7.02 A wallet dropped behind some school bleachers was found and returned to a man after 63 years. He was amazed and said, "Where has all the time gone?" A new clutch of barnyard sparrow chicks has hatched in the balcony nest. No sooner had the former chicks left the nest (see photos) than the parents began preparing the nest for the next generation. While the chicks were perched on the balcony rail, looking out at the world for the first time, the mother was already occupied in refurbishing the nest.
7.03 A mild burning sensation around my eyes has intensified lately. It helps to distract attention from this irritation by some physical activity such as hiking or trail maintenance. The worst thing is to compound the pain by imagining dire long term prospects about it, causing mental distress in addition to physical distress. There is a story in the Bahiya Sutta (Udana book of the Khuddaka Nikaya) about an elderly religious seeker named Bahiya who realized he had not reached enlightenment in spite of years of practice, and so feeling an urgent need, traveled to where the Buddha was staying. He was so desperate to see the Buddha that when he arrived at the town, he went straight to find him on his morning alms round. The Buddha told him that this was not a suitable time, but Bahiya persisted, saying that the time of his death was not certain. Then the Buddha said, "Bahiya, for you the seen is only the seen, the heard is only the heard, the known is only the known. When you understand that you are not in this or with this, you will find peace." Later that same day Bahiya was killed by a cow with her young calf. When the Buddha's disciples asked about Bahiya's fate, the Buddha said that he had died enlightened. There are two morals to this story for me. First, pain is only pain, not to be taken personally. Second, time is precious, not a day should be wasted. Today the effort must be made.
7.05 My main computer has been upgraded from the HP-DV5 laptop to an HP-Elite desktop. Team Mulberry Treehouse at Rosetta@home has added a new member. Now there are five of us, each required to have a unique email address. We are: jwleaf the founder (now with Juan but inactive, a Gateway laptop, jw at jwleaf.org); jwleaf2 (HP-DV5 laptop, williswhoa at yahoo.com); jwleaf3 (ASUS Eee netbook, jonathan at andarivel.org); jwleaf4 (HP-Elite desktop, jonathan at jwleaf.org); and dza (nephew Dan with a laptop). If anyone else (Jesus? Fabian? Daniel? Brothers and Sisters? Friends?) would like to join this team, you are cordially invited. When you choose your username at Rosetta@home, you can select any handle you like.
7.11 I have made a request to participate in the Personal Genome Project headed by George Church at Harvard Medical School. This morning my internet access was unexpectedly suspended for a cooling off period of five minutes because of excessive bandwidth usage, probably due to recent uploads of my library of photos to a backup site. The problem started when ftp access to my domain jwleaf.org was interrupted one recent afternoon for unknown reasons. Therefore I decided to open an unlisted account with picasaweb to obtain an alternate backup location for my photo albums in full resolution (my public picasaweb albums are all low resolution for faster display). The warning message that popped up on my screen surprised me. I did not realize that my bandwidth usage was monitored and subject to a limit. This is a timely reminder to spend less time on internet.
7.12 Over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with taking breakfast with me up the hill to eat there after sunrise, but I have concluded it is better to wait until returning to the apartment. Preparing the food, packing it, carrying it, carrying or not carrying water, eating it and bringing the dirty bowl back to be washed, these activities take time and distract from the essential hiking. My daily routine begins with the barn sparrows chirping before dawn's light. I step on a digital scale to record my weight, take my resting blood pressure, measure about three handfuls of rice and vegetables into a pot, set a timer for 40 minutes, then sit in meditation until the timer bings. I am careful not to wake the internet dragon at this time. At the first light of dawn when the stars fade out and the ground appears, I pick up my hiking staff, open the door, take a deep breath and get out on the trail. On returning to the apartment later, after the sun has evaporated the morning dew (according to the Whoa Way of Hiking), then I really enjoy breakfast with a good appetite.
7.13 Lab tests report my LDL bad cholesterol level has exceeded high normal (104 mg/dL, normal <99). This requires immediate attention because of my high genetic risks for atrial fibrillation (56.6%), obesity (53.3%),and heart attack (41.6%), and because of my present sedentary lifestyle. After consuming the last of the perishable food in the kitchen tomorrow (some tofu and fresh squash) , so that it will not be wasted, I will start a V8 juice diet until my weight shrinks down to a more healthy target level of 130 lbs (BMI = 21.0 = 703 * 130 lbs / (66 * 66 height squared)). My height is not 67 inches any more. With age it has shrunk to 66 barefoot inches.
7.17 The sixth lecture by Richard Feynman on the nature of physical laws deals with the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics. He describes a famous experiment of electrons passing through a choice of two holes, where the resulting distribution depends on whether the electrons are observed or not. When the electrons are observed such as by shining a light on them to see which hole they pass through, they behave like particles, but when they are not observed, they behave like waves. The very process of observing them changes their behavior. This means that at some level, at least at a quantum level far from ordinary experience, nature is unknowable and unpredictable. Therefore one should not be too sure about things.
7.18 In the last ten years of his life, Richard Feynman and his bongo buddy Ralph Leighton were scheming to visit the lost land of Tannu Tuva somewhere near Outer Mongolia, Asia, just for the adventure of it, "Tuva or Bust". Feynman said anyone too serious about the deep meaning of things would go nuts. He might impatiently reject my Buddhist world view or scorn my taking meditation seriously like polishing a brick to make a mirror. However he championed the concept of summing all possibilities. He might understand embarking on an impossible quest like Ulysses having nothing else remaining to do. A few days after Feynman's death at age 69 from stomach cancer, an official letter arrived from Russia with his long awaited invitation to visit Tuva.
7.20 Today is the anniversary of the breaking of the fellowship of my Costa Rican adventure, 20 July, 2008, Musoc bus terminal, San Jose. Pasajera es la vida, dolorosa y vacia. I have learned about the unexpected death of my Cloudbridge neighbor Ian Giddy from pancreatic cancer, also barefoot old don Alejandro who suffered from Alzheimers.
7.26 The Rosetta@home server has been down all day for unexplained reasons. This happens from time to time, but I wish the administration would make more effort to explain things to us users, although in a university research environment there may not be enough money or manpower. Even so, prompted by a feeling of dissatisfaction due to this recurring failure to communicate, today I tried linking my computers to a different distributed computing network called World Community Grid operated by IBM which of course has many more resources than a university lab. WCG supports a variety of interesting and beneficial projects such as Nutritious Rice for the World, the Human Proteome Folding Project, Phase 2, and FightAIDS@home. Since both Rosetta@home and WCG run on the same Berkeley BOINC platform, it is possible to control the ratio of work units assigned to each or at least suspend one project or the other temporarily. The benefits of the WCG projects seem more obvious than Rosetta. I may decide to share CPU time with WCG in spite of the many points accumulated this year for team Mulberry Treehouse at Rosetta, in the spirit of dedicating merit, not to be accumulating points for oneself. An article in New Scientist reports a new joint venture between Synthetic Genomics (J. Craig Venter) and Exxon Mobile to produce biofuels from genetically engineered algae. By extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this could completely solve the problem of global warming. This might be a good opportunity to invest in XOM common stock.
8.03 My friend Gerald spent the past week in Alpine attending a writer's class at the university. He was busy with classes, but he would stop by my apartment around 9:00 am after my return from morning rounds on the hill. We would sit on cushions on the floor and share a breakfast of "chow main", so called because it was (my) main chow of the day. He would only eat a little bit because of his habit of eating at night, but at least we were able to synchronize our meal and meetings to some extent. One late afternoon before sunset we hiked up to the crest of the hill together.
8.07 Detaching my three computers from Rosetta@home and attaching them to World Community Grid. All three have been enrolled under one username jwleaf4, member of a small team named Buddhists with home page in Australia. The WCG can be joined here. The accumulated points for jwleaf2 and jwleaf3 at Rosetta could not be carried over to my BOINC totals under jwleaf4, an instance of a failure to reincarnate. However my Rosetta jwleaf4 points were not lost because of maintaining the same email address across projects. I did not realize several months ago that multiple computers (called "hosts") could be run under the same username, hence the proliferation of jwleaf, jwleaf2, jwleaf3 and jwleaf4. Since Juan continues as the original jwleaf, even though incommunicado and inactive in Costa Rica, I have reborn at WCG as jwleaf4. A recent medical checkup included a satisfactory EKG test. Waiting now on blood tests for liver and cholesterol to explain some recent mild headaches which might simply be due to summer heat. Rudy the apartment manager has ordered a part to fix the broken air conditioner. Currently investigating whether "experiencing the whole body" (kayasankhara in Pali) in the third anapanasati step (MN 118:18) refers to the whole physical body or to the whole body [of the breath] as explained by the ancient MA commentary. There are gurus for both interpretations. I am provisionally inclined to favor the whole body [of breath] interpretation.
8.10 Encouraging lab tests report unchanged normal liver panel and marked improvement in cholesterol. Total cholesterol improved by 7%, LDL by 12%, HDL by 19%, VLDL by 42% and Triglicerides by 43%. VLDL and Triglicerides are fat transported by the blood. This improvement was due to following a calorie restricted diet and to reducing carbohydrate consumption including giving up (regretfully) rice and potatoes, and also by taking a variety of vitamin supplements, especially vitamin E, garlic, niacin and carnitine as recommended in Ray Kurzweil's book Transcend. In order to swallow a handful of pills all at once, the trick is to take a full mouthful of lemon juice flavored water, then tilt the head back to roll them to the back of the tongue before gulping them down. The many colorful supplements fill two large pill trays, one colored green for morning, the other blue for evening.
8.12 Mild headache persisting now over two weeks. Dr Sanchez suggested an MRI scan for a 2% probability of aneurysm. However as this would require a trip to Ft. Stockton, therefore postponed for the time being. Other episodes of headaches in my life have been worse. I have been thinking about the Buddha's advice to Rahula and also to Bahiya (see 7.03), that nothing should be considered as "me" or "my own". When it is understood that I am not in this or with this, peace will be found. It is proving very difficult to burn off stomach fat. Even a little munching on almonds and drinking 300 calories of V8 juice a day seems to keep the weight constant. I am exercising more by hiking up the hill before sunset in addition to the regular morning round before sunrise. To stop the munching I have taped the kitchen cabinet doors shut with a message "130 or bust". Having said that, it would be ironic if "bust" (reventar en espanol) were to happen literally. P.S. To be on the safe side, because words have power, changed message to "130 first!".
8.13 Removed aspirin from my list of daily supplements in case it might be contributing to the headaches by bleeding from around a hypothetical aneurysm. This may sound far fetched but it might be worth a try among the factors in my control. Anyway, while aspirin may help prevent coronary clotting, it may not be indicated in my case because EKG results were normal and blood pressure is normal (121/75 avg of 54 readings past month).
8.16 The number of people who read this blog is unknown, probably very few. I have not found a way yet to install a hit counter like the one at my former andarivel.org blog hosted by yahoo. Recently I posted my email address on my main page which may invite some emails from strangers. While I am not eager to multiply contacts, I would like to be helpful in some way. Meanwhile a lot of advertisements for medical drugs have begun flooding in lately to my WCG email address. My yahoo spam filter routes them to the spam folder as it should, however there is some risk that valid emails from people not in my contact list might get buried there too. Therefore I have posted a different email address on my home page and without the at-sign to defeat web crawlers. If anyone wants to reach me, please be persistent and remember that I try to limit my email access to once a day in the morning when I am fresh. I am also trying to refrain from browsing world news which is almost always depressing in one way or another. The endless stream of bad news only reinforces my view that suffering is inherent in all experience.
8.17 A curious optical phenomenon has been noticed in my apartment due to the interference of light. The other day I moved my meditation seat away from the wall to a location in line with the door to the room, in order to sit up straight and not slump against the wall. The new line of sight extends all the way from the seat through the open door frame into the living room, then continues straight out through the balcony screen door to a small storage shed beyond the rear parking area and a tall pine tree standing behind the shed. From my seat the tall pine tree fills the outline of both door frames, a nice view from the interior of a building. The white wall of the storage shed contains a small ventilation grill up near the roof. The rectangular grill consists of narrow vertical slots in dark contrast to the wall around it, although the slots are also painted white, therefore partially reflective. From my seat in the apartment and only from that seat, a panel of vertical bands of light fills the dark outline of the grill. The bands and the equal dark spaces between them are wider than the slots of the grill. If I move my head slightly to one side, the bands rapidly shift in the opposite direction. The distance from my seat to the black mesh of the screen door is 20 feet six inches. The grid spacing of the mesh is 7 strands per cm or about 1.43 mm, which is about the wavelength of far infrared light (visible light is 400-700 nm). After watching a lecture by Richard Feynman a few weeks ago about the properties of light, it is wonderful to see a live demonstration here.
I wondered if the bands of light might be originating from the white wall spread over a wide area but visible only when superimposed over the dark background of the grill, and if so then why would they appear as vertical bars but not horizontal, since the mesh is uniform in two dimensions, or whether they originate only from the partially-reflective vertical slots of the grill. When I covered the grill with a black cloth, the bands of light disappeared, proving the bands originate from the grill. However I also noticed that when the screen door was slid open out of the line of sight, then the bands also disappeared. Therefore the phenomenon depends on both the fine mesh screen and narrow columns of light originating from the grill. Mysteriously the ghostly bands refuse to show up in a photograph.
8.20 My anapanasati notes were updated regarding my understanding of the sutta, especially regarding the first tetrad. Now I believe the reference in the third step to experiencing "sabba kaya" means to experience "all" of the bodies (the interpretation by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu), not the "whole" body of the breath only. "All" refers to both the flesh-and-blood body as well as the breath-body which is conditioned by it. To sit and experience the body while breathing is not so difficult but it leads to disenchantment with the body. The flesh-body is always uncomfortable in any position, especially noticeable in later years. The fourth step says to calm the body-conditioned breath (kaya sankhara). Many guides insist that anapanasati does not manipulate the breath like pranayama does; however if the fourth step says to calm the breath, then some gentle control must be applied, if only to patiently wait for the breath to subside, to know if it is the last breath of one's life or not. The texts say that the breath can become so fine that it cannot be detected. This ushers in the first jhana or possibly death. Unfortunately my headache condition is persisting after several weeks although at least it is not severe. The gabapentin pills are effective for pain and mild nausea but make me drowsy. I am postponing getting the MRI scan while still hoping for some improvement. Meanwhile the compressor fan in the air conditioner unit outside has been replaced but the apartment vents still blow hot air. My portable floor fan stationed three feet from my seat runs constantly to relieve the 95 degree heat. The rest of my body envies my cool armpits. I found a lonely insect crawling in my apartment. I have so few visitors that I carefully dropped it in the garbage can where it would find more nutriment to eat.
8.23 I have adopted two stars in the Kepler planetary survey with names containing my birth date. KIC 7101142 is a canary yellow star located in Lyra, according to the Kepler Field of View, in square panel number twelve, on a line between Delta Cygni and Mu Lyrae. KIC 9101142 is another sunlike star in Cygnus just above Delta Cygni in Kepler panel number 10. They can be viewed in Google Sky. Planets might be found around them within three years. The list of the Kepler stars available for adoption is here.
8.24 Four more stars were adopted for my brothers and sisters and eight more for my godsons. The Pale Blue Dot Project sent me certificates of adoption for KIC 7101142 and KIC 90101142 which I proudly mounted on the wall. There are about 300,000,000,000 other stars in our galaxy (300 billion) which are not adopted.
8.26 More stars were adopted for mothers and younger children to complete a Costa Rican family with 20 stars. My stay in Alpine, Texas, may be coming to an end, or at least interrupted for awhile. Recognizing long-term problems in getting specialized medical care in this small community and without having cultivated a social safety net of friends and neighbors, and mindful of some responsibility to care for my father age 92, if he should want and need my help, I have promised to visit Boerne, Texas, for a few weeks. My father has invited me to occupy the empty second floor apartment of his townhouse. A visit would inform me better about the circumstances there. I would miss my hikes up the hill and the tranquility of Alpine, the flow of days without distractions except for medical issues not in my control, and therefore I am undecided and a bit reluctant to commit to a permanent move. However if it comes to it, meditation can be practiced anywhere. Bodhidharma sat in front of a wall for nine years.
8.27 Installed an APC 750G battery backup to protect the computers from lightning transients. Seems to work; during a thunderstorm the lamps blinked but the computers did not reset. Now it may be possible to let some of the computers run unattended for several days or even weeks during a possible absence. I petted a little dog who seemed eager for contact, but the owner quickly stepped out of his small house to order his dog to come back inside. He remarked that the little dog was too friendly. He might run away. The little dog reminded me of the orphan in Oliver Twist. If it were treated with loving kindness it would not run away, although it could stray or be kidnapped. All of our possessions will be lost in time one way or another.
8.29 This morning I was notified of being chosen Rosetta@home User of the Day. My profile was displayed for 260,000 users to see. I am glad I kept my little ASUS laptop working on Rosetta while the other computers worked on the longer WCG work units.
The number of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy is 300 thousand million, a vast number, 300,000,000,000, but the number of cells in a human body is 400 times more than that. My 140 lb body contains about 121 trillion cells (121 * 10**12). This is calculated as follows. A cubic meter of water measuring 100 cm each side contains one million cubic centimeters and weighs 2200 lbs, per Wolfram Alpha. By simple proportion of weights, since the body is mostly water, 140 lbs/2200 lbs * one million cc = 63,600 cc, the volume for my massive body. Now how many cells can fit inside one cubic centimeter? Typical eukaryotic cell diameters range from 10 to 30 microns (and yet prokaryotic bacteria are 10 times smaller in diameter and 1000 times smaller in volume). Smaller cells are more efficient for performing tasks in complex organisms such as the human body which has 210 distinct types of cells; the average human cell diameter is 10 um (one micron = 10**(-6) meter or 10**(-4) cm). The formula for the volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi r**3. Thus the volume of a human cell is 4/3 pi * (5 um)**3 = 4.19 * (5 * 10**(-4))**3 [changing microns to cm] = 524 * 10**(-12) cc. Taking the reciprocal yields 1.9 * 10**9 or about 2 thousand million cells per cc. Multiplying the 63,600 cubic centimeters in my body by 1.9 billion cells/cc = 121 trillion cells.
This complexity of the human body has an important consequence for the practice of anapanasati, step 3. The issue is whether the object of concentration, called "sabba kaya" in the original Pali, should be understood as the whole body (of breath), or the whole body (of flesh-and-blood), or both of them together. The reason why this detail is important is that years can be wasted if the meditation practice is not right, hence the importance of an experienced teacher if one has the good fortune to meet one, which I did not. While I received the eight precepts from Ven. Thanissaro, I did not feel that he was a guide for me in a personal sense because he did not seem to welcome conversation with me. In my personal history, I was 62 years old before I discovered that my understanding of anapanasati was flawed. I came across a book in the Bangkok train station which contained a translation of the sutta. It was the first time I learned that there are 16 steps, much more than just watching the long-breath and short-breath, steps 1 and 2. How and where the breath is watched can make an enormous difference in results. Never having experienced the reports of joy and happiness in the meditative states (the jhanas), I believe it is because my practice was not focused correctly. For example, for years my attention literally followed the movement of the breath into and out of the body, moving along with it, instead of holding a fixed position at the nose-tip. I believe I also misunderstood the instruction for the third step as "experience all the bodies", that is, experience both the breath-body and the flesh-body. This was the translation given in the book that I found and it is also taught in this way by some other contemporary translators, but now I believe it is incorrect. Yesterday Nanamoli's translation of Buddhaghosa's fifth century commentary on anapanasati finally reached me. It clearly explains that the object of the third step should be the whole body of in-breath and out-breath, not the whole body of flesh-and-blood. This makes more sense to me, because if the attention is misdirected to the vast desert wilderness of the gross body where there are dozens of sensory contacts clamoring for attention at any given moment, then the mind will never settle down to a concentrated state (samadhi). The first tetrad deals with the breath. The attention should not stray from the calm oasis of the breath out into the trackless wilderness of the body to get lost there in its manifold distractions.
8.31 Not a single response from 260,000 Rosetta users. This isolation reminds me of hiking the Continental Divide Trail in 1999 when I was five months into the hike before meeting any other thru hikers. My headache seems to be subsiding at last after six weeks, curiously similar to the six week episode at the end of the CDT hike, but not so severe this time. It may correlate with the summer heat which has finally broken. Although the air conditioner was finally fixed by replacing a capacitor shorted by a lizard, it is not used in preference to the floor fan unless the indoor temperature reaches 95 degrees. The rising exhaust of the air conditioner outside would disturb a barn swallow nest of three chicks almost ready to leave the nest.
9.03 The first of the three chicks ventured from its nest this morning. I did not see it leave but witnessed its return. With a wobbly, fluttering approach it missed the nest and landed on a narrow ledge three inches below. After pausing to catch its breath and examine the situation, the valiant little chick launched itself into space once again to gain enough elevation to return home successfully. This reminds me of Ayya Khema's comment that meditation is a home for the mind where it can return whenever it needs to rest.
Forty-one years after I first looked for it, a copy of Buddhaghosa's Visuddimagga has finally reached my hands. It brought back some memories. In 1968 at age 25 I made a bicycle trip from North Texas down to the Mexican border with the twofold purpose of giving up smoking by vigorous exercise and locating a copy of Buddhaghosa's Path of Purification in a large library in Mexico. The date can be established exactly from the sole entry in my Texas police record: I was fingerprinted and detained overnight at the Port Lavaca jail as a "sleeper" for having the naivety to ask for permission to spend the night there. I cannot remember now if my Mexican destination was Guadalajara or if I managed to reach as far as Mexico City where I had spent a summer semester at Mexico City College just out of high school. In any case, I did not find the classical text I was seeking, although I was successful in giving up smoking, and after my return to Texas, I went out to California to look for work to return to India on my spiritual adventure, but that quest was also diverted while visiting my cousin Brother Paul Bernard, a monk at a Trappist monastery in northern California. While visiting him I received a letter from a certain Swami Satchidananda in New York City in reply to my question about finding a guru. The Swami invited me to come meet him instead of going on to India. At that time the Visuddhimagga did not even exist in English translation in print. It was published from Nanamoli Bhikkhu's notes by the PTS in Ceylon seven years later in 1975.
9.08 Currently listening to some interesting talks by Bhikkhu Vimalaramsi relevant to pain management. He is in the camp which interprets sabbakaaya as meaning "whole flesh-and-blood body". Maybe it doesn't really matter so much what the object of meditation might be, whether it be breath-body or flesh-body or even other objects of mindfulness such as loving kindness. Maybe breath-body and flesh-body are mutually dependent like opposite sides of a coin. Maybe what matters most is staying with the practice regardless of chosen object, learning to drop whatever hindrances arise due to attachment. The Buddha taught his bhikkhus anapanasati to replace the practice of contemplating foulness of the body which was provoking numerous suicides, therefore anapanasati ought to be a pleasant experience.
9.09 Updated my profile photo with a smile and blue eyes. My eye color has changed from green to blue in recent years.
9.10 Breaking from meditation, I reread War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, published 1898, which paints a picture of a different society than today's globalized internet world. The social background of the story interested me as much as the plot. I located some of the small towns near London using google maps. I also read some other stories involving personal encounters in strong contrast to my withdrawn life. Last week I was invited by a neighbor's son who knocked on my door, his father watching from below, to share supper with the family after they saw me trying to rescue a baby chick found on the pavement. I regretfully declined because of not eating much after midday, but also out of some reluctance to start new contacts, which is a pity. If I truly wish to avoid contacts and withdraw from the world, logically I should also give up browsing internet. Out of hundreds of pages of text and images, some of them can be disturbing, arousing the five hindrances of desire, aversion, drowsiness, restlessness and doubt.
9.13 Carelessly handling a fallen bird nest last week exposed my hair and skin to bird mites. I noticed them at the time but thought I had brushed them all off. Mild shampoo has not been able to wash them out yet. Sometimes the tiny black specs can be felt crawling over the face. They can be seen in the bathroom mirror or even spotted wandering across the backlit computer screen. At other times sharp biting pains like ant bites flash under the skin where nothing can be seen on the surface. The mites seem to have burrowed underneath striking and chewing delicate nerves. A rash of small welts under the armpits and itching sensations prove this is not entirely my imagination or an ominous new phase of neuropathy.
9.14 Hitting the open road! this update comes from little Asus in ft Stockton, in lower case because the right shift key is awkwardly placed. The little machine is extremely jumpy like a nervous chihuahua puppy.
9.22 At my father's house in Boerne, Texas. Fortunately his health is pretty good and he does not need much assisted living beyond Angel's weekly help or my help at this time. His house does not have a wireless internet connection, only an intermittent cable connection to an unused but good computer belonging to my sister which has been recently updated by me. Without a wireless connection in this house, updates of Rosetta work units from my Asus portable laptop have to be done from the Boerne public library. After two days my Alpine computers stopped sending their completed work units to WCG. Since remote control is not a feature provided with Windows Vista, there is nothing I can do to fix the problem from here and actually this might help me do a better spiritual retreat now. Here I have a good opportunity to practice meditation without the distractions of microwave cooking, heavy internet browsing or reading books, in other words a perfect setting for an undistracted spiritual retreat as in other places fondly remembered such as Boonkanjanaram and Seelee Hotel in Thailand and Pension Fanita in David, Panama.
9.25 A Skype video successfully connected my sister's computer here with her house in California. She could be seen inside her comfortable living room seated near the sunny patio window, wearing a broad smile, a colorful print blouse and a straw gardening hat. My father was reluctantly persuaded to wheel his chair over to take a look but quickly wheeled back to his lunch, apparently not very impressed. Skype video is easy to use and seems to be preferable to the alternate more cumbersome video option of Yahoo Messenger.
9.29 I dreamed that I was sitting in the rear of a small passenger airplane ready to take off from a dirt landing strip in Latin America. I felt eager to return home to the United States when suddenly I realized that my passport and all my other identity documents had been left behind in a bag in my room. I asked the stewardess to open the hatch door so that I could jump out to the ground before the airplane could take off. I wanted to go recover my passport and board the next available flight. She said she could not comply because the cabin would have to be depressurized. This I could not believe because the airplane was sitting right on the ground. I told her that without my identity documents my return home would be refused and the airline would have the expense of returning me the same day. I also pointed out that the airline was at fault for not verifying my identity before boarding. Running out of arguments and growing more anxious while the other passengers became more annoyed at my delaying tactics, I demanded that she consult ground control. Then they began discussing depressurizing the cabin while I looked longingly out the window at the ground so near. It would be so easy for me to open the door and jump out! At that stressful and suspenseful moment, I woke up. A great sense of relief flooded me as I realized that I am already home in the United States. I do not have to do anything more to get here. However this dream reminds me that my attachment to my identity which causes anxiety is still not resolved.
10.15 I have returned to Alpine after a visit of one month in Boerne. I renewed contacts there with my father, brothers, sisters, nephews Jarvis and Chase, and made a few new friends. On my return last night as I walked from the bus stop to my apartment, it was refreshing to breathe the dry air and see the stars overhead once again. It felt like coming home as when I used to return to the Sonora desert for my winter retreats. I found a layer of dust on the computers in the apartment, the lights, power and fans still on but the internet connection interrupted. The main Elite desktop has suffered a major hard drive failure. Fortunately the HP laptop came back up which I am typing on now. My little Asus netbook which served so valiantly on the trip has been restored to its useful role as a countdown timer for meditation sessions.
One of the Boerne issues was consumption of food, both my own and my father's. Concerning my own habits, I learned that it is not necessary to heat food by stovetop or microwave to make it palatable, although hot coffee is a treat. A couple of cans of vegetables completely satisfy my daily needs and tastes if flavored with vinegar, garlic and red chile sauce and supplemented with vitamins. However, because of the distracting temptation to snack on instant foods out of regular hours, even by opening a can of beans at night, I will avoid accumulating more food than needed for each day, or in other words, go out each morning to buy only the food needed for that day. My father's excessive consumption of food serves as a warning. Without observing any dietary restraints on time and quantity, he has become a prisoner of his wheelchair, too heavy to stand up and walk. I believe his compulsive eating is a reaction to isolation, loneliness and depression. He even asked me to knock when entering by the kitchen door to avoid bumping it into the frequently open refrigerator door. However he refused to visit a nearby retirement community with me and my sister to look at an attractive apartment in the large multi story building.
A second issue of importance in Boerne concerned the status of my nephew Chase, facing sentencing for two robberies. He has not developed habits of self restraint either. He and his brother Jarvis are both heavily sedated with tranquilizers and anti depressants, therefore it is difficult to communicate with them, but I stayed at their house for a few days. As with my father, I feel sadly unable to penetrate their walls of isolation.
10.21 Successfully installed a new replacement hard drive for the HP-Elite. Now begins the painstaking task of restoring the software, especially the BOINC platform. The reason for the hard drive failure last month is unknown, however a neighbor told me there was a severe lightning storm. A nearby strike might have breached the surge protection and a power outage longer than 5 minutes would have also shut down the smaller laptop until my return.
10.23 After watching a video of a long-armed gibbon playfully teasing two tiger cubs, I got the idea of mounting a chin up bar in my apartment cage to develop upper body strength and enliven the ordinary routine of pacing and sitting. The brackets had to be tilted to fit the narrow door frame but I am pleased with the rock solid support. Both of these two photos were uploaded to my product review at amazon.com (strangely you have to click on one photo to see the other one); it is wonderful how information can pass both ways on internet. I bought all the necessary household tools to do the job: an electric drill, a level, a tape measure and a screwdriver. Now my computers have been restored to service after a month of inactivity. Some friends have joined my team at WCG, boosting our combined score (jwleaf4). To protect against future crashes and enable a smoother recovery, I have synchronized an external USB hard drive with the new replacement. My alternate HP-DV5 computer saved the day this time. Backups are necessary because nothing can be taken for granted in this world.
10.24 Cool Timer, a handy count-down timer, can play any .wav or .mp3 file. I use the gentle tone of notify.wav to time my meditation sessions. The timer can be programmed to loop continuously, playing a tone once after each twenty minute period, synchronized to the hour like ship's bells. Even during the day when I am not sitting, the periodic alarm echoes through the apartment to remind me of the many opportunites to practice meditation which I might otherwise be skipping. Sometimes I sit one session, take a break next session, then sit again on the signal. Mechanically sitting like this and trying to motivate sitting by accumulating milestone points on a tally counter may seem as futile as polishing a brick to make a mirror, but I don't have any other work to do and it keeps me out of trouble which is worth something. This endless quest reminds me of hiking the continental trail to Canada when the distant goal stretched so far beyond the horizon that I could not bear to think about it. At most I would daydream about reaching the next resupply point for a serious meal. Then one day, six and a half months after setting out from my winter camp at Organ Pipe National Monument on the Arizona border with Sonora, I finally reached the end of the trail. It was an ordinary afternoon and the world did not take any notice.
10.27 A bulletin from Buddhist Global Relief describes worthwhile hunger relief projects underway in several regions of the world. The mission statement on the BGR main page refers to a statement by the Buddha that "hunger is the worst kind of illness". When I asked Ven. Bodhi about the source of this reference, he replied to me in an email as follows:
"The statement is from Dhammapada 203. The Dhammapada itself, of course, does not indicate who spoke the individual verses, but the Dhammapada Commentary ascribes this verse to the Buddha himself. According to the Commentary, on one occasion the Buddha and the monks were traveling through the country and arrived at the outskirts of the city of Alavi. The Buddha had seen that there was a cowherd living there who had the supporting conditions for stream-entry and made this long journey of two hundred miles especially for his sake. When the Buddha arrived, the people gave an alms offering to the Buddha and the monks. After the meal they gathered around, waiting for the Buddha to give his discourse. But the Buddha just sat silently.
It happened that the cowherd who was the object of the Buddha's visit had lost a cow that morning and had to pursue it in the woods. After he found the cow and brought it back to the herd, he went to hear the Buddha preach. But because he had spent the morning searching for the cow, he missed his meal and when he reached the gathering he was very hungry. The Buddha, aware that if he remained hungry he would not be able to concentrate on the discourse, inquired whether any food remained from the offering. When he was informed that there was still food remaining, he requested that the cowherd be fed. After the cowherd had eaten and his fatigue was dispelled, the Buddha began his discourse, at the end of which the cowherd penetrated the four noble truths and became a stream-enterer."
This story about the hungry cowherd suggests a way of approaching the philanthropic challenge of deciding how to allocate funds in support of temporary versus longer term solutions to global misery. A comprehensive solution has to address many interconnected problems and deal with each of them in context of the whole. Thus, global hunger relief needs support, malaria eradication needs support, moral education, secular education and scientific research need support everywhere.
This story also demonstrates the Buddha's compassion and understanding that hunger can be distracting. The Buddha may have remembered his own experience when he accepted a gift of milk and rice after prolonged severe fasting. The gift restored his strength before his final struggle for enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. However the Buddha set a higher standard for his monks than for laymen. He required them to fast daily, not eating after midday until the following dawn. In the Heirs of Dhamma Sutta (MN 03, page 97) , he praises a late-arriving disciple who declines to eat out of time, even if invited to do so by the Buddha himself. The Buddha said such self-restraint "will for long conduce to his fewness of wishes, contentment, effacement, easy support and arousal of energy. Therefore, bhikkhus, be my heirs in Dhamma, not my heirs in material things."
Good news: The Majjhima Nikaya price at Wisdom Pubs has been reduced to $39.96 for the fourth edition, thanks to anonymous donation. A careless production error overlooked updating the title page from "Third Edition" to "Fourth Edition".
10.30 At Rosetta@home, disbanded Team Mulberry Treehouse (1 active member) and joined team The Planetary Society (50 active members) as jwleaf4. Also continuing as jwleaf4 at WCG with team Buddhists (30 active members).
11.08 I have finished skimming through Ray Kurzweil's utopian book about the approaching Singularity. He predicts a radical transformation of human life in about twenty years due to exponentially accelerating developments in genetics, nanotechnology and machine intelligence. He predicts that a vastly superior nonbiological intelligence will evolve from humanity and spread outward to fill the universe at the speed of light. He is very optimistic. In spite of the incredible odds, he surmises we are probably alone in our galaxy, otherwise we would have detected some extraterrestrial intelligence by now. He defines personal identity to be a pattern of consciousness evolving over time, a pattern which does not actually require having a biological human body. He predicts that cyborgs will gradually replace imperfect human bodies until humans completely merge with machines in a virtual reality which he claims will nevertheless still be human in some sense. I wonder how much of this I will live to see. If he is right, the world will not be anything like what we may be expecting. Apart from the unknown accuracy of his forecasts, I believe his motive is a humanly egocentric craving to establish the reality of his existence, even if it might turn out to be a virtual reality such as a computer simulation. The Buddha taught that craving underlies all suffering and motivates all intentional actions. This would include Kurzweil's writing his book. There are three kinds of craving: craving for sensory contact, craving for existence and craving for non-existence. If a superior nonbiological intelligence should emerge with craving, I wonder if it might crave non-existence, which might explain why no signals have reached us from space.
11.10 Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau complements the feverish intensity of Kurzweil's book with a calmer, more readable look at the human players in the coming GNR revolution. It examines three possible scenarios: heaven, hell and prevail. The very extensive bibliography lists enough references to fill a year of study. After putting these books down, this question comes up: supposing that I could really expect another fifty years of robust, good health to devote to a new career, instead of retiring to practice meditation as nobody, going nowhere. Would a renewed body really change my life? Or would it only distract from my goal of achieving the jhanas to abide in bliss? After all, how much did a healthy body help me for so many years when I took it for granted? Still, the thought of renewed youth is tempting. It makes me wonder if maybe, after winter is over, I might break out of this Alpine isolation and go find a community of cohorts, no matter if the climate in other parts might not be as good. "Light out for the territories", as Huck would say. But wait, there is a wonderful hill at hand right here, thirty minutes door to summit, neglected for months, and the weather is perfect. Why languish inside when I can light out for the hill! Did Bodhidharma have such a hill?
11.12 A new Audubon singing bird clock floods my apartment with the trills of a different bird song every hour. Concerning my physical health, unfortunately the constant mild headache which started up last August in my left temple has never completely gone away. In addition, some muscle soreness persists in my right shoulder. The muscle soreness is like the pain which finally ended my years of working on my tree farm in Costa Rica. That episode of muscle soreness was treated successfully by a timed release injection of testosterone for age-related androgen deficiency. I could ask my doctor here for a prescription if the condition persists further, but the headaches concern me more at present. They started more than three months ago in August. I have almost become resigned to them, although there are still some arrows in my quiver. For one thing, I could try a metabolic cleansing fast. I taped a sign "130 OR BUST" over the microwave. The other few recent times when starting a fast I got discouraged by the initial hunger pains as well as by the hope that the headaches might go away anyway. Suffering from hunger pains can be minimized by avoiding the nervous stimulating effect of drinking coffee, however I crave it and drink some anyway. The other arrow which I could try is more dynamic exercise to restore health, such as by doing another long distance hike or getting a job as a dishwasher in Cambridge MA living near the MIT campus, or returning to cultivate my tree farm in Costa Rica. None of these options moves me at this time. (My indoor hermit thrush just sang his 11:00 am song, reminding me of my summer stay on the north rim of the Grand Canyon years ago when we played hide and seek in the forest.) At least I should make more of an effort to get out of this apartment and hike up the hill every day. What fun it was to go for walks with Skippy, Chokame or Suchi.
11.18 My andarivel.org domain was terminated today after the remainder of the pages were moved to jwleaf.org. The photos were uploaded to picasaweb in higher resolution (1600) than had been displayed at andarivel.org (800). The maximum resolution photos have already been backed up elsewhere. The footnotes were copied to the picasa format as comments under each photo. News has arrived about the bankruptcy of Decodeme Genetics in Iceland. In a way it will be a relief to stop getting monthly reports about diseases that might happen to me. It seems the world doesn't want to hear bad news about global warming either.
11.19 Wondering where this might lead, this morning I received a new lightweight backpack, a Golite Jam, black and grey, medium size 2600 in^3 as on my former long distance hikes. It thrilled me for old time's sake to load it onto my shoulders and take it up the hill. It has some ingenious design features: small utility pockets integrated into the waist belt and a toggle mechanism to collapse it into a slim daypack. Another arrival this morning was a Honeywell Air Purifier for the apartment. It could be good for the computers and good for breathing even though it whooshes noisily in the background like Rio Chirripo [later given away].
11.22 I have been looking at online communities such as wikipedia.org , slashdot.org and kurzweilai.net, where the participants cooperate in constructing a body of knowledge (an encyclopedia) or explore the ramifications of an idea (commenting on some topic). There may be rules of conduct and peer rewards for insightful contributions but no one giving orders. This kind of uncoordinated action is called stigmergy, a word coined from stigma (sign) + ergon (action) to describe termite behavior. It refers to indirect coordination between workers reacting to changes made in the environment, not to orders from an administrator. Stigmergy describes the process of elaborating articles in Wikipedia by edits which build upon previous edits: first a stub may be started, then someone may add to that, then someone else may add or subtract something more, until an article is considered provisionally finished. It is noteworthy how much can be achieved by cooperation even without external direction.
Whereas in regard to my own projects and how they may relate with the online communities, it is hard to maintain enthusiasm for continuing them alone when no one else takes any interest, even though without perseverance they may not bear fruit. Today's date happens to be exactly one year since my first coming to Alpine, also the birthday of one of my distant godsons, hence some backward and forward looking thoughts. I wonder how my solitary projects would be affected if there were more participation with the online communities, such as by my joining in them or by others commenting on mine. What if I added a comment option to this blog? What if I had to defend my understanding of the Four Noble Truths in a public forum like Ray Kurzweil has to defend his notions of the Singularity?
11.24 The breezy Hawaiian cotton shirts worn by Dr. Sanchez always cheer me up. They remind me not to take life so seriously. He diagnosed my shoulder pain as tendinitis. Blood work was taken to quantify androgen levels. Today in line in the Dollar Store, a little boy in front of me was crying. I asked him, "What happened?" He looked up at me with tears rolling down his cheeks. --"My grandmother won't buy me a slingshot." "Well," I offered helpfully, "Someday. Be patient." This was a short message about delayed gratification, and he may not have understood the word "patient" although he may have understood that someone sympathized with him because he stopped crying. He lapsed into resigned silence while his grandmother wiped his tears.
11.25 Born to Run, a book by Christopher McDougall, brought back lots of memories of my visits to the Tarahumara canyons. The ultra marathon race reported in the book takes place on trails which I have personally hiked. A YouTube montage of photos can be viewed here. The premise of the book is that the human race evolved and prevailed aided by a superior capacity for endurance running (see chapter 28). When Homo erectus walked upright out onto the grassy plains of Africa two million years ago, spears and other hunting tools had not yet been developed, but humans were able to run down game. The book describes such a hunt in modern times by Kalahari bushmen. When a four footed mammal runs, its breath rate is limited by its leaps: every contraction of the body squeezes the lungs and every leap forward expands the lungs. This bellows effect is perfected in flexible cats and rabbits. Even so the bellows effect does not compensate enough for the heat which accumulates due to increased metabolism. Naked humans can cool off by sweating but hairy quadrupeds have to dissipate heat by panting which they cannot do while running. The upright carriage of the human body decouples the breath rate from the stride, permitting faster breathing to sustain continuous running. McDougall suggests that modern Homo sapiens prevailed over the beefy Homo neanderthalensis because of their ability to run down animals on the open range, when climate change opened up European forests to grasslands and the large animals on which the Neanderthals depended died out. Smaller Homo sapiens bodies did not need as much food and could run much farther for the same expenditure of energy. The book also reminds me of the importance of daily exercise, the joys of a healthy body and the benefit of a simple mostly vegetarian diet such as the Tarahumara staples of beans and pinole corn.
11.27 Opened blog website Jwleaf Wall at jwleaf.wordpress.com to receive comments for my domain jwleaf.org.
11.30 First winter snow in Alpine. Some recent pictures of my apartment show the beautiful wooden table, lamp and sheaf beside my meditation seat, found at the nearby Deja Vu resale store. Jwleaf Wall is working! Thank you everyone for writing on my wall.
12.01 Whatever may be defective in this world, such as global warming, bodily aches and pains, deteriorating vision or a publishing error in the title page of the fourth edition of a cherished book, I need to remember the Buddha's advice to his son Rahula: do not consider any of these things to be mine, me or myself (netam mama, nesohamasmi, nameso atta). Meanwhile a box of ten 5-oz packets of El Guapo Pinole has arrived, ordered from amazon.com after I had read about the Tarahumaras. Pinole is a powdery blend of toasted ground corn, sugar and cinnamon. It makes a pleasant, hot, nourishing substitute for coffee which often puts me on edge and stimulates an irresistible craving to snack on something. I am going to try a diet of pinole, fruit and vitamins on my way to 130 or bust.
12.10 Created editor account Komudi at Wikipedia. Komudi in the Pali language is the full moon of November, named after the white water lilies (kumuda) which blossom then. Komudi is the fourth month of the rainy season and the occasion when the Buddha gave the Anapanasati discourse. Other aliases by which I have been known in the past are Jonny (childhood and adolescence), Janardhana (given by Swami Satchidananda), John (engineer), Willis Whoa (long distance hiker), Nosomos2 (email), Padrino (Costa Rica), Jwleaf (Flagstaff) and Magenta (a name suggested by my father in Boerne after I put some magenta buds in his hand, after he showed me the poem by Coleridge. Then not knowing what else to do with them, he simply dumped them into the trash can under his desk, probably not aware of the analogy). Magenta is the color combination of red and blue, a disturbing color, not calming pink which is red and white. It is the only color that does not exist as a single wavelength of light, the color which only exists as a mental construct (white is also a mental construct but not usually considered to be a color). Isaac Newton discovered that magenta could be obtained by overlaying the red light from one prism with the blue light from another (see my home experiment here).
12.14 Today I decided to share my apartment space with a sapling equanimity tree rooted in a terra cotta pot opposite the sunny southern window. No one in the garden store or any of my neighbors could tell me its botanical name, therefore I am calling it after its regular geometry, well balanced with orthogonal planes in three dimensions. The lightly loaded branches exit from the trunk in opposite pairs in north-south, east-west planes and spread outwards in horizontal planes. The leaves are small, opposite, odd-pinnate, dark forest green above, light green below, smooth, oval and asymmetrically tapered. They do not overlap or crowd each other.
Lately I have been reading about two English friends who went to Ceylon to ordain as Buddhist monks, Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Nanavira Thera. After some time they separated to live in separate hermitages on the island. After only eleven years Nanamoli died of a heart attack at a young age; five years later Nanavira committed suicide after suffering a long history of amoebiasis (easily cured now with metronidazole). Unlike them I do not have to go in romantic quest of some exotic foreign destination to find a hermitage, not even to Costa Rica. I do not believe that wearing robes would help my practice especially, not even association with a monastic community, whether foreign or domestic. It would also be awkward for an older man to fit in as a novice anywhere, and in the United States, the Buddhist world view is already weird enough. It is not a life-embracing view, in spite of the false images of a fat laughing Buddha (which is from Japanese Zen). The Buddha's final advice was to work out your own salvation with diligence, be a lamp unto yourself, not depend on anyone else. Nothing is preventing me from practicing right here in remote Alpine, Texas. The obstacles to practice may be partly external such as physical health which affects diligence to some extent; however the main obstacles are the internal five hindrances of desire, ill will, laziness, restlessness and doubt. At the end of several discourses (MN 8, 19, 106, 152), the Buddha tells his followers, "Look, here are the roots of trees and empty huts. Meditate, do not delay or else you will regret it later (MN:19 Two Kinds of Thought)."
12.18 It turns out that Bhikkhu Nanavira's suicide in 1965 in Ceylon was precipitated by more than a long history of amoebiasis dysentery as the Wikipedia biography vaguely suggests. In some of his letters he discusses a problem with satyriasis (obsessive lustful thoughts) arising in the last two years of his life. He refused well-meaning suggestions to abandon his hermitage to seek treatment in Colombo because no doctor would promise him that it would do any good, and he also foresaw that his mental state would be aggravated by contact with other people as objects of lust. He feared that the mental stress would force him to disrobe; he said he would rather commit suicide than disrobe. He claimed that he had experienced stream-entry in which the belief in a self disappears, although I doubt it because of his attachment to his identity as a bhikkhu. I assume he felt there was nothing to lose by ending (two) incurable (so he thought) illnesses, and nothing to gain by disrobing. That such obsessive thoughts could arise in a bhikkhu who had earnestly practiced for fifteen years puzzles me. His insight into the suffering of lust seems strangely deficient. True insight should produce disenchantment which leads to dispassion which matures in cessation. While I have been realizing the inevitability of some amount of chronic physical pain or disability in remaining years (cataract vision is definitely getting worse, for example, beginning to impact my reading), I am not expecting an increase in mental pain or despair such as his, hopefully not. In any case, Nanavira as an existentialist rebel is turning out to be a more interesting study than his better known former friend Nanamoli who patiently translated the Majjhima Nikaya, although for me the Buddha always sets the highest standard to emulate.
12.19 Reminded that Christmas is almost here by a neighbor's note left on my door and a card in the mail, I wasted the day in idle entertainment by reading The Hobbit adventure by JRR Tolkien and eating too much food and drink. So I should not criticize Nanavira for deficient insight concerning lust when I repeatedly give in to lust for food and laziness. Furthermore, I should not disparage wearing bhikkhu's robes which would definitely help control excessive behavior, if not by insight then by shame, but it doesn't seem feasible for my situation.
12.21 While searching for more information about Ven. Nanavira I stumbled on an autobiographical account of a young American about my age (now deceased), relating his early experiences as a samanera (Vinayadhara) and then bhikkhu (Ven. Nanasuci) in Ceylon. He lived at the same hermitage formerly occupied by Nanavira and eventually he transcribed, edited and published Nanavira's letters and essays. His account of wandering homelessly in Ceylon, Getting Off: A portrait by V, confirms that the bhikkhus who adhered faithfully to the vinaya code did not eat anything at all after midday, not even fruit such as a banana. I think my looser interpretation of the rule against not eating out of time, by allowing for fruits and fruit juice, puts me in the camp of those lax bhikkhus who would snack on sugary treats calling it "medicine". While the vows in the Pali language which I took in 1996 at Wat Metta in California were against "bhojanam" (substantial food, meals) and therefore not definitively prohibiting snacks, I think it would be healthier for my cholesterol level and rising blood pressure to abstain from evening food completely, at least for awhile, unless someone should happen to invite me to share a cookie.
In the last chapter of Getting Off, Nanasuci's account of why he disrobed after five years sounds as much like an impulsive whim as when he ordained. On both occasions (and in the same region of the world, and in the same region where he later met a premature death), he imagined himself playing a different role and did not meet any resistance to making the change. It is easier to change roles early in life. I understand his feeling of panic to be defined as this instead of that. An inquiring mind may find all roles ultimately unsatisfactory. All roles will be transcended by reaching nibbana (not by committing suicide which only manifests a craving for a different kind of existence, a craving for non-existence). Abandoning attachment to "I, me or mine" is the only way to escape old age and death and reach the deathless, but it does not come easy. A intellectual person gets frustrated by the boredom of steady mindfulness practice. Instead of plodding along as nobody going nowhere, watching the in-breath, watching the out-breath, restraining thoughts until seeing the truth of impermanence, suffering and non-self in everything, a frustrated seeker takes to writing books or managing philanthropic projects, diverted from the noble quest. I have not come across Nanasuci's reasons for ordaining again nine years later. After his second ordination as Samanera Bodhesako he preferred to remain as a samanera without taking the full bhikkhu vows again.
12.22 According to Nanasuci Bhikkhu, the regular bi-monthly confession of faults between pairs of bhikkhus does not actually include the gory details (at least as practiced in Sri Lanka), only the recitation of a general formula (this does not extend to major sanghadisesa faults which have to be confessed to the whole community). Even so, formulary confession could still be effective for correcting behavior just by virtue of focusing mindfulness. Similarly it would not serve a useful purpose or even be interesting to turn this blog into a public confessional. My main reason for touching on some issues such as the rules for eating is to dialog with myself more than with anyone else. I would be surprised if anyone actually replied with comments on Jwleaf Wall even though comments are invited. In any case, the other bhikkhu is only supposed to say "Friend, do you see these faults?" and then "Friend, restrain yourself in the future."
12.24 Christmas eve after a gray wintry day. Remembering that grocery stores will be closed tomorrow, I relaxed my usual rule against hoarding food overnight and brought some things home for tomorrow, but way too much as the store was closing with no time to decide on just one. May everyone be happy.
12.28 My Christmas day haul of a loaf of bread with pimento cheese lasted one day, the steak lasted two days and the carton of six large eggs lasted three. Now my digital scale tells me it is time to face the music. My daily walks up the hill remind me of my homeless years when I did not have a cozy shelter like my apartment to spend the days and nights. I would not say that my overall feeling of contentment during those years was much better than now, because without enlightenment there is always something to worry about, but at least my physical health was better because of more activity and younger age. My health during my Costa Rican years began to decline because of androgen deficiency causing fatigue, in spite of vigorous activity cultivating Andarivel. Since returning to the United States, my health has been declining further due to less activity. Somehow I must find a way to restore activity to my lifestyle. Even here in Alpine it would be possible if I could force myself to take longer walks with a heavily loaded backpack.
12.29 Yesterday a book arrived in the mail from a used bookstore in England, Search for Nirvana by Robin Maugham (nephew of Somerset Maugham and also a writer of fiction). I had ordered the book to learn more about Bhikkhu Nanavira because of a chapter in it about a visit Maugham paid to his hermitage in January, 1965 (mentioned in this Nanavira letter). Maugham's account of the meeting was reported in a London newspaper article in September, 1965, after Nanavira's suicide in July, 1965, and later expanded in his book pp.175-203, published ten years later in 1975. Maugham uses the word Nirvana frequently throughout the book but he misunderstands it to mean a state of happiness connected with places and other people, especially in the arms of his young lovers. He doesn't understand that the motive to practice Buddhism begins with right view which is seeing the underlying pain in all experience. I think both men were too wrapped up in their world views to understand each other. I think Nanavira missed an opportunity to educate Maugham who was dissatisfied with his life but not completely so. As a hermit Nanavira was not a skillful communicator. His letters and notes (like maybe my own blog) betray too much thinking. He was also distracted by bodily pain (amoebiasis) and mental pain (satyriasis). By contrast, the Buddha was a supreme communicator. He did not write letters or remain locked in solitude after his enlightenment; instead he walked around and talked to all kinds of people for forty five years.
Anyway, if someone turned up at my door to interview me and asked me how I got started with Buddhism, I would remember back to high school when I first read the story of Prince Siddartha's renunciation of his life of luxury. I asked myself then why a royal prince could not be satisfied with all the comforts he had, including a tall, handsome body, wealth, loving parents and attendants, a beautiful wife and a newborn son. Later after more experience in life I understood better what I already sensed even then, that the problem of suffering is more than the mere perception of impermanence. Everyone will acknowledge that pleasure is fleeting and youth subsides into old age, sickness and death. The problem of suffering deepens when it is seen that there is no experience entirely free of pain, not even apparently happy ones. The people that see this become Buddhists and their reason for practicing Buddhism is to end personal suffering at a more fundamental level. Buddhism would not interest someone who is more or less satisfied with life. If it still appeals to laymen, it is because the original Theravada suttas have been overlayed and sugar coated by the later Mahayana and Vajrayana schools to add popular elements of heroism, worship and magic.
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