I have been feeling negative vibes in general about people and things around me especially in elevators and while driving and mostly towards myself. This is not a good feeling and very detrimental towards my spiritual practice of self liberation or simply finding peace of mind within me. I blame it on ageing and lack of tolerance as one gets up there in age. Am I a racist? Perhaps I am deep down and try as I may to overcome this nasty trait I still find myself shooting people in the head in my darker nature that is forever lurking in the shadows of my consciousness. I keep finding myself feeling guilty when these negative thoughts arises in me triggered by an external negative event and then I would be asking for forgiveness from my Maker and the to deliver me from these poisonous and toxic tendencies. Astarghfirullah! Forgive me Lord and remove these feelings from me, I would whisper to myself in the hope that it would help to purify my mind if not my soul, frankly, it seldom seems to work except at the very moment in time, after that it is back to cursing and swearing and sometimes murderous intent boils within me. I thought I had been able to put all these behind me through my practices over the years, but I find my anger management issues still is with me waiting for the moment to explode from within. In the Buddhist perspective these are 'deep rooted karma,' and it takes much work to remove them just as one finds that some plants are simply hard to remove for good when one is weeding the garden as they keep returning as if out of nowhere.
So, I ask myself, what is the solution, how do I remove this flaw for good from my consciousness, how do I become free from this feeling of anger towards anything and everything that takes a poke at me, how do I stop being angry at myself for being anger prone? It cost me US75 Dollars an hour visiting a psychiatrist in Marin County, California at the behest of my boss back when i was a department head for Hand H Ship Service for my anger management issues, it did not do much good but it was a good experience as experiences went, like if they ask have you ever been to a shrink? Yes i can say, one of the best supposedly in Marin County, if you know Marin County, Ca. Now it seems the old snake has started to raise it head again threatening to cause an unwonted scene at the slightest of provocation. At my age this is not what to look forward to, I am too old to loose my cool especially at something trivial like being cut off on the road by and idiot or being given a dirty look in the elevator. One would think that by now with all the so called spiritual practices I have been attempting at i should be free from such mundane vexations. Nope! It seems like it gets more intense by the day and I have to keep repeating to myself Astargfirullah or forgive my Lord and protect me from my nafs or my ego.
Will I ever be able to drop off all these baggage that i have been carrying before i die? Can I ever enlighten myself and become liberated from my egoic nature, my shadow, my ugly side? Perhaps never, perhaps i will walk into my graves till haunted by my deep rooted, ancient and twisted karma those buried deep within my subconscious. It would be like pulling out 'Tongkat Ali' or the root known as, a plant much sought after for its powerful properties when ingested. Most Malays will tell you that it is almost impossible to pull it out of the ground as its single root runs deep into the ground. Talking about plants especially weeds I had an experience one day while weeding the field of spinach at Green Gulch Farm Zen Community. It so happened that I was weeding alongside a Japanese who was visiting the farm while on his way home to Japan, his name was Tsuyoshi Miyoshi, a mountaineering guide and ha just taken a group of Japanese up the Grand Teton. We worked for three hours weeding using the Japanese long handled weeder and was out doing each other seeing who was better and faster at it. He did not speak much English and so most of the time we worked in silence.
It happened when we finished the last row almost neck to neck and I decided I just wanted to lay down an take a nap in between two rows of spinach bed. I laid the weeder down across the beds and laid down with my neck resting on the handle and my head dropped tilted back looking up at the sky. I saw the sky just above the low hill slope and there were clouds moving across it silently and it was blissful. Then I looked to my left and saw the bed of spinach I had just finished weeding and from the freshly dug soil I noticed small baby plants sprouting out of the ground like in a slow motion movie. The baby weeds popped out of the ground before my eyes and started to grow as though mocking me. Just as I was lost in this surprise I was shocked out of my mind by a loud yell,"Buta!" or Pig! There he stood with his chin resting on his weeder handle, Tsuyoshi was looking down at me with a silly grin on his face! I shot up and we both laughed and started for the Zendo where we sat beside each other in meditation as thought it was what we were supposed to do with our dirt covered cloths and exhausted body and mind, we sat till it was time for the rest of the Zen students came in to join us for their scheduled sitting time.
Tsuyoshi left for Japan a few days after and he left behind all his mountaineering cloths and a tent. Even if we could not communicate much in language we were spiritually connected on a deeper level that i felt had helped me to face all the trials and tribulations I had at Green Gulch especially the prejudices and being made to feel not welcome by many older students. My experience with Tsuyoshi gave me the courage I never knew I had in facing people.
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