Manai'a Explorations
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If you distill life to its most elemental, what do you have? Eat. Sleep. Poop. See. Hear. Touch. Smell. Taste. Feel - Hunger, Pain, Fear; Security, Comfort, Love. Think - Causality, Prognostication. Relate.

The Large One and I spent a day and a half in White Sands New Mexico. El Grandote passed a kidney stone while we were there. He was ultra stoic about it. Didn't even mention it to me until we returned to Tucson. Beautiful place I will return to. The scenery is very elemental - light and shadow, black and white, lines and curves, rhythm. It's very meditative.

From my front balcony this morning.

Reactive living vs. proactive living. Emptiness, karma, and our responsibility in creating reality. Being what we want the world to be vs. seeking an external savior (that does not exist). Being responsible vs. being dependent. Taking responsibility for assigning meaning vs. following the herd. Knowing our own values vs. accepting society's vlaues. It’s all the same thing, just different words. The words are jumbled in my head at the moment, but I hope to concisely express this realization soon and then apply it. The Geshe Michael talk was excellent. He made the story of Je Tsongkhapa very relevant. The mystics figured it out. Do I use civilization to help me on my way, or do I use it as an excuse to remain stuck? Why am I so afraid of making a mistake?

I went to see Mickey Hart's Global Drum Project last night - four amazing drummers. Bought the CD - excellent, even if you are not a drummer. Going to see Geshe Michael tonight.

There is a phrase in Spanish - forma de ser - way of being. I've been reflecting on ways of being. Do I live reactively - crisis management, putting out fires - or proactively - constantly moving toward my values? I think reactive living is the easy choice; You don't have to think or take any responsibility or make any decisions. Proactive is difficult and scary. You could make a mistake and it would be all your fault. I've been listening to this song a lot lately: Reminds me of myself as a young man.

The scrappy street fighters start obedience school this Saturday. Their theme song:

The day before it was a rattler.

Yes LAG, the Hortons are famous in many ways.

So I am reading Willa Cather’s Song of the Lark and it is an absolutely brilliant portrayal of the puella aeternus , the female version of the puer aeternus , and I am gaining much insight into my self. The main character, Thea, has a talent for singing and the story is about her emergence as an artist. She has great disdain for bourgeois sensibilities and longs to be recognized for her special talent. Cather has fabulous paragraphs that nail the contemptibility of the bourgeoisie (I find myself cheering her on) followed by evocative paragraphs of the spiritual ascendancy of the puella that I initially identify with, but moments later think, “Thea is a delusional, condescending, arrogant, egocentric princess.” I used to know a mechanical engineer. I simultaneously admired and hated this guy. He was a free spirit, an adventurer, but he was also unbelievably arrogant. I could hardly stand to be in the same room with the guy, but I envied his travels and adventures. One day he and I went ...

Pics from my recent trip to Hawaii.

I have made some progress. The bourgeoisie want to be in the safe and comfortable middle preserving their self. The Buddha is in the middle, but has recognized that his self is no self at all, in that it is one and the same as everything else in the universe and that it is empty. The bourgeoisie avoid existential angst by distracting themselves with consumerism, materialism, gluttony, … The Buddha confronts the Void, the emptiness of all things, and is at peace with his ambiguous, paradoxical, meaningless role in the universe. The bourgeoisie are self absorbed, egocentric, selfish. The Buddha holds on to nothing, gives everything away, has compassion for others. I think my discontent is rooted in inaction. I need to be living my values in the world in some way. I used to have the church youth group as an outlet, but since I was dis-invited, I have not been active in the world. I think I need to find another way to give myself away for the benefit of others.

http://www.hortonmovie.com/site/index.html

I was standing in ankle deep water last week watching this honu foraging for tasty limu .

I had lunch today with beloved soul brother Lee and in the course of gazing into the Lee mirror, I came to recognize a source of discontent within myself. Hermann Hesse’s brilliant book Steppenwolf is about a man that is torn between two selves – a bourgeois self and an extremist self. Here is how Hesse sums it up: Now what we call “bourgeois,” when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seek after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint,...

I slept all weekend. I was exhausted. I literally slept 15 hours last night.