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7.12 Wenatchee, Washington, Computer Park Cyber Cafe. This quick update reports that I am now looking for an apartment in Wenatchee, Washington, where I have decided to stay instead of continuing on down the Columbia River. Wenatchee is known as the Apple Capital of the World, or the Buckle in the Power Belt of the Pacific Northwest. It is a fair, sunny city on the mighty Columbia River. The summer heat (about 90 degrees lately) may discourage a long summer stay here, although the vista is really grand, reaching across the wide Columbia to mountains in every direction but not too close to seem confining. A sprawling array of buildings and green trees extends far up the steep slopes of East Wenatchee across the river. Wenatchee is large enough to support a major hospital and has all the big box stores, but it is not cluttered with traffic like larger metropolitan areas. There is a feeling of vast space all around. There is an adequate but slow public transit system stretching all the way up to Lake Wenatchee and other surrounding communities (but nothing runs on Sunday). My first choice of an apartment complex at the downtown 10-story Cascadian Hotel for Senior Citizens was refused because my income exceeded the subsidized limits. Too bad, but the search continues. I arrived here by bus last week from Seattle via Ellensburg after visiting my brother Jim and sister Julie in Boerne, Texas, where I left a few last personal effects behind, including my copy of the Majjhima Nikaya in my safe deposit box. I carried all the rest of my worldly possessions with me in my backpack, total weight 18 pounds. I spent a few days hiking from Lake Wenatchee up to Union Gap on the PCT which I found buried under snow. I could not remember the trail from 16 years ago. My hiking staff was very useful. I walked back down along scenic Highway 2, doing in all about 35 miles in three days, not too bad for my condition, although only 2/3 of my former capacity. It will not be easy to keep updating this blog, or even to check email frequently, at least for the time being. 8.03 Wenatchee, Washington State, Computer Park Cyber Cafe. This computer shop is the only location in Wenatchee which allows executable access to KompoZer.exe on my flash drive, necessary to update my jwleaf.org website pages. While there are blog sites which do allow page edits in the cloud without depending on local drives, I do not have a strong motive to make changes at this time. As the famous Unix slogan goes, "less is more", meaning less verbal proliferation may be a good thing. If anyone is actually reading this, please let me know. Today after several seeks of laying back in Wenatchee, I am heading north on a Northwest Trailways bus to visit the neighboring river towns Okanogan and Omak. After taking a look around, I plan to walk west about 30 miles into the higher Cascade valleys to explore the towns of Twisp and Winthrop surrounded by (hopefully) cool forests. I am storing my wheeled travel bag in the basement of the Empire Hotel where I have rented a cheap and cozy room for the past weeks, cooled somewhat by an electric fan bought at Walgreen. One of the books I have read lately was the autobiography of Conrad Hilton about his rise to riches. He says that a necessary ingredient for success in any undertaking is having a dream. His own dream was to accumulate hotels. His last purchase was for the total Statler Hotel chain for the amount of $111,000,000, a fabulous sum fifty years ago. His own Hilton Hotel Management board was opposed to the deal due to the enormous risk. The board asked him why he could not be content with his 20-odd collection of Hilton Hotels which he already owned, but he replied that he could not pass up a bargain. That was his dream, to accumulate hotels. Now I ask myself, what is my dream? 8.17 Wenatchee Computer Park Cafe. Today I am back after exploring the country north of Wenatchee, failing to escape the summer heat everywhere. From Omak, the last public bus stop on the Columbia River, I hiked 30 miles over Loup Loup Pass to reach the small village of Twisp ("Lips Lisp Twisp"). From Twisp I followed the Methow River northward to the tourist town of Winthrop, then returned by a different route. Then I hiked the other direction down to Carlton and returned again by mountain roads. When next I tried to climb a steep gravel road up Lookout Peak outside of Twisp, I had to turn back halfway due to the scorching sun and many annoying flies whenever I would stop to rest. I also noticed with some concern that my heart was throbbing with an irregular beat, the first time palpitations have ever been noticed. After returning to Twisp, checking into the air-conditioned Sportsman Motel and resting a night and another full day, I walked 30 miles down to Pateros on the Columbia River in two days, actually covering 18 miles the second day, anxious to board the once-a-day early morning bus back to Wenatchee. No relief from the heat could be found anywhere in North Central Washington. According to weather maps seen on TV in motel rooms, the climate in Spokane or even Boise is much the same. This appears to be a regional instance of global warming which is affecting the whole world, such as the excess monsoon rainfall flooding Pakistan recently. It seems incredible that the United States can not come to grips with this problem. In my opinion this country is out of touch with reality in many ways. Congress is fiddling (filibustering) while the country is burning (literally, with forest fires). Part of the reason people may not recognize climate change is the disconnect between them and the natural environment. Who notices the heat as long as air conditioners are working? Who notices a fatal dependence on oil as long as gas stations are pumping? We are like frogs boiling in water unaware of the problem. Anyway, regarding my own plans, tomorrow I will take a bus over Stevens Pass to Monroe north of Seattle to explore the coastal region which enjoys a more moderate climate. My reason for all of this hiking is to melt off excess abdominal fat, a known factor contributing to my diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD). My less immediate goal is to find a place to live which will remedy the two main deficiencies of Alpine, Texas, namely health care and social contact. There must be some other people like me somewhere in this world, where as Robert Frost says of home, when you go there they have to take you in. Granted, these personal goals revolving around my own health and existence do not inspire a lot of enthusiasm, hardly worth writing about, as compared with a higher bodhisattva resolve to save the whole world, or even take care of other people who may need me. Nevertheless this is my colorless state of mind at the moment. Speaking of color, I just bought a couple of nice new cotton shirts with collars to replace the old hiking T-shirts. It cheers me to spiff up my appearance, more appropriate for my age, even if the shirts might get wrinkled or stained over time in the field. I also keep my face shaved whenever hot water is available. 8.27 Back in Wenatchee this morning at the Computer Park Cafe. This is the only place I have found in Washington State which allows me to update my blog from my flash drive, at 6$/hr. The security constraints which public libraries place on executing local programs from my flash drive may curtail further updates to my blog until such future time as when I may get a personal computer again. I am experiencing a homeless life now like a rolling stone, an "itinerant path to perfection" as once described in The Whoa Way of Hiking. I am back now from my exploration by foot of the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island west of Seattle. When the Northwest Trailways bus dropped me off in Monroe north of Seattle, I quickly realized that walking up the narrow and heavily trafficked roads along the urbanized Northwest Washington coast corridor towards the northern towns was not feasible after all. A friendly person at the Monroe Chamber of Commerce mentioned that some parts of the Olympic Peninsula were fairly dry in this month in the rain shadow of the mountains. So I changed my hiking plan, took a local bus over to Everett and spent that night in a shabby motel after a lot of walking around. The next morning I took some city buses down to Lynnwood and Edmonds in order to ferry over to Kingston on the Olympic Peninsula. What a relief it was to break out of the urban congestion onto the open expanse of the strait, even under gray skies. Then during the next week I hiked from Kingston up and across the Hood Canal floating bridge (1.5 mile length) to Port Townsend, then ferried over to Whidbey Island and continued north to Coupeville and Oak Harbor. I camped at night in patches of native woods, sometimes having to carve and scrape a three-dimensional cubbyhole out of the extremely dense underbrush, at other times trusting clear skies but subject to wet morning dew. In general the hiking was not very enjoyable due to stressful auto traffic everywhere. Whidbey Island is an odd mosaic of suburban homes and uncut forest patches. Now that I have seen it and refreshed my memory of the depressing cold, wet, gray coastal climate, I am going to try the other direction in the vicinity of Spokane, possibly hiking down to the college town of Pullman, Washington. 8.31 Washington State University (WSU) Student Library, Pullman, Washington. After unfruitfully exploring the endless expanse of the Spokane Metropolitan Area in every direction for several days, including visits to the nearby towns of Cheney, Medical Lake and Liberty Lake, I continued my search for a home southwards down to Pullman, Washington, even veering across the Idaho state line to compare with the rival but smaller college town of Moscow, Idaho, eight miles east. The four large and heavily wooded hills of Pullman stand out from surrounding golden fields of wheat like an oasis in a desert of dunes. The WSU campus sprawls across the northeastern hill above the town center at an elevation similar to Sul Ross Hill rising over my former apartment in Alpine. Extending north beyond the campus to the very edge of the treeless prairie called the Palouse, stand two and three story apartment buildings housing 20,000 students and serviced by frequent shuttle buses. I am hopeful that this town of Pullman, named after the railroad magnate who invented luxury sleeping cars, will satisfy my search for a small town of hills and trees in a mostly sunny climate in a rural environment, with full services including a hospital and opportunities for social contact. 9.4 I have submitted a lease application for an attractive third-floor two-bedroom apartment in a quiet housing development called Aspen Village. Although the second smaller bedroom may be optionally locked out to qualify as a one-bedroom unit, since the generous amount of thick carpeted floor space includes a living room and a kitchen, the second bedroom may be useful in some ways such as improving apartment cross ventilation or by serving as a guest bedroom or as a meditation room, a quiet place, a chapel dedicated to the cessation of all activity. Aspen Village requires about 30 minutes to walk to the WSU Terrell Library or 35 minutes to reach Dissmore's IGA supermarket, but in case of need or snow there is frequent shuttle bus service except on Sundays or school vacations. The wooden third floor balcony facing the morning sun fronts a looming hill of yellow wheat to the east and north. Unfortunately the public access road which loops around the apartment complex runs along this hill at the same level as the balcony, therefore traffic passes directly opposite at a distance of about 50 feet, compromising the privacy and silence. The adjacent apartment, also available for my choice, faces northwest towards the interior of the complex presenting a view of other balconies and parked cars, but still within sound of traffic. I wish the apartments could have windows on more than one side for more sunny illumination. A tall young tree of unidentified species (but not Aspen) stretches up outside the bedroom window screening the view slightly from the road. 9.7 A delay of several days due to the Labor Day Weekend allowed me to revisit the Aspen Village apartment site at various times of day to weigh my wavering decision to lease it. Today when the leasing office reopened, I asked to see what else was available. Finally I selected another third-floor two-bedroom unit farther removed from the noise of the road, even though it faces a northwest direction without direct sunlight. So today this rolling stone has come to rest by signing an eleven-month term lease through July, 2011. The address is 1620 NE Northwood Dr, Apt F303, Pullman WA 99163. The apartment is completely unfurnished; I can't even change an overhead light bulb without something to stand on. I don't have a screwdriver (yet) to adjust the hot water temperature. This town and my remote location at its far northern edge are not as convenient as Alpine for obtaining small useful things and groceries. No more snack runs to the corner convenience store! A Wal Mart superstore is scheduled to open here in two months, but meanwhile getting household supplies such as a shower curtain may require a shuttle bus trip over to Moscow, Idaho, eight miles away. I miss the convenience and comforts of Alpine, but as the Buddha said concerning jungle thickets as suitable sites for meditation (MN 17), if a student is not making progress somewhere, then he should move on, no matter how comfortable, but if he is making progress, then he should stay even for the rest of his life, no matter how uncomfortable. As for connecting to Internet, I am deeply suspicious of an urge to buy another computer and start those wheels rolling again as I did in Alpine. Instead, I see this apartment as a golden opportunity to whoa-down and practice meditation without distraction. This place could be just the right jungle thicket for my practice, every bit as good as a monastic rains retreat in a foreign country, and I don't have a lot of time to waste anymore. 9.20 WSU is a large campus with at least six libraries; today I am visiting a small, quiet one, the Brain Education Library, not frequented by many students. I am glad for the chance to go out for daily walks to explore the WSU campus and Pullman town, to break the monotony of sitting in an empty apartment, but then I am also glad to have a shelter to come back to, especially since the weather has turned cool and rainy lately. As part of establishing a residence in a new town and creating a new identity where no one has known me before, I am taking this opportunity to revert to my other given name Willis instead of Jonathan. Just as some people are fortunate to have two residences, one for the summer and one for the winter, I would like to use both of my given names, Jonathan for the South and Willis for the North and Costa Rica. As precedent, my grandfather Oscar Willis Hennings, a newspaper editor, lived in Minnesota at the same northern latitude as Washington State, and I have almost reached his maximum age (he died of a perforated ulcer at age 68 on 5/4/1942, five months before my birth). As an historical note, back in the fall of 1960 when I went up to start my freshman year at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, not too far from my grandparents' former home in Wanamingo, I wanted to bury the juvenile name Jonny to start fresh with new friends. So I started introducing myself as "Will" as in Will Rogers. I must have felt that the two syllables of Willis were too formal. Everyone else seemed to have names of one syllable, and I definitely was not ready to handle the three syllables of Jonathan. But when my mother heard of it, she strongly objected because "people would think Will was short for William". In hindsight, I suspect she was reacting not so much to the name William but to the stress of losing a first child in the process of breaking away. It is unlikely that people would assume Will was short for William. They would probably not even think about it. Who wonders if Will Rogers was really William? Unfortunately I caved in to her pressure and compromised on using Jon, at least a step up from Jonny. Later as an engineer, I went by John for a few years to blend in with my peers but never felt like it was truly me. According to Buddhist wisdom, there is no true self under these conventional layers of names. 10.03 WSU Terrell Library. I have come across a very interesting book in the archives of this library: Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, 2nd edition 1974, by Ian Stevenson MD, University of Virginia. It is the first time I have ever actually read details of verified reincarnations. Until now I had assumed reports to be based mainly on hearsay, or in the Buddhist literature, on the assertions of the Buddha who remembered his former lives on the night of his enlightenment. The cases are reported in this book in great detail (7 in India, 3 in Ceylon, 2 in Brazil, 7 in Alaska among the Tlingit Indians, and 1 in Lebanon). All of them were verified personally by the author before or after the young child was brought to his or her former family and correctly identified many relatives and objects which he or she had no way of knowing. In some cases, especially among the Tlingit Indians, certain birthmarks also suggested reincarnation. Stevenson goes to great length to discuss and exclude four alternative explanations: fraud, cryptomnesia (knowledge previously obtained in this life but forgotten), extrasensory perception with personal identification, and possession by a spirit. The topic is one I never paid much attention to because of apparent incompatibility with my scientific background and my skeptical outlook in general. I have never understood the mechanism by which a personality may continue in a subsequent birth if there is no permanent self, and what could be the medium where former memories are stored. The Buddha described the rebirth cycle by an interlocking process of twelve steps called dependent origination. He compared it to the transfer of one candle flame to another. To explain phenomena which have no obvious explanation, such as these verified cases of remembered former lives, it may be necessary to postulate invisible subtle bodies which support consciousness (since Buddhists deny that consciousness can exist independently of any body, which is the eternalist belief in a permanent soul). After all, if physicists can postulate that "dark" matter must exist, then why not "light" matter as well? Divine beings are supposed to have bodies of light. If humans can not perceive deva bodies, then maybe the devas in the lower heavens can not perceive the devas in the heavens above them. My resistance to investigating the subject is an example of a natural tendency to ignore data which does not conform to a particular world view, until enough evidence accumulates to require a better explanation. Now, however, I am coming around to accept the possibility of reincarnation, or as Buddhists prefer to call it, rebirth (the difference being in the belief in a self). In my own case, I sometimes wonder whether a certain large hairy birthmark extending across my right shoulder may suggest a former life as a Theravada Buddhist monk. The monks in tropical climates wear light cotton robes exposing the right shoulder to view. One reason I may not have chosen to become a monk in this life, in spite of lifelong interest, could have been reluctance to expose that blemished shoulder to public view. Supposing that in fact I happened to be a Theravada Buddhist monk in a former life, then I wonder if this unattractive birthmark signals a karmic consequence following on some moral failure, or whether it might have served as a spiritual thorn to inhibit the normal pursuit of sensual pleasures leading to marriage. My disgust with this physical body was increased further by internal injuries sustained in a nearly fatal motorcycle crash at age 21, even though I managed to recover the use of my broken legs and later walked on them twice from Mexico to Canada. On the whole, my life has been healthy and prosperous. Anyone who is reborn as a human being has by definition obtained a favorable destination as a reward for at least some meritorious conduct, but that is not a reason to be complacent or smug. It is a reason to see some good in everyone. The idea of rebirth is, in a way, a consolation which gives me hope for a favorable rebirth to continue my spiritual quest, so that lessons learned in this life will not be totally lost. 10.07 After one year, the Kepler search for extrasolar planets is about to announce 312 of about 700 candidate stars, out of 156,000 in the field of view of the Kepler Telescope trailing behind the earth in a solar orbit. Another year or two will be required to confirm these candidates by repeated transits. This number of possible transits is larger than expected. The low probability of a planet transiting across the face of a star in a direct line of sight from the earth is only about one in a hundred stars [see note below]. Therefore if every single one of the 156,000 Kepler stars had at least one planet orbiting around it, then at most no more than 1,560 of them would have a visible transit observed from earth. Since 700 of them are indeed indicating transits, this implies that almost one-half (700/1560) of the stars in our local neighborhood have at least one planet, if not more. Then if the density of planets in our local neighborhood is typical of their distribution throughout our galaxy, and since there are at least 200 billion stars in our galaxy, this implies that at least 90 billion planets occupy our galaxy. The odds are extremely high that at least some of these planets have life but the odds of intelligent life are still unknown. Note: the equation for the geometric probability of observing a transit is simply d/2a, where d = the stellar diameter and a = the orbital distance of the planet from the star. It does not depend on planet size. The easiest transits to observe are planets near large stars. In the case of the earth transiting the sun, the probability is 0.47%, but since probabilities for co-planar planets add up, the probability for an Earth + Venus combination together is about 1%. I have "adopted" fifteen of these 312 candidate stars for $10.00 each (see the Pale Blue Dot Project). They have been adopted in the names of the Buddhist heavens and abodes with the following Kepler KIC numbers: KIC 7602070 Peerless Devas These five abodes of light are for non-returners KIC 7134976 Clear-Sighted Devas KIC 7118364 Beautiful Devas KIC 6707833 Untroubled Devas KIC 6422367 Devas Not Falling Away KIC 5972334 Abode of Equanimity These are the four divine abodes KIC 5461440 Abode of Altruistic Joy KIC 4832837 Abode of Compassion KIC 4270253 Abode of Loving Kindness The six heavens of sensory pleasure KIC 4139816 Paranimita Vasavati Heaven (Devas Wielding Power Over Others' Creations) Abode of Mara KIC 3966801 Nimanarati Heaven (Devas Delighting in Creation) KIC 3541800 Tusita Heaven (Contented Devas) The Buddha's last abode before human birth KIC 3340312 Yama Heaven (Yama Devas) Abode of Yama, Lord of Death KIC 3114167 Tavatimsa Heaven (The Thirty-Three Gods) Sakka, Lord in Chief KIC 2557816 Chatumaharajika Heaven (Devas of the Four Great Kings) Stars for the five lowest realms (human, animal, hungry ghosts, titans and hells) were not adopted. Stars for the four immaterial spheres (Infinite Space, Infinite Consciousness, Nothingness and Beyond Perception) were not adopted. See Dhamma Study Notes or Wikipedia: Buddhist Cosmology. 10.17 My third-floor apartment building is built of wood, not brick or stone, therefore it quivers whenever someone runs up and down the stairs or stomps heavily on each step, especially in the dead of night. More than once the vibrations have waked me up while sleeping on the carpeted floor. This reminds me of a story related in Chapter 37 of the Middle Discourses of the Buddha about a visit that Moggallana, one of the Buddha's foremost disciples, paid to Sakka, ruler of the Tavatimsa Heaven, to find out if Sakka had really understood a discourse which the Buddha had given him. The full text of this amusing but instructive story can be read starting at page 344: The Shorter Discourse on the Destruction of Craving. The story begins by relating what the Buddha says when Sakka asks him how a bhikkhu is liberated in the destruction of craving to reach Nibbana. The Buddha tells him, "When a bhikkhu has heard that nothing in the world is worth clinging to, then he contemplates the impermanence in all feelings, whether pleasant or painful or neutral, and their fading away, cessation and relinquishment. Contemplating thus, he does not cling to anything in the world. When he does not cling, he is not agitated. When he is not agitated, he personally attains Nibbana." Sakka appears to delight in these words and returns to his heaven of pleasure where painful feelings are never experienced. Then Moggallana, who happened to overhear the conversation, exercises his supernormal power to visit Sakka in his heaven. The commentary explains that Moggallana and Sakka had once been companions in the holy life and that Sakka was a stream-enterer on the same path to arahantship which Moggallana had already reached. Therefore Moggallana addresses Sakka by his personal nickname "Owl" and asks him to recount what the Buddha told him. Sakka replies that he has been so busy lately that he just forgot, and by the way, would Moggallana like to see his new palace? Moggallana agrees to a tour but considers thus: "This spirit is living much too negligently. What if I stirred up a sense of urgency in him?" Then he nudges the corner of the palace with his toe, causing it to shake and quake and tremble. This brings Sakka to his senses and he recalls the Buddha's message. This story illustrates the danger of being too comfortable and reminds me to accept disagreeable experiences as an incentive to practice harder with more of a sense of urgency. 11.03 Installing a Toshiba Satellite A665 laptop in my apartment with a Time Warner Road Runner cable Internet monthly service $35 and a decent download speed of 6 to 8 Mbps. I have a lot of misgivings about this. I miss having a reason to get up and go out for a refreshing thirty minute early morning walk over to the to the university library to check on email. In fact I may decide to keep on doing just that. The laptop is intended mainly for researching Buddhist studies or other useful information. Certainly not for playing chess. 11.06 After wasting some 16 hours yesterday (6 am to 10 pm) repeatedly playing "Chess Titans" by Oberon Games which came bundled with Windows 7, I have to set some firm rules about using my laptop at home. The Chess Titans game is addictive for me. Like an alcoholic for his liquor or a junkie for his fix or a tobacco user for his drug, I cannot play just one game and quit (although the addictions are not exactly the same: alcohol blunts the perception of pain, intoxicating drugs distort perception in various ways and smoking momentarily suppresses the center of craving in the brain, not the pleasure center. But they are all addictive). Chess Titans is an addictive pastime for me because it is an interesting challenge but I know I can always win. I always win, guaranteed by the take-back move, unlike life in the real world. The only drawback is that the game requires to be played out to checkmate to count as a win, otherwise quitting early counts as resignation, even for an obviously won endgame which the game is not intelligent enough to evaluate (unlike Rybka which is much more of a daunting challenge and can feel more like work than play). Since it is tedious to play out an obviously won ending, I often accept a "nominal" loss in order to start a new game, knowing that I can always reset the cumulative score to zero. The cumulative score only serves to record how many games have been played. Therefore I am provisionally developing three laptop access rules as follows: 1. Do not even look at my laptop at night after 10 pm until dawn, and then only after at least one early morning meditation session of 30 minutes must have been completed (to positively reinforce meditation practice, giving me an incentive to get it done), and only after morning clean up chores (nitten soji) have been done. The only exception might be if my neighbor on the floor below wakes me up at 2:30 am by playing music on her radio or by slamming doors or by taking a shower as sometimes happens, or the loud snoring of her brother resonates through the floor of the other room, or conversations in the parking lot outside the window wake me up, and I feel too lethargic to take the opportunity to practice sitting meditation. Eventually I hope to develop equanimity no matter what disturbance may occur and not even depend on ear plugs which irritate the skin. 2. Do not play Chess Titans at all, EVER!, not even "one" quickie game. However studying grandmaster chess games with Rybka is not restricted, or even playing a game against Rybka if I feel up to it. 3. Do not casually browse Internet just to pass the time for mental entertainment only. It doesn't really satisfy anyway. 11.08 I just discovered that four of the 20 Kepler stars which were adopted last year in the names of my Costa Rican families were subsequently removed from the list of candidate stars. Therefore I accepted an offer to adopt four other stars. I managed to find some alternates near the former locations to keep all of the group together in the same local region. Some views of them as seen on Google Earth/Sky were uploaded to my Picasa website as a series of snapshots zooming into the Kepler Field of View in the constellation Cygnus. Today I had several long-standing, neglected cavities filled by a dentist I am pleased to have found, Marcus Torrey DDS. His support staff is very competent and calmly reassuring. His office is up to date with the latest technology such as digital xrays which can be transmitted by Internet. He has a drawer full of all kinds of anesthetics, important to me for my presumed allergy to lidocaine. Today his assistant Sheila applied a topical application of 18% benzocaine (she showed me the label on the package), then he injected a dose of marcaine (bupivacaine), related to short-acting carbocaine which has been used on me before. However marcaine lasts longer, in fact the anesthetic did not wear off for at least twelve hours, but to my relief it did wear off at last. I had to sit in the chair about two hours. My anxiety was calmed by concentrating on my breathing, at times stopping it completely, therefore appreciating the next breath even more. When I was finally allowed to take a much appreciated break to step over to the bathroom, while still wearing a green rubber dam contraption exposing a hideous grin of bare teeth, and while still wearing protective sun glasses, I saw a living Halloween skeleton in the bathroom mirror. Here are some more of my xrays. Several weeks ago Dr. Torrey also recommended my using a Waterpic to flush out periodontal pockets. It has been added to my morning routine between flossing and brushing. 11.10 A pleasant symmetry has occurred to me. Each morning, before doing anything else except for a visit to the bathroom, even before preparing a cup of black French pressed coffee and sitting in meditation for half an hour, and of course before even looking at the computer, I measure my weight, resting blood pressure, pulse and the time. At the end of the week these daily figures are averaged. When the average time is calculated, it is convenient to use decimal figures instead of minutes and seconds. Therefore, when I record the time, I mentally convert the minutes and write them down as decimal tenths of an hour. The critical minutes of the hour where the decimal tenths increment are at 3(=.1), 9(=.2), 15(=.3), 21(=.4), 27(=.5), 33(=.6), 39(=.7), 45(=.8), 51(=.9) and 57(=.0). For example, 14 minutes converts to 0.2 but 15 minutes converts to 0.3, and 57 minutes rounds up to the next hour. If I can remember these critical points, I can mentally convert any of the 60 minutes to decimal tenths without having to do a tedious division by 60. One aid to remember them is that they are all separated from each other by 6 minutes each. Another aid is to visualize them distributed around the clock face in a pleasing symmetrical pattern. For example, the point at 15 minutes is balanced horizontally by the point at 45 minutes. Now the charming discovery I made is that each of the horizontal pairs adds up to 60 minutes thus: 3 + 57, 9 + 51, 15 + 45, 21 + 39 and 27 + 33 each adds to 60 minutes! Not only that, but each of the diagonally opposing pairs across the center of the clock face ends in the same digit thus: 3 + 33, 9 + 39, 15 + 45, 21 + 51, 27 + 57! The final trick is just to remember these ten special numbers: 31, 92, 153, 214, 275, 336, 397, 458, 519 and 570. 11.11 Following on my earlier thoughts about believing in reincarnation (see my essay on Agnostic Buddhism) and in general the problem of deciding what to believe about matters which cannot be proved one way or the other, including karma, rebirth and divine beings, (see The Incontrovertible Teaching Majjhima Nikaya 60) I have come across a discourse MN 74 about clinging to views. The commentaries give some background for this discourse addressed to a young skeptic Dighanakha who claimed he did not believe in anything. Dighanakha was the nephew of Sariputta who was to become one of the foremost of the Buddha's disciples, but at the time of this discourse Sariputta had not yet become an arahant. He was present standing behind the Buddha fanning him while listening closely. When his young nephew defiantly asserts that no philosophical view is acceptable to him, the Buddha points out a contradiction in his rigid position. The Buddha asks him if, at least, his own view is acceptable to him? This takes some of the wind out of his sails, but he goes on to say, somewhat confused, that if his own view were acceptable to him, then that would also be unacceptable to him. The Buddha comments that there are plenty in the world who cling to their views come what may, but few who abandon an unsatisfactory view and do not take up some other view. He mentions two extreme views of that time, the eternalists who believe everything is acceptable, and the annihilationists like Dighanakha who believe nothing is acceptable. He says the view of eternalists is close to lust, close to delighting, close to bondage, whereas the view of the other camp is close to non-clinging. At this, Dighanakha interrupts to exclaim, "Master Gotama commends my point of view". But the Buddha proceeds to explain that a wise man in either one of the two rival camps will come to this conclusion: "If I adhere obstinately to my view, it will clash with the other view. Where there is a clash, there are disputes leading to quarrels and vexation." Foreseeing this outcome, he abandons that view and does not take up some other view. This is how there comes to be the abandoning of views. Dighanakha understands the point and becomes more receptive to the Buddha's instruction. Meanwhile Sariputta is also listening attentively. The Buddha tells the young skeptic that this body made out of material form, consisting of the four great elements, procreated by a mother and a father, and built up out of boiled rice and porridge, is subject to impermanence and disintegration. It should be regarded as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as void, as not self. When one regards this body thus, one abandons desire for the body. The same is true for feelings. Whether agreeable or disagreeable, they do not last. Seeing this, a well-taught noble disciple becomes disenchanted with feelings, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion the mind is liberated. When it is liberated, there comes the knowledge, 'It is liberated.' He understands, 'Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.' A bhikkhu whose mind is liberated thus sides with none and disputes with none. The reference above to disputes and quarrels reminds me of the public debates which Tibetan monks like to stage. They make intimidating gestures, clap their hands and snap their fingers. It is great fun if not taken too seriously. The commentary to this sutta concludes that Sariputta, reflecting on this discourse which introduced insight meditation, soon attained arahantship, and Dighanakha attained the fruit of stream-entry. 11.14 Out of curiosity, I opened a Google Voice Mail account. Since there were no Pullman local area code numbers available (509), I used my existing cell phone number which I have always kept from Flagstaff, Arizona (928). Google Voice Mail transcribes my phone messages reasonably well and archives both the text and voice which can be played back from Internet or by calling a certain number in Montana (406). It is convenient to retrieve messages from Internet now that I have access from my apartment or from libraries. The service seems promising except for one unexpected feature: when I noticed that my former AT&T Voice Mail message service no longer worked, now that Google Voice Mail had replaced it, I tried to cancel my Google Voice Mail account to restore the phone to its former state, in order to compare the two services, but discovered it is not possible to go back! Once a phone is checked into Google, it doesn't ever check out! The Wikimedia Foundation Donor Page has linked my name to my home page. This may invite more visits to jwleaf.org. After getting a required flu shot, testing negative on two required TB shots and attending an orientation meeting, I have been accepted as a volunteer at the Pullman Regional Hospital. Most of the volunteers are seniors like me with time to do a four-hour shift one day a week at the reception desk, wearing a green jacket and a volunteer badge. I hope to make some new friends and be useful in some way. Since I usually get across town by bus (it is a four mile walk taking about 1.5 hours in good weather), the afternoon shift from 12 to 4 will be the most convenient for me. 11.17 First snow of the season is forecast tomorrow, about an inch. The apartment office left a leaflet in each mailbox reminding the residents (mostly grad students) to leave some heat on if they plan to be absent over the holidays, to keep the pipes from freezing. To conserve energy, I have not been heating all of the rooms in my large apartment, only the bedroom when I am in it during the day, and nowhere at night when my warm sleeping bag serves very well. However, I am trying the experiment of leaving the incandescent lamp in the kitchen burning at all times as well as the stove light. This will generate a little more heat and save the trouble of switching lights when entering or leaving a room or fumbling in the dark. The laptop computer has been moved to my bedroom to help generate heat there (about 66 watts according to the eco monitor) while running day and night on the World Community Grid. 11.20 I have been watching some movies on Netflix just as I did two years ago for a few weeks, even though I realize this side excursion may not be good for calming the mind, or even worse, liable to stir up unwholesome feelings of lust, anger, sadness, loneliness and despair. For example the movie Au Revoir Les Enfants reminded me of cruelty and hate involved in the persecution of a minority. I do not like to read about current world news which is much the same story of ill will and hatred between people. The touching Scandinavian movie Mother of Mine, seen again after two years, reminded me of the double heartache caused by a foster parent's attachment to what is impermanent and a child's bewilderment at feeling abandoned. Kitchen Stories, another Scandinavian movie, while hilarious in an understated way, reminded me of the sadness of growing old and dying alone. While watching these movies, I also simultaneously watch the emotions that are aroused by them. The movies may be fictional to some extent but the emotions they arouse seem real. Some can make me cry. Does it feel good to cry? Why do people enjoy watching scenes of horror, pain and destruction? Why does anyone enjoy reading about disasters over a morning cup of coffee? They do not perceive miseries affecting others as touching them personally. Their concept of their own personal identity ends at the boundary of a small bubble floating in the ocean of the world. The five aggregates which compose a person are form (the physical body), feelings of pleasure or pain, perception (knowledge, memories, dreams), formations (moods, emotions, habitual ways of thinking, volitions), and consciousness (which underlies the others). Contemplation of the breath is a meditation practice of awareness of a bodily process involving the aggregate of form, but contemplation of the other aggregates is also possible, such as contemplation of emotions while watching a movie. Constant awareness of any of the aggregates should lead to the realization that they are impermanent, unsatisfactory and not mine. This insight in turn leads to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation and peace. My watching emotional movies may lapse after this brief experiment because they serve no useful purpose. In the same vein, having noticed how my easy access to Internet tends to unravel the thread of meditation, I have begun restricting email access to once a day. If it is true that there exist levels of pleasure superior to sensual contacts, and supposing they they can be experienced here and now in states of concentration (the jhanas) without waiting for a heavenly destination after death, it is necessary to renounce chasing after the lower sensual enjoyments. It may seem like taking a calculated risk but it is easier to do as the insight grows that the lesser enjoyments do not really satisfy anyway. There are, however, documentaries on Netflix which do not carry the emotional freight of movies and are worth watching. One which I found very interesting was about the evolution of dogs from wolves, Dogs Decoded: Nova. Sometimes I wish I could have a dog. We could go hiking together when the winter is over. I could move to a pet friendly apartment if I give up plans to travel much anymore. 11.21 Touching the Void, a gripping drama of survival about a climber descending a mountain with a broken leg, then falling into a deep crevasse, cut loose from his partner's rope. Abandoned for dead with no hope of rescue, unable to climb out the icy walls, the climber decides to lower himself further down into the black depths. Miraculously he finds an exit but then has to crawl for days without water to get down to the campsite, not knowing if anyone would still be there. To combat despair he sets himself manageable goals such as crawling to a certain rock in less than twenty minutes. His youthful vitality and desire to go on with life help him resist the temptation to lie down and sleep. This sets an instructive example for my practice. Even though I may lack youthful vitality, there is still something more I can do. By sitting for set times to practice concentration, I am pressing onwards even though progress may be undetectable. 11.22 14th birthday of my godson Juan in semi-tropical Costa Rica. A winter storm has begun here in Pullman, Washington. Six inches of snow are forecast with temperatures dropping to -6°F (-21°C). 11.23 Super Size Me, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock, describes the results of his experiment of eating nothing but McDonald's fast food for one month and even ordering Super Size portions whenever asked. He was lucky he did not get sicker than he did. For me the film is preaching to the choir. My present weight of 135 lbs, height 5'7", BMI = 21, has been maintained over time by sticking to a calorie restricted diet and daily exercise, but it has not been easy. Weight control is not so much a question of developing will power or making rational choices but rather of limiting convenient access to fast food and food advertisements. Food cravings are nipped in the bud by preventing them from arising in the first place. My retired lifestyle allows me the privilege of cooking nutritious and satisfying food at home in a rice cooker, once in the morning to prepare a measured amount for the whole day. I never eat out when I have a place to live. I never have to decline someone's invitation to eat out of time, except once at the Kiwanis afternoon luncheon which was an awkward experience drinking only a coke when everyone else at the table was eating pizza, and I did not go there again. To control the national epidemic of obesity, technology has to find a better cure than laparoscopic stomach surgery. A technological cure might eventually be found, just as a technological cure for traffic accidents might be found by entrusting vehicle control to machine intelligence, removing human error from the system, which would allow passengers to talk on their cell phones or watch movies as much as they like. The major political opposition to change are the vested corporate interests. There may be structural problems inherent in capitalism which cannot be fixed completely, but if so, then evolution operating at the level of social organization will eventually select for other economic and governmental systems. 11.24 I have resumed a method which I discovered in Alpine to help develop lower back strength for sitting meditation practice. This method helps develop stamina for prolonged sitting by requiring my computer to be accessed without back support. The computer is positioned on a long shelf elevated about 12" above the carpeted floor and along the wall. The shelf is supported by white plastic crates from Ace Hardware, one at each end. By sitting in front of the computer in a half lotus position, or sometimes in a Burmese side saddle position, without any back support, the strength of the lower back is developed to build stamina for longer periods. My interest in watching movies or playing chess, allowed as long as the torso is kept erect, is used to advantage. It helps distract the mind from muscle aches and the tedium of watching the breath. I do continue to restrict email access to once a day, however, and browsing in general. For a few weeks near the end of my Alpine stay I tried an alternate method of computer access by standing up, however it made my feet ache due to poor circulation, did not condition the legs for sitting meditation, and the height above the floor required more crates. I prefer open space free of cluttering furniture. 11.25 Thanksgiving Day. By mid morning the bitter arctic cold of the past few days began to abate, having risen from near record lows of -6°F (-21°C) to 10°F, and although a light snow mist continued falling, I put on thermal clothing and set out for a good long walk to the market for some human cheer. Most of the parking spaces in this university apartment neighborhood were empty, because few residents remained behind if they had somewhere else to go over the holidays. No school buses have served this neighborhood for the entire week. At least the city of Pullman did clear the main streets and scatter black nuggets of grit over the white powdery snow. The muffled sound of an occasional car coasting over the white surface was spooky. At any moment I almost expected to see Marley's Ghost. The only other sounds were the crunch of my footsteps, the periodic thunk of my hiking staff and the dry rustle of plastic grocery bags slung over my shoulder on the return walk. Back in the snug warmth of my bedroom, after a holiday snack of pretzels, I watched a very interesting documentary by Michael Pollan called The Botany of Desire, about the cultivation and evolution of four crops important to humans: apples (sweetness), tulips (beauty), marijuana (intoxication) and potatoes (genetic modification). These plants were evolved in response to selection and in turn they have changed human life. Most apples, for example, are naturally bitter, historically cultivated to make hard cider in nineteenth century America, because, among other virtues, fermentation killed harmful bacteria which polluted the common water supplies of those times. Everyone drank cider instead of water. Johnny Appleseed spread apple trees by seeds, not by grafts, which resulted in robust diversification. In the twentieth century, selection changed to favor sweetness with the result of developing monocultures of few varieties. This trend increased an agricultural dependence upon chemicals to defend against the vulnerability of monocultures to pests and disease. Marijuana presents another fascinating example of evolution. At the time when it was first made illegal, it was imported from Mexico. For years the U.S. pressured Mexico to spray their producing fields with an herbicide called paraquat. This had the unexpected consequence of promoting domestic cultivation in the U.S. out of health concerns for the imported product. Then, when the government belatedly realized the scope of the enterprise and began to crack down on domestic production in California, cultivators adapted by moving the crop indoors. The main species of marijuana plant was cannabis sativa, a twelve-foot tall weed. It was cross bred with an Asian species, cannabis indica, to produce a short plant which could be grown indoors under intense artificial light. Rapid growth and potency were also selected. The history of the humble potato provides a stark warning about the dangers of monocultures. When the potato was brought from Peru to Europe, it changed European civilization and made the Industrial Revolution possible. In those times the northern part of Europe was less populated than the south because the main staple crop of wheat grows better in the south. Potatoes, however, grow well in poor soil and damp climates and require less labor. These favorable traits accelerated population growth in the north and freed up a surplus work force to support the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, Ireland cultivated only one variety of potato, the Lumper, on poor soil, and the use of good pasture land to grow other kinds of food was appropriated by the English overlords for grazing cattle to satisfy England's demand for beef. When an air borne fungus called late blight destroyed the entire potato crop in 1845, the resulting Potato Famine lasted three years and killed or displaced millions of people. This lesson about the danger of monoculture dependence is still relevant today. The world-wide popularity of the long McDonald's French fries which spring from an iconic red package like a bouquet of flowers, has resulted in excessive dependence on a sole species of potato, the long Russet Burbank, driving up the costs for chemical defenses to compensate for monoculture vulnerabilities. When Monsanto engineered a genetically modified (GM) potato called New Leaf, giving it a gene coding for a protein deadly to its main pest, the Colorado potato beetle, public backlash led to termination of the experiment after two years in spite of the glowing potential to reduce the cost of pesticides. The jury is still out about GM. A recent study on the evolution of insect resistance to GM toxins has shown that insect resistance develops faster when a toxin is always present than when it is applied sporadically. It took only a few years for three different species of insects to develop resistance to a certain genetically modified variety of cotton. The next step may be the insertion of a genetic switch to turn on resistance only when needed. This documentary delivers the message that human civilization does not stand wholly outside of nature controlling it but rather is bound up with it, reciprocally conditioned by it. From the point of view of plants, metaphorically speaking, apples, tulips, cannabis and potatoes have used humans to their own evolutionary advantage. 11.28 Below-freezing temperatures, gray skies, snow and heavy fog for days on end continue to limit my going out except for a few walks made in spite of the bad weather. To pass the time indoors without contact with anyone and to practice sitting for longer and longer periods, I have been watching quite a number of documentaries on Netflix. Some of them are mediocre but one of them gave me pause for thought: a National Geographic study of Solitary Confinement in American prisons. The short film covers some theory and historical background before focusing on a few inmates at a maximum security penitentiary in Colorado. It conveys the message that solitary confinement does not rehabilitate over time. On the contrary, anger and impulsive acts of aggression tend to increase. Most of the inmates do not behave rationally, and when they do lash out with violence, or even when they resentfully refuse to follow orders, their sentence gets extended further. One inmate who began with a twelve year sentence has increased it to ninety-four years. Of those who are released, at least two-thirds return. This study gave me pause for thought because I can see a parallel between their daily life and mine which is also extremely solitary. The question this raises for me is whether this solitary lifestyle is good for me if the solitary confinement of prisoners is so bad for them? This question was addressed in the Fear and Dread Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 4, p 102). A householder asks the Buddha if solitude in the jungle is not hard to endure. The Buddha agrees that solitude is hard to endure for someone who is unpurified in bodily conduct, verbal conduct and mental conduct, but someone who is purified in moral conduct and possesses wisdom will find great solace living alone in the forest. This is not meant to imply that in my case I enjoy solitude because of moral purity, but rather that solitude is pleasant to the extent that the root faults of lust, ill will and ego diminish. A note about vocabulary: "Lust" here means a craving for agreeable contacts with any of the six senses, not only sexual touch. The six senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and the perception of mental objects. "Ego" or "selfishness" or the "I-thought" (as Ramana Maharshi called it), means more than "conceit", an exaggerated sense of self importance. "Ego" means a fundamental delusion about self existence, it is a craving for identity. It is lack of ego reinforcement which makes solitary confinement more painful than mere sensory deprivation. 12.01 I figured out how to pick up a teapot, a mug and a bowl of food at the same time without spilling anything. A full 32 ounce gooseneck teapot is heavy, hot and must be kept level, therefore one hand is dedicated entirely to it. A full bowl of food can also be heavy and should be kept level, therefore it is picked up next and gripped between the thumb and the two end fingers. This leaves the forefinger and the middle finger free to pick up the mug. The trick is to place the forefinger inside the lip of the mug and the middle finger through the handle, thus obtaining enough leverage to keep the mug level too. It might be better to pick up the mug first, the bowl second and the teapot last so that the right hand can load the left hand. Of course this would not be hygienic if serving someone else. When I worked as the crew messman serving thirty seamen on an oil tanker while working my way home from Europe at about age twenty, I learned how to carry three plates at the same time and keep them level in rolling seas. 12.03 First afternoon serving as a volunteer at the Pullman Regional Hospital. The volunteers, usually working the front desk in pairs, welcome visitors with a "Can we help you?" and escort them or direct them wherever they need to go, such as pre-op appointments. My experienced tutor, former schoolteacher Jan Stewart, sent me around to explore various locations. A clean dark green cotton jacket, washable as hospital laundry, was supplied with an official badge"Willis J. Volunteer". On my reconnaissance missions I also visited with a few of the hospital staff. My tutor informed me that if someone should slip and fall on the sidewalk outside the hospital door, even in plain sight beyond the glass windows, then I should not leave my post to go outside to help them, but rather call 911 (it is really 9-911 to get an outside line). If necessary, the 911 medics would then call an ambulance to take the patient around back to the hospital emergency entrance, even though a corridor directly connects from the front desk. Such is the American cultural dependence on vehicles and disregard of medical costs. She emphasized guarding patient privacy by avoiding using last names or by leaving appointment slips showing names face up on a table. Visitors coming for pre-op appointments are asked to identify themselves by their first name. This is a change from Latin American culture which values privacy less and courtesy more, where it is not polite to call strangers by their first name. There was a huge as yet undecorated Christmas tree hung with a few green and white tags requesting gifts for underprivileged children, for example "Child 118, Male Age 16, Shirt Men's M, Pant 30x32, Please return by Dec. 13, 2010, Pullman Child Welfare". When my shift finished at 4:00 pm the daylight was already fading with temperatures dropping below freezing. The city bus was 25 minutes late. Next time I should bring warmer clothes. My carbide tipped hiking staff was essential for navigating over the slick black ice and crusty snow, and my wool gloves, colorful scarf and cap purchased from the Ecuador caravan last month were much appreciated. 12.04 Opened a twitter account @jwillisj, intrigued by the option to see who else may be following persons of interest to me. Since tweets are limited to 140 chars, long embedded URL links to other Internet pages often use the popular bit.ly (Liberia domain) service to shorten them instead of TinyURL. However my first tweet did not need to be shortened: "First tweet: http://jwleaf.org/most-recent-news.html" [Note: preferred domain name has since been changed to http://jwleaf.org stripping off the www. prefix]. 12.05 The sad news has arrived from Costa Rica that my godson Juan did not pass his first year of high school. The school year there ends at this time in early December at the beginning of the dry season, to allow students to enjoy a "summer" vacation without the usual rain everyday. In rural parts they spread out on the finca hillsides to pick coffee. Juan is following the poor example of all five of his siblings. His older brothers, Kenneth, Cristian and Jesus, used to be supported by me until they dropped out of school to go their separate ways. His family does not value education highly. Another godson of mine, Juan's first cousin Daniel, did manage to pass his year although he was only taking a light load of two subjects to make up for failing last year. Another godson, Fabian, nurtured in a more educated family, probably has passed his year, as far as I know, but has dropped out of contact. Contact has also been lost with my other students, Ana's sons Jean Carlo and Joseph Anthony, living in the rural countryside above Arboleda Andarivel. Years ago I had high hopes that monetary support would make a difference in their educations. 12.08 After consuming 47 GB of downloaded movies last month as well as 20 GB more this month, I have canceled my Netflix account as foreseen when beginning the trial three weeks ago. I have been satisfied with Netflix in every way; there was really no valid reason for canceling found among the long list of possible reasons furnished in the exit survey except the very last one: I will not be watching movies at home. I think I have watched enough. Concerning diets, my sister Julie has reminded me of the health risks of a carbohydrate diet rich in starchy grains, including my favorite staple of rice. According to the Wikipedia reference about low carb diets, when carbs are broken down into glucose, the pancreas has to secrete insulin to transport the sugar into cells. If there is too much glucose, insulin resistance can develop leading to Type 2 Diabetes. Therefore I am going to reduce my rice consumption somewhat and also change from white rice to brown which does not break down into glucose so easily. In their place I will add more protein such as fish (sardines), eggs and soy. My weight is good, holding steady at 135 lbs with BMI 21, due to habitual calorie restriction and keeping tempting snack foods totally out of the apartment, but since my muscle mass has been converting to fat by winter inactivity, my weight could come down another notch to about 130 lbs. Recent events about Wikileaks have been absorbing my attention lately. The political pressures on Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Amazon and EveryDNS to terminate links with Wikileaks violate our Constitutional right of free speech. Technically that right may not be extended to a foreign Australian citizen to publish?, but American citizens certainly have the right to read as well as publish. Any encroachment on free speech leads to abuse by a centralized government. This is why our founding fathers created a federal republic with limits to centralized power. If Julian Assange is considered a foreign citizen, then an accusation of treason against him would be not logical. Unfortunately Assange is damaging his valid cause by his immoral conduct, if true. His personal situation is distracting attention from the Wikileaks revelations of a contempt for truth by our government and a failure to understand the rest of the world. If American citizens begin to distrust the government this country will become divided against itself. Meanwhile sticking to meditation practice without all these kinds of distractions from movies to world news to godsons in Costa Rica to health and diet is like walking along a razor's edge. 12.09 I encourage my friends and all believers in free speech to join with me in signing this Avaaz Petition in support of Wikileaks: To the U.S. and other governments and corporations involved in the crackdown on Wikileaks:We call on you to stop the crackdown on Wikileaks and its partners immediately. We urge you to respect democratic principles and laws of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. If Wikileaks and the journalists it works with have violated any laws they should be pursued in the courts with due process. They should not be subjected to an extra-judicial campaign of intimidation.12.11 The email which I sent to every English speaking person in my contacts list inviting them to join with me in protesting against the unfair crackdown on Wikileaks has met with zero response except for one friend who told me that he had already signed it. Somehow my point of view is not shared by many of my fellow Americans, not even by my own siblings. Most of the supporters of the Avaaz Petition, amounting now to 550,972 signatures, reside outside the United States in Europe or Latin America. My friend who voted with me remarked that in opposing an entrenched instinct of self preservation, "from the outside, we have to keep on trying to preserve the world from self-immolation". In response I would disagree that "we" are on the "outside". If anyone is on the outside, "they" are on the outside, out of touch with reality. But actually the correct view is we are all in this world together, like a marriage, for better or worse. Whatever may happen to the world may not be in anyone's control even though we all do the best we can. Conceiving oneself as "outside" or "inside" is part of the fundamental delusion of self identity. The belief in self existence and the instinctual urge to establish self existence is the root source of unhappiness, more painful than whatever may happen to the "outside' world, even if it self-immolates. The Buddha reminded us time and again that nothing in this world will last. So no need to fear the destruction of the world or the inevitable changes to come. In the evolution of life on this planet, countless species have come and gone. If reincarnation is true, countless lives have come and gone. 12.12 Sent a letter about true inner freedom to my nephew Chase in prison. 12.15 My godsons Fabian [note 12/25: not exactly true -- two more exams due in February] and Daniel managed to pass their school years but not without having to take a makeup exam. Fortunately the school system in Costa Rica gives students a second chance. Today Magnus Carlsen managed to recover from two initial losses to win the London Chess Classic and regain his #1 world ranking. I have been glued to my laptop watching the games unfold in real time during the morning hours of this past week. The English grandmaster chess commentators would illuminate the strategy and tactics involved at each changing position without relying too much on HIARCS (second only to Rybka, the world's strongest chess computer program). Only at critical moments would they take a peek at the "monster" to confirm the best lines. The Statcounter script in my website pages has been changed to Google Analytics for monitoring the light traffic here. I have been finding my Twitter account handy for following various issues of interest and I have even posted a few tweets of my own, but mainly I continue to rely on this jwleaf.org blog to publish news and views, at least until I may lose interest. Some days I drift far from my goal of practicing meditation, a pity given my opportunity at this stage of my life to do it. Maybe I should have become a monk after all instead of frittering the years away. However regret is one of the five main hindrances (desire, aversion, drowsiness, restlessness or remorse or regret, and doubt). I seldom use my Facebook account, it is far too busy for my liking and minimal level of social contact. The average number of Facebook friends is said to be about 150. Time Magazine has named Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook as Person of the Year 2010 because of the growth of social networking, however Julian Assange should have won the award because of the repercussions from Wikileaks. Zuckerberg will be forgotten in one week but not Assange. Time compares the two men: "Like two of our runners-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a whole lot of veneration for traditional authority. In a sense, Zuckerberg and Assange are two sides of the same coin. Both express a desire for openness and transparency. While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends. Both have a certain disdain for privacy: in Assange's case because he feels it allows malevolence to flourish; in Zuckerberg's case because he sees it as a cultural anachronism, an impediment to a more efficient and open connection between people." 12.17 Some ideas about ads on Wikipedia. The website Courage to Resist supports resistance to the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars including the defense of young whistleblower Bradley Manning and other conscientious objectors. Lately media attention has focused more on Julian Assange than on Bradley Manning who continues to be locked up in solitary confinement pending his court martial next spring. By opposing a wrongful war at great personal risk, Manning is an unqualified hero in my view. He has continued to resist pressure to implicate Assange in some kind of plea bargain. I really admire his courage. The moral standing of Assange is more problematic with me because of the cloud of accusations against him for sexual misconduct with two women in Sweden. There is something fishy about the case, however, because the Swedish prosecutor would not reveal the charges at the extradition request. Later, some unidentified person in the Swedish government leaked details of the charges on the day of Assange's bail hearing, as if timed to prejudice the decision. It would appear the U.S. government is applying pressure on Sweden. The chances for Assange to avoid eventual extradition to the U.S. on a charge of espionage are better if he can remain in the United Kingdom which has a more open legal system. I am still unsure about Assange regarding the Swedish charges although I give him the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty. Even if they turn out to be substantiated and he has feet of clay, my impression of Assange is favorable based on his interviews in several recent videos. He is an intelligent, articulate journalist who will not be intimidated. I still support the goal of Wikileaks which is to open governments. Wikileaks and its mirror sites will survive even if Assange is replaced as editor-in-chief. The personal future of Manning who has no voice concerns me more than Assange. 12.22 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), renowned as the best engineering university in the world, located in Cambridge across the Charles River from Boston, provides nearly all of its undergraduate courses and many graduate courses online for any motivated self-learner to study free of charge. This treasure chest of jewels is called MIT OpenCourseWare. One of the courses, for example, is Introduction to Astronomy - Spring 2006. I was taking a look at some of the exams with solutions, asking myself if I could handle a challenge like this at this stage of my life when my mental acuity has softened from years of inactivity. The first problem in the first quiz asked for the velocity of a star given its apparent proper motion and its red shift of light. I actually understood the problem, it requires the superposition of two vectors at right angles to obtain a resultant velocity. I am sure I could work it out if I had a calculator handy and some practice using the formulas. But somehow it seems almost too good to be true, to be able to solve problems with unequivocal and elegant solutions, because the problems of real life are intractable, messy and have no clear solutions. Every day starts fresh like a blank sheet of exam paper to be completed open-book in my own time, but in spite of all my notes and guidebooks, I never seem to get the answer quite right. For awhile last summer I debated moving to Cambridge to rent an apartment near the MIT campus to be part of the action there. As it turned out I relocated to Washington State and landed in remote Pullman which has no action to speak of, but maybe next year, who knows. The Pullman campus is dark and deserted now over winter break. 12.23 Considering the seemingly unending stream of depressing world news such as recent accounts of the mistreatment of PFC Bradley Manning locked in solitary confinement for the past six months and not even allowed to sleep in peace, I feel disgust for browsing Internet. I would like my mind to remain unaffected by world news but my wisdom is not so great that troublesome issues do not affect it. I am reminded of the Buddha's advice to his son Rahula who was once daydreaming about his youthful good looks. The Buddha told him that all material forms in the world including his body should be considered with wisdom thus: "This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self." This saying has been restored to my homepage linked with a summary of the discourse Majjhima Nikaya 62: Advice to Rahula. When I imagine living in the same austere conditions as Bradley Manning, locked in solitary confinement, deprived of sensory enjoyments, not even allowed to sleep uninterruptedly at night and forbidden to exercise during the day, I am reminded that each new day is another precious gift of time which should not be wasted. I rededicate myself to my goal for this new year and give up always trying to make myself comfortable, playing chess and uselessly browsing world news over which I have no control. Some volunteer service at the hospital may help mitigate my social isolation. Does refraining from browsing world news make me a Quitter or an Ostrich? A Nobody going Nowhere? Hamlet's dilemma: to be or not to be, to take arms against a sea of troubles or to die to end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. 12.26 Nearing the end of this year 2010, I have been reviewing my email correspondence over the past several years. How many words have been spilled on personal contacts which have quietly faded over time! My yahoo account williswhoa was created in October, 2003. Email from my former hotmail account nosomos2 has been lost. My former andarivel.org domain has been rented to a travel agency. I successfully downloaded a full backup of all of my email from the yahoo cloud to local disk using Mozilla Thunderbird and FreePOPS. I may publish a few letters of interest from my new page Letters and Essays Index. The total number of emails over the past seven years with yahoo adds up to 6034. The largest of the fourteen folder categories are Costa Rica (1567), Family (897), Accounts (714) and Friends (687). 12.27 Spent the whole day restructuring my website using a handy freeware program Sitemap Generator which lists all of the linked files in a website. The purpose of a sitemap is to assist the Google web crawler find everything in order to improve page ranking so that more people can see my pages. The catchword is SEO (search engine optimization). Without a sitemap, the Google web crawler has only found five of my sixty files to date. Using Google Webmaster Tools, I learned that Wikipedia has many links to my site, much more than any other. I changed the preferred domain name from jwleaf.org to jwleaf.org. I renamed most of the files to convert underscore characters to dashes which look more streamlined whenever a filename is underlined as a URL hyperlink. I made the filenames more descriptive, for example changing "wwhiking" to "whoa-way-hiking". I updated all of the internal cross-reference links and stripped off the obsolete "www." prefixes like I would like to nip off the bite-stress polyp presently growing under my lower lip. Doing a Google search on "site:jwleaf.org" revealed a number of forgotten leftover files which were purged. The new filenames will show up in the Google listings in a few days. The internal site structure was modified by changing the "jwj" subdirectory to "html". My original website for my Arboleda Andarivel tree garden in Costa Rica started out as a yahoo geocities domain called andarivel.org, but when yahoo closed geocities down a few years ago to change to a small business service, I purchased my own domain called jwleaf.org. I wanted a name connected with trees. Since at that time I had already left Andarivel behind in Costa Rica, I created two subdirectories, andarivel and jwj, to keep the worlds apart. The residual andarivel directory still exists on my site, although all of the photos have been uploaded to Picasaweb. There is really no strong reason to maintain a separate "jwj" directory except to keep the root directory free of clutter. Therefore I have replaced the "jwj" directory name with "html" to indicate the kind of files stored in it (parallel to "docs" and "pics" directories), and without emphasizing my personal identity as much, another irritating polyp that will rub off some day. 12.31 This will be my last entry for this year 2010 and the last from the bedroom of my apartment. Today I am moving my computer to the living room for two reasons. First, the temperature of the unheated living room has fallen to an ideal level, about 50° F, for a hot computer running all the time working on protein folding for the World Community Grid. Until recently, heat from other occupied apartments below in this three story building has risen naturally to help keep the living room warmer, but neighbors have gone for the holidays and meanwhile the outside temperature has dropped below freezing most of the time. It is wasteful to keep a room heated for occasional use by only one person. Imagine frugal Scrooge sipping potato soup in his ornate but cold and lonely chambers. I have read that some electric power stations in Florida maintain operations even when off gird in order to discharge warm water for manatees which congregate there in cold weather, a nice example of compassion if true. However in my case I do not know of any other living thing which might benefit from my warm living room, not even any plants of which there are none. There are no neighbors overhead to benefit from rising heat. If there are mice or squirrels nesting under the roof, they prefer the warmer space over my bedroom, and in fact I do hear pitterpats there in the silent hours before dawn. The living room heaven is reserved for the gods of silicon intelligence. Sometimes I have walked past the university greenhouses in the frosty night air and admired the yellow blaze of heat lamps illuminating the entire wall of windows. The opulence reminds me of the Little Match Girl story by Hans Christian Andersen which takes place on this very last night of the year. Once as a boy I struck matches in a dark closet fascinated by the light. My father gave me a hard spanking with a thick leather strap for my curiosity. Secondly, I am moving my computer to a less comfortable place in order to reduce my time spent on it and reserve most of the time for meditation practice and seclusion from worldly distractions. If my laptop is not in my bedroom I will not be tempted to use it all of the time. I have heard fabled descriptions about the jhana states of concentration all of my life. I have never become established in them and I do not know anyone for sure who has. I have only heard about them. They are not claimed to be necessary to attain enlightenment which can be reached by insight alone into the Four Noble Truths. However the jhana states represent a lofty goal more worthwhile and challenging than merely hiking from Mexico to Canada. Concentration is supposed to be highly pleasureful, not a chore at all. The Buddha experienced his first jhana state as a young boy while sitting under a rose apple tree watching a spring plowing festival (some rose apple trees were also planted in my Andarivel garden). Whenever the suttas refer to the four jhana states of concentration, the canonical description goes something like this (wording from Maurice Walshe in Ayya Khema's commentary, see also The Kandaraka Discourse, MN 51, p451): "Having abandoned these five hindrances, gladness arises in him, from gladness comes delight, from the delight in his mind his body is tranquilized. Being thus detached from sense-desires, detached from unwholesome states, he enters and remains in the first jhana which is accompanied by applied and sustained thinking, filled with delight and happiness born of detachment. And with the delight and happiness born of detachment, he so suffuses, drenches, fills and irradiates his body that there is no spot in his entire body that is untouched by this delight and happiness born of detachment. Having reached the first jhana, he remains in it. And whatever sensations of lust that he previously had disappear. At that time there is a subtle but true perception of delight and happiness. Again, a bhikkhu, with the subsiding of applied and sustained thinking, by gaining inner tranquility and unity of mind, reaches and remains in the second jhana, filled with delight and happiness born of concentration. Again, after the fading away of delight he dwells in equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending, and he experiences in his body that pleasant feeling of which the noble ones say: "Happy dwells the one who has equanimity and mindfulness", and he reaches and remains in the third jhana. Again, with the abandonment of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and sorrow, he reaches and remains in the forth jhana, a state beyond pleasure and pain, purified by equanimity and mindfulness." The body becomes so quiet in the fourth jhana that breathing becomes undetectable and there is no longer any perception of pleasure or pain. The Buddha says that this kind of pleasure should be cultivated, it should not be feared. Now the very first condition mentioned to reach the jhanas is to be secluded from sensual pleasures. This explains why being too comfortable presents a major obstacle. Eating food, for example, is pleasurable as long as one is not sick and has a sense of taste, but eating too much food dims mental alertness and leads to ill health. It is necessary to maintain constant vigilance against indulgence in the entire range of pleasures experienced by all of the senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and perception of mental objects. I do not accept the hedonistic philosophy "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". We will die, no doubt, but something still remains to be done, against all odds, to enjoy a single excellent night. Recent News 2011 Home Page (jwleaf.org) |
