this is work in progress or homilies or miscellaneous items

that don’t warrant a page by themselves

or seem to fit better here

pending poems  index

chronological order is from the bottom to the top of  the page

audio files can be complemented by listening to them with the eyes closed

"wisdom literature"

is two words

be careful of both

ideas only ever translate imperfectly

into reality

making concrete

what is abstract

a mistake

“ as a person’s weight goes up, all regions of the brain go down in activity and blood flow ”

“ acceptance that alzheimer’s disease is a lifestyle disease, little different from other age-related diseases, that is, the sum of a lifetime

dr. amen and collaborators provide compelling evidence that obesity  reduces  blood supply to the brain to shrink the brain and promote alzheimer’s disease ”

the discovery and opening up of  tutankhamun’s  tomb and sarcophagus

very informative and brings the whole discovery and cultural impact to life

the tomb is a long lost cultural system reified

the drift into the end of time

slow, painful

inexorable

religion is the reification of rather toxic ideas

something humans are very good at

complain at your peril

from history the grand names roll

marvellous empires, bloody wars

architectural wonders

times of fertility and decimation

they are all creations of you

what does that mean ?

zen is so difficult it requires full intellectual faculties all your life, if you damage your brain with substances then you are out of the game

the irony now is that "zen" has become life wallpaper for people with substance abuse problems, its perceived "nihilism" justifying their abuse

the question about any drug is do they do permanent brain damage and people seem to vary hugely in this, even one dose of LSD can really damage some, others not so much

just asking that question can get you banned from certain portions of the web

the net is full of mental health problems and drug abuse, its easy just to write self-justifying bullshit, with what your life actually is tucked away unchanged

religion is fiction

its basically the error of taking a literary work and making it too real

the stasis

of the fading blossom

in a vase

“ "do not lie" is a very interesting precept

i always thought about myself being honest, but i’ve discovered that i lie to myself

and that couldn’t be more damaging

for instance say that somebody says something that upsets me, well then without be conscious about it i built up mental lies to cover up that unpleasant sensation instead of facing it

it comes as a surprise that i was not as honest as i always thought about myself ”

my  reply

to my mind, that’s the real zen, you have to go against the grain of yourself

without doing that you are worst than wasting your time, sadly, so few do it, well of course its hard to do

the weird thing about drug use is its not all negative

it creates a certain sophistication about handling reality and manipulation and deceit and appearances

i can handle people fucking their brains up with drugs, that’s their problem, but its the way they can fuck your life over with "the skills' that makes me cry

even people who have "kicked" their use are still a nightmare, ex-alcoholics too

when these people hit fifty you get a lot of "late-onset" schizophrenia and impaired cognition, women ex-alcoholics get especially hit when the hormones drop off

its not realized how much of this "late onset schizophrenia" is around, you can waste your brains when you are young and get away somewhat with it, but post 50, you are a burden, why the hell should i support you ?

i've seen it, limited use of lsd and mdma  (ecstacy)  can have a permanent very deleterious effect in some, its like the trenches in WW1 now, so many walking wounded with a very bad attitude

"do not lie"

lying is totally appropriate in some circumstances

actually black and white "lying" is part of something very multidimensional

"gaslighting" "bending the truth " inadvertent lying and telling the truth, circuitous truth, white lies, lying by omission, unnecessary lying and being caught out

as i have got older it has become more apparent how important it is to be able to trust someone and there’s a lot of interplay between not quite telling the truth and being fully truthful in that

how does "fiction" relate to lying ?

i notice you do that a lot with the way you are try to build "bradbuddhism", a supposedly "sophisticated" version of "westernized buddhism" with the fiction or lie about nishijima and kobun being "pupils" of sawaki which they never were, and making sawaki some sort of "root guru" to get around the problem of most zen masters talking arrant nonsense whereas he makes sense somewhat and also doesn’t appear to be too tainted by the issue of "war criminality" in japanese zen lineages

you are also lying to yourself about the validity of "bradbuddhism", what was the attraction of "hardcore zen", it was the "self-honesty" and now you are just wallowing in the bullshit of others

this would be the central problem with "lying", is the way it distorts your world in a non-productive way, you can’t tell a lie without half believing it yourself

the net makes lying and living in various delusions very easy, i do think it has altered social standards the wrong way, net zen is a stinking sewer of lying by omission, avoidance, self-dishonesty and false declaiming, disgusting !

one day you’ll never think straight

for no change

one day you’ll think straight

for a change

audio

the energy

going to support appearances

reputation mainly

and substance is ignored

or plagiarized

three or four nights in a row of a bright full moon

even the insomniac magpies get tired

that, with a frost

makes everything quiet

the endless noise of people

why bother with them ?

the endless noise of people

why bother with it ?

the endless noise of people

why bother ?

the windswept cliffs of infinity

call us to step off

well, we have to wait

trapped in fixed ideas

the idiots blarney back and forth

thinking it beautiful

not seeing their own ugliness

for what purpose

i cannot guess

the self-important

with their inane opinions

like they matter

well you have to be careful

correctness doesn’t mind which cloak it wears

the wooden horse was a siege engine

troy was a luwian city

odysseus was of the "sea people'

troy was real, but different

there was a lot of history going on

they can imitate the style

but alas, lacking the brain power to drive it

they founder

the wealth of history

beggars fantasy

there’s a very rough edge

to everything going on

all the time

dreams of benignness don’t work out

they are after all

a dream

sex is a rabbit-hole, just like religion

people disappear down both never to return

the zen patriarchs were celibate for a reason

they don’t trip

but walk over the ground

rather

than

under it

sex is a rabbit-hole, just like religion

people disappear down both never to return

the zen patriarchs were celibate for a reason

just because i look the part

and talk the part

doesn’t mean i am the part

that takes judgment

the rabbit hole of buddhism

caught brad warner

and how !

this idea

of working something out

and expressing it simply

is too much for people

stalin

a man not without his share of tragedy

visited it on others

one thousand-fold

stalin

a man not without his share of tragedy

visited it on others

on being a writer

one day you wake up

and realise you are competent

the crowds don’t want to applaud you

they want to kill you

for showing them up

african moon

well you do to be removed

from the savagery

below

rather than work through ideas

people take sides

championing one idea or another

how foolish

spots make a leopard

but they don’t make a cheetah

what makes a cheetah ?

 running !

the moon corona has too small a pupil

which is just as well

an unblinking eye

would be too much

i had an idea

it quickly cascaded into a mess

all i could think was

why did i do that ?

i knew

i had an idea

i had an idea

it cascaded into a mess

all i could think was

why did i do that ?

i knew

i had an idea

"thou shalt not steal "

youth steals from age

age steals from youth

children steal from parents

women steal from men

men steal from women

the rich steal from the poor

the poor steal from the rich

i’m afraid its

"thou shalt steal"

the stasis

of fading blossom

in a vase

the stasis

of fading blossom in a vase

the stasis of fading blossom

in a vase

"you write a lot"

well its not like the universe is short of words is it ?

"meaning" in paragraphs however is a different case

people are not very interesting

why is that ?

the same mold striking over and over

again and again

the mold is called "survival of the species"

they never go "out of bounds" in their thinking

a good poem is like a rubik’s cube

you have to shuffle the meanings to the get the process of resolving the sense

readers do not necessarily view this process positively

we exist

there’s not much more to be said

because more

can’t be said

we exist

there’s not much more to be said

because much more

can’t be said

equations unsolved

sums not added

over a lifetime

accumulate

begging

to be addressed

i’m used to thinking of "impossible" at the end of a continuity of probability, but on looking closer there’s lots of things that are actually "impossible" and not just "improbable" because of inherent factors actively preventing the outcome, that is, not even remotely possible, rather a discrete event of impossibility

like telstra getting back to me about my $2 sim card that the activation got messed on

the problem young men have with their early employment is they are very far from having an adequate skillset in anything

by the time you get an adequate skillset which takes decades then you are running into the decrements of aging

life’s not fair, but the screwed up education system that requires you to unlearn over later decades the rubbish you are pumped full of is malice, but hard to say by whom

if you don’t report what is there, when its there, as its there

then you don’t report what is there, when its there, as its there

audio

to revolve through so many lives

the mind rebels

while still revolving

if you have too clear a sense of history

you’d never do anything

its cycles and ups and down

cast a patina of pointlessness

if you have too clear a sense of history

you’d never do anything

its cycles and ups and down

cast a patina of hopelessness

if you have too clear a sense of history

you’ll never do anything

a full moon

what are the magpies asking

and why ?

pull the curtain moon

a full moon

what are the magpies saying

and why ?

celebrity gossip

nothing happens

again

icarus fell

and was resurrected

you go away

no-one knows where

you come back

no-one knows where you’ve been

be-ing

 where am i ?

be-ing

being

 where am i ?

being

panpsychism is a bad mash of theology and yet more added nonsense, why does no-one know about the main research paradigm, ie the "broadcast" /global workspace theory of conciousness ?

i really like this  painting  by "el sexto"

gratian

pupil of

ausonius

it

didn’t

stick

what is separate

is separate and the influence

of

one on the other

is limited

the version of what a samurai is as portrayed by the "ghost of tsushima" is is actually a modernist/propagandist product of meiji era and nationalist-imperialist japan, you know "the sword that kills gives life" as a justification for all sorts of atrocities

what "samurais" were in the various historical epochs is informative, what they were changes and has everything to do with japan’s bloody transition from a feudal to "modern" society

we’re a species that talks and expects everyone

else to do everything

and in some pathetic cases

even do the talking

all of christian art

trying to write

some truth

into

falseness

the inconsistency of the "do not kill" precept in buddhism is that it would make no sense to intelligent highly conscious species like lions, elephants, hyenas, wild dogs and killer whales

in other words its not a "spiritual" truth but social more, necessary for a functioning society and even then it has a context as in war there is permission to kill the enemy without any punitive consequence, at least from your own side

an interesting boundary condition of that "more" are the committing of "war crimes" by allied troops in afghanistan and iraq

"do not kill"

tell that to the lions !

just lie in bed thinking

that’s what descartes did

all things are a manifestation of the buddha dharma

all things manifest the truth of the absolute

“ what is the truth of the absolute ? ”

what all things manifest

boys play at war

girls play with dolls

and so the farce continues

what is it to feel sorry for yourself ?

a private grief

a mourning of something

a problem of existance ?

media life appears to be one long "humblebrag" these days, more insincere and hypocritical apologies than you can throw a stick at

pukeworthy

for a moment

the intense orange

on the sunset skyline

everything else

pales

people

who expect to be spoon fed

won’t move an inch outside themselves

will crash

let

them

crash

shares, gold, crypto

people chasing "stores of value"

let’s hope they don’t evaporate

all the below down to the homily ending in "text" was written in an hour after being woken early this morning by a magpie, don’t ask me where it comes from because i don’t know

worse than "normal"

and more dangerous

are the "wannabe normal"

unduly persistent

with

their

malice

worse than normal

and more dangerous

are the wannabe normal

unduly persistent

with

their

malice

mystical experiences are always strange

the "normal" can pick it

and try to kill you

when they sense it

you unwrap

their puny world

they

retaliate

 the frauds !

you can infer something

but real knowledge

requires experience

you can infer something

but real knowledge

requires

experience

when idiots are better paid than you

its time to leave

we all have more profound being

we cannot see

it is more objective

than us

the extent to which we are configured

to perceive health and health problems

in others

is unbelievable

beware the obese and heavily tattooed

you are stigmatised by evolution

the extent to which we are configured

to perceive health

in others

is unbelievable

the extent

to which we are configured

to perceive health

in others

is unbelievable

the extent

to which we are configured

to perceive health

in others

is

unbelievable

half-sleep

a different mode

of being

fictionalized universes

are fiction

don’t forget that

fictionalized universes

are fiction

a day planned

writing destroyed it

a day planned

writing alcoholics

bukowski, pessoa

they needed to write

to keep themselves on deck

too tired to read

too tired to write

too tired to sleep

the wrong kind of "tired"

too tired to read

too tired to write

not too tired to sleep

the right kind of "tired"

too tired to read

too tired to write

too tired to sleep

is that really so ?

or are you just fictionalizing something

as usual ?

if you can't sleep

at least rest

closure

the door closed

don’t dream

it happened

the power of text

is it remains

we don’t

the power of text

is it remains

we

don’t

things

stop

when we stop thinking about them

then they occur

unsurprisingly

things stop

when we stop thinking about them

then they occur

unsurprisingly

what’s run out

runs

runs

out

the neverending

story

what’s run out

runs

runs

out

the

neverending

story

Brad, you are writing a book

called "Brad’s buddhism"

most people don’t see religion that way

they see ceremonies, activites and beliefs

well you have beliefs

the worst part

of

the

deal

god

another of those mornings

in and out of bed

writing homilies

pessoa

give

me

your

suitcases

sometimes

things just run and run

i don’t know

why

when you write

you don’t want to get

too fictional

experience outweighs fiction

and gives depth

sleep

balm

if only i could get it

magpies

wake me

early in the morning

and then

i write

and write

and write

drugs

anesthetize you

to situations

you should get out of

or make changes to

i class

over immersion

in entertainment

as a drug

it always amazes me

the number of things that can go wrong

like you are being searched for some reason

it always amazes me

the number of things that can go wrong

like you are being searched

for some reason

brad warner

you are writing a book

called "buddhism the answer to life"

there is no answer to life

because there was never a question in the first place

religion

is a fiction

made too real

things that should only be thought about

become actions and beliefs

the crazy get crazier

little dishonesties

take us a mile off course

we veer a mile

from where we should go

an "adept"

can’t say much

because where he was taught

proficiency is frowned upon

the usual way

at some point

you have to break free

and teach yourself

a preacher trapped in text

talking for so long

he comes to believe it

"too long"

can be a reason

to leave

regrets

what wells up from memory

sometimes surprises

regrets

what wells up from memory

sometimes

surprises

text  text

everything’s

text

letters and numbers

and full stops

and quote marks

question marks and hyphens

endless

text

text

sanity is bordered by insanity

insanity is bordered by sanity

obvious when you think about it, but insanity is also bordered by itself

the end of the road

you get out

look around

there’s a barrier

not exactly necessary as the road stops there

you get back in

turn around

and drive back

a top spins

my head spins

my life spins

this world spins

spin a little less please

a top spins

my head spins

the world spins

spin a little less please

there’s a whole new "genre" of "zen" grown up on the net which is anti-meditation or contemplation and is basically text based with an underlying "i’m enlightened, you’re not" theme

people over-attach to "meaning" ,  not understanding its fluid nature and as stalin said as he signed the order for execution of the polish officers at katyn. "paper can bear the weight of anything put upon it"

if you post anything of "contemplative insight" ,  they then proceed to bother you endlessly because it conflicts with their preconceived notions of being "enlightened"

being unable to "talk the talk" they then try to beat you into silence

joshu/zhaozhou  and   ryokan  occupy a space people don’t want or can’t go to because it is celibate zen

the problem is, its the only space "zen" has any meaning

joshu’s  “ song  of the twelve hours of the day ”

the net

text becomes more important than reality

it replaces reality

the male dream

supercompetence and women

genghis khan realised it

“ why is there something rather than nothing ? ”

because if you have "nothing" then that also implies having something

its a real art to explain something simply, for years i have looked for a "simple" explanation or overview of what cryptography is, but never found it

and  this  has just turned up

its a rare ability apparently, that you, rafael pass, have

its interesting that at this point its not known whether you can create intrinsicially secure cryptography which actually will become a practical problem with the development of quantum computing, if you think about it, quantum itself is actually a solution, no doubt there will be degrees of "quantumness" and the ability to solve the kolmogorov complexity problem

to live your life by "text" is a bit crazy

taking "precepts" is the whole core of the religious problem

its making too real what is in fact oversimplified "wisdom literature" ,  its something to think about and that’s all

"wisdom rules" don’t seem to translate into life very well at all and i have to say my observation of people who take precepts is they are closed minded hypocrites, borderline personality even

a disabled child

whose mother had rejected him

there is no redress

or mercy

 or what ?

the moon

through the clouds

spilling its light

like on a lake

patterns in the sand

like human lives

occur

asking what the pattern means

isn’t futile

its mistaken

words

nonsense

without meaning

the usual human patter

the other worlds of translation

reveal

beyond this time at least

not male

not female

stuck in the strange world

of

male and female

you know r|zen is a psychward when it kicks out the sane

“ Most mystics throughout history say Infinity can only be reached through good-will, compassion, and more ”

good-will and compassion are meaningless aggregates

i think there’s a lot of circumstantial things in life

deep trends

but circumstances can be favourable or unfavourable

edward hopper’s personal life is not so attractive, his wife, josephine was quite a good painter and he was mean to her

I           II

they both needed to eat better, the brain can’t run well on a poor diet

they were not suitably matched

contrary to what you might think, the dutch are very religious with a lot of different sects

if you listen to what  these women  say its just brainwashing

why would they have to do nothing but justify themselves ?

i come across many on the web whose ideas are so far off track and restricted as to be characteristic of schizophrenia, modelling without any attempt to test in the real world

when you question them, its either complete silence by return or that flip into aggression, not having learnt how to deal reasonably when challeneged

there’s quite a few "convent" videos on the web, with one or two exceptions they seem to be proof the notion of god is "bogus"

if god is infinite ,  then surely he or she must be wider than any particular religion or genre

only "literature" seems to get this

if you want to understand a woman, look at her earrings

buddhism

a bunch of fairly conventional philosphical ideas

misapplied

women

worshippers of voynich in men

from that

you can see everything is doomed

women

worshippers of voynich in men

you can see everything is doomed

before it starts

if you have an imperfect understanding of infinity

well, everyone does

the problem is when you

think

its

perfect

or

even

that

there

is

infinity

because

there

isn’t

the morons

miss

the point

the strangeness of being

i still can’t figure it out

zen

a dream catcher

for the intellectualy disabled

brad warner

a dream catcher

for the intellectualy disabled

all these western "devotees"

of various indian gurus

their hidden sexual agendas

are the only explanation

nuns and monks

shaped by belief systems

how can you

give your life

to insanity ?

what really can be said ?

nothing

well i’m saying nothing

that said it !

i’m eating liver

wallaby

i slit its throat last night

wallaby

it doesn’t get fresher

the aged

locked up in their little cells

fed and watered

and carted away when dead

the convenience store

of life

m.f.a’s who can’t write

pretentious magazines

the academic shemoozzle

the latter day scam

of the intelligentsia

what’s wrong with the monastic life

the  anonymity  of the graves

writing reconstructs something

from

nothing

writing reconstructs something from nothing

i thought the harpist looked quite young, at ten a genuine prodigy

the fingers are not quite strong enough, but the  interpretation  is played with feeling and cannot be bettered

cai thomas singing the  suo gan

with a lot of legal stuff, all you are doing is making it more expensive for the opponent to continue than settle

guzheng  covers  of "drama" and "love has won"

human life is optimized, if you can call it that, for continuity

therefore all activites tend to continuity

infinity is a discontinuous event, even though it may appear to have continuity

human life is optimized, if you can call it that, for continuity

therefore all activites tend to continuity

infinity is discontinuous

a good video on  posture  for walking

people are as different as landscapes

you can’t terraform one into another

liturgies have a functional purpose

to codify the craziness

so you know who is in this asylum

and outside

translations by idiots

make idiots

of the reader

continuity

discontinuity

one is the obverse of the other

 why ?

because

a frosty dawn

the noise of the birds

warm in their feathers

no mammal sounds at all

a frosty dawn

the noisy birds

warm in their feathers

no mammal sounds at all

audio

the problem with convents and monasteries is the "over-identification" of god as "discrete"

they are constantly maintaining an image, "the god of love" or whatever

sort of a "can say" "can’t say" that goes on forever, which of course is why the world occurs

there is no "right" or "wrong" in terms of what other people do, just look out for agendas !

in all this world

there is only me

and the grief of that

and other

the religious

you can’t go after them

they disappear

up the arse

of some text

or

other

everything just runs on and on

on and on

ad infinitum

yet there is a stop

if you

can find it

why error persists forever is

it cannot

resolve

brad warner has won

armed with the babelic libray of buddhism

he

can

bullshit

forever

i’m

out

moving in with his girlfriend

ruined him

why error persists forever is

it cannot

resolve

there is always a group

in any society

who would destroy

the existing social structure

and take over themselves

ideologies are the camouflage

for this aggressive

grasping

the problem with buddhists

and their pseudo-philosophical world view

is they believe it

more than christians

the christian world view is so inconsistent

even the insane will have moments of sanity

but buddhists

dull of mind

have no doubts

about

what is nonsense

the tableaux of death

it sounds better than inanity

so many

spill their lives

into

these

they want you to spill your life

into them

the bastards

its not benign

they mean you harm

there’s nothing worse

than trying

to

make

a

poem

when

there

is

none

it matters

it matters

not

it

does not

matter

it

matters

endless

this interplay

congenital nuclear cataract, the entire nucleus  is filled

this is what happens to lesser extreme with the most common form of age related cataracts

its in some degree in everyone’s future, the lens nuclues is real

ed.  second photo to the right

there’s an interesting relation between the writing of a muscial composition and a performer learning it

the composition in this case would have taken much less time than  tiffany  is taking to learn it

i doubt bach would be spending this time learning to perform it either, on the other hand, his performance could be inferior ?

anyway, its the writing itself that gives a density and compression of space and time unattainable any other way

it amazing how little the truth that vincent van gogh didn’t commit suicide but was shot in "mis-adventure" has fitered through to popular and academic cultures, even with a film  like this

he also never cut off his own ear, gauguin did that and van gogh covered up what was a serious offence

his letters are the most sane writing i have ever read

eihei dogen writes that the buddhist doctrine of "twelve fold dependent origination" is

"the wheel of non-necessity"

ie complete nonsense

from the horse’s mouth but who listens ?

notions like the twelve fold chain are actually a philosophical and reasoning mistake common to all religions which involves the making of an identity between abstractions and their particular instances, whereas the nature of the process of abstraction only relates in the most indefinite way to any specifics

“ could you say something about food and zen ? ”

its so bad as to be life shortening

the only decent food i ever had on a sesshin was made by a russian orthodox couple and it was "heavenly"

the external world

supposedly uninfluenced by us

pulsates with every beat of our hearts

the external world

pulsates

with the beat of our hearts

i’m getting old

tired of arguing

the energy ebbs to stillness

the recognition

of the impossibility

of changing anything

the wrath of god is gentle

it works the only way it can

its what we miss

the fine trees and garden

oh, that’s the wrath of man

the wrath of god is gentle

it works the only way it can

its what we miss

the fine tree and garden

no longer there

oh, that’s the wrath of man

a day  in the life of the mala mala game reserve which borders the kruger national park on the west

to break the spell

of a film or television program

look at the actors outside that role

and the director and writer too

it does wonders

these artful fabricators of what is

usually nonsense

we all

have our

different crosses to bear

mine

has

always

been

me

we all have our different crosses to bear

mine

has

always

been

me

competence is a dreadful thing

it consumes you worse than any flame

keeping you within the bounds

of its walls

religion

a bunch of idiots

chasing a toxic rainbow

zen

a bunch of idiots

chasing a toxic rainbow

the fall of icarus

so many meanings

on different levels

but the young are headstrong

and the old survive

“ why do you think premarital sex was made a sin by the christian church ?

i’m trying to think of a practical reason why ”

things used to freer before the advent of syphilis, but religious doctrines are often really social "mores" in disguise, that is, they often have a/the "productive" purpose of the social control of a disruptive behavior

also its only since about 1950 its been relatively easy for young people to earn enough to support a child and actually that may be changing again

history

better than a circus

of reality

true envy is when they won’t touch those they envy

but attempt to massacre those around them

i don’t know what you are saying

or why you are saying it

a   collection  of recent art by jason, except for the drawing of him at the bottom

i quite like  this one ,  interestingly herman melville also  symbolised  a palm tree

the xinxin ming

a lot of nonsense

 except for one line 

 "just avoid picking and choosing" 

 i can’t disagree with that 

don’t bother with god, or buddha, or angels or demons or prophets and life will be saner and simpler

everywhere i looked for rest

some minimization

of the kaleidoscope

but i forgot

its never static

but always

moving

everywhere i looked for rest

some minimization

of the kaleidoscope

but i forgot

its never static

but always

moves

a presentation of  annabel lee ,  it works i think because it captures the rhythm

its certainly one of poe’s most profound poems

edgar allan poe’s death by rabies fits well with what we know of him and not the "drunk" hypothesis, at that point he wasn’t drinking at all

another unfortunate "random event" like vincent van gogh being accidently shot

van gogh had a finished  final painting  while poe’s  last work  was unfinished

what is effectively a group effort of jason, catarina and myself translating catarina’s poem

colourless existance

when i lose my zest for life

i’ll ignore my elegant lipstick

with unkempt hair and heavy eyes

mirror of a loss of meaning

when i lose my zest for life

the exquisite bra won’t excite

the irrelevancy of a tumultuous mind

it will not help me amidst my misfortune

when i lose my zest for life

inured to anguish

i will withdraw

no smile for anyone

when i lose my zest for life

wonderful clothes i shine in

will in that sad hour

be abandoned

when that unwanted time comes

and i live in abject conformity

and lose my dreams

defeated

you can’t go past the limit

on the limit

you are the limitless

i have damaged my left knee somehow, and researched it on the web, i wasn’t really paying much attention to it and trying "to walk" the problem out, ie just ignoring and not resting it

however researching on the web identified it as likely a torn or stretched miniscus or ligament and the best thing is to just rest up

saved myself the trouble and expense of diagnosis and likely treatments or watever that would make it worse, plus corrected me

the body has millions of years of evolutionarily designed mechanisms behind healing joint problems, let them come into play

jordan peterson took the road of psychiatric medications instead of supplements and getting the diet right

he paid the price for trying to save the world and not himself

“ the great way is not difficult, just avoid love and hate ”

there is no great way

love and hate are constructs

the target’s north

the zen adepts shoot south

and call that

"enlightenment"

“ some scholars note the similarity with a poem called mind inscription by niu-t’ou fa-jung (594-657) (gozu hõyû) of the oxhead school of chan and have speculated that the  xinxin ming  is an abridged version of the mind inscription ”

how crazy is it to write a book or talk about the the Xinxin Ming without knowing that ?

the reality of good poetry is its not possible to translate effectively

the level of insanity in religion is such

that it re-defines it

the limits of writing

are the writing of limits

we can only see the right roads

by virtue of the wrong roads we have travelled

the disasters of one generation

are forgotten in the next

the generation after

has never even heard of it

and the generation after that

denies anything ever went wrong at all

audio

so much mental action

on the boundary of

sleep

friends

an illusion of similarity

only to discover

on knowing them better

how deeply dissimilar

you are

friends

an illusion of similarity

family

people who you always have to deal with

you are refusing to address my point

about being dragged down by cross currents

to depths you may not recover from

you are refusing to take my point

about cross currents dragging you down into depths

from which you may not recover

audio

a way of dealing with people

i don’t have to answer their nonsense

audio

remedy lies

in the multiplicity of detail

we’d rather not address

remedy lies

in the multiplicity of detail

i’d rather not address

audio

why is it

to know a person well

is like leafing through

another chapter

of

dante’s

hell

why is it

to know a person well

is to leaf through

another chapter

of

dante’s

hell

easy to be drunk

and the clarity of sobriety

takes pain

its not what i signed up for

and to be surrounded by sots

half blind ,  half seeing

but offensive in their hubricity

and their belief you should shoulder all their burdens

easy to be drunk

and the clarity of sobriety

takes pain

an "improved" translation from the portuguese of writing by jason’s friend, catarina

Sitting on the windowsill, my body turned to heaven and my back to the world, I enjoy my favorite hour : a time of tranquility, the silence of a restless city that was earlier a pure impression of agitation

The sun sets calmly accompanied by a painted horizon with colors of dreams, sounds of seagulls in the background flying in the sky like spirits that return always to watch me

The moon rises and the city sleeps, replete with lights that shine in my eyes, terrestrial stars that transmit me to me peace and withdrawal

From my window I feel decay, hearing silence that the city had never provided, symbolizing a death of euphoria that took care of me

Planes move slowly in a distant place with destinations to other paradises, but none like this, where my company is the sounds of nature, and myself

Appreciating a city asleep for a short time, the stars appear illuminated gradually, and the light from a moon with an ethereal illumination the sun is lacking in 

When this time of day passes, the day is born again with the sounds worthy of a city, different realities from the previous hours

a.a. milne  reading  a chapter of winnie-the-pooh

its a case of "hidden depths"

the "four quartets"  read  by t.s. eliot

i don’t feel the "on-line retreat" is a format  (ed. springwater center)  that works, after all any-one can put aside a day themselves and the talks are empty because they lack that close personal interaction

however, what would be useful is multiperson zoom type "conferences" where a teacher or other experienced people can provide advice and discussion

women can start to lose their "cognitive marbles" a bit as they approach menopause, and for some you will even have very early indications of a later dementia

“ Olhos piedosos de infidelidade E passos cansados do pecado ”

the female icarus of infidelity, soaring high with pious eyes and the tired wings of sin

a daughter examines her feelings on discovering her mother secretively texting a man she wants for a lover

it hurts that our past together is no longer there, your heart lost in the emptiness of unreciprocated love

why do you need to misrepresent me?, there’s a serious problem there

my least popular view in terms of "the spiritual path" is the instrumentality of celibacy

the problem is that the non celibate life has too many things coming from too many directions in addition to contrary paradigms so "effective practice" is actually a "sour" illusion in that context

conventional religion is "safer" in that respect because you don’t get into the mystical side and drowned in the cross currents, the usual consequence

as you point out "no-self" is a real thing, but when self necessarily includes spouse/girlfriend/children then you are going to be ripped apart non-productively

i used to think that just a girlfriend and no children was ok, but even just a girlfriend doesn’t work either, its a different paradigm

humans are not "created"

but made by a process

the process is called evolution

unlike god, you can put your finger on it

the results anyway

with god you can’t put your finger on anything

"normal levels  of zinc  support human resistance to inflammatory and infectious diseases"

"zinc and its binding substances can slow down the work of RNA polymerase  (an enzyme that synthesises viral RNA molecules)  of coronaviruses and suppress their spread in the body"

add zinc  to the arsenal of "supplements" useful against covid, vitamin D and K and possibily copper and germanium

sometimes i wonder if i would even notice i had it, having the "good" blood type, " O" and taking vitamin K2 and D daily

even the dead kick occasionally

eihei wanted to sleep in, but his girlfriend pushed him out of bed and said "make the breakfast then take the dog for a walk"

eihei wondered as he walked down the street ,  toy dog in tow "am i the person who gets bossed around like this" and he bumped into the bodhisattva of compassion who looked him in the eyes and said

the buddha was celibate for a reason

not just any bright star

but jupiter

that colourful world

strangely abstracted

into what its not

not just a bright star

but jupiter

that colourful world

strangely abstracted

into what its not

the passages we never took

the lives we never lived

at moments

come crowding in on one

a half moon rises

its light holds a mystery

a slight menace in the shadows

a partially illuminated world

so, taking some old papers off my desk i came across a poem written in 2015, it seems sort of dissonant, like i don’t want to know it, maybe its not dense enough or doesn’t quite hit the spot, what has happened to me that i feel i hit the spot in my recent writing ?

anyway i added two words on the end which seems to improve it

there's nothing to say

or

be

or

do

or

not

do

or

not

be

or

not

say

if

only

the illusion of the frictionless publishing of the web

you think it means something

it doesn’t

though it may

jiddu krishnamurti is a  polished speaker ,  not afraid to interact with his audience

there’s a lot of skulls out there

with brains inside

each going its separate way

whatever the appearance

ed.  once you strip away cultural and memetic veneers, people are guided by their own stars and there’s not much you can do about it, and as you get older, there’s not much you want to do about it

losing a day

thought sunday was monday

on monday i couldn’t explain things

enlightenment is the endless patience

to correct things

then find yourself

still unfinished

enlightenment is the endless patience

to correct things

then find yourself

unfinished

a poem should weave and wrap

and sail and dive

and come up somewhere

unknown

a poem should weave and wrap

and sail and dive

and come up somewhere unknown

i have done too many hard things in my life

that would have had some point if i had finished them

as it is,

i am just left with the difficulty

the stones in the stream

in the crystal wash

with strings of algae

ferry me somewhere

the evening star coming over the horizon

tonight

looks mournful

for

some

reason

ed.  well the reason is it was jupiter, which, with saturn are orbiting closest to the earth in twenty years

the peons

thinking they

can speak

and write

grunt around

in their restricted semantic-pragmatic

space

in denial of any ceiling

but above it

the angels sing

in language

you can

understand

i have looked

from the beginning to the end of time

this and many universes

but i have not found

anything that wasn’t me

"that you are wasting what’s left of your life"

lol, it not the "wasting" but "left" that worries me !

the world can fool you

it intends it

the world will fool you

it intends it

all the roads that go nowhere

we seem to travel every one

never finding the one that goes somewhere

all the roads that go nowhere

we seem to travel every one

thinking they go somewhere

the problem with "hypersanity" is you can only measure it in terms of "sanity", but you can’t have the greater beholden to the lesser

why was osip mandelstam so wrapped up in the hagia sophia ?

it just a building

with small windows

give me the outside

with the breeze in my face

why was osip mandelstam so wrapped up in the hagia sophia ?

it just a building

with small windows

give me

the outside

with

the

breeze

in your

face

the most important thing in the "working life" is to be in an area where you have a "natural aptitude"

it needn’t be an entire match, but basically, it must be good enough

if you are uncertain about something you may be doing, then it pays "to get there" before you get there, ie, start doing some of the work immediately so you start on the process and so can see where to go

you need to put a lot more rigour into your suppositions which are in the area of childish, rather than workmanlike

basically you are just writing poor quality "sophism" and are entirely unaware of it

there is another world out there, unconstrained by meaning

the only sense is

what happens

puzzle over that

wise ones

in his book  (printed  1814) ,  "a voyage to abyssinia" ,  henry salt describes a climb up into the mountains behind aden with a gripping account  (page 92)  of the last stages of the ascent to an ancient watch tower erected right on an uppermost precipice

i looked on the net to try to find these towers, but no luck, i assume they are no longer standing, then lo and behold, here they are in  this drawing  of a failed portuguese assault on the city in 1513

in my dreams

i traverse the gulf of aden

its crystal seas

crossed with galleon wakes

lapis lazuli skies

arid capes

torrid lands

blazing sun

more strange

than anywhere

on earth

i find

there is an advantage to having writing separate from income, you can write what pleases you, that’s a huge deal

"teachers"

the stay of fools

wasting their lives

being some-one else

be yourself

and a bit more

that is all

dogen  nisargadatta

books  teachers

the seekers all looking

outside of themsleves

for what is not there

those empty shells of idiocy

rattle around

words, practices

making sewers

of their lives

this is called

"being spiritual"

to exist on this planet

one needs to visit other worlds

on a regular basis

i can keep tabs up for several weeks, sometimes i do this with music if i feel it has something to it and, accidently really several weeks later i will play it again and actually hear it, like for the first time, i can track there’s really something to it

the gipsy song  ay danu danu dani

the spinning circles of error

open up

to be closed by correctness, only to spin open

again

the way leonard cohen fell for the spiritual crap is just amazing

especially when his lyrics are so much better !

jason works on a translation with catarina, i make some comments, the original portuguese is a bit further down the page

refuge

seated with my legs on the windowsill, my body turned to heaven and my back to the world, i enjoy my favorite hour  :  a time of tranquility, the silence of a restless city that was once a pure reflection of agitation

the sun sets calmly accompanied by a painted horizon with colors of dreams, sounds of seagulls in the background flying in the sky like souls that return always to watch me

the moon rises and the city sleeps, replete with lights that shine in my eyes, terrestrial stars that transmit me peace and evasion

from my window i feel decadence, hearing silence that the city had never provided, symbolizing death like a euphoria that took care of me

planes move slowly in a distant place with destinations to other paradises, but none like this, where my company is the sounds of nature, and myself

appreciating a city asleep for a short time, the astros appear illuminated gradually, and the projection from a moon with an exuberance greater than the sun. when this time of day eludes itself, the day is born again with the sounds worthy of a city, different realities from previous hours

my  comments

i can’t really build a picture of how she is seated

"a pure reflection of agitation"

reflection doesn’t seem to fit

"like souls that return"

can’t get to grips with that either, spirits ?

"transmit me peace and evasion"

evasion  =  removal ?  withdrawl ?

" I feel decadence,"

is decadence the right word ?

"symbolizing death like a euphoria that took care of me"

doesn’t seem right

"the astros appear"

stars ?

"with an exuberance greater than the sun"

exuberance  =  intensity ?  ebullience ?

"When this time of day eludes itself,"

needs re-expressing imo

she has a wonderful feel for language, a natural flowing rhythm, maybe a short story is the next step ?

she will win the camões prize one day !

so much of historical art

is absolute and complete kitsch

antoine watteau  is "out of time" ,  he has a maxfield parrish touch

the process is the result

i have done way more "meditation" than anybody i know of, my advice is from experience

the basic problem is you are using nisargadatta (ed. my reply) as some sort of guide, but you are treating him as an authoritative source rather than as a "peer"

if you treat him as a peer then you can allow he makes mistakes and what's more, you are not dealing with him directly at all, but records which can be highly filtered and distorted

as it is, you are treating him as an "authority" ,  so his mistakes become yours

same holds for dogen

meditative work is your own discovery, its what discovery opens up. you are not consciously going anywhere or waiting for something to happen

eihei dogen is heavily indebted to  nagarajuna’s  rhetorical and stylistic techniques of "recursive layering" ,  so actually he sounds pretty indian

i like this quote of nagarajuna

“ if an astronomer calculates from the sky

he will ascertain the paths of the moon and the stars;

but in his house the womenfolk are at variance,

and he does not perceive their various misconducts ”

not that i have looked that closely, but the usual representations of nisargadatta have seemed confused to me, however this  documentary is good

what surprised me is the extent to which he is imbued with christian mysticism, but its not surprising given mumbai's christian and catholic colonial past, very "john of the cross" actually, a translation from the emotionally "cloying" catholic paradigms into something more philosophical and "drier"

“ in the inner stillness where  meditation  leads, the spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds ”

the old testament

soap opera for patriarchs

the noise of the world

raucous

wearing

generation after generation

they like it that way

everything seems unreal to me

people and their differentiation

physicality

another species from myself

protestantism and catholicism are not poles apart

peel back the paint

the same stupidity

is revealed

getting older

the winds of aging whip up

so do the winds of life

a capacity

shortfall

looms

women can be just as dumb about men as men about women

jason tries his hand as a "gossip columnist" with my comments after each of his

“ well its not because it’s good damien, but because its  worth money ”

damien hirst is always marketing himself

“ damien hirst’s girlfriend scares the shit out of me for some reason ”

the women famous people attract are always trouble  and murderous

“ jeff koons’  son

well he grew up super privileged with all that money ,  he can probably just do whatever he wants.  he’s got a pretty girlfriend, but yeah i mean he won’t start to understand the celibate life, not that i’m saying he wants to anyway ”

if the father is talentless, why would the son have talent ?  bourgeois to the hilt i am afraid

“ well you probably heard about this manic shit ,  yeah he’s probably in a manic episode

and then this  schizophrenic shit , reminds me of dave ”

kayne west will be selling more  (ed. running for president) ,  good marketing. also his wife is probably eyeing becoming "first lady" ,  it looks a measured decision, he and his wife are no fools

oddly enough, jason’s portuguese friend "catarina" writes really well, could become well known one day

in the portuguese and a google translation

Sentada com as pernas sob o parapeito da janela, corpo virado para o paraíso e de costas para o mundo, desfruto da minha hora favorita :  o tempo da tranquilidade, do silêncio de uma cidade inquieta que outrora era pura reflexão de agitação.  O sol deita-se suavemente acompanhado de um horizonte pintado das cores do sonho e do desejo, sons de gaivotas no fundo voando sobre o céu como almas que voltam sempre para me assistir.  A Lua ascende e a cidade adormece, repleta de luzes que brilham nos meus olhos, estrelas terrestres que me transmitem paz e evasão.  Da minha janela sinto a decadência, ouço o silêncio que a cidade nunca me proporcionara, símbolo de morte de uma euforia que tomava conta de mim.  Aviões movimentam-se demoradamente num espaço longínquo com destino a outros paraísos, mas nenhum como este, onde a minha companhia são os sons da natureza, a minha pessoa.  Aproveito uma cidade adormecida de curta temporalidade, os seus astros iluminados que aparecem progressivamente, e a projeção de um luar com uma exuberância maior do que a do próprio sol.  Quando esta hora se esquiva, o dia já nasce e com ele os sons dignos de uma cidade, realidades diferentes de horas anteriores

Sitting with my legs under the windowsill, my body turned to heaven and my back to the world, I enjoy my favorite hour :  the time of tranquility, the silence of a restless city that was once pure reflection of agitation

The sun goes down gently accompanied by a horizon painted in the colors of dream and desire, sounds of seagulls in the background flying over the sky like souls who always come to watch me

The moon rises and the city falls asleep, full of lights that shine in my eyes, terrestrial stars that transmit peace and evasion

From my window I feel the decay, I hear the silence that the city had never given me, symbol of the death of a euphoria that took over me

Airplanes move for a long time in a distant space bound for other havens, but none like this, where my company is the sounds of nature, my person

I take advantage of a sleeping city of short duration, its illuminated stars that appear progressively, and the projection of a moonlight with an exuberance greater than that of the sun itself

When this hour eludes, the day is born and with it the sounds worthy of a city, realities different from previous hours

a story says what

the madness of its author ?

to write a poem like a book

one would just sit down

and write

weaving characters into plots

the human male dreams of

not women

but  "supercompetence"

a lovely story about  katherine hepburn

in a garden

the roses

blaze

rejuvenate your retinal photoreceptor function with  deep red light

the weakness of "bullshit" is people need a certain degree of accuracy to survive, so you can hit people between the eyes by saying something accurate, they need it, even though they don’t like it

this cover  is good, the "aides" are the model’s mother and grandmother which is a nice touch

i think it shows that the magazine is more "intelligent" than most of that ilk

good publicity for them and i suspect that portugal, like spain has huge mental health problems

actually i would think there are very few places in the west that don’t

"performative contradictions"

a good phrase

meaning

saying one thing

and

doing

another

writing compared to oral

with the winding of memory

can’t compete

another pretender

they are all the same

they pretend

a creative burst

or flash flood

 what remains ?

flotsam stuck high in the trees

and i wonder why

a creative burst

or flash flood

 what remains ?

the end

looks you in the face

searching for clues

words finished

but unfinished

i leave off

and toss them

into the suitcase

pessoa rolls in the grave

i give him a drink

not sober, he quaffs it

i gave up my missionizing

some years

ago

so i sat down

and wrote ten poems/homilies

one after another/ in a row

am i exhausted ?

no

where did they come from ?

how and why were they built ?

unanswerable questions

i try to answer

but can’t

write for yourself

let others read

or not

a poem

abbreviated sense

grammar

meaning

opens out

into

a

flower garden

“ what is the way ? ”

its always the way

too craft, cozy

what should i do ?

wait

the words will come

oh

empty  full

goodbye  hello

let the readers make sense

of

nonsense

written out

wrtiten down

left, right, in

the bleeding

goes

on

aeons tick by

our little aeons within the aeons

rush

everything is nothing

and nothing is everything

so the zen conundrumists say

they’re idiots

let me dream

plashy brooks

leafy trees

eternal summer

why

can’t

i

get

 there ?

some thoughts coalesce

out of which

a poem appears

no rearrangement

just write it down

it is as it is

your take

on reality

the road to death

is not so much

strewn with

injuries, pain, loss of function

diseases

a crimping of ourselves

bills  dependence

you could hardly say it was a road at all

but a junkheap

crushing

us

a powerhouse performance !

i have noticed that sisters playing together can get a degree of synchronicity and depth of mutuality that cannot be matched any other way

a mist on the mountains

jordan peterson on his recent  experience

"the consequences for benzodiazepine withdrawl were worse than death"

actually he looks like he has come back from hell and death and in a way is the more relaxed for it

i always felt he and his daughter never had their diets right and attention  to my writings  on the subject with supplementation would have saved them the debacle they have just been through

all these tin eared stupids

2nd rate musicians

scrabbling on the web

looking for religio-wallpaper

to boost their

self-

esteem

you are interested in certain things

because of an incompleteness in yourself

once you make the "completion"

you will move on

any problem

has to be solved

from a number of

different viewpoints

and

even outside

viewpoints

any problem

has to be solved

from a number of

different viewpoints

the first lines of  a poem  by vittoria colonna

i live on this depraved and lonely cliff

like a sad bird abhorring a green tree

or splashing water

ed.  she’s an interesting person, well worth some  research on

a drawing  by michelangelo of her

my  reply

the splashy brook

the wooded grove

all that is wanted

there i hove

you don’t need anything direct

because there is no direct

correcting error

is all

that’s

required

one thing excludes all others

but it doesn’t

all things exclude one thing

but they don’t

some

  conundrum ? !

brad pursues "successful enlightenment"

he never found it

however what he did find

is

"lack of success"

brad pursues "successful enlightenment"

he never found it

however he did find

"lack of success"

the world looks for what it can’t find

and when it finds what it doesn’t look for

it forgets

and so all realms and beings

wend their usual way

to remember

is exceptional

you are the only person

who knows

the world is full of monsters

half men

half something else

chimeras

adding up

 to what ?

its hard to beat  buddhist cosmology  for being so much insane rubbish

“ george wants to go to therapy but he’s struggling with money, is it worth it for him to go to therapy anyway if he’s just going to continue with the drugs ? ”

half an hours meditation a day, it teaches people to bear with themselves when they are not feeling so good and gain some insight into their stratagems

r|meditation is full of recovered addicts and alcoholics, unpleasant people, but recovered all the same

maybe ayahuasca is a help, i don’t know

some drugs have to be "stepped off" like alcohol and cigarettes to avoid bad health consequences

drugs damage the brain and the more damaged it gets, the more easily it is damaged, a one way street anyone can read the signposting for

not science fiction but the  real mars ,  a planet with not enough gravity, no liquid water, unbreathable atmosphere and no magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays and energetic particles from the sun

sergei korolev  who spent several months in a gulag gold mine in the kolyma area, lucky to come alive out of there i would say

soviet russia suffered from the same problems as nazi germany, the destruction of the most productive portion of its middle class

i think abstract art is because the artist can’t manage perspective

2D is so  limited  compared to the semantic space of 3D

beliefs

the cess pits

of

intellectual endeavour

beyond the appearance something else is going on

some machinery you have no idea about

beyond the appearance something

else is

going

on

some machinery

you have

no

idea

about

the never ending story

correcting the uncorrectable

waste your life

and waste your time

in correcting them

the never ending story

the correction of the uncorrectable

waste your life

and waste your time

in correcting them

we are constantly building a picture of "our place" in the world

the problem is

"our place" creates the world

when i use the term "schizophrenia" ,  its often, but not always, in the sense of an endemic human condition, don’t take it personally

nanoparticle  replacement  photoreceptors

this looks right up there with cataract operations as a major advance, but it looks five years away from becoming a standard therapy for degenerative retinal diseases

crowding

too crowded

within myself

to see

clearly

an awful feeling

quite a cool use of colour ,  painting  by eyal massad

a definition of "science" is a sort of intellectual cultural game played here in the west, i will confess to thinking about it occasionally so here is what i have worked out

i would say "science" is not a quest for "truth" per se, since it never can be arrived at, but is a process of the positing of relatively improved hypotheses about the way the material world works

some-one asks

i would be curious to know why truth can never be arrived at

people used to think the earth was flat, but through scientific observation and calculations we know the truth that it is not, i’m also curious to know why you put "science" in quotes

my  reply

people never thought the earth was flat, in fact its diameter was calculated by eratosthenes in about 200 BCE

there are geometries in which spheres are rendered as flat or non circular  (quite useful in physics), its like anything, when you start to poke it, it opens out

however i am thinking of modern astrophysics and "the standard particle model" which have big holes implying further development of the theory and in fact it seems to go on forever

there is no finality or fixed point of observation which is actually the "zen view"

i put science in quotes to reflect that it is just a viewpoint, that of synchronous theories about material reality, i might say contrast it with "magical realism" which is certainly not scientific, but conveys truths of its own

"alice in wonderland" is a superb example of the truths magical realism can convey

"reading this, i have often come down on the side of buddhist exceptionalism and modernism"

guilty as  confessed ,  sentence, caregiver to a toy dog forever

i think these days with the net it has gone even further ,  especially zen and daoism where you have them used as comfort umbrellas for what is really mental illness or schizophrenia with highly idiosyncratic personal claims to boost self-esteem with no real life social involvement at all, indeed, it is strongly avoided and actually brad, i also think you are in this anti-social area of this "new" net buddhism/zen

my real life experience of zen and buddhism was strongly social and the development of social skills and understanding from this "contact" was of huge benefit, these "net buddhists" take the doctrinal junk and reject the social skill offering which is so wrong and upside down as to be mentally ill imo

to me, the notion of being a buddhist, christian or muslim also seems crazy, at the most one might say a person has some buddhist ,  christian or islamic beliefs, (which at their core are the claims that christ, buddha and muhammad are historical people)  that’s the most it could ever amount to, but to claim an absolute like "being" a christian, buddhist or muslim is actual conscription into a pysch ward

people are not passive participants in ethical systems

they are constantly working it/them for their own advantage

the web game is

declaim

declaim

what is not so

is said to be so

simply because

it is said

kinga lost in the middle of maasai nowhere, tanzania and has to  ask for directions

you are "declaiming" which seems to be a popular sophistical error, saying something is so, doesn’t make it so, its the mentally lazy substitute for "real work" again an epidemic modern attitude

we actively interpret the world though models we have of it, so "introspection" is needed to work on the validity of the models themselves

its not commonly done at all, being time and energy intensive with limited incremental results and a huge amount of trauma

a typical error is the assumed primacy of social over personal reality which ties into "the solipsism of neurology"

some-one asks

if confusion comes from interpreting reality via a model, is it worth making incremental changes to that model ?

my  reply

most people form a rigid model by the time they are eight or nine and certainly by twenty and their life is a playing out of the accuracies and inaccuracies of the model

we make minor adjustments to the model throughout our lives, usually as the result of trauma

this is as evolution intends and is a part of its strategy for the survival of children

this is imo, why celibacy is so essential to the "spiritual search" because the changes to the "model" needed are so large that you become partly non-functional in the world, you are constantly dodging literal "crucifixion"

so in terms of "the conventional life" incremental improvements to the model are needed to reduce the burden of trauma, so in terms of your question, yes it is worthwhile

in the larger context of a "spiritual understanding" its a completely different ball game and i do not recommend it unless you are already partly there

be sophisticated in your social dealings

my elderly father damaged his hip and is now in hospital from falling when "jumping from table to sofa to tables fixing blinds"

my  comment

i figured out several years ago that one has to be cognisant of what happens if one falls when past a certain age because everything breaks or damages so much easier and recovery is much slower and more problematic

there is the sadness of noticing the "cat like" reflexes younger people have "leave" and situations where you previously had the dexterity and resilience to save yourself, you no longer can

historically what has destroyed societies are pandemics, climate change and warfare, not "poor ethics"

some-one  asks

is society just a bunch of people ?  —  are ethics not essential to the concept of "society" ?  vital as in "defined by" ?

my  reply

well from an ethical point of view i feel your reply is devious, i never said a society is just a bunch of people nor that ethical systems won’t arise in societies which can be defining, but like all definitions they can change

i think my beef with brad’s approach is "ethics" are native to the brain’s neurology, like language, they are always there in terms of the neurology, crazy metas like buddhist ethics are "crazy metas" more akin to schizophrenia than anything else

his further reply

.    .    .    as for the rest about brains and metas  —  I must have missed something as i am not able to follow your line of thought

my  reply

ok, you've missed something, why not work it out ?

the solipsism of neurology is the central thesis

its not that you can’t "get there" because you haven’t made the constructive progress necessary, but that errors in your "thinking systems" prevent you from understanding

and actually this is what "retreating" is about  (since we are on a "zen" blog) ,  to open us up to the perception of these errors

i really have seen it all on the web over the years

from stupid aggression to flawed talent

insanity however always shows itself to be dull

i think its the dishonesty of pretending to a real understanding when you just walk the road of entertainment that is the problem

why not at least be honest with yourself, you can’t i guess ?

brad warner is  wearing a mask  going out for a walk in suburban los angeles and validating himself by saying he is following the buddhist vow of  "i will follow the rules of society"

my  comment

i vow to appear "to fit in" which is not the same as "following the rules of society"

i don’t drink or do drugs, try to look at all the sides to any situation , am celibate, childless, take care of my health by intelligent supplementation and attention to diet

none of those are in accordance with conventional attitudes

in eihei dogen’s time there was social permission for celibacy and childlessness, but that’s not the case today

the vow is already broken before its made, in a life there’s very few "rules" that hold and certainly the buddhist claptrap is a leading performer in this respect

you are stuck in the wrong dimension because you are moiled in the "low brow"

there’s no answers in contemporary culture which is the paean of idiots

i am used to people not listening to me

you don’t hear the deeper message do you ?

what you say now is inconsistent with what you have said earlier and you are not processing properly what i write and are coming up with invalid inferences about what i say

i am certain we have communicated before with the same result

there’s something about seeing another language in action, so meaningful to its participants, so incomphrehensible to non-speakers

"she taught me to yodel"  sung  by sofia shkidchenko

brad warner is becoming schizophrenic imo, he’s getting some sort of shadowing from his genes for huntington’s syndrome even though he doesn’t have the disease, late onset schizophrenia is surprisingly common and explains a lot of middle age disasters

eihei dogen’s "one bright pearl" has its 'spikes' ,  beware

i can’t argue anything

definitions go backwards

that’s the road i follow

others don’t go there

i can’t argue anything

definitions go backwards

that’s the road i follow

others can’t

the future is very uncertain, in terms of health, trajectories can be changed with attention to diet, exercise, air quality, supplements etc

genetic testing except for extreme known conditions is problematic

generally i give people credit for knowing what they are on about if they think they have a problem

dream worlds shatter

it can matter

smoking debris of our pain

realism would have been our gain

i say stuff that seems to slip past you, there is a significant age difference between you, it matters

dream worlds shatter

it can matter

smoking debris of our pain

realism would have been our gain

the popular tableaux

films, music, commercial art

a culture absorbed into nothing

to its detriment

if someone has an enmity against you, they won’t be reasonable but use what they can against you

therefore don’t supply them with ammunition ,  rational argumentation or help

in short, use them without qualms

with competence, you expect self-assurance

its the self assured

without the competence

that

are

the

worry

you can go down the wrong road, but if you take the trouble sort out your understanding somewhat

then its not entirely a waste of time

you can dimensionally layer the reasoning behind things and it abstracts across

more angles on reality

everything done right gives no angle/s

reality   =   right and wrong

look you are just meandering about in philosophical referent tricks of trade

why waste your time that way ?

treat buddha as a peer, treat eihei dogen as a peer, treat jesus and god as peers, not some untouchable authoritative source

and then you will make progress

one of the hazards of writing

people bear you enmity

for what you say

though you don’t know them

go figure

its a stress and a danger

the pen and the sword are intermingled

unfortunately

potholes we fall into

other modes of existance

we wake up

in

a

different world

david bentley hart, idiosyncratic fighter of the rearguard action of christian apology

well you can wave a sword but i’m crushing you

repudiating hell  won’t save you will it ?

the devil is your own pusillanimous brain

another  great painting  by hans memling

late medieval art takes you vividly into  a different world

around and around we go again

what did i miss last time ?

what will i miss this time ?

around and around we go again

what did i miss last time ?

if you have trouble understanding what i am writing, come back to it in a couple of days, the brain works on it "in absentia"

the past, whatever we do, we cannot undo

whatever we do, we cannot undo

a lot of buddhism is "corrupted" greek philosophy, particularly the misapplication and projection of "platonic idealism" into the personal

vitamin D and K2 is a great help with joints, you need the K2 to remodel the cartilage and bone, vitamin D by itself is insufficient

the problem with ethical systems and why they are so much crazy nonsense is that they are rules and rules over-simplify and assume complete discovery before the situation, whereas the situation is a constant wrapping and unwrapping into different perceptions and realities

i have done things i feel guilty about or my behaviour has been "narrow" but in no way do i hold myself to account in terms of a so-called ethical system, mostly its "regrets" or violations of "feelings"

ethics imo belongs to the cultural and social sphere of punishment and reward, we are never "good" or "bad" people per se or in our personal view, but simply enmeshed in a system of discovery and consequences

religion is like a false social and personal memory

we come into life already wrecked because of it

we treat a memory as real

something that happened

but it could be something completely unreal

something that never happened

just sayin’

where would we be if it was the case ?

still where we are ?

we treat a memory as real

something that happened

but it would be something completely unreal

something that never happened

just sayin’

where would we be if it was the case ?

still where we are ?

the highly selective audience of the net and life

an echo chamber

if you’re not careful

the highly selective audience of the net

an echo chamber

if you’re not careful

the men and women behind glass walls

you can’t reach them

why ?

a poem wriggles away

into what i didn’t write

but is interesting

all the same

a poem wriggles away

into what i didn’t want to write

but is interesting

all the same

a quarter moon in the sky

the sea just seen

stretching into what i can’t say

a suspension of sorts

and not

brad warner

yet another priest

of eihei dogen

interpreting nonsense to mean nonsense

a glass wall behind which

no criticism can penetrate

he looks out

unseeing what

he needs to see

brad warner

yet another priest

of eihei dogen

interpreting nonsense to mean nonsense

a glass wall behind which

no criticism can enter

he looks out

unseeing what

he needs to see

dusk

the not quite dark

sea

after a while

i heard

the waves

interpretation times interpretation  =  a lot of nonsense

interpretation x interpretation  =  a lot of nonsense

interpretation squared  =  a lot of nonsense

interpretation²  =  a lot of nonsense

there’s something very special about writing

it aligns the thoughts of some-one very different to you

to your own

i

don’t

think

art

does

the

same

there’s something very special about writing

it aligns the thoughts of some-one very different to you

to your own

good art does the same

there’s something very special about writing

it aligns the thoughts of some-one very different to you

to your own

very few

medical professionals

keep up

with the

research literature

don’t assume anything

this gap

with considerable effort

you can cross yourself

what does

"iatrogenic"

 mean ?

i think one of the keys to understanding the net is the various audiences are not representative of "normative" populations

what gives lie to the primacy

of the material universe

is the intensely

subjective nature

of existance

hours burn

days burn

years burn

our lives burn

 what is there to show for it ?

the ashes we become

hours burn

days burn

years burn

 what have i to show for it ?

the ashes i become

life

circles and cycles

why would it exist in such a way ?

you need to look at eihei dogen as your "peer" and not authorative

unless you are celibate you cannot look at him or other celibates like joshu or the sixth patriarch as your peers

soto zen is caught in a ghost cave because of this

because they are caught, even though i explain this, they cannot see it

its years since i have seen an art film, everything seems to lack bite and lyricism, but maybe  ponyboi  has that

not fitting in

one only fits in a dream

but the gifting of dreams

more real

than reality

english lit and writing courses

where the ignorant

are

made

more stupid

everything satiates

nothing stands still

everything moves on

don’t

wait

for

me

contemplation re-wraps the world

be careful to keep it broad or it will wind tighter which is what happens in zen i think, a bunch of bound mummies, desiccated corpses pretending meaning lies where it doesn’t

the non-celibates with their wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, children, pets, animals churn in the mist thinking they are making progress not noticing they are going backwards

all the dogen quoters don’t quote him on the impossibility of non-celibates reaching any understanding

such frauds !

not even the insane

are so persistent and unreasonable

as

druggies

a blight on the earth

they are

bruce lee

fake martial arts

fake philosophy

fake profundity

loved by

the world

he

was an entertainer

idolised

by halfwits

i am hated by the haters

the "likers" hate me as well

how hated can i get ?

apparently god loves me

if only i could find him/her

i am hated by the haters

the "likers" hate me as well

how hated can i get ?

apparently god loves me

if only i could find him

there’s something about teaching that cripples the intellect

“ what are you DOING to fight racism ”

battles should offer a personal return

in my dealing with people i am not racist, that’s all that’s required

preaching is the panacea of hypocrites

men, the female agenda doesn’t have your long term best interests at heart

covid is showing itself to be very infectious, i don’t think international travel is on until there’s vaccines

one of the reasons why net relationships often don’t work out is the male may not have the right  "immune system"  match for the woman, she can tell by his "smell" and its instinctual, so any relationship in real life is a very open question

the lazy bastards

take the shortcut of  "meta"

it doesn’t exist

you have to go through detail

however ,  if you go through detail

there are answers

mood

so fickle

from despair to hope

within several hours

mood

so fickle

from hope to despair

within several hours

to write what you think

is the deepest spiritual truth

for

all

time

the tomb of edgar allan and virginia clemm poe

just a block

of marble in

bad taste

why the dead scrape the barrel bottom on kitsch seems a rule that has to be

no hint beyond the text

of anything

at all

modern life

everything so compressed

squeezed into a box

no wonder they explode

you need to take care with what you eliminate

there’s a high price to be paid if you get it wrong

and often

you do get it wrong

both with the eliminated and not eliminated

reading the life of the librettist  emanuel schikaneder  helps to understand  the magic flute ,  it’s not just mozart’s music that makes it such a classic

“ the part of the inner ear affected by sensorineural hearing loss is supplied by only one artery, which makes it susceptible to damage if low oxygen is present  [as can be the case in anemia] ”

  article

study   :    “ association of iron deficiency anemia with hearing loss in US adults ”

“ are people with high myopia  (- 6 etc.)  able to donate blood ?  or it is a risk for retinal detachment ?

in post soviet union countries blood donation with myopia is restricted.  but in the most countries it is not. ”

my  comment

soviet medicine knew a thing or two, some of their concerns are not to be lightly dismissed though not conforming to western ideas

its prohibition against people with high myopia donating blood is due i think to an increased risk of holes in the retina and an increased risk of wet AMD as the result of anemia, or "body iron" on the low end of normal

in actual fact Hb tests are not a reliable guide to body iron levels so you can see the basis for their concern

sources, the first looks like a "automatic"  translation

“ Experts, blood for blood for the normal eye has little effect, but the eye is myopic refractive errors, in general, mild myopia, is less than 300 degrees, complications will be minimal

The high degree of myopia is greater than 600 degrees, the anteroposterior diameter of the eye was longer, but the retina and choroid but not the corresponding variable length, leading to the retina, choroid elongated and diffuse atrophy, blood vessels also become more relevant slim

This vessel is very sensitive to changes in blood pressure, while the vitreous gel can be turned into liquid

Slight fluctuations in blood pressure when, for the retinal blood vessels pulled too thin for high myopia may cause retinal vascular spasm, leading to lesions of the retina has occurred hole, this time it will take the opportunity to liquefaction of the vitreous into the retina and cause a retinal detachment, a serious eye [condition] ”

the second is  a study ,  its from india which of course has a vegetarian diet as part of hindu culture

i would think Hb is not a sufficiently good iron indicator for the purposes of high myope risk, that more sophisticated tests measuring a fuller range of haematological parameters are needed

interestingly, i have a close relative with essential thrombocythemia on hydroxyurea developing wet AMD, likely as a result of the effects of platelet suppression as per the indian study

in his case, whether other drugs would be less problematic in this respect, i don't know; the drug therapy heading in  this link

the sense of the world

is not in the comprehensible

but what we

cannot

comprehend

i don’t really criticize a poem, but if i do, i write a poem that picks the eyes of the problem

that shows i am on the same level as the writer, not some dumbarse who has had his ideas on reality discomforted /disturbed /dislocated

life spreads us as far as we can make it

focus to your detriment

wrong words in wrong realms

are our detriment

the tropics glisten

a sun so harsh

the cycle

speeds

the undercurrent of what people seek is acceptance

the eye is a chemically aggressive environment and the lenses do degrade, glistening is one measure, its a function of the material and time

replacement operations are surprisingly common, its called "explant"

long term corneal stability is essential for any use of lenses that exhibit "toricity"

artificial lenses occupy less volume than the natural lenses so you can get issues with the vitreous tugging on the retina

the eye is a very complex bio-mechanical system with cataracterous lens replacement having subtle issues, for example less glutathione since the natural lenses produces glutathione and as yet undetermined immune reactivity and other effects to the replacement lens material

understand what dysphotopsia means

steroid induced cataracts are a huge developing problem in young people

its an operation to recover sight, not an operation to go "glasses free" in most cases

there’s forward and retiring people

there’s never any problem finding out what the forward think

but care needs to be taken to elcit from the retiring, they usually have more well thought out views

the problem with teaching

is what is taught

gets reinforced in both the teacher

and taught

when

it

is

disputable

the problem with teaching

is what is taught

gets reinforced in both the teacher

and pupils

when

it

is

disputable

huh, mikhail bakhtin’s  chronotrope  is what i would call a "tableaux"

how things were under stalin and beria

number 12 ,  the writer  isaak babel

a small hole in the head according to nadezhda mandelstam

i think babel must have got too close to the notorious nikolai yezhov, lavrentiy beria being the new broom

these things are not as random as they appear

months of rain on end

the watercress

is growing well

months of rain on end

the watercress

grows well

“ when circumstances get overwhelming, what do you do ? ”

why are you asking ?

tap dancing noses   —   shostakovich

the problem with "ethics" is everything looks fine and dandy until it hits the wall of insanity, then it all breaks down because from the viewpoint of insanity there are no rules, which in fact is the actual situation

the classic example of that is the situation of jewry in europe under the nazis, the keepers of their value system, the priests actually contributed to their vulnerability and sometimes, quite actively as in their role of organising the ghettos

the general quality of priests i have seen, of any religion raises alarm bells about them having too dominant an influence in any culture

i think the point of literature is to escape the moil, toil and ignorance of the contemporary social sphere

the borgesian universe of the study of english literature

ed.  jorge luis borges;   whore-hey   lou-eece boar-hes   audio

the borgesian universe of higher education

yes we know,   you read and talk  and don’t do anything, your views are cryingly untainted by any real dealing in the subject area

lorianne  replies

indeed, as a reader and instructor i am not doing enough.  so please teach me  :  what more are you doing that you would advise for me ?

my  reply

i have always been interested in history and it gives a perspective on these matters

i can’t convey it to you because you have to do it and actually its similar to the problem of trying to explain that translations are simply an opinion of the original work, you need to do some translation to understand that

there is a dimensionality to great writing and its language that you just cannot pull apart

your "fake" humility could do with some work btw

i’ve read some african writers and what i found interesting is you can understand them, they think the same way as me, literary thinking is above race and communality

alternatively, you of course can get caught up in the inanity of the hoi polloi, their rabidness, stupidity and grasping

the beauty of the "literary mode" is to take you across time, place and geography to where the thinking has salience and has somewhat sorted out the confusion

when i look at art or read, i also research the author or artist, that naturally gives a bit of historical perspective that can actually get quite weird at times with some surprising highly condensed connectivity

the point i make about "real dealing" is that until you interact with something on a street level so to speak, you really won't progress in understanding, otherwise teaching and reading would be adequate

i have had some contact with american students of english literature and i would have to say i have never come across such a bunch of politicised, opinionated stupids totally closed to anything that has not been shoved down their throats

the problem is the lack of "doing" they don’t write, they just read in a restricted way, and actually zen is like that to

well, the deeper problem is the complete lack of talent, even you must have noticed that

don’t let me interrupt your dream of middle class life, injured animals and toxic zen and i am sure you won’t

well, i must have pricked that thick hide because she replies

i’m confused by your reply.  you said i need to do more, and i asked you to tell me what more i should do, and your response focuses on what you have studied, read, and observed.  all that is fine and good, but what. do. you. want. me. to. do ?

i am asking you to teach me, and you reply by saying you can’t.  that’s a nice sidestep but doesn’t help anyone

my  reply

surely your reading age is up to coping with what i wrote ? a phd fgs ?

basically the contemporary world is just a rabble of noise, if you want the "clarity of deeper understanding" you need to look across various eons to writers of substance and not be fooled by your co-existantists, who while not always malign have twisted brains

i think that’s one of the interesting things about zen and what makes it so toxic, is the very restricted range of intellectual material, however it does introduce one, or at least mediation does to the contemplative mode, but one has to move on and out of the carefully crafted nonsense so embedded in it

you are asking me, yet your blogs of your solitary experience like your walks are where its at, that experience and the re-working they do and the writing thereof which is further processing, you are already there, the world hardly rates it, but its the deepest "spiritual experience"

this is the trouble with zen, its a fake "peer group" your peers are more in the artistic area and really if you are interested in for want of a better phrase "the overall meaning of life" you have to create a conversation with people like emily dickinson, sa'di (a medieval isalmic/sufi mystic) ,  jenny joseph the poet   .   .   .

there’s more answers in landscapes than people, and i think you can include artistic works and quality writing in that

since you have quite a bit right, what you probably have to do is lift your reading level and its so helpful to read the lives

for example sylvia plath, a deeply mystical poet  (lorelei is one of the all time great poems)  got literally killed by spreading her wings way too wide with children and a deeply unsatisfactory husband and then you can go across to pieter bruegel the elder and his famous "icarus painting", its never ending

i think the "text only" approach of some academic circles is very misguided and has its origins in a misinterpretation of jacques derrida

the really sad thing about sylvia plath is she was an outstanding prose writer, she could have made a good living at it it and if vogue had published her short story "mary ventura and the ninth kingdom" that would be the break she needed, but of course they didn’t

i don’t want to be too negative on zen, it does have some strengths, it teaches social skills and machiavellian politics quite well, but its origins are not what you would expect, some hermit in remote mountains like bodhidharma  (actually quite close to a wealthy sponsor)  but rather greek philosophy from the greco-bactrian kingdoms on tang dynasty borders

the conventional buddha statue with pleated robes is stylistically greek

you may not think i am answering your queries, but i am

"declamation"  is the rhetorical disease of today

people come straight out and say such and such is so and refuse to address your disputation of it

crazy worlds constructed on bad premises

why is hard to fathom

except self harming mischief

“ i’ve never had objections to any of your viewpoints, just with the self-assured demeanor with which you deliver them ”

self assurance comes from competence, what do you expect ?

try treating me as person  (ed.  reply to "einsof" on brad warners vlog)  and not some object to beat down just because our views differ and i can express myself well

just like i can’t change your views, you can’t change mine, so what’s the point ?

i take everything as an opportunity to explore and correct myself, that in a sense is zen

only this "process" matters, fixed views which is the way it is usually taken are empty and meaningless

on the topic of my editing posts, i usually do that within the next hour as i think of more things or correct punctuation and spelling, so if reading my posts it pays to let an hour pass before assuming its finished

i do this because all this material goes into my writing, it is "my benefit" so to speak

ask yourself, what is the benefit of moving in returning circles ?

he’s morbid beyond death

i guess that’s morbid

he’s morbid

beyond death

i guess that’s morbid

i'm really onto "declaiming crazies"

that is, people who say something is so, often a list

and its not so at all

arseholes, stupids and mental defectives taking my time

well some are not so hostile, but i can live with the hostile ones, however, even if you can use them effectively, the trauma is draining

dry eye usually an inflammatory condition, 1000iu vit D and say 100µg of selenomethionine daily can help with that

you need to keep your blink rate up when looking at screens

jason&nsbp; writes

meaning is always lost in translation

it just depends how much

my&nsbp; comment

medicocre and bad translators alwys retranslate some nonsense in their own image

burial

they’re just bodies

we shouldn’t be in any hurry to join them

ed.  this is some play on the notion, they are "not there", yet if they are not there, why would one become concerned about joining them ?

four feline faces

 anticipatory for what ?

minced chicken

not quite up there with fresh liver

but close

the whirlpool of aging

the body tugs apart

equanimity

is

an

illusion

the whirlpool of aging

the body tugs apart

the price of fame is the pests it attracts

some of who can be dangerous

all of whom are a nuisance

i can’t really say what i think, people get too upset

there is another world, larger, more beautiful, more infinite that we constantly walk on

but rather than wonder at it, people get terrified at any glimpses and can react very negatively

in the arts there’s a lot of technically competent people around, but in ideas, they are completely short

zen, where they learn a few rhetorical techniques and think that enlightenment

things exist for a while and go

we don’t seem to "get it" do we ?

"waking up" is in the area of hypnagogic, funny things can happen, the brain is literally booting up into normal conciousness

years ago

not being responsive enough to some-one else’s distress

the memory came back

she’s a witch

a harpie

a nightmare

she’ll eat you alive

one of the problems of writing "well" is it can have too much of an effect on people, some of whom can get quite antagonistic

i’m not at all famous, yet my publishing and posting on the net has caused me a few problems over the years with encountering hostile people at the extreme edges of attitude and behavior

the crazy "ein sof" tells me

your poetry reeks of unrequited love and a catastrophic lack of luck with romance

my  reply

well its more an  "unrequited life"  like yourself and brad, and if i have made progress rather than regression in understanding what it is about, its because i have been celibate for most of my life and this gives the space to work it out and i think this was eihei dogen’s conclusion as well

the thing i have noticed in dealing with people is to be even and look from their point of view and attempt to explore favourable outcomes for you both, don’t be angry, just roll with the situation and work things out

where this doesn’t work is when a person has mental health problems, the nature of their being mentally ill makes them unable to change productively, one sees this in plenty on the net which has a disproportionate percentage of these people

i have had a surprising number of people over the years on the net get really upset with my writing, and they follow me around making absolute pests of themselves, like "einsof" or whoever he is , is doing at the moment on brad warner’s vlog, i seem somehow to strike at the heart of their delusion with what i write completely unintentionally and they react strongly to it and they are utterly unable to address the why of them doing it

if what i write is so invalid, surely if it was wrong it should just drift away into the infinite bucket of nonsense on the net

anyway the point is that "ethics" only works if you are dealing with rational people prepared to negotiate "win-win" situations, because you will come seriously unstuck if you hit anyone with "borderline personality disorder" or any of that ilk and i am sure eihei dogen  (ed.  a japanese medieval writer)  dealt with it all the time being in a religious environment with competition with other sects

one can be in what is war and the same rules apply, strategy, not giving anything away, deception, occasional well directed force ,  "be a napoleon"

hmmm, don’t get overextended, he missed that one and he ignored josephine’s advice to not invade spain, i think she was really half his brains

of course, easier to see when it is outside your personal and family life, closer to home can make for real disasters

yes we know, you read and talk and don’t do anything, your views are cryingly untainted by any real dealing in the subject area

by the time you get to my age

you sorta get things coming around enough times to say

well, that’s actually so

you can’t know it

you can’t fathom it

you can’t will it

what can you do ?

let it come to you and when it does

tarry

you can’t know it

you can’t fathom it

you can’t will it

what can you do ?

let it come to you

it does

everyday

dealing with

the aggressive ignorant

mathematic infinity is not enough

i wouldn’t say wealth

every day is different

ed.  so we have this idea that mathematical infinity is not enough, but there may be an "infinity" that is sufficient/enough, but what is it ?

so you get the next line, maybe it is a sort of wealth but its not really, or maybe it is ?

then we have the last line trying to describe it, or how we know it

the way things used to be

men died in battle

women died in childbirth

eevryone had diseases

today’s world would be unrecognisable

the way things used to be

men died in battle

women died in childbirth

eevryone had diseases

today’s world is unrecognisable

when you look at the way the world is

balanced on a precipice

a knife edge of life and death

its a wonder any understanding ever occurs

the world opens up and closes at the same time

but in the open

we can walk around the closed

i think she has been diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder" you have to understand how out of reach mental illness places people

dealing with people who have  "borderline personality disorder"  is a destructive situation and best kept clear of to the extent possible

you have to keep away and let them turn on themselves

they are very emotionally manipulative, don’t act rationally and totally prepared to "shit in their own rice bowl"

personality change always equals brain damage as it attempts to rewire itself to restore function, the visible sign of the invisible

very disturbing to deal with because they are not the same person

the downvoting "small gods" can’t beat the "big god"  my writing

i’ve seen the dogen "interpretation" game played

in other zen centers including john loori

ed.  not just brad warner

the pretense of "exclusivity" by morons

who read hardly anything at all

i was going to ask what sylvia plath’s absence meant

but she’s not absent

one can read her poetry

death is not absolute

i’m an O. D.

i’m a little god

i know its hard to stomach

i’m not a big god

like an ophthalmologist

but still

its the

size

of

the pond

that matters

i can tell you all about "buddhist ethics", its just the same as any other religion, bullshit up front and all sorts of shit going on behind the scenes

the clock of childhood

spins so fast and slow

the clock of childhood

spins so fast

and

slow

an excellent  documentary  on the manchester painter l.s. lowry

claude debussy’s "clair de lune" was originally called, "a sentimental walk", but actually neither title suits, its really its own space with somewhat complex and ambivalent feelings

an interesting version  on harp

a simple tune, but lovely

you have to listen for a bit to get into it

a thirteen year old melissa venema  playing  the trumpet in "il silenzio"

at seventeen

where i live there is an oversupply of optometrists and shortage of ophthalmologists

i think there’s a structural problem with the lack of a qualification between optometry and ophthalmology

“ you are the best possible argument for anything that isn’t you ”

you are the worst possible argument for anything that isn’t you

the morons spill words like spew, pretending to an understanding they don’t have

buddhism is a failed attempt to make a system out of solipsism

you can look at buddhism as a failed attempt to make something practical out of solipsism

fgs,  (ed.  brad warner proposing to write on "buddhist ethics")  talk to your publishers, your inclination to "box office poison" is astounding !  you have some net presence, the first thing is to ask around what people say they would want to read

its only because you never read around that dogen’s  solipsistic  views appear unique to you, but the reality is its a philosophical position that has been around forever

the problem is, is that 'solipsism" is a partial truth

here’s a koan for you

how do you express solipsism as a complete truth ?

xyz quotes me and then comments

“ i  

don't

think

men

understand

how

strong

jealousy

is

with

women

they

can

and

will

kill

for

  it ! ”

this is your writing, so i asked c. if she would kill someone   .   .    her last relationship, her ex was talking to a girl, on her stream and playing video games with the other girl, so i asked if she thought about killing her and c. unashamedly said "yes"

she would look at her instagram and was watching for when she was coming to lisbon, then she would meet her at the train station and kill her with a knife

so i said to c., you're as violent as me, and she said yes

no time

timeless

lots of space

a green-grey sea at dusk

rainy mist

the gulls

on the ground

and in the air

the child life becomes suspended in time

referenced for meaning

as

we

age

the child life becomes suspended in time

referenced

as

we

age

look at what is happening in syria, yemen and parts of africa, these "black lives matter" protests are a total loss of perspective

eihei dogen gets things wrong, he changes his views and all we ever read are translator’s opinions of what he said and they are an intellectually lazy lot, they don’t do any philological research

so western views of dogen already have him moulded in the western viewpoint

read the "tsurezuregusa"  (written by the japanese monk yoshida kenkō)  translated by donald keene for a much better translation quality and see the difference, those "essays" were written by a kyoto homeboy only 80 years after dogen’s death and is way more famous than any writing of dogen, but zen people don’t want to know

a lot of dogen is actually rhetorical technique designed to obscure and sound impressive, but actually its not far from "voynich"

why do we never seem to get our own paucity

when the paucity of others is always so apparent to us ?

our own paucity we never seem to get

the paucity of others

is always apparent to us

this "black lives matter" movement posits a benign backdrop to the social world, but humans are anything but benign, especially groups

sarcasm has its place, but it is defensive and gives away one as being in a losing position so should hardly ever be used

“ in percentages, in the entire population, individuals with blood group O were 9-18% less likely to test positive for covid when compared to other groups

"exposed" individuals with blood group O were 13-26%  less likely  to test positive ”

13 to 26% is a huge amount

yes, i am O+

what has god got against type AB ?

i don’t know, but i’m not complaining

i have a learning difficulty

i can’t learn anything unless it is beaten into me by things going wrong

there are two sides to the george floyd story, he was a career criminal with a history of violence  (and had been in jail because of it)  and on meth and fentanyl, tall  (6'4", 110kg)  and physically powerful, also he may or may not have had an active covid infection that reduced his lung capacity, the officers made a mistake, but they were also faced with the problem of subduing some-one on meth with a record of violence and maybe the covid made the situation fatal when it otherwise wouldn’t have been

its interesting he had played football at high school and all the research is showing the problems of the accumulation of subconcussive damage constantly occurring in the game giving rise to traumatic brain injury, he clearly was behaving in a way that put the police on their guard

to me the "protests" are more indicative of the level of serious drug taking in society than anything else, druggies "protecting" their own

nothing to do with race at all, just an epidemic drug problem to the point social cohesion is tearing apart

without the police society would quickly degenerate into a semi-feudal world, from their point of view dealing with people on drugs is difficult and dangerous and people don’t necessarily react "rationally" in conflict situations like that

if you are going to reply to this comment, please do me the courtesy of actually reading it and answering to the points, not the "i don’t like what you say" idiocy i usually get

dealing in a calm and rational manner with disagreements is hopefully, a "zen" skill

a rose and a tulip  art  by jason

so much goes to too much goes to uncontrollable goes to collapse

the gap between us

big, small

yet our dna can coil

together

amazing

the extent to which a religion depends on its control of publishing is being illustrated by the fragmenting effect on "orthodoxy" and "cohesion" the net with its "everybody is published" paradigm is having

i would go so far to say that religion is an artifact or enabled by publishing

“ anyone’s ability to mean anything is made possible by social practices that hold people to such rational rules of entailment and incompatibility ”

so much on the net is a playground for schizophrenics stepping away from this, the formulation of internally inconsistent and non-communicable systems with their own vocabulary

the philosopher robert brandom on what makes for  meaning

maternity, from  whales  to humans to cats

males step away

humans are "energy gatherers" at the cost of minimal "energy expenditure"

you may have noticed this, particularly when it goes awry, which it always seems to do with me

jason  writes

william burroughs was really into  telepathy

ed.  pages 58, 59 and 60 of  "william s. burroughs " by phil baker

he ended his book  "junky"  talking about telepathy and how he thinks its real

and then i remember linda king writing about how her and bukowski had a telepathic connection where bukowski could call at just the right time when something bad happened

“ countless times he’d call and ask, "what’s wrong?"  .  .  .   just as something was wrong.  he’d ask again, "what happened at three o’clock  .  .  .  something happened at three o’clock ”

“ lying by bukowski on the bed i’d feel a heat or rays of some kind coming from the center of him.  it would move into me and warm me in a way i’d never been warmed.  sometimes it was so strong i’d put my hand over that area and test it to make sure it was real.  the same vibes would enter my hand ”

what do you think about all this ?  another mind reading  thing

my  reply

writing and art is just constructive schizophrenia

the trick is to make it "constructive" and not "destructive"

false beliefs need testing and correcting

linda king would have been an almost continuous succession of things going wrong, charles bukowski was an intelligent man  (except in the women he got involved with usually) he would be able to make close to the target inferences

mind reading stage shows use a repertoire of techniques, its just very real world trickery

telepathy and the supernatural are not consistent with the way the world works

to understand reality

you are permitted one thing that fits

with me i think that’s writing

everything else

hounds

you

"social learning" is a huge gain strategy that we are evolutionarily designed around

basically it says just copy, don’t invent and you can see it everywhere today

it works within limits, but limits break down

the hubric young

there’s not so much excuse for the hubric old, but they are there too

i wonder if "activism" does anything at all except "signal virtue"

for any cause there’s any amount of practical work that can be done, but of course like anything "real" it takes time, persistence, care and skill

activism is just noise that does nothing, and actually trades in a negative or parasitic manner on the results of "real work", the "tragedy of the commons" so to speak

i feel "buddhism" goes to the heart of the matter and just signals virtue without even the necessity of activism

a religion for our time, virtue signalling without any work at all !

ed.  this was a comment i made on  a vlog  of brad warner’s and when i looked at the other comments, it struck me that they were virtue signalling without even buddhism, the ultimate refinement in mentally lazy slackness !

self-congratulatory narcissism

after some thought  (ed.  later comment)  what i notice is that they both have highly idiosyncratic versions of buddhism and really do not agree with each other and certainly the versions clash just like they both clash with mainstream forms of buddhism

i agree with robert brandom the philosopher that "meaning" actually depends on social rules of entailment, compatibility and at least some potential for mutual understanding

to step outside this also steps into the realm of ongoing cognitive distortion  (aka mental illness)

all beauty is strange

it is in its nature

all beauty is strange

it is its nature

reading and viewing changes you

for better or worse or indifference

university english literature education and i suspect, the whole liberal arts scene has become absurdist drama with the insult of having to pay to be made an idiot

like some borges universe, having been made an idiot, your only options for employment are in this what is now  a fictional construct

the author of the article is i am sure, iranian and having some experience of that blend of intelligence and madness ,  i sent an email

you are iranian, intelligence in the insanity ?

i liked the article, but surely you have noticed, you are caught in a borgeian universe, intelligence is stamped to moronacy, a literal  "library of babel"

velázquez’s  "venus looking at herself"

what i write could be regarded as "fragments" given how disparate the subject matter, but they are diamond glimpses of deep structure

the real "gaumata" buddha was in fact "bardiya" ,  the second son of cyrus the great who became a populist persian emporer for a very short while and was murdered by darius the first in a consipracy

interestingly, bardiya’s father was a real life "ozymandias" who left the following inscription on his tomb

you who view  this tomb  of mine, cyrus the builder of the persian empire, do not begrudge me this little earth here

my  comment

iran, weep for your violation by narrow minded rulers

politics is too rough a game for artists to handle safely

as he held her hand

her face morphed

into male, then back to female

from a wolf to a star

he admired the teeth

to read another poet

long dead

is to

bring

yourself

to life

my haters

in the end they drop away

except ewk

but even he

will

one day

drop

away

one mile in one direction

another mile in another direction

once walked

they turn out to be

one hundred

mile

somethings you just want to go on forever

but

they don’t

perhaps the greatest loss of the russian revolution was the annihilation of an "intelligensia rich" social strata which i think was something vladimir nabokov attempted to recreate is his marvellous novel "ada"

modern american and western wealth is incredibly crass without an artistic bone in its body as reflected by the current art market and tastes

as for public funding    .    .    .

the brain can be so full and busy

it will burn

but a little remains

to see the ashes

vitamin K  reduces mortality  for the coronavirus

you can have the talent for something, but not the temperament

the right temperament is what takes you down the long long road of improvement  (and usually impoverishment)

no wonder there is so little quality around

an interesting example of lacking talent, but having the temperament and even ability is  agnes martin

of course having talent ,  but lacking temperament we almost never see because it isn’t finished enough to make it into the public eye

journalism is another extreme, lacking talent, temperament and ability but having the public eye

the front of honesty

the undercurrent of dishonesty

the press and media

bastions of morons

so shallow

a scratch

cuts

them

in two

circles have a wonderful capacity to return to themselves

again and again

making spirals

i’m not sure that is progress

“ 20% of coronavirus cases are  super spreaders  with an infected person passing the virus onto many more people  —  result in 80% of transmissions ”

romeo and juliet

sir henry neville had a sure hand

love and death

ed.  sir henry neville is the real author of  "the plays"

the very white crowd

protesting  "black lives matter"

no

cattle

i notice

they enjoy their beef

these dreamers

ed.  the paddock next to me and the farm where i live has blacker than black steers

my tenant neighbours

a kalediscope of changing people

on a spectrum actually

lit by red

blood red

their’s and mine

one can paint like monet

or van gogh

or marc chagall

i find it easier to write

 does that make me lazy ?

“ too much autism under one roof ”

the trauma spins it apart

you can’t trust the book of genesis on anything, well it was right about  the bricks  being mortared with bitumen

the tower of babel is the babylonian ziggurat, likely built using prisoners of war speaking different languages

genesis is in fact half assyrian fable and i wonder if in fact the exile was formative of what we know today as judaism, an exclusive religion to stop intermarriage with local populations

the way the past falls behind us

an unseen stamp we are not aware of

i think where simone weil went wrong is she was trying to find a resolution between the social and mystical and there is none, at least in terms of any reconciliation of viewpoint and semantics

howover it does resolve in terms of the mysticist needing not to get too out of step with society, in appearance at least

i’ve done this so many times in my life, watch the boat leave port without me

you can’t call it back, its gone forever

women   =   maternity

maternity needs money

why don’t you get that ?

studying a bit of history helps cure any undue involvement in whatever current public trauma

try the "boxer rebellion" for a bit of unadulterated craziness

peggy guggenheim who slept with a thousand men while in paris made the following comment on her break-up with samnuel beckett

i made scenes while she  (ed.  suzanne déchevaux-dumesnil)  made curtains

you jump too high without building a real life base, sort of a craziness, really

18 versus 23 is a very significant age difference in terms of a relationship

more energy, more open, less committed to everything

less formed

the mystery of the universe

voynich or not ?

you don’t have to go far

to find it

"waiting for gogot" is perhaps understandable in portraying the communal failure to  "gain grace"

you really get a feeling of a "lack of synchronicity" intrinsic in the exchanges and events of the play

or resonant synchronicities moving off target

an ambiguous communality edging into solpsism, but ultimately insufficient

sometimes

a key piece of understanding

tumbles you into

a lot more understanding

a knowledge of history gives

a relaxed perspective

about current events

stability follows turmoil

and turmoil follows stability

you don’t need to know much more

god is in fragments

and

not

systems

mid winter

long shadows stand out

on

the

yellowed

grass

its difficult to convey

“ what is difficult to convey ? ”

what its difficult to convey

aphorisms and apothegms

are always

on the edge of voynich

so much so

its a matter of great skill to steer into one and not the other

the intellectually lazy

unable to work anything out themselves

pick up the cudgels

to beat their truth into others

the fiction of dogen

of zen

of truth in

a system

religion is a false problem

mysticism is a false problem

the mystical itself is not a false problem

a supposed aphorism of heralcitus

nature loves to hide

my  reworking

nature is many layers subsuming each other

madmen without sense

the people

who write

the news

madmen without sense

the people who write

the news

words can look pretty empty at times

frighteningly so

i guess artists run into this issue as well

from many years of observation what i have discovered is that what you do always has a cost, its not what you actually do since that just about always brings some benefit, but its what you didn’t do that offered more benefit or was necessary because you were doing something else

snakes can’t be everywhere

neither can money

and actually

neither can people

though

it

seems

like

it

the unending end

beyond the end

outside the beginning

“ the edge of time ”

time has no edge

time is a name

for what ?

i don’t think about it anymore

why do we think everything has an end ?

the very idea is pulled apart by our approach

it has taken me most of my life to understand that you have to "explore" reality through interactions with it to find out how it works; ideas, theories and projections don’t cut the ice

you can’t and shouldn’t assume any woman is being 100% straight with you

that’s just the way it is

reality deceives before you have even started

different perspectives come from different experiences

you can’t change that but imagination does help

too bad its in such short supply and so many creeds and ideologies teach the death of imagination

ed.  i think that’s "imagination" in the sense of "the full gamut", intellectual, emotional and rational, you have to look from layers of perspective, from close-up to the very abstract

different perspectives come from different experiences

you can’t change that but imagination does help

what she wants to be careful of is he is sounding unreasonable enough to be a physical danger

his blindness to any point of view other than his own that makes him a nuisance also makes him a danger

if he really cared for her and wasn’t just following some hubric projection of his own then he would stop hassling her

she should straight out tell him she doesn’t want any contact with him and she should also complain to his parents

she’s playing the game in a dangerous way, her liking of caravaggio has deep roots

she has to have told him in no uncertain terms he is not to contact her again

more experience of life would have taught them that if it didn’t work once, then it won’t work again and they should both be glad they are not together raising a children in a malfunctional marriage

they both dodged a bullet, why he insists on wanting to put his head in front of the muzzle again is beyond stupid into the realm of mental illness

building castles in the air tautologically don’t work out because they are so much our own projections they necessarily must run askew

 caravaggio’s  paintings can be very acerbic comments on life from one who has plunged its extremes

women always keep a "back-up" male

installation  meets 3D

its good, but lacks semantics, like just about all of  recent art 

voynich enshrined, but bullshit can’t hide itself

thomas gainsborough’s  portrait  of his two daughters

double trouble i’d say

the better for not being finshed

his honour

sceptical of writers

ignores the literary tomes

called law

a wet day

the clouds clearing

a daylight moon

sabine devieilhe  saprano  in "alcandro, lo confesso" by mozart

claire greenwood  ("gesshin")  has a marvellous streak of  unconcious humor

today’s protesters

loot

upmarket apparel stores

lenin

winces

i find a slightly more than level teaspoon of taurine dissolved in water is a great help for migraine

immediately after the war in germany, the colour (original) makes  this video  very vivid and real

covid-19 is not an "escapee" from a lab, but a result of genes  shuffled  between bat and pangolin coronaviruses and possibly another animal

a  monoclonal antibody  has been developed

What is a question ?

something that elicits an answer

what is an answer ?

something that elicits a question

a veritable merry-go-round

now that’s not a word i have used recently

all my learning, but one day my brain will fade

i always have trouble learning unless i suffer a bit

an interesting  interview  by artist sam gillian

he has wonderful and highly sophisticated conversational manner, something that may have its roots in the slave culture of the south where you had to diffuse or avoid tense situtations with those who had a lot of power over you

maggi hambling

these people think like me, so useful after dealing with the outright stupids on net message boards, the world is not just this level of stupidity and schizophrenia the net morons show

corneal stability is a statistical average

that does not mean you are that average

there’s a lot of research showing "means" but almost none on probability distributions

nazism

the most brutal stupid people you know

are in control

of

your

life

when dealing with message boards and comments sections, remember it is a publishing medium and most people have enough of a grasp of elementary sophistical techniques to be effective nuisances

to the extent you can, let what you write speak for itself and don’t engage the myriad of useless toxic arseholes the net abounds in

all my life

never crediting myself with any talent

applauding the halfwits

when i out-trump them all

though its an informative talk, the curator seems to miss the point of velázquez’s  venus ,  that the mirror image is a subtle comment on the projective and narcissistic nature of  "love"

i think the sort of contextless "don’t be a jerk" that brad warner’s translation of a phrase of eihei dogen is, is a mistranslation to english because its never used abstractly in english that way but is only ever a reply or advice in the context of some specific action

so using that phrase that way doesn’t make sense to me

what would make sense is "don’t be hasty, look at both sides and figure the consequences"

there is something unhealthily depressive about "don’t be a jerk", its a total abnegation of self-interest, whereas what is really required is being "objective" about self interest, for instance, a lot of things we may not like are in fact, from an objective view of our "self-interest", in fact running things our way despite the discomfort or discordance

hard to understand

even armour can be pierced

by self-reflection

i woke early in the morning with this on my mind and wrote it down, otherwise when i woke again it would be completely forgotten

some of my best writing comes from this boundary between sleep and wakefulness, that strange and unfamiliar world

its schizophrenic to craft the use of a language away from its common expression

its schizophrenia to craft the use of a language away from its common expression

what’s schizophrenic about philosophy is the way they have to craft their own language to say what they want to say

there is nothing that can’t be expressed in the poetry or prose of "commmonly recieved" language use or skills

i pick up things very quickly and take my time to get it wrong later

there’s more to this justifiably famous morecambe and wise  skit  with andré previn than meets the eye

supercompetence versus bumbling hubric incompetence, life sees hardly anything of the former and so much of the latter

martin heidegger complained to his nephew about the loss of the war invalidating the train fare concession he, as a nazi party member got and he certainly would have been aware of the extermination camps  (he never denied knowing about them)

as a philosopher i could never be bothered to read him, too obscure and dense and what’s the point, just the usual maladroit crap

“ you are always complaining about being rejected ”

well it suits, i am not comfortable with acceptance

lights out

and then everything is over

a sleep to dream

and then awake

lights out

and then everything is over

a sleep to dream

and then not awake

lights out

and everything is over

a sleep to dream

and not awake

women are not just machines

for

semen

to

uncoil

on

the world is like a fractal zoom

in every direction

it

just

keeps

unfolding

its distressing

to miss

what necessarily

must escape us

the world is like a fractal zoom

in every direction

it

just

keeps

unfolding

its distressing

to miss

what must necessarily

escape us

the world is like a fractal zoom

in every direction

it

just

keeps

unfolding

if you are artistically talented, the world will have disowned you

before you start

in effect its a lonely world for the talented, the morons just want to drag you down

hannibal is accounted a military genius, but he wasn’t, only a fool takes on an unbeatable enemy on their own terms which was all his invasion of italy could ever be

and missed the key feature of the problem, rome’s supremacy at sea

surely seafaring cultures like the phoenicians and carthaginians were could have risen to the challenge with the appropriate resources and redeveloped their galleys ?

i suppose the financial and organisational might of the roman empire made the prognosis certain, better to have sued for peace despite the necessary concessions

war

where old men

chuck away the lives

of young men

without too much thought

war

where older men

chuck away the lives

of younger men

without too much thought

somethings we look back on wondering if we should have done this or that

but actually

we got it

exactly

right

people are uneven

they get some things right

and some things wrong

we can see that with others

why can't we see it with ourselves ?

the problem with martin heidegger as a philosopher is he was a believing nazi who never changed his views and was in fact a subtle war criminal who should have been executed at the nuremberg trials, but as i say the scale and type of offence is too subtle for the world to grasp

as far as i can work out, eihei dogen would have been like "a kennedy", well positioned by birth in a powerful governing clan and probably had to be very careful of anything he said politically, indeed, he will have been at some pains to distance himself from the political world though his trip to china appears likely to have been funded by a shogun/ local ruler

in china zen was a religion of the administrative class and actually has its early life in a period of particularly brutal  civil war

there is some likelihood of the cold mountain poet, han-shan being a rebel leader and having to hide in the "cold mountains" or facing execution if caught

i think its crazy to impose any sort of "do gooding" on zen, it much more about an explanation of how the world works and in fact that understanding tells you the world is irremediable, it simply occurs according to its nature and periods of violent disruption and relative stability will always both occur

endless the little steps

some missteps don’t take us too far away

others   .   .   .

i think i do have a streak of insanity

i go my own way

regardless

pieter bruegel’s paintings are a  visual compendium  of dutch and flemish proverbs

throughout history there has always been a strong interest in "wisdom literature" that interestingly is almost completely absent today, i think the effect of modern media and perhaps an ease of living that is certainly new

its not generally appreciated how shocks to the body can affect the head, putting the brain and retina at risk

out there

somewhere

lies a lyric poem

so beautiful

the angels and devils weep

and god fades into non-existence

all i have to do

is find it

and

write

it

down