I don't want to do shit today. But I will. I need exercise, so I'm going to walk for at least 15 – no, 20 minutes. Maybe from this cafe til the end of the lagoon?
I don't want to look at spreadsheets, but I will – customer data needs to be regularised, and trades need to be categorised.
I also need to make an estimation for a cash injection to pay myself.
And I should do emails. Hey, emails should be easy... Except the tasks attached to them. But fuck it – I should make a CV regardless.
Almost out of money. Not paid on time, because the (overseas) HQ doesn't want to deal with the bureaucracy, and the local company doesn't have money to pay me. Credit card due in less than 2 weeks. Limit already reached. Not getting to stressed though. Or rather, stress won't help. Just focus on making it easy for them to pay me. Yeah? Made a fuckup with the flights home. 5k+ down the drain. Probably won't get a refund. Fuck the USA – or rather, fuck their bullshit laws about travel visas. Why the hell should a layover – not even leaving the airport – require a visa that takes 8-10 months to get an appointment? And fuck my optimism. I shouldn't have been so naive to believe I could have stopped over in the US on the way home. Ah well, lessons learned. Expensive lessons are usually better lessons. More painful, more you pay attention.
I have less existential questions about life recently, less depression, as I've taken on more worldly concerns and habits. Sexual fantasies and titillations – like trying to convince my wife to have a threesome, or considering a visit to sex clubs, or tantric massage. Getting back into a coffee addiction. Listening to rock music. And now – getting my ass into gear, as I get worried about having enough money and a place to live, alongside trying to raise enough money for a trip back to my home country.
I think it beats nihilism and absorption into the groundless, unified, sublime, insane, terrifying awareness that psychedelics give me.
An overly peaceful life seems to breed hell.
No coffee, a body cleaned out from ayahuasca... led to constant meditativeness, awareness, groundlessness.
And the perception that for each happy or good aperture of reality, exists a sad or evil aperture.
Meanwhile an all consuming challenge brings flow, bliss...
How to take advantage of the opportunity to explore sex work / face it's trauma, before leaving BR?
Hire a GP? With my wife?
Ask my wife to take a client?
I think I would be both scared by and enjoy both.
I also think that trauma can be encountered:
What could go wrong?
So maybe it's not such a great idea...
Alternatively we can just make jokes about sex work to each other, roleplay it, etc etc...
9pm. An early morning bus ride tomorrow. Better to stay up all night and sleep on the bus than sleep now then sleep on the bus, I reckon.
I am feeling tired despite a “super coffee”. But then again – it's dark outside and I am under a yellow light, listening to calm music.
Time to pop on the lofi? Upbeat style.
B told me that I need to snap out of my unmotivated depression. That she's getting it from me. And she totally is.
Ahhhhhh women. Women women women. They are master reflectors.
I don't want to work at all. But I guess I gotta force myself.
I will cash out whatever's needed to pay off the tax bills for this month. And before that I will get the tax report ready. Yes, I will.
And I'll also get myself in spreadsheet mood via making a new contact schedule.
Beeeeeepsis.
Caffeine is giving me a positive outlook on life. Is it false? maybe. But basically anything I believe will be somewhat false.
I have begun drinking coffee again.
Yes I notice that it's toxic. Yes I notice that it gives me anxiety and unnecessary stress.
But without it I am becoming apathetic and dealing with an existential crisis.
Life feels meaningless. My connection with god/source feels severed.
I feel like everything is illusion except the white void that I saw during aya.
Everything feels proper meaningless in light of this void.
Work, health, relationships...
I have a constant awareness of my mortality, of the fact that I'll lose everyone and everything precious to me, that everything I have is on loan and will be taken back one day.
Why even bother building a strong body if life will break it down? Why even bother building a big business if it will eventually become obsolete?
Why even bother building an amazing relationship if it will eventually end – worse, if I am the one to leave it prematurely, leaving my wife to mourn over it's loss?
Coffee is one of the least destructive drugs I can take to paper over this void. It focuses me on work. Gives me an endorphin release. Gives me some stress.
It also keeps me focused on money, which I am becoming dangerously apathetic to. If I totally neglect my finances, I will lose a lot more than mental peace – I will lose my relationship, my access to healthy food, my ability to choose who I work for, my ability to see my family, and much more.
I am worried that caffeine won't be enough, and that I'll turn to alcohol or worse drugs to try to deal.
Maybe I can balance out the caf with a 3-4 day fast each month?
I'm glad to see someone else has stumbled across the same path to madness as me.
Makes me feel less alone.
Apparently there are 4 things we must not try to define or conjecture about, as it'll only bring madness:
The Buddha-range of the Buddhas (the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a Buddha)
The jhana-range of a person in jhana (the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in jhana)
The [precise working out of the] results of kamma (karma)
Conjecture about [the origin, etc., of] the world
These are the four unconjecturables that are not to be conjectured about, that would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about them.
Remember – Siddhartha is a tale, a metaphor, not a reality. Or at least not as real to me as my reality is.
If I chose to believe reality is as the book portrays it to be, that is my choice.
Ignorance is something we can do something about. Because ignorance is the cause of the entirety of the mass of stress and suffering (including being reborn), when ignorance is uprooted and replaced with insight, knowledge and wisdom then the person not only overcomes all stress and suffering in this life, but they also overcome death and rebirth.
I like this Reddit thread.
Hot4Scooter
When you wake up and your house is on fire, get out. Why spend any time wondering how long the fire's been going or whether you maybe deserved it. The first question is irrelevant and the second is irrelevant and, when you get right down to it, selfish.
All beings have the potential to attain liberation. It might take some work, if course, but the teaching that we've been circling samsara sice beginningless times also implies that even if attaining liberation will take us a few kalpas, that's actually peanuts compared to how long we've been stuck in samsara.
Just some thoughts.
lutel (OP)
Why is this selfish? I'd like to get liberated as much as for others. But only this terrifies me, that having infinite number of past lives, means I've failed infinite number of times. And infinity is really huge, huge number, much more anyone can imagine, and if you think you know how much it is, you are wrong, because it is more. So it is hopeless to really do any effort, for some reason we are locked in samsara for eternity.
Hot4Scooter
Because seeing everything in terms of “me, mine” is selfish. Making things about “me” that aren't about “me” is selfish.
You've not failed got an infinite number of lives. First of all, “you” don't exist. You're just a label on a current bit of a beginningless stream of ever-changing essenceless causes and effects. Second of all, until “you” actually came in contact with a Buddha and recognized that fact, you didn't know liberation was possible, and you lacked the necessary freedom and capacity for it. Squirrels also don't “fail” at reading Dostoyevsky.
More fundamentally (in the Mahayana view), of course, the chain of births having no discernable beginning is because all phenomena are anutpada, unoriginated. We've only ever seemed to be born and die as unaware beings. It has no reality, however much we cling to it, for example by reifying infinity as a huge number (that infinity, mathematically speaking, isn't a number sorta illustrates that point).
Nagarjuna said something like “If things weren't empty, nothing was possible.” You're kinda finding the inverse of that statement.
Just some thoughts.
In general my naive understanding is that a human incarnation in which one has the opportunity to learn any teachings of a Buddha is somewhat rare. This gives you an opportunity to improve conditions for future incarnations through practice.
But I am immature in these things and may be wrong.
It would have huge consequences. Infinite number of past lives, I've committed infinite number of murders, but it also means I've met buddhas in person infinite number of times in my past lives. Thats the consequences of “infinite” to me.
This doesn't follow. Just because there's a non-zero chance of you murdering in a given life doesn't mean that if the set of your past lives is infinite, the subset of that which is your lives in which you've murdered is also infinite. Same for having met Buddhas.
But it is true I suppose that any given person you meet might have been someone you murdered in a past life.
It makes me think there is absolutely no hope to escape dhukka, samsara, to attain nirvana. I've learned about the road to liberation, yet I must have failed infinite number of times to get on this road.
That you have met the Dharma in this lifetime suggests you were motivated in a past lifetime to attain awakening, and just didn't succeed then.
Try harder this time if this worries you so much rather than having no hope, because some people do actually succeed, so you could too.
How can you have hope of liberation?
I am training, and I will keep training, and I hope it will get somewhere.
It really strips all the hope from me, any effort seems futile.
This guy seems to get no real answers to his questions except for “sit down and meditate bruh”
One thing that scares me now is a concept someone raised... that consciousness is a pyramid with humans at the top, and it's a lot more common to go down than go up... and that many who reach the state of humans often go back down inthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6YOzeIN71Eo being animals...
Have I already sinned enough to not reincarnate as human?
Enough reading for tonight.
Time to call my Granny. She has had another horrible tragedy with her friends of 30+ years dying.
I'm so sorry for what happened to Wim and his wife. Schizophrenia, manic depression, pills...
10 years after the first kid – 31 years old – she began to decline, and eventually killed herself jumping out a window.
And the cold – the pain of the cold – made him stop, circuit breaker for his grief and pain – made his grief stop.
“I pledged my oath to my wife – if I am able to get out of this grief – I will pass it on to others.”
The enlightened one, perfected in wisdom, feels the sensations of hunger, but does not crave food.
He nevertheless eats for sustenance.
He does not lust after food.
If he does not get food, it will not make him unhappy or agitated.
Feeling hunger is different from craving for food.
His perfection in wisdom leads him to be able to see through his experiences and not become overwhelmed by them.
Something about that last line makes it easier for me to deal with the 'enlightenment' I feel that ayahuasca has given me a glimpse of. Or maybe even given me the keys for.
After all, dukka – that suffering feeling that comes from craving what we want, a different situation – it feels fucking horrible...
It's horrible to think about just how painful that suffering gets and how unnecessary and self-inflicted it all is (that is – self-inflicted in the case of wanting things to be different. Not like if you get raped as a kid – that isn't self-inflicted.)
So whilst 'enlightenment' uncovers a sense of insecurity, messes with the feeling of sanity, breaks down the borders between things, reveals the world as illusion...
It also provides the key to getting past difficult situations. The death of loved ones. Heinous crimes.
Maybe I could even find peace or joy in the process of being stabbed or shot. (Or at least immediately after?)
God I hope that in that experience adrenaline would kick in and I wouldn't feel shit.
There's also that little idea about other realms...
When you mention desire, yes – the human realm is “Desire driven”. In the Buddhism universe, there are realms different to the human realm and not driven by desire. If you have reached a certain stage of enlightenment, even not fully enlightened, you may/may not reincarnate into a realm/world that is not driven by desire. So, ending the desire in the human realm is possible. Otherwise, the idea about other realms would be impossible which contradicts to pretty much all of the concepts of Buddhism universe.
which is also somewhat relieving...
Jesus. I wish I could just be happy all the time.
My ancestors suffered a lot to bring about a better world. Now that world is collapsing, it seems like – irreversibly on a path to degenerate and self-destruct – and I can't even enjoy the end of the empire.
Bah, I'm being pessimistic. I am going through a sad time right now. I will be happy again.
If I was insane, I would be unable to tell so. Simply questioning my sanity is a good sign that I am sane.
Maybe I should stop using the word 'insane' so much. Like 'insanely cool.'
Maybe I should appreciate something about my current situation. Like the fact I'm not controlled by horniness. That I'm conscious of poverty and suffering.
A part of me wants to go back home to [my home country.]
Because it's safer there.
Because I have to deal with pettier problems.
Less poverty and suffering than LatAm.
Less risk of crime, robbery, attacks.
That said... not no risk.
The risk still exists.
Would I feel very guilty if a horrible thing befell me or my wife whilst we were there?
If the answer is no, go.