Monks and Mortality

A monk I met recently gave me a book to read that was on the NYT best sellers list. Doesn't sound like much right? The meeting of this man, our conversation and th implications definitely are a big deal for me. He is caretaker and former monk at a once active Buddhist Temple where I go to often. 

I met him one day when he and a couple friends were drinking in a corner of the yard behind the ordination hall. They had the standard Thai street set up; small bottle of moonshine, large bottle of water and bowl of limes. Somewhere in the conversation about why he isn't a monk anymore he told me that he wants to be in paradise. I heard the longing and frustration in that and the implication for daily drinking. Definitely lost his way. 

The book he gave me, Being Mortal, is about mortality and how modern medicine transformed many dangers in life but when it comes to aging and death what medicine can do often runs contrary to what it should do. My career as in healthcare taught me that as well.

I want to find out how these threads connect for this intelligent being who has moved away from a life of faith to one of addiction.

The Time is Now

 It has been 4 years since the last entry here. Maybe 5 years. Of course there is a reason.

I returned from my 3 month trip to Tiruvannamali, India in January of 2017. Don't really care exactly because it was the end of the life I had been living for almost 20 years. I guess at 76 the years aren't milestones any more.

Anyway, the people I love decided, independently I hope, to say goodbye to me and asked me to leave them. Says a lot about me, for certain. I have always had ass-hat tendencies and I guess it all caught up with me at that time. No pity, maybe some judgement and overall a sense of relief.

Perhaps they sensed the longing in me to be quit of the drama, frequent and copious IMHO, that came with these relationships. I certainly didn't have the courage or power to leave them. Probably still don't. So there is a sense of gratitude that they took the final step for me. I have been free to travel the world since then and pursue my spiritual, intellectual and wanderer interests wihtout trying to fit them into my "life."

So, the time is now to begin writing again. What's going on, what do I see and experience and how does this world of 2023 look to someone born Mid Last Century?