nojazz

The real problem was that the air was too thin.

Too thin to breathe.
Too thin to talk.
Too thin even to think.

Why were we even at this altitude?

Can we go home? I asked.

The home is gone she said and tore the photo in two.

I saw both pieces fall and
I saw the ants and bugs and
grubs and mold seize and
eat and
then
gone.

great film and i'll tell you what i think of it:

http://social.richmond.com/blog/mward/2009/04/observe-and-report-review-box-office-notes/

i said but, but i meant and. and a couple of other errors. and probably inappropriate. haha

"An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." ~ Martin Buber

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanual Kant

"My little dog -- a heartbeat at my feet." ~ Edith Wharton

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals" ~ Anonymous

"Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!" ~ Theophile Gautier

"A dog is the only thing on earth that will love you more than you love yourself." ~ Josh Billings

"If I have any beliefs about immortality it is that certain dogs I know will go to heaven, and very very few people." ~ James Thurber

"Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled" ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"The dog represents all that is best in man." ~ Etienne Charlet

"...he will be our friend for always and always and always." ~ Rudyard Kipling

at least the most popular hit is positive...

The car's here, ready tomorrow. I've been practicing waving to Jeeps. <grin>

New York was great, I didn't see anyone playing sax. There was a guy with a sax case, but no sax to be seen. There was an entire band set up inside the pay zone of the subway, sweet. But no saxophone. The song by Fear still kept rolling through my head, as I roamed the subway platforms near Times Square and strolled through the financial district, which, by the way, reminded me a lot of European cities. The buildings in Prague are shorter, the streets in Warsaw are longer, and all look quite a bit older, but the layout of the streets, short streets, winding streets, every direction, etc. It's probably just because I grew up in a Mormon planned settlement, with streets set on a rectilinear grid, each of them wide enough for a team of horses to turn in. I'd probably feel the same way in any older city. Denver, Houston, SF, SLC, Las Vegas, all are set up on grids, it seems so natural to me, with plenty of room in the numbering system for yet another new building between almost every existing building. But it certainly isn't the only way to build a city.

New York is great. I gotta go back someday. The list of things that I wanted to do and didn't have time to do... Or money! You could dissipate a fortune having fun in New York. I never felt so cool in my life as when I thought I might have a job in Manhattan.

Whatever that can be burnt, should be burnt. Whatever cannot be readily consumed by fire should be smashed and put through the fire before dumping into the trash-can.

a field of fireworks, lions dancing through the smoke. sitting still, moving slow, stumbling through the simplest forms.

a yellow jeep rolling across the country, a dollar on the sidewalk and back out the window to another on the same path. the new year and the work has begun. freedom from desire, freedom from anger, freedom from delusion, and freedom from bondage.

when the fire has done its work, the crops can grow again. all praise to the cell, to the prison, to those who imprison, and to those who reside in or are cast out of that prison.

praise the lotus, whose pristine petals rise from sewage, showing our true nature. praise the pain and praise the joy!

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men

I went to the monastery looking for relief. I was in the middle of a terrible grief and while every person manages to deal with grief, I somehow could not find it within myself to let go.

The monastery that I found was a Thai Buddhist temple named Wat Bodhiyana in Las Vegas, Nevada, a city known for it's lights more than it's enlightenment. But a friend of mine knew of a monk there, Ajahn Chalee, who was willing to teach students how to meditate.

The monastery itself, was a 3 bedroom house in the middle of Las Vegas. In what was originally the living room, there was a raised dais along the wall, with big statue of the Buddha, surrounded by flowers (real and artificial), at one end. The rest of the dais had 5 cushions in a row, for the monks to sit on, one per cushion of course, during chanting and ceremonies.

The three bedrooms were used by 3 of the monks. Another monk slept in the temple room. Outside the house sat a two story storage shed, the upper story of which was a small room and a bathroom. No hot water though. I stayed in this small room. The back yard contained a large concrete patio, with a kidney shaped pool, filled in with rocks. A small container garden and two tents in the midst of some large bushes lay at the back of the yard. One tent was Ajahn Chalee's, the other was a guest tent.

My first morning at the monastery, I woke at four in the morning, and dressed myself in white pants and white shirt. Traditionally, meditation students wear all white clothes. I was told that there are two reasons for this: because white is a symbol of purity, and because white clothing gets dirty quickly unless you are very careful, so it promotes mindfulness, a core value of Buddhist meditation.

The official beginning of my retreat would start with the ritual acceptance of the training rules. I got ready for the ritual and waited for Chalee to come. Chalee came into the monastery from the garden. I am not sure if he lives there all year round, but the entire time I was there, he sat most of the night in a small tent in the garden. A tent too small to lay down in, just big enough to sit in. He had a small indoor room as well, but he just used it for storage, as far as I could tell.

He came into the monastery with a crash. The sliding glass patio door was closed and in the pre-dawn darkness, he didn't see it. So there was a huge crash and then the sound of the door sliding open and him laughing. He came in with a huge smile on his face, and a bird flew out of his hand toward me. I ducked as the bird flew toward me, then wheeled away into the room.

Chalee sat on a raised dais, and we performed the ceremony. It is all in an ancient Indian language called Pali, like most of the ceremonial chanting done in the temple. Sometimes there are passages in Thai, I think translations from the Pali, so that the Thai community members will understand some of the key points of the rites. The ceremony completed, he went back to his tent, and I stayed in the temple and practiced walking very slowly and sitting very still, while trying really hard not to think about how much I missed my son and my wife.

The monks described meditation as a process of cleaning your mind, of purification. "Let go and be happy," one monk would say to me. I mostly did two kinds of meditation while I was at the monastery, walking and sitting meditation.

Walking meditation is simple. Simply let your mind rest on the sensation of walking. Feel your left foot lift, move forward, and drop. Feel your right foot lift, move forward, and drop. Again. When your mind wanders, and it will, bring it gently back. Cultivate interest in the feeling of walking. Pay attention to every detail of the movement. Feel the way your toes move when your foot lifts. Feel every moment of every step. Each one is as unique as a snowflake, and together they are as similar as grains of rice.

If you are walking in a circle, feel the way your ankles turn as you change direction. If you are walking back and forth, when you come to one end, stop and feel your body standing, the minute shifts in your body that are needed to stay erect. See your mind consider turning, watch your feet and ankles move to turn, feel yourself stand for a moment, see your mind consider walking again, and then walk again.

Sitting meditation is a little simpler. Sit. Breathe into your abdomen and be aware of the physical movement and changes of sensation in your abdomen. Feel as your abdomen rises. Feel as your abdomen falls. Do it again. When your mind wanders, and it will, trust me, gently bring it back. It helps, especially in the beginning, to use mental labels: "rising" and "falling", to keep your mind on the object of meditation.

The lessons that I received from Chalee were simple. He would slowly walk, and I would walk by his side. After about a half hour, he would motion for me to sit. I would sit down in a chair and he would sit in a chair next to me. We would sit for about a half hour. That was the bulk of it. He would tell me to be aware of all things. I would sometimes ask him what I should do if I had some difficulty. The answer was invariably: pay attention to it. The greatest teaching that he provided, however, was simply his style of life. He demonstrated, every day, what non-attachment looks like, in the way he lived. I wish I could describe it, but words fail me.

Every day some family in the community would bring food for the monks and me to eat. The entire time, I only had dishes that I recognized from Thai restaurants a handful of times. I would try to stay in the present moment with the process of eating food, just as I would with walking or sitting. Eating became meditation.

One time I ate ant eggs. That was difficult. I thought that the dish was greens with small white beans, but as I got to the bottom of the bowl that contained my portion, the egg shells around what I thought were beans became broken and large white ants were looking up at me. I felt my revulsion rise as I ate them. After I finished that dish, I immediately ate something more familiar, some sausage, and felt much better.

During the course of the month, I slowly let go of many things to which I had been clinging. I found that in meditation, I would sometimes see mental tension which indicated clinging and suffering and by simply watching it very carefully, it would slowly ease. My progress was very slow, since I was thinking about how much I missed my wife and son most of the time (clinging), but little by little, I was able to make progress in developing deeper and deeper awareness of the present moment and what was happening inside of me in that moment.

I found that by simply watching the mental activity associated with desire, the power of desire was lessened. The same thing with watching aversion. I cannot say that I conquered these "defilements" as the Buddha called them, but I definitely saw them decrease in intensity.

One challenge that I faced in being in the present moment, was my natural inclination to think and analyze continuously. I started to watch that as well, and was surprised to find that most of my thoughts were just repetitions of earlier thoughts. One of the monks would come to me, and tell me that I should stop thinking if I wanted to make more progress. I asked him how is it possible to stop thinking. He laughed and asked how is it possible to stop eating? Of course, we must think, it is what makes us human, but it is just one of many faculties at our disposal, and I was burying myself in my thoughts. With practice, I have found that I can quiet this internal voice with a little effort.

Another challenge that I faced was motivation to meditate. The first week was easy, I just did it. After the first week, I started to become more comfortable, and found myself spending more and more time talking to the monks about theoretical aspects of meditation and the mind-body complex. I felt that I had plenty of time to meditate, and what did it matter if I talked for a half hour here and a half hour there? These half hours really started to add up. Fortunately, as soon as I noticed that this was a problem for me, a woman came to the temple and asked for meditation lessons. One of the monks asked me to teach her. I was surprised, because what could I teach her? I was a student myself. He assured me that it didn't matter, that I could just show her what I was doing. She came every single day after that, for two weeks, and would practice meditation with me for 2 or 3 hours each morning. Since I was her "teacher", I had to meditate when she was there, and so I was able to use her discipline to my advantage.

Did spending a month in a monastery help me? I don't know if it was the month or the monastery, but I got through a great deal of the grief. What else? I became friends with the bird that I met on the first day. I have a greater acceptance of the world as it is. I have let go of some of my desires and aversions. As for delusion? Still a long way to go, if you measure it by the number of times you can read the word "I" in this report.