Blocks of Thought

I know I shouldn't be afraid of the things I'm afraid of, but I can't overcome my fears. I'm scared of talking to people, like at school, or even people on the phone. I'm scared of others judging me. I'm scared of being a financial failure. I'm scared of cancer and medical bills. I'm scared of having a terrible job the rest of my life. I'm scared of being angry all the time. I don't want to be angry. I don't want to have a temper that snaps so easily. I don't want to be jealous of what other people have. I want to be happy for other people. I want empathy. I want to be looked-up to. I want to be proud of myself. I want to stop caring what other people think of me, but without resorting to dismissing them as human beings. I want the world to get along; I want people to stop killing each other. I want people to open their minds and stop being ignorant of the world. I want peace and relaxation. I want respect and honesty. I want to act like I think. I want to think before I speak. I want to be charming and charismatic. I want to lead people to prosperity. I want to be a genius. I want people to study me five hundred years from now. I want to write breath-taking literature. I want to influence the hearts of people. I want them to think about why they live. I want everything to slow down because I'm too scared of everything happening at once.

I don't want a funeral. I want to be cremated. I want a party instead of a funeral. I want to see what the future will look like, but I can't. I want to overcome my fear of death, now, at age twenty, before it overpowers me any longer. I want to do the things I want to do before I die. But even if I did, would that actually remove my fear of death? I'd want more, and more, and more. There's no end to human desire, yet there is clearly an end to human life. The Buddha says all life is suffering because all we do is desire. Well, I desire not to die, but that won't make it so. So we should be more like the Buddha, and we should be more like Christ, and accept our fate: that one day we will die, and even though it may be preceded by a glorious life, the world will move on. As Robert Frost so famously said about life, "It goes on." As John Keats so beautifully and concisely expressed in his epitaph, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water."

And so Virginia Woolf committed suicide and so Earnest Hemingway committed suicide, and so many others have committed suicide, who's names we no longer remember, who's names we can never locate again; they are gone, and in time, will be forgotten. Everyone who has died, will die, has been born, or will be born, will be forgotten in eternity. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed: Hemingway and Woolf and all the Popes and all the kings and all the peasants are gone, but their atoms are not, and even though that doesn't mean we live forever, it demands the question: were we really ever here, wherever here is, to begin with?

We are no more infinite than a ham; we are no less infinite than a ham.

I came from brilliancy
And return to brilliancy.
What is this?
Kaa!

--The Last Poem of Hoshin, taken from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compliled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

Another list, another zen story, a mess of things

A list of things I'm excited for in 2012:
--I'd be lying if I said turning twenty-one was not my most anticipated event of the next year. I guess you know where my priorities are now.
--Finally transferring out of community college and into a university.
--People will finally stop talking about 2012 Mayan Doomsday.
--I wasn't very excited for the previous two films, but I'm actually looking forward to watching The Dark Knight Rises this summer.
--[insert other stuff later]


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Muddy Road

"Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
'Come on, girl,' said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. 'We monks don't go near females,' he told Tanzan, 'especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?'
'I left the girl there,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?'"

From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki.


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It was like 75 degrees today.

Today's sunset was pink and very, very nice. It was striped with a light blue, like early afternoon. It looked like candy. Someone far away was witnessing that azure sky appear in the East, while my sky turned dark from the East.

Hahahaha! I just realized someone could describe something being in the East, but to me, it could be in my West, and that they're both so freaking arbitrary, it shouldn't even matter. Just like how people think the Earth is upside-down if Australian is 'on-top' of a map. I'd love to buy one of those 'upside-down' maps.

I feel like I'm wasting away from doing nothing all day. I sleep in until noon, and then go on the internet until one in the morning, then repeat the process all over again. This is not a life in fulfillment, I can tell you that. I can't wait to go back to school. I can't wait to become a big-shot whatever it is I am.

I'm constantly worried and scared by the never-ending stream of coming events.

What am I even talking about? What am I trying to say?

Surprisingly, this whole thing sums up how I feel at the moment.

Christmas and Stuff

For Christmas this year, my family and I went to my mother's cousin's (first cousin once removed, I think) apartment. It's in this huge apartment complex that's shaped like a square doughnut, and in the middle is a pool surrounded by two clean-cut lawns.

My cousins and I played Just Dance 2 on Wii. Are you the kind of person who's not afraid to make themselves look stupid? I am, and I am not. As anyone who's ever briefly met me can attest to, I'm quite shy. I'm also quite socially inept, meaning I don't know how to treat other people in social situations. I've gotten better since high school, but it's still difficult for me to hold one-on-one conversations with strangers, or generally people I'm not very familiar with. Anyway, with that aside, I can sometimes act like an idiot. I can totally shed any regard for shame and dance like a lunatic in front of my cousins (who I'm not exactly close with). I'm either on or off, I guess.

Sometimes I question whether I'm a leader or a follower. But then, why can't you be both? A leader one day, a follower the next.

Often I think about what kind of father I may be some day. I want to be like my dad. I want to have the kind of life experience he has. Maybe all older people have that level of experience, but not all of them learn from their experiences. But to have more life experience, I need to, uh, experience more of life, don't I? Sometimes I think I'm too well-behaved for my own good; I play things too safe.

I think a good father does whatever he can for his children, and I think one day I'll be willing to do that. That one day, however, is nowhere near today.

Brief Thoughts and Questions on Humanity

I was just thinking that if I could, I'd like to travel for a living. Not tourist travel where there is always a barrier between observer and observed, but a world traveler where I assimilate into different groups of people. Like a monk or something. I've never felt an Us and Them mentality--not until recently. And I feel that's true for a lot of young people until we're told by older generations that, This is how 'They' do it, This is how 'We' do it. People have different ways of wanting or achieving the same goals. Is a Canadian baby any different than an American baby? French to Brazilian? European to Asian? We're so mind-locked into thinking each other a different species that we don't see each other as related.

But then again, maybe we are too distant to care anymore. People are so damn concerned about themselves--including myself--that we ignore others. Maybe the world is too big to care about anyone else. You know, it's like how people lived in tribes and protected their tribes from other tribes and killed other people they considered enemies. Now, we have countries and continents, and so we kill other people because they're trying to hurt us, or in extreme cases, because we want what they have. So where does it end? What does it mean to be human, to act humanely, or to behave like an animal? Humans are animals; perhaps, when we separate ourselves into Us and Them, we're only doing what our instincts tell us to do--the animal instincts.

However, no other animal has ever built a hospital, or performed open heart surgery, or air-shipped millions of pounds of food to the other side of the world, or opened schools, or kept written records, or harnessed electricity, or done any of the wonderful things only humans are capable of. So then, is there a line between human and animal? Can we become more than our natural instincts and let go of our own self-interest for the sake of a more harmonious world?

List and Ghosts

Things I'd like to have happen by forty:
--marriage
--possibly children; if not by forty, then I probably won't ever have children
--a stable income that could support my wife and I; it wouldn't matter to me if my wife worked or made more money than me, as long as she doesn't choose her career over our marriage
--a house
--sense of individual accomplishment through my work
--a consistent way of helping other people
--plenty of time spent abroad
--this is not a comprehensive list

I don't know what else to blog about. I'm typing as I think.

Do you believe in ghosts? I don't, but I know a lot of people who do. Their reasons are mainly personal stories of unexplainable things happening around them. For instance, a have a friend who believes there is a ghost-woman in a white dress who walks his street every night at 2 am. Not a homeless person; a transparent, ethereal apparition that appears and disappears every night at the same time. I have another friend who thought his house was haunted because he's heard strange sounds like footsteps or doors closing. They know I don't believe, so sometimes when they're done telling me one of these stories, they look at me and go, Well, how do you explain that? And my answer nearly every time is, I can't. I can't disprove that a ghost slammed a door in your house or walks around in the middle of the night; I CAN, however, say it's very unlikely the kind of thing you think of as ghosts--namely, a human being in spirit form who can somehow physically manipulate objects--are responsible for these incidents. If you were raised in a culture that believed 3-inch-tall invisible elves did all these unaccountable things, then you'd blame them for scaring you at night. I suppose that still doesn't explain why strange things occur, but, culturally, it's just as reasonable. Maybe there are other-worldly forces that cause these things, but calling these forces ghosts is over-simplifying the problem, and leads to more fear rather than more understanding.

Ego

Today I watched football and played Xbox and used the internet. I'm kind of afraid that's what I'll be doing the next two weeks because I don't have school. I should definitely read more, and I should definitely write more--in my diary, at least. At least I'm putting time aside to write here.

One day I'll have to experience snow.

There was this guy in my fiction writing class who would be on his computer whenever somebody was reading their story. It's rude to expect people to listen to you, and then ignore those people when you're supposed to listen to them. Did he think he was better than everybody? Did he think no one was worth listening to? Sure, there were people in the class who weren't good writers, but why ignore them? Is his ego that big?

I have a big ego. I freely admit that. I'm trying to cure it, but it's difficult for me. I'm always comparing myself to everyone else.

One of the reasons I love my dad is because he has almost no ego. It's so wonderful because he doesn't belittle people and even tries to understand them. I can correct him without fear of reprisal. He admits when he's wrong too. He's self-sacrificing and honorable. He sees every one as equal. He doesn't considered himself above anyone, nor anyone above him. That's the way we should be. That's the kind of person I want to be.

This comes to mind:

"I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting--it is, it is....Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."--Franny by J.D. Salinger

My Own Hero Journey

Golfing was fantastic. I did much better than I thought I would.

What is this feeling inside of me that wants new experiences and adventure and originality? On one hand, it may be the natural growth from childhood to adulthood: the search for a new place and identity in the world. On the other, it may be that I'm tired of living the same old boring life and want something to wake me from this monotony. You can call my old life my childhood, and you can say I want to become a mature, independent adult. Maturation is a process; it's not a magic trick, and it doesn't happen overnight. In our society, there are a few rites of passage that mark maturation: obtaining a drivers license; graduating high school and/or college; living on one's own; getting a job; getting married. Many of these assume maturation because, each to some degree, they levy responsibility on us. But not all drivers are the same, and not all marriage are consummated between responsible individuals. So even if we do all these things, that doesn't mean we're mature adults. Is that okay? Can we survive adulthood without self-dependence and will and solemnity? No, we cannot. So what happens to the person that passes through these stages, but never grows up? I guess what I'm really looking for is a threshold to break into adulthood. But I don't want to be a full adult yet. I'm caught in the middle, somewhere between responsibility and play. That is what irritates me.

The only time I've ever touched snow was when my family and I went up into the mountains when I was seven or eight. Other than that one experience, no, I've not dealt with snow. I could have lived my whole life up to now without seeing snow--and I've never seen snowfall. But why is that so surprising? I don't think many people in tropical regions have seen snow either.