’Keeffe in April, she told me what I went through has no significance at all and to drop it. “It was your body, and not you that it happened to, anyway.” It may sound callous, but it was said with clarity and love.

By day 7, everything I hold dear, like my partner(sorry, Tee Rak) and my family become only ideas that I can pull up and experience solely based on feelings or perceived needs. They seem to be like the same feelings one tries to let go of. Ah, which to keep and discard? The juggling act we think we can do so well. This judgmental mind has often lead us astray. So, I would try to feel them to feel like I exist. It was never done in a panic because existence is always really foggy, only while in silence it is more pronounced absence of ties to what we think is reality. My mind had let go of the stranglehold I had on people and things while meditating, but then my dreams at night spoke of the fears of non-existence. I would try to solve things and conjure importance for being. A few dreams I would wake up with I thought was an epiphany as a clear idea of how to solve my problems or others. Fat chance, as they were usually based out of the ego, that was struggling to exist in the face of close observation of it's weak soapbox. There is no reason why we are here, so perhaps I made this all up to prove I do exist. 

Oh, What a Feeling!

In observation, I find myself directing thoughts to get a feeling. Subtly, it may be done to establish the fact I am alive, because without a feeling we are living unaffected. Living in awareness and not in experience can feel like a withdrawal, but only when you hooked on feelings. We don’t realize it when we will create an averse reaction to something in the world just to sample a bad feeling and then quickly jump to solving a problem, grabbing some food, or if we are lucky a run in the park. I look at my old habits of trying to fix, straighten or get something completed just for a good feeling. It leaves one running from thought to thought without realizing it is never all done. Thoughts give birth to more thoughts. Self-created anxiety for me was most likely developed as a kid in the chaos of alcoholism in my family. I do find most people are hooked on a feeling, regardless of the cause, hence why obesity and alcoholism is so prevalent. It is really not the food or the drink, but the feeling they desire. And when one knows deep down that to feel good can’t be found in things outside your self, they are much likely to spiral into depression, as bad feelings have so much more of a long lasting kick. Good feelings need to have bigger and grander objects of source to get overcome the bad feelings. Bad feelings can be a simple as “Not knowing” what is next in life. I often reflect on what has come so far, and it is not over yet. I have tried to learn better ways to handle myself, often inspired when exhaustion sets in after repeated unskillful actions. Wisdom for me, enters in the back door, more as the last thing left!

What to do? Well, meditation brought those realities to the foreground. When I am resting in awareness while meditating and not labeling as good or bad, a natural peace flows from within. It is not ‘peace’ as another feel good object to grasp, but really relaxation into what is going on right at this minute and being ok with it.  Now to carry this relaxation in being into daily life, because it is me on that cushion at 5am, and it’s me... always, just a little bit scrambled. 



“....Without knowing yourself,
 there is no peace.
— J. Krishnamurti






That is why I am going to an 8-day Meditation with a focus on the Satipatthana Sutta teachings.

Wisdom comes Quicker without Liquor

The fifth precept:
I undertake the training rule
 to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness.

Wak Saket Prep for New Year's 2555

The abbot who I had so much respect for when I did I short term ordination in Thailand, said when I disrobed that the fifth precept is the most important to keep in lay life. I agreed but came home to enjoy my occasional wine with dinner, I felt I had it all under control, but this stuck with me. He also stated that it isn’t the alcohol that is so bad, but drinking makes you more apt to break other precepts about lying, false speech and maybe even sexual misconduct. One as a human becomes weaker.

I continued requesting precepts at temple with the Nuns at home, which is done after prayers and meditation, so I finally listened to myself. If I request the precepts then I must want to live by them. Don't I? I love red wine, and feel it was such an important part of who I am. I keep wanting some positive, I thought, a remainder of my life pre-brain injury. I realized that I was clinging still to my old self.

My kuti at Thai Temple Nov, 2554

But is it really who I am? Not on my wisdom seeking missile path, I am more and more leaning towards the natural compassion that lives within everyone. How can I let this shine more? Like when I went up to a participant at my weekend retreat with Bentinho, at the fire pit in the evening while rubbing his back, said to a gentleman, “Thank you for being you.” He was touched. Or when talking to another woman feeling her dis-ease with her life, kneeled next to her, with positive ideas of how to ask for what she may need from her husband instead of venturing in search of a spiritual experience. One cannot feel in these situations if you have even one half a glass of wine. You are more into the experience of the wine to care deeply about others. Although the wine will give you the illusion of being more in touch with your feelings.

I feel I can now write about why I quick drinking on 1/1/11(2554). First let me say, that I am pretty aware of the dangers of alcoholism, but in my twenties I still partied and drank socially. This lead me to wine with dinner, and as a way of opening conversation with friends. Thinking more, it actually lead me to an elitist idea of myself as my taste in wine got more and more refined.  I dawned on me, more ego …more suffering and less wisdom. I had to quit, not to prove anything but that it was just an organic leaning to greater wisdom.

You know it is actually liberating to walk past the wine in stores, knowing that is one less thing to look towards for any source of happiness. Just having a half-open bottle of nice red-wine that you can't throw out, means you are obligated to have it the following evening, and thus making it more difficult to do an evening meditation. When you are out shopping, it also becomes a focus of what next to buy. It all became very transparent that all the wine desires pushed me to wanting a new experience each time. I could not rest in awareness or taste the peace of just being. That is a huge relief not to be bothered with in thought and desire, and I now feel the peace that I was actually looking for by drinking. 

 Relaxing at the beautiful Shwedagon Paya, Jan. 2555

My partner rarely drinks, and when I last saw him I bought him some really good Russian vodka that he wanted, last year. A full liter, it remained in the fridge for his occasional use. He would have a shot or two after a hard day at work with dinner. When I took off for Myanmar, he found himself feeling lonely, and drinking more that he should, woke up feeling not very well. We talked about this, in both cases and he realized he was not really interested in drinking. He realized that a nice run, was more what he needed. I had to let his natural wisdom shine through his experience.

Unique... We Are Not!

After spending a weekend retreat with Bentinho Massaro, where he tried groups for the first time … I feel I have some insights. Whenever, I heard someone vocalize a breakthrough from their old thinking, and experienced a relaxation, I got teary. Not because it was sad but it was so lovely to witness and the joy they felt, I felt. To let go of an old way of thinking to not being involved in experience was liberating. It did not matter how they got there nor the subject that prompted it, but I realized that the human body has only a handful of reactions which we all experience. This happened time and time again in groups, and it did not matter who it was. Sorry to break it to you, but we are not as unique as we think. And without our ego involved with a group with no other intentions we can honestly feel the other, which leads us over and over again to the inseparability of all. Bentinho once said, “It is like two ends of a tablecloth talking to one another.” One gentleman’s release, even though it could be perceived as subtle by the thinking mind, was so profound for him that I felt a huge wave of emotion that he was obviously feeling as well. by relaxing into source before thoughts and experience. This leads to me to the natural compassion every human has that comes when all thoughts and ego are let go of. This compassion is not a new state, and is natural when all else is cleared away.




A little update, I received an email from the young man I met in Bagan thanking me for the money I gave his family for a motorcycle in January. “ You have 'infected' my family and they want to see you again. The rose plant you gave my mom is blooming. I will offer them to Buddha and pray for you.”

Imagine if for the next twenty-four hours you had to wear a cap that amplified your thoughts so that everyone within a hundred yards of you could hear every thought that passed through your head. Imagine if the mind were broadcast so that all about you could overhear “your” thoughts and fantasies, “your” dreams and fears. How embarrassed or fearful would you be to go outside? How long would you let your fear of the mind continue to isolate you from the hearts of others? And though this experiment sounds like one which few might care to participate in, imagine how freeing it would be at last to have nothing to hide. And how miraculous it would be to see that all others’ minds too were filled with the same confusion and fantasies, the same insecurity and doubt. How long would it take the judgemental mind to begin to release its grasp, to see through the illusion of separateness, to recognize with some humor the craziness of all beings’ minds, the craziness of mind itself?

— Stephen and Ondrea Levine

The Worst Assumption...

...that there is always tomorrow. Most of the time we live our lives right up to our last moment assuming that tomorrow we can be happy or at least happier than we are right now.  Meanwhile, our bodies and minds fall apart.  This makes it ever more difficult to change our perspective and we end up banging our heads against a wall. “It worked in the past, so why doesn’t it work now?” or like the old man I found on the street after having experienced a stroke who I helped home said, “Age creeps up on you fast!”

I find myself examining my life and actions now with greater and greater frequency. Trying to move towards lightness, instead of darkness. Sometimes, I am lucky enough to be aware right in the midst of engaging. Then I can fast forward to an outcome beneficial to others and myself, and cut my reactive mind out of the equation. I do find that most all conversation instigated by me is a kind of ego based expression. The equivalent of saying, "Wait, I am here and alive and I matter," rises up. If I remain quiet, I seem to run up against the real fact that I don’t really exist. That this life could very well be a dream, with only one or two important distinctions from the ones experienced when I lay down. I can feel the weight of my body affected by gravity, and tastes are usually more enhanced and detailed. I can usually exist in silence for quite sometime with ease given my difficulty with speech.

Saturday, I went to a Satsang with Bentinho Massaro, and was quiet except during lunch with my friend who accompanied me there. There was one time when he spoke with one woman, guiding her into feeling her own pain which she had mistakenly tied in with feelings for the sufferings of animals …and I felt that what she really needed was a hug. Coming from the loneliness and misplaced anger that was her vegan path. I almost spoke about this, but caught myself. Also she was intelligent and aware enough to see the pain when Bentinho pointed it out. Bentinho was clear and mature enough in awareness to feel her pain but not get swept up in it. The whole exchange was so beautiful to watch and made me appreciate our precious human existence that we often forget.

Before I went to see him, my friend did a brain/bone hearing test from his Mozart Brain lab equipment, and found that my last Vipassana, it left my emotions open and we would have to work to close it back up enough in therapy when his has time. ( it is charted based on frequencies) I do have emotional lability left over from my severe brain damage, that in a good way is liberating, because I cannot keep emotions hidden in my gut, and when I feel emotions I express them at the time the cause manifests. I rarely cry in out bursts that is embarrassing or out of place now. This allows me to be more compassionate and makes my path evolve naturally. I find that when I speak it ties me in to my past ego demands and more old self faster. I find that friends that are more comfortable with my former self, are now pulling away which is natural for them. They are scared of silence, which seems like a mirror of their actions and way of being. The people that are “on board” appreciate the move from my old ways.

Meanwhile, my partner has come to some maturity and self-awareness of his being and the effects on others, just in the past 4 months that has brought him great clarity and joy. It was a natural evolution from seeing where he was creating some of his misery. He has been rewarded at work, and everyone there comments about his change. He is one person that was born into darkness and is moving towards lightness I can model on. And really all he needs is my love and not my advice, so I can be quiet on this front. With one hand touching the earth.


Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such prayer. Crying includes all the principles of yoga.

— Swami Kripalvanandji

Bagan Boys

I am pretty sure the boys are chanting Pali with a Burmese accent. They were herding goats after school and I gave them a Buddhist calendar for their pocket from Thailand and they took a break from the goats to come up and show off. I have one more of them play fighting.

I have been busy since my return from Vipassana, where I almost had three days of clear body scanning followed by more deep sankaras coming up. At that time, I felt bright, awake, and very clear, and still feel it now. Yet, if this clarity leaves, naturally ...I will not be surprised. It makes me want to return to serve, and work towards the 20-day requirements.
I still reflect about Bagan, and feel it was a sign of the intercon-nectedness of everyone, when I met the young man there and his family. What unfolded there is pulling towards a desire to short term ordination.
Let life unfold naturally, like nature does. You can't force open a flower.

Was It Ever Real?

As my ego developed as a child, I came to the realization I will die at some point. I can’t remember what triggered this. What’s that mean? Me as a body or Me as in what I thought? Looking back this is where my “I” sense had firmly established itself and was scrambling for attention. When it first happened, I was lying on my bed at night and felt a dropping out of all my ideas of who I though I was. This continued to happen for about three weeks tapering off as the drama of life overtook and displaced my sign of what “I” was or in this case… what “I” was not.  

This may mean that self-awareness was still in flux before this time, and I may not have beed involved in stories of my ego. So, it meant that after that, I was and am now totally caught up in labeling the world and my experience as good or bad.

I( the character known as Was Once, in more a correct term) got a feeling that the difficult circumstances of the flood in Bangkok, that caused me and my partner to be separated when his work got flooded actually propelled me to look at how I see the world. The flood even cancelled my Vipassana while there, leading me to the other Thai temple with a very realized abott. When I did a course here upon returning, I got to experience solitary cell meditation, working on my ego and anger. I look forward to another 10 day Vipassana, furthering weeding out of desires of the way things should be. I will look at pulling back further from a personal involvement with the world’s events. It doesn’t need me to label to continue the course of nature and it never did. I am really not that important, and it was only my ego that got it all confused.


I will re-examine in my meditation over the 10 days to see if the experience in Bagan was out of pure natural compassion or the ego wanting a new or a better experience.

If Looks Could Kill

I have an expressive face, and I’m a pro at eye rolling. I have no trouble making it clearly known that I don’t approve of whatever. I mostly likely learned this from my father and society’s disapproval of who I am. It even worked its way back into my face after paralysis, arriving before my speech.  Get this… I had relearn to flare my nostrils, before I learned to speak, again.

My partner on the other hand rarely shows emotion besides happiness although he is not poker faced. We will argue and it will take him a long time to show any emotion. He knows intuitively that words are not really who I am and doesn’t confuse me with my ideas. Sure, he might get silent, but it is frowned upon in his culture to show anything in public, and he has been a great influence.  And yet, he is far from poker-faced and embodies Chai Yen.  He is calm and cool and not pulled by life’s vicissitudes. And he has had is full share of them, starting at birth by being abandoned by his parents.

He has me thinking that everything I don’t like, relates to things I feel internally or don’t like about myself. We often throw our opinion about life with gestures or attitudes if we don’t say it verbally. One doesn’t have to read auras to get a sense of the personal misery I am so willing to share. It makes me wonder how many people I turned off by this exhibition unknowingly over the years? Why do shoots darts of emotion into the crowds and expect anything but a mirroring of the shite you put out. The world is not out there and we forget that we are our world living in a self-created hell. If all we do and see is ugliness, even in its most benign form of laughing at others will just further our misery.

We can start with watching our feelings in every situation, to really see what prompts our every reaction. (How about no-reaction? Who really asked you, anyway?) Those looks that kill may not have anything to do with what or who we are directing it all to.  We might be hungry, anxious, disappointed, tired, in pain or just experience normal emotions that we are not in touch with. When someone says a person is grounded, actually means they know what is driving them internally at every moment. Start with your feet, you will notice they are furthest from you mind, and really you’re your body working up to the head. You’ll notice that you reside in your thoughts not allowing you to feel the real trigger. That is, before you go on a Bette Davis impersonation ....in front of strangers.

Art of Dying, verifying my Near Death

Having experienced a near death which actually was a gift, Dr. Peter Fenwick verifies it.
Briefly, a nurse saw my eyes roll back, and I was out of body and moving as an energy field to merge with the universal consciousness. She called my name while intubating me, then I slipped into coma.

Bullies Killed His Sense of I

I am disturbed by gay teens taking their life, and this teen, Kenneth Weishuhn really got me. I was this teen and luckily I had no Facebook or a cell phone to help drive in the point that I was deemed worthless by society’s “standards.” When you are a teen, you are still relying heavily on others to help form a firmer sense of your “I.” And when Kenneth came out to his friends, almost no one stood by him, leaving him vulnerable to whatever bullies would write on his “wall” or drive home in cell messages. Seeing hate in action in one thing, but reading or hearing hate when one is alone and quite exposed leaves a deep mark. That hate echos deep within his delicate being. The hate I was exposed to made me angry and that what this tapped into when I saw this news.

Surely, the It’s Get’s Better campaign helps some, but most teenagers don’t have enough personal history to get a real feeling that time passes ....so that they can look any difficulty and have clarity. I was lucky enough to be busy enough with work and my horses to let the distance be perceived as a break from the bullies who tormented me in school. I now feel very lucky not to have Facebook in my face a home and on my phone to remind me how much others hated me. Parents should really look hard at how much these social media cues help to define their children sense of worth. Obviously, when watching this video, the mother did not quite grasp the shear weight of the posts of Facebook, emails and phone messages. Sadly, parents love will never overrule them. These children are at a fragile point in their existence, trying to understand their gayness which they are usually too embarrassed to talk about, to their parents. I am sorry that as a gay elder I cannot reach out and talk to the parents and their gay children. I am deeply troubled by this and wish his parents some wisdom will have to come out of this. They must now move this tragedy to a greater purpose and may they transcend their grief to do so. These bullies, although they never drew a physical gun, will carry the physic fingerprints tying them to his death that they will never shake.

Defined by What You Don't Like?

I am beginning to notice whenever I am uncomfortable in body or mind, I lean towards defining myself by what I don’t like. This can be news that is unpleasant, or that I feel really offends my being. I know I am not allowing peace to come into my life when I find myself doing this….that is, when I wake up to the reality. I think it came from being told how to act and be in the hetero-sexual world by my peers, family, society leading up to our favorite news and advertising. To act natural in hostile world is something everybody has to works towards. When you are young, you are assumed to be immature and full of it. One learns to scream louder at that point. Midway through life, wisdom hits and you calculate your odds in every situation, and learn to take on those that you feel you can “win.” Maybe you are smart enough to stay silent, or get creative with your approach when things don’t seem to lean in your direction. Does peace come in at either point? Or only when you get your way? You tell me. There are many areas in which peace is kept at bay when things are not quite comfortable. By now we should know that being misunderstood, challenged and uncomfortable in body and mind plays a very big part of our life. So, why in my case do I continue to look for things I don’t like? For the drama and the excitement of finding the utmost, stupidest thing in the world? To get a false sense of security by knowing I am better than this? That is such a "Humpty-dumpty" view of life. I can’t keep holding myself as a fragile egg, where the slightest crack disrupts my peace. I am actually running towards suffering. Maybe I’ll put a rubber band on my wrist, and every time I catch myself doing this I’ll snap it to remind myself. Peace is always available even in the most chaotic situations...and really never takes a holiday.

The Cries We Chose Not to Hear

I’ll be the first to admit I’m selectively compassionate. If it is the right person and the right time….boom! …there it is… in full technicolor. Ahh, but what about the others?

Last night’s meditation, I thought about a couple of neighbors who have since passed away. When I first moved into my house I have now, there was an older lady who lived next door. She was a drinker, and she would go out shopping drunk and leaving she would hit nearly every car near her, so we had to park far away from my house. She would return, and leave her car sticking out in the street. At first, I did talk to her and even took her groceries in from her car, but once I ascertained she was continually drunk, I quickly dropped dealing with her. A few times, she would ring my bell, drunk and just lay into me, making no sense as to what is was the trigger(now, I think it may have been that she wanted help). We know we can’t change people but several times it was obvious what she was doing was for attention. She lived alone and lonely, and she died in her house and was there 3 1/2 weeks before anybody noticed. I was busy with a huge house repair, and the police used my scaffolding to get into her window to find her body. At the time all I could say was, “Oh, well, big surprise!”

Then there was “Billy,” the man who used to wander drunk up and down the block looking for love my first few years. It slowly became apparent that at 50+, he was no longer the looker he once was and nobody returned his stares, so then he graduated to walking to find fresh cement just to put his name in the sidewalk. I caught him at 1 am, marking my new concrete I had poured for my driveway. He also could never make it into his garage, so he would park anywhere, in any direction. He used to wander by just to see if I found him “interesting," which helped to light my anger. He died in his house at 55, and I could not muster any compassion for him even dead. Some sadness now comes up, when I see his “Billy Was Here” mark in a sidewalk.

Now, we have our reasons not to be compassionate, thinking that everyone out there is like these two, not really cuddly and needy just the way we like it. We are failing in these cases not to see the suffering, and that part of us that is just like them, but of course in a much subtler display. Compassion is not all or nothing kind of thing, we can adjust when the subject is not cooperating. With these cases could have send them love rather than hate mentally and it would have made me actually happier by not carrying the hate.

I was no where close to a wise understanding at that time, and all I could see is my drunken dead father gathering the moss of disgust in my mind. So, in a way I contributed to their suffering, by not moving the hatred to an even more neutral disappointment laced with some concern. "Tough love,” you say, was what was needed at the time, but being angry with them only helped to fuel their disenchanted view of life. So, now I will never know if I could have been that person, the one that one certain day, when they really needed was a kind hello to shake the foundation of their delusions and help them wake up.

A Cry Heard 'round the World

I will put this forth as an idea, and whether is based in reality or not... you can debate. After my brain injury, when I had no voice for a long time and remained in silence… fatigued, resting at home. I remember laying on my heated floor looking up at the rafters, and now thinking about it still miss that heated floor(that’s another story). Within six months, I was going to work every other day to let my brain rest. A few years later, I met friend who invited me to meditate and then enjoy dinner with him at his house. My first time meditating I wanted peace, so desperately, that I sat for an hour, which shocked him and me. It was not but a few years earlier another friend suggested I meditate, and I made the lame excuse of my brain injury would not let me. That started me on pursing meditation, slow at first with him, and later at temple. Funny, I have inspired that other friend to go do a Vipassana, turning the cards on him.



My partner has had a hard life, abandoned by his parents at birth, when they separated and moved far away leaving him with an old village couple unrelated to him. Raised by these kind souls, he was very close to his “grandmother,” he told me. It was very hard for him, since they were poor rice farmers and had thus no money. In elementary school, World Vision helped to feed him, and he gave donations to them twice this year, with his meager salary, even though he is Buddhist. He is eating less, just to honor those in the world that have no food. At one point in his early years he had to ordain for a year, just to have enough food to eat. Not treated well by the abbot of the temple in his village, he was treated more like a slave. His grandmother died about a year before we met. It rocked his world when the only person he really could count on growing up was gone. He got very ill, and almost died. He “cried” out in pain and perhaps, I “heard” him across the world. When we met it was out of extraordinary circumstances (yet another story). We established enough of a bond during our first month, that it launched our relationship.



Two things seem to me to be at work here, since the chance of us meeting was so rare, as neither of us were looking for a relationship. One is the primal need or the cry of another human being “heard” when one quiets down. The second one, is I am beginning to feel that his grandmother sent me to him. When we met I went to his village and met his grandfather who was still alive, who liked to sit and watch me. I remember sitting with the grandfather and his friends enjoying some home made rice wine on mats outdoors under the stars. We saw a huge shooting star that night, and have night photos of us looking up. This year will celebrate our 12th anniversary, and now it’s the longest relationship of all my siblings. My partner's Master's graduation ceremony is in April, with a famous Thai princess handing him his diploma.

I give to Buddhist Global Relief to help feed people and Bhikkhu Bodhi has heart-breaking, 3 part story of his early years as a hungry monk in Sri Lanka HERE.

Don't Mess with my Teeth

It was time to get my veneers on my teeth replaced. A crazy orthodontist when I was a kid pulled 4 eye teeth out of my mouth at 13 when my jaw was not even developed and I was slow to mature anyway, essentially screwing up my bite forever. He actually over-dosed me on anesthesia, resulting in me tripping for a day and a half and yelling at my mom to leave me alone. Wrongly attributed to an allergy, and then to adolescent rebellion, my mom didn't know I was gay, the source of much anger. A loner only because society made it clear they hated me, I felt. I can still bring up the memory of me being escorted out of the office higher than a kite. I had braces twice, and I cursed him out later as an adult calling just to say, “You made money off my suffering.” Not exactly a bright thing to do, but that me twenty-five years ago. I kept them and had a hippie woman make Macramé a necklace of them in high school, never quite understanding until now that it was yet another symbol of my pain. I have veneers solely to beef up the teeth to make up for the ones pulled. They broke during the seizures I had with my near death in 1994, cutting into my tongue, and lower lip. Thankfully, I was so mentally gone I was in no pain, then. Yet another reason to enjoy the fruits of my brain injury, which has never come up in Vipassana ...as something I need to deal with. I have really effectively moved this into gratitude for who I am now.



Anyway, in the dental office today as the temporaries broke for the second time, meaning I won’t be able to eat food, only liquid until the real deal is put back in. I was thinking more about the money this would cost me, is enough to support a family of five in Myanmar, recalling the family I helped there. Looking at the ceiling light above me in the room, I thought about how foolish it is, to fix teeth on a man past his prime. Who I am trying to impress? Certainly, I don’t want my partner, family and friends to disregard any wisdom I can share, based on the fact that I have let myself go. I am still a member of their society, and as such… I have be play by their rules. It is for my health first and my ego second, but I would like wisdom above all.

“Now I'm just letting you know about these things... the suffering that arises from within, that arises within our own bodies. There's nothing within the body you can depend on. It's not too bad when you're still young, but as you get older things begin to break down. Everything begins to fall apart. Conditions go their natural way. Whether we laugh or cry over them they just go on their way. It makes no difference how we live or die, makes no difference to them. And there's no knowledge or science, which can prevent this natural course of things. You may get a dentist to look at your teeth, but even if he can fix them they still eventually go their natural way. Eventually even the dentist has the same trouble. Everything falls apart in the end.” — Ajahn Chah

We Are the Sum Total ...of What?

Are we are really only a sum total of everything we have experienced and have been taught? This came up during my ten-day Vipassana sit, of which 7 of the 11 hours a day were spent in a pagoda cell. My ways of dealing with life seem to be solely a product of what I have been taught combined with what I, as a gay child experienced. Not that I can’t unlearn some things, it just seems like the panic of having no where to go, and no one to turn to, even as a role model. Or even someone to explain to me why everyone is so hurtful. I was lucky enough to have some common sense and a few survival skills based mostly on the love that my Mom and I shared the first four years of my life, before my siblings came into being.

When the neighbor kid was playing with his friend, I did not join in, mainly because I knew love was never supposed to be an outcome. I felt this might be my reaction to any sexual affection, my intuition said stay away. The same when someone was interested in me in freshman year of college. Yet, in junior high and high school I had to mainly deflect the bullies and my parents crazy assumptions that two of the woman who were in my life were even remotely interesting. As a kid, I had firmly made a decision during a "birds and bees talk" that I was never going to have sex with a woman, for me it was un-natural. As a adolescent, one woman was an ugly bull dike that I worked with, and I had to be nice to her or she would kick my ass. Later, the other woman was an attractive and more affluent, yet lost in a sea of deadbeat straight men. The dike, I now feel ...served a purpose, she was physically uglier than I felt internally about myself at the time. When she threw a hammer at me over something dumb, and hit my arm…she was terminated from my life. It was time to move on, to where I met the other woman. Kinder and gentler, she knew deep down about me, but did not want to face it. I was more like a masculine mirror of her. Many years later, she was in town and I hope she did not agree to have lunch with the idea I might be a candidate for a relationship. When we parted it was for forever, and so I am beginning to think that she had other ideas. Did I have to play straight in order to survive. confusing others? It worked until my roommate in college ‘found’ magazines hidden under my mattress, in a planned attack to expose me among three friends studying in my room…my whole world was collapsing at the same moment some gay freak was stalking me. Embarrassed, I had to tell my R.A., and eventually my parents before someone else told them. Then I quit college and ran far away.

Running to a ski town, I landed with three other misfits, sadly all straight, I was no better off. But I held out for love, wanting my first relationship with a boy to be what I really needed and imagined. This intuition helped guide me into a few successful relationships, and kept me healthy. And my rejection by society as a kid, growing up helped form my phony elitism, where I set higher and higher standards. I went through this confusion and hurt from my childhood in my ten-day Vipassana, I cried for the kid who had nowhere to go…this cry came out in the form of anger. Anger that exhausted me the first day in appeared in my pagoda cell, to the point of folding over in a seated posture, snoring and fast asleep. It died down over three days, and worked itself out.

All this pain had wrapped my heart in "black tape", and it felt great to dissolve it. I never feared it, and actually looked forward to each sit, so when Metta came next it actually seemed like the perfect natural transition. I recalled the woman who helped to inspire me on this path, thanked her profusely. I was lucky enough to be able to say good-bye by email before she died, since I was far away at the time. She died happy, because she gave it all she got, natural love. This same natural love is my heart's true nature, and she knew this.

Bagan Photos

I could not say it better, but this signals my next ten days of Vipassana, see you in March!

Homage

to the peace of Moe Wai