Notes to Myself While Sitting (“meditating”)

 

This excerpt is from November 1968 when I had the experience of of eternity, "God," Reality, listening to the last three Beethoven sonatas --under the influence of LSD and wine. (Hans von Bulow, the late-nineteenth-century pianist and conductor, writes of Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata, No. 32 in C minor, opus 111, that the two movements of this piece may be characterized as “Resistance . . . Res­ignation, or, still better, Samsara . . . Nirvana.” And 30 and 31 are on the same level.  See the discussions with my renditions.) I had considered this the crucial turning point for me, but had such experiences before, including deep experiences listening to the late Beethoven quartets. I had also been wanting to start meditating, but I didn't know how. So when Philip Kapleau came to Rochester the following January for a lecture on Zen and selling his book The Three Pillars of Zen, I was ready. But even without that LSD experience I'm certain the same would have happened. Plus it took me years to figure out my own way of sitting. My non-method of free won't discussed in Cabeza.

 

 Following this is a general introduction, and then the notes themselves.

 

[In my teens I had made three suicide attempts, and as this experience shows I was desperately close again.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Second: “Man cannot avoid suffering . . . he must endure without complaining and feel his worthlessness, and then achieve his perfection, that perfection which the Almighty will then bestow upon him.”

 

And then, around the time he was writing the Ninth Symphony in 1823: “There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals, and by means of that contact spread the rays of the Godhead throughout the human race.”

 

Also, Beethoven at the end of his life had on his worktable under glass the following quotes, copied out in capital letters, of inscriptions he had recently learned were found in the temple of the goddess Neith in lower Egypt:

 

 

 

 

 Interestingly, in The Mind of Egypt , Jan Assmann remarks that the religious understanding expressed in these quotes very likely influenced Moses, for in Exodus 3:14 (in the King James translation), God responds to Moses asking of his name: “I am that I am.” (In newer translations it’s “I am the Being One.”)

 

Rainer Maria Rilke echoed these almost  precisely in a letter: “. . . as soon as we accept life’s most terrifying dreadfulness, at the risk of perishing from it . . . then an intuition of blessedness will open up for us. . . . Whoever does not, sometime or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent, to the dreadfulness of life will have been neither alive nor dead. To show the identity of dreadfulness and bliss, these two faces on the same divine head, indeed this one single face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to our distance from it or the state of mind in which we perceive it—: this is the true significance and purpose of the Elegies and the Sonnets.” 

 

To expand and elaborate on this theme is also at least part of the significance and purpose of Cabeza, these Notes, the book on Nell, everything I’ve written at my two websites, www.meaningofwilderness.com and www.wildernessofmindzc.org including the comments to the videos I’ve posted at YouTube of my renditions of the greatest keyboard works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert.

 

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, at the time he began painting his greatest works: “How strange these last three months do seem to me. Sometimes moods of indescribable mental anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time . . . seemed to be torn apart for an instant.”

 

And: “To suffer without complaining is the one lesson that has to be learned in this life.”

 

Finally, T.S. Eliot, at the end of his great long poem Four Quartets which won him the Nobel Prize: “. . . A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything.”

 

At the end of June 1965 thanks to a blind double date (I had been extremely “shy and retiring” regarding the opposite sex up until then) I began my relationship with Ann, my first girlfriend. But at the end of August I started the fall semester at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Coming home for Thanksgiving, Ann told me she’d gone back to her old boyfriend. Driving home for Christmas was my first spiritual experience, described in Cabeza, page 29. 

 

“Off to college. That was different, but the general meaningless misery of my existence continued unabated. Sharing the long drive home for Christmas however . . . I’d had my turn at the wheel and was napping . . . and awoke into—another realm. What I later jokingly referred to as the Reader’s Digest condensed version of Handel’s Messiah was on the radio: an abbreviated instrumental arrangement. I’d of course seen/heard it on TV, radio, record, live, ad nauseam—especially the famous Hallelujah Chorus. Now that same Hallelujah Chorus (sans chorus) was slipping past the normally formidable defenses of my mind, and I knew for myself—at least a taste—for a few moments, firsthand, of the extraordinary Reality inestimably profound, that underlies the meager quotidian fare of “normal” life. Years later I read that Handel was in great despair at the time of the Messiah’s composition: The libretto (a rather remarkable selection of quotes—some of them—from the Bible) had been presented to him but he could think of no music whatsoever. In time however, the dam burst, and it all flowed out . . . and, just after having written the Hallelujah, he told his manservant, with tears streaming down his face, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself.”

 

I had good grades the first semester but in the second stopped going to classes, started screwing around with other ne’er-do-wells, staying up all night going for long walks along railroad tracks into the country. Flunked out. That summer (1966) I was listening to “masterworks of despair”: the Verdi Requiem and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony when my friend Steve started introducing me to Bach, the works of Hermann Hesse, and T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Later that year I bought a tape recorder and at the beginning of 1967 took two noncredit courses at The New School in New York City: Logic, and Beethoven. The latter’s required reading was Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, by JWN Sullivan. At the same time a New York radio station was playing the complete Beethoven quartets, which I recorded. Also, attending courses at The New School gave me a New York City library card, enabling me to borrow, and record music, from the large record library at Lincoln Center. Most important were sonatas 29-32 of Beethoven which I wouldn’t begin to appreciate until the LSD trip in November the following year (1968).  But I did begin appreciating the late Beethoven quartets, especially 15 (third movement, determined by Beethoven: “The Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Godhead”) and 14.

 

 

 

The fall of 1967 I returned to the University of Michigan, did well the first semester . . . and stopped going to classes again the second, which is when these notes begin. My aim was, by writing things down, to understand myself better. Don’t think I understand everything I wrote then. Also, I was often just throwing out ideas from what I’d been reading. Some of that I’m considerably embarrassed about now; I may leave that in, though, just to show how screwed up I was.

 

As to the cause of my misery, as of now —June 2023 — I would describe it as the finite being’s reaction to the Infinite Spirit. In Cabeza I write of fear being our link to the infinite, and is likely much stronger on the surface in those who are “Touched with Fire.” But that Infinite is devastating to our little selves, created by evolution, programmed for sex, status and security. My life’s work has been devoted to seeing if somehow it is possible to allow that devastation just to flow through the mind and thus allow, as I write in Cabeza, “mind to know Mind, Being to permeate being.” 

[Now the notes chronologically; early 1968.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You must talk and not isolate. He [Beethoven] was truly alone but he loved. How??  [Cabeza:  “the Adagio of Quartet No. 15, op. 132—which, when half-asleep I first understood it, raised the great question of how this man, so alone and isolated by deafness, could know such love, such joy—”Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Godhead.” ] Christ. And if everything is a joke, then what?? Hatred again but that is weak. Better to be strong. Am I good? Could, would I be good? Everyone would be good if. Do not hate, do not hate, do not hate . . . rather suffer. [I am] Despicable.

 

 

 

 

Reject God because of suffering? [Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov.] Joy without pain, tears? We cannot comprehend eternity, unity. But suffering must be accepted as necessary, but is suffering necessary? [“The Woman of the Lightning”: “. . . the eternal necessity of suffering.”]

 

We are God — the responsibility is terrifying. It must be accepted to lead to our joy. The loneliness is terrifying, you say unbearable, but it must be borne. Joy in life is still not comprehensible. Cry, yet do not fear, we all must accept it. Drugs are wasted [I got very little for marijuana; always ended up extremely depressed]— suffering is rejected. Dropping out is irresponsible. Each is responsible for all!! But must find himself alone. Acceptance . . . then sublimation. Don’t withdraw, yet don’t conform. Read.

 

Why do you feel that everyone dislikes you? Everyone is so involved in joking and “having fun,” but they are not growing (or are they in a way you can’t appreciate?). But there are no ideas, no learning — so much time is spent in the group.

 

You must create if only to relieve yourself of the pain, and to absorb yourself in thought and feeling.

 

Ideas — man is equivalent to God

 

Why do I hate them? (And I do — I am jealous of MaryAnn that she might be happy and right.) I hate group laughter — I feel left out. They hate me and use me. I feel so lonely. Even though what they offer me is not sufficient. Read.

 

May 3 (1968) 1 AM. Emptiness, sadness, frustration. Doubts tighten my mind. You must close yourself off at times to self-evaluate and be independent of others’ values whether good or bad. Noise, others, attack your existence. You can expand when you are protected . . . you doubt everything. Because you are too insecure to accept the responsibility and freedom to choose. This is all intellectual shit [Probably much of this refers to what I’d been reading regarding existentialism.]  You must reveal yourself to others. I am no more secure than I was, but since I have a goal now, I am leaning towards expansion rather than depression [the goal, and earlier the path, likely refer to the joy and love — undirected lovingness — expressed in Beethoven’s quartets 14 and 15]. Every day you resolve to be free with Dr. Draper [shrink number three], but you never are. But how can I be guilty towards myself, hate myself??? Schizo? Read about it. [Books gave zero; I had to figure it out myself, partly through the greatest music: The Infinite Spirit feels the worthlessness of the finite being. But instead of “enduring without complaining” (as Beethoven wrote) the finite being reacts and strikes against itself.]The frustration demands action, but the only action is self-destruction. Imprisoned in angst, fear, dread, anxiety, anguish, thrownness!

 

I am indeed nothingness. [Had likely been reading John Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and Nausea] I look for myself but can’t find it. Senses absorb too much stimuli. Conscious of receiving stimuli, but not enough self [what I mean is not enough Being]. You become your eyes. Experiment: are people without eyesight happier? Work best at 3 AM — less stimuli. Now, this real drive to discover.

 

The psychoanalyst can always absolve himself of guilt. I never can. It is horrifying and dreadful that I’m the only one who can decide. But if he is decided to be bad [by me] — hate will flow to be followed by a deeper isolation.

The future disintegrates. The present narrows to a point. I feed it. Death. Everything is futile (even slight actions).

It amazes me as to how I can be so pleasant to people. Immediately though, I can’t help laughing from the absurdity!! Laughter from pain. Camus. Feeling is inversely proportional to consciousness/knowledge.

 

What ties everything together is my potential, which can be realized only through a decision to be. All abstract unmoving  theorization. Intense fear of deciding. [The finite being is terrified of allowing the Infinite Spirit to take over; that would devastate it.]

 

Two hours of wasted discussion with Mike. [I can’t think of anyone at college I had a worthwhile discussion with.]

 

My existence is just bearable enough that I can’t resolve to change. Now I try to change myself through the pleasure of the possible fear that I might have after deciding.

 

Ways to change:

1. Deny yourself the pleasure of depression, or react to unpleasant stimuli in an open matter despite the fear.

2. Try to grasp people.

3. Act the way you want to be.

The same good feeling as before — after deciding.

Meditate.

(In the margin: I feel that this accentuated consciousness is driving me mad.)

 

Central theme of my life history: Inability to relate to the future or the past. Examples: 1. Never brushed teeth regularly despite intense dread of going to the dentist (always had about 10 cavities).

2. No intense effort to play tennis well, although pure enjoyment of the game caused me to be good at it. The strong hatred of losing and despising myself when doing “poorly” could not help.

3. Never did homework but was intensely proud of receiving good grades.

4. Second semester of college — no cares for flunking out . . . even the draft didn’t bother me.

5. I often become lost in the present when performing minor actions. Absentmindedness.

6. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. . . . . . . . . .

It is angstbar [anxiety full] reading Ellen West [very screwed up, likely manic-depressive, woman analyzed in existential terms, mostly BS. Eventually killed herself. I had probably read about her in Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology Paperback – Unabridged, June 1, 1958 by Rollo May (Editor), Ernest Angel (Editor), Henri F. Ellenberger (Editor)]

 

THIS IS NOT FAIR.

Why should I ever be created to endure such torture and loneliness? And vacillation. Suspended over a bottomless pit.

It won’t work — I feel different every MOMENT!! Why is there such misery???!!! [Much scribbling  X’s and O’s]

I am going insane. (I am going insane — I have even less perspective/perception of the future.)

I have always been insane.

MEANINGLESS.

EMPTY.

PEDANTIC.

HELP.

 

Decide something!! What, where, how, when, what for? Help. I vaguely wish to cry. I’d rather sit here wasting, enjoying it — continual frustration prohibits planning for the future. Paralyzed. If I drop [acid] or smoke [marijuana; after starting out enjoyable, it always led to extreme depression and a sense of being eternally isolated] again I’ll feel even more alone. Pain, dread, can be dispersed through passivity, but it also eliminates the possibility of joy.

Passivity because of extreme consciousness — knowing why you would do something irrational destroys any possible satisfaction. Damn.

 

Quelled anxiety yields to wastedness.

 

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. [The previous encircled with lines and scribbling.]

 

The driving desire to read and know everything about psychology overwhelms me. I cannot look to the future. I must know now. The frustration yields to passivity, wastedness. I will sleep.  Shit.

 

Fear of Mitwelt [Mitwelt is a German term used in existential therapy to refer to an individual’s social or cultural environment. Problems in the mitwelt center on integration vs. isolation, or individuality vs. conformity] and Umwelt [In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt is the “biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal”; (in ethology) the world as it is experienced by a particular organism] can be assuaged by meditation, involvement in music, so as to make possible some future decision. Eliminate the dread of freedom.

 

Thankful and hopeful again after listening to C-sharp minor quartet [Beethoven 14]. The fear of dread must not overtake me.

 

[Musical notation of the first bars of The Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus 14, The Final Fugue.]

 

Playful, soaring, laughing . . . a joyful walk . . . glad I’m alive . . . hopeful but tired now. I know the anxiety will return, but I want to remember this moment. I love Nancy. A little now, but so much more will come, I pray. I felt like her and wanted to share everything with her. I know I will love. [I was so “in love” with Nancy. I don’t remember a single thing she ever said. I remember she was impressed when I told her the opening fugue of Beethoven Quartet 14 was a bridge. Later I saw her walking hand-in-hand with the head of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society: the radical group that spawned the violent Weather Underground). I attended a rally he led — very charismatic guy, and also very angry. Just now I found Nancy on Facebook: she was very small and thin, probably 100 pounds with long brown hair. It looks like she’s at least 130-140 now, with a fat face I don’t even recognize. Huge things on her ears hanging down to her shoulders. Short hair. Standing with a man, presumably her partner. Went back to college to study labor issues, and later public health (while obviously doing zero exercise herself). My kind of girl for sure.]

 

I have slowly withdrawn from the nonliving world (some people can be nonliving depending on how I look at them. Music is living, though. If I say I love Nancy — and at times I do, when I think of her — it makes me feel more solid. It gives the foundation to any goals. Security.

 

 

The sublime crumbling of their walls

Releases the slumbering giant of love,

And destroys, for that instant,

The thought that life is meaningless.

 

They laugh and soar in the triumph

Of the joy that rises

As a leaf, suddenly, surprised,

Caught by the wind.

 

And then he prays that he too will be born

And create life from emptiness.

But anguish and dread always return.

And the freedom crushes his soul.

 

And once again he is empty.

He tries to re-create the moment,

And in lifting the pen is stronger.

But realizes he has nothing to say.

 

Anxiety is like a ghost

Libera me Domine from the freedom.

Anger springs from hopelessness and the need to escape and transcend.

Transcend.

 

Oh, to act, to be alive!

To have the words rush out.

He wants to die, to hate, to love,

But the strength is not there.

 

Why this wastedness? GOD!

 

You become what you want, immersed in superfluity

And mediocrity — for it is much easier to escape than

To dare to express yourself. But the unleashed anger will

Bring suffering through guilt. Every small escape

Strengthens the wall between you and yourself.

 

Thoughts swirl out from the center,

Then disperse like phantoms.

I search and grope for their source,

But its elusiveness drives me mad.

 

(July 1 [1968]. It is curious that whichever girl your attention is focused on is the one you adore the most.)

 

They whip me about in my submissiveness.

Surprising me with a joyful truth,

Only to ensnarl me later

In the labyrinths of despair.

 

July 8, 6 AM. 24 hours after my sixth trip. I am unmoved by the thought that I am an insect [Kafka, The Metamorphosis]. The Fear has slowly left me although I still feel traces of the stirring that dominated me yesterday. One must be doing something with one’s mind all the time, but there is no will for action.

I’m quite amazed that I continue to live, put up with this. I go to sleep as an insect. I will wake as an empty shell, change slowly into a wounded lion in the company of men, then perhaps a laughing hyena, or instantly a cat, or actor, but always remain alone.

 

I take myself too seriously because I hurt myself too much. When will I really care about another? Not even despair.

 

September, 1968. Once again I return to make a mockery of myself. Innumerable disgusting events have occurred; incline me to withdraw [had been spending time with “friends”; ne’er-do-wells and goof offs I was infinitely better off avoiding. But they got me LSD.]. However I would like to strike back.

 

Hello a few days later. Prof. Bergman! [Philosophy professor whose course I was auditing, whom I  liked at the time]. My mind has become empty and dull because vacillating, circling, omnipresent self-deprecating thoughts were too frustrating. So now I lay here happily dead. I’ve lost the ability to despise myself. Is this good or bad?

 

There have been a few occasions during trips when I felt I was totally me, i.e. love, reaction to the wastedness of society, eternity, desire to create. Can I hope for this or should it be recognized as an impractical longing? . . . NO!

 

September 24, 1968 Progress? Expression of anger at Dr. Draper’s with consciousness of I. 

 

1. I am submitting to what he wants by expressing myself. (My getting better → his accomplishment. I hate him.]

2. Out of spite I don’t want to be healthy.

3. My insistence on reading may imply my own sense of impotence — nothing valuable coming out of myself. [But I had to discover for myself that virtually all of that reading — philosophy and psychology — was worthless compared with Bach and Beethoven.]

4. I am horrified by the possibility of being small. Incomprehensible.

5. I want to be Caligula.

6. Or I want to be a tree root (Sartre) — pot, LSD occasionally produce that feeling.

7. Expressing anger at Draper may disintegrate it.

8. What meanwhile?

9. I can’t seem to stay doing things that disgust myself. I argue against everything.

10. Give up the desire to be God? — Never!

Will I ever try to improve — never!

I know enough about a lot of things to be arrogant, a fool, and think I know everything.

 

September 29, 1968 1. Bach equals suffering plus God plus Job; never wild and frenzied. I do not like having recognized this “truth?”

2. Frankness causes antipathy or aversion. [Learning people don’t want to know what you really think?]

Cast myself into the madness of my passions. [Not in the realm of the possible.]

I am with Bach when I am weak, Beethoven when I am strong.

Bach’s anger is impotent and repressed, is happy and submissive to the divine will, and is eternal and static.

Beethoven’s happiness springs from his own will and strength — it is playful, capricious, soaring.

I’m not in the mood to castigate myself for these worthless overgeneralizations.

To hell with all thoughts, reflection, plans to act, visions of future situations. Suddenly you’re watching yourself play the game of anger, too! The rage, spite, could kill you.

I’m about to play the game of walking up the street in the cool pure air. The trouble is that it doesn’t hurt enough!!!  So I can’t even die.

I must choose between the limpid, lucid walk and the angry spiteful drive. Do I really want cigarettes?

 

I’m almost ready to go completely underground. [Reference to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground; much of these notes refer to that.]

 

Next day — it seems only just that something great, blissful, or at least intensely creative or expansive should overtake me some time, to atone for all this hell.

 

October 17 1 AM. Well? Insipidity, placid, at least your vocabulary is improving. [I was making an effort at this.]

October 24 2 AM. Reference notes for future states of depression, which are recognized as inevitable and perhaps necessary.

 

Laugh, laugh, LAUGH . . . can I believe what I see? All that is wished for will be, fills me with song. [Donovan song: Wear Your Love like Heaven.]  Blessed are the sleepy ones, for they shall soon drop off. [Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.]

 

Since you have decided to stop going to Dr. Draper, you will rely on yourself for your salvation. Laughter undermines the onerous doubts. Yet I still fear you won’t listen to me, fools that we are; and now I feel that I’m slowly sliding, but each laugh is a wave beneath — pushing me out. I’m a lucky one, aren’t I?

 

The courage to overcome the nausea. [Jean-Paul Sartre] Goldberg Variations.

Laughter is better than brooding. YES. Y   E   S   [faces drawn in the first and last letters; I don’t know what inspired this rare good mood.].

 

October 30 8 PM. So now you say you could work effectively intellectually, but despair at the thought that you might become (or have become) an insect. What? Will only perfection satisfy you?

 

Discard all self-images in order to create one (real).

November 2, evening. It’s consoling to know that anytime you want to reestablish contact with yourself you can just take acid or mescaline.

 

The alarm rang. Up instantly, alert. Wash, dress— coat and tie, since he was going to the city — brush his hair, make sure of his wallet and pen. Then carefully down the creaky stairs to the kitchen. Orange juice and toast. Then to the camp refrigerator in the cellar for his bonds — $175 . . . and his father’s wallet for $20 cash.

 

At the door. He left no note. Why should he? He did not care about them. He was alone. But they cared about him? Perhaps his mother needed him, but only superficially, as an object. No note.

 

Outside. It was still dark — street lights glared directly at him, isolated in the mist. He walked through the damp leaves, along the affluent suburb’s street. The hidden sun was beginning to touch the eastern sky and the mist was gently rising through the trees and homes. 5:45 AM. His mind was clear, his soul was blank. No doubts, no choice. He had to catch the 6:20 AM bus since his father would take the 6:50.

 

G reach the stop early, waited, anxious that the bus would not come, or pass him by. A few cars passed and large sounds reached him from the small factories across the street. Normal people beginning normal days of acting [action?] and work. He was alone.

 

Finally the bus came; he got on. Secure, warm, rocking motion. Away. To the city. [To jump off the GW Bridge]

 

November 8, 2 AM, 1968. Eight hours into a trip. Two hours into a halfhearted drunk. [I was in my apartment; neither of my roommates was there. Sitting on a couch I felt nothing less than crucified against the wall behind me. In fact the finite being was being crucified so the Infinite Spirit could arise from the ashes.  I’ve had very similar experience at retreats, especially my first, and sitting and playing piano up until the present. Over the past 51 years though, the finite being has been worn down enough that it allows, momentarily at least, the Infinite Spirit through: these include my jerks discussed below.]

 

Spent the last 10 minutes beating myself with my fists. I should do that more often. Strike some sense into myself.

 

 

!!!!

November 8 continued. Beating yourself is good. Pain and tingling sensations — you feel like you exist. Look at your life, Fool! What gives you hope?  Eh? Come on!! What! I hereby turn in my card. [Reference to something; suicide, withdrawal from life?]

If I die, and someone finds this, would someone do something for me?  Eh? Just tell me why? WHY?! Not just me. Billions. Suffering, trapped, INSANE. WHY?

At least I realize now that I am insane. It’s better than being insane for all your life and not knowing it. By the way, if a music connoisseur’s reading, try Beethoven Sonata 32 in C minor. Just the right music when friends are in for tea.

Wine has soothed me . . . but I’m getting a headache. Probably from hitting my head. Do I like pity? EH? No. Only from myself.  S E L F ? Where . . . What . . . Who . . .??? I’m not me. I swear to God I’m not.

 

 

I keep stopping to look down at myself. I am very analogous to Michelangelo’s St. Matthew [unfinished: writhing body emerging from the stone. I must have read something about it]. Not my body, but 21 years of conditioning, habit,

 

 Y E U C H

 

Something is very wrong with Dave [my roommate; evidently I saw for the first time how “insane” he was, just living on the surface with a superficial persona.] I looked at him objectively the first time tonight. [I.e., not reacting; with the awareness from being on LSD.]

 

Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of:  

“When Will Phil Give Up?”

“Hammerklavier” [Beethoven Sonata 29] is good too. Third movement . . . DAMN

GOOD !!!!

Why? . . . Balance of wine and LSD puts me in an almost normal state. No. Beethoven, Ludwig van.

Writing keeps me calm.

I am living for the moment when, after my suicide, someone reads this.

I truly believe LSD could help someone who is not as firmly entrenched as I am. LOVE. HK fourth movement [Beethoven Sonata 29].

I wish I could shut my self up in the basement until it decided to conform to MY standards.

 

And now, for those few who have gotten past 32 and 29, prepare a paper for me, due next Thursday, entitled “Why Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #30 in E major is ETERNAL . . . and keeps me alive.”

 

When World War III occurs I shall damn mankind to the nth degree if only for destroying LVB’s works.

How valuable is an artist’s piping [reference to Kafka?]? God.    G              o             d.

Steve [my high school friend.  See Cabeza]. . . — I say yes in theory if not in practice.

To myself and any other suicide: I am GLAD I did not commit suicide five years ago. I don’t understand, but . . . yes! 29, 30, 31, 32.

Hurray for jelly sandwiches and chocolate milk!! [Yuck!]

Hesse . . . . . . . . . Beethoven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all . . . . . . . . . . . . one. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 17 3:30 AM. Ever-growing pile of garbage → LSD → DESPAIR.

→ Beethoven → God → China → Hesse→ I Ching → Way? → Way! → DAMN!

To say what one realizes when one hardly realizes that one realizes or will realize? All one has is skeptic faith that the shell is cracking.

1:30 AM, Thanksgiving. Either I am going insane (schizophrenia) or am on the path to Truth . . . or both.

 

 

My MIND is burnt out. Goddamn . . . why was I put through all this?

I am all gone.

It always seemed that there should be some reward for all . . .

So now I have given myself the final punishment for all self-punishments.

I have idiotically made an idiot out of myself.

That such an un-thought-out move as this should have such a momentous impact on my life!!!!

THAT SUCH

I don’t want to make you suffer, but please? Won’t one of you help me?  Help me please please please

Stone Guest [Mozart’s Don Giovanni: the Stone Guest arrives at the end and takes him to hell.]

YIACH

No father, I am not yet a raving maniac

GOD     GOD

No, not yet.

If it is evident that I am an idiot, will someone please have the decency to kill me? Please!? I should have died a long time ago.

All for nothing . . . Everything for the future, the future nothing.

Not even happily raving insane, but clear watching oneself insane.

[All the above during the triple LSD trip. But I did recover]

 

January 14, 1969 11 PM. Well! All of last month’s hell had been forgotten, but one quick glance at the three preceding pages recalled enough vivid images of those 30 interminable hours to send a bitter chill through me, and disincline me to the writing I had planned.

 

January 27, 2 AM. The ultimate dread is to be distinct, isolated, alone, you with yourself eternally. Hopefully, to be distinct means to be mortal, and to be dispersed to death. Do you happy and unhappy ones out there (my rationality begs me to posit your existence), do you know ISOLATION? You know, when your soul turns black, and disgust, nausea, and an intangible fear overwhelms you, and it’s all you can do to hold on? Hold on to what? Your self? [Julian of Norwich: “I became so disgusted with myself I could hardly bear to live.”]Somehow your ego will never give in to your common sense. The horrible hope is always there that tomorrow will be better. No! It’s not even that. Your self just wants to be — no matter how black, isolated, or disgusting. If only you felt you were selfless enough to kill yourself — then there might be hope for life. But NO! Despite all rational protestations and halfhearted manipulations to the contrary, you know that your wretched ego will always be the center of your universe.

 

Fool, if you are aware of that all the time, you would (or should, ethically, that is) be dead by now.

 

I hate to think, therefore I hate to exist. (Or vice versa.)

 

Guardian evil genius [reference to something]— always manipulating my environs to disintegrate my own efforts at self-manipulation.

The pen said to the paper: “How can this fool still take his moods seriously?” If only he would go to bed and sleep it off — I don’t like writing at 3 AM.

 

January 27, 11:30 PM. Bad day. Woke up 9, 10, 11, then 12 finally for my 1 o’clock. Have skipped Chinese philosophy three out of last four, supposedly my only “meaningful” course [I was also auditing psychology, which is where I met Melinda. I forget what else, another philosophy?]. Empty, tired, will-less, faithless; I can only see myself floundering forever in nothingness. For my own good I should strive for the impossible — for even if I’m forever frustrated, then there is always self-respect. But how does one strive when one’s only drive is to sleep? The rational man is capable of rationalizing away every inadequacy.

 

Anyway, today was the worst of 1969. Since the only tolerable activity is to reflect, be self-critical, and write, I shall continue.

 

Is it possible for one who has always hated existing to love living? It can only come from opening, a state into which one is thrust and is heavily dependent upon one’s environs. The lucky ones naturally find their love object and instinctively know how to hold on to it, or at least to their love. Viz., by submitting completely to the feeling, casting away their self and the intellect. But we unfortunates are forever separated by the hair’s breadth of circumstance from that which is our salvation, or if by some Miracle, the wonder of Wonders is placed within our grasp, we are dumbfounded, paralyzed, and the long-conditioned self-restraint and egocentricity gleefully lead us to ruin. We stand on the brink, incapable of jumping, and grasp disgustingly at our adored, who, soaring gaily above the chasm, playfully laughs, then whips herself away in search of more daring companions. And we, mortified by the abyss and nauseated by ourselves, crawl away and hide under the largest rock we can find.

 

What logic I used to justify my wasting time on these courses, I don’t know. Develop my mind, my willpower — to live like an insect? Or perhaps not — and everything is doubted. To strike out like Grosse Fuge is my goal. But my anger turns back against itself, therefore one is powerless. One slowly wears oneself down.

 

January 28. Better, by virtue of finally writing Grandma [Christmas thank you note], otherwise insipid, unproductive. And ever more uncertain of the value of these courses — in fact I am just bored by them. I need an agent for sublimation.

 

February 4, 1969. First yesterday. Went to 11 and 1, skipped 2 and 4. 2-5 and 8-10 was in library. 10-2, Melinda. [We met in the psychology course I was auditing.] Very tired, living only out of lack of will to die. Melinda said she loved me. My mood of the time was exceptionally callous. Later though was better; I was on the brink of caring. She is very beautiful when tender, affectionate and sad, and I did care. I trust her more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. I made it clear that she wasn’t to expect a thing from me. She’s too messed up to help as [I imagined] Nancy could have. Still, I was feeling better last night. Today has been shopping, laundry, cooking, eating. Not bad, but empty. [A friend of Melinda’s had a record collection I looked through: discovered, and recorded the Schubert B-flat Sonata. Thank you!]

 

February 13, 1969. Sensei [attended workshop by Philip Kapleau, including some meditation. Bought The Three Pillars of Zen.  Read it immediately (first of eight times).The enlightenment experiences described were equivalent to my November LSD trip. Plus the whole Buddhist idea of karma was an explanation for all my inner moods and torments: previous lifetimes had led to the present one. Started sitting, at times with a small group in Ann Arbor, mostly on my own. Cabeza, page 251:

 

When Philip Kapleau held a workshop in Ann Arbor, where I’d dropped/flunked out but was auditing courses on Eastern philosophy, and presented his book The Three Pillars of Zen; Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment, I knew this was it. Everything I’d been looking, waiting, and hoping for.

 

I immediately started sitting and preparing to move to Rochester, which required rebuilding the engine of my VW bug and breaking up with a girlfriend (Melinda) who, despite valiant efforts to convince me otherwise, had ultimately little interest in meditation. The latter proved—by far—the more difficult. It is not easy to watch a person moaning, sobbing, and banging her head against the floor in despondency. It worked. She got to cling to me for a while longer until she decided she couldn’t stand my way of life. Not that the whole thing wasn’t my fault in the first place, and not that I wasn’t just as bad as she was. Oh relationships, what “entertainment . . .”

 

 Moved to Rochester and joined the Zen Center that September. Worked there daily rebuilding after a fire until finally going to my first flunk out retreat in January, 1970. My handwriting becomes much calmer at the point where I started sitting.]

 

March 1971. Melinda, who is my love, I hate you and I love you. If I would let myself hate you more openly, then I could love you as I really do perhaps. But you cannot be the object of my love, you can only be the catalyst for a love which has no object. I feel close to suicide, which opens up my love, since love is death. [i.e., the finite being has cracks in its walls.] I want you here now. I pray when you are here I still will be as now; open to you. Because you are good to me in your love.

 

Please. I am tired very very tired of this life and would like a new one. Will it be in hell? I will show you these pages of my sickness and despair, open myself to you? You are all I have outside of me. Please be there and not fear. We must help. I am not lost, only trapped. [Needless to say, this did not happen. Einstein: “I must seek in the stars what is denied me on earth.” Melinda, though she tried, was unable to retain interest in sitting, or my ascetic way of life. Her mother was likely manic-depressive — chased her around with a knife when she was drunk. Melinda had some of that — a lot of that — Fear in her.]

 

October 10, 1972. Dream last night of falling, falling, through myself, experiencing Fear, Terror. I was shrieking. This is perhaps the Fear of myself or the fear of hell I could (would) fall into when I die?  [Too much Buddhist thinking. It’s really the finite being’s terror at extinction at the hands of the Infinite Spirit.] Bassui [Zen master whose letters were in the Three Pillars: “With hands held high, leap into the flames of your own primordial nature.” Yes, but how does one leap? It’s an act of will.]

 

Yesterday I dreamt of Roshi leading me, dancing with me gently, lovingly.

Love and grace, forever sought,

The only hope of this poor life.

Yet spite and hate and their source Fear,

Compel this one to live in strife,

Still, knowing that the key to life . . . is Death.

I am my only companion, my only lover, my own true love for all time.

Forever and ever we shall lead me to love. Must.

Life is strong within me, yet afraid. Where’s the long-lost home.

 

[From T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets]

The dripping blood my only drink

The bloody flesh my only food

 

The one discharge from sin and error

The only hope or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre,

To be redeemed from fire by fire

. . . . . . . love . . . love

To live with every instant blazing brilliantly— the funeral pyre of profundity and TRUE LIFE

The unspeakable silence of all time ternal . . . eternal

Gratias agimus tibi [referring to the most profound and terrifying part of Bach’s B minor mass, repeated at the end in the Dona nobis pacem: We worship thee. We glorify Thee. Thanks we give to thee.]

 

Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t. The Center is again restricting me as I draw closer.[I don’t know what this is referring to. I wasn’t a member between 1970 and 1979.]

 

Endless vacillation around the point of my karma. I unfortunately have the tendency to hate myself to protect myself from being hurt. CRAZY LIFE!

Another paradox: if I feel sorry for myself I can begin to love, yet it is all my fault and everyone says it is wrong to feel sorry for yourself and yet again this not my fault, it is___’s fault. They say I did ask to be born, but in the beginning long long ago, or was there no beginning, only the word WHY? Why do I have to see the pattern and hate myself for it — ego desires to die? Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t.

 

March 6, 1973. A night of asking all the why’s. So sad this life. I feel I skipped childhood and must become a child if I want to grow — I must be the loving father and mother of this unhappy child.

 I don’t understand anything. Do —Don’t? I d __know!?

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 13, 1973. It is so incredible after remembering all of Dorothy’s tears and begging and imploring me to help Nell, and her words and tears of gratitude that I had after I did, and such a miraculous recovery, that she can think it a coincidence now. Of course I am too attached to wanting to be loved but it is so strange how expectations are built so high by the circumstances and always smashed by the most unexpected twists of____. It will be a curious experiment (unfortunately necessarily inconclusive) to see what Nell remembers and what happens. Of course maybe it really was the shocks and I really didn’t save the poor girl from insanity and death, or she would’ve saved herself anyway, but if I concede that, what external event can I ever trust myself to understand? [She immediately sent me a postcard from the hospital after I called her: “Our talk on the phone was the turning point for me here . . .” I  know I reached her. Showed her she did not have to run from the FEAR. Dorothy told me she loved my phone calls and letters. But they kept giving her more shock treatment just to “make sure she was cured.”

 

Then Dorothy told me she didn’t remember anything about my phone calls and letters. Turned her into a zombie — in her own words and her brother’s. I visited her in July but was unable to reach out past my own fears to her. Helped give her driving lessons so she could drive herself to a meditation group in Vermont. She used the license as ID to buy the gun.]

 

[next page, undated, but evidently after the previous and before Nell’s suicide.] It seems that I have now tried everything except suicide and I wonder even if I could do it, would it be any better than anything else. But I so long for peace and hope. What am I expected to do? Perhaps best to set a deadline like Steppenwolf [novel by Herman Hesse], perhaps that could set me free of wanting or expecting anything for now. Maybe that’s what Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony is really about— the freedom before the inevitable death. One can finally love since all the baggage of worrying about living is gone. I would like that. Death will be my lover and we shall dance the gentle song. The final paradox to this paradox of a life. Death will teach me to live, if only I were then alive. Or perhaps the only meaning or purpose or that in every way my life was directed to the moment when I would save Nell, and now I can finally die, fulfilled. This is insanity? But I so need something consoling to think about to bring me peace, yes peace at long last please? Remember the sad case of Ellen West. 

 

I really should write Roshi before I decide to die.

I really am ready to love . . . all I need is faith.

If we can really just see this through to the end.

 

Where is there an end to it? [Reference to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.]

There the dance is. [T.S. Eliot] There is no pain or cause of pain [reference to the Heart Sutra].

 

January 6, 1974. There seems little doubt these days that I am being guided, even forced, and have been all my life, to the way of the gods . . . and all my misery is my blessing. I have no choice but to conquer myself over and over again — if I did have a choice I would choose the lowly life. “Not as I will, rather as You will.” [Christ, in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.]

 

[The following pages were probably written when my first wife (called Jane in Cabeza) moved out (1978-79?) and I began sitting much more – up to eight hours daily. I rejoined the Zen Center at this time, going to all the sittings plus sitting at home several more hours. I told Roshi Kapleau I was doing jumping jacks between rounds of sitting — he looked at me like I was from another planet.  See Cabeza chapter Guru II for more details about this time. I also mention that one and only one time the kyosaku – the stick that the monitors strike you with on the shoulders to supposedly deepen your meditation — did actually help me (at other times the sound was just a distraction). This particular evening sitting at the center I requested the stick — by holding my palms together over my head. And that night I had a dream — if you can call such an experience a dream — of the 6-part Ricercare from the Musical Offering (see my rendition on YouTube). That it was nothing less than the highest, most unutterably profound Truth revealed, as expressed by the quotations, from ancient Egyptian sources, copied out by Beethoven and under glass on his worktable: “I am that which is. I am all that was, that is, that shall be. No mortal man has lifted my veil.” 

 

But a few, rare indeed, “immortal” artists — who did nothing less than give their lives for their art, for Truth — did give us ordinary souls a peek behind that veil. Vincent van Gogh, at the time he cut off his ear and began making his greatest paintings wrote: “So strange these last three months do seem. Sometimes moods of indescribable mental anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and the fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant.” And his greatest paintings do in fact give us a glimpse behind the veil of time. . . .

 

Also part of that dream was an intimation, a presentiment, of the “indescribable mental anguish,” the crucifixion of the finite being, that I would need to go through. That I have been going through, more and more intensely, attempting to give myself over to it without reacting. See the later pages of this notebook.]

 

[Returning to what I actually wrote down in roughly 1979.] This notebook/diary is dedicated to the example of Milarepa— may he always be the deepest inspiration to me. (Wikipedia:” Jetsun Milarepa 1028/40–1111/23)[1] was a Tibetan siddha, who famously was a murderer as a young man then turned to Buddhism to become an accomplished Buddha despite his past. He is generally considered as one of Tibet‘s most famous yogis and poets, serving as an example for the Buddhist life.” I had probably just read Tibet’s Great Yogī Milarepa, by W. Y. Evans-Wentz.)  May I ever be willing to face the present effects of my past actions. May I someday in the not-too-distant future devote all my energies to zazen for the purpose of liberating all beings.

 

Zazen

My sitting cushion,

Kannon

And hands pressed palm to palm.

And countless tears of joy and sorrow.

 

February 5, 1979. Bitter wind and snow — a real joy to ride, just ride maybe, to work. But no school. Sitting— good, mostly non-striving, except now whatever it is — the Buddha smiles. But some tension now, evening, should I continue or not?

 

My wind  bell

Sings sweet songs

To a billion fleeing snowflakes.

 

Who writes the poem?

If I could have, I would have, I would have been a musician, making music with others the whole day through. But I’m blessed to be forced to find the source of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.

 

February 6, 1979. Kannon, when will I ever develop the strength and determination to keep on sitting — it wasn’t even that bad tonight, I just didn’t want to do the hard work so I had some cookies. I see how each time indulge in food or sex more easily tempted I am the next time, and vice versa. I think I am partly afraid of feeling the terrific hunger for enlightenment which couldn’t be satisfied easily. I’ve got to stop this food indulgence and keep on sitting. I feel so pitifully weak willed, ashamed of my weakness. To accept it as my karma and not try to hide it — that would be non-ego.

 

Why do I alternately feel this calm about “Jane” — that I haven’t really lost her? Does it mean anything or is it just delusion, or just an awareness that she still cares about me, without accepting the impossibility of it? But now this calm is what I feel, that we will remain together. Crazy, and I have no hope. My only hope is the despair to drive me on. My Bodhimandala. Hsu Yun reminds me that this world I sense is just a tiny aspect of reality. Kannon, I have got to know it all, but where are my guts? Kannon is my guts. Kannon . . . Kannon. . . Kannon. Through the day . . . through the night . . . [from the Kannon Sutra chant at the Zen center.]

 

Could there be anyone more selfish than me? Who else do I care about? How could “Jane” stand it so long? But something more is happening, I pray, between my self-hate and my ego fantasies, I pray, I pray Kannon . . . to know you. Forgive me . . . forgive me . . . all the evil hurtful actions committed by me [recited  at the Zen center repentance ceremony.]

 

The truth will set me free — to liberate all beings is spontaneously and naturally as my heart pumps the blood through this body, to nourish all cells. Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon, Kannon. For the sake of all, ALL, ALL beings may this one . . . may this one let himself be guided on . . . for the sake of all beings.

I love my new prayer plant — a new thing to love. Cleansing affection from the temporal [T.S. Eliot.] Escape through beauty. 

Love is itself unmoving,

I said to my soul, be still . . .

And let the dark come upon you . . . and they that walked in darkness . . .

Have seen . . . have seen

And the dark . . . the dark . . .

Shall be the darkness of GOD. 

And wait without hope . . . and without love.

But there is FAITH.

And the darkness shall be the light

And the stillness, the dancing

 

If there is ONE MIND, who is striving for enlightenment? And why doesn’t he know it?

My poor kitties never get enough love. Am I mean — who is mean? [I had two cats then, foisted on me by crazy Laurie.]

 

February 8, 6 AM. It looks as if you have just got to learn to keep on sitting. Fear comes on so strong that you’re never going to make it when you let up a little. Does fear produce thought, produce fear, produce thought? Give it all up.

To be ready to die for the Buddha, to die for the Buddha at every moment — then what is there to fear? And to practice loving kindness towards all beings. Over and over again, like Hsu Yun, to lay down one’s own life for the dharma. All else is delusion. This world I see — such a pitifully small aspect of Reality, a bubble in a stream, a star at dawn.

 

February 9, 1979. On charter, why is it that I become so tense with people – because I am not willing to die for the Buddha? — Or perhaps a guiding karma that will always keep me out of talk, even the most sublime, because it is at root empty? My goal is just to sit and sit and sit. What a Buddha Hsu Yun was, patience that is not patience, but just utterly natural functioning of ONE MIND. Give up, give up, a lifetime’s death in love [Four Quartets]. No judgment. Maitreya sees. One must be deeply enlightened to know good from bad. Give up, give up. “I experienced no suffering because I had laid everything down” [Hsu Yun]. Perhaps you become tense out of trying to be close through talk. Having so little, will you be driven to attain more than most? Why judge? Hands held high in the air just let go . . . like someone who has nothing to lose. . . .

 

February 10. Three desires and their gratification have great effect keeping us bound to this body and preventing progress in zazen. Food, sex, and sleep, all meager substitutes for the real Dharma. Yet when dwelled upon seem to be so desirable in themselves. [T.S. Eliot: “Desire itself is movement, not in itself desirable. Love is itself unmoving, the cause and the end of all movement.”] In fulfillment of one to desire for another, and another, and over and over again. Cutting way down on food helps me greatly, but I just had to have cookies this morning, after sleeping too much — seven hours should have been four or five with nap during the day if necessary. These weekend sleeps always leads tension in the morning sittings, although too little sleep during the week is adverse, too — must find balance. And I must be more persistent in zazen, not become discouraged so I don’t fall to those desires.

 

Chanting on February 8: Many sobs and electricity gripping my arms and some calm afterwards. Felt how I might be able to go to sesshin and get caught up in that tremendous flow with no dillydallying, stop and go like here at home. But I must keep working here, but maybe going to more and more sittings — with complete patience. Kannon, help me to be what my heart of hearts longs to be. I know there is tremendous strength in me, and great love. I could help so many, if I would just get moving — nonstop sitting to the end. Kannon . . . Kannon . . . Kannon.

 

February 14. Was. very discouraged after seeing Sensei [Toni] and a bad sitting at center Monday night—haven’t sat much [I must mean relatively; I’m certain I was still sitting several hours daily] since then. Very embarrassed and full of self-hate over letter I wrote to Roshi [I don’t remember this at all]. Now — practicing loving every object, being, sensation, thought, trying to embrace everything in my awareness — seems the best practice. Overcomes fear and hints at the great joy I knew before [referring to the experience described in Cabeza, page 268: “I visualized infinite love and compassion. I knew it was there, but I did not feel it. So I imagined what it would be like to know it. I imagined it flowing through me as I rode my bike to work, as I met the other drivers, as I boarded and checked out the bus. Imagined it flowing through my arm as I opened the door and as I closed it. Flowing through the children as they boarded. Lovingness . . . without object, without self, without resistance, without wanting, without fearing. And as I rode home . . . flowing through the clouds, and through the sun, and through the cars, and through the streets, and through the houses. . . . And the shell   . . . began to crack. To dissolve. The cage door to swing wide . . . until . . . finally . . . home in my empty house. . . . . . .

I have never known, before or since, such joy. I was crying, laughing, and pounding on the floor in uproarious paroxysms of bliss. There was no me! Never, ever, ever, never, ever had there been a me. The oh-so-separate self I’d been defending at such cost: Gone. Only joy and love. 

But.

Since rejoining the Zen Center, while I had not yet dared to attend a sesshin, I had been a regular at the daily sittings. That evening I went, and while the memory of my “breakthrough” was intense (whether it would have deserved a bib I have no idea; it was certainly not as profound an experience as deLancey’s second), I could still feel the old anxiety start to rear its head in the background.” But “overcoming” fear just buries it temporarily — it always comes back].

 But in actual sitting perhaps just letting go is best.  For unto us [Messiah: . . . a child is born, a son is given] . . . Am I that child? I must do my best. How can you fail by aiming high?

February 16. A few notes here on charter — listening to the  violin chaconne, Bach — all my life I’ve had this feeling of being in a foreign world — my home I have only found in the deepest moments of music. I always wanted to share that with someone — Jane, but never could. Bach is saying something similar in that partita. I think that has been my thought all my life — when will I find my true home?

Jane is in a lot of pain — due to me she thinks. No contact. I am so alone — yet not at all if I can find IT. I need to keep the inspiration around me to get anywhere. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert; my best friends, the company of the gods. Kannon, forgive me — let me devote every moment to the ultimate benefit of all beings[rather the ultimate benefit of Being.]. So selfish I am. If you stay alone it has to be for others. Beethoven is becoming clearer and clearer. The awakened MIND. At peace . . . at peace . . . at peace. And full . . . full . . . FULL of LOVE.

February 20 a.m. Terribly depressed. Bob and Jane [saw them walking hand-in-hand] — my practice going terribly — jealous, vengeful feelings coming up — suicidal. I’ve got to cultivate love for all beings. Bob and Jane, everyone I meet, and myself — it is the only hope and I have seen how it rapidly can liberate me. Swim up the torrent of fear with love. You have, and you can . . . you will do it. Great joy and freedom is the sure reward.

Later on in this terribly hard day when it seems all is lost — that the greatest hopes were mere imaginings and the only reality is what you have lost. Suicide and murder — such thoughts I have fleetingly . . . only to know that I have to die, but still such despair, such fear. And desire to leave this place of painful remembrances — go out West . . . a pilgrimage . . . anyplace. [Very soon thereafter I bought my first truck and built the cabin on it, and two months later went out to Canyonlands.] My greatest hopes have been dashed so many — every — time. Yet there is the thought that these hard times will pass — my practice may come back to me. Why am I the unloving, unreceptive person who cannot — never has — related to others in the ways they all take for granted [so I imagined]. The hard one can neither give nor  accept. But supposedly, undoubtedly, it will change. I have changed a little in the last ten years. The first day in ages above freezing (the first in two weeks above 10°); spring will come, although there is no hint in the white snow. Who writes this . . . who is trying to . . . who will come to awakening? There is every reason to doubt, yet somewhere there is faith.

February 21. Crying my eyes out to Beethoven Sonata 32 again. There is something leading me — all I have to do is keep learning to let it. Seeing Amy and Bill yesterday — maybe it is possible for me, good for me, to have friends. A way to learn lovingkindness better.

March 10. So many ups and downs — despair lately — keep awareness in hara [abdomen], let breathing go. Awareness in abdomen . . . doesn’t need to run away or have fear. Awareness in head always thinking, fearful clinging thoughts . . . and always want to run.

March 21. Downhill. Downhill. Downhill. Crying so much lately seems that I need to, yet I still can’t get back into practice. So much pain — and giving up ego I also seem to be giving up the one who wants to stay out of the way of cars — I would just like to die. Just for your sake, Jane, if that happens and you read this — I remember your dream about your father killing himself and you were only angry at him when he did it. So feel free to be furious with me if I die. All my actions have always been premeditated to hurt you, you know . . . don’t you? [Meant sarcastically.]

Down to the pits. Kannon, give me some sign as to what I must do or will happen. I’m very confused. Kannon, give me some sign that you are real. Help me. I don’t really want to go to hell. I would like to know love, why am I so fainthearted?

June 11, 1981. If I happen to die it may not be an accident.

December 10, 1983. Most of the proceeding is nonsense. [On staff now at Springwater center, giving up the Buddhist nonsense.] However, if there should be death of this body, perhaps the Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei of Missa Solemnis could be played. Even if there is suicide, there are no regrets. Even having only feeble glimpses of What Is, one knows “regret” is most inappropriate. (“Applaud friends, the comedy is ended” — Beethoven on his deathbed.) I.e. “it must be . . . it must be . . .” [16th quartet]

December 20, 1983. Make that the whole Missa Solemnis. “We only live, only suspire/Consumed by either fire or fire.”

If that’s too much to ask — just stick the headphones on the urn . . . Do . . . o . . . o . . . na . . . Nobis Pacem . . .

December 31, 1983. Relationship with Anne begins.

End of first notebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1994 [second notebook; we moved to Nunda in 1990]. Learning to do nothing, with joy very simple.

Learning not to try, but letting go of all fear,

Fear of pain, and fear of judgment.

Why hold on, why? Rather, why not be free perhaps to visualize/imagine the work as easy, not hard. Looking back into the mind, gently, delicately, to see the cause of all our ills, to know with un-fearing intimacy the source of all sorrow.

Sports: competition (survival skills of early man, dominance, gene propagation, learning the pecking order), but also the joy of transcending the body (the limits thereof).

The sensation and fear of great sadness, sorrow, or despair arises from the idea of a self, which, when dropped, allows the sadness to vanish.

A nightmare of fear beyond any normal fear, on a spaceship with others trying to escape our doom, then knowing the terror I’ve always been running from and screaming, screaming. . . . . . .

On the edge of seemingly infinite pain, sorrow, despair, misery — just ignore it (without repression, judgment) it’s just “makyo” [in Buddhism, delusion].The great pain seems to be the resistance of the “I.” Gentle persuasion to let go is required.

Willing to die, but not a violent death, rather a gentle one. A joyous death.

When “bad” feelings come — pain, fear — we consider them part of us; that is what we think we are. To just let go of the feelings and observe without fear.

The above is useless when the pain comes.

Listen to the sound of the Mind, and be willing to die. —???

Pain is a protective response, defensive and linked to fear by conditioning. Disassociate pain from fear. Just pain, no fear. [But this makes the finite being infinitely vulnerable.] 

January 7, 1995. Slowly letting go of the not wanting to sit, not wanting to know one’s self.

Consciousness = standing wave.

September 27, 1995. Do not be concerned with how you feel — that will take care of itself in time. The feedback system: I feel bad, so I must do something. Automatic program — can be allowed to wither. The attention [the not reacting] is all that matters.

Emotions, programmed by our genes, conditioned by our environment, stimulate us to do something. This is not necessary or desirable.

The “I” is a concern about what will happen, or is happening, and a motivation to affect that. To know that there is no thing to do, change . . . the “I” is time (i.e. past, present, future). Attention knows that time is an illusion, a conditioning. Attentive awareness knows the “future” is trivial compared with the NOW. The “future” is a creation of our genes.

Fear, when very young, of abandonment (i.e., death), due to “unloving” mother. Leads to constant stress, anxiety (perhaps changes in the brain). A constant wanting to do something to avoid the omnipresent threat (everything is a potential danger to a baby without a mother). To be loved, admired, have status: one must do something, but all doing is futile. Only attentive awareness [I would not use those words now, rather just allowing the mind to be with itself not reacting: free won’t] with its calm strength can relieve it. But for attentive awareness, one must give up all doing, which the organism sees is the only way to avoid death (i.e., gene death) therefore great fear arises to re-motivate to do something.

Tension: a defense from attack — constant due to sense of abandonment one young. [But it’s really in everyone regardless of how “good” their mother was.]

Tension gives a feeling of relative safety. To relax means unilateral disarmament, which is terrifying.

Thoughts are generated by the mind to solve problems, all reducible to the drive for genetic success. Greater fear, anxiety, inevitably create more thoughts, i.e. a mind state obsessed with thinking.

You cannot make thoughts go away. You, that is attentive awareness, can only see how you, as the willing slave of the emotions, make these thoughts yourself. Only then . . . can thought lessen.

We are like someone hitting themselves over the head with a hammer, seeing doctor after doctor, taking aspirin after aspirin. If we really saw what we were doing to ourselves, we would stop in an instant. But our emotions don’t want us to stop, because that would threaten our genetic success.

In sitting it is not necessary to do anything. Rather to refrain from doing.

. . . So why can one not just sit quietly, with oneself, without thought? Is there subtly a profound fear just under the surface, being the source and motivation for all these thoughts and disquiet? If so, then it must be discovered, seen, felt, experienced, its root cause fearlessly explored and finally seen as empty, of no significance; a paper tiger that has chased us all our lives. Only then is Peace possible. [Here I’m beginning to see that it is emotion that drives thoughts.]

Fear/pain may lie beneath subtle tension.

Do not try to change what you are —that is just the genes wanting to propagate. There is nothing to change— just be what IS, NOW.

It is our genes that make us not like what we are now, wanting to change, simply because reproductive success is threatened (signaled by unpleasant emotions, etc.). Investigating the present moment does not make babies.

November 10, 1995. The “I”: a knot of tension, of wanting/fearing, in our consciousness — unnecessary, obsolete, the cause of all sorrow. Perpetuated by various feedback mechanisms, it serves only to replicate the organism’s genes.

[I had likely recently read Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, along with, earlier, Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. ] 

A donkey pulling a cart. The driver dangles the carrot in front and periodically whips the donkey in the behind. The carrot is “happiness,” pleasure, sex, dreams of the future. The stick is pain, fear, discontent, etc. The driver is our genes. But humans do have the choice, the awareness to see through this and be free. “Happiness” is being “loved,” having sex, children, status: anything that furthers the prospects of our genes.

All trying has a motive, which ultimately is genetic success.

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Even a mind full of thoughts will come to rest eventually when its source of energy is seen through.

An impulse, feeling, motivation, enters the consciousness as a prod to action. The consciousness processes all available information and acts. Attentive awareness does not act, but merely looks back at the source of fraud. Emotion makes us want to do something. Tension arises when we don’t know what to do. Attentive awareness drops the doing and looks of the cause, which is very threatening. “Nothing will be done!” the mind cries.

Thoughts are a symptom. Like smoking, their purpose is to relieve internal dis-ease, but also become habit forming.

Self-hatred — very painful, frighteningly unbearable feelings at an early age. The only defense is to separate the self into that which is hated and the “true” me. [What I was doing unremittingly in 1968. The only freedom from that is “endure without complaining, feel our worthlessness.”]

February 17, 1996. Thoughts — preparation for verbal or otherwise battle, conferring status and reproductive success. But also useful for solving problems.

April 1, 1996. For thoughts to cease — an intimate apprehension of the root of wanting/fearing — gentle, tender, aware, clear, i.e. unmotivated by that wanting/fearing. A very simple attention to what makes the mind go round.

To be free, it is necessary not to obey the carrot/stick of wanting/fearing.

Wanting/fearing: movement away from the attentive stillness that the mind is capable of.

The mind constantly judging: wanting is bad, therefore trying to get rid of it. Just more wanting — not attentive awareness.

The mind’s identification with the emotions (including all wanting/fearing) is the core difficulty. Attentive awareness does not identify; just gently observes.[I prefer the term free won’t.]

Utter hatred of the way “I” “am” — the biggest “obstacle,” yet no “obstacle.”

Hopeless: implies one is trying to do something.

Emotions: start in the brain (from a thought? [no, from a reaction), Then physical reaction, i.e. tension, etc. Attentive awareness can see the beginning and choose not to react [free won’t]. But that can result in great anxiety: “If I don’t react, what will become of me?” “I have to do something!!!” Attentive awareness can gently, intimately be with this.

Letting the mind become aware of its painful condition and allowing the powers of attention to work — this requires “willingness” to face one’s own mind, and “faith” or intuition or understanding of attention.

How we “feel” motivates us day and night. Attentive awareness is unmotivated,un-motivating. [Four Quartets: “Desire is itself movement, not in itself desirable. Love itself is unmoving, the cause and the end of all movement.”] 

All “feelings” — rooted in genes — make us feel we have to do something or die.

The “Great Pain” is merely the minds bondage to a mess of conflicting emotions, wanting, fearing, etc.; their interaction causing omnipresent tension, their action causing new sorrow daily. Attentive awareness is free of all that, sees all yet does not have to see any thing because there is no separate thing.

The big trap: to try to use attentive awareness solve our problems (i.e., relieve pain, anxiety, etc.). Attentive awareness does not solve problems, it effortlessly, gently, caressingly, takes in the Whole. We want to solve problems (for our genes).  Wanting is a separation; attentive awareness is the Whole. The impulse to want . . . does not have to be obeyed. It is like a bad habit tormenting, destroying our life.

Attentive awareness: effortless, gentle, calm, clear, profound knowing [Being].

Effort is in the realm of genes and wanting.

If despair comes in this work, it is due to wanting, demanding, the utter futility of which may need to be experienced. [Feel our worthlessness.] Then, possibly, attentive awareness may arise.

The mind demands, “Do something about the pain! Now! Please! Help me!!!” But nothing needs to be done. Nothing. [“The biggest trap is trying to get out of the trap.”]

Observing great tension in the abdomen. Wanting very badly for to go away. But the wanting is the tension. Observing the whole thing.

See the inner hell unmoved by the tumultuous emotions. Like watching a football game, unconcerned with who wins, but seeing everything that is happening.

Most thoughts are the result of the mind observing the impulse of the emotions, trying to satisfy the emotions by finding a “solution” to the “problem” they pose. If we don’t obey, the emotions scream bloody murder, and we think we will die, but it’s a lie. If we don’t obey, all the tormenting thoughts will eventually cease.

It seems important not to be obsessed with the inner turmoil, trying to resolve it, etc., but to see it, gently . . . from afar.

When emotions arise (almost constantly), the body reacts, tenses, in preparation for acting, and thoughts are stimulated regarding what to do. Attention, seeing, knowing the emotion before the body reacts [free won’t]. Doing nothing.

There is nothing you can do. Just allow the process to operate, on its own time, at its own pace.

Despair results when we see the futility of all our doing. It is perhaps a necessary state, a prerequisite for this work to occur.

May 29, 1996 consciousness is awareness, attention, so obviously nothing has to be done. But consciousness is the subservient tool of the emotions (genes). That can be seen: consciousness looking back at consciousness. But it is not an “activity,” just the natural functioning of consciousness.

I hate pain. At some early age I learned it was unsafe to express anger externally, therefore I focused it against myself. If I feel pain, or do something that may make me vulnerable to pain, I hate myself. To be open to pain without reaction (hatred, tension, etc.) . . . is a form of death, i.e., gene death.

The mind needs to know itself, LONGS to know itself. If unobstructed, it WILL know itself. You cannot make it happen, but you can LET it happen. 

Conflicting emotions:  great fear of people (due to inadequate bonding with mother, etc.?) And yearning for status (success, but perhaps enhanced by the first — note dictators such as Stalin need for status to control their fears.) 

This causes great internal turmoil as the fear was so great in me to prevent any gain of status. Thus self-hatred for both the fear and that yearning. (Part of me could never respect someone who yearned for status; or, I was aware that the yearning for status could lower status in the eyes of others; likely both. 

So much of the way I worked in the past was an attempt to escape from the emotions (this was even clear from the beginning) — I was terrified of their immense power. [A dream around 1980 that I was an extraordinarily wild, vicious animal, wanting to lash out at everyone and everything.]

Just as an addict acts on his craving, react we react to our emotions — physically and with thoughts — in order to “fulfill” them. For an addict to abstain from his drug — this is non-action, yet profoundly difficult work. Thus it is to abstain from reacting to our emotions. But in that abstention is awareness, simple observation of our condition. Blind reaction crowds out awareness from the mind. But if there is no reaction, then there is space for the “natural,” unmotivated functioning of the mind to occur.

It is precisely the same mechanism as addiction: we feel bad, want to feel better, and think and do something for that effect — but nothing is changed and a destructive, or at least very limiting cycle is perpetuated and reinforced. To break the cycle and just observe is to break a bad habit of the organism [but . . . that “bad habit” is designed to get the genes into the next generation.]

This work has been so difficult, at least partly, since this organism learned early to fear everything. [But perhaps everyone learns that, in one way or another. Or, most likely, it’s hardwired in the brain and body.] “I” feel so bad. “I” hate what “I” feel. “I” hate “myself.”

To know myself is the most frighteningly painful experience possible. [BECAUSE that SELF is pure BEING; the Infinite Spirit is devastating to the finite being.]

Fear of everything plus my tendency to blame myself makes me constantly afraid I am doing something “wrong.” Set into motion by my mother? [No, by evolution. The mother is just a proximate cause.]

Is the “Great Pain” itself a reaction (to an unloving mother in a frightening world)? No reaction, no pain? I cling to the reaction (identifying with it, pain being a defense mechanism to warn of possible death) and the pain — but it’s not necessary to do so. Not clinging to pain is being vulnerable, and willing to “die.”

Perception (discriminating mind?) → Emotion → Reaction, etc., etc. Observe this process.

Emotional reaction → distraction → thoughts. If no reaction, no distraction or thoughts, just attention.

Thoughts are the way we try to resolve emotional reactions.

“A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything.” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets. You get what you pay for. Pay now, or pay later.

Romantic love: the same as chocolate mousse.

“Attachment”: the mind’s identification with an emotion — “this feeling is ME.”

Always trying to do something, but the trying is a defending against WHAT IS.

Ignoring the pain, i.e., seeing it but not identifying with it — then there is no need to fear it. Not being separate from the pain either, but not saying this is Me (and “I” have to DO something about it).

The “Trick” of knowing the pain without identifying, reacting with tension and fear: a “lightness” of consciousness, very gentle, not demanding progress, content to, perhaps, open only a tiny bit at a time. Content not to open. Is there something wrong in this universe? No.

Our personality is a set of distinctive emotional reactions and stimuli (both learned and inherited), i.e., our emotional reaction to a situation stimulates us to respond in a certain way, — but we do not have to react to these stimuli. We do not have to be, i.e., identify with, our personality. We can be, instead, the Observer . . . of the Whole.

Doing, including thinking, which has proved useful to Homo sapiens in solving problems, is a “natural” tranquilizer. Without doing, or thought, great anxiety can come up, which needs to be seen in stillness — without doing or thought. Tension is a form of doing, and blocks the anxiety from our consciousness. Ultimately, anxiety that we will not reproduce.

“I” don’t like tension. “I” want to do something, anything, so “I” don’t feel, or am not aware of, it. The “I” is an identification with how the organism feels.

An ever-present background (or foreground) of wanting in the mind, due to the underlying anxiety.

This work is literally the simplest way of being. All doing, thought, etc., is a complexity leading to chaos and confusion — like science, in which the simplest theory to fit a set of facts is chosen (Occam’s razor).

Perhaps we sense how tenuous, unreal, the “I” is, and this is why we defend it so fiercely. When we know what we truly ARE, we see that there is not a threat to that BEING in the entire universe. The “I” is not a being, but a trying to be, (i.e., reproduce).

Like someone who identifies with their fancy sports car, without even knowing or understanding what they are doing, we identify with our personality, unawares. In sitting we begin to see what we are doing.

The Mind receives an emotional stimulus from the brain. If unaware, it responds (making a “choice” based on its conditioning). If aware, however, the Mind has what is the only true choice, not to respond, but just observe. Observing the wanting to respond, but abstaining from it.

All pervading inner sea of fear/anxiety — to be with, hold the terrified child, “fulfilling,” finally, its unremitting need. All the “mistakes” of life — like mistakes on the piano — can be seen but not agonized over. [Beethoven: feel our worthlessness.] One just needs to keep working at it (practicing or sitting).

“Imagining” a loving openness for my inner knot of pain/fear. “Imagining” “untying” the knot.

No need to struggle. Let the work do itself.

Why do bother to try to do anything? There may be much pain, fear and misery, but it’s utterly futile to do anything about it. But perhaps the recognition of the futility allows the possibility for attention. And then again, perhaps not. But there’s nothing you can do.

Knowing what you are. Seeing, feeling, being what you are, dispassionately. [Free won’t, feeling our worthlessness.]

At work it is apparent how much I abhor the present moment. That abhorrence is my ever present underlying mental attitude. But nothing to be done about it, except see, acknowledge it. Apparent because work is so “boring.” [Housecleaning]

To solve the problem you must KNOW the problem.

Is there really something so terrible about the present moment? Or is the mind just continuing a bad habit? [But the bad habit was created for a reason: the present moment is devastating to the finite being.]

Without trying to do anything, allowing the work to proceed. 

Trying to be attentive — putting all the wanting and fearing into it.  Futile. Allowing the attention to be free of all that— this is where the work is. [Free won’t]

I want a magic way to get through my knot of pain without really knowing it fully, intimately, wholly. But there is no such animal.

Pain was “designed” to stimulate fear (i.e., avoidance), anger, or sorrow to make us shun threatening circumstances. To know my knot of pain simply without those reactions. . . . If there is reaction, there is no attention. Is the “I” that which reacts? Just observing — no reaction — no I?

Disinterested attention, unmotivated by hopes of the future. All motivation having a physical aspect, a tension of the body/mind (?). (In me at least). 

Attention requires the abstention of investing effort in motivated action (thought is a form of action). But we first must see the effort one is making. Here’s the difficulty, and that there is fear of stopping the effort, that the dam a break. This is the heart of the me. And there may be many “layers” of effort to abstain from.

All these years, being terrified of the forces, feelings, within my mind has been the prime obstacle. But there is no need for fear. The feelings may seem infinitely powerful, but they are not. The attentive mind does have the capacity to see these forces in all their immensity, and yet be unmoved, undisturbed. [Still, Beethoven scrawled “despair!” over the first movement of the Ninth Symphony.]

In a way, sitting is like watching TV — except we can’t change the channel. (But with our thoughts we may try to.)

Attentive awareness is totally un-intentional; we can let it happen but not make it happen. Not “I must embrace everything,” but letting the mind take in the whole of what is.

Always trying to do something. NOT wanting, avoiding at all costs, knowing the mind.[Being the mind.]

The great paradox and conundrum — what to do about doing. How do we stop doing? 

All our thoughts are part of the great chain of doing, the mind’s attempt to satisfy the infinite appetite of the emotions.

Homo sapiens: the perpetual wanting machines. But we have the choice not to keep winding it up.

We may try to satisfy our “spiritual” need to understand through the emotions. This is a great but common, persistent error. Does a man lost in the desert satisfy his thirst with a bottle of whiskey?

Allow the mind to be intimate with your most secret inner misery. Intimately aware, yet unmoved. Do not try to do it, because it’s not something that can be done.

Is most of the power of organized religion due to people wanting the security (i.e., increased reproductive success) of belonging to a group — the beliefs themselves being less important than the emotional sense of well-being due to belonging? Being due to the charismatic leader who can induce the placebo effect (i.e., the belief that we will be “saved” if we follow the “rules”).

Worry/thoughts about how sunglasses will turn out — because I do not want to face, i.e., I am afraid of, the feelings that will arise in dealing with the Vision Center. Face [be with] those feelings, and there is no need for thought and worry.

Wanting to get out of our hell, without seeing fully, wholly what is going on, and acting on that wanting, is a recipe for disaster. See Lenin, Hitler. [Lenin’s book: What Is to Be Done? He did something about the government of the Tsars and created something far worse.]

Why do you not want to continue sitting?

The constant obsession — what do I do to get out of this hell. Wanting to control the work, make it happen, when it can only happen on its own. Allowing the mind to be driven by wanting/fearing is the obstacle. And the belief that there is someone to rescue from hell, that one must be saved. There is no soul (read ego) to save. [But this requires the finite being to be utterly devastated and demolished, “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.” Buddhism clings to the idea that there is someone to be saved. Except for the Diamond Sutra— widely ignored — which has the Buddha saying, “In reality there are no sentient beings to save.”]

“You must endure the unendurable.” (Unendurable to the “I,” but what is it really?)

To observe, simply, openly, how we torture ourselves, without reacting — how else could human misery come to an end? But not wanting (a reaction) it to end. The wanting is the misery.

The mind has many deeply ingrained, automatic mechanisms, thought processes, etc., that worked to prevent what is unpleasant, painful, frightening, from being seen and experienced. These mechanisms need to be seen and abstained from [free won’t]. For me: tension, self-hatred, countless thoughts. . . .

Humans may talk about “Peace,” have a romantic idea of its nature, but have no qualms about wiping out any organisms that pose the slightest threat — from bacteria to grizzlies.

ALL pain is due to damaged or threatened reproductive success. Mind, awareness, not tied to reproductive success, knows no pain. [Or at least is unmoved by it, like Ivan Ilyich.]

Look at [be with] the cause of the thought: the emotion that drives the mind. [Feel our worthlessness: the inability of the finite being to get out of the trap.]

All you’re doing, all these years — just to prevent yourself from seeing. . . .

“Free will”: Awareness serving only the genes. Attentive awareness: profound emotion [not emotion, I can’t think of a good word— perhaps spiritual sensitivities] but unmoved and unmovable.

The aim of this work is not to change oneself, change anything, but to understand, intimately, Everything, just as it is.

The biggest, deeply ingrained, habitual error: trying to change oneself. This is just avoiding the Truth of what one is now.

Everything we don’t like about the present moment needs, begs to be recognized for what it is, intimately, fearlessly. [This is hardly in the realm of the unfree will, the finite being. Only the Infinite Spirit has this capability.]

Experiencing the breath, but gently allowing awareness of everything. Not using concentration to hide/avoid anything. [But experiencing the breath is a practice which the unfree will will take over for its own ends. Just be with . . . that which is.]

The purpose of sitting is to learn the meaning of hopeless. [I.e., feel our worthlessness.]

Sitting is not fun because we learn all the miserable effects of our wanting [thus most give it up]. We are forced to see it. But if we decide not to sit, we do not see it, but identify with the wanting and act it out.

We all want “peace,” i.e., something to soothe, calm, allay, cover up our fears. True peace involves a seeing, knowing, beyond wanting, beyond fearing.

Just trying to observe thoughts without knowing the emotions that drive them — this is a cover-up and a futile exercise.

So terrified of my own emotions (wanting to act on them, not knowing them for what they are). But sitting may be slowly eroding the great resistance.

April 28, 1997. When a thought (or piece of music) is stuck in the mind there is a reason — and emotion — that needs to be known. Until it is, one must live through that thought or music going round and round . . .  not trying to escape the whole mess.

Repressed anger: the cause of all [? no] my tension. Anger redirected at myself since its expression at an external object was determined to be dangerous or ethically wrong. But one can abstain from letting anger motivate one. And thus allow a gentle, open inner awareness to come to the surface [free won’t].

Anger: when we don’t get what we want.

What philosophers call free will — a self-conscious awareness that observes the situation and then chooses what it believes is the best course of action — chooses, but that choosing is directed by its conditioning, i.e., environment and heredity.

But that self-conscious awareness has the ability, potential, to just observe and not choose, not act (of course we must act as a practical matter) — this is the only true freedom. Unconditioned.

Are most natural sounds pleasant to the ear so that we will listen more closely and obtain a survival advantage? Origin of music? But the natural world (sounds, etc.) can reveal the nature of That Which Is.

When doing [i.e., self-conscious doing that is motivated by wanting/fearing] comes to an end, seeing can begin.

 

“You have to face it sometime” (Toni Packer, Springwater teacher). Not facing it, but allowing the painful frightening feelings to come up and flow through the mind — not preventing them from coming up. Not doing anything [not trying to do anything]: facing, being with, becoming one with, etc.— not wanting things to be any particular way, just letting the mind have the space it needs for awareness to come, on its own, uncontrolled, uncontrollable. 

 

The miracle is, with all the wanting to do this work, the “I should” do this work, the extreme fear of this work — the work is still possible [thanks to the Infinite Spirit].

To not react to an emotion is very difficult because our habit is, if we don’t act on it directly, to repress it, divert it, “sublimate” it, or otherwise indirectly act on it. Thus seeing, observing, the process is essential: intimately knowing the minds workings. Only thus is non-action possible. The subtlety and power of the emotions to direct every aspect of our being should not be underestimated.

I have so far been using “emotions” to mean emotions plus a multitude of semi- or subconscious impulses that are not generally felt as what we call emotions. [But they are within the realm of wanting/fearing.]

The mind needs to be allowed to be aware of everything, no matter how much we don’t like it. Sitting is the slow crucifixion of the “I.”

Is it possible that attention can come up in the midst of one’s misery, not resolving it, but still be there, aware? And can being too obsessed with one’s misery prevent this? [Obsessed meaning determined to make it go away.]

Can attention flow gently above, amidst, the chaos and misery — unmoved, undisturbed, unmotivated to change a thing?

Compare how we view the self with how the world used to view the earth: as the center of the universe.

All the difficulties of this work can be reduced to not wanting to know what one really is. Wanting to be something different. [But what one really is — the Infinite Spirit — is devastating to the finite being.]

Thinking of projects while sitting — the incessant drive to do something.

June 24, 1997. Don’t try to fix yourself — it can’t be done. So your mind is a crazy, mixed up, chaotic mess . . . what else is new? You can’t DO a thing about it. [All doing just perpetuates it.]

The hardest work is allowing the work to be unmotivated (by wanting/fearing, etc.)

 

Who is it that is doing the trying? No one, just a loop of impulses and reactions working automatically until we see the process and refrain from energizing it.

During extended sitting, more and more wanting/fearing comes up and my reaction is ultimately excruciating tension. But there is nothing to do about this.

Not wanting to be the one who reacts: yet another reaction.

Do Not Try to Relax! When the mind is allowed to see/know itself (That’s Which Is) internal opposition and conflict will cease on its own. It does not help (understatement to the nth) to want this to happen. The genes’ puppet strings always make the mind want to feel better, but this has nothing to do with attentive awareness. Awareness does not care how we feel. [But free won’t can allow the misery to slowly dissipate.]

The obsession with how we feel is rooted in our genes. In humans this is what drives reproductive success. The “art of dying” is allowing this obsession to end, which is, in fact, death to the genes.

 

Due to my very deep-seated fears (arising from feeling unloved in early childhood? [an oversimplification]) my mind was conditioned to a state of constant doing, or feeling I should be doing something. This is why non-doing is so difficult (and frightening) to me. [Oversimplification: Infinite Spirit is devastating to the finite being.]

 

Sitting is no more difficult than watching TV — except we can’t change the channel (although we do try).

Observing the reactions to emotions — tension, thoughts — is there always a physical reaction? [Yes.]

What one is — this is everyone’s koan.

There is no easy way out — you must live this through to the end.

To be free of wanting/fearing one must live through the pain of wanting/fearing.

There’s nothing you can do! You keep trying (wanting) to do something. Non-doing can allow the work to happen, on its own.

The Great Pain — something is in the way that one is identifying with. [The finite being.]

The Pain — makyo — ignore but not repress [ free won’t]. [Makyo actually means illusion/delusion. The Pain is not illusory but is part of the finite being’s reaction.]

 

Going to the dentist — making the appointment, sitting in the chair, not doing anything. Not fun, but is it difficult?

Is it, as Toni says, that attention sees through wanting, or rather that in the non-doing state, the mind is just learning a way to BE, and not react to the wanting impulses (the constant desire to become something?

All this “Can you see that?” of Toni — inaccurate. Rather, “Can you just be with, and not react to that?” The mind is aware — it is counterproductive to try to see anything.[Not “seeing without knowing,” rather, “Being without reacting.”]

You keep trying to make the tension go away, instead of just being aware [instead of just being with what is going on].

We all want release through the emotions, but the only true release is from the emotions.

 

The cause of all, All, ALL your misery lies within. Can you remember that?! And that cause can be seen, known, felt, understood [not reacted to], and thus lose its power. All your reacting to external events is utterly inappropriate, only tightening the knots and noose that bind you.

January 15, 1998. The “I” arises out of identification with something that is experienced, i.e., an emotion,”mind state,” etc. No identification, no “I,” just awareness. Identification means we say, “This is me” — due to wanting, driven by emotions. All reducible to reacting to emotions. Can we abstain from this reaction?

 

We think we have to do something (this may be revealed as a subtle tension). But who is this “we,”  this “I”; just a complicated collection of impulses directing us, and perfectly, towards reproductive success. Outside of this there is nothing to do, nothing that can be done. Just the observation of That Which Is.

Earth center of universe — epicycles needed to explain motion of planets. Very complex. The “I” center of universe — complex theories of God, karma, heaven, hell, rebirth needed. Ivan, in Brothers Karamazov, rejects “God” because the world doesn’t make sense, that God should not allow suffering. But only because Ivan considers the self supreme. [Woman of the Lightning: “The eternal necessity of suffering.”]

To not react to the emotions feels like, is, death. The death of the “I,” the death of that which limits us.

 

Most music makes the mind feel emotionally fulfilled (vicariously) to a mild degree. Like a drug. [But not the greatest, genuinely spiritual, music.]

The mind, constantly trying to do something, anything to “improve” its situation. [I.e., the situation of the finite being.] But there is nothing to do. [For the Infinite Spirit. It’s there, within, without: here, now, always.]

The only thing worse than letting one’s thoughts run unchecked is to try to control them. The emotion which drives  thoughts needs to come up and be experienced, not repressed.

Free will: the biggest delusion/illusion. Created by the genes, always making us feel there is something we can do.

Sitting is like facing the firing squad, waiting for the shot that never comes. We want to run, Run, RUN.

The essence of sitting: not to react to emotional impulses mentally (with thought) or physically (with tension, etc., that prevents the impulses from coming into full awareness.)

 

Not maintaining the neural networks of wanting/fearing so they fall into disuse, disrepair. [Not feeding them.]

Sitting is like being tied hand and foot to a tree, and mosquitoes are biting. Nothing we can do. Can we just stop fighting it? [Die, what else.]

To abstain from reacting one must be aware. [Free won’t.]

We want to have our emotions resolved by enlightenment/awareness. But this is not necessarily the case. More that they are left behind.

So much energy spent on “I don’t want this!”

Just as elementary particles do not follow the rules classical mechanics, but rather the mysterious, seemingly paradoxical dictates of quantum mechanics, not-doing, non-action, awareness, do not follow the rules of doing, wanting, fearing.

 

Wu wei — non-action — is perhaps more aptly termed non-reaction (to the emotions). Action arising out of Being is unmotivated (by emotion) (by reproductive success). [We must somehow be in the world, but not of it.]

We all want peace, but on the self’s terms. True “peace” has no terms, and requires the end of the self, the end of wanting.

The path to the infinite lies straight through the self. [Not exactly through, but rather being with, not reacting to, that self. Cloud of Unknowing: you will not find God, rather the stinking, putrid lump of self.]

Allowing the emotions to remain un-acted upon — the same as to abstain from cigarettes, unnecessary or junk food, etc. A bad habit that one can slowly leave behind. In sitting, one acts on the emotions by thought, tension (not being “open”).

 

In knowing self fully, one knows all.

Can you say not “I am afraid,” but rather, “There is fear in the mind.”

Wanting: an impulse to take action (including thought which plans action), the end result of which, whether we know it or not, is reproductive success. The “I” is merely an identification with the wanting. Awareness, rather, just observes and abstains from action and identification [free won’t].

Identification: intentionally (but still blindly) supplying the wanting with energy.

The biggest trap — is to try to get out of the trap.

There is not room for both wanting and awareness in the mind.[But we want not to suffer, and if we let go of wanting, the finite being suffers to the nth, screaming bloody murder.]

How can we see when we are constantly saying to ourselves, “No, I don’t want to see this, I don’t want to see that, I just want to see what I want.”

We don’t want awareness (we want to feel better). We prevent it, obstruct it, avoid it in every way possible. But we can learn to abstain from those reactions.

Living happily under the dictatorship of the genes is like living under a totalitarian regime. Some people may be happy, but others yearn for freedom. Or like a dog that is happily subservient to its master. But its ancestor, the wolf, could not live that way.

Awareness has no problem whatsoever being with the most unpleasant of circumstances. It is only the impulses arising out of what we call the self (really reproductive success) that want things different.

We try, try, try, try, try; we try until we die. But the “I” cannot control That Which Is. The God (i.e. the way we think life should be) we make in our image is only a mirage, flickering over desert sands. Do we know the desert for what it really IS?

Why do we sit? To find out why we sit, of course.

We are aware — we don’t have to do anything to become aware. The problem lies in our not liking, wanting to change what we are aware of. If we merely abstain from acting on this wanting, as we would abstain from say, having another cigarette, then awareness would be free to flourish.

The sex urge is so strong because it must overpower all the other impulses (at least occasionally) e.g., status, etc. It has yet to adapt to the age of birth control, however.

A dream of something absolutely terrifying. But there is no choice but to continue regardless.

Sitting gives us the opportunity to see what is driving us and we are stuck with ourselves— our normal reactions, except for thought, tension, et al., not being possible.

Do not try to unclench, to be open — just see [be with] the clenching. It’s really very easy — effortless in fact. [But, it allows the devastation of the finite being.]

No one chooses, but something sees the futility of thought, etc.

Before we can abstain from reacting to emotions, we must see what we are doing. Or, are seeing and abstention one and the same? [Yes.] It is doubtful that people who say they want to quit smoking see how much they really want what smoking gives them. They will never quit until they are willing to face the absence of that fulfillment, i.e., the anxiety within that drives them to smoke.

The vicious circle of resistance to That Which Is: resistance→ pain→ more resistance. Like an ethnic conflict — can it end?

September 1998. So often trying to make the organism feel better, instead of just allowing awareness to be. Eventually the mind understands that being fully aware is what matters, not how the organism feels. [But again, this is devastating to the finite being.]

Even the most awesome emotion — utter terror, consuming desire — is just a paper tiger if we don’t try to do anything about it, just see it. [Not accurate: just seeing is devastating.]“First, do no harm.” In sitting meaning not to bury things deeper. [As any intentional practice does.]

“I” am utterly terrified of Truth.

To continue, despite the fear, terror, is this courage, wisdom, or just finally knowing that there is no choice? Or, more accurately, is it that the forces of the “I” have diminished and the gravitational-like force of That Which Is is drawing one inward? [Beethoven and his death was working on a 10th Symphony in which he meant to “create a new gravitational force.”]

Sitting is like voluntarily standing in front of the firing squad. We can run, but we can’t hide. Die now or die later — your choice.

The price of life is death. Pay now or pay later. People who believe in heaven, rebirth, their children, are in denial.

Do not imagine there is anything you can do in sitting. Just being aware requires the abstention of doing.

You can’t know the truth if you are fighting it.

Mission impossible: your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to know who you really are.

Why do we throw rocks in the pond? Because we are terrified of what we might see.

The genes are ruthless, but awareness, MIND, even more so. It requires the ultimate sacrifice — Christ’s Passion — of every one of us.

Like a project on the house or truck, where you keep discovering more things to do, this work can seem endless. But who are we to complain? Besides, there is no choice.

The mirage of what we think we are prevents us from seeing what we really are (God).

“One does nothing, yet no thing is left undone.”[Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 38] found this online:

 

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 38

 

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,

And is therefore good.

A foolish man tries to be good,

And is therefore not good.

 

A truly good man does nothing,

Yet nothing is left undone.

A foolish man is always doing,

Yet much remains to be done

 

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.

When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.

When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,

He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order

 

Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.

When goodness is lost, there is kindness.

When kindness is lost, there is justice.

When justice is lost, there is ritual.

Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.

Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of the Tao.

It is the beginning of folly.

 

Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real

     and not what is on the surface,

On the fruit and not the flower,

Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

 

We all want help, Help, HELP! Won’t you please, Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase, help me avoid going through what it’s absolutely necessary to go through on one’s own. (But on one’s own doesn’t mean what we think it means — but we have to learn that for ourselves.)

We learn our lesson, i.e., awareness; then try to put it into practice. Grade: F!!

The energy we use in all our mental activities is all available for pure attention — in fact that is its source.

When we “love” someone romantically, it is in our imagination — they may not be who we think they are. So “love” of God could be the same thing. “Dedicate” your life to God: just as to a person (until we know them better). In return God promises [so we imagine] us reproductive success. Repent sin because sin hurts your reproductive success. [Frequently by lowering one’s status.][See what is written in Cabeza regarding Mother Teresa and her “devotion” to God.]

To live one’s life without understanding evolution — like a rocket scientist who doesn’t know the theory of gravitation.

Like a little child crying in the back seat, “When are we going to get there? Are we almost there? Why does it take so long?” — we, utterly ignorant of the nature of the journey, think it should be different.

All my past self-hatred just a bad habit, due to reacting to the intense fear. No reaction, no hatred. No reaction includes no repression also.) Tension also a bad habit. [But these habits protect the finite being from devastation.]

God needs to know God, and what I want or feel is utterly irrelevant. I just need to get out of the way and allow whatever happens to happen.

Sin is not an act; it is a state of mind, of being (or rather trying), of separation.

Sitting is just like watching TV: the program is: “This is your mind,” you can’t change the channel, and there are no munchies.

To believe anything about God — this is the highest blasphemy and expression of arrogance. God is a mystery we need to know for ourselves; all else is vanity.

God is like a mountain that looks different from every direction, or in different light, or when partially or totally obscured by clouds; or when we are wearing purple, out of focus, glasses. [Here I am spelling God, G_d.]

Seeking God’s heart = Allowing God in one’s own heart. One’s own heart is God’s heart.

True forgiveness is to forgive oneself: for separating oneself from God.

People who feel guilt usually, in their state of unawareness, usually feel guilt about the wrong things. [I.e., about things that have lowered their status.]

Wanting: to see it, to acknowledge it, to feel it burning in our breasts — yet not blindly act it out.

Everyone wants to know Why? Thus all the ideas of all religions. And science can learn all the proximate causes, but the ultimate Cause of Everything — is a Mystery. (Stephen Hawking, “Why does the universe bother to exist?” but we still must acknowledge that we need to experience this mystery directly, without ideas.

We are imprisoned in a deep dark dungeon, we know not why. If we identify with the dungeon, we will remain there forever. But if we don’t identify with it, but allow the need to be free to surface — then anything is possible.

Prayer can be a valid practice since it subserviates the self to a higher power [For some: Frequently it’s just asking for reproductive success]. Since the self is in fact just an “optical illusion” created by the genes, and our awareness “emanates” (or something like that) from That Which Is, saying that the soul prays to become one with God is not far off the truth.

Faith — simply to not react to fear. This faith is all-pervading.

We interpret and describe aspects of That Which Is. The human mind projects onto That Which Is as it projects onto the landscape in ways such as: Old Man Mountains, Indianhead, Castle Ridge.

If we don’t want anything, then we don’t fear anything. Fear is only that we won’t get what we want.

 

To continue click here