friend is only one letter away from fiend 

at the edge of a

one thousand

foot cliff

arms out wide

winds in all directions

my dad threw a chair in front of me today and yelled to my face, "you ruined my life!", and recently i've been wanting to warn him about alzheimer's

eating wheat causes an allergic reaction ?



some guy at Tassajara says to me: 
"Just look at you, you're a high guy!"




"Benzos definitely work"
yeah and they definitely have side effects 

andrew links me to an awesome russian monastery video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5apoJAsImg

my response : monk makari is the most interesting one

andrew's reply : he's trying to restore coherence to a failed proxy system . .


my further comment : his fellow monks are just reciting scripture

grandparents 

first one mother's side, second father's side

wherever the crowd goes, i don't go

andrew linked this recently on reddit, what an amazing read !






long island, the shithole capital of suburbia







one time when i was younger i hopped on the piano and played keys to my liking, it was nice sounding and i had a vision of of dolphins jumping in and out of water
my mother liked the sound and asked me to play again, problem was it couldn't be played again, the moment was gone

eat like shit = feel like shit





I don't remember if Brad Warner was working while at Tassajara

If he wasn't I can understand why he goes back, very beautiful there, big mountains with walking trails along the sides of them

I was looking at "Zen In America" interviews and saw one with Greg Fain, best part of the video was when they stopped shooting him and started showing views in Tassajara

my favorite times while staying there was when i'd have enough time to walk alongside the mountains

time was short because i was doing the work- practice exchange, they'd really put you to work !





sort of upsetting that these retreat centers have nothing for me

had some steak tonight and felt my brain working better than normal, what will it be like when i have brain to eat?

it hasn't been a year since i started following andrew's advice and i have had crazy improvement, if i didn't get his shikantaza advice i would still be a grunt zenner, trying to stop my thoughts with will ! 

Danxia Zichun "... forgetting instantly everything you remembered in the past ..." I understand where this "stopping thoughts" idea comes from, but it can not be forced, it's spontaneous 

"... you cannot prepare by studying sutras and teachings or by reciting from your zen notes.  nor can you prepare through artifical cleverness ..."

but ewk told me i could understand by studying, lol! nope, and artificial cleverness, the buji way ?

these sort of experiences can't be forced, but i can prepare myself with meditation. charles bukowski spoke about not leaving his room for 6 days, staying in bed for 6 hours straight

isaac newton never married or had children

the portuguese and spanish call me "mudo" (mute), i just don't like talking very much, what gets them so upset about that ?

im a mutant of chernobyl 

Marina Abromovic Residency Program

number 2 reminds me of taking the SAT, pointless

Roll The Dice

                 Charles Bukowski

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

i was about 13, and my mother was planning for me to go to church later that sunday which i despised

i called her on her cell phone and told her i did not want to go because i did not believe in jesus, her reaction was something like "WHAT?!"

i said i do not believe in god, or jesus, i do not think they are real

she started crying, screaming that i will be going to church later

i kept on saying jesus and god weren't real and they never existed

later i never saw my brother so angry, he yelled louder than ever about how could i say that to her

it was true though, i never thought jesus was a real person, or god

she didn't speak to me for a couple days, i didn't go to church though, never again

a philogynist by nature, i have always preferred the company of women over men

bach Ich Ruf Zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ

cesar franck sonata for violin and piano in a major

clay colored kitchen

they're talking about a vacuum
and i can't stop staring
at the sun setting
filling the room
with a golden sunlight

      this was in portugal when i was young, they were talking about how the vacuum was broken and they needed to use the warranty to get someone there to fix it. i was a bit upset because i didn't want anyone else to be there, so young my dislike of people manifested
      what was special about that moment was how the sunlight was shining in


i have these certain memories from my life that are vivid, somewhere in my teens i said to myself "i'm going to forget most of these things" and i did because my memory was failing, thanks to andrew and his health info these memories are coming back


flickr album 11/6/2015
will i ever take as nice of photos as rob?



when i first watched these two videos months ago, i was bewildered
lars von trier interview
andrew's black stream poem

what caused my confusion? and why is it that now i watch these videos and i see two men so human, much more than i?
is it that i have a background? and a background in meditation? i think so
what's incredible is the density with andrew levin, lars von trier, virginia woolf, charles bukowski
it seems almost endless, i keep looking and reading these people and it's never ending, there is so much to them. they aren't the normality that can be read so easily, there's decades of work with all of these people


where will i be in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?

i say: I didn't know what silent illumination was really

andrew replies: the real shikantaza churns yourself, for just about everybody this state/condition is to be strenuously avoided so they create third party systems like "silent illumination" and "koan study" to proxy their time so they themselves are never subjected to the trauma of C H A N G E

these two poems of andrew levin are the ones that have stayed in my memory

                                                                 "a starlit night

no moon

across the paddock

the sound of cattle

working the fences"

"the sun

sparkling on the sea

has no room for men labouring on it's shores

hush

and listen to the clear stream

flowing over mossy banks"