The Wandering Monk

Brewmaster Rysu – New Posts On Tuesdays

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What is YOUR Direction?

Think back as far as you can remember.



Now comes the hard part.




















Addiction: It’s all in your mind.










Addiction is just another word for a runaway habit.

An addiction can usually form if these criteria are met:



Here’s why Addiction is in your mind.
































Talk to you soon.


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Time and the Human Experience

Consider what the word ‘Time’ means to you.  When you think of it casually, the definition and the ideas associated with it seem simple to understand.  Time is the dimension of the passage of events from one to another and our experience with it, right?  It’s the progression of events, one after another, towards the future and from the past and the position we are at right now is the present.

Human Beings love boxes and labels.  I recently wrote a post about Gas Station Sushi that talked briefly about this, but more to the point is that labels are funny things.  When we look at them in passing, they seem to represent exactly what they were intended for; to easily convey an idea or a set of preconceptions.  But the harder we look at it, the more abstract and disconnected we feel from the label.  Some people even adhere so strictly to labels that without the boundaries of labels to guide them, they feel like all is chaos.  And they aren’t wrong, are they?

The YouTube channel vSauce recently posted a video on the passage of time and it’s abiguity as well as the method in which we, as human beings, have kept track of it.  When you look at the past methods we’ve used to track time, it becomes clearer and clearer that we have tried desperately to fit our common perception of reality into boxes so we can quell our lack of total explanation.  

The way the earth turns in relation to the sun has some interesting impacts on the measurement of time, from day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year, century-to-century, and millennium-to-millennium.  It makes muddies our once crisp view on time and the manner in which we track it.  It’s an example of universal occurrences that are wild and chaotic that the human experience tries to quantify for the sake of our own understanding.  

Philosophically it brings a few points to mind.  Foremost is the idea of dimensions; if Time is a dimension because it’s a manner of perception, then shouldn’t all of our experience as human beings be consider its own dimension?  After all, whether it’s a dog’s view on reality or an extraterrestrial’s, their entire concept of existence is entirely and abstractly different than our own.  The next idea that comes to mind is that the universe, while amazing and marvelous, is the result of billions of years of actions and reactions that coalesced into only one possible outcome given the variables abound.  Some people call it ‘intelligent design’ because it is so vast and incomprehensible, because it’s so calculated and exacting.  But is it?

Let’s go back to ‘time’ as an experience.   As box-creating, boundary-setting human beings, having established words like ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’, we are surprisingly unable to set an exact instance of experience between the past and the present or the present and the future.  Some say it’s the transition of awareness; when you are aware of an event that is no longer, it has transitioned to the past, whereas if you are aware of an event that will come to pass but hasn’t yet, you’re referring to that as a future event.  But where do we draw the line? Can we observe a moment becoming part of the past, or is it only when we realize it? ‘Now’ can either be one second, or it can be a moment, an hour, or a day.  So long as our perception establishes the sensation of the ‘now’.  As I write this, is each word I write the ‘present’ and the previous word the ‘past’?  And if this is my present now, by the time you read this, it will be my past, but your present.  For me, it’s my present but your future.  Geesh!

Astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Steven Hawking have explained many times in many places that gravity can stretch and impact time.  But if time is an experience, then the dimension of time is within us and so gravity stretches us.  The gravity of distant stars skewing our perception of the universe may be another creature’s normal, non-altered reality.  When we look into the sky, we see the light of a billion-billion stars, whose light is reaching us long after its source has faded into oblivion.  This means that we’re experiencing the past in the present and that we are those stars’ future to their present.  

It seems to me that the perception of time is relative to the human experience.  With this in mind, our strict adherence and obsession with time to measure our lives, our days, our experiences, seems a tad silly.  It’s this idea that reminds me that we created words to conceptualize experiences and ideas so we can share them with each other.  So we can learn, and think, and grow.  Ironically, when we spend so much time on the constraints of the labels we’re using, we are robbing ourselves of the very experiences we’re trying to share.  

So, the next time you’re late, just remember that it’s all relative. 

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Gas Station Sushi

Think of the words “Gas Station Sushi” and record your first impression on that phrase.

Specifically, answer these points:

1.  Initial thought.

2.  Visualization (if any)

3.  Associated impression.4.  If a friend asked you about your opinion, what would you say?

Now before we get into where this conversation is going, write those answer down.  

Alright, now that we’ve considered ‘what’ your perspective is, let’s follow it.  I won’t pretend to know what your responses were but, for most, the thought of Gas Station Sushi generated a few opinions immediately.  These initial impressions have some keen insights not only into a single person’s perspective, but also on a social case that can be made for some much harder issues.  Let’s take a look.

If you’re like me or many others, you saw the words ‘Gas Station Sushi’ and your first impression was likely not a favorable one.  Without having any direct interest, a person may respond to the phrase with indifference or disinterest at a minimum, or may leap to assuming a great many things from the phrase at a maximum.  If you felt indifferent, then this speaks for a cautious, open, and analytical mind whereas if you leapt to a conclusion, it may indicate that you trust your immediate instinct and impressions, draw conclusions from experiences with relation to subject matter, and likely behave in a headstrong manner.  

Further, if you remained indifferent, it may mean you struggle to direct your focus and energy into a single task.  This exercise, for example, implicitly asks you to engage with it.  Doing so minimally means you’re interest enough to participate, but not interested enough to give it your mind’s full focus.  Pre-judging based on the phrase means you draw from experiences innately, and psychologically react to those experiences, especially bad ones, with a internalized, pre-determined action (that may or may not be a conscious decision).  

But what does this mean for society at large?  Well, look around in your group of friends and in the social communities you participate in.  Do you see more of the reserved, cautiously optomistic, critical thinkers?  Or do you see the reactive, knee-jerk, hasty responders?  Statistically speaking, you’re likely to encounter the later, not the former.  Our society innately fears what it doesn’t understand and it rarely takes the time to see a situation through before making a decision on their action.  This action doesn’t have to be a physical one, it can be a psychological action too.  

Can you think of where Gas Station Sushi fits into this?  What if we replaced Gas Station Sushi with a particular ethnicity, gender, race, creed, or religion?  Would the results be different?  Here again, statistically speaking, they would not.  Notoriously, we as humans have oppressed those whom we did not understand, or whom we judged too hastily.  When humanity hears Gas Station Sushi, it reels at the thought.  Indeed it may research and investigate it, but the stigma is born from an initial and widespread action.  Only through aggressive, societal change, can this stigma be broken.  

Consider for a moment that human beings, like Sushi, vary wildly beyond their titles and the words we invented to describe them.  Consider that the function of our language is to convey ideas, not bind others with restriction.  And most importantly, consider that there is only one word that can accurately describe anyone: Human

By the way, it turns out, there’s a sushi vendor by the name of Lee’s Sushi that offers high quality sushi that is quite good, at local gas stations.  This adage may have been a long winded version of “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, but truly when a cliche is uttered so often, the value in the lesson is lost.  

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The Meaning of Happiness






  1. I am not weak.
  2. I am not helpless.








–Hellen Keller

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Last night I dreamed that I was a creature made of light and energy and I hovered in space before a blue planet of creatures I’d never seen before.


They appeared to be young but somehow, had deviated from the natural world. All worlds I recalled seeing before this one were that where natural ecosystems existed in harmony. Perhaps there were those that consumed others, but their consumption ultimately fueled the ecosystem they were part of. Their every waste product enabled the positive production of their world.

But this new world on this new planet was different.

They seemed to be intelligent, emotional, capable, driven, explorative, curious creatures that regularly ventured to press themselves further and further into the fabric of understanding.  It was easy to see their intellectual potential.  It was obvious that they thirsted for knowledge like no other. 

Yet for all that they understood, which was impressive for the short time span they had grown, they were so blind to the things that they were doing to their surroundings. Their waste products destroyed their local ecosystem. Their consumption of those around them did not cycle back into the system in such a manner that it ultimately necessitated the circle. They were outside of the cycle.  Some of them knew this and tried desperately to tell others, but their progress steadily drove them farther and farther towards inevitable destruction.

As I hovered there, learning about who these creatures were intimately, what they were doing and how they were doing it, it became more and more clear to me that their future was destined to always consume with great disregard. How could anyone welcome them to a greater universe when all they know is consumption?  When they behaved like the most advanced virus the galaxy could ever have seen.  The kind that is intelligent and is utterly unaware at the destruction they cause.  I observed their past and saw they had always been this way from the moment they could.

I turned to the stars behind me and began to drift away from the world. After a moment I paused and glanced back and I said, “I will return some day to see what will have become of you. I pray that you learn from what you’re doing before its too late.”

I woke up.

What have we done?