sometimes i feel alone. i think i have superficial comfort in the fact that jon is around. although i have been trying REALLY hard to not depend on him, not be attached, i know that i am not succeeding. i am not doing well at eliminating that crutch that his presence creates. when he is gone from me, i sometimes feel this emptiness inside of me that i don’t understand. i try to not have that feeling but it just happens. his presence creates a glow that i enjoy. i like complanionship. i am bedridden right now and i don’t like being alone. i want my housmeates around, not even to talk to, just to be there. i wonder what my mother experiences at home; she is so mortally alone. sometimes i realize that i wait for jon to go home, so that i won’t be alone. i like having three roommates. i am never alone that way. this is unhealthy and i know that. i just have to kill my loneliness. this is my life goal- kill the loneliness, kill the dependency that i have on being with people.

uneveness bothers me. it is a silly bothersome but i was just thinking about it. it makes no sense. my body is even- left=right, symmetric. when one side hurts, it bothers me more than if both sides hurt. strange. if jon gives me a body message and focuses on one side, it bothers me. when my socks don’t match, it bothers me. somethings are not even about my body though- i write with my right hand (but i like typing better because i use both hands equally). i cannot stand being mal balanced. if my body is leaning, it bothers me. i cannot sleep on tilted beds (even slightly), it bothers me. i don’t like watches- i never know which hand to put it on (i used to wear two watches). when i exercise one half of my body, i must exercise the toher half equally. very odd. i never though much about it until recently but it is true. my mind always thinks of good thoughts with bad thoughts; a bad though with each good thought. i need to accept that not everything is balanced and flow with it, accept it. bringing my oddities to the surface is a good thing. that way i can think about them and not let them rule me. acceptance is good. realization is good. that is my focus of the week.

november 14 i cried tonite. in fact, i bawled. not because of some torment but because i finally understood. i came home for the weekend, for my mother, to take care of her and keep her sane. it is her birthday and i did not want her to grow another year old alone. she is so sad as it is. we talked about her life and the pain she went thru. for some reason, it made sense tonite. she has told me many of the same stories many nites before and i would listen as a dutiful daughter but tonite it hit home. i understood. the realization that i finally understood hit home just a moment ago and i started crying. tears rolled down my eyes and i did not try to stop them. i did not need to hide from myself. the truth was inside me

we sat there for hours, holding each other, talking about this and that. the important things, the important moments. there has been so much sadness in the family and it is devastating. i am sad for her. both of us sat in our living room, bereaved in pain over the recent deaths and past frustrations. then, we both breathed and we both knew and that knowledge was shattering. i hugged her and we sat like that for a long time, knowing that the pain was over, the time was over and the past was finally in the past. it was one of those perfect hugs. and the tears flowed, releasing all of the past with them…

i received an email today that made me contemplate some of my expressions. i have been known to use two expressions over frequently- and no worries. both have become part of my regular language- the former in email and the latter in verbal commmunication. no worries has a story in my history.

one summer i was at a program (one of those where you learn something). halfway thru the program many of my friends were paniking about their projects, concerned about their well being and sanity. i too had gotten that out of control enthusiasm combined with mental insanity that drives all of us nuts. suddenly, i sat back and questioned why were paniking. did it matter if we did not get the problem correct? no. the world would not end. if our attempts to understand something failed, rather than paniking we should seek out information. we started referring to the problem at a not worry problem.

not worry turned into no worries as the years progressed and the phrase has come to be of great importance to me. there is no need to drive yourself insane for menial tasks. it defeats the purpose. worry about what is necessary. forget what is in the past and don’t panik about the future. sanity will come from there.

recently, i have become rather good friends with a freshman (ie: newbie to brown). she mirrors me in so many ways that we have great discussions about what she is going thru, new to brown, dissimilar to many of her classmates. there is always something so majestical about looking back at your own past thru the eyes of someone else. having had most of those headaches and heartaches, i relate well and can give advice when she seeks it. but regardless of how much i can help her, i have been given the opportunity to reflect on my decisions from last year.

embittered by my unit mates horrid attitude towards college (stereotypical $30 grand party), i sought independence immediately. well, i found the opposite – the cs department. although neither group was me, i learned a lot about myself during my first year here- who i am, what i want in friends and how to treat friends. it was a good well needed lesson. i also learned the importance of accepting everyone even if you don’t agree. regardless, seeing myself has been interesting..

right attitude is important. i know that. or at least my mind does. it is not about sitting or what you do when you are thinking about being in right attitude. it is what is displayed when you are not thinking about right attitude. yet, that does not seem to hold true sometimes.
many of my thoughts are directed towards right attitude and “being good” but i am not always capable of keeping up with them… like when i am in pain. for some reason nothing good happens when i am in pain. all i want to do is crawl in bed until it goes away. i can comfortably overcome mental pain rather well and let it fly by, like when i am annoyed at something or angry with someone. but when my hands hurt, i am paralyzed from living. why? how do i make it better? that is my thought of the day.

one of my computer science requirements is a course called cs51. although the professor is extremely nice, he is also known to be rather dull and confusing. to make matters worse, he knows that he is dull and confusing but this does not manage to eliminate this problem. every day i enter his class feeling semi-confident about the topic at hand only to be utterly confused by the discussion or shall we say lecture. i get angry at his inability to teach and am always smacking my head thinking “how can this man be allowed to teach?” i know that he is nice but i still always walk out of the class being pissed.
on a regular basis, i speak with both the tas and the professor about this problem, ask him to be concrete and he goes about his merry way. i depend on the tas to “reteach” me everything that i do not gain from class.

like any other day, today was a repeat of these problems. i walked into class feeling rather confident of my understanding of fsms and was quickly confused by every word that exited his mouth. i asked questions and he seemed annoyed by my confusion. my mental response was to get annoyed- pissed that he did not try to relate to his students, angry that he constantly told us that we understood and that is why the class was good (even though every person in the room had some form of perplexity on their face), frustrated that he did not try to make it better.

then something dawned on me. i was being completely unfair. he knew that noone understood and was frustrated himself. he truly had no clue how to help us. he felt out of control of the class because of the distance between us and him but he did not know how to fix it. rather than verbally acknowledge the problem, he constantly tried to convince himself that we really did understand by verbalizing this. when students asked questions, it was obvious of the gab and that flustered him. he was afraid of the truth and of the fact that he was doing a poor job. more than likely, he will never be able to communicate with us about models of computation. even his book that he constantly admires is only a way to cover his fear of our confusion and the reality that he is not getting thru to us.

so, i sat back and relaxed, no longer angry. i am now fully aware that, for me, the class is pointless. i will continue to go (and continue to be confused) because it would hurt him so much for us to not go. but, i will not worry about the material. i will talk to the tas and try to understand outside of class. and i will continue to give him advice but i will not expect anything from him. it is the expectation that makes me frustrated. when i expect him to teach well and he lets me down, we both lose. if i expect nothing but gain knowledge then i will not be at a loss.

for the last few days, one thought has been on my mind- “kill your parents.” it was just one of the words said at a dharma talk two weeks ago… i have no idea how to kill my mother. the monk was 100% right though- i am entirely attached to my mother. i had not thought about it before that talk but it is so true and i have no idea how to stop it.
it is a pretty uncomfortable battle. i love my mother and she me. we have a very close bond. she does not understand many of my decisions and we argue thru everything. she is often the first person that i contact when i need to talk thru something with someone. and she depends on me. it is definitely mutual dependence.

i am also attached to her monetarily- i am in college and i don’t have the money to fund my way so she does so willingly but requires certain things of me because of it.

how do i kill my mother?

mmm.. good meditation this morning. i love meditation. it was the first time that my leg ever fell asleep and it was a weird feeling but not one that stopped me. i was awake and enjoying the meditation and relaxed within myself. i am still a bit nervous about interviews on wednesday but they can’t be that bad. even jon came with me this morning!
and then tonite! wow! zen master dae kwong came and answered questions- i really like him too. he is relaxing and calm. also, we had a five minute meditation that flew by soooooo fast! it was amazing! i never thought it would go so fast…

i have been having this thought on my mind though.. why does buddhism say that drugs are bad? is it the attachment or the substance? hyon gak sunim mentionned that many people of his generation in zen got involved in zen thru acid and whatnot. even dae kwong tonite mentionned drinking in social settings. yet i remember readings saying that drugs are bad. what is the deal?

i had a dream last nite (and not one of those world changing types).
for some reason, my entire community (composed of all my friends and loved ones) was away from our homes (which all existed in succession of each other in some far away world). late in the afternoon, we all came home to see that our entire community had been demolished. although some random items were taken aside to be saved (stuff like bed sheets and kitchen knives), most of our precious belongings were destroyed when they collapsed our dwelling. the entire community was hysterical- everyone was screaming and crying and angry and pissed off. but i wasn’t. i was standing in the middle of all the hysteria, scratching my head and wondering why the government hadn’t asked us ahead of time- we would have moved..