we shall call you... Optimus

I’m a utilitarian when it comes to stuff, especially cars. The last time I bought a car was 12 years ago. It was my first car. His name is Mitsu. I still drive it. He’s been my faithful road buddy ever since. He’s been good to me. He protected me from accidents, and still in top condition. If it’s just me, I’ll keep him until he turns to dust. But the reality is that he can no longer serve my our needs as a family. With the addition of our little buddha we soon need a baby-friendly ride. So out we went yesterday to finally get our dream car.

We’ve been eyeing the 2010 Toyota Prius for some time now. I’ve been reading reviews, looking at pricing, all the while salivating. That’s why it didn’t take us long to decide to drive off with one from the dealer. We ended up buying a 2010 T0yota Prius IV Hybrid (with a cool Blue Ribbon Metallic color). I picked the Prius IV package because of the solar sun roof and navigation options.

I was nervous buying a new car. I’m no longer used to paying monthly car payments. But we bit the bullet because of our need for it and, of course, to spoil ourselves after working our asses off. Fortunately, we got a really good deal on the base price. Considering the additional options, we got it for about $1K less than invoice (based on the TMV Pricing via Edmunds). Sweet.

The next thing for me to do is to RTFM (read the friggin’ manual) and watch some 2010 Prius hybrid driving tips so I can start driving our new car with ease. With its 51/48 MPG rating, I’ll be spending a lot of joy riding with this rock star of the hybrid world. My wife loves it and I’m sure that our little buddha will appreciate the smooth, safe, and environmentally-friendly ride.

We like to name our cars. We treat them as if they’re our friends. So from this day forward, we shall call our new road buddy… Optimus.

P.S. Here’s a good review from CNET.

(via Flickr ~ wignaz)

In my previous posts I transcribed tracks from Session 13 of The Science of Enlightenment. Session 13 is one of my favorite sessions in the series because it’s a good reminder for everyone who are consciously taking a spiritual path.

In this post I’ve transcribed the last three tracks in the session. This is the part where Shinzen Young described in detail three possible extreme reactions or attitudes of people in the Intermediate Realms of Power.

Before reading my transcription below, if you haven’t read my previous posts yet, I suggest that you read them first so you can appreciate this post from a bigger context. Here are the links to the previous tracks that I have transcribed.

The Science of Enlightenment: The Pathless Land

The Science of Enlightenment: Consciousness as a Three-Layered Cake

The following are last the three tracks on Session 13. I hope this helps you along your journey. May you be safe, be healthy, live with ease… and may Happiness be.

Session 13: Track 4 – Relating to Your Intermediate Realms

As I mentioned, in my book, the yardstick, the barometer of spiritual maturity lies in how one conceives of and relates to the phenomena of this Intermediate Realm. I can suggest to you that there are three extreme cases and an infinity of intermediate cases.

One extreme relationship to the phenomena of the Intermediate Realm is as follows. A person starts out on the surface like everyone, either because of a cultivated path, or simply spontaneously, or perhaps because of some condition like and illness or being expose to sleep deprivation or hot or cold or who knows what — drugs. For whatever reason a person turns 90 degrees from the surface and starts to go down a bit into the substance of consciousness. They go down a bit and they encounter some phenomenon that may be unusual. It may be strange, and they get frightened, and they say, “That is not for me. I don’t ever want to go back to that place.” So one extreme response or relationship to this intermediate realm is, you go down a little bit you freak out, you scramble back to the surface, and you stay on dry land, you stay on that surface for the rest of your life, and you do not go back there.

A second extreme relationship, once again for whatever reason, either through a cultivated path or some circumstance, or spontaneously due to random flow of probabilities, for whatever reason you have an experience when you go into the substance of consciousness below the surface. Start to move towards the source, something happens, and you like it. It’s interesting. It’s empowering. It’s enticing. You say, “This is for me. I want to learn about this.” You start to explore. But the way that you explore is not by going any deeper. You turn 90 degrees again and you begin to go out horizontally out into the phenomena of that realm. Now you start to go out and explore this rich, empowering, interesting world of special phenomena — kundalini energy, psychic powers. I think you can see that the range of phenomena that constitute that realm is pretty much the range of mainline New Age stuff. That’s the New Age material down there. There’s no end. Once you go out horizontally there’s no end to new stuff you can experience — more interesting stuff, more powerful stuff, weirder stuff. The problem is you think you’re making spiritual progress. You think you’re getting closer to the spiritual source. But in this extreme case you are not, and you don’t know it. And your followers don’t know it. Because the vocabulary that you use is almost indistinguishable from the vocabulary used by the people that are going the mainline plummeting straight down to the source without following any byways horizontally out. The vocabulary is almost indistinguishable. The concepts is almost indistinguishable. It’s all spiritually correct stuff. And this is one of the reasons why teachers are very useful, if not absolutely necessary. Only somebody that has traversed those realms can really distinguish whether you’re going on a horizontal path out into the powers or whether you’re following a direct line to the spiritual source.

Session 13: Track 5 – Problems with the Realms of Power

There are a number of problems with this whole New Age phenomenology. Of course New Age is just a late 20th century term for something that has been recognized and known for millennia. In the Buddhist terminology it is sometimes called the Realms of Power. The surface ordinary awareness is referred to in traditional Buddhism as the Nirmanakaya — which means kaya, the body of appearance. The phenomena in the intermediate realm are called the Sambhogakaya — which means the body of glory. And the Source is called the Dharmakaya — the body of the Absolute, or the supporter, dharma means that which supports. So they talk about the three kaya, or three bodies. Every buddha has three bodies — nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya — because every buddha, every fully enlightened man or woman, has experience in each of these three realms.

So here are the problems with the phenomena of the Realms of Power. The first and foremost is, because the realms of power are near the Source, if you get caught up in the appearances in the realms of power, you’re losing this wonderful opportunity to have a direct experience of the Source. You have to be able to see through those phenomena just like you have to be able to see through the phenomena of conventional reality. That’s the first problem. The second problem of course is, this whole aspect of turning 90 degrees again and going out into exploring these realms, because as I say without knowing it you could think that you are on a spiritual path and you could convince others that this is a spiritual path. When in fact it is literally parallel to the movement that people make on the surface of consciousness which is a movement of statis. When we move on the surface of consciousness we get statis. Basically the same trip that’s why this phenomena, this extreme case of going out horizontally is sometimes referred to as “spiritual materialism.”

The other problem is for every person that is interested in traversing the vertical path to the Source, there are a thousand people that are interested in the ego ornaments of the realms of power. So the ration is about a thousand to one in terms of where people’s money goes, where their time and energy goes, who they’re likely to follow on a spiritual path. The more you have a component of the powers, the more likely you are to attract a lot of people and to make money.

Another extreme, the third extreme, I’ve already obviously implied what it is: You go straight down. Whatever comes up you just view with mindfulness and equanimity. If nothing special happens, you pay attention to the ordinary. If something special happens and it’s frightening and painful, you view it with mindfulness and equanimity. If something special happens and it’s blissful and gives you special powers, you view it with mindfulness and equanimity. You make no distinctions. It’s a zero-tolerance policy. It also represents a certain extreme. In general, the Buddhist tradition would prefer that people follow that extreme. However, I should say that I have had teachers whose main interest was the special powers, BUT from a certain context.

I live with this teacher in Taiwan for almost a year, just he and I living together. He was a total Taoist Tantric Wizard. His entire interest was in the spirit realm and getting powers, BUT that interest had developed after his enlightenment. Why he had that interest was, within his culture and given his educational background, that was the best way he could help people — by curing their illnesses, by locating runaway children with psychic powers, by exorcising people that have been demonically possessed (which I saw him doing. very fascinating. Chinese possession phenomena, culturally quite different from Western possession phenomena). In any event, he cultivated all this stuff because that was part of his path of engagement to help other people. It wasn’t he was particularly interested for himself. He was liberated. He lived in the Source.

In the Buddhist tradition, if you’re interested in this stuff, it’s ok to put a lot of time and energy into it AFTER you have contacted the Source. Because after you have contacted the Source all of this phenomena take on such a different context. You realize where it really comes from. And until you have realized where it really comes from, there’s every probability that you’re going to develop problems in your relationship to these powers, which will then translate into problems in relationship with your fellow human beings.

We have three extremes:

You go down a little way, you encounter this stuff, you freak out, and you pop back up.

You go down a little way, you encounter this stuff, you get interested, and you go out into the world of exploration.

The third extreme: You go down and whatever you encounter you view it with mindfulness, equanimity, and a cognizance of its impermanence, and you just auger, auger, deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until you touch the Source. And you have direct experience of where both the surface and the intermediate zone come from.

Session 13: Track 6 – The Ascent of St. John of the Cross

Ascent of Mt. Carmel - English Translation of the Terms Used in St. John the Cross' Original Drawings

A good historical example of the third extreme, from the Western tradition, is St. John of the Cross. He was a great Christian mystic-poet. lived in the 16th century in Spain. He used the model of going up rather than going down but the idea is the same. He described the path to God as Subida Del Monte Carmelo (The Ascent of Mt. Carmel). He belonged to the Carmelite order of Christianity, which is one of the main meditating orders in the Roman Catholic tradition. He drew a picture (and we actually have the picture that he himself drew) of this Mt. Carmel — different stages that you go through as you’re ascending. And of course, the peak of Mt. Carmel is Dios, it’s God. Except he didn’t write Dios on the peak. Here’s what he wrote: At each stage of going up this mountain, he wrote Nada, Nada, Nada, Nada. And on the very top he wrote Y El Monte Nada. And at the peak also you’re going to experience Nada. Nothing, ok. But of course, the Nada of that peak is a very special nothing: the Zero of which you have heard me speak, many, many times. That’s the Nada that is Todo. And with this picture is a poem in Spanish. And I’m paraphrasing, I can’t remember either in Spanish or in English the exact thing that he said but it is something to the effect of: If you want to climb this mountain, you cannot let yourself be frightened by the beasts, neither can you stop to pick any flowers. It’s exactly the description of a really mature relationship to the intermediate realm — Not frightened by the beasts, but you’re not picking any flowers either.

(via Flickr ~ noblerobinette)

In my previous post I transcribed Session 13: Track 1 – The Pathless Land of The Science of Enlightenment series. In that talk Shinzen Young uses a metaphor of a “three-layered cake” to describe the journey from the surface of consciousness to the Source of consciousness. In this post I’ve transcribed the next two tracks so that readers would have more context of what Shinzen is talking about, and have more understanding of the usefulness of the three-layered cake metaphor.

Personally, I find that metaphor very useful as a conceptual model for my own practice. In this session Shinzen treated paranormal phenomena as if they were real, but without elevating them — a true sign of a matured teacher. Shinzen’s articulate description of the Intermediate Realms is an important reminder to everyone who are on a spiritual path.

I hope you find this teaching useful as you tread along the pathless land…

Session 13: Track 2 – Three Layers of Consciousness

Basically I like to think of three layers, although of course there are many subdivisions. The first layer is none other than surface consciousness — ordinary waking, consensual reality. The second layer is rather thick. It corresponds to what in the West is called, the subconscious and the unconscious. And then the third layer is not really a layer, but that’s where the metaphor gets a little misleading. But we could, for simplicity’s sake, think of it at least initially as a layer.

The third layer is, of course, the core of consciousness, the Source of consciousness. If you want to call that God, you can call that God. If you want to call that the Nature of Nature, you can call it the Nature of Nature. If you want to call it Brahma, which is the Sanskrit word for God, or if you want to call it the Tao, or if you want to call it the True Self, or the No Self — any of these words are completely legitimate.

The words don’t matter. The important thing, of course, is to have direct contact with it — direct contact as opposed to indirect contact. Nothing wrong with indirect contact, but it really doesn’t bring the satisfaction that direct contact brings. Indirect contact is when we think about our spiritual Source — we believe in it, we have certain ideas about it. Indirect contact is when we feel at an emotional level our spiritual Source — we have a sense of the numinous, we have a sense of piety, of Grace. That’s believing, feeling, it’s all great. But that’s indirect contact. If we want to have direct contact it means we have to go there. Where the confusion lies, in many cases, is with the experiences that a person has in the Intermediate Realms of consciousness — between the surface and the Source.

In those intermediate realms of consciousness one may experience various unusual phenomena. When we look at how these unconscious and subconscious has been dealt with in the West, it’s very revealing. If you look at the early history of analysis, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, you have, on one hand, Freud who spoke about the unconscious as this dark cellar, wherein all of these ghosts and demons and cobwebs and snakes and centipedes are hiding — the repressed poison and pain of our life, this pool of poison and pain of unresolved past experiences and conflicts. There is a certain truth to this. The basic impurities — the cravings, the aversions, etc. — are sort of stored down there. And in fact, it is the existence of those impurities that forms the impeding material that prevents surface ordinary awareness from constantly touching the Source of consciousness. And so from that perspective, the path is not really a journey, but rather it is a cleaning out of that intervening material, so that the surface and the Source fall together. When we shine the lights of mindfulness, and when we pour the water of equanimity into any experience that brightness and softening agents seep down into those areas where the blockages are and things get clarified and dissolved. And so the surface gets closer and closer to the Source. It drops one quantum shelf after another, until finally there’s a touching, and that’s your initial moment of enlightenment. And from that time on, in ordinary life, one is always aware that ordinary experience is in contact with the spiritual Source of all things.

Another view of the unconscious though, would be exemplified by Carl Jung. For Jung the unconscious was the world of the archetypes — the world of the spirits, the world wherein angels and dead ancestors, entities, and spirit beings actually exist, for real. And it’s quite true. Some people when they make this journey from surface to Source encounter extraordinary experiences in that intermediate realm. Not only might they encounter spirit beings and entities, but they might have other kinds of unusual experiences such as the impression that they have psychic powers. Whether these powers exist in actuality or not, I don’t begin to comment. But one can certainly get a very strong impression that they exist. One may have experiences of seeming to leave the body — a literally floating out of the body and looking down and floating down the street and seeing what you’re neighbor is doing. One may have experiences not only of encountering entities but of having these entities sort of channel through one. One may seem to have the ability to heal, or to influence people, or to even know what people are thinking. One may seem to have the ability to know what’s about to happen. Do we really have these abilities? Can we really do these things in the objective world? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. But the impression can be extremely vivid and strong, and therefore it is significant. It is significant.

It is of the utmost importance to realize that by no means does everyone encounter such unusual experiences or special powers when they traverse that intermediate realm. Also, it is to realize that by no means does everyone encounter directly the monsters of their impurities when they traverse that realm. Some people traverse the whole intermediate realm from surface to Source and are never aware of anything other than very ordinary banal experiences like the touch of their clothes, or aches and pains in their body, or the feeling of the breath. That’s all that ever happens to them, and yet they’re able to go to the Source.

Basically, some people have very ordinary experiences for the whole path. Some people get weird and uncomfortable — events in the mind, body, and even visionary hallucinatory material. Some people get interesting, unusual, entertaining, empowering experiences. Sometimes you can have a mixture of both — unusually hellish and unusually celestial experiences, both may be involved as you traverse this path. So there’s a lot of possibilities. Different people have very different experiences in the intermediate realm.

Session 13: Track 3 – The Creative Nature of Impermanence

However, how one relates to these experiences is of the utmost importance, whatever the experience may be in terms of what we might call, “spiritual maturity.” And in fact, the gold standard, the litmus test for spiritual maturity, in my book, is related to how a person conceives of the events in that intermediate realm. The spiritually mature person treats all events in that intermediate realm exactly the same. They greet them with mindfulness and equanimity. The spiritually immature person develops cravings and aversions with respect to the phenomena of the intermediate realm. They have fears of certain unusual experiences, desire for other certain unusual experiences. They have fear they won’t have any unusual experience. One way or another there’s all sorts of preferences, cravings, and aversions that can develop with respect to possible phenomena in the intermediate realm. As I say, the mark of maturity is how the person conceives of that intermediate realm.

There’s a famous Zen story about a monk who is meditating and started to get real successful at his meditation so that he could actually sit for hour after hour and, in fact, day after day without even having to move. He got so deep in meditation that even the gods started to admire him. Now, of course, in that part of the world what they call the “gods” we might say corresponds in the West to like angels and saints and that kind of thing. After a little while these angels and saints would show up every day and shower flowers on his head and give him offerings and things like that. And this went on for several days, and then finally he just grabbed his stick and he whacked them all and he said, “Get out of here! I’m tired of you guys!” That’s one response, okay. What did that mean, whacking them and saying “get out of here”? And is in fact, that’s the whole answer to this issue of these phenomena. Well, I would suggest to you that’s part of the answer, but that might not be the whole answer.

In my own experience, after I’d been meditating for about five or six years, I started to have visionary material, very intensely. One of the interesting things about visionary material is that once it gets going it’s not necessarily limited to when you’re sitting in formal practice. That’s something that people that go through this phenomenon discover to their chagrin. Once it gets going it’s there all your waking hours often. So that means when you’re just walking around or whatever you’re seeing stuff all day. And in my case it was mostly, but not exclusively, giant insects. And they were very realistic. It’s not like seeing a static image. It moves with all of the motion of a living being. The perfect arthropod articulatory motion that you would find in an actual creature. These things, they move and they were extremely vivid. We say visionary material but I should say you can touch and hear and smell it too. That’s what I meant when I said that it’s extremely realistic, whatever its ultimate ontological status may be. In any event, that went on for a good year. And I was in school, I was in graduate school and I walk to school and there’d be giant grasshoppers greeting me along the path and all sorts of stuff, and I still function quite well. There’s no problem. It wasn’t like being schizophrenic or anything like that. It was just a phenomenon of that intermediate realm. It means that I had dropped into that realm and some material was coming up.

Well, what did I do? Nothing special. I just treated it like any other phenomenon. It’s visionary material, so you’d meditate on it the same way you’d meditate on the visual field. Like if the grasshopper is in front of you, as your awareness go to the upper right, to the lower left, how your visual awareness floats over the surface of the thing, and you try to look through it, not at it. So you have a certain equanimity, not to be either curious or frightened. The interesting thing is that the more mindfulness, equanimity, and cognizance of impermanence that you have relative to this kind of material, the more realistic it becomes. Not the less realistic. Until when you are able to experience these phenomena with complete equanimity and unbroken awareness, at which point paradoxically they become absolutely tangible. They become like the ordinary world. They become that vivid. At that time you might think that that’s very disconcerting, but actually it’s not disconcerting at all. Because you remember how I described the flow of impermanence.

Well, we’ve only described a few aspects of impermanence. One aspect of impermanence that I have not yet talked about is, the impermanence is not just a characteristic of consciousness. Impermanence is also the very creative flow of nature that forms and ferments phenomena into existence, moment by moment. The more mindfulness and equanimity I had with this visionary material, the more I was able to literally see how the flow of impermanence was molding that material. So at the point when I completely surrendered and allowed the flow of impermanence to expand and contract and vibrate, it was at that point that created these visions the same way it creates ordinary reality. That’s why the visions become so realistic. But you don’t freak out. In fact, quite the opposite. You have a deep insight by having seen how impermanence creates something that is obviously a hallucination. You now have insight into how ordinary experience — the surface consensual reality — comes into existence. I should say that it’s not so much that the hallucinations become real but rather what you formally called real proves itself to have certain aspects of a hallucination. You get a real insight into the creative nature of consciousness.

If one greets the phenomena that come up in this intermediate realm with mindfulness and equanimity, because the intermediate realm phenomena are closer to the Source than consensual reality, one has a wonderful opportunity to get a deep insight into the creative process — how it is that mind creates. The reason that the Zen people talk about hitting the deities when they come is that they don’t want students to miss that opportunity. They don’t want students to get tripped out on the content of that intermediate realm, and therefore, miss their golden opportunity to get an insight into the nature of consciousness — the nature of Nature. It’s a very empowering thing to have an entity come and shower you with flowers, but that is a trivial experience relative to the empowerment that you get when you understand how the Source creates all things — yourself, the flowers, the entity, the world.

The reason that in some traditions they call this intermediate realm Makyo, which means the realm of blockages, the realm of the devil actually. Ma means like the devil. The reason why such pejorative terminology is used is that it’s so easy to miss your golden opportunity. You could get so caught up in the wonder of the spirits, that you fail to realize how close those spirits are to the Great Spirit — the Source of all things. You have to look just beyond the spirits and you can see the Great Spirit. In other words, the third layer — the activity of the Source.

(UPDATE: For the concluding tracks, see The Science of Enlightenment: Intermediate Realms of Power.)

Early on I was confused by these two seemingly paradoxical approaches to enlightenment. But over the years I’ve grown comfortable to embrace the two contradictory views. In short, I’ve gotten used to the paradox. I no longer agonize over it. It’s still a paradox to me. But I prefer to view it as enlightenment by serendipity.

So whenever I say that the ultimate “goal” of my Open Practice is enlightenment, I’m very well aware of the contradictory nature of that statement. I’m aware that it’s an illusion. I’m aware that I’m setting up myself for failure. I’m aware that I’m treading on the pathless land.

Nevertheless, I carry on, keeping in mind the core lessons I’ve learned from The Science of Enlightenment. Allow me to share some of these lessons…

In Session 13 of The Science of Enlightenment series (one of my favorites in the series), Shinzen Young started out with a track entitled, The Pathless Land. In this talk, Shinzen has captured in exquisite detail my view on enlightenment.  I’ve transcribed the talk so I can share this to all readers and to encourage people to listen to the entire series. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ll be transcribing more of my favorite tracks in future posts. In the meantime, here’s a sample of how eloquent Shinzen is when describing the “path” to enlightenment. 

Session 13: Track 1 – The Pathless Land

One metaphor for spirituality is that it’s a kind of path. The particular benchmarks on that path and how one describes the starting point and the ending point of that path, and the kind of vehicles that one uses — the actual techniques and approaches that carry you down that path — may differ. And in fact, the description of the path itself may differ. Often people don’t realize that two seemingly different descriptions of the path are actually referring to the same thing. Of course there’s some troubles, some problems associated with considering spirituality as a path. It leads to some misconceptions and some pitfalls.

If we describe spirituality as a path then it immediately sets up all sorts of expectations, all sorts of cravings, all sorts of aversions — “I wanna be there”; “I’m not there” — all sorts of ignorance because the goal of the path of course is to understand where you have been all the time. In a sense when you come to the goal of the path you only realize where you’ve always been. So the length of the path that you have traversed is actually, in a sense, zero. If you start thinking about a path it creates enlightenment as an object out there and in the future, which of course is the essence of illusion itself. You’re damn if you do, and you’re damn if you don’t.

If you fail to describe this spirituality as a path people don’t have a motivation, they don’t have a direction, they’re not sensitive to the benchmarks and the signs, they don’t recognize them, they don’t know what turns to make, etc.

To teach is to inevitably mislead people, to a certain degree. Any kind of teaching, as soon as you opened your mouth, you have misled people. On the other hand, to fail to teach is to mislead people even worse.

Let’s talk about aspects of this path, understanding that to speak of it as a path has dangers and is misleading. And yet on the other hand, to speak of it as a path may be of some use.

One possible model for the path to enlightenment is to look upon it as a journey from the surface of consciousness to the Source of consciousness. A lot of times people think of spirituality sort of as turning a 180 degrees away from the world. We turn away from the world and we turn towards God. And it’s a 180-degree turn going in exactly the opposite direction. But the way that I’d like to look upon spirituality is it’s not a turning of a 180 degrees, it’s a 90-degree turn. If we consider consciousness in some way as a layered cake, which I think has some validity as a model — the Earth exist in strata; there’s the surface of the earth and then underneath that are older rocks and underneath that are older rocks and the whole structure changes as we go through successive layers. In the same way we can look upon consciousness as having different layers to it.

Our usual ordinary day to day experiences — the world in which we have to sort of take care of business; subject and object are separate; we’re inside time and space; we have only the ordinary human type experiences that constitute what we might call consensual reality. And so our day to day life can be looked upon as sort of moving over the surface of consciousness — the different kinds of experiences we have in daily life: ordinary reality.

When we start to meditate we turn 90 degrees. Instead of moving just along the surface of consciousness we start to move down into consciousness. Actually, passing through successive layers in its structure. So we’re moving into the mind, into consciousness. By consciousness I mean, of course, just the six senses. Hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, the feeling body, and the thinking mind are the six doors of consciousness. And collectively, taken together, we can use the word consciousness to describe the collective of these six senses. We’re starting to go into consciousness rather than moving on the surface of consciousness. It’s a kind of journey from the surface of consciousness to the Source of consciousness. In doing so, we pass through successive strata or layers of consciousness, encounter different kinds of phenomena.

(UPDATE: For the continuation, see The Science of Enlightenment: Consciousness as a Three-Layered Cake.)

Last year I had 2,703 posts, so I only added 39 posts this year. That’s an average of 3.25 posts, per month! In previous years that was my average, per day! So I definitely slowed down with my blogging, and switched high-gear on (hyper)streaming (case in point: I currently have 8,626 tweets and counting.)

So does this mean I’m losing my passion and compassion with blogging? I don’t think so. The passion and compassion that drives this blog is still there, it was just channeled into this section of my site -> http://www.c4chaos.com/hyperstream

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post I’ll be reserving my blog for longer posts–more focused distillation of ideas, information, and opinion. For those who are following my blog, you’ve noticed by now that my focus this year is my Open Practice. This is because my (meditation) practice became central to my life this year and for years to come. Thanks to Shinzen Young, Daniel Ingram, and my friends at Buddhist Geeks. I believe that I have found the teacher I’ve been looking for all these years.

Also, this year is one of the most memorable for me because ~myDakini and me are expecting to have our little buddha soon. So expect me to switch my focus to parenting starting early next year. In fact, I’ve already started This year was also my first time to vote. And I’m glad that the guy I voted for won. And oh, I’ve decided to get rid of my public speaking phobia too, so I joined Toastmasters.

From a bigger perspective though, this year has been full hardships for a lot of people due to the financial crisis, housing foreclosures, health care issues, continuing wars, swine flu scare, and natural calamities around the world. But as much as I empathize with those, I’m also grateful for all the blessings and lessons I continue to receive in this lifetime. Thank you for your attention and time.

May all of us be safe, be healthy, live with ease… and may Happiness be.

waking up in a nation of immigrants

I just finished delivering my Toastmasters Speech #1: The Ice Breaker. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from my fellow club members. They enjoyed the flow of the story, the topic, the humor, and the overall presentation. I was also voted as best speaker for the day. Sweet. This gives me confidence to carry on and be the best speaker I can be

Below is the text of my Ice Breaker speech. It was from my old blog post. I re-wrote it in speech form and edited it to fit the 6-minute time limit. Looking forward to more public speeches.

“Ang di marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay di makararating sa paroroonan.” [Translation: "He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.]”
~ Dr. Jose P. Rizal (Philippine National Hero)

I remember it like it was yesterday…

“We don’t have stick-shifts here,” said the guy on the front desk.

“Oh, ok. Fine. I’ll take automatic. Economy, please.”

I could still smell the “brand new” scent of my first rental car. It was a 1997 Hyundai Accent GT from Enterprise. It took me a while to pull out of the parking lot because I didn’t know I had to step on the darn brake so I could shift the darn gear. I felt stupid that morning.

So there I was, my first time driving an automatic transmission on Interstate-90 on my way to Arlington Heights, IL.  I was overwhelmed. Where I come from the roads were narrower, the traffic lanes were imaginary, and cars moved bumper to bumper.

Ahh, so this is how it feels like driving on the freeway. Cool.

Then a motorist honked and gave me the finger. I think it was his way of saying that I was too slow merging with the traffic. I just shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, Welcome to America, live long and prosper.

It took me two hours and a couple of gas station stops before I found my hotel, Red Roof Inn. Thanks to the crappy rental car map.  As soon as I entered my room I put my belongings aside, took a deep breath, and plunged myself on the bed. Suddenly, reality hit me. For the first time in my life I was alone, away from my family, away from my friends, away from all the people I know. I was a complete stranger in this place. I just moved into a foreign land with only a suitcase full of clothes and a box of books. I wanted to just lay there and wallow in sadness… But there was no time for melodrama. I was hungry. All I could think of was, Now where can I buy a pizza? I ate pizza for the next two days.

Fast forward ten years later… After working for different companies as an IT consultant; after toiling on different projects including the infamous Y2K bug; after moving from Schaumburg, Illinois to Boulder, Colorado and to Kirkland, Washington; after being a good law-abiding citizen who paid his taxes on time — I found myself in a room full of people from all over the world–more than thirty countries all in all. It felt surreal. I was with ninety-nine people raising our right hands in front of the Red, White, and Blue flag, renouncing our citizenship from the country where we were born, taking our pledge of allegiance with the United States of America (so help me God). I was neither sad for renouncing my citizenship nor ecstatic for gaining a new one. But I felt a sense of gratitude for being granted special privileges, like voting in the most powerful Democratic nation in the world, and being able to travel more freely to other countries with no restrictions (except maybe Iraq, Afghanistan, or Cuba).

And so, on April 2nd, 2007, on a Holy Monday morning, I woke up as a Filipino. And in the evening I went to sleep as an adopted citizen of this great Nation of Immigrants. I may have taken an oath, signed some papers, received a fancy certificate, got a hi-tech blue passport, but to be honest I don’t feel any different. Why? Because I’ve always considered myself as a citizen of the world. And during my lucid moments, I’m also reminded that I’m neither this body, nor this mind, nor any nationality… But that, my friends, is a topic for another story.

Over the years I’ve done my share of passionate blogging on the topic of Climate Change (Global Warming) in particular, and the Environment in general. I don’t have anything new to add from what I’ve expressed before. So allow me to re-cycle and just link to some of my selected posts on the issue of Climate Change.

The 5-Point Climate Change Belief Scale

Open-Ended Gut Thinking On Global Warming

The Hot Politics of Global Warming

IQ2 Debate: Global Warming is Not a Crisis

Jared Diamond: Taking the Middle Way of Environmentalism

Energy Technology in a Post-American World

I’ve selected the above posts because they represent my open-ended belief on the issue of Climate Change. Go ahead and read the links within the links. I hope you find them informative and useful. If not, then, it is what is.

A Prayer for Universal Health Care

However, this whole health care reform debacle is frustrating the hell out of me. Republicans have no interest in reforming health care, except to block any progress towards universal coverage, while some Democrats don’t have the spine to stand up to special interests groups and lobbyists from threatened health insurance companies. Most of the so-called debates on mainstream media go on tangent and degenerate into name-calling (”socialists”, “fascists”), racism, and outright lying. And then there’s Rep. Joe “Lyin’ Wilson and the useless Baucus bill which is not even worth the paper it’s printed on. And it just goes on, and on, and on, and on…

Meanwhile, millions of Americans either continue to have no health insurance or are underinsured.

But what frustrates me the most is that the mainstream media gives more airtime (and print space) to the insane and ignorant people — politicians, celebrities, and radical (or more accurately, crazy) fringe groups on both left and right — who have nothing useful to add to the health care reform. Instead of solutions, insights, and wisdom, the media highlights confusions, ignorance, and political food fights. No wonder a lot (if not most) of Americans are drowning in the sea of cacophony when it comes to the issue of universal health coverage.

Fortunately, there are people out there who are doing their best to inject some sanity into the health care reform issue. One of them is journalist T.R. Reid, author of the book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. Below is a video of T.R. Reid on FORA.TV (watch the whole program here). Listen to what he has to say. It will make you think deeply and wonder what’s keeping the U.S. from extending health care for all.

Finally, whether you believe that health care is a fundamental human right, or otherwise, I highly recommend watching T.R. Reid’s PBS FRONTLINE documentary, Sick Around the World. Go figure.

May we all be safe, happy, healthy, and live with ease. Here’s a prayer for universal health care.

ADDENDUM 09/20/09: Here’s another informative Q&A interview with T.R. Reid on C-SPAN. T.R. Reid should be getting more airtime on CNN, MSNBC, or even FOX, instead of those bumbling politicians and lunatics at the fringes…