Before the beginniNG [sequential uploads(2'nd) ed.]

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before

THE BEGINNI NG Chris Stephens

Academic Purvey The gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word WAS God.” In Buddhism, it is common to hear the saying, “the whole universe is made of mind.” Both of those sayings are fine, I suppose. But what I want to know, then, is what about before the beginning? What then, is mind made out of? In the beginning, what language was the word in, and how did God speak it with no tongue? These types of questions – about before the beginning, words without language, and speaking with no tongue, are the essence of Koan practice. Koan, in Korea Gong-an or Hwadu, is a branch of Zen popularized by Master Rinzai (In Chinese, Linji) during the 800s in China, although this method has been used by most of the famous sages throughout history. The Mahayana (read: Zen) view on this, is that this type of transmission has no beginning, and as such will never end. And yet in our world, it began when Buddha held up a flower and Mahakashypa smiled. Jesus saying to let the dead bury the dead, or to follow him when he has no place to go, are also indicative of this method. As the monk that introduced me to this style many years ago likes to say, “Jesus’ enlightenment, and Buddha’s enlightenment, they are neither the same nor are they different.” With that said, there are plenty of schools of Zen that do not participate in Koan practice, or at most view them as a side curiosity to study after the main practice has been done. Soto and Pure Land are like this. Soto, started by Dogen after he practiced with monks in China, almost as a reaction to Koan practice at the time, focuses on Shikintaza, “Just Sitting.” Just Sitting is exactly what it sounds like. You assume the posture of meditation, and...well...just sit. Whatever comes up you neither avoid nor pursue until the time allotted for meditation has completed. This is the natural result of counting breath when people are introduced to meditation. First every breath is counted, then every other breath is counted. Then counting itself is dropped and there is just focus on the breath, and finally, even focusing on the breath is dropped. Concentration is developed enough to just “rest” in it, without

focusing on any one particular thing. On the topic of posture, some are better than others for meditation. The traditional full lotus with someone's legs completely pretzel-ed up is ideal. Most western people cannot do it. I cannot do it. In good conditions, I use what is called a seiza bench. In the last year and a half I just lay down most of the time. Laying down is absolutely the worst possible position for doing meditation, without question, and should always been done as a last resort. If you have to, so be it, but seriously, any other position is better than laying down. There are millions of styles of meditation – I have no experience with the vast majority of them. Koan and Shikantaza are two that I do, so those are the two I focus on. Within Koan practice, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, or maybe even an infinite amount, depending on how a person wants to classify things, of cases to work on. The two most famous cases, generally speaking, are Mu, and one hand clapping. Mu goes as follows:

A student asked master Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?” Master Joshu replied, “Mu.” (無, 무, Mu).

Mu is hard to express in English, as there is no single word that has the exact same usage. There may not even be a combination of words that have the same usage. It is often translated as “no” or “not” or “without” or [to negate] or “nothing” or….None of these words are used in the various ways Mu is. To anyone reading that knows or has studied Korean, 없다 is the Korean equivalent, at least in meaning and usage. When I first heard this Koan, I had not studied Korean, nor gotten a feel for how 없다 is used in order to get an intuitive understanding of what it is, so my question naturally was “does the definition of the word matter?” Unfortunately, and this will leave most readers even more perplexed than trying to understand the meaning, the answer is fully yes, and fully no. Yes, the definition, and the way the word is used, are of the utmost importance, otherwise Joshu would have

said something else. Also, no. The definition does not matter a single bit, and not understanding it at all will not in the slightest hinder one’s ability to practice it. The second Koan that is famous, although this one is famous in popular culture at least partially thanks to The Simpsons, goes

“Two hands clapping makes a sound. What is the sound of one hand [clapping]”

I included the brackets because, and this is especially true of Korean, although my understanding is that it is also common in Chinese and Japanese, obvious parts of sentences, as well as connecting words/phrases, are often dropped when communicating. The original koan does not contain the word clapping a second time; I have included it along with this explanation in order to avoid any confusion for native English speakers that have no experience with those languages. This koan is a bit more straight forward. There is no difficult to express linguistic function as there is with Mu, it is just asking, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Like asking, “What about before the beginning” or how to follow Jesus when he has no place to go. So what then, is the point of all of this? What is it that is gained and lost through this practice? The reader will probably not like the answer. There is nothing gained. There is nothing lost. But at the same time, the whole world, the whole universe is gained, and lost. This unending paradox is koan practice. it includes both sides - this and that, gain and loss, nothing and everything. Is it confusing? Well, it is confusing, but it is also not confusing at all. As concentration is developed over many, many hours of continuously returning to whatever koan a person is working on, the answer becomes obvious as all opposites: gain, loss, you, me, us, them, so on and so forth are all just different concepts that arise in a never ending mind-stream, and it is the nature of this mind-stream which is being referred to.

I want to touch on, quickly, what I mean by mind-stream, as I mention this a lot. The typical human experience is one of continuous experience. There is this I that is doing things, that thinks of this and that, and it is continuous. There are no gaps in the default human experience. When someone starts doing meditation, one of the first things that occurs is something that is known colloquially as the "waterfall effect," where the sheer number of thoughts that are happening starts to become apparent. It is called the "waterfall effect" because it is almost like standing under a waterfall, the deluge makes you soaking wet. Many people say when they first start doing meditation and they start to recognize the sheer volume of thoughts that come up, that they are completely overwhelmed and cannot believe that has actually been how things have always been, their entire life. But it has, and will continue in exactly that way indefinitely. That default way human beings experience things is not actually how experience works, however. What is actually going on, some thought arises, and it ceases. There is a small gap, then another thought arises, somehow related, sometimes directly sometimes tangentially, to the previous one. Then there is another gap. For this process to complete once, a though arising and ceasing, and then the gap (in Zen terms, the thought arising is form, and the gap is emptiness) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 seconds. probably about 1 1/2. This happens continuously all day long, even in sleep. Dreams are experienced the exact same way. Think of it like this: Default human experience: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is actually going on: -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.The gaps between the thoughts are indescribable. That doesn't mean they are fantastic or extra special or anything like that. Or even terrible, for that matter. Neither good nor bad applies. But since the mind has ceased any attempt to label it obviously will not work, as any kind of categorization whatsoever is something that arises as a thought. From the highest pleasure to the worst suffering, the

mind-stream operates like this. But be careful. While the word Zen can be more accurately translated as concentration, concentration is not concentration. Concentration is just another idea in this unending stream of mental images, memories, and sensory experiences. Talking about concentration just means, for the most part, it isn’t concentration in the way Zen uses the word. Concentration, or Zen, doesn’t even allow for someone to be stuck on the idea of concentration. No mind moment whatsoever is allowed to be the point. So while in instructions for meditation, it is common to say things like “develop your concentration,” this is just a helpful thing to say for people that have no experience with the practice. I am not aware of any koan at all that even mentions concentration. They are always about daily life situations or questions/answers between people. Historically in the Patriarchal Koan tradition, koans are how the depth of concentration someone has developed are tested and examined. If concentration has been developed, and as a result someone has recognized the nature of the mind-stream moment to moment, it can be expressed through everyday interactions without effort. As someone practices for more and more time, the myriad ways of expressing it in daily life itself becomes unending. Every aspect of life becomes a chance to share this point. When the Buddha gave transmission to Mahakashyapa, he held up a single flower, and Mahakashypa smiled. In this situation, what was transmitted? Buddha gave Mahakashyapa nothing, he held up a flower. And Mahakashyapa, having simply smiled, received nothing. Yet Mahakashyapa became the first patriarch in a lineage that continues to today. Originally I wanted this to be about Zen, and Zen alone. But at this point, I can’t separate the practice from the rest of my life. If I want to write about Zen, I have to write about my life. If I want to write about my life, I have to write about Zen. These two things, my life, and Zen meditation practice, which were at one point two separate things, are no longer separate from each other in any meaningful way.

Before proceeding further, I want to make two things clear: I am not a monk. My lifestyle is very similar to a monastic lifestyle, but I am not one. Within the Zen tradition, I have also never recieved inka, which is a Japanese word that means something to the effect of "You have noticed what the Buddha noticed, you are authorized to teach to other people if you so wish." I probably would by now, but a young woman insisted on kicking me out of the group I had been practicing with for more than 15 years a while ago, which I get into in a later chapter. I am not completely free of blame on that point, but even by monastic rules I should not have been removed. Anyways, I don't really see the point of either of them - I keep what is essentially a monk meditation retreat schedule every day, and I am always trying to share the results of meditation practice with other people, even if they don't notice. The idea that I need to have some recognition from other people in order to do that is kind of ridiculous to me, so I don't care about it in the slightest. Other people may care though, and so in the interest of full disclosure I am including it. I don't even think of myself as a meditator, guru, or spiritual person. I just consider myself homeless. I am not a Zen Master, which has a specific meaning within Zen. 15,000+ hours of meditation are my credentials, take it or leave it.

the SON and the

Moo-n

When I was tagging videos Before the Beginning of this book, as a rule, it is up to each individual to figure out why they got the specific song and/or the specific timing. That is...just how the process of Koan-style Zen works. One thing I will comment on, is how, at least in the nativeEnglish speaking world, God's plan is continually exposed and revealed to us. Similarly to Zen and the insight that comes from it not being dependent on any given person, the conditions of our lives are enough to discern this. Specifically, there are a number of times where images of the Sun and the Moon were used. It was not accidental. This may work in other languages other than English, however for this specific instance I am not sure it can. The sound of "sun" and the sound of "son" (as in, "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." are the same - the way we typically differentiate

between the two sounds is either through written language or the context of conversation. Similarly, the word Moon contains the sound of "Mu," to the point where the "n" at the end of the word can be dropped without hampering someone's ability to understand the word. One of the songs I used the most, Brain damage/eclipse, after listening to it countless times, I cease to hear it as anything other than the "Dark Side of the Moo." This When Jesus does finally return, this phrase will have some kind of unique significance, especially since this phrase works solely in English - the Son and the Moo-n. The Son and the Mu-n are celestial bodies - heavenly bodies - another phrase that only works in English

♥ Sutra

Within Mahayana Buddhism, of which Zen is a part, there exists a whole extra series of sutras called the Prajnaparamita sutras. Prajnaparamita is a fancy Buddhist way of saying something to the effect of "The highest wisdom." I'm not sure what it literally translates as, but "The highest wisdom" is a reasonable way to understand it. Within these sutras, there is one specifically that Zen singles out (sorry everyone, it isn't the Kama Sutra; this is far more boring) as what is probably the most important sutra in all of Buddhism. Now, that may seem like no big deal - there has to be one sutra that is the most important right? Well yes, that is true. However, while that is correct, what the Heart Sutra essentially does is completely negate all other Buddhist Sutras. It also is addressed to and spoken by Avalokitesvara (관세음보살 in Korean), not to Buddha. So the most important Sutra is the one that basically denies the entirety of Buddhism and does not involve Buddha at all. Very Zen. The text of the Heart Sutra (which is all of a page long. Most Buddhist sutras are much longer) is as follows: The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion From the deep practice of Prajnaparamita

Perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas And delivered all beings from their suffering. O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness, Emptiness no other than form. Form is emptiness, emptiness form. The same is true of feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness. O Sariputra, all dharmas are empty. They are not born nor annihilated. They are not defiled nor immaculate. They do not increase or decrease, So in emptiness no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness. No eye, ear, nose, tongue body, mind; No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or objects of mind, No realm of sight; no realm of consciousness. No ignorance, nor extinction of ignorance, No old age and death, nor extinction of them. No suffering, no cause of suffering No cease of suffering, no path to lead out of suffering; No knowledge, no attainment, no realization For there is nothing to attain. The Bodhisattva holds onto nothing but Prajnaparamita Therefore his mind is clear of any delusive hindrance. Without hindrance there is no fear, Away from all perverted views he reaches final Nirvana. All Buddhas of past, present, and future Through faith in Prajnaparamita Attain to the highest perfect enlightenment. Know then the Prajnaparamita is the great dharani, The radiant peerless mantram, the utmost supreme mantram, which is capable of allaying all pain, This is true beyond all doubt. Proclaim now the highest wisdom, the Prajnaparamita: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

There are plenty of different ways the Heart Sutra has been translated from its original form in Chinese (from a quick Google search, it was written sometime between 100-400 A.D.), but the above translation is the one that I have been chanting for the last ~20 years. Some are better than others, but in general if it is widely used there has been some agreement by people that have been practicing Zen for long periods of time that the general point has been maintained. There are a few words that are not

typical English words that I want to define first -

Skandhas - form, feeling, perception, impulse, and consiousness. Basically the stuff that makes us believe there is an unchanging "I" that is driving this car. There probably is a driver, but it isn't what what normal human experience leads us to believe it is. Sariputra - This is a name; Sariputra was a monk. Emptiness - All things are composed of things that are not it. There is no actual thing that all of the sub-parts make outside of the sub-parts themselves. The sub-parts themselves are also like this. It's turtles all the way down. dharmas - Things. Stuff. Nirvana - Heaven, basically. Not exactly, but it is close enough for the sake of this chapter Dharani - some kind of magical protection spell. No really, that's what it is. Mantra - basically a Dharani. I'm not really sure what the difference is between the two, to be honest. "Om Mani Padme Hum" is the really famous one. Most people, even if they aren't Buddhist or even interested in religious stuff have at least heard that. So with the basic background explained, and with all of the weird Buddhist words defined, I want to go through this and give some insight (some. I'm not the Buddha, my understanding is not perfect, but it is good enough to be useful to other people) into what exactly this page long thing is trying to say. The first thing, which is kind of stated, but not really, is that this sutra is written (it was done orally at the time) from the perspective of someone that is fully, completely enlightened [ From the deep practice of Prajnaparamita Perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas And delivered all beings from their suffering.]. It

is said in Buddhism that when Buddha "woke up," "got enlightenment," whatever, all

other beings did the same. That is what is meant. Avalokitesvara, when doing meditation for a million, billion, trillion years finally got full enlightenment, and as such, the distinction between Avalokitesvara and all other beings was completely eliminated. When all beings woke up with the

Buddha in the traditional sutras, and here with Avalokitesvara in the heart sutra, it is referring to the fact that even the distinction between you and me, us and them, whatever, is completely and irreversibleyeliminated. It was actually never there to begin with, so it's more the recognition that it has always been that way. Why we don't experience it as such is beyond me. As such, when someone is fully enlightened, so is everyone else. Now that doesn't mean that we are all one. I mean, it kind of does, but not in the way new age spiritual people like to say. It is also not a belief, but the actual experience of the person. If you and me are one, you couldn't even say "you and me are one" because it still includes the perspective of you and me and are one. It still includes that we are different (you and me) and the same (are one). The perception that there is even an I and a you to begin with that can even be one is already wrong. Following that, comes the phrase "Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. form is emptiness, emptiness form." I think of the entire sutra, this is the sentence that is both the most important and gets the most attention. While this is focused on form and emptiness, what this essentially means is that all opposites arise and depend on each other. They are inseparable. They aren't quite the same thing, black is black and white is white. But there is no way to have black without white. As soon as white exists, so does black. One of the few things I don't like about this translation (This is the one used at the BZC) is that is says "no other than". There are a number of other translations that say "does not differ from," which to me seems like a better way of saying what is attempting to be said. It's not that they are the exact same thing - one opposite is one way and the other opposite is the other way. But because they cannot exist independently it isn't like they are different, either. It's a middle ground (Buddhism is often called "The middle way") between the two extremes of the same and different. The next section says that all dharmas are empty, and then starts listing a bunch of things which are opposites of each other. Above I wrote that opposites arise together - they aren't exactly the same thing, but they don't really differ from each other either. In the Korean text, this is indicated in a

way that is never really maintained in English:

더럽지도 깨끗하지도 않으며, 늘지도 줄지도 아느니라.

The bolded letters 도 are a way in Korean of saying something to the effect of "these things, taken as a set (a pair in this case, since there are two)." or "These things, together." When this is read in Korean, it is obvious that these opposites have to be considered together, inseparably. I have never read a translation in English that expresses this explicitly as such. I have no idea why. Next, as per the definition, dharmas is a fancy buddhist word for "things." All things, both subjective experience and objective experience of the world, exist by means of a bunch of things that are not it, and there is no actual thing that is separate from all these subparts. At least not in the way we typically think of it. Maybe not at all, but I am not sure one way or another on that point. This is basically a rehash of "Form does not differ from emptiness," just using different things. Then it goes on to negate all of the human sense organs and their associated senses. Both of them have to be included, because like the opposites above, the sense organ and the sense itself are dependent on each other. Which doesn't mean that eyes and ears, etc., can't exist independently corpses have sense organs and have no senses. But if there is a subjective experience of a sense, at least with things that have physical bodies, there MUST 100% of the time be a sense organ it is paired with. It finishes with "No realm of sight, No realm of consciousness," and to be honest, I have no idea why realm of sight is singled out here instead of the other senses. I assume it is because we as human beings associate our vision with that which is the outside world much more so than the rest of the senses, which is the opposite of consciousness, that which is the subjective experience. I am not 100% certain that is why those two are used, however, and it is just my best guess and what feels correct to my intuition. Especially when it comes to Buddhist stuff, my intuition is correct far, far more often than not.

The next two sections really should be taken as just one. I'm not sure why they are separate in the translation above. Ignorance in this case, and in general in Buddhism, is ignorance of how experience arises from moment to moment. Of what exactly experience is. I talk about this in a later chapter, about how there is this assumption that experience is created by this body, and "me", and how it isn't actually the case. Once this mistaken understanding is seen through, uprooted, whatever someone wants to call it, birth and death (and old age), also cease to exist. The thing that is actually creating experience moment to moment has never been born, and as such cannot get old and cannot die. Recognizing the nature of what is creating experience also eliminates all suffering. It eliminates the entirety of the Buddhist project, because the Buddhist project is simply how to recognize the nature of the thing which creates experience. Once that nature is recognized, any suffering, stress, unpleasantness whatsoever not only ceases to exist, but never existed to begin with. As such, there is nothing to attain. The thing (in Buddhism, it is called Mind with a capital M. It isn't different from mind with a small m, but the recognition of it is totally different. Kind of like being in a room that is completely dark and a room that is completely lit. The stuff in the room hasn't changed, but at the same time it has completely changed) that experiences stress and suffering and what not cannot stress and cannot suffer, nor could it ever. It isn't possible. It can't even attain anything. Despite the fact that it is continuously creating myriad experiences 24/7, including stress, suffering, harming and being harmed, the thing itself can't actually stress, suffer, harm, or be harmed. Following that is "The Bodhisattva holds on to nothing but prajnaparamita." It doesn't say the Bodhisattva holds onto nothing, it says nothing BUT prajnaparamita. Nothing is just another idea, another concept in the mind-stream. In a certain way, so is prajnaparamita. But in this sutra, it is talking about the actual wisdom developed, not the idea of it. It isn't really possible with language, outside of koans, to directly point to wisdom, so they use the word "highest wisdom" with the idea that even though "highest wisdom" is just a concept, what it is trying to refer to is not. There is a common saying within Zen that all of Buddhism is just the a finger pointing to the moon; what is

being referenced, even though it can't really be captured with language is the important thing, and while the language used itself is important - this thing and not that thing was said by some ancient master - it isn't something to get caught up on or place undue importance on. When someone has developed wisdom to the point of final, total enlightenment, A.K.A. prajnaparamita, certain things can no longer happen, called here as hindrances. There are five of them: sensory desire, ill-will, laziness (more formally called sloth and topor), restlessness/worry, and doubt. When those things have been eliminated due to developed concentration, it is impossible for fear to arise. I'm not sure why fear is singled out here, like sight was singled out above, nor do I have an intuitive sense on the matter to even speculate. The final line, "away from all perverted views, he reaches final nirvana," just means what I've already written - when someone recognizes what is actually going on moment to moment, when someone recognizes what is actually creating experience, they are enlightened. Perverted in this case is just another way to say "wrong." The final section is saying that developing the concentration/wisdom to the utmost is the greatest protection someone can have. It is even called a dharani, which is basically a magical protective spell. The utmost wisdom is basically protection from anything that can possible harm someone. Which doesn't mean that someone can't be harmed, but that even if they are, the thing that is actually creating experience is still just as perfect and whole as it always was and always will be. Any suffering that someone experiences in daily life can be resolved through developing concentration/wisdom to the utmost it can be developed. The final line, "this is true beyond all doubt" is pretty self explanatory - I don't think I need to go into any more detail than that. Why concentration does these things, I have no idea. Why it is so difficult for human beings to develop concentration, I also have no idea. Buddhism, and Zen, don't really deal much with the "why" of things very much. Once concentration has been developed, the answers to the "why" questions someone has, if they have them, will eventually be satisfactorily resolved. The general attitude towards the "why" of things in Buddhism is that it is irrelevant: regardless of *WHY* these things are

the way they are, and regardless of *WHY* these things operate the way they do doesn't really matter all that much. They are the way they are, they operate the way they do, and we have to figure out what to do with the situation. The elimination of stress and suffering are the primary target of Buddhism. There is a somewhat famous sutra where someone is shot with an arrow, and instead of having someone else pull it out, they want to know about the person that shot the arrow first. Intellectual conjecture doesn't really help with the overall problem, so it is not seen as important. There are even a series of questions in traditional Buddhist sutras that Buddha would refuse to answer, and all of them are related to intellectual conjecture about why things exist as they do, going as far as to state

"Whoever speculates about these things would go mad & experience vexation"

In general, Buddhism does not care much about the "why" of things. The "why" can be answered through sitting practice if someone does it for long enough. All someone has to do is become a Buddha (or phrased a way that is more accessible to western people versed in Christianity - "All someone has to do is become God"). No big deal. The last section "Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" is one of the few mantras (it may be the only one I know of, thinking about it) that has a meaning associated with the sound. It means "beyong, beyong, totally beyond, to the other-side, enlightenment, hallelujah." Typically mantras do not have a meaning - there is some significance to the syllables pronounced in and of themselves. Historically, when mantras have gone from place to place, there is some variation of them due to sounds produced in the local language, but the overall "feel" to them remains the same. As an example in Korean, instead of "Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha" it is "Ah-che Ah-che para-ah-che para-sung-ah-che mo jee sa ba ha." Om mani padme hum is the same in English as it is in Korean as it is in nearly every other language I can think of. Nearly every language, and maybe even every language, on Earth contains the sounds necessary to say "Om mani padme hum," which also

happens to be one of the most significant mantras. There are an unbelievable amount of commentaries on the Heart Sutra, both from long term mediators and Buddhist scholars. Both from nearly 2,000 years ago and from today. When I say commentaries, I mean both short excerpts like I've done here, sometimes even shorter than what I've done here, and entire books dedicated to it. It is by far the most commonly chanted sutra in Zen, and probably in greater Mahayana Buddhism as a whole. I don't think I've written anything here that is unique to my understanding or that can't be found elsewhere, but it is so common and singularly important that I feel like I have to include it.

What About Before the Beginning (of Zen) something Of course, I’m talking about in my life, Zen has neither a starting nor an ending point. I’ve briefly touched on how things were awful at home, and awful at school, but I should go a bit more in depth so that it is obvious how these years shaped the next 20 (these years being those from ~7th grade until high school graduation) . In general while writing this, I have considered using people’s names, and then not using people’s names. By and large I have decided against it. Good managers at work will praise in public and chastise in private, and I think that is a good rule of thumb. There are some people, such as my mother and sister, that are named even without being named, as I only have one, and there isn’t really any way to anonymize that. Otherwise, the only person I have directly named so far, I think, is Pohwa Sunim, and that is solely because there is some benefit to hearing (I guess in this case, reading) monk (and nun) names. This is another one of those “I know this is the case, but if you want me to tell you exactly what the benefit is, I cannot.” So I’m going to do a bit of a compromise and use fake names, because I think names will be necessary in some capacity to keep who did what, where, and when, straight. I’ve thought about how to write this completely nameless, and I think it is more trouble than it is worth.

In general, in my life, I don’t talk about this kind of stuff. I do not see myself as a victim, and as I’ve said with numerous other situations, I would never have been able to stick with Zen to the point where I have if it wasn’t for all the terribleness. My life as it is, with my concentration as developed as it is, is far better than it could have ever been otherwise. Absolutely unequivocally. That being said, middle and high school left me an absolute mess of a human being. I basically could not function in the world. And even once I started to be able to function after years of sitting, the lingering effects made the things that most people do naturally, socially speaking, nearly impossible. Even today, I still have serious problems socially, all stemming from that period, it's just that it doesn’t matter anymore. I still for the most part stay to myself, I still don’t really hang out with people, I don’t date. But I don’t really want to anymore. Sitting is better in just about every way. To put this all in context, I grew up in a suburb (exurb is probably a better word to use) of Washington DC named Burtonsville. It’s about 15 miles to the DC line. Somehow, at some point, people were convinced that living in a giant house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by other giant houses in the middle of nowhere, with little to no public transportation, no entertainment, no easily accessible stores, etc., was a good idea. Burtonsville, Maryland, is the poster child for such a place. Technically it is about halfway between DC and Baltimore, and I’ve heard it said that means that people that live there get the best of both. I did not, and to this day, do not, see it that way. To me, it means you get the best of neither. There is nothing to do unless someone drives through 95 and 495/695 traffic to get into the city, and if you’ve ever lived around Baltimore or DC, it is obvious why that does not happen often. Other than having nothing to do, and nowhere to go, it means that you are utterly stuck with the people you live nearby, because the distances involved in going places are designed for cars, and preteens, young teenagers, and even some older teenagers, do not have cars. So if collectively, the entire town decides that it is ok to make life a living hell, there is not a single thing that can be done about it. I guess moving is an option, but if the only remaining parent is more interested in getting high

from overdosing on insulin than the wellbeing of their children, moving is not an option. My mother has never been a well liked person. From the few stories she told me about high school and her general childhood that I remember, she was always the unpopular girl, and didn't have many friends. At some point around when I started middle school, when she was around other parents and adults in our town, when they would speak ill of me, she thought that joining in with them and also speaking ill of me, along with her other general behavior, would cause her to be more well liked. It would cause her to fit in better with the other people her age. Of course, it did not work like that. I've said elsewhere that a large part of how moral cause and effect works is not just the action, is not just the intention, but the nature of the relationship between people the action takes place with. When a parent actively speaks ill of their own children to other people, especially when it is for the purpose of fitting in, other people will find it distasteful at the very least. Possibly even disgusting. That she was actively shit-talking her own child took a situation where she was not well liked and turned it into a situation where she was essentially hated. Of course, instead of evaluating her own behavior for reasons why people found it disturbing, she blamed me. Other people didn't like me, and they especially did not like her when she tried to fit in with them by also not liking me. The more she was hated and excluded from town events, the more she blamed me, and as I look back over the last 20 years, I can directly link the two concurrent events: everyone hating her more and more because they found her behavior abhorrent, and her hating me more and more because she blamed me for it. of the hundreds of times I saved her life when she was overdosing on insulin to get high, I don't know if she ever sincerely said thank you. It was my fault that she was driven to getting high by overdosing on insulin because the whole town hated her. That I was saving her life was irrelevant, because it was my fault (in her eyes) to begin with. Moving was what everyone in the town wanted us to do. At some point, a conclusion was drawn that nobody should ever say or do anything to help, because if someone did it might convince us to stay in Burtonsville instead of moving. Everyone sat by and did nothing for years, through daily near-death overdoses, because the only thing everyone in the town wanted was for

us to be gone. It would have been much easier to help. With regards to home life, I don’t know why people collectively decided that it was ok with regards to me and my sister, and I don’t know why nobody stepped in and helped. But absolutely nobody did, and everyone knew what was going on. I’m not joking about that last part - everyone in the neighborhood saw the ambulance pulling up daily because my mother was overdosing. Numerous times a week, for years. It was even a joke at the local firehouse. At family gatherings - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and whatever other holidays people would gather for, she would overdose. Nobody did a thing. At some point in high school, My sister called up my aunt. Well, we called her my aunt, but she was actually my sister and my Godmother, crying her eyes out, balling tears, begging for help, and the response was “Grow up.” Everyone in the neighborhood, and all local family members had seen with their own eyes what was going on, and none of them intervened. My actual aunt, my mother's sister, lived, depending on DC beltway traffic, 30-60 minutes away. She too knew what was going on, without any doubt, and also did nothing to help. I don't even need Weird Zen Stuff for this on the rare occasion we saw her, more often than not my mother would overdose on insulin and nearly go into diabetic comas. My aunt did not care. Which isn't to say that my mother never did anything good while I was growing up. When my father died, he had set up a trust fund so that we wouldn't have trouble with money and be able to go to college when we got older. When I turned 18, it was made available to me, and it was a good chunk of money - I don't remember exactly how much, but north of 100,000 dollars. She could have squandered it, spent it, or not been prudent with its investment. She did a good job, as far as I know, in seeing that it was well kept. By the time I got to be college age, I had so many problems that I couldn't make good use of it. I had tried going to college directly after high school, but it didn't work out for countless reasons. As I am trying to be honest in this, both about other people and about my own shortcomings, between the time I was 18 and I think 25 when it finally ran out, I did drink a lot of it away. If things had been a bit more typical during my middle and high school years, I would

have been set to go to whatever college I wanted, wherever I wanted, and to actually be able to enjoy the experience. Well, at least to the degree people enjoy college. In most cases, nobody is 100% bad, or evil, or harmful, and in the case they cause a lot of harm, they do at least some good along with the harm they cause. I would never have been able to get into meditation like I did, nor live at the Baltimore Zen Center with Sunim, nor go to Korea, if she didn't responsibly look after that money, and for that I am thankful. If I had been more responsible with it, when I finally did go to school in my later 20's, it without a doubt would have been much easier and less stressful. I don’t know why nobody intervened in school, either. In high school, someone had put laxatives in my food, making me shit myself in public in Ocean City, Maryland, earning me the nickname “shitbrick.” for a few years. If I ever tried to fight back, I would get jumped and beaten. I had no idea about the laxative until very recently, when I had to take them after spine surgery to counteract the pain medication, and it clicked. Most, if not all of my peers knew about it, and nearly all of them that knew found it hilarious. How it was kept from me until I figured it out myself nearly 20 years later is a mystery, given how teenagers gossip. More in depth, I think I should start in middle school, as that is when the overdosing started. The first time I remember coming home to my mother ODing was in 6th grade. My sister would have been in 8th grade, so we would have come home from school at the same time. I have no idea whether or not we called the EMTs, although I suspect we did. I don’t remember it happening much immediately after that, although it may have. 6th grade was still pretty “normal” by most standards. I wasn’t part of the cool kids crowd, but still had friends, and we hung out, went skateboarding, watched movies - did kid stuff. That all changed in 7th grade. By that time, the overdoses became a multiple times a week thing. At some point, either towards the end of 6th or the beginning of 7th, although I lean towards the end of 6th, I became friends with Alan. He sort of joined in the skateboarding group of people, and everything was good. Everyone got along, to the point that preteen kids do. There was bickering, and

fights sometimes, but everyone more or less found common ground and moved on. Until one time. One weekend, Alan and I went with my cousin (the same cousin that I spent the weekend in New York with. I’m not sure why terrible events in my life involve him) to Kings Dominion, a theme park in Virginia. That day, everything was fine. I had no idea anything was wrong. We had fun, went on rollercoasters, and in general had a good time. On Monday, however, all of a sudden all the people in the skateboarding group ceased to talk to me. For some reason, Alan decided that he was going to go out of his way to make me as miserable as possible, for as long as possible, and for the most part every single person in my grade went with it. There were a few exceptions, but by and large everyone I interacted with from that point on for the next two years hated me, and two years when you are 11 is a long time. Especially when there is no way to get away from the people that are actively making life miserable. I was purposefully excluded from everything, by nearly everyone. To this day, I have no idea why this happened. If I ever tried to stop it, it just became worse. This became obvious to me one day when for no reason, Alan came out of nowhere, in front of everyone, and slapped me across the face. Had I tried to fight back, I would have been jumped and beaten by everyone else watching. I knew then, at that instant, things had changed and there was absolutely no way of it returning to how it was. It was nothing I had done - I was friends with all these people previously, just a week or two or three before, and had done nothing to draw such ire. It wasn’t based on me, but their own ideas. I just happened to be the object on which their ideas fixated. I would go to school, take abuse and be humiliated by everyone, then come home to my mother nearly dying because she got high from when her sugar dropped (insulin dependent diabetes, purposefully injecting far too much insulin knowing the effect). As a group entity, they would harass me in school, order pizzas to my house I didn't order, harass me online, and even took over a website I had spent many hours creating. Alan liked a girl I talk about later that encouraged him to do it, for whatever reason, and he did it at least in part to impress her. There was no reason for any of this - by that, I mean I had never done anything to harm Alan, the girl he was trying to impress,

or any of the rest these people, they just really, really enjoyed making me as miserable as the possibly could for as much time as they possibly could. It was their hobby. This was about the time preteen boys and girls start having an interest in each other. Except in my case, because of the dynamic going on in the school, and the town in general, if I ever showed any interest in anyone, I was publicly humiliated for it. I know Alan was involved in some way in having the first girl I had a crush on turn me down. I'm certain they joked about slapping mu in the face in public while on the school bus back to her house. A simple no would have sufficed, and instead it became a giant running joke between everyone, except me. I mentioned that if I had done anything when he slapped me across the face, everyone else would have joined in and beat me. I know because it was something that had happened. This dynamic, of people not just not liking me, but having to have everyone else not like me too, continued for 20 years. Something interesting that I noticed while writing this - this girl was the only time in my entire life I had a crush on someone with blue eyes. Everyone since then, I'm fairly certain without exception, has had brown eyes. I have blue eyes, I don't know why I would be interested in someone else that has them too; if I want to see blue eyes, I can just look in the mirror. I've had conversations with people recently that if I ever met the girls I liked, found pretty, whatever, growing up, today, I doubt I would give a single one of them the time of day. After coming back from Korea, I went on a date once with a girl I had met in Organic Chemistry while I was studying at HCC - she had blue eyes. We went to a Korean restaurant, and I think she was so used to just being able to flash her pretty blue eyes and have guys swoon over her, that she actually got upset when it didn't work. This was another case of women that have no game that I could immediately tell was going to cause me problems. She literally got upset and jealous a few minutes later when I didn't care and was speaking to the waitress in Korean. The waitress was at least 10 years older than me and the conversation was entirely based around what we were ordering; I was not hitting on her or flirting. She became visibly irritated by the whole interaction. I don't think

we ever hung out again after that night. As I mentioned elsewhere, after I came back from Korea I by and large lost all interest in American women. I think this was the only time since I came back ~13 years ago I've even gave one a chance. My gut instinct, that she was going to cause me problems if we kept hanging out, also turned out to be correct. A year or two later, she had gotten engaged. Her fiance, although I don't know the motive behind this, ended up stabbing her to death, shooting their dog, and then committing suicide. When my intuition about someone tells me that there is something off about someone, or that they are going to cause me unwanted problems, it is usually correct. Not 100% correct like Weird Zen Stuff, but significantly, significantly more often than not. So much so that if I am wrong it genuinely surprises me. The other side of concentration is wisdom - I really dislike talking about this at all, because it sounds cliche, but as concentration develops so does one's "gut feeling" about people and situations. The more time spent developing concentration, the more accurate someone's intuition becomes. Like I just mentioned, by now it genuinely surprises me when I'm wrong. To be clear, I'm not hating on people with blue eyes. Having blue eyes doesn't make someone unattractive, it just isn't something that I personally go for. The American [male] fascination of a white, blonde haired, blue eyed woman holds absolutely no appeal to me. I have no idea if there is any significance to this, but she (the girl from middle school, not the one that was stabbed to death) is certainly the odd one out in any case (although I guess it could be said getting stabbed to death makes the other one the odd one out too). In the case it was found out by someone that I did have an interest in them, it became a running joke between them and their friends. Once I brought in a middle school year book to what I think was my 9th grade math class, although it may have been 10th, I'm not sure. Back in middle school I had a huge crush on one of the girls in my grade, and had circled her picture. Because I was 12 at the time, or something like that, and that's what 12 year old preteen boys do when they like a girl. When I realized other people wanted to look at it, I very quickly took a pen and crossed out her

picture a bunch of times, terrified of anyone finding out. She was in the class and saw it. So if you are reading this, remember the situation, and know who you are, sorry. It was what I thought was the best option at the time. It was to protect myself, and if it harmed you, I'm sorry. Even at home, anytime I showed any interest in girls from school, or even actresses in TV shows, my mother and sister would endlessly mock me. This dynamic continued throughout high school, and has affected my ability to date, and my general interactions with women my entire life. To this day I’ve never really had a girlfriend, although I’ve had a number of short flings, and an even larger number of one night stands. I was always embarrassed about this, which compounded the problems I already had. But then I developed jhana, and now I think of it as “lucky me.” I don't have a wife I have to keep happy, nor children I have to take care of. I can just sit all day, every day. I don’t typically quote Buddhist sutras (scripture), but I think for Jhana an official definition is relevant. For the first jhana, from the wikipedia page:

Separated (vivicceva) from desire for sensual pleasures, separated (vivicca) from [other] unwholesome states (akusalehi dhammehi, unwholesome dhammas[25]), a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the first jhana, which is [mental] pīti ("rapture," "joy") and [bodily] sukha ("pleasure")

In the above definition, bhikku is the sanskrit (or pali? I’m not sure) word for “monk/nun”. Usually Buddha spoke to the monastics that accompanied him from place to place, so sutras are typically addressed to them. It is equally applicable to laypeople, though. There are 9 “levels” of jhana, and within those “levels”, there are different sub-levels as they are practiced more and more. I use “levels” in quotation marks, because while the general path or trend is the same for everyone, the specific experience, how they arise, how they are experienced, is a bit different for everyone. Also, I personally would not describe it in the way it is described in the sutras; it is more subtle than outright bliss like the sutra states. After the first four, concentration is so strong that a person’s physical body

actually disappears. Going by the sutra definitions, even time and space itself disappears. When Jesus says in the Bible that the kingdom of heaven is in the mustard seed, that is what he was talking about. Concentration, which starts out so infinitesimally small and basically useless, can be developed to the point of unending bliss that even time and space itself cannot penetrate. Just like how meditation is not confined to sitting meditation once concentration is adequately developed, Jhana can be experienced anywhere, and at any time. It can be experienced while waiting in line at the grocery store, while riding the bus, or even while talking with people. Once it becomes effortless, All day long, whenever someone wants it, they can enjoy a source of contentment and pleasure that is essentially activated simply by having the intention to have it. When I noticed this in Annapolis that day, that I could enjoy pleasure simply by having the intention for it to arise, that is when I knew utterly and irreversibly, I had “beat the game,” at least under the conditions of normal, everyday life. Going back to growing up, and similar to the shitbrick moniker I had in high school, everyone knew what was going on, and nobody thought it was a good idea to step in. For me, if I have a problem with someone or something someone has done, I address it directly. I think in my entire life, I’ve done the “I don’t like this person, so you shouldn’t either” thing twice, and in both cases I apologized to the person for my behavior, and tried to make things right. I would go to school, and either not speak to anyone at best, or be the endless target of abuse and violence at worst, and then go home to the already mentioned nightmare. At some point, before leaving middle school, it irreversibly changed my personality in a way that never was never really fixable. The unending stress from that point on, which has affected the rest of my life since, has affected my ability to make friends, to date, to excel in school and work life, all of it. Every single aspect of my life that deals with interacting with other people was completely damaged, and as time progressed, only got worse. The abuse and constant humiliation got worse. My mother’s overdosing got worse. Every day, I would go home, and spend all day online back when 28.8 modems were still a thing and the internet sucked, because it was the only way to meet

people that did not hate me. There was a silver lining to all of that, though, in that there was nothing else to do but play on the family computer. I don't necessarily use the word "play" here as play games, but just as in general tinkering with it. As such, from a young age, I learned how to use computers in a way that still benefits me. Currently, I am writing this in LibreOffice Writer in Ubuntu on a Chromebook. The vast majority of the people in the world have no idea what the first two things are, nor why it is relevant to include the third thing most people have at least heard of, even if they don't have one. Most people know of PC, Mac, and ChromeOS and know those as the three types of computers that someone can use. There are actually many, many more types of operating systems available. Chromebooks tend to be cheaper than regular laptops, since they are linked to the Google Play store, and Google gets a percentage of all software sold on the store. Similar to video game consoles, they sell the hardware cheap with the idea it will be made up elsewhere. Ubuntu is a type of Linux, a fourth type of operating system. It is mainly for nerds, and it breaks incredibly easily. I think in the two months I have had this laptop (my old one died from water damage), I have had to start from scratch at least 7 or 8 times. There is a running joke in the computer nerd community that next year will always be the year of the Linux desktop. It is certainly easier to use now than it was even a few years ago, but its not really something Average Joe could set up or troubleshoot. Just as an example, my microphone and webcam do not work, and as far as I can tell, there is no way to fix that. The drivers for the hardware simply do not exist for Linux. I've had to try somewhere in the ballpark of 5-8 different versions of Ubuntu before I found one that worked with the laptop's sound card; both the version before the one I use, and the one after I use, as well as different variations of the version I am using right now do not work with the sound card. I have no idea why. ChromeOS is actually based on the brain of Linux, and can run some Linux applications if you jump through some hoops, but ChromeOS is not a Laptop operating system in the traditional way. It's entirely tied to Google's services, and tries its absolute hardest to keep everything "in the cloud." I have

no interest in being completely tied to Google for every aspect of a computer, and I have no interest in storing things, with rare exceptions (I make a backup of this every day or two on Google drive, in case Ubuntu breaks again and I have to start from scratch) in the cloud. There are, I assume, hundreds of variants of Linux. Anyone can make their own variant if they want to put the time and effort into it. Ubuntu is probably the most popular variant (variants are called "distributions," shortened to "distros" among the nerds), and is one of the easier to use. It is possible to put Ubuntu onto a Chromebook and have a laptop that is essentially fully functional like a Windows or Mac laptop, but for a fraction of the cost. It can even run most Windows applications (I have no idea if it can do Mac applications too, I have never tried nor do I know any exclusive to Mac. I assume it could). It isn't, however, something the average person that has no background in tech can do, and if done wrong it can turn the laptop into an expensive paperweight. The endless boredom I had growing up forced me into understanding how computers work in a way that still benefits me today. I would not be able to afford a normal laptop that can do the things this one can on the very limited monthly income I have. Even with that background, learning Ubuntu for the first six months or so was an endless exercise in frustration. I am fairly comfortable with it after a year of using it, but it absolutely is still an operating system for nerds, primarily. Back then, like I mentioned before, 28.8 and 56.6k modems were the main thing. They were slow. A 3 minute MP3 file would usually take around 30 minutes to download, assuming nobody picked up the phone on the line the modem was using. Video services like Youtube did not exist, and online gaming was very laggy and unpredictable. These days, having a ping of > 50ms is basically intolerable. To people that don't have the slightest idea what a ping is, or why it is in milliseconds, it is the amount of time it takes to send one packet of data (I don't know how big a packet is. Just think the smallest amount of data possible to send to some remote location) from one computer to another and then have some other packet of data sent back and received. when that number gets too high while playing online games, things stop working correctly. back when I was growing up, spending all day

long on my computer, pings of 200-300ms were very common. The games did not play well even under the best conditions. Not only did online videos didn't exist, music streaming didn't really exist (Napster and Kazaa became a thing, I think, in the middle of high school), so I spent a lot of time on IRC - internet relay chat, basically text-only chat rooms. Usually computer oriented chat rooms, although there were rooms (called channels) for just about any interest anyone could have. Especially during middle school and early high school, this was my one escape, the one way I could talk with people, well internet chat with people, that were not in any way involved with everything else going on. It was still not nearly as fun as actually having friends, going places, and doing stuff, and it didn't do anything to stop the daily overdoses, but it was at least SOMETHING. These chat rooms are not that dissimilar from Twitch chat, just obviously without the video streaming portion. I wouldn't be surprised if Twitch uses the same underlying protocol for exchanging information. The personality problems I developed as a result of the constant abuse, stress, and trauma in middle school drove the problems that I had in high school, and high school made them worse. In high school, I also more or less hung out with the skateboarding people, at least for the first two and a half years or so. The oldest people in the group were my sister’s age, and my sister had done something, I have no idea what, to wrong them at some point, so they also hated me. Since the distances between neighborhoods and houses were so great, they also happened to be the only people from school that I saw that were easily accessible to hang out with afterwards, so I was by and large stuck with them. Sure, there were other people in my neighborhood that were my age, but they also hated me. They had joined in with Alan previously and made it obvious that I was unwanted anywhere and at any time. Now is a good time to introduce Ben. I had met Ben while in middle school, although we did not go to middle school together. He was a year older than me, and lived down the street from someone, Van, I did go to middle school with. We would skateboard together. out of everyone that skated together, Van was arguably the best. He was built for skateboarding - very tall, and had good balance. In some sports, height is not important, and in some sports height is very important. There are

not many 5’6” tall basketball players, for instance. Skateboarding is somewhere in the middle, in that for the first couple of years it isn’t very important, but once all the basics are mastered to the point of effortlessness, taking it to “the next level” is very much based on how high you can ollie (jump with the skateboard), and that is based, at least somewhat, on how tall someone is. There are exceptions to this, where tall people can’t ollie very high and short people can, but as a general rule it is pretty accurate. A somewhat similar thing that happened with Ben as Alan, although in this case it wasn’t as big of a big shock, as I already knew most of the people we mutually hung out with didn’t like me very much. This one centered around one of the older guys in the group, Nate. Nate was dating one of the girls in the group, in the way high school students date. I had a bit of a crush on her, and Nate did not like this. Neither did she. I was also much better at skating than he was, and I think that jealously probably played some role. She did not like it so much that she "encouraged" her boyfriend and Ben to put laxatives in my food and publicly humiliate me. Similar to other situations in middle and high school, I had never done anything intentionally harmful to her, at least to my memory. I had a crush on her, I was probably a bit annoying about it, she didn't like it, and felt that making me shit myself in public was the appropriate response. Other people also liked her in that way, and she never insisted in having laxatives put into their food so they would shit themselves in public. A simple "leave me the hell alone" would have sufficed. Ben and I were going to Ocean City, Maryland to stay the weekend with what I think was his family, although I could be wrong on that point, it may have been friends of the family or something completely unrelated. I really don’t remember. Like I said before, I already knew that most of the people in that social clique my sister’s age didn’t like me very much, and not from inference by their behavior. They made sure to let me know, time and time again. From what I remember, we arrived in Ocean City on Friday night, and everything was good. We played some video games and may have watched a movie; I don’t really remember the details. It was the next day that was important. We had

planned to go to the skate shop "East of Maui", which was somewhere around 30th street. So we woke up, ate breakfast, and left for the bus to take us to the shop. Somewhere in the realm of 45 minutes to an hour passed between when we finished eating and when we got to the shop. Very soon after we entered, I really needed to take a shit. Not in the normal way when someone needs to take a shit - more like explosive diarrhea. So I said to Ben, “Hey...I think we should leave and go back to your house, because I’m not feeling very good.” He said ok, and we left the shop. As we were crossing the road to take the bus back to his house, it happened: I shit myself in public. Explosive diarrhea. I had pieces of shit running down my leg. That part, for him, especially, was memorable, since he drew pictures of it and showed them to people for years thinking it was hilarious. I had to ride the bus back to his house covered in shit. To give an idea about how ridiculous it was that he put laxatives in my food and made me shit myself in public (if that itself is not enough), I'm going to explain why I am terrified of bees. Yes, bees. Not much scares me these days, but flying, winged insects with stingers still terrify me. I guess hornets and wasps too, but I kind of lump them all together in the same category. I think most people would agree that secretly putting laxatives into someone's food and making them shit themselves in public is pretty abhorrent. But wait! it actually gets worse. One day Ben and I, and maybe other people but I'm not sure about that, were at his house and his dog had gone missing. This happened before the laxative thing. We went around the neighborhood looking for the dog, and eventually came across it (I don't remember if it was a boy or a girl, nor its name). We found it in some overgrown brush near Ben's house, and it was having what looked like a seizure. It was not having a seizure. It had stumbled upon an underground bees nest and was getting stung. Nobody knew that at the time, so I went into the brush to try to grab it. I ended up getting stung somewhere in the ballpark of 10-15 times over the period of about three seconds. It hurt. It hurt bad enough that, like I said, I STILL to this day have an irrational fear of bees. Well, maybe irrational isn't the right word, as it is seemingly pretty rational. It is entirely possible that going into the brush to grab his dog saved its life. I was significantly physically

hurt in doing so, and ben repaid me by secretly putting laxatives in my food, making me shit myself in public, and then telling, apparently, every person he knew about it. When we got back, I actually went to the bathroom and got the rest of it out that I was able to keep in. After that, I felt completely fine. I was utterly convinced at the time, and for about two decades after, that I had shit myself in public. The next week when school started, I had earned a new nickname: “Shitbrick.” It was at that point that middle school happened all over again, except worse. If at anytime I tried to stop the humiliation, the whole group would gang up and beat me. Over time, news of what happened, including that I was given a laxative unbeknownst to me, disseminated throughout the whole school. As far as I know, everyone that knew about it found it funny. I'm not sure if Adam knew or not. It was only very recently it clicked for me, when I had to take laxatives to combat the side effects of the pain medication I had post spine surgery, that I made the connection. When things like that happen, when years after the fact I realize something about some situation that I had never noticed or considered before, it is always the results of meditation. It has happened many times over the 20 years I have been practicing, where I understand what was really going on in a situation that I was involved in, and every single time it has been correct. Ben's girlfriend was in the grade ahead of me, so we didn't interact much during the day outside of early morning when everyone got to school a bit early to hang out before class. On top of that, because Burtonsville was designed solely with cars in mind, there wasn't really any way to hang out after school unless transportation (read: plans with people's parents) was arranged before hand. My mother hated having to be a responsible parent, to the point where walking 30 or 40 minutes each way to go to a friends house was preferable to having to deal with her, so the only time I regularly interacted with her was via online instant messaging programs - Facebook Messenger is roughly equivalent to what we used at the time. She was usually online late at night, and I would stay up to talk to her. At some point during 9th grade when this was going on, purposefully staying up late irreversibly changed my sleep patterns: I started to go to sleep later and later, and it never went back to

how it was. From that time until today, my natural sleeping pattern is to stay awake until 2-3 AM and sleep until 10 or 11 AM. Even when I go overseas, like say, to Korea, where there is a 14 hour time difference, within a few days I adjust to the local time and STILL have that sleeping pattern. The only way I can follow a "normal" schedule is taking melatonin and OTC sleeping pills early in the night, and even then waking up before 9 or 10 AM is awful. I do it most days with the sitting schedule I keep, but I feel off for the rest of the day. Once the people my sister's age graduated, and I had a bit of encouragement from a girl I knew at the time, things changed for the better. I ended up making new friends, and started hanging out with people more often. Part of it was that the time we became friends lined up with the time I started driving. My horrible experience growing up is why I never again want to live somewhere that cars are required for basic everyday life tasks. They were pretty tolerant of my personality quirks, and I was happy to have friends for once. I even, on occasion, was invited to parties. I still wasn't really part of the "cool crowd" but I was for the most part able to do normal high school stuff, instead of having people put laxatives into my food and getting jumped and beaten if I tried to make the humiliation stop. Two of the main ones, Rob and Steve, I was good friends with from my senior year of high school until a year or two after. I even got in touch with them when I was staying at my friends house in Northern Virginia. They both are doing well and It was nice to hear it. After high school, all of us started drinking and smoking a lot of pot together. Eventually we all sort of drifted away from each other, but it wasn't on bad terms.

The Three Times

Zen, and Koan Zen specifically, are…not typical American pursuits. Sure, Zen Centers, dojos, temples, whatever one wants to call them, are plentiful in larger cities - New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. But when I started practicing Zen, I did not live in any of those places. I started practicing

meditation for the first time in Laurel, Maryland, right off route 216. There were no Zen Centers, or as far as I knew then, anything Buddhist (although it could be said that Zen is Buddhism, it could just as easily be said that Zen isn’t Buddhism at all) near me. At the time, my life was completely awful. My Father died when I was very young, and I have few memories of the man, and things continuously got worse after that until I moved out when I was 18. Starting when I was 11 or 12, I do not remember exactly, just that it was at some point in 6th grade, My mother started overdosing on insulin on a daily basis to get high from the sugar crash to the point of death. And I mean this quite literally - if nobody was around to intervene, either by forcing her to drink a sugary drink, take sugar paste, or call the EMTs for an IV drip, she would have died. Over the years from when it started until when I moved out, this happened multiple hundreds of times. My sister had been stockholm syndromed into being my mother’s mother sometime around then too, although I can’t say for certain when exactly that dynamic happened. Also around the same time, everyone in my middle school seemed to unanimously agree that I was not to be included in anything, ever. I was the unending target of abuse and humiliation for many years, from 6th grade in middle school until I graduated from high school my senior year, which caused me severe social problems that lasted into my 30’s when I had finally, after somewhere in the ballpark of 15,000 hours of meditation, developed concentration to the point of an effortless bliss. And I suppose even with that I still have problems interacting with people, but it no longer matters. The constant stress from all of this caused me to literally be cut off from all sorts of emotions that everyone else experiences, which is one of the reasons I had so many problems as a result of my upbringing for so long. I was not, and still am not, on the same page as anyone else I interact with. I have done so much meditation over the years however, that everyone that I interact with thinks I am on the same page. It's almost surreal to me how unexplainably different my experience of life is from everyone else I know and meet, and by and large nobody has any idea. The beneficial effects of meditation aside, There is some kind of mental block, which persists to this day, that blocks off some

experiences that everyone else has. When I first decided to try meditation, I was actually not looking for meditation at all. I was looking for natural anxiety remedies, as I still have chronic, unending anxiety all day long, and meditation was one of the things that had come up in the internet search I had done. So I thought, “Hey, why not? what’s 5 minutes of trying.” Well, something very, very weird happened. And out of everyone I have ever talked to, I have never heard of someone else having a similar experience. Immediately after I started to bring my attention back to the focus point, which in this case was counting breaths from one to ten, my body temperature started to rise. Usually when sitting, it is common for someone’s body temperature to remain stable, or, if anything, slightly lower. A person’s body temperature rising to the point of starting to sweat profusely is, at least to me, unheard of. And I mean profusely - by the time the five minutes were up, I had sweat pouring down my entire face. And I noticed something else: this mental block, for lack of a better descriptor, was slightly, .0001%, lessened. It was the first time in my life that had happened. So immediately I knew, from the very first time I did it, that it was something I needed to continue. Eventually, the weirdness of my body heating up ceased to happen. I’m not sure how long it took, but if I had to guess, a couple weeks later of daily sitting, it stopped. I think this is the correct time to say, meditation is hard. Unbelievably hard. People don’t like being bored, people don’t like doing work, people don’t like being lonely. Meditation forces you to experience all of these things over, and over, and over, and over again. It is also painful at first, as most western people do not have posture that is suitable for sitting upright for extended periods of time without the back support of a chair or something similar. After the first week or so, I would set a timer for 20 minutes, and they were some of the worst 20 minutes in my daily life at the time. Boredom to the point of tears. Bringing attention back to a single point every time it is noticed that one is no longer counting is hard, and frustrating. To top it off, even if you practice every day and develop concentration, it isn’t something that can be readily shared with the rest of the world, so there is nothing to show for all the

effort. It is no wonder most people do not stick with it. I did because my life was a total mess after my childhood, and it was the only thing that made anything better, even if it was just .0001%. In Eastern Religion, the number 108 comes up over and over again. The reason for it is as follows: there are six senses (and paired six sense organs): eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. There are three ways these six senses can be experienced: painful, pleasant, and neutral. There are three times that they can be experienced in: the past, the present, and the future. There are two places from which these sensations can originate: from outside the body, and from within the body. When 6, 3, 3, and 2 are multiplied, it comes out to 108. 108 is essentially the entirety of the human experience. In this case, I am not talking about the three times as past, present, and future, but the three times I had some experience where my life was markedly different before and after. One could say they are the three times, but the three times being referred to are not the three times. A little while after I started, I moved from Laurel, Maryland to Columbia, Maryland. I continued to sit daily, and searched out a few meditation groups. One of the places I found, the Baltimore Zen Center (BZC), and the monk I met there, Pohwa Sunim (Pohwa Sunim), has stuck with me to this day. I have never before, nor since, met anyone so utterly absurdly happy all of the time. When I first went to BZC, I went because the website said that there was a sesshin (a sesshin is an extended period, usually half a day or a day of meditation. Similar to a short retreat) scheduled and I wanted to try one. There was no sesshin. There was nobody even at the house. I knocked a few times, and after noticing that there were no cars in the driveway or parking lot, I put two and two together and started to leave. And that is when I met Pohwa Sunim. As I was leaving, He pulled up to the house (BZC is not a temple in a traditional sense, it is just a small house with a garage that has been repurposed into a meditation hall). He walked towards me with a bunch of groceries and flashed the biggest smile out of anyone I have ever met, before or since. He seemed genuinely happy that I had come for the sesshin that no longer took place. To this day I remember the smile - I have never before nor since seen someone smile like that. Radiant joy is

the only way I can even come close to describing it. I immediately knew: I want to be happy like that. I even asked him at one point soon after meeting him, something to the effect of, “how are you like this?” His response, “I’ve been doing meditation 8 hours a day for 30 years. This is the outcome.” I practiced with him at the BZC until his master got sick and he had to return to Korea. From that time, I was 21 or 22, though more likely 22 thinking about it, I kept up my daily practice, usually 45 minutes a day or so. And then, a couple years later when the stock market crashed, I was 24, and I went to Korea. In my adult life, there are three events that profoundly impacted me to the point where I was not the same after as I was before - when I went to New York City and stayed with my cousin for a BJJ tournament for a weekend (more on this later), meeting Pohwa Sunim the first time, and going to Korea. To be clear, when I say Korea, I mean South Korea. To anyone that has ever been, or has known Koreans in the US, there is no need to specify, but to people that have no connection to the place, the question that usually comes up is “North or South?”. I will omit “South” going forward and just refer to it as Korea. In Korean, Sunim (스님) means “Monk”, and it is typical in the Korean language to refer to people by their title instead of their name. As such, Pohwa Sunim in Korean means Pohwa Monk. I’m not sure what Pohwa stands for, to be honest, but all monk names in Korean Buddhism use Korean Hanja. Korean Hanja is essentially Chinese characters with the pronunciation of the associated Korean word. Also of note, in Korean, names are reversed, so in English we would say Monk Pohwa. This happens with most other titles - teachers are not called Mr./Ms./Mrs. [name], they are just referred to as sonsaengnim (선생님) , lit. “teacher”. Doctors are just called “doctor” (의사님) and so forth. This style of naming even applies to the relationships someone has with others; it is uncommon for people to directly refer to another person by their name unless they are very close and/or the same age by birth year. When the stock market crashed, My life was continually unpleasant. I was drinking a lot, couldn’t find a job, wasn’t in school. It was overall a bad situation. I told this to Pohwa Sunim, and he

said, essentially, “If you can afford a plane ticket, you are welcome to come to Korea and live at the temple with me.” I had lived at the BZC with Sunim for a short period of time, and had assumed that living at a temple in Korea would be similar. So I sold my car, and went to Korea. It was not similar. From second I got off the plane at Incheon airport, I was shocked. Korea resonated with me in a way that I had never before experienced. When I took a cab from Incheon to Seoul, where the temple was located, My jaw continuously dropped. Seoul is huge. Huge is an understatement. New York City, America’s largest city, has ~8 million people at night, and 16 during the day when people commute in. Seoul has ~25 million people at night and 30 during the day. It is incredibly hard to explain just how unendingly massive Seoul is to someone that has not been there and seen it with their own eyes. I went directly from the airport to the temple at night, so I didn’t get to see much, but it still was one of the most memorable things I had ever seen. Once at the temple, I had arrived just in time for the month-long winter retreat. I had never done a full on Zen retreat before, and had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Every day, without a break, the schedule is such

3:00 AM - Wake up 3:30 AM Chanting 4:00 AM Sitting 45 min 2x 6:00 AM Breakfast 6:30 AM Work period 8:00 AM Rest 9:00 AM Sitting 45 min 2x 11:00 AM Lunch (this may have been 11:30, I don’t remember) 12:00 PM rest 1:00 PM Hiking, then sitting 45 min 2x on the top of the mountain

4:00 PM Rest 5:00 PM Dinner 6:00 PM sitting 45 min 2x 8:00 PM chanting? I honestly do not remember if there was chanting again at night, I think there was 8:30 go to the room 9:15 lights out. There are no days off in a Zen retreat. Every day you are tired because you wake up early, getting about 5 hours of sleep. You sleep on concrete, and in Korea there is no central heating, but heated floors. If the floor is warm enough that the room is warm, it is too hot. If the floor is comfortable, the room is too cold. So even the 5 hours of sleep that someone gets are punctuated with waking up from the heat/cold and the pain from sleeping on concrete. I was so tired in the morning sitting sessions I wanted to cry. The only reason I didn’t was because I didn’t want to disturb anyone else. Every day roughly 8 hours of sitting are scheduled. Every day I was hungry because there is very little protein in temple food, which is totally vegan. Every day I was bored. In this situation, every day I was lonely because I couldn’t speak, read, or understand Korean, and had very little experience with the culture. Some of the people I was around could speak English, and every now and then we would get a foreigner that would stay that I could relate to, but by and large I never had any idea what was going on around me. It was continuously uncomfortable in nearly every way. To compound these problems, My legs do not pretzel. I cannot now, nor have I ever been able to sit in lotus, half lotus, burmese, or any of the other myriad positions. I have to sit on what’s known as a seiza bench. It is somewhat difficult to describe, but pictures of them are easily found on google or whatever search engine you like. I also have less cartilage on the posterior of my spine than most people have, making sitting upright in the way that is ideal for meditation impossible for me. Hwa Gye Sa did not have a seiza bench for someone of my size. I had to create a makeshift one out of zafus (the Japanese word for these cushions is so much more widely known in the US than the Korean

word that I had to just look up the Korean word) - meditation cushions. This was a serious problem when I was sitting 8 hours a day. The first two or three sessions were usually not a problem, but by the fourth it would start to hurt to breath since my weight could not be properly put on my spinal cord. By the last sittings of the day, I had to support my entire upper body with my arms pushing upwards while on my quads, which itself led to other problems. Eventually, I sat for so long with bad posture, through so much pain, that I ended up tearing the lining of my ribs. A bubble filled with…stuff…I’m not really sure, and started to protrude out of my rib cage, which hurt for years. It eventually receded back into my rib cage, which then hurt even worse for a few more years. It eventually stopped, but that is the level of dedication needed for real Zen practice. You sit through the good, and there are, especially after years of practicing, good experiences and sensations that happen while sitting. And you sit through the bad, the pain, the boredom, the loneliness, and whatever problems are naturally occurring in life that trouble you. You sit through all of it, continuously. Hours a day, every day of the week, then months, years, decades… After two months at the temple, I left and went around Seoul meeting people, and checking out the city. But even when I was going around Seoul, drinking at bars and sleeping at bathhouses (Jjim Jjil Bbang) and with women, I would sit at least an hour a day in the morning or evening, depending on when I woke up. At least most days. It must have been a strange sight to the Koreans at the bathhouses - a foreigner sitting upright facing a wall without moving for an hour at a time. Even in Korea, where Buddhism (Seon) is interwoven in the culture, most people are not Buddhist, and those that are for the most part do not practice meditation at all. After I came back from Seoul, there were aspects of my personality - my likes and dislikes that changed, and have remained changed since. I put hot sauce on all of my food, for one. I started learning Korean, and have been learning it ever since. I more or less lost all interest in dating American women, even American born Korean women. Korean people, in general, have a vibe to them that I’ve not found anywhere else, and I am always reminded of this whenever I am interacting

with people. Korean women in general tend to act much more feminine than American ones do, and after seeing this for a few months, I couldn’t, and still can't, unsee it in my interactions with American women (sorry, ladies. It is what it is). As of writing this, I am 37, so it has been 13 years since I went, and none of this has changed in that time. To be clear, when I use the word "feminine" here, I'm not referring to a woman staying at home and being a housewife. That happens here in the US, that happens in Korea, but that isn't what I'm referring to. The American cliche of a suburban housewife that cooks apple pie after church on Sundays does not appeal to me at all. If a woman wants to have a career, that's fine. If they want to be a housewife, that's also fine. I don't really care either way. I'm all for the equality of the sexes to do whatever they want with their life, so long as they are capable of doing it. I also don't mean feminine to mean submissive. There is a sort of perception in the US that women in Asia in general tend to be more submissive than American ones. I have not found that to be the case. I've met plenty of women in Korea who, if given the chance, will run roughshod over anyone that lets them. What I do mean, is that, in general, women there play up being cute, being beautiful, just in general being "girly" much more so than women in the US do, to the point where the spoken language itself changes. The general mannerisms and body language is completely different than the US. The gender roles are much more rigid in general, and the distinction in behavior, and while I use the word behavior here I think more specifically it could be said to be the combination of mannerisms and body language, between men and women reflects that. Most if not all of the other westerners I met while staying there have also noticed this, both men and women. Usually when a large number of people notice some phenomenon or come to the same conclusion about something independently, there is some truth to it. This is simply my personal preference - while the vast majority, if not all of the other western people I regularly interacted with have also noticed it, some of them did not find it appealing. I do, but plenty of other people do not. It doesn't have anything to do with Zen practice. Zen practice does not

care one way or how feminine or masculine someone is. If I'm going to be sitting in front of a wall for hours at a time, whether the person/people I'm sitting with are white, black, Korean, American, man, woman, etc., it does not matter one iota. I'd much rather sit with a group of American women that can actually sit for 45 minute sessions than Korean ones that can't sit for 5. The saying, “Lets Go To New York” came from when I was living with Pohwa Sunim. Every now and then we would randomly drive up to New York City, eat some Korean food, maybe meet with some of the Sangha (a Sangha is the Buddhist word for Congregation. It has the same meaning and usage), hang out in Korea Town, Manhattan for a while, and then drive back to BZC. If nothing was scheduled, I would say to him, “Hey Sunim, lets go to New York!” and we would go. Earlier I had mentioned that there were three experiences in my life that I was very markedly different before and after. I suppose trying meditation could count as a fourth. Two of them, going to Korea, and Meeting Pohwa Sunim for the first time, I have already explained, at least enough for the reader to get an idea.

대 한 Mean 국

Throughout this book, I tend to speak very highly of Korea (day-han-min-gook, kr 대한민국, is the official name of South Korea in Korean, in case anyone is confused by the title of the chapter) Korean culture, the language, etc. There are many things, both actual physical things, the way daily life is set up with cities and towns, the culture, so on and so forth, that I really, really do look fondly on. That is the stuff that I remember the most, and is the stuff that tend to refer to. I do not apologize for that. There are a lot of bad things about Korea and the culture too, however, and I feel it would be misleading if I didn't at least briefly include some of them. It has one of the highest, if not the highest rates of suicide, alcoholism, and men/women not getting married and having children in the world. Historically, Korea had something similar to the caste system in India, where people were more or

less stuck in the social position they were born into. While officially that system no longer exists, it still does in less obvious ways. It is widely held that the only way to really improve someone's social standing is to get into one of the three prestigious universities in Korea, collectively known as SKY (Seoul, Korea, and Yongsei universities. Analogous to the Ivy League in the US). It just so happens that the only real way to do that is by an incredible amount of expensive after school tutoring and test prep. Which really isn't all that different from the Ivy League schools. The US system of higher education even has a somewhat similar system in place with legacy admissions: Someone's parent's went to school somewhere, so their applications are treated differently (read: more favorably) than everyone else's. A quick Google search just showed that having a direct relative that has gone to an Ivy League school, or in other words, "applying as a legacy", increases the chance of admission by 500%, and that the wealthier a family is, the higher that chance becomes. No need to be the best student, nor the most intelligent nor talented. Just have parents that went to Harvard, and if that isn't enough, have them be obscenely wealthy to boot. no big deal. Sounds like an unofficial (at that point, is it even unofficial?) caste system to me.

“If [a typical student with a baseline probability of admission at 10%] were switched to a legacy, holding all other characteristics fixed, the admission probability would rise to 49%.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2023/07/25/some-universities-are-retiring-legacyadmissions-but-the-ivy-league-wont-join-them-without-a-fight/?sh=7e61b1a55a26

The thinking behind the statistic is as follows: There is some kind of genetic link to intelligence, whatever intelligence actually is, and since someone's parent (or other close relative) was able to attend and graduate from somewhere, it isn't unreasonable to think that they would also be able to. In certain circumstances, I can see there being some merit to that argument. However, the few circumstances that I can see it having merit are few and far in between, at least if an educational

institution's main purpose was actually to educate people. Realistically, if two people have the exact same resume, one person comes from a disadvantaged background and the other comes from an advantaged one (i.e. a legacy), the person that came from the disadvantaged background is clearly going to be the better student. They are absolutely not going to be 500% worse than the person with the same score that had every advantage in the world to get it. If anything, the person with the legacy background should be held to a HIGHER standard than the one without, as they have proven, the logic goes, that because of familial connection that they are somehow inherently better. Saying someone is 500% better than someone else and then holding them to a lower standard, someone could even go as far as to say there is one set of standards for the population as a whole, and a second standard for those that already have the right social connections, only makes sense if maintaining social status is the main goal, not education. Which is fine I guess - that legacy applicants are treated preferably, especially at...certain...schools, is widely known in the US, and people still voluntarily apply to them. Nobody is forced to apply to schools that are highly ranked by independent organizations. Personally, I would be embarrassed if I needed my parents' help to get into university, but that is just me. Back to Korea, it is common for high school students to pull 12-16 hour days, 6-7 days a week. The Korean version of the SAT by and large determines what school someone goes to, and what school someone goes to by and large determines the social network and opportunities someone has going forward, to the extent that someone that is less productive at work with a SKY degree will almost certainly get more promotions and better career considerations than someone that is more productive but without the educational background. It is far more serious than the SAT though: the entire society basically shuts down for a few hours when the test is held annually so that the students can have the most optimal conditions possible for test taking. Buses, subway trains, and even planes, are often times rerouted or completely shut down for the duration, since the rest of a persons life largely depends on how well they do. This happens with the Ivy League schools too in the US, but in

Korea it is turned up to 11. Poorer families will literally bankrupt themselves trying to get their kids extra tutoring with the hope it will improve their score and give them a better future. As can be imagined, with such immense pressure, cheating is rampant. The test even had to be canceled or rescheduled sometime in the last few years, as a number of cheating scandals became public that couldn't be hidden. The Korean movie "Parasite" touched on this briefly, although not in a way that would be obvious to people that are unfamiliar with the culture. For those that have not seen the movie, it centers around two Korean families, one well off, the other...not. The well off family is looking for an English tutor for their daughter, but will only accept people that either attended or are currently attending one of the SKY universities. Knowing this, the son from the poor family fakes a resume and lies, saying he was attending Yongsei. The well off family, satisfied that he was of "good stock," so to speak, give him the job. While it is a fictional story, the focus on where someone goes to school really does have that level of importance: Even if someone spoke perfect, unaccented English, if they didn't go to SKY, they would be excluded from jobs and positions that they were clearly qualified for (in this case an after-hours English tutor). Outside of academia, when I say the caste system that Korea has traditionally had doesn't officially exist anymore but that it still kind of exists, there is one obvious example that comes to mind: Samsung. There is a whole series of companies that are directly subsidized by the government called "chaebols." The closest corollary in the US I can think of is when the financial crisis of the late 2000's occurred and the government decided it was going to bail out wall street. Defense contracters may have a somewhat similar relationship. Imagine that being the norm, where the government actively subsidized companies to gamble on future products and what not, and that is something of the setup that the Chaebol companies have. The control of the Chaebol companies also tends to run in families, passed down from generation to generation, meaning that the people that are at the top of the social pyramid are kept there by the tax dollars of everyone else.

I single out Samsung here for a few reasons. Most people, if not everyone, in the west are at least familiar with Samsung, even if they don't own anything made by them personally. These days, as in, the last decade or so, Samsung, as a single company, is worth, or contributes, depending on how someone wants to phrase it, north of 20% of the entire GDP of the country, far more than the other Chaebols (LG and Hyundai are the two other big ones that most people would have heard of). While people in the west are most familiar Samsung's electronic products, in Korea they make and are involved with nearly everything in daily life. They make apartment buildings, they offer insurance. They are involved in heavy industry, electronics, medical equipment, and nearly everything else someone can think of. The best comparison I can think of to an American company is General Electric during its heyday, but even GE didn't have nearly the influence and range of products and services that Samsung and other Chaebols have. After the Korean war, which ended in 1953 (ended is not the correct word to use - there was an armistice signed between the North and South. Technically the war never ended, it's just in a state of cease-fire), South Korea was one of the poorest countries on the planet. The Chaebols were originally devised as a way to create home-grown industry and products; having government financial backing and direction meant that companies could take risks on products and in areas that they couldn't otherwise. They operated on 5 year directional plans dictated by what the government thought the country needed the most. It worked incredibly well, as anyone can tell, but at the same time created something of an unofficial oligarchical class funded by the rest of the population regardless of how people felt/feel about it. When Shakaymuni, the historical Buddha, was alive in what would be modern India/Nepal, the society and culture he was born into was caste-based. He was a prince, and was so wealthy that even his servants were able to eat meat (double-quarter-pounders with bacon and cheese being part of an ordinary person's diet is a fairly new phenomenon). Buddha not only was born into a culture that contained a rigid caste system, he was born into the top position someone could possibly be born into within that system. He left his privileged life voluntarily to go meditate with people and said after he

got enlightenment that what he was doing was better than if he had become king. If leaving a royal position to become what is essentially a wandering monk was not enough to indicate how he felt about the caste system of the time, the monastic order he created refused to recognize the caste of the local population, with the exception of those who were enslaved. Within the lay sangha, business in human beings (read: being someone that is somehow directly involved in the slave trade) is explicitly classified as wrong livelihood. While not anyone could become a monk due to individual circumstances, even the untouchable class was at least in theory welcome. The only basis for seniority in the monastic sangha is the amount of time spent as a monk (I think the assumption that was made at the time was that the more time someone has spent as a monk, the more insight from meditation they will have. It is not always true - someone could be a monk for 100 years and not have a single insight. Generally it is, though). Buddha didn't go out of his way to try to destroy the caste system of his day, but he made it clear that if someone follows him, they follow him, and their caste, whether favorable or unfavorable, is no longer important; only their behavior is. Within the Patriarchal Koan tradition too, local caste-based systems are not respected. The sixth Chinese patriarch, Huineng, who is the 33'rd from the Buddha, was given transmission secretly from the fifth patriarch. Publicly, Hongren, the fifth Chinese patriarch, was said to have favored and chosen a student who was more...classically...appropriate to the local area, who came from a well off family, etc. Huineng was considered to be an illiterate barbarian. After giving Huineng transmission, the fear that he would be killed for upsetting the local social hierarchy was so great that he had to escape the monastery he was living at at night, without anyone knowing, and go hide in another area for some time. Going from ancient India/Nepal back to modern Korea, Korean work culture is also very, very different than in western countries. It is common to go out drinking with someone's boss and coworkers every week, sometimes multiple times a week. Not participating can, and almost certainly will, have negative effects on promotions and the general way someone is treated at work during daily

life. To be clear, while these social gatherings are unofficially mandatory, the company, or even someone's direct boss, pays for them. Workers are not expected to attend and pay out of their own pockets for the privilege. During the work day, junior workers typically cannot leave the office until their senior workers/boss leave, meaning that even if all work for the day is completely finished, they still have to sit in the office and "look busy" until their boss, who may or may not have the same circumstances with their own boss, leaves. Often times this means "working" 60-80 hour weeks, every week. In reality, a lot of the time is not spent actually doing work, but it also means that time can't be used for doing things people normally do, like dating, hobbies, or whatever. There have even been laws passed recently trying to curb this dynamic, but if push comes to shove and someone tries to claim that the law says they have finished work for the week due to the maximum number of hours workable having been reached, they'll just be fired for some other reason and replaced with someone who will play ball. Which really isn't all that different from the US - people get fired all the time for arbitrary reasons when the actual reason is protected by law. In the US however, company social gatherings tend to be much rarer, the social and career effects of not participating far less significant, and junior workers are not expected to hang out in the office until their superiors decide to leave for the day, meaning that the average person will have more free time to themselves than they would if they were in Korea. I met numerous people while I was in Seoul that would go out all night with their coworkers and boss drinking, and I do mean quite literally all night as there is no last call, then go back to work not having slept and still completely drunk. Showing up to work in the US completely shitfaced will almost certainly get someone fired; showing up to work in Korea completely shitfaced is expected from time to time and has no real ill effect unless someone screws something up as a result, and even then if it was due to official company parties it would probably not be seen as a big deal unless the screw up was something incredibly serious. There is also a problem with xenophobia. In the US and in general I think the greater western world, the word racism and racist comes up a lot. Historically, most of the new world has been a

hodgepodge of people from different backgrounds and countries - Native Americans, the European settlers, African slaves, Asian laborers, etc., that all have to figure out some way to live together. Over time, it has created an environment where discriminating against someone for certain reasons like race or country of origin is greatly frowned upon, at least publicly, and even sometimes outright illegal. Xenophobia is a bit different from racism as it is understood in the west. It includes, more or less, what would be considered racism, but adds another layer of also disliking other cultures and people that in the western world would be considered the same race. I get into this is a bit more detail later, but in Korea it isn't enough to be Asian; someone has to be Korean. If someone isn't Korean, it is more or less OK to discriminate against them in whatever way someone wishes. Many places won't rent apartments to foreign people, even Asian people from neighboring countries. Unless someone has a Master's or Ph. D. in a technical field, it is very difficult as a foreigner to find work in a profession that isn't being an English teacher. Most, if not all, western people I had met while I was there were English teachers; moving from being a teacher to some other line of work just...doesn't happen. At least not with any regularity or consistency that can be replicated for others. There is also no way to become Korean like there is a way to become American. Anyone can be American, which is one of the, in my opinion, best parts about living in the US, especially some of the larger cities like New York and Washington DC. There is a process by which foreign nationals can become Korean citizens, but even then, they aren't *Korean* and will never really be treated as such. It's a combination of race, language, culture, and familial background, and if someone doesn't have all four they will never really be accepted the way actual Korean people are. This is less common and less in-your-face in the younger generations. It still exists. Sort of like how every single western person I know that spent any considerable amount of time there noticed the thing about how women in Korea act, in general, very different than western, and especially American, women act, every single western person I knew also noticed the sometimes overt, although usually subtle, seemingly omnipresent racism and xenophobia that pervades Korean culture. There are

plenty of Koreans, especially in areas that near US military bases (for obvious historical reasons), that don't share it, which is true. If there weren't, foreign people would never stay, and plenty of them do. I met plenty of Koreans that weren't like that; in fact I would say most I met were great. If they weren't I can't imagine I would still hold a positive view of the place, people, and culture. And like I just noted, it is far less common with the younger generations. With that said, It is still absolutely pervasive nearly everywhere. I think, without exception, every non-Korean I knew when I spent time there had at least one story about absolutely shocking incidents of outright, non-apologetic racism/xenophobia, myself included. The older generation is worse in this regard, but it exists throughout Korean culture. In the west, we would say that racism and xenophobia in Korea is "institutionalized." It is pervasive in ways that a Korean person would never even consider, but is blatantly obvious to foreigners. If anyone doesn't believe me, find a non-Korean person that either currently lives or has spent any extended amount time in the country, and ask. In the US, and the greater western world, racism is largely a thing about the color of someone's skin, what they are more or less born with. The racism and xenophobia that exists in Korea is not like that. Well, it's kind of like that. Lighter skin, especially with women, is generally seen to be better, but for a totally different reason. Historically, richer people worked inside, and poorer people worked outside. Everyone in Korea has roughly, by birth, the same skin color, at least by American standards. But historically, because poorer people tended to work outside, they get tan, while richer people tended to work inside and stayed fairer skinned. The cosmetic and even the plastic surgery (don't even get me started on plastic surgery in Korea. That would be a whole book on it's own. In the US, when someone is 16, at least if they live in the suburbs, it isn't uncommon to get a car as a present. In Korea, when someone is 16, it isn't uncommon to get plastic surgery) industry in Korea is entirely oriented towards having lighter skin, because it gives the impression someone comes from a wealthy background. Even during the summer, which is generally similar to the summer in say, Washington D.C., women especially, but also men, will go out of their way to wear clothing that

prevents tanning. In the US, people, and again especially women, although men do it too, often go to tanning salons, because in the US being tan means that you have time and money to hang out all day in the sun leisurely, or at the very least money to go to a tanning salon regularly (on a personal level, I think, although in the US it's mainly women that do this, being tan in the winter is weird. I don't think it looks good and I don't understand how other people do). In Korea, being tan means that someone had a low-status job, and that they must work outside. This brings up an interesting point: The effect the preference for lighter skin over darker skin is roughly similar, but the reason behind the preference is totally different than it is in the west. When people do the same thing but do it for a different reason, is the thing they do the same, or is it different? Mu. There are also a number of things that western people in general take for granted as being universal, which aren't. Korean people, by and large, lack the gene that causes sweat to smell bad, and as such, they don't typically wear deodorant. Finding deodorant in Korea is really, really difficult - the only place I can think of off the top of my head that carries it is their equivalent to Wal-Mart, named E-Mart. The deodorant they carried while I was there was very small, did not work well, and was incredibly expensive. Easily four or five times the cost of something equivalent in the US. This is such a big deal for foreigners that when I went the second and third time to Seoul, I actually brought extra sticks, and lots of them, of American brand deodorant so I could trade them with other foreigners for things I found more useful. Clothing often doesn't fit quite the same either - The few pairs of shirts I bought there were too narrow on my shoulders to be comfortable, something that has never to my memory happened with clothing I have bought in the US. Korean women tend to be much more petit than western ones, and being overweight is something of a social faux pas, so from the female side of things too I knew people that just...couldn't find clothes that fit them. One person I knew even left the country early because she felt that she stood out too much from the average Korean woman and it made her uncomfortable everywhere she went, to the point of actual tears when she tried to go shopping for clothing and couldn't find anything that fit.

Finally, although this is not something that anyone has control over, Korea was in general a pretty terrible place to live geographically before the last 30 or 40 years. The winters are colder than those of Boston, and the Summers are hotter than those of Washington DC, with all of the humidity. The entire country is mountainous, so traveling has historically been difficult, and most people would die in the same town or city they were born in. The mountains also mean that farmland is scarce and expensive, so meat and animals products, if someone wanted to have either, were out of reach of the average person. With modern transportation, farming methods, air conditioning and heating, none of these things matter that much today, but "today" is a small blip compared to the time Koreans as a people have lived on the peninsula, ~6,000 years. There is also a problem that occurs today as a result of the way the weather comes over the peninsula via the jet stream: the prevailing winds generally go across the Mongolian desert, then over a large portion of China, before hitting Korea. As a result of the desert sand from Mongolia along with the pollution from factories and cities in China, there is a phenomenon known colloquially as "yellow dust," which is exactly as it sounds. Most days there is a constant yellow dust in the air that only really goes away immediately after it rains. It causes enough health problems that wearing a mask while going about daily life is a common thing to do. Even when COVID started to be a big deal, Korea was not hit nearly as bad as most other places, since wearing masks was already commonplace (It also surely helped the only ways into the country are by boat and airplane - the land connection to China goes through the DMZ and North Korea).

Write Speech In Buddhism, since our actions dictate future circumstances, there is an incredible amount of emphasis placed on behaving and speaking properly with other people. I've said before that I am not really a big fan of Buddhist Sutras: not only does scripture, and I include other religions in this as well, not really interest me, but Buddhist sutra's were originally maintained orally and contain an

absolute ridiculous amount of repetition (if you were learning them orally and had no written record of it, it makes sense to repeat something over and over again). As such, at some point over the last 20 years, I have taken the entirety of Buddhist teachings on "right speech" and made it ezpz for everyone else:

MUST i say this now must I say this now must i SAY this now must i say THIS now must i say this NOW

As a general rule, if someone wants to say something, and they can go through that sentence with emphasis put on each word, and after doing so it still seems like a good idea, it is probably a worthwhile thing to say. Just because something is true doesn't make it a good thing to say. Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should - maybe it would be better if someone else said it. Saying it at all may not be the write thing to do. Maybe there is some other way of doing things that doesn't require saying anything at all and it would be even better than directly saying something. Etc. Write speech is tied into a greater thing called the "Noble Eightfold Path." Yes, I'm serious, it is actually called that. Yes, I also find it kind of corny. That is what it is called though. the 8 fold path is as follows:

1.Right understanding (Samma ditthi) 2.Right thought (Samma sankappa) 3.Right speech (Samma vaca) 4.Right action (Samma kammanta)

5.Right livelihood (Samma ajiva) 6.Right effort (Samma vayama) 7.Right mindfulness (Samma sati) 8.Right concentration (Samma samadhi)

If you notice, speech comes before action. The way we talk, and what we say specifically, actually has more of an effect on our lives than the stuff we do. If someone's speech is always correct (whatever "correct" may be), their behavior will be too, put another way. If someone's understanding, if someone's insight into how experience functions moment to moment, is correct, then their speech will also be correct. Think of it almost like a set of dominos that are set up in a line - when the first one is pushed, all the rest of them fall down too. In my daily life, I am almost OCD about my speech. It's not OCD - OCD is involuntary and tends to manifest in ways that cause problems for people, and my focus on the way I talk is neither. I am incredibly specific about the language I use, though - what seems like an insignificant distinction to me could be the difference between Heaven and Earth for someone else. I'm sure studying Korean and Biochemistry in college played some part, as in both subjects the precision of language becomes paramount. Spending absurd amounts of time continually doing koan practice - essentially focusing on language itself, also probably plays some role. That this thing is said in this way, and not that thing said in that way, even if they are seemingly similar, really does actually matter, sometimes very significantly. I think Pohwa Sunim said it best to me at some point, "One speck of dust is greater than the entire universe," Meaning that even small misunderstandings can cause huge problems, so it is better to risk being somewhat annoying than it is to risk misunderstandings. I actually don't have much else to say on the 8 fold path. Most of this has been said in one way or another, both by me in this book and by uncountable numbers of other people elsewhere. It's one of the first things someone learns about if they want to "learn" Buddhism, and there are countless sutras

that go into great detail about examples of what Right [whatever] would look like in daily life. Generally speaking, the closer someone gets to the Right [whatever] ideal, the less stress they have in their life, and the fewer undesirable future situations someone will create for themselves later on. It isn't "Right Speech" because doing so makes someone a good Buddhist, or a good Christian, or whatever. Buddha does not punish people if they don't use Right Speech. it is "Right Speech" because the closer someone gets to the ideal, the better their life becomes.

5

The New York event was a bit different. When I was around 21, I went to New York City for a Brazilian Ju Jitsu tournament, held in Jersey City. I stayed with my Cousin and his then girlfriend, now wife, who coincidentally enough, is Korean, on the upper west side right near the Time Warner Center. Also coincidentally enough, they just happened to have a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha in the hallway that led into the apartment even though neither of them were/are Buddhist. As far as I remember, I went up Friday night, the tournament was on Saturday, and then I was going to drive back home on Sunday. While that was exactly how it went, it was, at the same time, in absolutely no way how things went. This was the second time I had been in Manhattan. I had gone up one night for a day with a girl I had met at a party in Towson University on a whim. I’m still to this day not exactly sure what happened when I stayed with them over the weekend, as much of it is still a bit blurry, and there are large blocks of time that I have no memory of. I remember getting there - at the time, my cousin was dating a woman who was in some kind of dental specialty training out of Columbia university. After settling in, we went to a grocery store to buy food if I needed anything, since they didn’t typically cook and went out instead. Later on that night, we went out and went to Kum Gang San, a Korean

restaurant on 32’nd street (in Manhattan, 32’nd and 33’rd street near the Empire State Building are known as Korea Town, to the point that there are even a second set of street signs that have Hangul, the Korean alphabet, spelling Korea Town (한국 타운) that is no longer in business. As far as I know, this was the first time I had Korean BBQ, and it was quite possibly the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I don’t remember much of the rest of that night. There are entire sections of this weekend, hours at a time, that I have absolutely no memory of. Saturday morning, I woke up, did meditation for what I think was 20 minutes, although it may have been 30, and prepared to leave for the tournament. Something I noticed years later - in order to get to Jersey City, I had to take the Port Authority Trans Hudson train that went from somewhere downtown to Jersey city. The Port Authority Trans Hudson is usually shortened to the PATH train, and the most common way to refer to Buddhism is the “Noble 8 Fold PATH”. To be clear, I’m not sure if there is any significance to that coincidence, but I absolutely noticed it years later. I went to the tournament, it was a NAGA tournament, a company that organizes tournaments all over the US. I did not compete. Now, isn’t it a bit strange to go to a tournament and not compete? Well yes, it is. This specific tournament was not prepared for the amount of people that registered, and as such the two events I was scheduled to be in were running somewhere in the ballpark of 4-6 hours late, with the second event only coming after the first block of events was totally finished. So I would have had to stay from 9 in the morning when I got there, until who knows when, to compete. So by I think 2 or 3 PM, when my first event was still a few hours away, I decided that since it had been years since I had seen my cousin, and I was still hours from my first event, I was just going to leave and go back to his apartment. So that’s what I did. Between the time I got back to their apartment, and I left Sunday afternoon, something that I still cannot explain happened - that mental block that has existed my whole life that has cut off certain kinds of experience, came down. I have no idea why it came down. I have no memory of when, or what triggered it. The only thing that has even chipped away at it was meditation, which from the beginning was one of the

reasons I kept at it. This mental wall, this block, is incredibly uncomfortable. Unending pain seeps through it all day long, and it permeates my entire body, also all day long. At this point in my life, especially in the last few years since I have developed effortless blissful concentration, it isn’t really a problem for me in terms of dealing with other people, but it absolutely caused unending problems all throughout my pre-teens, my teenage years, all through my 20s, and into my early 30s. As I said before, I have never been on the same page as anyone. I know for certain it had to have been Saturday after I came back from the tournament, as I had no problem while there. I also remember that Saturday night, we watched the movie Cinderella Man. At some point, I all of a sudden felt like I was 5 years old again, and this persisted until I got back home to Columbia, Maryland. Except I had already lived through elementary school, middle school, and high school. It was as if my entire life had been taken from me in such a way that I could never get it back. When I say that, I don’t mean it in the way of someone getting me fired from a job I liked out of spite, or being married, then having your spouse get everything in the divorce. This was much, much more encompassing. Everything I liked, everything I disliked, all the people I knew, the friends I had, all of it, has all been while this mental wall has been up. So not only was I 5 years old again, it was like I had all the likes and dislikes of a fully grown adult that wasn’t me. Even my best friend from high school, who I still at that point spoke to on a regular basis, I hated that we had been friends for so long, because when this wall came down, it was almost like I was inheriting a different person’s friendships. I have no memory of Saturday night after watching the movie, and I have no memory of Sunday morning until we went to a clothing outlet center somewhere upstate. I have very little memory of the outlet center. I DO remember continuously asking them what clothes I should be buying, if they liked them - that sort of thing. Even my sense of clothing style was something that was not mine but that someone else had given me. I basically needed them for every aspect of life because I had never gone through it like everyone else had to begin with. I have no memory of returning from the outlet center, nor do I have any memory of what happened for the rest

of that day. I DO remember leaving, as I was pulling out of the parking garage beneath the building they stayed at, My cousin’s girlfriend said to me, “Give us a call if you need anything, OK?” and at the time, given what was happening to me, I took that very, very seriously and intended to do exactly that. I have no memory whatsoever of the drive home. From New York City to Columbia, Maryland, is a 2 ½ - 4 hour drive, depending on traffic. I have absolutely no memory of any of it. The next thing I remember is walking to the door of my apartment, opening the door, and screaming. I needed them, because I had basically missed my entire life. I was enrolled in school at Howard Community College at the time, but all the subjects I liked were all of a sudden not the subjects I liked. The subjects I liked were inherited from this person with the mental block that locked away parts of the human experience, they were not mine. I didn’t know what kind of food to buy, nor could I perform basic adult tasks like going shopping. That I remember clearly, thinking to myself “How can I possibly go grocery shopping like this?” This one experience completely set up the next 15 years of trying to figure out what exactly happened that weekend. I was crying, screaming so loud “NOO!!!!! NO!!!!!” that I thought that my neighbors, either upstairs or next to me, would call the police because I can only imagine it sounded like someone being murdered. I’ve cried before, many times. I’ve screamed from pain, many times. I have never cried or screamed like this, before or since. At one point, I tried to do meditation, count the breaths. I went from screaming on the floor in the main room of the apartment, to my bedroom where I had my seiza bench set up. I made it to 2, and then collapsed on the floor screaming again. At this point, I called my cousin, remembering what his girlfriend had said to me. “Can I please stay with you again next weekend?” I asked, even though I had no idea how it would be possible to make it that long in the state I was in. “uh well let me get back to you I think we may have some plans already” was the response. Well, in intention anyways, I don’t remember the exact words. I tried my best while speaking with him to sound as normal as possible, I’m not sure on his side of things how much of

what was going on came through. I had considered calling my mother while this was happening, but I had such a deep distrust of her by this point that even when I was on the ground screaming I decided against it. Many years later, having left me homeless after hip surgery, then certainly preventing other people from helping me when I had a herniated disc and again leaving me homeless,and once again convincing other people to leave me homeless a month after spine surgery (I spent I think 3 days a month after spine surgery sleeping on a blanket on concrete with some homeless Latino people I had made friends with during my time being homeless. They would sleep and hang out near the homeless services organization and they helped me with whatever I needed until Maryland DHS pulled some strings and got me into a homeless shelter on short notice), I in retrospect made the correct decision. To put this into perspective, I have probably saved my mother's life somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-1000 times. She was overdosing on insulin to get high to the point of death two to three times a week, sometimes more sometimes less, from the time I was 11 until the time I was 18. In return, she not only left me homeless after hip surgery - she convinced other people to leave me homeless with a herniated disc, and then convinced other people to leave me homeless again after spine surgery. After another 10, maybe 15 seconds, I very, very clearly remember having the thought, “I can’t be this vulnerable all the time.” And just like that, the mental block came back up. I did not put it back up. I did not take it down. I have no memory of when it came down, I have no idea how it got back up. When meditation is practiced for crazy amounts of time, all sorts of things about daily life that someone is unsure about get resolved, naturally, and without effort. Even 15 years and 15,000 hours later, I have no idea what happened that weekend. I can’t even remember the vast majority of it. There are entire sections of hours that are completely missing. I tried time and time again to spend time with them, in hopes I could have a better understanding of what exactly happened to me. I tried for years. They would never spend more than an hour or two with me after that. My cousin even told me one time when I was practically begging him for help that I should just go to school in NYC. So I even went to NYU for a summer semester,

solely with the hope that they would spend time with me again and I could figure out what had happened to me. They did not. Everything in my life since that weekend has been an effort to understand what happened. Well, at least with meditation practice. I jokingly call it “The Manhattan Project”. Daily life, getting groceries, errands, going to work, and that kind of thing still need to be done. So many other things in life that have bothered me have been resolved simply through sitting, but not this. It will though, at some point, there is no other way for things to happen. I don't particularly like getting into metaphysical speculation. I always cringe when I hear people talk about God's plan for them, or that the universe wants them to do this or that. That being said, one thing that has become very clear over the years - God's plan for me, my karmic destiny, my purpose in the universe, whatever someone wants to call it, is completely 100% linked to whatever happened to me in New York City that weekend. I know for certain that the mental wall that came down that weekend, and then went back up when I got back to Maryland, will come down again, permanently. And it will suck and be awful. But it has to happen. Eventually, like with all the other problems in my life that have been overcome through meditation, so to will the problems and the pain that come with that. When I say "But it has to happen," I mean, circumstances in life will not permit otherwise. I'm certain that if I were to be dropped out of a plane tomorrow at 30,000 feet, I would somehow survive it, because that wall has to come down first. There is a cosmic-level significance to it that goes beyond me and my own daily life. Knowing this, while it doesn't stop "bad" things from happening to me, does grant me a sort of stupid-level bravery. Or at least that's the way it comes off. If you know nothing bad is going to happen, it isn't really bravery. case-in-point: there is a giant radio tower behind my apartment complex, probably around 150-200 feet high. When I lay in bed, which is where I spend most of my time, it is the thing that most catches my eye from my bedroom window. So one day knowing, in the Weird Zen Stuff way that I don't die here and now, I decided to climb it. It's a bit of a weird

juxtaposition - I am terrified of heights, but not in the slightest bit of dying. I took probably in the realm of 30 minutes to get up and down the thing, and sure enough I was completely, totally unharmed doing it. If I didn't have "weird zen stuff" style knowledge that I don't die, or even really get harmed in any significant way (my current back problems not withstanding) while living at this apartment complex, doing what I did would seem totally nuts. Or inhumanly brave. Or both simultaneously. I even made a subtle nod to this, as I left my apartment to climb it at exactly 5 PM. I guess I could have been even more specific and left at 5:55 and 55 seconds, but I didn't plan it out in huge detail ahead of time. And I guess it still was somewhat, this tower is incredibly tall, and it still scared the hell out of me at a few places, especially towards the top as there were a bunch of vultures perched on it. But I knew I'd be fine ahead of time, so it isn't really either of them. Plus, the vultures perched on the top and I made an oral agreement to not interfere with the climb, so I knew they would leave me alone. I've even considered doing it again, since the people that live in the apartment complex with me spend most of the time they socialize in full view of this tower, and when I did it I made sure that nobody was out to see me. After telling a number that I climbed it, every single one of them had the reaction that they really wish I had told them I was going to do it so they could see. My back has not agreed with it though, and the very practical problem of post-surgical complications outweighs the desire to entertain my neighbors for half an hour. Back to the aftermath of the NYC trip, on the one hand, I begged and pleaded with them for years for help, and I was very bitter towards them for a long time that they absolutely refused to in any significant way. A few years later, they had even moved to Delaware, right near where I was living at the time. I asked and begged them there too, for another year, possibly more, and they still refused. On the other hand, that weekend was supposed to just be a time for them to host me so I could go to a tournament, and then we part ways and go back to normal life. If they had known at the time that it would do what it did to me, there’s no way they would have let me stay with them to begin with. Eventually I gave up in trying. To this day, I still have very conflicting views about them.

Actually, in writing this, many years and hours of meditation later, it is clear to me. There is no conflict. They should have helped. The emotional trauma which happened when I came back to my apartment that day was the most painful emotional experience I have ever been through. By a LOOOOONG shot. Before I went to New York City, I had already been doing meditation, usually daily, for about a year, although I don't remember the exact length of time. It was, as I wrote above, the only thing that attenuated this mental wall I have experienced my whole life. Once that wall came back up, it came with a new daily traumatic episode: every day, for several hours, seemingly randomly, I became utterly terrified I would re-experience whatever happened to me that day. The experience of the mind-stream became different, and every thought that arose had some hint of fear and anxiety, without exception. It by and large prevented me from the natural increase in duration that occurs when someone sits over time, sue to the extreme fear that arose every time I sat. I had been on anti-depressant/anti-anxiety drugs from time to time, and it helped slightly, but not much. I had tried going on Xanax, and it helped a little bit more, but still nowhere near enough to compensate for the effects that occurred daily. It was there when I went to South Korea and stayed at the temples, it was there when I went through school studying Biochemistry and the Korean language, and it was there when I was working a 9-6 job after school. After I parted ways with the software company I worked at at met God, whatever it did with my spinal column completely attenuated the effects. Starting the very next day, the different thought-process patterns that started after I returned NYC ceased. I have no idea what happened, or why it happened when it happened, but if it had happened directly after I returned this would be a very different story.

Homeless Zen - Part 1

Over the last few years, I have been homeless a number of times, both living in a shelter and in a tent in the woods. Both were fantastic for practicing Zen. I have done as much meditation in the last few years as I did the rest of my life, although, to be fair and honest, the longer someone has practiced, the easier it is to sit hours and hours a day. Typically, when I had my days free, I would sit three sessions in the morning, two sessions in the afternoon, and then once I felt tired I would practice until I fell asleep - usually an hour to an hour and a half. So long as someone already has the discipline to keep a schedule when nobody forces it, it is about as close to optimal for intensive sitting as living in an actual temple when they have retreat periods. Being homeless is an interesting experience. It is terrifying at first, because, well, what do I do? Where do I go? Where can I stay? Will the police arrest me? Where can I get necessities when I don’t have money? Which people are OK to be around and which aren’t? Food? etc. There are also levels to homelessness. Having continuous health problems is one of the better situations for homelessness that someone can be in. I was not addicted to drugs or alcohol. I didn’t have behavioral problems that caused trouble for myself and others. There aren’t really *good* ways to be homeless, but there are certainly better ones. When I was first homeless, I slept in my car for a few months. I had just come back from visiting a long time friend of mine in LA. We hung out for a few days, and it was apparently a great time to go, since there was no traffic due to people freaking out about COVID. Not wanting to stick around, I left not long after I arrived; there was some worry that restrictions were going to be put in place to limit travel in and out of the city. I had stopped in a number of cities going to and coming from - Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, El Paso, Amarillo, and Houston are the ones I remember clearly, but there were probably 20-30 other ones we made quick stops at. Amarillo was probably the one that stood out to me the most, just for its bizarreness. Right across the street from the Greyhound station was a ~30 story marble bank tower. Across the street from that was a homeless shelter and across in the other direction was, as far as I could tell, an abandoned, dilapidated two story

*something*. Some kind of building, but I have no idea what it's purpose was. The entirety of downtown was like this; it seemed like there was no central planning done for what goes where. When I was in Chicago, I noticed someone had written “forgive” in spray paint on a sidewalk. In Zen, the doctrine is that opposites always arise and depend on each other. The easiest way to show this without having to do meditation is to use a magnet as an example. Magnets ALWAYS, as in, 100% of the time, have a north and a south pole. If you break a magnet at any point, both pieces of the magnet will simultaneously have brand new north and south poles. They cannot exist independently. They are not the same thing, the north pole of a magnet has a magnetic field that expands in one direction, and the south pole does the opposite. But they always arise together. This same principle holds true with mental formations and concepts. Not in a doctrinal way, as in, “This is what I believe,” but in a very real way moment to moment in how the mind stream operates. Whenever you have some idea or sensation, feeling, emotion, etc., it only exists in relation to its opposite. So hate and love, up and down, like and dislike, or in this case, forgive and apologize. For whatever reason, this spray paint had really caught my attention. So I looked at it for a moment, and it struck me what I had to do. I had already been having trouble with my mother and sister: they refused to let me stay with them after I had my first hip surgery. My mother had paid to rent a room near BZC where I could recover (the problem being, the surgery did not fix the problem, and it took an entire year to see another surgeon to correct it). So when I saw this graffiti, I immediately…well maybe not immediately, but after noticing it for a few seconds it struck me. I should apologize to them for stuff that wasn’t even my fault. "Everything is my fault, I should have been better, I should have.....I'm sorry." So when I got back from LA, the first thing I did was find a place I could park and sleep in my truck without being bothered by the police. Once I had done that, I took off to Delaware, to apologize for things I hadn’t even done. So I went, unannounced since I was told I was not welcome (I will get into this in a later chapter, I am not free of blame) and did exactly that.

My mother was upstairs, and when I walked in the house. I said hello. I sat down across the table and told her, “I’m sorry. Everything is my fault. I should have been better. I should have…” I don’t remember the whole conversation. But I accepted fault for things I did not do and which were not my fault. After speaking to her, I went downstairs - My sister has the basement of the house to herself - And did the same thing with my sister. Then I left, and drove back to Severn (This may have been Hanover, I’m not really sure) and parked. The next day, I got a text from my mother saying “You shouldn’t have come here.” When people don’t like you for a reason, that is fixable. The issue can be addressed and resolved and everyone can be satisfied. But when people LIKE not liking you, when even taking on blame that isn’t yours as a last measure to try to fix things just makes them angry, that cannot be resolved. That habit, of enjoying not liking someone, or something…it does not have to be a person, has bad consequences when it plays out for long enough. Ill intent always has negative consequences, for anyone and everyone, myself included. I refused to be a part of it, and decided it was better to be homeless while injured than give them an avenue to continue such a dynamic. There is a quote from a Theravadan monk that lived in the 5th century that is as follows:

"like a man who seizes with both hands glowing live coals or dung in order to strike another man therewith, but who first burns and befouls himself"

When someone acts out of malice, or even holds a grudge, maybe they hurt the person they are trying to hurt. Maybe they don't. The person doing the action, however, the person holding the grudge, is already hurt by it. Something that becomes obvious over time when someone has a consistent meditation practice is that the sensations, both physical and mental, that accompany ill will, are really, really unpleasant. After some time, and by "some time" I mean after 5-10 years of daily practice, the natural inclination when ill will does arise, even when someone has done something to

"deserve it," is to try to resolve and eliminate it as quickly as possible. Being angry and upset with other people really sucks. To be clear, that doesn't mean to become a doormat and let other people continually do things that any reasonable person would be upset with. Like the situation I just described with my mother and sister, where they are clearly acting out of ill will, I just refuse to be involved with them. In no way do I harbor any resentment or anger about it, though. If I did, it would just mess with my daily life, and there would be no benefit for me. They would probably even like it if I did, since it would give them the impression that they hold some sway over me. Back to the story, my right hip was not fixed after surgery. The process that was supposed to take 6 months total ended up being nearly two years. It was 9 months later that I finally had my left hip worked on, with my right one still not being correct. So once it got too hot to stay in my truck, One of the people that the local homeless services place introduced me to got me into a homeless shelter in annapolis: the Red Roof Inn had contracted with the county to become a shelter in an attempt to keep it from failing when COVID was running wild. So I called the number for shelter placement, and I think within a day I was there. When I was in my truck, I was usually sitting (I use the word sitting and meditating interchangeably. If I say sitting, I mean “meditating”) two or three one hour sessions. When I got to Red Roof, I started the schedule I more or less maintain today: two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and two hours in the evening. At Red Roof, there was no schedule that had to be maintained. So long as I was back by the 4 o’ clock curfew, I could do what I wanted with the day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were provided, and we had a microwave, mini fridge, and TV in the room. In each of the times I was at Red Roof, I voluntarily gave up the TV to my roommate - I don’t watch much TV and don’t personally find it interesting. Under these conditions, I would put some headphones on, turn on white noise, and sit. My roommates always found this behavior to be weird at best, and one was downright hostile to it at worst, something that I found funny. Here I am, basically ceding the TV to my roommates and letting them do whatever they wanted, not making a sound for a significant portion of the day, and,

especially my first roommate, still they found reasons to be upset with me. It was OK, I didn’t really mind. In Anne Arundel county, people can stay at a shelter for 90 days before they have to leave, and after 30 days they can reapply to stay again. Typical spring/fall Zen retreats in eastern Asia, in Korea and Japan, at least, last for 3 months. I’m not sure if it’s 3 months by the month, or for 90 days, but it is roughly the same amount of time as a traditional retreat period. After the first 90 day stretch, I went back to living in my car for a few weeks, and moved into a room for about two months in Severn, Maryland, near the BZC. By this time, nearly a year after I had had my right hip done, I could still barely walk on it. The doctor that performed the surgery kept telling me everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t, so I got a secondary and tertiary opinion, the second by a hip doctor that didn’t do the arthroscopic procedure I needed and another one that did who I had seen before but could not proceed with due to my insurance. Both of them said I had serious problems and needed surgery, something I already knew given that I could not walk with my right leg without using a cane. So I switched my insurance and set up surgery with the doctor that did perform the arthroscopic procedure. Around the same time, the woman who I was renting a room from started screaming at me all day from downstairs and getting drunk and abusive to the point where I had to call the police, I know for sure once, although it may have been twice. I called a friend of mine and asked him to stay at his place while I had surgery and recovered, probably a month total. I was unaware at this point that the AA county shelter system worked under the 90 days in - 30 days out policy, so I thought I was going to have to literally be on the street after surgery, but luckily as I just previously mentioned, a friend of mine let me stay with them. It was towards the end of renting this room I had one of the most painful experiences in my life. Sometime in the previous six months to a year from that point, I’m not sure exactly when, the online zoom group I had been doing meditation with (basically all the long term members associated with Pohwa Sunim and the BZC) had a new person join. New people join every now and then, but it

is not a common thing. It’s even less common that they stick around. This person, a young woman, had mainly been practicing with Tibetan Buddhists, and wanted to try out a Zen group. As a general rule, upsetting the harmony of the Sangha is a big deal. It’s “Bad Karma” with a capital B and capital K. Sometimes it happens unintentionally because people are people and when you get a group of people together for any significant amount of time, problems arise. That’s fine. It happens. What follows is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve done, at least with regards to my conduct within the sangha, and oh boy did I pay for it immediately after. On Zoom, when you join a breakout room, usually one person’s video stream will take up the entire screen. Friday nights, our Zen group would have extended sitting, from 7-12PM (although it was later changed to 7-11PM), and during either the second or the third session, we would switch to breakout rooms and one by one wait to have the koan interview with Pohwa Sunim. This is typical for Rinzai style Zen. Regardless of who’s stream was the one that came up when I joined the breakout room, I did not change it. If you were old, young, man, woman, attractive, not attractive, I treated everyone the same. I have stared at everyone in that group for more hours than I can count. This new member was a young lady, I would wager in her mid 20’s although I do not know for sure. She fell on the attractive side of things. Well, at least by eye, her behavior not so much. Anyways, Just like all the other members, I had stared at this woman for...I’m not sure how much time. Many, many hours. One day, I was looking through what I think was PornHub, although it may have been some other similar site, and there was a video with someone that kind of looked like her. I watched it, not because it looked like her, but because the woman in the video WAS attractive, like this woman was. It wasn’t because they looked similar, but the similarity was absolutely something I noticed. I did the thing people do when watching those kind of videos, and then went about my day. That night, my balls started hurting. A lot. So much I went to the hospital. They checked me out, said everything was fine, and sent me home. OK, fine. There was nothing wrong. Except the same thing happened again the next night. At some point, I don’t remember if it was the first or the

second time it happened, I had sent her an email, because while the intention was not to cause disharmony within the group, it had already been bothering me, so it was already doing exactly that. After spending years and years doing meditation, you become very sensitive to when your behavior causes problems for others. Even if nobody knows, it will seriously bother you until it has been resolved in some way. Doubly so if it involves the Sangha. I had done something wrong, I wanted to own up to it and try to make things right. The impetus for sending the email was when I started experiencing excruciating pain in my testicles. I went to the hospital again and after having some imaging done, the staff told me some bad news: I was having a testicular torsion, I needed immediate emergency surgery or I would at best simply lose the testicle, or at worst die. Obviously I chose the surgery. The next morning when I was discharged, another thing happened: I wound up with a 3CM hematoma on my right testicle. That pain was actually worse than the pain from the torsion, somehow. Morphine did nothing. Fentanyl barely did anything. The only thing that I could do was continually put the thoughts of pain down. Which helped a bit, but only a bit. I ended up being hospitalized for two or three days after. When you do meditation for crazy amounts of time, chances become more likely than not that you will experience the results of your actions sooner rather than later. I disrupted the harmony of the sangha, and in return I had a testicular torsion and a 3 CM hematoma that left me hospitalized for a few days. Easily one of the most painful experiences in my life. I tried to make amends with the young woman, but she was not interested. For obvious reasons, I did not mention the torsion or the hematoma – I did not think talking about my balls would have done much good in the situation. As time progressed, she insisted that I be kicked out of the Zen group I had been sitting with for 15 years, and Pohwa Sunim obliged. This is the other meaning of homeless Zen – not having a home temple (or I suppose in this situation “group” is more accurate) someone is affiliated with.

On this topic, I think I should talk about fucking, or at least with how it relates to the fourth Buddhist precept. The actual text of the precept, as is on Wikipedia, is as follows:

"I undertake the training-precept to abstain from sexual misconduct."

More specifically, a common way it has been interpreted over time is as such:

This has been interpreted in classical texts to include any form of sexual misconduct, which would therefore include inappropriate touching and speech, with a married or engaged person, fornication, rape, incest, sex with a minor (under 18 years, or a person "protected by any relative"), and sex with a prostitute.[138

Generally speaking, both of these are reasonable translations. The under 18 part of the interpretation is added in, as every interpretation I know of does not specify at what age it is appropriate for someone to start having sexual activity. By and large, 18 is what is legal and accepted in most modern countries, and is a reasonable rule of thumb. Which doesn't mean that interpretation is wrong - the five precepts are somewhat vague, intentionally, for that purpose. What is acceptable behavior in one place is not necessarily acceptable somewhere else, to the point where activity that is perfectly fine in one place could be taboo or even illegal somewhere else. Even with monastic precepts, a number of them were created in response to local traditions and cultures, and while they are still followed (because if someone is a monastic, they have to be), the purpose behind their creation was to maintain harmony with the local population. As with all the precepts, they were created in order for people to prevent bad future situations - there is no punishment from Buddha for not following them, just the natural causal effects of the intention required to perform the action.

There is no rule, for laypeople, against pre-marital fucking. That being said, like above, the relationship of the people that are fucking plays a big role in the causal effects, good or bad, and the closer someone is to the ideal, which really is to be monogamously married with a "normal" fucking life (there are some places where Buddhism is practiced where monogamy is not the norm, like some areas where Vajrayana Buddhism is practiced. In some areas of the Himalayas, for example, it isn't uncommon in the local culture for one woman to be married to multiple men. I'm not going to get into all the different circumstances and situations people can have while fucking. The specifics of the myriad effects that myriad relationships will have is above my pay-grade). the better the good effects are, and the less bad the bad effects are. The closer someone is to a pure intention of wanting to make their partner happy, if they are into kinkier stuff, the less bad the result will be. Nobody on earth lives an ideal life, however, even monogamously married people. Monogamous married people, by virtue of having what is considered to be the ideal conditions for fucking, can still violate the precept under certain conditions, and in no way is being monogamous while married a valid set of circumstances to judge the sexual activity of others. Being monogamous and married and having a completely "normal" fucking life, while at the same time discriminating harshly against those who don't, may actually (I would even go as far as to say that it probably is) be worse than having sub optimal conditions and doing kinky fucking activities. As I have said elsewhere, the precepts are always the metric to consider one's one behavior, they are never, ever used to judge the behavior of other people. Now, I think a reasonable question to ask given what I've just written, is why is marriage important? Buddhism does not particularly place a great deal of importance on marriage, at least compared to Christianity in the west. The reason for it is this: historically, and even today, when people get married, their lives become intertwined in a way that does not typically exist for nonmarried people. At least in theory - I'm not referring to getting drunk in Vegas one weekend and deciding to randomly marry a stranger at an Elvis Presley themed drive through chapel and then divorcing the next day after you fucked. The more intertwined people's lives are, the weaker the

effects of non-standard fucking will be. If it isn't obvious, here's why: let's say someone is really into BDSM, and there is a non-insignificant portion of the population that is, and they are married with a spouse that is ALSO really into BDSM, and to be clear I mean both that they have a healthy marriage and are actually into kinky fucking. If someone isn't and their spouse is, and their spouse does it anyways because that is how they make them happy, so be it, but similar with some Vajrayana locations having, what would be by most opinions, non-standard marriages, I'm not going to really get into every single circumstance married people can have - it would be ridiculous and could be written about infinitely with no real benefit. By virtue of how their lives are intertwined, there is a sort of natural inheritance of the direct effects of their fucking life. When people share finances, family ties, and all the other things that married people share, there is kind of a natural inclination to not go overboard with harmful sexual activity, and even if they do, that level of commitment to each other will attenuate the effect at least marginally, possibly even significantly. So marriage is special. No really, as ridiculous as it may sound, marriage actually is somewhat special. That being said, there are other circumstances that couples, or even groups of people like in Vajrayana, can have that would play a somewhat similar role. So also marriage is not special. If two people that weren't married in the legal sense had their lives set up otherwise in the exact same way (I'm not sure if this is even possible, as most countries I am aware of treat married and non-married people differently for taxation purposes at the very least), but didn't have a marriage certificate, they are married, regardless of actual legal standing. All sexual activity, really all activity anyone ever does at anytime, ever, will both have some sort of immediate effect and some sort of positive or negative effect somewhere down the road. Like I have said elsewhere, a good way to think about it is this: if everyone in your daily life knew what you did while you were fucking, how would things change? Would things change for better, or worse, or not at all? Would it affect your relationship with other people? Would it affect your career? Would it cause embarrassment and unpleasant effects for one's partner(s)? Which isn't to say if someone

answers yes, and I clearly mean yes in the negative way, to these things people can't do whatever it is they want. People can do whatever they want, whenever they want to do them, with whomever they want to do it with. The question to ask is, is it worth the consequences? With that extrapolated on, when I say insisted in having me kicked out, I don't mean simply that I wasn't allowed to join the meditation groups that she joined. I mean, quite literally, kicked out. Essentially any and all support the Sangha gives someone, which can sometimes be similar to how a congregation at a church helps members when they are having tough times, was removed. Over the years, I have done basically whatever was asked Sunim or other senior members asked of me, mainly because I wanted to help the Sangha where I could. When I was living at the BZC after I finished college, I paid all the bills, I mowed the yard (I HATE HATE HATE mowing grass. It is one of my least favorite things to do), made sure the meditation hall was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Kept Sunim's car running so he could use it when he came back from Korea for once a year, even put in a new radio when the stock radio broke. I would set up the Sunday morning meditation hall for the Korean Grandmas and be there weekday nights for the odd time American people came by and wanted to do meditation. It was basically my second job I would do when I got off work. I had done things like this for years, and didn't really mind it. It was my small way of making this practice available to other people, with the hope it can benefit them like it has benefited me. I even painted the house and dharma hall at one point, because it looked terrible. I didn't do that great of a job - it was the first time I had painted something - but it still looked a lot better than it did before. I've said elsewhere that when someone has done meditation for long enough, all of their behavior comes out of wanting the best for someone, whatever that may be. Even if it doesn't seem like it, and even if it kind of sucks in the immediate term. I did not, and still do not like the way Sunim behaved towards me. However, he has proven to me over, and over, and over again for the time I've known him that this is the case with him 100% of the time. Even when this was actually

going on, even when he was being rude, I still give him the benefit of the doubt that it was indeed for my benefit. a few years and many thousands of hours of sitting later, I am completely content being homeless as it is approaching winter with a bad back that makes it difficult to do much of anything. Without being forced into the situation, I would never have developed my practice like I have. So even after all of that, if Sunim called me tomorrow I would gladly take his call. Once I was essentially ex-communicated, even with all I had done, Nobody in any official capacity helped me in any way. In an unofficial way, one of the senior members has lent me money a number of times during my homeless episodes, which was how I was able to pay for the room to rent when the torsion incident happened, but even with him, there was always a big amount of disrespect involved when he did it. His response was always hassling me to get a job, even though I could barely walk. He left me homeless in the winter when my disc was herniated. But he has also lent me a few thousand dollars that I haven't even been able to begin paying back since 2020, and he hasn't bothered me about it (I assume he knows I will pay him back when I am able to, and as such knows bothering me about it won't do any good). When the disc in my back was herniated (this was after the incident), I had asked Pohwa Sunim if I could use the extra room at the BZC for a month so I wouldn't be homeless. He said no. Quite rudely at that. I had asked again, I'm fairly certain, to use the room again right before I had spine surgery while I was recovering for a month or so. He said no to that too. Essentially any form of official help in my situation from the Sangha was cut off. So not only was I no longer allowed to sit with people I had known for 15 years, it had very serious ramifications in every day life too. Again, I suppose it is my fault. Had I not done what I did, the whole situation where I am dependent on someone else's good will and ability to forgive would not have happened. All of it stems from my own actions and behavior. Messing with the harmony of the Sangha is a big, big deal. As I have said before, while I was homeless, and even since, I have had more women than I can count try to sleep with me. I’m certain at least some of them have done the same thing with me in mind. I’ve even had a couple older women offer to pay me. In none of these cases did I make a big

deal about it. “I’m flattered, but no thanks” has been my typical response. At the beginning of that situation, I legitimately DID feel terrible. Both because I had disrupted the harmony of the Sangha in general, and made this young woman uncomfortable specifically. But over time, especially with the amount of women that have tried to sleep with me in the mean time and the way I’ve reacted to such situations, I feel less and less bad about it. Well, at least with her. I still feel bad about disrupting the Sangha in general. Wanting to maintain harmony within the sangha relies on all parties – if a person does something to disrupt the group, they should try to resolve it to everyone’s satisfaction. But there is also a an onus on the group to figure out how to accept the resolution, the apology, and move on. It would have been one thing if I had a habit of doing such things; I did not (and do not). As time progressed, I became more and more convinced that her behavior was simply out of spite, and nothing more. The same principal applies to her as it did to me – messing with the harmony of the sangha, not allowing for amends to be made and turning it into an avenue to play social games is going to have bad results. I did not have weird Zen stuff happen with regards to her in the typical way, well, I kind of did. I know for certain that she has had her own sexual escalade, some involving multiple men simultaneously that she did not know. But not regarding they way she has behaved with me specifically. I have a very strong intuitive feeling that her reaction is mostly based around the fact that I am not conventionally handsome. Or really unconventionally handsome, either. I think if I were, she would have been much more open to making amends. I could be wrong about her motivations for her behavior, but my intuition about these kinds of things is right significantly more often than it isn't. It isn't 100% like with WZS, but it is right often enough that when I strongly think I know the reason someone is behaving a certain way, especially if their behavior is completely explained by it, I trust it. Very soon after, I moved down to my friend’s place in Northern Virginia, sometime around my birthday that year, since the hip surgery was on the 24’th of November. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was within a week or two of the surgery. I still had a bit of money, a second stimulus check came out, and so I went back to my regular sitting schedule. Three fourty minute sessions in the

morning, two fifty minute sessions in the afternoon, and then until I fell asleep. The friend I was staying with, as far as I can tell, found this behavior extremely odd, but didn’t question it. It was also funny to me, as above the bed that I used was a picture of Jesus nailed to the cross. Well, it wasn’t the typical picture, but a modern reinterpretation of it. Speaking of Money, it doesn't actually exist either. Like A & a only being the same thing because everyone agrees that it is the same thing, money, by and large as it currently exists, is only valuable because other people think it is. Certain things - think precious metals, oil, and other commodities have a sort of intrinsic value. Gold has uses in electronics especially, oil should be fairly obvious, food is necessary for people to survive, etc. Paper money is only valuable because people say it is, and here is my proof: There is a scene, and as far as I know this is based on a true story (and even if it isn't, the point itself remains true regardless) in the TV show Narco's, where Pablo Escobar is in hiding with his family after surviving a government assassination attempt. They have millions of dollars worth of American Currency, but no heat and it was a cold night. So they burned the millions of dollars he had saved in order to warm the house. Without other people who agree on its value (THIS IS IMPORTANT!) to exchange money with - it has no usage other than to write on or to burn. Or I guess someone could use it after going to the bathroom. Because it is paper, and those are the natural uses of paper. During this time, for whatever reason, I was terrified that the mental block that I have had my whole life was going to come down. It just felt like it was the right time. I always have chronic anxiety, all day long, to the point of serious pain, but this was far worse than what is and has been typical. What great material to practice with! But as a side effect, I also drank a bit more beer and liquor than I am comfortable with in trying to live with it. I think this is a good time to bring up the 5 lay Buddhist precepts. They are similar to the 10 “Thou Shall Not’s” in Christianity. They are totally voluntary, however. The typical speech someone makes when they go to a precept ceremony is something to the effect of “I voluntarily undertake the

training to……” and then one by one say what you won’t do. The way they are looked at in Buddhism is a little bit different than in Christianity, however. In Christianity, people don’t break the 10 commandments because they don’t want to anger God. In Buddhism, people don’t break the precepts because doing so plants the seeds for bad future conditions. In theory, someone could knowingly violate all the precepts continuously, if they had a deep enough understanding of cause and effect to know that what they were doing was going to cause bad future conditions and accept that. This is actually what is meant when it is said that Jesus and Avalokitesvara (and other MahaSattvas – the buddhist term for “Nearly God” or maybe “Heaven’s highest angels”) go to hell to save hell beings. It doesn’t mean that they leave heaven to visit hell and then go back to heaven. Well, I guess it kind of does. But it means they are willing to do things that they know will send them to hell because doing those things are what are required to protect other beings from their own evil karma (sin). This is even mentioned in the extended version of the Mu Koan:

A monk asked Master Zhao Zhou, "Does a dog have Buddha Nature?" Zhao Zhou replied, "Yes." And then the monk said, "Since it has, how did it get into that bag of skin?" Zhao Zhou said, "Because knowingly, he purposefully offends."

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The fifth layperson precept in Buddhism concerns abusing drugs and alcohol, and the interpretations range from incredibly strict - no alcohol (or drugs) whatsoever, typically in Theravadan countries, to very liberal, more typical in eastern Asia. What Pohwa Sunim has always said to me has been, “Don’t drink every day, and don’t get drunk to the point that you black out. Otherwise, if you do something stupid, it is your own fault and that is the risk you take.” The second

sentence was added by me, but was clearly the point he was getting at. This is the approach I tend to favor. in fact, the first time I ever tried SoMaek(소맥), when a shot of soju, which is like Korean vodka but is roughly 20% abv, is dropped into beer, was on the way back from a trip I took to a temple when I was living at Hwa Gye Sa. One of the older people that was on the bus with us to and from the temple poured me a glass of beer at a restaurant afterwords and poured a shot of soju in it, smiled at me, and told me to give it a try. Even today, if the conditions are right, I don’t mind having a couple beers with a friend every now and then. I don’t get drunk, nor do I make it a usual occurrence, and that feels fine to me. Obviously, if someone is a recovering alcoholic, it is probably better to be more strict with the interpretation, but in the end, the precepts are meant to be helpful and to prevent bad future situations, there is no judgment or punishment for breaking them other than the consequences of one’s actions. Back to being homeless: being homeless is dangerous. Life-threateningly dangerous. Both from other people, and from the elements. two people I knew nearly lost their life being homeless: the first was nearly beaten to death for…being homeless. There was no reason other than that. He spent a few weeks in the hospital, but survived with no long term problems. The other was chased out of the woods where had set up his tent by a guy on a motorbike who was shooting at him. Once he got away, the guy on the bike went back to the campsite, rounded up all of his stuff into a giant pile, and burned all of it to the ground. A third person that stayed at Lighthouse, the main shelter in Annapolis, at the same time as I did was also nearly beaten to death, trying to buy drugs. So very quickly I learned that the best way to avoid problems, especially when sleeping in a tent in the woods, is to be very well hidden, by yourself, and to in no way look homeless. Keep up grooming standards, regularly wash clothes, use a laptop bag instead of a backpack so people think you are doing work, or at least going to/from. In most circumstances, doing the above will eliminate or at least greatly reduce the problems that come with being homeless. The idea that most people have about the homeless is both nearly

universally negative, as well as being based on the fact that homeless people look...well...homeless. Most circumstances. There are still some times where either having no address (something most people would not even consider about being homeless: you do not have an address to receive mail), or using the address of a local shelter that offers mail services, will come up as relevant conversation, and people will react accordingly. Within those circumstances, interactions with the medical community, especially in emergency rooms, itself can be dangerous. Since becoming homeless I have had to go to the emergency room a number of times for back pain as well as other less pressing problems. Using the local homeless services address immediately causes the staff to ignore whatever medical symptoms may be present. Immediately the staff will assume, if someone is homeless, that they are a junkie, even if narcotic drugs are never requested. Yesterday, the end of January in 2024, I decided that my back hurt enough that it made sense to go to the ER. After ignoring everything I said, they proceeded to, at least as far as I can tell by the Department of Justice's definition, torture me for not being able to sit upright in a chair. An entire group of hospital employees, along with actual police officers, forced me into a chair, and then pushed my shoulders down forcing my lumbar to compress. When I tried to relieve the pressure by shifting my weight into my arms, they pressed harder. They shoved me into walls, and restrained my arms so I could not brace my weight. In my entire life, I do not think I have ever screamed so loud. After looking at recent MRI images, it is entirely possible, and I think even likely, that they did this to me while having a herniated disc. Even when I was in a tent, during the middle of the summer, I would wake up at 7:30 AM (mainly because of the heat. As soon as the sun came up, the tent became unbearable) to go to lighthouse by 8 and sit three sessions on zoom, then go to the library by midday to sit two more hours, and then I would either sit on my own (although in this case it was laying down, I still say “sit”). or sit with one of the people from the Zen group I had been practicing with for years via zoom. So even when conditions are not good, like being in a tent in the middle of the summer with no money, it’s still

possible to have a great retreat period. I made a joke once that being homeless is like a free unending Zen retreat, but it's true. I practiced at least as much, if not more, since the time I started being homeless as I did for the entire rest of the time I’ve been sitting. After I left Northern Virginia, I had a new problem: the hip surgery I had while there was not healing correctly. I had already had four hip surgeries over a period of a couple years, I knew roughly how long it took to recover. The procedure was more complicated this time, as my old labrum (the cartilage that lines the interior of the hip socket where the hip meets the femur) needed to be removed and a new one grafted in. Even still, it was clearly not healing correctly. I went back to Annapolis, trying to find a room to rent, when I ran into one of the people from Red Roof (it was still acting as a shelter at that time), and he explained to me the 90 days in/30 days out policy. So considering I could still not walk correctly, I called the hotline number again and got placed back into Red Roof. Within a week or so, one of the anchors that fastened the labrum to the bone broke, the labrum separated (dehinsed was the word used in the MRI report), pooled up with fluid, and I was back to square one. So I saw my surgeon, he looked at the MRI, and set up yet another hip surgery. This would be #6. My roommate this time and I got along pretty well. He was troubled with social interactions, something I knew quite well from growing up, before I had been sitting for ridiculous amounts of time. He always assumed that everyone was paying attention to him, and that the attention was always bad. He is one of the few people I have ever directly told, “Well, you can try meditating.” since it would very clearly help him with his misperceptions. I can’t count the number of times I told him this. He never listened to me. Most people don’t, which is much more of a blessing than a curse - it means that people leave me alone. He would leave for work, and I would be sitting. He would come back from work, and I would be sitting. It was after this period that I ended up in a tent in the woods in the summer. That was not fun, but there is not much more to write about it than I already have. It was an incredibly hot summer, so most of the time was spent going from one indoor spot to another indoor spot until the sun went down

and I could return to the tent. Around this time I noticed that whenever I met with women (and I suppose gay men, as two of them tried to sleep with me too), all of them were attracted to me. I don’t say this as a brag - not even a humble brag. I was poor, injured, homeless, short, and by all accounts not good looking. By all reasonable standards, women should have wanted nothing to do with me. The opposite happened, however. It did not matter where on the spectrum they fell: young, old, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, black, white…I noticed that all of the interactions I was having were suddenly very favorable. Once concentration becomes blissful, in Buddhism “Jhana”, it has a noticeable effect on the outside world, it ceases to be something only the person doing it experiences. In English, we say that a person has a “vibe” or an “aura” or whatever. Jhana does that. Meeting someone that has developed their concentration to the point of jhana is incredibly rare. Even if you are living in Buddhist temples around monks, it is rare. It is entirely possible that the people, both men and women, I had met with had never met someone before that had done it. The thing is though, once you have done this, once you have access to a source of contentment and bliss that is not dependent on the outside world, the interest in pursuing those kinds of relationships falls off dramatically. Sitting becomes the primary focus in life, because all external relationships cause stress, and Jhana does not. The more time someone spends practicing Jhana, or their koan while having Jhana in my case, the more serene it becomes. Consequently, the more selective I became about who I spent my time around. I found that most of the time, the people who were interested were interested because it was something new and exotic. Which is fine, that isn’t really a problem with that per se. But from my position, it was very obvious that getting involved with people whose primary motivation was that it was something new and exotic, especially women for whom it was obvious (it is/was obvious because they have no game. They are/were so used to getting what they want, when they want it, that they think bringing up sex in and of itself is all that is needed. As if I am the one that would be so lucky in the situation to have sex with them. I had one woman even

tell me "I haven't had sex in a week and a half!" with the clear intention of wanting to sleep with me, and with the idea that bringing up the word sex was going to get me to to pursue her. I ignored it, but to myself I thought "That sounds like a giant you problem, I don't know why you're telling me." ) that they were used to getting what the wanted with men because of their looks, would cause me problems, and as such my response was always, “I’m flattered, but no thanks.” To put this in perspective: I could be the worst lay someone has ever had, the fastest they’ve ever had, with the least impressive pecker they’ve ever had, and it would STILL be lucky them. Jhana is that rare. I remember very clearly the day I noticed that Jhana had become effortless. It had actually happened the night before, during my second stay at Red Roof, but I don’t remember that much about it. It was when I went about my daily life the next day that the implications became obvious. I was sitting down on a table, while everyone else around me was doing stuff. I noticed, by intention alone, without effort, I can generate sensations of physical and mental bliss. Bliss may be a strong word for it; maybe serenity is a better descriptor. It was the contrast between everyone around me being busy, and doing work, and being stressed out, that made it really click. I burst out into laughter. One of the people that worked at the place I was at asked me, “what’s so funny?” and I replied, “I just beat the game.” They had no idea what I was talking about, and just thought I was super weird and gave me a scowling side-eye. It was OK, they had no idea what I was talking about, and even if I tried to explain it, it would not have changed anything. I'm not sure if there is any relevance to these two things, but I do think it is an interesting coincidence: the place I was when this happened, it was across from a hair studio called "The Temple" and right behind a creek named "Church." There's been a number of times over the years (taking the PATH train to the BJJ tournament in New York City, for instance) where when stuff like that happens, significant milestones in meditation, there is always, well, maybe not always, but quite often, something named after either religious stuff or something relevant to the experience nearby.

As I said, once this is the case, when jhana becomes effortless, by and large all the problems that come with daily life of being human have been overcome. If someone is dying, or they have some disease, or physical ailments, or whatever, it does not solve that. It does not eliminate physical pain. It does not remove sexual desire, but it does provide a reasonable and always accessible alternative to it. All of the social problems, the social games - the “I want to hang out with this person and not that person” and “I want to date this person and not that person” or “I’m so bored” or “I’m lonely”, all of that immediately ceases to matter. At least it did for me given my unique life situation, with the mental-wall-thing that I still experience. I have no idea what it will be like whenever it does eventually come down. So I guess I should rephrase it to “All of the social problems/social games that I had immediately ended.” Whether this is the case for everyone once jhana becomes effortless I am not sure. Hanging out with people, dating people, climbing the work ladder, getting a new job, all of it becomes entirely optional. Most of the time, it is not desirable. At this point, people’s behavior is much more important than if they are popular (I guess famous would be the adult version of this), or rich, or beautiful, or handsome, or whatever thing someone is chasing after. Most people’s behavior is such that it will cause problems long term, so it is incredibly obvious very quickly who to avoid. At this point, I had 6 hip surgeries over the period of about 5 years. At some point, I don’t remember if it was before or after the 6’th surgery, I had my hips x-rayed, and the left hip, which I had just had surgery on, still had the bone impingement that was supposed to be shaved off. It was the first time that this problem was diagnosed via x-ray, every other time had been with an MRI. So that was #7. The period between #6 and #7 was when I was in a tent during the summer I mentioned earlier. I’ve already expounded on most of that, so I will skip ahead to what was either late September or late October of that year, although thinking about it now it was probably late October. By this point, my 7’th hip surgery was healing fairly well, I was up and about with no real problems, when one night I had an absolutely nightmarish back spasm. I started to bridge my back uncontrollably. The only explanation I can offer is that I did Brazilian Ju Jitsu for 10 years, I have done that bridging motion

probably 100,000 times, at minimum. quite possibly many times more. I have never had muscle spasms like that before, and I have never had one again since. the whole thing lasted for maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds at most. And it didn’t hurt at all. And it didn’t hurt after. Nor did it hurt the next day. It felt a little bit odd, for sure, but not painful in the slightest And then it hurt. Oh God did it hurt. I could not get out of bed it hurt so much. I had no idea what I had done, nor why it hurt so badly two days later. So I went to the ER. The first trip they scanned the wrong part of my back with the CAT scan, although to be fair to the ER crew, my upper back also hurt, which I reacted to, and that was the area they set the scan for. My lumbar, however, was where the real problem was. I think I went back two or three times before I finally got an MRI of my lumbar. I wound up with 4 seriously bulging discs in my lumbar, from L2-L5. I basically could not move without being in pain. Nor could I lay down without being in pain. nor stand up. It was not fun. After getting the MRI, I set up an appointment with a spine doctor associated with the hospital system in Annapolis. I laid in bed all day, every day, until the appointment, I think. I did PT for it, as I did for my hips, but I don’t remember if that started before or after I saw the doctor. After he looked at the MRI, he suggested doing what was called a trigger point injection, and we set it up. I don’t remember the time between the procedure and the appointment, but it wasn’t very long. The trigger point injection actually did help quite a bit, but it was still difficult to do much of anything. PT also helped a bit, but not much. The real problem was that my 90 day stay at lighthouse was coming to an end, and I could not do much of anything. So I stayed outside, in the winter, in a tent, with what ended up being a herniated disc and 3 others that were bulging. This was also not fun. I still tried to maintain my sitting schedule throughout all of this, 8AM 3x, 2:30 2x, and then at night from whenever I felt like it until I fell asleep. Being homeless in the winter, as I just mentioned, is not fun. During the day, it is cold. It’s winter, of course it’s cold. But at night, it is just outright awful. Any exposed skin immediately gets cold and can turn to frostbite. You have to sleep fully inside the sleeping bag, so the air you breathe

gets hot and muggy and incredibly uncomfortable. but if you leave a spot to breath out of, that will very quickly get too cold. It is all around an unpleasant time, and I would not recommend it to anyone if they have other options. As I mentioned previously, an old friend of mine’s mother had randomly gotten in touch with me a week or two before the end of my stay at Lighthouse, before I was outside again. I told her the situation, and her response was that she was going to pray about what to do. When she finally got back to me, it was a never ending string of abuse cloaked in the bible, but not really. Because everything that she said was the opposite of what Christ taught. During the back and forth I would even quote bible verses that showed this, since being Christian was her entire personality, I thought it might work. It did not. The last text she sent to me was, I think, on Thanksgiving, where she told me she had been in touch with my mother, it was my fault she never loved me, and then she blocked my number. This was the second time my mother left me homeless, in an even worse physical condition than the first time. I have not spoken with my mother since the first, nor with my friend’s mother since then. In both cases, I have sent them Koans with the hope at some time, quite possibly in the distant future, that it is helpful, but not normal every-day speech. When someone refuses to stop their ill-intended habits towards you, and you have exhausted every option, for the protection of both sides, there can no longer be “normal” communication. When ill-intent, or even downright malice and hatred, are the main drivers behind someone’s behavior, it will ALWAYS, and I repeat ALWAYS, have negative consequences somewhere down the line. After sitting for years and years and years, this fact of cause-and-effect, karma, God’s law, whatever name it is given, is blatantly obvious. The negative repercussions are either lessened or strengthened by the situation and the relationship between the people involved. From my position, I could have just accepted that she was going to be abusive - she probably would have let me stay with her. It would have gotten me out of being homeless, with what turned out to be a herniated disc, in the winter. But the physical discomfort of those conditions is a far lesser problem to deal with than both having to continually accept the abusiveness that she was very clearly marking as a condition of her

help, as well as for her own sake of not giving her the opportunity to act out such behavior. As much as it was protecting me from her abuse, it was protecting her from the results her behavior would bring if given the opportunity. The interesting thing to me about people like this, without exception they very much base their personality around being "Christian." They decide who is OK based on whether or not THEY are "Christian." If someone else isn't "Christian," then they find it ok to be hostile towards them. They also decide what being "Christian" is. However, once I brought up behavior, instead of simply *believing* in Jesus, they get very defensive and upset. Jesus did not care if you believe in him, short of if the belief was enough to get people to do what he was telling people to do. Believing in Jesus does not save anyone. I'm not sure how this misconception has so thoroughly pervaded Christianity in the US, but it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The people Jesus spoke to clearly knew he existed, saw him performing miracles, etc. Why would they not believe he existed and was who he said he was? The belief that what he was saying was true was only important in so much as it caused them to behave in the way he told them to behave. The simple mention of behavior to "Christians" for whom belief is the only relevance was enough to immediately become the target of vitriol. One of, if not my favorite pair of verses from the Bible is Revelations 22:11-12. Here are the verses:

11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. 12 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. With my friend's mother, she continuously talks about Jesus returning, about how she can't wait for the end times, etc. Yet her behavior did not match with those two verses. Revelations is not a

long book in the bible, so it would be pretty difficult to miss them. This is essentially the biblical version of Karma, that everyone, everywhere, without exception, is going to inherit the results of what they have done. Just like in ancient times, many people have sinned so much, generated so much evil karma, acted so poorly towards others, that if such a situation were to occur - if all of their bad deeds were called up right now and they had to pay for them, they would not survive. It could be said that God from the Old Testament, the one that regularly killed people, destroyed entire cities, and even flooded the whole word, the one that acted with wrath and furry, is the one that really returns in Revelations. Within Buddhism in the US, and I think to a greater extent in the wider western world, the word compassion comes up over…and over…and over…and over again. I can’t stand this personally. Compassion in Buddhist circles seems to, as far as I can tell, equate to being nice. When Buddha, or Jesus, or whoever, was talking about compassion, it stemmed from a deep understanding of how actions will lead to certain results. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with being nice. Well, maybe not nothing. Sometimes being nice CAN be the compassionate thing to do, but they are in no way synonymous with each other. In this case, both with my friend’s mother, and with my own, it was compassion on my part that led me to choose being homeless in bad conditions. It was better for everyone involved for me to make that choice, because, as I just said, enabling the behavior that they wanted to act out would have been much worse for them, as well as me. There comes a point in sitting practice, and I’m not sure exactly when it happened for me, that someone will voluntarily endure hardship if it means protecting other people from their own negative (read: harmful) habitual tendencies. It absolutely would have been more physically comfortable in the immediate term for me to have just gone along with whatever demands were made of me the first and second time I was in a tent. But in both the short and long term, the effects of allowing people, especially ones that are supposed to be in a parental role and that should protect you, to act out such behavior are far worse, for everyone involved.

I think I should make this clear, since when I have mentioned this before it has been referring to the actions of other people. Everyone, non-exceptionally, has bad results when they act out of illintent. Myself included. Everyone will experience the results of such actions, which will always be negative. I am in no way excluded from the results of my behavior. The things I have done in my life that have harmed others, I will pay for them, the same that everyone else will. There have been things I have done I cannot take back, that I cannot change, and that I deeply regret every day to this day. I will suffer for it the the same as everyone else. In general, the worse the action, the worse the consequence. God’s law, or karmic consequence, or the rules of the universe, whatever phase someone wants to use, they apply to every action every person does equally. There are no exceptions to this. Well, there are some exceptions, but they are based on the fact that the person performing the action think children, or the mentally disabled - is not fully aware of the significance of what they are doing. So even in the case of the exceptions, they aren't really exceptions. Well, there maybe be another kind of exception, but it would also be only kind of an exception. It would both be an exception and not an exception. I think that Zen as a whole would not make sense, or maybe sense isn't the right word, but Zen would not be a reliable way to understand reality if there wasn't something that both was and wasn't an exception: Buddha's. Maybe Maha-sattvas, things that *could* be a Buddha if they wanted to, like Avalokitesvara, would fall under the same category, although on that point it is my complete speculation. I don't even have a good intuitive sense for it, to be honest. In the Theravada enlightenment scheme, the category before being an Arahat is a non-returner. (find the sutra reference) While there may be other ways of becoming a non-returner, one absolute, 100% for certain way is to reach the level of Jhana where the mind-stream stops, called "cessation," where the mind-stream itself stops. Karma, or God's law, operates within the mind-stream moment to moment. Or maybe a better way to phrase it is, "Karma is how the mind-stream operates." Nonreturners have the experience, although since the mind-stream is what creates experience I'm not sure experience is the correct word to use, of not having experience. I'm sure there is an equivalent in the

Mahayana scheme, but the Theravada one is much more direct on what specifically marks the difference between the different "levels." What separates, doctrinally, a non-returner from a Buddha is that while a non-returner may be able to, in samadhi (meditative concentration), no longer use the mind-stream, possibly to the point where it totally ceases (this is, as I say elsewhere, above my pay grade. Usually though, my intuition on Buddhist stuff is right, to the degree that when I get something wrong it surprises me). When they stop meditating it comes back. Well, that, and a bunch of other things, but the relevance to this topic is really only that. Non-returners, while very advanced, because of this, will absolutely fall into the side of "they aren't an exception to Karma." Buddhas, however, or God, have completely ended involuntary usage of the mind-stream. Sentient beings are always, all day long, using the mind-stream. The vast majority of them, including the vast majority of human beings, have no idea they are doing this every single moment. The reliance on the mind-stream is so thorough that it may even be better said that sentient beings are being used BY the mind-stream, rather than that they use it. The reason there is suffering is because of this total, complete reliance on the mind-stream. If the mind-stream was never used, even negative results from actions would not matter. Or maybe put better, even negative results could not cause suffering. We, myself included, have no idea how to turn it off. From reading books, I know it is possible, but I have no experience of it not operating. Buddha's have turned it off. They can use it if they want, I assume, but it is completely voluntary. I think. That the only motivation a Buddha would have for interacting with others is to try to teach meditation also plays something of a part - Karma works on intention - but is overall, kind of irrelevant compared to the mind-stream actually completely dropping away. Intention falls off at the second Jhana. The mind-stream itself falls of at the 9th, to give an idea of the difference in significance between the two. I have had times where while sitting intention itself falls away. As soon as it does, at least the few times it has happened, it is so disorienting that it nearly immediately disrupts my concentration, needing the intention to meditate again almost as soon as it

happens. I think that is a reasonable way to understand the difference between someone like me, someone that meditates because it makes my life better, and someone that is actually trying to get to the bottom of this life and death thing. Even after more than 15,000 hours of sitting, moving past the first stage of jhana is involuntary to me, it has happened only a handful of times in my life, and when it does happen it doesn't stick around long. A second or two. Whatever happens at the 9th is absolutely beyond anything that I can confidently, outside of my understanding from Buddhist texts, speak on. Buddhist texts, however, I have full faith in; they may describe things differently than I would, but that doesn't make them incorrect. In case it wasn't obvious what I just said, because I said it somewhat indirectly: I have done this thing, Zen meditation, for over 15,000 hours in my life. Of the nine levels of Jhana, I am at the first. The 15,000 hours to get there are like driving to a baseball game. The 15,000 hours are to get someone to the point that meditation is actually peaceful and serene; to build the habit of doing this thing daily. I'm still in the first inning, and have a very, very long way to go. Which brings up question: Compared to someone that has never done meditation before, I probably seem impressive. Or at least the amount of time I have spent doing it does. Compared to the average, in Buddhism the term often used is "indigent", being that is alive on Earth, I have done this meditation thing a lot. Compared to a Buddha, or to God, the thing which is the absolute farthest, most in depth someone can do it, I have just started. So have I taken it far, or have I just started? Mu. There is even a koan that goes, something to the effect, "Does a buddha fall under the situation of cause-and-effect" (put more clearly for this topic: "Is a Buddha affected by Karma or not?") where the master, similar with the Mu koan, gave both a yes and a no answer. I think it was Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen sect in Japan that said this, but I could be wrong. When someone or I guess "something" is a better descriptor, no longer uses the mind-stream, do they fall under the rules of Karma? Are they confined to the rules by which the mind-stream operates? The answer is clearly obvious: I have absolutely no idea. If I tried to claim I did, it would be a bold faced lie. There are a lot of things that have become clear about reality to me as a result of sitting over the years. This is not yet

one of them. This is even directly addressed in Buddhist sutras - and by "this" I mean trying to understand the experience of a Buddha - and it says, verbatim,

Whoever speculates about these things would go mad & experience vexation.

In the old testament, Exodus 29:43-36 reads as follows:

There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory…. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.

What this means, and I am fully confident in this, is to be literal: God, the "thing" that created the entire universe, you, me, whatever, decided it was going to become a human being and take part in, aka "dwell among" it's creation. The "why" of this, why God decided that in its plan it had to play that specific part and do...whatever it was...it did, is beyond me. I Won't even begin to speculate. However, If God (Vairocana Buddha) decided to become human and interact with sentient beings on our plane of existence, God's actions would indeed fall under the rules of cause-and-effect. Unquestionably - as long as they were acting out of usage of the mind-stream the way human beings do. How a Buddha, or God with the capital G, decides to become human and does it? I don't know. How that person would experience life, I also don't know. Would they experience it as God would, or would they experience it as a human being would? I have absolutely. No. Idea. Would the person that God became even actually be a person, or would it be some kind of like holographic avatar thing that is beyond human understanding? If you figure it out, let me know. Buddha's aside, the other exceptions aren't really exceptions, It's just that the understanding necessary for Karma to operate fully does not exist for some people. Someone's position in society

does not exempt them from this. Their job, their spouse, their money, their connections, their family, the stuff the have, where they live, the school they went to, the........, absolutely none of that matters in the slightest. Every single thing that someone thinks is *theirs* in this life, and that what is theirs protects them from the results of their actions, does not. Every. Single. Thing. changes, arises and disappears, including the things that someone claims as their own. In this way, everyone is equal. Experience itself, the way it comes to be, functions the exact same way regardless of physical conditions. The benefit of sitting practice, is that over time, especially once jhana is developed, and extra especially once it is effortless, is that most of the conditions that cause people to behave improperly, or immorally, cease. Boredom, loneliness, greed, hate, ill-will, all of these are either eliminated or greatly attenuated to the point where they cease to be the driving force behind behavior, and most behavior that causes future problems is linked to one of those uncomfortable mental states. It also helps with suffering itself, as it becomes more and more obvious that even heaven and hell (or in more everyday life speaking, the good times and the bad times) are intertwined – hell sets up the conditions for heaven, and heaven sets up the conditions for hell. So even when someone’s negative karma does ripen, seen through that lens, the ability to endure it is greatly increased. The suffering is not pointless, simply necessary to set up the conditions for future pleasant times.

Homeless Zen Part II

Today I left my apartment in Ford Meade to be homeless again. My lease was up, and the people that ran the place made it clear that they would not renew it on a monthly basis because I had smoked in my apartment. They had butted heads with me a number of times before, and even through their business-speak worded emails, I can tell they did not like me. At one point, within 6 months of having spine surgery, they had tried to force me into working when I still couldn't sit up for more than an hour at a time. I ended up making it clear that I had no problem taking the issue to court if need be,

and they backed off. It strikes me that they thought they finally beat me, by not renewing my lease for a month while I wait on a second opinion regarding my back. Like I said elsewhere, Zen beats all games. Another meaning of that, outside of the fact that I am always trying to share Zen with people, even when they are playing some social game, is that certain behavior will always have certain outcomes. Harmful intentions will always have harmful results. Always. If I am correct, there is no escaping the consequences of one's actions. If their behavior is indeed due to them thinking they beat me, then the consequences of not extending the lease for a month so I can get a second opinion will be reflective of that, at some point, and they will not be good. It's one of the reasons I didn't even bother to argue with them, because there is no point. My back is really in a bad condition. Being homeless right now is going to suck. I've said it to myself a number of times over the last week as it became clear that this was what was going to have to happen. I can't really carry things, standing up for more than a couple of minutes hurts. I had an MRI scheduled for last Friday, and so I intentionally went out of my way to do more than normal. By Thursday night I had an emergency trip to the hospital, since I was worried I may have torn the fusion on my vertebrae . I was taking canned food out of my pantry, felt a pop, a tear, or something, and collapsed. I crawled over to my bed, and tried to get up with the bedpost as a crutch. As soon as I let go I collapsed again. It hurt. Hurt to the point of actual tears. So I am again homeless, again with a very serious injury. I am on the list to get into the local homeless shelter, but nobody can tell me how long that will be. I mentioned before that the worst part of being homeless is when it first happens. Knowing what to do, where to go, who to associate with, all of these things have to be learned, and for the most part while someone is going through it. Having been homeless a number of times before, it doesn't really bother me all that much - the weather is nice, and the place I had my tent set up is very close to the homeless services organization. In Annapolis, the homeless services organization is very close to grocery stores, a target, walgreens, etc., and all are much closer than the stores were to my apartment in Fort Meade. In some ways, being homeless and

sleeping/living out of a tent may actually be easier than living in the apartment was. The last time I was homeless, I kept a normal schedule where I woke up early, would sit with people on Zoom for a few hours, do whatever I needed to do, sit for a few more hours, have some time to do whatever I actually wanted to do, and then practice meditation until I would go to sleep. It's the same schedule I kept while in the apartment in Fort Meade, and I intend to maintain it again. Being homeless, like I said, is not really all that different from a Zen retreat, so long as someone has the discipline to maintain a schedule without anyone forcing it on them. I've been homeless before with back problems, when my disc was herniated and my friend's mother made taking abuse a condition of their help. I think the pain I am in right now is roughly the pain I was in then. I've done it once, I can do it again, even if it will suck. Maryland has, since the last time I was homeless with back problems, legalized recreational pot for people over 21, so if things get bad enough there is a pot store right down the street. Buddhism (I would wager Christianity too, actually - "God made all green plants and said they were good), believe it or not, explicitly says that cannabis is an OK remedy for pain, even for monks. I don't particularly like smoking pot, but if the conditions call for it, I will. In fact, today after I leave the homeless services place I'm going to go buy some. My back really, really hurts from setting up the tent and all the walking I had to do yesterday. I have now been in a tent for about a month and a half, and the weather is starting to get cold. It typically gets to around freezing at night, or slightly above it. Most days I have to smoke, well, vape, pot because IBUprofen and Tylenol combined do not help enough, and I still have to get stuff done during the day. Funny enough, one of the nicknames for a Buddhist Sutra is a "Gold Leaf," and that is the name of the dispensary that is right down the street from me. Being homeless when it is cold is in general not very fun; being homeless when it is cold and a bad back prevents me from doing much of anything other than going to the homeless services building to charge my things, namely a portable USB battery and my cell phone. When I am at the building, I have to lay down the whole time on a couch. Everyone that comes to the place has essentially ceded the couch to me when I am there, which

is nice. It is very obvious to everyone I interact with regularly that I am in significant pain throughout most of the day. When I go back to my tent, I have to lay down. Since moving back to Annapolis, I have done something other than basic daily life tasks once, when I went to visit a friend that is a couple bus stops away. Even that, a 15 minute bus ride and hanging out for an hour or two, hurt bad enough that I had to take an Uber back and spend the rest of the day and the next day laying down. It seriously hurts most days, although some days are better than others. Since I've been here, I've said to a number of people that my life while being homeless doesn't change much from when I am inside. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, I wake up Monday through Saturday at 5:45 in the morning to join a Zoom sitting session with a Soto Zen lineage that streams meditation periods. I assume the people at the temple that I see every day are monks, because they have shaved heads and wear robes, but I am not certain of that. I don't have much experience with monastics from Japanese lineages, and I have no idea what typical monk clothing in the Rinzai school looks like. But they are there every day, Monday through Saturday, and that is how I start my day. I hate waking up early. I am not a morning person. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get to sleep and wake up early like most people. When I used to sit with the morning group that Pohwa Sunim leads, we would start at either 7 or 8 AM, depending on daylight savings. Even that was tough for me. This one starts at 6, meaning I have to wake up around 5:30-5:45. I have my alarm set for 5:35, but I usually snooze the first one. The morning sitting sessions are the only sessions I am ever late to, since I need to make (nearly frozen, instant) coffee, have a cigarette, and usually pee when I wake up. I've actually put in extra effort lately to try to join no later than 6, but even still I am late a couple minutes pretty regularly. It is really, incredibly hard for me to wake up this early, especially considering that nobody forces me to do it. But at this point I have made it something of a habit, so I do it anyways, even if I don't particularly like it. Even on Sundays when the temple doesn't have the morning sitting session, I don't tend to sleep in any later than 7 or 8 AM.

Also like when I was in my apartment, I join a group in Europe that sits at 3:30 PM, and then again at night I do two more sessions with a temple that streams their evening sits. Most days I chant the thousand hand/eyes sutra, along with the heart sutra. I've recently bought a 108 bead mala and started chanting gwan-say-um-bo-sal, the Korean pronunciation of the name Avalokitesvara, and I chant that three times a day, three times per instance, with the exception of midday where I go through the mala six times. I do it usually sometime around the sitting sessions as I check the time periodically to get ready for them anyways. When I lived at the Baltimore Zen Center while I worked at the software company, one of the things we would do every Sunday was chant gwan-say-um-bo-sal 108 times, and then there is some kind of mantra at the end. I know most of the mantra, but one part of it I don't. I've tried to look for it online, but have not been able to find it. To be entirely honest, I don't even know what I would look for to find these words specifically. Usually when people use mala beads, they are dedicating merit to someone or something. Merit in this context means sort of like "generating good karma." A lot of the time it is done after someone has died, with the idea that it helps with the process of dying. It may seem a bit silly, but it really does, actually, do something. It has some effect, although specifically what that effect is, I can't say for certain. But it does 100% do something, especially when it is done habitually over time. I remember reading at some point that when someone does something like that, chanting to dedicate merit, for example, it is beneficial for both the person chanting, and the person or thing being chanted for. This has been in my experience true. It may not even be possible to say what effect it has, other than "it's beneficial," because every situation is different, and as such the effect it has in one situation could be wholly different than the effect it has in another. It doesn't change the past, it doesn't eliminate harm done, but it does do something, and is absolutely, unequivocally without question better than not doing it, especially as I just wrote when done as a habit. If there was no benefit to doing it, I would not waste my time and effort; I could use that time to sit, instead. Or watch Youtube or any number of things that are more fun than chanting a name 324 times, three times a day. There is though, so I do it,

once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night, every day, unless I have daily life stuff to take care of that takes priority. Even when I miss sitting sessions due to daily life stuff, I still make sure to do this three times a day.

Work on this over the next weeks Zen (lack of) Sex

I've mentioned numerous times during this that the unending hell that my life was growing up left me basically unable to function as a person, with all sorts of interpersonal and personality problems. I've also touched on the fact that I used to watch a lot of porn in my 20s, and even my early 30s. One of the long lasting effects of what I went through is that I can't really enjoy having sex. I've had sex plenty of times, don't get me wrong. It's still "fun," but I can never really get into it. There is always a pervading fear that whoever I am sleeping with is going to use it to hurt me or cause me problems in some way. Or is faking it or has some ulterior motive to begin with. I recognized while sitting recently this was mostly tied to Eve's behavior in high school. Its the result of the entirety of middle and high school, but her role in it was far and away more significant than anyone else. Even with porn, the only porn that really interests me includes humiliation and pain. Usually its called BDSM. To be clear, this doesn't include rape or anything that is involuntary. I don't even like porn with simulated rape, when its acting and all parties have consented. If I wanted to overpower or impose my will on someone, I can just go to a BJJ gym and whoop on some white belts. Even then, when I sparred on a regular basis, when I was whooping on white belts, it was always to point out the holes in their technique. It wasn't out of enjoyment of whooping on them. This is something I have been stuck with since high school. I cannot change it. I wish I could change it. If I could, I would, without question.

Even when I completely abstain from sexual-related things, it is still there when I go back. I've said the intention of harming other people, even if it is mutually agreed upon by all parties, is going to have bad results. So that I could never in person get to actually put these things into action, both because of the unending problems I have socially, and because I'm just not a very attractive man in nearly any sense of the word, was a blessing. On the other side of that, the fact that I made it out of high school at all is also tied by and large to Eve's behavior. She was absolutely terrible to me behind my back, unquestionably. Her playing games and always toying with me was an awful thing to do. Knowing I had a huge crush on her and non-playfully teasing me and leading me on was also an awful thing to do. Trying to get me jumped by her friends was terrible (I'm not sure why it never happened; my assumption is because I never did anything to her to deserve it, and her friends didn't want to beat the shit out of someone that had done nothing wrong). almost all of her behavior regarding me with other people was unceasingly bad. HOWEVER, It is difficult to explain to people how utterly awful my life was, the actual subjective experience of it, during high school, so I think that there is a better way of doing it than writing it out. These two pictures are my school pictures from my freshman and senior year:

The difference in these two pictures is the effect that her behavior to me directly had. It was other people too, especially once senior year had come around, once I had a car, and most of the people that went out of their way to make my life hell had already graduated, but by and large the transformation that I had between these two pictures would not have happened if it wasn't for Eve. I'm not even sure I would be alive today if she hadn't at least faked being nice and kind to me. It had that great of an impact on me. During my 20's when I went back to school, not including the girl I knew from Korea that I had met in New York, I went on a total of three or four dates, depending on how someone wants to define "date," and all of them ended badly. Or maybe not badly, but not in the way that both people

want to have a second date. When someone is incredibly lonely for a very long period of time, think years, it leaves a sort of stink on you that other people can notice. It makes interacting with people, especially people of the opposite sex (it doesn't matter if someone is a man or woman. Or the same sex really, I guess, if someone is gay), much more difficult than it normally is. Nobody likes to be lonely, and on the part of other people, nobody really wants to be burdened with being the person that someone else needs to not be lonely. One of them was a girl I had met in my Organic Chemistry class when I was in HCC. I've mentioned her elsewhere, but I think given the subject it is worthwhile to touch on it again. She clearly had a thing for me, we went on a date, but something about her just screamed to me "I need to have nothing to do with this person." That she was in no way my type played some role in that feeling, but there was something else about her, that I still can't really put my finger on, that made me uneasy. After spending an few hours with her, we left separately and never really hung out again. She later got engaged to be married; her fiance murdered her by stabbing her to death, shot their dog, and then killed himself. The next two or three, or maybe even one depending on what exactly qualifies as a date, didn't end with someone getting stabbed to death, but none of them ended particularly well, either. All of them were when I was at UMBC in my later 20's, so sometime between when I was 27-30, although I don't know how old was at each time specifically, but something in that area. One was with a girl that was in my Analytical Chemistry and later in my Biochemistry 2 class. I even had a nickname for her with a friend of mine, "posture," since, if you can't tell by the name, she had really, really amazing posture. I've tried my whole adult life to fix my posture so I can sit for extended periods of time more easily, and I just can't do it. So when I see someone that sits completely upright, almost like they are sitting on a meditation cushion, it catches my attention. In Biochem 2, we wound up sitting next to each other in class. While in college there aren't assigned seats, in smaller classes like Biochem people will usually pick a seat at the beginning of the

semester and more or less use that seat for the rest of the semester, and if not that one, one near it. It's kind of an unspoken agreement between students that if someone typically sits somewhere, not to take their seat if you get to class before them. We had studied together before at some point, and went to what I think was a Vietnamese (she was Vietnamese, if I remember correctly. At least somewhere in southeast Asia) restaurant somewhere near school. She had invited me to come to her place, and I thought, "Hey! why not. should be fun." It was not fun. The very first thing that caught my attention on the way back that something was off was where she lived. Burtonsville. I'm not joking, she actually lived in Burtonsville, a 30 minute drive from UMBC, about two miles from the house I grew up in. Nothing good ever seems to come from being in Burtonsville, at least for me. When we got to her place, she was dating someone, a woman that seemed roughly her age, and hadn't mentioned it to me. I to this day have no idea if she was inviting me over as a friend, or if she was inviting me over to see what her girlfriend thought of me for...other things. In either case, we had a couple drinks, and her girlfriend started going on about how she was a black belt in some martial art. It may have been Krav Maga, as that is what sticks out in memory to me, but I'm not sure. By this point, I had been doing BJJ for about 10 years, usually multiple times a week, and one of the first things someone learns when they start doing any sort of wrestling or grappling sport, is that stand up striking does not work when someone has a hold of you. I said as much to her, not because I was trying to show her up, or impress the girl from my class, but out of concern that if someone has only trained in striking (and this works vice versa too. Over the years I've spent a small amount of time learning how to box just in case I need to. I'm not good at it by any metric, especially compared to grappling, but I know the absolute basics), especially if it is heavily rules based like karate or tae kwon do, all someone has to do is grab them and everything that they have learned no longer matters or helps. She started to argue with me, so I said I would prove it to her. I told her something to the effect of, "I'm going to grab you from the side, I want you to try to use the [martial art] that you know."

Of course, she couldn't, because I had grabbed her, and any striking martial art requires distance to work. She got very upset by this, said that all men were all alike, and then slapped me, incredibly hard, across the face. From my side of things, my behavior was well-intended; someone being completely confident in their ability to win a fight, even if they can but especially when they can't, is dangerous. For me too; for UFC fighters, for anyone and everyone. Even after doing BJJ for 10 years, I am weary of getting into a confrontation with people if I think it will escalate to an all out fight. If I have no choice, then I have no choice. I usually, key word usually as there are still situations I would, won't back down from a fight if someone else insists, but 100% of the time I avoid it if I can. That was my purpose in it, to try to prevent a bad future situation from happening where she thought she could take someone on that actually did want to harm her. She took it as me being like "all other men," slapped me across the face, and I left soon after. The slap came after I had said, "You can slap me if it would make you feel better, I don't mind." It did not make her feel better. No good deed goes unpunished, I never hung out with the girl again. Like I already said, I still, almost 10 years later, have no idea what her motivation was for inviting me to her apartment to have a couple drinks. In another chapter, I briefly mentioned that within the US, there are two distinctive groups of Koreans, the FOBs and the twinkies. Again, as I mentioned before, this is completely 100% a real thing, and the two groups tend to not interact nor even like each other very much. Part of the reason why, I think, is that if someone grew up in Korea, surrounded by the culture and speaking the language, the way things in the world are categorized is totally different than someone that grew up in the US speaking English. At one point when I was in Seoul, I had picked up an English newspaper while I was on a train going from I think Seoul to Daejeon. Or maybe it was the opposite and it was from Daejeon to Seoul. One or the other. One of the articles was an opinion piece written by a Korean person that had a Ph.D in English. There had been a study done of native English speakers, i.e. foreigners, and native Korean speakers, i.e. Koreans, where they were given three objects and told to group two together and leave one out. If I remember correctly, the three objects were grass, a chicken,

and a cow. 100% of the time, the foreign, native English speakers would group the chicken and the cow together, since they are both animals, and leave the grass separate. Koreans, again, 100% of the time, did not do that. They grouped the cow and the grass together, leaving the chicken out. Native English speakers group the animals together, whereas Koreans group the cow with what the cow ate. That things are grouped and categorized differently in language and culture is all pervasive. In the US, someone is white, or asian, or black, or whatever. In Korea, someone is Korean, or a foreigner. Even other Asian people, even from neighboring countries like Japan or China, are foreigners. A foreign person in Korea could master the Korean language to absolute perfect fluency, be a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, own a business making Hanboks (traditional Korean clothing), win a national kimchi competition, have a Korean spouse, and they would STILL be a foreigner. A popular foreigner probably, but still a foreigner. Someone born and raised in the US would not know that these distinctions, the way things are grouped together and left out and categorized, is completely, 100%, arbitrary. They wouldn't even know that there were other ways to look at things. Someone that was born in Korea and later moved to the US (this is true I think for anyone that is born and raised in one country and then at some later point moves to another, but the differences in language and culture between the US and Korea are far greater than they are between say, the US and Canada, and as such the differences in how the world is seen are more obvious) absolutely would notice. I've never actually had a conversation with anyone about this, but it would not surprise me if it is one of the reasons that FOBs to some degree look down on twinkies: they don't even know what they don't know, and trying to explain it to someone without the experience is a fruitless effort. On a similar topic, this is one of the reasons why the Quran, the Muslim holy book, has to be read and copied in Arabic to be authentic. Sure, there are translations of the Quran in nearly every language; I don't mean to imply otherwise. However, Muhammed (PBUH), spoke Arabic, and there are ways of expressing things in Arabic that simply do not exist in other languages. To be clear, I have never studied Arabic. I don't know jack about Arabic. I can recognize the written script when I see it,

but that is about as far as I go. That I even know this is because there were a lot of Muslim people, well, at least compared to average across the US, in the town I grew up in, and at some point during high school I had exactly this conversation. I do know that the US Foreign Service has a list of languages along with roughly the amount of time it takes to be proficient in them when someone starts off with English as their native language (This is an important point that to me is obvious but may not be to other people: the difficulty in learning a new language is largely related to how similar it is to someone's native one. Japanese is very easy for Koreans to learn, but incredibly difficult for American native-English speakers, for instance). There are five categories, ranging from the easiest to the most difficult, with each category having it's own estimate of the number of classroom hours needed to become proficient with it in daily life. The fifth category, the most difficult, includes Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, and Arabic. When I was growing up, it was required to take two years of a foreign language to graduate from high school. The options that we had in Burtonsville were Spanish and French. At the time, and even after taking the classes (I had no interest in either when I was younger and did what was essentially the bare minimum to pass), I was largely under the impression that learning a new language was more or less just learning a new set of vocabulary and some small amount of grammatical changes. That may be somewhat true for something like French or Spanish; I took Spanish but I don't remember much from it. When someone is learning something as distant to English as Korean, or more relevant to the subject at hand, Arabic, however, it is far more encompassing than just words and grammar. I would even go as far as to say that it is more about learning a new way of describing, relating to, and interacting with reality than it is just learning a new language. A lot of the assumptions that native English speakers make about the way things work and the way things are are simply that: assumptions. They have no definite, solid foundation, and they are only true insomuch as everyone else that speaks English natively also makes them, almost certainly without even knowing that they are doing it.

The point of bringing that up is the next disaster of a date I went on. I think this was in my final year at UMBC, although it may have been the one directly before it. The UMBC Korean club did some thing where they were auctioning off dates with people, both guys and girls. I kind of envied the people who put themselves up for auction; it takes a certain confidence that I did not have. At the time, I was working weekends and studying all week, so I didn't really have the time nor the energy to make up clever ways to hang out with people to get to know them better. Also, as I have mentioned previously numerous times, similar to the FOBs, I don't tend to get along very well with twinkies, nor did twinkies typically get along very well with me, so even if I had the time and energy it probably would not have made much of a difference. At the auction I bid on and won a date with one of the girls that was doing it that I thought was pretty. She was half Korean and half white, although I don't know what kind of white specifically. I told her that she could pick the place to go eat, thinking we would go to some kind of Korean restaurant, since that was what I would have done if the situation was reversed. She picked some kind of American steak house. That was my first clue it was not going to go well. I think even today, if I had a choice between the average American steak house (not eating beef aside, pretend for a moment that does not matter) and a Korean restaurant, especially if it was Korean BBQ, I would pick the BBQ place most of the time. Not all of the time - one of the weird traits of American people is that we have an absolutely crazy amount of choice in the foods we eat. I love Korean food, but I can't eat it every day. But given she was involved with the Korean club on campus, and as far as I could tell only had twinkie friends, I assumed beforehand that she was into Korean stuff. The rest of the date went poorly. Like the girl from my Organic Chemistry class, our life experiences in no way lined up. I was already disappointed from the get-go with the choice of restaurant, and the more time we spent together the more disappointed I became. By that time, I had been sitting for somewhere around 10 years; when I was disappointed in something or with someone, other people usually had no idea. The whole date just turned into practicing letting the disappointment

cease as it was arising. At some point, she made the distinction of being "Asian," as the way American people categorize race, saying something to the effect of "I am Asian." Someone who made their entire identity and social life about being Korean didn't even know that Korean people, and the language itself, do not identify, nor categorize themselves in that way. In the Korean language/culture, as I just mentioned, someone is either Korean or a foreigner. Even people from Japan or China, neighboring countries, are foreigners. A Korean person would never identify themselves as "Asian," at least not under normal circumstances. I didn't bother to say anything, since it wouldn't have been useful. At the end she told me she liked me as a friend. At the end I thought to myself, "I don't even like you in that way anymore." To me, it was like someone having parents that were doctors or lawyers (or something. Pick a profession.), and then going around and telling people they were a doctor or a lawyer. Sure, maybe they know a bit more about it than someone who's parents aren't doctors or lawyers, but it doesn't make someone one. I have no idea why someone would want to make something central to their personal and social identity that they knew almost nothing about. To be clear, this is common among American born Korean people, and I would assume other American born Asian people. It wasn't unique to her, and I had mentioned to other people at the time, especially to other American people that had spent time in Korea, that it did not make a lot of sense to me that being Korean, and more specifically "Asian" was the main way that they identified themselves socially when they didn't know the language, culture, nor had ever actually been there. The American people I spoke with about this also found it a bit odd, although most were not as perplexed about it as I was. The very distinction of being "Asian" itself is a totally American way of understanding race, which is something that is lost on people that don't have in depth experience with other cultures. People that identify that way think it makes them different from "white" Americans, or "black" Americans, or whatever, but the only way being "Asian" as a sort of social construct makes any sense is when it is compared with white and black and brown. The thing that they thought separated them from other Americans was actually the thing that made them exactly like other Americans they thought they were separate from.

At some point over the last few years, I had a conversation with a friend of mine from childhood to this effect. The difference between the various groups of American people - white, black, asian, brown, Christian, Muslism, etc., seems very significant to the average person that has grown up in the US. Once enough time is spent around people from different cultures, the perception of those differences changes. the differences don't change at all, but the perception of their significance absolutely does. Spend a lot of time with people that are culturally and linguistically different from American people, like say, in Korea, and all of a sudden the differences between groups in the US seem pretty trivial. Which doesn't mean that the problems that the groups have with each other evaporates, but it does mean that it is in general easier to fit in with various people that seemed very distant at one point. On the topic of foreigners, in general I tend to get along with foreign people in the US pretty well. It is comfortable to me to be around others that understand that the way things are in the US is not the way things actually are. It's just the way they are here. It is totally arbitrary and in no way, shape, or form is "correct" (nor incorrect, either). It is hard for me to relate to people that have never left the bubble of their home country, since a non-insignificant portion of my adult life has been about learning that the way things they are here in the US is simply that. When someone else doesn't know that, when they haven't had that experience, the gap in life experience and the gap in the way the world and even interpersonal relationships are understood is as big as Mount Sumeru. Which doesn't mean I'm a jerk about it or rude to people, or even that I dislike people that have lived in their home country their entire life. I guess if anything, it is somewhat frustrating on my end, because I am incredibly thankful for the fact that I know this, and I can't really relate it to other people. I can explain it like I just have, but to really understand how thoroughly the way things, by things I mean "reality as a whole" are categorized and understood is completely arbitrary and have no underlying basis for how they are, it takes years and years of study and immersion. Most people don't have the time, don't want to put in the effort, and even if they had both, wouldn't have the right conditions in life to do it in a way

that would be really beneficial. Just going to a foreign country and partying with people is not going to do it. Nor is watching movies or TV shows with subtitles. I don't watch Korean movies or TV very often (I don't watch American TV or movies often either. I don't like having to dedicate extended periods of time to entertainment, with the exception of hockey on occasion. Even with hockey I haven't seen a game yet this year), but something that catches my attention every time I do, and I really do mean every single time I do, is that the subtitles are absolutely not what is really being said. They are reasonable approximations, but what is actually being said is often not really expressible in English, and is usually far more vulgar than what the translation indicates. My life has been bizarre enough that all three simultaneously existed in a way for a long enough period that I was able to benefit from it. On a similar point, I think that around the world, it is more common for non-American people to at least have some idea about this, simply because American media and entertainment is prevalent nearly everywhere in the world. In the three countries I've spent a reasonable amount of time in, English is mandatory to graduate from high school. In Korea, there are English language cram schools called Hagwons, and a quick google search shows that it is a ~26 billion dollar a year industry. They take it very seriously. Speaking English well is almost a sort of status symbol, given the amount of time, money, and effort required, and a fairly reliable way of telling how rich or poor an area is in Seoul is by how much English is seen on signs and in restaurants and businesses. Most movie theaters play American movies, and most networks will have American TV shows. People born in other countries and into other cultures are exposed to this daily in a way that American people are not. I even think it's funny how a lot of KPOP videos seem to fetishize what they know about American culture, especially American high school, from TV and movies. Which isn't to say that it is better to live elsewhere, just that there is some benefit to being constantly exposed to foreign culture and language during daily life. Since I'm on tangentially on the topic of not reacting to people and/or situations when they are unpleasant to me, I'm going to side track a bit to something my sister said to me before she decided

that she was going to have my mother leave me homeless after surgery was something about not being able to have sex. She had contracted an STD or something, and was worried that she was never going to be able to have sex again. I have no idea why she told me that. I wasn't close with her, certainly not close enough that I should be privy to details like that about her sex life. I didn't really react, which is typical for me, like when the guy groped my ass during post-surgical rehab, and like on that date. My not reacting infuriated her for some reason. I suppose I didn't show the appropriate level of sorriness for her condition. I've never, as in, not once, in my life been able to enjoy having sex, by in large because of how she, my mother, and all the girls/young women throughout middle school and high school treated me. And while I voluntarily haven't had sex in quite a few years, even when I did when I was younger, I never had orgasms (which leads to a whole host of other problems with the person someone is having sex with). So meditation aside, I'm not really all that sympathetic. It left me with problems that, if it wasn't for meditation, I would never be able to be be happy with my life. The flip side of these problems that I have is that this is exactly what I am meant to be. If I hadn't had them, If I was able to enjoy sex like nearly everyone else, I wouldn't have been forced into meditation like I had. I wouldn't have ended up developing Jhana, which is far better than normal pleasant sense experiences. For all the terribleness of my life, there is always the flip side from meditation. No matter what problem I have or have had, meditation has by and large made them irrelevant. My life now is much better than people that didn't have it terrible, to the point where I am actually quite thankful for all of it. If meditation didn't do anything, and I had the problems I had in my late teens/early 20s for the rest of my life, I would probably have a different opinion on it. It does though, and unequivocally, refined concentration to the extent I have had to do it is superior. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an American ordained in the Thai Forest tradition of Theravadan Buddhism, put it as such, "if you see a greater pleasure that comes from forsaking a lesser pleasure, be willing to forsake that lesser pleasure for the greater one." There isn't really a way to stick with Zen practice if life is too good. Well, maybe there is, but not to the extent that is necessary to have it be utterly

transformative of the experience of daily life. Quite recently I got back in touch with one of the people from middle/high school that was part of making my life hell, which left me with all these problems. She had a picture of a Buddhist temple as her Facebook banner thing, so it caught my attention. When I randomly see Buddhist stuff in daily life, it always catches my attention in a way very few other things do. So I asked about the temple, how she was doing, etc. My side of the conversation was entirely about Buddhism, directly. I don't really talk about Buddhism directly in daily life. I like to do it the indirect way, where people don't even know I'm doing it. That is the best way. But if someone is going to go as far as to make a Buddhist temple their Facebook thing, I think talking about it directly is OK. She quickly went from talking about Buddhism to trying to play the dating or the hooking up game. Buddhism, and Zen in particular, to me is how I've been able to fix myself. It's how I've been able to take my life from being practically unlivable to actually being able to enjoy it, by and large. I take it very, very seriously. Maybe I shouldn't. Buddhism to her, as far as I can tell, is a piece of social flare she can use to signal other people the kind of stuff she is interested in. The change from talking about Buddhism to trying to play the social game was obvious as one day, she was at her brothers wedding, and she sent me a picture of her on the beach. There was nothing overwhelmingly scandalous about the picture, but the way her shoulder was exposed (and the way it made her tit kind of hang out) was enough, along with the general way the conversation was developing, that it was clear that the game I was playing, the Zen game, was not the game she was playing, the dating/hook up game. There is nothing really wrong with the dating/hook up game. I don't mean to come off that way. But, by in large because of how her and her friends behaved towards me for all those years, I've never been able to play that one. My life forced me into mastering the Zen game though, which I can play while other people are playing their dating/hook up game. Eventually, she thought she won the game she was playing and stopped responding to me, when I was only talking about Buddhism. At that point, there isn't much else to do. I sent her a few Koans. She spoke to me once more when I asked her

why she had treated me like she did, since I had never done anything to her. I had said that she had behaved like a demon. Her response was "Everyone got bullied, I guess some had it worse than others." It took me ~15,000 hours of staring at walls to fix what was broken, I don't think that she really appreciates the effect of her behavior. That I was trying to share with her the benefit of 15,000 hours of sitting, and she turned it into a social dating game is even worse. Historically, if you wanted to talk to someone that had done meditation to that extent, you had to make some kind of pilgrimage to a temple in the middle of nowhere and, if you were lucky, you could have a brief minute with the master. One of the lineage masters in Korea during the 1900s, Seung Cheol Sunim (승철 스님) would make anyone that wanted to speak to him do 3,000 prostrations before he would speak with them. The president of the country had tried to meet him at one point, and he made the same condition for the president of the country. They did not meet. I was giving her the benefit of my practice for free, and she turned it into a hookup game that she thought she won. To be fair, there is some truth in what she said. I would wager during youth and adolescence that everyone gets bullied from time to time. In Buddhism, it is said that everyone without exception suffers. It is inescapable that things we do not want to happen will happen and things we want to happen will not happen. Kids bullying each other has been going on far before I was born. But the extent that it happened, the length of time it went on, and with the entire town somehow unanimously deciding it was OK, it wouldn’t surprise me if it rose to the point of actual criminal culpability for some of the people involved. I started this book off with "In the beginning was the word" from the bible. The word was with God, and the word WAS god. Gods Law, Karma, whatever you want to call it, it works through language. As a habit, If you behave like a demon, you will go to hell. If you behave like an animal, you will be reborn as an animal. One woman I met recently had said she was a cougar, and proud of it. If you are a cougar in this life, you will be a cougar in the next one. If you constantly ghost people throughout your life, you will be reborn as a ghost. Hockey players (I single out hockey players

because I LOVE hockey. Its probably the only sport I actually follow. It is endlessly fascinating to me to the point where the only sport I've seen in person in my adult life was a Capitals game where Ovechkin was gifted a golden hockey stick for scoring 500 goals), people that play violent games on ice, will be polar bears. Or said another way, "Those who are violent on ice will be violent on ice" It will be the same thing as in this life, just different. With language, things can be both the same and different - that's why it is God's law. God does not abide by the normal human distinction that things are one way or the other. God contains both, simultaneously. Samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death in Buddhism, is shaped like a pyramid. It is very, very easy to have a bad rebirth, and quite difficult to have a good one. The general trend is almost always towards bad and unpleasant rebirths. It's one of the reasons why coming into contact with Buddhist teachings (Or even the bible, although I think the heart of the tradition got lost somewhere along the way, unlike with Zen) is considered to be so unfathomably fortunate. A way of looking at Karma that doesn't need metaphysical hocus pocus is to imagine that everyone someone met in their life knew everything they had ever done, even the stuff that they think was done secretly. If all of the good/harm someone has done all came back someone at once, in one moment, How would it change their life? If they have continuously done bad things, continuously harmed people, etc., how would it change the relationships they have? How would it change the way people see them? How would it effect their ability to retain employment, or even do daily life things like going to the grocery store or eating at a restaurant? Being human means being dependent on the good will of others, to a large degree, and if everyone in your daily life woke up tomorrow and utterly despised (or completely loved you; the opposite holds true as well) you simultaneously, what would change? In the bible, Jesus was said to be sent because nobody was able to live a "pure" enough life to not go to hell. That there is nothing between what we would consider a normal human life and hell doesn't make a whole lot of sense, which is why I think this is something of an approximation. As I've

said in other places, "Skillful means," since the framework for understanding reality that existed in ancient India didn't exist in ancient Israel. In Buddhist scripture, the future of many professions in general are laid out here and there, and the the vast majority of them are negative. In ancient India, where Buddhism first started, that actions in this life effect circumstances more or less indefinitely into the future was already known and accepted. This can be seen with my own life - as I have said elsewhere I am no exception to how this works. Throughout my 20s and 30s, I spent a lot of time and money on cam-girl websites. It was the only way I could have sexual interactions with women. Like most guys in my 20's and up until my early 30's I was endlessly horny almost all the time. Now at 37, both age combined with Jhana, it has calmed down a bit and doesn't really influence my behavior that much. I was what was called an incel involuntarily celibate. Being continuously lonely all the time because you don't fit in with anyone, along with being continuously horny because no woman wants anything to do with you, rots you from the inside. It was endless years of continual, never ending frustration, where nothing I ever did, no matter how much effort I put in, no matter how good I was at something, didn't change a thing. As a result, I have had CAM impingements in my hips and have been on and off homeless for a few years. The CAM impingements tore my labrum. Also, my hips don’t lie: I have 5 surgical scars on my hips that are in the shape of stars, which is what I typically rated people. Once my hips stopped being a problem, I herniated a disc in my lumbar - labrum and lumbar are anagrams of each other. cam and CAM are the same letters in different cases. Labrum and Lumbar are the same letters in different orders. When things are simultaneously the same and different through the use of language, that is Karma at work. My back has not healed correctly, and I am as of today homeless again with serious spine problems. Karma, God's law, whatever you want to call it, is applied through the use of language. It is the same thing, it is just different. When you do crazy amounts of meditation, you will experience the results of your actions sooner rather than later. So while I've said numerous times that I am not an exception to the fact that everyone will bear the results of their actions, it is even more than that. If you

get really deep into meditation, you not only will experience them, you will experience them sooner than people who don't meditate will. The testicular torsion and hematoma I had are other examples. I am experiencing the results of actions that would have effected my next life in this one. Eventually the harm I caused others will have been burned away through my own unpleasant situations, and I will stop having these problems, but not before. The one saving grace for me is, because I am cut off from a significant part of the human experience from my upbringing, I don't really experience the significance of sex in the same way most people do. One of the few things I do remember very clearly from what happened to me in New York was this recognition, although I cannot remember why that is. I quite literally cannot fathom what the difference is between that time and my daily life now. It is beyond my ability to even imagine. If I did, if I experienced it in the way human beings naturally do and I had behaved the same way, the results would be much, much worse than they already are. The vast majority of people will have a worse time in the next life than they did in this one. As I just mentioned, part of what determines the result of an action is to have full knowledge of what they are doing and do it anyways. I had asked this person why they had treated me the way they did, but really I already knew the answer. It was because they enjoyed it. The same as the rest of them. Often times, there isn't really a deeper reason for people's behavior than that. People enjoy what they enjoy, and they are more or less stuck with it. Even for things like food, or music. Maybe sometimes someone will try a new food they didn't like before, and maybe sometimes they will stop liking things they once liked, but even when that happens, it isn't really an intentional thing. You can't really voluntarily change what you like and what you don't like. You can make a conscious decision not to do things you like and to do things you don't like, but the likes and dislikes are for the most part just something that we have to live with. I don't know why it was me specifically, and not some other person, but they enjoyed acting the way they did, or they wouldn't have done it as a matter of habit. It is one thing to act harmfully to someone because you have a fight, or they wronged you in some way. It is also said that one way to

lessen the effect of bad actions is to genuinely be regretful and try to make amends in some way. This doesn't even need Zen or Christianity to see in daily life - when someone wrongs you, if they try to make amends in a way that is acceptable, both parties can move on. But when someone behaves in a harmful way continuously, unprovoked, for years, every chance they get, they are more or less setting up the conditions they themselves will experience when the actions have results. People who behave like demons as a matter of habit will go to hell. There are plenty of descriptions of hell in Buddhist sutras, it goes into much more detail than the bible does. I assume they are accurate. It is not a destination you want to go to. There is no escape from this. From the highest king to the lowest slave, it applies to everyone, without exception, equally. Knowing this, not just believing it, but actually recognizing this is how the mind-stream works, just make me feel sorry for all the people in my life that were involved in the negative aspects of my childhood (and even my adult life). Most of those involved will go to hell once the results of their actions ripen.

Past, Present and Future Lives

One of the things that western people who are interested in Buddhism really find fascinating is the existence of prior, and by extension, future lives. I never particularly cared about any those kind of things, to be honest. As a passing curiosity when I first started sitting, and I was reading all sorts of Buddhist literature and what not, I read into it a bit, but not as a serious concern. I got into Buddhism and Zen practice because my life was awful and doing it helped a little bit each time. Speculation on previous and future lives is something that people who have don't have enough problems spend time worrying about. That said, the interest in different lives isn't limited to people that have an interest in Buddhism - Yesterday when I was coming home from physical therapy, there was some kind of tarot reading crystal place that was advertising that they know about that kind of stuff. There does, in general, seem to be a non-insignificant number of people in the US that think they have had past lives,

or at least find the idea fascinating, and want to know about it. Typically in western Christianity the idea of having past and future lives is disregarded as being not-Christian. There is, however, one prominent example of it happening in the bible. Not only is does it happen in the bible, the bible doesn't even work as a religious text without it: Jesus returning. The idea that all the bad stuff in Revelations happens and then once everyone on earth has suffered whatever it is that they will suffer through has come through the other side Jesus all of a sudden appears in the sky and all of a sudden everyone worships him, like simply believing Jesus existed somehow meaning that someone goes to heaven, does not make any sense. When Jesus returns, it is because he is born again, like the first time, grows up, like the first time, goes out and does years and years of meditation (prayer), like the first time, and then suffers with everyone through all the bad stuff. Nobody would pay Jesus any attention if he just showed up after all the bad stuff went down and said, "lol ok worship me now pls." There are two ways to rule others: because someone creates an atmosphere of respect and love, and out of fear. I have a hard time believing Jesus would have to resort to the latter, after showing up once all the suffering has finished. The former can only happen when someone has done things worthwhile of other people voluntarily wanting to follow someone. On a personal level, as a result of all the sitting I have done over the years, I have good news and bad news; the bad news first: I can't really help anyone to know their past or future lives. At least not with any real accuracy. There have been a few times in my life when I meet someone that I have a strong inclination to believe they were deeply into meditation previously, but that's about as far as I can extrapolate. And even with these people, the few I can think of, it is just my guess; I in no way know it is the case for certain. In general, the habits someone has in this life, the strong pulls and pushes they have towards this thing and away from that thing, have some relation to what has been done previously. It doesn't even have to be in a past life, this pattern can be seen in this one just based on the things that have been done and the experiences that have been had. The process that creates experience from life to life, and the process that creates experience within a single life, is the exact same process.

The good news is exactly what i just wrote: the habitual tendencies people have in their lives must come from somewhere, and if you spend enough time sitting it can be sort of teased out how they came to be. Myself, for instance, at some point previously, I was Korean. By some point previously, I mean the life directly before, and if not directly, nearly, I was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, at Holy Cross (I'm not joking. I really was born at Holy Cross) hospital in November of 1985. I assume, by my habit towards Buddhist, especially Zen, and especially especially Korean Zen, things, that I was either a monk or I was a very dedicated lay person. I was more likely a dedicated lay person than a monk; I smoke cigarettes, I curse probably a bit more than I should. I drank a lot in my 20s and early 30s, and have slept around some, and I assume that if I had been a monk previously I probably wouldn't have. I also assume if I had been a monk previously I would be one now. I've had the opportunity before to actually become a monk and I declined. Even today, while I keep a monastic-style schedule, I do it as a lay person. Either way is possible, but a dedicated lay person makes much more sense. The weird personality quirks I have, my horrible upbringing and childhood aside, aren't really explainable in any other way. As I have said a number of times, immediately when I went to Seoul something clicked in my brain and it has changed me ever since; To this day I love Korean food, I like listening to the language. I even eat Kimchi from time to time when I have my own place to live. I miss Seoul and the general atmosphere that Korea has. More than a decade has passed since I have last gone, and I still have a very strong pull towards it that I cannot change, and it has not dissipated in the slightest. I was at the Baltimore Zen Center when I made that connection, in a Weird Zen Stuff way. It was either while I was working at the software company after college, or directly after. I actually cried quite a lot when I did. All of a sudden a lot of the bizarreness of my life, and of my likes and dislikes, made sense in a way that it hadn't before. A lot of the stress that I had in my life was immediately ended: I am this way because I am SUPPOSED to be this way. I SHOULD have a strong draw towards Korean stuff and I SHOULD be very into meditation and Zen in general. Even when nobody else

around me is, and even when people dislike or even outright hate me for these things. When someone makes something, like Zen practice as an example, into an incredibly strong habit over a long period of time, that momentum carries forward. Not indefinitely, mind you, but just because someone has died does not mean that the habitual tendency is erased. One of the first "famous" monks that became big in the US, and big here is relative as I mean within American-Buddhist circles, was a guy named Trungpa Rinpoche. Like how the word Sunim is the english spelling of the pronunciation for "monk" in Korean, Rinpoche is roughly the same thing in the Tibetan language. He died some time ago, of cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much, no less, but while he was alive he translated a book common in Tibetan Buddhism that we call in English "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" or "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying." I've seen it written both ways, but the former is far more common. I have read bits and pieces of it before, when I was living at the Baltimore Zen Center as Pohwa Sunim had a copy of it, although I'm not sure if I've ever read the whole thing. If I haven't, I've at the very least read most of it. To be completely honest, I have no idea if what is written in it is true or not. There is a lot of hocus pocus style stuff in it that does not really resonate with my personal experience, both of just daily life and of meditation in general. That being said, he was a lineage holder in two different Tibetan traditions, and that isn't something that someone can just do. It isn't like making a business card. When I was looking up the reason he died just before writing this section, this portion of the Wikipedia article stood out to me:

One of Trungpa's nursing attendants reported that he suffered in his last months from classic symptoms of terminal alcoholism and cirrhosis,[47] yet continued drinking heavily. She added, "At the same time there was a power about him and an equanimity to his presence that was phenomenal, that I don't know how to explain.

As I have written elsewhere, when someone has done meditation for ridiculous amounts of time, and especially once Jhana has been developed, they have a sort of vibe, or aura, to them. It isn't something that can be faked, and it is something other people absolutely notice. As such, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he had probably just done this meditation thing for a far longer amount time than I have, and that his translation is reasonably accurate. I use the word reasonably here purposefully, because whatever the experience of death is, kind of like the experience of Jhana, it can't really be related to other people using every day language, especially to other people that have never experienced it themselves. Like trying to explain color to someone that has been born blind, It can't be done, at least not in any way that is beneficial. On a related tangent, there is a book by a guy who has been practicing Zen for 40 years, Brad Warner, called "There Is No God and He Is Always With You." The point of bringing this up is not to bring God or Christianity into this topic, but something else: the experiential portion of death aside, whatever that happens to be, having someone else die during during your own life causes its own set of problems, stress, and pain. When people die, the people that go on living often feel a deep sense of loss and separation from the dead one. That part of death, the part of being on the side of those still living, I do have extensive experience with. Even when someone is dead, from the side of those still alive, they aren't really gone. They are, were always, and always will be, experienced in the mind-stream, and as such, even though they are dead, they aren't really separate from the person mourning them in any realistic way. The entire experience, from beginning to end, of the other person was only someone's own creation. This is another one of those things that can be shown without having done meditation to any extent: there are plenty of times that many people will see the same person differently. To explain what I mean by that, a saying I am quite fond of is to never meet your idols, as they often act very differently than someone would expect by what they have seen/heard of them through TV/internet/whatever. I've read plenty of stories about people who meet their favorite artist or musician or actor or athlete or whatever, and how disappointed they are when the person's behavior is

not what was expected from their public persona. So when someone has two sides, a public side and a private side, each tailored to a specific group of people, everyone has a totally different idea of who that person actually is. Maybe that person isn't even either of those personas. In Zen, it is often said that the way people see others (animals, things...basically anything at all, really) is based on their own karmic afflictions, and that the object that is being seen is entirely the construct of someone's own habitual way of understanding reality. That is also true, which adds a layer of complexity to the whole thing: even with the public facing actions someone does, everyone else can see those actions differently.

I think the best way to sum this up is an old Zen joke:

A student asked a Zen Master, "What happens after we die?" The Zen Master replied, "I don't know." The student responded, "You don't know!? I thought you were a Zen Master!?" The Master responded, "I am, but I am not a dead one."

Do I think it is possible to fully understand what happens after death through meditation? Yes, both by my own personal experience and what is written in Buddhist scripture. From the dogmatic, scriptural standpoint, once someone is at one of the higher Jhanas, it is possible to voluntarily recall past lives. I've tried to find at which Jhana specifically this happens, but I cannot find a good reference. Also from the dogmatic standpoint, once someone is at a high enough Jhana they understand how to create the conditions for their next one. Also also, Jhanas are separated into two separate groups, concentration where someone still has their physical body, and concentration that is so absorbing that even the physical body disappears. Eventually all of the human senses are completely lost in absorptive concentration. At the very highest of the Jhanas, even the mind-stream itself

disappears. I assume that experience is similar to the actual process that happens during death. Do I think it is possible for the average person that sits 20 minutes a day on occasion when they remember to do it to fully understand what happens after death through meditation? No. Do I fully understand it? Also no, although due to meditation I don't particularly fear the process either. One of the reasons that meditation is helpful with the dying process is, at the higher levels of Jhana, someone can get accustomed to not having any senses, which are all lost during the dying process. That part, losing the senses and connection to this body is probably quite terrifying if someone has no experience separate from them, but lots of things in life suck, and things sucking does not stop people from doing them. On a similar topic since it has to do with past and future lives, suicide is something that comes up in Buddhism like it comes up in the other major religions. I think the best thing that can be said is similar to when someone calls up a 1800 suicide hotline number: Don't do it. Historically, there have been plenty of monks that have committed suicide, usually by self-immolation (a fancy way of saying, "They lit themselves on fire and burned themselves to death). In Buddhist dogma, suicide by arahants is considered to be OK. Maybe OK isn't the right word to use, but if they decide that is the best line of action, they are not considered to be heretical or anything like that. Arahats have completely severed all attachment to the mind-stream and to the human body, so what they are burning is not them. Someone I know that has been doing meditation for a long time, 40+ years, said to me something to the effect of, "when those people do that, they are long gone. " I mention earlier that one of the sure ways to become a non-returner is to reach the very last level of jhana where the mind-stream drops away. The difference between a stream-enterer, someone that has first gotten enlightenment, and a non-returner, someone that has reached the very last jhana, is probably somewhat similar to the difference between a non-returner and an Arhat. An Arhat is so far up the meditation ladder that, similar to Buddhas and Maha-sattvas, I cannot even begin to speculate as to what their experience of reality is. Given that the sixth and seventh fetters that give way as someone

climbs the meditation ladder are desire to be born with a body/born without a body, I think, although this IS speculation on my part, the lack of desire (good OR bad) to be reborn probably takes a role. For the average person however, for the rest of us that AREN'T Arahats and Buddhas, suicide will almost always, if not always have negative effects going forward. Death is not the end of the mind-stream, and dying does not eliminate that past negative actions will have negative effects. Like with everything else, the intention that someone holds while doing an act by and large determines what the causality will be. When monks burn themselves alive to make a point (or for whatever reason, I guess), They don't do it to escape some consequence that they think they would be better off dead than face. If they did, it would have a negative effect. They would also probably chose less painful ways to die. Then, not only does someone still have to deal with whatever situation they were trying to avoid, they have to deal with the negative effects of trying to avoid it too. Even if someone is successful in killing themselves, and there isn't really any way of knowing ahead of time if a suicide attempt will be successful (imagine if someone irreversibly injures themselves in an attempt, for example), the way someone dies, at least from all Buddhist literature I have ever read on the subject, has a direct effect on what happens next. Trying to commit suicide out of fear, coupled then with the gradual loss of sense contact, which is generally held to be terrifying on its own, directly effects the conditions of the next life going forward. Is it possible to commit suicide (Arahats and Buddhas notwithstanding) and have what follows death in this life be pleasant? To be honest, I'm not sure. Even if it is possible, I wouldn't bet my life on it. In nearly every conceivable circumstance, it is better to experience the results of the acts done in this life in this life.

To put it another way: if you have to take advice on whether or not to commit suicide based on a book written by someone you don't know and have never met, don't do it. You don't have my permission or approval.

Sys

I've mentioned before a number of times that my mother had stockholmed syndromed my sister into being her mother growing up. I know for certain I had noticed this by high school, since I had mentioned it to other people by then, but it had been going on in one way or another since I was elementary school. To some degree, my sister was OK with this arrangement, because it meant that she got whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. That was their unspoken agreement: my sister would play the role of my mother's mother, and in exchange my sister always got her way, with whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, without complaint or argument. That dynamic continues to this day. As I mentioned elsewhere, my mother was OK with me staying with her while recovering from surgery until she asked my sister about it. Then it wasn't OK. This dynamic overrides everything else in both of their lives. Even me being in a tent during the summer recovering from surgery, and being in another tent during the winter with a herniated disc, did not change it. The opposite, if anything - they need me in order for my sister to really get what she wants - to obviously be the favorite, so they convinced other people not to help so that I would have to play that game with them. She can't be the favorite if she is the only one. I refuse to play that game, regardless of the trouble it brings me. My mother would rather play this game than have a son. She recently cut me out of the will because I refuse to let them play it. Before that, sometime between the first time I was in a tent after hip surgery and when I had spine surgery she had thrown out an expensive subwoofer I had in one of the storage rooms (WZS) in her house. She wanted to punish me for not allowing her and my sister to play their game, and she knew I liked the subwoofer and knew it was expensive, so she threw it out. To be clears, my back hurts. I read the MRI report from the MRI I had the previous week, and there are irregularities with the section of my lumbar that correlates with where the pain is localized. I would rather be homeless, living in a tent, with a bad back that always hurts, than have anything to do with that dynamic.

Growing up, this lead to all sorts of bad situations. She was never punished for her behavior towards anyone. Our house was continually egged, toilet papered, and probably other stuff, because my sister always caused problems with everyone while at school. I don't know many of the specific details of it, but it happened often enough that she had to have been doing something. Between her and myself, she at one point had tried to drown me. She let me up, eventually, but not until after I had already started to inhale water into my lungs. It was at Calverton Swim Club, on the opposite side of the pool from the diving board, along the wall next to the ladder to get out. I still have a burn on my right wrist from when she had shoved me onto the pavement, stepped on my wrist, and then ground my wrist into the driveway. She randomly would kick me in the testicles when I had friends over, on the rare occasion I did, unprovoked. Once I started having friends again towards the end of high school and directly after, she fucked one of the guys I hung out with the most. Her reasoning, from her mouth, verbatim, "I was angry you had friends." The joke was on her though with that specific case: It didn't make me at all angry with my friend, more grossed out and made me feel sorry for him. For the most part, any chance she had to make things worse for me, she took it. Any chance she had to cause problems between my friends and I, she took it. She completely out of the blue told me I was an accident after I lent her $5,000, which she never repaid me. She even got angry when I asked when she was going to start paying me back a year or two later. She enjoyed it. it was her pastime. There was no other reason for her behavior than she utterly enjoyed causing me as much pain and trouble as she could. Well, that and she knew she was not going to be punished for it in any real way. At some point in middle school, between her and my mother always making fun of me for being hairy and having a lot of moles, I even developed OCD that still occurs today. There is a mole on the side of my nose and the side of my neck that are raised, and like most raised moles, grow out thick black hair. Now, most people that have visible, hairy moles take care to not let them get too unsightly, but when I say I have OCD about them, I mean it. I involuntarily check them every 20 or 30 minutes to make sure no hair is growing out of them. I've tried to stop doing this, but it happens regardless of my

intention or effort. I have the same problem with hair that grows on my thumbs and the upper part of my ring finger. Meditation has not eliminated this behavior in the slightest. If I am sitting upright using my bench, I usually don't do it, but if I am laying down (which I have had to do for the last year and a half) this OCD habit will actually interrupt my sitting. In general only things that are very funny, very sexy, or very painful interrupt my concentration while sitting; I think this OCD is the only exception to that. After high school, although I don't remember exactly when this was, we took a trip to Hawai'i. I had wanted to go Island hopping - I had already been on the Big Island and Oahu, and I wanted to check out Kauai and Maui. As I mentioned before, Hawai'i was one of the three places, along with New York and Seoul, that made an impression on me that has stuck around to this day. Indescribable natural beauty. Pictures and postcards, and even 4K videos on youtube, do not do it justice. You have to see it for yourself, and even then words fail. So I did a bunch of research on hotels and figured out the best order to do things, made all the arrangements, and we went. My only condition was, while on the first island, the Big Island - the one I had already spent time on, I wanted to go up Mauka Kea. Mauka Kea is a ~15,500 foot high mountain with a bunch of telescopes on the top of it. Since Hawai'i is near the equator, there isn't really any light pollution (the Big Island even uses different color street lights than most places to minimize the interference they can have with the telescopes), and Mauna Kea is above most of the atmosphere, it is one of the best places in the world for astronomical observations. Some of the best, most expensive telescopes in the world are located on the top of Mauna Kea. Because of this unique situation, there is a road that people can take to drive to the summit of the mountain. I had been to the summit once before when I had met my friend from high school and his Dutch girlfriend. From the summit you can see, what I would assume are tens of thousands of stars. Maybe even more than that. Different shades of purple from the arm of the milky way. Other weird colors that I have no idea the significance of. Ancient people would look to the night skies for

inspiration, to commune with God, and that kind of stuff. After seeing this, I fully understood why. Like I said, the only thing I actually wanted to do was go up Mauna Kea. I wanted to go on the whole trip, but I was fairly open to doing just about anything. I made this condition clear from the beginning, and it was agreed upon. Until we got there. As soon as we got there, because the car was rented in her name, she started doing the same thing she always did, and still does. She would refuse to go anywhere, or do anything. She refused to do the one thing she had agreed to do beforehand. I ended up having to hitchhike into town (to be clear here, hitchhiking in Hawai'i is a fairly common thing. It isn't typically dangerous and people do it all the time) to get away from her. She went out of her way to make me as miserable as possible while we were there, to the point where I eventually ended up saying, "WHAT DID I DO TO YOU? WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS LIKE THIS TO ME?" To which she just smirked. I did nothing to her. She enjoyed making my life hell because she enjoyed it, and because of her dynamic with our mother, nobody would step in to stop her. We ended up cutting the trip short, leaving after just the first island. While at the airport, she was screaming at me in public. Over her screams, I was speaking to the ticketing agent, explaining "I have these tickets to go to other islands, but I just want to go back to Baltimore. Can this be done?" She took a second to survey the situation, and gave me a look of complete sympathy. I still remember to this day, what has to be somewhere around 17 or 18 years later, that look, because it immediately validated what I strongly suspected to be true: this behavior was absolutely crazy, and even if I was being a total asshole, even if I had done something wrong, it was in no way appropriate. I had sympathy from complete strangers that knew nothing about me I had just met, because her behavior was so utterly extreme and inexcusable. With most people I've listed in various places here, I usually have at least something good to say about them. I can say the usual thing, that without being continuously traumatized by her throughout childhood, I would never have stuck with sitting like I have. And that is true. 100% completely true. But I have a very hard time finding other silver linings. Her only motivation when

interacting with me, going back as far as I can remember, is to cause me pain and trouble. Even when she was being nice on the odd occasion, it was also only to somehow also cause me pain and trouble. Sometimes, in high school, it got to the point of actual fights. It was about the time I started to be stronger than her, she really, really didn't like that she couldn't physically push me around anymore. So she put a bunch of keys between her fingers when her hand was in a fist and tried taking swipes at me. I ended up punching her in the forehead. I'm fairly certain its the only time in my entire life I've ever hit a girl (outside of sparring accidents while doing BJJ. It happens, they aren't intentional). When you act like a demon, you will wind up in hell.

American, White, Female

While writing this, a pattern that has been consistent throughout my entire life has become obvious to me in a way that I had never really noticed before. Before delving into this topic I want to make a few things clear: I am white. I've spent a lot of time of my adult life around foreign people, cultures, and languages. Even growing up in Burtonsville, the town was about a quarter white, a quarter black, a quarter Asian, and a quarter Arab/Indian, which is by far not the norm in the US. so I am not really culturally white. When I am interacting with other people in my daily life in the US, however, the assumptions people make, and as an extension, the way people act towards me, is that I am a white American man. The only way someone would really recognize that I am not culturally, and by culturally I mean "the things that interest me, my general life experiences, and my understanding of the world," white is if someone spent a lot of time around me. Even then, it's entirely possible that someone wouldn't pick up on it. While I am white, I personally do not think I am overly privileged. I don't know anyone in my daily life that has ever said that I come off as a snob, or racist, or above some other group of people. Maybe some people do think that, but it has never come up in a conversation with me. I think the worst

that people have said to me is that I can often come of as condescending because I seem too smart for my own good. On my part, that isn't intentional - it doesn't come from conceit or even from myself thinking that about myself. I've met plenty of people that are incredibly intelligent, many far more so than I am. I do have a very unique way of speaking, but that is largely because I want to be precise and accurate with what I'm saying to others in order to avoid confusion, which is the result of both being immersed for nearly a decade among Koreans and by extension realizing that a lot of things in English are not nearly as clear as they on the surface seem, along with my extensive experience with meditation. Language in general is a lot more difficult that most people recognize, and a lot of issues that arise between people happen due to language being used in a way that people understand it differently than what is intended (the flip side of this, is that I can be on a totally different page from everyone around me but speak in such a way that they have no idea). I had to put myself through college. I come from what would widely be considered to be a broken family. My home town is not exactly the ghetto or anything like that, but it is also far from Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side. In the US, at least, I am shorter than average for men by a reasonable amount, with all of the negative impacts on life that entails. I'm not overly good looking, and in general have been poor most of my life. Being white in the US does, regardless of everything else, confer certain benefits (interactions with the police would be one of the more obvious ones), but outside of those I have a hard time seeing how anyone would really envy the conditions I have and have had. I also don't really have a problem with white American women on an individual level. In my daily life, I am as friendly and polite with white American women as I am with any other group of people. In general, I like being by myself, and don't spend much time hanging out with anyone, regardless of skin color or cultural background. While there has been, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter, a consistent pattern throughout my entire life of white American women behaving in ways that are ridiculous, there have also been a few scattered around here and there that were really great and I think of fondly to this day. This chapter is about an overall cultural

phenomenon that seems to influence behavior, and my best guess as to what and why it is. I have mentioned briefly an interaction I had with Adam's wife when I came back from Korea, saying something to the effect of "I had no problems with women when I was in Korea, but I come back here and all of a sudden I have the same problem I had when I left," to which her response was "Well yeah, because you were overseas!" with the obvious implication that being overseas meant that people were willing to overlook...whatever it was...that she found so horribly unappealing about me. At the time, I was actually really, seriously, hurt by what she had said. These days, if the exact same situation and conversation occurred (it can't, but let's take a trip to imagination land and pretend it can), I would not be bothered by it in the slightest. That conversation specifically, and that sentence specifically, I think is indicative of an underlying cultural problem, or at the very least, cultural way of looking at things, so I'm going to focus on it. It rests on the assumption that white American culture, and white American female culture specifically, is the best, the prize, the thing that everyone wants to be, etc. It harbors a kind of subtle racism - white American women would never want anything to do with me, but people from other races and cultures (I never had problems, outside of the daughter of the family I was staying with, with women in Germany or Holland. So it isn't a skin color thing, as Germans and Dutch people are by the American view on race "white"), lesser people, would. It also harbors a subtle, although less subtle than the racist aspect, view that there is something wrong with me, not something wrong with her. All of these things were (and likely still are. I would imagine that her view on this has not changed much) her own creation. That American white females and their culture are somehow the be all, end all, of anything and everything has absolutely no real basis. It is a certain type of privilege, and a self created exclusivity, that to me, it is the exact opposite of appealing. To me, being around other cultures and other people has been, by and large, a blessing. It has thoroughly, utterly changed my understanding of the world and my place in it. That somehow being a bad thing is absurd, and is as far as I can tell is an attempt to maintain the privilege and exclusivity that they themselves have created

but has no real basis other than enough people agree on it that it seems like it is actually true. She was able to take something that is wonderful, and what I personally find to be a blessing, and turn it into something that is negative. In the heart sutra, it is said that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. That phrase can be switched with any two opposites and remain true - to me the privilege and exclusivity that seems to be so pervasive and subtle among white American women, the thing that seemingly sets them apart as better, is probably the thing I find to be the most unappealing. The phrase "the privileged few" exists because privilege separates someone from everyone else. When someone is privileged, the pool of people that someone can associate with, because they need to maintain their privilege and they can't associate with people that don't share it, shrinks dramatically. Why someone would want to arbitrarily, through self-imposition, limit the people that they can interact with to maintain a sense of self importance is beyond me. As I've said, one of the things, if not the thing (outside of Zen practice, obviously), I am most thankful for in my whole life is that I have had extensive experience with people from all different kinds of backgrounds and cultures. Similarly to the pool shrinking dramatically when someone wants to maintain a sense of exclusivity and privilege about themselves for whatever reason, when someone isn't privileged the pool of people that common ground can be found with - the-nonprivileged many, becomes essentially the whole world. Being privileged is the weird, uncommon thing. Being common is not. I recently had a conversation with my therapist, (I actually do have a therapist. I don't really get much out of it, and the main reason I have maintained the relationship is because it was required at the public housing apartment I rented. Every now and then, though, it is good to get the viewpoint of someone that is totally uninvolved in my daily life on situations that I may not have a clear idea about), who is a white American woman, to the effect of, "It seems to me that white American women think they are the only game in town, and as such they can make whatever arbitrary rules they want and treat people however they want. They aren't the only game in town, however, and in my opinion they aren't

even the best, or close to the best." After I had explained, at least in a cliffnotes fashion, the pattern I've noticed recently about my entire life, she didn't really have any objection to what I was saying. When I say this is a pattern that has existed throughout my entire life, I really do mean that. At least from middle school on, the vast majority of people that have gone out of their way to make me miserable as a matter of habit and enjoyment have been white, American women. The woman that had me removed from the sitting group that I had been with for more than 15 years was a white, American woman. The people in middle and high school that thoroughly enjoyed making my life hell were almost exclusively white Americans, with the girls being exceptionally awful. Even when guys were awful to me during that period of my life, it was almost, if not always, on the direction and encouragement from white, American girls. The few dates I've been on in my adult life were all (the twinkie I went on a date with from the Korean club was, culturally, a white American woman who thought being Asian made her even more special than the average white American woman) white, American women, and every single time their behavior nearly immediately made me cringe and regret it. The I think Vietnamese woman was kind of an exception in that she and I had no problem, but her girlfriend did, and she was, believe it or not, a white, American woman. If it was something about me, if I was truly the problem, this pattern would exist regardless of where I go, and regardless of who I interact with. But by and large, well, not even by and large, almost entirely, it only exists with white, American women. It didn't exist with Koreans in Korea (The only extensive interactions I've had with Koreans in the US was in Ellicott City, where they were insular and didn't have any interest in integrating or associating with Americans in general. It was directed towards all American people, not me specifically, and I have no idea if it is a common thing across Korean communities in the US or is specific to Ellicott City, so I can't really say one way or another), it hasn't existed with Latinas when I worked at Chipotle, it hasn't existed black American women. It didn't exist with the Germans in Germany or the Dutch in the Netherlands. There is a saying I am fond of - "When everywhere you go smells like shit, check your own shoe." In my life, it rarely smells like shit, except for when I have to

have extensive interactions with white, American women. Recently, as in, within the last week of writing this, Taylor Swift was awarded TIME's person of the year. These days, she has been on the front page of CNN.com and on the cover of all sorts of magazines more times than I can count. The other day I was at whole foods, and of the 8 magazines that were in front of a check out lane, she was on 3 of them. I assume she makes regular appearances on talk shows and what not, but I don't watch much TV. She is dating, at least I think they are dating, the pro-bowl football player from the Chiefs, Travis Kelce, and her being at the games almost seems to be a bigger deal than the games themselves. I'm not joking: I am writing this on a Sunday, and within 20 or 30 minutes of writing this section (I am now returning to this later on in the day), someone near me was watching what I think was a pregame show for the Chiefs on their phone, and I overheard the hosts discussing whether or not Swift was going to be there, and how much of an effect her presence/absence would have on Kelce's ability to play. CNN recently went as far as to say that Kelce is Mr. Taylor Swift. It seems like all of America is utterly in love with her. With regards to the award, I don't really agree with the choice - I actually in general do like her music, but I can think of many people that are, at least in my opinion, far more deserving of the it. That aside, when I listen to music, since I have played guitar since my early teens, I don't generally listen to the lyrics of a song. Usually I listen to the melody, and most of her songs are pretty catchy. Even with KPOP and chanting sutras in Korean, I don't usually understand most of what is being said, I just like the sound of it. Over the last year, or maybe year and a half, I've listened to a lot of her music, and time and time again I have been shocked by how many songs I've known that are hers that I had no idea are hers. People don't make it 15 years, or however long she has been a popular recording artist, in the music industry without an actual talent for the art. I couldn't do it. I doubt I could write even a single song that would appeal to large groups of people; doing it consistently for more than a decade is, from the perspective of someone that has tried to write their own music, at the very least, impressive.

When I do actually listen to her lyrics, however, the vast majority of her songs seem to exhibit the same pattern of behavior that I've continuously found in my interactions with white American women throughout my life. A significant amount of her songs seem to be about how she is proud of how much of a hassle she can be towards other people, and men in specific. About how her status and social position means that she has an endless line of people wanting to date her and they have to put up with that kind of thing if they want a chance. I noticed fairly recently her song "Blank Space," by far her most popular song on YouTube, is entirely about how she is an unruly woman that men can't stand to be around, with the lyrics literally being, "I'm a nightmare dressed as a day dream," and that it is somehow a good thing. Mind you, that is the fault of both parties: if someone knows someone is an unruly person that goes out of their way to create problems for people and someone want to go for it anyways, there is really nobody to blame but oneself. Now, it's entirely possible that she just writes lyrics like that because she is telling a story one of the reasons TIME gave her the award is because they find her to be a fantastic story teller. There are plenty of bands, rappers, singers, etc., who write songs that are in no way indicative of how they actually feel about something, or about how they behave. From the few things I know about her outside of her music directly, she donates a lot of money to charity. She is involved in some way with animal welfare groups. She gave, without publicly announcing, the staff on her latest tour, massive 6 figure bonuses. So she clearly has some concern for other people in some respects. Enough of her songs are like that, however, that I have a hard time believing it isn't at least partially true: She is a rich, famous, white (blonde-haired-blue-eyed, at that) American woman, checking off all the boxes for what people tend to agree upon as being desirable (read: privileged) and ideal. While I wouldn't mind having enough money to be comfortable (read: not being homeless in the winter with a bad back), the rest of those things, the things that most people, at least Americans, look upon as desirable hold absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. That a significant amount of her music is about how she is essentially intolerable and somehow people find this to be a positive thing worthy of emulation is more

or less the same thing I've seen throughout my life with most other white, American women. Looking at a recent demographics study of people that self-identify as a fan of her music, while the breakdown is about 50/50 between men and women, by ethnicity 74% of her fans are white, meaning that white, American women make up by far the largest singular group of people that self-identify as a fan of hers. While I don't tend to listen to the lyrics of songs (the music video I used the most when I was tagging people/groups/whatever before writing this was "Na Na Na" by My Chemical Romance. I have listened to that song almost certainly more than a thousand times, likely several thousand. I still don't know the lyrics to it unless I am actively listening to it), most people do, and I have a hard time believing that her largest, most significant group of fans, white American women, do not, and that the significance of the lyrics are lost on them. There really does seem to be a pervasive belief in white, American female culture that being as big of a pain in the ass as someone can possibly be to other people is somehow a good thing, worthwhile of emulation. That causing unneeded stress for people because...well...someone can, is something to aspire to, and I really do not understand it. Nor do I particularly want to. The thing is though, as I've already mentioned, all behaving in that way does is limit the people someone can surround themselves with to other people that also think behaving in that way is somehow a good idea. It creates something of an echo chamber, where being selfish and inconsiderate are for some reason considered to be normal, when both of those behaviors only have negative effects, both for the person doing them and for the person they are directed towards. Only being able to be around people who think being selfish and inconsiderate is good would be absolutely awful. Even if someone made friends or dated with such people, I can't imagine the relationships lasting very long, which is something else that Swift seems to be proud of in her music. Shake It Off, probably the first song I heard of hers back when I was in UMBC that I liked, is almost entirely about how she can't maintain relationships. Somehow, like I said, this is seen as a good thing.

I have said before that acting out of ill will, malice, or outright hatred will always, as in 100% of the time, have negative effects. I'm not sure if callous, selfish indifference to other people and the effects of one's behavior on them quite rises to the level of actual ill will or malice, but it too only has negative effects. It doesn't make life better, it makes it worse. It doesn't make someone more desirable, it makes them less. It doesn't broaden the experiences someone can have (the behavior seems to be geared towards getting as much out of someone as possible while contributing as little as someone can), it restricts them. In the Bible, it is said that people should be evenly yolked, and although this is referring to marriage specifically, it is just as applicable to other relationships, meaning that people should have similar life situations, and should contribute roughly evenly to making relationships, whatever that relationship is, work. In Zen, it is said that opposites arise together; if there is giving, there has to be taking. If there is taking, there has to be giving. Relationships, both romantic and otherwise, based on this tend to last. The ones that are based on taking as much as someone can while returning as little as possible cannot. In this way, over time, selfishness is self-defeating. All of this isn't to say that these things only exist in white, American female culture. Every race, culture, ethnic group, whatever, has people that who are selfish and people who are privileged. Specifically how those things manifest is different among different groups, but they are not unique to American culture in general, white American culture in general, and/or white American female culture in general. American culture however is unique in that it is pervasive nearly everywhere in the world through entertainment, the English language, and various other things, while the opposite is almost never true. I've never seen a Korean Drama on my local ABC station, nor have I ever seen a German movie on Fox. When a group of people are never exposed to how things are different elsewhere, the result is a very deep, very subtle, almost certainly unknown belief about behavior and the general "way things are" that has no actual basis other than the fact that other people within that group, who also almost certainly don't know that all of these things are completely arbitrary also share it. The example I gave before with the letter I and it's lowercase correspondent i is good, but I think upper and lower case

eh is better: 'A' and 'a' having nothing to do with each other, except that all English speakers learn that it is the same thing in different cases. Unless someone was told specifically that 'A' and 'a' are actually different versions of the same thing, they would never, ever make that connection. They look absolutely nothing alike. To someone that had never seen the English alphabet or heard the English language, there is no way they would know A and a are the same thing. That is the level of subtly I'm talking about. It's something that is so utterly taken for granted as true that people don't even question it, especially native speakers. But there is absolutely no reason that A and a reference the same thing (and what is the thing that upper case and lowercase eh reference? there is the big and the small, but what is the standard case?). In fact, I think it is more true to say that they don't than they do: far more people have lived that have never been introduced to alphabets that have "A" and "a" reference the same audial perception than those that have. Like, probably in the hundreds of millions or even billions. So for the entirety of human existence, understanding those two things as a variation of the same thing is, believe it or not, the odd thing out. Not understanding it in that way is actually the default. Understanding it that way has to be explicitly taught. One of the things that comes up a lot in Buddhism is that there are two different versions of the truth: the relative and the ultimate. Mind with a capital M and mind with a lowercase m; Truth with a capital T and truth with a lowercase t. Things can be true in one way, but not in the other, and yet are still true. I think a good way of understanding this distinction is "truth that is dependent on the circumstances of someone's life, and truth that is independent of those circumstances." Relatively, because this very subtle belief about the way things are is shared by many people, it actually is in some way true. Because it influences behavior, it takes on, and even creates a certain reality of its own. It's only when someone spends absolutely absurd amounts of time sitting in front of a wall for a decade or two, and more or less completely removes themselves from the group of people that share it, that it becomes obvious that there is no absolute basis for it outside of the agreement of everyone who thinks

that there is. It is very, very difficult to notice this in a way that someone can free themselves from it and the harm it causes. Ultimately, there is no basis for it. Relatively, NFL pregame announcers discuss the importance of Taylor Swift's presence/absence at Chief's football games. I'd like to end this chapter on a positive note, since a lot of this is very critical. I said before that, while the vast majority, in fact nearly all, my experiences with white American women in my life, going all the way back to at least middle school, and possibly before, have been uniformly terrible. It wasn't my choice for things to be this way. If it was, I would have chosen for all of these people to not have acted the way they acted. There have been on occasion some that do not conform to that mold, and that I hold in high regard. Very few and far in between, but there are some. As funny as it is to me that I have to do this, I think I should directly and unequivocally state that I am not racist against white, American women. I don't have much in common with them, but neither do I actively go out of my way to avoid them. As I mentioned before, most of the dates I have gone on since I've been back from Korea have been with white, American women. I am also still open to the possibility that I am the problem; it would just be very, very difficult to convince me. Fortunately, I started doing this Zen thing a while back, and every now and then I have Weird Zen Stuff happen to me where I know the answer to something with absolute certainty. That would do it.

As an edit: Weird Zen Stuff happened. It's not me, it's them.

Black and White in America

Ha ha ha. Nope.

Work/Study Zen Part I

When I first went back to school at HCC, I lived in what would typically be known as "the ghetto," near North Avenue in Baltimore. It wasn't "The Wire" level bad - there were no boarded up row houses filled with dead bodies. But it was only a few blocks from it. It was definitely "look behind you every 30 seconds if you are walking somewhere at night to make sure nobody is trying to sneak up on you" bad, because that is what I did. I actually went back to this area recently, and now, a bit more than 10 years later, it more or less is "The Wire" level bad. I rented a room from a Korean guy I had met at one of the bars and became somewhat friends with. The area was more or less Korea town (more like Korea block. It wasn't much more than a block. And not even that. there were a few Korean restaurants and a few bars that were scattered around a quarter-ish square mile area). There were drug dealers and street ladies at night. I think I was the only white person on the block. Having lived in Germany and Korea already, being the only white (Germany is filled with Germans, not white people. It's a distinction that people born and raised in the US wouldn't naturally make, but it is very apparent when living in "white" countries that they have very little to do with being "white" as is said in the US) person somewhere didn't (and still doesn't) bother me. The impression I got was that everyone else was more surprised by me than I was of them. One of the first things I did was make friends with the drug dealer on the corner. He mainly, if I remember correctly, sold crack, but also other stuff. Not because I wanted drugs, but because they are there to make money. They don't want problems that will cause the police to pay attention to them (and stop them from making money). They know people in the area, and my reasoning went that if I made friends with them, or at least was cordial, the chance of something happening to me like getting robed or assaulted, or worse, would lessen. One time he even brought me with him when he had to re-up, and stopped by a crackhouse or two. They were disgusting; I do not envy those people. I'm not sure if it was actually the case that he looked out for me in any way, but during the 4 or so months I was there, I never had any problems, and I knew plenty of other people that did.

As I mentioned earlier, in temples in Korea, there are no days off during a retreat period, whether it is the three month spring/fall retreat, or the one month winter/summer retreat. I did a similar thing when I was starting school back up. At this time, I think I was 25, although I may have been 26. After a few years of daily sitting, concentration has been developed to the point that you are practicing meditation all day long, even when not actually sitting. I don’t recall roughly how long it takes for this to happen, to be honest, but it has to be within two or three years of daily effort. My second semester back in community college was very similar to one of the retreats in Korea, just replacing sitting meditation with working/studying meditation. If I recall correctly, I was taking Physics 1, Organic Chem, Korean 201, and Genetics (Bio 201), as well as working 35 hours a week. Like being in a tent in the winter, it was not fun. Interestingly enough, Korean was much more difficult than the rest of the classes. Very little in English translates directly into Korean - so not only is there a whole new set of vocabulary to learn, many of the phrases used in English simply do not exist, or if they do exist, could have entirely different meanings. Many words will only have one of the numerous definitions that the same word will have in english, but not the others. One of the examples I like to use is the word hot. In english, the word hot has two main meanings: the temperature, or when someone is attractive. In Korean, the word 덥다 means hot in the first way (when you go to hell, you are hot) but not in the second. In Korean, to say hot like "attractive" someone would say sexy (섹시) or beautiful (아릅답다), or even pretty (예쁘다). The grammar is also completely jumbled up. It’s not backwards - if it was backwards, it would be easy. Just switch everything. The example I give people to illustrate this is as follows:

En: “I went to the store with Bob (or Suzy, Or whoever) because we were hungry.”

Kr: “Me(as for) Bob(with) hungry(because) store(to) went.” (나/저는 봅하고 배고파서 슈퍼에 갔어요)

Where the words in brackets are conjugations of the root word. Also, it is very rare to directly say “I”, so instead of I it is Me with the end conjugation (think of how in english -ing is added to make a verb something someone is do-ing) of “as for”. Almost like “With regards to me,.....” Korean also has honorifics, where the words and conjugations used are different depending on the age and social status of the person being spoken to. As soon as more than one subject or object is included in a sentence, it gets maddeningly difficult. The honorifics thing has very interesting effects on the way people interact. In general, in the west, if someone wants to go to a bar and have a beer, they can do that. They sit at the bar, and if someone else is also sitting at the bar having a beer, it isn't that difficult for them to strike up a conversation. People make friends, and even find boyfriends/girlfriends this way all the time. When honorifics are a foundational part of language, the circumstances by which people can randomly meet shrink. I've mentioned elsewhere that normally, only people that are either the exact same age by birth year, or people that are for one reason or another very close, will call each other by their actual name. Everyone else is referred to by either their title, or by the name of the relationship someone has with them. So at work, you call the boss "Sa Jang Nim" (사장님), which translates as either President, or CEO. I'm not sure if someone would call their direct boss that if they weren't the head of the company, but even if they didn't they would substitute that with whatever the title of their direct boss was. Random people on the street are usually referred to by their relationship by age to the person speaking - calling someone Ajumma (아줌마) or Ajyoshi (아저씨), which translate similarly to saying Miss or Mister, but without the secondary connotation of marriage (Miss has nothing to do with Ms. or Mrs.) when they are obviously older, or maybe even hyong (형) or Noona (누나), which translate as literally older brother and older sister, but only when the speaker is male. When the person speaking is female, the names of these relationships change. For the most part, for every one of these kinds of relationships, there is some corollary between Men and women, but not always. Rather than try to

explain it, reference this chart:

Even with this chart to give an idea, it omits something directly relevant to what I'm trying to show here: while all the relationships in the chart are accurate, it is actually even MORE complicated than that. There are modifiers, for instance with aunts and uncles, for the age of the person with relation to one's parents. And even with regards to whether the person is from the mother's side of the family or the father's side of the family. So the name for the relationship used to describe your uncle, who is your father's older brother, will actually be a different name than the name for the relationship used to describe your uncle who is your mother's younger brother. A lot of the time these details are omitted in the actual daily life usage, and most Korean people I've known don't know them all. If someone wanted to be technical about it, however, it is correct.

The importance of this is difficult to relate to someone that hasn't seen the way these things influence social interactions. The example I gave earlier, of two strangers, each of them going by themselves, sitting at a bar and having a beer, and striking up conversation, which is a common thing in the US and in general other western countries, is far less common. It happens, and it is more common in places like Seoul where things are more cosmopolitan, however, getting these things wrong - the status, age, etc., of someone can be incredibly rude and insulting, even when it is done unintentionally. Typically, if people want to go and hang out, or have social interactions with people, they will go somewhere as a group, do what they do as a group, and leave as a group. Similarly with the outright xenophobia and racism I mentioned before, younger generations don't seem to care about it as much as older ones. With that said, I have personally had experiences where I unknowingly used the wrong title, or wrong honorific word or conjugation, and someone was upset about it. Even as a foreigner, who isn't expected to know the details of these things, not showing someone the appropriate level of respect and deference can cause interpersonal issues that would not exist in a language where honorifics are not used or are not all that important. Which brings me to plane crashes. Now I know - why on earth did I go from talking about making friends at a bar while having a beer to plane crashes? Because of honorifics. There have been literal plane crashes because of the significance of honorifics and the way they influence behavior between senior and junior people. Junior people at work are not allowed to correct their superiors (Yes yes there are surely instances where people can say "I corrected my boss before, no problem!" I am talking about societal trends, not specific instances. I am serious, and don't call me Surely). In the 80's and 90's, there were a few plane crashes where the copilot noticed something that the pilot did not. The copilot, because of the relationships that senior and junior people have, and because the way the honorifics in language function, could not directly tell the pilot, "Hey, something is not right," even though they had noticed it. The pilot never noticed. Hundreds of people died. One of the results of these incidents is that pilots and copilots for Korean airlines will always speak in English, even when

only flying in Korea, and even when only talking with each other. Communications with radar and air traffic control everywhere in the world is done in English; communications between staff on an airplane is not. Even in the official reports, the culture of deference towards senior people and the way the language is used when speaking to a superior were cited as a main cause. The importance of politely relating to people senior, both in age and experience, to oneself in Korean culture is so ingrained and pervasive that people have risked (and received) actual plane crashes to maintain it. Physics, Chemistry, Genetics were difficult, for sure, but they are in English, and as such still work with the basic linguistic foundations most native English speakers have been using since birth. There are new concepts in each of them, and I am not much of a math person so Physics was especially hard, but Korean was basically throwing out every assumption that English makes about how language works out the window. Deconstructing English for the amount of time I’ve been learning and practicing Korean has led me to have odd speech patterns in daily life. Usually they are somewhat funny, but occasionally they are confusing. To this day, I speak Korean very well for a foreigner that learned it as an adult, but compared with a native speaker I am probably on the level of a kindergartner. I still listen to it and practice it as much as I can, but I am convinced at this point that if English is someone’s primary language it is not possible to learn Korean (I would assume Japanese is the same as they share much of the same grammatical structure) as an adult to anywhere near fluent proficiency, regardless of how much time is spent studying and practicing. ========================================================================= It was not necessary for me to work so much, I mainly did it so I could save money to go back to Korea during the break between semesters. I did though, and it was difficult. Probably one of the more difficult 3 month periods in my adult life. Every day, I would wake up at 7:30AM so I could get to class by 9, and if I didn’t have to work, I would be on campus, usually at the library, until it closed at 11PM. If I did have to work, it was usually from 2-10PM, except weekends where it was from open to close - it was either 9 or 10 AM, to 10PM. I worked at a Chipotle store at a mall location that was

endlessly busy from the time it opened until the time it closed. While there I learned a little bit of kitchen Spanish, but everyone that worked there for the most part spoke to me in English. I don't remember any of it anymore. At least I got free food. When someone starts doing meditation practice, one of the things that people in general, although this is not everyone, runs into is laziness. As I said when I first described the practice of sitting meditation, it is hard work. Unbelievably hard work. Eventually, as concentration becomes more and more developed, it becomes easier and easier. But you know what never really gets much easier? Physical labor. Studying. So studying STEM/Korean and working at an endlessly busy fast casual restaurant simultaneously was a really good chance to practice with the continuous desire to be lazy. The main reason I needed to work so much was to save money to visit my then girlfriend (I'm not sure if girlfriend is the right word to use. Girl I had fooled around with in New York and we made plans to meet again a few months later) in Korea. We had known each other for a few years, first meeting when I was at Hwa Gye Sa in Seoul, the first temple I stayed at. Somehow or other, we stayed in touch, and at some point she had told me that she was coming to New York City for a vacation. She came with one of her friends, and they stayed for two or three weeks, I don’t remember exactly how long. Most of that time was spent in NYC, some in Baltimore, and a day in DC. While they were there, things transpired, and by the time they left I had agreed with her that after the next school semester I would come to Korea like she had come to New York. So I started the semester, and let me say, working and studying all day, every day, even when I had a solid meditation practice for a number of years, even after the 30 day retreat I did in Korea, was tough. Every day, it was a continuous exercise in letting thoughts of wanting to rest, of wanting to not do what I was doing, of wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else, go. My back hurts? Let it go. My knees hurt? Let it go. I’m so tired I could fall asleep head-against-a-desk? let it go. I need to study, and I need money. Basically everything I did for those ~15 weeks, from the second I woke up,

to the second I went to sleep, was done with that as the goal. Money and Study were my objects of meditation - I’ve said before that when someone starts practicing, they usually use the breath as the object. But that object can really be anything. And once concentration is developed to the point where all day long, both on and off the meditation cushion someone is doing meditation, even external things like money and grades can be used. Once concentration permeates experience in daily life, anything at all can be used as the object that everything else is put down for. When I say put down for, I mean the continuous stream of mental moments that arise sequentially in daily life. It has nothing to do with picking something up and putting something down in the usual sense of the phrase. At some point during that semester, I met a Korean guy who I became friends with for the next few years. Well, I say friends, but I'm not sure how true that is anymore. This is the same guy that told me that being homeless with a herniated disc wasn't his problem and that I shouldn't ever ask him to borrow money. He was one of the few, if not the only, Korean FOBs I knew that made any effort whatsoever to try to integrate with greater American culture. I was taking lower level Korean classes that I occasionally needed help with, he was taking business classes he occasionally needed help with, and we generally got along. In general, relationships between people should contain give and take, when it goes too much to one side over the other, it creates problems. During HCC it was for the most part even, but after it was almost all taking from his side and me giving from mine. Like with Adam and his then girlfriend and now wife, I think a large part of that came from the girl he started to date sometime towards the end of our time at community college. She was also a FOB, but from a different country; she also did not like me much, despite efforts on my part. I would even edit her homework and essays so they sounded better to American ears, and it still did not change her opinion of me. Maybe I shouldn't have. As I have said elsewhere, if someone does not like you, that can be fixed. If someone likes not liking you, there isn't much that can be done about that. One of the funnier things about my situation with her - her entire family is really, really Buddhist. They are Theravadan Buddhist, the southern Asian style of Buddhism, but still Buddhist.

When I say really Buddhist, they had pictures and shrines all over their house filled with Buddhist things. By this time, I was, as I have said, already doing meditation from the second I woke up to the second I went to sleep. I had already had numerous Weird Zen Stuff experiences about the nature of reality, and would regularly do meditation for an hour or two at a time. I already had a "calm" vibe to me that, while not as pronounced as it is now, had some effect on the people I was around. Her response to it was, "I don't believe in that stuff." Everything else went by the wayside. My room was a mess, my car was a mess, I didn’t eat well (at work I ate Chipotle, but when I wasn’t I didn’t eat well). I couldn’t exercise at all, although working at a Chipotle is its own kind of exercise, especially one that is busy from the time it is open until the time it closes. Actually my whole life was a mess, except my grades. I made sure to keep those up. Somewhere through the semester, the girl and I did not work out - she ended up cheating on me with her boss, who she had told me before that she hated. They got married and had a number of kids. There were extenuating circumstances that brought it about, however - her father had been diagnosed with terminal stage four cancer, and he wanted to see grandchildren before he died. I was still years away from finishing school. In Korea, people tend to be far, far more obedient to their parents than we do in the US, and while I didn't like what happened, I can't really fault her for it either. Women are also for the most part expected to be married by the Korean age of 30 (~28 in the US, I think) and she was getting close to it. It was an unwinnable situation and as far as I know She didn't like it either. We spoke some time later, probably a year and a half or two, and I could tell it was not an easy decision on her part and it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the fact that her father was literally dying. He died soon after she had a kid, so he got his wish. I kept up the insane schedule anyways. I started to lose patches of my hair from the stress of it all. Two thirds or three quarters through the semester, I had what I can only assume was some kind of mild heart attack at work. And even that I tried to practice meditation through, although eventually I basically collapsed and no amount of letting go of whatever mental experience that was arising

changed the situation. I went from being able to run 5 miles to not be able to walk up a flight of stairs. Since then, which is now more than 10 years later, whenever I get too stressed out I still get chest pains. I’ve seen numerous doctors about it, and nobody has any idea what is going on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Even still, uncomfortable bodily sensations are just more mental experiences to let go of moment to moment. People usually think of there being this I that is experiencing all of this, and that this I has a body, and that this I experiences this body. That is not really accurate as to what is going on. Each sense is really its own stream of consciousness (not consciousness in the way of sentience, but in the way that the eyes are their own thing, the ears are their own thing, and so on), and all of them are experienced in the mind-stream. The senses do not even have to agree with each other; in everyday life people don't typically notice when they don't, but each is completely independent. Even with bad bodily conditions, the experience itself is entirely the mindstream. The senses are never experienced directly. Or maybe they are if someone practices meditation enough, but they aren’t for me, and they never were to begin with. In Buddhism, this is known as the 12 links of dependent origination - how experience itself arises from moment to moment, with my description above correlating to links 3-7. That being said, recognizing this does not make someone impervious to pain, or loud sounds, or bad smells/tastes, or disgusting sights. It does help though. Barely being able to walk did not stop me from finishing out the semester. When I went back to school, I still had a lot of interpersonal and social problems with other people that I can directly link back to how awful growing up was. Most people did not like me, some rightfully so and some maybe not so rightfully so. As such, not only was I dealing with constant stress from incredibly difficult classes and nearly working myself to death, I was unendingly lonely. I had come back from Korea a year or so before, and like I said, I came back a very different person than I was when I had left. I didn’t fit in with American people much, although to be fair, I never really have. But even more so after I came back. But I also didn’t fit in with the Koreans at the school (Ellicott City, Maryland, is about 10 miles from Howard Community College, and it is essentially Korea Town,

Maryland. There were far more Korean people at my school, both HCC and later when I went to UMBC, than the countrywide average). Loneliness is a hard thing to deal with. Loneliness along with the general horniness that comes with being in the middle-to-end of the 20’s made it even harder. I watched a lot of porn in my 20’s. Even constantly putting it (loneliness, not porn. Although I guess both would be accurate!) down, in the mental usage of the word, it continually re-arises. Monasteries and temples try to force people into experiencing loneliness with how they are set up, but if someone really gets sick enough of it, they can just leave. Even monks and nuns disrobe because they cannot deal with loneliness. I could not leave my life. No matter where I went, I was always stuck in this same kind of situation, where I did not fit in with anyone along with the pain and the suffering that came with it. I think there is some relevance to note a social distinction that Korean people (I think other Asian-American cultures make similar distinctions - I know that Chinese people tend to use ABC American Born Chinese - instead of twinkie, for example)in the US make. This is commonly said, so I don’t think I will get in trouble for noting it, but there are two groups in the US: the twinkies (American born) and the FOBs (immigrants). I’m not joking here, this is actually really serious. In general, the two groups interact very little, and tend to not like each other very much. My first real extended experience with Korean people was with Pohwa Sunim (or I suppose my cousin’s girlfriendnow-wife, but that was so brief I don’t really count it), and more in depth was in Korea. So I always felt more comfortable around the immigrant Koreans than I did with the American ones. But at least in and around Ellicott City, the immigrant ones have very little interest in wider integration with the larger American community, or even as much as socializing with Americans that have some experience with Korean culture or have lived in Korea. And while I have had social problems that have plagued me for the majority of my life, I think without exception every other American person I knew with any in-depth connection to the place and culture found the same to be true. This was always odd to me, because when I lived in Korea I went out of my way to learn the correct way to act. I learned

Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and studied the language every day. I WANTED to integrate as best I could when I was there. One of the interesting things about the twinkies that I noticed over time was how obsessed they were with being Korean, even though they often didn't know the language, had never been there, and knew nothing of the culture. Being Korean was their #1 priority. Like many of the people I have mentioned elsewhere with being Christian, being Korean was the costume they liked to wear. It's like someone having a parent that is an engineer or a doctor, but that has never studied engineering or medicine going around and being very proud of being an engineer or doctor. It didn't make a lot of sense to me then, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me now. My grandparents, or maybe it's greatgrandparents, are German and Polish, but I would never go around in my daily life trying to make a big deal out of that. The only German I even know was from when I actually lived in Germany. I don't know any Polish whatsoever. I interacted with twinkies a bit at HCC, but not very often. Most of the twinkies I met outside of work were at UMBC. They also really, really didn't like me. There was a bit of an age gap between us - I went back to school at 25, and as far I know most of the ones I interacted with because of my classes had come straight out of high school. But even with the age difference, their distaste for me was not proportional to anything I had done. One of them was majoring in a class I was having trouble with - I had offered to them that I would gladly pay a friend of theirs that knew the subject $20 an hour (roughly what I made at work) to tutor me in the subject. They disliked me so much that they didn't even bring it up with their friends, despite being broke college students. They wanted me to fail more than they wanted their friends to have spending money. In general with these people, most of whom I had classes with every semester because we were all doing biochemistry together, I wasn't really all that bothered by it. As I just wrote, My experience with Koreans was by and large in Korea. Knowing nothing about the place, language, or culture yet making it the number one aspect of one's personality is totally, completely weird to me. So by and large with them, we would occasionally collaborate when

studying for exams, or if some homework came way out of left field, but the general feeling of not much liking one another was more or less mutual. Although even with them, I never did anything to them as a result of it other than avoid them if I didn't want to interact. I was also somewhat tangentially involved with setting up the meditation club at UMBC. I didn't really have anything to do with it other than being a name on the paperwork. I had met some "ministers" (basically monastics) from a Korean Buddhist offshoot called Won Buddhism, and they had a very strong proselytizing streak. Their goal was to get as many members as possible. and they thought that being involved with a meditation group at UMBC would give them access to college students. Won Buddhism basically claims that their founder got enlightenment, the Buddha had a bunch of stuff wrong, and then created a religion out of it. In my honest opinion, I DO think something actually happened to their founder. I think he had some kind of Weird Zen Stuff experience and thought it was the be-all-end-all and wanted to share it with people. I don't think they are in any way malicious or trying to be harmful or trying to brainwash people or anything like that. BUT! I also don't think their founder had the end-all-be-all enlightenment experience he thought he had. Even when I was introduced to it at the time in college, some of their stuff just felt...wrong. It didn't really match my moment to moment experience. One of their ministers also openly discouraged me from doing meditation sesshins, saying, and this is a verbatim quote I remember 10 years later, "Sotesan [the founder of Won Buddhism] said we don't have to do meditation like that." I mean, it's great that Sotesan said that, but I do it because it makes my life better, so I don't particularly care what his opinion was/would be. So when they were on campus, one of their ministers had suggested to me that we should start a meditation club. I was not really comfortable with the whole situation from the beginning, but I went along with it. I went to the club once or twice at some point in the future after I graduated (I think it was my final year, possibly even my final semester, that the club was started), and it was all this weird new-age stuff and healing crystals and other nonsense. So if anyone reading this sees my name on the

UMBC meditation thing, I had very little to do with it other than being a name on a piece of paper; I didn't and don't have control over what people did, nor how it was run on a meeting-to-meeting basis. If I did, it wouldn't have new-age crystals. I'm a name on a paper, and nothing more. In a somewhat repetitive way, kind of the same thing happened to me throughout college as it did in middle school and then high school. There was one person in particular, a Korean, that enjoyed hating me, regardless of what I did, and they made sure everyone else felt the same way, or they would cause them problems too. The best example I can give of this is my Brazilian Ju Jitsu practice. After I left New York, I kept it up until I started having hip problems when I was in my late 20's. I think I was either 28 or 29, and I have not been able to do it since. There was an MMA club on campus at HCC, and I ran an informal group at UMBC to whoever wanted to roll (rolling is the word BJJ people use for "sparring"). At HCC, I was by far the best in the entire school, there was nobody else even close. I would regularly tap out people that weighed 100 pounds more than me, without problem. At UMBC, there was one other person, who had a black belt in Judo (Or Japanese Ju Jitsu. Or Both. I don't remember), trained with the wrestling team for fun, who at some point went to Brazil to train (I don't remember if this was before or after we met, I just remember him saying something about it) basically this guy's whole life was athletics, who was on par with me, and he outweighed me by 50 pounds. But this person enjoyed irrationally hating me. So much that they even talked shit about me to other waygookin (외국인 is the Korean word for "foreigner" that Korean FOBs in America, for some reason, still call everyone that isn't Korean. It would make more sense to refer to themselves as 외국인, but I digress), and as I mentioned, Korean immigrants by and large went, and as far as I know, still go out of there way to not interact with American people if they can at all help it, so they must have really, really despised me. I don't know why. I never did anything do them. I never did anything to their friends. So even that - being by far the best grappler in community college, and then at worst being tied for best at university, they still used it as a point to speak ill about me to people. I've said

numerous times in this that people not liking you is something that can be worked out. But when someone enjoys not liking you, you could be a doctor lawyer pro-athlete supreme court army navy delta marine, and it will never be enough. At that point, it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything you have done, or do, or will ever do. That someone can take an achievement like that - I was around 140 pounds when I was rolling on a regular basis and tapping out people that weighed 250+ with ease and turn it into a reason to hate someone and continually speak ill about them, makes me somewhat glad we never became friends. God only knows what else they said and did. I first met this person either my first or second semester at HCC, and we spent the next few years there and again at UMBC. As far as I know, the entire time we went to school together they kept up this habit, of not just disliking me themselves, but going out of their way to make sure nobody else did either. if it isn't apparent yet, this has been a continual thing throughout my entire life. It isn't enough for someone not to like me, regardless if I have wronged them in any real way or not, but they have to make sure nobody else does either. Growing up, it was about 50/50 between guys and girls that did it, but as an adult, it has almost universally been women. I assume its because I am short, not very good looking, and have been more or less poor throughout my adult life. The personality and social problems that still lasted from middle school and high school probably didn't help too much either. I think the reason why, at least partially, this stop happening from other guys as I got older is that when you get very good at martial arts, it changes, to some degree, the way you interact with people. Knowing that if someone really wants to push you, that you almost certainly can fuck them up without a problem, gives you a bit of a vibe. BJJ, for those that don't know (It's widely known now with the UFC, but there are still plenty of people that don't watch MMA), is similar to submission wrestling. The vast majority of it is grappling, "wrestling," on the floor with people, isolating a joint, and then bending that joint in a way that it does not naturally bend. Its very dangerous, and scarily effective. It's so effective that I call it the nuclear option of martial arts: the end game is that someone leaves with one less working limb than they did at the beginning of the fight. That limb, it is entirely

possible, will never work again in the same way. I have broken a rib, hyper-extended my elbow, torn ligaments in my foot, dislocated my ankle, and had at least one concussion, along with, I'm sure, plenty of other less memorable injuries. When I hyper-extended my elbow, it hurt for years. With boxing or kickboxing, it hurts when it you get hit, and maybe there is a bruise for a couple weeks. Maybe a broken rib. But when the fight is over, both parties are not significantly harmed long term. This long-term injury problem in BJJ is so serious that in many competitions leg locks, i.e. attacks that isolate the ankle, heel, or knee, are barred until very high levels. Too many people were leaving tournaments with one less working leg than they had when they came, and it became a serious liability problem. The irony is, this style of fighting is most suited for smaller, weaker, lighter people to fight and win against larger, stronger, heavier people. The person in question, that used even the violent sport I was by far the best at in our school as yet another reason to hate, talk shit, and spread rumors about me, was a smaller person, and would greatly have benefited from learning it. To someone that has never seen it before, it may look a bit strange - rolling on the ground with someone - but one of the reasons it is a staple in all MMA fights (good luck finding a single fighter in the UFC in the last ~20 years that did not have any background in BJJ) is because it is so utterly, ridiculously effective. One of the reasons I started BJJ was because I was always smaller and weaker than everyone. Starting from middle school, when my mother began overdosing on insulin to get high, we often did not have food in the house. I know for absolute certain I missed at least one growth spurt because we didn't have food, in 6th or 7th grade. Whichever year I had art class in the last period. So I've always been a bit shorter than average (In the US. In Japan I am average height, in Korea I think I'm an inch below average height. In the Netherlands, I am something like 8 inches shorter than average, but in Latin America I am a few inches taller. Am I short or am I tall?). Being shorter, my reach, the term in boxing for how far out someone's arms go from their chest, is also shorter than average. I also weighed less than average, and when I competed I was in the lowest weight category - 140lbs, flyweight.

Having no reach, being significantly shorter and weighing less in a sport like Muy Thai or western boxing is able to be overcome, but it is ridiculously hard. Height, weight, and reach don't matter nearly as much with grappling. They still matter - if two people have the same amount of training, the heavier, larger person should win more often than not. But it does not matter nearly as much as it does in stand up striking. Even still, I don't think I won a single match for the first 6 months. Everyone in my gym where I started was bigger and heavier than me by a significant margin. I do remember the first time I won though, it was an armbar from guard. Armbars wound up being my specialty, because you can do them from nearly any position. Someone is on top of you? Armbar. Have someone in guard? Armbar. Have someone's back? Armbar. Half-guard? Side control? North South? Armbar, armbar, armbar.

In retrospect, all of this was a blessing, not a curse. Of course, at the time, I didn’t look at it that way, but without constantly having to deal with being lonely, it cannot be overcome. Loneliness is probably the single most difficult thing most people deal with. Being in a crowd of people, and not connecting with any of them. It is really awful. Similar to boredom, so many bad actions and habits come from the experience of being lonely, and wanting not to be. So many people date people they don't really like, are friends with people they don't want to be friends with, and take part in activities they don't really want to do because they can't stand being lonely. Loneliness is one of those things that, if there is any possible way to escape it, people will. So being forced into being unceasingly lonely for, what essentially from middle school until I first developed Jhana when I was 33 or 34 was some kind of weird blessing, because until loneliness is totally overcome, better things cannot take its place.

finish this up later

Moses

Moses is a guy I met while homeless in Annapolis. I, and numerous other people, gave him the nickname Moses because he walked around with a giant wooden staff, always preaching about God, the end times, etc. When I first met him, and I think it was the very first time, he said something to the effect of, "That is when I had my awakening" when he was talking about why he preaches all the time, and how he came to do it. Out of everyone in my life that I've met that has made such a claim, he's the only one that I actually do believe something happened to. The way I express it, almost always secretly, and the way he expresses it, shouting from the mountain tops, are very different, but I am absolutely of the opinion he had some non-standard experience and that is why he does what he does he is trying his best to share it with other people. I first time met Moses, when he said "that is when I had my awakening," was when I stopped by the Red Roof Inn during the time it was operating as a a homeless shelter. I was in the area for some reason, but I cannot remember for the life of me why, and I wanted to stop by to see if any of the staff that worked there when I had stayed there was still there. I was probably there for 30 minutes when he walked into the entrance room I was in with some of the staff (and with his staff), and he started preaching. He's always preaching, even when he isn't. After meeting him, our paths continually crossed for the next few years, and I stayed with him in a hotel room for about a month before I had spine surgery when my disc was herniated. We had even been in the same place at the same time numerous times before and just hadn't run into each other. From the first time we met, the best way I can put it, is "real knows real."

As I said, he is very open about what he does and his claims. He preaches on tiktok and other mediums trying to reach people. He actively searches people out, and actively wants "students." I put "students" in quotation marks because, at least in the context Zen, being a "student" of someone is a massive commitment, both on the side of the teacher and on the side of the student, and that is not really what he's doing. This being a book about Zen, I want to make this distinction clear. I think follower is probably a better word to use. Regardless of terminology, that is his way of doing things. My way, doing things secretly, and his way, doing this openly, are both legitimate ways of trying to share these kind of non-standard experiences that occasionally happen. I don't particularly like being at the center of attention, so I do it my way. He doesn't mind, and so he does it his. Moses has had a very interesting life. He went to Harvard, although I do not remember what he studied. Even going to Harvard won't protect someone from being homeless if the conditions call for it. After he went to Harvard, he joined the Army, and served in numerous posts, both in the US and overseas as a warrant officer. He had a family, and is still married, although he and his wife aren't "together" in the normal sense. I never asked about the details and he never really offered them. If you run across him though, while these things may come up, his main purpose in his daily life is preaching. There are a number of things, mainly the details, of what Moses preaches about that I don't really agree with. He is very much into the cosmology and theology of Christianity, and Christ specifically, in a way that I am not. I know the general story of the bible, and of Christ's life, but the details of it by and large do not interest me very much. He knows all the different tribes [of Israel], the significance of them, how these tribes are represented today, and those kinds of things. He could very well be right about most of it, but as I just said, that kind of scholarly understanding of the Bible is not something I now, nor have ever, really cared about, so I can't speak to it one way or another. Certain things in the Bible stand out to me; not that. To be clear, I also don't have that kind of scholarly interest in Buddhist sutras either. My thing has always been meditation, "prayer", and I don't think that will change much. Maybe it will, but I don't think so.

Moses is an older black man in what I think is his early 70s. He likes to use the n word a lot. I've actually talked to him about this specifically, and during the majority of his life black people had it much harder than they do today; racism was much more pervasive and all encompassing in daily life. Which isn't to say that racism and all the nastiness that comes with it is gone, simply that in most parts of the US, it is at the very least not as blatant as it was, and in the best situation may not play a large role, or a role at all, in daily life. That experience to some degree shapes the way he sees the world today. He said to me the other day when I spoke with him, "Christ was a n.....," meaning Christ was a black man. That is one of the details I don't agree with. The common understanding, which I think is correct, is that Jesus was a Hasidic Jewish man born in/around what would be known today as Israel. If you search on the internet for pictures of what people in that area looked like at the time, and there are plenty, he was very clearly not white, as white people in the US categorize themselves. The artist renditions I've seen would put him closer to what people in the US think of as "black" than "white" but neither of them are very accurate. If Jesus time traveled to our time and tried to get on an airplane, he would probably get singled out for extra security checks. I'm not sure why Jesus had to be Jewish. Nor am I sure why he had to live in and around Israel. ~2000 years ago. To that effect, I'm not sure why anyone is what they are and lives where they do and has the life they have. Sure, you can say "God's Plan," or "Karma," but that isn't really what I'm getting at. What I mean, is why is the experience I have of my life the experience I have. Why can't I just decide one day, "I want to spend my day as...." and experience someone else's conditions. Why we are locked in to our life and our life specifically is something that still completely eludes me. This assumption, that we are more or less completely locked into our life and conditions is something that is so basic that people don't, by and large, even consider it in their daily lives. It is unquestionable, more or less, that I am me and this experience of this life is the only one I have. But really, I have absolutely no idea why that is true. It seems true - I can't randomly be a NFL Quarterback on Sunday when I'm laying in my tent because my back hurts. But I have no idea why. It would be cool, or maybe it

wouldn't and it would actually really suck, to just be able to experience other people's lives as they do, but for whatever reason, we cannot. Even when people have out of body or near death experiences, they are still "them" and don't all of a sudden start experiencing the lives of others. Maybe that assumption isn't true - a lot of the fundamental assumptions people make about life and reality are completely wrong - and there is some way to experience the lives of other people. But we seemingly cannot. I wish I had an answer to that one. I'm also not sure in the more common way why Jesus had to be Jewish, and live where he did when he did. Again, someone could say it was "God's Plan" and that is true, but it just moves the question back one step, "well OK, then why did God's Plan have him being Jewish and living where he lived when he lived," like "What about before the beginning?" Why he wasn't born in Rome and was an advisor to Ceasar or whoever the Roman ruler was at the time? Why wasn't he born in Gaul or somewhere in Africa or Asia or whatever. I can't even begin to speculate on that. I have no idea, but I also think its a worthwhile thing to point out: There is some special significance to where and when Jesus was born and lived that is more subtle and important than is typically paid attention to, although as I just said, I have no idea what it is. That tangent aside, back to Moses.

MUslim I've mentioned elsewhere that one of the few things about Burtonsville that I am grateful for is that it is far more diverse than average in the US. Growing up, especially in high school, I knew a number of people that were Muslim. I assume most still are. I know for certain I took at some point a social studies class that included a brief overview of the world's religions, which included both Buddhism and Islam. After looking at Google maps, there are three or four different Islamic groups in Burtonsville, depending on whether someone counts the neighboring "towns" (I use quotation marks here because outside of a name and zip code, the difference between Burtonsville, and say, Cloverly,

where one of the Islamic community centers is located, is not really noticeable to someone as they go through the area. It's all suburban sprawl with no clear distinction between where one place stops and another starts), and depending on whether or not someone is counting Mosques specifically or Islamic community groups in general. I've never read the Quran. In fact, right now, even though I have a translation of the Quran with me that I bought on Amazon the other day, I still can't read it. How is it that I can have an English translation of a book with me and yet I still can't read it? The Quran has to be read in Arabic as it was originally spoken/written for it to be considered to be legitimate. There are plenty of English translations of the Quran, as well as translations into many other languages, similar to how a lot of Mahayana Buddhist sutras were originally spoken/written in Chinese and those too have been translated into modern [whatever language]. Just like with the word Mu, however, there is no real way to say the same thing in English. We can approximate it fairly well, but English doesn't contain a linguistic function that is used in the exact same way. The Quran takes it a step even further though: it isn't enough that it is in Arabic, it has to be Arabic as it was spoken at the time Muhammed (PBUH) was alive. For reference, I know the Mu koan in English and Korean. I have absolutely no idea what it is in classical (medieval?) Chinese, which is what it was originally recorded in. The very first page of the translation I am using, by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, had a number of footnotes that pertained to why the author decided to translate a word or phrase one way instead of another. In fact, so far every single page has had footnotes that do roughly the same thing. From the hour or two I spent looking into translations, there are some better than others, but all of them have roughly the same problem: it is really, really difficult to accurately translate things from classical Arabic into modern English. Abdel Haleem's translation was highly praised on every source I looked at, so that is the one I went with. Any passage I refer to is from his translation; if other people/translations differ enough for there to be serious disagreement, that is not something I can do much about. Similarly with Christianity and Buddhism, Any and all commentary I provide is based on

meditation and how experience itself arises moment to moment; I am not an Islamic scholar. Maybe that is a good thing. One of the things that stands out to me the most, at least 50 pages in, is the usage of the word "believers" and the context it is used in. Over and over again, it is said that if believers forego their belief and return to disbelief, the outcome will be...bad. I am 100% sure, as in, nobody in the world could convince me otherwise, what this is referring to is when someone has Weird Zen Stuff happen to them and how they behave afterwords. When WZS happens, and someone knows experientially that there really is something to this stuff, they can't go back to how they were before. There is a distinct change in someone's life before and after that cannot be undone. WZS doesn't mean that someone understands everything, that they have communion with God, or anything of that sort. But it absolutely DOES mean that they know for certain that there is something to this stuff, and knowing that for certain changes what specifically being a believer is. Which makes sense: if someone had some kind of insight into the nature of reality and then decided to disregard or ignore it (for what I would assume is some kind of temporary benefit from/with other people, as that is really the only circumstances I can imagine it would even be possible), the result from doing that could only be unpleasant. Whatever temporary benefit is acquired would be totally insignificant compared with, what would be at the very least, even if someone never said anything about it to anyone, the personal discomfort someone would feel for ignoring something that they know to be 100% true for short term gain, especially if the short term gain is in opposition to whatever insight was had.

KB

Since I was just discussing Ubuntu, Linux and tech in general, I think its a good time to go from one thing to another. KB is a term used in tech circles meaning knowledge base. It is the general

compendium of information that will have answers to most questions people have. I said that Linux in general is an OS for nerds, and most of the time if someone has a question, they will be referred to the documentation, otherwise known as the KB. I mentioned in the chapter before that I think from the time I got back from Korea, the one time I went on a date with an American woman was someone I had met from organic chemistry, and that I got the vibe from her pretty much immediately that her game was essentially "I have blue eyes, lucky you!" which for previously stated reasons doesn't really do anything for me, and more so that being involved with her was just going to cause me problems in the short, medium, and long term. There was just something about her personality that struck me as "I need to stay away from this person." Eventually she started dating someone else and was engaged; her fiance stabbed her to death, killed their dog, and then shot himself in the head. Usually when I get an intuitive feeling that, for whatever reason, some person is going to cause me problems, I heed it and keep my distance. Once again, it turned out to be completely right. That is for the most part true. There is one other time I went out with someone that had shown interest in me, who I had given this (KB) nickname, since she was incredibly competent at her profession, which was not a technology related one. As far as I know, she assumed what KB meant, since there was other more obvious relevance than the somewhat obscure meaning I meant, but she never asked about it. I highly doubt she ever made the connection to what I was actually getting at. But having studied biochemistry in school, when I met people that had a similar educational background and they clearly knew their stuff, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they aren't idiots, because the idiots are weeded out far before school is completed. If someone is not motivated, at least somewhat intelligent, and disciplined, they do not make it through the coursework, full stop. It simply isn't possible. I had met this person when I was homeless, and they were in a tangential way involved in all the medical issues I was having. We didn't go on a date per se, but she had invited me to watch a football game with her and her friends one weekend sometime after we had met. probably within the first month or two. Well, she had mentioned her and her friends were going to watch a football game at

a local bar, and I knew nobody in Annapolis at the time, so I asked if it was open for anyone to come and she said yes. By then, I it had come up that I do meditation, that I had lived in Korea at temples, etc. It came up naturally in conversation, because she had a figurine of Amitabah Buddha on her desk, and it was in the same style as the statues are in Korea. Not only that, it was essentially the EXACT same as the statue that is next to the meditation hall at the BZC. It was a much smaller version, but otherwise the same, so immediately it had caught my interest, and I had asked if she knew what its significance was. In Buddhism, there are an uncountable number of Buddhas. Shakyamuni was the historical one on Earth 2,500 years or however long ago it was. But There are Buddhas and Buddhas and Buddhas and Buddhas. For every star in the sky, there are a million, trillion Buddhas. This is because Buddhas, like God in the bible, don't really comply with the standard way human beings tend to categorize things. Infinity is just one thing, but its also infinity. So it could be said there are uncountable numbers of Buddhas, and it could be said there are never any Buddhas and there never have been. Both are true in their own way. On that note, I think there is a relevant distinction to bring up between veneration and worship. In the west, in Christianity, God and Jesus are worshiped. In some Christian sects, like Catholicism, other people - think saints - are not worshiped, but are venerated. Buddhism is somewhat similar, but at the same time, not similar at all. In Asian countries where Buddhism has a long history and it has intertwined with the local culture, it would not be incorrect to say that people at large worship Buddha and high level Bodhisattvas. Many times there are even local monks, both living and dead, that are held in that regard. Even in Buddhist sutras, there are times that Buddha outright states that worshiping him is generally going to be a good thing to do. I don't particularly have any issue with people worshiping God or Buddha or Jesus or Avalokitesvara. If that is what gets someone to put the time and effort into meditation, great! In the west however, generally speaking among practicing Buddhists, I think the word veneration better

describes the relationship. It's not so much that they are worshiped, so much as they are considered to be what everyone is striving for - they are the inspiration for behavior and action, but otherwise are not given undue importance. Just like believing that Jesus somehow died for your sins doesn't eliminate that actions born out of ill-will, anger, etc., will have negative results, believing and worshiping God or Buddha or Avalokitesvara won't either. Anyways, because of the statue my background had come up naturally in conversation. I don't talk much about meditation, Zen, or Buddhism in daily life, unless there is a really, really good reason for it. As I've said elsewhere, nobody cares, and trying to explain it just causes more confusion than people had to begin with. I even more rarely talk about the extent to which I have done it. Talking about it at all with people who are interested in such things by itself tends to draw too much attention, and I don't particularly like it. I had said I meditate most days (at that point, I was living at a homeless shelter, I was basically doing a retreat period like I would have done if I was living at a temple in Korea). I had also mentioned that usually when I was resting at the end of the sessions I had to do I would usually do it. I never mentioned that I am actually doing it all the time, from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep, and have been for years. I also didn't mention that most of my behavior is oriented to trying to share meditation with people in a way that they don't even have to realize I'm doing it. In my opinion, that is the best way to do it. I've always been considered weird by people, so if people think my behavior is weird, well, then that's fine. I'm used to it, but at least now its weird AND beneficial to others, even if they don't realize it. To explain what I mean by this a bit more, of sharing meditation in a way that people don't even know that I'm doing it, I can give some examples. In Korea, monks and nuns tend to wear black and gray. They wear other colors sometimes depending on circumstance, but by and large the monastic clothing is black and gray. Similarly, the vast majority of the time, I wear black and gray. Sometimes if there is an appropriate reason, I wear other things, but even then the other things are still just other ways of trying to share this point. With this person in specific, I had offered to bring in some pasta for

her and her coworkers. I cook really, really good pasta. Everyone I've ever given it to is shocked by how good it is, including Italian people. What this person didn't know, was that the water that I used to cook the pasta came from the well beneath the Baltimore Zen Center's meditation hall. I had actually driven from where I was living at the time to the Baltimore Zen Center specifically so I could get some well water. There is some small material effect that meditation has on the world outside of the practitioners body, and that meditation hall, and the water underneath it by extension, has been full of people meditating for two decades. This is yet again one of those things where if I am asked to say exactly what the benefit is, I can't. I have no idea. I just know that there is one. The guy who was living at the temple at the time thought it was super weird, but that's fine. He never practiced meditation, and has no idea about any of this stuff. But I have, and I have practiced it for unfathomable amounts of time. As a result, I can be weird and beneficial simultaneously. There are all sorts of little things like this that I do that probably seem super weird to people. I am completely fine with that. I would rather people think I am weird than a Buddhist or meditation teacher of some kind. One of her coworkers, who was a younger woman, called me Christopher once. Whenever a woman calls me by my full name, it always, like, 100% of the time, means that they are trying to push whatever boundary our relationship has to see if they can get a bit more "friendly" with me. I don't think, in my adult life, and especially since developing Jhana, a woman has ever called me Christopher without this clear and obvious intention. So when she, I will call her Geri (The name is relevant. It isn't her name but the point will be clear in a moment), said this to me, I asked her, "Did you just call me Christopher?" "Yes (with a bit of a laugh and smirk)" "Are you sure?" "Yes (again with a bit of a laugh and smirk)" "OK...if you are sure...". So I gave her a Zen, Koan style nickname, Geri Geri. Now, you may look at that and think "Why did you just repeat her name twice? How is that a nickname?" But that's why its a Koan nickname. By eye, through vision, Geri and Geri are the same. BUT! by ear, it was Geri, with with the J sound from Jerry, and Geri, with the hard G from a word like God. By eye they were the same word, but by ear they were different words. Now, I know what you're thinking -

Geri and Geri are different words! Yes, that is because someone at some point in your life has told you that G has two different sounds, and everyone agrees that is how G's work. But if someone who never learned English, or the English alphabet saw those two things - Geri & Geri - they would have no idea. When I say they are the same by eye, I mean by vision alone. Without any sort of intellectual understanding. When the senses, in this case the eyes and the ears, disagree, through one they are the same, but through the other they are different, which is correct? Are they the same or different? So even when I give nicknames to people, I'm really just trying to share Zen, even if they have no idea, or don't notice, or think I'm being weird. Back to KB, after mentioning that I had done meditation for a long time, and it was clear I actually did know what I was talking about, I could tell at the very least she had an interest in the uncommonness of my background. Most women are not as good at hiding their interest in people as they think they are. Which is fine, I didn't mind. Like I said, I was the one that had asked if the football game was open for anyone to join, and also like I said, I could immediately tell she was incredibly competent at her job, which is something I tend to admire in people. She had even chewed out my surgeon when I was clearly still having problems with my hip post surgery and it wasn't getting better. I'm fairly certain that it was the only time out of all the medical professionals I had interacted with that someone actively went out of their way to confront a doctor that was not doing their job properly. When people are competent at what they do, they make life for everyone else a bit easier. It's kind of Zen style compassion, to lesson the burden of other people by taking care of things in a way that others can trust them without having to be concerned. So I went to the bar she had told me at roughly the time the game started and I hung out with her and her friends for a few hours. In retrospect (this seems to happen a lot for me), I probably should have found a different medical specialist after going. I've mentioned other times that most people think that everyone has roughly the same life experience that they do, and that for the vast majority of people, that is true. People in general are so caught up in the bubble that they've known for the vast majority of their life,

that they can't really fathom that people experience life in completely different ways than they do, or have circumstances that are so utterly different that their lives don't overlap in they way they think they do. In this case, both of these were true. I'm good enough at playing the game that other than my general weirdness people can't generally tell that my life has been wildly different from theirs in nearly every way. Which is fine. I actually in general like it that way. People who have really had terrible lives don't tend to make it a point, they just want to be able to enjoy stuff like people who haven't do. From the moment I got there, I was uncomfortable. One of the very first things she had said was "I need to fire my dad" because of some random reason. Most people, when they've grown up with their parents, even if they are divorced, take having parents for granted. Many people, myself included, do not have both parents. Some have none. So from nearly the moment I got there, there was a giant chasm between her and my life experiences that I did not think was going to be able to be bridged. When someone takes for granted something you have never had, people aren't even on different pages, they are in different books. At that point, I had a mala, kind of like a rosary in Catholicism, that I wore around my wrist. I don't typically have malas, because I take them off and lose them. The same with watches - I take them off because they are uncomfortable and then lose them. So even in the odd case I do have one, it doesn't last very long. By some coincidence I did have one at this point. So being uncomfortable nearly immediately, I start using it for the Koan I was working on, with the idea that the discomfort will pass, and counting the beads will help. At that point, she said very loudly, "ARE YOU PRAYING!?" in an obviously negative and condescending manner. Well, I am always praying, er...sorry, "Meditating", from the second I wake up until the second I go to sleep. You just don't notice it. And similarly to seeing someone wearing black and gray because they want to look like a zen monk, seeing someone using a mala that is actually doing it with developed concentration is in some subtle way beneficial. The two other things I remember the most from that day were her jeans and her behavior. Usually, when a woman wears really, really tight jeans that really, really show off their ass, its because

they want to be checked out. A nice ass is great, but to me, someone's behavior is much more important than a nice ass, similar with the woman I had gone on the date with I had met in HCC. One of the people that was there was as far as I could tell an ex-boyfriend or something. Their interactions were super weird, I honestly couldn't tell until they were drunk whether they were exes, or friends with benefits, or just really close family members or something. I had even asked the guy if he was her brother, since she had said she had one before. He smiled with the sly smile a guy has when they think they are getting laid, and said something to the effect of, "Nah." Actually even after they were drunk I couldn't really tell what their relationship was. Clearly they had gotten together at some point and that was about as much as I could figure Her behavior from that point was continuously toying with this guy. Again I have no idea what their history together was, it was never explicitly stated, and after I got the "nah," I figured I didn't want to know the details. But the rest of the night was her playing hot/cold for whatever reason with him. I don't mind drinking, as I've said before, but after getting a DUI when I was bartending, I don't drink and drive, nor did I have money I could just spend, nor did I have money to order an uber, so I was for the most part completely sober throughout the entire night. By the end of the night, after she had spent the last few hours playing games with this guy, she turned to me and said, "So...you want to take me home?" No. No I did not. Similarly to the woman I met in community college, she acted like a fool all night, and her game was basically "I want to have sex, lets go have sex." Earlier in the night for whatever reason the guy in question kept saying he was going to kiss me. I don't really remember what the reason for it was, nor why he decided to pick me to single out, but this constantly came up. So given that she was wasted, he wasn't getting the hint that all she was doing was toying with him, and me wanting nothing more to do with the situation, I did the unsexiest, most socially awkward thing I could think to do: I grabbed the dude by the neck and tried to kiss him. It immediately ended all possible bad outcomes for everyone, and everyone went home.

Kind of. This event infuriated KB. She had invited me to hang out with her friends, and I made a complete fool out of myself. At least that was the way she understood things. From that point on, although I didn't know it at the time, she despised me. She endlessly talked shit about me to her friends, and to her coworkers. She did not want me at the facility she worked at. She never said as much to me, nor could I tell from her behavior at the time. That I know this is at all is due to WZS that came up later. She tried to get her coworkers to also hate me. She was unsuccessful. That her coworkers liked me when she tried to get them to hate me infuriated her even more. That I gave one of her coworkers, who clearly had at least a bit of a crush on me despite KB's best attempts to get her to hate me, a koan nickname made her complain that she had seniority at her clinic and her junior coworker liked me more than they liked her. She absolutely hated it. Luckily for me, I went to this place two or three times a week for an hour or so at a time. I could just change medical practices if I needed to - and if she had said anything about being uncomfortable after hanging out that day, I would have without a second thought. Luckily for me, my life did not have the circumstances where her opinion of me, and how her opinion effects other people, mattered very much. If I had been in a situation like I was in high school, or even when I was at UMBC, she absolutely, 100%, would have been like all the other people I've written about here: she would have gone out of her way to make me as disliked and as miserable as possible, for as long as possible. Luckily for me, I've been doing this Zen thing for a long time. Usually when people irrationally hate me these days, their hate sticks to them - it doesn't usually rub off on me, nor does it change the opinion of people I interact with much. My behavior, along with the general calmness that I have during daily life, will win that social game every. single. time. Her behaving like a crazy person was the thanks I got for cleaning up the mess she made when we hung out that night. Which makes a bit of sense - she behaved a bit like a crazy person when we hung out that night. The further and further someone gets into meditation, the more selective someone becomes about the people they spend time with. When people behave in such a way that is clearly going to

cause me problems, I try my best to avoid them. Not because I don't like them per se. Sometimes people can behave in ways that are going to cause problems and I do like them. But by and large I don't need to spend time with people anymore to be happy - being alone is my default state. So if something is going to mess with that, and push comes to shove, it isn't a difficult choice to make. As a result of being completely fine being by myself, the less I care what people think about me. My behavior, especially when its super weird behavior like trying to kiss a dude, is always because it is clear after 15,000+ hours of sitting that doing that thing, whatever that thing is, will wind up with the best outcome for everyone involved. Even if nobody else notices, or worse even if it makes people dislike me, it is still the best choice of action in the situation for everyone involved and I am more than willing to have people speak ill of me if it means saving them from bad choices that they are going to make. It is always done to benefit others, even if it is at my expense. Like I said, I actually prefer being by myself, I haven't had sex in years voluntarily, nor do I particularly have any desire to get involved with people in that way. I made an exception in this case because I was so utterly impressed with how well she handled things with her work. But getting involved with people romantically, it always, nonexceptionally, causes problems. Even if people are married and live a perfectly happy monogamous derived directly from fairy tales and children's books, eventually one of them will get sick and die. Whether or not a relationship is worth the eventual cost in stress and suffering is up to the individual, but like death following birth, romantic relationships cannot exist with only a "good" side. So if I blew my chance, well, really I wasn't the one blowing anything. It was her audition, not mine, and she didn't pass. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This was during the period where I had I think 4 or 5 hip surgeries over the period of a year and a half or so, and then herniated the disc in my back. Like I previously mentioned, if this whole situation happened over again right now, I would have the very next day found a different place to go. Behindsight (hah! see what I did there? She wore really tight jeans that showed off her ass, and I made a play on the word behind!) is 20/20 and all. But I didn't, I stayed at this place throughout all of my

post surgical rehab requirements. At some point, I had even tried to directly tell her that I'm always trying to share meditation with her and not much else, saying something to the effect of "I've already told you, you don't listen." And she didn't get that, so later I said, "I've already told you, but you don't listen. You didn't listen when I told you that either." Zen supersedes all games people play. She was playing with me the same game she was playing with the guy who was at the football party. But I don't play that game. I play the Zen game, and only the Zen game. This person is the only person I can think of where I set up something of a Zen trap. After spending enough time around someone, I can generally tell the way they will react to things, even if those things haven't actually happened. If someone, as a matter of habit, is condescending about things they don't like, but other people like, they will do that regularly, regardless of what the particular thing is that is being referenced. This had happened a number of times with various things, to the point where I could tell if I did something she thought was odd she was going to be condescending and rude about it, regardless of if it actually impacted her or not. One thing that was continually harped on was my keys: I had 3 keys at the time, and I didn't use a keyring. I was homeless, and if I had accidentally lost a keyring with the three keys I needed, I was really, really screwed. So I kept them separate in my pocket thinking that it would be better to risk losing one more often than all three at once less often. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to do. If I had a whole keyring of things, that would be one thing, but I only had three. So one day, I had to get my oil changed or something. I don't remember exactly what I had to do, but I ended up with a keyring as a result of it. I put all (3) of my keys on it. The next time I went in, I brought it up that I had actually gotten a keyring, and pulled it out to show her with all three keys on it. She was condescendingly happy for me. When I left that day, I took the keys off the keychain, for the obvious reason of not wanting to risk losing all three keys that I really needed at once. The next time I went in, one of her coworkers (I don't remember what her name was, but I remember it meant "wench") was there that also seemed to be really fixated on my keys, who wasn't there when I had the

keyring the previous time I had come in. So I made sure to say to them, really loudly, loudly enough for KB to hear, "You should have been here the other day, you would have loved my keys." KB sure enough heard this, turned around and said, again condescendingly, "OH YEAH SHOW HER YOUR KEYS." after which point I pulled out all three keys. Wench looked at them, and asked what the big deal was. I turned to KB, and started laughing hysterically. She cowarded away and went in the back for a few minutes to regain her composure. If, as a matter of habit, you continuously react to things in some certain way, it isn't hard to create a situation where it will bite you in the ass. Like I said, Zen beats all games. Something I've also harped on continuously is that compassion in the usual sense of the word and compassion when you understand cause-and-effect are generally not the same thing. Generally. Sometimes they do line up and are the same thing. After Wench left her position, their company had contracted it out to someone. I don't remember their name either, but I do remember it meant "fiery". I for whatever reason have an easier time remembering what people's name's mean than I do with their names. I had overheard them talk about how they were stressed out about their hours. One day I had hurt my leg and wound up with a contusion on my shin, a fancy medical term for "bone bruise". I basically couldn't walk correctly for a week or two. I had called in and said that I wasn't going to be able to make it because I couldn't really walk, and I would always walk to this place. When I said this, she kept trying to push it, trying to get me to come in. It clicked that she was super stressed out about her hours, and me not coming in affected that. So I walked across town, using crutches, to go to the appointment session. I didn't mention the difficulty of doing this, nor the specifics of my situation. But they were super stressed out about their hours, and going in that day when walking anywhere was difficult was the small thing I could do to help alleviate at least some of their stress. Generally speaking, if you are going to do something out of compassion in the Zen way, it should be done secretly so people can not question the motivation.

Usually, when I find that direct communication is no longer very useful, I will send people pictures, or links to music videos, or other videos. As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. There are all sorts of things that someone can do with various media that will get the point across that do not and cannot work through text alone. Various colors, the person the drew the picture, the time, the artist in the video, the clothing being worn, all of these things can be used as subtle references to Zen. Not to say that every time I send someone something like that every single part of whatever I've sent is conveying it, but there is always SOMETHING in whatever I send that cannot be done through text in the same way. At some point, That was how I started communicating with her. Since I had already told her twice directly that I'm just doing meditation every day and not much else, and she didn't listen, I figured I had to go the koan way. One of the more obvious ones I sent was what I think was the schedule for my next surgery. It could have been something else, but I'm fairly certain it was this. When I was taking the screenshot on my phone, the battery was somewhere around ~70%. So I waited for a minute or two for it to go down to 69% and then took the screenshot, with that being sent to her. Everyone reading this knows the obvious implication of the number 69. And if someone doesn't, I don't feel like it is my place to be the one to tell you. But, there is another meaning to 69 (or 96, really. It could have just as easily been 96. Well kind of. 96 still works in the Zen way, but it does not work in the dating/hook-up game way, so 69 is better since it covered what I was doing and what she was doing. Also my battery was at ~70% so from a practical standpoint 69 was also better). 6 and 9 are the same thing rotated spatially. At least in the vast majority of fonts, and definitely on my phone I took the screenshot with. If something is moved around in space, but nothing is added nor is anything taken away, is the rotated thing the same as or different from the thing in its original orientation? You could easily say it is the same, you could easily say it is different, you could easily say its both, and because its both you could easily say its neither. It's like if you have a cookie on a table you smash your hand into and break it into a bunch of pieces. Is the broken cookie and the original cookie the same, or are they different? Nothing is added, nothing is

removed. So clearly it is the same. But a broken cookie is broken, and an unbroken cookie is unbroken, so it is also clearly different. Once this point is obvious, that things can be simultaneously the same and different, it isn't all that difficult to be able to point out real life examples of it. I do have to give her credit, she is one of the very few people who have done things that bother me to the point that I needed to ask her to stop. Usually, when people annoy me or say things that are hurtful without realizing it, I just practice with those thoughts that are arising, like any other thought. It's very, very, very uncommon for someone to do something they don't know is being hurtful yet it still bothers me enough that I have to ask them to stop what they are doing. By and large, the more you practice, the more you want people to be whoever they are so long as they aren't acting maliciously. You want people to feel comfortable around you to be themselves, with whatever that means. One day she had continuously brought up her family, over and over again. To rehash, My father and all my grandparents died when I was very young. My mother is mentally ill, spent my entire adolescence basically being a heroin junkie that stockholm syndromed my sister into being her mother, and my sister actively went out of her way to make me homeless after invasive surgery. I have never had a good or a happy family life. I understand that people live in different realities, and I want people to feel comfortable talking about whatever they want to talk about, so long as the motivation behind it isn't to harm anyone. But it got to the point where I had to take her aside and basically beg her to stop bringing it up so much. Her response, similar to when I first showed up at the bar that day, was "My father is an asshole." I had actually met her father. He would come into her business to say hello when he was in the area. I was there once or twice when he had done this. I could not believe her reaction. In retrospect, I again should have found another place after that. I even called the following Monday saying this was getting weird, and that I kind of felt like I should go somewhere else. She insisted it was fine. At some point, I don't remember if it was before or after taking her aside and pleading with her to stop talking about her family so much, I played a bit of a koan joke. The Eagles played over the

weekend, and they had lost by a field goal, making them 3-6. Or maybe it was that they missed the extra point and it allowed the other team to win by a field goal. Something like that. Koans are always self contained. There is nothing from outside of the situation presented in the Koan that is involved in the answer. So I had written on one of her business cards, "What is 36?" with the 3 and 6 split in the middle of the card - the 3 was just barely on the left 50% side, and the 6 was just barely on the right 50% side. She said I have no idea what 36 is. I said, "It's 3 and 6. It's a field goal, a touchdown with a missed extra point, and the eagles new record." I then tore it in half, placed the part with the 6 over the part with the 3, and said "In the middle of 36, one thing becomes two" 6/3 as a fraction, or said out loud "Six over three" is two. One piece of paper had become two pieces of paper. It worked both by ear (or said another way, it made sense both by seeing it and through language) and by eye. The senses do not always have to agree with each other. In this case, I made sure they did. Like I said, this is more of a joke in the style of Zen, but it is also exactly how koans are really practiced. Nothing that I said was outside of the question "What is 36," it was all just different understandings of what exactly 36 is. The mysteriousness of this I guess had some effect, as the next time I came in was the second time she tried to get me to sleep with her, this time also having absolutely no game whatsoever. This is why I don't tend to even make jokes in the direct Zen style. I don't want the attention. I had been weird twice, she had tried to sleep with me twice, I think that about evens out. As I said, the Zen game beats all other games, from before the beginning until after the end. If someone is playing the dating game, they will eventually get tired of it and move on. But the Zen game is played until infinity itself. There is no end to the ways someone can express Zen in daily life. There is no end to how developed concentration can become. Eventually she got tired of the dating game she thought I was playing. It was fine, I didn't mind. I will never tire of playing the Zen game, all day long, every day. At this point, there is nothing else to do but play the Zen game. I wrote at the beginning of this that by now, with the amount of time I've spent doing this, there is no real appreciable difference between meditation practice and my daily life, between trying to share Zen and my normal interactions

with people. Even if nobody understands or notices it, that's fine. At some point in the infinitude of time that exists that humans don't typically experience, these efforts will have results, even if it isn't anytime in the near future, or even if "I" am not the one experiencing it. There were a number of things that happened after she decided she had won the dating game that shouldn't have, from a professional standpoint. At some point, she had started telling people (her father, who was an asshole and who she wanted to fire) I was stalking her. To be clear, while I do have very strange behavior, including trying to kiss her guy friend at the end of that night, none of it involved sleeping with her. Or trying to sleep with her. If I wanted to sleep with her I would have done it at either of the two opportunities she made absolutely clear that she wanted to. This was a WZS thing, so I know it happened. I had 4, I think, hip surgeries when I was in Annapolis, and then my herniated disc. I think for non-medical related reasons I stopped by a handful of times over the period of a year and a half. One of her male co-workers groped my ass when he was working with me, after I made a nickname for him referencing a person from the bible. I learned later that in the gay community calling someone "king ...." is akin to hitting on them. I was not hitting on them, I was calling them a common name from the bible, like using a mala or water from a well underneath a meditation hall, there is some subtle benefit for hearing such things. Since she thought I was playing the dating game, she ignored it. Or maybe thought I was making it up. I have no idea how many other people he has done that to. I strongly suspect I am not the only one. I've had plenty of people touch my ass over the years during post-surgical rehab - there is a very noticeable difference between someone doing therapy work and an open palm grope. After I didn't react, you know, 20 years of meditation practice, he did it again immediately after, I assume because he thought the lack of reaction was an endorsement, instead of meditating through the thought of "What the fuck did this guy just do?" In any case, by the end of my time in Annapolis, when I finally had the spine surgery to fix my herniation, it seemed like a good time to move on. At that point, her professional judgment had started to be affected by her assumption that what motivates me is the same thing that motivates everyone else she knows. That's fine. I don't

mind that either. Even when people miss what I'm doing, or don't like what I'm doing, its just because they don't understand the reason yet. Maybe someday she'll start a consistent meditation practice, and 20 years later some of the stuff that has happened to me with random memories popping up will happen to her, and it will click. Or maybe not. Either way is fine. It the intention and effort on my part that matters. I've said a number of times so far that if I wanted to sleep with someone over the last few years, I could have done it, with just about anyone I interacted with on a regular basis. I am not joking about that in the slightest. This woman was highly educated, had her life more or less together, and by all reasonable standards attractive. Even to me, someone that doesn't really have much of an interest in American women. Her game being "I'm horny sleep with me" after acting like a fool all night I think is pretty indicative of how easy it has typically been in her life to get the men she wants. One of the receptionists, when I was basically immobile after surgery at a rehab center saw me meditating one day. She came in the room, started touching me leg, and said, "Youre lucky I'm married." You're basically sexually assaulting me, and I'm the lucky one? OK.... At the opposite end, at the same time, some of the older women (one of which offered to literally pay me for a threesome at some point) that were at the homeless shelter at the same time were trying to set me up with one of the younger residents, who every guy at the shelter was trying to bang. It would not surprise me if she ends up being a model some day. I had suspected that they were trying to set us up, but one day I was walking behind them going to my room and overheard it directly. I didn't need Weird Zen Stuff to know this one. She was half my age, or so, I think she was 18 or 19 and I was 35 or 36. She clearly came from a broken family, as her mother dropped her off, alone, to live at a homeless shelter. The whole situation just struck me as awful. If she was older, we weren't both living in a homeless shelter, I wasn't continually having surgery, had something of a stable life, and wasn't about to be living in a tent in the woods, I may have entertained the idea, but as it was, there was no way. She even asked me for my phone number when I left at the end of the 90 day period as I

was walking to go to my tent. I turned around and yelled back, "NO!" It would not surprise me if our lives intersect again at some point. Not because of Weird Zen Stuff, but just the intuitive feeling that I get. I have had every opportunity to sleep with, for the most part, whoever I wanted to, and for the most part whenever I've wanted to. Life is better in general without those kinds of relationships. Which isn't to say I would never ever date again (well, again may not be the right word here, I never really dated to begin with. I think my point comes across though) - I'm not wholly against the idea, but I've yet to come across someone that would make my life better in any appreciable way than it already is. I've met plenty of people that want me to be the solution to their own boredom, to their own loneliness, or to their own horniness. I have no interest in playing that role for anyone at all. Well, maybe the last one if the conditions were right - There were no FOB Koreans at any of the homeless shelters. If there were maybe I'd be telling a different story right now. But I had to overcome those things on my own; I don't really see the benefit to myself in being someone else's crutch.

Adam and Eve

This has nothing to do with the bible. Or maybe it has everything to do with the bible. The point the bible was trying to make, especially Jesus in the New Testament, is always available to everyone all the time, so any specific thing in my life, or really, anyone's life, is always completely related to the bible. But in this case Adam and Eve are just two people that I could not have gotten through high school without. Originally, this was going to be the only section where I named people directly, as I mentioned earlier, "praise in public, chastise in private," But since I started writing this section, a number of Weird Zen Stuff related things have happened regarding both of them, and none of them have been good. There is a bumper sticker I like, "Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you're an asshole." I forgive them for these things, but other people that know them would probably take issue

with it. One of the few people that didn’t find what was going on in middle and high school funny (or maybe he did. At this point I have no idea) was a person I had been friends with since he moved to Maryland from California during our 7th grade year, Adam, one the two people I briefly mentioned earlier. He didn’t find what Alan did funny either. When everyone else hated me, we still hung out. It was a bit problematic though, because as I have mentioned numerous times before, our town was developed for cars. From my house to his house, even taking shortcuts, by walking, took about an hour each way in good conditions. Neither of us had cars until we were 16, and we had met when we were I think 11 or 12. His parents were also weary of everyone, and incredibly “religious” (read: abusive under the costume of religion) and so he was not allowed to hang out very often. Still, not often was better than never at all, and we still speak to this day. His parents were super Christian. And by Christian, I don’t mean behaving in the way Christ told people to behave. Christians that do that are generally decent enough people. I mean, they wore it as a costume, and used it to see if you were willing to submit to their abuse or not. Both were on and off alcoholics, both were incredibly physically (They even had a giant wooden “discipline stick” they would beat their children with) and verbally abusive. I’ve always found it strange how all the kids that came from massively abusive and neglectful backgrounds all somehow seemed to find each other at school and become friends (maybe friends isn’t the right word, but I’m not sure what the right word is), even though it was never really outright and explicitly discussed. I wound up going to church with him some Sundays when I would sleep at his house on the weekends. Even though his parents were incredibly abusive on-and-off alcoholics, it was still better to be at his house than it was mine. I met most of the youth group there, and even though I wasn't Christian (I still find most Christianity in the US to be kind of gross, similar to how I don't really like being around people that make being Buddhist a big part of their personality) I became friends with a bunch of them for a number of years. At some point during high school, when my mother was ODing

on a nearly daily basis, I was at their church for some reason or another. I don't remember the circumstances. The stress of continually having the one surviving parent ODing to the point of death (If nobody was around to either force her to have sugar or call the EMTs, she would die. There was no maybe about this. I don't know how she is still alive today with the amount of times she would OD and by pure luck and circumstance, someone came home in time to do one or the other) eventually got to me. I walked off on my own into the woods that surrounded the church, made it maybe 200 feet, and broke down crying. Adam had followed me unbeknownst to me, and walked up next to me 30 seconds later or so. I was balling my eyes out, "I can't lose another parent...I can't keep doing this..." I remember saying those two things specifically, I don't remember what else I said. I don't think the entirety of the time I was in high school, throughout all of the bullshit I dealt with, that I cried like that. There wasn't much he could say or do. At the time, I didn't know she was ODing to get high, I just thought she couldn't control her insulin levels. Even if I had known, though, I'm not sure what could have been done. She lied to everyone about it. Eventually we "found out" that she was bulimic, and she said that was the main reason why she was having problems controlling her sugar levels. There is probably a hint of truth in that, but mainly it was because she enjoyed the feeling of her sugar being incredibly low just like heroin junkies like getting high. They both even involve a needle. As we got older, in high school, he started dating a girl from his church, who he later married. As they got further and further into dating, I saw him less and less. She also did not like me, and in general did not want me around. At some point Adam had to make a choice, keep hanging out with me, or keep his girlfriend (it may have been fiance at this point, I’m not sure) happy. He chose the latter, telling me at one point that we were getting older, and his priorities have changed a lot. I hope at the very least she was/is good in bed, as her influence over him from that time until now has created bad future conditions. People make bad decisions for sex all the time, Adam is not unique in that. I had asked her at one point if we could hang out for a day or two, and if she could give me some advice on how to better interact with women. I had said I didn’t have the problems in Korea that

I do here, mainly because in Korea foreigners are expected to be a bit weird, and so being weird is normal. Here, being weird is not normal, its weird. She had responded, “Well of course you didn’t have problems, you were overseas” with the very clear implication that the only thing I had going for me was that I finally stood out in some way that I never would here. We never hung out, she never helped. That one hurt. In retrospect, I didn't have any problems when I was overseas because I wasn't around people who irrationally hated me. It wasn't me, it was her. Right before I became homeless, I went to LA to visit them. I had never been to LA before, hadn’t seen him in years, wasn’t working due to my hip not healing correctly, and I had some money saved, so the conditions seemed good. I had always wanted to drive across the country to see it first hand, since high school, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. As soon as I got to their place, they showed me to their guest bedroom. Right in the center of the bed was a pillow with the word "Mu" on it. It was related to an Adobe (the company that makes Photoshop) product, but I don't remember which one. Obviously, a pillow with the word "Mu" on it is going to catch my attention, so I asked "What...what is this? Why do you have a pillow with the word "Mu" on it? He had no idea about Koans or the word Mu, so my guess is he was pretty confused by my interest/reaction. To be completely honest I was not very impressed with LA. It was good to see him, but we didn’t get to do much. We went to Huntington Beach, did a couple daily life things, ordered some food. I was only there for a few days before I left because COVID was starting to run rampant, as I had mentioned earlier, so I did not see much, and as such I am not very invested in my opinion and wouldn’t mind going again to get a better feel for the place. LA did not seem like a city to me, more like a never ending suburb that occasionally had a few tall buildings here and there. At least the parts I went to. It was when I left LA that my suspicions about his wife hating me were confirmed. I left earlier than I wanted to, because if there was a travel ban I didn’t want to get stuck in the city. So when I decided to switch mu bus ticket to an earlier trip out, and I told them, she said to me, “Oh darn….” I could hear it in her voice and see it in her face that she did not want me there. She was not, and is not

very good at putting up a facade. Adam was much better at it. These days, he is a professional photographer. Well, his entire adult life he has been a professional photographer. He would even do free photo shoots with people in high school to build up his portfolio. He worked at a 1 hour photo development business, then as a photographer for school pictures, then for the US government taking the pictures of congressmen and senators that have the US flag in the background. He’s been doing it his entire life, since being a teenager. I don’t know much about photography, but even I can tell he is incredibly talented at what he does. I never really knew what I wanted to do in life, professionally. I’ve always just kind of fell into jobs because circumstances were right. He always knew exactly what he wanted to do. I still keep in touch with Adam to this day, albeit on a somewhat irregular basis. He had sent me money a few times when I was completely broke when I was homeless, which I am to this day pretty thankful for; I've never had to panhandle or beg (I find it distasteful. If someone wants to do it, its not my place to judge them, but I have not done it myself). And while we were good friends, I don’t really have all that much to write about him since our relationship was and still is pretty straightforward. I had asked him before spine surgery if I could stay with him for a month or two if I needed to, since I had been running out of options. He declined, and said that they had just had one of his wife's brother over and it was straining on everyone. His wife also declined, as did her family, after which she blocked my number and my Facebook account. If I left someone in the street after spine surgery, I probably wouldn't want to be continuously reminded of it either. I get the impression it was mainly her, but he was the one that OKd the decision. Most of it would just rehashing everything else I’ve already written as we were friends through the majority of it. We still remain friends. Over the last few years, with the weird Zen stuff I do, he has always just kind of gone with it. At least to me directly, I have no idea what he says to other people, if he says anything at all. At this point, I don’t take up a huge part of his life, so I can’t imagine he ruminates on it too much.

Eve on the other hand, was not my friend at all, at least not in the same way Adam was. She was also not my friend at all. We didn’t have the same social circles. We didn’t like the same music, or go to the same parties (I didn’t go to parties at all, so that made it somewhat difficult). In retrospect, she hated me like most other people and mocked the awfulness of my life. It wasn’t clear to me at the time though, and to me directly she always behaved kindly. That was, at the time, my standards for who I considered a friend of mine: they treated me not terribly. Most people were blunt with their disdain of me. They had no qualms about letting me know. Eve, on the other hand, may have hated me, but her behavior to me directly had no trace of it, and that effort itself has some merit. She would usually even give me a hug in the hallways between classes if we ran into each other. I imagine it's probably difficult to hug someone that you despise, but she did, and it was helpful at the time. These days, as a side effect of meditation, if I go weeks or even months without touching someone, I could not care less. Back then, however, it made a huge difference in my daily life. I’m quite sure If I hadn’t known the two of them I would not have made it out of high school, as I had seriously considered suicide on more than one occasion. I hadn’t thought about Eve in what was probably 15 years, since the time I left for Germany, until one night, when I went to sit with some people I knew from when I first started in Ellicott City after my 3rd hip surgery, in late December of 2019. Something very uncommon happened during the sit, which has only, to my recollection, happened two other times, one of which was before, and one of which was after. At one point during the sitting period, I don’t remember if it was the first or the second session, time itself shifted to a day back when I was in 11th grade. I don’t mean I had a memory of something that happened in 11th grade. From the moment the thought arose, it was completely experiencing exactly that moment over again as if was happening for the first time right there and then. When that kind of thing happens, when the experience of time as we human beings normally experience it goes straight out the window, it is completely unforgettable. Eve, her friend Jane, and I got together and saw Oceans 11. It was the only time we had ever hung out, and I was excited to

simply get out of the house. The experience was of us sitting in the movie theater together, the Lowes (Now AMC) Theater in Calverton, Maryland. When I got back home I looked up when Oceans 11 was released. The day I went to sit was in the week we had winter vacation from school, when went to go see it. I have no idea which day we went, but its entirely possible (and I honestly think its even likely because of how bizarre the timing is) this experience happened on the same day of the year. This event, hanging out with them, was incredibly significant in my life, even to this day. Not because of the movie. Which isn’t to say Oceans 11 is a bad movie, from what I remember it was pretty good. But because afterwards, she suggested that I go and cut my hair. My hair was down to my shoulders-ish, really wavy, and just in general looked terrible. I had dyed it black a couple of times, although I don't remember if it was dyed at the time. Given I thought she was trying to help me, I agreed to it. After that day, gradually, things in my life started to get better. I can exactly point to that one single day as the turning point away from the awfulness my life had been. After I went home from Ellicott city, within a week she started showing up in my dreams. I think I should make something clear – the thoughts and experiences that arise during meditation are by and large involuntary. One thing arises and ceases, and then another thing arises and ceases, so on and so forth. Once concentration has been developed, especially over many years, so many random thoughts about all sorts of stuff come and go that most of them are forgotten about as soon as they pass. I’ve heard that some people can voluntarily have lucid dreams, but I cannot. I don’t know if that is something that can happen with meditation practice or not, but it has not for me. So in all of these cases I am listing here, they were all spontaneous and involuntary; I was not putting effort into them. She was in a number of my dreams, over several years. I’m still not exactly sure why, and although I do not typically remember my dreams, I do remember all of these - every single one. They were never the *fun* kind of dreams, just random happenings. This occurred occasionally, without any specific pattern or reason that I could determine. Then, sometime in I think August of 2023, although it may have been July, I had I think three dreams in a period of about a week and a half that she was in. I

am 100% positive that this was a result of continuous sitting, because it started involuntarily permeating my daily life. It really, really bothered me. I had tried to get in touch with her via facebook a few times over the years, but she never responded to messages nor accepted my friend request. From my position, I thought of her as an angel. She was nice to me when none of her friends were. And I was never able to really figure out why. So I wanted to know, from her position, why did she do what she did? I could never figure out what her intention was – did she feel sorry for me? Was it malicious? Did she have something of a crush on me? (That one I thought was probably the least likely, but I couldn’t discount it entirely) Was she just that kind-hearted? Nearly every possible scenario I could think of more or less fit her behavior, even contradictory ones. One of the other two times (this is relevant, stay with me) I had that time-shift experience was with one of her friends that was in my grade. I accidentally touched her arm at one point walking back from the teacher’s desk and profusely apologized for it. She replied, “You don’t have to apologize for touching me” The same thing happened there, although this was when I was sitting every day in Northern Virginia, I don’t remember if it was before or after surgery. I found her on facebook, and in what I’m sure was a very odd and possibly creepy way tried to explain that I just had some super rare crazy meditation experience that focused on her about something that she certainly has absolutely no memory of, and that apparently it had stuck with me for the last 20 years. We talked for a bit, and the last thing I asked was who played short stop on the Paint Branch softball team (I was fairly certain it was Eve, but not completely). As soon as I asked, she stopped responding. OK, now that I have finished that detour I can continue – it is relevant. After being unbelievably bothered both by all the dreams I had been having, as well as the fact that I still had no idea 20 years later why she had acted so nice towards me, The problem solved itself. Weird Zen Stuff happened. I’ve mentioned this kind of thing happening other times in other portions of this, and when questions get resolved in this way, the answer is correct 100% of the time. At least it always has been. I suppose the reason it started coming continuously both in dreams and daily life to the point where it

was causing me actual annoyance was because it was about to resolve, finally. I did not know that while it was happening, though. Every day, well, most days, I join a Zen group based in Europe that sits at 3:30 PM eastern time, which is night time where they live. Every time I have joined, there has always been at least one other person sitting with me. Not this time though. It immediately caught my attention. Given that I was already set to sit and I was already logged into zoom, I thought “screw it, if nobody joins I’ll just sit by myself,” and so I did. Probably about half way through the normal session, I finally had my answer. Eve hated me. She was probably the worst out of the entire school short of Ben and Nate. Maybe even worse than them. It’s why the person stopped responding to me when I asked who played that position. My nickname from a lot of people in high school was Columbine. There were some people it was meant in an endearing way, and from them I took it that way. But it wasn't endearing to from most people. To anyone reading that doesn’t know what Columbine is, it refers to Columbine High School, which was as far as I know the first planned mass school shooting. I know she went around telling people I was going to shoot up the school. I know she knew about the laxative and thought it was funny. One of the people that was part of my "group" that floated between "groups," I'll call him "Dick," told her. She then went out of her way to disseminate it to all of her friends. She thought that my father having died was funny. Her taking me to get my haircut after Oceans 11, something I looked at as a turning point when things in my life started to get better, was just to show off to her friends that I would do anything she told me to do. I'm not sure if I've ever met her sister, but I know that her sister encouraged her and took part. Her sister also told people I was going to shoot up the school. I have no memory of ever meeting this person; maybe I did, but even if we did it would have been in passing. But they thought it was OK to tell people I was going to try to kill them. That one I know for sure, I can only imagine what else she said. Their father knew about it and approved. I wrote at the beginning of this that somehow the entire town I lived in seemed to come to the unanimous decision that it was

perfectly acceptable to turn my life into utter unending hell. That was not a joke, nor an exaggeration. Other than Adam, the person I thought was the most kind to me was actually one of the most, if not the most, evil. Finding out that she was always acting in a harmful way towards me actually didn’t bother me that much. I had said to people I spoke to about situation that I didn’t really care at this point what the motivation was, I just needed to know. So once it resolved in that way, I was at most slightly upset, but to be completely honest I don’t really think I was upset at all. A few days later I made the connection that the whole trip to the movies and to get my hair cut was just to further humiliate me. That one hurt. It really, really hurt. But even then, even though her motivation was ill-intended – it still had a very, very positive effect that changed the rest of my time in high school, and played a significant roll in shaping the next few years of my life. Within a few minutes of making the connection, I wasn’t really upset anymore. The one about her father knowing was probably the worst of them. Even the adults in the situation, the ones that in theory should have known better, joined in. One of the benefits of extended meditation practice is that getting angry, getting upset, those kind of things, they don’t happen all that often, and even when they do, they don’t stick around. In the end, just like me, and everyone else, the consequences of her actions are hers and her alone. The funniest part of this, to me at least, when I had tried to contact her immediately after sitting in Ellicott City, and I am pretty sure it was the same night, and if it wasn’t it was the following, all I wanted to do was apologize. My behavior towards her, in retrospect, was not really appropriate. I never did anything specifically to harm her, in fact I made it a point to never do anything if she had ever found out about it would cause a problem. But I was so desperate to talk with anyone that was nice to me that I look back on it and cringe. That I had a huge crush on her made my behavior even more cringe. If she had answered the Facebook message, she could have spoken to me for a few minutes, I would have taken every word she said at face value, without question, and we would have went our separate ways. I had seen on Facebook that she was married, and had a couple kids. I had no

interest in getting involved in that in any significant way, I just wanted to know why. I would have never, or maybe I would have but I don’t think so, have had the rest of the sequence happen where I found out the meditation way, where I know the truth with absolute certainty, and how poorly it reflects on her behavior. I had been trying to write a book about Zen, or about my life (the two are no longer in any meaningful way separate), for a month or two before this had happened, and I was having an incredibly tough time with it. I took me hours to get even a few pages done. After this happened, I tried again, and I have had no issue with writing 10 or 20 pages a day. Everything that had happened later in life, college, when I was working, being homeless, etc., already made sense. I already knew who liked me, who didn't like me, and the reasons behind people's behavior was clear. Everything else that had happened in high school (and middle school) was already clear. I had every piece of the puzzle except for one. As soon as that final piece fell into position, telling this story became effortless.

Zen University

With the exception of the first semester I went back to college, and a brief period when I had the heart trouble after nearly working myself to death, I worked the whole time I was in school. When my health was finally back to normal-ish, I wound up working in Ellicott City at a bar for the next 3 ½ years. In HCC I had majored in pre-medicine, essentially all the core classes someone needs to take in order to take the MCAT (or PCAT, DAT, or many other acronym tests needed to get into professional school). Once I finished my two years at HCC, I went to University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). While at UMBC, I majored in biochemistry, and minored in Korean. UMBC was somewhat similar to HCC, in that due to its proximity to Ellicott City, there was a significantly higher than average population of Koreans that went there. I thought, when I first decided to minor in the language, I would have no problem finding help if I needed it. I was wrong.

Biochemistry is hard. Almost all, and its entirely possible that it actually was all, classes are graded on a curve, because nobody can possible know all of the material the classes contain. As such, it’s not that someone is learning the material of the class, but that someone is learning more than everyone else. Every class is a continuous competition to see who can learn the most, and the curve of the class is based on that. The credits the classes were worth was also completely arbitrary and did not in any way correlate to the amount of time required to pass the class. My favorite example is Analytical Chemistry (Achem). Achem was a 4 credit class. It contained 3 hours of lecture per week, along with an hour long open-note group quiz, and a 4 hour lab period. I clocked my hours one week out of curiosity, and this one 4 credit class could easily have been a full time job, as in 40 hours a week, by itself. Biochemistry 2, the final class taken before graduation, was also 4 credits and could also easily have been a full time job in and of itself. As difficult as biochemistry was, I’m still, to this day, of the opinion that Korean is harder. Especially “Higher Level” Korean. I use quotation marks there, because even if someone takes higher level Korean they are still at the speaking level of an elementary school child. So its high level to Americans that have an interest in the language, but unlike something like Spanish where a minor would probably make someone at least conversational in daily life, It was still not possible for me to use only Korean to speak by the time I finished the classes. If I had majored in it and had more time to practice (I did practice at work – the owners of the bar were Korean, and being in Ellicott City, a large number of the customers were too), maybe I would have been able to, but it is pure speculation on my part. In summation, I majored in an incredibly difficult subject, minored in an incredibly difficult subject, and then worked weekends so I could pay my bills, get food, and whatever else I needed. Like HCC there were some semesters where, outside of holidays, I wouldn’t have a day off. It was great Zen practice. When I say something is great Zen practice, it does not mean great in the typical usage of the word. It is not like going to a great restaurant, or seeing a great movie. It means “This thing really

sucked, and the only way to get through was by continuously, all day long, dropping every thought that arose both about how much it sucks, and how much I want to quit.” Zen training is often like that, where bad situations are considered to actually be fortunate, because concentration develops much more significantly under adverse conditions than it does under favorable ones. That is why the lotus is the symbol of Zen (maybe Buddhism as a whole?) - lotus flowers grow out of mud and muck, and once they bloom they are absolutely beautiful. It was in UMBC that I learned that I hate academia. Most of the professors, at least in the biochem track, had little interest in teaching. Most classes were an endless practice in accepting insults and general rudeness without recourse. There were exceptions, but by and large the professors seemed to enjoy making the classes as difficult as possible while simultaneously making getting help as uncomfortable as they could. There was one class that stands out to me, though, because I had a Weird Zen thing happen while taking it. Weird Zen Stuff™. In Christian terms, someone could say its when God speaks to them. In traditional Japanese Zen, its called Kensho. I like saying Weird Zen Stuff just because it is at least slightly funny, and saying "God told me" sounds kind of ridiculous. WZS happens in daily life from time to time. I’m not sure why. It was my biochemistry lab class. The first half of the class I was continually failing every lab report I turned in. I put absolutely ridiculous amounts of time into my lab reports, far more than normal from what I understood when I asked my classmates how long it was taking for them to write theirs. I went to the lab study groups, went to the professors lab hours, would talk with the TAs, and I was still failing and I couldn’t understand why. Then one day, I was cooking bacon, and it struck me. This is another one of those times where the solution to some problem I was having in daily life spontaneously became obvious. When I say it struck me, it was actually almost like getting hit in the head. When I say struck me and use it in the context of Zen, it isn’t in the way that it is typically used. I can’t even really explain it, because this is not something most people have ever experienced. It completely interrupts the day, almost like an

electrical shock, and the solution to the problem is obvious. This was similar to when I realized I was given laxatives to shit myself, when I realized my mother didn’t have problems with her insulin but was actually overdosing on it to get high, or when I realized Eve hated me. This kind of thing, when it happens, it is completely, totally unlike normal daily life and the way we normally figure something out. The instructions for the lab contained the following phrase: “Why is this important” which we had to write about. The way I understood that phrase was “Why did we use this technique to find this value, or whatever it was we were trying to find, and not some other technique?” which is a totally reasonable way to understand it. The problem with understanding the phrase in that way, is that being an undergraduate student that knew nothing bout biochem lab techniques, I had absolutely no idea why we were doing what we were doing to determine whatever we were determining. That is why I was taking the class – in order to learn those things. And so that was what my lab reports were full of, comparing different techniques I had to look up, research, etc. And that was why I kept failing. Nobody, not me, not the professor, not the TAs, not my classmates I had talked to about it, realized that the simple phrase “why is this important” could be understood in more than one way, and that I was understanding it in a totally different way than what was meant. In Koan practice, especially with Mu, it is commonly said that someone has to match the Master’s mind. Why did Master Joshu respond “Mu” to the question “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?” This kind of thing, where you spontaneously recognize what someone is trying to convey to you, is what is meant by that. I’m not sure how it works, to be honest. I’m not sure why in the case with the phrase “Why is this important” it happened when I was cooking in my kitchen so I would have food to take to campus with me. I’m not sure why it doesn’t happen all the time, as all day long people misunderstand each other. I don’t know why it can’t be voluntarily triggered. What the professor actually meant by that phrase was, “What happened, what should have happened, and explain any difference between the two.” In this class, getting the wrong final value was

penalized, but it would not make you fail the lab. If you could explain why the value (or whatever) wasn’t correct and where you went wrong and why, you could still get either a very low A or a very high B, I don’t exactly remember. As soon as this happened, and I recognized there was a totally different way to understand those 4 simple words, I started getting A’s and B’s. I think on one I even got a perfect 100 (although that was supposed to be the easiest one of the semester, to be clear). All of this endless stress I was having over this class – the bad grades, the clueless research into various lab techniques I knew nothing about, the irritation I was having with the TAs and the professor, all of it was immediately, completely and irreversibly eliminated as soon as I recognized the problem was in my understanding of those four simple words. That day, I went to see one of the TAs during their office hours. All day long, I had been laughing, at some points laughing hysterically, about how my confusion over four words had caused so much trouble. When I got there, I sat down, and with a big smile, pulled out the paper that contained the directions for writing the lab reports. I found the section with that phrase, and asked, “Does this mean to write about why we did what we did instead of something else, or to write about the results we had, what we should have had, and if the results are not what they should be to write about why?” He said it was the latter. I burst into laughter. Uncontainable laughter. All this stress, all this frustration, all of it because I understood four words in a way that nobody else did. Laughter to the point where they started to smile and even laugh with me. They asked me what was so funny, why I was laughing like I was. I didn’t mention Weird Zen Stuff had happened, just that I had understood it incorrectly from the moment I read it, and even though we had spoken many times about it, neither I nor they, nor the professor nor anyone else I had talked to had ever caught that the entire problem was a simple misunderstanding – of reading the same thing differently. In Zen, and in Buddhism in general, Enlightenment is described as the irreversible elimination of suffering. It (meaning final enlightenment) happens, I assume, in the same way that the solution to those four words did. There is some fundamental misunderstanding that all living things have about

experience, and as soon as this fundamental misunderstand is recognized, the ability to suffer is immediately and irreversibly lost. In both Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhism, there are several stages of enlightenment, but the Theravadan descriptions are more explicit about this aspect. The table below goes into some basic detail:

stage's "fruit"[note 3] stream-enterer

abandoned fetters

rebirth(s) until suffering's end up to seven rebirths in human or heavenly realms

1. identity view (Anatman) 2. doubt in Buddha 3. ascetic or ritual rules lower once more as once-returner[note 4] fetter a human s once more in 4. sensual desire a heavenly realm non-returner 5. ill will (Pure Abodes)

arahant

6. material-rebirth desire 7. immaterial-rebirth desire higher 8. conceit no rebirth fetters 9. restlessness 10. ignorance

What each of these stages mean, is that once you have achieved it, the suffering that comes along with the associated fetters that are eliminated is immediately and irreversibly ended. Once someone is a stream-enterer, they never again have any stress over whether what they are doing is correct, they never again mistake the thought of “I” as actually them, and they never again stress over doing rites and rituals (not that rites and rituals aren’t important – there is a reason most temples do 108 bows in the morning, and other such stuff. Just that the reason for doing them becomes clear). Similarly, once someone is a non-returner, they never again can have ill-will towards anything or anyone, and they never again suffer from not having pleasant sensory conditions or from having unpleasant sensory conditions. An Arahant has recognized the fundamental misunderstanding of experience from moment

to moment, and as such, being able to suffer from anything at all, even death, is completely removed. As I mentioned, Mahayana has a similar system, the 10 bhumis, but they are less explicit about this aspect in particular. If there is a time in writing this that they appropriate to include I will do so, but from a personal standpoint, I like the Theravadan description more. When Weird Zen Stuff™ happens, it is in the style of the eliminations of fetters. After it happens, the confusion that allowed for suffering (although in all of my cases I think stress is a better word to use) is eliminated, and as such, it is never possible to stress over whatever was causing the problem again. Ever. The answer that is found is absolutely, unquestionably 100% correct, and even if the entire world told you otherwise, the only reasonable response would be to tell the entire world that they are wrong. I had mentioned earlier that most of the professors went out of their way to make coming to get help uncomfortable, some more than others. This one was an exception. Every time they had office hours, there was a line of people waiting outside their door to ask questions. It was a very difficult subject that was often not straightforward. Conclusions on what happened, and why it happened had to be drawn from data – nothing was explicitly stated. And people very commonly drew the wrong ones. I’m not positive about this, but I do not think I had Weird Zen Stuff™ happen for any other class. There are three other classes that I still remember to this day, on the biochem side of things: Achem and Biochem 2. Both were difficult. Very difficult. The other class was Physics 2. There was nothing particularly special about physics 2, I just really liked the professor who taught it. He was one of the very few professors who legitimately seemed to love the subjects and classes he taught, and It was immediately obvious interacting with him. I actually had a physics question years later, just basic physics 102 stuff, and emailed him about it, since I don't know any physics people or engineers in my daily life. Surprisingly enough, he got back to me almost immediately with an answer, despite having no idea who I was, or that I had taken a class with him many years ago, or that fact that it was just basic 100 level physics stuff. It proved my gut feeling about him right. The two chemistry classes, on the other hand, did not need to be so difficult; the professors made them intentionally harder than they

needed to be, both in class and outside of it. It was mainly these two classes that shaped my opinion on academia as a whole, which as I have already mentioned is not very positive. Biochem 2 especially was interesting, because by all means, the same Weird Zen Stuff could have happened there. I wish it would have happened there, and it didn’t. Biochem 2 was split into two halves, the first half was taught in one way by one professor, and the other half was taught in another way by another professor. The first professor was very much into organic mechanisms. We had to know Glycolysis, the Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex, and the Krebbs cycle, along with all intermediate steps for getting from the beginning of one to the end of another, along with countless other regulation diagrams, and I think some definitions. Without getting into what those words mean specifically, because they don’t matter much to the point, it was a lot. All chemistry degrees in the US are certified, or maybe accredited is a better word to use, by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS has their own exams for all chemistry subjects (biochem falls under chemistry and the ACS accredits schools that offer biochem degrees. It is a chemistry degree that specializes in the chemistry of biological systems) that schools can chose to use, or not to use. For example, the first time I took Achem, we did not use an ACS exam at any point. The second time, the final exam was an ACS exam. ACS exams are scantron – multiple choice. Biochem 2 tests at UMBC were not multiple choice. Everything had to be fully drawn from memory. Which is fine. This is where the Weird Zen Stuff comes in, or in this case, didn’t come in. It happened in the biochem lab class with the phase “Why is this important.” In Biochem 2, often times on exams we would be given instructions on the format our answer had to be in which were not very clear, and the one I remember the most was “By means of a scheme…..” where we would have to draw a scheme of whatever was being asked. There were a large number of students, myself included, where these directions were not obvious as to what format the answer should be in. There are plenty of different ways in biochem to use the word “scheme” when drawing out various things, and they are not all

similar. So a significant portion of the class, even when we knew the material, would get partial or no credit because it was not conveyed in the way that was meant in the prompt. I had even asked the professor at one point if he could give an example of what he meant by scheme, after which he shook his head and said, "I don't know." It would have been very useful for Weird Zen Stuff to have happened there, and it didn’t. There is a possibility I wouldn’t have had to retake the class if it did, or if I could trigger it myself at will. I have no idea why it happens when it does, nor why it happens with the things it happens with, nor why it doesn’t happen with things it doesn’t happen with. As many times as it has happened over the years, I have no better understanding of it now than I did the very first time it happened. The second half of Biochem 2 was taught by a second professor. It is actually due in large part to his section that my memory is as good as it is. When I was interviewing for jobs after college, and I was asked that question of "What are some of your strengths?" I would always say my memory. It isn't something tangible - how can someone rate how good their memory is? But after this class I noticed a massive difference from before in how easily I was able to learn and remember absolutely absurd amounts of information, especially compared to other people. As I said, the professors in UMBC biochemistry would always make up their own exams. The first one really, really liked organic mechanisms, as that was his field of study and focus as a professor. Most of his published works are, as far as I know, dealing with how molecules go from one thing to another along with their intermediate steps. The second one did things a bit differently. There were a few of the mechanisms here and there, but by and large we did not focus on them. In biochem 2, there were three exams and a final, the first exam was fully the first professors, the second exam was 50/50, and the third exam was fully the second professors, and then the final covered all the material of the whole class. At some point, the second professor would print out what he called a study guide. It comprised of somewhere in the ballpark of 20-30 slides of various biochemistry things covered in class, each with a title of the thing that was being shown. No big deal right? Sounds normal.

It was not normal. Or maybe it was normal, but I learned very quickly, after taking his first exam that the questions on the exams for the most part had nothing whatsoever to do with the obvious connection between the title of the slide and the things on it. I would say upwards of 2/3rds - 3/4ths of the questions on the exam would be random pieces of trivia from the slides. Sure, none of the questions were ever completely out of left field - they indeed were always somewhere on the slides. But there was no way to ever know exactly what on the diagrams were going to be asked about. So what does someone do in that situation? I don't know what other people did, but what I did was just memorize, as in totally commit to memory, every single thing on the slide. Be able to draw out every, and I mean every, single detail on every slide regardless of how unrelated they were to the overall point implied by the title. To this day I'm not sure if there was another way to do it. By the time the class finished, I'm fairly certain I had rewired the part of my brain that dealt with storing and retrieving memories, because from that point until even today, my ability to memorize and recall absolutely massive amounts of information quickly is far beyond anyone else I meet on a regular basis. While I failed the class the first time, when I retook it I ended up with a "B". I think that is the proudest I've ever been of a "B" in my entire life. On the Korean side of things, I had two teachers, one at HCC where I took 102, 201, and 202, and one at UMBC, where I took 301, 301, 309, and 310. In general, I found that the teachers I had at community college were much more polite, much friendlier, and much more helpful with the subject matter than the ones at university were. I'm not sure if this is a common thing across higher education, or it was just my experience. Both were born in Korea and had moved to the US at some point in their life. Being near Ellicott City, I would estimate that anywhere from 1/4th to 1/2 of the classes were either Korean-Americans trying to connect more with Korean culture, or Korean immigrants looking for an easy foreign language credit. I had mentioned earlier that with Biochemistry, the amount of credits a class was rated had absolutely nothing to do with the actual amount of time required to pass the class. I think out of every

class I took, Korean 309 was the best example. Korean 101-302 were all linear in progression, they all built on each other and were the next logical step if someone wanted to learn the language. Korean 309 was nothing like that. It was a three credit, 300 level course, and it ended up taking up more of my time than my 400 level four credit biochem class. Unlike 101-302, 309 skipped two entire years worth of material. I did not know this when I registered for the class. Had I known, I would have taken the Korean movie class where you watch a movie, and then write a report in English. I really wanted (and to this day still do. I still practice Korean on a nearly daily basis) to learn the language, and so I wanted to take the next class offered towards that goal. Korean 309 starts to really focus on honorifics. We don't really have them in English, but think of business-speak where things are more formal, and people use things like sir and mam more often. In Korean, its like that, but turned up to 11. Most verbs, and a lot of non-verb words, in Korean have three different words, depending on the level of speech someone is using (actually I think there are 7, but only 3 are commonly used). So it isn't just that someone is learning a new language, but multiple languages that have to be able to be switched to on an intuitive basis depending on the person being spoken to. This class also introduced some Hanja (無 is the Hanja for 무), which are Chinese characters with the associated Korean pronunciation, but there were only a few of those in a week, and weren't a big deal. The class was split into two different grading metrics, and the group I was in didn't have to learn them, but even if I did, it was usually around 5 a week, which was nothing compared to the amount of the material for the rest of the class. As I said before, I am absolutely of the opinion that Korean was a more difficult subject than Biochemistry was, and that is saying a lot. I probably spent close to double the time studying for this class as I did Biochemistry 1 for the same grade. It was unbelievably hard. The other half of University was working as a bartender. It was at a mom and pop owned bar, so I had more responsibilities than a bartender normally would, but probably less than a manager would at a more official business. It was somewhere between the two. At first, I actually really liked

bartending. By the end, I decided I would never do it again. In Buddhism, there are certain occupations that are basically forbidden. They aren’t forbidden, but kind of like the precepts, people voluntarily do not do them because doing them always, without exception, causes bad future conditions. Bartending is in somewhat of a gray area. The actual text of the sutra that mentions this is as follows:

"A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison."

I’ve heard from people that it means someone cannot work with alcohol whatsoever, including bartending and even being a waiter or waitress at a restaurant that serves alcohol. I’ve also heard that this applies only to actually owning a business, and that employees are exempt from the rules. I’ve even heard it said that business in intoxicants solely applies to actually making the intoxicant, i.e. being a brewer or something to that effect. In general, rules in Buddhism are a guideline to prevent unwanted future situations, and its up to the individual. I did not, at the time, personally feel bartending to make ends meet while in school was all that bad, but I would definitely not do it now, either. One of the reasons is because it inherently gets someone involved in the poor decisions that other people make. Exposure to fights, gossip, and general life troubles goes through the roof. I look at bartending very similar to the way I look at eating meat (with one exception: I do not eat beef. Holy cow!): the people who go to a bar to drink and have a “good time” (whether it ends up being a good time once alcohol is involved is another matter) are going to be doing it regardless of who the bartender is, generally speaking. The alcohol has already been made, and bought by the business. The people going already have the intention to drink. Meat is on the grocery store shelves already exists regardless of whether or not I buy it. In the case of meat, it even has a very short shelf life where if it is not bought and prepared, the whole process from the birth of the animal until its slaughter, all the time, effort, food, medicine, etc., all goes to waste. I think in both cases there is some negative effect –

buying meat and bartending, but it is not much. It is better not to do either, but we don’t always get to chose the conditions we are faced with in life (the Dalai Lama eats meat due to health necessities, for example). In some cases we have to do things that will cause negative outcomes because its really the only choice there is in the situation. I cannot think of another job that would have allowed me to work weekend nights, making on average $20 an hour, without any previous experience in the field. So I went with it. The act of bartending itself, especially when its busy, is another great opportunity to practice meditation. For hours at a time, I was continuously moving. We had a jukebox that was incredibly loud and people often played music I didn’t like. My body hurt. I was stressed out. A small but still significant portion of the customers could be quite rude, especially after a few drinks. I was always worried about the rest of my life, since I was always just barely treading water on my studies, money was always super tight, and various life stuff was always happening. I was still always lonely. Every time one of these thoughts would arise, I would not interfere with it, and it would pass on its own. And they would continually arise. Which isn’t to say that bartending was all bad. My natural sleep cycle since high school has been to be awake at night and sleep during the day. Even when I went to Korea, which has a ~12 hour time difference, my body would adjust to be awake at night and asleep during the day. This goes all the way back to 9th grade of high school, when I would stay up late to chat on AIM (a sort of precursor to facebook messenger. Kind of.) with a girl from school I had a crush on. like the BDSM thing, I am stuck with this sleeping habit. Even today, if I want to get to sleep on time I have to take melatonin and some form of OTC sleeping medication, and even then it does not work half the time. This is another one of those things that I wish I could change; I would much prefer to have a typical sleeping schedule, but I do not and can not. Bartending at night fit my sleep schedule in a way no other job I've ever had does, and it was wonderful. There is definitely some benefit to working nights: no traffic, when running errands there are no lines during the day, it's easier to make doctor appointments and get to a

bank, etc. I actually would look forward to seeing some of the regulars, especially Sunday afternoons. Sundays were usually not very busy, and two regulars would always be there when my shift started. It was one of the few bright points of the week where I could relax and socialize with people without having to put on my bartender mask where I am overly polite, or my student mask where I am overly serious and focused only at the subject matter at hand, usually some complicated science-related thing, which is being discussed. In my entire life since I’ve started practicing meditation, only two people have ever commented that I was always calm, and one of them was one of the two regulars.

Nine Two Five Zen The first place I worked at (it was actually the second place, but the first place did not work out, both on my side and theirs, and I was there for I think less than a month) after graduating from UMBC was a company that specialized in database software for breast cancer centers. The laws regulating how mammography centers inform and keep in touch with their patients are complicated, and keeping track of who gets contacted when, and with what, can very quickly, especially when some centers have many thousands of patients, become unmanageable by individuals. I’ve always enjoyed playing around with technology, and my area of study in school was in biochemistry, so it seemed like a good fit. Of all the places that the company could be located, it was located in Burtonsville, my hometown. I had been back to Burtonsville a few times since I left when I was 18, and my opinion of the town hadn’t changed much. It did not change when I was working there, either. Just from a town development point of view, the whole place made no sense. Why anyone would center their business there, in what is basically the middle of nowhere, eluded me then, and it eludes me now. The owner of the company was one of the people that believed being halfway between DC and Baltimore meant that you got both. I am firmly of the opinion that it gets you neither.

The company had people from all over the central Maryland area, with one of my coworkers even commuting in from DC proper. I suppose leaving DC to enter Maryland during rush hour wouldn’t have been as bad as the opposite, but I never envied him for it. As a general rule, I got along with most of my coworkers, although there were some exceptions. I more or less got along with my direct boss, as much as someone can, at least. They were the other one of the two people that had commented that I was always calm all the time. The coworker from DC is the only one I kept in touch with after I left. To give a little bit of background, I HATE talking on the phone. It's very uncommon for me to spend more than five or ten minutes on a personal phone call. Even when I'm calling someone, like Adam as an example, that I've known for a long time and want to speak with to catch up, it doesn't really last more than 10 minutes. With this coworker, since we both left, I cannot count how many conversations we've had that went on for multiple hours at a time, discussing how utterly awful of a place it was to work. At the beginning of my employment there, it seemed nice, location notwithstanding. That facade did not last long. The CEO and VP were outright abusive of just about everyone, and then when this caused problems, they blamed everyone but themselves for it. To give an idea of the environment they created, I’m fairly certain in the year and a half I worked there, the entire support department, somewhere in the area of 30 people quit, and then out of their replacements the vast majority of them quit. My department fared a bit better, but it still had a high turnover rate, probably in the 50% annual range. The only departments where turnover wasn’t a problem were the engineers and the developers. I’m fairly certain that more people either quit or were fired than worked at the company at any given time by the time I left. When turnover is ~70% annually, there is an underlying problem. Zen practice is great for business. Zen is actually great for everything, but this is a chapter on business, so I'm going to focus on that. It may seem a bit odd - how can sitting in front of a wall, motionless, for hours at a time, help someone with their business? The obvious way is that people that

do meditation tend to be able to endure stressful situations better than those that don't. This has been proven through rigorous scientific studies over the years; if you want details, just Google it. Work, by and large, tends to be stressful (with some professions more so than others), and anything at all that can help with that will obviously be beneficial. I would even do meditation during my lunch breaks sometimes at work (the bosses always thought I was sleeping and would interrupt me - "You can't sleep in the office." Well, I'm not sleeping, so there is no problem there). Given the stressful environment that pervaded the company, I don't know why they never thought of it as a good idea to try, at the very least to see if their turnover rate would decrease. I had even brought up a number of times that I was living (well, renting a room) at a temple and did meditation on a regular basis, and nobody really cared. For reference, most large tech companies have some form of mindfulness training program, since it tends to have an overall positive effect on employee metrics and general satisfaction. But there is a less obvious reason that Zen is good for business, and it involves a word I hate using because I think it sounds cheesy or pretentious: wisdom. Wisdom is being able to see the best solution for a problem for everyone involved. At a company, or any group of people that are, at least in theory, working towards a common goal, everyone is sort of "in this together," or "in the same boat," so to speak. Seen through that lens, it is difficult to create an environment where half the people in a company either quit or are fired annually. Wisdom is being able to pick the correct way of understanding a situation when there are multiple ways it can be understood. The CEO of the company, a lawyer by education, was always thought of very highly by management. All of them were continuously impressed by how smart he was. Like Burtonsville getting the best of DC and Baltimore by being half way between the two of them, I did not agree with this view. Don't get me wrong, they were very clearly highly educated; it isn't easy, as far as I know, to get a law degree. But whenever there was more than one way to understand something, when they had to draw conclusions from data and the answer could be either

this or that, they picked the wrong one. I'm fairly certain every time I was around where there was more than one way to understand some situation, they understood it wrong. Intuition is something that cannot be learned, at least not in the traditional sense. But it can be developed as a side effect of concentration. As concentration is developed, the ability to intuitively understand a situation also becomes more refined. So as much as everyone gushed over this guy, I was not impressed. This is sort of an aside, but in general I hate business speak. I find it to be incredibly pretentious and in general completely unnecessary for most interactions. A lot of it seems to be to show that someone is part of the "business clique" and not much else, like a sandwich with nothing but condiments. Just like how I don't really have any interest in being part of the Buddhist clique in America, I don't really have any desire to become part of the business clique either. I can English gooder than anyone; I don't need to arbitrarily use filler buzz words to prove it. When I would edit business homework papers of the Korean guy I went to school with, I was unendingly shocked at how at how it seemed like people that went to business school were learning how to fit into the business clique, instead of actually learning things that help to found, manage, and run a business, to the point where I could correctly answer his 400 level business school homework with absolutely no background whatsoever in business. With the sciences (and engineering), language gets very, very specific and precise because the natural world is complicated, and that level of detail is needed to accurately describe things and relate to other people what is going on. The business school related things I saw from my friend were by and large arbitrary and didn't correspond to anything other than being able to bring it up with other business people. When I hear people speak, it is very obvious to me who is using niche words in order to impress other people, and who is using them because they most accurately describe something that is difficult to describe. Most of the business related coursework, at least that I saw, very clearly fit into the first category, not the second. Which isn't to say that running a business is easy. It isn't. I myself have never run one. Maybe I will someday. I managed at a Domino's, which carries some of responsibilities that actually running

a business has, but only some of them. I didn't have to make working the center of my life. I didn't have to carry the burden of other people's livelihood with hiring and firing decisions. I'm actually quite glad about that, as it would stress me out to no end. Especially when a business is first started, and the time commitment is much, much more significant than 9 two 5, Zen can help. When I nearly worked myself to death my second semester (maybe it was my third?) in school, the only reason I was able to push myself that far without quitting was because of how habitual it was continuously put down whatever thought was arising at any given time. When things seem overwhelming, when there is so much work that needs to be done, when the to-do list is endless, that is fine. All of those situations are just another idea that arises in the mind-stream, and they doesn't really need to be paid much attention to. Which doesn't negate that things are overwhelming, that there is much work that needs to be done, and that the to-do list is endless. But it eliminates the stress from understanding the situation in that way. There is no need to put a head on top of your head, so to speak. Back to the main topic, my department, the implementation department was split between Project Managers and Systems Engineers. I was on the PM side, it was our job to interact with the customer, figure out what they wanted to do, and implement it. The Engineers would do all of the back-end logic, especially with how information was sent between all the different systems that would interact with the software. I think there were 6 PMs and 3 engineers, to the best of my recollection. I said before that it seemed like a good fit - between my background in tech in general, that I was a bartender for a few years and more or less made interacting with people my job in college, and it had to do with biological problems. It was about as good of a fit as there could be. Similarly with high school, and college after that, there was one person that worked there that utterly enjoyed making life as unpleasant as possible - although this wasn't always directed at me. It was for the most part with anyone she thought she could get away with being awful to that she would do it with. It was more or less a running joke among everyone else that had to deal with her to avoid it if possible. I had to interact with her more than most people in the office because our positions often

times overlapped in work that had to be done. By this time, loneliness and horniness were the main problems I had day to day, and I suppose laziness too, but really the first two. The unending problem of laziness is something I've been able to by and large handle through sitting, and while I still to this day prefer being lazy over actually doing stuff, it has ceased to be a driving force behind my behavior. One of the things that happens after years of sitting is that a person's laugh tends to change. It was one of the first things I noticed about Pohwa Sunim, was that the way he laughed seemed so...happy. I'm not really sure how to describe it. When you sit a lot, you will tend to laugh more, and more authentically. As things that have bothered someone their whole life get resolved through sitting, naturally they will become happier in daily life. Even with the problems I had at the time, when they weren't actively bothering me, I was still pretty happy. Even the problems of loneliness and horniness come and go. When they are a problem, they are a problem for they time they arise; eventually they cease, and once they have ceased, they are gone until they arise again. They cease to be all pervading, only happening when they are happening, and when they go away they go away. Similar again to high school, similar again to college, this person despised me simply because they enjoyed doing it. At one point, I think I was about to get some coffee in the kitchen, I overheard this person making fun of my laugh to someone else. Like being the best guitarist in high school, like being the best grappler in college, this person took the result of many thousands of hours of meditation practice and made it into yet another avenue to attack me. They way people that have done meditation for crazy amounts of time laugh is something like an achievement in a video game; it is indicative of a nearly impossible achievement. It's very unique and distinctive compared with the average person. I've seen this with other people that have done meditation for crazy amounts of time, not simply Pohwa Sunim or myself. It is a common result. When a person can take an achievement like that, turn it into an avenue to further hate on someone, There is nothing I could have done that would have caused her to stop her behavior, because there was nothing I HAD done to caused them to act this way to begin with - they did it because they liked it, similar to the rest of the people I've

written about that have acted this way. She knew neither I nor the engineers were getting laid, and went out of her way to make sure all of us knew that she was, and as often as she wanted. She even would have conversations about her sex life, and it was always loud enough and in ear shot of us. One the stories I remember the best, well actually the only one I specifically remember was her saying "Bend me over and fuck my ass," but comments like that were common - everyday for her. And they were always targeted at the engineers and myself. Back to the company as a whole, as I mentioned before, there are all sorts of laws and regulations governing how breast cancer centers have to interact with their patients, and it gets very complex very quickly. Medical devices are also subjected to review and evaluation by the FDA. The company I worked at however, did not make devices, nor were they a mammography center. There were no rules or regulations, and as far as I know there still aren’t, for medical software whatsoever. This was even a running joke within the company, since the software always broke. Doing basic tasks, It would crash. It would alter or erase data, and some portions of it that were sold as extras outright did not work. It was a running joke between coworkers – “Is the software device broken?” “The software device has never not been broken.” One of the major selling points, if not THE selling point, was that it could be customized to each individual center’s need, and that was for the most part true. But the more complicated a system is, the more points of failure there are. Seems OK though, right? Most software has bugs (we had to call them "issues"). Most software crashes from time to time. Well, that is true, and sometimes those bugs can cause serious problems. In the case the data set is medical related, especially cancer related, having bugs that alter that data can kill people. While I have no evidence that their software was directly responsible for killing anyone, it absolutely did change, on a number of different sites, and in the ballpark of 100 patients, BI-RADS (BI-RADS is the rating system radiologists use when they read mammography images to indicate likeliness of cancer) scores from "This person has cancer" to "This person does not

have cancer." Part of what I mentioned earlier, of the complicated rules and regulations regarding how centers interact with their patients has to do with how they are contacted regarding their BI-RADS score, setting up following appointments, and things of that nature. The BI-RADS system works on a scale of 1 - nothing abnormal whatsoever - to 5 - confirmed metastasized cancer, with 0 being an odd one out meaning "Please come back and take another image, the one we have is inconclusive for any number of reasons." 0 is not necessarily bad, the technologist taking the image may have simply made a mistake that caused the image to not come out. I would imagine it still stresses people out, however, to get a "please come back to take another image" letter regardless. So people that had cancer got letters saying they did not have cancer. Cancer moves quickly, and so if someone does have a BI-RADS score that indicates a person either likely has, or definitely has cancer, the letter is something like "You likely have cancer, we need you to come back IMMEDIATELY for further imaging/biopsy/evaluation to decide what the next steps are." Delays of even a few weeks can literally mean the difference between life and death. So at one point, it was found that there was a very odd combination of conditions under which the software would change the score, and therefore all the subsequent necessary interactions needed thereafter. I was tasked, along with my coworker that came on at the same time, with going through every single customer's database and seeing who was and wasn't affected. I actually don't have much of a problem with being part of that portion of this whole fiasco (and fortunately, it was the only portion I was a part of) - it absolutely was necessary to see which site was and wasn't affected by this bug, and within each database which patient(s). That information needed to be collected, regardless of how they planned to use it. So we were given essentially an entire extra 40 hours of week that work, since a lot of these sites and databases are incredibly locked down and difficult to access due to HIPAA and other relevant regulations. None of the management was involved in it, so they obviously did not find the situation people with cancer getting "you don't have cancer letters" - to be urgent. After a week, we turned in our findings, and left it for them to decide what to do with it. They decided to simply change the BI-RADS

score back to the original score from the back end - everything done from the program interface had an audit log, but they had tools developed to interact with the database directly (and to be honest, there are an infinite number of non-malicious reasons why someone would need to do that. Having those sort of tools is not abnormal), and that was how they changed them back, weeks later. They also forced the program to reprint the letters updated with the new BI-RADS score/follow up recommendation. I don't know if any of the sites ever noticed that some patients that had recently gotten letters had new letters printed automatically with different content than the original. One of the sites I had the most interactions with, if not the most interactions with, was one of the places that was affected. Eventually, when I was living in Northern Virginia with my friend while recovering from surgery, I got in contact with the two people I had worked extensively with, and told them what had happened. They could not believe it. They did not believe me. I had saved the spreadsheet with all the sites that were affected (well, I wouldn't go as far as to say I saved it. It was a google docs spreadsheet that I still had access to. I think my coworker and I had shared it with each other while it was going on, or something, I don't particularly remember), along with the custom program that was written in order to make finding all of the necessary conditions for the bug to occur, along with any possibly affected patients, a single mouse click. After I had sent it to them, they said they needed to take it to their management team. They were absolutely aghast, and could not believe it. I never heard from them again. I had bounced between homeless shelters and tents in the woods during this period, but eventually I got a priority letter from a lawyer in DC saying I had broken a non-disclosure agreement, and that I needed to get in touch with him. I think he was going to try to scare me by threatening to sue me, but the joke was on him: he told me it was very hard to get in touch with me, and that they had sent letters to various addresses. My response to him was, "I don't have an address. I live in a tent in the woods and meditate all day." He had no idea what to say. I said I had no other copies of what I had sent to the people I had sent it to (I don't remember if this was fully true at the time, but after migrating email addresses, having gone

through two different computers, I absolutely do not anymore), and had no plans on doing anything else. The whole situation had bothered me, and I felt the need to speak up. As a secondary note, nondisclosure agreements do not cover criminal violations and whistleblowing, so while it sounded fancy and I'm sure he thought he was going to scare me, I'm fairly certain that it would not have applied to the situation at hand. As I said, I have no idea if any of the people that had cancer which got the "you don't have cancer letters" ended up dying or having it spread, needing a mastectomy, or anything else like that. It would not surprise me in the slightest if someone did though, as cancer, like I already mentioned, can go from "you'll be fine" to "this has metastasized and you will likely not live more than a few months" very, very quickly. While I was working at that place, I was renting a room out of BZC. I paid full rent, didn't claim it on my taxes as a religious deduction, or anything like that. I mowed the lawn, made sure the Korean grandmas that came by had a warm sitting hall every Sunday during the winter, a cool sitting hall every Sunday during the summer, and was home every Tuesday so that I could set up the Skype or Gotomeeting or whatever it was we used so they could talk with Pohwa Sunim once a week. Ususally two or three times a week I would meditate at night for two or three 45 minute sessions with one of the grandmas and any American people that stumbled by that were interested. It wasn't often other American people came by, but if they did I always made sure to welcome them. It was kind of like a part-time volunteer position with the amount of time it took up per week. Eventually the stress of all of it got to me, I started drinking a lot, and even smoking pot. I had mentioned before that I was not completely free of blame for my mother leaving me homeless after surgery, and this is where that part came in. Towards the end of my time at that company, I started smoking pot on a regular basis. I've mentioned earlier that I really don't like smoking pot, and this is one of the reasons why. It has very, very unpredictable effects on concentration for everyone. At that time, I had probably spent between 5-10,000 hours sitting, and so the unpredictable effects were

intensified exponentially. I had some kind of weird pot thing happen, and I ended up trespassing onto Fort Meade, stripping naked, and screaming crazy stuff at people. Fortunately I was not arrested, they just took me to the local hospital and I spent a week in the looney bin. After that, neither my sister nor my mother was ever comfortable around me again, even though they weren't really directly involved, and both of them had done much worse many times more over numerous years. They didn't want me around and that was the excuse they needed. But I was not perfect either. When I was in the looney bin, I basically turned it into a Zen retreat. There wasn't much else to do. The staff didn't like it very much - apparently one of the ways that staff at a looney bin determine when/if someone can leave is how a patient interacts with other people. So me spending hours at a time in my room sitting silently did not fit any behavior they had ever seen before. It was during this time I first made the connection that every single thing someone has ever done, good or bad, will be repaid. Stuff someone remembers, stuff someone doesn't remember, all of it. I knew intellectually the principal of Karma by this point, obviously, but it wasn't clear how it worked in my moment to moment experience. How someone reacts to that, recognizing that every single thing they have ever done will come back to them, depends a lot on what someone has done. If during someone's entire life, they have done nothing but good for everyone all the time, It would be a delightful experience, I would think. While by and large in my life I have not been overwhelmingly harmful to others, there have been times where I have been, even irreparably. Even things like martial arts, or other violent sports, or kinky sex, where everyone is there for the same reason and agrees that harming each other is OK for the purpose of whatever it is they are doing, is going to have some negative consequence. I have, since the weekend I spent in New York City, had constant, all day long anxiety, and this amplified it horribly. It just became my new meditation practice all day long: continuously putting down thoughts about how harm I have caused others is going to come back to me. Again, I knew this intellectually, but starting to recognize exactly how was still incredibly unsettling. I had probably been sitting for about 15 years at this point, and meditation had become my default

experience throughout daily life for probably around 10. As someone sits more and more, and concentration becomes more and more sublime, it isn't uncommon for troubling or disturbing things to arise. They don't happen before that because even with developed concentration it is difficult to deal with. Without developed concentration, someone would probably just go crazy. The more harm someone has caused, the more difficult this period would be to get through; eventually though, with continued regular meditation, it passes and "normal" life starts to resume. Once someone has this recognition, which happens to coincide right around the time (it was just before, in my case) Jhana first develops, someone naturally either totally ceases, or at least highly curtails, behavior that is harmful to others. In retrospect (I say this a lot in this, I've found), once I needed to start drinking on a regular basis and smoking pot to deal with the non-stop stress between work and then coming home and basically running a temple, I should have quit one, or both. My habit my whole life has been to never quit at anything, for better or worse, if for no other reason than just to spite everyone that was trying to get me to quit. That habit, of refusing to quit, has been very helpful in countless situations. This is one where it would have been better, once it became clear somewhere along the timeline of my employment, that they were trying to get rid of me but didn't want to fire me because it would have caused their insurance to raise, to have quit and found something else. Something, something, hindsight, something.

Hello God, Its me

I was still living at BZC when I got back from the looney bin. I think I stayed there for another three or four months afterwords. At some point towards the end, Pohwa Sunim told me that one of the Korean Grandmas that came for the Sunday morning chanting/meditation was going to be moving in and I had to find some other place to go. By then, since I had free time, I had already painted most of

the house, and the dharma hall (meditation hall). It wasn't perfect by any means, as I said already, it was the first time I had painted anything. But it looked a heck of a lot better than it did. I didn't paint the two bedrooms. The Baltimore Zen Center is a small house, it has two bedrooms, an open kitchen, and a living room, with a very small bathroom. Towards the end of the work I had done, I had run out of paint, and my whole point in doing what I was doing was so that people that drove by would see the house and not see something that looked decrepit. One of the walls in the living room I had painted a reddish-orange color, what is commonly known as an accent wall, was the same color as the cabinets. This color is very similar to the color of the sash that monks wear around the world (As far as I know, when monks/nuns wear a sash it is the same color regardless of what country they are from or what type of Buddhism they practice). At least, it was the closest color I could pick out from memory. When the Korean Grandma moved in, she asked me to paint her room and the room her son was going to use, and told me she would buy the paint. I didn't particularly see a problem with this, and I did it, but like I just mentioned, I had run out of paint on the accent wall, and the paint on the outside of the house absolutely could have used another layer. To me, I did not care one iota about the bedrooms, because nobody saw them outside of the person using it. But people DID see the house when driving by, and the accent wall if they came in and were interested. A temple should be a place that is at least somewhat inviting to people that are not familiar with Zen. Not too inviting, but having a house that hasn't been painted in 20 years along with an interior that may never have been seemed like a good middle ground to cover. In my opinion, both of those should have been taken care of first. At some point when I was doing this, painting the house, and other misc. things I updated/changed, I met God. Or Vairocana Buddha. I am of the unchangeable opinion that those names refer to the same thing. In the bible, especially in the old testament, it is commonly said that when angels reveal themselves to people, one of the first things, if not the very first thing they say is, "Be not afraid." When this happened, I totally got that. I was terrified. I did not get the "Be not afraid

speech," although really I'm not sure if I did it would have helped any. "It" was a "body" of brilliant golden light. When I say brilliant golden light, it was not a light or a shade of gold that I have ever seen before. It was gold, for sure, but it was almost as if it was completely separate from the area of the electro-magnetic spectrum color is associated with. I don't remember if it filled the room I was in or not. Like I said, I was terrified. There were three major things that happened during this. I have no idea how long the brief period was. A minute or two or three at most. Three is probably a bit too long, but my sense of time during this went completely haywire. I don't mean in the way where it became infinite as it has done a few times before. Time proceeded as normal, I was just so utterly terrified of what was going on that I more or less lost my ability to process time as we normally do. This is why when people tell me that they talk to God, or that they've met God, and that it is this totally normal, friendly thing like calling your neighbor, I don't believe them. God, the thing that created the entire universe, that has flooded the earth and destroyed cities has taken a keen interest in your life specifically, and it's like calling your BFF from high school? I don't think so.... When I got back from New York, for many years, actually until this point, for a few hours a day my experience moment-to-moment would become very different. Much more anxious, much more painful, much more just all around unpleasant. The fear that whatever happened in New York was going to happen again that day, right there and then, would get cranked up to 11. It would happen randomly, but usually last about the same amount of time, two or three hours. One of the few things that helped was taking liquefied valerian root. To those don't know what valerian root is, it is a sort of natural, plant based tonic that you can buy at Vitamin Shoppe or GMC or probably Walmart these days. It stinks. It smells really really bad, so much that the running joke was to call it Dong-Yak (똥약), Korean for - "shit medicine." Even taking that, The only real choice was to practice through it. So for years and years, that is what I would do. If it happened at work, practice through it. If it happened at home, practice through it. It would be easier to do if I was engrossed in something else that I enjoyed -

a video game or a movie or something, but it still for the most part sucked. One of the reasons I was terrified, Other than the fact that some kind of radiant golden light was literally speaking to me, was that God had grabbed me by my spine. I don't mean by my torso, I mean by my spine, in particular. My spine and only my spine. I guess God can do that. What follows next is so unbelievable that I don't even know why I am bothering to put it in here. At some point during these two or three minutes, my vertebrae were moved. Totally rotated around in place, in some very strange order, over a period lasting what I would guess is a couple seconds. It happened very quickly. I would say the vast majority of the vertebrae in my back were moved like this. It also did not hurt. This absolutely should have killed me. I don't know why it didn't kill me. If this had happened in normal, everyday life to someone, there is no way it would be survivable. But not only did it not kill me, it didn't hurt at all. And from that point going forward, this problem I had for years, ever since coming back from New York, ceased to happen. I'm not sure why this was the way God wanted to introduce itself. It made an impression though. There has not been a repeat of that event. Knowing that there is something that can at will isolate my spine and move my vertebrae around in ways that should not be possible was a difficult pill to swallow. I could easily at any moment be squashed like a bug. By and large I am OK now with the fact that if God wants to directly intervene with my life, it will do so and all I can do is hope for the best. I assume if God wanted to kill me at some point, he would have done it there and then. But God didn't. The second was that this whole story, my life, the life of everyone else, it is all already known. It has all already happened. Human beings just don't experience it in that way. There is a plan, for each and every person. There is no way to fuck up the plan, as even the fuck ups are part of it. The Bible is more or less true (the Earth isn't 6,000 years old.). Jesus really did exist, and Jesus really will return. Revelations, the last book in the bible that describes the end times, really is some kind of prophecy. Jesus, as I mentioned in the introduction, traveled to India or somewhere, practiced Koan Zen for some

years, and then went back to Israel to teach people. He really did do miracles (in Zen, and Buddhism at large, they are called Siddhi's). He really did die on the cross, and then resurrected a few days later. The overall points of Jesus' life and the bible in general are actually completely true. As I have mentioned with other stuff like this, when it struck me that Revelations was actually true, that it was actually going to happen, it really fucked me up. This was probably within a year of having "met" God, and while I was working at Domino's. I still had to go to work and do daily life stuff afterwords The vast majority of the time, maybe even every time, something like that has happened to me, it has had negative effects on my daily life. I got wasted drunk every night (well, maybe not every night, but certainly most nights) for weeks. I would challenge anyone else to deal with it better. I was living out of my car at the time, right off of a road called Milestone. Usually when these types of things happen, there is something nearby that is somehow important or relevant to it. This was a milestone. It was something that utterly changed me before and after. Even meeting God didn't fuck me up like this. I have more or less come to terms with this since, like I have with the idea that if God really wants to fuck up my day, it will do it and there isn't much of anything I can do in response. I was using my phone, and meant to search for the term "world news." Autocorrect changed it to "world bees." I looked at it for a second, and thought it was an odd autocorrect to have been made, so I made the search and checked the results. The first result was a news article about how colony collapse disorder has been killing off bees in excessive amounts, and how it will have a massive effect on the food supply of the world if something isn't done about it. Once I read this, the distinction between inside and outside, myself and the greater world, ceased to exist for a short while. Maybe 30 seconds. At the time this happened, Flagpole Sitta from Harvey Danger was on the radio (I'm looking at the lyrics to this song right now, and it even starts out with "I had visions...") There is no escape. For anyone. The entire world will be effected, untold numbers of people will die and suffer. As the song goes, "Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide." Revelations, the end times, the tribulations, whatever

someone wants to call it, is when people have their Karma, their sin, called up and have to pay for it. At the very end of this, right before the distinction between myself, between my internal subjective experience, and that of the outside world, came back, the spoken words "The greatest story ever told" came up in the mindstream, which happens to be the name of a mu vie about the life and death of Jesus. On a seemingly different subject (but not really), the distinction between religion and science in the west is a fairly new one. It used to be that monasteries funded research by monks into how things in the world worked. Studying the world was in some way considered studying God, as it was studying God's creation. Mendell, the man that discovered how genetic inheritance works, did so while living at a Christian Monastery somewhere in Europe. That what science says about the world is at odds with God is entirely based on the misunderstanding of the bible. The Ancient Israelites didn't have a scientific background. Trying to explain how DNA works to them and all of the biology and chemistry background needed to understand that explanation would not have worked. In Buddhism, this is called skillful means - speaking in ways that are appropriate to the audience. God told the ancient Isrealites that earth had been around for however long its been around for, because it suited a purpose for them, and all of the other knowledge needed to know otherwise didn't exist at the time. So when there are times that science contradicts the bible, the biblical story should be the thing to be updated, or at least seen through the lens that this was told to a group of people that didn't have the understanding of the world that we do today, and as such is clearly meant as skillful-means, and not literal. The Dalai Lama said a similar thing with Buddhism, when science and Buddhism contradict, Buddhism must change. The third, and related to climbing a giant radio tower without any sort of safety gear in case I fell (because I knew I wouldn't die, or even be harmed significantly), there is some kind of cosmiclevel significance to all of this. I don't fully understand what or why, but it goes far, far beyond just my own life. This recognition is often times funny to me more than anything else. As I've mentioned

numerous times, I don't really talk about Zen or Buddhism, or religion in general unless someone else brings it up. Sometimes if the conversations veers towards it I will try to sneak it in. I absolutely do not talk about the "Weird Zen Stuff" side of things, which I would imagine meeting God would fall under. I am the least religious person, or at least I come off that way, that someone could meet. Not in the militant, angry atheist way, but in that I just don't really care about it, and talking about it directly often just causes problems. So by and large I avoid the conversations if possible. I have some kind of integral part in the overall plan that has existed since before the beginning of the universe, and nearly everyone in my daily life for as long as I can remember has in general treated me awfully. There is cosmic-level humor and irony in that. So me, the random homeless guy with back problems, that isn't really religious, who does not really care about the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is someone that God itself has taken a keen interest in. Well, I'm flattered I guess. Would have been nice to know 20 years ago. I've said before that one of the reasons that I don't talk about Weird Zen Stuff is because it is dependent on someone else believing that you aren't full of shit. If people don't like me for things they can see me actually do - playing guitar, or BJJ, or skateboarding, whatever, why would they put any trust whatsoever into something that cannot in any way, shape, or form be verified? Well, I suppose WZS that regards other people's behavior and things that they've done can be verified, but not so much things that are just my own experience. Needing people to believe you on something they can't really know for sure is not a good thing to center one's life on. How can anyone actually know for sure that I've experienced time being infinite, that I know that the mind-stream has been going on as one thing or another for literal eternity?You can't, really. At best you can check out the way I behave over time and see if it matches the things that I have said. Having people believe that you've actually met "God" is that taken to 11. I don't even know what benefit there would be of having people believe it. I'm fairly satisfied with my life, which is fairly close to being a hermit. Even if other people did believe it, it would probably just cause me trouble.

Jesus (Avalokitesvara) Goes to Hell To Save Hell Beings

I touched on this earlier, but I want to go into a bit more detail on what specifically this means. It is said in the Bible that Jesus had gone to hell to save people that were trapped in Hell. In Buddhism, it is said similarly that Maha-Sattvas (heaven's highest angels) do the same thing. I focus on Avalokitesvara because I personally am convinced, as in, there is nothing anyone could ever say to me that would get me to change my mind, that Jesus was just Avalokitesvara. Or the opposite could be said, that Avalokitesvara is just the Son Of God. I don't really care which version is given precedence. This phrase, going to hell to save hell beings, is usually misunderstood. I have said time and time again that certain actions will have certain consequences. People who have done enough in their life to go to Hell (If you behave like a demon in this life, you will be surrounded by demons in the next one) will go to Hell. There is no escaping that. Jesus cannot change it, nor can Avalokitesvara. Nor God himself. Nobody can change that. Simply believing in Jesus and that he died for your sins does not change it, either. In the bible, this is known as the Law of the Prophets. When I started writing this chapter, I wrote the following, but was uneasy with it, even highlighting it in bright red to come back to later when I figured out what was making me uneasy. Nearly everything I claim about in this is either 100% Weird Zen Stuff, or something that I am confident enough that I think if I had to explain why I say something I say to anyone in the world that disagreed, and they were amenable to changing their mind, I would be able to. I think everything else here I could reasonably do, except for this section. There is a phrase at work for when someone doesn't know something when it is above them, "Above my paygrade." To my intuition of how I experience life RIGHT NOW, I am confident in my assertion. Jesus/Avalokitesvara are "Basically god." They do not experience reality the way you and I

do. I think of how different my moment to moment experience is now compared to when I first started sitting, and if I met that me and they asked me to explain how it is different, I could only reply "you can't understand." I have been doing this for a ridiculous amount of time, yes, but I am neither Jesus nor Avalokitesvara. I can't perform miracles. In Buddhists sutras, once someone has done enough meditation, there are all sorts of wild things the highest of the highest meditators can do: Creating avatars, in Buddhism it is called a "mind made body", basically is apparently possible, as is leaving the body whenever someone wants. There are a bunch of other ones, but at this point in my meditation practice, I absolutely think that it is true that after a million trillion years of doing this, someone can do stuff that the rest of can't do nor understand.

Here is what I originally wrote:

So what exactly then, does it mean that Jesus went to Hell to save Hell beings? It means that once cause-and-effect, Karma, God's law, whatever someone wants to call it, is understood, It is possible to ripen the Karmic consequences that would send someone to hell after death here and now in this life. In order for Jesus to go to Hell, Jesus (Avalokitesvara) had to do things that literally sent him (Them - in Zen sects Avalokitesvara is often portrayed as a female) to hell. If someone understood moral cause-and-effect deeply enough (Jesus was said to be able to know the sins of others when he met them), they would know exactly what had to happen in order for the karmic consequences of someone's actions to ripen at any specific instance, and then do those things. The hell that someone would be born into for unfathomable amounts of time would be resolved quickly and with precision. It would still be hell for the person, as I said there is no escape from the consequences of one's actions. It would still absolutely suck. Almost certainly traumatizing. It's still Hell. But the other option is to literally be born into hell after death and have no chance whatsoever to escape it for unfathomable amounts of time. Kind of like being homeless, there aren't really good ways to do it, but some ways are

also clearly better than others. I've said before that once someone has been practicing Zen for long enough, their behavior is entirely guided by wanting the best for others, whatever that could mean. In this case, Jesus/Avalokitesvara do things that ripen the Karma of those destined for Hell knowing fully that by doing so they themselves will suffer, and suffer greatly. "The Ripening of Karma" is a polite, fancy way to say "they will make someone suffer exactly the way that is needed so that if they were to die right now, the things that would send them to Hell are already paid off." It is probably the highest form of love that exists, even if it doesn't really seem like it. There is no joy in it for Jesus, or other similar entities. It isn't done with that kind of intention. It just has to happen to save someone. Doing things someone knows will send them to hell, doing things someone knows they will suffer for in order to save someone else from the karmic results of their behavior is something that most would never consider doing - just look at divorce rates. In general, the worse someone's behavior has been over their life to other people (or animals, or if you can see ghosts, ghosts...whatever), the worse it will be when Karma ripens. There are some things that attenuate this, but by and large it is accurate.

Now what I am comfortable with saying, as in, I feel that I could defend to anyone and everyone that was amenable to hearing me out, is that all actions will at some point have consequences, good or bad. I am also confident that that if it all happened at once, if all of someone's sin, or ill-intended acts were all repaid at once, many people would not survive it. Buddha had a bad back in his old age because he had hurt someone unintentionally wrestling in a previous life. Imagine what the consequence is for actually intending to harm someone. There is no free pass on that, for anyone. It's just how the mind-stream and experience function. That being said, Jesus had superpowers. I have no idea if there is this 1 secret trick all doctors hate (it's a healing the sick joke. Work with me.). I have no idea how God, and Jesus interact with people from their side of the experience. I have no idea if the actions they take have the same

repercussions as yours and mine. Even if I had met either of them and asked, they would probably tell me exactly what I would tell myself 20 years ago. I wouldn't be able to understand it. I will say that from my experience right now, that is the only way that I can understand what happened to Jesus was that it was the natural causal sequence from "ripening" other people's Karma. Someone that has lived an absolutely perfect life, being basically God and deciding to become a human being to help these idiots stop themselves from hurting themselves does not have the karmic conditions for people to literally crucify them. The point is, once someone has done something that is going to have negative future effects, there isn't any way, as far as my experience of life is right now, moment to moment, to escape that. There is even a story in Buddhist sutras of a guy who becomes an enlightened Arahant (a Saint, basically), who has the ability to appear and disappear at will, and he ends up getting beaten to death by local villagers for something he did previously. Every time he would disappear when the crowd came and reappear after they left, they would come back again the next day. It continued until he was decided to stop disappearing and reappearing and just allowed himself to be beaten to death. Even Arahants, Buddhist saints, and Christian prophets, by the law of the prophets in the Bible, must experience the result of negative actions. Whether the effect of that action is experienced in this life or afterwards, it absolutely must be experienced. That the mind-stream, that experience itself operates like this means that it isn't something that can just be "believed" away. As I have said elsewhere, believing in Jesus doesn't do anything to erase causality. There is something important here though: Karma, or sin, whatever someone wants to call it, for the average run of the mill person, should always be considered only for themselves. When Jesus was out "ripening" other people's Karma, he did it out of knowledge of moral cause-of-effect. The average person has absolutely no idea how intentional action gives rise to certain results. If you enjoy when someone else is going through tough times because you think "it's their karma ripening," that itself is your own bad karma that will ripen at some point in the future. At best it is callous indifference, and at worst it is active malice. Behaving with either of those things as the motivation

for behavior, regardless of the object the behavior is directed towards, will not have pleasant results it is impossible. For the run of the mill person, the only way Karma should ever be understood is "If I do this thing, with this intention, knowing that ill-intent only has negative outcomes (and it doesn't even have to be "do this thing," speech that is spoken with ill-intent is enough, as is simply maintaining the view itself even if never spoken or overtly acted on), will it have results that I will like or will it have results I do not like?" It is never, ever, ever appropriate to try to use it as a cudgel to justify acting immorally. Jesus was basically God, and the result of him, with what I would assume is near-perfect understanding of how reality and experience works (and as such, his motivation would have been nearly if not completely devoid of any ill-intent whatsoever), "ripening" other people's karma was to be literally crucified. Imagine what the result would be if someone did it without such an understanding. Doubly so if they did it with callous indifference or active malice as their motivation. It is easy to love someone that always gives you what you want. It is much harder to love someone that makes you suffer. Somewhat unrelated, this is one of the main things that interest me in BDSM porn and the general kink - it's really easy to enjoy someone's company when they do things that always make you feel good and give you what you want. But to willingly enduring discomfort and even outright pain for someone else? You have to really, really want to make them happy, and they have to really, really matter to you. In my own life, As soon as I so much as inconvenience someone, I am gotten rid of. But Jesus/Avalokitesvara does it. Because of their wisdom and understanding of cause-andeffect, their intention is not born out of ill-will. It is born out of love. Not love in the way we normally think about it, the type that is shown in Hollywood movies and songs are sung about. But the love that arises from not wanting people to continually create bad future conditions for themselves. The love that comes from wanting people to discover what they have discovered, the way out of this unending mess that comes with being born. As such, even when they do go to Hell for ripening the karma of

others, it is not very long, and it is endurable in ways that otherwise couldn't be. I've touched on the fact that there are two major schools of Buddhism in Asia, Theravada and Mahayana. I've mentioned Theravadan stuff elsewhere here, but haven't really touched on the Mahayana side of things. Mahayana Buddhism, of which Zen is a part, is also known as the Bodhisattva path. A Bodhisattva is essentially an angel in the bible. As in other places, I am of the opinion that these things are referring to the same phenomenon, but were explained to different people at different places and times, and as such on the surface seem like they are dissimilar. The Bodhisattva path, and especially very, very highly attained Bodhisattvas like Avalokitesvara, is based around the idea of postponing final enlightenment until all beings are saved from this endless cycle of living and dying. If that sounds a bit silly to you, you are not alone - when I first heard it, it sounded silly to me too. It still kind of does I guess. I also have absolutely no idea how it is possibly to actually postpone enlightenment, so don't ask. Even with Zen things that aren't Enlightenment with a big E, think Weird Zen Stuff, I have no idea how it works. As I said elsewhere, "Above my paygrade."

Heaven and Hell

As with a number of other things, heaven and hell in Buddhism are explained and expounded on in much greater detail than they are in the Bible. I'm not sure if there were better descriptions in Christian writings at some point and they were lost or not, but by and large the bible does not go into great detail about what they are. The time frames for both of them are also largely approximated in the bible as "forever" whereas in Buddhism they are more specific. The times described in Buddhism are unfathomably long - eons and kalpas., but they are not infinite. They are better understood as timescales of the birth and death of universes themselves rather than time as human beings understand it. When it was said in the Bible that God created the universe in 7 days, it was almost certainly meant in the way that God does not experience time in the way human beings do. Those 7 days may be, and

almost certainly were, much longer. The specific definitions are as follows:

Sub-Kalpa (approximately 16 million years)

Mid-Kalpa (20 sub-life)

Big-Kalpa (4 centered life = 1.3 billion years)

These time frames are really, really long. Obviously. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt that they are actually true. As I've said elsewhere, the perception of time that we have as human beings works very well for our daily life, but it isn't really accurate as to what is actually going on. You can even see this yourself without having done meditation at all: when doing something you really don't like, one hour passes very slowly whereas when you are doing something you like, one hour is very short. So even in the common subjective human experience, one hour isn't really one hour. It always varies based on our like and dislike of what is going on during that time. In Buddhist scripture, it is said that when Buddha woke up, he recognized that there is no starting point to the mind and the myriad experiences it creates. That it has been going on, literally, forever. So while to human beings this seems extraordinarily long, under the time frame of infinity, it is practically over as soon as it has started. A lot of the variation of the realms of experience, from hell, to ghosts (if you believe they exist. Buddhist cosmology says they do. I'm not sure about the Bible), insects, animals, human beings, and so forth, comes from how time is experienced. The other part is that animals and below do now have the ability to actually practice meditation, since they live solely on instinct. Since, by and large, human beings can only interact with other human beings, and not with formless things or animals, we assume that our perception of the way things are is correct, and that everyone shares it roughly the same. It is not, and we do not.

In the bible, getting into heaven is considered to be the top priority. If you simply believe that Jesus was a person, and the son of God, and he died for your sins, then you get to go to heaven. At least that is the common theme in American Christianity that I have been exposed to throughout my life. Buddhism doesn't really share this point. It kind of does, in that being born in heaven is the result of intensive meditation practice and in general doing good things throughout your life, but unlike in Christianity, heaven is not a forever thing. It is much longer than we live, but even heaven ends and then you fall down the pyramid as the effect of the things that brought you to heaven are exhausted. This can be somewhat seen in daily life, without having to involve religion at all: when someone does something extremely brave or heroic for someone else (think jumping onto a subway track to save someone that is having a seizure and fell), especially if it is at great risk to themselves, they become kind of temporarily famous and everyone they know has their perception of them changed. The whole world behaves differently towards them for some time, then the effect of the thing they did wears off, and they return more of less to their normal, daily life. Heaven is somewhat similar to that. Similarly, when people have done the opposite, and they go to hell, it is the inverse. Eventually they will have suffered enough that people forgive them and they return to daily life. The life human beings have is roughly similar to how the overall thing works. Hell in Buddhism is terrifying. It is terrifying in Christianity too, but Buddhist sutras go into much, much more detail about what it is and what happens than Christian writings do (I honestly have the feeling that there were much more detailed descriptions in Christian writings at some point and they were simply lost. Not WZS style, but my intuitive sense). They are graphic enough that I do not feel the need to include the details here. If you want to know, go on youtube and search for Buddhist hell realms, and there are plenty of educational videos available. Like I said before, they are absolutely terrifying. You don't want to go there. Unlike in American Christianity (I've said before that I find the entire premise of American Christianity, at least the Christianity I have been exposed to throughout my life, to be fundamentally incorrect) however, you don't go to Hell because you don't believe in God or

Jesus, but because of your own actions.

In Your Dreams

I've mentioned before that I don't typically remember my dreams. In fact, if anything it's the opposite: it is so uncommon for me to remember my dreams that when I do, it immediately sticks out. I've also, I think in my entire life, never had a "fun" dream. Maybe once, although even in that case I don't remember any of the details. It's possible, but I can't say for certain, to be honest. I also don't fantasize about people I know. Or even people I don't know. If I am having...personal "fun" time...it is never with the thought of a person I know or don't know. In my entire life, I've done it once, I think, when I was in middle school. I mentioned earlier that I had circled a picture in my yearbook and then crossed it out and drew over it quickly when people had asked me to see it. I'm nearly positive that was the only time I've ever, in my entire life, done...that...with someone that I knew in mind, and even then, it was only one time. There may have been a second time, kind of, later on, either towards the end of high school or directly after, when someone on a girls gone wild video looked like Eve. but also like with the possibly fun dream, I really can't say one way or another. Unlike the situation with the young woman from the Sangha, where I noticed that someone in a porn video kind of looked like her but it wasn't why I was watching it, if I did in that case it would have been because of the similarities. I'm not sure about it, though. From my understanding with speaking with other people throughout my life, not fantasizing about people you know, either directly (people in daily life) or indirectly (people that you know of, but don't actually interact with. People on TV or movies, or whatever), is not "normal." Which makes sense, because nothing about me is "normal." I mention this because fantasies in waking life are not dissimilar from dreams while asleep. They aren't the same thing: one happens during waking life, one happens while asleep. But in both situations the same underlying process is occurring. Fairly recently I had a dream where someone else was in it, and they tried to turn it into a "fun" dream,

but even then, even in my dreams, I just ignored them. Which brings me to the more important topic here: what exactly are dreams? To be honest, I don't know. But also I know. I both know and don't know, so neither knowing or not knowing is really accurate. I've said before that the thing that is creating experience from moment to moment is not tied to this body and this life. Dreams are somewhat similar. The same thing that creates the experience of waking life creates the experience of dreaming. So in a very truthful way, it can be said that dreams and waking life are just as real as one another. Or the inverse could also be said, that dreams and waking life are just as fake as one another. Different ways of saying the same thing. I've said before that I don't have lucid dreams - dreams where someone is aware that they are dreaming. That is true by and large - I've had one in my entire life, I think, where I was aware that I was in a dream. It was kind of an interesting thing to happen, because as soon as I recognized that I was dreaming, the only thing I wanted to do was wake up. But I couldn't figure out how to do it. I've heard stories of people that claim to be able to lucid dream at will, and all the cool stuff they do. Flying around, meeting dead/famous people, those kind of things. But all I wanted to do was wake up, and I couldn't. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get out of the dream. I guess there is some kind of cosmic poetry in that, since Zen practice is all about "Waking up." That waking life and dreams are created by the same thing, the thing which is creating experience for moment to moment, means, to a some degree, that the things that happen while dreaming have actually happened. The mind does not distinguish between experiences created while dreaming and experiences that happen during waking life. They are all just experience. So I think all in all, it's probably a good thing I've never had "fun" dreams in my life, and that I by and large don't remember my dreams. If someone gets entangled with someone else in a dream, they have basically gotten entangled with them in real life. The consequences are not the same, as dreams usually do not, at least as far as I can tell, arise by volitional action. I guess if someone was able to lucid dream at will and they intentionally caused dreams of a certain type to happen, it would start to have normal karmic

effects. But even in the Buddhist monk/nun rules, if someone has an orgasm while sleeping and it is unintentional there is no consequence. So it's not quite that sleeping with someone in a dream is real life, but the experience itself it not different, either. In the Old Testament, it is mentioned numerous times that God speaks to people through dreams. God also speaks to people in normal, waking life, but dreams are kind of singled out as a medium that God likes to use to communicate with people. Like with other things of this nature in both Buddhism and Christianity, I fully believe that does indeed happen. I'm not even sure that belief is the right word to use, because it has nothing to do with belief. It does indeed happen.

To Meat or Not to Meet

I touched on this a bit earlier when I was went into my experience with bartending, but this is a huge deal within the western Buddhist community, and often times gets outright nasty, so I think its relevant to discuss in a bit more detail. Historically, Buddhists (This was addressed to monks, and monks typically have stricter rules for conduct than lay people) eat meat so long so it meets certain criteria: you did not slaughter the animal yourself, you did not have it slaughtered on your behalf, and you did not see or hear it being slaughtered. As long as those three things are met, it is OK to eat meat. With regards to lay people, as I also mentioned earlier, one of the professions lay buddhists voluntarily do not hold is that of a butcher, so when Buddha set these rules he was obviously aware of the dynamic of supply and demand, or at least of the act of buying meat that someone else had slaughtered and butchered for the market. And yet there is no rule against purchasing meat. before I continue, I want to get into a bit of, what is probably to most people, some boring details and history about the monk/nun rules. In Theravadan countries, which are mainly in southern Asia, monks walk through villages and city

neighborhoods daily to collect alms. They are not allowed (in theory. in practice people will learn what monks/nuns like and don't like and try to give them the stuff they like and not give them the stuff they don't like) to pick and chose what they eat. If they are given meat, so long as it does not violate the three rules I just pointed out, they have to eat it. In Mahayanan countries, which mainly consist of northern/eastern Asia - Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan, things developed a little bit different. The temples tended to be isolated and in the mountains, so daily alms rounds were not really feasible. As such, lay people would bring food to the temple. The idea was, since the food is being brought specifically for the monks, instead of leftovers like it was in Theravadan countries, it should be vegetarian. I'm not sure I agree with this, I'm still of the opinion that monks especially should eat whatever is brought to them so long as it follows the rules mentioned above, but I'm also not one to argue with more than a millennium of tradition. Another difference worth noting, although this isn't about eating meat or not, In Theravadan countries, within the monastic community, there is generally no eating after noon, with some very limited exceptions. As far as I know all Mahayana countries eat three meals. I think I should start this next section by saying my own opinion on western Buddhism in general. I am not a big fan. Much of western Buddhism is comprised of people that have some kind of social or political cause (and they are almost always left wing political causes) they want to lend a certain religious legitimacy to, and then try to figure out how to make Buddhism say what they are trying to push on other people. I'm also not a big fan of lay people wearing robes at temples or having Buddhist decorations around the house. I have, I think, two sets of traditional Korean lay-person temple clothes, and I very rarely wear them outside of when I go to Asian temples that are mostly populated by immigrants. And when I have to do laundry and have nothing else to wear. I said earlier that hearing monk names, seeing Buddhist temples, wearing monk robes, all that stuff, has some subtle benefit, and that is true. But there is a way to do that without doing it, and that is the real Zen way. It can be done without sticking out like a sore thumb and being a weirdo. It seems to me that a very large

portion of western people that are into Buddhism turn it into a kind of weird social club, and I am not nor do I have any desire to be part of it. I personally find much of it off putting. I don't really follow politics, but one word that gets used a lot when one side in the US attacks the other is "snowflake." Lots of people that are into Buddhism tend to be "snowflakes." In general, in daily life, I don't spend time with Buddhists, except when I join sitting sessions on zoom. The goal of Buddhism, and Zen in particular, is to be OK with life exactly as it is; constantly trying to force people to bow to political and social leanings is kind of the opposite of that. I'm even less of a fan of Buddhist magazines. At least with people that are into Buddhism/Zen in general, nobody tries to be a mouthpiece for "Buddhists" outside of self-important monks/teachers that want to make a name for themselves. Buddhist magazines are, as far as I can tell, at least in the US, without exception political/social mouthpieces that try to use it for their own personal causes which have absolutely nothing to do with the actual practice. When Trump became president there was a big uproar in the American Buddhist community because, by and large, it is a giant left wing echo chamber. One magazine even went as far as to say roughly (the bold part is verbatim, I don't remember exactly what the rest of the sentence was, I am paraphrasing) "Most of our readers come from left-wing political backgrounds, so that is what our content is oriented to. We do not apologize for this." outright admitting that they were a socio/political organization, not a Buddhist one. If I remember the context correctly, they were asking for readers to write in with their opinion on Trump being president and/or the role of politics and social causes in Buddhism. I don't know why they wanted people's opinions on that topic - Buddha made it clear what the role of politics is, what the role of the Buddhist lay Sangha is, and what the role of the monastic Sangha is. They also have the example of what happened to Japanese Zen during the 1900s when monastics got too involved in politics. For what it is worth, I am not interested in politics. I have a hard enough time managing my own life in such a way that I don't cause problems for myself and/or others. I wouldn't dream of wanting to make decisions that impact other people. If there was something in my immediate daily life that intersected with local

politics, I might get involved at the local level to the degree that was necessary, but not as a Buddhist, just as a normal citizen that wanted to give their two cents. Back to the topic at hand, most of my experience with this subject of how Buddhism and Vegetarianism (I even use it as an -ISM because people are irrationally stuck in their view once they adopt it) comes from online message boards, although I've done retreats at a few temples where people were outright rude about their dietary habits when the kitchen has to make bulk food to feed 30 people. During most of my 20's and early 30's I was not typically around people that knew anything about Buddhism or practiced meditation. As such, if I wanted to talk about either one of them directly, I had to use online message boards. In general, I think these boards can be useful to people that are not near a physical temple, and have no real contacts with anyone that has any background in either the doctrine or the practice. Buddhism has never, does not, nor do I think it ever will (I could be wrong on this. who knows what things look like 100 years from now) prohibit eating meat. These message boards often had people that knew nothing about Buddhism, or Meditation, and people who were vegetarianists first and Buddhists second started trying to force their view on the whole population of people that read it. It was under the guise of compassion, but its the kind of compassion I mentioned earlier that comes up all the time in western Buddhism. It is in no way based on any understanding of cause-and-effect, and how certain actions will produce certain results. As soon as the people that were so compassionate that they thought it was a good idea to try to gatekeep the practice to only those that didn't eat meat, were challenged in any way, all sorts of vitriol, ill-will, malice, insults, and other vulgarities would start flying. It got to the point where nearly every second or third topic was about vegetarianism. It had nothing to do with compassion, it had nothing to do with Buddhist or Zen practice. It was a bunch of people trying to give their pet social cause a religious validity so they could try to force it on other people.

The vegetarianism view on the matter is that supply and demand cause animals to be slaughtered, and since buying meat technically increases demand, supply has to be increased to match it, and as such the meat has been slaughtered for the person buying it. That is...not how that works. I mean, it is kind of how it works, but it completely misses the other half of what is going on: with meat that is on a grocery store shelf, the animal has already been raised and slaughtered, butchered, transported, and packaged, and there is nothing anyone can do to undo this fact. In Buddhism, the rules of "you can't kill it, see/hear it be killed, or have it killed for you" means that it would not exist without you. Buying meat at a supermarket does not qualify that condition. Not buying it does not undo it, and instead makes all of the time, effort, cost, and energy that has gone into it totally wasted. A single individual buying meat at the supermarket is responsible for the meat industry in the same way a person driving a car is responsible for global warming. There is truth in it, but any one person doing it is not the cause, and not doing it will not stop it from happening. That people were spreading vegetarianism and claiming it was Buddhism, and worse, claiming it to people that didn't know better, and even worse, trying to create a vegetarianism Buddhism club where the ticket to entry was not eating meat, really bothered me. It still does, actually, but I don't visit online message boards regarding Zen or Buddhism much these days. In the traditional Sutras, at one point Buddha says that finding the dharma (fancy word for Buddhist teachings) along with having conditions to practice it are as rare as if the entire Earth was an ocean, and there was a dolphin that surfaced every 100 years and by sheer luck surfaced withing the circle of a lifebuoy. I'm not sure it that is literally true, but honestly, after 20 years of sitting, it would not surprise me if it is. Zen practice especially should always be open to everyone. Even to those that aren't Buddhist, that break the precepts continually, that drink, and gamble and even kill people. I guess especially those people. So long as their actions are not causing problems within the group of people practicing, they are that person's problems and that person alone. There is nobody alive that practicing meditation would not help in their daily life. When it is done intensively for years, the experience of refined concentration is

better than the pleasures of the richest, most powerful king (or queen. whatever, the sex of the person isn't really important here). When someone practices for a long time, they naturally stop doing things that are harmful, both to themselves and others. I wish everyone on earth would do this, because people would be much happier. Even from a totally selfish perspective, happy people, people that are truly happy, don't tend to cause problems for others. So even if I was the most selfish person in the world, I would STILL want other people to do this thing, because my life would have fewer problems in it. In reality, selfishness and selflessness are the same thing. what is really best for others is what is really best for myself. And what is best for everyone, without exception is developing their concentration. Even if someone has terrible conditions, those conditions are often unchangeable by personal intention. So even in those cases, meditation is one of, if not the best thing they can do to improve the quality of their life. In Buddhism, there are 31 different ways that someone can take birth, these tables are copy/pasted from wikipedia:

Happy Destinations (sugati) Numbers 5 – 11 are in the realm of the sense world, can experience sense pleasures and displeasures, mostly pleasure for the devas (impermanent gods or angels).

No.

Realm

Pali

Life-span

5

Humans

manussa loka

varies, approx. 10 to 120 years

6

Devas of the Four Great Kings

catumaharajika deva

9 million years

7

The 33 gods

tavatimsa deva

36 million years

8

Yama devas

yama deva

9

Contented devas

tusita deva

10

Devas delighting in nimmanarati deva creation

144 million years 576 million years 2.3 billion years

Cause of rebirth here development of virtue, wisdom, stream-entry guarantees rebirth as human or deva wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom

Devas wielding paranimmita-vasavatti 11 power over others’ deva creations

9.2 billion years

wholesome actions, virtue, generosity, wisdom

II. The Fine-Material World (rupa-loka) Numbers 12 – 27 are in the realm of form. There is a subtle body and these deva realms are superior to those in the sense realm. One attains rebirth to these planes based on kamma and spiritual attainments.

No.

Realm

12 Retinue of Brahma 13 Ministers of Brahma 14 Great Brahmas Devas of limited radiance Devas of unbounded 16 radiance Devas of streaming 17 radiance 15

Pali brahma-parisajja deva brahma-purohita deva

Life-span one-third of an aeon

Maha brahma

one aeon

parittabha deva

2 aeons

appamanabha deva 4 aeons abhassara deva

18 Devas of limited glory parittasubha deva Devas of unbounded glory Devas of refulgent 20 glory 21 Very fruitful devas 22 Unconscious beings 19

half an aeon

8 aeons 16 aeons

appamanasubha deva

32 aeons

subhakinna deva

64 aeons

vehapphala deva asaññasatta

500 aeons 500 aeons

Cause of rebirth here proficiency in first jhana, minor degree proficiency in first jhana, medium degree proficiency in first jhana, highest degree proficiency in second jhana, minor degree proficiency in second jhana, medium degree proficiency in second jhana, highest degree proficiency in third jhana, minor degree proficiency in third jhana, medium degree proficiency in third jhana, highest degree proficiency in fourth jhana proficiency in fourth jhana

Notice that there are two tables here: one for beings that experience sense pleasures, and ones that experience Jhana. Even when someone has first developed Jhana, before it has become at all refined, and before it has become effortless, their experience in life is immediately better than someone that can experience the greatest sense pleasures life as a human being has to offer. Within the first table, these variations of experience can also be seen as the position in the social hierarchy someone is. People that are born into wealth, or powerful families, who can more or less do what they want, when they want, and tend to live longer would be towards the high end. People born into unpleasant situations, think extreme poverty or even slavery, would be born into the low end. Jhana, even when it

is first developed, beats all of it. I want to focus a bit on two of the sentences above:

Within the first table, these variations of experience can also be seen as the position in the social hierarchy someone is. People that are born into wealth, or powerful families, who can more or less do what they want, when they want, and tend to live longer would be towards the higher end. In the bible, it is stated that it is the poor that are lucky. That the meek will inherit the earth. When someone is poor in their lives, their ability to cause harm or trouble for other people without nearly immediate consequence is negligible. When someone is born into a situation of wealth and power, or through circumstances at some point in their lives they have the same conditions as those that are actually born into it, their actions are just as subject to cause and effect as everyone else. Being rich does not negate the effects of actions. Being powerful does not negate the effects of actions. It may buy a bit of time since both power and money can tie up the legal system in most places (maybe even all places), but eventually, when the conditions are right, money and power will not be enough. In fact, going bankrupt from legal fees and pissing off all of someone's powerful friends could be enough for even a rich and powerful person to find themselves homeless and begging on the street. In Buddhism, one of the reasons that being born into higher realms of experience is actually considered to be a bad thing is that the causes-and-conditions that allowed for that experience will eventually be exhausted. When that happens, they fall from wherever they are to wherever the actions they have performed take them when they ripen. Someone that is born into a formless realm, who is essentially a god, can, based on their actions, still go to hell. As a result, even Heaven is not really considered to be something to strive for. Even within the same life, it is entirely possible to, because of the actions someone has done, go from Heaven to Hell. Death is not required in any way for someone's Karma to ripen.

After looking through Wikipedia (believe it or not, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to heads of state that have died for various reasons which goes back to 1743 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_and_government_who_died_in_office . I was born in 1985, so that is where I am arbitrarily picking to start. Relevant to this section, and as an absolutely bizarre coincidence, JFK himself was assassinated on my Birthday), AT LEAST 22 different world leaders have been assassinated while in their position. Some of them, like Libya's Gadaffi, were horrifically tortured to death. Since "tortured to death" can mean just about anything, what happened, at least a significant part of it, was that Gadaffi was raped to death with bayonettes (in case it isn't clear: people shoved bayonettes, the knives that are fastened to the end of rifles in the military, up his asshole over and over again until he died). Business titans are also often kidnapped, tortured, and killed - it happens quite often, but is in no way exclusive, in Latin American countries for example. Being at the top of the human social pyramid has absolutely no ability to protect someone from the results of their actions. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Someone's position in life is irrelevant Karma, actual moral cause and effect, is generated by intention. In certain circumstances, someone's position of power in life would actually make the effects of actions worse than they would be if they did the action under different circumstances - a very obvious example is when police officers go to prison. In normal, everyday human interactions, certain positions in life give people the illusion that they are protected from the results of their actions. Like Taylor Swift being a worthwhile thing to talk about when discussing how the Chiefs are going to perform on any given day, there is no substance, no underlying truth to this illusion other than the fact that enough other people also believe it that it seems to be true. It is not. Gadaffi was not only the Lybian head of state, he was also a Colonel in the Lybian Army. Being a military officer, even a high ranking one, does not exempt someone from cause-and-effect. I think this is a bit more obvious to most people than the other examples, since military officers, even high ranking ones, especially in actual war time, are often put into dangerous situations that can and do

often result in serious injury and even death. The ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates this: as of December 2023, again according to wikipedia, nearly 3,000 military officers on both the Ukrainian side and the Russian side have been killed. Of those nearly 3,000 officers on the Russian side, there have been anywhere between 9 and 16 generals along with one admiral. Within US history, during the Vietnam war, where the term "fragging" was coined, men who either enlisted on their own or who were drafted would throw grenades into the tents of officers while they were sleeping with the purpose of killing them. Over the course of the war, at least 450 officers were killed this way, along with at least 600 enlisted soldiers. Nor are judges exempt. There was a situation fairly recently in Pennsylvania where corrupt judges were purposefully convicting minors in order to receive monetary kickbacks from the local forprofit-prison that operated. When I say convicting minors, over the course of the scheme, THOUSANDS of minors were given extreme sentences in order to fill up the private prison. Eventually the story came out, and everyone involved - the two judges, the owner of the prison, even the developer of the property was charged, and convicted. The judges were sentences to decades in federal prison. There is no position, none, zero, zilch, nada, that will protect someone from the results of evil and heinous actions - and like I just mentioned previously, if the position someone has allows them to harm others and they are anything other than benevolent with that position, the consequence for using it to harm others, and in the case of the above judges, to enrich themselves, it will make the outcome FAR worse. On that topic, I'd like to talk about riots. During the course of my life, there have been numerous instances where people who thought they were protected by their position did things that were...well...evil, and caught on tape. When Rodney King was beaten nearly to death in the early 90s, riots broke out in LA. More recently, Freddie Gray in Baltimore was injured somehow before being in the custody of police, and then died soon after. Also riots (There were riots even when NONE of the police officers involved were even as much as charged with a crime). Even more recently, George

Floyd was actually murdered, in public, ON CAMERA!, by police officers. What happened? Riots. In Rodney King's case, after the federal government stepped in, some of the police officers involved were arrested, tried, and convicted. In George Floyd's case, all officers involved were convicted and sent to prison. Being a police officer too does not exempt someone from cause and effect. No position whatsoever in life avoids moral-cause-and-effect.

At the very beginning of this, I brought up the Bible, Jesus, and God quite a bit, and I have not much since. This is simply because I am much more familiar with Buddhist stuff, as I have been deeply involved in it for a long time. Jhana, and its effects, are also mentioned in the bible. It isn't called Jhana, but the description of people who have developed it are the same as they are in Buddhism. I don't have the specific verses, but a priest I watched on youtube recently had spoken about this, saying things like effortless joy were indications someone knew God (a.k.a. developed Jhana). Gatekeeping what is essentially a precious gift to all humankind in order to be able to push social causes onto people is another one of those Bad Karma things with the capital B and the capital K. I'm not sure if its "Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to hell" Bad Karma, but even if it isn't, it is not far from it. Actually, I'm pretty sure it is "go directly to hell" Bad Karma, since Buddhist scriptures themselves contradict the very thing they were trying to push, they knew that (because they were directly told countless times, both by myself and the few others who thought what they were doing was gross), and did it anyways. It wast targeted at people who had no exposure to the practice. Usurping Buddhism for one's own personal pet cause is unfathomably bad karma. When the Japanese occupied Korea, the Japanese military tried to remove the rule of celibacy and force monks to marry. That is how it has worked in Japan for some time, that monks aren't celibate. The Buddha, when creating the monastic sangha, mandated celibacy for monks (and nuns). ManGong Sunim, Pohwa Sunim's teacher's teachers' teacher screamed at the man in charge of the decision, "YOURE GOING

TO HELL!" Its a similar principal. Trying to alter the system that has existed for 2,500 years, devised by one of the wisest people to ever live, to fit some kind of social cause is going to have absolutely horrible consequences. On these message boards, it got to the point where I had to make a fuss, because none of the people in charge of it were stepping in and stopping what was obviously a sociopolitical movement trying to gain legitimacy through Buddhism. Every second or third post would be about how you can't practice Buddhism or meditation and eat meat. People who did not know any better were reading these things. On a bit of a side track, I want to get into Japanese Zen a little bit. It probably seems a bit strange that I constantly use the word Zen, which comes from Japan, instead of Seon, the Korean word, given that I speak at least passible Korean and speak no Japanese. During the 1900s, there was an active push in Japan to spread Zen Buddhism (especially meditation) in the west. The common thinking was that Buddhism in Japan is dying out, as it will eventually do everywhere, and so it is time to spread it to the next place, the same as has happened starting with the Buddha, then Bodhidharma took it to China, Chinese patriarchs took it to Korea, and it made its way to Japan. So in the US, mostly in California although I'm sure it happened in other places to, lots of monks came and set up shop, teaching anyone that wanted to learn. Western people (read: American people) started coming to meet these monks, trained for a number of years, and then set up their own things. This happened with Korean Seon too, but to a much, much lesser degree, to the point where in the US, even if someone is practicing in a Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese lineage, it will almost always still be called Zen. In my lineage (Even if I have been kicked out, I still call it my lineage. whatever), we use the word Zen - the Baltimore Zen Center, as an example. The Japanese occupied the Korean peninsula from the late 1800s until after world war II, when it was split between the Soviet controlled north and the US controlled south. Japanese Zen has changed pretty drastically since 1800, probably more that anywhere else except for China (and possibly Vietnam. I know almost nothing about the state of Thien (Zen) in Vietnam). It is the prime

example of why Buddhism and Zen should not get into politics, or social causes, or other things that aren't Buddhism/Zen. At some point leading up to the 1800s, monks got more and more interested and involved in the political realm of things. The political apparatus did not like this, and issued an edict forbidding monks (and nuns I think? I'm not sure if it was universal or just for monks) from celibacy, as a way of eroding their power and status in society. Essentially "You must be married, or you aren't a monk." Within a generation, or maybe two, Zen in Japan was turned into basically family run funeral parlors. Real practicing for the most part ceased outside of a handful of dedicated training centers. Temples are passed down through the family, father to son style like any other business. This is the reason that Buddhism, especially monks, should be focused on Buddhism, and not politics, nor pet social causes, nor anything else. As soon as people start using the practice as a way to claim legitimacy for some other thing, the whole foundation of the practice cracks, and everyone is worse off for it. Back to the topic at hand, these days, I do not eat beef, nor have I in years, outside of very, very specific and uncommon situations (basically, if someone else buys it without me in mind, and cooks it without me in mind, I will eat it. It they do it again I will accept it again, but let them know I don't eat beef. I would not accept it a third time. The only other times are when I was at a homeless shelter, and we ate whatever was cooked that day, or if it will be thrown out. it rarely happens). But at the time, and actually even today, two of my favorite foods were cheeseburgers and cheesesteaks, and I did eat beef. So whenever these posts were made, I would go out, buy a McDonald's cheeseburger, take a picture of it with a note dedicating it to the person that posted it, and make that my response. Where did the compassion these people have go when they saw it and started insulting, cursing, and all sorts of other ill-intended behavior came out? It was never there to begin with. Buddhist compassion is always directed at the subject, It is not directed at the object. It is directed at the meat-eater, not the cow. Compassion arises from knowing how the mind-stream operates and how actions lead to results. Insulting someone because they eat meat because you love animals has absolutely nothing to do with

Compassion and nothing to do with Buddhism. When real compassion, in the true Zen meaning of the word, is developed, it is not possible to get angry when someone doesn't agree with you or acts counter to what you suggest. There is even a Zen koan (all of which were real interactions between people) where a monk kills a cat:

Once the monks of the Western and Eastern Halls were arguing about a cat. Nansen, holding up the cat, said, “You monks! If you can say a word of Zen, I will spare the cat. Otherwise I will kill it.” No one could answer, so Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening, when Joshu returned, Nansen told him of the incident. Joshu thereupon took off his sandal, put it on his head, and walked off. Nansen said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been saved!”

Which isn't to say there isn't some negative result from eating meat. There probably is. But there are negative results from doing almost anything whatsoever when it comes to having sensual pleasures (in Buddhist terms, sensual pleasures just means pleasant experiences of the 5 senses/mindstream. It does not necessarily correlate with the everyday usage of the term). Drinking alcohol has negative results. Going to concerts has negative results. Watching TV shows, and Movies, and eating delicious vegetarian food and so on and so forth. Basically any experience that is "good" through the senses will also have some element of bad to it. The hangover the next day, the ringing in your ears when the concert finishes, wanting to know what happens next in the show, so on and so forth. I don't know if I've ever seen a group of people try to claim that someone can't see a concert if they want to be Buddhist, and its the same principal at work. Today, I do actually learn towards being vegetarian. When I get pizza, its either extra cheese or veggie. I like to have scrambled eggs with rice and beans but no meat. Ill eat ramen and have a glass of whole milk with it. I think on an average day one out of my three meals will be vegetarian. I've found that when I try to go further than that, I get continuously hungry to the point where it starts effecting other things negatively. That's me though, after two decades of sitting. I would never expect

anyone else to do it. I would especially not close off the opportunity to practice Zen if they didn't.

As a final note, the main place I posted banned discussion of the topic as a result. It remains banned as of today, the middle of September of 2023.

Empty Abortions

In the US, the debate around abortion tends to revolve around the belief that life begins at conception, as that is the common take away from the bible. I just did a quick google search for the actual bible verse that contains that view, and I can't find it. I'm not sure if the Bible actually says that, or it's just become a kind of meme in the Christian community, but in either case, people make their decisions on abortion with that as their foundation, and the decision is that abortion should never be done, often times to the extreme of under any circumstance. Buddhism does not share this view. The Old Testament in the Bible does not contain this stance (The book of Numbers has actual instructions on how priests should perform abortions). The common understanding in the west, and of western Christianity in particular, of life is consciousness and consciousness is what determines whether or not something is alive, and that consciousness arises immediately after the egg is fertilized. I've said before that there isn't really consciousness as a single entity as the common human experience says there is. That each sense is its own stream of consciousness (along with the mindstream) and they are independent, to the point of being able to disagree with each other. So already the entire premise of the western Christian idea no longer fits. The term for this in Zen is "emptiness," which basically means that all things, from physical objects in the world, to the first-person experience of life itself, are all made of other things, and that at no point do these other things ever actually make the complete thing that we typically describe them as. I can show a few quick examples of this:

@re A and a the same thing? are they different? Is gray dark white or light black?

where is the standard ㅔ from which A and a come from? What is the reference point between the upper and lower case? (ㅔ is the Korean letter that has the phonetic sound of "eh," the letter A/a)

When you can answer those questions in order, 0 oh ㅗ ㅇ

It its unclear, I will elaborate a bit: 0 has two separate sounds - "oh" and zero. It is officially named zero. When I was thinking about examples earlier today in daily speech, when it is used in numbers that are not singularly 0 or decimal variants of it (i.e. -1 < 0 > 1), all of the examples I thought of use "oh" alone. oh is oh in the sound but is different from the visual perception of 0. ㅗ is the Korean letter (한글) for the sound of "oh". The Korean letter ㅇ is not named "oh" but "ee-ung." with the ung being very similar to the beginning of the word uncle, switching out "c" with a hard "g," like the G from God, which either has no interaction whatsoever to audial perception or has the audial perception of the English letter "ng" depending on where it is placed in the syllable group. Since I haven't touched on it before: the Korean alphabet is based on syllable groups. inverted triangle where if the ㅇ(eung) is at the top left position, it has no sound. for an example: 싱 and 잉 - in the second syllable group, the first ㅇ has no audial perception and the second and third letters do. In English "ng" sound - doing, reading. So an "o" and an"O" and an "0" and an"oh" and an "ㅗ” and an "ㅇ" are all the same thing to the normal experience, but only when people have been taught the way each of these things are used. Sometimes the are an "oh" via visual perception, sometimes the an an "oh" via audial perception, sometimes the are a zero by mental understanding. "o" is the visual form of the lower case "oh." "0" is the number zero that is used in everyday speech in some circumstances pronounced as "oh." "oh" is the phonetic pronunciation of the letter that has no basis outside of its upper and lower cases. "O" is the upper case version of "o" - there is no way to differentiate between

upper and lowercase "oh" without other letters. O and o are only noticeable when there are other English letters around them. "ㅗ" is the Korean letter that has the sound of "oh" but has a completely different appearance to the visual sense. Usually when people try to make examples of this, they do it in a way that it is clear that their moment-to-moment experience does not reflect it. They have learned this from a book, or from someone else, and are trying their best to point it out with physical objects. If someone's experience of life is actually like this, where the senses have become somewhat unglued and it is obvious that they are independent of each other and not referencing an actual thing, pointing it out in this way is like I said earlier, easy. There are unending things in daily life that are like this. In fact all things in daily life are like this. Just pointing it out in the physical world is not enough, it has to be subjective experience as well. Zen covers both sides, both subjective experience and objective reality. The term for this, emptiness, comes up a lot in Zen. A lot a lot. The Heart Sutra, which is probably the most referenced Zen sutra, is entirely about emptiness. When people hear this for the first time, it typically leaves a bit of a negative impression, so much so that I'm not sure I really like using the word "empty." But that is the word that has been fairly universally chosen in English to try to express this point, so that is what we are stuck with. My explanation above is what is meant whenever the word "empty" comes up in a Zen, or even Buddhist (it isn't talked about much in Theravadan Buddhism) context. It doesn't mean that things aren't happening (it does though), nor does it negate the importance of things that happen (it does though), just that regardless of what is happening, what is actually happening cannot be found in any of the ways we typically experience it. So back to the main point, the idea that there is one thing, "Consciousness," which arises doesn't really make sense. Some people are born blind, some are born deaf. Some people don't have taste or smell. Some people have mental disabilities, others have very uncommon ways of experiencing pain/pleasant bodily sensations, etc. So just from that point alone, it is clear that there isn't a consciousness "thing" that is directly linked to what we typically say is "being alive." Also, in

order for the senses to have a stream of consciousness, the sense organs themselves have to be developed, at least in the human world. I'm not sure how it works with "things" that don't have physical bodies. The fertilized egg does not have sense organs, so the streams of consciousness that the senses provide cannot yet exist. The sense organ, and the stream of consciousness that it provides in moment to moment experience arise together (again, at least when someone has a body. I have no idea how it works for things that don't). I don't know much Buddhist scripture, to be honest, but I've known many people over the years that do. I don't have the exact Sutra reference, nor do I have the slightest idea what I would even look for to find this information directly. When I have had conversations with these people, what has been constantly referenced is that being "alive" requires two sense organs, along with the mind-stream (the brain has to be developed to some degree). In general, this happens around 3 months after the egg is fertilized. So from the Buddhist (and more importantly, Zen) stance, abortion, so long as it happens before there are two working senses and the mind-stream is tied to the new body, is not murder. To be clear, this is for something to be born living - if someone was already alive and lost their sense of smell, taste, sight, and hearing, that does not mean they are no longer alive. But in order for the whole thing to start, for the fertilized egg to go from a mass of cells to an actual human being, for the driver to get into the car, there needs to be two senses and some amount of brain development. There is a large stigma that seems to transcend human cultures about abortion, so from a very practical sense, not even talking about Karmic consequences (although in this case the stigma itself is something of a Karmic consequence), I don't think it is free from negative consequence even if it is done before the fetus is alive. But it absolutely isn't murder. Well, it can be, but if it is done early enough, it isn't. So if anyone reads this had an early abortion feels guilty that they may have killed their kid, they almost certainly didn't. In Buddhist doctrine, the effect of killing something (someone) is dependent on a number of factors, but in the case of abortion only two of them are really relevant. The first is the intention

behind the action - so in the case someone had an abortion thinking they actually had killed a person does have some relevance. Meditation is not even needed to see how - would you be more comfortable around someone that knowingly had an abortion under the premise they were actually killing a person, or someone that knowingly had an abortion knowing that the fetus was not in any sense considered alive? the latter, right? The second factor is what exactly is being killed. Killing a bug has far less serious repercussions than killing a Buddha (In fact, out of the 5 "do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, go directly to hell" things that exist in Buddhist doctrine, one is to shed the blood of a Buddha, and the other is to kill an Arhat (A saint, basically)). When I say "what exactly" what I mean by that is the higher up the food chain you go, towards "holier" things, the repercussions for harming them grow exponentially. It works like that for a few reasons - The higher up the food chain you go, the more insight and wisdom into what is going on moment to moment exists. As insight and wisdom (they are really two sides of the same coin, insight is what allows for wisdom. I don't like the word wisdom, it just sounds cheesy to me, so I don't typically use it, but in this case it kind of has to be included) are developed, someone (it doesn't have to be a person, you can reference the chart I have elsewhere about the different realms of experience) more and more just wants to help others. Harming a person that has no motivation other than to help others is clearly, even to an ordinary person that has no background in religion and has never done meditation, much more serious than harming someone who only wishes to do others harm. Killing Mother Theresa would have caused much more outrage than killing Al Capone. So even in the case someone has an abortion and the fetus is alive, a fetus doesn't have full human faculties yet. It is worse than doing it before any senses have developed in terms of consequences for doing it, but it still doesn't rise to the level of killing a fully functional human being. What the actual long term Karmic consequences of it are beyond me, I just know that these things are the case. In general, countries that are "Buddhist," one's that have a long history of the culture intertwining with Buddhist teachings and have an active monastic sangha, tend to not be as fanatical

about abortion as western, Christian countries do (well, at least the US and many Latin American countries. I don't know much about the state of abortion in Europe). In Japan, they even have a bodhisattva (angel), Jizo (지장/Jijang in Korean. The English name is super long, hard to spell, and is not a common English name. I don't know it.), who's job is to help aborted babies cross death to their next life. I don't know of any place on Earth where having abortions is seen as a good thing, especially if it is done as an actual habitual form of birth control. But kind of like being homeless, some places are better than others, and as far as I know countries that have a long history of Buddhism tend to be more liberal on their availability and the general view towards people that have had them.

Pizzas Here

After I left the software company I worked at directly after college, I had a somewhat difficult time finding a job. My resume was all over the place, as a result of always kind of happening into work by circumstance. I had interviewed at a number of places, which I thought had gone well, but received no further contact. One interview I had, the president of the company even went as far as to say to me, "How do you feel about working for someone that isn't as smart as you?" which I thought was a bit of an odd question. Usually, being considered smart is a good thing; that someone would take that and use it as a reason to not hire me makes me think they just didn't like me and were looking for an excuse. Once again, welcome to the club, I guess. After searching for a month or two of things that were seemingly a good fit, I started to broaden my efforts. At some point, I even decided a job working fast food was better than continually working, so I started applying to places like McDonalds and Domino's Pizza. Domino's actually got back to me. I went to the interview, in a full suit (dress for the job you want, and all), talked about how I ran a bar and worked at a deli in high school. I'm not sure if I mentioned I had worked at

Chipotle in college or not. In any case, after the interview they called me and offered me the position of assistant manager, which I took. Domino's was an interesting experience. The pay was awful, and the demands that management made were often times ridiculous to the point they were impossible to actually fulfill. But I found that I got along with my coworkers there, as a general rule, than I did at the software company. There was a surprising amount of things to learn very quickly, which caught me completely off guard. Much more so than bartending or working at Chipotle. I'm not sure if that is common across all pizza places or Domino's is just weird like that, but it was something I was not expecting. All pizzas at Domino's have a certain amount of toppings per topping ordered. I don't remember the specifics of what they are, but a large will get a certain number of ounces of cheese. Or if they have pepperoni, they will get a certain number of pepperoni slices (fun fact: in Italy, pepperoni is almost always made of pork. In the US, it is typically a mixture of beef, pork, and chicken. I did not know this until very recently). I think the large pepperoni pizzas would have 30 slices of pepperoni on them. The traditional symbol for Buddhism is an 8 spoke wheel

☸. So I would put 16 slices of

pepperoni around the outside of the pizza, then do another circle in the center with 8 pepperoni's. In the center of that I would place two pepperoni slices next to each other with one above them in the center, which is the symbol of Buddhism in Korea:

I'd then place the last 3 wherever there was room, if there was room. While we did not make the dough at the store, we did stretch it there, and sometimes a pizza would be slightly larger or slightly smaller. It was while I was working at Domino's that my senses became unglued. Well, at least enough that it is obvious that they are independent from one another. I make no claim that the job is finished, so to speak. I was reading something that was misspelled, and had one of those Weird Zen Stuff

things happen that completely interrupted my day. Sometimes the interruption is not much, and sometimes it is completely disorienting. This was the ladder. It was when I was renting the room with the landlord that was banging one of his tenants. Funny enough, soon after I moved into that place, there was a leak from the pipes between his room (on the second floor) and mine (on the ground floor), through my ceiling, through my floor, and to the ceiling in the basement, which was where her room was. That was how I knew he was banging her - I could hear her with her boyfriend in the basement, and then I heard her again upstairs. She made no effort to be discrete. the hole that was made from the leak was in the exact shape of female genitalia. I'm not exaggerating here in the slightest, I can't imagine someone could have seen the shape of the hole made in the ceiling from the water damage and think of anything else. He had to take pictures of it, I don't know whether it was for insurance purposes or what, so I wonder if he ever made the connection. That the water went from either his bedroom or his bathroom (the rooms were right next to each other. I don't know exactly where the leak was), through my room, and to hers is far too interesting, along with the shape of the hole, to make me think it was completely coincidental. God works in mysterious ways and all. When I was working at domino's was also the first stint I had being homeless. At this point, I was still living in Severn near the Baltimore Zen Center, and lived out of my car for a month. Maybe a month and a half. Being homeless in a car in a suburban area is very different from being on foot in a tent in a small city. I actually prefer being homeless in Annapolis with no car over when I was homeless in Severn with a car. In general, I hate driving, and I hate living in places where a car is a necessity to get daily life stuff done. God gave us legs, not wheels. Places that are designed for cars tend to be awful places to live in general. I think I worked at Domino's for around 6 months, when I started to tear the cartilage in my hips again. During that time, I had either 4 or 5 GM's of the store I worked at. Some were better than others. One was absolutely awful. after a few months, I wasn't able to stand up for long periods of time anymore, so I mainly just did deliveries. I had gone back to the surgeon that had done the

original hip surgeries a number of times and he kept telling me everything was alright, when it clearly wasn't alright. I'm fairly certain he decided I was a junkie looking for drugs when I had smoked pot before he did an injection and had a very weird reaction to it. The first two times, at least I think it was two times, he did an injection it hurt like hell, and I thought smoking pot beforehand would help (I at that point had a medical card and Maryland had legalized medical marijuana). It did not. Once he thought I was a junkie looking for drugs, he stopped taking me seriously, to the point where I had exactly told him what the problem was, and he still said everything was fine. I don't know why someone is a doctor if they straight up ignore legitimate medical problems. Even if I was a junkie, and even if I was looking for drugs, I still had a legitimate medical issue that needed to be solved.

D(e)ut(s)ch Zen

I had mentioned briefly earlier that when I had that experience where time itself shifted back to seeing Oceans 11, I hadn't thought about Eve since I had left from Germany. but I never mentioned why I was in Germany. It's not exactly down the street, and I do not know any German people. After I came back from New York, I was absolutely traumatized. I had no idea what happened, why it happened, if it was going to happen again, and if it was going to happen again, what would cause it. At the time I was enrolled in HCC, and I immediately dropped out. Every day without exception for a few hours the experience of the mind created would become different, and markedly painful. It would start, and then it would stop, and similarly, I had (and have) no idea why. At that point, my life was even more of a mess than it was before, which is something of an accomplishment, I suppose. When I was a teenager, through Adam's church, I had met a bunch of people that I kept in contact over the years. One of them went to a Christian school out in Hawai'i, and had met a Dutch girl while studying. The school had a program where if you could afford the plane ticket, so long as you did 4-5 hours of work a day, usually in the kitchen, they would provide room and board, and then

the rest of the day and weekends were free to do whatever someone wanted to do. Living in Hawai'i is expensive. Really, really expensive. Food is expensive, electricity is expensive, rent/mortgages are expensive. Everything has to be imported. I went when I was I think 19, and even then a Big Mac meal was somewhere between 7-10 dollars. For comparison, back in Maryland I think it was around 4. So having a free place to stay and free food seemed like a deal too good to pass up, and I went. I met my friend and his Dutch girlfriend while I was there. At some point after I got back from New York, I was at least somewhat close with them, well as much as I got close with people, and tried to explain what happened. I've tried to explain this to numerous people over the years, and always fail at it. Whatever happened was so far outside the typical human experience that we do not have words and phases to describe it. After going back and forth for a while, his girlfriend had said that her parents had adopted people before, and that it may be worth a try to go over to Germany, where her parents lived, and see what happens. I had known my friend for a long time, and knew that the suggestion came with good intentions, so we set everything up and I went. Before leaving, I had emailed Eve about the situation, and let her know when I left that I would probably not be coming back. As far as I remember, that conversation was the last one we had. When I went to Korea, I immediately clicked with the place. Korea just made sense to me. I couldn't understand the language at all, I couldn't read things, I didn't really know the culture, but it still made a sort of intuitive sense. At the very least I loved the food, thought the language sounded beautiful, and thought the women were pretty. Going to Europe was, for the most part, the opposite (Dutch and German women were also pretty - don't crucify me). Her parents lived in a small town in northwest Germany, a few kilometers away from the border. It is much cheaper to buy houses/land in Germany than it is in The Netherlands, so they had decided a couple years before I had met them to move. Dutch and German are also at least somewhat similar languages, and both groups speak at least some English, so communication was never really a problem. From the second I got there, I was

continually bothered by things. Not necessarily the people, although that played a part. More that the way things are designed - houses, bus stops, stores, roads, etc., is very similar to the US, but all of it is slightly different. The physical dimensions of what is pleasing to them, both the Germans and the Dutch, is all slightly different than what it is to American people, and everywhere I went it bothered me. It bothered me to the point of getting headaches when I went around town. The other part is that having lived in the US my whole life, we don't typically draw a big distinction between what we call "white people." In the US, someone is white, or asian, or black, or brown, or whatever. They are very broad groups that encompass people from a whole range of backgrounds. And while people who have their historic roots in Ireland may do things slightly different than people that have their historic roots in Italy, people are far more the same after a generation or so than they are different. Germany was not like that. At all. The Dutch people were very different from the Germans, and the Germans were very different from the Dutch. At least to them. I remember thinking at the time, more than once, "I don't see what the big deal with most of this is, you're all just white people." A lot of the differences they took very seriously I thought were completely superficial and not all that important. The Dutch family, like I already mentioned, had a small house with a small back yard in a small town in far northwestern Germany. They spent a lot of time curating their back yard, probably more than any other group of people I've ever met. One thing I took away from the whole experience is that the Dutch really, really like their gardens. Overall, they had, if I remember correctly, three daughters and a son, but their youngest daughter was the only one that still lived with them. I think she was close to finishing up the Dutch version of high school, but I'm not really sure at this point. I think I was 21 at the time, although I may have been 22. From the second I got there, we had problems that were not really solvable, despite effort on everyone's part. The very first, and this caused a LOT of friction while I was there, was the food. There is a reason that Dutch cuisine is not famous. Most of it is very bland, and not really something to show off. It was common to eat a

sandwich that was one slice of bread, and one slice of meat. Or one slice of bread and one slice of cheese. No condiments were allowed on the bread, nor the mixing of meat and cheese, nor putting things like some lettuce or a slice of tomato. During breakfast or lunch, they would eat 3 or 4 or 5 of these really tiny, bland sandwiches. This drove me absolutely crazy. I was always hungry. They would get actually upset with me if I made a sandwich that was actually satisfying to me, saying I was now with Dutch people and I should act like it. I also tried to learn Dutch when I stayed with them - I still to this day remember the Dutch alphabet song. The Dutch alphabet uses the same letters as the English one, but most of the letters have a different sound/name. In spelling, grouping vowels together changes their sound in ways that it does not in English. The g's have a guttural throat sound and the r's are rolled like in Spanish. The grammar is for the most part the same. It was the first time I had really tried to learn a second language, not counting Spanish when I was in high school (I don't really count that, because I never used Spanish in daily life, it was solely for a class in school. I actually had to use Dutch when I did things). I also had to pick up at least a little bit of German to get around and do basic interactions with people, living in a German city. The amount I needed to learn in the short time I needed to learn it was absolutely overwhelming, and it did not go well. Their Daughter, the one in high school who still lived with them, did not like me from the second we met. Welcome to the club, I guess. Looking back on it, the moment she made it clear I was there on her grace, since her parents for obvious reasons cared more about her than about me, so long as I continually did what she said, did not argue nor complain, I could stay. I should have left and flew back to the US immediately. That dynamic happened very early, probably within the first week, quite possibly even on the first day. Once those conditions are set, that I am always going to be treated as an outsider and secondary to her, there was no way being there would solve the problem that I went there to solve. It was more or less the same dynamic I had with my sister growing up, although far less abusive, where I was the unwanted black sheep and my entire existence was just so that my sister

could be the clear favorite. But I didn't change my flight and go back to the US. I stayed, for what was probably close to three months, and tried to make it work. And it continuously did not work. I learned Dutch every day, tried to learn the culture the best I could, tried to make their daughter happy by always letting her have her way. None of it mattered. Mind you, I wasn't perfect either, for sure. But the entire time I was there I put every effort into making it work, to trying somehow fit into their family, whereas they absolutely did not. Or maybe they did, and it was just not as obvious as the effort I was making. I don't think so however, because years later, their daughter found me on Facebook and apologized for how she behaved, and how she treated me. I don't remember the exact conversation, but it was essentially what I have already written - "I didn't like you, there wasn't really a reason I didn't like you, and I made it so that my parents would never accept you being with us long term. I'm sorry for my behavior, and I would take it back if I could." I told her, more or less, that I understood, and that I hope her life is good these days. Dutch people are somewhat famous for their bluntness. Things that would be considered to be rude in the US are commonplace there. The opposite could also be said, that American people are somewhat famous for their timidity, and things that would annoy Dutch people are commonplace here. Both are true in their own way. By and large, I got along better with the Germans in the city I lived in than I did with the Dutch. Germans are not known for being friendly, but compared with Dutch people, at least the Dutch people I was meeting, they were. Which was a good thing, as other than the Family I stayed with, I spent most of my time around the Germans. One of the more interesting things that wasn't Zen-related that happened while I was there were these city-wide parties the Germans would throw. I don't remember how often they would happen, but probably once a month. They were always on the weekend, so most of the town would show up. In Europe, at least in Germany and Holland, the distinction between towns, villages, and cities is really important, much more important than it is in the US; there is probably a historical

reason for it, but I never cared enough to find out why. The parties would start in the morning and go all day long. There was food, entertainment, music, and beer. Lots and lots of beer. I would go to them about mid day, and start drinking with them. Most of the Germans had been there since morning, and had already started. I would drink with them for a few hours, and when I say a few, I mean it quite literally - maybe two or three hours. By the time I left, I was totally, completely drunk. I would let them know, the people I was drinking with, that I should go home because I can't drink anymore. They found it funny, laughed a bit at me, said goodbye, and kept drinking. They would do it all day. I learned at that point that the common stereotype about Germans and drinking was absolutely 100% true, at least where I was. To be honest at the time, and I guess still a bit now thinking about it, I found it pretty impressive the sheer amount of alcohol these people could drink. While in this small town, I had two episodes of Weird Zen Stuff happen. Even then, before I had really intensively gotten into meditation like I do these days, I kept up a usually daily meditation practice for 20 or 30 minutes. I had mentioned this to the family I was staying with once that I do it, as it is helpful for me, and they did not approve. In retrospect, I should have used the word prayer instead of meditation, and a big part of their personality was being Christian. The daily sitting I was doing may or may not have played a role in the Zen things that happened, I can't really tell one way or another. In both of these cases, they were relevant to the way I was (and still do) experiencing life; they had nothing to do with resolving a question or problem I was having as I have written elsewhere. The first time, I was riding a bicycle (it is common in most parts of Europe to ride bicycles short distances. Gasoline is taxed pretty heavily compared to the US, so people don't drive unless they have to) through somewhere in the city center. I tried to find the exact place on Google Maps recently, but not all the streets, even in the city center, were mapped; the area I am quite sure where this happened in is one of the places that was not mapped. I remember very clearly, I was riding the bike and I was transitioning from the sidewalk to the street. Or it may have been the opposite, and I was transitioning from the street to the sidewalk. I know for sure I was going from one to the other. Time

itself became infinite. There was no beginning to it nor end. This lasted for a second or so, and then it went back to normal. Its kind of a strange thing, to say that I experienced an infinity of time for one second, but that's why its Weird Zen Stuff. It's simultaneously both. It was both unending time that had no starting nor ending point, and it was about a second. Zen always covers both sides, life as we experience it every day, and how things actually are without the lens of the way humans experience it. The other time was when I was walking back from the town, and was on the street their house was on. Most, if not all of the problems that human beings experience comes from experiencing the mind as something other than just another sensory stream. We have a very, very deep belief and habit that it is something more important than the rest of the senses, and that it contains us, the "I". It's so deep rooted and habitual that people don't even know it's a habit, nor that it isn't really true. I was walking down this street, getting ready to go inside for dinner, and all suffering momentarily stopped. The mind, the thing that always creates suffering, was no different than my vision, or hearing, or sense of smell or taste or touch. This also happened for about a second before things went back to normal. I have no idea why these things happened while I was there. The one where time became infinite has happened again since, although not in the same way. When I had the experience of sitting in the movie theater with Eve, that was a somewhat similar situation. The same when I had the experience with her friend, one of my classmates, when she told me I didn't have to be sorry for touching her. When some memory is completely re-experienced as if it was happening again for the first time right there and then, it becomes obvious that time itself does not really work in the way we typically perceive it. But in neither of those cases did it actually become infinite. I have no idea why those things happened instead of other things. It would have been much better for me if the kind of Weird Zen Stuff that happened with "Why is this important" occurred, so I would have known things wouldn't have worked out, and I could have flown back to the US instead of continually trying to fit in with people that had no interest in me fitting in with. But the things that did happen happened, and the

things that didn't happen didn't happen. I went to Germany with the hope of either triggering whatever happened in New York again, or at least coming to some better understanding of what exactly went on. Neither of those goals were achieved. Not to continuously repeat myself, but as soon as it became clear I was always going to be secondary to their daughter, I should have left. If someone invites you into their family, they have to treat you equally to their family. Continuously having to walk on eggshells because someone arbitrarily does not like you is never going to work out. At least in their case, unlike my cousin, unlike my Aunt, they at tried, even if their effort was half-hearted. After I went back to the US, my relationship with my friend and his then wife became pretty strained, and going forward we didn't speak much. I saw them again sometime after my second right hip surgery for the first time in many years, a few months before I started being homeless. I had recently looked through an old photo album I had with pictures from the trip I took out to Hawai'i, and there were a number of pictures with both of them, sometimes individually, sometimes together, that I wanted them to have. I told them, "I took them, but they are your pictures." I think they enjoyed it. I went to dinner at their house, and at the very end I told them, "For my part, I'm sorry it did not work out when I went to stay with your parents. I really tried. I wasn't perfect (as of writing this, I can't think of anything specific I did to cause problems, but I'm sure there were things), but I did my best while I was with them. I appreciate that you guys tried." which I think, to his wife especially, was nice to hear. After leaving Germany, I never had another chance in the same way to figure out what happened to me or to fix it.

NEET Zen

After I came back from Germany, I rented a room with Pohwa Sunim at the BZC. I don't remember how long I was there, probably about a year. Maybe a year and a half. Sometime while I was there, Sunim went back to Korea because his master had gotten sick. While he was there, he

maintained a daily sitting schedule. We would do everyday life things, and occasionally go to New York. I would typically join any talks he gave, but I did not, I think even once, wake up at 3AM to sit with him for however many hours he would sit in the morning. Even today, waking up that early is incredibly difficult for me. After he left, another one of his students moved into the room he used, and we lived together for a short while. We were fairly good friends while we lived together. Both of us had done martial arts for some time, both of us were interested in Zen (obviously) and both of us had an interest in the Korean language/culture. At some point, I decided it was better to move back in with my mother, since I was still under the impression that her diabetic episodes she had all throughout my teenage years were out of her inability to manage her sugar levels, instead of doing it to get high. She had also not left me homeless after surgery, nor with a herniated disc yet, so I was also under the impression that she in some way wanted me around. As I said, once I got back from New York that weekend, I was traumatized for years. I couldn't work, I couldn't go to school. I couldn't date. I couldn't even have sex because social interactions stressed me out so much. I had no friends, nor people I spoke with on a regular basis. I watched a lot of porn, and drank a lot. I think I stayed with her for about a year and a half or two years, I'm not entirely sure. During that time, I was a NEET - an acronym used these days to describe someone that is Not in Education, Employment, or Training. I would still sit every day, or at least most days, as it did make things slightly better, but I couldn't do much else. She never really seemed to care much, and in retrospect it makes a lot of sense. I've talked about the second and third time I had Weird Zen Stuff happen where time itself shifted back to some experience I had a long time ago, but I have not said anything about the first. When I was living in Delaware, drinking most days, and watching a lot of porn, was when I had the first. Like a lot of things in life, the first also happens to be the most significant. There were a few times when I was in Delaware when I would basically do a Zen retreat. I would sit two forty or forty

five minute sessions three or four times a day, depending on how tired I was for a week or 10 days in a row. When I first described methods of sitting in Zen, I brought up Shikintaza, "Just Sitting". While I did practice Koans at the time, my main focus was the development of concentration as an extension of counting the breath. When I had gotten to Delaware, I was at the third stage of this - the first being to count every breath, the second being to count every other breath, the third to just focus on the breath itself without counting, and the fourth being actual Shikintaza, where there is no focus on an object and concentration itself can be rested in. I don't remember if it was before or after the time shift experience it happened or not, but I do remember at some point while I was there I went from the third stage to the fourth stage, from having to fixate concentration on the breath without counting, to not focusing on anything in particular. I should note, there isn't a way to "chose" when someone moves from one stage to the next, it just kind of happens on its own, like many Zen things. It isn't like you wake up one day, and decide, "I'm just going to focus on my breath without counting." It does not work that way. These milestones are the natural progression of counting the breath, and they happen when they happen. They cannot be forced. Like I said, the first time this time shift happened it was by far the most significant of the three. It could very well be the most significant of the Weird Zen Stuff that has ever happened to me. In Buddhism, it is said that this living and dying cycle has gone on for eternity, that this particular life is just another in an unending chain of lives that has no beginning point nor will ever have an ending one. Pohwa Sunim phrases it as "never born and never dying." At that point, I had always been somewhat suspicious of this claim. I didn't know whether or not it was true. My interest in Zen was never to discover the truth about the life, the universe, and everything, it was just that it made my life somewhat better every time I sat for meditation, so I continued it, not worrying very much about the claims it made about the nature of reality, and of life and death. And then one day, when I was doing a self organized retreat, it happened.

This has only happened once that I recall, and it was this specific time. I was sitting in the afternoon, and I remember very clearly that it was in the afternoon. Most of the time Weird Zen Stuff happens in daily life. It does happen from time to time while sitting, but the vast majority of stuff that I can directly link to meditation practice has happened when I am not sitting. At some point during the sit there were a pair of thoughts that immediately verified what Buddhism as a whole, and what Pohwa Sunim often told me. As someone sits more, and the nature of the mind becomes more clear, it becomes obvious that the mind has no permanent form. It continuously is changing from one thing to another to another. It arises as one thing, then it ceases, then it arises as another, then ceases, then arises as another, so on and so forth. When someone first starts sitting, the understanding of the mind is very limited - I don't mean a person doesn't understand it very well intellectually, I mean that by default, human beings do not recognize that the mind has no form, or put another way, infinite forms. Another way to say forms is to say experiences that arise. So as someone sits more and more, this self imposed box that we think the mind is starts to fall away. First its that it is "I", then eventually it is recognized that all experiences of the senses, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, are all actually myriad forms of the mind arising and ceasing. But at this point, the experiences the mind creates moment to moment are still linked to this body and this life. That day when I was sitting, I had the experience of what I assume is a bat's echolocation. Maybe it was a dolphins echolocation. Some kind of animal, I'm not sure. Animals don't know they are animals, they act entirely on instinct, so a bat does not know its a bat, a dolphin does not know its a dolphin in the way human beings know we are human beings. In any case, an experience arose that was not even linked to the human senses. The very next thought that arose after that was the first memory I had in this life that I am 100% positive that was a real thing. There are other experiences from earlier in my life I have memory of, but I am not sure those things actually happened. They could have happened, but they were before there was a continuous stream of consciousness that existed moment-to-moment. The memory was of walking up the steps to my preschool with my

mother. This was the thought that I had the first time shift experience with. Specifically, it was the sound of the pebbles that were stuck in the soul of her shoe grinding somewhat against the floor of the steps. Immediately I realized I had been doing this thing, this living various lives, including apparently that of a bat (or something), literally forever. The mind, which I had assumed up until that point was linked to this body, and these senses, and this life, was not even bound to any of those. When I was someone or something else, it was this same exact mind-steam that I am experiencing right now that was experiencing them. At that point, not only did all suffering stop, like it did when I had experienced time being infinite in Germany, but I experienced a euphoric bliss that I have not experienced before nor since. Even euphoric bliss does not convey it. Every single thing I had ever stressed about, worried about, suffered about, all of that was replaced with bliss that is greater than anything I can convey with words, including experiences when I've tried drugs. Those two thoughts in succession were the two that had me recognize that what Buddhism claims, that this process of life and death is endless is actually literally true. It made what Pohwa Sunim had told me countless times of "Never born, never dying" make complete sense. Like the other instances where time shifted, this did not last long. I wish it did. I wish I always felt like that. It was the total, complete end of all stress and suffering, completely replaced with bliss that is beyond comprehension. It was the exact same thing that was always happening, the mindstream arising and ceasing, but with the recognition it is not even bound to this body or this life. A similar thing happened a few days later when I was doing meditation on my couch, but it did not have the same bliss, profound insight, or impact on me going forward as the first time did. I've said before that when answers to questions come from meditation, they are correct 100% of the time, and that even if the whole world said otherwise, the only reasonable thing to do would be to tell the entire world that they are wrong. That is how this was. As soon as this happened, all doubt about life and death, about whether or not I was doing the right thing (although in this case, for my purposes, I already knew I was doing the right thing. Every time I did it my life got better, and that was all I

really cared about. The questions of life and death were never really my interest), all confusion I had about Buddhist sutras, and even a number of things Jesus said in the bible, all of them were permanently and irreversibly eliminated. Unfortunately, this doesn't really help much in daily life. After this thing happened, life went back to exactly how it was before, except that I knew with absolute certainty that the mind-stream is never destroyed, has never begun, and will never stop. Which is great, I guess. But in general, nobody cares. Knowing this does not pay the rent, it does not go grocery shopping for you, nor does it solve the problems already in your daily life. It is simultaneously the single most important thing to ever happen to me, and completely irrelevant to everything. That's why its Weird Zen Stuff, because it completely includes both, simultaneously. I think even the development of effortless jhana a few years ago did not have the profound impact that this experience did. I am much happier with effortless jhana, my life in general is so much better. But it does not really touch on the problem of life and death like this did. This was far more encompassing, in that the notion I had that at the very least, this mind is produced by this brain and this body, was totally, completely, irreversibly destroyed. Most of the time, these kinds of experiences are kept to oneself. I don't think I've ever gone into any detail about this with anyone. In general, there is no way to prove this kind of thing happened. With meditation in general, monks that have spent many thousands of hours have done fMRIs, and they have completely abnormal findings. I assume if I had one done on my brain it would be completely bizarre. I guess it can be seen in one's behavior to some degree - once you know for certain what needs to be done, in this case meditation, you do it naturally and without hesitation. But otherwise, its totally reliant on other people believing that it is true. The other part of it, is that a lot of people that are into spirituality and Buddhism in the west, or in other words, the people that are more disposed towards believing that it is indeed true, can be kind of nuts, and aren't really the kind of people you want to spend significant amounts of time around anyways. Or at least I don't. I think at this point it is OK to discuss here because I don't really have any interest in if people believe it or not.

In fact I would rather people didn't. A friend of mine that I met down in Annapolis when I was homeless has said many times he had some kind of enlightenment experience where he met God. I actually do tend to believe him. But I've said to him before, completely seriously, that at best nobody will believe you, and at worst they will. At this point in my meditation practice, Jhana has more or less made me lose interest in extended interactions with people. I am still polite, and friendly, and what not, don't get me wrong. I do not go out of my way to be unlikable or anything like that. But I voluntarily do not go out much (even if my back was fine, I don't think I would go out much), I voluntarily do not hang out much with my neighbors at home. I voluntarily don't date. I voluntarily don't have sex. If I am excessively frisky for a few days and it just isn't going away, I just hand-dle it and get on with life. It doesn't happen often, though. In the last two years or so, there have been months at a time where I haven't, and then days in a row when I have. How often someone has sex or masturbates is up to everyone individually - what is perfectly fine for one person could drive another person crazy, and vice versa. There is something to be said for not masturbating - as I have said elsewhere, any sensual, and by sensual I mean "something that is experienced through the senses," not sensual in the typical usage of the word, pleasure is going to have some drawback. The more senses that are involved, the worse that drawback will be. "There is something to be said" being said, if it does not rise to the level where it bothers someone individually and the object someone is masturbating to (this goes for both men and women) consents to it, it isn't typically going to cause problems for someone in their daily life. Essentially if someone follows the same guidelines for masturbating as they do for sex with the precept regarding sexual misconduct, it will probably be ok. To be clear, this is not permission, but a general observation in my own life. for the last I could have done all of these things at any point over the last few years, and for the most part with anyone I wanted to do them with. Any motivation that I could have where I would discuss this in order to benefit myself has been more or less eliminated. Hopefully it can benefit other people in some way, though.

Both times I had gone to Korea and stayed at temples doing retreats were when I was living in Delaware. This happened after I had come back. I was probably 24 at the time, if I had to guess. I went back to school when I was 25 during the fall semester, before I turned 26, so its possible I was 25. I'm fairly certain it was during the hockey season because I would watch Capitals games at night. That experience, as I said, while being quite possibly the most profound thing that has ever happened to me, also changed nothing at all. I was still having massive social problems. Most people still didn't like me. Girls still wanted nothing to do with me. I was still traumatized by what had happened in New York. I still couldn't really hold a job or go to school. I was still living in my mothers basement, in my mid 20s, drinking multiple times a week by myself and watching tons of what tended to be rough porn (my entire adolescence was filled with abuse, pain, and humiliation - it makes a mark on someone's sexuality that someone is more or less stuck with for the rest of their life) . Absolutely none of that changed at all. The only thing that changed was that I knew that, even if it wasn't how my experience was moment to moment, none of this was really actually happening. Or well it was happening, but it didn't really matter, because even if someone dies, the same thing that experiences this life will experience the next one. There is no death. There is no birth. The whole thing, in Buddhism it is called Samsara, is all due to a fundamental misunderstanding that the thing that is experiencing all of this is somehow tied to this body and this life, and it isn't at all. In Buddhism, it is commonly said that there is no self. Or really, more specifically, there is no unchanging self. People that look into Buddhism see this, often think its completely nuts because it so obviously goes against the experience of life that it can't be true. That is partially correct. It's not so much that there is no self, but the thing that creates the experience of self has created the experience of other selves stretching backwards and will go forwards infinitely. So while in every day experience, there is clearly someone doing the stuff we do, the thing that gives rise to that experience of there clearly being someone doing the stuff we do is in no way bound to every day life. And it is continually, unendingly changing every single moment. Just like the eyes give rise to sight, the ears to

sound, the mind gives rise to experience. Experience itself is some kind of inherent property to the universe that cannot be eliminated. Death does not eliminate it. This thing that creates experience was doing it before you were born. This recognition has to be experienced first-hand, learning about it intellectually does not make one iota of difference. Believing it to be true doesn't make one iota of difference. Well, I suppose it doesn't HAVE to be. Nobody is ever forced to do Zen practice, its completely 100% voluntary. But if it isn't experienced first hand, there is no real benefit otherwise. At some point after that, I met the girl I had mentioned earlier in New York for a few weeks, and decided to at least try to get my shit together after she left. I re-enrolled in college, despite still being terrified every day that whatever happened with my cousin was going to spontaneously happen again if I was around too many people for too long (like on a college campus, for example), and went back to school. I guess the habit I had developed over the 5 years or so I had been sitting for by that point was more significant than I had realized, because as I said earlier, once I started using grades for the object of meditation, I was able to push through all social problems and fears, and there is no way I would have been able to without all the time I had put in sitting. After I left, I never again really spent significant time with my mother, although really, even when I was staying there we didn't interact much. At some point, my sister had told me I was an accident, almost certainly to be cruel and to play the game of "I'm the favorite and you aren't" that she liked so much, but I think she was telling the truth. It perfectly fit my mothers behavior, both when I was living with her again, and in the time since. So What Is This Mu?

I don't know. What isn't it? Practice it for 30 years, and if you find out, tell me.

Twitch Zen

While recovering from spine surgery, I found Twitch, a website where people live stream all sorts of things. It originally started out specifically for people to stream themselves playing video games, but over time it has changed into a platform for just about everything under the sun that people can think of to stream. Some people cook, some people play instruments, some people play video games, and some people even hang out in hot tubs and beaches in bikinis and swimsuits. I had heard of Twitch many times before, but I had always stayed away from it: the vibe I got from people that talked about it was that it was a place for lonely guys to simp (simp is a young-people-word for "swoon" or maybe "put on a pedestal") for female streamers to try to get attention from the person doing the streaming. There are plenty of worthwhile things on Twitch - there is a temple in Japan that streams the grounds 24/7, for instance. There are a number of people I've met through Twitch that I would actually like to meet in real life. But the idea I had of it from what I had heard from other people also has a lot of truth in it. In general, I don't join streams or follow streamers that are overly sexual. When people are doing whatever it is they do on Twitch, sexual stuff will come up from time to time (streams can last for many hours, and there is a conversation that goes back and forth between the streamers and the viewers called "chat." Even for streams and streamers that are completely family friendly, so to speak, every now and then that kind of thing will naturally come up in the discussion), just like in real life, but if it is the focus of the stream I don't typically like it. As I've said elsewhere, if I wanted to get laid, I'd just go to a bar and chat someone up. If I wanted to see someone half naked, I'd just go to a strip club. It actually reminds me a bit of the situation with eating meat - being directly involved (i.e. joining a stream) when someone has mad the decision to make the content of their stream overly sexual has a bad feeling to it, in a way that, say, watching Kpop music videos (which tend to be on the sexy side of things) does not. One is an active participation in the process, the other is already done and has nothing to do with me. Actively interacting with someone is much more significant than passively watching a pre-recorded video.

With that said, I have probably been to more Zen temples on Twitch than I have in real life. Along with the temple I mentioned above, a good portion of the people I follow are Korean. It's the only real way I get to practice Korean on a daily basis, and a couple of the streamers I follow occasionally stream their daily life when they are out and about (I think all of the ones I follow are in or around Seoul). One of them has gone to a number of temples during their treks, which is nice. There are no Korean temples near where I live, so that is about as close as I can get to actually going to one. In fact, ever since I last went to Seoul when I was 27, I had continuously missed the place, to the point where wanting to be around Koreans was a always-in-the-background desire I had during daily life, and Twitch has for the most part solved that. It isn't the same as actually being there, but it is pretty close. While Twitch is an American owned and operated website, there is a non-insignificant number of foreign streamers. I've met American, Korean, German, Dutch, English, Turkish, Arab (I'm not sure which country), Australian, and Polish streamers, and it's always interesting to see the different ways people from different countries and cultures interact with people. The vast majority of the people I follow are foreign. It would probably be a good supplement to a language class if someone was trying to learn a second language. Its also completely free (there are things on the site that can be bought, but the base experience is free). One of the most popular video games that is streamed is called League of Legends. Its classified as a MOBA, which is a fancy way of saying an online team game. Everyone picks a character that has unique characteristics, and the point is to get to the other team's base and destroy it. Ever since I had to stop doing BJJ in my late 20's because of my hip problems, I have been a very avid LoL fan, and Twitch is one of the best, if not the best, place to watch people playing it. Similar to being able to practice Korean and hanging out with Korean people, its a great way to watch competitive play from people that are very good at it. I have a very strong competitive streak, sometimes to the point where it is a problem, and League is a very good outlet for it.

Short. Ugly. Poor.

Everyone in life has their hardships - it is inescapable. From the richest, most powerful, and best looking, to the least. All of it contains stress, unpleasantness and suffering. That isn't to say however, that everyone, everywhere on the scale, experiences the same amount and in the same way. Most people assume that everyone experiences life in roughly the same way that they do. And by and large that is true. My life has been such an extreme outlier in nearly every way possible that I very thoroughly know that assumption to not be true. I am not saying this to garner sympathy, but to share my own life experiences with people that have not experienced life in the same way - poor, short and ugly. I have been poor for the vast majority of my life. Growing up, after my father died, my mother refused to work so she could instead overdose on insulin daily, so we never had money for anything. As an adult, even when I had the money my father left me, I spent it very frugally, then during and after college I never made much money. For women, being short is not really that big of a deal. For men, it has all pervading effects on every single aspect of life, and almost all of them are negative. There could very well be a similar dynamic for women that are uncommonly tall, but I have not known any like that I can think of to have any second-hand anecdotes of whether or not that is the case. I cannot count the amount of times I've had a woman that I was interested tell me, "but you're short!" or "I don't date short men!" or something else to that effect. Numerous times they seemed insulted just by my interest. I'm not joking here - for the vast majority of my life, showing any sort of sexual interest in anyone was nearly akin to directly insulting them. Imagine going through life without being able to express interest in the opposite sex (or I guess the same sex if someone is gay; I'm not discriminating against LGBT people) because doing so, for you in particular, is somehow judged by others completely different than literally every other person. It isn't enough to be better, I had to be perfect, and even that was not enough. For both women and men, being poor and ugly are

unpleasant situations to experience. It's possible being an ugly woman is more difficult than being an ugly man, but given my own experience I personally do not have the opinion there is a drastic difference between the two. The combination of the three is unceasingly awful. In America, the American Dream is what many people use to motivate them to try harder and do better: that if they just work at something hard enough, the good times will flow. I'm fairly certain that the combination of those three factors more or less eliminates the possibility that even if someone works hard, even if someone is better than everyone else, that they can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and better the quality of their life. That is the main reason I got so into meditation - no matter how good I was at things, it did not make one iota of difference. I guess I could do meditation for 20 years and then write a book about it. In middle school, I was by far the best skater in the school. There was nobody else even close. Everyone hated me for it. In high school, I was far and away the best guitarist in the school. There was, again, nobody else even close. I haven't played guitar regularly in years, yet when I played a few times at the homeless shelters in Annapolis, A musician I know invited me, multiple times, to come to his set at one of the local bars and play a few songs. I declined, since I don't particularly like being the center of attention, but even after years of not playing, I had professional musicians telling me I should be doing it publicly. People hated me for it. In College, I had already discovered, albeit unintentionally, the truth of life, the universe, and everything through meditation. I was already meditating all day long, in every situation. I was the best grappler in HCC, and arguably the best at UMBC. I studied two incredibly difficult subjects. In all of these cases, people hated me when I had done nothing to them, and then hated me even more when I was the best at something. It wasn't just classmates, either. There were numerous times in classes where the professors clearly hated me, and would mark verbatim correct answers as incorrect. I wrote earlier about how the Chaebols in Korea originally followed 5 year plans from the Korean government, along with Samsung having departments in Heavy Industry. The reason I remember that specifically was because the way

it was presented in class was "HCI." In chemistry, HCl, with an "el" is hydrochloric acid. In the class I'm referring to, it was HCI with an "eye," referring to Heavy Chemical Industry. This question, something to the effect of "what were the three 5-year plans?" was EZPZ. Especially because I thought the HCI-HCl thing was funny. Just memorizing trivia like that, random factoids, is very easy for me, so when it came up on the test, I thought "I know this answer, word-for-word verbatim," and I did. The professor still marked it wrong. I didn't bother to challenge it at the time, since it was obvious that the reason why it was wrong was because, to put it bluntly, "fuck you," and if I had challenged it in any way they would have arbitrarily taken off even more points on the next test. The professors too did not like that I was doing well in their classes. Not all of them, mind you. As I've mentioned, there were a few classes where the professors were great, but significantly morse often than not it was the case. The vast majority of my classes were an endless practice of accepting disrespect and abuse meditation. The same thing happened with Korean. There were, by the time I finished taking all the Korean classes I needed for the minor, two other American people that could speak Korean as well as I could. It did not matter. Although as I've mentioned before, in this specific case it by and large was not limited to me. No matter how good my Korean became, it just annoyed and irritated the Koreans I was taking the classes with. When I got into the workplace, the same thing happened again. By that point, I was basically running a meditation center at night. I spoke two languages, and was able to concentrate through stress unlike anyone else. None of it mattered. Excelling at something often makes it worse. My very existence seems to make people angry. Which isn't to say I never do anything wrong or do things that rightfully upset people, but absolutely not in any way that is proportional to the hate and dislike I have experienced from most people on a regular basis throughout my life. There is also a fourth aspect to this I briefly brought up - my father died before I really knew him. I was either 6 or 7, although I'm pretty sure I was 6. Something that most people take for granted

in their lives are the social circles that someone inherits through their parents (or whoever their guardians are. It does not have to be biological parents, just people who play roughly that role). I did not have any of that growing up. Or now as an adult. I have had to do everything myself, make every connection myself, without advice, without example. Combined with the the aforementioned poor, short, and ugly, all of that has been unendingly more difficult, with far less to show for it, than the vast majority of people have simply by being alive. I had, and still have, no real idea how the "real world" works, I was never exposed to people in different occupations growing up, for the most part. I studied biochemistry, but by and large I had no idea what a biochem background was for short of professional school. In fact one of the few professions that I do have some idea about is physical therapy, somewhat humorously, simply because between my hips and my back over the last few years, I have been continuously exposed to what they do and how it works. If I had some idea like this when I was 18 like most people do, I don't think the rest of this would have happened. In video games, there are different difficulties - easy, medium, hard, professional, etc., and life is somewhat similar. My life has always been on expert mode. The slightest mistake I make is the end of the world, and all the good and help I do does not matter in the slightest. If I inconvenience people, they drop me immediately. If I benefit them, I am tolerated until the moment I stop. A bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. I have always been held to a standard by other people that they themselves could not and do not meet. A perfect example of the above was someone I was roommates with at HCC, and somewhat friends with for a while after. Or maybe we weren't friends, in retrospect, it's hard for me to say one way or another, really. He came to the US from Korea to study. When we were living together, I would often help him with his English related things, and he would help me with my Korean work. This dynamic worked out very well when we were living together. Having lived in Korea before, and at the time trying to learn the language, I have extreme sympathy towards Korean people that come to the US and have to take classes and complete their work entirely in English. It isn't a 1 to 1 situation

exactly, everyone in Korea needs to have a certain proficiency with English to graduate high school. I was not exposed to the Korean language until I was an adult, probably around 21. Even still, someone coming to the US to study with just the background in English they learned in high school is incredibly daunting. It is difficult to explain to someone that hasn't tried to learn Korean how unfathomably hard it is to become proficient on even an elementary school level, never mind college. So I really didn't mind helping where I could. I helped him with his work throughout school, even when I went on to UMBC. I even helped him get the first job he had out school, revising his cover letter, and essay, and I think even taking one of the tests that was linked to English comprehension on the job application. I had lent him money when he needed it when we were in school several times, despite not having much myself. When I was homeless, with a herniated disc, I asked him if he could lend me a few hundred dollar so I could get a bunch of CBD to help deal with the pain I was constantly in. CBD is not outrageously expensive, but it was expensive enough that with the very limited budget I had, it wasn't possible to buy it in any significant quantities. He told me no, and then said that it wasn't his problem that I was homeless with a herniated disc. I'm not sure how much money he was making at the time, but I know it was north of 6 figures. When we went to school together, I never charged him for help, but if I had, it would have been far, far more than the $300 I had asked for him to lend me. If I had to guess, probably in the range of several thousand dollars over the years (I English very good, as is obvious reading this). As long as I was useful to him, he was polite. As soon as I needed something from him, he left me homeless with a herniated disc and told me it wasn't his problem. These days, I am far less interested in helping people. There is a place for being helpful to others, both in the common sense way, and in the Zen way. But often times helping people, even when done with good intention, isn't really helping. Not just in that situation, but in many, if not most situations. If someone is acting out of greed, or out of malice, or other harmful motivations, helping them is just setting up bad future situations for both parties, the helper and the one receiving help.

There is a monk that coined the term "Idiot compassion," which is kind of like the compassion that is commonly talked about in American Buddhist circles. That was the kind of help I was giving. Unfortunately at the time, I had not done enough meditation for this to be obvious to me in daily life, or my approach to the situation would have been very different. It was only once Jhana had developed this started to change a bit, at least in person. The "vibe" I gave/give off was so utterly unique and unknown that my interactions with people started to, for the first time in my life, become a bit more favorable. Its unfortunate that it isn't really noticeable unless someone meets me in person, because I think if it was obvious over Zoom meetings that young woman may not have been so dead set on having me completely removed from the group I had known for over a decade. Even still, even with a vibe that people have never before experienced, there have been countless times where women get angry at me because they feel that any amount of attention is something I should be grateful for, given my life circumstances, and I more-or-less turn them down. Actual anger to the point of trying to cause me problems, because they feel that, being short, ugly, and poor I should always be thankful they are interacting with me at all. One specifically comes to mind of when I was working at Dominos Pizza as an assistant manager. There was a woman that was renting a room, the same as I was, in the house I lived out of. She had the landlord tied around her finger just by giving the man a bit of attention (She was also screwing him on the side, I assume in lieu of rent, but I don't know that for sure. She was very loud, and his room was right above mine). She tried to do the same to me, saying to me once "Oh! you scared me!" in some weird what I think she thought was cute/sexy way when I went to do laundry. I looked at her funny and kept going about my day. The next time I went to shower, she had broken my razor, and then spent the rest of the time trying to cause problems for me with the landlord. All because she was infuriated that I wasn't grateful for her attention. As such, I think the best thing that ever happened to me was that I became homeless and started doing meditation between four and six hours a day. The whole dynamic, which has plagued

me my entire life was all of a sudden turned completely upside down. Even after the young woman had me kicked out of the sitting group I had been with for 15 years, so what? I don't need anyone else to sit. I don't need anyone else to meditate. I don't even really need good conditions to do it. I didn't need people to like me, I didn't need to show that I was better than anyone else. I didn't need grades from people that would arbitrarily mark correct answers wrong, or recommendations from bosses that wanted me gone but didn't want to fire me because it would cause their insurance to rise. All of the hate I had received my entire life, from just about everyone I interacted with, was gone, because I did not need them anymore to have a source of happiness. All of the stress involved with having to be better than everyone else and still getting a fraction of the recognition, was gone. Of doing more than everyone else and getting a fraction of the monetary compensation. This is the other meaning to "beating the game" I referred to earlier. It wasn't just the long term effects on my personality that growing up had ceased to be a problem, but also that the continuous, unceasing stress and suffering that comes with having those three unpleasant factors existing simultaneously no longer mattered. I could probably be homeless and do this sitting thing for the rest of my life, and I would be completely fine with that. I think it would even be preferable in some ways than going back to the 9-5 lifestyle, making money, getting a house, etc., as the more time someone spends developing Jhana, the more pleasant and blissful it becomes. Far more blissful than having nice stuff. Most importantly, it is not dependent on other people treating me like everyone else. Hold whatever opinion you want of me, hold me to whatever arbitrary standard you want, I'm going to go sit for a few hours. And that's why people hate me for it.` Right now, I have I think 5 pairs of pants I wear regularly, as well as 5 t-shirts. Most of them are not in good condition. A few of them have a number of holes in them. I don't really have money to get new ones, since I live on an extremely limited budget, in the public housing project portion of a homeless shelter. It does not matter. I could be the most unstylish person on the planet, in the least desirable zip code, and it wouldn't matter a single bit. Jhana more-or-less eliminates the need to

impress other people. There is nothing that they can give you that is better than what you already have. Interestingly enough, I've had a few times that the happiness that Jhana brings also causes people to be angry with me, one of which was my own sister. In general, when people have been doing meditation for a long time, they tend to be happier on average than people who have not done it. We were walking on a boardwalk on beach near my mother's house in Delaware, right after going to an arcade place. I don't remember what the conversation that led her to say this was exactly, but I do remember exactly what she had said to me: "YOU ARE SMILING AND LAUGHING TOO MUCH". A number of times in writing this, I have said roughly what people have meant when I don't remember the exact words. In this case, these are the exact words. Even my own family members feel that, due to my physical conditions, I should not have the ability to be happy. That being able to be happy in a way that isn't dependent on them, or other people who think I shouldn't be able to be happy, is somehow an insult to them and shouldn't be allowed to happen. Not only is it that I have to be better then everyone else at everything I do for a fraction of the recognition, I am not allowed to find a way to be happy that is not dependent on them. That is how my whole life has been. My entire existence, even if I am not doing anything harmful to anyone, makes people irrationally angry, doubly so when I have found a source of happiness in it. Simply being alive is somehow an affront to people. When I first met Pohwa Sunim, the first thing I noticed was that this man was happy in a way I have never seen anyone else before (nor since). My reaction to this situation was, "I want to be like that." I can't imagine being angry that someone else is happy. At the very least, happy people tend to cause less problems for other people, so even from a selfish perspective I should want people to be happy. My reaction was to start doing the thing he said was the reason for it, as difficult as it was, because I wanted to be like that. It seems to me after writing this that most people do not have that kind of reaction.

This topic of conversation actually came up recently in daily life. It probably doesn't come through well in text, but I really am quite happy that I had (well, still have) these conditions. If I didn't, I probably would have dated like most people did, gotten married, had kids, etc. There are some lyrics from a Katy Perry song I heard yesterday that describes it pretty perfectly, actually, from the movie with Kim Jong Un and the two interviewers: "Maybe the reason why all the doors are closed is so you can open one that leads you to the perfect road." I know enough people like that and see the stress they deal with as a result, and I have without question the opinion that life that is based on developed concentration is significantly better. I don't have to compromise with people all day, I don't have to set my schedule around them. I don't have to continuously put up with stuff I don't want to so I can get something someone else has - money, or status, a job, whatever. I can sit every day for as long as I want, whenever I want. It is absolutely better. And there is no way it could have ever happened if my life wasn't terrible and continuously unpleasant for the vast majority of it. Now, I feel It's kind of like winning the lottery. Also - I may be short, ugly, and poor, but at least I'm not stupid and lazy.

Why Did You Choose Us?

Before writing this, I spent a lot of time posting koan-style comments online, on a lot of different people, things, and places. Some are things that are interesting to me, some are not. I tried my best to do what I thought was a cross-section of society at large - people I knew, athletes, musicians, tv/movie stars, politicians, religious leaders, authors, business people, twitch streamers, and even porn stars and people that were into different fetishes on pornhub. Especially with the fetish stuff, most of it does not interest me. I tried to be as even as possible between men and women, and include people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. With the people involved in politics, at least within the US, I tried to be even between Democrats and Republicans; as I have said elsewhere,

politics don't really interest me. There were 12 that were given astrology symbols that correlate with private messages I have sent them at some point in the past. Usually, I tried to tie the number of people from a given subsection of American life with Buddhist stuff - in this case the 12 links of dependent origination (I used 12, 8, 4, and 2 in categories since Buddhist has the 12 links, the 8 fold path, 4 noble truths, and form/emptiness). In many of the tags, there were three things that were obviously similar, and one that was seemingly dissimilar. The fourth one is actually not dissimilar at all, it just seems like it, similar to the four viewpoints of Zen (something is, something isn't, something both is and isn't, and something neither is nor isn't). In general, I try to avoid excessive interactions with other people, at least beyond what is necessary to get through daily life. If I tagged you and you find out, feel free to get in contact with the publisher and I will speak with you. All of the comments were under my Facebook, Mastadon, or Youtube name, so as far as I know they are public. Most of them use music videos that I picked for various reasons. The one I used the most, by My Chemical Romance, "Na Na Na" I picked because if someone wanted to translate 無 into modern, everyday spoken english, Na would be a pretty good way to do it. I also know 無 in three different scripts, the Chinese character, the Korean Hangul and English, so it caught my attention in ways the others did not. Everyone that I tagged, as far as I know, got something different. Something somehow related to what I know about them, or something I assume would resonate with them, and then something about the contents of this book, especially the portions that relate to Jesus and Revelations, God, that kind of stuff. Historically in Zen, Koans are discussed privately, but are given publicly, and I want to maintain that tradition. There were countless reasons for various people. Some were people I actually interacted with regularly at the time, although most were not. Some were people I went to high school with and haven't spoken with in 20 years. A large portion are people I have never met. Of those, there are some that I actually really would like to meet, and some that I don't have strong feelings towards one way or

another. There are probably even some that I really wouldn't want to meet with I tagged, and would meet with, anyways. I imagine the opposite is probably true as well - why would someone want to meet me, of all people? In those situations, I suppose it's "lucky me." By and large, I don't particularly care what someone does as a profession, nor what they are into, nor what they have done in their life.

Reflections

In writing this, I've thought about a number of things that I have not in many years. Most of them are unpleasant. In fact most of this has been about how everything for most of my life has been unpleasant, at best. I am not looking for sympathy, nor am I looking to get back at many of the people who went out of their way to make life as awful as they made it. The people who were directly involved with everything else, if they ever wind up reading this, will know who they are, and that for me is enough. I guess I indirectly named a few more than two people, like my mother and sister; there are only so many professors I took classes with, and so by nature of the relationship it significantly limits who they could be. If I completely removed any reference to anyone that could possibly be identified simply by time, place, and circumstance, there would be very little to write about. I have tried to be as even as possible: to include the good as well as the bad. In large parts however, there wasn't much good, and there was a whole lot of bad. I cannot change that, nor was it my choice for it to be that way. That is just how my life has been. I have tried my best to include my own shortcomings in situations where they were relevant. The other half, the half that I have continually returned to, is that without that awfulness there is no way I could have or would have stuck with meditation like I did, the end result of which is much better than if everything had been perfect in every way to begin with. By and large I hold no animosity towards anyone that went out of their way to make my life unpleasant. For the most part, I just feel sorry for them. A few to the point of actual tears.

I think there is some relevance here to delve the slightest bit into the rules of monastic conduct. There are 227 rules for monks and 311 for nuns. Every rule that was created was in response to a situation that occurred within the community; it wasn't like Buddha said to everyone at the beginning, "You have to follow these 227/311 rules to hang out with me." I do not know what the extra ones are for nuns; I don't even really know the vast majority of the rules for monks. I do know that the extra rules for nuns were created because at the time in India, there was concern, probably valid, that nuns would be a bigger target for the local communities they depended on for necessities, and they were added to prevent problems (read: for their safety from people) from occurring. Having sex as a monk/nun is an immediate disrobing offense. You do not pass go, nor collect 200 alms. You're out. As far as I know, being disrobed for having sex does not otherwise prohibit someone from participating in the sangha. Even actual ordained monks are not disrobed/kicked out of the sangha for jerking off:

The thirteen saṅghādisesas are rules requiring an initial and subsequent meeting of the sangha (communal meetings). If a monk breaks any rule here he has to undergo a period of probation or discipline after which, if he shows himself to be repentant, he may be reinstated by a sangha of not less than twenty monks. Like the pārājikas, the saṅghādisesas can only come about through the monk's own intention and cannot be accidentally invoked

with rule 1 being:

Discharge of semen or getting someone to discharge your semen, except while dreaming.

I am not a monk. My lifestyle these days is quite similar to one. I wake up, usually at 5:45 AM in the morning to sit two sessions with a group on zoom. I join another one midday, and I join another

one at night at 7:30 PM for two sessions. I usually do another session on my own at some point during the day, and I practice until I fall asleep. I quit the 7:30 PM one early tonight, and am skipping the second session, because I have written something like 10-15 pages today, and I really felt like this is more important right now than sitting is. I don't think, these days, unlike when I was younger, I would have any problem actually becoming one. Not being one but keeping a similar schedule affords me the opportunity to not keep my daily sitting schedule when I really think I should be doing other stuff. It also affords me the opportunity to try to share this practice in daily life with people that have absolutely no idea that this is what they've always been looking for but didn't know it. Weird Zen Stuff has been happening a lot these days as I've been writing this. It has happened from time to time over the years, but never with the frequency that it is happening now. Most of the time its regarding people that I already knew didn't like me much, so it isn't really all that surprising. But every now and then, it happens regarding someone that I wasn't under that impression with. Finding out that someone you've always thought was in your corner, had your back, whatever, actually didn't, is stressful. It sucks. It really, really sucks. Not being a monk means that when Weird Zen Stuff happens that really bothers me, I can take a few days off from my schedule and let things settle. I could not do that if I was ordained and living at a temple. Even when I do take breaks, they don't last long. I've been sitting somewhere between 3-6 hours a day, nearly every day, for what has to be very close to four years now. After a few days, It feels super weird to not be sitting for at least a session or two every day, and I come back to it naturally. Being held to standards that not even fully ordained monks are held to, while this young woman clearly has no issue going on her own sexcalades, is probably the thing, out of all the mistreatment I've gotten over the years, that bothers me the most. Most of it, in fact nearly all of it, doesn't bother me at all, so I'm not even sure saying "the most" is a necessary qualifier. It's not just that Korean Seon groups are rare in the US, and I have a ~15 year history with the Korean language and culture, nor is it the difficulties I had while being homeless as a result, nor is it that Rinzai (Seon

is essentially Korean Rinzai) groups are rare, nor is it that Pohwa Sunim is a master in the direct line from Buddha himself (If you believe that sort of thing. After meeting the man, I immediately did), but those things combined with the fact that once you start koan practice with someone, it isn't like switching jobs or finding a new house when you move...it is not really possible to continue where you left off with someone else. I was listening to one of Pohwa Sunim's old talks the other day, and he said something to the effect of "40 minutes of sitting with an interview is worth more than 400 years of sitting by oneself." I don't know if that is literally true, but the general sentiment absolutely is. It is tied to your life conditions, both currently and from the time it has been started. To be clear, it's not exactly 20 years of practice down the drain; it doesn't work like that. The concentration developed over the time I was practicing directly with them doesn't just *Poof* and vanish. But to my memory, I cannot think of another person, lay-person at that, who has been held to such standards, standards she herself clearly does not meet. That it DOES bother me though, is something I guess I am somewhat grateful for. Even people using the Sangha to push their personal views or as avenues for vindictiveness should not be able to bother me at all. Getting kicked out of the group and all the problems I've had as a direct result should also not be able to bother me. It exposed a blind spot I didn't even know I had. I assume after more sitting practice I will eventually even be thankful for the situation like I am with most of the rest of the bad situations I've had in my life that have caused me to develop meditation as I have. Anything at all, and I do literally mean anything, that can cause me to be upset is MY problem that I have. It is nobody's problem but mine, regardless of what it is or why someone did it. Even the most unfair treatment in the world would not upset Buddha, or Jesus, and that is goal of the practice, that what everyone that seriously takes it up is working towards whether they directly know it or not. the In Buddhism, it is said that "attachment" is the cause of suffering, without exception for what the "attachment" is. Even if the attachment is Buddhism, it is suffering. I use "attachment" in quotation marks, because like a lot of other commonly used words and phrases, the meaning in the Zen way is a

bit different than the meaning in the everyday life way. It means any mental state whatsoever that someone tries to make the point of anything at all will cause stress and discomfort. Sort of like how I said at the beginning of this that while Zen means concentration, and the while the whole purpose if it is to develop concentration, even concentration itself is not allowed to be the focus of it, as actual concentration is something that the idea of concentration does not apply to. I woke up today - its the middle of October - like I normally do at right before 6 o'clock, to sit two sessions with a zoom group. When we finished, I realized, I have no trepidation whatsoever with being homeless. With a bad back, it isn't fun. But at this point, I have spent enough time doing it, along with the fact that my schedule doesn't change much if I live in an apartment/house/whatever, that I actually am thankful for her reaction. I wouldn't have been homeless in the winter with a herniated disc, and I probably wouldn't be homeless now with new back problems. But the problem is never with homelessness, but the reaction to it. The idea that people have about homelessness. This can be said about just about anything, but I'm dealing with homelessness directly right now, so it is more apparent to me. Sure, certain parts of being homeless kind of suck, but so do parts of living in an apartment (or whatever). When I left my apartment almost three weeks ago, I had absolutely no trepidation about coming to Annapolis and setting up a tent. I have no trepidation with staying in one. If the weather gets cold, the local homeless services organization will give me warm clothes and whatever else I need. Being able to become homeless on the drop of a hat, and not caring about it one bit, is fantastic. Most people that are homeless don't like their situation, which ends up making the whole experience much, much worse than it actually is. To me, its just a free Zen retreat; in the US, Zen retreats tend to be very, very expensive. I don't think I could afford to do an actual Zen retreat right now. So thanks - I couldn't have done it otherwise, I think. I think the saving grace, so to speak, in her case, is that she is/was new to koans. I don't think she had/has any idea about the significance of needing to practice it with the same person for the entirety of the time someone is doing it, or the rarity of even been able to find someone it can even be

done with. I think she assumed, like most people do, that my life was at least somewhat like hers, and I could find another group to sit with. I don't think she knew that I would wind up homeless with a herniated disc and Pohwa Sunim would go as far as to deny me the use of the extra room at the temple. Karma is another name for "volitional, intentional action, and its result" - you have to know the significance of what you are doing and do it anyways, and she did not. Well, I assume she did not. That being said, having the conditions in life to develop Jhana is incredibly, nearly impossibly, rare. The combination of bad enough conditions to be willing to put the time and effort into meditation along with good enough conditions to actually be able to do so is so bizarrely uncommon that it would not surprise me if there is not another person alive in the US in my generation that has done it. Possibly even the greater western world. That is what I want the take away to be - that even when someone has terrible conditions in their life, meditation practice can help with that, and even make things better than they could have been otherwise, and I hope that is what comes through the most. Even without the support of the Sangha I had been with for nearly 20 years, I can still continue to develop my concentration, And continuously refine Jhana; it is not dependent on anything or anyone other than my own discipline (I had originally written "effort" here, but I don't think that is the right word to use anymore). There are a number of things I've written about in this that I don't think I've ever told someone. All the instances in my life of Weird Zen Stuff that have ever happened, except one, I have always kept to myself. Even that was with a monk that already knew about it after someone else had their own Weird Zen Stuff happen about me and they brought it up. As I have written elsewhere, I've been doing meditation for pretty close to 20 years, and in 20 years I've never said anything about any of the times it has happened to anyone. Part of the reason why is that, traditionally, Buddhists and Zen people especially aren't really into proselytizing. If nobody ever asks about it, I don't bring it up otherwise. Most (all?) of Buddhist sutras start off with someone asking Buddha a question and Buddha answering. I should be a spy or something.

Nobody has any idea what Zen or meditation is, and trying to explain it to someone that doesn't really care (or even someone that does really care, to be honest) is almost always more stress and trouble than its worth. It may even be worse to talk about it with someone that is interested, because then trying to trigger random weird stuff can become their priority with sitting, and it shouldn't be. There is also the fact that when people find out that you know stuff about them with 100% certainty that you cannot possibly know, its probably a bit frightening or even scary, especially if its stuff they want to keep hidden. What exactly am I going to do with such knowledge? Fortunately, as I said, for both myself and for whoever else the WZS is about, I don't really care about it. If at any point I wanted to meddle with someone's life as a result, I would have done it already. There have even been some instances of WZS involving the people in this that are not related to the circumstances I have personally have had with them, and as such I have not included them. I have no interest in getting involved in people's lives with stuff that does not involve me. Both in general, in the everyday sense, and when I find out something about someone as a result of meditation. It's why by and large these things happen after Jhana is so refined and effortless: getting deeply involved with other people's lives in any significant way is undesirable. My hope is that if they read this, it causes them to think twice in the future about doing such things, for their benefit and for the benefit of whoever they interact with. In the Old Testament in the bible, there was a very high importance placed on treating people you don't know well with high regards. I assume this is partially if not mainly why. You could be interacting with someone that spends all day praying (meditating) and wouldn't know. It should really be done anyways with everyone, but especially so that situations like this can't happen. If you never do anything wrong to someone, you never have to worry about WZS occuring with you. I mention the Old Testament because there are numerous times that angels from heaven would be born as human beings, similar to how in Mahayanan Buddhist doctrine/cosmology/whatever someone wants to call it, very highly attained Bodhisattvas will do the same thing (Avalokitesvara is probably the most famous

one in Buddhism, although the name will probably not mean much to anyone. Essentially Jesus. Or Jesus is essentially Avalokitesvara. either way works to me, honestly). I had mentioned earlier that if there was ever a time that the Mahayana version of the stages of enlightenment was relevant, I would include it in some way. I think this is the best time to do so, at least with one specific bhumi (bhumi roughly translates into either level or stage, similar to how in the bible there are different levels of angels. In Mahayana there are 10 of these stages once someone has initial insight into the nature of reality, and after the 10th they become a Buddha. Or God. To me the words aren't that important, to be honest). Again, from wikipedia:

The third bhūmi, the Light-Maker[edit] Tsong Khapa states that the third bhūmi is called the "Light-Maker" because when it is attained "the fire of wisdom burning all the fuel of objects of knowledge arises along with a light which by nature is able to extinguish all elaborations of duality during meditative equipoise."[7] Bodhisattvas on this level cultivate the perfection of patience. Their equanimity becomes so profound that even if someone...cuts from the body of this bodhisattva not just flesh but also bone, not in large sections but bit by bit, not continually but pausing in between, and not finishing in a short time but cutting over a long period, the bodhisattva would not get angry at the mutilator.[8] The Bodhisattva realizes that his tormentor is motivated by afflicted thoughts and is sowing seeds of his own future suffering. As a result, the bodhisattva feels not anger, but a deep sadness and compassion for this cruel person, who is unaware of the operations of karma. Trainees on the third level overcome all tendencies toward anger, and never react with hatred (or even annoyance) to any harmful acts or words. Rather, their equanimity remains constant, and all sentient beings are viewed with love and compassion: All anger and resentment rebound on the person who generates them, and they do nothing to eliminate harms that one has already experienced. They are counterproductive in that they destroy one's peace of mind and lead to unfavorable future situations. There is nothing to be gained through anger and resentment, revenge does nothing to change the past, and so the bodhisattva avoids them.

The final paragraph is the one that is most relevant to what I'm discussing here. In ancient Israel, there was a very common and widely held belief that messengers of God were continuously walking around on Earth doing the stuff God had told them to do. This is explicitly stated countless times, so much so that I'm not even going to bother looking up verses. Just google it and it will come

up, if you don't take my world for it. There are even times where it is said, I know when Moses was leading people through the desert, God himself became a person and dwelled among them. Because of this, hospitality towards people, and strangers especially was considered paramount. They were quite literally afraid that they if they didn't treat people well, they risked pissing off God himself. Which, if you take the bible as generally true (I don't mean literally true - the Earth is clearly older than 6,000 years, for an obvious example. But that there is something that is called God that is beyond typical human comprehension, that "God' had some part in starting life, the universe and everything, that there is some kind of plan put in place from before the beginning, etc.) is not an unreasonable thing to think. Again, if you take the bible as generally true, harming or disrespecting God's messengers is going to have really, really bad consequences from the Big Guy himself. The flip side, is also true, I think I should note: that acting in beneficial ways to such people would have really, really positive effects. Well, it could still happen with you, like for instance with the phrase "Why is this important," but I have a hard time imagining how that could scare, frighten, or worry someone. There are plenty of other WZS instances that have happened over the years I did not write about, since they aren't relevant to the overall purpose of this by and large. I still have no idea why those things happen when they happen, or why they happen where they happen. Or really, why they happen at all. By and large I wish it didn't happen at all; I don't like getting overly involved in other people's lives to begin with. I have no idea if there is something that triggers them or not. As far as I can tell there isn't. Or maybe there is, but the trigger would have to be unique to each time it happens (which for the most part is basically no better than them being completely spontaneous). That I don't like that this happens, and it quite often causes me discomfort, and even extreme sadness is why I don't believe in corner store fortune tellers and mediums. If someone really was able to simply meet someone and know exactly what their future was, there is a reasonable chance that whatever their future is would not be good. WZS doesn't happen (or at least it hasn't so far) with

people I've just met. It doesn't even really happen with people I've known for a long time. But even the times it has happened, and when I know someone has done something that is going to cause them bad future conditions, it isn't an easy thing to deal with. Even after doing meditation for 20 years, it isn't an easy thing to deal with. I have cried a number of times over stuff like this. A few times to the point of hysterics. It drains me, and it isn't fun. Like when people say they've met or talked with God and it's like speaking to their BFF from high school, If someone really could do what fortune tellers and mediums say they can do, with everyone they meet, they would not be able to function in daily life. They would probably go crazy. Meeting God was terrifying. Having this stuff happen, especially when its bad, but even when its good, is awful. I am actually quite comfortable in saying that I have no better idea about what Zen is and isn't now than when I first started doing it 20ish years ago. Sure, my understanding of it has changed, and in some cases, changed a lot, but like asking "what about before the beginning," those changes just lead to other questions and new sources of confusion and uncertainty. I am comfortable enough with the results of the practice to write this, if for no other reason that other people who are themselves in terrible situations in life could benefit from it. Or really, even if people who have good situations benefited from it, that would also be great. I'm not discriminating against anyone in anyway, meditation can help everyone.