Make Tea for The Hounds of Hell

Just finished choosing courses for next semester, then spent a little more time replanning the courses for my Hamilton career.

2 labs and third term Japanese plus Socio for junior fall. Then there’ re bio-biochem, chem-biochem, linguistic analysis in anime and manga, psychology, genomes and another semester of physics. Bruh.

So, assuming work-studies and training remaining manageable, I can only wish to remain in one piece after getting a Biochem major and Japanese minor. Things wouldn’t have been this bad, to be honest, had I knocked down orgo and calc my freshman year. I think about that all the time you know. The hypotheticals. The could-haves, should-haves, would-haves. The easy road. The one where I didn’t spend weekend nights bunkering down in the library reading Buddhist scripts for Art History or re-watching Un Chien Andalou for Theories of Films. The one where I just stick to being the science kind of guy.

But then I wouldn’t have had no freaking clue of what to say when people start hammering questions about Buddhism. About why samurais and Zen could co-exist in feudal Japan. About why samurais withered but Zen evolved. About why dichotomy between avant-garde and commercial films exist and how useless it is to study each in isolation. I wouldn’t have had anything interesting to say to break the ice in awkward first encounters. I wouldn’t have had no experience performing under different modes of pressure.

So kill the Buddha, as one koan would often go, and make tea for the hounds of hell, as I would often say. Don’t have to if you don’t want to, really. It’s your choice. But you're already here at Hamilton, so as Will Ferrell has eloquently put it,

Enjoy spring while you still can.