February 25, 1995 - Seacliffs, San Francisco

Englewood Cliffs, NJ
My brother's back from honeymoon, so I'm no longer spending hours and hours at his place scanning negatives. I'm still not doing anything in furtherance of a future, still no motivation to return to the monastery, quite the opposite. The Sangha is on Thich Nhat Hanh's speaking tour now on the East Coast, and I have no desire to be a part of that. Weird what a turnaround that was, but it doesn't mean inspiration won't strike in the next couple months and have me booking a flight to France.

At this point, no Nagasaki plans, no Taipei plans, no job plans. Although revisiting all those black and white negatives has gotten me to pull out my SLR again, which has film in it from I don't know when. The last roll of film I remember developing was from foto-strolls with the SF fotolog gang, so this roll can't be that old. It's at the end of the roll, so I'll try finishing it off tomorrow, get it developed, and scan in the negatives. I feel so tech. But if I was really techy, I'd have a digital SLR. The current heatwave is apparently over, so once it stops raining, I want to ride into New York. I have a hankering to go to the Village and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Practice-wise, I've been more immersed in Tibetan stuff, which makes the Zen stuff look like kid stuff. I still stand by the Zen stuff, as that was my initial attraction and initiation to these teachings and philosophies, and I think that my current fascination with Tibetan teachings is because that's where Zen had been taking me anyway. Zen got me to a place where Tibetan teachings are comfortable and familiar, so for me there's not much of a disjuncture between the two paths. But as far as Tibetan Buddhists look down on Zen Buddhists, that's just unfortunate, and Zen Buddhists who don't go beyond Zen are experts at hammering nails into boards, but never learn to build anything.

To the extent that they're not the same thing, I think I would rather follow Tibetan teachings, but might not be ready for that, ergo Zen. I'm kinda in between. There were a lot of good things about the practice at Deer Park, very enriching, very challenging, but it was also easy to get complacent and cocky. It also focused on the manifest world around us and practicing in daily life and living. I've never been to a Tibetan place, but I'm attracted to how the teachings delve into the mind and consciousness and psychology. It treats the teachings as a science, verifiable by one's own experience.

I don't think I'm practicing Tibetan style these days - I mean, how could I? I think I'm basically following the Zen regimen in form, but mentally and cognitively, my ideas and thoughts are mostly spun by Tibetan teachings. And it's a trip the way it fits in with my pre-existing psychology and tendencies.