Two Confessions… on the making of this video

The first is kind of a cool secret:
I happen to have a masters degree in film and video (which, to my mother’s dismay, I haven’t overtly ‘used’ in about 25 years.) So making video is a total artistic OMG!!!! The technology finally got easy enough even for me. I bought a new camera and then a new Mac, and presto, you pretty much just plug them in together and everything ‘works!’ Combine this with traveling, music, tea, wonderful people and spiritual joy and I’d say a new episode might just be poking through the surface… So stay tuned.

The second confession is a bit more serious and up until now, a bit more more private…
I quit smoking and here’s the how and why it happened:

The first night I am in the monastery, which is virtually a world unto itself -  called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas - with street names like Compassion and Virtue Way. Everywhere there are devout nuns, monks, and mostly Asian practitioners from around the world. We are all staying in an enormous building that was once - and I am not kidding - an insane asylum. Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette. Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous. I can’t do this here.

Then, I imagine one of the Buddhist nuns, with shaven head, lighting up. That is it! It’s just so funny, and so sad an image I say to myself, That’s it! I am quitting. So, in addition to meditating and chanting for seven days, I am privately going through severe nicotine withdrawal.

Now, for those of you who know… the Nicotine Demons get furious when you don’t feed them. They start crawling through your skin and putting fog into your brain, or maybe it’s some of that smoke you’ve been breathing for years. I read in one of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua’s dharma talks that the celestial beings stay away from those who smoke because they dislike the smell.

Now there’s an argument for quitting that I haven’t heard. Even the Gods won’t come near you… It all seems so incongruous here, smoking; such a strange, yet gripping habit.

Quitting at the monastery turns out to be easier than trying at home because it is simply absurd there. And I am quite preoccupied each day from 3 am ’til 10 pm. The real trick is now that I am back in my cozy home, all alone, with only me to know what’s up, the Nicotine Demons are racing back, more furious than ever over my refusal to submit to their cravings.

What is truly a private victory for me encapsulated in the making of this video is… it’s 100% smoke free! You see, my habit of artistically creating something while smoking goes back to my teenage rebellion years. Now, I am rebelling against my own fabrications and delusions. Instead of breaking away from others, going off to smoke while I create something personal and beautiful (the two have a long romance together in my mind), I am staying up ’til 5 am making this video, and well… just ‘forgetting’ to smoke. I take a deep breath over that.

It has been 2 weeks as of this writing. One day, one breath at a time. Wish me good fortune.

p.s. About the peacocks: They roam freely all around the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and you can hear the cackles of their cries each afternoon while you meditate.

Quehestemehah
You Dance In My Heart

In Beauty, Amara