emptiness

In pursuit of knowledge,

every day something is added.

In the practice of the Tao,

every day something is dropped.

Less and less do you need to force things,

until finally you arrive at non-action.

When nothing is done,

nothing is left undone. 

True mastery can be gained 

by letting things go their own way. 

It can't be gained by interfering.

 .                             ~Tao Te Ching, Ch. 48

Maybe I took this too literally.  Maybe I misunderstood it.  Maybe Lao Tzu didn't understand the process of neurological development and it's impact on one's ability to master much of anything.  The Diamond Sutra uses some similar language in reference to bodhisattvas, though Buddhism often incorporates the metaphor of the raft required to cross a river.  Dharmas are fundamentally empty of meaning like any phenomena, predicated entirely on circumstance and conditions, yet needed to navigate circumstances from which they've arisen.

Such navigation being the product of brain function, cognitive development honed by practice.  Upaya-kaushalya.  A practice of emptiness, mindfulness of impermanence, conditions - and a practice of learning, studying, processing, utilizing, and incorporating new information, lest the mind fall to dysfunction and atrophy.  There may be such paths to advanced cognitive states, but I'm skeptical of the value therein, absent a robust adaptive understanding of the world, and our myriad experiences of it.

I've often touched on thoughts and feelings of pointlessness, on what it really represents and how much sense it makes, in my effort to understand why this question pervades my thinking.  These days, I've been feeling that I've finally answered that question in a way that satisfies me, and this answer strikes me as wholly antithetical to this concept I've been holding so close for decades.  This ideal of an empty mind, letting go, letting life happen.  Like water.  Doing nothing, stagnating.

If I read a book, the book is not the point.  When I create something, the creation is not the point.  If I get an education, the education is not the point.  In all things, the point is the same as when I meditate.  Failures and difficulties are not setbacks.  The point is the practice.

What matters is that I stop doing nothing.  Getting an education is probably the most serious way of going about it.  I'm also hoping that in the process, I get a better understanding how life is supposed to work, because I'm still confused.

living in the world

My search for guidance has not been going so well.  The system is more of a mess than I'd realized, and seems to have even gone downhill in the past two years I've been here.  I've been striking out in my efforts at choosing a social worker that would help me navigate a transition into academia.

That is, one with an emphasis on external, practical solutions, as opposed to the countless psychotherapists who will hash out my feelings and history, week after week, month after month.  I've done enough of that in my life.  It's not what I'm looking for, but seems to be all many mental health professionals offer.

I'm thinking that I might need to take some initial steps on my own.  Not to be cryptic about it, but my impulse is often to leave the specifics out of my more personal posts. I mean that I need to look into my financial aid options and how to enroll in the community college that's just a few blocks from where I live.  It's a little school that only offers some basics, but as I understand it, this would lay the groundwork to enroll in a more interesting university later.  I'm also thinking that once I get started, I'd have access to advisers who would help me figure out if I'm even going in the right direction.

Right now though, I need to wait for the Zoloft to kick in, or at least to stop making me worse.  This should take another two weeks or so.

*update, made an appointment with someone this morning, so now I'm just nervous.  I think part of my plan here is to force myself to stick to my plan.

no self compassion

"Subhuti, those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought: 'However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form or no form, whether they have perception or no perception, in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all. And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated.'

"And why not? Subhuti, a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a being cannot be called a 'bodhisattva'. And why not? Subhuti, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life, or a soul."

~Diamond Sutra, Ch.3

I've skimmed through a lot of this stuff before, but never made a serious effort to learn what these sutras are actually going on about.  At first glance, the wording can seem somewhat ridiculous.  I'm only halfway through this one now, but one thing that stands out to me is the way no-self and compassion are staked out as essentially the basis of the entire religion.  I've long understood that to be the case, but wasn't sure.  I wasn't aware of exactly how and where it's spelled out.

I've also enjoyed the way it goes into the contradiction therein.  If there is no self, then what is it that the bodhisattva should be concerned with liberating?  The idea is that to awaken from delusion, one must be motivated by a pure compassion for all beings, while realizing no-self; no being has a self.  There are no beings to liberate.  Not to then give up on the whole idea, but to transcend the cognitive dissonance.  Or something.

the diamond sutra

Now that I've decided I'm capable of reading books again, I've decided to start with one on the Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita.  The sutra itself is only 29 pages, but it's followed by over 400 pages of commentary.  I still have no interest in reading fiction, but I realize there's some grey area, here.  Some of it is historical, but the line between history and fiction can be a blurred, particularly when it comes to religious texts.

I've thought a lot about the problem of fundamentalism versus progress, particularly in regards to religion.  There's something appealing about deifying an esoteric history, at the center of which being Gautama himself.  To have faith in the value of Buddhism, should one assume it's founder to be the pinnacle for which all followers strive?  At best, subsequent woke beings would only attain what he'd attained, right?

In Buddhism, the risks of fundamentalism are not as concerning as in some other religions, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.  It only makes sense that despite some great teachings, this was thousands of years ago.  Even the most brilliant wisdom existing in the context of time and place, like scientists of ancient times, brilliant, but crude, ignorant, flawed.  There's no disparagement intended here, I think it's just a matter of being realistic about it.

I've often questioned how accurate any of it could really be, from oral traditions to translation and re-translation, how distorted it must become.  I've thought of this as a problem, the solution to which being an effort to cut through it all, to the best of our abilities, in the effort to ascertain what was originally intended - but this is fundamentalism, the premise that the teaching in it's original state should be held in highest regard.

Alternately, we can treat such fundamentals as invaluable, but more of a starting point upon which many have built, and upon which we can further build.  While there is no scientific method to look to for resolution, humanity has made great strides.  Modern teachings involve distortion, but also progress.  Some of these modern interpretations are likely superior to what the Buddha originally taught.

This is what humanity does in so many different realms, building upon each others' ideas.  Makes more sense to me to have some faith in that, than some vague concept of perfection lost to time.  Much as the self is but a process, so is everything else.

executive decisions

Got off the phone with my PCP a bit ago, he's having trouble finding someone with any openings.  He informed me that the normal insurance rules don't apply to mental health services, and that I could actually just pick someone myself, as long as they accept my insurance.  I can go through local listings, make my own decision.  I've seen lots of mental health professionals in my life.  It occurred to me that not once did I choose any of them, myself.

Then I think about why I'm seeing this practitioner in the first place.  I had no idea how to choose a PCP, so I asked my cousin, and this was the place she knew of.  A clinic, which assigned someone to me.  I just went along with it all, because that's what I do.  My father does the same thing.  It's daunting, so many choices, many look so terrible.  Other people hardly know or care what I'm looking for though, and apparently there's a shortage of doctors willing to see poor people, but I'd probably make a better choice than some random person I get stuck with.

This is pretty much why I'm on disability.  Once I ended up this way, I've just gone along with it.  I've posted about the choices I've made in my life, but it's mostly been about finding ways not to make any choices.  I've never understood why I'm like this.  It really is a whole lot less fun than it sounds. I'm still having this odd feeling that I might be ready to do something about it.

I feel as though I've been making a lot of very straight forward statements lately, in admonishment of the ridiculous ways I've been living my life.  Maybe all that omega-3 I've been taking is finally paying off, right?  I'm a little nervous about the drop-off prior to Zoloft kicking in, though.  My optimism and executive decision making may start to wane for a while.

This frustration I express over which psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner I end up with is really frustration with myself.  I'm still figuring out how this looking for help business works.  Navigating society looks like it'll take some trial and error.

traditional science

I seem to have spontaneously grown an attention span.  Either that, or the will to keep trying, in spite of its absence.  It's honestly hard to tell what's going on exactly, but I no longer feel driven to distraction.  It's easier to read a book, or meditate, or draw for hours, when I'm not in constant dire need of distraction.  It was always a difficult feeling to describe, but now it seems to be gone, in remarkable coincidence with my caffeine addiction.

"both A1 receptors and A2A play roles in the heart, regulating myocardial oxygen consumption and coronary blood flow, while the A2A receptor also has broader anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body. These two receptors also have important roles in the brain, regulating the release of other neurotransmitters such as dopamine and glutamate." (wiki)

These are the adinosine receptors that caffeine fucks with.  This provides well known benefits in the short term, but over time, as these excess receptors proliferate to accommodate the addiction, those benefits become deficits.  Many people are fine with this, but due to everything else going on with me, it would seem I lack the dopamine to spare.  It's been getting worse and worse for years, and suddenly.. that's all it was?  I just had to stop drinking so much coffee?

debating myself

What if I go out into the world, still unable to find what I'm looking for?  What am I looking for exactly?  Some nonsense about a soulmate, affinity, or belonging, an elusive concept creeping back into my thoughts as it always does, undermining my resolve.  This is really about loneliness.  Nothing makes me lonelier than being around people.  I'm going to have to wade right into that.  I'm going to have to get used to it.

I've realized that more important than any of that, I can focus on doing better than I have been.  I can try to better live up to my own standards.  It's not always going to be painless or rewarding, but I know it's what I should be doing.

There's this person on my friends list I met during Bernie's run last year. He's got this new Facebook page that he's trying to get going, an integration of politics and science, with a futurism slant to it.  So, no question, right up my alley.  He's asked me to contribute, so I've been trying to think of something suitable.  Stoicism doesn't seem to work as well on creative endeavors.  I can't seem to force myself to have ideas.  This gets discouraging.

I've been practicing creativity in general more.  Writing has always been easier for me than anything else, but only when I'm rambling and aimless about it.  Also considering taking my guitar more seriously, but in the meantime at least playing it a little every day.  Painting.. even thinking about that again, but I don't know.

Sketching things out with pencil should be good exercise for those neurons on the meantime.  Writing this drivel makes for good practice, should I come up with something more interesting to write about.  At some point, I plan to switch from learning Russian to Mandarin.  It doesn't matter which, as long as I keep learning.  Finding the will to meditate has become so much easier. I've been doing that for an hour or so every day.  Not that my mind doesn't wander as much as ever, but I sit every morning no matter how I feel.

For the longest time, I've thought of intelligence as an inherent trait, a matter of potential.  You can do something with it or not, but an attribute of who we are, not what we do.  There's an element of truth to that, but it's a tragic misconception of how these things primarily work.  Our patterns of behavior and lifestyle create who we are.  The more we rally our brain cells to a task, the better suited they become for that task.  Draw every day, and that will make far more difference than any latent ability.  Learn every day, and learning itself becomes easier.

This takes time though.  A lot of time.  It requires consistency and resolve, a simple truth that becomes wholly unintuitive, as weeks and months go by, to negligible benefit.  Go years without reading a single book, and even reading can take some practice to get back into.  We are always up against who we've already been, our whole lives.  In so much as the self is a thing, it's more a process than anything rigid.

I need a sense of direction in much of what I do.  Like in martial arts, I remember what a difference it made when I had a plan to execute on my opponent, instead of just reacting.  I had to know what sort of plan would be realistic, but go for something.  Otherwise you're just waiting to get owned.

In what I want to do with my life, this will be important.  I'll focus on who I want to be, in terms of what I want to learn and pursue.  I won't sit around making excuses anymore.  In creative endeavors, it's much the same.  I've been letting my brain atrophy all my life, but I'm going to try to stop doing that.  In a way, I realize that's been the plan for some time now.  It's just taken a while to start feeling like I've been getting anywhere.

I get all tangled up in how well I should do at anything and everything, when the consequences of doing nothing are substantially worse.  What will I be any good at, if I never do anything?  Why have I been doing this to myself?  I've become oddly disinterested in distractions lately.  That seems to making all sorts of rational thinking easier.

The mind wanders, keep bringing it back.  What matters is the practice.

is this.. volition?

I know, I'm clearly insane, but maybe something good can still come of it.  Maybe I've finally hacked my way in and accomplished some rewiring.  This seems like another good sign, anyhow.  It's no masterpiece, but I've hardly picked up a pencil in twenty years.  Maybe it's a start.

It turns out I can draw while listening to music instead of just sitting here looking sad.  I.. don't know why I haven't done this until now.

approval

It feels somewhat like realizing that the motivation for approval that I'm always crying about is really my own.  I don't approve of how I'm living, or the choices I'm making.  That's a whole lot easier to figure out how to do something about, than trying to make sense of what everyone else wants.  My kitchen is finally clean again too, because every time I look at it, I've been wondering what kind of scumbag lives here.

I know I said I'd be building some walls, but this is something else.  Crazy attachment transference shit, the wholesale collapse of my adenosine receptor blockade, or maybe just some brutally well placed criticism.  I don't know, but whatever it is, I'm going with it.

I'm skeptical though.  I know how deceptive a change in perspective can be, circumstances change, and suddenly I'm not feeling like I'm actually at the helm, anymore.  Started having some doubts when I woke up this morning.  Some coffee would have definitely helped in the short term, but I got up.  I meditated, got some exercise.. ok, then I fell back to sleep for a bit, but I think I'm still making progress here.

For now, the one downside seems to be that I'm having trouble writing about anything other than all this.  I'm hoping I can keep this going, but maybe calm down about it a bit.  Mental health intake appointment this Thursday.  I am going to need any help I can get to take this a step further, so I'll go look for help.  My brain doesn't usually work like that.

dropping anchor

I've been vegetarian on and off since I was six.  Essentially, on my own, I've always been a vegetarian, but when I have shared my life with those who are not, I've compromised and in some cases, gave it up entirely for a while.  In some part, due to values instilled in me by my uncle, whose wisdom I always held in high regard.

He taught me not to be rigid, but sensitive to circumstances and the people around, in how I conduct myself, even in matters of ethics.  He'd talk about how so much of it was cultural. Values are memes, we learn them from each other, at least when we're open to it.  That made sense to me for a long time, but I suppose I'm having doubts.  He was vegetarian-sympathetic, but not vegetarian himself.  I also better understand how that plays into a person's views now, and how they can be skewed.  Maybe don't trust a meat eater to tell you when it's ok to eat meat.

Of course, also in part due to my own weakness for the taste of it, I've eaten lots of animals over the years, which I'm not proud of.  I don't know that it's purely a matter of reason, but this feels important to me.  All the ways I've compromised, for myself, for others, how good I am at excuses. What impact this has had on my sense of self, confidence in myself.  Empathy can be volatile, it can go terribly wrong. I seem to have it in spades.  This is probably why I've always compromised so much.  I'm acutely aware that it needs work.  This isn't a matter of berating myself for it, so much as realizing that maybe I can try a better approach to life.

The universe is vast, suffering infinite, the impact of our individual actions of dubious significance amidst it all.  First and foremost, I am a consequentialist but consequences are not always so straight forward or to be found where we're looking for them.  What does it mean to compromise my values?  Values are not just about what we do in the world, but what we're doing to ourselves, in our thoughts, our words, actions and interactions.

In reference to slaughterhouses,

death camps, circa ~1989 

When I speak of doing better, this is also what I'm talking about.  I've been relatively vegan ish for almost a year now. I can do better, but should it need to be said, this isn't just about what I eat.  Maybe I can even stop drifting.

seriously, it's good that i'm documenting this, because wtf.

do better

When I moved from Pittsfield to Minneapolis, I didn't have any help for most of it.  It took me weeks to get it cleaned out, and by that, I mean I had to carry everything to dumpsters, because I couldn't bring much with me.  My father did help with the transportation itself, and I commented to him on my frustration, with how difficult it was and how much I had to lose, because I didn't have the means to do it myself.  He laughed, and I don't remember his exact words, but he thought it was funny that I'd expect anyone to be any help ever.

He has been very stoic in some ways.  I'm not sure, but I think when he's had to move, he has done it himself, unless anyone's pushed their way into helping.   I don't think he'd ever ask for it, even if it meant he'd have to throw out everything he owns.   He is the most asocial schizoid type I've ever known.  My sister and I both seem to have inherited some of that.  It's been much more problematic for me, but I think she's had her issues, too.  "I hate people" bumper stickers and the like.

It's not always obvious what matters.  I think it can be important to break it down, not just by ourselves, but in the social exchanges between each other.  Or sometimes with blood work.  We don't need to do any of this, but it seems important to me.  I've come to realize that I have been stuck in this vague unconscious state of waiting for help, attaining self sufficiency, and that these different types of self sufficiency are related.  I've been sabotaging myself my whole life, and this does not make for good company, even my own.

Under better circumstances, I'd have just gotten that sort of help when I was a kid, and this whole process would have gone more smoothly.. but I guess for me, it went sideways.  There were lots of reasons.  I had a therapist in Pittsfield who picked up on some of this, commented that it seemed I was perpetually waiting for something, but that was vague and he had no idea what to do about it.  It would have been a nice bit of help, if I'd had a better therapist.

I'm not sure what I can do, but I'll look into what sort of higher education and financial options I do have.  I'm not entirely confident in my resolve or my competence, or that of the underfunded systems I'll be looking to for assistance.   Could take weeks or even months for appointments, but I've set it in motion.  I have a sense of direction that I will try to make sure that it goes in.  I'm writing about it, so that I can remind myself, should I need to debate myself about any of this, at some point.

I think I'm being realistic here.  It's hard, it hurts, scared, distracted, but here's the full equation.  Now that I see what's going on in my head, do I really want to choose not to do this?  There are always causal factors to it all, but this is less about free will, and more about just being honest with myself.

learned helplessness

Learning to give my own injections took way too long.  I started when I was maybe fifteen, and had a really hard time of it.  It wasn't until starting again in my forties that I understood how to grow the fuck up about it.  I look back on it though, and I see the tricks my mind played on itself.  I understand how my rationale wasn't even conscious.

If only someone could have explained it to me, in the detail that I understand it now, that would have been all I needed.  Maybe a parental type just being an authoritarian jerk does that trick too, but I'm not sure.  I only remember sitting there by myself for so many hours trying to prove that I was so incompetent that I wouldn't have to do it.  No one will blame me, if I can't do it.

This is learned, I know where I learned it, and yeah, of course it's fucking crazy.  What kind of cowardly bullshit is that?  I needed to understand how to ask myself, is not doing this a serious option?  Maybe I needed some consequences explained, but there was no reason for ambiguity.  Do I seriously want to admit that I chose not to do this?  I needed to understand that yes, I was making a choice - it just wasn't conscious.  I couldn't see it, but now I understand that it was there.

So, if yes, I'm going to do this, there's no reason not to do it right now.  As long as I can think of something to do, and yeah ok.  Of course I can.  Not after weeks of inner struggle to prove that I can't. I've been getting better, I do things eventually, but it shouldn't even be such a long drawn out battle.

It took me a long time to unlearn this nonsense.  I'm still unlearning it.  I still do this, in so many ways.  It is more difficult, with some things more than others, I definitely have some obstacles, but seriously, I know, I need to grow the fuck up.  It occurs to me that I never really try, anymore.  I can't even draw something, without sketching it out quickly, and if that's not good enough, fuck it.  It's not worth it.  What the fuck am I doing?

This is why I've been doing everything I do.  The omnitrope, the running, meditating, giving up coffee and alcohol.  I think maybe all of this has helped, and it's been so gradual in accumulating that it has been hard to tell.  Maybe it's time to admit that I'm doing better.

Either that, or I've come down with some sort of horrible brain disorder, and this is the part right before I try to eat my neighbors.

social asceticism

Just set the appointment process in motion for both counseling and psychiatry.  There's a waiting list, but hopefully I'm at the point where I'm ready to take some real steps towards self sufficiency and maybe even some ambition.  Never seemed to be much point in getting help, just so I might feel better sitting around doing nothing.

In some ways I've spent my entire life fighting not to have to depend on people, with the gigantic caveat being government assistance.  Everything from doing my own therapy, learning to cook my own curries, to cutting my own hair.  I have far more conversations with myself than anyone else.  Emotionally, I'm not accustomed to depending on anyone, but I don't believe that this is ideal.  Honestly, I don't recommend any of this.  Find someone to teach you, if at all possible.

This sort of independence is ironic, because it's forced me to be entirely dependent and trapped wherever I go.  I've always been aware of this, ashamed of it.  I've wanted to do something about it, but it's difficult to honestly look back on my life, and discern whether my excuses for not doing anything about it were any good or not.  In a sense, I've always just needed guidance, to overcome the very real problems I had. Problems no one around me understood.  I've even had to be my own parents.  

Undoubtedly, I've made awful decisions throughout the course of my life, so it's a matter of perspective, but I didn't know better.  It's taken me a long time to learn.  I'm hoping that a professional will be better versed in what my options are, how realistic it would be for me to pursue them.

I've referenced the years I have ahead of me, assuming nothing tragic befalls me in the meantime, but I haven't posted about it's relevance to this.  A major impediment to pursuit of anything ambitious has been that I'm too old.

This is why it matters, how many years I have ahead of me.  If I'll be old and feeble in fifteen years, there's not much point.  I've known people who went back to school at my age, forced to retire for age related health reasons, not all that long after graduating.  If this is going to drag out for another fifty years though, I should really get moving.

morning ramble

In the US, one interesting attribute of class striation is that people above a certain wealth level often don't associate with a single cigarette smoker.  Tobacco addiction almost entirely eradicated among liberal types with money and education.  Meanwhile, I've read that among some poor conservative communities, the inverse is true,

everyone smokes like it's still 1950.

In the blue state poverty I'm more familiar with it's more mixed, but I have known many who smoke.  I tried it myself for a few months, years ago.  I figured out that most of the enjoyment came from satiating the addiction, rather than anything I really like all that much about tobacco.  For a while, this seemed like a good deal, because when life is such crap that we don't enjoy much of anything, we take what we can get.  Addiction itself can be, not something to avoid, but even downright precious.  This is why people with no money keep buying something that's so expensive.

Once that addiction was gone, I discovered that I could no longer even enjoy it occasionally as the mere smell made me nauseous.  I was somewhat ambivalent about giving it up.  Coffee though, how could I possibly stop enjoying coffee?  I just need to drink it way less, but not give it up, blah blah blah.. well, as I made some for myself this morning, the smell of it was a bit nauseating.  Coffee.  The smell of coffee, nauseating.  That's insane.

My emotions seem to have evened out, and there's only one person in the world who knows what I'm talking about.  She's very busy, doing her own thing on an entirely different continent, yet she still knows more about what's going on with me than anyone else.  I'm trying to be happy for her, and the new relationship that she's in.  Although I'm also starting to wonder if my brain's been going through something more physiological, throwing my emotions out of wack.  Or if throwing my emotions out of wack might have done something to my brain.

I've long suspected that I'm capable of emotional attachment to people. I'm just extremely selective.  When I say "I" though, that's not to suggest I have much control over it.  My mental health issues make it very difficult, but not impossible.

In a way, even worse than that might be the anxiety I get dealing with everyone else.  All the people I find alienating, at every level of interaction. It cripples my ability to navigate society, and if I could do something about that, it would change everything.  I'd be able live, to meet far more people, I'd probably find what I'm looking for.  I've sometimes allowed myself to indulge in elaborate fantasies in which someone helps me achieve that.  I've certainly yet to figure out how to accomplish it myself, so this gives me hope, until I realize what an unrealistic stretch it really is.

So that's part of what's been going on with me, too.  This past week has been very strange, and when I said that it felt like being on LSD, I was not exaggerating, and it occurs to me that this is not a good sign.  Sometimes I wonder if my inability to process emotions properly has anything to do with why I avoid the world.  I'm really not keen on having a psychotic break, and felt that I came dangerously close.

It's very strange, knowing that I'm losing it, knowing my thoughts are grossly irrational, my emotions off the rails, and finding myself completely incapable of pulling it together, for such an extended period of time.  Some facet of my persona was still in there somewhere, telling me to write about it, helping me keep it together, helping me sort through and not completely lose my shit, but fuck, was it looking iffy for a while there.

I'm feeling much better now, but I'm not sure whether I'm making progress or just taking a break before drifting further towards oblivion.  I really need to change my life.  I'm thinking maybe it is time for me to try seeking some professional help, again.