The LTQ Diaries

Getting honest about samsara 2/12/18, 6(08 pm
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24 SEPTEMBER 2017 / SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
Getting Honest about

Samsara
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/getting-honest-about-samsara/ Page 1 of 14
Now, tell me - if given a

choice, which of the following
would you choose:
An immense suitcase
overflowing with profound
wisdom teachings that would
lead to enlightenment?
Or would you choose a small

purse containing all that is
necessary to become rich and
famous?
Honestly, which one would you

choose?
Honestly.
For the longest time, I convinced

myself that I would choose the
suitcase.
I chose it because it felt good to say,

‘I’m above all that base, materialistic
fame shit - and all you peons going for
it are deluded as hell.'
I chose it because it felt nice to think I

had already figured it out.
And it even gave me a spiritual hard-on

to think that, one day, *I would become
a monk. *
If existence is nothing more than

suffering, of a perpetual sense of
dissatisfactoriness; of being bound by
inescapable realities of time, death, of
being separated from loved ones and
seeing everything we build fall apart…
what act are we capable of doing that
isn’t just a colossal waste of time? That
isn’t squandering this ‘precious human
life’ that we have no way of
guaranteeing in the next life? Or even
guaranteeing tomorrow.
I never really had a rebuttal to the

whole 'Four Noble Truths' line of
reasoning. There’s just not a lot of
wiggle room to justify doing anything
that’s not directed at figuring out how
to get out of this cycle of suffering.
They say that madness is doing the
same thing over and over again while
expecting a different result. It's
difficult to not see humans in that
light.
For years, I kept telling myself that when all the causes and conditions came
together, I’d finally do it. I’d even publish an extended note on Facebook,
declaring my weariness with the ways of the world. Shave my head, become a
filmmaker in robes, and get attention just because I'm a charismatic, white
Tibetan monk. Maybe I’d even get to write bestselling books on happiness,
like Matthieu Ricard, while touring the TED circuit.
(I love Matthieu by the way.)
Life would be real. Finally, I'd don the

Life would be real. Finally, I'd don the

robes, free myself from all of life's
distractions - Spotify, Netflix, the next
Murakami novel - and enter into an
intentional community where everyone
is aligned in the same direction. I'd
take three year retreats while living a
simple, idyllic lifestyle in the
Himalayas until, driven by an
insatiable desire, I'd realise the nature
of mind and the rainbow body at the
same time and life would be glorious.
Except, my life wasn’t.
It was just so…
Heavy.
Living in a self-centered melodrama
entitled ‘how bad I am’.
Guilt-ridden.
I couldn’t have a drink or masturbate
without my superego chanting - ‘What

the hell are you doing?’ ‘You shouldn't
enjoy this…’
Unlike shame, neither of these feelings

pushed me in a direction towards
growth. Instead, I became stuck in
these cycles, feeling powerless to do
anything about it.
Holding onto these fantasies also gave

me a license to be unhappy with the
status quo. You might know the
conversation: 'If only I were...then
everything would be amazing."Monk
was that for me - the highest form of
mental masturbation.
Last week, I received useful feedback

that helped me see how all of this self-
deception just ate away at me. At a
leadership training, people were asked
to give me feedback.
How did they see me - HONESTLY, no

sugar-coating, no forced sandwiching
positive with negative feedback? What
did they feel when they experienced me
in their lives?
What I heard:
“Closed.”
“Fake.”
“Showing up with energy that’s
just so draining for everyone
else.”
“Only seeking attention and
praise.”
“Manipulative.”
The compassion and honesty that

others showed to me helped me see
that, contrary to my own self-view, I
wasn’t this calm, open, compassionate
walking, almost-there Buddha that I
puffed myself up to be. Instead, in my
own self-deception, I’d been weighing
people down, creating more distress
than joy, more anxiety than ease.

Emotional contamination is a real
thing, by the way.
And, that evening, it finally hit me -
I hated who I was.

I hated that I couldn't be this
effervescent ball of joy,
compassion, courage and
everything that I knew to be
valuable and true but just
couldn't embody because of all
these inner obstacles that I
couldn't see - or at least
pretended I couldn't.
This wasn’t the first time that idea had

dawned to me. I knew at an
intellectual, self-deprecating way that,
'yeah, I'm not good enough.'
This time, it felt more like I’d entered a

sensory deprivation tank, where
everything external to me kind of just
faded into the distance. And all I'm left
with is a mirror. No more thoughts.

Just raw devastation that evoked
memories, memories of events where
I’d learned what love meant: pleasing
people, receiving praise. Love meant
validation. And in the absence of that
validation, I simply wasn't worthy.
If I'm honest, HONEST - I'd choose the

purse. Not that I don't value wisdom,
that I don't actually take joy in doing
spiritual practice.
But I'm just not at that level of the

suitcase. I don't have a voracious
appetite for transcending all of this. I
still love dancing in my room naked
while listening to David Guetta and
Steve Aoki. I still love getting lost in a
Murakami universe. And you better
believe that I love having scorching,
kinky sex.
And yeah, if someone one day

discovered my music or writing or cast
me in the next season of Master of
None, I'd take it in a heartbeat,
because, deep within my subconscious,
I still carry this fixed belief that fame is
happiness. (Intellectualizing it and
pointing to all the examples of people
who are famous and miserable doesn't
help - beliefs are emotional and can't
really be reasoned with.)
Each of us, I believe, has our own

version of the suitcase and purse. An
idealized self and a self that's always
falling short. And in between those two
selves is a gap that never has been and
likely never will be closed (unless
you're Pope Francis or Barack Obama).
I know now that I can't rush towards

the ideals - even if I know them to be
morally desirable. Constant denial and
pretending just to be seen to be 'good',
ironically, didn't help. It just deepened
my self-deception. It means that
everyday I show up, I show up as the

image I want to project - and hide all
those negative beliefs that I think I
actually am.
Acknowledging the gap between my

suitcase - the Buddhist view that I
know to be true - and my purse - the
me that craves for attention - is the
start of a real path. A big part of
spiritual growth is learning how to
stand in this gap and embrace the
accompanying ambiguity.
It means I can be free of that superego,

free to live, to create joy and really start
to live the questions.
(Note: The above clip is taken from the

film Samsara by Pan Nalin, an
incredible film about the struggle to be
honest on the path to enlightenment.)
Taking the 'Shadow' as the Path 2/12/18, 6(07 pm
12 OCTOBER 2017 / SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
Taking the 'Shadow'

as the Path
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/taking-my-shadow-as-the-path/ Page 1 of 20
Enlightenment - the conquest

of wisdom over ignorance.
Light pummeling the shit out
of the darkness and planting
its flag on darkness' skull to
proclaim eternal victory.
Something that, hell, we may
not achieve in this lifetime,
but wouldn't it be worth it if
we could just squelch out all of
those toxic emotions, and just
be loving 100% of the time?
When people talk about

enlightenment, it feels like there's no
room for the 'darkness' - those
shadowy parts of myself that I wish
weren't me, the parts that want to hurl
expletives at authority, lust for
strange fetishes, the jealousy of those
who make it on the Forbes 30 under

30. Let's be clear - I don't find any of
these feelings as desirable. But how
else is one to deal with what Carl
Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, called
'the Shadow'?
This is a (semi-autobiographical)
story of a child - and the shadow
that followed him. Maybe a little
more than semi, come to think of
it...
From the moment he began walking,

he was a little ball of energy - the kind
of energy that’s untethered, like a
sudden flash of the sun when it
increases its brightness.
He lived next to a giant redwood tree

that he always wanted to climb,
because the tree towered over everyone
and everything around him, casting its
shadow over his entire home. 'What
might the view be like up there?'
He wondered.
He wondered.
The world was this giant, mysterious playground that invited -

and rewarded - all of his curiosity. He had so many friends. All
the animals that he encountered - mostly cats - were potential
friends. Every object was a toy in waiting. He liked to puff
cigarettes stubs on his lawn and pretend he was Popeye the Sailor
Man.
But then it doesn’t reward him. He

falls. His toy breaks. Those friends -
the cats he met earlier - aren't there

when he needs them. Scared, he gets
jittery, cries his heart out because the
pain takes over his entire being and he
doesn’t know what to do with it. He
can’t ‘think it’ away. He doesn’t really
have the tools for that yet.
And his parents - well, they don’t like

that. They bark at him, ‘Just be still!’
‘Stop crying!’ ‘Because I said so.’ They
don’t do it because they don’t love him
- they love him more than anything
else and they’re just doing the best they
can with what they know. ‘He needs to
be tamed,’ they think, ‘just like they
were.’
But what he ends up hearing is that, to

remain loved, he has to act a certain
way.
So, he ends up putting all of these

parts of himself - the parts that
might threaten his parents’ love
for him - in a bottle.
The bottle’s not really visible (it's a

metaphor - you get it, right?). It’s hard
to really describe ‘where’ it is, actually.
Maybe it’s in his throat, every time he
swallows in something he’s ‘not
supposed to’ feel. His chest pulses.
Maybe that’s too tame a word.
Explosion, yes, that’s better - the kind
of explosion that’s contained in one of
those metallic domes that then sends
shockwaves through the earth -
shockwaves that never. No one gets
hurt - he thinks.
So swallowing becomes a habit. Every

time he's scolded by teachers, bullied
by those around him, he just keeps
depositing parts of himself the bottle.
And he sees that yes, there is a payoff -
the people around him ‘like him’. They
praise him, saying things like ‘good
boy’, the same things he hears people
tell dogs when they obey their master’s
commands.
And what he's storing in the bottle is

And what he's storing in the bottle is

energy - energy that he's deemed
unacceptable. Not who he should be.
Certainly not if he wants to remain
loved. It's too ugly, too difficult to bear.
Especially that anger. Can’t show that -

otherwise people will see him as a
fraud. Not the nice person who people
like and praises. He hates that part of
himself the most. He needs to exert a
lot of energy just keeping that side at a
distance.
By the time he's 29 (going on 30), he

has become a shell of that little ball. He
can see it every time he looks in the
mirror - a diminished self, carrying a
bottle that’s become so heavy, contents
all twisted and coiled together that it’s
no longer clear what’s inside. It’s
actually pretty frightening, now that he
thinks about it - better just keep it
aside. He’s been able to get by fine
until now - what a dumb thing that
would be to waste time in doing
therapy or something.
But he feels exhausted from years of

shoving all this energy in the bottle.
Have a crazy idea to write a novel?
'Don’t be an idiot.' Want to be a
dancer? 'Everyone will laugh at you.’
Searching for a spiritual path?
‘Religion is for the weak.’
The voice is so strong that it’s now

automatic. Not storing it in the bottle,
he knows, would mean being cast out
like a leper. He knows it for sure - he’s
seen it in others.
people like David Bowie, dressing up like omnisexual alien rock star to save th
and hedonistic - I mean just look at that snow-white tan. Bowie's so bold, so u
owie's probably emptied his bottle years ago. Maybe Bowie even smashed it to
cackling like a madman.
'What an asshole,’ he thinks, boiling

'What an asshole,’ he thinks, boiling

with bitterness. 'How can he be so free,
have so much energy, when here I am,
stuck with this bottle? What gives him
that right to just flout all convention?’
It’s almost as though he recognises a

part of himself in Bowie - a part that he
has long ago banished deep into the
bottle and sealed with an airtight cap.
He remembers who he was - and who

he could be. But it’s too late now, he
thinks. It’s too late for him to even
think about exploring that part of
himself.
The sexuality, the wildness, the

spontaneity, the anger, the freedom,
the creativity. They have now become
hostile features of his personality,
captives of the bottle.
He wonders, as he turns 30, how much

energy that bottle can really store. He’s
heard that eventually, like some over-
carbonated beverage, it might explode,

bursting its contents like shrapnel,
hitting everyone in its vicinity. He
might scream at an unacceptable
volume, hurl his body over a bridge. Or
just punch the next guy who cuts in
front of him on the subway line. While
having dinner with his friends, instead
of asking them to pass the salt, he’ll say
‘I can’t fucking stand you assholes.’
He can feel it, curdling, bubbling. He’s

no longer in control anymore. It’s no
longer floating beneath the surface of
his conscious awareness. He feels the
tremors - and he feels them everyday.
They’re so black, so dense. He thinks of
another Bowie-like character, Freddie
Mercury. ‘Oh how I want to break free,’
he sings to himself.
e wants to break free.
nd he wants it NOW. He’s tired of forcing a smile whenever his boss suggests
omething that, in his heart, knows is a terrible idea, but he just swallows it,
ecause, shit, everyone might reject it. He’s tired of pretending to be such a ‘goo
uddhist’ who looks calm and meditatious on the outside but inside, is a
restorm of unspoken rage. He’s tired of pretending that he enjoys just doing
hat all his other ‘friends’ do - going out, drinking, maybe chase some tail, but
ever wholeheartedly, because he’s a good guy and he wouldn’t want to ‘impose
s desire on someone else who might judge him for going in for the kiss and,
hen she hears he’s a Buddhist, be like ‘what the fuck, what a fraud!’ and then
hame post about him on Instagram and get media to write a story about all the
ke Buddhists out there, which will, effectively, make him the ultimate persona
on grata that no one will ever talk to. Again.
nd most of all, he’s tired of being stuck in his head, imagining all sorts of shit -
hit like becoming a persona non grata for getting rejected by a girl. He knows
at his head distorts the world through his kaleidoscopic vision. But it just feel
o safe in there, in the comfort of ‘knowing everything’ and never having to be
rong.
Against all odds, he meets a girl.

After going to a movie, he walks with
her over a bridge. He pauses.
Something about the moment gives
him a hint of ‘possibilities’. There are a

bunch of military tanks driving by and
fighter jets zooming over him. Odd.
Overcome by all this funny energy, he
goes in for the kiss. And they both
embrace, and hold on to each other like
war might erupt any moment now and
there might not be a tomorrow.
He’s shocked; that was fucking electric.

And the bottle feels a bit lighter.
And then, he approaches his

boss.
The same boss he hated so much for
hijacking his project at the last minute
without telling him, and when he told
her how he felt, she pulled rank and
told him how he shouldn’t ask those
questions, and then they had a half-
hearted conversation about how the
situation went, and, without expressing
his true feelings, he agreed to never let
it happen again. With a smile so fake
he might’ve stolen it from a Barbie
Doll. And so, for months, he’s been
holding on to that unspoken anger,

avoiding her at all costs.
But something feels different about

today. So he asks her out to tea, and
tells him how he’s been feeling; that he
hasn’t been able to connect with her,
that he didn’t feel like she listened, but
that also he’s been treating himself like
a ‘victim’. He doesn’t spray the feelings
like bullets - he’s measured in his
words. And, to his shock, she hears
him out. And she tells him all sorts of
things that he hadn’t anticipated, like
how she felt insecure in her own
position as a mother of two infant
children, how she rarely felt
acknowledged, and how she felt hurt
that she wasn’t able to connect with
him. And they hug and embrace after,
leaving all that baggage on the table.
He’s shocked; she’s not the controlling

bitch he thought she was. And the
bottle starts to feel even more light.
With things going so well, he

With things going so well, he

decides to just say, ‘fuck it,’ and
quits his job.
He wants to write the ‘Next Great
American Novel’. No, he wants to tell a
story - a story that he thinks no one
else has heard. That whole ‘Next Great’
shit is just a term he’s used to belittle
the activity - and the possibility of him
ever writing one. And so, he writes it,
spending an entire month focussed on
making it happen. A 200-page
manuscript - what a shock.
He starts sending his work to

publishers everywhere. But doesn’t
hear back. He waits a week, a month,
two months. Nothing. Maybe he’ll self-
publish. No one reads it. It wasn’t the
story he thought would rock everyone’s
socks. But he wrote it. He stepped
outside of who he thought he was. And
he created something that he could call
his own. But shit - now he needs to
make some money, he remembers.
Maybe that means he can’t live the
glorious life as a writer that he

envisioned - he might have to get his
hands dirty doing something he hates,
like consulting. But, he knows now that
doesn’t have to come at the cost of his
creative aspirations.
And all of the sudden the world

feels full of possibilities - for
himself.
He’s forgotten about the bottle that
used to control him. It’s not empty -
there’s still plenty left inside. And it’s

probably not going away. But that’s
okay.
The bottle is just part of who he is. It’s

no longer the malicious villain, here to
sabotage his shot at happiness;
instead, it’s a teacher, offering new
possibilities for him to know himself at
a deeper level. If he stands to face it,
he’ll see that the dragons were actually
just cream puffs after all.
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Dealing with Anger and the 'Cave-Manny' within 2/12/18, 6(07 pm
13 NOVEMBER 2017 / ANGER
Dealing with Anger

and the 'Cave-
Manny' within
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/dealing-with-anger-and-the-cave-manny-within/ Page 1 of 14
Holding on to anger is like

grasping a hot coal with the
intent of throwing it at
someone else; you are the one
who gets burned.
Maybe you’ve heard this one before.

The one from the Buddha illustrating
the pitfalls of anger.
How all the hot-bloodedness, increased heart rate, infusion of stress

hormones doesn’t ultimately do you any good. It’s the reptilian brain
coming out for battle.
Image: Mary Clanahan
Fight or flight.
Let’s get tribal.
Assert dominance.
Anger is wrong.
Like the time when I almost blew up at

my colleague. I’d been slogging away at
a report - a report that was kind of like
my baby. We were just in the final
stages of putting the content and
design together, preparing it to be sent

off. The report was the product of
months of research, research that I’d
designed, executed, and analyzed.
Research that involved collecting
stories from families dealing with
incredibly difficult circumstances that
only I was privy to. No one could take
this away from me.
Until he did. In one fell swoop.

Without ever consulting me. Someone
who had absolutely zero role in the
project. And what’s more, he handed
the report over to an 18-year-old
intern.
‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ I asked

myself. ‘What right does he have to
take this away from me?’
Blood hot. Heart racing. All those

stress hormones pumping, shutting
down any energy for rational thought. I
felt the caveman brain come out as if a
bear were chasing me, and that bear
was my boss. I had to slay the bear - or

be slain.
I try to call.
No answer.
So I channel that caveman into an
email. If I were to be honest, I might
just write one word:
DIE.
s crab is also saying.
My neocortex intervenes:
Wait, Manny. You’re a

Buddhist. Buddhists don’t do
that with anger. Just watch it.
It’s just energy. Let it be.
Breaaaaaaaaattttthhhheee.
Okay. Anger is bad. Anger is to be

avoided. Anger is sin. But wait, I don’t
believe in sin. There’s no good or bad,
right? That’s the whole point of
nonduality. Oh wait - oh shit. That’s
not the way you’re supposed to think
about relative truth. It still matters.
Now you’re just overthinking it.

Let it beeeeeeee.
But it’s too late - my heart rate

increases even more. My entire body is
prepared for battle. If you were to hand
me a spear, I might impale the next
person who touches me. I fire off a
strongly worded email asking how he
could do that.
Cave-Manny Crush. CAVE-MANNY

KILL.
I look for sympathizers. I tell a

colleague about the situation.
Yeah, man. That’s total bullshit.
Right? CAVE-MANNY KILL.
But wait, Manny. You do

realize he could fire you. Then
you’d lose everything - where
would you go? Your
relationship would fall apart.
Your parents would say, ‘I told
you he wouldn’t make it
through this.’ And it would be
ALL YOUR FAULT.
Whoa. Whoaaaaaa. Then you see his

response.
He’s pulling rank. Oh no he didn’t…

CAVE-MANNY KILL.
But then, I think: I’m walking on thin

But then, I think: I’m walking on thin

ice. I’m new here. I escalate this
anymore and...KER-PLOW.
But CAVE-MANNY K-- no. No more

Cave-Manny.
And so, I take that hot stone. And I

swallow. I apologize profusely. We
have a one-on-one conversation in
which I feign coming to an
understanding with him. It’s forced,
only intended to avoid bringing up that
stone that never really went away.
A stone that had a lot of friends in my

stomach. Other stones I’d swallowed
when I’d felt like a beta male. When I
thought I’d lose face. But that hot stone
doesn’t cool off in my stomach. I didn’t
think I have the enzymes or acids to
really break that down. It’s invisible.
At least I thought it was.
But the energy never really left me and
my colleague. It just meant I would

glower icily at him every time he
entered the room. It meant I’d ignore
him whenever he came in, smiling
joyfully. I’d shut down, with my
headphones covering my ears while I
secretly paused the music to hear him
speak so that I could wait for him to
say something dumb and confirm my
feelings towards him.
CAVE-MANNY still want to kill.
‘But you shouldn’t,’ the voice says.

‘Love him. He’s your teacher about
anger. Just visualise him as a child,
seeking exactly what you want -
happiness. Freedom from suffer-’
CAVE-MANNY KILL THE VOICE.
This goes on for about nine months.

Nine months of avoidance, of carrying
this energy, of cursing this person.
Calling the anger out as ‘bad’ is just as
effective at uprooting it as is raising a
fist in protest to a dictatorial president.
It just didn’t work.
Until I actually talked with him -

honestly. I waited 9 months to
approach him and share my feelings
around the whole saga. How I’d let this
become a reason to resent him. How he
himself had felt that every time he’d
enter a room and feel the energy drop
when he was within a five-meter radius
of me. And how, this whole time, he’d
just been struggling himself in his new
leadership role.
It’s never been easy for me to confront

others after I’ve felt intentionally hurt
or wronged and when the anger feels
almost uncontrollable, even shameful.
To cope, I dissociate from the feeling.
And what happens? The anger just
festers. And festers. Until the object of
the anger is no longer human anymore
- it's an idea.
In our ‘civilized’ society, anger is

probably the most complicated
emotion to manage with all the ethical
and legal constraints in place to fence
it in. To tame this emotional tendency

that we haven’t quite evolved from our
caveman days.
But the more I find ways of expressing

it, the more I wonder - might there be a
way to actually channel this in a
productive way that invites honesty,
openness and connection?

Questions
your inbox
The Path to Becoming Wise (Without Shakespeare) 2/12/18, 6(07 pm
30 OCTOBER 2017 / LIVING THE QUESTIONS
The Path to
Becoming Wise
(Without
Shakespeare)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/love-shakespeare-and-what-it-means-to-live-the-questions/ Page 1 of 21
Like most 18-year-olds, I

never got Shakespearean
sonnets. He had so many
stressed syllables, I thought
they were going to suffer a
nervous breakdown before the
poem even finished.
Heh.
Heh.
But really, I didn’t get Shakespeare.

Kind of like how people don’t get Bob
Dylan and his raspy poetic music. (I
also happen to be one of those people.
Does that make me so uncultured?)
And so, after completing an analysis of

And so, after completing an analysis of

one of the sonnets in Coach G’s English
class, an analysis that featured a lot of
cobbled together bullshit that I
borrowed from Wedding Crashers on
love being the ‘soul’s recognition of its
counterpoint in another’ - seriously I
used that - my teacher, ignoring the
reference, wrote in her B+ assessment
of my paper:
“You need to get a girlfriend.

It’ll help you understand
sonnets better.”
This comment did not stay private for

long. Before I knew it, everyone in class
knew that Coach G - an eccentric, fifty-
something - had just offered me (and
only me) - unsolicited love advice. As
you might imagine, this tickled the
hazing triggers of my entire class.
Somehow, I didn’t feel any of that fiery,

youthful resentment towards her for
exposing me like that. Deep down, I
knew I didn’t know a damn thing about

love. I could recite poems by Rumi - by
poems, I mean one poem - but I had no
idea what it meant to surrender and
risk it all for another human being.
Love was nothing more than an
aesthetic experience, something I could
only consume through indulgent
endings of Judd Apatow romcoms in
which even the deadbeat hipsters like
Seth Rogen could woo the likes of
Katherine Heigl.
does this^ happen???
Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I

really loved anyone (other than
myself).
But the idea of love has always been

intoxicating to me. Love has always
held this position as the peak life
experience, the promise to lose one’s
self and never have to return to my tiny
skull-sized kingdom that I’m pretty
sure has had more coups than
Thailand. (BOOM!)
Maybe that's why I got all into the

literature on mysticism in college.
Augustine, Plotinus, Dogen, Chogyam
Trungpa, Rumi, Hafiz...all of these
writers spoke about a 'love' so BIG.
Love,
as an indissoluble union with the
ultimate,
the return to the source,
the recognition of what already is - as
all things interwoven in some giant
room of mirrors that just reflects back
at each other
A love
so BIG that it's unsayable, it
transcends all concepts and punches
the ego straight between the eyes but
has a fist so big that it just bruises the
whole face
A love that wouldn't involve so much
drama that's a result of playing to
small, two-person love game (
Shakespeare).
A love that meant I no longer had to
think.
Moved by this notion of boundless

love, I began to mold myself into an
orb that emitted more rays of love than
firecrackers on Diwali.
I enrolled myself into all these public

service courses, because public service
is the only place love can happen,
right?
I did my honor’s thesis on this
programme that taught kids
meditation, because that basically
means they were being marched on the
path to enlightenment.
I entered the 'caring' professions,
because bankers, consultants,
engineers, doctors, and lawyers
(especially lawyers) can't be vessels for
love.
(Sarcasm, guys - I come from a family
of engineers and doctors)
And yet, after all of this, I just felt so

burnt out. Whenever I showed up to
volunteer, all I could think about was
how I just wanted to get this all over
with. To put on the smile, pretend like
I loved everybody, and just go home,
shut myself off from the world, and
play Pro Evolution.
I still didn’t love anyone in the way that

I thought I should love. And I sure as
hell didn’t know a damn thing about
sonnets. And I didn’t know why.
A little over a century before my

English teacher pointed out my
passionless life, a nineteen-year-old
Austrian cadet by the name of Franz
Kappus began writing to one of
Germany’s literary giants, Rainer
Maria Rilke.
A student at the Theresian Military

Academy, Kappus was a writer
disguised in a military uniform.
Insecure about whether his writing was
good enough to take up the life of a
poet, he sought the advice of Rilke,
who, at 27, was then an indie poet
known for his new age-y poetry that
decoupled mysticism from religion and
won him a small, hipster-like

following. With poems like:
I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the
primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands
of years
and I still don’t know: am I a
falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Rilke, still a nobody in his own mind,

wrote just as he had been trying to
locate his own footing within Auguste
Rodin’s in Paris. Rodin, then a lionized
master in his sixties, had enchanted
Rilke as the ideal of how an artist
should live - but also as an ideal that
felt so distant from himself. He had
gone to Paris not just to write about
Rodin but to figure out how to live. As
Rachel Corbett writes,
If Rodin was a mountain, Rilke

was the mist encircling it.
Rilke (left) had a religious devotion to Auguste Rodin, whom he

covered as an art critic - but saw as a master
But Kappus’ call for help awoke Rilke

from his own inhibitions. It was almost
like getting a call from a younger
version of himself. Like Kappus, Rilke
had also gone to a military academy
that didn’t really suit his artistic
sensibilities, had felt the indignation of
forever feeling like a misfit until he
found something he could crush -
poetry - and be like ‘what now,

bitches?’ Both Kappus and Rilke had
stood on the same soil, worn the same
uniform and shared the same dream.
Kappus wanted answers. He wanted

someone to tell him, ‘Your poetry is lit
bro! And you’ll be famous!’ He wanted
to see himself in the reflection of his
master’s eye. Like Pinocchio.
Rilke knew this whole external

validation game doesn’t really work.
"Nobody can advise you and help you,"

wrote Rilke, "nobody. There is only one
way. Go into yourself.” He knew that
the best judge of Kappus’ poetry would
not be anyone other than Kappus. In
returning one of Kappus’ poems that
Kappus had sent, Rilke re-wrote the
poem in his own handwriting, advising
him to
“Read the poem as if you had

never seen it before, and you
will feel in your innermost

being how very much it is your
own.”
Instead of advising Kappus on the

profession of poetry, he opted to guide
him on poetic life - about love,
solitude, and this mindset of living the
questions:
“Be patient toward all that is

unsolved in your heart and try
to love the questions
themselves, like locked rooms
and like books that are now
written in a very foreign
tongue. Do not now seek the
answers, which cannot be
given you because you would
not be able to live them. And
the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then
gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer.”
(You can find the letters in Rilke’s

Letter’s to a Young Poet, which were
posthumously published by Kappus.)
“You’re impatient,” one of my coaches

told me in a recent feedback session.
“Impatient?” I asked, puzzled.

“Impatient for what?”
“Impatient in the sense that you speed-

read everything. And when you’re
done, you say ‘yes, I’ve got it,’ then you
try to put it into practice before you’re
even ready to. You don’t let these
insights that you receive from others
sit with you so that you’re not just
regurgitating it without fully owning
it.”
And it hit me. After all these years, I'm

always the first to reach for movie
reviews after seeing the movie, to read

the commentary after reading the root
text. I don't let things sit with me -
mostly because I don't want to have to
figure it out for myself. Maybe it's
because I've allowed Google's
processing power to replace my own.
Ironically, one of these received

insights that I’ve been sitting with has
been Rilke’s point on “living the
questions.” What does it really mean to
live a life through questions, through
that strange ambiguous space between
knowing something to be true versus
really feeling it to be true, such that
you’d be able to effortlessly defend it
even in a drunken stupor?
One of the wondrous things about

truths is how you can share the same,
exact truth to people. But what they
hear can be entirely divorced from
what you were certain it meant.
Take Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”:
BOB MARLEY THREE LITTLE BIRDS
Don't worry about a thing,

'Cause every little thing gonna
be alright.
Singing' Don't worry about a
thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna
be alright!
Three people might listen to Bob spit

wisdom and hear it in three entirely
different ways.
The first person who hears this might

be like:
"Oh my god. That hits me
perfectly right now at this point

in my life when I’m facing all
this stress. That's what I
needed, because I'm going
through this and I wasn't sure.
And this gives me perfect
clarity. Ah, I was putting
importance on the wrong
things."
The second person who hears this

might be like:
"That makes sense..."
And then five years down the line, after

entering the workforce, getting
married, and then losing a job might be
like:
“Wow! That’s what Bob Marley

meant - the wisdom of
simplicity!”
The third person who hears this might

be like:
“This is slow and dumb - I think

I’ll just go listen to Steve Aoki
and those EDM fiends instead.”
(No one calls them ‘EDM
fiends’, I know)
Neither of these people’s experiences is

‘wrong’ - it’s kind of just how the
transmission of wisdom works. The
truth can’t be heard by ears that aren’t
ready to accept it.
And now I think I really get what

Coach G had been telling me all those
years ago - I needed to get myself out
there in the world if I really wanted to
gain some kind of understanding of
love (and maybe decipher
Shakespearean sonnets). Because there
really is no substitute for personal
experience in the path to becoming
wise. The Buddha understood this very
well.
Taking risks at work, experimenting
with love, and reflecting all have made
me more receptive to these truths

about self, time, love, impermanence
and death. And that’s really why I’ve
started this blog - to document my
journey to becoming more wise and
loving.
s my man Willy Shakes says, gotta take it slow:
The best explanation of Buddhism I've heard 2/12/18, 6(06 pm
26 NOVEMBER 2017 / BUDDHISM
The Best Explanation

of Buddhism I've Ever
Heard (Alongside My
Journey)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/the-best-explanation-of-buddhism-ive-ever-heard/ Page 1 of 20
When I embarked on the

Buddhist path over seven
years ago, the circumstances
were, I imagine, not unlike
those of the Beat poets.
A bout of existential nausea.
An unshakeable feeling of
groundlessness that no movie, no self-
help book, no relationship could fill.
An insecurity arising from questions

such as, ‘Is this it?’ ‘Why live at all?’
I just felt so...sad.
The ‘heart of sadness’ and

Buddhism
And then I read Cutting through

Spiritual Materialism, and discovered
that there was nothing wrong with this
feeling that continually bubbled up;
rather, it was to embraced:
If you search for awakened

heart, if you put your hand
through your rib cage and feel
for it, there is nothing there
except for tenderness. You feel
sore and soft, and if you open
your eyes to the rest of the
world, you feel tremendous
sadness. This kind of sadness
doesn’t come from being
mistreated. You don’t feel sad
because someone has insulted
you or because you feel
impoverished.
Rather, this experience of

sadness is unconditioned. It
occurs because your heart is
completely exposed. There is no
skin or tissue covering it; it is
pure raw meat. Even if a tiny

mosquito lands on it, you feel
so touched. Your experience is
raw and tender and so
personal.
The genuine heart of sadness

comes from feeling that your
nonexistent heart is full. You
would like to spill your heart’s
blood, give your heart to
others.
Reading a spiritual teacher so genuine

in his expression, so poetic in his
articulation of this feeling that had
lingered with me for years, got me to
ditch my Zizek books and David Lynch
films for the meditation cushion.
Never would I have thought that this

undirected sadness and generalized
awkwardness was just part and parcel
of existence, a perpetual
dissatisfactori-ness that marked the
human condition. And this self that I’d
been searching for? It had no ground
to begin with. Scrambling to find one,
paradoxically, just made things worse.
So...I did what any impulsive,

searching college kid would do: I took a
gap year to dive into the dharma,

studying at the seat of the Buddha’s
enlightenment in Bodh Gaya for four
months, going on meditation retreats,
attending teachings by great Buddhist
masters, including the Dalai Lama.
And all of this was, mostly, an

improvised act. There’s no curriculum
to follow for being a Buddhist. No hard
and fast rules, no church, no five times
of prayer. Essentially, there’s no real
structure - and that, first, was what
drew me to it.
It was the Buddha’s injunction, after

all, to approach practice empirically:
Do not go upon what has been

acquired by repeated hearing;
nor upon tradition; nor upon
rumor; nor upon what is in a
scripture; nor upon surmise;
nor upon an axiom; nor upon
specious reasoning; nor upon a
bias towards a notion that has
been pondered over; nor upon

another’s seeming ability; nor
upon the consideration, “The
monk is our teacher.” But when
you yourselves know: “These
things are good; these things
are not blamable; these things
are praised by the wise;
undertaken and observed, these
things lead to benefit and
happiness,” enter on and abide
in them.
The Buddha’s so cheeky, isn’t he?
‘Don’t believe me, huh? Sure go on

drowning your sorrows in comic books,
skipping meditation sessions, and
pretending like you’ll never die. See
how that works out.’
Okay, maybe that’s how I hear it in my

head.
Since that period, I’ve really been

trying to work out for myself what it
means to be a Buddhist. Sure, I identify

with all these beliefs around the non-
existence of the self, impermanence,
and that, at the core, that we are all
entwined together in this cycle of
suffering that somehow forms the basis
of compassion. But what does it mean
on an everyday basis? (I’ve previously
written about how, for several years, I
thought that this meant I had to be a
monk)
Meditation has been at the core of that

practice. And, definitely, it’s helped
loosen me up a little bit from my
obsessions and inhibitions. I’ve also
sought the advice of a lot of different
masters.
But still, I’ve been wondering, ‘Am I

doing this right?’ ‘Am I just getting
stuck?’ Sometimes, for example, I
wonder whether I’m doing the
meditation just for that ephemeral
feeling of abiding bliss rather than
really understanding the truth.
Everything can feel so unstructured

and messy: on the one hand you’ve got
all the relative truth stuff - like
cultivating mindfulness, compassion,
and discipline - and then you’ve got the
ultimate truth stuff that centers around
this all-pervasive emptiness, which
initially sounds like it negates the
relative until you realize that it goes
beyond concepts. And that, somehow,
both the relative and ultimate need to
be harmonized. The whole path can
feel quite daunting.
In a recent talk (actually titled, ‘Peyote

vs Shamatha vs Vipassana vs Habanero
vs Mariachi vs Mojito’), Dzongsar
Khyentse Rinpoche offered a useful
framework that, to me, helped me
coherently structure the Buddhist
path:
'View, Practice, Behavior, and Result':…
I think I’ve probably heard similar

frameworks before. But that’s the other
thing I’ve found about Buddhism -
sometimes, you need to hear the same
thing a thousand times before it finally
sinks in.
Here’s my stab at understanding the

framework:
The View: At the Core of

Everything Else
Of these four elements, the view is the
most important. You lose these core
beliefs, everything else crumbles. The
view is encompassed by the four seals:
1. All compounded things are

impermanent
2. All emotions are pain
3. All phenomena are inherently

non-existent.
4. Nirvana is beyond concepts
(You can read more about the four

seals here)
Intellectually, these are fairly easy to

accept. But internalizing them is a
whole ‘nother endeavor.
Practice: Breaking Down

Concepts
All practices - meditation, chanting,
making offerings, prostrations, and

thousands more - are intended to bring
the practitioner beyond “dualistic
distinctions.”
Dualistic distinctions have to do with

the concepts we create: ‘good vs. bad’,
‘you vs. me’. These distinctions create
hope and fear, expectations and
judgment. What happens to a tree
when you remove its label, for
example, and observe it for what it is?
The poet William Blake was quite
skillful at this:
How do you know but every

bird that cuts the airy way, is
an immense world of delight,
closed by your senses five?
Seest thou the little winged fly,

smaller than a grain of sand?
It has a heart like thee, a brain
open to heaven and hell,
Withinside wondrous and
expansive; its gates are not
closed;
I hope thine are not.
Another method is ‘peyote’:
What these substances do is

suddenly upset the normal
dualistic distinctions. Suddenly
that door is so far. Suddenly
that cup is so heavy.
The problem, of course, is that peyote

expires in 6 hours - leaving you are
more angry and disappointed.
Behavior: The Middle Way

Next is behavior. Rinpoche doesn’t
delve too much into this, describing it
as the path to moderation and the
“middle way”. At some level, I see this
as ‘living the questions’ - as not taking
extremes in practice in terms of
penance and forcing oneself into a
belief, while at the same time not over-
indulging.
Result: Removing the dirt

Lastly, and to me the most profound, is
the result. As Rinpoche points out, this
isn’t something to be acquired; rather,
it’s something to be eliminated. This is
because there is nothing to be gained;
we have that capacity already.
As Rumi once wrote,
Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
The metaphor of ‘dish-washing’ is

quite evocative int his regard.
We talk about washing dishes as

though the dish were the problem. But
the dish hasn’t changed - it just has
accumulated some potentially sticky
residue from the food. ‘Washing
dishes’, in this sense, is about restoring
our image of the dish to its original
state.
The Buddhist path is messy - but

it doesn't have to be unclear
Seeking the truth is a necessarily messy

endeavour that requires a lot of dish-
washing.
But Rinpoche's fourfold framework has

given me a sort of 'Buddhist GPS' to
The biggest lesson I learned in my twenties 2/12/18, 6(07 pm
19 OCTOBER 2017 / SELF-ACCEPTANCE
On 'fitting in' (or

ramblings from a
slightly terrified and
newly-minted thirty-
year-old)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/turning-30/ Page 1 of 17
My twenties, petulant as they

were, taught me a lot of things.
Important things, like how to
not get seduced into reading
‘29 things you have to do
before you turn 30’ and other
click-baity titles that I click on
it anyway because, well, the
closer I got to thirty the more
my bookshelf got populated by
all the self-help literature.
That’s kind of the gist of my twenties;

an impatient kid continually asking
himself,
‘Is this it?’
And then finding out that
‘No, this isn't it you fool - you

have to de-clutter your life and
mind, and focus, and
prototype, and dream, and
passion, and mastery...'
And feel shitty that I am not that. And

then get caught in the next self-help
hype, 'designing your life' fad,
forgetting the previous one like a bad
movie.
I couldn’t have turned thirty at a better

point in my life. Finally, I’m starting to
‘get’ at a gut level what it means to just
fit in.
To fit into my skin.

This one-by-one box of bone,
intestines, muscle, cells, unused tears,
repressed memories, stories of guilt,
joy, and brokenheartedness.
This box that, now blossomed to its full

genetic potential, still kind of sags, but
not like the way an old man’s does but
like a kid in his dad’s oversized suit. Oh
delayed adolescence...
Not that I look that I’m that oversized

anyway, right?
I still relish the comments that I
occasionally get that I look 20, though
my hairline will not always be so kind.
At least I can’t guarantee that...

...though, now that I think about it,
people have stopped asking for my ID.
At 30, I still can’t grow a beard with the

density of a hipster’s - it kind of just
looks like a concentration of pubic hair
on my face, which I’m told is not so
attractive.
Ageing, no longer has that positive

connotation of growth. Now it’s kinda
just about decay and hurtling towards
death.
My hair, once a shimmering black

puffball of an afro, is beginning to gray.
I no longer have the ability to suck in

my stomach and produce a six pack
(it’s popping out).
Along with my joints that crack a little

more every morning I wake up,
prefacing the onset of arthritis from
years of huddling at my computer
stalking girls I longed for in college on
Facebook…
To fit into my words.

At 20, I swiped them from other, more
clever writers - like David Foster
Wallace
My words were missing that extra
punchline that kept a phrase from
being punchy and meaningful and
capable of going viral
‘The truth will set you free.’ Right.
Cliché. BORING.
And then DFW's twist:
Oh shit.
I know that means something more but

I can’t really grock it yet.
My words were overdue library books

that I never actually read, but propped
them on my bookshelf so that others
would be like, ooooohhhh shiiiiiit.

Proust, Heidegger, AND Joyce - names
that could always lend more weight to
whatever bullshit I tried to advance.
And now words feel more natural,

more effortless. And, if you run them
through a Grammarly check, you’ll
notice they weren’t plagiarized!
To fit into place.

Even though I’ve never really had one,
I guess.
A little Oklahoma became a Texas boy

became a self-denying British kid who
then became Texan again, but not
really, because there’s no going back
after you’ve gone so far, until you go to
California where somebody can be
anybody until I realised that was
nobody, so I was like, hey why not try
to be Bhutanese? Makes sense, right?
Sidenote/True story: I pretended I

had OCD my ENTIRE freshman year
because I thought it would be cute and

quirky like that TV character, Monk.
And then I saw that I wasn’t the only
one, because a meme actually exists
describing that sort of attention-
seeking deception, and it made me
think like WTF is going on with this
generation that I’m a part of that we’ll
go to the extent of pretending to be
germaphobes?
But now, I get it. I’m American.

Anywhere I go, I bring that lens with
me. Sure I throw on a gho, speak a
little Dzongkha, and respond to every
elder with ‘Yes, la’. But in the end, I’m
American, with all the baggage and
pride that term carries.
To fit into my feelings.

Well, I didn’t really know about these
actually.
Mostly because I was preoccupied with

other people’s thoughts of me.
Until I realized how seldom they do -
they’re too busy with other thoughts,
like living their own lives.
And then I watched Miyazaki’s Spirited

Away, and I wept uncontrollably for
the 10-year-old Chihiro when she

finally realised that Haku’s the river
spirit, but then she leaves the bath
house of witches, giant radishes, and
spirits that her parents can’t see.
To fit into my dreams.

My dreams were never really mine.
More like an idea from another

person’s mind.
Of revolutions, radicalisms, brain

hacks, transformations.
Overnight changes that promised

salvation.
And then I watched Spirited Away

again, and wept when I saw that I’d
lost touch with the little joys that I still
had, and were okay.
It turns out that insights are hard-

earned and not transmitted through
some cable that you plug at the back of
your head (like in the Matrix).
But I’d be lying if I framed this

whole decade as being the lead in
my own story.
There have been my parents and
brother who, after a decade of ignored

phone calls, missed meals, and general
neglect, still stand by me.
There have been many cast in and out,

coming on stage probably when I
needed it most, when I couldn’t bear
just being the only one facing the light.
Friends, mentors, advisors, those

random connections that you just can’t
explain, like you’re at a party and all of
the sudden you realise that the person
across from you lives just two blocks
down from where you grew up and just
read Kafka on the Shore, like you did -
and then you end up in one of the most
intense 5-day relationships, spilling
each and every one of your guts until
yours and their merge into some
chimera-like beast. And then never see
them again after.
Yeah, those kinds of connections.
I can’t count how many I’ve had - and

how much they’ve taught me.
Messengers, I guess. I don’t like the

whole New Age approach to ascribing
cosmic significance to each and every
one of these, but there’s something that
defies explanation and that’s just far
too wondrous to ever merit one.
But none more wondrous than this

connection I have with this girl, Jialing
Lim.
This girl who has shown me, day after

day, how to actually say, ‘I love you,’
and mean it with a conviction that
would make Wolverine’s adamantium
claws crumble into sawdust.
As I enter the big 3-0, I’m starting

to fit into my skin.
It took me ten years to really earn the

insight that the skin’s less of a tight,
tailored fit with little room to grow a
belly. Definitely not spandex that
would flap up to reveal the belly. More
of a stretchy fabric, like the kind that
Ministry of Supply make. They’re not a
government Ministry, and this isn’t a
promotional message, so I’m not going
A letter to Bhutan, the country I loved - and still do. 2/12/18, 6(05 pm
4 DECEMBER 2017 / BHUTAN
Dear Bhutan (A letter

from an old lover)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/dearbhutan/ Page 1 of 21
Dear Bhutan,
It’s been nearly 10 years since we met

Can you believe it?
That’s so long.
It’s funny that you’ve become one of

the bedrocks of my life:
You, this small little kingdom tucked

away in the Himal^^^^
You are the happie^^ pl^ê
You who have such rich cult^ê
You are who are blessed with such
l^sh f^^^^^sts and fr^^ fl^^^^^ng
riv^^s
You with the phallu^^^ dedicated to a
Di^^^ne Ma^^ân
(N.B. Content edited for any
cringeworthy clichés)
Okay, fine. I’ll cut it with all those
tiresome shibboleths. (N.B. This post

will NOT feature any photos of Tiger's
Nest).
You’ve heard them on all the other
stories about Bhutan - the Guardian
articles, the TED Talks, the Kickstarter
campaigns, the tourist brochures.
Let’s get real.
Since I left you three years ago,

there’s a little bit of heartache every
time I visit.
That feeling that I could never forget
you.
Nor...do I really want to.
It’s like trauma, but the opposite.

What is that, anyway?
Let’s call it Ob-auma.
Ok, just kidding. It's one of those lame

rhyming jokes that my dad might make
(that also happens to be far too timely).
I guess the Portuguese saudade is still
appropriate here - the melancholic
longing for something that will never
come back - and likely never existed.
(A photo of a raven experiencing

saudade)
But that’s pretty dark, right? I don’t

know if saudade quite captures it.
Mapping the human emotional

landscape to language doesn’t work out
when you have a feeling so precise and
granular, one that I could sift my
fingers through, enjoying its rough and
unrefined texture that, in my inability
to recognise it, showed me that I still
live, breathe and wonder with every
moment, that there’s so much I still
don’t know and even if I memorized all
of the untranslatable emotions.
I guess that’s why poetry exists. But

then, I was never really a poet, was I?
So. Let’s just call it heartache.

It’s simple enough to convey what I’m
trying to say.
Bear with me, ok?
The heartache always strikes when I

alight the plane at the Paro airport on a
sunny, winter’s day. I feel you in all
your splendor as I inhale your winds,
as if they were kisses from the firs and
rhododendrons surrounding me. It’s
an experience that rarely tires me.
(The token chilip photo)
The heartache always strikes when I

think of the people - the ones that
made me feel special. That showed me
that I’ve got a bit of narcissism - who
doesn’t love to feel like they’re the
special little chilip (‘foreigners’), that

honorary Bhutanese who can take the
daley chilis while taking a swig of ara
(Bhutan's version of sake)?
But you also showed me how much I

have to contribute to others. I hardly
ever fancied myself as a leader; as
someone who could influence the lives
of others to be greater than anything
they could have imagined. And then,
when I see the results, as I did on this
past trip, my impact is undeniable.
Young people have found courage
because of me; have found purpose
because of me; and, have shifted their
view of the world.
Because of me.
And because I can see that - and not

shy away from or deny it out of false
modesty - I feel empowered.
In all our years that we’ve been

together, I don’t think I’ve properly
acknowledged that.
You know: the ways in which you

empowered me. (I'll talk about that
more in the next post).
This heartache - it’s like it won’t go

away. It’s contained within all of these
seemingly small and insignificant
details. Like how I can’t let go of some
of those long, road trips on buses
where the driver would loop the same
three tracks (Singlem, if anyone
remembers that earworm) on your
narrow, bumpy roads that curve across
mountains such that I’d be nauseous
for half the ride, fart uncontrollably
from all the cheese I’d been eating and,
if questions were asked, I’d lay the
blame on some slumbering uncle.
Because that’s what old people do -
fart. Publicly. And then on those night
stops, we’d all stay at some dingy hotel
near the bus with zero insulation and a
hardly functional toilet that if I had to
get up in the middle of the night to go
to, I’d be shivering for the next 30

minutes until I’d successfully re-tucked
myself back in and regained all the
warmth I’d spent hours accumulating.
Man going through those rides meant
that when I’d reach the destination of
my little pilgrimage, it would feel that
much sweeter.
Okay, fine. Maybe I’m waxing a little

too much nostalgia now.
**But then there are the parts that just

allow my face to rest in a smile. **
BBC)
Like the road signs from my BRO (The

Indian Border Roads Organisation,
that is). I always enjoy imagining what
those meetings looked like with the
BRO team, the same team that came to
the conclusion that amusing roadside
limericks were the best way to deter
irresponsible driving and behaviour
and so they appointed a small time of
rejected poets to come up with
hundreds of couplets and metaphors
that they could pull from. My all-time
favorite remains “Be Gentle on My
Curves!”, though “Driving with Whisky
is Risky” is a close second.
*(Photo Credit: BBC)

*
What else is there?
Oh! Your devilishly spicy food that

never ceases to send me to the toilet
and sear my ass for days. Bhutan, as
my friend shared with me, is the only
place in the world that recognises
chillies not as a seasoning - but as a
"core vegetable".
Not much more I can really add to that,

other than that my tongue is now
irreversibly Bhutanese not so much by
its affinity to chillies, but moreso
because I simply can’t taste anything

that doesn’t include chillies. Ever.
Again!
And the annoyingly lovable cover

bands of Mojo Park that have
performed at least a dozen variations
of CCR’s “Rolling on the River’” and
Metallica’s “Whiskey in the Jar.” It’s
amazing how far mediocre rock travels,
isn’t it?
Somehow, even all this small society

gossiping and muckraking has it’s
charm.
Actually, wait - no it doesn’t.
Come to think of it.
Yeah, I could do without that part of
you.
But I do fear that someday you

may forget me.
Worse - that you already have.
Like you just moved on.
With all those hotels, car dealers.
These new chilips.
And these younger Bhutanese I’ve

never seen - who are they? I thought
they were just kids while I was here.
Man, six years is a lot for a 17 year-old
I guess.
I move through decades now - not

years.
Just as my friends do.
The older ones who are married - or
getting married.
Who have gone on to have kids and
proceed to the next life stage.
Like, WTF?
I guess it’s normal.
Maybe I need to move on.

It’s not like we’re pretending to be
friends, right?
The love has been there.
Real love - not the fake love dispensed
by all those syrupy storytellers that
don’t dare take a closer look at you.
That don’t dare get to know what your
people really think.
Other people will only love you for your
gloss.
I love you for your contradictions.
Even the small society part. Yes, even
that.
Cause that’s what love is, right?

The Zooey Deschanel’s of the world,
the manic pixie dream girls, always
comes with the manic side.
When you learn to lean in past all the
stubborn imperfections, those pieces
that you wish you could change so
much but just won’t move as long as
you try to push it out.
I was kind of hoping for some

Pygmalion effect.
You know, I dress you up as my fair
lady and then you beat me at my own
game.
Hah! I thought I could tout you up as
the special example of the new
paradigm that every country should
follow.
But that moment never came.
I guess that’s how change works - you
can’t really shove it down their throat

like some hot chili.
Otherwise it just leads to more painful
ass-burns.
Sometimes I wonder whether it could

have been different.
Not that I want to get married to you or
anything.
That much I’m sure of.
There may have been a time where it
looked like it might happen.
That I might just get a Bhutanese wife
or maybe become a monk that goes for
lifelong retreats.
But I just couldn’t.
Not out of a fear of commitment or
anything. (Though maybe there’s still a
bit of that...).
And no - there’s not anyone else. Well,
maybe there is.
I’m still thinking about it.
I mean, I could see us - and

maybe that’s the problem.
I don’t like what I see with us.
That kind of relationship might cripple

both of us to a life of stagnation.
Of never really growing much together
past a certain point.
That life would have it’s nice pace and
a great view.
But maybe that’s just not what I’m
looking for anymore.
Let me be clear.
You’re not an ‘escape’ and you never
were.
Anyone who says you are is in denial
and is dealing with some deep-seated
issues back home.
You're just as real as any other place.
And man, it just feels like shit gets
realer every time.
So don’t worry - this isn’t

goodbye.
We won’t be like those other ex-lovers
that refuse to see each other.
You know I could never do that.
But we’re something different now, you
and I.
And that’s just something I’m working

to accept.
You’re more than just a ‘part’ of me,

right?
You’re more like my reflection.
And that’s why I’ll always be grateful.
But it's not just me who's benefited

from this relationship - you have, also.
And that's what I'm going to share with
you in my next letter.
Love,
Me

Questions
your inbox
Dear Bhutan (On Contributions and the Gandhian fallacy) 2/12/18, 6(05 pm
13 DECEMBER 2017 / BHUTAN
Dear Bhutan (On

Contributions and
the Gandhian fallacy)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/dear-bhutan-what-i-contributed-to-you/ Page 1 of 25
Dear Bhutan,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the

idea of ‘legacy’
And what it is I intend to leave behind
How it is I intend to change the world.
And not just intend - but how I have
changed it.
There’s this fallacy that floats around

the ‘change making’ circles.
“You must be the change you

wish to see in the world.”
Often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.
So I’ll call it the Gandhian fallacy.

Not that Gandhi is wrong, or anything.
Or he might be, I don’t know.
It’s just that the aforementioned quote
has been extracted and probably

decontextualized to the point where it
can no longer be meaningful, like those
misattributed Einstein witticisms
about insanity (‘doing something over
and over again and expecting a
different result’) and who knows what
else, but hey it’s got Einstein’s name
attached to it, so let’s just go with it.
Here’s why it’s a fallacy.

There’s this premise of a sequence.
Of seeing the light first
before you help others see it (Plato’s

Cave).
Of attaining enlightenment before one

supports others.
The saviour who transforms (mostly)
himself through extraordinary means
of penance, contemplation and
sacrifice before he has summoned the
indomitable strength of a juggernaut to
lift the world out of its misery. (Yes, it’s
almost always a HE)
The return of the hero who’s come
back with his excalibur to slay all of
these demons.
That you’ve managed to sober up,
unlike all of us submersed in our
drunken stupors.
Consider this.
When I came to you in 2011

I was hardly the model of an exemplary
citizen.
You know?
The kind that would import the values
of freedom and responsibility just by
his very being.
I didn’t vote.
I didn’t care much for politics.
I hardly volunteered.
And when I did, it was done
begrudgingly, so as to be seen as doing
good.
And yet, here I was.

Placed in a position to lead and design
experiences for young people that
would open up to this new way of life.
In those early days, I wondered why
exactly I signed up for this.
Maybe I just wanted to be a part of the
Bhutan GNH movement.
Maybe I thought I could score a big
book deal once it succeeded.
And there you were.
And there were these young people

around us.
Those same young people who so often
Would cover themselves
Behind their ghos and kiras
That burning desire to speak
To say, ‘I am here’
To ask, ‘Can you see me?’
But never too loudly.
Only in slight tremors.
The kind of tremors that you can
ignore just long enough
before the edges begin to grind against
one another
Building up pressure
until the waves
shake the ground from side to side
leaving one swaying
like a boat on water.
In connecting my own
inhibitions, my own sense of
alienation with these young
people something changed.
In the freshness of that experience
Of being in a place where democracy

was so new
Where democracy hadn’t been
engraved into your consciousness with
a deep laser
More like a barely visible outline on
sand
Beginner’s mind.
Covered in chilis.
After that first workshop that I

designed and facilitated, something
changed.
Within days, I could see the inner walls
of young people start to crumble.
Like they’d heard the sounds of their
own voices for the first time.
They could take their own stands for

issues, like human rights, gender
equality, and sexuality.
And there I was, right there with them.
The high of facilitating someone’s

transformation, of triggering off a habit
of thought like that of a lancet fluke, a
virus which takes over the brain of an

ant so that it climbs up to the top of a
blade of a grass only not because it’s
beneficial to the ant - the ant just gets
consumed by the grazing cows - but
more for the lancet fluke to hitch a ride
into the stomachs of the grazing cows
so that it can reproduce.
Does that make sense? Probably not,
right?
Well, okay, if that disturbing

analogy doesn’t work, let’s try
some actual stories.
You know I ran a lot of workshops,

right?
Like, over twenty at least.
Workshops with hundreds of young
people, about subjects ranging from
documentary filmmaking to citizen
journalism to what it takes to be an
MP.
And after those workshops, some of
those participants walked away a
different person.
On this past visit, I had the rare

opportunity to speak with these people
about what exactly shifted for them -
and how that’s affecting them today.
Young people like Ngawang who, when

I met him, was just a wee 11th grader.
Then he started to question things.
“Honestly, my entire 13 years

of education was being
questioned during that time -
13 years of education versus
what you are learning in 13
days. And it was liberating.”
Before joining the Youth Parliament

program I helped design and lead,
Ngawang saw just one path for himself
- becoming a politician. Then he

started to question things.
“When I joined the Youth

Parliament, I had this
generalized idea about how the
world worked. Interacting with
so many young people, with
you as a facilitator, allowed me
to understand that the
education system was lacking
when it comes to questioning
things as they are.”
With his mind opened, Ngawang began

to see different possibilities for himself.
He started up a youth cooperative,
became an artist, dropped out of
college (which was on a government
scholarship, no less) and now leads a
number of entrepreneurial ventures in
and outside of Bhutan. Did I plan for
that? Absolutely not (otherwise, I’d feel
kind of bad about the college thing…).
But Ngawang just took that lancet fluke
I incepted him with and ran with it.
A similar thing happened with Phub. A

pudgy high school student and physics
nerd when I met him - well, he’s still
pretty pudgy - Phub experienced his
own awakening in his relationship to
society, an experienced that forced him
to consider the tradeoff between
following his intellectual curiosity in
the origins of the Big Bang or leading a
small revolution in Bhutan.
“I saw the future as something

that was going to happen to
me, not something I had a hand
in. My experience with the
Bhutan Centre for Media and
Democracy (BCMD) really
changed that. It made me think
about how my theoretical
physics PhD helped me to
contributing to society, which it
couldn't really. It changed the
lenses through which I looked
at society.”
Phub and I both started up the Youth

Parliament project years after he’d
proposed the idea. And that whole
process began the small revolution that
is the Youth Initiative, which has
groomed over 80 young leaders today.
“Working with YI I saw what it

means to be a leader. Now I am
able to confidently head to the
world of Start-ups. That is how
BCMD has impacted me.”
Being involved in building that

initiative gave Phub a taste of success
that he would want to follow up in
other areas of his life. Now studying
economics in college, he’s also a small-
time entrepreneur in Bhutan running
his own digital marketing setup.
And then there’s Yangdey. A tall,
outspoken girl in high school, Yangdey

always felt awkward in high school
where she experienced a degree of
alienation for her ‘difference’.
“I didn’t like high school. I

didn’t learn anything. I didn’t
develop as a person. I just read
novels and storybooks. In
classrooms, I wasn’t accepted. I
was the ‘weird one’. So I
wouldn’t speak out. I would
just read my storybooks.”
Participating in those workshops

allowed her to find a community that
allowed her to realize that she wasn’t
alone in her crazy aspirations.
“But here when I was

participating in the workshops,
I met like-minded young
people. It was the best. It’s
interesting, because for me, the
way I see the world. I’m like
‘this is my reality, this is it,
there’s not gonna be anything

else.’ So you put people in a
box, say this is how it’s going to
be.”
“But then you meet other crazy

people like Kencho who had
this will of starting his own
CSO. He wanted to make a BBS
program. The best part is when
you come for workshops,
people listen to you, and then
show you how your ideas can
be possible. When Phub started
about the Youth Parliament.
And I was like ‘hmm?’ ‘It can
come true?’ Everybody has a
crazy idea.”
Yangdey went on to design her own

education in carpentry, knitting, and
other trades all while traveling across
India for six months on her path to
discovering other crazy communities
where she could share and cultivate
her love of the world. She gave a TED
talk earlier this year about her

experience.
And then there’s Karma. Karma was a

teacher in training when I met her at
our media literacy workshop in 2012.
She’d longed to find a place where she
could speak her mind, but rarely found
it in classrooms. As she began
practicing it in the context of the
workshops, she heard her voice - and
she loved what she heard so much that

she wanted everyone else to hear
theirs.
“After the workshop, I was very

bold in speaking my mind and I
wasn’t shy about saying things
I wanted to. At the same time, I
was respectful of others’
opinions. I’m ready for all
kinds of opinions. Mentally, I’m
prepared to take it all in and
not be offended. I feel strong,
bold, confident. And
empowered. To be honest. And
I feel there can be someone
more educated, better off, but I
know deep inside that I can do
this. That I have my original
opinions to share. And that
speaks a lot about someone’s
personality.”
Alongside her teaching duties, she’s

working with a group of young people
to provide counseling to students that
helps them not only speak up, but to

empower them to pursue careers that
match their passions.
“Picture a college classroom.

Put 100 Bhutanese students
there and a few foreigners.
During any discussion, the
foreigners will always outshine
the others. They are very
confident. They just want to get
their points across. Bhutanese
students feel a pressure to say
the right thing. I went through
that struggle too. It has to
change - students need to be
opinionated. If you don't do
well in that, how good are you
doing in your college?”
Now, you might be thinking:
‘Wow, Manny. You’re so

arrogant. You think you did
that all by yourself?’
Of course not. Well, maybe sometimes

Of course not. Well, maybe sometimes

in my own delusions of awesomeness.
But definitely no - I wasn’t the person
who transformed these young people -
they did it for themselves. I am that
person who had the good fortune to be
there with them in the uneven folds of
life’s many starting lines - maybe I
fired the starter shot, maybe I cheered
them on, maybe I was a pace runner.
But I did play a heavy hand in

supporting that transformation.
I own that.
And yes, it is a source of pride that I
could introduce a little anarchy into the
system sometimes dogged by dogs
lazing in your streets.
Without taking this outrageous leap to

being a facilitator for democracy
Someone who certainly did not meet
the job description of ‘model citizen’
Could dive into this and get all
passionate about it.
That’s wild, right?

That’s wild, right?

And the thing is...
I’m still not a model citizen.
It’s not like I came out of these
experiences with that conclusion that
‘Yes, this is my life’s calling.’
That happens for some people, and I
guess those remain the grist of
inspiration; that someone could just
discover that ‘one calling’ to which
they’re summoned and can commit
their life to.
I’m still wandering.
I’m still making sense of my own role,
of what I can contribute.
I still have my own insecurities.
But I don’t have a doubt about my
capacity to influence a person’s life.
And I don’t have to be Mahatma
Gandhi to make that happen.
Love,
-Manny
A Letter to Obama (and How I Learned to Love My Family) 2/12/18, 6(04 pm
10 JANUARY 2018 / SELF-ACCEPTANCE
A Letter to Obama
(and How I Learned
to Love My Family)
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/obamaletter/ Page 1 of 34
Dear Mr. President,
I’m writing to share with you a

moment I had in the Marina Bay Sands
hotel. As I wandered around the room,
the same room that I shared with my
family for two days, I saw shreds of
evidence that my family was indeed
here. Shoes my mother wore jutting
out of the small, cylindrical bathroom
trash can, still bearing the dirt of
Cambodia and Vietnam that we’d been
treading on for almost three weeks. A
ziplock bag of unfinished dried
mangos, towels damp from my
brother's morning shower, beds
unmade from an early morning rise.
The almost departed scent of my dad’s
scent, a conglomeration of both sweat
and cologne. Every dad has a slightly
different but recognisable scent, don’t

you think, Mr. President? My dad
definitely has one of those. I would
describe the scent as ‘woody’, but that’s
pretty vague. To paraphrase
Wittgenstein, how can one describe the
aroma of one’s father if the audience
has never smelled it?
Sitting on the cushy Sands bed with the

rain pouring and Russian Church
Choirs blasting out of my little
bluetooth speaker, I paused to
appreciate all of these shreds. It started
with a small welling of what could only
be described as a warm, fuzzy feeling
that clutched against my chest while
sprawling its feathers out. It was a
feeling that said with finality that this
holiday, this trip that I’d painstakingly
organised with my girlfriend over the
past three months, was actually over.
But it also said,
“I love my family.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I

actually felt this in such an enduring
way. To feel that these were
unmistakably my people and that I was
theirs. And that we are inextricably

entwined together in this life, not
necessarily by blood or even fate, but
by a love that no single one of us - not
my brother, not my mother, not my
father, not me - can really fathom.
I love my family.
Now, you’re probably wondering why

I’m telling you - of all people - about
this realization.
There’s really no link to public policy,

to civic engagement. It doesn’t have
anything to do with your presidency. In
all honesty, I don’t really know why I’m
writing to you. I know that, according
to a New York Times profile (the same
one that described your ritual around
seven salted almonds), that you’re
incredibly diligent with reading your
presidential fan mail and all that, but
there’s a pretty high probability that
you won’t read this.
I think that I’m writing you because

I think that I’m writing you because

I’ve been connecting A LOT with you
over the past year - and not just
because I miss seeing you as my leader.
Like that time at Charleston when, 35
minutes into your eulogy of Reverend
Clementa Pickney and eight members
of his congregation who were gunned
down in hatred by a deranged 21-year-
old, you paused for thirteen seconds.
That pause was as pregnant a pause as

there ever had been, disrupting the
flow of what felt like an unbroken
sermon and reflection on the tragedy
and God’s grace. And then you broke
out into one of the most sublime acts of
oratory that I’ve ever witnessed when
you began singing “Amazing Grace.”
You sang like an enthusiastic
parishioner, sang in the style of the
black church. Even though you
probably wouldn’t make the cut for the
choir - no offense - everyone, including
the pastors and preachers behind you,
rose to join you in song.
And when you all sang, it felt like all of

that collective tension from the tragedy
had been transformed into a moment
of ecstasy, an ecstasy of communion
that could engulf all sorrows in its path
and remind us with our combined

voices of how we can be graced by an
infinite love. For, as Rumi once opined,
the wound is where the light enters.
And in that moment of communion, in
my small, little one-room apartment in
Singapore, I felt proud to be American.
Proud, for the first time.
Yeah, I miss you. But you already knew

that.
But I’m also in incredible admiration of

your story - a story that I wholly
connect with.
You see, Mr. President, both of us are

outsiders. We are multicultural - I’m
half-Iranian (dad’s side) and half-
hispanic (mom’s side), half-Muslim,
half-recovering Catholic. We both
spent time growing up in countries
outside the US. Sure, I don’t share your
skin colour - and I knew that makes a
huge difference in any discussion about
being a ‘third culture kid’. In fact, I
hardly look multicultural. My skin’s

white, and while I have patches that
almost amount to a unibrow (the lone
trademark of my father’s heritage), I
look like nothing more than your
average (but good looking) Caucasian.
When I grow my afro, most people
think I look like a New York Jew. I can
send you photographic evidence if it
helps better evince that image.
The New York Jew look
But there’s an odd thing that happens

when you blend into your
surroundings as I did in my mostly
white elementary school classroom in
Texas. On Sunday, everyone went to

church; I went to Bonyad, where I
studied Farsi and Islamic ethics.
During Summer holidays, my friends
would go to visit their families in
Arkansas, California, and other parts of
Texas; I went to Iran. My family in the
US - my mom’s side - consisted of
generational ranchers who, while
growing up, spoke Spanish at home but
were coerced by their Catholic
missionary teachers to speak English
in school lest they prefer to receive
beatings by way of the yardsticks.
And there I was in classroom,

censoring out all of these details to my
classmates, preferring not to let this
background set me apart from my
peers. I was embarrassed about all of
this. I guess the only difference
between us is that you couldn’t hide
where you from - I always could. The
only way I knew how to cope with all of
this was to resent this weird family -
my brother, father, mother.
The arc of both our lives has been one

of seeking acceptance - of ourselves
and the strange combination of places
that compose us.
You traced your path to acceptance in

Chicago, embracing your blackness
though not at the expense of the white,
of the multicultural. You can’t really
choose to let go of those, right? And
that’s what makes you so unique and
yet so relatable.
I see you in you the same impulses I

see in myself: to unite rather than
divide, to please those around me
rather than confront, to remain a bit
more guarded and not too vulnerable.
I’ve also felt the impulse to detach, to
be unknowable, like you were to your
early girlfriends. Because they just
won’t understand, right? What it’s like
to be an outsider everywhere you go.
I still haven’t really found my ‘tribe’
like you have. To console myself, I used

to say that, because I never really fit in
anywhere, I could fit in anywhere,
camouflaging with my agile,
chameleon-like pigments. And I did it
pretty much everywhere I’ve lived and
traveled to, from Iran to Bhutan, from
India to Singapore. Blending in, as I’ve
said, has never been a problem for me.
Blending in Bhutan? Just throw on a

gho and speak Dzongkha
But accepting me - just ‘me’ and not
the chameleon me - has been a longer,

zig-zag of a process. I thought I could
do it alone, until I met my girlfriend,
Jialing, someone so loving in her spirit
that she could lure out the parts of me
that had retreated all the way into the
dense foliage of an island where it had
been cast off. Like the secret language
that I speak to her in a special high
pitched voice while beatboxing (don’t
ask).
I’m so lucky to have her in my life, Mr.

President. Did you know that she met
you in Laos during a Young Southeast
Asian Leadership Initiative meeting?
She remembers your perky butt and
the intentionality with which you
shook everyone’s hands, locking eyes
with them to give them that one glint
of connection to you.
So she’s there. But all this time, for the

past fifteen odd years starting around
my pubescent period all the way up to
my early adult life, I’ve been at odds
with my family, resenting and avoiding
them as I’ve traveled and worked

abroad. And carrying all of that has, at
an unconscious level, led me to rot
away like a banana in a fridge corner
that gets unpleasantly discolored
because no one really notices anymore
as it keeps getting blocked by all of the
juice boxes and sparkling water cans.
(That's what happens in my fridge, at
least).
I finally acknowledged all of this pain

over this past autumn.
I won’t go into detail about ‘why now’

or ‘how did it happen’; I’ll just say that
it happened over the course of a
leadership training. Maybe adding that
bit of context might add a necessary
emotional layer to the story that sheds
light on why connecting was so
important. I just feel that it’s difficult
to describe, kind of like the aroma of
my dad; to go into all of the inner work
I had to go through to accept and feel
the pain that had been lingering
between us for so long, and how that

pain had led me to hold back in other
parts of my life. Pain, once captured
and left unexpressed, can’t really be
neatly compartmentalised in one’s
psyche so that it does not affect other
parts of one’s life, like my own
confidence as a writer. Like, if I don’t
see myself as a worthy of being loved,
I’ll keep all of my writing to myself for
fear of the ensuing judgment that will
confirm this self-limiting belief and
will only send me spiralling more. And
if I fail to see my own beauty, I’ll fail to
see the beauty of the nature, like the
whirring sound of cicadas in the
morning that can so easily fly under
the radar until, once recognised,
cannot be unheard and kind of
functions as a pulse to the other
sounds of the forest, like the chirps of
parakeets. Does that make sense?
And that’s why I wanted this trip to

happen.
Since graduating from my Master’s

Since graduating from my Master’s

program at Georgetown sixteen
months ago, I’ve been working in
Singapore. While I’ve made
intermittent trips to visit, including a
visit to introduce my girlfriend, they’ve
all been trips that allowed me to
remain in my comfort zone. We chat
about politics, we go to movies, enjoy
nice meals together. But we can avoid
all of those topics that have been
fenced away, avoid probing into our
inner lives and the pain that could be
rumbling beneath. We’re in our
comfort zones most of the time at our
three-storey home in Houston, where
each of us can retreat to our rooms
when we want to be alone and avoid all
of the friction that might result from
too much contact.
From the moment my family

disembarked into Singapore, I knew
this would be an entirely different kind
of family holiday. Now I’m sure that
you know that family holidays can be
stressful. There I was, waiting in the

Changi Airport terminal for arrivals,
feeling the weight of expectations to
deliver not just as a son seeking to
create connection and loving
memories, but as a travel agent
coordinating different parts of a multi-
destination trip (Singapore, Vietnam,
Cambodia), a tour guide expected to
give meaning to the landmarks that we
would pass. I didn’t want to disappoint
them after they’d journeyed so far,
after we’d started this journey of
opening ourselves up to each other. I
wanted nothing less than a stellar,
Instagrammable memory-filled trip
that they would regale their friends
with in Houston for years to come.
I delivered - but not in the way that I

thought I would.
There were several missteps, hurdles,

stressful moments, idle moments,
moments that I’d hoped to avoid
because they might be too combustible
- even before they arrived.
While applying for my family’s visas,

just one day before they would fly out,
I’d realized that my brother’s passport
would be invalid in less than six
months - meaning that he’d be unable
to obtain a visa in any of our
destinations. I rushed to inform my
parents, calling them at the crack of
dawn to mobilize and get all of the
documents together. Thinking that this
snag would, in all likelihood, cause my
family to postpone their flights, my
family RALLIED. With less than 16
hours to their flight, my parents put
together all the necessary documents,
rising at 6 am to the Houston Passport
Agency to renew the passport. They
pushed, with my dad calling the
airlines to negotiate a change in flights
at no cost should my brother not be
able to get his passport renewed. But
they did it. Together, we made a very
small impossible happen.
Days later, in Ho Chi Minh, while we

Days later, in Ho Chi Minh, while we

were en route to Phu Quoc (a small,
sunny island that we’d used as a proxy
for Bali given the whole volcanic
activity going on there), we hit another
pothole. Our Vietnam Airlines flight
landed with just a little over an hour to
get through customs, re-check our
luggage and check into our new flight.
My dad, always deft with finding life’s
fast track lines, spoke with a manager
of Vietnam airlines, who shuffled us
through a VIP customs line so that we
could make our flight. While literally
running to the domestic flights
terminal, my mom humored us by
checking her steps on her FitBit, all of
us laughing when we knew that we just
weren’t going to make it. And when we
didn’t make it, the Airlines staff were
incredibly kind, offering us premium
seats on the next flight along with a
‘snack’ budget while we waited another
hour to catch the next flight. That lull
gave us time to chat over coffee, to
pause now that we were grounded and
had nothing else to distract us with.
There would be several more of these

snags - Airbnbs that didn’t quite match
the listing’s highly filtered photos,
restaurants that served less than
palatable food, so-called waterfalls that
were more like mini Feng Shui springs
that you place in your garden, a
passing typhoon that delayed our ferry
and marooned us on an island that we
had all but tired of, border crossings
that lasted for hours, New Year’s Eve
celebrations that went awry, and
botched hotel bookings. But we worked
through it, even when it hurt to. We
didn’t have a choice; we all shared the
same hotel room, after all.
But it wasn’t all snags, hindrances

intended to test our endurance as a
family. There were also the moments of
spontaneity, of unexpected enjoyment
and fun.
Like when we serendipitously came
across a resort with an incredible bar

and restaurant situated on wooden
planks by the beach, a site we chose to
adopt as we sat by the sunset, sipping
mai tais and take over the beach
volleyball court.
Quoc
Or the time when we realized a

childhood fantasy of taking over an
entire theme park, filled with safaris
with tigers (though we later came to
know that some of the animals there
may be illegally trafficked), death
slides with vertical drops, an arcade
where every game was FREE, and
dizzying rollercoasters and other rides
that left us all ecstatically nauseated.
And I’m not exaggerating when I say
that it was practically OUR theme park
for a day, Mr. President. I wonder if
this is how Michael Jackson felt when
he first set up his own Wonderland…
d the river
There were also moments when we

experienced beauty and awe together,
the biggest example being Angkor Wat.
Wow, Mr. President, what man is
capable of! Creating an empire from all
of these impressive, intricately
designed structures that no doubt
involved exploitation and human

sacrifices. But what magnificence!
What beauty!
There were also the Killing Fields. Now

I would never attempt to fit this site
into the category of beauty or awe - it is
the very antithesis to all of this. The

horror and shock of the unfeeling
carnage man is capable of when
ideology takes precedence over human
needs and suffering. I guess what I
appreciated was how our family sought
to intimately understand the context of
the complicated history behind these
events and how they continued to
affect the country’s collective
consciousness. We read and heard
personal accounts, watched several
films, and reflected deeply about
humanity and its capacity for violence.
othing worn by a Cambodian murdered in the Killing Fields. After almost 40

ge's rule ended, fragments of clothing, bones, and teeth still rise to the surfac
The trip culminated, quite fittingly,

with a communications workshop. On
their final evening, I brought my family
out to participate in an event where we
would reflect together, with fifty other
Singaporean participants, about our
communication styles, differences, and
ways to work around them. Using a
concise survey, each of us was placed
in one of four communications styles:
(1) Controller, those

domineering, bossy types who
will do anything - anything - to
get the job done
(2) Promoter, the self-absorbed
creative types who think
they’re the most interesting
people in the room
(3) Supporters, the
relationship-driven ‘nice guys’
that are always concerned
whether everyone’s doing okay
(4) Analyzers, the data-driven
introverts always crunching
numbers and processing
through the lens of logic
Oddly enough, my dad and I landed in

the Promoters corner, while my mom
and Jialing landed in the Supporters
corner. Don’t you think attraction to
partners can be generational? My
brother, unsurprisingly, turned out to
be a Controller, which explained a lot
about why we locked horns so often
(Controller’s seek to dictate,

(Controller’s seek to dictate,

Promoter’s seek to preach).
All of these experiences, the good and

the bad, contributed to that moment in
the Marina Bay Sands. Where I could
look at these objects that had come
into contact with (or exited from) my
family and feel that these were my
people and I theirs.
Thank you, Mr. President, for helping

me move along this journey. Thank you
for helping me find acceptance - and
the power that comes from that.
Manny

Questions
your inbox
Moving Out: An Elegy 2/12/18, 6(07 pm
3 JUNE 2018 / ELEGY
Moving Out: An Elegy
https://livingthequestions.ghost.io/moving-out-an-elegy/ Page 1 of 20
We moved out on the 452nd

day.
The 451 days prior we spent in Escada

View. Located in the sleepy
neighbourhood of Kembangan,
"Escada View" - as its name might
suggest - is one of those condos that if
you gazed at from about 100 meters,
you might admire the columns and
curved balconies, these lines that wrap
around the building like a ribbon
wraps a gift, and trees - especially the
palm trees - that suggest you’ve found
an oasis on the edges of this loud, noisy
city.
I mean look at this sexy, Airbnb photo
Increase the resolution on the condo

and the cracks start to appear.
It's how I imagine Justin Bieber

looking twenty years from now - a
shade of those dreamy, boyish looks
but with features that start to droop
with panda eye circles and creases that
cut across his forehead. But still, it'll be
hard to erase that image of the teen
pop idol that everyone fell for.
Anyway.
The first crack in Escada's View:

The first crack in Escada's View:

the oasis myth. Look beyond the
building facade and you'll see a giant
highway with cars roaring, interrupting
the birdsong.
Crack #2: the mean muggin'

security guards. The only way to
enter is through the security gate,
keycard in hand. When I'd forget the
card in those first few weeks, Din, the
balding Malay security guard with a
metalhead's mohawk, would deliver
the stinkiest mean mug that'd leave
tucking my tail between my legs as I'd
walk past his security station. Two
months ago, I talked with him for the
first time and discovered that he is,
indeed, a metalhead. And Rammstein
lover. And Deadpool fanatic. Which
now makes him like my favorite person
in Singapore.
Crack #3: For all the romantics

hoping to pull a Romeo, there are
no balconies. Decades ago, the
developer went overbudget and could

only afford parapets.
Crack #4: The Pool. Well, let's start

with the chairs. The wicker lounge
chairs surrounding the amoeba-like
pool have holes bored into them, all in
the ass area. Maybe a lot of fat people
lived here. Nights later, we’d find that
groups of twenty somethings would

congregate around the pool at around
midnight to party, listen to Bollywood
music while one neighbour walked this
elegant husky dog - yes, people own
HUSKIES in freaking Singapore (oh
how they must suffer!) - around the
pool. And annoying dogs that yip with
a measured frequency and screeching
high pitch. Yip, yip, yip…you know that
yip that all the sudden inspires a young
Buddhist man sworn to nonviolence to
suddenly take an aggressive turn and
consider committing canicide. That
kind of yip.
Everyday, those kids left a wreckage

from each night partying for the old
cleaning uncle to collect. That cleaning
uncle must be at least 70 years old.
Shit.
Anyway.
452 days after walking into those gates,

I’m the one who’s volunteered to
vacate us from the premises once and

for all. Emptying the place we called
home. Emptying it of every last trace,
every last crumb, every last stray hair
(and there were many).
I remember imagining what we could

create with the sunken living room.
Floor cushions! What an amazing idea
for a relaxed and cozy atmosphere!
Fuck sofas and their imposing
presence. At least floor cushions can be
moved dynamically along with second-
hand IKEA rocking chairs and a coffee
table made of recycled materials that
would, together, meet the needs of
whatever purpose we needed the space
for. Even if it was just to watch movies.
But it wasn’t just movies. That’s where

we often sat to dine. Dine to fried
curries and red rice that I’d quickly
whip up after a long day, or pastas that
Jialing would put together that always
HAD to feature eggplant (or brinjol or
aubergine...whatever…). Or birthday
booze.
Actually the booze only happened

once.
I remember celebrating my 30th there.

And that girl who Airbnb’d with us also
had the SAME birthday as me (only
she’d just turned 18 - making me feel
like a fucking dinosaur), so we decided
to celebrate the crazy coincidence with

multiple bottles of champagne while
smothering our faces with Ben and
Jerry’s and talking about what it means
to really age.
I think I’m getting old.
The floor cushions. That’s where I

used to escape when Jialing’s snores
were too loud. Or the time I just sat
there reading Brave New World while
listening to jazz. I hardly ever listen to
jazz, but for some reason it made sense
to do so that Sunday afternoon. We
also opened Christmas presents there,
and I distinctly remembering my dad
complaining about how the cushions
were terrible for the spine. Or maybe
that was my mom.
And then there's the kitchen. What a

kitchen! I remember how the landlord
only gave us the place because the
family with a competing offer ($300
more than ours!) was Indian.
Concerned that the family would cook
curry that would seep into the walls
just as it did with the previous tenant
(who also happened to be Indian), the
landlord opted in our favor. And I
thought - man, that’s some racist shit
isn’t it? Well, I guess it's karma that I

also happen to LOOOOOOVE my
curries and indulged these wells with
plenty of kormas, saags, and jalfrezis.
At the kitchen's sliding door, I find

slight shards from where Andrew,
another Airbnb guest, broke a glass
and did nothing to clean it up. That
same night, he placed one of his apple
cores on my dinner plate mid-
conversation while there was still food
on my plate. Who does that?
There’ve been a lot of guests who

stayed with us. 56 to be precise. I
wonder what the accumulated effect of
having so many people occupy the
same bed is. One thing I wonder is
whether any of them shared the same
nightmare. There must be a high
probability that at least two of them
had nightmares about gigantic spiders
and cockroaches.
Phub, my brother from a Bhutanese
mother, was our first guest. Oh man, so

much fun! I remember him flopping in
the kids’ pool like a baby seal. Well he’s
a little bit bigger than a baby seal, but
not quite a grown seal. You get the
picture?
I actually kind of loved the pool. What

a joy to stare outside the window at a
pool with palms lording over it, tall
enough so that civets could crawl along
the gate and go unnoticed. It’s the pool
where I launched myself into during
my 30th birthday after giving my
speech. Don’t know why I jumped in in
street clothes, but it just felt like
something I should do. An ablution to
usher in the new decade. I’d take a lot
of ablutions in that pool. Mostly after
runs in the heat. Does that count as an

ablution?
I danced a lot on these tiles. That space

in between the kitchen and the living
room. It’s this open space where my

tiny bluetooth speaker has a magical
acoustic sweet spot at the centre of the
room, the kind of sweet spot that just
shuts down the world outside of our
condo. And so we dance, wriggling our
bodies and flailing our limbs in hopes
that they might land on beat. Like that
time my friend Jupi stayed with us and
we went CRAZY over that song “Feel it
Still”.
We made a lot of memories here.
And it gets me thinking how spaces can

be containers for memories. Escada
View has now become an extension of
my body, such that if I walk by the pool
side, I might remember that time I
jumped in with all my work clothes on,
or if I go into the kitchen, I'll
remember that time we celebrated
Bhutan National Day by making ema
datshe. I never know what memories
could be evoked at any point in time.
But then I thought, if someone came

But then I thought, if someone came

here to demolish all of Escada View
with a bulldozer to the point where it
no longer became recognisable, would
I still feel attached?
Would my body still no the longitude

and latitude of that place where I met
Shah, my security, for the first time
and he confided in me his friend had
committed suicide. And in that
moment he wanted to hit me but I
leaned in for the hug, disarming him
entirely? I’ll always remember that
moment with a tinge of pride and a
tinge of shame that I no longer really
keep in touch with him. Deep down, I
think he needs professional help and
that as much as I’d like to win people
over with unconditional love, that love
still remains pretty conditional.
This is the second time that I’ve been

asked to be the last person to scrape a
home in its entirety: dismantling bed
frames where we used to have sex,
boxing kitchen supplies that have

supported many a meal, stripping the
walls of its photo frames until the
condo is returned to its original state,
naked, but not exactly as it once was.
At least it can’t be in my eyes. As long
as this building stands, which won’t be
long given Singapore’s reputation for
de-construction. As I pack, I realise
how we’ve accumulated far too many
tupperware containers, tote bags, and
recycled peanut butter jars. Maybe we
can donate the jars to a zero-waste
restauranteur.
So here it is, almost as it looked on

February 2, 2017. When we first
stepped in. All of our cells mopped,
vacuumed, and sprayed away with
disinfectant. Sterile. Ready for the next
owners to populate it with their dust,
their curries, their tears, their snores
and screams, their feet taps and jumps
while dancing to the next “Feel it Still”,
their fluids when they decide to be
spontaneous and fornicate in the
kitchen.
We never managed to accomplish that

last feat. Not yet.
I write this from my old desk in my


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Getting honest about samsara 2/12/18, 6(08 pm

Living the Questions HOME Subscribe

24 SEPTEMBER 2017 / SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

Getting Honest about

Now, tell me - if given a

Or would you choose a small

Honestly, which one would you

For the longest time, I convinced

I chose it because it felt good to say,

I chose it because it felt nice to think I

And it even gave me a spiritual hard-on

If existence is nothing more than

I never really had a rebuttal to the

(I love Matthieu by the way.)

Life would be real. Finally, I'd don the

Life would be real. Finally, I'd don the

Except, my life wasn’t.

It was just so…

without my superego chanting - ‘What

Unlike shame, neither of these feelings

Holding onto these fantasies also gave

Last week, I received useful feedback

How did they see me - HONESTLY, no

The compassion and honesty that

than joy, more anxiety than ease.

And, that evening, it finally hit me -

I hated who I was.

This wasn’t the first time that idea had

This time, it felt more like I’d entered a

with is a mirror. No more thoughts.

If I'm honest, HONEST - I'd choose the

But I'm just not at that level of the

And yeah, if someone one day

Each of us, I believe, has our own

I know now that I can't rush towards

everyday I show up, I show up as the

Acknowledging the gap between my

It means I can be free of that superego,

(Note: The above clip is taken from the

Living the Questions HOME Subscribe

12 OCTOBER 2017 / SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

Taking the 'Shadow'

Enlightenment - the conquest

When people talk about

who make it on the Forbes 30 under

From the moment he began walking,

He lived next to a giant redwood tree

The world was this giant, mysterious playground that invited -

But then it doesn’t reward him. He

the cats he met earlier - aren't there

And his parents - well, they don’t like

But what he ends up hearing is that, to

So, he ends up putting all of these

The bottle’s not really visible (it's a

So swallowing becomes a habit. Every

And what he's storing in the bottle is

And what he's storing in the bottle is

Especially that anger. Can’t show that -

By the time he's 29 (going on 30), he

But he feels exhausted from years of

The voice is so strong that it’s now

'What an asshole,’ he thinks, boiling

'What an asshole,’ he thinks, boiling

It’s almost as though he recognises a

He remembers who he was - and who

The sexuality, the wildness, the

He wonders, as he turns 30, how much