Ornoth

Time for a brief update on my kyūdō practice.

You may recall that after 2½ years of painful struggle and utter failure in this martial art of Japanese archery, I attended a seminar in South Carolina in hopes that our sensei would be able to correct my constant misfiring, which I wrote about at length here.

That was four months ago. So how has it gone?

Holding the tally board following Austin Kyūdō's 108 Arrows Shoot 2026.

Pretty well. Putting sensei’s feedback into practice has helped immensely. While I’m still far from perfect, I’d say I’m able to shoot nearly as reliably as anyone around me, which is an amazing degree of improvement.

Which brings me around to yesterday’s practice session: our annual ceremony of shooting 108 arrows to begin a new year.

Ironically, the meaning behind the ceremony is Buddhist in nature, as a way to recommit to overcoming the 108 Defilements. In her email to the group, our club leader phrased it as “letting go of tension, frustration, mistakes, grudges, and anything else we carry from the past year.” I think those words perfectly encapsulate my attitude toward my shooting in 2025.

So this was a very intentional opportunity to make a break with the struggles of the past, and begin a new year with a clean slate.

In previous years, my terrible form and lack of confidence made this ceremony uncomfortable for me, and I contributed very little to the group effort. But with newfound confidence in my shooting, this year I was eager to push myself and publicly demonstrate my progress. Plus this would be exactly the kind of shooting-focused practice I need.

One way I prepared was working out with my bow while the group was on hiatus over the holidays. I specifically wanted to develop the strength to hold a full draw for longer, and the endurance to do so repeatedly. To that effect, I did daily workouts, building up to three sets of three draws with my 12 kg bow, holding each one for 24 seconds before release.

On the day of the ceremony a dozen of us showed up, so math suggested each person should aim for about 9 or 10 shots. Whatever! I was the first archer to the firing line, shot the club’s first arrow of the year, and spent the most time at the line.

And at the end of the session, I tallied 36 shots, well more than anyone else, and tying (intentionally not surpassing) the current record for most shots during the annual ceremony.

Not all of them were perfect, of course. About a third of the way in, three of my shots ricocheted off the target, but I realized what I was doing wrong and corrected my form from that point forward. And even if I count those as misfires, that’s still a 92% success rate, which I haven’t enjoyed since early 2023.

So yeah, my shooting has definitely improved, and I’m pretty happy with where I’m at, with an eye toward improving even further in 2026. Or, as the Japanese would say, “Daiseikō!”

Aside from general improvement, one of my next steps is joining the local archery range and getting proficient at distance shooting. The range is open all day, every day, and is a very convenient 10 minute drive from home.

I also have the option of formal testing and advancing in rank, but – having begun in a different school of kyūdō that doesn’t have tests or ranks – those things aren’t of any interest to me. Nor am I particularly interested in flying out to South Carolina (or further) every few months for seminars.

For now, I’m perfectly happy taking my time and refining my form, free of the significant downsides that come with formal testing and ranking systems.

Though I will say that after 2½ years of stress, insecurity, and failure, being the top dog at the dojo – even if it was just for this one day – felt really, really good. If this were a TV drama or sports anime, this would have been the climactic episode of my redemption arc! And it was a deeply satisfying way to begin a new year.

Here I was, all set to post my first of these new “Memorabilia” blogpos, when this happened:

See that big black gaping hole in the toecap of my pine green Chuck Taylor sneakers? Yep, they bit it. Now let’s talk about why I care about a dirty old pair of Chucks…

Out of all the pairs of Chucks I’ve had, this was my only real custom order. Back in 2011, I used Converse’s custom sneaker configurator to build this pair up from scratch, with gunmetal grey stitching and eyelets, green highlight stripes, and a gingham patterned inner lining. But the topper was the silver embroidered “T2SP” on both outer heel panels.

The significance? It’s a reference to an old fable about a monarch who commissions a ring to make him happy in times of sadness. The ring is inscribed with the phrase “This too shall pass”… hence “T2SP”.

Although the story is Persian in origin, it echoes the central Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, anicca, one of Three Characteristics of Existence. Something well worth keeping in mind at all times!

While they were my favorite pair of sneakers for most of the past fourteen years, impermanence finally caught up with my Chucks this past week. Into the bin you go!

I’ve been burnt out on dhamma books for a number of years, feeling – justifiably – that after a certain point, reading about dhamma has diminishing returns, and what’s truly important is putting what you’ve learned into practice. But circumstances ensured that these five titles made my reading list. Here’s some capsule reviews of my dhamma reading from earlier this year.

Richard Shankman’s “The Experience of Samadhi”

The jhanas — esoteric states of heightened concentration – have perplexed me since my 2007 reading of the Buddha’s Middle Length Discourses. Although they are emphasized in a huge number of Buddhist suttas, there’s lots of disagreement about what they are, how to achieve them in meditation practice, and how important they are. Shankman’s book was recommended to me by Mariposa Sangha teacher Carolyn Kelley. The first half summarizes what the original Pali texts say about jhana, contrasting that with the radically different reformulations that derive from the Visuddhimagga, a commentary written 900 years later.

The latter half of the book contains statements — also frequently at odds with one another – from well-respected modern teachers, both lay and monastic, including Jack Kornfield, Bhante G, and Ajahn Brahm.

My takeaway is that it’s futile to strive to find a “real answer” to those questions about the jhanas, because the disagreements have persisted for centuries. The best thing to do is to concentrate (pun intended) on your own practice, ignoring all the furor over what the jhanas are, whether they actually exist, how important they are, and how to achieve them. From Shankman’s introduction:

“Dharma practice is not a matter of finding the one ‘true and correct’ interpretation of the doctrine and practice that is out there waiting for us to discover, if only we could find it, but instead, it’s the ability to examine ourselves honestly, recognizing our strengths and limitations so that we may apply our efforts in the most fruitful directions.”

Robert Pantano’s “The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence”

I’m a sucker for these kinds of brutally honest titles: this one by the creator of the philosophical “Pursuit of Wonder” YouTube video series. This book is basically an encapsulation of the author’s version of the quest I undertook 25 years ago: to revisit the philosophical and ethical alternatives to religion, as well as my own personal beliefs. Then – given those beliefs – how to find the best way I can to live in accordance with my values.

Pantano pulls from all the major Western superstars, including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung, Emerson, Bukowski, as well as my biggest influences: Sartre, Camus, and Alan Watts. He doesn’t spend much time evaluating Buddhism, but — like many kids these days – gets positively juicy about Seneca and Stoicism.

Ironically, when alphabetized by author, this book sits on my shelf directly adjacent to the “Philosophy For Dummies” book that I kicked off my inquiry with back in 2002 (blogpo)! I found it enjoyable going back over some of the intellectual paths I trod over two decades ago and hearing what someone in a similar situation made of it. From his summary of Ernest Becker’s work:

“What’s worse than living a life knowing that one will die is living a life knowing that one will die without having lived as many moments as one can properly relishing in the fact that they have not yet died.”

CIMC’s “Teachings to Live By”

I received this privately self-published book as a benefit for being a longtime member and supporter of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. It is a compilation of reflections that were sent out by email during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, authored by several CIMC teachers, including Larry Rosenberg, Narayan Liebenson, the late Ron Denhardt, Madeline Klyne, and longtime dhamma friends Zeenat Potia and Matthew Hepburn.

This book reminded me of so many things about CIMC that I hold precious, even a decade after last setting foot in that building. One of those treasures is the center’s unwavering dedication to ensuring that practice isn’t an esoteric, intellectual exercise, but visibly transforms our mundane, everyday lives.

I think that’s summed up best in the following citation from one of Narayan’s sections, entitled “Begin Again”. I’ve already read this in one of my dhamma talks, and will no doubt continue to share it with other practitioners.

Remember that meditation is not sitting. Sitting is a form and meditation is the love of awareness (whatever posture the body may be in). And sitting is an invaluable form in which to cultivate the love of awareness and the capacity to bring our practice to the entirety of our lives, not just to the cushion.

Larry Rosenberg’s “Three Steps to Awakening”

Cambridge Insight’s eminently practical view of meditation practice derives largely from CIMC’s founder, Larry Rosenberg. I studied with Larry for twelve years, and nowhere is his understanding of the dhamma more compellingly articulated than in this book, plainly subtitled “A Practice for Bringing Mindfulness to Life”. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in meditation’s value in learning how to live.

Larry has distilled a lifetime of dhamma practice into three steps that anyone can perform. In my own words, those are: finding calm by maintaining awareness of the sensations throughout the body that arise with breathing (shamatha); using awareness of the breath to identify less with habitual discursive thought (vipassana); and transitioning awareness from the breath to the silence that underlies all the happenings in our daily lives (choiceless awareness).

That sounds pretty esoteric, but Larry is always practical, down-to-earth, and immediate.

Don’t put your faith in a “future you” who will evolve over a number of retreats and sittings. Of course you will reap byproducts down the road. But you do not have to wait, because meditation is a never-ending process of learning how to skillfully relate to everything daily life presents. Confirmation and verification occur right here and now!

Actually, this seeming passive activity sets in motion a dynamic energy that does move you in a wonderful direction. But don’t divide your attention with a preoccupation to improve. In our approach, you’re not attaining specific stages of wakefulness, or life goals, but rather taking care of each moment, whether on the cushion or at home or in school. This is why you are encouraged to not separate practice and daily life.

The Buddha is considered a fully awakened human being. He is offering you help to join him. Each moment of awareness is a small moment of Buddha mind. As the wakefulness matures by applying it to every occurrence in life, off and on the cushion, you will see the by-products of the learning that comes from this enhanced awareness. You are learning how to live skillfully in every moment, whether on retreat or at home with your family, at work with colleagues, or with strangers on the bus.

Narayan Liebenson’s “The Magnanimous Heart”

Narayan is a co-founder of Cambridge Insight and Larry’s longtime partner in teaching at CIMC. I also received her new (well, 2018) book as a thank-you gift for my support of the center. Amusingly, it was the first work selected by the new book club at Mariposa Sangha, my new meditation center in Austin.

The book is her very personal response following a period of tremendous loss, grief, and trauma in her life, and she confronts these topics head-on, without denial, distraction, or avoidance. It’s an unvarnished sharing of how an experienced meditator met some of life’s most painful challenges, which may be of value to others going through similar difficulties.

Fortunately, my life has been largely free of trauma, so for me the book was more like an evocative, frank, heart-opening account from a dear friend.

Is there any moment other than now that is more worth being awake in? We would have to answer no to the question, given that now is the only moment in which life can be lived. There is nothing to be gained by looking forward to future events that seem better than this boring moment right now. This boring moment right now is our life, and everything else is just thought. When we make contact with the sparkling nature of right now, the specific content we encounter in this moment matters less. Ultimately, being present for whatever is going on is more important than whatever is going on.

“No matter how much I meditate, I’ll never become Enlightened, whatever that is.” So said an experienced practitioner during one of my meditation groups’ Q&A periods.

I had a strong and immediate reaction, because her understanding of Enlightenment is based on a frustratingly common misconception, and her despairing attitude is completely unnecessary.

To be fair, most Buddhist texts do an awful job explaining Enlightenment (aka Nirvana, Nibbana, arahantship). It’s usually described as a one-time, life-changing accomplishment that completely and permanently obliterates our greed, hatred, delusion, and all the doubts and dissatisfactions of normal life.

That’s a great goal to aspire to, especially if it motivates you to meditate. But there are three big drawbacks.

The first problem is that greed, hatred, delusion, and doubt are an unavoidable part of life, and no human being can fully eradicate them. Chasing such an unattainable goal engenders a whole spectrum of painful, destructive mental states that conflict with the growth of wisdom: insufficiency, striving, comparing oneself to others, frustration, self-doubt, and ultimately failure.

The second problem is that the idea of Enlightenment as a permanent state contradicts the Buddhist belief that everything is impermanent. As described, Enlightenment is a specific mental state, and all things—especially all mind-states—are temporary, ephemeral, and guaranteed to change. Enlightenment as a one-time, irrevocable transformation just doesn’t jibe.

And finally, in my experience Enlightenment simply doesn’t exist. I have never met any meditator—lay or monastic, teacher or student, male or female—who claimed to be Enlightened, or who claimed to have met someone who was.

So much for the formal, upper-case noun “Enlightenment” as described in the suttas and as envisioned in popular culture. But let’s draw a distinction between formal “Enlightenment” and the lower-case adjective “enlightened”.

The former implies a mythical, permanent, once in a lifetime achievement. But if we use “enlightened” to describe a particular action, or a momentary mind-state which may come and go over time, we come much closer to something useful: an action or state of mind that any human being could achieve, if only for a brief time.

What is an enlightened action? It arises from a mind-state of intimacy and connection with all living beings that struggle with suffering. Enlightened acts exhibit love, compassion, delight, and stability, and are free from self-referentialism.

While most of us don’t think that way most of the time, we can and do experience those ah-ha! satori moments of insight when we can see a different, more enlightened way of being. And our practice is to recognize those moments, allow them to guide our actions in the world, examine the results of those actions, and cultivate more such enlightened moments.

This is something everyone can experience and aspire to, without incurring all the striving, comparisons, and failure of chasing some grandiose vision of permanent “Enlightenment”. And when we view enlightened mind-states as temporary, they do not conflict with the law of impermanence. And most importantly, this ”momentary enlightenment” is eminently achievable.

And if you somehow still believe in that permanent state of “Enlightenment”, in practice that's still nothing more than consecutive moments of enlightened behavior.

So let me summarize my view of Enlightenment:

• Enlightenment is not what you’ve been told. Enlightenment is simply stringing together enlightened mind-states and actions more and more frequently.
• At first, this may not be quickly or easily achieved. But early results produce confidence and progress that gradually accelerates.
• Enlightenment is definitely not a permanent, one-and-done accomplishment. It’s something that requires diligence, effort, and commitment over time.
• It’s unrealistic to expect Enlightenment to erase all the complexities, doubts, and selfishness of normal life, but it will greatly reduce them.
• Letting enlightened moments motivate our behavior still results in the same radically transformed way of thinking about, relating to, and responding to normal life, enabling us to minimize our own suffering, and that of all living beings.

So don’t tell me you’ll never be Enlightened. The real-world possibility of Enlightenment is as close as the very next action you take.

As it spread across Asia and the rest of the globe, Buddhism changed and adapted to the local cultures it encountered; however, Buddhism’s core goal—freedom from suffering—and its core method—contemplative meditation—have perforce remained constant… until recently.

Thus it’s understandable that the 20th Century Westerners who went to Asia would come back with a unique version of Buddhist practice that ought to work better for those of us brought up in the West than the original article. The hybrid Buddhism that we inherited from them had been distilled down to the essentials that would most appeal to educated middle class White people like themselves.

That meant discarding inconvenient concepts and practices such as reincarnation, myths & deities, miracles & supernatural powers, ritual & chanting, merit-making, the more esoteric states of concentration practice, karma, renunciation, non-duality, and non-self. That’s how American Buddhism became divorced from Asian, and enabled a diminished “secular meditation” with all the uncomfortable bits filed off.

That decision made some sense, as several parts of devotional Buddhism are at odds with our Christian heritage or directly contradict universally-accepted scientific laws. But the stylized meditation techniques that have gained such popularity in the American mainstream have also lost sight of the actual purpose and point of meditation practice.

The most facile example of the trendy “Mindfulness Movement” is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. Obviously, learning tools to cope with stress is a Good Thing, but I can’t help but be saddened by how much got lost when the goal of meditation was reduced from the “eradication of the root cause of human suffering” to “just help me get through my day”.

It’s as if everyone in Asia had been inoculated with a one-time permanent cure for diabetes, but we Americans have shortsightedly continued carrying blood testing kits and syringes filled with insulin, only treating the symptoms of the chronic disease as they arise day after day.

Another painful example is how big business and professional sports have co-opted meditation as a cheap tactic for “guaranteed career success” and “enhancing peak performance”, promoted by well-heeled management consultants and wealthy athletes like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Derek Jeter.

I’ve participated in several sittings and talks run by prominent performance-oriented meditation gurus, and always felt deeply uncomfortable. Because at their core, these programs and prescriptions are diametrically opposed to what Buddhist meditation is all about. Whether it’s vanquishing your business or athletic rivals, these techniques are designed to promote selfish desires and goals which reinforce the ego.

In contrast, Buddhism guides the meditator toward the understanding that no worldly attainments can ever provide deep or lasting satisfaction; toward relinquishment of personal desires; and toward freedom from our unexamined enslavement to the insecure demands of the ego.

All too frequently, I hear proclamations from people publicly known as meditation experts that completely set my nerves on edge. In their own literal words, meditation can: lower stress levels, help you drop all distractions that may interfere with winning, enhance peak performance, aid in the reduction of how chronic pain affects the mind, help you cope with the aftermath of a disappointing performance, strengthen your drive, boost your belief in yourself and your ability, build your athletic identity, improve sleep patterns, speed recovery time, enhance endurance, aid in proper fueling, and help control oxygen.

I’m sorry George, but the Buddha had a far more important and fulfilling goal than “speeding recovery time”, “building his athletic identity”, and “controlling oxygen”.

Through tireless self-aggrandizement and promotion, many of these business and sports meditation gurus have grown rich and famous as a result of dispensing their advice. I’m going to leave that contradiction aside however, as it’s too obviously hypocritical to waste time discussing.

Attending these completely secularized meditative self-gratification programs is kind of like taking classes at a prestigious cooking school, but disregarding everything except how to microwave a frozen burrito. It’s such a waste! Buddhism has a larger mission and so much more to offer than empty self-affirmations and greed-reinforcing self-talk.

I’ve also observed that when teachers introduce meditation practices to naïve Westerners, most of the reported short-term benefit is due to peer pressure or the placebo effect. For the practitioners I’ve known, their initial months of meditation were uncomfortable and challenging before things settled down and the practice started producing its slow, gentle results. But Americans have been sold a persistent fable that meditation will produce immediate and noticeable relief; so that’s what people report, after just a few minutes alone with their unruly internal dialogue.

For all these reasons, the majority of Americans think of—and relate to—meditation as if it were just another self-improvement project: a way to be a far more powerful, unshakeable, invincible you.

While there are undeniable positive side effects of long-term meditation practice, it’s not about building up, improving, or perfecting the self; it’s about letting go of the self, and liberation from the tyranny of the ego.

And the ultimate goal of Buddhist meditation—which the Western mindfulness movement has completely forgotten—is the freedom and well-being that results from the eradication of suffering in our lives: something many self-proclaimed “meditation experts” have a vested interest in perpetuating and profiting from.

Over the solstice, I attended an 8-day silent meditation retreat with Bhante Gunaratana at his Bhavana Society retreat center in West Virginia.

Buddha in Bhavana's main hall

Bhavana Buddies

Is this a dhamma talk?

My Kuti

What Eighth Precept?

Bhante G. is a well-known Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, the author of the widely-read manual “Mindfulness in Plain English”. To be honest, I didn’t know he was located so close. When I learned that Bhavana is a three and a half hour drive from Pittsburgh, I was immediately motivated to go do a retreat, especially since I wouldn’t be inconveniencing Inna, who has been out of town for months on business. And at 90 years old, Bhante G.’s advancing age gave me an added sense of urgency.

Last spring, when I looked at the Bhavana Society’s schedule, one event immediately stood out: a jhana retreat planned for the end of June.

What’s “jhana”? Jhana is an intensive concentration meditation practice which predated the Buddha, which presumably leads to four increasingly subtle and esoteric mental states.

The jhanas comprise Right Concentration: the eighth component of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path leading toward the ultimate goal of practice: the cessation of suffering. Once you have developed a high degree of equanimity through the jhanic concentration practice, you can use it (and the impermanence of those states) as a tool in Vipassana practice: the development of insight/wisdom through the internalization of the Three Characteristics of Existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self).

That sequence—practice concentration, then use it to develop wisdom—is one of two ways that people approach Buddhist practice. The other approach, called “dry” or “pure” Vipassana practice, does it the other way around: meditators work directly to realize the Three Characteristics, and let their concentration skills develop as needed. Meditating on the Three Characteristics through Vipassana meditation comprises the seventh element of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Mindfulness.

Virtually all modern western Insight Meditation centers go the latter route, teaching Vipassana meditation exclusively. They rarely talk about the jhanas, and often discourage jhana practice, believing that the preoccupation with mental attainments is an unnecessary diversion from the development of wisdom… if those presumed attainments even exist at all! Having “grown up” in that Insight tradition, I dismissed jhana practice for years as little more than legacy Asian mysticism.

But ten years ago I decided to read some of the original Buddhist suttas, specifically the Majjhima Nikaya: the Middle-Length Discourses (my 2007 blogpost). There I discovered that there’s a passage describing how a skilled meditator enters the jhanas as a preliminary part of practice. Moreover, that standardized passage is repeated in a lot of suttas: about 30 percent of them, IIRC. Appearing so frequently, it was clearly something the Buddha considered extremely important. From then on, I knew I couldn’t simply dismiss jhana practice; I needed to give it a fair and openminded trial.

I bought books and did online research, but couldn’t get past my confusion. On one hand, the “jhana factors” that arise are familiar to me: applied thought, sustained thought, single-pointedness, happiness, bliss, and equanimity. But on the other hand, the four jhanic states are subtle and difficult to judge, and I certainly hadn’t experienced any of the mental imagery (nimitta) or magical powers that supposedly precede them. Were they merely metaphorical? As an avowed empiricist, I had difficulty reconciling the presumed importance of these concentration practices with the mystical bullshit that accompanied them.

As a followup to his best seller, Bhante G. also wrote a book about the jhanas called “Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation”, which I also read. So when I learned his center was nearby and that he’d be leading a jhana retreat, I figured the time was right to go and try to resolve my longstanding confusion. That’s why—due to an unfortunate scheduling coincidence—I decided to stay home at our Tuscan villa on the day the Giro d’Italia bike race came by: so that I could guarantee my spot in Bhante G.’s jhana retreat as soon as they opened online registration.

To conserve Bhante G.’s strength, activities like dhamma talks, Q&A, and teacher interviews were shared, with three different monks taking responsibility for two days each. As a result, my understanding of the jhanas changed and evolved over the course of the week.

The first two days we were in the care of Bhante Jayasara, a young American novice. He addressed the groundwork for jhana practice: specifically, suppressing the negative mental states called the Five Hindrances: a straightforward and familiar practice.

During his Q&A, he shared his personal experience of a nimitta: a sign of deep concentration that’s often perceived as a bright light. I found his sharing informative and inspiring, especially his confirmation that the nimitta is not a visual perception, but a purely mental one.

Interestingly, he could only share this with us because he’s not yet a fully-ordained monk, since the Vinaya—the Buddhist monastic rules—forbids monks from contradicting the canon or discussing their own personal experiences and attainments. So if you’re looking for practical advice based on personal experience, don’t bother asking a monastic!

During his Q&A, I asked which of the Five Hindrances compulsive planning fell under and how to practice with it. Of course, the answer was somewhat nuanced. Planning is often useful, but could also be an expression of anxiety and discomfort with uncertainty. In the moment when the compulsion comes up, one should consider three things: what is the appeal of planning, how it might be problematic, and how to reframe one’s habits of mind to avoid following that pattern out of compulsion. As Bhante Jay summarized: “The gratification, the danger, and the escape.”

After that, the middle two days were handled by Bhante Seelananda, a middle-aged monk who was born in Sri Lanka and became a monk at age eleven. As a lifelong academic scholar, he has exceptional knowledge of the Pali canon (the Buddhist scriptures).

His talks covered Buddhist academic theory relating to the jhanas in unrestrained detail, reciting a litany of passages in Pali and lists of theoretical esoteric mental states. Less of a dhamma talk and more of a collegiate lecture, it was the first dhamma talk I’ve ever attended that included a slide deck presented with an overhead projector and laser pointer!

With a straight face, he reported the magical powers the canon associates with the jhanas: the abilities to fly, read minds, recall past lives, and clairaudience.

At no time did he share any personal reflections or practical advice, limiting himself to reporting the content of the Pali canon as if it were literal truth. I’m not sure whether that was because the monastic rules prohibited him from contradicting the Buddhist writings, or whether his childhood upbringing within the monastic community rendered him an indoctrinated faith believer incapable of critical thought.

In either case, he had zero practical advice to share that would have benefited his audience of lay practitioners. As you might imagine, his circular reasoning and arguments from false authority didn’t sit well with an objective materialist like me.

After coming into the retreat with an open mind and specifically looking for practical help, I was getting discouraged and felt that I was wasting my time. I was ready to conclude that the jhanas are simply not a useful concept. Sure, concentration practice is important in habituating oneself to meta-thinking; the Five Hindrances are things we can all relate to; even the “jhana factors” I listed earlier make sense in the context of quiescing the discursive mind. But the four jhana states themselves sound like abstract, magical mumbo-jumbo.

And even if they are real, someone has got to find a better way to teach them. One doesn’t learn how to whistle by being told “Just blow long enough, and it’ll happen”; and one doesn’t learn how to swim by being told “Keep splashing around on your own and one day you’ll magically become a master swimmer”. You need someone to directly show you the techniques of how to whistle, how to swim… and how to meditate, achieve, and recognize these abstract, theoretical mental states.

For me, no matter how much of the official doctrine Bhante Seela cited, the jhanas simply don’t pass the Kalama test. In the Pali canon’s Kalama Sutta, the Buddha tells the Kalama tribe to accept as true only those teachings that one has personally verified are skillful, blameless, praiseworthy, and conducive to happiness; and to expressly reject teachings that derive from blind faith, dogmatism, and belief spawned from specious reasoning. And the jhanas demand a whole lot of the latter.

After Bhante Seela’s academic theorizing, the final two days’ talks were given by Bhante G., and I was eager to hear how he would follow up. Thankfully, as a non-academic, Bhante G. is more personable and more encouraging than Bhante Seela, which was reassuring in itself.

In the meditations he led, he ended each sitting by reciting verse 372 of the Dhammapada, one of the earliest Buddhist texts:

There is no concentration without wisdom,
Nor wisdom without concentration.
One who has both wisdom and concentration
Is close to peace and emancipation.

This is the central theme of his teaching. Here “concentration” is a reference to jhana practice, and “wisdom” is shorthand for Insight or Vipassana practice. While the two are often considered completely separate practices, Bhante G. says they are parallel roads, different but complementary ways of reaching the same destination. After all, Vipassana constitutes Right Mindfulness, the seventh element of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, while Right Concentration (the jhanas) comprises the eighth. That helped me put concentration practice into a better perspective.

But where I most benefited from Bhante G.’s wisdom was in the group interview I attended, where I was able to ask “How can you tell you’ve reached a jhana state if you don’t experience something as unmistakable as those bright-light nimittas?” His answer was packed with insightful nuggets.

First, one should look at those factors that co-arise with jhana: applied thought, sustained thought, single-pointedness, happiness, bliss, and equanimity. Those are a lot more concrete than the four abstract jhana levels. He said that entering the first jhana isn’t that hard to do for an experienced practitioner, but it’s a subtle and difficult thing to see. He said I might have achieved it many times, but who can say? You just have to judge for yourself. The important thing is to just practice. Concern yourself with your own mind, not the esoteric theories about signs and levels.

His advice was personal, immediate, practical, and encouraging… way more useful than any of the infographics Bhante Seela had presented. I’m so glad that I got into this retreat and had the opportunity to have an exchange with him, while he is still well enough to teach. It was touching when, on the last day of the retreat, I ran into him on his daily walk and we exchanged smiles.

So where did I wind up as far as jhana practice? While I didn’t get confirmation that jhanas exist or not, I did get a degree of practical clarity. Taking Bhante G.’s words to heart, I’m not going to pay a lot of attention to the jhanas. I’ll continue to practice meditation of various flavors (Vipassana/Insight, concentration, and samatha/calmness), with the main focus on evolving my relationship to desire, aversion, impermanence, ethics, and renunciation.

With that, let’s dump all this philosophy. “How was it?” I hear you asking. Well, lemme tellya…

Long retreats hurt. Despite their obvious benefit, I dread them. Even though I use a meditation bench, long periods of sitting hurt both my knees and back, and my knee pain turned severe this time. On top of that, my yogi job was washing dishes, and their sinks are definitely not at a height for normal-sized humans.

There’s also an odd kind of discomfort associated with heightened mindfulness. I would spend all day building up my mindfulness, only to find it difficult to relax and fall asleep at night, because I was so busy noticing and observing everything. Once you’re in that mental state, you can’t simply shut it off, which in my experience leads to a particular kind of retreat fatigue. I find that far more uncomfortable than the more-frequently reported discomfort returning to mainstream society following a long retreat.

Rather than being put up in a dormatory, for the first time ever I got my very own kuti, a tiny one-person cabin off on its own, used as a living space by monastics. It was little more than an uninsulated wooden shed, with a twin mattress and just enough space to squeeze around it on three sides. No electricity, but two windows. I guess it fit the modern idea of a “tiny house”. Thankfully, there weren’t too many insects inside, though I was still glad to have brought bug repellent. I was assigned the cabin named “Panna”, which is Pali for “wisdom”.

The weather. The first three days were hot and sunny, which I enjoyed, despite the lack of aircon. Although the heat was supposed to hold all week, the weather turned very rainy and cold from Wednesday through Sunday. Several times so much rain fell that the short, grassy downhill path to my kuti spontaneously turned into a rushing brook!

Flora and fauna everywhere. Poison ivy. Fireflies. A deer outside my kuti one morning. Termites or something loudly trying to bore into the kuti all day and night long until the rains came and drove them off. Ridiculously loud and annoying tree frogs that trilled back and forth to one another from 8pm to 11pm, sounding for all the world like dueling car alarms. Great for practicing equanimity, but not so great for actually sleeping.

And Buddy. We were told that we’d see Buddy, their tabby cat, who might come and sit in your lap. Monday evening, during a ten-minute break between sittings, I ran into him outside the main building, introduced myself, and made friends. I sat cross-legged in the driveway, and he climbed into my lap and promptly fell asleep. I saw him a couple more times, but he too disappeared once the rain started. I mused that although I hadn’t experienced the Buddhist concept of “no-self”, I did understand “no-Buddy” (nobody).

Other oddities, for your amusement…

Bhavana’s retreat FAQ suggests bringing earplugs, and those were key! I’ve already mentioned the nightly amphibian car alarm chorus and the termites or whatever was chewing its way into my shack. On top of that, the kuti came with a battery-powered clock whose second hand ticked louder than its built-in alarm; I yanked its batteries on the second day. Then the pounding rain on the kuti’s roof topped it all off. Without my earplugs I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep at all.

There’s always one… Normally people claim a spot in the meditation hall and have one zabuton (mat) and one zafu (a tall cushion) or meditation bench. One guy sitting a couple rows in front of me built and sat atop a ziggurat composed of no less than three zabutons, a square cushion, two zafus, and another square cushion, with a bench nearby, just in case. He was perched more than two feet off the floor! Which I think is a violation of the vow we took on the first day to uphold the Eight Precepts, specifically the vow to refrain from using high or luxurious beds and seats. Ridiculous!

The food. Normal people always crow about how great retreat food is; I’m too finicky for that, but I found everything surprisingly palatable. Plus there were a couple treats, such as Nutella, Gatorade, and one day we got orange juice. They also provided Sriracha sauce, which I found helped many dishes, except loading up on it wasn’t always the best idea, since I usually didn’t fetch anything to drink with my meal! Still, when the retreat ended, I made a quick stop at Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar, then grabbed a cola and potato chips to enjoy on the drive home.

My yogi job washing dishes provided some entertainment. I’m used to turning dishwashing gloves inside-out to dry, which is difficult to do unless you know this secret: blow into them like a balloon to reverse the fingers. But somehow I managed to explode two gloves by blowing too hard into them! They blew up with impressively loud bangs during an otherwise silent retreat!

At one point (for some unknown reason) the cook pulled me aside to tell me he thought I looked like Frank Zappa. “Maybe it’s the ponytail?” That’s a new one on me. In the past I’ve drawn comparisons to David Beckham, Steven Seagal, Fabio Lanzoni, and (in a swipe from the ex-wife) Star Trek’s emotionless Mr. Spock.

Even with all this zaniness, it was a good and productive retreat, although three weeks later my knees are still recovering. I was able to meet and practice with Bhante Gunaratana, a cherished teacher whose career is nearing its conclusion; and I gained some clarity about how to practice with and relate to the jhanas (or not). It gave me what my practice needed, and was quite a memorable experience.

Upon coming home, I felt a huge sense of relief. Not because of the retreat, but because I had concluded four months of frequent travel: two weeks gallivanting around Asia in March, a week in Italy in May, and another week on retreat in West Virginia in June. It’s nice to visit new places, but home will always be home, and I was eager to hole up for a while in a familiar place. I wouldn’t mind if there were a few less-eventful weeks in store for me now!

Visiting Southeast Asia has always been on my bucket list. Fanatsizing about going maybe someday was easy; but I’ve never had the courage and initiative to start making it happen. So when Inna agreed to a (minimum) six-month work assignment in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), I had to make the most of the opportunity and visit her there. And so the trip was planned.

In the end, I wound up going for two weeks in the middle of March, spending four days in Malaysia, three days in Singapore, three more days in Thailand, and the equivalent of four full days flying there and back.

This post covers those travel days and my time in Malaysia. It’s the wrapper story that surrounds followup posts about the weekends we spent in Singapore (here) and Thailand here, which warranted their own separate writeups. Doing that splits my trip report into three digestible, reader-friendly sections, and lets me organize and post more photos from each of those adventures.

But first things first: Malaysia!

Wednesday, 14 March 2018

Kicked off the trip with two Facebook status updates. Since I’d be spending all of 3-14 (aka Pi Day) flying, I made a universally underappreciated comment about spending “pi in the sky”. But I also dredged up a pertinent quotation from Led Zeppelin’s classic “Ramble On”:

Now’s the time, the time is now to sing my song.
I’m goin’ round the world—I got to find my girl.
On my way…

With Inna at Suria Mall & Petronas Towers

Selfie at Somerset Roof Pool with Petronas Tower

Petronas Tower from Somerset Ampang

Somerset Ampang Roof Pool from Petronas Tower

Petronas Towers from KLCC

Petronas Towers from KLCC

Petronas Tower 1 Top from Tower 2

Big Kuala Lumpur Panorama

Full Malaysia Photoset

The drive to Pittsburgh’s airport was uneventful other than dealing with freezing temperatures and snow showers. My flight to Chicago’s O’Hare was delayed half an hour due to a broken headset and the need for de-icing. On our final approach to O’Hare, we flew for miles next to another jet that landed seconds before us on a parallel runway. Conveniently, my flight from Chicago to Tokyo had also been delayed 40 minutes because the plane hadn’t arrived.

It’s funny how much can transpire on a 13-hour flight. I stayed awake in order to sync my sleep pattern up with Kuala Lumpur, which is exactly 12 hours off from Pittsburgh time. I kept an eye out for aurorae, which were active following a solar storm, but I saw none. Flying All-Nippon Airways (ANA), I tried the Japanese version of curried rice for the first time, and cold noodles in a light sauce. I had a brief scare when I lost my reading glasses on the floor in a fully-darkened cabin. But the highlight of the flight was getting a fabulous nighttime shot of the lights of snow- and ice-bound Nome, Alaska from 34,000 feet.

Jumping the Date Line requires a new timestamp, so:

Thursday, 15 March 2018

After doing the Date Line time warp, I arrived in Tokyo late Thursday night. It was my second time in Asia, and the first since a work assignment in Seoul in 2008. Back then, my connections were also in Tokyo, although this transfer was at Haneda, rather than Narita. I arrived to lots of Facebook Likes and a welcome exchange of messages with Inna.

It was an easy process—but a long walk—to my next gate, where I charged my devices and did a little exploring. My most noteworthy observation: to alert oblivious pedestrians that something’s behind them, instead of mechanistic beeping, the little terminal golf-carts at Haneda play the tune of Disney’s “Heigh-Ho” song from Snow White.

My third flight of the “day” took off just after midnight, which means another date stamp:

Friday, 16 March 2018

Another eight uncomfortable hours in flight.

Having gone sleepless for more than 40 hours, I was unhappy and barely functional. One highlight was flying over the Philippine island of Palawan, although I was on the wrong side of the plane to see it.

At the end of my three-day flying ordeal, we finally approached Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). But as we were about to touch down, the pilot gunned the engines, climbed, and performed a complete go-around for another try at landing. I couldn’t make out the explanation they offered, but I think they mentioned the control tower. Kind of disconcerting.

After de-planing, the first stop was customs and immigration, where I garnered my first “cheese”: our shorthand term for the reward at the end of the long lines. One of my goals for this trip was to accrue some new passport stamps to join the lonely one from Mexico back in 2010 before my current passport expires. Happily, I received a Malaysian entry stamp, then found my luggage, bought me some Malaysian ringgits and a prepaid taxi voucher, and hopped a cab.

Obviously, Malaysia is a foreign place to me, and it’s also a Muslim country, so I was primed for things to be different. This was most apparent when I noted that every announcement over the airport PA ended with the phrase: “… and have a Happy Jenni”. I was surprised that I’d apparently landed in the middle of some kind of major holiday, whatever “Jenni” was. But eventually Inna and I figured out that it was just an odd pronunciation of what they were really saying: “Have a happy journey”!

That was followed by an hour-long taxi ride from the suburban airport to the heart of KL’s business district and Inna’s hotel: the Somerset Ampang. After leaving a snowy Pittsburgh, I reveled in the humid, tropical heat and the sight of lush hills full of palm trees. Having landed at 7am Friday morning, Inna had just begun her normal workday, so after getting into her empty suite I unpacked, tested out the roof pool on the 22nd floor, then enjoyed a long-anticipated shower. From the pool, I could see one of KL’s two Petronas Towers, knowing my baby was working right over there, on the 75th floor.

Having worked a half day, Inna came home around 4pm. It was the first time I’d seen her in two months, and it was a nice reunion, although by then I was staggering due to sleep deprivation. She kindly guided me through dinner (teriyaki chicken) at the hotel restaurant (Souled Out). After 50 hours without sleep, I finally collapsed into bed, while Inna stayed up and conscientiously booked our last-minute flights and hotel in Singapore. I’m grateful for her help, because I was in no condition to execute, and without her diligence, my trip would have been a lot less eventful and memorable.

The next morning, less than 24 hours after I landed, I was back at KLIA where Inna and I hopped another flight to Singapore. We explored the town on Sunday and returned to KL Monday night. We had an amazing time, but the events of that side trip will all be related in a separate blog post devoted to that weekend in Singapore.

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Tuesday, 20 March 2018

Having returned to Kuala Lumpur Monday night from our long weekend in Singapore, Tuesday morning Inna returned to work at her office in the Petronas Towers. While she engaged in a regular work week, I had the rest of the weekdays to myself.

After spending two days flying to Asia, followed by the weekend’s side trip, I was still exhausted. My Tuesday plan was to relax all morning, catch up on my email and web reading, and hit a grocery to get some foodstuffs.

In what would become my daily ritual, I went up to the roof pool around 10am for a leisurely swim and some early sunbeams, then came back down to shower. Although on Tuesday I tried out Inna’s window-side jumbo-size tub, which I mostly fit into. In the afternoon, I scampered across a major intersection to the nearest grocery-esque store and stocked up on fluids and snack foods, including a knockoff-brand Pringles potato chip in “green curry” flavor… not recommended!

After work, Inna took me to Pavilion, one of KL’s many malls, to have dinner at Wild Honey, her favorite breakfast place (yup, pancakes and sausages for dinner), then ice cream at Baskin Robbins, and an interesting dollar store called Daiso Japan. While I enjoyed the shopping, that part of KL is all huge malls populated with international luxury brands, and I’d hoped for something with more local flavor.

We were back home and in bed before the equinox hit at 15 minutes past midnight.

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Wednesday was accidentally another rest day. After seeing Inna off, I had my swim and did more catching up online. While I was enjoying 90-degree Equatorial warmth, Pittsburgh had received ten inches of snow, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s: far below climate normals for late March. So sad!

I planned to hop a 2pm shuttle, do some more shopping, and then visit Inna at work, but she let me know that she was going to be working in a locked room, isolated and without communication, until at least 5:30pm, so at the last minute I decided to punt. In the end, I just hung around the hotel, relaxing.

Although I’d originally hoped to catch the Tour de Langkawi—a professional bike race—the following weekend, Inna counter-proposed flying to Thailand and playing with tigers, something she’d discovered from a coworker. It was ridiculous how stoked she was about playing with big cats, and I definitely wanted to share that experience with her. So later that evening Inna booked our tickets for Phuket. We were both very excited.

Thursday, 22 March 2018

The next morning, in addition to my obligatory morning swim and sun, I did a load of laundry. It was my first time using a combined washer-dryer unit, and it was fine, other than the inconvenient 5-hour cycle time.

Hoping to execute my aborted plan from the day before, I grabbed my dSLR and walked through the KLCC Park that stood between our hotel and the Petronas Towers. I took my time, finding ample places to compose photos of the iconic buildings.

Of course, there’s a mall (called Suriya) at the foot of the towers, so I made my way to my shopping target: a Japanese bookstore called Kinokuniya. I browsed the cycling and extensive manga collections, but in the end I gravitated toward the section on Buddhism. I found many familiar books on vipassana by authors that included my teacher Larry Rosenberg, Gil Fronsdal, Ajahn Brahm, Goenka-ji, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Sylvia Boorstein, Sharon Salzberg, Ajahn Sumedo, and others. In the end, I picked up three titles: “Bear Awareness: Questions and Answers on Taming Your Wild Mind” by favorite teacher Ajahn Brahm; “Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka” by his student William Hart, and “Buddhist Ethics” by Hammalawa Saddhatissa.

After finding nothing else of interest in the mall, I met up with Inna, who got me free visitor access to the tower and took me up to her working space on the 75th floor (of 88). There I met several of her coworkers and clients, took a few panoramic photos of the KL skyline, and hung around until Inna was ready to leave.

From there, we had dinner at Ben’s, a restaurant in the Suriya mall, where I had yet another pasta carbonara. Despite Southeast Asia’s reputation as a culinary destination, I didn’t find anything special to recommend it. But the couch was comfy, and we had a nice view of the evening light show in the fountain between the towers and the park.

Inna’s coworkers pinged about going out for drinks, but, already eating, we demurred. However, on our way out of the mall, she spied a couple friends on the escalator. After we lost them on their descent, one of them (Freddy) tracked us down. He graciously took a couple photos of Inna and I in front of the fountain lights, and the three of us hung out for one round of drinks before he ambled off toward Jalan Petaling, one of KL’s Chinatowns, while Inna and I caught a quick cab home.

Friday, 23 March 2018

With more air travel scheduled for Saturday, I declared Friday another rest day. After my swim, I had lunch at the hotel restaurant, got a few hotel errands done, and tried to nap.

Inna went out with her coworkers after work, so I just hung out. When she finally came home, she stayed up late booking her flights for a May trip home, which will be followed by a family reunion in Florence, and then back to KL.

The next day we would hop a plane to continue our adventure with a long weekend in Phuket, again returning Monday evening. You can read about that side trip in my Thailand blogpost.

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Tuesday, 27 March 2018

I had a mere 12 hours between returning to KL Monday night from our long weekend in Phuket, Thailand, and my departure flight back home the next morning.

I roused myself at 4am Tuesday to say goodbye to Inna, then slipped out into a rainy morning. After a long, characteristically pensive cab ride to KLIA, I quickly got through customs, acquired my third Malaysian exit visa stamp, hopped the Pittsburgh-like train between the landside and airside terminal buildings, and waited for my flight to Tokyo.

On board, I couldn’t sleep, and instead composed an email to Inna with thoughts about our visit. Seven hours later, landing this time at Narita airport, I was pleasantly surprised to see the runway lined with sakura: cherry trees in blossom, a favorite symbol of Japan. While waiting for my next flight, the Japanese televisions showed news reports about the progress of the cherry blossoms, rightfully a matter of national import.

Two hours later, while boarding my flight to O’Hare, my seatmates asked me if I would move to another row so they could co-parent their screaming progeny. Citing a 36-hour journey, I outright refused, unless they could provide me a window seat with a bulkhead I could lean against to sleep. Even for Buddhists, compassion for others is no more important than self-compassion. They eventually found someone who would switch; that person took only the aisle seat in my row, which left the middle seat unoccupied! What a blessing on a 12-hour flight!

I’d need every possible chance for sleep, because their breeding experiment wailed like an ambulance, accompanied by coughing fits from a handful of passengers who sounded 87 percent dead from tuberculosis. Unable to sleep, my fortitude was down to zero when we finally reached O’Hare.

In Chicago, I had to go through immigration and customs, re-check my bag, take a train between terminals, and pass through another security checkpoint. Fortunately, I had a three-hour layover, and managed it easily. I found myself dangerously wobbly and close to passing out, even after downing a small pizza. After more than 24 hours without sleep, I was back in the sleep deprivation zone, and desperately needed to get myself home and in bed.

Happily, the flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh was short and quiet, and my checked luggage was spat out onto the conveyor just as I approached the carousel. I dragged my bags out to the car, loaded myself up, and drove home to an enthusiastic reception from a very lonely—but something short of tiger-sized—cat.

Malaysia wasn’t quite what I expected. Before I left, my biggest concern was that Malaysia, as a strongly Muslim nation, complete with calls to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers, would feel extremely alien. But what I found was a surprisingly diverse, cosmopolitan society.

English might not be the primary language amongst Malays, but it’s present. They use the English alphabet, so (unlike Thailand) you can eventually learn Malay words by reading them. But if you rely on English, be aware that their spelling is idiosyncratic if not downright creative. You might figure out how to get to the universiti or a katedral or the sentral rail station. Or you can catch a bas or a teksi to the konvensyen center or the muzium of tekstil. Or relax at the rekreasi park or the golf kelab, which is in another seksyen of town. And make sure you ask for extra sos for your food.

Having found itself awash with oil money, Malaysia shows the inefficiencies of rapid growth, with a melange of modern high-rises displacing dilapidated and uninspired neighborhoods that had themselves only recently overtaken outright jungle. It’s an ethnically and economically segregated society, and what I saw of it—mostly downtown malls—lacked any connection to its history or locality.

To be fair though, I did a poor job exploring KL, lacking the time or motivation to venture beyond the bland, characterless malls and the immediate temptation of our hotel roof pool.

Epilogue

Having been through the details in this and subsequent blogposts, let’s take a step back and review the big picture.

I’m particularly challenged by international travel, or more properly not knowing the local language. That wasn’t a major factor, as there was plenty of English in use.

Despite that trepidation, I’m delighted to have added nine new pieces of “cheese” to my passport: three pairs of Malaysia entry and exit visas, another pair from Thailand, and an entry stamp (only) for Singapore. Plus two connections on the ground in Tokyo, as well. Great success!

Beyond that, I set new records for the farthest I’ve traveled south and west. I somehow survived ten flights totaling 22,000 miles and 50 hours in the air, plus uncounted hours of the usual airport runarounds. And despite all that travel, I happily didn’t contract any illnesses.

On the other hand, because I couldn’t sleep, each transcontinental flight amounted to staying awake for two consecutive all-nighters. Doing that twice in two weeks would be a major trial, even for someone half my age! Although I was nearly delirious due to sleep deprivation, not sleeping did make it easier to deal with jet lag, despite the 12-hour difference meaning daytime was suddenly night and nighttime suddenly was day.

Contrary to the warnings I was given, I found it much easier traveling east, because I got home in the evening and could immediately collapse in bed, whereas on my outbound trip, I had arrived at 7am and had a whole day ahead of me before I could (or should) go to sleep.

With only four days in KL, and three each in Singapore and Phuket, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have the chance to do any biking, or visit more than one Buddhist vihara, and little local food or shopping. I’ve been spoiled by my trips to Scotland and St. Thomas, where I had weeks—if not months—to explore and get to know my destination, which I vastly prefer. With Inna based in KL, I should have devoted more than two weeks, but I’d been a little apprehensive, and didn’t want to distract her from work, either.

Of course, that was all balanced by the wonders we did experience, such as Singapore’s Gardens By The Bay, Phuket’s Tiger Kingdom, and swimming in the Andaman Sea. I have some amazing photos and memories that I’ll always treasure.

And I enjoyed swimming in the hotel roof pools each morning. Though I felt a little awkward doing so, the epitome of the idle rich white man. After all, I had nothing better to do than travel from snowy Pittsburgh to Southeast Asia to lie around all day and absorb the equatorial sun while everyone else was working their mundane day jobs. Coming from middle-class roots, I’m just not comfortable with the idea of such conspicuous self-indulgence.

Beyond the passport stamps, the tropical sun, and the exotic sights, the main reason behind my trip was spending time with Inna, seeing how she was making out, and doing what I could to relieve some of the familiar stress that comes with working abroad.

Fortunately, over the weeks and months, Inna has gotten comfortable with her clients and confident in her role and what’s expected of her. So many elements of her project remind me of my half-year deployment in St. Thomas, which was strenuous, amazing, and absolutely off-the-charts ridiculous. The day she left Pittsburgh, I wrote that “I’m incredibly proud of her career progress”, and three months later, that sense of pride has only increased. She’s been kicking ass, and it’s awesome to see.

I’m surprised that despite the equatorial heat, Inna has taken to Kuala Lumpur, to the extent that she might be open to extending her stay. I will, of course, be very interested in how that question resolves itself in coming months.

Continuing the topic of stress, this trip was a test for Inna and I, and our ability to work together under challenging conditions. We made it harder for ourselves by not discussing our plans for our two weekends until the absolute last minute. I’m particularly thankful for her willingness to handle the arrangements for Singapore and Phuket while I was comatose in bed trying to catch up on sleep.

As with any partnership, we each had our moments of difficulty and irritability to work through, but in the end we made a great team, helped one another out, achieved most of what we wanted to do, and built an immense pile of memories together that we can share and cherish.

I don’t like her living on the opposite side of the planet, but it did afford me the opportunity and the impetus for a once in a lifetime trip: one I’d dreamed about for years. I’m glad to have taken that rare opportunity, and to have shared such a memorable experience with the woman I love.

Having read this through, if you’re interested, here are links to more images and text about my trip.

• My full Malaysia photoset
• My Singapore weekend blogpost
• My full Singapore weekend photoset
• Inna’s Singapore Day 1 and Day 2 blogposts
• My Phuket weekend blogpost
• My full Phuket weekend photoset
• Inna’s Phuket overview and Tiger Kingdom blogposts
• My trip videos

Inna wanted to go to the 2017 Meetin national celebration in Seattle in September, and it made sense to piggyback that with a detour up to Victoria BC to visit my brother, since—after my mother’s death—he’s unlikely to be coming east any longer.

The logistics were enough of a nightmare that we actually needed a travel agent’s services. Inna and her mother flew direct to SFO to visit family for a few days. Then Inna flew OAK (not SFO) to SEA while I simultaneously got from PIT to SEA via IAD. After the Meetin gathering, we’d take the ferry to Victoria BC, then eventually get home flying Air Canada together from YYJ to YYZ to PIT. Meanwhile, Inna’s mother returned on a direct flight from SFO. Yeah. Glad to have an agent handle all that.

Seattle Skyline & Rainier

Danger Man

Self-Portrait in Steel

Inna's on the Ball

The Sky's the Limit

Family @ Observatory Hill

Sunken Garden

Japanese Garden

Full Seattle photoset Full Victoria photoset

Tuesday, the day before I left, was memorable for two reasons.

First, having just gotten over a three-week long summer cold, I woke up with another sore throat, heralding another ugly illness spanning the duration of the trip.

Second, that evening I had a ticket to go see “Walk With Me”, a movie centered around Buddhist icon Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditative community at Plum Village. Between this and other previous films, I’ve become convinced that the medium of film really isn’t a good vehicle for introducing Buddhist philosophy to the masses. But that’s really not a topic for this blogpost…

After I returned home, my sore throat left me with a sleepless night before an early Wednesday morning walk to the bus stop, then a two-bus expedition out to the Pittsburgh airport. Having lived without owning a car for more than twenty years, I hadn’t even thought about driving!

My first flight—from Pittsburgh to DC—was delayed 30 minutes by a maintenance issue, causing me to skip my planned combined breakfast and lunch as I loped through Dulles seeking my connecting flight.

After five hours with absolutely zero legroom in a United cattle car, I touched down at SeaTac hungry, tired, and sick. I ignored the seventeen text messages from our catsitting friend and hoofed it to the Uber lot to meet up with Inna, who had flown in separately from Oakland CA.

Although I’ve made half a dozen trips to the PNW, I’d never been to Seattle, so everything here was new to me.

After a lengthy drive into downtown Seattle, we tried to check into our hotel—the Inn at the WAC—only to discover that our room wasn’t ready. We had only planned to drop our bags before heading out for dinner anyways, so we simply got a recommendation from the desk clerk and headed straight to the nearby Tap House Grill. I had a French dip sandwich and ice cream, while Inna ordered shrimp and tiramisu ice cream, which wound up being her favorite meal of the trip.

We returned to the hotel to find a tray with hot tea, cocoa, a chocolate bar, and a handwritten note—to Mr. and Mrs. Nirenburg—waiting in our room, since the staff had overheard Inna mentioning my illness. Inna tracked down Sheela and Monika, our Pittsburgh friends who were also attending the Meetin gathering, and the four of us chatted briefly in our room. After a long day of travel for me, we opted to skip arrival-day festivities in favor of rest and a quiet evening in bed.

Thursday morning we were up early to join a small group of Meetin people exploring Pike Place Market. Along the way, I snagged a cinnamon bun for breakfast. We observed the market’s outdated manual daily stall-assignment ceremony, then took a brief guided tour with still more Meetin peeps. With tired legs, Inna and I wandered off for some overpriced ice cream. Then I spied a stall selling roasted corn on the cob, but balked at the ludicrous $5 price tag. We both eyed the beautiful ristra hot pepper arrangements—each for different reasons—but realized they would be impossible to transport back to Pittsburgh.

We joined another big Meetin group for lunch at the Pike Brewing Company, but left before ordering when Inna realized she wasn’t sure if she had forgotten her medications in San Francisco. That led to an afternoon of phone tag with doctors and chasing around drugstores before we returned to the hotel, where she found them hidden in the bottom of her bag.

But along the way, Inna picked up some dahlias for our room, and I ducked into Metsker Maps, where a postcard with a bicycle and the phrase “Conquer the Hill” called out to me in anticipation of my upcoming Dirty Dozen ride.

Tired after so much walking, we were content to rest in the hotel until the evening event: a meet-and-greet at the top of Smith Tower. On the way, we experienced elevator malfunctions in both our hotel and our destination. Smith Tower is a lot like Boston’s Custom House Tower. Both are about 35 stories and 490 feet tall, with an open-air skywalk observation deck at the top. We took a few pictures of the view, then went in to chat with other Meetin folks. Those included Mary McDaid (Portland OR), event organizers Anita Christensen (Portland) and Helene Pincus (Las Vegas), and I had to interrogate Deanna Cochener, whose cellphone case loudly announced that she was a Portland Timbers supporter.

Afterward we wandered around with Monika, stopping to admire the Seattle Public Library. The steep hills in downtown Seattle were vaguely reminiscent of Pittsburgh, and we shared an uncomfortable laugh when one woman apologized to us as her dog’s feces literally rolled and bounced down the steep sidewalk into our path. In Westlake Park plaza we found a giant-sized Connect Four game, and I promptly destroyed Inna twice running, despite never having played before. The girls stopped in a mall for Pike Place Chowder, while I brought a theoretically fast Mod Pizza back to the room.

Friday was really the main Meetin day. After Uber failed us—and charged us anyways—we got ourselves invited to share a Lyft summoned by New Yorkers Ricky Evans & Zhenya Brisker. That dropped us at the morning’s activity: a duck tour. While waiting, Inna & I chatted with Laurelee Langan, who was there representing Boston. Despite my having been through at least two dozen duck tours, the tour itself was fine, featuring Amazon’s HQ, the Fremont Troll, houseboats and floatplanes on Lake Union, and lots more. Near the Belltown Apartments, the tour guide indicated we were passing through a quiet zone, which I happily observed, having lived for ten years on the Boston duck tour route myself.

Afterward, rather than spending $33 each to get into the Museum of Pop Culture, we opted to visit a local food court with Sheela and Portlanders Bijana & Ankesh Kadakia. Still illin’, nothing appealed to me but fries.

After lunch, the “Meeps” gathered up again to go through the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. The exhibit was short but breathtaking. In the middle of the tour, I remembered to show people that the abstract background image on my cellphone has for many years been a close-up of a green-and-yellow work of Chihuly glass that I took back at the 2000 Dargon Summit at Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory, which you can see here.

After that, Inna and I returned briefly to the food court before walking down to the Olympic Sculpture Park and rejoining the larger group. We wandered around, enjoying another warm, sunny afternoon. While resting at one point, a kid ran up to Inna asking in an incredulous voice, “Hey lady, is that your belly?!?” She was taken aback but about to respond affirmatively when the kid’s caretaker came up to explain that the kid wasn’t actually referring to her stomach, but the rumbling sound of a nearby passing train!

I walked down to the harborside, having a nice conversation with Bijana, before the group split again, with most people headed predictably toward a bar. Meanwhile, Cha Cha Chen (DC) and I collected Inna and ambled off to meet Anita and the main group of Meeps for a ride up the Space Needle.

The Space Needle was a lot like Boston’s Customs House Tower and the Smith Tower from the day before: a reception room and elevators surrounded by a narrow exterior observation deck. The main difference is that the Needle was crowded to absolute capacity. But it did provide the requisite view of the city, the bay, and the mountains in the distance.

Inna & I were among the first to punt and make our way to the Belltown Pub, the first stop in the group’s planned bar crawl. I had a chicken sandwich and a cookie while we chatted with Helene and Ricky. Eventually we’d skip the bar crawl and drag Helene, Ricky, Zhenya, Sheela, and Monika back to the hotel’s common room for an evening of games: specifically Cheating Moth and Coup.

Saturday that same group got together for breakfast, having been lured away from the Meetin brunch by the promise of Quaffles—waffles made out of croissant dough and cinnamon—at Anchorhead Coffee. On the way there, we posed beneath a huge flower pot and watering can sculpture, and got unexpectedly sprayed with water. The Quaffles made up for it, as probably the best food we had during the entire trip.

Having no interest in the Meetin group activities planned for that day, Inna and I shooed the others away and walked aimlessly around the city, winding up at a Russian bakery called Piroshky Piroshky that Inna had sought out. She sampled their pelmeni (little dumplings), piroshki (potato and cabbage dumplings), and Napoleon cake, but pronounced them all mediocre. Then back to Pioneer Square, where I dragged Inna into Magic Mouse Toys and picked up perennial favorite Fluxx, while waiting for our underground tour.

In brief, Seattle used to have problematic above-ground sewage pipes. Then, after Seattle’s big fire, they decided to put them underground… Not by digging trenches, but by running them down the middle of the street, then filling them over and putting an elevated street over the top. Meanwhile, as buildings were being rebuilt, owners were required to build their primary entrances on the second floor, rather than the first. Wooden planks allowed people to get from the elevated street to the elevated second-floor entrances, spanning the open pits that was the old sidewalks, since they were still at the former street level. The old sidewalks were never filled in, just eventually roofed over, leaving downtown Seattle a maze of underground sidewalks connecting the basements (former first floors) of the surrounding buildings. Much of this work was financed by the mistress of several houses of ill repute. It was an interesting tour.

After that, we wandered around town some more, checking out Seattle’s K&L Gates building, the “Pittsburgh” Lunch, and so forth. Then hopped an Uber to take us to the suburban Seattle Meowtropolitan cat cafe, where we enjoyed some time with a few blasé felines. After an Uber back, I picked up a very yummy dinner from Mae Phim Thai. I spent the evening resting in the hotel room while Inna rejoined the Meetin crew for karaoke.

It felt odd to me, because the Meetin event was nominally a weekend thing, but we’d spent the entire day Saturday on our own. It felt like the social element of the trip had petered out, doubly so because our ferry to Victoria prohibited us from attending the farewell brunch on Sunday.

So the next morning we slept in a little, had a decent breakfast in the hotel, ran into Ricky and Zhenya in the lobby, and made our way to the ferry.

Looking back on Seattle, it seemed an okay town, but throughout its history it seems to have been very poorly slapped together, whether you’re thinking about their former sewage problems or the current explosive growth accompanying Microsoft and Amazon. We did have absolutely gorgeous, sunny weather up until the day we departed, but it’s probably a lot less fun in the rain. The accommodations were really great, except for the horrible elevators. My cold was mostly manageable, but I did wish I’d had the strength to bring my SLR camera along. And the Meetin group were generally enjoyable, although predictably more party- and drinking-oriented than Inna and I.

But overall, I really enjoyed my time in Seattle and could have stayed longer.

At the dock, our Victoria Clipper ferry bobbed and weaved in the wind-blown rain and heavy seas, and Inna didn’t have a particularly pleasant 90 minutes crossing over to Victoria. And as expected, we didn’t get passport stamps for our entry into Canada; cheap bastards.

However, by the time we docked, the seas had calmed and the sun was out, and we walked through downtown and past the Empress Hotel on the way to our lodgings at the Hotel Rialto. After nearly a year, it was really, really enjoyable to be outside the authority of the Trump Presidency. Tired from our journey, we had Indian at nearby Sizzling Tandoor before going back to the hotel and crashing.

Monday I let Inna sleep late, then we hoofed it through Chinatown to pick up our rental car, where we wound up with a RAV4 rather than a VW because the Hertz dealer somehow lost the keys when he got out of the vehicle after driving it up. We’d hoped to drive along the coastline of Vancouver Island up to my brother’s home, but had to settle for the inland highway because they were pressed for time.

We had Thai food for lunch and a nice visit with my brother, plus my sister-in-law, whom I haven’t seen in several years. We took separate cars and met up at the top of Observatory Hill for a brisk but breathtaking panoramic view of the island. Then they headed home while I took Inna up to Victoria’s famous Butchart Gardens.

The gardens were predictably amazing, and predictably crowded. What didn’t run according to plan was the weather, as the predicted day-long rain held off completely. Inna bought me some gelato in the Italian garden, and we took our time enjoying the scenery.

Tired from the walking we’d done all week, we gave up on dinner and just got some basics at 7-Eleven, including some products that you’d have to find in imported food shops at home.

Tuesday morning we wandered around downtown a bit. We looked into the John Fluevog shoe store, chatted with the proprietor of North48 Bicycles, perused the surprisingly well-stocked MEC sporting goods co-op (c.f. REI), and discovered Baggins Shoes, who will print any custom design you want onto a pair of Chuck Taylors or Vans. Then we had brunch with my brother at Willy’s, a diner in town. Sadly, my sister-in-law’s back trouble prevented her from tagging along.

After saying farewell to my brother, Inna and I moseyed down to Craigdarroch Castle—a Victorian mansion rather than a medieval castle, of course—which was cute but not particularly engaging, though Inna found some interest in the stained glass and examples of actual filled-out “dance cards”. By the time we dragged ourselves back to the hotel, we were both completely done with the walking and tourist thing and ready to go home. We had dinner at the hotel—a cube of mac and cheese, topped with tandoori chicken!—before showering, checking into our homeward flights, and turning in.

Wednesday we were up and out, with a quick drive up to Victoria’s leetle jetport. Our Air Canada flight to Toronto was long but uneventful. YYZ was a nightmare of maze-like corridors, eventually leading to a mid-corridor dungeon of a waiting area, with a tileless suspended ceiling and bare light fixtures dangling from their wires. Impatient to get home, we took an Uber from the airport rather than wait for the bus, and were very happy to arrive.

Inna enjoyed Victoria and would have liked to have spent more time there. Like Seattle, we were very fortunate to enjoy unseasonable and atypically good weather. It was especially nice to see my sister-in-law, since her health hasn’t permitted her to travel for some time.

Between the two cities, it was a pretty successful trip, though as always it was really nice to get back home again.

May featured two interesting events on strangely divergent ends of the spiritual spectrum.

The first was Vesak, which is the biggest holiday in the Buddhist calendar. Traditionally, the May full moon marks the date of the Buddha’s birth, the date of his enlightenment, and the date of the passing of his physical body.

For whatever reason, the American Buddhist groups I’ve associated with have never bothered to observe this occasion. However, the active Sri Lankan expatriate group here in Pittsburgh has organized an annual observance in accordance with their customs, and invited other local groups to contribute in their own ways.

So on the 15th of May I made my way down to the community park by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum to join about a hundred others in my first observance of Vesak. Ironically, the downtown streets had been blocked off, so I had to hop off the bus and walk an extra half mile to get there. The reason: a big procession of Christians carrying idols and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. Very strange synchronicity.

One thing I have to say about Buddhists: their celebrations really suck. The observances included chanting, recitations from the dhamma, and a dhamma talk: all very stolid, head-y stuff. The most demonstrative display was by some beautifully elegant traditional dancers, who did an excellent job, though they too were pretty sedate.

When the talking was over, there was a procession down to the banks of the Allegheny for a peace ceremony that featured releasing rose petals and water into the river, to disperse throughout the world.

For me, the observance and opportunity for reflection were nice, but almost comically staid. Still, it was heartwarming to be able to participate in such an important community event, having had been offered no such observances by my American Buddhist communities.

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A week later, at Inna’s prompting, I found myself driving into the remotest parts of the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts to attend a huge week-long pagan festival: the Rites of Spring.

I approached Rites with a twofold purpose. On one hand, nature—wood, wind, rock, and sun, and especially the solar holidays—are an important part of my spirituality. But I’ve always preferred to honor those in silence and solitude; so Rites was something of a test to see whether there is any room in my veneration of nature for community. And failing that, my fallback plan was to simply go my own way and treat it as my own five-day woodland meditation retreat.

In the end, I wound up balancing involvement with the community with solitary reflection and a good helping of meditation. I observed a few of the big community rituals, but felt more turned off by the people than spiritually moved. Inna and I did bring our drums to one of the fire circles, and that was fun. I summed up my feelings at one point: “Nature is majestic and mysterious and magical enough without all the dumb human inventions like magical energies and mythical beings and healing crystals and blah blah crap.”

My community experience was saved by a dear old friend who had coordinated the Sandwich Retreats back at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. Whispering Deer is an amazingly wise and lovable woman who shares the Buddhist teachings with a different audience at Rites, albeit translating it into their vernacular. Her series of workshops meditating on the four Brahmaviharas and mindfulness of the body gave me something familiar, trusted, and interesting to work with. It was really cool seeing Whispering Deer teaching the dhamma on her own, and I was delighted that Inna chose to join me in attending.

Of course, I also found time for about seven hours of solitary meditation practice, usually on a granite rock or dock on the shore of the pond. I spent those hours enjoying the opportunity to observe and integrate with the sun, woods, and lake around me, and contemplating why the veneration of nature is something I find so difficult to share with others.

But another important aspect of the trip was the opportunity to connect more deeply with my partner. The trip took Inna and I out of our daily routine, and we had a couple long, quiet conversations that brought us closer together. And that was way more valuable to me than all the silly neo-pagan hoopla.

Fourth of July is a time when Americans make a big deal about our freedoms. Freedom of religion, freedom of expression. Self-rule and freedom from oppression. Freedom of movement and career choice. Freedom to stockpile and use lethal weapons on one another. You’d think America would rank pretty high as a free and happy society.

But in reality, most Americans are neither free nor happy. And the reason is clear to see, codified for posterity right there in our Declaration of “Independence”:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

[Use of “unalienable” and lack of Oxford comma/semis are Jefferson’s. -o]

Paraphrased: We think Life is an inalienable Right. We think Liberty is an inalienable Right. And we think people are best occupied in an eternal, unending pursuit of more and better “Happiness”.

I would be reiterating a familiar refrain in pointing this out: forever chasing happiness will not lead you to the Garden of Eden; it’s better understood as a real-world manifestation of the eternal punishment of Tantalus. We’ve been taught from birth that no matter how much capital ‘H’ “Happiness” we obtain, we cannot ever be satisfied. We are compelled to eternally chase an elusive vision of future fulfillment that, by definition, cannot ever be achieved.

The mindless pursuit of more and better: do you call that freedom? I call that enslavement.

We are neither free nor happy because we are constantly cultivating unfulfilled wants, unrealized desires which society compels us are necessary before we can be happy. No matter how many “freedoms” we have, our nation’s economy and our individual lives are structured around our inability to ever achieve fulfillment. And no matter how many things we achieve or buy, our “Happiness” remains as distant as ever. This eternal hamster wheel of wanting something we don’t have is the very thing that makes us unhappy.

You think our country’s forefathers granted you enough freedoms to be truly free? You forgot about the single most important freedom of all: freedom from want.

The solution ought to be obvious to anyone who thinks rationally about it: if the pursuit of something cannot ever be achieved, then the pursuit must be abandoned.

To be truly happy, you must give up our founding fathers’ “pursuit of Happiness” and learn how to be not just okay, but happy with what you already have, and with the world as it is, complete with all its myriad problems and imperfections. The conclusion is Zen-like in its simplicity and profundity: to gain the thing you want, you have to let go of wanting that thing, and eventually abandon the very impulse of wanting itself.

Old people grok this more readily than the young. They’ve lived long enough to have acquired and achieved great things, seen how short-lived everything they worked for really was, and realized how little lasting happiness those things produced in the long run.

I can’t say I’ve freed myself from desire, but through my Buddhist meditation practice I’ve made surprising progress. By learning how to be at peace with life as it is, rather than chasing after life as it could possibly become, I’ve been happier, less worried about my status, more secure, less jealous, and more compassionate. By reducing my wants, I’ve adopted a much more a minimalist lifestyle, become more environmentally friendly as a result, and (perhaps ironically) become wealthier by wasting a much smaller percentage of my income on ephemera that ultimately prove unfulfilling.

Most important is that I’ve been “happier”. Lasting happiness cannot be achieved by pursuing it more and more intensely, but only by abandoning the chase and allowing oneself to actually *be* happy, in this and every moment, unconditionally and without disclaimer. Or the other way around: you will never *be* happy if you define happiness as something you don’t already have that you must eternally pursue.

America can only become the land of the free and the home of the brave if Americans become aware of and reject our “unalienable Right to the pursuit of Happiness”, which is just a tricky code phrase for the unending cycle of consumption and desire that keeps us enslaved to our petty wants.