LouisKatz | Main / DukkhaRepentanceGraspingTeshuva

Its, the first time traveling to Thailand has been like this. It’s a chore. But sitting on the plane is fine, a relief. "Other peoples problems, they overwhelm my mind". Well not really now, Perhaps I am whelmed, but just not “over”.

The last week, well, not a good one. If you try and put yourself into all the player’s head-spaces, empathize, channel them, well it does all make sense, if you accept that people’s actions are pre-ordinated by circumstance. Circumstances, personalities are what they are, In some sense people can only act as they did, or they would have acted differently. If you believe in “human will” then they are just strings of my four letter Yiddish vocabulary words. But, if you start with with the assumption that everyone is crazy, they never disappoint you.

So, on the plane I slept ,maybe noon to 4 Texas.. 1 to 5 Thai. I watch, am watching Freda,,,. Diego used human nature as a license to be yet another string of Yiddish words

That movie is full; passion, sadness, joy,,,but, on airplane full of sleeping people, the humor, held in, my diaohram pumping my mouth held shut,,I thought that I would pop, under these circumstances is laughing good for you?

I am worried. The conference will be hard. I lost, my vaccination card in Corpus at the airport. But Thailand is happening, my face is relaxing,,really just a part of it. The muscles that smile r tightening. My face will be sore. You use different muscles to speak Thai. I must have been in a state. I found the Vax card. It was wrapped in plastic to protect it. I was looking for paper. This is like Ceramics students looking for their bisque work and not finding it because it is smaller than they remembered because it shrinks as it dries, and the color changes when its fired.  Cool runnings.

In Thailand they have a philosphical tool, “mai pen rai”. Culture, -ligion , philosophy, are glasses through which we see a whole. “Suffering is the result of attachment”. In order to understand this sentence, you have to understand the speakers use of the words,,their cultural context. It helps to know is -ligious roots. While we each are our own culture, some cultures are or seem further than the one of your neighbor on Church street. Or maybe it just seems like because of the lense through which we see culture. (Upādāna ) Grasping, attchment, the expection that you will be without pain and the failure to be without it is suffering. Suffering (dukkha) is the attachment to the unobtainable absence of pain, a grasp at something that does not exist. Using my Western analytical scalpel, pain exists, suffering we do to ourselves.

Mai, a negatting word, "its not" - pen, a tenseless "to be”- rai,"a thing”.Its not a worry, not a concern, nada. Don'tgrasp, don't cause your suffering. Piece be with you, cool runnings. Its a great movie, but in Star Wars terms, chill and “be one with the force”.  The concept, acceptance is not alien to Abrahamic religion, we have it, most common it is carried in phrases like "its g-d's will. “G-d’s way is mysterious”, is a fulcrum for a process of acceptance, a tool to relax the “grasp” and prevent sukkah.

Guilt is a suffering, we do it to ourselves. We limit our grasping of guilt. (latin)“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Admission of guilt, and repentance, in Hebrew וידוי and תשובה‎(literally “return”) the ask for forgiveness , i'm sorry, the superpowers of humility, a releasing of the grasp, the attachment to our flaws. Forgiveness is a tremendously powerful tool. It relaxes the grasp. 2021-12-13