Xavier H.M. - Notebook

Been having a rough time the past few weeks but I felt inspired to write a diary entry. I think posting something to the site will feel nice, and I hope that venting a little might break me out of this funk.

02.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s caused this depressive episode. Work was really rough but it’s finally leveling out a bit. Haven’t had any complaints on my route for two weeks now so that’s been nice.

I think having eight hours a day to just be alone with my thoughts is not very helpful though lol. I’m only a few weeks into the school year and it’s already getting to me. I’ve exhausted my favorite albums on my MP3 player. I started listening to the radio instead; my wired earbuds act as an antenna. I mostly flip flop between our local NPR station and a station that plays the greatest hits from the eighties onward. I get the best reception in the culinary kitchen, where I’ll listen to national news segments and business reports.

I ordered a small portable radio that’s arriving Monday. I hope it’ll get a better signal so I can listen to more stations. I looked up AM/FM stations near me on Radio Lineup. I’m interested in the news and talk shows. Also apparently there’s an AM station about farming? Definitely gonna give that a listen.

Besides that I want to start listening to audiobooks. I’ve borrowed books using Libby on my Kobo Libra Colour but apparently you can’t borrow audiobooks on Kobo, only buy them through the Kobo store. Which is a weird policy. I’ll have to download them through the Libby app on my phone. Technically I could walk around with my portable CD player and rent the physical audiobook CDs from the library but I don’t think that is very practical, least of all because I’d be burning through AA batteries.

I’ve downloaded a few dharma talks from YouTube and listened to them which is nice, as well as some sutras. A Discord friend sent me audio files from a lecture series on Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville which I’ve been really really enjoying. I haven’t read the actual book yet but I’m sure this lecture series will enhance my eventual read-through. I’ve already learned a lot of important context.

I looked it up and you can buy more lectures on the company’s website or pay a monthly subscription. I might subscribe in the future. I honestly think I’d get a lot of use out of it.

03.

I keep going back and forth on my recent decision to refrain from (too much) pirating. I still pirate old games that are otherwise unavailable for my 3DS. And I pirated the new episode of South Park because the creators literally made an entire episode about how they don’t give a fuck. They also had their entire show up on their website for free until they got on streaming which they’ve also riffed on multiple times.

But I stopped pirating music, books, and other TV shows/movies. I just felt drawn to minimize the habit. It was starting to become a little excessive and I could feel myself harboring feelings of greed. I was downloading all kinds of stuff just for the sake of it and I didn’t like how it made me feel.

I started looking up information on piracy from within Buddhism. There’s a lot of different opinions and arguments about the topic. But I came to the conclusion that it is not in accordance with the dharma.

There are five core precepts in Buddhism that both monks/nuns and lay people take up. Or at least have the option to. Precepts are not really “required” by lay people. Many lay Buddhists around the world only observe them on special holidays. In some schools, like my own Jodo-Shu, precepts aren’t even really encouraged—in the sense that they are irrelevant to that school’s specific practice. In the case of Japanese Pure Land, that practice is nembutsu recitation. Precepts don’t really affect the nembutsu one way or another.

Nonetheless, the five main precepts are basically the ethical minimum which we can model our behavior after if we so choose.

The second precept is, simply put, “Do not steal.”

A more literal translation of the original Pali would be:

Abstain from taking that which is not freely given.

I want to emphasize the literal translation here because I’ve seen many Buddhists justify piracy according to the popular translation. Piracy isn’t “stealing” in the traditional sense because nothing is being taken away—only copied. For a long time I told myself the same thing. I wouldn’t shoplift CDs, novels, or DVDs from a real store but I would pirate music, books, and TV online.

This change of heart occurred a couple months after I found Anna’s Archive, which is the largest text archive probably ever made. I didn’t know about it until this year. Within a couple months I amassed a pretty huge collection of titles.

I already downloaded several ebooks and started looking up Buddhist ebooks. I found the book I was looking for but stopped short of pressing download. Pirating a book from my own spiritual tradition gave me pause. After that I began rethinking piracy as a whole and how it was changing my relationship with the media I consume, my own greed, money, etc.

I plan on writing a longer blog post about it soon. I made a thread on Dharma Wheel here and got some good responses. There’s some other great threads like this one that feature more compelling debates and arguments.

This comment on my thread stood out to me in particular:

At the same time, you are also seeing something important clearly: the mind’s relationship to the act matters. The repeated self-justification, loophole-seeking, and inability to let go are probably more spiritually significant than the technical legal status of an old ROM file.

I keep going back to this statement time and time again. This isn’t really “about” pirating itself. It’s about how it is affecting my mind. I don’t know if I could just say fuck it and go back to downloading stuff for free all the time now. But I also don’t want to create new religious anxiety in place of my previous habits.

Am I carving out exceptions for myself that contradict the precept I wanted to uphold in the first place? Definitely. Does that invalidate my efforts to minimize my habitual piracy elsewhere? I don’t think so. Likewise, I don’t believe that allowing myself some wiggle room in one or two specific instances means I should just go back to my materialistic, data-hoarding ways.

I’m not a buddha or a bodhisattva or even a good practitioner. I’m not trying to be perfect. But I am trying. I’m trying to work with my mind. I’m trying to work through my feelings of guilt and follow my spiritual practice in a way that is uplifting, constructive, and personally healing—not degrading or self-judgmental.

The practice has certainly changed my relationships with content consumption and money. I’m buying physical media where I used to download. That means I’m also spending more. By removing the convenience of free, always available content, my media consumption now has real stakes—and I’m noticing the real losses.

But it’s also given me some real gains. I’m using the library more than ever. I’ve gotten back into listening to the radio for music and the public radio for news. I’m more appreciative of the movies and albums I do own. Instead of constantly downloading new media I’m becoming more acquainted with the limited content I actually own.

I feel more connected to the present moment. I’m more intentional in what I watch, read, and listen to. I’m actually finishing books instead of hopping between an insane amount of PDFs. Since I’m actually buying books I want to get my money’s worth and read them in full.

So, yeah. That’s an update on that.

04.

I started therapy last week.

I feel like that’s a big announcement I probably should’ve fronted this post with but whatever.

I’ve been in therapy many, many times. I’ve never really had a good therapist though to be frank. I’ve only ever seen counselors. After Covid I switched to an online therapy provider because that’s what my PCP at the time referred me to. It taught me that basically any schmuck can get a degree in psychology and a webcam and call themselves a therapist lol.

The person I’m seeing now is an actual doctor of psychology and a professor. His office is in a hospital. All of these things give me peace of mind.

Our first session went well. It was mostly me just giving a quick rundown of everything going on in my life. I also shared some concerns based off my previous experiences in therapy. He was pretty receptive and understanding. I get the vibe that he actually knows his shit and will be able to provide structure and clinical boundaries where my previous providers could not.

I’ve got my second appointment tomorrow. I’ll post another update afterward.

05.

Something cool I’ve accomplished amidst generally feeling like crap is getting back into drawing!

I’ve been posting sketches on the site. It’s been really really nice. I’ve found some cool new Krita plugins that have helped my workflow a ton. I plan on making a blog post about them all soon and my setup/workflow! I might start making speed painting/drawing videos soon too!

You can view my recent sketches in my sketchbook.

I also started looking for more places to post my art. I’ve been on krita-artists.org for ages. It’s a really lovely community. But I wanted to try seeing other platforms that weren’t just for Krita. Right now I’m on Sheezy and Cara. I like both of them so far but they serve different niches. Sheezy feels more like old school DeviantART with its UI, community awards, spotlight, etc; Cara is more of a professional portfolio site.

06.

Besides art, I’ve also been doing a lot of webdev stuff. Not on this site though.

I’ve been working on transmen.online again for weeks now. I started with the backend and then switched to redoing the frontend. Now I’ve just got to rework some site content and make new member profiles for people that applied months and months ago. After that I’ll make a proper post announcing the relaunch. I’m really excited! You can view some of the changes live on the site. :)

07.

That’s pretty much it. Just wanted to vent and get some thoughts and stuff off my chest. Starting a new week today that is decidedly less busy than last week. Gonna make an effort to take some time for myself and chill out/relax. Maybe plan a few solo library dates. :)

Take care! Thank you for reading <333