monday, november 25
there's more you can do with photography: David Crawford: Stop Motion Studies. ----- i'm in panic mode today. out of it. underwater but silver colored too. is it because i went out both days this weekend? am i second hand smoke poisoned? i've been dreaming too much again. i wake up tired. overworked. i don't know if i've ever dreamt of dreaming. maybe it's happening right now. it's been a while at least since i wanted to peel everything away, off, regenerate. finish and start again.
3:28 PM

not again
10:38 AM

wednesday, november 20
nice site to find: www.tricycle.com

"I've been meditating for ten years, and I'm still angry. What's the matter with me?

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU? YOU'RE ANGRY!

If you are angry and you meditate to get rid of your anger, you will only frustrate yourself. Meditate because you are angry, not to eliminate it. Thich Nhat Hanh says we must learn how to hold anger like a baby: we need to learn how to be angry, not how to express or repress it. Whenever we take any emotion and make it into an It (as in "I can't stand it any longer" or "I have to get it out of my system"), we are in trouble.

The classic Buddhist psychological texts have a lot to say about working with anger. In the Visuddhimagga (the fifth-century Sinhalese "Path of Purification"), for instance, the mental factor of dosa , or hate, is described as follows: "Herein, by its means they hate, or it itself hates, or it is just mere hating, thus it is hate (dosa). It has the characteristic of savageness, like a provoked snake. Its function is to spread, like a drop of poison, or its function is to burn up its own support, like a forest fire. It is manifested as persecuting (dusana), like an enemy who has got his chance. Its proximate cause is the grounds for annoyance. It should be regarded as like stale urine mixed with poison."

RECOGNIZING THE CHARACTER of anger, as described in this text, is a big help in learning to work with it skillfully. We feel righteous when we are angry, but more often than not we end up being self-destructive. The grounds for annoyance are there, but we respond in a way that is savage. Like a forest fire, anger tends to burn up its own support. If we jump down into the middle of such a fire, we will have little chance of putting it out, but if we create a clearing around the edges, the fire can burn itself out. This is the role of meditation: creating a clearing around the margins of anger. Ten years of meditation might be a good start, but it is actually very difficult to carve out that margin. Holding anger like a baby while at the same time regarding it like stale urine mixed with poison is a neat trick. The Dalai Lama implies something like this when he teaches us to offer gratitude to our enemies for teaching us patience.

The Buddhist teachings have another method of working with anger, one that the Dalai Lama always refers to. "All human beings want happiness and don't want suffering," he often says. There are practices in which one deliberately changes places, in one's mind, with another person, thinking, "She wants happiness, she doesn't want suffering just as I want happiness and do not want suffering." These practices are usually done first with a person for whom one has loving feelings, then with a person for whom one has neutral feelings and finally, only after much practice, with a person for whom one has angry feelings.

So you're still angry and you're wondering what's the matter with you? Probably nothing. Don't compare the Bodhisattva path with being a Buddha and expect yourself to have purified every emotion."

-- Mark Epstein is a practicing psychotherapist in New York City and a Consulting Editor to Tricycle. He is the author of Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (BasicBooks).
5:08 PM

Daily Dharma
Kenneth Kraft, Inner Peace, World Peace

"Nonviolence belongs to a continuum from the personal to the global, and from the global to the personal. One of the most significant Buddhist interpretations of nonviolence concerns the application of this ideal to daily life. Nonviolence is not some exalted regimen that can be practiced only by a monk or a master; it also pertains to the way one interacts with a child, vacuums a carpet, or waits in line. Besides the more obvious forms of violence, whenever we separate ourselves from a given situation (for example, through inattentiveness, negative judgments, or impatience), we "kill" something valuable. However subtle it may be, such violence actually leaves victims in its wake: people, things, one's own composure, the moment itself. According to the Buddhist reckoning, these small-scale incidences of violence accumulate relentlessly, are multiplied on a social level, and become a source of the large-scale violence that can sweep down upon us so suddenly....One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace, Buddhism teaches. A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness, and self-absorption."
4:59 PM

monday, november 18
"If you have no more happiness to give:
Give me your pain."
-- Lou-Andreas Salome: Hymn to Life

she's the third muse in Lives of the Muses and she is a horrible woman. how could Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud be so easily manipulated? were they so weak and bored they accepted her games and ridiculous lifestyle? ridiculous by my standards - these creative "geniuses" i thought had more guts in their daily lives. of course most were mentally unstable or downright ill. i am so disillusioned to find out these big big names hid diseased characters. i wish more studies were performed about the human brain.
1:27 PM

wonderful time seeing dan after a few years. i feel rejuvenated and energized to do more with my design background, foreground, present. i do miss CMU.
12:06 AM

thursday, november 14
pure sleepiness
10:06 PM

monday, november 11
i've forgotten what it's like to cough uncontrollably. i take my health for granted. maybe most of us do unless we're hit by specific unfortunate and unfair events. ----- i've started reading The Lives of the Muses. it's fascinating. i used to consider myself a muse and now i know for a fact i was a muse. it's a tricky role to play. ----- i forgot to write that last sunday (nov. 3rd) i took my mom to see Willie Nelson at the Beacon Theater and it was an Amazing show. we cried a lot. we also laughed. she thought he is the most generous performer. at the end he signed anything people gave him. one guy handed over a small bottle with some green liquid. it looked like Gatorade from my balcony seat. willie opened it, smelled it, took a drink, signed the label and then gave it back to the fan. that takes guts and willie pulled it off. it's not easy to be The "living american legend." he's actually much more than that. for me he's Nature and Life and Faith. he's a living meditation. i wonder if anyone studied his voice and its vibrations. he has some healing magic.

"Take the ribbon from your hair, shake it loose and let it fall,
playing soft against your skinÝlike the shadows on the wall.
Come and lay down by my side in the early morning light,
all I'm taking is your time,Ýhelp me make it through the night.

Well, I don't care if it's right or wrong, I don't try to understand,
let the devil take tomorrow, 'cause tonight I need a friend.
Yesterday is dead and gone, and tomorrow's out of sight,
and it's sad to be alone,Ýhelp me make it through the night."

-- Help me make it through the night -- by Willie Nelson
8:20 PM

wednesday, november 6
the hot waterbottle season has begun - i feel like dung
7:25 PM

tuesday, november 5
i watched Rock the House on MTV. a fan's room is re-designed by their rock icon. Tommy Lee is so cool. he is such a sweet nice man. he's very different from what i imagined. he gave his fan a bunch of things from his home: a framed gold record, one of his piercings, he autographed and made a drum set coffee table - and at the end of the show when the young little man almost cried and was all shaken up by meeting his hero, Tommy was super cool. the two guys just got along. it was a very very nice show. ----- earlier today i voted. then i bought some bananas and the cashier tried to give me the wrong change. instead of $2.21 she gave me $1.21 so i went back and she gave me a dollar immediately. the two Gristedes in this neighborhood are not only filthy, the women who work there also try to steal money all the time. you have to be alert. ----- sore throat is lingering and i'm debating getting a flu shot.
5:29 PM

saturday, november 2
it was awesome to have dinner with pebbles last night. she's moved to sacramento and i wish i could teleport myself there. we could take classes together, cook, grow gardens. we knew each other when we had never kissed a boy. that is very sweet and seems like many revolutions ago. stevenm... still blue? or rather red? the frog and the scorpion story comes to mind: "it is in my nature."
10:34 PM