8/2/25
Before my recent flight to New Delhi, I had breakfast at the Pacific Hotel in Phnom Penh, where the experience is usually relaxed and subdued. But that day was quite different. As no sooner did I sit down with my plate full of buffet favorites, then suddenly the entire room was flooded with a large Japanese group having to mix into a much smaller Anglo one. Having just come from Siem Reap, where it’s quiet and spacious, this scene suggested to me what might be creating some of the fascist tendencies in America, and much more, now that I really start to think about it. Expansionism in the face of global crowding, was one. Resource plundering of special minerals for increasingly higher consumption of war goods and higher tech lifestyles, was another. While the expulsion of foreign nationals is simply to assuage bigotry—a return to what never really was, ‘a great America’—being a dog whistle to exercise lazy, smug, and arrogant thinking, that naturally gravitates to baser instincts. Then throw in a diversionary ’reduce wasteful governmental spending’ campaign to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy which makes tax payers think their interests are in good hands. Predictable of course is a binary response from the liberals and Democrats who protest, expatriate, and increasingly join in political and climate crisis vagabonding. All of this political rambling reminding me of the visiting John Bircher to our high school triggered, after a another rant of mine, to snap, “who got to you?”
Now back to my ‘not the breakfast I’m used to having at the same old Pacific Hotel,’ as I was seated amongst the Japanese tour group, the communalism was palatable, and its solidarity welcomed. However, the Australian group appeared somewhat riled and unnerved by it as their space became increasingly more invaded. Now, imagine the Australian group as wealthy elitist Americans, many of them millionaires and billionaires, on the left or right. And the Japanese tour group as the world’s poor, its ‘workers,’ and people of different colors. While I initially felt ‘crowded in,’ it was only for a brief while. Probably because as a former New Yorker, I’m used to crowds, conditioned to be tolerant, and natively a humble citizen of the world who welcomes diversity.
This in stark contrast to the anti-diversity fascists, elitists and oligarchs in America, who are probably experiencing be ‘crowded in,’ cheated, and overwhelmed by all the ‘others’ all the time. So it seemed to me, during that uncharacteristic breakfast buffett rush at the Pacific Hotel, that our fascist brethren, behaving so poorly right now, are just having a big reaction to a shrinking world where good locations with good weather—populated by ‘one’s own kind’—is a proposition becoming increasingly hard to find. There’s been a complete loss of patience with it all as now the traditional virtues—giving, patience, moral discipline, diligence, concentration, and wisdom have all been noised-out by the continuous play of ‘content’ on the internet.
In conclusion—and from the point of view of practicing traditional Buddhist values and enjoying the increased perspective they engender—the full spectrum of political views, from the extreme to the rational, are then understood to be equal in their relativity, but unequal in the qualities of their impact. This, as good remains good and bad remains bad, while both maintain their own characteristic ways of creating suffering. All of which tempers and subdues one’s reactions, gifting peace and ‘Great Equanimity toward those near and far,’ as originally promoted in the Brahmins’ prayer known today as The Four Immeasurable, a mainstay of Mahayana Buddhism.
13/2
Because of the delusion of a ‘coming’ and a ‘going,’ when we think of being either with or without the other, then we both suffer ‘alone’ and ‘together.’ But if we can remember to just forget these two impossibilities, then there’s no one left ‘out’ to feel the pain.
All jealousy reflects one’s desire to float more boats of selfhood upon the sea of pure awareness. Remembering this—and its arising of attachment and hatred to those near and far—the compass of one’s awareness will propel all selves into a great bay of Equanimity.
Happy Valentines!
18/2
Met the other James last night. He lives with his Thai wife in Ponducheri, Thamal Nadu, and she is the same age as when I met Rung in Bangkok, whom I loved but later had to abandon, over ten years ago. He’s lived in Indian for thirty years after retiring from working at Software in America and meeting his first guru. He’s a Shaivist tantric who met his second guru thirteen years ago. He’s deep into his sadhana to the point I sometimes think his mental processes are questionably altered. But then I’m probably the same way. While the three of us have become fast friends I’m not so used to Anglophone company and even she, coming from Bangkok, reminds me of my past in New York City where I had a number of good Thai friends. Keeping company is not what it used to be since my last long Hevajra retreat. The deities are extraordinary company with no afflicted behavior or emotive obscurations. They are completely compliant, spontaneous, and exist in an unimpededness, neither coming or going, mode, that my awareness—not stabilized—tunes in and out of. Interacting with ordinary people, within an ordinarily perceived context, feels by contrast alien and disaffected. My ego comes to the fore when I talk, my self reifies, and it’s not comfortable. Yet, I ask you, is there any better opportunity to practice the transformative powers of Vajrayana than this?
23/2
Comment: GI Gurjief nailed it: Pets, like domesticated dogs, reify one’s self-centered nature, reinforcing deluded ‘considerations’ like the ones made in this post that promotes dogs’ instincts about people over practicing loving kindness. Semi-domesticated dogs like we have in Cambodia, which are pretty feral, are shameless food thieves and fornicators by day, and then, pathetic barkers and howlers at night. To the point, preferring pets and animals over people—thinking they ‘know something’ about a guest’s or passerby’s character—is just a projection of one’s attraction or hatred to others, and caters to bigotry. Bill Murray making his cute, ‘hangdog’ face, demonstrates how ‘pets’ reinforce insular, elitist, and indulgent tendencies. Pets and animals require no less or no more loving kindness than all other sentient beings. Even the ones you can’t stand.
24/2
Emptiness of own being, the experience of nondual clarity and bliss, can be realized through Shamata’s single minded concentration upon any object. But only when Vipasana takes the Buddha’s integrated doctrines as its object, can fully Enlightened Buddhahood arise. They say Vajrayana practice is resultant Mahayana. But we must make it so. Seasoned Vajrayana practitioners are wise to go back and read—or review once again—Buddha’s third turning of the wheel sutras.
25/2
The content of news apps, Insta Threads, and so forth, attempt to inject into the yogin’s transcendent practices a continuum of anger, ignorance, lust, jealousy and greed. Having formerly absorbed one’s attention into them, they darken and foul one’s mind stream instantly. Be aware. As WCW wrote, “It’s hard to get the news from poems, yet men die miserable everyday for lack of what is found there.”
Posted: ‘This is so beautiful. I was crying by the second line, Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 - 17 March 1918 was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford.’ “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.”
My comment : This reveals many heartfelt issues, like who has this depth of intimacy now? While I sincerely hope others have some semblance of it, I fear many do not. Also, in many ways it echos what the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa pronounced while nearing his parinirvana when a tearful disciple asked, “Your Holiness, what will happen to you?” His reply was, “Fundamentally nothing will change.” This because his mind had already changed, away from such delusions of a self which lives, suffers, and then dies, long before. May it be so for us all.
27/2
After completing a sufficient Vajrayana practice, merit accumulation from taking having taken refuge, generated bodhicitta, and Vajrasattva confession and purification, more wisdom, in a dedicated fashion, can be accumulated through a visualized deity, mantra recitation, and then its dissolution into the profound emptiness. Eventually, the continuum generated/revealed therefrom arises effortlessly in place of the common experience, and then, simultaneously, with it. At that time, the simultaneity of samsara and nirvana is demonstrated to the advanced practitioner, along with a general sense of well-being and other siddhis. May it be so for all who follow the resultant path for the sake of all sentient beings!
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