After learning about the horrific traumatizing experience that happened to a great friend of mine, and how they will have to reset and completely start over in order to not be controlled by those memories, I have been reminded of how important it is for me to continue the spiritual path that I began years ago.
Every summer, I stay fairly secluded at my dad's house taking care of the house and plants while my dad is at his summer job. This summer lifestyle began in my third year of high school, and was the beginning of a life-changing spiritual path of self-studying Buddhism, Taoism, and meditation via the internet and a few books. This completely changed who I was in the greatest of ways, as I had finally understood the value of what it means to exist, and what it means to truly love every coexisting thing with all of your heart. My favorite meditation was always this one in which you first imagine the most beautiful place you can, in detail, and then imagine a vision of yourself at your greatest potential walking toward you. You can then ask your potential self any questions you may have, and then feel in your heart the answers. The main question that I always asked is, "How can I be like you?", and the answer was always, "Just trust that you are already me, and surrender everything to your heart". It was the beginning of an amazing transformation in who I was.
This continued the next few summers, as I became even more enamored by what is possible through living a meditative lifestyle. I had researched about brainwave frequencies (aka. binaural beats), and how I can use them as well as subliminal messages to shape my own thought patterns into more conducive and loving ones. To this day, I continue to sleep with earphones in my ears every night playing these frequencies and subliminal messages at a very low volume.
I was having so many realizations about life and who/what we truly are beyond any self-concept based stories that we play in our minds, I felt that I had reached the top of the mountain (figuratively speaking).
However, through my years in college I had started taking meditation practices for granted, and felt that I had fallen back to the bottom of the mountain. My mindset became "I already know what the top of the mountain is like, I don't need to go there again", but what I had forgotten is that being on top of the mountain you live a completely different kind of life and see the world in a completely different way. I had started taking all of this for granted, and started living a day-to-day life as a college student addicted to facebook and youtube videos, with an extremely mundane mind compared to the potential I had reached in the past.
This summer, I am once again living at my dad's house taking care of the place while he's gone, and I began the summer by just entertaining my mind as much as possible, with exercise, television, anime, video games, and most of all facebook, completely wasting away the potential that summer brings for me with self improvement.
Thanks to hearing about my friend's situation with their recent traumatic experience, I realized that I can also start over; right now. Today I began researching again Metta meditation (loving-kindness meditation) with videos, writings, and recordings taught by a wonderful Buddhist nun, Ayya Khema. I plan to rediscover the things I once realized, and perhaps discover more and different things.
For too long I have gone into seeing meditation as a chore that I would procrastinate from - I had forgotten how it can really change your mind. As the Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein said:
"The mind is like tofu. Tofu doesn't have a very
big taste about itself; the taste of the dish you cook with tofu depends
on the marinade that the tofu is prepared with. It's what you marinate
the mind with that generates the kind of being that you are and the way
that you project yourself in the world."
This is an audio recording of Ayya Khema explaining why to meditate. I highly recommend listening:
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Rediscovering my greatest love, Physics!
When I was in high school, my favorite subject was always physics, due to my incredible teacher Michael Lampert (who was awarded by the president of the United States for being one of the greatest teachers in the Northwest). Physics was introduced to me in a very fun and sensible way, involving many hands-on experiments such as building pulley systems, shining lasers through a small slit toward a system of mirrors, building little bridges, using the Van de Graaff generator, electrocuting things, freezing objects with liquid nitrogen, using a Tesla coil, using frequency generators and oscilloscopes, and cutting open cow eyeballs, among many other experiments! I also took classes in microelectronics and robotics from the same teacher, it was such an amazing experience. I also had one of the greatest calculus teachers in the country teaching me calculus! I skipped pre-calculus because I wanted to take calculus, and I passed the AP exam with the highest possible score (along with everyone else in the class - our teacher Jon Kawamura was just that good).
As high school was ending, I had decided that I wanted to become a physicist, and the dream of going to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) made my mouth salivate.
The reason I became a music major is because I knew that the analytical and mathematical part of my mind was what I was especially good at, but I had developed a passion for music, and wanted to develop and build upon the artistic part of my mind. There were also many musicians in my life who I wanted to be like, a few of which had previously gone to the UO. Also, my sister's (ex-)boyfriend at the time was going to OSU to study mechanical engineering, and it didn't sound as fun as I had hoped - he later ended up with a job at Intel that he didn't enjoy. I didn't want physics to become bothersome, so I focused on my creative enjoyment of music.
Well, after five years of studying music, I am starting to get involved with studying physics again! Thanks to my friend Andrew's facebook posts about the physicist Richard Feynman, I have been watching video lectures of Feynman, and have even found a book full of 52 different chapters, each with a different lecture by Richard Feynman! To make it more amazing, I found audio recordings of these same lectures online (the book was cleaned up with some editing), so I have been following along while listening to the lectures, and I am learning amazing things!
This is the first lecture in a series of four lectures that sparked my interest in looking deeper:
Nothing interests me more than discovering the realities behind our world and our existence! The mysteries of what life really is, and the rules / laws that govern this reality are the most amazing thing to me! As my past physics teacher Michael Lampert likes to describe physics, "Physics is the art of the Gods". There is nothing more beautiful than this universe we live in - it's so surreal how incredible everything is, and even more surreal when you realize what is actually happening on the subatomic level and smaller! The interactions between particles is something so unbelievably cool to me!
I am absolutely happy that I chose music composition as my major - I am not saying that I would give it up to study physics instead. Though physics is what matters to me most, I think it's important to not major in what matters to you the most (at least not at a young age), because you don't want your greatest passion to become dull and boring through constant required study materials. The freedom to study on your own is something that best serves learning!
My main focus is to become a film scoring composer, hopefully for Japanese anime, but that doesn't mean it is my greatest passion. To me, composing music is incredibly fun and rewarding! It is like a meditation, in that it is a healthy process of creativity (not bad for a life path!).
I am just so glad and thankful to be reminded of my deeper passion of physics. :-)
As high school was ending, I had decided that I wanted to become a physicist, and the dream of going to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) made my mouth salivate.
The reason I became a music major is because I knew that the analytical and mathematical part of my mind was what I was especially good at, but I had developed a passion for music, and wanted to develop and build upon the artistic part of my mind. There were also many musicians in my life who I wanted to be like, a few of which had previously gone to the UO. Also, my sister's (ex-)boyfriend at the time was going to OSU to study mechanical engineering, and it didn't sound as fun as I had hoped - he later ended up with a job at Intel that he didn't enjoy. I didn't want physics to become bothersome, so I focused on my creative enjoyment of music.
This is the first lecture in a series of four lectures that sparked my interest in looking deeper:
Nothing interests me more than discovering the realities behind our world and our existence! The mysteries of what life really is, and the rules / laws that govern this reality are the most amazing thing to me! As my past physics teacher Michael Lampert likes to describe physics, "Physics is the art of the Gods". There is nothing more beautiful than this universe we live in - it's so surreal how incredible everything is, and even more surreal when you realize what is actually happening on the subatomic level and smaller! The interactions between particles is something so unbelievably cool to me!
I am absolutely happy that I chose music composition as my major - I am not saying that I would give it up to study physics instead. Though physics is what matters to me most, I think it's important to not major in what matters to you the most (at least not at a young age), because you don't want your greatest passion to become dull and boring through constant required study materials. The freedom to study on your own is something that best serves learning!
My main focus is to become a film scoring composer, hopefully for Japanese anime, but that doesn't mean it is my greatest passion. To me, composing music is incredibly fun and rewarding! It is like a meditation, in that it is a healthy process of creativity (not bad for a life path!).
I am just so glad and thankful to be reminded of my deeper passion of physics. :-)
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
YOU ARE PERFECT - Just allow everything To Be just as it is
After having written that "I'm a Lone Wolf" blog, I've been thinking a lot and I realize how incredibly foolish I've been. I felt more depressed after writing that blog than before, so I examined why, and realized that the reason is because everything I wrote in that blog was a lie to myself. I was simply making excuses as an effort to stop looking for relationships.
In reality, nothing on the mental level can be true, because it not part of the real and physical world - it is just imagination. Sometimes imagination can lead us to believe that there is somebody called "me" who is suffering, and we go on trying to explain it, which only perpetuates it and makes the illusion stronger.
I have a book by spiritual guru Adyashanti entitled True Meditation, and in it Adyashanti explains that true meditation is to simply allow everything to be just as it is. To take interest in the question: "Am I truly allowing everything to be just as it is?", and to practice allowing things more and more - that is true meditation. Everything is perfect, just as it is.
When I practice this, I notice that even all those thoughts spinning around in my mind, and all those worries and fears, can be allowed to be as they are. The seemingly "unpleasant" physical sensations that they bring about can also be allowed to be just as they are. Memories of the past can be allowed to be as as they are. Everything in our experience can be allowed to be just as it is.
What happens when you allow your understanding of the word 'perfect' to actually mean everything in your present experience, and everything that nature has brought about? ALL the struggling disappears, and you can feel great in realizing that you yourself are absolutely perfect. Everything in this world is a result of nature, and nature is the new ultimate source of perfection.
Please remember,
YOU ARE PERFECT
In reality, nothing on the mental level can be true, because it not part of the real and physical world - it is just imagination. Sometimes imagination can lead us to believe that there is somebody called "me" who is suffering, and we go on trying to explain it, which only perpetuates it and makes the illusion stronger.
I have a book by spiritual guru Adyashanti entitled True Meditation, and in it Adyashanti explains that true meditation is to simply allow everything to be just as it is. To take interest in the question: "Am I truly allowing everything to be just as it is?", and to practice allowing things more and more - that is true meditation. Everything is perfect, just as it is.
When I practice this, I notice that even all those thoughts spinning around in my mind, and all those worries and fears, can be allowed to be as they are. The seemingly "unpleasant" physical sensations that they bring about can also be allowed to be just as they are. Memories of the past can be allowed to be as as they are. Everything in our experience can be allowed to be just as it is.
What happens when you allow your understanding of the word 'perfect' to actually mean everything in your present experience, and everything that nature has brought about? ALL the struggling disappears, and you can feel great in realizing that you yourself are absolutely perfect. Everything in this world is a result of nature, and nature is the new ultimate source of perfection.
Please remember,
YOU ARE PERFECT
Monday, April 30, 2012
I'm a Lone Wolf
I think it's about time I accepted the role of 'lone wolf'. Often times
when I am alone I dwell on the ideals of relationships, and daydream
about what kind of person I might want to spend the rest of my life
with. There are many people I know whom I have weighed the possibilities
of dating, and thought concretely about pros and cons. Just about
every single night when I go to sleep, I have gone through in my mind a
long list of people I am interested in, and tried to narrow it down to a
person, or at least a select few people. Maybe I've just been overly obsessive about the whole thing. I even made profiles on a few dating sites in hope of finding someone.
Honestly though, I'm sick of the whole thing - I feel that it is a hopeless cause, yet I feel that I love all of my friends so much that I would happily date any of them (girls), even if I hardly know who they are: I have a lot of faith in humanity, and believe that all people are inherently pure and perfect just as they are; a similar philosophy to the ancient Chinese Taoist master Dogen.
I don't think any girls are interested in me - I can't think of a single person who has shown the slightest sign of interest. Those who I have thought were interested, I found out the hard way that they weren't when I decided to pursue something with them - I've lost about 9 or 10 friends that way, and developed very awkward situations with a few others.
I have always felt like a 'lone wolf': a label given to somebody who has never depended on society or relationships for fulfillment.
It doesn't mean that I live without any help - my parents give me more help than I can even willfully accept, helping pay for school, housing, and food, as well as giving me rides every time I need to commute to Salem, and giving me random gifts every now and then. I definitely do not live completely on my own.
I actually take a lot of honor in being a lone wolf, because I find it to be a very respectable role that only those with pure and strong hearts are capable of living. It isn't easy at all, but it is what has led me to love nature so much - nature is there for me when nobody else is.
To be honest, I have always felt a little lonely, to the point where loneliness is a part of who I am - it no longer bothers me unless I have a lot of time to myself with nothing to do. I don't have many close friends anymore - part of the reason is because I am just not accustomed to it. I've always had myself to come back to, so that's what I've always done. When I was in high school, I had some upper classmen friends who took me under their wing, and I miss them a lot. When I entered college, that life was gone, and I was socially on my own. Somehow all my closer friends are really colleagues that I don't really have that close of a relationship with.
I love everybody, because I practice feeling compassion for others when I meditate. For each of you reading this, I love you. It's because I love you that I want you to know my biggest struggle.
For now, I think it's best that I accept the role of the lone wolf, and stop looking for relationships. Constantly looking without finding just leads to suffering.
(This is not intended to be a rant. I just want people to know what's been going on in my mind, so I don't have to hold it in)
Honestly though, I'm sick of the whole thing - I feel that it is a hopeless cause, yet I feel that I love all of my friends so much that I would happily date any of them (girls), even if I hardly know who they are: I have a lot of faith in humanity, and believe that all people are inherently pure and perfect just as they are; a similar philosophy to the ancient Chinese Taoist master Dogen.
I don't think any girls are interested in me - I can't think of a single person who has shown the slightest sign of interest. Those who I have thought were interested, I found out the hard way that they weren't when I decided to pursue something with them - I've lost about 9 or 10 friends that way, and developed very awkward situations with a few others.
I have always felt like a 'lone wolf': a label given to somebody who has never depended on society or relationships for fulfillment.
It doesn't mean that I live without any help - my parents give me more help than I can even willfully accept, helping pay for school, housing, and food, as well as giving me rides every time I need to commute to Salem, and giving me random gifts every now and then. I definitely do not live completely on my own.
I actually take a lot of honor in being a lone wolf, because I find it to be a very respectable role that only those with pure and strong hearts are capable of living. It isn't easy at all, but it is what has led me to love nature so much - nature is there for me when nobody else is.
To be honest, I have always felt a little lonely, to the point where loneliness is a part of who I am - it no longer bothers me unless I have a lot of time to myself with nothing to do. I don't have many close friends anymore - part of the reason is because I am just not accustomed to it. I've always had myself to come back to, so that's what I've always done. When I was in high school, I had some upper classmen friends who took me under their wing, and I miss them a lot. When I entered college, that life was gone, and I was socially on my own. Somehow all my closer friends are really colleagues that I don't really have that close of a relationship with.
I love everybody, because I practice feeling compassion for others when I meditate. For each of you reading this, I love you. It's because I love you that I want you to know my biggest struggle.
For now, I think it's best that I accept the role of the lone wolf, and stop looking for relationships. Constantly looking without finding just leads to suffering.
(This is not intended to be a rant. I just want people to know what's been going on in my mind, so I don't have to hold it in)
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
My piece performed, and other things on my mind
This past week has been amazing! Last week I scheduled three rehearsals with some awesome performers for a performance of my brass quintet (with added bass drum), and they performed very well at the Oregon Composers Forum (OCF) concert last Saturday night!
Here is the recording from Saturday night:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53528622/05%20Track%2005.wav
The next day I was able to repeat the same performance (but without the bass drum) in front of a bunch of brass players at a Monday night class called Brass Class. I normally don't attend Brass Class because I actually have an Eastern European Folk Ensemble rehearsal during that time, but I took an absence in EEFE so that I could have my piece performed again.
In rehearsing with performers I always learn something very wonderful: that I absolutely love performers (or at least ones as awesome as here)! They enjoy playing new music and are really nice with the composer, and being able to guide the rehearsals is wonderful because it gives you a chance to really befriend these people! Meeting performers that like playing your music has to be one of my favorite parts of being a composer.
Now for something else that's been on my mind that I want to get out. Sometimes I feel a little lonely and wish I had a female companion to spend time with. That feeling has been growing gradually for the past couple of years, and lately it's really been on my mind a lot. I often think about the people I'm interested in, and try to determine who I would want to ask out, but honestly I really just don't know as many female friends as I should, or the ones that I have asked out simply were not interested back. I've decided to start asking girls that I don't know very well out for tea or coffee so that we may get to know each other a little better, and that way I can really open my options and consider more people. There are still certain people I know who I definitely am interested in, but am too nervous to say anything to them simply because when I see them I get the feeling that they are not interested, even before anything is ever said. If there is a girl out there who is interested in me, I just wish they would at least hint me so that I can stop looking in the wrong directions. I'm honestly getting tired of always being alone, even though I have always been more of a "lone wolf" and have gotten very accustomed to it.
Now for some positive news! While searching some more (at the request of my composition professor) for the right short film to use for my film scoring demo, I found what I think is the most perfect video I could possibly have found on the internet! It is called Lutins, and here it is:
http://vimeo.com/21548329 (you'll have to click the link because the video will not embed)
My professor Rob Kyr will see the video tomorrow, among two other videos, and we'll know if it's the one to use! I'm very excited!
All in all, everything has been wonderful!
Here is the recording from Saturday night:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53528622/05%20Track%2005.wav
The next day I was able to repeat the same performance (but without the bass drum) in front of a bunch of brass players at a Monday night class called Brass Class. I normally don't attend Brass Class because I actually have an Eastern European Folk Ensemble rehearsal during that time, but I took an absence in EEFE so that I could have my piece performed again.
In rehearsing with performers I always learn something very wonderful: that I absolutely love performers (or at least ones as awesome as here)! They enjoy playing new music and are really nice with the composer, and being able to guide the rehearsals is wonderful because it gives you a chance to really befriend these people! Meeting performers that like playing your music has to be one of my favorite parts of being a composer.
Now for something else that's been on my mind that I want to get out. Sometimes I feel a little lonely and wish I had a female companion to spend time with. That feeling has been growing gradually for the past couple of years, and lately it's really been on my mind a lot. I often think about the people I'm interested in, and try to determine who I would want to ask out, but honestly I really just don't know as many female friends as I should, or the ones that I have asked out simply were not interested back. I've decided to start asking girls that I don't know very well out for tea or coffee so that we may get to know each other a little better, and that way I can really open my options and consider more people. There are still certain people I know who I definitely am interested in, but am too nervous to say anything to them simply because when I see them I get the feeling that they are not interested, even before anything is ever said. If there is a girl out there who is interested in me, I just wish they would at least hint me so that I can stop looking in the wrong directions. I'm honestly getting tired of always being alone, even though I have always been more of a "lone wolf" and have gotten very accustomed to it.
Now for some positive news! While searching some more (at the request of my composition professor) for the right short film to use for my film scoring demo, I found what I think is the most perfect video I could possibly have found on the internet! It is called Lutins, and here it is:
http://vimeo.com/21548329 (you'll have to click the link because the video will not embed)
My professor Rob Kyr will see the video tomorrow, among two other videos, and we'll know if it's the one to use! I'm very excited!
All in all, everything has been wonderful!
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Short films
School has been going well - I'm really excited for Rob Kyr (my comp professor) to take a look at the videos I've found for possible film scoring projects - he's going to help me decide on the right video! So far, this is the video I'm wanting to do the most:
I originally wanted to score for a 3D animated film about a girl who raises a baby dragon, but while the dragon is still a baby it gets taken away by an older dragon; then after years of searching for the dragon's lair, the girl slays an older dragon, but then realizes that the dragon was her old dragon grown up. It was a very long video though (17 minutes), so that wouldn't be ideal for a film scoring demo. The above video is short enough, and plenty of things happen, enabling different kinds of music! I think Rob Kyr will like this one, but I still have to find more videos by tomorrow morning for him to look through.
I originally wanted to score for a 3D animated film about a girl who raises a baby dragon, but while the dragon is still a baby it gets taken away by an older dragon; then after years of searching for the dragon's lair, the girl slays an older dragon, but then realizes that the dragon was her old dragon grown up. It was a very long video though (17 minutes), so that wouldn't be ideal for a film scoring demo. The above video is short enough, and plenty of things happen, enabling different kinds of music! I think Rob Kyr will like this one, but I still have to find more videos by tomorrow morning for him to look through.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Thoughts on a Sunday night
After having dinner with Desi and Adam, I led a brass ensemble euphonium sectional for an hour, and that went pretty well. We're playing an arrangement of the funeral march from Wagner's Götterdämmerung:
The difficulties in the music are mostly rhythmic - our section has some problems lining up notes perfectly, so I asked them to do a lot of work away from the horn, and to think about a quarter-note triplet pattern against the normal pulse of the piece (a pattern of 3 against 4), to help finding the exact timing of the notes. It's sounding a lot better now, so I think the sectional was indeed worth it. I also gave them copies of a sight-singing warmup sheet (for intonation) that I was given for my adv. aural skills class, which deals with major, minor, and chromatic scales, and asked them to practice singing them with solfege while consistently check themselves for pitch at a piano. I have learned that the ear training that comes from sight-singing in solfege has really helped my intonation, so I want to see if it will help the other members of my section in the same way.
Then when I got back home I did my counterpoint homework, which was to write "a bunch" (I did three) of bridges / sequences for our fugues. A bridge or sequence is just a couple measures of music that repeats in a pattern, being vertically moved around (in a consistent pattern) to bring you from one key to another. In this case, I need to get from the key of the dominant (roman numeral v) back to the tonic (roman numeral i). My favorite of the sequences I made use a chromatic leading-tone motive in every repetition.
As the day passes, I feel very good about the day, because it was relaxing, I learned a lot about the software and hardware that will give me so much more to work with as a film composer, and I got to catch up with an old friend in good company :-)
Today's been a good day!
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