Tuesday

 

Wikipedia: Bagan is an ancient city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Pagan Kingdom, the first kingdom that unified the regions that would later constitute Myanmar. During the kingdom's height between the 11th and 13th centuries, more than 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were constructed in the Bagan plains alone, of which the remains of over 2200 temples and pagodas survive. The Bagan Archaeological Zone is a main attraction for the country's nascent tourism industry. 

Tonight is New Year's Eve. Shams was feeling bad, he feels inbetween, he can't live in the world, he can't live as a monk.

My version of that tension was when I went on a week long solitary week, and I realized with work and family I wasn't going to be able to progress the way I wanted to. I think I went a little crazy, went the wrong direction, desperate struck out and wrecked everything. Left my wife and children, though tried to be available for my children. Then spiraled negative and into substance abuse. I absolutely went crazy, and I'm just coming out of it now, and my life is nearly over. Maybe Theravada are right, maybe lay should just focus on supporting the sangha. Maybe only monks should go for it. 

I'm sick as a dog, it's a miracle I sat today, I'm proud of that. 

Reading the Gooch book on Rumi, and he's writing about the silk road, one of the roads Buddhism traveled. Peking to Constantinople, Hangzhou to Cairo. Love Bill Porter/Red Pine's book on the Silk road. Looked up so many things and learned so many things. Infact, I love every Bill Porter travel book I've read. I'm getting an obscure one in the mail soon, hopefully. 

Some maps have Mashhad on the silk road. Looks like January is the coolest month in Mashhad. I didn't know Imam Reza shrine was bombed in 1994, 25 people died. The Baloch terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, a Sunni Muslim turned Wahhabi, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was found to be behind the plot. 

If Rumi went to Neyshabur in 1216, he maybe went to Mashhad, but maybe not. I'm pretty sure there were lots of forks in the road. But Mashhad is one way to Tehran and Neyshabur is another. 

Yaqut (1179-1229) has some influential books used to understand the times. There was a huge earthquake in 1145 and in 1153 Oghuz Turks invaded and took off their grand sultan.

When Rumi was in Neyshabur he might have seen some Malamatiyya: "The Malamatiyya believed in the value of self-blame, that piety should be a private matter and that being held in good esteem would lead to worldly attachment. They concealed their knowledge and made sure their faults would be known, reminding them of their imperfection. The Malamati is one for whom the doctrine of "spiritual states" is fraught with subtle deceptions of the most despicable kind; he despises personal piety, not because he is focused on the perceptions or reactions of people, but as a consistent involuntary witness of his own "pious hypocrisy"."

Now there's a sect of Islam I can get behind.

1/1/25. I was sick and missed meditation, but I did a rain meditation with Tara Brach today.