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.