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.