29 May 2004 8:34 AM

AM yet closer to my departure to home, and I find myself coming closer to the final judgment, and I realise that happiness isn’t in the world I’m living in at the moment, without meditation, and the following the path set forth by the great noble awakened and enlightened one the great Buddha, who I would have loved to meet, thou I will wish to meet an enlightened being, or an arhant, which would be an amazing experience, and depression seems to becoming the biggest sickness in the world, well the western one any way, probably due its capitalist ideal, and money worshipping which wish to escape ASAP, but it can come from anything, or arrive anytime, anywhere, having suffered a couple of bouts, thou Buddha named it samvega, which was so bad that I felt I couldn’t go on, the first week was bad, and then the second week, was a hundreds times worse, unable to eat or sleep, with so much fear and anxiety I’ve felt only once or twice before when I was ten and 17, now 24, thou 23 when the last bout occurred, struck with such an overwhelming flood of emotions that sucked me down into an abyss that was complete darkness all around, and only could see the light again thanks to “big Russ”, and the venerable Bhante Thitinyana, who not only calmed me, but grabbed me from the falling branch and just held me there so I could gain my balance and stand up again, so that I could breathe and stop my self from screaming, a whole week, from were I couldn’t sleep, or eat, and with such an anxiety that I was nauseous and vomiting, and had such a huge blockage in my chest, as thou a watermelon was trying to burst out through my throat and couldn’t move on my own, and all I kept feeling was that I needed to cry and just release and relax a bit more and just calm down and stop hyperventilating so I could stop for a second and think a new thought, which had been a while, just the one word over and over again can get so boring, but so fearful and painful, and then meeting ajahn kalyano, and then ajahn bramavamso, they saved my life, and have made me consider my future in monastic life even more, its always been in the back of mind, even thou during high school it was more about being a brother thou, due to the influence of the school of course, thou once I left and was able to discover my own path, becoming a monk has always been a constant rock in every path I walk along, not big enough to be a wall and inhibit what ever I was doing at that moment but enough of a bump in the road to remind, and yet unlike most other things, I don’t fully grasp what it actually is that I feel, to even consider not only a monastic life but to have found such a religion which hardly anybody has even known, let alone read a book upon, I’ve always considered my self different and have never known why, maybe this has something to do with it, maybe I was a monk in a past life, or even just a follower, and that in this life I am to become one, but I can finally see what Buddha was trying to explain to the world, and also don’t understand why people who have read and discovered his teachings, that they also don’t follow, it just seems so obvious to me as soon as I read the first few pages of a book upon his life and teachings everything began to click and fall in place, maybe because I’ve heard it before, or maybe because it’s the truth in all its glory, with no polish, or décor to cover the “ugliness” which westerners are reluctant to talk about, but really in the end who is to say what will happen, but what ever happens was already in the works so to speak, maybe I have some other purpose but I will certainly be doing retreats each year for the rest of my life, my annual medicine, just like the flu shot, thou I have many mistakes in the past due to my ignorance and misunderstandings

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