Behold my inspiration for the site redesign: an attempted recreation of a Beijing hutong (or alley way).
很像吗？
Uncategorized 9:30 pm
This past weekend was Yidi’s birthday (Ricky’s girlfriend), and we celebrated with a feast at a Hang Zhou resturant (i.e. sour fish and funny tasting greens…). Afterwards we had a relaxed time at No Name Bar with a few mixed drinks. Funnily enough, Yidi’s best friend in Beijing has been helping my former boss in Qinghai to do small scale development projects. A small world indeed! Here’s a pic of the birthday girl (25):
Yidi (right) and Kate (chinese canadian)
Uncategorized 9:24 pm
*Note: Debated on whether or not to post this…but here it is.
As the self collapsed, there was still a moment of intense fear—after all, it was the death of “me.” I felt like being sucked into a hole. But a voice from within said, “Resist nothing.” So I let go. It was almost like I was being sucked into a void, not an external void, but a void within. And then fear disappeared and there was nothing that I remember after that except waking up in the morning in a state of total and complete “newness.”
- Eckart Tolle on his “sudden awakening” experience
Friday afternoon. I’d been snoozing back at Ricky’s 胡同 (hutong) on and off for a hour or so somewhere between waking and dreaming. Suddenly I am very aware of something. My eyes are closed, all I see is a purple-blackness, and yet it is spinning somehow. Then there is a kind of dim light emerging in the center, also spinning. My breathe quickens and the light fills my “vision.” Most thought has stopped now, but one floats through, “is this the light of mind*?” My focus deepens, another spinning light forms and engrosses me. I’m scared, my heart is racing. Then again it happens, the fear is overwhelming, as if my life were at stake. It is hard to keep my focus on the spinning light and not the fear. I try to give into that fear, though my being wants nothing to do with it. Finally it stops, no more lights, my heart beat levels, I open my eyes. There’s no bliss, only a lingering pain in my chest and a wonder: Was it some kind of strange lucid dream? Was the fear the fear of ego annihilation or just of the unknown? Is the whole thing just more delicious food stuff for spiritual materialism?
*the light of mind here doesn’t refer to the “clear light of mind” which the Tibetan tradition takes as the underlying awakened consciousness. I use it as perhaps Theravadan traditions would, as a concentrated mind that becomes a tool for illumination during meditation.