Me: “Hi, how are you today?”

Customer: “I need to buy this bird.”

Me: “Ok, have you ever had a bird before?”

Customer: “I’ve had THIS bird before! I need to have this bird! My bird died last week and this bird tells me that he is my bird reincarnated! I need to have this bird.”

Me: “The bird told you?”

Customer: “How else would I know?”

(source)

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

–Carl Jung

Human beings are a funny lot. We pride ourselves on our ability to parse stimuli rationally and yet we rarely, if ever, accomplish the task. Take the Internet, for instance. As fascinating as it is to think that data can be sent so quickly as to allow real-time verbal or epistolary communication between people on the opposite poles of the Earth, it is somewhat mind-boggling that the result is that, as a species, we now spend a large portion of our time staring at a flat back-lit surface pecking away at an array of spring-loaded buttons in order to interact with people, places and things that have no relationship with our present circumstance.

It’s a pretty abysmal pastime if you ask me, and yet here I am, passing about a half-an-hour checking email, writing a blog post, accepting unkown facebook friends, reading old news, trying to upload a file three times, etc., etc. It’s funny how the more time-saving devices we create, the more we find ways to fill up our time using them. For me, rock vs. iPad is really a no-brainer, and yet I’m sure if I had an iPad, I’d use it, whereas I rarely, if ever, use rocks for much these days.

Worth some thought, anyway. The past two days the Internet has been down and I really didn’t miss it. On the contrary, it was a bit of a relief not to have to sit here pecking away like some kind of brain-damaged insect. Peck, peck, peck. Talk about weird.

In other unrelated news, I’m reading my first book in a long time; it’s called Irreducible Mind, and really is an incredible look at trying to bridge the gap between modern science and reality. And let me tell you, it’s a big gap to fill. Well worth the 800-page read; I’m already 200 pages into it and no sign of flagging yet. Keeps me away from this pecking machine, at any rate.

Update: Thinking about it a bit more, I guess I’m not seriously suggesting there is no benefit or reason behind using the Internet as a means to expedite or broaden communication pathways, I just wish it really followed through on the promise to actually save me more time than it actually does. It seems like our purported rationale behind the Internet is betrayed by the actual use thereof, often doubling or tripling our expected usage time. Rather than just a tool, it seems for most of us more of a crutch or, for some, almost a life-support system.

I immediately assumed it would take a lot of tweaking to turn a javascript and xml based project into a Firefox extension; turns out all it took was adding a container file, setting some variables and creating the right file structure. In a short time, I had a semi-working extension up and running. Cookies didn’t seem to work, so rather than figure out why, I moved to using Firefox’s in-built preference system, much preferable anyway. That part isn’t finished yet, but it works with a restart after changing the preferences. The rest seems to work as it should. Anyone interested should now download the reader here:

https://gaea.site5.com/~sirimang/pali/digitalpalireader.xpi

Let me know if it actually works outside of the lab.

Saw Ajaan Tong yesterday. He’s still as strong as ever, and full of wise and kind words. He was happy about the outcome of our efforts at Wat Thai LA; especially after the abbot made an unexpected visit to Chom Tong last month to ask him to allow me to stay and teach in Los Angeles. He says it seems I’m worth the trouble after all… that my ordination was not in vain, and he calls me an “Ajaan”.

As I’m typing here in the lobby, he just walked by, and I’ve let him know I’m returning to Los Angeles tomorrow. He’s surprised, so I explain I have to return to see my father who is in Los Angeles on vacation. Today back to Chiang Mai, tomorrow flying to Bangkok in time to catch my return flight on the same day back to LAX. Onward and upward.

Read: yesterday’s meeting kicked ass (my English <-> Monk translator is broken).

Lots of constructive dialogue, but the best part was realizing that these people are really slick… they had the whole presentation organized very well, they are very knowledgeable about all the various aspects of this project, and most importantly, they are very well connected with the upper echelon of Thai monastic and lay society. Sure, purists might sneer at the thought of relying on connections with high class officials but, hey, you’ve got to admit it does make little-guys-like-us’s job all the easier.

The most remarkable thing about the three-hour-long board meeting is that apparently the first two-and-a-half hours before I came in were spent bickering and arguing about every subject that came up. When it came time to talk about the meditation center (the only part of the meeting I was allowed to witness) not one person raised an objection, whether it was in regards to making me the administrator of the center, building meditator housing, or even buying more land adjacent to the proposed center. It is amazing to me to find a group of Thai business people who actually agree that teaching Buddhism and meditation is what a monastery should be doing; though, I suppose it goes with what I’ve always found, that the biggest obstruction to spreading Buddhism is with the frocked, not the unfrocked (trying to avoid using the M-word).

And that’s really what is special about Wat Thai of Los Angeles, why I’ve stayed on so long; this curiously twisted state of affairs where the monastic community is not in charge of things, something I would be among the first to denounce if it didn’t, curiously enough, work directly in my favour. Hypocrite? Maybe. Or maybe you can call this kusala upaya – making lemonade outta them lemons.

I can’t help but feel like finally I have the support to turn the work and training of the last ten years into something meaningful and productive. Sure, I don’t doubt that the road ahead is still uphill, but it’s now looking less like the little engine that could and more like a 49-ton diesel locomotive of damn right I can.

So, I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but looking at the tea leaves seems to leave no conclusion other than that I’ll be spending a great deal of my future in Los Angeles. The whole game has changed in these past few days, I’ve anted up and you can count me in, at least for the next round. Of course, it goes without saying that it could fold like a house of cards in a minute; such is the nature of samsara. If it does, I’m pretty sure it won’t be my fault; these past few days have given a confidence that was lacking before. Rather than wondering to myself whether I can somehow scrape together enough patience and perseverance to continue to fight against overwhelming opposition, I find myself looking at the hand I’ve been dealt and saying, “man, you know, I can work with this…” The game has changed, and you can count me in for this round.

Expect http://www.sirimangalo.org/ to go through some real changes in the near future; we’ve got a meditation center to promote.

The middle way forces you to give up everything about who and what you are. This is the hardest pill to swallow. It is hard not because it is wrong, but because you are wrong. Everything you cling to is painful, everything you stand for falls over, everything that has meaning to you is meaningless. It is the ultimate test of selflessness.

All of that is very dramatic, I suppose, when relating to the events of today… we did manage to compromise on the issue of opening a new center in North Hollywood under Wat Thai. I think the solution is really the best… it didn’t seem right anyway to make such a young monk the head of the meditation department at such a big monastery with such big and powerful monks, and a couple of times at the meeting I suggested that the best thing for me would be to just leave and find a place more suited to my way of practice. So, we swung back and forth, me trying to explain how difficult it is to run a meditation center when you are nothing more than a resident teacher under the authority of people who know very little about meditation centers in general, and they trying to tell me that everything would be just fine doing exactly that.

There were other complaints as well, like how I don’t make effort to get along with the other monks, not going to the daily chanting, etc. Actually I do go sometimes; not often, though… part of this is just laziness on my part, what with all the teaching and stuff. Another part is that I didn’t grow up Thai, and so I don’t understand what the big deal is about chanting in general unless it is for the purpose of memorizing something, or as a specific meditation practice. Finally, much of the chanting is silly anyway, stuff about living in a cage made up of the various characters of the Buddhist religion, extolling the praises of the Thai king, etc.

The best argument I heard, though, is that it should be easy to run a meditation center if you are virtuous and pure; this is always something that hits home to a Buddhist meditator… we can always improve in these areas. This is surely a part of the problem; as long as one is not fully enlightened, there will always be conflict, always suffering. But given the blatantly obvious differences of culture, practice, understanding and opinion between me and the people I am supposed to work with, I think the comparison between my difficulties and the apparent ease with which Thai monks are able to run things is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, this is one I’m going to have to work on; I know I’m not perfect, and that if I really could see things perfectly clear, there would be no difficulty in this project or any other I could undertake. Such, though, is the path of practice.

So, in the end, a couple of them understood and the rest were willing to concede to my demand that they give me some sort of position of authority to run the place I am supposed to be running, while I conceded to their claim that to turn the position of meditation head over to me, when the vice abbot currently held it (no matter that he has never taken any interest in the position), would be potentially hazardous to the general sense of harmony (or what’s left of it) among the monastic community. And actually, as I said and the more I think about it, it’s a really great solution. I have no delusions of grandeur; I am a young, foreign monk with a lot to learn about being a good monk, let alone running a meditation center. I’d rather just have the monastic community at Wat Thai forget I exist than become some big shot head of a department, but what I tried to make clear is that if you want me to do a job, you really have to give me a position.

At first, they thought I should be content as “Ajaan Vipassana”. I refused. They’ve agreed to add “ผู้บริหาร” to the mix, a title that means “administrator” or some such thing. That’s about all I really want, but I know how these things go. They say to me that they’re going to make this perfectly clear, but when it comes time to meet tomorrow I am sure it would have been far more muddled had I not held my ground – such is politics. So, I was stubborn, and said “we’ll see” when asked if I was satisfied. I really like some of the board members; some of them seem really sincere and have really worked hard to help keep the monastery going. Some don’t seem as dedicated or as sincere, but such is the way of things. The head lay man requested that we have another meeting with the monks in LA to talk with them about it, so all is clear and they don’t feel slighted. I think that’s a great idea, and I said so. If there’s one thing I like, it’s constructive meetings – the Buddha was clearly of such a mindset as well. They said I should go to the monthly meetings of the monastery as well, and I said I was more than happy to from now on. I’m still not decided about the chanting though; I am just fine without the cage, thank you very much.

Tomorrow, the real meeting.

Mike Knight: Then we go to the backup plan…
K.I.T.T.: The backup plan, the plan created because of Murphy’s Law … whatever can go wrong, will go wrong … but isn’t it true that there are an infinite number of ways a plan can go wrong?
Mke Knight: That’s why backup plans suck.
– from Knight Rider

Today we have a prep-meeting so the L.A. board dudes can tell me what to say when we meet the Bangkok board dudes. Tomorrow I get to meet the whole board of Wat Thai LA for the first time, but I’m not crossing my fingers. Last night I had a productive conversation with Phra Kru Supat of Section Five, Wat Mahadhatu, the gist of which was that if I came to teach at Section Five, I’d never have to worry about things like visas, and that he’d be more than happy to job-share with me so that we both could have the much needed time off such a job requires.

Personally, teaching at Wat Mahadhatu is not that interesting a prospect for me; I’ve tried it, and most of the meditators are only there because they don’t have the requisite interest or time to prompt them to seek out a more dedicated meditation center elsewhere in Thailand. On the other hand, it has great potential for funneling traffic into a dedicated child meditation center somewhere in the countryside, something that Phra Kru Supat is working on establishing. I have other places of my own, as well, and so this sort of setup does have great potential, besides the benefits of staying in Wat Mahadhatu from time to time, allowing for easy study of Pali and Abhidhamma as time permits.

Anyway, so there’s plan B. My guess is Los Angeles is a temporary position, not something that is tenable in the long-term, unfortunately. There just doesn’t seem to be the depth of interest either in the Thai community, or the American people at large. Everyone’s too busy trying to make ends meet; of course the funny thing is, if people were to dedicate their lives to meditation, there would be far fewer ends to try to make meet… IMHO.