[MD] is-ness

[Heather Perella]

Perhaps your correct on this Ron.  I've heard much suffering leads to enlightenment, that feeling on the hot stove of wanting to live something better.  When I was around 15 I contemplated suicide, once when I was as young as 12 or so.  I was so sad and thought the world would be better without me screwing things up when I was around 11 or 12, I had the knife in my hand and was softly rubbing it up and down on my arm, contemplating.  My mother walked and asked what I was doing and took the knife and left.  I was so young I'm surprised I could even think like that.  When I was 15 I would get so depressed.  I was an outcast I always felt.  I moved around 6 times and went to 9 different schools by 12th grade.  Got to the point that I didn't know how to be friends with people too long.  I had some very good friends along the way, but by high school only a couple and never saw them very much.  Not until college did I find a social life that even lead to not
 just hanging out and doing all kinds of fun stuff, but even talking philosophically with many people on a deeper level.  When I was 15, it was writing that saved me.  I wrote a lot about sadness, and then while I reading over some of my old writings in my journals it hit me how sad these writings were and from that day on I endeavored to be happy and try to write something happy and eventually a good friend introduced me to the woods, hunting, fishing, and reintroduced backpacking.  I came upon this friend after one day my brother and sister came back from the woods and they were talking to me about the woods and how cool it was and what they found.  It brought back memories of exploring in the woods before I was a teenager, and I thought maybe I lost something back then in those younger years, for exploring in the woods was so fun.  I went out in the woods and found all kinds of stuff.  It was great!  Then soon after that my brother introduced me to
 this good friend in which we and my brother and sometimes others would go out walking in the woods all day, backpacking, camping, fishing or hunting and such.  Once we began talking about the Amerindians the woods became something much deeper and I was introduced to a woods-intellect that to this day mesmerizing me like sittin' at a fire starin'.  With zazen I was further introduced to realizing this intellect ever-present in the living, in the wind, in the birds, in a flake of gray ash.  So... it would seem suicidal sadness and eventually a deep complaint about this culture and its non-woods discernment was realized to be a square peg in a round hole type of difference and this culture became a hot stove.  Writing is still what saves me, helps me clarify, have fun with words, and think my way through in order to come up with something beautiful that satisfies and makes one this effort.  Writing is a way to help me harmonize with this world.  Writing
 helps me harmonize with this culture, so, this culture doesn't seem so bad, for the writing is something of this culture I've been able to find a niche and put my heart into - a passion in this culture, thus, I see my place more and more in this culture.  


SA 


--- On Wed, 8/20/08, Ron Kulp <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com> wrote:

> From: Ron Kulp <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com>
> Subject: Re: [MD] is-ness
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 2:24 AM
> Ron,
> 
>     Maybe if Ham had some more poetry in his life, he could
> make his
> endeavor sound as beautiful as you did here.  But he avoids
> this "making
> sense" stuff to what he subjects as mere poetry which
> is a lower form of
> intellectual species.  The heart could add some color as
> you did below
> and actually make his effort not only more understandable
> but more
> alive.
> 
> 
> SA,
> Perhaps Ham has been fortunate enough to lead a relatively
> high quality
> life. He does not see experience as anything special, I
> think the
> experience of living is mystical. I had a long time to
> contemplate
> nothing-ness,
> I used to obsess on thoughts of suicide. When one gets to a
> point where
> all
> is meaningless and pain and thoughts of the extinguishment
> of self is
> contemplated you address a central value and realize you
> have a choice,
> to be or not to be. Once you make that choice it becomes a
> whole nother
> ball game.
> 
> At least it was for my own experience. That was the day I
> became a "free
> agent" . 
> 
> 
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