hungry ghost

Perhaps this makes me a "bad" Buddhist (there isn't really such a thing, I guess; just poor actions and reactions), but the last few days have really been an onslaught of tiny annoyances piling higher and higher until I feel like I'm going to choke. Really, I suppose I'm letting them pile up and choke me, but doesn't it just feel better sometimes to play the role of the victim, even if you're really the victim of false consciousness? This is precisely why I started practicing Buddhism--because I get so tired of my default settings and the ways in which I allow myself to wallow in poison. If my life were an overly simplified Buddhist cartoon series, the hero would finally track down the villain and unmask him, only to realize that THEY WERE BOTH THE SAME PERSON. GASP! The problem is that, even though I know that I am the villain in theory, I still suffer and I still feel the need to complain. And Buddhism isn't theory: it's a big fat pile of hard work, changing the mind. So, I suppose I am really in some over-educated but still pre-Buddhist state, where I know how I should be thinking, but it's not at all natural. What's natural is to whine and cry and generally act like a 135-pound baby. Sometimes I wish I could put my working life on hold to really, deeply work at my practice, but monasteries and retreats aren't really an option for those of us struggling in the Western capitalist machine. You have to somehow balance an entirely mental practice with the emotional and temporal demands of postindustrial life and its kabillion distractions. So, even although I know all about impermanence and the problems of attachment, I am compelled to continue...

--First of all, hardly anyone I invited came to my Halloween party, and even though I know many people were just too busy, it feels a bit like a blow off. I invited a LOT of people. Like 25. And 4 people (who were totally awesome) came. No one even called me to apologize for not showing. I think this might be the beginning of my totally lame adulthood (minus, of course, the money and respect that are supposed to accompany it).

--The Great Ear Mystery continues, unscathed by the many doctors who have poked and prodded me over the past 7 weeks. I've been going to physical therapy, but the results are inconclusive. I've also had to sleep sitting up in bed, which prevents me from getting any real rest and makes my brain scream about each separate and unrelated detail in my life like a crazed Broadway theater director. Add the vertigo, and the whole thing is exhausting.

--I am beginning to hate each and every one of my 65 students with the fire of a thousand suns. Freshmen are like a curse from the angry, vengeful God of the Christian Old Testament. They cannot come to class or hand anything in on time. They cannot follow even the most rudimentary of directions. They cannot take suggestions and fix mistakes. When they fail to do all the above, they still cannot understand why their grades aren't higher. Also--according to M who overheard some of them talking--they think I'm "mean" because I make them take their fucking EAR BUDS out of their ears while they're in class! I'm beginning to understand why people just give up on their politics and send their kids to private schools. The mediocrity piles up and crushes them into middle-class escapism.

--Basically, my new job is a ton of bullshit work, and I have to put up with the professor I T.A. for doing absolutely nothing and pushing all of the work he should be doing onto myself and the two other lowly assistants--if you call being an "assistant" having three times the amount of students and grading as the actual professor, who has yet to give a single lecture in his class and just shows films instead of teaching the students anything. He's getting paid around 80,000 a year: I'm making 10,400.

--I haven't spoken to my family in two months because I couldn't even begin to explain what's wrong with me, healthwise. When I tried to tell my parents about the Great Ear Mystery earlier this year, they pretty much just shrugged it off, like they do about everything they don't know how to deal with. I am considering not traveling to P.A. for Thanksgiving if I'm not better. It's embarrassing, but my family sometimes disgusts me. Everyone (with the exception of my deadbeat bodybuilding brother) is overweight, and although most of my family members are fairly well educated and intelligent, they lack the spark of passion that you feel around people who actually give a crap about things other than themselves. Plus every once in a while there will be a moment where they all swoop in on an issue--like affirmative action--and pontificate about it in this terribly ignorant way. I usually run and hide in the bathroom when this happens.

--Then, of course, there's the recent injustice of having this great state of New York pass on approving gay marriage, when only months later it has now been adopted by frigging NEW JERSEY! Where the fuck am I living?

.....................................Q