Hiroshima Day

Today is the anniversary of the day that I arrived in Shanghai one year ago. It's an easy date to remember because it's also another anniversary, Hiroshima Day, commemorating that day in 1945 when the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Japan. I remember learning as a teenager that the bomb had been dropped reluctantly in order to end the war quickly and avoid the massive military casualties that would have resulted from a land-based invasion of the country. Back then I believed this fairy tale. Of course, the true reasons behind the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rather more ugly and are nicely summarised in an excerpt from this site:

• The US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000 in 1940 dollars) to produce the bombs, and there was no inclination – and no guts – to stop the momentum.
• The US military – as did its citizens – had a bloodthirsty appetite for revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn't the mind-set of these professed Christians, and the missions were accomplished – with glee.
• The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium bomb and Hiroshima's was uranium. Scientific curiosity certainly was a major factor for the mass slaughter of the Nagasaki community. The decision to use both bombs had obviously been made well in advance. The three day interval was unconscionably inadequate – Japan being in shambles in its communications and transportation capabilities – and besides, no one, not even the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima.
• The Russians had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V- Day, which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima. Indeed, Russia did declare war on August 8 and was marching across Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn't want Japan surrendering to anybody else, especially a future enemy, so the first nuclear "messages" of the infantile Cold War were sent. Russia indeed received less of the spoils of war, and the two superpowers were mired in mutual moral bankruptcy and economic near-bankruptcy for the rest of the century.

These are the facts that spoil the fairy tale. Even so, there are some who would support the revenge motive and say that the Japanese got what they deserved for their dastardly and unprovoked bombing of Pearl Harbor. Like Hiroshima however, there is the fairy tale of Pearl Harbor, painted by the victors in the ensuing war, and then there is the ugly truth as comprehensively explained on this website and from which I've quoted below:

But comprehensive research has not only shown Washington knew in advance of the attack, but deliberately withheld its foreknowledge from our commanders in Hawaii in the hope that the “surprise” attack would catapult the U.S. into World War II.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. The same scenario as 9/11. It worked in 1940 and it worked again more than sixty years later. As Roosevelt said in his 1940 election-year speech: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” You've got to love politicians, especially US Presidents like Truman (who cold-bloodedly authorised the Hiroshima bombing) and Roosevelt (who acted so surprised and outraged when he got the news about Pearl Harbor). Let's remember on Hiroshima Day that sixty-five years on, Washington is just as duplicitous as ever and is still spinning fairy tales.

Silence Day

It was only by accident that I remembered July 10th is Silence Day and like last year I'm able to observe it once again, or at least try to. I tried for the first time last year and slipped up a couple of times by inadvertently speaking. In my case, the habit of speaking proved impossible to stop even for a day but Baba succeeded in maintaining silence for 44 years. Here is the link to my post from 2009 but I'll repeat the reason Baba gave for his silence once again.

Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence.

Return to Jakarta

Time to resuscitate this blog if for no other reason than to announce that I'm not ready to withdraw completely from the blogosphere. As a complete aside I must comment on how pathetic the spell checker is on Blogger. It flags "blog", "blogosphere" and "Blogger" as spelling mistakes. Anyhow, I figure that my temporary return to Jakarta after six months warrants a fresh post. Let's begin with my arrival.

I came in on a 30 day tourist visa and consequently had to line up in a very slow-moving queue, firstly to pay for the visa (US$25) at one window and then to acquire the visa at another. While I hesitated to join the queue, a little man approached me offering to help me bypass the queue entirely. I ignored his kind offer but, for a price, I surmise that he would have taken me directly to a person behind one of the counters. Welcome to Jakarta. I knew I was home.

Having joined the queue, I waited, and waited, as the people ahead of me paid their money at one of the three open windows. At last there was only a young couple ahead of me and, when it was their turn, they moved to the nearest open window. However, by the time they reached it, the surly young man behind it had put up a closed sign and snapped at them when they approached the window, having failed to notice the flip from open to closed. He then got up and stretched his legs. Service with a snarl. Now there were only two open windows to service the snaking queue. It was clear that I wasn't in Shanghai any longer.

However, enough of the negativity. On a positive note, I am now able to appreciate the "quietness" of Jakarta traffic as compared to the insanity of Shanghai with its incessant blaring of super-charged horns. Of course, the traffic jams can be horrific in Jakarta but at least the drivers don't resort to mindless, incessant and utterly futile use of their vehicles' horns. Additionally, my local McDonalds now has a special coffee section that also serves up excellent coffee and offers a selection of pastries as well. I am deeply impressed but best of all I can now access Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, YouTube etc. without the need for a VPN. I have left the Great Firewall of China far behind me.

Spring is in the Air

According to my calculations, the Vernal Equinox fell at 1:21am in Shanghai and I thought it might be interesting to cast an astrological chart for the occasion. It can be seen that Pluto is sitting on the Ascendant and forms part of a T-square with the Sun and Saturn. The Sun, newly entered into Aries, is located in the middle of the third house surrounded by several other planets: Jupiter, Uranus, Mercury and Venus. Mars is on the cusp of the eighth house in very tight aspect to the Sun (by trine) and Saturn (by sextile).

If one considers a chart like this to mark what Shanghai can expect for the astrological year ahead, then for a city the third house is associated with transport, communications and interconnections of all sorts. This will certainly be the focus over the next few months as the Expo gets under way. A tremendous amount of manpower, material and money has been injected into the city in preparation for this event and the ongoing, widespread expansion of the road and metro systems is reflected in the strong position of Pluto (signifying transformation) in aspect to Saturn (signifying infrastructure) and the Sun (in the third house of transportation and communications). The eighth house signifies "beliefs of the masses, red-tapism, speed of execution of works, delays and obstructions, accidents, fatal accidents, epidemics, gold and precious stones, legacies, capital gains, floods, earthquakes, cyclones, storms, etc." (reference)

The effect of Mars on the cusp of this house, in aspect to the Sun and Saturn, suggests acceleration in the speed of execution of infrastructure works and reduction in the red tape that can lead to delays and obstruction in the completion of these works. As for the accidents, floods, earthquakes, cyclones and storms, well who knows? The aspect between Mars and the Sun is a harmonious trine and so hopefully the effects of the aspect will be largely positive. The metro system however, is becoming increasingly complex as new lines are opened up and old ones extended. If an accident were to happen, it would probably happen there.

Meditation and Eyeballing

This is a sketch called "You eyeballing ME, boy?" and is taken from the April 26th 2009 post to a blog at http://smiftlarsen.wordpress.com. I did a quick search on Google Images for a graphic to accompany the theme of my post and this is what caught my eye (so to speak). The joint authors, Smift and Larsen, are graphic design students in Oslo and there is other interesting material on their blog-site. Have a look at it.

Why the theme of eyeballing? Well, I had a particularly deep and satisfying meditation session one morning, a couple of days ago, just before heading out to do some shopping with my wife Desy who is visiting from Jakarta. As Desy perused the garments on display in one clothing shop, I noticed that a guy was giving us a right good looking over and I blurted out "what are you looking at?" before I could catch myself. Needless to say, Desy was quick to rebuke me and just as suddenly, I averted my eyes and looked at the floor in embarrassment. I hadn't said what I'd said loudly and the guy had no understanding of what I'd actually said although he could have guessed from my tone of voice and body language.

After my outburst, I felt quite annoyed with myself, most of all because I should have been more alert. This sort of thing has happened before after a "successful" meditation session. Normally being eyeballed doesn't bother me and even if it does, I'll simply think "you eyeballing ME, boy?" and not say anything. In this case, the guy's eyeballing was quite overt and directed at both of us, doubtless because I'm a Westerner and Desy is Indonesian, an unusual combination in Shanghai.

So what's going on here? Why am I more apt to blurt something out after a satisfying meditation session that should predispose me to being serene and accepting of life's little vexations? I sort of know the answer but it's useful to attempt an explanation as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on the matter. When I meditate, I find that there are two "areas" to disengage from: one I call The Boiler Room and other I call Headquarters.

The Boiler Room, so-called perhaps because things can get pretty hot down there, is located in "my guts", an area behind the umbilicus, and is associated with how I'm feeling. Any tenseness, sadness, anxiety etc. will be felt here. In the past my identification with this "room" was almost total: I was in the room, I was the room. The trick in meditation is simply to back out of the room if already in it. A sense of "distance" has to be created and I find that locating my awareness in the area of the solar plexus is helpful in achieving this. It's important that the feeling is not pushed away or suppressed. Simple observation of the feeling is enough to trigger this disengagement which is always sudden and very apparent.

Once this disengagement has been achieved it is time to deal with Headquarters, a reference to the restless mind that is more or less located between and behind the eyes. Disengagement from The Boiler Room can throw the mind into a bit of a frenzy because the two work seamlessly together. If I'm having "a poor me" episode in The Boiler Room, the mind will generate an endless stream of thoughts that reinforce this negative feeling.

Once the connection is disrupted, the mind will often flip frantically between past and future, throwing up images of what has been and what might be in an attempt not to be pinned down in the present. Images from the past with strong emotional content will vie with unsettling images of imagined futures. To follow any of these is to be drawn into Headquarters where objectivity is lost and identification with mind is complete.

This will happen repeatedly but each time awareness needs to returned to the solar plexus area. After a while, the oscillations between past and future subside and less weighty thoughts begin to appear, centering around movies I have recently seen or books that I have recently read. This is a good sign and before too long I'll experience a sort of jolt when my mind realises that it's been thought-free for a brief period of time. This is the start of disengagement from the mind whereby thoughts still arise but just as quickly pass away because I'm not longer holding on to them.

There follows a period of internal equilibrium because there has been a more or less successful disengagement from both The Boiler Room and Headquarters. Awareness is centred firmly in the area of the solar plexus and quickly returns there if the attention wanders. An equilibrium also exists between what's inside my body and what's outside of it. Normally there is an inner pressure that wants to burst out into the world or sometimes the world seems to be pressing in. During a successful meditation session however, this imbalance is absent and instead I feel almost transparent. Outside sounds flow right through me. I don't react to them.

Getting back to my outburst, it's clear that during meditation the door to The Boiler Room is open and I can peer in and "feel" what's going on. Headquarters has powered down and only random, intermittent and light-weight thoughts are being generated. What seems to happen after meditation is that I remain closer than normal to The Boiler Room, the door is pretty much still open because I've recently been peering in. An external stimulus triggers an emotional reaction that I'm not quick enough to suppress because I've recently been careful to avoid suppression. Headquarters has also not been subject to any sort of control either, only observation, and so the reaction triggers a thought that finds vocal expression before the normal inhibitory mechanisms can intervene. I think it works something like that.

Of course, the term Boiler Room has business connotations where it's defined as follows (source):

A boiler room is an operation often associated with fraudulent activities, where salespeople cold call high net worth individuals in hopes of getting them to invest in thinly traded stocks. The phone reps have very little information on the securities and focus more on selling the client on the idea of making fast money. The name boiler room originated from the fact it is a high-pressure environment where phone reps are expected to close no matter what.

My own "inner" boiler rooms operates in much the same way. It is a "high-pressure environment" where I'm continually being tricked into investing in "thinly traded stocks" (my feelings) because I've been convinced that is what is best for me. At least that's the way it used to be. I'd be excited about some future possibility and "invest" in that feeling of excitement and anticipation. If the possibility disappeared I'd "invest" in the feeling of disappointment that followed. There was no distance between me and The Boiler Room and I couldn't see the fraudulent activity that was going on. I still get caught up in it but not as much as I used to.

For me, the key to a successful meditation is to sink into my body and become aware of any tension in it. This sensation of sinking into the body is quite palpable and it can be elusive when either Headquarters or The Boiler Room are in turmoil, but without it proper meditation is impossible. Nowadays this happens fairly quickly. I'm sure that my somatic "technique" as a preparation for meditation is quite crude at the moment but I'm deliberately keeping it experiential and not reading anything that will fill my head with "ideas" that my mind can seize upon during meditation.

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Perfect Storm

In my last post, I wrote that "I have come down with a mild but energy-sapping cold" and I was unaware of the complete physical collapse that was about to follow. I've largely recovered now, although my lungs still feel weak. However, the experience was unsettling and in the aftermath I find that I'm thinking more about my physical health and how best to maintain it in terms of sleep, diet and exercise. I've started taking Neurobion, a Vitamin B12 supplement that is available in Jakarta. I need to find the same or similar product here in Shanghai. I'm walking more and have resumed my morning meditation.

As my sickness worsened around Christmas time, Desy asked me if I'd had any shock before leaving China and at first I'd said no. Later it suddenly struck me that I did indeed have a shock of sorts. On the day before I flew out, I'd been half-dozing, face-down, on my bed in the late afternoon when I had an out-of-body experience. I found myself floating a few feet above the bed and became aware that I wasn't breathing. I was OK with this because somewhere in the back of my mind I realised that my astral body didn't need to breathe. However, I began to worry that perhaps I was dead and that my physical body had stopped breathing. This brought my awareness back to my body and the experience ceased.

Desy explained that her Batak culture recognises three bodies: the physical, astral and mental (although different terms are used to describe them). A sudden shock can cause misalignment of the physical and astral bodies with consequent illness, physical and/or mental. I suspect this is what happened to me because as well as being physically ill, I couldn't function mentally either. I was unable to read or use my computer for almost the entire two week period. My out-of-body experienced happened spontaneously and quite unexpectedly. The combination of this experience, the subsequent stress of travel and the disparity in climates may have produced a perfect storm of factors that produced my "super-illness".