January 19, 2002

• History
  
  People are the lessons they need to learn. What are we but a collection of ignorances? We learn things and those things are right at the time, but wrong in the present. What do we do but learn new lessons based on old ignorances?
  
  If you want to think of people as information, and it’s not a bad analogy, then our minds are like computer programs that sort this information. The program is self-modifying; the way it sorts the information leads to new ways to sort new information. We program ourselves by learning lessons.
  
  In the past, I’ve made mistakes I really regret. And I’ve done the right thing, and lived to regret it. And I’ve also been happy and pleased with what I’ve done, sometimes. Sometimes the happiness and regret overlap. Can the success of my self-computer program be judged by happiness or regret?
  
  I think my program does what it does, and whatever it is that assigns happiness or regret is along for the ride. That judgement is just another way to sort through the information, and the ability to reach such a judgement, that is, to look at life, in memory and as it is now, and see what’s there, and make it mean something, that ability is the measure of success.
  
  There’s a thangka (iconic painting) in our basement room, and it’s of Manjushri, or at least the Tibetan version of Manjushri. I can’t remember his name. Manjushri is a Buddhist saint. He’s depicted with a book and a sword, usually a flaming sword. Knowledge cleaves information. Wisdom cleaves understanding. Dharma cleaves bullshit.
  
  I’m trying to understand the past. There was a moment in time when something amazing happened, and part of me constantly wants to recreate that moment. It’s as gone as a subatomic particle; the act of trying to find it means you can’t know where to look.
  
  She was wonderful, in a strict meaning of the word. I wondered a lot; that was part of the charm. Physicists have assigned the word ‘charm’ to describe the interaction between quarks. There’s the B quark, and the T quark. Beauty and Truth. She was beautiful. She only told a certain kind of truth.
  
  Who was I then? What was I supposed to learn? What did I invite to myself in her? The suffering of unrequited devotion, the madness of laying out your own trap, and then being snared by it. I wanted. I wanted so much that I could convince myself that it was real. That’s another thing physicists do. They think up new subatomic particles, and then they find them. Is it magic? Manjushri cuts you from the snare, from your own tethers, lets you jettison the past. His darma is the real darma, the Real.
  
  And if Manjushri weren’t real, why, we’d have to invent him so he could remind us of all these things. Self-modifying computer program. What books have you been reading lately? What movies you been watching?
  
  History’s in the now, just like everything else. You can’t watch a movie in the past, you can only watch it now. History works the same way. You play it for yourself. The memory is the VCR on which you play history, except it’s doesn’t have to be the same movie twice. The lighting’s different, the perspective, the dialog has different inflection and meaning. One time you watch it, and she’s astonishing and he’s romantic, and the next time you watch she’s just toying with him in his naivete. Either way it’s beautiful, and either way it’s true.
  
  So what’s the risk in forgiving myself for not knowing? And what’s the risk in thinking I know now?
  

  • 6:00 am
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