[no date]
I will go back to study Zen. The image that has been repeating in my head is this grand beach that expands in every direction. The beach is empty and absolutely gorgeous. Everything on the beach represents something in my mind– every grain of sand.
I want to run through the beach forever, enjoying the beauty and perfect thusness of it all. The beach and I are the same thing. At my best, I feel like a wide open space where there is no one else.
There has to be a compromise between self-hate and arrogance, also aggressiveness and martyrdom. I should find that middle place, already.
Thinking about Trungpa, Cutting through spiritual materialism. On page 124, he writes:
“Surrender also means acknowledging the raw, rugged, clumsy, and shocking qualities of one’s ego, acknowledging them and surrendering them as well. Generally, we find it very difficult to give up and surrender our raw and rugged qualities of ego. Although we may hate ourselves, at the same time, we find our self-hatred a kind of occupation.
In spite of the fact that we may dislike what we are and find that self-condemnation [is] painful, we can’t give it up completely— it’d be like losing a job.”
This is a review of my personal journal from my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic in 2001-2003. Even if I feel differently now or found out later that I what I wrote was factually incorrect, I haven’t changed what I wrote then. Part of the joy of reading old journals is seeing a story arc where I’ve learned new things.
Names have been shortened to initials to provide some privacy. Even though those who were there may be able to use these initials to figure out who it is I wrote about, please remember that my journaling is not about other people or their experience.
- The next entry in this series is Meeting my host agency for the first time; visiting Consuelo
- The previous entry in this series is The hole in my soul
- You can see the journal entries as I post them here.
- If you’re just starting, here’s the first entry.
