Crazy Birthday

It is my birthday.

I had a plan. The plan: do 1080 bows. I’ve been meaning to do this for the longest time but like anybody else, I was waiting for the perfect opportunity. I probably can’t do it when I have a client at 6AM (total horseshit, I could wake up at 3AM to do it). I probably can’t do it midweek because I’ll be too tired (too tired for what?!).

My birthday seemed like the perfect occasion to do it. It could be a great celebration of my life and I happened to have no morning calls so I had a whopping 4 hours and 40 minutes to get the bows done, which should be more than enough time.

How do I know it’s more than enough time? Well, my Buddhist order has been running a special practice period called “100-day dharma lectures”. As part of participating in this program in Korea every Saturday you did a 1080 bow instead of the normal 108. This group bowing takes 3 hours, so I know 3 hours is a good time guideline.

My last record was 540, which is five loops around the prayer beads. So now it was time for the ten loops. In the future I will attempt thirty loops (3000) and eventually 10000, but more about that in this writing: #​

So now let’s go to today morning. I dreamt about bowing and woke up around 4:30AM without the alarm. I knew my dog would bug me as I bow so I made sure to walk the dog first, and he pooped and peed fine. Good. The dog went back to sleep so I closed the door of my room and started bowing.

Then first came this strange twist: around 350 bows my prayer beads I got from Bodh Gaya broke.

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Not the most ideal situation, but I have spares so I went to pick up my spare beads from the living room. This woke up my dog enough for him to notice me, but I hurried back into my room so he wouldn’t get anxious again. As I was proceeding on to my fourth loop, my dog started making this really weird bark.

He’s a barker, he barks a lot but this bark, I could tell something super fucked up was happening. I never heard a bark like this before. So I opened the door and he was going a bit crazy, which I thought was just his anxiety due to his dementia. I decided to bow in the living room to keep an eye on him, but a minute or two later he suddenly started puking.

Dogs puke all the time, and I’ve gotten used to them puking but this time it was like a big heaving puke that contorted his body. I’ve had that happen to me once before: when I had food poisoning. He puked up a great arc of yellow bile along with some stuff he ate from the ground and paced around the house in great discomfort.

It didn’t help that my other dog was trying to sniff up and eat the puke as I was cleaning it. All of this was happening around 5:30AM while my wife was sound asleep. Billy Jr. went outside and in a few times with no more puke or poop but now came another problem: an excessive amount of saliva.

Even humans, we get excess saliva when we throw up. Since this guy basically flipped his inside to the outside, it makes sense he’ll drool like crazy. And uhh, it was just drenching the area around me (because he’s always around me). So at 540 bows, the halfway point, I decided to stop the bows because he seemed to be getting anxious every time I stand up. I started meditating and opened my eyes to this.

All of that liquid is his drool and because he was curled up his entire body was wet. Ok, so I cleaned all of that up and gave him a quick wash then took a shower myself. I was drenching in sweat by this point and I was getting cold. My wife woke up and we had breakfast while I told her about the crazy morning I had, then she went out for her exercise.

I was thinking about trying the 1080 bows next time since the flow was already cut off. But then I thought, why stop? Sure, it’s not a consecutive 1080 bows but I have to be flexible enough to meet the demands of the current moment while staying true to what I set out to do. So I picked up the prayer beads again and started going for the second set of 540 bows.

Thankfully my dog was feeling a lot better after I fixed him some oatmeal and yogurt (what a life this dog has!), and it was time to go. Last time I did 540 bows I realized I had very poor technique because around the 400 bow mark I literally couldn’t descend my body due to knee pain. Since then I must have corrected my form (and this is the form I describe in my Buddhist practice guide!), because I have 0 knee pain today.

324 bows aren’t even that hard at this point. But man, I thought 400 bows were the difficult uphill but it doesn’t compare to the uphill battle of going from 800 bows to 900 bows. The crazy thing is, it’s so hard but I can’t really tell what the fuck the hard part is.

My legs are moving fine. There’s muscle ache but nothing too serious. Joints feel fine and I don’t have shoulder, back, or hip pain. My heart is racing but I’ve had it beat a lot faster in jiujitsu and I can go for multiple full rounds in jiujitsu so there is no reason for things to feel this hard.

But I kept on finding myself just crashing down onto the cushion. Unable to get up. Once I get up, I keep adjusting the cushion and can’t find myself the will to go do the next bow. And the more I stare at the fucking beads, the slower it moves because the only way to progress the bead is to do a bow.

Again, what is it? This difficulty that makes me want to stop, this difficulty that keeps on inviting me to stop, what is it? I can’t really identify it but it’s so… interesting to me at that point. I want to learn it more, I want to be able to identify it. The only way to identify it is to rile it up a bit more. So I push the great uphill climb of 800 bows to 900 bows and nearly lose my mind.

So what did I exactly find? I found myself at the 1000th bow and had just 80 bows left. I wanted to stop, because hey 1000 is already a great achievement. But I set out to do 1080, so I’m going to do it. Can I do it? Well, other people have and in fact there are people who have done many more than 1080 so it’s definitely possible.

But is it possible for me?

The unconscious tendency to take other people’s words as is instead of verifying it for me, it kept on telling me my actions were useless. Why? Because other people already did it. They already showed that it’s possible. With this voice so clear in my head now, I can talk with it.

As I bowed the last 80 bows this message, one of the last teachings of the Buddha, was digested onto me. Other people’s practice and attainment of happiness has nothing to do with my practice and attainment of happiness. I must be my own lamp and refuge.

And just like that, I finished the last 80 and did 1080 bows on my birthday.

You can tell how immensely proud I was at the end by that last stroke. lol. By the way this is the CJK-way of counting fives.

Then my wife came back home and we had the traditional Korean birthday food, seaweed soup. The recipe usually calls for beef broth but I substituted it with soybean paste (doenjang) and it was delicious.

So my friends, I turned 38 today. Thanks to my mother and father who decided to make me, give birth to me, and raise me. Thanks to all the food I ate that gave me sustenance. Thanks to all the doctors who cured me when I was ill. Thanks to all the teachers who educated me so I had something to make my ends meet. Thanks to all the employers who employed me over the years. Thanks to all of you who keep me and my business going.

My life is meaningless without the people who give my life meaning. So while I celebrate my birthday with my body with 1080 bows, I want to celebrate all of you. Happy birthday to all of you.

Billy Seol​
July Life Coach
​julylifecoach.com​

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