Om

I've been back home for a couple days.. I know I haven't been up to date so you might not have known I was gone, anyway, I got home Thursday.. I saw my grandmother, aunt and uncle in Washington and I was with my dad the rest of the time. It was great to see them, since it'd been three years since I saw them last. I'm glad to be home since I was gone for a while.

Well I didn't do anything for Halloween but went to temple instead. We had a wonderful kirtan and all- Swami is here and whenever he is, you can be sure the kirtan is amazing. He gave a wonderful class, too. I missed Gargaji..

When I was in Washington I finally went to see the Buddhist abbey I'd wanted to see for so long. Sravasti Abbey is its name, it's situated in the mountains near Newport. The Abbey was really beautiful, the land it's on was gorgeous. The people were very kind. I was only slightly disappointed and feeling a bit lonely there. Spending time there was educational, but I realized the value of the devotees here. I truly believe that impersonalists take an incredibly long path toward liberation. They do not clearly know the goal. And if you aim for something but are even slightly off-- and then the course is long enough-- by the time you get to the goal, your miss will put you very far off.

I was speaking with Geche Dorje and had a very stimulating conversation. He explained Buddhism- and I'd read it before, but hearing is different than reading, and it was good to speak about it. But I wish I simply could share my understanding about God- about the Infinite. Lately I've come back to something I read Blaise Pascal write. We exist, as a sphere of knowledge and experience, a bubble, if you will, somewhere between the infinite and nothing. Yet even if we go up or down, it does not change our relative position to these two. We still are exactly the same.

It's just sad when you see that people are lacking something, like faith in God, and you could explain it, but the difference in paradigm makes it so difficult... how we don't see things we don't know or already recognize. It's sad how atheists think the same thing of believers, too... that they are stuck in a rigid viewpoint, and these atheists are shutting themselves off from some of the greatest minds of our history.

Philosophy... ontology... can always be simplified. Ontology is about finding the root-values... or breaking philosophy down into fundamental truths. What I can truly know is that I am a soul... and I have knowledge of what this means.. I have had glimpses of truth and so on... but all I can know is that I am something between nothing and the infinite. Everything I know is not of so much value, because rigid definitions or value judgements do not reflect fluid reality. What I know as absolutely true is simply that I am something between nothing and the infinite; and so this is the most important thing within me, to speak of the infinite. To share the knowledge that I am a soul- that we all are- and that no one can die. And I quote a saintly person, George Harrison, on this site... and I am ridiculed. But, such is life! This world is no place for devotees. But people are good, like I always say. Also we are all connected. So I am not bitter.