Addiction

Addiction

Dogen, a Zen master, once said that to study the self is to forget the self. I have a big ego. Yes, I recognize that my having a big ego probably resulted not from so much a sense of inadequacy as some unresolved feelings of anger and annoyance and unfulfilled desire for violence as therapy. Ego is a big thing and love for power has a lot to do with it. But in my case, I have no lust for power; I simply want to kill those assholes and scumbags and motherfuckers who angered me. 

My past was infected with memories of hurts and pains, of unresolved feelings. I was addicted and probably still am to the feelings of violence and revenge. Trying to rid myself of those feelings has been my lifelong mission. I have had numerous dreams in which I killed people. I have written short stories of murder and violence. I know I am a short step from acting on my fantasies and obsessions. 

I am living on a short lease of sanity. Words and music and studying languages and physical exercises are what keep me from going over the edge. Henceforth in this piece, I owe a great deal to Cormac McCarthy in words and thoughts. 

Reading a very good book is like meeting a wise teacher. One is transformed for the better after the encounter. Today at the health club, I overheard one Arab tell a black American woman that everyday after looking at a Marc Chagall painting he feels that his day is made and he wouldn't mind dying afterwards. I don't know much about painting, hence I didn't know if the remark was a hyperbole or a sincere expression. I only know this: after reading Buddhism and Nietzsche, I haven't been afraid of Death. 

One can see the heart of any culture by the nature of its hero. In contemporary America, it is the businessman. In France, the intellectual commands much more respect than he does in America. In very ancient times, probably at the dawn of mankind, it was the Warrior-Chieftain. But then the Jews debased the concept of Hero. They introduced the man of God: from Moses to Christ. They brought forth the notion of prophet. Such a notion was unfathomable, unknown, unimaginable to the Greeks. The Greeks had men of gods, not the man of God. When gods were more human, men were more divine. The stone idols themselves have their own views of things. Maybe they speak to us in a language that was lost. Every stone on this planet has a language, a message. Of course, precious stones have a clearest language and a loudest message. These stones want to say that when we enhance the beauty of our beloved, we want to acknowledge the brevity of her beauty as opposed to the timelessness of the stones. Via the stones, precious (as used in jewelry) or not (as used in carving or construction), we announce to the darkness and to eternity that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives, that we will not thereby be made less, that we are gods ourselves in our heart of hearts. 

I used to long for a woman of a bygone era and I used to miss and cherish some memories, but I now realize that certain people and things are here for a while and then they vanish. To long for absent people and to miss things is to hope for certain people and things to come back. But that is a childish attitude. I am not a child anymore, not usually anyway. It's time for me to put childish things away. If you think it's cold to have that kind of outlook. then I would only gently remind you that truth has no temperature. A woman in my youth once told me she intended to love me until she died, unless I died before she did. At that time her corny exposition pleased me tremendously. And of course, she soon left me for somebody else after the remark. As far as I know, she has not  croaked yet, but frankly, I won't give a damn about her demise when it happens. All I knew was that she was a liar. I told you, truth has no temperature. 

Later, after I gained experience, I discovered that women liked me because I had a a moral dilemma, because I was weak-willed and not cruel enough. Women are attracted to men with certain flaws so they can dominate and control them. But you are probably wondering why I am unburdening myself and dumping some of my secrets on you. I read somewhere that a person is only as sick as his secrets. And you don't really know someone until you know all his secrets and what he wants. Let me spill out another secret: life is a game. A true player in life is like a true warrior. He plays only one game: he plays to win. Winning is more important for him psychologically than financially. A sword once drawn only knows the blood of his adversaries, not of his own blood because every shed drop of his blood is a danger to his well-being, psychologically and physically. A true warrior does not underestimate his opponents. Thus, he only brings one game to every battle: the will to win and triumph. Only losers would subscribe to the maxim, "winning is not everything". In fact, winning is everything. Life is for winners. Death is for losers. One must be a winner, especially over oneself. 

You probably don't believe what I am going to say, but I am going to say it anyway. I think about my own life a lot, what has transpired, what I have "accomplished", and whether I am happy and satisfied with the way it has turned out, whether I have emerged as a winner or a loser. Of course I am not happy with the way my life has turned out, and I think in some ways I have been a loser, but my life is not over yet. I still have time to turn my life around and in the end will regard myself as a winner. Hope springs eternal. But I am not going to make my life worse by killing some scumbags and assholes just to get some temporary satisfaction. However, I surely will go to a bar and "celebrate" their "untimely" demise, when that happens, if that ever happens. I am not above Schadenfreude. On the other hand, I also think about the lives of the hopeless and the hapless and what I could do for them. Unfortunately, thinking is all I can do. It has not been translated into action because I am selfish and have a small heart. I am not like Ludwig Wittgenstein who donated money to starving artists and poets. Of course, I know that älles Vergänglich ist nur ein Gleichnis (Goethe). There is no real separation between Self and Other. You may think you are different, but you are not. For all what I have sinned, I still believe very much in a moral order. I told you, my problem is that I am afflicted with a moral dilemma. It's not that I'm going down. It's what I'm taking down with me. Greed always take us to the edge. I'm fighting real hard against greed. You see, the world in which we seek to undo our mistakes is not the world in which they were made. We are at a crossroads and we think it's time to choose. But the reality is that the choosing was done long ago. Now it's time to accept things as they are, as to why we are at the crossroads in the first place. When it comes to grieving over our choices in life, there's no rule of exchange. Grief transcends all values. 

When it's time for you to die, your executioner, your assassin would require your cooperation. Too much credit is given to chance by mortal men. An assassin, a hit man knows better. He relies on careful, utmost planning. He leaves nothing to chance. A hit man thinks he is a warrior---and my friend, Omar Sabat is a rare species. He is truly a hit man and a warrior---but very often he is not. He is a pretender, an usurper, a pimp. All he cares about is the result, not the beauty of the execution. He's not inclined to give his mark a fighting chance. Because he has no heart, no sense of fair play, a hit man should be more feared than a warrior. The warrior strikes at you up front. You know he's coming after you. With a hit man, he brings his mark to the edge of the precipice and then softly asks his victim if he has anything to say. And as the poor chap is struggling  to get some word out of his constricted throat, amid the sobbing and abject terror, the hit man strikes. There's no need to appeal to the humanity in a hit man. It left him a long time ago. He only lives by the credo, "I come, I see, I do, and I leave."

At a decisive moment in your life, you know that life is not going to take you back. Ask the poor Jewish man who knelt in front of the ditch where other Jews had been shot. All he did was to brace for an impact of the bullet at the back of his head fired by a dehumanized Gestapo officer, looking grim and proud and full of himself. Ask the victims of the Khmer Rouge who were clubbed or hacked to death to 

save the bullets. Ask the Viet patriots being kicked on by policemen and plain-clothed "security" personnel when they demonstrated against the selling out of Vietnam to China by those Vietnamese who didn't know the meanings of fatherland, countrymen, and patriotism. 

I have no wish to paint this world in more somber colors than those it already wears. So when you cease to be, so will this world. Of course, there are other worlds of other men, and your understanding of these worlds is nothing but an illusion anyway. Tell me, do you really know what evil really is? Do you really know the heart of a shameless liar and pontificator? Your world, the only world that matters will be gone, sooner than you think. The extinction of all realities, your realities, is a concept that is truly difficulty to fathom until it's too late. What should stare you in the face is that, anytime, any moment, annihilation arrives and all your grandiose ideas won't save you. Death does not care about you. Don't ask it for meaning. 

I found out long time ago, much, much to my sorrow, that I didn't want to admit that the object of my desire had weighed me in the balance and found me wanting (lacking/deficient/inadequate). That was a very difficult thing for me to accept. But accept it I must. And I moved on. That was when I decided to become a hunter. But I soon realized that I was ill-formed and ill-prepared for the path I had chosen. It was the faintness of my own heart that had closed my eyes to the destination of my path. Nobody is more cruel than a coward. Believe it or not, I have tried, very, very hard, to not be a coward. There are many a night I get down on my knees and pray for courage. 

Wissai

January 10, 2014

P.S.

The piece is an amalgamation of pathos, bathos, irony, and meditation. Facts are facts. What matters is that whether we have the courage to face them. Very few humans have the courage. VAW is a coward through and through and yet she called me a coward. She couldn't and can't accept the facts that she is stupid, mediocre, untalented, unmotivated, vicious, and cheap. She lives her life with a lie. She does not read books, does not understand shit, doesn't now know what's the fuck going on in the world and yet she fancies she is somebody. She does not have a notion of true pride. A truly proud woman would work very hard to improve her mind, her physique, and her financial status so she could walk tall. A truly proud woman would not accept charity so she could live. A truly proud woman would not criticize others who are superior to her. 

Anyway, I hope you are not like the fucking bitch VAW.  I hope you are through with lying to yourself. In the end, only having a courage to face facts can save you from a life of shameful existence.