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

machine learning is what makes computer programs like google translate possible

“ google translate sifts through a vast amount of information to determine how frequently one word in one language has been translated into a word in the other language

in this way, the program can make an  accurate translation  without actually learning either language ”

poetry i think

gets the spot

in a way that prose never can

there is an extra dimension

that only can be accessed

by a person

for whom it is a first language

translation ,  unfortunately

can never cut the ice

poetry i think

gets the spot

in a way that prose never can

there is an extra dimension of that language

that only can be accessed by a person for whom it is a first language

translation ,  unfortunately

can never cut the ice

i never liked auguste rodin’s sculpture "the thinker" ,  but just now i was reading something i needed to think about, turned my head away from the screen, put my elbow on the chair and my chin on my hand and did some intense thinking for a moment or two

just like the statue

i guess the thing is the statue is just a moment of that intensity, not some-one musing for a hour like that

imitations  of classical greek literature in luke and acts

unreal !

i’m not so good on spoken

the advantage of writing is you can read it twice and correct it

autism is a lack of theories of mind, everybody is "autistic" in some respect, principally because theories of mind are mutually exclusive

for instance highly social people have good theories of mind for sociality, but when sociality deceives like the political mass psychoses of communist china, russia and nazi germany then "neurotypicality" runs aground

its not generally appreciated how we construct our world through evolutionarily designed "templates" that look for what fits

the template defines the world in a certain way and its pretty limited though meets its purposes of survival and breeding, but great thinkers, mystic and artists are necessarily autistic because they have to construct truer templates than what evolution and culture has given us

to the reader   :  i have a lot of trouble with people hassling me in replies  (ed. this was my reply to a reddit OP)  because they don’t fully read or attempt to understand what i have written, but pick a few words and construct their own version of what i say then berate me for it

don’t be that person

i think poetry is, to some extent philosophy

the difference is that philosophy has this huge burden of idiosyncratic vocabularies

whereas

poetry speaks directly from common usage

it does this

by transcending common usage

with semantic layering and cross association

since all things can be

that which is all things

can be

and can’t

the seagulls flow past

the sea flows past

the wind in the dune grasses and shrubs

flows past

nothing is going to go "all right" is it ?

the gospels of mark and matthew  shout

result circumvents intention

from the ridiculous

to the absurd

its a big step

watch out

when some-one

takes it

with you

from the ridiculous

to the absurd

its a big step

zen is an "understanding" that only comes to old long lived people who have worked at it for most of their lives

i think what this very long time period gives is the confidence in your the validity of what you have worked out, you see things come around several times so that’s the way it really is when everyone else gives an opposite message

things to me have looked increasingly farcical, idiot zen masters not having a clue with brainless followers baying the usual tripe  taking bad soap operas as real and actually all religion is like this, a haven for schizophrenia and psychosis

this goes on forever and will the same for all universes and intelligent life forms

young men undervalue the need for research and patience

buddha, jesus, muhammad

a triumvirate of futility

and fiction

there is no god

mind

absolute

nothing behind

beyond

nothing here

or not here

flames waver in the breeze

that is all

reincarnation is the usual imaginary religious paradigm/illusion seeking continuity outside existance

the problem of course being that you can’t have "existence" outside existance

personally i find the universe nutcase enough without compounding it

whether or not we can definitively know that reincarnation proposed as per buddhism is false is an interesting question

the only way to disprove something like that is to look with conflicts with what we know is true

re-incarnation as proposed is a "material reality" and science does not permit any such reality

for reincarnation to exist, the scientific understanding of the world and universe has to be wrong

from a more solipsist perspective i would look for some signs or traces like memories of past lives or duplicate existences and there’s just nothing

existence interestingly has the characteristic of a very steep fall-off in any probability of similars which i take to be a fundamental, we come this way just once, don’t waste it, a sentiment interestingly stated by the "sandokai"

not many people are familiar now  (it was big deal in its heyday)  with what goes on in theosophy, but i have had an interest

madame blavasky  (russian !)  was a con artist who got caught one to0 many times and then had the brain wave of going "spiritual" and conning people with stuff you can’t ever be caught out for because it was just absurd speculation

unbelievably she is still succeeding

serena williams comes across as unusually articulate and intelligent in this  press conference ,  tennis is a non brain damaging sport

one sees evidence all the time of the effects of brain damage from the heavy contact sports like football/league, in the consequences in the players lives

the money is not their for most anyway, a sucker trap

i remember a boy at school, exceptional at rugby, he could have become a world class professional, but he didn’t follow that path, a quietly intelligent young man who must have picked up the injury vibe from the sport

stupas would have to be at the top of the list of most useless religious monument being devoid of artisitic merit, beauty and utility

in short

a blot

on the landscape

buddha

a pointillistic image

whether true or untrue

its the dots

that

give

it

away

if its not communal, its not a religion

religion is essentially communal

the net is ravaged with "prophets in their own eyes"

tarot is just a way of giving advice without liability or the necessity of belonging to some guild or other

why buddhists miss the obviousness of genetic re-incarnation, i don’t know, even the childless get caught

brad,  (ed. warner)  to be honest i think you are the usual "net buddhist"  faux to the hilt and not buddhist at all because in practice you don’t recognise any calls of obligation as socially defined by belonging to a religion on you, principally in the ceremonial because that’s where the meaning of a religion lies, not the frothy nonsense of incoherent doctrine

so that’s the real theme on your net presence, a bunch of faux claims that the real life existance/implementation of is vigorously avoided

the sheer vacancy of what you promote is just mind boggling

stephen batchelor is in the same boat, you are a bit of a pair

interestingly stephen studied with one of the very few genuinely enlightened modern masters "kusan sumin" ,  a korean monk, he never gave stephen or anyone else transmission which i think you can take as disapproval

people try to handle the absolute "emptiness" in human terms of "infinity" so they fill it with specious junk

it has always been this way and always will and goes absolutely nowhere ,  you only have to observe over a while to see this

some-one says i am a buddhist, ruthenian byzantine catholic churchist  (interestingly  andy warhol  attended mass several times a week)  baháʼí-st, zoroastrian, muslim or sufi

but what exactly does it mean ?

its not our whole identity for sure

i think its more a call of obligation as socially defined, a christian would baptise their children and go to church services, a buddhist of whatever branch partakes of the ceremonial life

what i notice with the web is there are a lot of people who claim to be of such and such a relgion, but they don’t recognise any calls of obligation, so in effect its just a fraudulent/ self deceiving claim

a storm

an argument in giant land

doors slam

sparks fly

people who have been practiced in deception

can’t tell blind alleys from fruitful

and end up deceiving themselves

that is not to say

deception doesn’t have its place

for

survival

people who have been practiced in deception

can’t tell blind alleys from fruitful

and end up deceiving themselves

its no good telling some-one they’re an idiot

they have to work that out for themsleves

sadly few do

and its a moving target

its no good telling some-one they’re an idiot

they have to work that out for themselves

sadly few do

when people start to redefine words and concepts away from common usage you are looking along the road to schizophrenia

pablo picasso’s painting  family of saltimbanques ,  1905

he was smoking opium at the time and the painting has a daliesque feel to it, but is heavily autobiographical, well worth a search on

rogier van der weyden  15th century netherlandish painter

his most famous   painting

what you have written is obviously not "too stupid for words" because there are words

would you seek beauty, seek it underground

would you find strength  —  the strong are underground

and would you next year seek my love and me

who knows but you must seek us  —  underground

the above is a quatrian from richard le gallienne’s  rubáiyát  and below is my riff on it

beauty necessarily departs

because it is beautiful

age and time wastes strength

because it is an illusion

love changes

because facsimilies never hold true

be wary of people's opinions on the web, they often "oversell" and omit problems, especially on health matters

on the other hand you can be given good insight into life changing iatrogens that are glossed over by the professional medical community

circles in circles

the spinning wheels

we escape one

to be caught in

another

the circle man

goes in circles

running around effortlessly

ringing the miles

counting the scenes

deepening the track

what he doesn't get

is his life

is

out

of

wack

sylvia

caught by the beauty of children

and men

and drugs to ease her problems

“  Her overtures to other men, including Alvarez, were rebuffed, she and the children were often sick during the coldest winter of the century.  She was taking a  crazy cocktail  of medicines, some for colds, some for depression, partly prescribed by a well-meaning doctor who did not know her entire history: “by early February, Plath was taking two amphetamines . . . , one opioid (codeine), one barbiturate (Drinamyl), as well as an unknown medicine for her respiratory illness. The interactions of these drugs alone could have significantly worsened her depression and anxiety. . . .” There was also the terror over her final weekend that she would be hospitalized again, including the specter of more electroshock treatment ”

as you get older, its like standing at a crossroads with about thirty roads radiating out

the problem is you can travel all of them, but only one or two effectively

however there are penalties for failures to travel the other roads

its not difficult, its almost impossible, yet the balance between getting dissipated in broadness and effective focus in concentration in certain areas determines how satisfactory we find life

we’re treating things as though they make sense and the weird thing is no-one makes sense

a storm

giants slamming doors

and fires leaping from their braziers

its interesting to consider what works and what doesn’t and why

there was a huge electrical storm here and the following two lines came to mind

giants slamming doors

what sparks fly

but there’s no necessary connection between doors slamming and sparks flying, so braziers came to mind as a source and the imagery is very  n.c. wyeth

maybe the first line could be "in a storm" ?

the world is not irrational

its pretty consistent

however

elements within the world

may be irrational

to be busy

is to be blind

which we are

the world is consistent

infinite receding laminated layers

we never stood a chance

its not that difficult to be original

just start thinking outside

the common realm

and be guarded

in what you convey

the spirit of the inquisition

reincarnates

everywhere

give me the garden of eden

not quite as the bible paints it

no adam and eve

just gardeners

unobtrusively toiling away

a benign climate

free range food

isles ,  some sea coast

lakes

cascades, streams rivers

a life time at 20 years old

a small ask

but people sell god for less

i don’t

our utter separateness

is difficult

to grasp

“ god is the universe and the universe is god ”

pantheism doesn’t mean anything

why can’t they see that ?

the roads don’t coincide

if you spend too much time with the enemy

you become the enemy

time to get out

i don’t know why people bother with computer games

if you want mystery, puzzles, trauma and surprises, go on-line shopping

i sorta have a negative view of anything done to the cornea because of the high nerve density, but who knows ?

the regrowth pattern of the nerves is very important and you don’t know what affects it one way or the other

i have been looking at videos of russian orthodox ceremonies and the occasional "patriarch" missive, its very off-putting and the failure of the church to have any sort of contact with everyday reality was part of the reason for the revolution

the church is now just empty formality, a freak of subsidy created by the current russian government and armed services

dr. john campbell on  vitamin D and covid

i actually think a lot of people are in denial about the reality of effective supplementation on health, that getting ill and having medicine fix it is part of the western cultural mindset and is preferable to avoiding the illness in the first place by diet and intelligent supplementation

the gaping hole of course fuels illegal drug use

its much easier to get illegal drugs than some supplements where i live

there’s people

who don’t know

how

to

make

language

convey

something

meaningful

what

the

insides

of

their

heads

must

be

like

i

don’t

 know !   ? 

you do make reasonably cogent observations which are your own, but only seem to be able to express them through a filter of clichés

you have your own language, you want to rediscover it

the way you are operating at the moment is walking social penalty

you are not young, what went wrong that you never noticed ?

or that you noticed and never did anything about it

the "plum village" borg smothered you ?

its hard to accept one has been in a cult and hard to understand the depth of the severity of being damaged by it

been there twice

a twenty three year old  léna situations ,  she sits across all the categories in her talents to the extent it discomforts others

i always find it fascinating how children brought up in a different culture to that of their parents and their own genetic lineage so utterly become of that culture

that the acquisition of culture is a completely plastic facility in the brain, like language

fashion is theatre

evening

quiet

i have at last got all the flies out of the house

 australia !

i saw an eagle today

flapping through the trees

to roost on a bough

and then move on

i crossed the stream to get a better look

and was transfixed

claims without substance

the fools say such and such

when its not that at all

when queried

they clam up

what happened a moment ago ?

does it fade ?

where is it ?

an imponderable

for

sure

reality is a type of illusion

it is consistent and has certain characteristics of relation and continuity

that’s all

all life is defined by its need to reduce "free energy" ie the tendency to dissolution as per the well known theory and in the end even the universe is overwhelmed

there is something else going on in terms of the "ultimate mystical truth"

teachers and religions never saw this and meander about in meta until the end of their days thinking it important

lorena  writes

“  Michael Taft sounds as a bubble busy mind ”

ed.  author of an article called "a universal theory of awakening" ,  believe me, lorena’s criticsm is well founded

my reply to lorena  (who is a thich nhat thanh "devotee")

you see it in others and not yourself ?

just because you get an intellectual lobotomy in your "cult" doesn’t mean you escape the problem

for a woman to claim she has left death behind

is not true

the machinery to perpetuate itself

is in the mind

nor do men escape that

marriage is mar-age

 what do you expect ?

ed.  the above poem was written as a sort of response and criticsm of the three poems/translations  here

interestingly i posted the poem in the comments section and it appears to have been deleted

erik satie   gymnopédies

“ why do you think kindness is difficult for some ? ”

because its difficult to know what is kind

talking from books

they become books

with chapters, a beginning

and end

 what has this to do with infinity ?

the in crowd won’t have me

the out crowd is embarrassed by me

rejection is better than freedom

“  How you doing Andrew, I  hope you’re well, and having a good day ”

good days necessarily are followed by bad days, those who hope for your "good health" also hope for your "bad health"

“  Zinc is a trace mineral that  enhances  the clearance of virus particles through the mucociliary apparatus, augments epithelial barrier function, reduces viral replication, modulates inflammatory processes, and promotes anti-oxidant activity

Hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients have shown correlations between lower basal zinc levels and increased mortality, complication rate, and length of hospital stay ”

“ An analysis of 745 patients with chronic liver diseases with SARS-CoV-2 infection showed that baseline liver disease stage and alcohol-related liver disease were independent risk factors  for death  from COVID-19 ”

taking nonsense as sense is called "gullibility"

why do people take translations as the author speaking and not the usual unholy mix of both the translator and original author plus the transcription problems with old texts ?

its the height of stupidity

well that’s its audience i guess, if you haven’t worked it out for yourself you are going to continue to tout rubbish aren’t you ?

taking refuge in communal idiocy ?

pursuing fictions

wandering in illusions

we would rewrite the world

in our story

if we could

pursuing fictions

wandering in illusion

we would rewrite the world

in our story

if we could

the problem of  "meta"   humorously illustrated  by stephen fry and hugh laurie

you can know two things

but there’s some connection between them you have never made

and one day you see it and its like two gears spinning

apart from one another

coming together to make traction

and unseen

things move in you

the problem with truth

is once is not enough

for it to sink in

the definition of old age

what used to take two weeks to heal, now takes two months

and i guess one day it

won’t

everyday

a hundred points to pin

we can’t of course

but try anyway

there is the pain of absence

what hasn’t happened

less endurable

than what has

long shadows

in summer

tell me something

i am not sure what

the day’s gone

where’s it gone ?

under the chair ?

in the garden ?

on the stove ?

i can’t see it anywhere

if my eyes were tears

then i wouldn’t have to laugh or cry

at the farce of life

but in eternal mourning

would be

for what is glimpsed

only sporadically

what i always find fascinating about some poems is i cannot read then, but years later i can read them

something has happened in the meantime to open them up to me, in this case it was understanding the dream as a hypnogogic vision ie between waking and sleeping, which i sometimes get myself

giacomo leopardi's   the dream

  voice

if you say there’s something beyond

what is it ?

if you say there’s nothing beyond

what isn’t it ?

its like that

isn’t it ?

or

 is it ?

if you say there’s something beyond

what is it ?

if you say there’s nothing beyond

what isn’t it ?

its like that

isn’t it ?

it never occurred to me that some people resent google and the way it empowers better decision making through better information, but they do and would deny you access to it if they can

there are lots of crazies trying to pull the wool over your eyes on messageboards, as to why it is so important to them, well that has to be part of the craziness, probably they don’t cope with the dissonance between their own ideas and mine

my reply to yet another borderline personality narcissist on reddit

you seem unable to address my points in a way any normal person would, its in the area of mental illness

instead you try to beat me up and devalue me, super big red flag

you disagree with me, but not being able to put an argument together you try to convince me i’m writing "retarded shit" just because you say so

its a world of reason, especially writing

only the mentally ill don’t get that

ed.  i use "borderline personality disorder" in the sense of a disease of narcissism where you consider your opinion to be right and others to take you as so just because you say its so without backup discussion or facts and refusing to engage more along these lines of rational interchange

if something extends your skills and knowledge as an employee ,  great

but if its just repetitive hassle, then don’t wear yourself out on it

all you take from your job when you leave is the skills and contacts gained, therefore your focus should be on that and not just the benefit of the company, though you have to keep a weather eye on adequate benefit for the company

there is a general need for "micropayment wallets" with say cryptocurrencies so payment can be made per page view without the rigmarole and cost of subscribing

say 5 cents for a page view, of that order

that would solve a lot of problems, especially for newspapers and the like

i use an uncapitalised style in my writing, its just a style, grammar and syntax are fluid and change with use and time

politics is not honest or reasonable i am afraid

it may well be that the revenue sharing legislation targeting google to pay the like of the murdoch "gilded puppies" passes and google removes its australian search engine

its going to be a disaster

there’s a billion dollars of AI software behind them, that’s why they can’t be replaced

what i write is not intended as personal criticism, they are just discursions in abstract space which actually seems to be a concept people have trouble getting used to

a young woman asks on reddit "optometery"

“ Five and a half years into my optometrist job at a big chain store and the "social aspect" is fatiguing me

I’m good at my job, and I mostly enjoy it.  However, I’m a very introverted person, which means that the intense social interactions with ten new patients every day makes me absolutely drained.  I feel like I overextend myself because I want to make my patients comfortable and satisfied with the service, which usually makes them really loyal and happy.  Its usually the explaining part that's the worst for me, because some patients want to understand EVERYthing

So I guess my question for other people who are similar to me is  :   did you have the same issues in the beginning, and how do you manage this over time ?  Do you have any tactics ?  (Doesn't really apply to very extroverted people).  I’m strongly considering changing fields entirely

one of the fundamental paradigms of being human is that everybody tries to extract energy for free from you so you have to guard against this

one sees it on this subreddit so much, people not bothered to search google, but find it easier to put some-one else to the trouble of giving them an explanation

maybe you could suggest people research the topic on the net, certainly a lot of what they ask could be covered by this

the other thing to consider is the chain store is getting way more from you than they are paying for, that you are effectively putting a lot of "volunteer" time and actually "your life" into the job

in the end its only work and becoming jaded, hardened and cynical is the usual developmental course of any job and its not actually wrong, making more money for others than is being returned in a commensurate reward is soul destroying

this you have to work out yourself, no-one will help you ”

i’m not a fan of japanese culture except for its poetry, literature and art

i think japan is of an isolation and size that gives rise to a certain closed madness of which yukio mishima would be a good example

korea gives a similar vibe

how can some-one be so far ahead of  you

in some areas

and so far behind

in others

and we

not very able

to tell

which

is which

there’s nothing to do

there’s something to do

the search for god

is the search for god

only meaningful

if you think it is

bound by conventions

framed by conventional thinking

they ask their question

in terms of conventions

and conventional thinking

the answer appears meaningful

and is meaningless

someone joins, someone leaves

that club mentality

you’re a member

you’re not a member

good grief !

someone joins, someone leaves

that club mentality

they’re a member

they’re not a member

good grief !

someone leaves, someone joins

that club mentality

they’re a member

they’re not a member

good grief !

"cya"

irrelevant really

we have always been  apart

no co-incidence

even

when we want the other to be gone

who is to stop us ?

"cya"

irrelevant really

we have always been far apart

no co-incidence

even

when we want the other to be gone

who is to stop us ?

religion

conceptual systems

doomed to fail

hence

the

mailed

fist

when your road

is to travel in circles

going over the same material again and again

senselessly

i part company

cya

there’s a different class of thinking

that you have to be old to do

disillusionment with the present

from seeing life cycles

this has taken me so long to work out

and actually its been pretty painful

everybody is on different roads

they are not on your road going in the wrong direction

its a different road that you don’t have and indeed don’t want any control over

quality exists

where you least expect to find it

the sightedness of children

to be replaced with the blindness

of adolescence

and later

male versus female

child versus adult

friend versus enemy

the polarised world

energy going nowhere

seems to be my specialty

i don’t look for a result

anymore

extra languages are a costly neurological burden and i mean real costs with real consequences

circling through the familiar

rather than stepping out into the

unfamiliar

“ Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ”

“ Irritation is the sincerest form of flattery ”

how does it work ?

its

not

“ how i need it to work ”

but

“ how does it work ”

what is a mistake ?

something that’s gone wrong and an opportunity to go right

always the problem is to pursue the detail of the needed correction to prevent you traversing some barren plateau of sequential catastrophes

we are trapped in the ways of doing things

but there are other ways we can edge into

we are trapped in the ways of doing things

but there are other ways

korean zen is definitely its own flavour of zen, seung sahn was always pretty well taking from its repertoire

its a very different culture and actually north korea is representative of some aspects like the sloganizing

i quite enjoyed my time staying at kwan um centers, the people were nicer than the japanese varieties, and had a bit of madness that obviously suited me

not knowing

do know

poles

of

an

empty

dream

pack and unpack

vistas like crystal

curve into themselves

indefinitely

what can i say ?

what can be said ?

pack and unpack

vistas like crystal

recede indefinitely

curve into themselves

what can i say ?

what can be said ?

pack and unpack

crystal vistas

recede indefinitely

curve into themselves

what can i say ?

what can be said ?

pack and unpack

vistas like crystal

recede indefinitely

curved inside each other

what can i say ?

curved into themselves

what can be said ?

pack and unpack

crystal vistas

receding indefinitely

curved inside each other

curved in one another

what can you say ?

audio

rejection   acceptance

acceptance   rejection

who does what

and to who ?

what a moil

but truth lives in the unpalatable

a well timed wave, poised, about to fall, but not yet fallen

duke  orsino

the royal shakespeare company

the royal sir henry neville company

i don't know how they will take it

there’s a big fight and much handwringing coming

a man of surfaces

yet more than surfaces

a prescription

of many

we

know

the vacuum of absence

where presence was

nothing can be done about it

he is gone

mars

dust and rock

hills and valleys

some ice

craters

ridges

escarpments

yes, somewhat red

the science fiction dreams of fertility

vanquished

critical theory   :   an attempt by non-writers to discover what writing is about by the process of observation only

"critical theory"

more of the same problem

of what its criticising

“ the incidence of neurological or psychiatric conditions post-covid within six months was 33.6% ”

nearly 13% received their first such diagnosis.

that’s an  extraordinarily high  percentage for any illness

“ most diagnoses were more common after covid-19, than after influenza or other respiratory infections  —  including stroke, acute bleeding inside the skull or brain, dementia, and psychotic disorders ”

a teacher/student relationship is reciprocal agreement, it is disturbing for people to claim what is a level of intimacy with you without your agreement and usually, knowledge

complexity going to simplicity

simplicity going to complexity

simplicity going to complexity

complexity going to simplicity

personality cults are a form of  "argumentum ad hominem"

“ the finite coming from infinity/ reality from god/ plurality from singularity ”

you can try that line of reasoning, but it just goes nowhere

how russian politics really works ,  fascinating

i think putin is doomed, he can’t control the dissemination of this video and he can’t kill or imprison people like stalin/ aka "the butcher" was able to

however the preoccupation of this top "clique" with wealth and good living is in effect a saving grace, there is no return to the unspeakable brutality of the soviet years with the "ascetic joe"

if putin had any sense he would quietly turn his "palace" into a high class hotel/country club, it looks a nightmare/ madman’s folly and when he loses power, its one of several options of what will happen to it, another being a sort of state residence

i don’t think he’s mad, at least no more that a lot of power and money makes men, he is in reality a product of the years  of deprivation  induced by the soviet union and WW2 ,  an illuminating personal example of why communism is always doomed in the long run, personal material wealth is a central focus of human existence

in a world of immovability, some flexibility has huge value

in a world of immovable objects, some flexibility has huge value

people often find themselves unable to change what they know are problems, we can speculate about why and solutions, but we are also not them

when scott morrison and josh frydenberg fly by private jet to a christmas party given by lachlan murdoch, you know what the real story is

google shutting down in australia would be extremely economically damaging and the free flow of information is needed to control covid

all this to keep the murdochs able to fund plush christmas parties and their gilded lifestyles

its odd, toni packer was very  photogenic  as a child, it didn’t carry through in adulthood

there is a touch of the "unearthly" about her

its a funny thing

you can have a sense of something wrong

but it is a process of decades

to get the fine grain

of why

its a funny thing

you can see something being wrong

or doesn’t feel right

but it can be a process of decades

to get the fine grain

of why

read what you just wrote to me in a week and you might get an idea of how poorly it comes across

the phrase "narcissistic rant" comes to mind

i accept your claim to be "bad" ,  the evidence is everywhere in your writing, gas lighting, borderline personality disorder

the solidity of the past

it seems set in stone

but its not

its been a summer of cold nights

the hopelessness of caring for the tomatoes

and their likely early holocaust

people are horrible

its like dealing with refuse

everything is visited

only

to

leave

i have so many people promise to never engage me again on message boards, but they always do, destroying my hopes of the "peace" they claim to want

you really can’t tell the difference between cant and good writing can you ?

a broken doll bleating in some strange game ?

i think toni packer and albert low mutually influenced each other, their timelines at the rochester zen center certainly overlapped

excessive admiration for a person

is a red flag

usually waved right in front

of your face

they fawn on the dead

calling them teacher

whatever

maggots on corpses

that’s what they are

you seem to lack self-awareness, instead of selling "albert low" ,  why don’t you take on board what he says ?

you crank the handle of "self-identification" getting upset at anything that deconstructs that

gonna give me the usual "ad hominem argumentum" when confronted ?

when people talk up "ghosts" there is a serious problem

ed.  ghosts as in the dead

drifting skies

sympathy for fading

time flying

uselessly

i can’t hang on

to what matters

fading

glimpses

can’t save me

its a sort of a lyric for hope sandoval & the warm inventions song  blue bird ,  "erosion" is too high a reading age for a song lyric, so i used "fading"

drifting skies

sympathy for erosion

time flying

uselessly

i can't hang on

to what matters

erosion

glimpses can’t save me

what we call the present is really a form of memory

quasi-determinate

compared to the past  -  determinate

and the future

indeterminate

the teacher to student transmission in zen is not the authentic transmission ,  sucker bait for the "not too bright"

being involved with several "sanghas" taught me about how ruthless the internal politics of religions are, and also how little money there is exacerbating the poison-ness of the struggle for the control of the "kitty" and "congregation"

i think the notion of having a teacher is deeply flawed, one may learn from some-one, but people are so deeply uneven that if you over-focus on one person or persons then things are way too limited

having a teacher is worse than a bad mistake, its a sign of being irrecoverably on a wrong road, you can just look at any sort of religious teacher and their overflowing toxicity to see this

“ Not really.  That’s not how it works in anything when training ”

yes really, you say one thing, i say another, but in the end you have to judge by results and zen training by that criteria stinks generating stupid acolytes and teachers, fake past the depth of their bones

memories we never knew we had

when recalled

at first seem a bit strange

then familiar

because of course

they are

limbs break

joints wear

and are painful

does the brain break, wear and become painful ?

i think it does

limbs break

joints wear

and are painful

does the brain break, wear and become painful ?

it seems to

tossing words uselessly around

today’s generation

of thinkers

there’s no further to go

well i can wait

i don’t even wait

in a world of differences

money, race, culture, gender, geography

there's one great equaliser

the ability to use language

i thought i had a virus last night with a migraine and all

first thng i did was my "test" for covid

can i smell the dry cat food

yes i could

i think with writing you need to "fact check" ,  extend the range of context by research and keep things consistent

same as creating an aura of verisimilitude in painting

since this is all the business of illusions

lascia ch'io pianga   from "rinaldo"

sung by noëmi nadelmann

i thought it was from "the magic flute" but its very distinctly handel

the day casts spells

but moonlight infuses

the day casts spells

moonlight infuses

if you spend your time solving other people’s problems

your own are going to grow

churning nonsense

they can’t go any further

except to churn nonsense

you can tell them

but do they listen ?

the idiots

something out of nothing squared

doesn’t escape nothing

crazy

the positing of positives

when that posits negatives

what can you say ?

my brains gone awol

why ?

i don’t know why

where’s it gone ?

to where it can’t be reached

who’s answering my questions ?

not me

getting

thought

and words

to mesh

is

difficult

everything at its heart is built

the universe

ourselves

there is no "why"

what is interesting however, is the way semantic space calls reality into existance

that gets close to a "why" ?

“ it doesn't make sense ”

what sense was there in the first place ?

poetry

is

an

explanation

of

infinity

lol, i intended to write "exploration" for explanation, so here goes, only two letters different !

poetry

is

an

exploration

of

infinity

in any war

those who are lost

are sealed over

you can’t see

their absence

the no-road

of a road

always escapes you

bound in religious conceptualizations

you cavort with the billions

who don’t understand

tipping thought into action

its fraught

but it

has to be done

if you are on the wrong road

it doesn’t matter which direction you travel

you will get the same result

some-one else

we can see them

observe their behaviour

but

we don’t see through their eyes

and never can

this is called

the separation of being

does the mind exist in existance or non-existance

is it prior or post which or either ?

"being and non-being"

the nazi heidegger

was stuffed from the start

i put him under a bit of pressure

and he folded like a napkin

the distance between us

it is insurmountable

there’s something fundamental about this

what ?

the distance between us

it seems insurmountable

there’s something fundamental about this

we look for benignness in the world

being there or not ?

what is there to say about it ?

don’t make the mistake

of feeling sorry for an enemy

any assistance you give them

will be used against you

everybody has opinions

those who moved into reasonable, tested discussion

seem

to

be

few

there’s at least two or three years ahead of improved covid vaccines in the works

there is a theory that covid will eventually become like a cold virus and our subdued response to cold viruses is due to our getting them as children and developing some general resistance even if the specific virus changes

we all know what happened when viruses from european explorers hit populations with no experience of them

i personally think there will be vaccines for covid within three or four years that will cover all mutations, there’s even a "universal" flu vaccine under development targeting "conserved" areas of the virus

"but ya, the house stands, for now"

it never stood

like peter

it got washed away

gen Z is so dishonest

they don’t answer questions

and declaim like it means something

their modus operandi

is

to

dissemble

downvoters

the inarticulate

shown up

stretched, his answers clunk on

pretending to know what he is on about

the void gapes for him

stretched, his answers clunk on

pretending to be "enlightened"

the void gapes for him

having wasted his life in bullshit

he is indignant at you

for showing him up

the world is make believe

those enlightened

understand

yes and no

the teachers choice

those outside

know the span between

"permanence"

what is that ?

evanescence

squared

in

illusion

you go to touch it

it disappears

more evanescent

than what ?

a glance of beauty

"the great dictator" is also one of the "great films" ,  it seems odd that its creator was treated so badly by the americans

the  pudding scene

actually i think politicians react badly against any thing of artistic intelligence, since there will always be hints of criticism that are not possible to rebuff

i must admit, i remember a photo of a young jewish woman holding her child in a field being used for some sort of temporary internment of jews "rounded up" that day in an eastern european city or town, basically waiting to be shot

the pathos of actuality clashes with the superficialness of representations

the revolving wheel

of entertainment

picks you up

and drops you off

are you any the wiser

 for the round trip ?

the revolving wheel

of entertainment

it picks you up

and drops you off

where you any the wiser

 for the round trip ?

nisagadatta ties my shoes

eihei dogen cleans them

nagajuna washes my clothes

buddha wipes my arse

all the sages and holy arseholes

between here and infinity

are

worth

nothing

compared

to

me

when the road finishes

it ends

its that simple

space   time

rebirth

reincarnation

happy

unhappy

the unenlightened get

tangled

forever

on

wrong

roads

walking along the beach

in late afternoon light

i am enlightened

at the end of the road

i stop

with no further to go

that is all

it seemed to me donald trump’s personality changed after covid and the “experimental” monoclonal antibody cocktail he was given

personality change from covid induced brain damage is possible and not an unreasonable inference given his “advanced ” age

biden had given a public opinion about his not supporting continued legal action against trump, its just insane what happened from trump’s own view, he was already out of the frying pan and fire and just jumped in again

look

to

your

own

advantage

in

most

but

not

everything

the mistakes of others

all you can do is learn from them

and not repeat them

yourself

the whirligig of life

one day i will be stepping off

strange to contemplate

who am i asking ?

can i ask ?

who is there to ask ?

there’s no-one to ask

david hockney is overrated, much better than mediocre, but not great

the cornea is the most nerve intensive organ in the body, sculpting it is always a risky business and by that logic prk will be risker than lasik

the nerve density is so high, you can almost take the cornea as a sort of "mini-brain" ,  the problem is any modification is going to alter its "memory" and function, the way the immune system works and pain thresholds amongst other things

in the old days, people used to form artistic communities, i think with the web, that is changing and actually what has changed things the most is the universities pumping out morons who never in their life should have gone near the arts or writing

the whole arts and writing scene is now swamped with "anti-talent" and politicised nutcases

the bottom line with intellectual property is the complainant has to be suffering significant financial loss and when you consider legal costs, it has to be "very significant" financial loss

unless you are disney or j.k. rowling, don’t consider it, i’d just take the dispute public on the web, it will be good publicity, people love a fight

the problem with monotheism

and its many variants

is the number one

implies two

and so

you are back where

you started from

the southern cross

goes around and around

the unmarked hub

the southern cross

goes around and around

the unmarked pole

religion is basically theatre

presumed to be real

an attractor for dumbarses

the days go by

go by daze

the days go by

go by days

its hard to get used to the beauty of choral church music and the inanity of the words and meaning

hope sandoval has an incredibly compelling  voice ,  you can see that doyen of artful plagiarism lana del ray has copied her style

this is one of the few recordings where its not overshadowed by the instruments

you go

and something remains

then that’s not yours

you go

and nothing remains

then that’s yours

they don’t agree

with you

they have

their own agendas

to pursue

there’s nothing much

you can do

they don’t agree with you

they have their own agendas

there’s nothing you can do

"post death narratives" are not a arbitrary construction but reflect a society’s need for men to undertake the risks of battle

you know just saying something doesn’t make it so ? you are only conning yourself

as to "why" i cannot fathom

past lives are a looney bin

reality is too bitter for you so you think fantasy is real ?

the "rebirth" nonsense

idiot ramblings

by the insane

contemplative prayer or meditation is just "do nothing time" you can walk around or anything, just don’t listen to "guided meditation" or any of that nonsense, forget "posture"

also you need to read widely of quality, like sa’di and emily dickinson for instance, a lot of the so called 'zen" writing is pure bullshit/voynich which is why there is so much craziness and stupidity in real life zen, hakuin’s autobiography is a real eye opener

last night, gutting a wallaby, as i got down to the liver i couldn’t believe what i saw, it was full of these 1 to 2 cm white spheres ,  which on cutting open appeared to be solid tumours and not cysts, also the spheres were very well integrated into the tissue, literally part of the liver

the wallaby otherwise was in good health, no metastasis and quite young, possibly just a bit past adolescence

on researching on the web, the liver is quite prone to this sort of problem

it was quite unnerving to see cancer so visually and unambiguously present, simply doing what it does, growing and eventually catastrophically interfering with organ function

"this work" as per toni packer is the sort of pondering that takes decades

listening to the wind

work piling up everywhere

listening to the wind

cults

always live in peril

of the uncensored

voice

the vast majority of what is credited as poetry

is hardly interesting

dull heaps

of words and meaning

badly put together

read it

and the emptiness of wit

traumatises

the vast majority of what is credited as poetry

is hardly interesting

dull heaps

of words and meaning

badly put together

read it

and the dullness of wit

traumatises

language

the building of the tower of babel

wasn’t the beginning of the problem

or the end

language

the building of the tower of babel

wasn’t the beginning of the problems

or end

youth moves through its flower

unnoticing its increasing

speed

youth moves through its flower

unnoticing its speed

some times my brain works

sometimes it doesn’t

sometimes i can’t think my way out of a paper bag

sometimes i explode the bag and don’t even notice

i think this is one of those times

bottom lines are not bottom lines

if there was a bottom line there would be eternal life

moving slightly from every position and testing is the way to go

what is fruitless to take up with people and what is essential to do is a slowly developing life skill

beware of not having something returned to you that has been borrowed, there can be significant underlying attitude problems

allowing others to disrespect you is to disrespect yourself, you have to be looking to exit that situation

existence has holes

the ground of being is not as hard as we think

sepehr  writes

i think i may have taken a kind of half-"plunge" this morning when looking at the grayish-blue sky while waking up

i experienced a kind of realm of potentiality beyond the mundane human form in some sense

the grayish-blue sky was glittering and glowing in a way that felt otherworldly, welcoming to vistas of beauty that go beyond the memory of who i am.

the glittering and somewhat translucent grayish-blue sky somewhat resembled a kay nielsen, maxfield parrish, or inga moore painting

the philosophy of the minimum

only do the minimum necessary

over-complete is to buy trouble

i’ve become a fan of the persian poet and mystic sa'di, there’s a bit of a cultural/historical barrier in the paradigms he uses, but once you work them out ,  its exceptional

quality reading  is like a vaccine against life’s bullshit

it amazes me how few do it, even those who should

superstitious thinking

is a bad "fill in'' for a lack of knowledge and experience

in an area

superstitious thinking

is a bad "fill in'' for a lack of knowledge and experience

beware

the echo

chamber

of

self-reflection

i touch you

and you turn to dust

 where you ever more ?

i never was

this bottle washed up

without a message inside

a cliché it felt

half full and half

empty

on the boundaries

the millions

never leaving

never entering

cavorting

in uselessness

old points of reference

dissolve in time

and with time

until

you can no longer recognise

them

i think the point of meditation , is not just to habituate to the "useless thought noise" aspect and learn to identify the potentially more productive avenues, but see the deep structure of the patterns which in fact are pretty simple ,  mine is "fixing things and situations" and some people really don’t think like that at all

these deep patterns pretty well create what you do i think

but

beware

the echo

chamber

modern technology has given us too strong a sense of the past

so we think the future is as certain

sometimes i read what i wrote

and think its not so bad

most of the time

and now

its all of the time

what’s changed ?

i am more myself

and less

the world

“ quiet night 

the white wispy dragon dances

 over the ashes ”

quiet night

everything is gone

including dragons

ashes and dragons are "learned'

the real dragon is our own thought

but that’s so frightening

we remain silent

ashes aren’t ashes

and dragons not dragons

sounds like the diamond sutra

or

nagarjuna

mortals stuck in fixed concepts

flounder

the diamond "cutter" sutra

blunter than my axe

the idiots froth at the ears

thinking they are hearing something

the dregs never fade

they only pass tastelessly away

chased by phantoms

consumed by phantoms

the spit out remnants

think they are living

pursuing phantoms

gobbled by phantoms

they can’t see it

when you pointed it out to them

pursuing phantoms

gobbled by phantoms

they can’t see it

when its pointed out to them

i got a scam credit card phone call

the intensity of the scam world is unbelievable

the way it chases you down every second month or so

this one was quite well done, "computer voice", sorta international accent but american enough to be a giveaway

credit card brand right, but that’s how it works, they don’t necessarily know, but three numbers rung, one will be right

what’s missing, is my name, any numeric reference, the source of the call, nothing to indicate they know any of the card details beyond the brand ,  which of course can be/is a probabilistic guess

and actually the rationale for the call, in its claiming they suspected my card had been fraudulently charged because stores i hadn’t brought from before were being used

also i got a call a week ago about the same time ?  which hung up immediately on me, this is often done by automated systems checking on what time to call you

i do have a memory of reading about this scam, pretty much text book to what they described

you really have to keep your wits about you

modern life and its endless anxieties

i don’t need a critic

those vagabonds of uselessness

however

they do measure success

somewhat

i’m not interested in that

its what writing gives me

that counts

the thought of others getting benefit

makes me ill

i think a good poem has two modes

jesus i don’t know why i am writing so much today

anyway

depending on the mood of the reader

he could just skim over it, not entering into it at all

or he can enter into it which begins a transverse into

a strange new world

and changes you

this is why most people never get past the first

my hatred of editors

is enabled by my not having one

i have to do it all myself

including the publishing

and to be honest

its not difficult

when you take a number

to the power of another

its interesting how quickly

in terms of computational ability

you run out of steam

to me this indicates

vast realms of possibility

we are not even aware of

what is amazing

is 24 letters

a few numerals

and other symbols

can encompass

such vast landscapes

of being

migraine

for those who get it

is a constant similarity

migraine

for those who get it

is a constant similarity

in life

i set out to write something

amidst a swirl of useless thoughts

there is nothing

my brain has more sense than i have

some things

echo in the brain

to re-emerge whole

many years later

the modern disease is to be too certain of predicting the future

those who can’t be bothered to do anything outside their limited provenance are the majority

those who have the unusual energy of going further are few

to look for answers outside your own efforts is to condemn yourself to look forever since answers have no limits

grasshopper, you have mastered "pantheism"

now there is  panentheism

once you have mastered "panentheism" its then how many angels/bodhisattvas on the head of a pin and no rounding of decimal points !

“ how do pantheism and zen contradict each other ? ”

pantheism is an identification of "the universe" with say, "god" or some sort of summation in totality like the buddhist "absolute"

even in buddhism i can’t see that, its a separate doctrine and actually has christian roots, the catholic church has a long history of campaigning against it including the execution of giordano bruno

its an odd thing to be discussing stuff here that in earlier times could have got us killed

joshu is perhaps the clearest example of some-one in zen who actually knows what he is on about

"enlightenment" is to be enlightened about life, its that simple

however its not a set of rules but rather an ongoing development

the problem with zen is the amount of "garbage" in it, between transcription problems, religious politics and semantic change/philology, its sorta like 90% junk and misunderstanding

so you are going to scratch your head for along time if you take it for "gospel truth" aren’t you ?

if what zen is about is valid, then it has to be there in other religions and literature

emily dickinson, basho, sa’di, wang wei, john of the cross will crack the chinese puzzle for you

what i mean by "hypocrisy" and i think this is the common understanding, is the inconsistency between rules for ourselves and others in our favour, its actually fairly intuitive, we all know it and constantly visit it

one of the more fascinating hypocrites was hitler who indirectly killed so many germans, jews and russians was deliberately childless, that really makes you ask what was going on

my criticism of kataguri is he writes "fine sounding" nonsense and one looks for a reason for it and there are several, from income to serial philandering, but i wouldn’t say the relationship was cause and effect, he’s just the usual half-witted zen teacher

“ Is there an orthodox zen? ”

i thought you were soto ? eihei dogen certainly claims so

however in the end its a just a word with assigned meanings and in fact the common use meaning of zen is simply "tranquil" or "relaxed"

i don't think any zen masters today are "enlightened", but if you look at the records you see a few who were and you can take their "authenticity" to be "orthodox" and all the other bullshit as "heterodox' which is certainly the way dogen uses it

its a borderline personality disorder characteristic to think hypocrisy is ok

its a borderline personality characteristic to think hypocrisy is ok

“ so, there is no "dharma" ? ”

well, its a word, god knows what it means.  its certainly a collecting basket for voynich

the fools try to validate it, but being "voynich" they can’t

the gurus

open their mouths

to lose themselves

in the refuse of idiocy

aging

the dream of invulnerability

is

vanishing

religious ceremony

costume and ritual

creating the

illusion of depth

where there is none

doing "this work" is inevitably socially distancing, that removal is where the better judgment is able to come in

the problem with group retreats is indoctrination that takes decades to get out of your hair

i really think its a question of getting in some "solitary time" on a daily basis, and when you can do it, get out in areas of natural beauty

writing, including poetry is also instrumental, otherwise you are just a reader and not sceptical enough

its surprising who relates to stanislaw lem’s  the futurological congress

people you wouldn’t expect

more than half his family were killed in the holocaust and he had some close calls himself

“ past mind can’t be grasped, present mind can’t be grasped, future mind can’t be grasped ”

the mind of the past is grasped, the mind of the present is being grasped and the mind of the future is about to be grasped

this is a way of dealing with claptrap, the quote is some buddhist nonsense from the "diamond sutra", even the name of the sutra is "salesmanship", like the sutra isn’t so much wordy nonsense, but rather has the value of a diamond if you want to believe it

so what you do in dealing with a "declamation" like that is write a sort of inversion that shows it up, you have one declamation contra-distincted by another that is better, all you have to do is leave it and it speaks for itself, a wall whatever "faithful" can’t climb over or knock down

more subtly the original declamation and its "contra-distinction" make an interesting, even instructive, whole, neither part completely invalidating the other

who would have thought cleaning a painting could be so  interesting  ?

“ a view of het steen on an early autumn morning ”

theology

the detritus that arises

when abstraction is applied

to the wrong level of life

you can’t make yourself comfortable in an uncomfortable situation, otherwise it wouldn’t be "uncomfortable", if you were comfortable, it could be dangerous or costly if a mistake is made and you need to be vigilant, what can unfold is difficult to forsee

if its emotionally traumatic, you can’t walk around trauma like its not there

there’s a high level in unreality in what you are saying, it doesn’t sync with real life experience

its more like tolle is offering "life anaesthesia", the usual theological claptrap

there is a real "eckhart" btw, how many students of tolle would be unfamiliar with that.  just about all ?

i think my basic criticism is you are "meta-ring" situations that vary so much that the abstraction process is not meaningful, that’s not to say recalling previous similarities isn’t useful for "navigating" so to speak, but the imposition of untested ideas about how to behave or react without that actual "what’s happening" perception and background of "worked out" experiences is fraught and of course the "spiritual path" is full of the wreckage of people being caught out by various uncorrected ideas for very long periods of time because they take "whatever theology" as a given and not open to dispute

schopenhauer makes a criticism of wisdom literature, its really not possible to be "wise" without the experience

the flaw of the "in the moment" approach, apart from there being no such thing is the "appearance" has to be processed against the background of substantial "working out" and to substitute another’s untested thought for that leads to the usual disaster one sees in both mental illness and its various borderlands and i don’t think tolle has ever emerged from mental illness, your non critical acceptance of him warrants thinking about

all these "spiritual types" make the same mistake

that is, constructing a theology that is complete nonsense and bears no relation to anything real whatsoever, a patchwork quilt of inanity from various sources

you can’t even criticise anything ,  its all so far off anything of sense

all in an attempt to recover self esteem, but the real basis for self esteem they never grasp

you just can’t tell these people

its not enough to just think about something

you have to learn to do things, even in a small way to help "straighten out" one’s theories and abstractions

otherwise you will confuse "speculation" with reality

i’m sceptical about people’s claims to be satisfied

nobody is ever satisfied

how could they be ?

its the same as a claim to be "complete"

“ all things are possible ”

from this springs the entire universe

you’ve come to a question

and the question is the end

you can’t go any further

this doesn’t mean the question is wrong or futile

just that to go through the question

requires something else

i think a weakness of evelyn waugh and charles bukowski is their alcoholism left them both excessively focused on their personal experience as a source of writing material

its not a bad thing, that focus, but to get an overall picture you need a broader view

what is it about "gone" ?

"empty" ?

"abandoned" ?

their quietness after the busyness ?

something like death actually

what is it about gone ?

empty ?

abandoned ?

the quietness after busyness ?

something like death actually

alexander waugh gives good  insight  on his grandfather

bit of an eye opener in fact, a living "gospel of mark" in the sense of result contradicting intention

alexander is a very good speaker, one to learn from

some matters you have thought about over the years

it doesn’t appear to go anywhere

you try to go past it but you can’t

that’s actually because there’s no further to go

the real  underbelly  to middle class existance

the five ranks of tōzan are complete nonsense, why do people go in for this sort of deluded craziness ?

dame edith sitwell is  interviewed  by john freeman  ( 1959)

autism is not a symptom, like say for an illness, but a structural "low theory of mind" condition and as such has no "core"

good quality nutrition and the remedy of digestive problems (if there are any) can supercharge the acquisition of required theory of minds and actually is a life long process

the italian interest and detailed local knowledge of the writer of the plays is very difficult to explain , except that the author visited northern italy and it made a big impact on him

guess who did and didn’t visit northern italy

sir henry neville and william shakespeare

everything leads to other things

what do you do ?

follow everything ?

you blink

and your life is over

everything leads to other things

what do you do ?

follow everything

you blink

and your life is over

moments of what ?

vacancy ?

filled ?

with what ?

ourselves by ourselves yet not alone ?

what arises

and what falls

we don’t know

yet remember

so many attitudes

that i don’t need

or are even accurate

my own

which comes first

words or ideas ?

 or are they mixed up ?

i think they are mixed up

“ in my linguistics course we learned that people think in concepts, not languages

i speak 7 languages with various levels of proficiency, english being my second foreign language. as a personal observation, the more languages you speak, the more you skip the stage of vocalizing words in your head

that’s why, when you become fluent in a foreign language, you don’t think in your native language and "translate" into your tl, you just word ideas in the language you are speaking ”

my  reply

imo people think in words as well and being multi-lingual is disabling cognitively

the confusion and trauma of being  multilingual

post-60 exercise syndrome

when anything you do

breaks something

post-60 exercise syndrome

where anything you do

breaks something

“ its always there ”

something can be created from nothing in the blink of an eye

and go back again

that is not "always there"

usual zen fake i am afraid

no trope so hackneyed

that its not trotted out

like it means something

caught out they get indignant

like its your fault

the insolence of these

conmen

the usual tragedy of life is to have your talents

askew

with what you do

people don’t think of queen victoria as a writer, but its through her diaries we know her today

that is, as a writer and a reasonably gifted one at that

alma duetscher would be better to get  another pianist ,  composers often don’t play their own works the best

the world is short of competent composers, not recitalists

a problem of "genius" is to be too spread between skills

“ Do you have a specific complaint about her technique or interpretation ? ”

i can’t put a finger on it, i feel there’s something missing somewhere, maybe the composition itself is being shortchanged or she needs more stimulation from contact with competent peers, there is something unusual about her restriction to the classical "genre", a little "time capsule" if you will

“ what is eternal peace ? ”

eternal peace is like the "1000 year reich"

somewhat attenuated

“ dogen founded the temple of eternal peace

why is peace eternal ? ”

eternal peace is like the "1000 year reich"

somewhat attenuated

eihei dogen’s new year’s  talks  in 1246 and 1247 from "dogen’s extensive record  :     a translation of the  ‘ eihei koroku ’ "

my  reply

on the fishing boat

fishing

i don’t even fish

or wait

something has turned up, i don’t how it got there

i turned towards it unknowing

and take the benefit

“ what happens after we die ? ”

its not actually a real question

in terms of any possible answer there’s no such question as can give rise to them

“ what happens after we die ? ”

its not actually a real question

in terms of any possible answer its not a question that can give rise to them

alexander waugh  (son of evelyn)  lampoons  the non-existent scholarship of the "stratfordians"

an interesting  study  comparing the proof that william shakeapeare wrote the plays compared to sir henry neville

the italian interest of the writer of the plays is very difficult to explain , except that the author visited northern italy and it made a big impact on him

interestingly sir henry was very grateful to sir robert cecil for saving his life after the  essex fiasco

computer games

immersive worlds

taking you

in the wrong direction

“ to stop the clock of busy existence, at the hour when we were personally sequestered from it; to suppose mankind stricken motionless, when we were brought to a stand-still   [. . .]   is the mental unhealthiness of almost all recluses ”

the above quote by charles dickens

everyone has these "sequestering events" i think its important to move on, while allowing a processing of said event/s to occur

the "sequestering event" is when life doesn’t turn out like you expect it, what happens to you doesn’t fit the way you look at things and so in fact is a life long trauma, its a balance between excessive pointless rumination and processing it productively

for charles dickens it was his father being imprisoned for debt and his having to go and work at a "blacking warehouse" at age twelve and likely his marriage since he came to despise his domestic situation

to be fair, his  biography  is very "eventful"

the man in the moon

looks for something

in the earth

it cannot give

and so remains

in circles

the man in the moon

looks for something

in the earth

it cannot give

there are puzzles to be solved in life

that we rarely do

marble statues and busts

seem remote

once living people were

yet

with coloured irises

and eyes that moved

and hearts that loved and hoped

marble statues

seem remote

once living people were

yet

with coloured irises

and eyes that moved

and hearts that loved and hoped

the russian orthodox church has never recovered from the revolution, just an empty form, it lacks the rich cultural context it once had

russia has never recovered from yeshov, beria and stalin, three pieces of work you never want to see in your lifetime, though of course they exist today in lesser scope in various places

so many of its best people were taken out of the genetic pool

as much peace as i have ever known

picking one’s own raspberries

my last dentist and her assistant had to be stopped from putting mercury in my mouth, yet when taking a x-ray disappeared down the corridor until it timed out

ed.  this was a while ago, the dangers of mercury amalgam fillings are almost universally accepted now by the profession

lend a woman a book

don’t expect to see it back

i know that look of blank amazement

after you ask for it

you can’t work out whether

they have lost it

given it away

secreted it somewhere

anyway apparently its their due

and not yours

what is it with abstractions ?

they are not real yet rise above time ?

you can’t save the world

not only will you fail

but

you will also

doom yourself

to conceptualise

what is difficult to conceptualise

to conceptualise

what is difficult to conceptualise

to conceptualise

what is difficult to conceptualise    .     .     .

a poem or homily can do it

prose can’t

everybody is very uneven

especially the more talented they are

the more uneven they can be

it would be nice to generalise homogeneity

but its not the case

the problem with a religious education

is you are left deconstructing it for the rest of your life

which is a sad state of affairs

even those for whom it slips past like water rolling off a duck’s back

are poisoned

there’s headstrong

and headstrong

and stupid

there’s headstrong

and headstrong and stupid

an interesting use of youtube, is  (once you turn off the stupid music)  a "streaming" of paintings with some sort of theme or grouping rationale

summer scenes  (1950-1990s, the leningrad school)

religious exegesis

made-up stories

about

made-up stories

i don’t like the sufi bullshit

i don’t like the buddhist bullshit

i don’t like the christian bullshit

why only my own stuff is right is utterly beyond me

i’m not saying they don’t have their validities

insights into life

but in general

the dissembling

is

too

much

the world cannot be summed

its depth spreads forever

contain it if you can !

“ you who would read this book

ed.  "the mirror of simple souls"

if you indeed wish to grasp it

think about what you say

for it is very difficult to comprehend

humility, who is keeper of the treasury of knowledge

and the mother of other virtues

must overtake you

theologians and other clerks

you will not have the intellect for it

no matter how brilliant your abilities

if you do not proceed humbly ”

seems innocuous but it got its writer burnt at the stake in 1310

“ appearance is not truth, truth is itself ,  and not some other thing ”

marguerite porete, remembered at all this distance

anna

blue streak

lightning bolt

strikes men

and hurts herself

japanese practicality

the kmahachiman (enjuan)  "divorce"  shrine tree

life is an unreal dream

 what’s wrong with that ?

the hidden pole points disagree

“ i don’t disagree that i’m a big dreamer and not enough of a doer   .    .   that really needs to be fixed

i’ve been saying i want to get back into meditation, and reading, and a handful of other things.  it needs to happen ”

no it doesn’t need to happen at all, i never try to direct my life in that way, its a much more subtle process, you constantly have to feedback to yourself what works

tattoo inks contain toxic substances, carcinogens and nanoparticles, totally unregulated

the heavy tattooing of the criminal element may be as much causative as an effect

the pescatarian diet is high in heavy metals, keep the fish small to cut down the bioaccumulative effect, particularly mercury which is at geologically high levels in the sea and some inland waterways from human pollution

steve jobs was pescatarian and his pancreatic cancer may relate to the heavy metal loading, particularly arsenic from shellfish

schizophrenia

all dreams and no doing

then the dreams get out of control

and so does the doing

or lack thereof

ed.  i feel like i have to explain my use of the word "schizophrenia" because its so loaded, i do reference the clinical condition, but i also use it as a paradigm of reality, that basically life is schizophrenic, an untested dream, that of course gets tested in hidden and not so hidden ways

schizophrenia

all dreams and no doing

then the dreams get out of control

and so does the doing

requiem

what is gone is lost

it has happened before

the pole stars of being

more than a hint of non-being

but less than certainty

the young

don’t understand

the problems of aging

the walls closing around

close

theirs are on

the horizon

life is very uneven

there’s a limit to success

why failure has no bottom, i don’t know

nothing comes from nowhere

the rocky horror show is very indebted to the point of plagiarism to the goon show

mazzy star with hope sandoval singing  fade into you

time travel

we do it all the time

memory

media

it doesn’t pall

backfire

not a word we usually think of with our plans

more fool we

the crowded world

time and place are crowded

where to go ?

where its uncrowded

plato ,  dionysius I and II,   dion

the syracusian circus

successful things add in small quantities

beware the instability of big "hits"

"god" is a very "voynichy" term imo, its such a mess, people understand quite different things by the word, even "atheism" is difficult to define since if you don’t have a clear idea of what god is, how can you say what god isn’t ?

brad asks "was jesus a buddhist ?"

well you can approach the question a different way by looking at the origins

jesus was of the ancient egyptian religion (mut and khnonsu/ isis and horus-shed) as was moses, muhammad was a christianised jewish saviour and buddha was a nepalese tree god

there’s not an intersect between jesus and buddha except in their bad soap opera lives, in fact "buddha" is very different from the other three being "euhemerised" from a tree, whereas jesus, moses and and muhammad are purely fictional, "reverse euhemerised" so to speak

interestingly the kaaba is not fiction; but has its origins in an actual shrine

the huge advantage of a religion having a fictional founder who is supposedly historically real is that enforces a validity to it all, because you then blend the supposed historical reality with the crazy belief systems, ie the belief systems must be true because the founders were real people

it must be galling for the majority of musicians who are basically "talentless" to take backseats to today’s few, but very proficient "stars"

the internet has created a very uneven hierarchy of a few of the extremely talented who do very well, while the majority of good to middling or less don’t

i’ve thought about r|zen over the years and why its well off track

the reason is this, that what zen is about, if it is valid must be universal and hence the subject matter also is dealt with in the mystical arms of other religions

since r|zen  (and also real life zen, though not to the same extent)  excludes other forms of mysticism, then it necessarily is way too unbalanced, schizophrenic actually

that's what the "true nature" of zen is, schizophrenia

my main regret is it took me so long to work out

wow, ewk got suspended from reddit for harassing tamok  (who complained to the admins)

he made the big time !

i do feel he was mentally ill and a lot of the people on the r|zen  subreddit are

the thing about german cars is you have to be very wealthy to afford them, the purchase price is only ¼ of the lifetime cost; maintenance, repair and depreciation is huge

people get sucked in by the low apparent purchase price for second hand german vehicles, they are relatively low for a reason

perhaps german vehicles are safer, i don’t know

also diesels are at least twice the repair cost of petrol

when you see prostitutes as people and how traumatised by the prostitution they are, its very off-putting, the female pysch is to bond with who they have sex with, prostitution is constant trauma

not to mention the drug use, std risk etc

people who are more sincere than the conmen they promote

have

a

problem

the puzzle with wei wu wei is how someone can write such complete rubbish and have a public that laps it up

well the public is not such a surprise, its not many and the usual "spiritual promotion clique" which lives on the wrong side of idiocy

but wei wu wei himself, an, amongst other things, english racehorse owner called terence gray is not such a surprise once you look at his biography, a well known english type of conman as lampooned by the goons with the character   major bloodnok

a life skill is learning to "pare" reality from unreal dreams

i think the pendulum has shifted against diesel cars cause of poor emissions compared to petrol, i wouldn’t buy one unless you live in outback australia

reading

lost in other worlds

lost

flawed representations

what we have to deal with

all the time

receding constructs

nested recursively

an endless maze

yet the way out

is marked

"god’s justice" is just an idea

 how does the world really work ?

well, intention subverts

the result

 talk about loaded dice !

one of the weird things about writing

is you have to see yourself to some extent

as part of the writing

without that its not effective

just another blind ass

baying away

 is there any such object ?

there is no such object

 is there any object ?

there is no such object

 is there any object ?

there is no object

the "monolith" craze i think is ideologically indebted to the kaaba, a rather crazy, empty idea

christie’s

southeby’s

the high end professional art market

is a con so slick

tough wealthy people

get caught

a whole infrastructure of parasites

humming their tune

meta-theology

words

more words

and a lack

of

meaning

i really don’t have any recommendations

what suits one life

may not

suit another

i don’t feel i am an imposter

i feel the world is an imposter

so its sorta anti-imposter syndrome

what is vast

stretches you

and nothing fits

as it has

before

the world

a moil going nowhere

it can’t be any other way

the world

a moil going nowhere

cannot be any other way

the mind churns

foolishly

what has been before

down empty rails

going nowhere

ed.  my "restatement " of sir henry neville’s sonnet number 30

“ he who has come, comes again, and wherever he never came, there he will not come ”

hadewijch

almost christmas, but down to 3° last night

the terror of fear for your tomatoes

nodding off to sleep

a tiger comes up to me

snarls, jumps over me

and goes on its way

i don’t know what i missed

but i’m not complaining

nodding off to sleep

a tiger comes up to me

snarls, jumps over me

and goes on its way

those who step in infinity

always step

those who don’t

pass like the wind

what is absent in absence

and present in presence

never the two shall meet

to find out what you want to know

you need to go near and far

too many take one or the other

and don’t see their failure

old memories

more useless than

dried flowers

all religions schism unless compelled by the most horrendous violence/force to cohere

that force is still there for the muslims, but that’s its not with the anglican/episcopalian and catholic churches shows they have alread suffered "heat death"

like eddies

our lives swirl behind us

as we get older

do the stars writhe ?

or are they still ?

tell me

one of the things about poetry

is its you against the world

the world says "its this way"

you say "no, its this way"

the world doesn’t change

but at least the truth has been said

the sea’s sparkle is not lost

to

nonconsciousness

the nerve density of the cornea is so high, the nearest equivalent of lasik and its ilk would be brain surgery

be warned

"shiey" almost gets caught by border guards and escapes into the  austrian alps  to his and the viewers delight

really this content is so much better than the endless netflix and its ilk’s crap, you can cry about it

the way they use mobile phones to track where they are going and book accommodation is really impressive

"pink tax"

huh, women being charged more for some goods and services because they have no male advice to give them insight on the price fairness

brad has a bad toothache, it must be bad because he is asking for dentistry advice

what i wrote to him

reddit has a  forum 

you have to be careful, male dentists especially tend to be "shopkeepers" always recommending the most expensive treatment, i haven’t found dentists are "great thinkers" which as its "manual job" is hardly surprising and women have better manual dexterity than men

i have back molars that needed crowns but i just had composite put in and they have not needed changing in eight years, possibly i could have had two layers, glass ionomer, then composite

the glass ionomer has fluoride in which acts as an antibacterial, though just temporary by itself, you can have a hole drilled and the ionomer put in, the only problem is the ionomer is too soft to stand up to wear and tear more than several months 

i have a gap in my teeth where i had a tooth pulled rather than have a root canal or titanium implant put in, also the infection had got into the bone so i feel that the tooth removal gives the best chance of the bodies own immune system containing it and i can’t say i have had a problem

2000iu of vitamin D  (once daily)  and 90mcg of vit k2/mk7  (twice daily)  help rebuild tooth enamel

if you have a tooth removed, keep it and have a look at it, i did that and worked out that i need to floss to clear the space between the teeth where they are touching or you can get bacteria there and a consequent hole penetrating the enamel

i come across it again and again

there’s a lot of mentally ill people on the web

who wouldn’t normally be accounted mentally-ill

who hit some zone of malfunction

ensnared by  (the)  echo chambers

they move into overt

mental-illness

this is also systemic on the web

social media

various political and religious ideologies

message boards

amplifying echoes

can go crazy

resonant

be careful

its

dangerous

the uncertainties of the future

include certainties

we just don’t know what they are

the uncertainties of the future

include certainties

the uncertainties of the future

include

certainties

the male dream

one man against the world

i don’t know what drives it

because that’s not the way they behave

the  battle of midway was surprisingly evenly matched, both sides with very deep deficits and strengths

however midway itself was of no strategic significance, all that mattered was the destruction of carriers

the japanese made a fatal mistake which cost them three of their carriers  (ultimately all)  and that was to have all their fighters sortied against a wave of american TBD devastator torpedo bombers leaving the japanese carriers without protection from three dive bomber attacks coming from other directions

one of the artifacts of the meiji era was the replacement of aristocratic competence with bureaucratic seniority to the huge detriment of any able military leadership which japan paid dearly for in WW2 and the problem still persists today, the fukushima disaster is another example and was actually worse than midway when you look at genetic damage to the population

could i write like

arkhmatova

mandelstam

would i take their lives

no

i would suggest your reading needs upgrading, people get mired in the second rate because they can understand it

what they can’t understand, they avoid    .     .    .    a circular road if ever there was one

there’s a huge difference between discovering something by working it out yourself compared to learning a system like a buddhism or phenomenology

most people are in the area of "investing" in semantic systems rather than doing the long hard slog of sorting out one’s own thoughts

reading widely and putting in very significant "contemplative time" are the basics, if you are not going to read widely or put the contemplative time in, why would you think you have any skill in the craft ?

“ the default network

a set of brain regions involved in inner thoughts such as reminiscing, future planning, imagining and thinking about others ”

its very patterned which we can observe if we care to

"mind" is a decoy word, designed to tangle the stupid like flypaper does flies

over the years i have wondered at the utility of the word and it seems to me it has no utility, it is as i described

the purpose of writing this down is to clarify my thinking on the subject which is an infinite process, hence one writes forever, each time a bit differently

sylvia

spread across the waves like evening light

torn apart

by the storm

of

life

sylvia

spread across the waves like evening light

torn apart

by the storm of life

like old flowers

memories can hinder

the problem with fiction

a book or a short story

to say

what can be said

in three lines

or less

using

poesy

there is more

than we can see or know

always bear in mind

there is more

there is only one teacher and he/she is called "self-taught"

before

billions of lives

after

billions of lives

chasing religious nonsense

what can you say ?

ed gepixel  replies

I say people are on a quest for meaning.  It may get them somewhere or nowhere.  Maybe the quest itself is the meaning

my  reply

personally, i have never looked for meaning and at the end of the day i don’t have "meaning" so i don’t get "somewhere or nowhere"

you can explain until the cows come home and all that happens is "the cows come home"

its not really a question of abandoning meaning, but you have to get to a level where meaning is not really a  question

i think the problem brad warner has got is he is trying to take a short cut into "an adequate explanation" which he calls "buddhism" and of course is in terms people understand, but since their understanding itself is the limitation ,  how can that go anywhere ?

ed  replies

See, here’s where it gets complicated.  Quoting you “You have to get to a level where...”  So there is still something/somewhere to get, despite all claims to the contrary

my  reply

its not that there’s somewhere "to get" ,  rather there’s somewhere to avoid, you do the avoidance and that places you as "getting" ,  but its an indirect getting if you see what i mean

that’s good news because its more diffuse than "getting" and consequently "handable"

what you have to avoid is getting "sucked in" by bad models of reality so you need to be constantly developing models of reality that offer improved prediction and understanding

there’s no particular object called "awakening" ,  just this process of improvement, but mostly what people do is not embark on the actual developmental process, but rather substitute "learned" nonsense like scripture or other systems of thought that vary from completely crazy to "well off the mark" which actually is a form of schizophrenia which is why you get so many people with basic cognitive issues in zen

it always amazes me, the ratio of people who do the real work compared to the endless "fakism" is about one to ten million, so that’s the norm and the reality shouldn’t be so surprising

the other side is "the fakes" can be quite hostile, even to the point of being dangerous so watch out, there was an assassination attempt on toni packer who you would have thought was quite innocuous

the echo chamber ghosts

they disappear

the moment you put any heat on them

the echo chamber ghosts

they disappear

the moment you put any heat upon them

are you frightened to be female ?

i’d be frightened

when i look at the way you think

“ what are you most afraid of ? ”

going blind

mobility problems

all the shit of aging

we think certain things

that we don’t parse

for truth or semantic coherence

we think certain things

that we don’t parse

for truth or coherence

Teachers of Reddit, what is the most  disturbing thing  you’ve heard a student say ?

One day in class I let the kids talk for five minutes before the bell.

There was this group of kids that started talking about the movie "The Purge".  (If you haven’t seen it is a movie about America in the future and the government in order to reduce crime has set 12 hours every year that all crime will be legal)

So the kids started talking about what they would do if this happened to our country and almost all of them said they would leave the country for that day or lock in an underground bunker etc.

But there was this one kid that said something I will never forget

He said  :  "Guys what are you talking about ?  Can’t you see it ?  It is a chance to rape whoever woman you want without facing consequences ! "

Every kid looked at him in shock.  His tone was not ironic at all and he even tried to convince them that this was a good idea or something

Later he just brushed it of as "It was a joke brooo".  This incident is pretty recent and I want to do something about it

Can you guys help ?

my  reply

how does the film "the purge" differ from reality ?

to suspend law and order and emergency services for twelve hours would result in the overthrow of the government and militias fighting for control, sound familiar ?

syria, iraq, the drc congo, rwanda, you always get organised groups, you can’t have an anarchic situation like in the film

another thing is fire, in twelve hours you can set a city alight

you might like to introduce that child to the philosopher emmanuel levinas’s notion of "the face"

what i think you can explore is how the world of the purge can’t work and why it can’t work and how we really operate in a world with constraints on behaviour, there’s actually a huge amount of philosophy on the subject

the film may be interesting simply for its portrayal of an unreal world that can’t and has never existed, even in massacres you have one organised group against another

levinas really has something to say about "the other" and a face saying "please don’t kill me"

he lost a lot of his family in the holocaust

particularly at the end of the film the idea of everything going back to normal and the need for revenge is suppressed is not true to life

i think the film is a bit like a comic or an action shooter game in that in those worlds the dead can come back to life and in your context, the raped can be unraped

i really don’t think the education system teaches children and young people to cope with the ultra realism of today’s media

you have to go this extra step of analysing fiction and seeing its strengths and weaknesses and where it needs correcting

you can start "the purge", but you can’t stop it

i wouldn’t be too negative on the child, he found the flaw in the film

the real purge

there is no end of the road

the middle of the road might as well be the end

as is the beginning

jason and catarina  paint  together

the  murder  of ruhollah zam

the mailed fist of theocracy

i ask you

who is husayn ?

lethal hypocrites

what do you object to ?

give me a clue

a hint

i can’t read minds you know

is that what you want ?

some do

in the echo chamber

the perturbed ghosts

casting about

for a solidity

they can’t find

where am i going

what am i doing

i don’t know

 who ?

taking ghosts for real people

explore the fallacy

they want to waste your time

another ghost of the echo chamber

complaining about

disruption of the echo

its not that there’s no words

its that the words don’t cover the ground

a poem can cover the ground

nothing else does

not even death

when you look at what sells for what, you have to conclude the art market is unhinged

antiques are more sanely valued, in part i think because most are so ugly you can only be valuing on scarcity, condition and quality of workmanship

people pay to be in an echo chamber

you tell them it is an echo chamber

like ghosts they fade away

people pay to be in an echo chamber

you tell them it is an echo chamber

like ghosts they disappear

overemphasis in one thing

necessarily means underemphasis in a required other

overemphasis in one thing

necessarily means underemphasis in another

the fallacy of correction is that some-one can be corrected

you really have to hit someone who will not be corrected when the correction is very much to their advantage to understand that

ed.  hit in the sense of "come across" and perhaps also "hit"

the currents on their shores are different and you don’t have the slightest influence on them

paradoxically, even if you see this, you will find it hard to walk away, but in fact they are victims of a mental illness is a way of looking at it, life is full of it and we are not excluded

i think in a broader sense life is not correctable either

honestly,   that reading  of kodo sawaki is just judgmental nonsense on his part, brad your little "pantheon" of "right zen masters" is just a bunch of the useless

where people go wrong is what makes zen exist, that you think zen has something that the great mystics of other religions don't have

but if you think about it, how can that be so ?

the real pantheon is sa'di, john of the cross, emily dickinson, joshu, basho etc

yet these people you are clueless about, preferring half arsed mediocrities like sawaki, is it any wonder you are floundering ?

even the "half arsed" are not a problem but you are taking them too completely, not getting the "corrective criticism" right, dogen for instance is very uneven, there’s a lot of stuff he is wrong on, that his "devotees" take unchallenged so mire themselves in the same mud of stupidity and error

let me give you a koan

“ nostalgia is a disease ”

i notice that you don’t interact in any meaningful way with the commenters on your vlog, without that interaction the vlog becomes an echo chamber for you and you are just amplifying your "problem areas"

$2.8 million for something completely worthless

the wonderful stranger  painted by glenn ligond in 2008

the next item plus one, a mobile, equally worthless sold for $15.5 million

i don’t like you

therefore you are wrong

i don’t like what you say

therefore you are wrong

so much of life i am afraid

“relaxation of conceptualisations”

“examination of conceptualisations” i think as well

the only accurate translation of "shikantaza" is "instructionless"

and it really is

i can say "counting the breath" and koan study is toxic, but in terms of "instructionless" you will discover that yourself and move on

if you take "instruction" to do koan study and counting the breath you will never move on and believe me, there’s a lot to move through quickly

the outstanding problem i have seen with zen meditation is people don’t read widely in other relevant literature and they get schizophrenically entrenched in default circuit ruts

for those who feel offended at what i write, why not look at why you are offended and if you reply to me why not address what i actually say and critique it, it seems all i ever get in the replies are various flavours of "argumentum ad hominem" and a vacuity of actual criticism of what i say

what is the point of being involved in zen if you are just going to masturbate ill conceived default ideas and can’t hold your own in any reasonable conversation ?

if you have no substantial meditation and real life zen experience, why not examine your assumption that you have an adequate understanding of what zen is, rather than try and shout others down

the greatest gains a religion can make for its veracity

are to pretend its supernatural "founders"

are historically real

taking the supernatural as real

creates a whole different mindset

twisted

distorted

just ask yourself

who reaps the benefit ?

everything is impossibly wide

cascading infinities of universes

lives without number upon number

you can’t even think about it

except narrow views are repulsive

my view on the mystical branches of the various religions is they are a deconstruction of the religion, and zen seen truly is a deconstruction of buddhism and daoism

disagreement is its nature and you can see this in the records

the music doesn’t gell, but i like this  visual train journey

abstract expressionism just seems to me so much  bad wallpaper

good money  (for some)  for not too much work and a limited skillset though

maybe it was cognitive decline from all that lead in the petrol ?

basically its eliminating the dimension of cognitive coherence ?

you can’t get away with that

i was just thinking the story of jesus couldn’t be created today because he would be looked upon as a schizophrenic suicidal depressive

judas of course would be a woke, entitled generation Xer

kodo sawaki is writing absolute nonsense, he wasn’t enlightened, none of the "zen teachers" are, just a bunch of not too bright pretenders, what they are doing i cannot know, its DSM-5 stuff

it takes literally hundreds of "enlightenment experiences" to get a bead on what’s happening and in addition you need to be celibate, otherwise you will never give it adequate attention to get it right and it has to matter, with a partner and kids it will never matter enough, you will only be interested in garnering nonsense to boost your self esteem

in the history and records there’s very few masters who get it "right" ,  joshu would be one of the few, some of the supposed great masters like da hui were not "enlightened", joshu is perhaps the best example of one who was and he said in the thirty years of "travellers" dropping in at his temple, not one had any clues at all

the buddha story is "enlightening" in this respect, its completely dysfunctional from a family point of view

there is something beyond "enlightenment" but nobody seems to get it, all the aggressive defenders of whatever scriptural, "practice" and zazen nonsense spilling their hostility and failure everywhere, they chase their lack of knowledge and real experience and try to mould the world into the paltry image they expect

irreversibility seems much more a mode of life than reversibility

in fact reversibility is hardly ever the case

on a blank page a story came into being

it was about a divorced man sitting under a tree  (child abandonment as well)  who saw a star and became enlightened that he was a man in a story that would then become a religion that would pretend he was historically real

the funnel of time replicated him on a billion pages in a trillion characters but the core essential of the pretense never changed

the problem is not the existence of the universe or life, but the existence of platonic objects which clearly implies something else is going on, there is another plane of "being" which is utterly unaccountable for

the positive side of feeling sorry for yourself is at least some-one feels sorry for you

in actual fact being both hard-nosed to yourself and "lachrymal" have their place, just one or the other doesn’t cover the ground to your detriment

in the end

if they say something

and do something else

there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it

except defend

yourself

a person may be stupid in one area and not stupid in another

and actually its a lack of experience

but experience is always the major bridge to cross

anyway

nostalgia

builds something

quite distinct from the original interest

habits

are calcified predictions

we need to keep them

on track

space i can grasp

but i can’t grasp time

 why is that ?

i must be time

time like me

is without beginning or ending

contrariness has value because life is full of decoys and it tests decoys for authenticity

text books tend to be 10 to 20 years behind the latest research and you can easily read the latest research on the web which sometimes gives startlingly different observations compared to the various professional consensus opinions

regardless of a professional opinion as to your suitability for a lasik operation, before the operation you have to sign a disclaimer that you understand things beyond their control can go wrong and you can’t hold them liable for it

my personal view is that the corneal nerve density is so high you can regard the cornea as a sort of "mini brain", an intelligent organ in its own right with a developmental imprint designed to maintain a highly sophisticated clutch of factors to solve optimal immune, pressure, pain and vision parameters, in other words, "corneal sculpting" in the long term is a risky business

what goes on

in the heads of others

i can never work out

i can’t explain anything to you

about explanations

because that would be an explanation

and no longer "about"

emmanuel levinas seems to go somewhere but he doesn’t

andy clark seems to go  somewhere

a "good show" by the interviewer and interviewee, andy clark is certainly coming along in developing his hypothesis in depth and consistency, proof of course as to the validity of "extended mind"

interestingly i notice some parallels with emmanuel levinas

what makes for a good interviewer is some humility about their own ideas and a willingness to explore the ideas of the interviewee, doesn’t seem difficult and its done well here by robert khun, but so rare in most of the web and media content

robert interviews  julian barbour

there’s a twist to this  painting  by john greenhill which philip mould explains, i’m not going to spoil the surprise

the victoria falls

cascade of the zambesi

something out of the just so stories

 or not ?

mysterious animals

a vast vista

towering waters

the thundering roar

let’s hope it does not continue

to

dry up

when people self advertise themselves as "scholars" but can’t say what

you have to wonder

the principal theological and philosophical problem is the failure of solipsism

we are all that is, but clearly we are not all that is

with the web and youtube you see a lot of actors and actresses, but with a few exceptions they have no brains, their very normality and vapidity of thought is part of their popularlity and i guess the writers are too intimidating with their intelligence for the average intellect, people only want to know "the product' which has been made palatable for them

the writer and actress michaela coel is interesting, unusual for sure, she got raped after a spiked drink, i was just thinking, spiked drinks are another hazard of modern life, you can’t be too careful, that complete helplessness from being unconcious, even being asleep offers some defense compared to that

also the risk of brain damage from overdoses or "bad chemicals"

a literature phd

the supreme achievement

of intellectual

vacuity

well

mediocrity

has

to

live

somewhere

emily’s  “ syllable-less sea ”

does nothing but spit syllables

of beauty

‘ but what does she mean by syllable-less sea ? ’

basically she was a mystic

she’s talking about something accessible through a mystical experience

obituaries on the web

to remind you of the dead

forever

this purgatory on earth

i can do without

the actual meanings of a lot of the terms in buddhism are questions of "philology" and surprisingly there’s practically no philological research around for buddhism, what you get is "partisan" guesses, i’m not sure there is even any asian concept of what westerners call "mind"

the game of any priest, buddhist or otherwise, is to take scriptural nonsense and say something instructive and sensible that the audience can appreciate and understand

why the necessity of "converting" the scriptural nonsense goes on on, is without it, you wouldn’t have the religion

that actually is essentially the process of religion, however in the background you always have the "'scholars" and theologians beavering away to try and create a more objective interpretive scriptural base, but they are always defeated by the nonsensical and fictitious nature of scriptures in the first place

mostly, but not entirely, theological scholarship is inhabited by stupid creeps in my observation and one is always surprised to come across a relatively clear thinker, but they do exist

ritual is a roaring insanity

its a halfway house that burns to the ground as fast as it is built

unfortunately the priests rise like phoenixes from the ashes

one thing you notice about p.g. wodehouse is his ability to convey  the disconnected islands  of thought people are in relation to others, welded together by events beyond their control

there is also a fluctuating "acceptance/rejection" paradigm at play

when dealing with media or the press, remember their loyalty is to their editors, not you

the internet hasn’t made saints of the usual ratbags

to recommend something is to some extent to take responsibility for another’s decision

“ fools rush in   .    .    .  ”

excess

always creates

its own set of problems

excess

always creates

its own problems

outside

late at night

nothing is happening

then you notice

light on the horizon

but as yet

no moon

you go outside late at night

it seems like nothing is happening

then you see on the horizon

the light of a moon

that will soon appear

you go outside late at night

it seems like nothing is happening

then you see on the horizon

the light of a moon

that is not yet here

looking for an originator of our thoughts is like a mirror looking at itself

infinite regress

people are surprised by this

there is actually "no ground" of ourselves

evelyn waught  part 3

there’s a feeling certain landscapes give

not lush but arid

the light

a sense of space and distance

and human futility

the ability of teaching to suck the life from teachers always impresses me

all for the supposed benefit of the offspring of others

personally i don’t think its of benefit to any of the parties involved at all

the emptiness of death

the banality of cemeteries or the glitz of the imam reza shrine

not even an unmarked grave captures it

a life gone

erasure

absence

you are all that’s real

everything else is a simulation

its hard to get this

but its true

mincing meat  with a cleaver

another video with a  different technique

there may be a benefit in using a solid wooden chopping board rather than plastic

the trouble at your age and i used and still do have trouble with this myself is that ideas about something are not something, you have to interact with it to get a clearer picture and in fact this "inclarity" never fully resolves

the attraction of simple ideas is high gain for no work, if only the world rewarded this sort of insight and perhaps it does to some extent, but a good idea is only a beginning

positive and negative emotion

the absurdity of psychiatry

the referent doesn’t exist

the cataracterous full moon

wobbly in its glory

when you are older, you just don’t have the energy to embark on the endless battles the young do

and you have the life experience to question the validity of it anyway

new zealand bureaucratese

the faux bastardization of english and maori

insanity

they are not languages that mesh well

give me tongan any day

the literary world has become dominated by university graduates with worse than no talent

counter-talent is the new paradigm

some people approach life in a way that continual building into new areas is possible in a coherent way

others don’t

there is no greater virtue than waiting for fruit to ripen before eating it

too soon and too late are the bugbears of life

people only ever feed others dribs and drabs of truth

a more complete understanding awaits your own discovery

aging adds some capacities and strips others

the sum at best is depressingly close to zero

the roads of other men are not your road

you travel them at your peril

philosophy is founded on a mistake

that "reality" has a base

from which everything can be explained

the fools create and create

systems of nothing

those that travel in circles

that return and return

never look outside the circle

today’s world

discussing bumblebees with the gardener

over the raspberry flowers where they were buzzing away

neither of us knew much about them

looking it up on the web

its a type of "transformer" apparently

well looking further

they "buzz pollinate"

important for tomatoes

and form small colonies underground

zen

the same old stories

recirculating past disbelief

a travesty

of

understanding

the closed circuit world of academic nonsense

repeating itself

repeating itself

"your true self" looks  a bit empty imo ,  you did better with some of the more "fantastic" imagery of your earlier paintings

there’s a million people out there painting realistic stuff, its the more imaginative with the cognitive aspect that there’s a shortage of

an interesting female portraitist is gwen john

the female impressionists also and modern artists like louise  bourgeois and tracey emin are worth looking at

there’s an awful lot of material on the web, you need to look at a lot of it to get around the lack of life experience

so many prodigies hit a wall in their early twenties, they stop growing intellectually

we shape the world to us

we imagine

augustus john knew how  to paint women

so did his sister, gwen

the benign world of imagined tractability

but nothing changes

the wolf pounced and ate you

jordan peterson

the benign world of imagined tractability

but nothing changes

insanity is now hidden

no lunatics wandering the streets

offending mortal views

medication keeps them within bounds

the walls of normality are no longer broken

so nobody escapes

not only can paper bear the weight of anything written upon it but it is indifferent to any idiocy penned

when i look at poetry versus art

the span for poetry is so much greater

language is the root

outcomes based on coin tosses are not a good idea

more measure is needed to get into "positive" territory

he deserved better

i deserve better

welcome to the umpireless world

some people have an extra cone which is the basis for seeing extra colours, its very rare and called  tetrachromacy

interestingly, "extra colours" in this case appears to mean shades that we  (non tetrachromats)  can see but can’t in the objects she  (a tetrachromat)  is looking at, ie "nothing new under the sun"

colour perception is an adaptive mapping system for certain physiological correlates

what you see is always going to be seen in terms of this mapping system which can accommodate any physiological input within the map, there is nothing outside the map in terms of vision nor can there be since it is a coherent evolutionary construction

people who take "psychedelics" and claim seeing new colours are only seeing the confused mapping, this does not equate to alternative systems, its simply confused

deeper states through "psychedelics" are an illusion, all they induce is a useless state of disorder and tells you nothing

"new" rather than finer graduated colours/shades are really claiming to colours outside colour theory which is a contradiction

the possibly interesting case is "blind from birth" where parts of the visual cortex are somewhat "rewired" to give extra processing to sound and touch, eg some degree of "sonar", but i think the visual brain map has to some extent been abandoned

why speculate when with a bit of research you can  look it up ?

why speculate when with a bit of research you can "know" ?

my experience of drug users is they can’t stop lying about everything, even the unnecessary

is there nothing ?

or is there something ?

that is something

is there nothing ?

or is there something ?

that’s something   ! 

two jokes by slavoj žižek

the last is in very questionable taste, though i don’t know what that makes the first

  dissident           jesus

put it all aside

no god

no saints

no wise men

no infinity

and what is there ?

put the question aside

put it all aside

no god

no saints

no infinity

and what is there ?

put the question aside

i remember when triclosan was all the rage and going to be put in everything, even plastic toys for kids and i had a toothpaste with it in

the list of woes  includes liver tumours, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, reduced clearance of foreign chemicals in the body, reduced diversity of the gut microbiome and fibrosis

we exist for a while

there is no beginning and ending

this is the only meaning there is

anything else is an illusion

we exist for a while

there is no beginning and ending

this is the only meaning there is

well, you got   chaos in spades ,  that’s for sure, too much attention in one area and an unquestioning attitude about psychiatric meds left you vulnerable, though everybody knew about the problem with benzos except you apparently

ah well, the balls dropped, join the club (again )

put this down as a rule for life

“ you can’t solve other people’s problems and your own, one or the other ”

the minimum withstand voltage for the mains supply is tiny, one hundredth of a mm, that explains some contact problems with AC where you wouldn’t expect it

“ at large gaps it depends roughly linearly on distance, and also depends on the composition, temperature and pressure of the gas.  for air at standard temperature and pressure its about 3.3MV/m

as the gap gets very small the voltage required to create a spark actually increases again

the spark is caused by free electrons that are accelerated by the voltage knocking other electrons off air molecules.  if the gap is too small they can’t get enough of a run up to knock off another electron before hitting the positive electrode

this means that there’s a minimum sparking voltage of 327V at 7.5µm in normal air

240VAC has a peak voltage of ~340V, so you might be able to get it to briefly spark near the peak with a gap close to 7.5µm. 120VAC won’t spark in air

in the real world there can be transient overvoltages, contaminants, condensation, etc. you shouldn’t rely on the above for safety purposes ”

“ you compare yourself to the dead, why not to the living ? ”

well the living can disown you, the dead can’t rebut back

one thing you are never told when young is how strange getting older is

neck drills ,  just be cautious

you don’t want to rip an artery

there’s a very useful stretch which is not just a simple raising of the head, but at a bit of an angle that stretches the side of the windpipe and not the front like a head raising would do

i seem to remember it as the only researched exercise which lengthens life, presumably reducing cervical artery dissection

of course its a bit of a doubled edge sword, i would think you have to move into it slowly, like any neck exercise actually

i really don’t like full rotation of the neck/head, its damaging to the spine

"awakening" and "awakened" ,  like holiness are areas of so much insanity i wouldn’t touch them

there are complaints about violence in computer games, but what could be more violent  than this  ?

this absurd male dream of solitary supercompetence beating "the mob"

a church

 empty or full ?

empty speaks more

of sanity

ed.  it used to be and perhaps to some extent is still so now that churches were unlocked when not in use and you could go in and just sit there or pray, i used to do that and it had quite a different feel to that boring crazy idiocy of the services we had at boarding school

ill

when did i recover ?

when i started eating again and my ability to attend returned

prize giving in the arts consists of closed circles of mutual beneficiaries

its why so much talentless junk is awarded

when something of outstanding merit comes along and is not too strange, it might win second, but of course the big money goes to the "mate" who wins first

enlightenment or holiness equates with a degree of removal from life that equates with death

yet is not death

so many pretenders to this unpalatable state of living

there is nothing special about time as it exists now, it has always been going on

there is nothing special about time as it exists now, it is always going on

time travel, film of   late 1890’s paris ,  complete with horizontal escalator

“ what is the meaning of life ? ”

i would never ask such a stupid question

job got everything back

that’s not god

that’s santa claus

the wood heater is cold

but my memory of it

still feels the warmth

only fasting for a day and already the visionary is upon me

water boiling from the rain

the ground moves under us

we cannot see

but things are different

the ground moves under us

yet it looks the same

but things are different

i have a virus

can’t eat, can’t think

waiting for my appetite to recover

not doing much

one gets into the swing of it

a part of the female pysch that men have trouble getting to grips with is their social one-upmanship

some people go almost their entire lives without missing a meal

unbelievable

famine is what we are designed for

a thin crescent moon

the outline of the trees

against the sky

the moon must love

being bright enough

to see its shadow

unable to understand what he reads

unable to articulate criticism

he resorts to

argumentum ad hominem

migraine

takes you out

of

reality

you can study zen

and build inane worlds

of nothing

that’s dogen for you

building the inane worlds of nothing

if you are in touch with the source

you don’t have to write

but you do

you can study zen

and build inane worlds

of nothing

dental implants are more  problematic  than they make out

"star wars" has a zoroastrian theology, interesting to think about

overt "evil" on a par with the main god, but not quite

elements of that in non-canonical christianity as well, interesting how it has carried on despite the demise of its zoroastrian roots

there are six words of love

i can’t say what they are

for that would be giving away the secret

ed.  i was dropping off to sleep and had this sort of geometric/ 3D kaleidoscopic vision which told me there were six words of love and not five

now you know !

a tumble of roses

a small flower and old variety

suffused with pink

caught in a light

through the window

a tumble of roses

a small flower and old variety

caught in a light

through the window

kathryn burkett talks about fetal acohol syndrome, and it actually covers a lot of modern child  developmental problems

imo, you can sorta see it everywhere and in oneself

kamikaze and these days, islamic and other  "martyrs"

the ultimate in the collective fallacy

give your life for the benefit of the borg

you will notice the leaders never do

just the young suggestible

i'm going to give up reading brad warner’s hardcore zen blog again for the following reasons

if i stay longer, brad is so financially needy i feel i will have to make a donation which i don’t want to do because i don’t respect what he is doing

"birds of a feather flock together" ,  these people really drag you down to their level

zen is basically a cult, i don’t want to do anything that supports it

to post there requires some "accommodation" ,  if i accommodate more, then the stupids who hassle me lay off me a bit, but if i dial down the accommodation into more my opinion directly, i get the disagreeable worms come out of the woodwork harassing me, accommodation in itself is problematic, but if i accomodate less then its more hassle from these people and this is just to burn my mental energy fruitlessly on a daily basis

some of the commentors have a mission to waste my time, the more effect a comment i make in reply to brad’s vlog has, the more they seem to swarm around

i have much better and more important to my life things to do, particularly i want to travel more, get out and about, which i need money and time for and any attention to things like brad’s vlog, detracts from that

there is a general air of insanity and retardation amongst the commenters, i’m not sure whether this escapes brad or not, but let’s put it this way, there’s not much money around, nor can there be

brad actually replied to my last comment, so its a good point at which to leave, ta da

the media

a distinct category

by themselves

the literary infantile

with pretensions

scattered by bias

and inattention

a subculture up itself

over its inanity

its not enough to do something right

but you have to see that its right

because

often the world will tell you otherwise

i was working on an alkathene water pipe outside and i had to "squat" about an hour and today i can hardly walk

as you get past middle age, its not so much you can’t do stuff, but that you get damaged by anything the wrong side of exertion

i can throw myself into the work and get it done which is the way i usually do, but now i have to think about the "penalty" side which is not easy

actually it may have been an odd virus symptom/combination as it cleared up in a matter of hours overnight a few days later

for something to be so consistently wrong and i mean the various human theologies going back to before the ancient egyptians

it must be coming from the wrong viewpoint

and indeed they do, coming from a too articulated semantic-pragmatic space

rather than shock with appearance, its way better to just blend in otherwise you are just fighting continual adverse reactions

some of what goes on in the tattoo and body modification world is crazy

quite a good  cover  of fleetwood mac’s song "dreams"

annalise mahanes has a voice that suits this song, but not others, perhaps a sign of limited talent ?

marie bracquemond, definitely one of the great  impressionists

if you are looking for a "unified" theory of reality, there is none

cheetah and hyena

back and forth

endless

they don’t worry about meaning

they do

the cat caught a big rat

she held it with her teeth by the skin alive

the serengeti at home

the cat caught a big rat

she held it with her teeth by the skin live

the serengeti at home

god or gods are stories, they can be anything you like, but don’t escape being stories

the problem with "good versus evil" is its very context dependent

what’s "good" from one viewpoint may be evil from another 

what’s good for the cheetah may not be good for the hyena

what’s good for the elephant may not be good for the lion

its funny how one’s views can change over the decades, but i now feel that anything that smacks of "teaching" is a total mistake

this, is in part because stepping too far into another’s "cognition" is to curtail its own organic developmental understanding with your "stamp" or form, an unhealthy and constricting "bastardisation"

at a more abstract level "teaching" is a denial of the more fundamental state of solipsism and our essential equality in this respect

buddha-wiki   :   2000 years of sermons reorganised thematically

this "flexibility" gives it a huge advantage and is more suited to today’s cultural and technical enviroment with its dfferent mix of advantages and deficits compared to several hundred years ago

all the same, its assumption of a "unified" theory about "mind" is wrong

WW1 ,  like WW2 was a forgone conclusion and only nuclear weapons and modern communications have prevented WW3

war is an interesting extreme, because it takes everything to the limit which is death and maiming

the genetic constructs that impel human territoriality expect and require this

black hair gone to grey

what there is of it, the long locks gone

presbyopia grabs the eyes

the skin loose on the face

nature enlightens us

like the fall leaves

telling us to be ready to go

scrolling through old photos

the memories come flooding back

how could have they been lost ?

but they were

clicking through old photos

the memories come flooding back

how could have they been lost ?

but they were

why you have trouble going to sleep if you get  over-stimulated  is that basically the winding down of neurotransmitter production is what sleep is

there have been substantial periods in my past

where i have tried to figure something out

and i did figure something out

eventually

there’s murderous sons of bitches out there

they just want to kill

without regard to the consequences for themselves

you have been posting on a message board for a while

then you strike it

some-one with a pathological hatred of you

unbelievable !

what i write

and say

and think

is not so innocuous

apparently

the energy with which

people defend bad ideas

can be

directed

against

you

toni packer and charles bukowski

had an attempt on their life

this is why i keep a low profile

the "normal" world cannot concieve

of this extreme

but it happens

from experience i find

these people are a problem for about six months

then they disappear

the insane

dropping lines with unbaited hooks into the ocean

why do i rush to take them ?

when young, an hour doing what we didn’t want

seemed interminable

now the evening

is not long enough

three ? crossing the road

not quite yet young women

but neither are they girls

relaxed and carefree

they sparkled

brad warner replies to a comment i made about the necessity of anger

“ one of the buddhist precepts says we should not express anger ”

my  reply

i feel you are constantly angry and continually expressing it in a  "passive  way"

you are pissed off at life and so am i , its too difficult and one is too unsuccessful despite the effort one puts in

i think good writing is born of anger

“ so how does one express anger without disturbing the peace ? ”

disturb the peace, it will give you the feedback and consequences necessary, however with time, one learns to be more pleasant and utilitarian about this

various spiritual teachings try to emphasize "being at peace" as some sort of enlightened or holy "attribute", but this is absolute rubbish, the world and ourselves simply do not work that way

born to trauma, live to trauma and die to trauma

even "peace" is trauma

the tower of babel "story" is in fact rooted in an historical event, prisoners of war and captives from all over the persian empire were used as forced labour to build a "ziggurat" in babylon and due to communication difficulties arising from the different languages of the captives, construction was a bit of a disaster, though i think it was built in the end, not quite the ending the storytellers were looking for ?

some people don’t understand the importance of articulating their objections to what you say

"i’m right and you’re wrong" is the stuff of wars rather than co-operation

"god" is a meaning in language

so it can’t work the other way around

another way of saying this  is "god" is just a story ,  to move into "god" as literally true is to set yourself up for infinite recursive echo chambers that ultimately go nowhere

“ this report concludes  that a high-intake of fructose syrup causes a reduction of beneficial butyrate producing bacteria and a gut microbiota profile that may affect unfavourably host lipid metabolism, whereas high consumption of fructose from fruit seems to modulate the composition of the gut microbiota in a beneficial way supporting digestive health and counteracting harmful effects of excessive fructose ”

smokers relapse because stress  decreases  GABA levels

there’s a lot to be said for heavy smokers taking six months or even a year or more to slowly reduce to get around stress causing a relapse

from the complete cessation of smoking it then takes five years to be in a position of significantly reduced health risks

one of the best  poems  i have read, "the dance of the eunuchs" by kamala das

seems to go with  this music  by erik satie

everything is penalty

except what is not penalty

only exceptional translators try to give you what the original said, most just burn the sense on the altars of their various agendas and actually "imperfection" is intrinsic to translation

we should use our dealing with others to teach us how life works, its an extra layer on the way we usually go about things, but well worth the effort

so much of the world

shills for nonsense

when exposed

they retaliate

tibetan buddhism is a cultural religion

like catholicism, orthodox and isalm

i don’t see why one should be better than the other

insane people can be a trap

because they can’t change

you just go around and around in a circle with them

forever

you have to give credit where credit is due, the catholic church keeps shooting itself through the head, the foot and the groin

this is what happens when you have an organisation run by enfeebled greying/whitening men

900 years ago european country boundaries were moved and armies raised by popes and heretics burnt alive

theologically it was always pretty vacuous, but that’s irrelevant when you have the coercive power of the state behind you

nowadays just the vacuity is left and it is starting to show in spades

they got an extra four hundred years of validity from those jews, teresa of avila and john of the cross

i think mother teresa was an exemplar of today’s religious paradigm, riddled with inconsistencies that are ultimately invalidating

i have a feeling she realised this, she was caught in some sort of transition she had no control over and was too old to make the necessary changes in her life

why is the sky so tall ?

it has no surface

breadth or width

what can i say ?

dimensionless blue

carries away you

the luminous pearl opens time

so it has no meaning

the mortals scrabble

not understanding this

the dome of the rock

wonderfully ornamented to what effect ?

to make real a nonsensical story

labour, bloodshed and artisanal talent

by the cartload

but in the end

it remains a story

a few hours and pen and paper can create as much

the net

every man and woman has a voice

the glorification of incompetence, hubris and mild insanity

a bog difficult to circumvent

jacob wrestling with the angel

just a story

i’d have broken the wings off

and plucked him

doesn’t sound so good does it ?

“ what do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other ? ”

george eliot

what do we live for, if not to make life more difficult for each other ?

inverted george eliot

yet another swallows nest in the small shed

this time i picked the eggs out and slightly crushed them with my thumb to see if the cats would eat them and they did

the bog people

a thousand or thousands of years ago

there was something going on

they didn’t know about us

but we know about them

if there was some prize for anti-natal missionizing ,  kate baer  would have to win it

we pass turnings too rapidly

if by chance we can stop and turn, they can be highly rewarding

women, you marry men

the children are half theirs

i know

disappointing isn’t it

women and men play out age old paradigms

called lust, care, friction, harmony, fragility, robustness, conflict, betrayal, loyalty, incapacity, capacity, children, growth, aging, attenuation, death, new life

you would think the novelty gets seen through

but it never does

early summer

the grass seeds appear

the wallabies seek out

the lush feed

in swamps and streams

pen in hand

i wait for words

and am

reduced

to writing this

when i write i am able to access some inborn ability i have no perception of at all

its just there and i only know it by writing something that surprises me and i ask myself ,  where did that come from, it doesn’t seem like me at all

“ what happens when you die ? ”

your thinking about it is all that happens

the river

is a mirror

reflecting the sky

the greenery on its banks

an impartial memory

that fixes nothing

i think the painters would have been grateful for a 100th of a percent of what  this sale  went for

gustave caillebotte, a "lesser known" impressionist, he was wealthy enough to lead a "leisured life" and something of that comes through in his work, a certain remoteness and disinterest, but wonderfully capable of taking you into the  scenes  he was painting

venus has a sulphur-crested   cockatoo  perched on a chair beside her

the painting was done about 1618 which tallies with early dutch exploration of papua new guinea

they are avid feeders on the montery cypress/ cupressus macrocarpa seeds here

“ all  rubens’  pictures are painted by journeymen and are the most wretched   ”

william blake

professional jealousy i’d say

another day

nothing done

like every day

one occasionally comes across people with an extreme need for a "disagreement free" "life tableau"

there will be some difficult background trauma like being subject to irrational violence in childhood so tread carefully

“ i’d say zen is simply a cult

it relys upon the practioner to study and believe a dogma that is thousands of years old

it is reinforced through repetition and meditation practices to become a fully engrained belief system 

essentially you are brainwashing yourself to see the world through that perspective

why else does the practice take so long to achieve these "awakening" moments ? ”

yeah, i have been involved in real life zen and it has taken me many years since leaving to realise that it is a cult

i’m not saying my time "in it" wasn't without benefit, it really teaches you to get along with people and develop social and to some extent living skills, and meditation is initially useful and the retreats, while a mixed bag because of the "programming" are also useful, but you have to "deprogram" yourself of all the conceptual "bullshit" to become sane again

zen is not without some authenticity, but in the end you have to leave it or you will become "cognitively crippled"

“ what made you quit zen ? ”

well zen wasn’t adding up and then i had the good fortune to come across toni packer and the springwater center who had broken away from the rochester zen center, so its sorta zen without the nonsense and she had an authentic understanding, unlike all the pretence of "zen teachers"

"awakened" is like "holy", if you look for a real life person fitting the bill, they are not there

these idiots on the web who think they can cudgel people into not expressing their opinions, which says a lot about what they must be like in real life

social skills are built around the premises that truth is more destructive than a lie and as long as you are the one that isn’t hurt, everything is ok

in my twilight years

the fading

the short term memory is not as keen

if you push physical effort too much

troublesome joints become more troublesome

the mist of cataract slowly descends

and so on

like the red queen

one becomes conscious of running hard to remain in the same place

and wonder if it has always been like this

probably not

the sums of life don’t add well and one doesn’t like the outcome

the hardest lessons of life one’s young self never understood

hardly anything turns out the way you want it

persistence pays, but only if you persist at the right things

grasping is the deep undercurrent of human behaviour

everybody is under the unbreakable illusion the world persists if they die

going the extra mile is the prerequisite of getting anything to work

the world is full of traps and decoys to catch the foolish or inexperienced

wisdom can’t be separated from bitterness

the world is more open than we think, but we have to explore the unfamiliar

there’s not too much rhyme or reason to anything so don’t be too critical

on the other hand, don’t let your position be imperilled by the incompetence of others

the gullible are one thing

the gullible stupid are another

and those who expect you to buy into the nonsense they have swallowed are yet another

isn’t that the cult illusion of zen ?  that there’s something called  "awakening"

there is in fact no such thing, its your usual collective wrong minded idiocy

its a pathetic betrayal to allow your own thought to be "overwritten" by nonsense that your own observation and thinking tells you is nonsense

the only "awakened" people are the usual suspects, fictional entities in some religious soap opera

the  m.c. escher  corner in amalfi

superlative !  music suits too, nicki has got a subtle abstract contrast in there

you can see why escher is a great artist, he has captured something that i think she has illuminated