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

work is not simply a question of taking time to do something, but a rather obscure mental alignment to do it

life’s sums

condensations

occur

huh, you should sit with  your knees apart

understanding  sciatica

dr. yoav suprun explains the  mckenzie method

an  interview  of robin mckenzie

other worlds

another world

a world of worlds

women

carrying the womb

the future of the species

men don’t understand their role

as drones

the uncomfortable fact of mysticism

is that you can’t bring others with you

because truth is solipsist

only you can be true

itchyboots riding along the  coastal route  south to cape town

untangling the knotted yarn of others

has a limited

reward

“ there can be earth in a treasure site ”

ed.  the above is a quote from eihei dogen’s shinjin-gakudo in a translation by mike cross and gudo nishijima

i would add, there can be a treasure site in earth

ed.  as a word of warning, the tanahasi/welch translation really sucks

this is actually the foundation of "enlightenment" and enlightenment experiences, your "trip" on that bridge in japan brad was in fact a journey to and return from the "treasure site"

you have to have travelled there and return and remember it to become "enlightened"

i think everyone does this at times in their lives, but what makes "enlightenment" different is being able to integrate it and develop from the experience

people don’t understand the intelligent openness and ability to see one can be wrong that springs from this, some people give me hard time on this comments section because they can’t face up to the fact they are just pretending and never done "the work" and are stranded there like stupid starfish on the high tide mark

they pretend to themselves they own brad’s vlog and ignore that fact that he finds it acceptable for me to post here, i think because though he disagrees with a lot of what i say, he can recognise "a genuine traveller" having had that experience himself, but to take a chip out of these granite statues of pretenders is difficult

unfortunately but entirely in accordance with what one might expect from the world, people either deny this, or synthesize fake views and experience, and believe me, this is the norm in zen, a thousand fakes spouting their toxic swill

so there are other worlds  (alice though the looking glass)  and alice actually steps into that or those worlds and there’s one world that is all worlds and i don’t say its one or two or even a world and these other worlds are neither one or two or even worlds

the trap is this endless synthesis of "tawdry worlds"   :   nostalgia, pop culture, dzogchen, zen, advaita, new age, neo advaita, of course these worlds are endless, the treasure world is neither endless or not

and there is another step yet beyond all this, all you have to do is take a walk to see it, but people waste their lives in "spiritual practice" and arbitrary constructs and trying to "take down" the authentic

the living reality of "the treasure site" needs to be explored and engaged and any theorisation must come through that engagement and not turning over the usual turgid crap from any of the million waste of time theologies that whole libraries exist for

translated/interpreted, all you have to do is understand the two are cojoined and your intelligence takes a huge jump and you walk out of rigidified misunderstanding

there is a strong mismatch between our physiological and genetic existence and gaining any competence in life in its own terms

you have to keep functioning when things are difficult, you can’t walk away to take a break and expect things not to have got more out of kilter when you come back

what i have seen of usa arts graduates on the web is they are amazingly "political" and poor quality thinkers, is this your observation ?

what has happened to the university system that it has become an indoctrination hub ?

bad as literature is, philosophy is worse

my take on the old philosophical question asking how we know that we see the same colour

you want to look up andy clark’s "extended mind". because other people are other people’s extended mind things between people are quite blurred, you can’t sustain too much "cognitive dissonance" between people in the real world, that is we get to know our points of agreement and disagreement with others and modify them

one of the keys to "extended mind" is the defining of reality by exploration and interaction which is quite contrary to current western educational ideas which weigh very heavily on preformed and adequate theories of mind about reality and why the whole educational system so damages those who pass through it

the low reading age stumble

on what they can’t read

blaming what is beyond them

rather than their own inability

moving on

what went on before

remains

suspended

weighed down by the words of dead men

and books

he doesn’t see the dust

on his own pages

william james glackens

the bathing hour ,  chester, nova scotia, 1910

creating concepts

bound in concepts

locks with no key

religious claptrap

lulls

the

dreamers

to

sleep

"buddha nature"

lulls

the

dreamers

to

sleep

converging roads

diverge

they don’t even diverge

over time they appear

and disappear

parallelism is

not

identity

-------------------

you and this

world

are not "I"

similarity matches

dissimilarity doesn’t

---------------------

caught in the wrong dimension

he flounders

calling it

what does he call it ?

to see the world simpler than it is

is necessary

or we would collapse

before the load

emily  (ed. dickinson)  dying

felt her failure

to live longer

“ you are an anguished soul ”

all souls are "anguished"

its our condition

i am the man at the end of the universe

a transparent butterfly flies past

other universes come to mind

what is inside what

and outside what

i can never make out

half the art of decoy

is to be projected on

exact similitude

is impossible

nothing has opened my eyes

like being attacked by the senile

who then forget they have attacked you

i feel like i am following in dante’s footsteps

tracing the purposelessness of life

half way to death

is full of monsters

the monsters of no-meaning

in essence i have worked out everything before

they come around again

slightly different

why i don’t know

presence and absence

is and is not

simple poles

the world whirls around

presence and absence

is and is not

simple poles

the world whirrs around

aging

a certain toxic incapacity

like winter

spreads over us

aging

like winter

spreads over us

in a certain toxic incapacity

infinite time

spread out for us to wander in

that is the saddest loss of all

reddit downvoters

men and women

disturbed

by an opening door

letting the sunlight

flooding in

time passes through

in shifting scenes

should one stop for a moment

enlarging and wrapping around

us may suffocate

the alignment profound

dream worlds of idleness

following beach shores

sea and lake

forested hills

blue hazed mountains

beauty cannot be grasped

but i have no reason

not to try

tending the wounded

is it better to tend or be wounded ?

the answer seems obvious

but being wounded

is the deeper

experience

well, i’m too old to be giving "advice" and should be paying attention to taking my own

i think when the ramadan "meme" was originally developed, it was timed for the period of annual cyclical food shortage in late spring, so in effect stretched out food supplies over the month while also prioritizing food to children and pregnant women

in addition food intake being more restricted overall offered full fasting benefits, not just the short term improved microbiome diversity but the longer term stem cell regeneration

because of a different dietary supply today, you have full on eating after the daily fasting period which is completely maladaptive

right up there with ramadan as a maladaptive dietary regime in today’s world are the anti-parasitical jewish food prohibitions and "kosher" notions having also to do with providing income to that priest class so instrumental in enabling the holocaust

what we call "religion" today are in fact the remnants of all powerful medieval constructs that do not fit in today’s society, strongly penalizing their adherents, the constructs themselves are being torn apart by that dissonance

what works for today is "informatic models" like for fasting understanding the importance of the microbiome diversity and also stem cell regeneration and the ways to get those, though i have to say "qualified nutritionists" are the last people to understand any of this, you have to read the research yourself which is ten or twenty years ahead of "medical advice"

one of the problems of religion

is it collapses your horizons

why wouldn’t that happen

in the presence

of

some

faux

 largeness ?

its a funny thing giving advice, as i get older i feel more and more its impossibility

in writing, you don’t state everything

you are weaving the threads and the pattern is what emerges

you don’t state the pattern, rather the skill is in the weaving and the pattern is seen

i see this mistake made so often in the arts, writing and philosophy, an endless gabbling meta "about", a claim for getting to an end when in fact they are jumping into the abyss of nonsense

childhood traits

amplified in adulthood

are often rather tacky

art fakes are interesting

i think its analogous to translation

the result is not necessarily inferior, but usually is

what i have found as i get older, is what i project to be the case is often not the case

i don’t know why i notice it more now

aging rips the comfort zones off ?

i get that you disagree, but it really puts people’s backs up to use a direct negation like that

cascades

rippling of eternity

words

that

clarify

nothing is ever finished

except in the imagination

which itself

is never finished

there must be something

in the emptiness

in the quiet

 worth saying ?

lorianne disabato  is running  out of "spoons"

my  reply

sometimes you have to leave a situation to see it clearly

you are conscientious, literate and competent and actually what is a big deal these days, don’t take drugs

i am sure that you would find employment in an unrelated field where the pay would be better and those you work for more appreciative

there’s a basic commercial problem with "teaching literature" and its that there’ "no moat" between "being taught" and using the net to teach yourself, in fact being self taught on the net is way better because you can follow your own interests and are not subjected to the "politicality" of today’s humanities curriculums

its actually a form of severe depression to work the way you are, spending all your spoons to the benefit of a rather toxic entitled generation

that was a good post, i could relate to it though i have never been a teacher

you just want to make a few inquires about other lines of employment imo

lol, thank god for the spell checkers

lorianne  replies

i tried leaving academia in my thirties and failed miserably.  i was simultaneously over-educated and under-qualified for every job i explored

but yes, now that i’m middle-aged and we’re in the middle of a pandemic with record levels of unemployment, i’m sure finding a good paying job is much easier than it was then

my  reply  (ed.  i never sent it)

i get too involved in these things and always the question arises, who am i to give advice and thought maybe i shouldn’t reply, but have included it below as i have already written it out

one thing i will say is zen is a very uneven animal and very destroying of self-confidence and reality orientation and am walking away from it entirely now

-----------------------

the thing is just to make small moves in a certain direction, you don't know the outcome and the road may be quite different to what you anticipate, but still be satisfactory

what i pick up from your writing is you are competent and can organise high levels of complexity

people like you are badly needed in any business i can tell you

its a strange world as evidenced by the number of quite young bitcoin millionaires walking around

maybe the problem is quite abstract, you need another source of income and what that might take is a journey of discovery

the almost fully grown male kitten is sneezing outside the window

he has a bad respiratory virus

covid makes you notice these things more

words

empty thoughts

of diseases

yes

usa english

departments

are

living

  mad houses

fiction

getting lost in a book

i don’t think i could do that now

there’s always something missing

what is the mystery ?

there’s no mystery

that which appears  disappears

that which is not even guessed at

arrives

i have always rather fancied a career as a gossip columist which i might have been quite good at

i wonder if the real dynamic of the melinda and bill gates split is he has alienated his children by restricting their inheritance to $10 million each and the rest goes to charity

that wouldn’t go far with the sort of lifestyle they are used to

he’s actually got himself into quite a tricky position

one of nicki storey’s  best videos

"light in spirit"

the  music video  she did the makeup for

i was thinking we have an equivalent to the very fatalistic "its what allah wills"

in our phrase

"it is what it is"

the cornea is not an unfeeling slab of collagen

its a highly adaptive, intelligent nerve driven organ

damage those nerves at your peril

a reddit quiz

what is the weirdest fact you know?

“ the sacred band of thebes , was a troop of select soldiers, consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers which formed the elite force of the theban army in the 4th century BC, ending spartan domination ”

my comment

they were almost all killed  by troops  led by that very gay "general" later empire builder alexander and an image of the  mass grave  has been reconstructed recently

it seems to me that "free will" is a meaningless construct

what has free will ?

the brain ?

what we call "self" ?

where stands what to move forward from ?

its just a morass, a sinking bog

emily

ordered

unordered

i focus on

reading

what she says

is there something to figure out ?

if so, what is it ?

how does it turn out ?

an endless road of figuring

that never stops

because we die on it

absence

seems like nothing

an avoided space

but its what we

grow in

enlightenment and practice

the

pillars

of zen

crumble when pressed

our lives

panel carvings

so intricated

its impossible to get away

boarding school

perpetual immaturity

the resonance

of

just

boys

insipid bland nonsense

the parlance of priests

insipid

bland

nonsense

the

parlance

of

priests

there is an eye that looks at everything

to see it

you need to look at everything

and everywhere

there is an eye that looks at everything

to see it

you need to look at everything

if life rejects you

and you reject it

you are even

these modern poets

academics

raving def

dull stupids

writing half baked nonsense

selling themselves and everything else

as competent

when

in

fact

.

.

.

.

.

the unending

goes on and on

in that on and on

we can see the end

the morons gawp

digesting the dead

they shrivel

from malnutrition

anne sexton

complained of the pain of living

and its amplification in thought

though a woman

she coolly planned her suicide

though she went

she never went

and what happened to the pain

i don’t know

posting on reddit

when you get the downvotes you know you have something right

the cowards too afraid to tackle you directly

they don’t look outside

fill in the gap here

their experience, what they are familiar with, their understanding

what they don’t know

they ridicule

and

eschew

non starch polysaccharides can have disadvantages, specifically, feeding malign microbiome

these "prebiotics" require caution

actually one of the best "prebiotics" i have found is shredded coconut

the lack of differentiation between the response of useful compared to malign bacteria has always been an underlying problem with prebiotics

the problem is, and this is addressed by the scd diet is that indigestible starches provide a relatively undifferentiated energy source for microbiome and for people with less microbiome control in their digestive system, this is important

with writing you can question everything

but when you question the need to communicate

you stop writing

the fact of an enemy is you can’t persuade them

all they are interested in is crushing you

and effecting a bit of larceny and robbery to boot

peter mark roget’s problematic  grand tour

similarity and difference

the magical formula for marital felicity

how few get it right

well, i have been covering my tomatoes with "weed mat" when it looks like frost and it seems to work well enough, though of course it won’t help with below freezing and any sort of wind, so i am "replete" with tomatoes

the neighbour gives me "free range" eggs and i get watercress from the seep in the bank

pretty feral here

an oscar wilde quote

the true mystery of the world is the visible ,  not the invisible

my  reply

visible versus the "invisible"

are they static qualities oscar ?

our parents and siblings are our increasingly tenuous connection with our young lives as we get older

its an odd feeling to see that erosion

dying before we die so to speak

our lives spinning increasingly erratically around the now unstable pole of childhood

the living always have the last laugh

its their nature

we tend to treat

other people as reflections of ourselves

wrong

we learn something in the extremes only the extremes can teach us

i wish i learnt

some other way

sometimes

the most important connections we need to make

are the hardest

and remain

undone

to very

negative

effect

advice and "explanations" are premised on a certain receptivity

where that receptivity is not there

beware

one day, fed up, you walk out through the asylum door

expecting change where there can be none

why be burdened trying to repair the unwilling crazy ?

for the enemy

whose only objective

is to waste your time

i would petition

dante

to create a special hell

you can escape

with your life

with your money

but you don’t escape

until you understand what the problem is

i have noticed with the top musical talent that they are open minded, intellectually curious and have good ears, there is vast swamp out there of the wannabe’s without any of those attributes, especially the last which you would think would be a beginning point

the weirdness of super effective decoys

you realise they are not the real thing though

whether or not they are is blurred

but that life should permit such mimics

is totally unexpected, a competence that seems

totally improbable, yet is not

one of william blake’s best etchings

aged ignorance

not so popular is it ?

the gates of paradise

male and female

beyond the strife

a neutral ground

a million creation myths

a million wrong views about reality

fermented vegetables have an uncontrolled microbiome possibly with ecoli and other problems

you want to think long term rather than a "21 day microbiome dietary reboot"

stool condition is very indicative, though "reading" is a learning curve

stomach "comfort" is another good indicator as is loss of specific food cravings

outside of religion

is vaster than what’s inside

can you tell them ?

no

the fools grope in the dark

outside of "buddhism"

is vaster than what’s inside

can you tell them ?

no

the fools grope in the dark

the problem with knowledge

is it can absorb all your capacity and then some

the problem with ignorance is blundering into lions

in the dark

over educated   +   multilingual   =   fragmented

the wide eye of history doesn’t see us very clearly

and most likely

not at all

the most sense on  the origins  of the aboriginal people of australia i have seen

am i more than writing

is writing more than me ?

a million roads in front of you

almost every one

leads away uselessly from you

one of the problems of education is "fragmentation"

joan didion is not fragmented

our thoughts

skating on themselves

not seeing the abyss

in the asylum

arguing with the inmates

goes nowhere

verbal rejoinders

the perpetual jigsaw

the laughter of distress

stock in trade for some

a rose is itself

not a name

the pretenders thrash about

in polyglot

ezra pound’s

polyglot nature

contributed to

his insanity

spread too wide

coherence escaped

through the gaps

my "mystic creed"

the answer is not inward or outward

fools chase words

what only experience can teach

pot calling the kettle black ?

AND

the kettle calling the pot black

i was thinking today about a relative’s response to something i said that had surprised me  (quite a while back  —  maybe 15 years ago)

and it was like a loud click, oh, that’s why

something that i was very vague about in their life  (and mine)  had definitely happened

art

playground

of the injured

art

playground of the injured

you want to be careful with shift work to try and keep disruption to the circadian rhythm to a minimum, there are nasty long term consequences like increased probability of getting cancer to circadian rhythm disruptions

there is a real historical basis to "the tower of babylon/babel", in actual fact a "zigguraut" being built by prisoners of war speaking different languages

it was a disaster, but eventually did get built, when you look at a ziggurat you can see the need for good communication and architects, all those exact inclines

“ the world’s a little blurry ”

its not even the world

 where would you start ?

in the end, on message boards, its just one opinion versus another, so many try to "missionize" like their opinions matter, but within a month it is all forgotten

love

the wise leave the subject alone

you can travel the world, go everywhere in terms of geography and culture, but you can’t go back in time

here  you can go back in time, berlin 1910 in colour

“ is love gain ? ”

yes

its crazy to take fiction as historical truth, but the world is full of the ignorant dumb

reading

the   autobiography  of a super tramp

essay on scientific and cultural progress being due to the   failure of empires

linguistic  alignment  in couples

the share market is like a woman on her period

she bites

the problem i have with "zazen" and "prayer" is this notion of "method" to infinity or god

what method can there be ?

to what ?

if you say there is no method, then what are you doing ?

to what ?

when they come around in the same circles two or three times

and they ignore your attempts to pry them out

leave them

all religions are fictions

creating tableaux of conveyance

but nothing can be conveyed

in the nothing

is something that encompasses all

yet is not all

but is

nothing

there is no god

no absolute or relative

buddhism, christianity, judaism and islam

are fake

what does that leave ?

identity

that is all

in the mouth of a cat

a mouse

like a furry purse

compressed

if there’s a moral

i can’t think of one

she’s dead

she’s

gone

that’s the nature of death

ed.  an irritated response to the perpetual resurrection of princess di

edmund campion’s  brag

“ to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten ”

its unbelievable he was prepared  to die  for this bullshit

a dive into the sun if there ever was one

nowhere is everywhere

of course to our eyes

it looks the other way around

i don’t understand this either

nowhere is everywhere

of course to our eyes

it looks the other way around

what we think about

that can’t be thought about

what to do ?

sounds like  francis thompson  needed religion

his most famous work,   the hound of heaven

jack the ripper was a polish jewish immigrant hairdresser/barber called kosminskiwho ended up in an asylum

chasing understanding

we focus on "understanding"

when it should be

the eternity of "chasing"

i’m not a monotheist

i’m not a theist

i’m not me

we take sleep for granted

but it is a weird thing

to lose consciousness every day

and arise a slightly different person

as you walk past

and the dying grab your hem

its not healing they seek

but to drag you down

when young

the sums come together quickly

when older

the computations

stretch out

i’m trying to include more "entertainment" on these pages, a tip i picked up from brad warner

a break from my rather "mournful" outlook

well more mournful, a good "cover" of mazzy stars  fade into you  by kristel nicole who has the right voice for it

i must admit, listening to a few songs by female composers has opened my eyes to the trauma of "falling in love" for women, way beyond the comprehension of men

fiction and reality

take your choice

both deceive

the "hatay tank" of "indiana jones" fame is fictional, modeled on the mark viii though, but with a turret added on top

the problem is the turret would have made the tank top-heavy, the downfall of the only  german tank  which was very prone to rolling on its side in rough terrain

lol, if you watch the  tank chase scene ,  everything is fictional

an interesting comparison is this  film recreation  of a real event, the tribulations of the crew of the "fray bentos" trapped stuck in an exposed position on the front line right next to the germans

fighting and conflict is its own rationale

fighting and conflict drives its own rationale

could you imagine this being regarded as popular entertainment now ?

the three stooges and chorus  sing the alphabet

we are not weavers

planning the patterns of our lives

rather

we are the pattern being formed

threading back and forth

endlessly

somehow

in this

is the necessary illusion

of control

the young

full of hubris with their strength and energy

are not indomitable

time bides

and abides

the young

hubric with their strength and energy

are not indomitable

time bides

and abides

the young

hubric with their strength and energy

are not indomitable

time bides

the eye lens is not jelly-like but quite tough and stiff, chewy in fact if you have ever eaten one

meditation is necessary, but not a forever thing, you should grow out of it over several years

time passes

today looks like yesterday

tomorrow looks like today

this truth

escapes us

i have watched a lot of u.g. krishnamurti’s talks and to me what he ended up saying is "it can't be conveyed" which is pretty well my own observation now

“ have you participated in any "bohm dialogues" ? meaning the conversational method still going nowadays ”

yeah they do that at the springwater center, there’s something to it, it really teaches "interpersonal skills" and the ability to argue and talk effectively and in fact this comment section, the way brad runs it with no or minimal censorship is effectively a " bohm dialogue group" now i think about it

however the group needs a range of people with different competence levels in imo

"true mysticism" is a process of discovery rather than the attainment of "levels" since its an ongoing process then earlier is pretty much subsumed by the later, in other words if you do the work and continue with it, everything takes care of itself

of course no-one understands this and being a bunch of pretending frauds chase and promote notions of attainment, having been conned, they perpetuate the con

the "ultimate ground" idea of j. krishnamurti and david bohm is in effect monotheism and to be expected from both their religious backgrounds

the alternatives are also problematic and you avoid this only by not engaging the question, so how do you not engage ?

you don’t engage by not engaging, but the idiots yap in endless "meta", their repulsive hubris always to the fore

sometimes in life

you think you know it all

then you find yourself

staring into the dark abyss

of ignorance

the yellow light of a late autumn evening

clouds tinged with pink

matches my mood

you can’t force writing

like a pleasantly expected guest

it has to arrive

transference on steroids

today’s media

trying to capture the world through knowledge

knowledge captures you

some people are your enemy

it can be hard to understand

outwardly they may appear to have no malice towards you, but there are undercurrents if you look closely

but things work better for you if you consider them an enemy and treat them as such

oh the joy of not being female

to having one’s biology and brain subordinated to reproduction

as you get older you get much more sceptical about your own ideas, mainly because they don’t turn out right

nobody can predict the future

couples

endlessly leading each other astray

and not seeing it

ourselves

not one gordian knot or two

but many

a convoluted mass

snarled and twisting everywhere

the necessary untangling

doesn’t occur

even in death

the mess remains

evocative, joseph wright of derby’s painting  moonlight landscape ,  he’s worth a browse, you will recognise some of his paintings

“ divide and rule ”

i think its more like leave the very problematic alone to bicker and fight amongst themselves and so be neutralised, whereas your involvement incurs the high cost of conflict with no gain

when people have too thick a hide

its not a good sign

beware

opinions

the stock in trade

of human idiocy

opinions

the human stock in trade

of idiocy

opinions

the usual stock in trade

of idiocy

opinions

the stock in trade

of idiocy

a marcus aurelius quote

“ death smiles at us all 

 all we can do is smile back ”

my  rework

all we can do is kick it away as far as possible until the point we welcome its encroachment

reading a bit  of history  helps one escape limited contemporary perspectives

the british tabloid press really has it in for megan markle not going to the duke of edinburgh’s funeral, but in fact she is doing the right thing, pregnant women should not cross time zones, the disruption of the circadian rhythm damages the unborn child

it amazes me the general ignorance about this problem

i even emailed a journalist, one louise roberts of "the daily telegraph" about  her article

i’m not expecting a reply, at least she had an email address and what is certain is that no tabloid will ever write about this problem in its pages

toxic halfwits and management, news corp really sucks, their attempt to parasitize revenue off google and facebook showed that

what the newspapers and all printed content providers on the web need is a cryptocurrency micropayment wallet system for page views, but do they do anything ?

no

look out writers , no wonder their track record with relationships is so fraught

actually this mechanism of the increasing similarity of partners would also be a good predictor of divorce, for similarity to endure, both personality structures have to be able to accomodate such directed change, some matches are going to be much better than others in these terms

i bet this holds for the arts generally and why the "happily married" produce such mediocre trash

the rain

then the corbie moths

battering the lighted windows

you can’t step outside without an influx of them

like a hitchcock movie really

when the dice roll

do you have any control ?

everyday they roll in life

everything makes its own noise

wallabies, possums, horses, cats, crows, magpies, boobooks

what is your noise ?

the middle class

the spirit of revolution walks past

they are comfortable enough already

“ say to me the truest thing you can ”

what makes you think there’s anything that’s true ?

one declamation met with another

shows

them

up

bad experiences can be quite good for us

they are an extreme edge that teaches us something we needed to know that otherwise we wouldn’t

of course, edges cut

the rattler

imposing his own version of nonsense

makes me sick

what can you do ?

as they trash about

throwing rotting flesh

everywhere

you don’t answer my questions

you don’t read what i write

you stalk me

you are very concealing of your identity

you are not the first

nor will be the last

i’m not famous

but i get the extremes

when i am called a "filthy animal"

knowing  the reference

i wonder

some gimmick being used against me

why ?

a cold

more leaves of kleenex

than i can count

a cold

more leaves of kleenex

than you can count

you don’t reply to questions asked of you

or the main points of what is said

your only commenting is to be intrusive personally

and you are missionizing some implied insanity

why don’t you surprise me

and write something

that indicates

you have read what i have written

the teeming brain

requires unspinning

emptying out

which if it remained

would fester

maudlin

a quiet evening

a fire

and food

somehow

ignites

the reflection

evolution

time’s mistress

creates what she will

yet the oddity is

what she creates exists

but she herself doesn’t

monkey steps from buddha’s inner elbow

to the tips of his fingers

and still could not outpace him

yet all he had to do

is marvel at stone doing this

and he would already be

well beyond

metaphysical speculation

how to bypass the need

is not easy

yet possible

what is there to do ?

what lies about

unready to be formed

the master’s hand rebels

at

the

unwanted work

required

the need for

imposed

from

above

melencholia

dürer’s wingéd angel

looks out of sorts

with what she has to do

the bric - a - brac of artistic construction

lies about her

whatever form is to emerge

combined together

is too much

for this

chimera

the problem with number

one god or two

two worlds or none

is there is always

greater

and smaller

the past and the future are so dependent on the present

it must be paranoia for the present

humans are so fractious they will fight over anything

hominins on the savanna defending their territory

as they see it

pandora’s box did not contain evil

on the contrary

attractive things

that consume time

this is the evil

pandora’s box did not contain evil

on the contrary

attractive things

that consume time

that is the evil

my insanity

there’s so much that’s not my problem

yet i take it as my problem

and spill my time wastefully

i don't think there’s any sense of a way a life should be or should have gone

any life has a million trajectories

only one of which occurs

a cold

 what can i say ?

you think in a fog

and from that fog

these words emerge

within limited horizons

we circulate

clones of similitude

religion is philosophy for those most unsuited to that sort of contemplation

the bad news for buddhists

there’s not "two truths" because there is not even one truth

recursion undercuts "emptiness"

the legend of "buddha" is a patchwork quilt of nepalese tree shrines and gods, persian emperors, folk stories and the social control needs of ashoka’s mauryan empire

i was born with a hunger

to figure out the world

i can’t figure it out

what is the problem ?

walking through repeating mirrors

is the the problem

“ nonetheless, there is a broad point bernard faure  ("chan insights and oversights")  wants to make, namely that chan has been and continues to be an ideology in continual production ”

i must say, i can see that, zen is now very much aligned with "woke politics" ,  brad is rowing against the current in the boat of buddhism with a few other syncretic blendings

a quote from "shoji" by eihei dogen

as all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings

as the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient beings, no birth  and death  

my  comment

there’s an interesting difference between "all things are a manifestation of the buddha dharma" and "all things are the buddha dharma", universes of difference, the second being the received heterodox wisdom and the first being the "enlightened" view

the direct coupling of the absolute with "reality" is a toxic commonplace now, sorta a covid in its own right selectively infecting the stupid

either eihei dogen got it wrong, or the translation is bad, of course in the limited universe of zen, dogen cannot be wrong, in other words despite dying of TB he is viewed as a supernatural being, shinto-like

this statement is true and false

this statement is false and true

i don't think dialetheism goes anywhere, tautologically any statement can be true and false by virtue of being composite

infinity as a part that is also the whole is not the whole yet the whole is also infinity yet is not

this is why any process of understanding is so ungraspable

if you take any position, it slides away from you

i think a surgical qualification is needed separate from ophthalmology and optometry, the skills for surgery are really different from the core work of both which is diagnostic, albeit in a less "elevated" way for optometry

"having buddha nature" seems additional to "things as they are", actually something like a "soul"

it would not surprise me if zen was heavily influenced by christianity as it was a growing force in china at the time of the formation of zen to the extent that it was supressed by the state in about 850 AD which is why there is no "native" christianity in china today, on the other hand christianity did survive in japan and one of the tragedies of WW2 was the atom bomb accidently dropped on predominantly christian urakami valley two miles away from the intended target so killing a large portion of japan’s christians

i suspect the "implicit" monotheism of zen is why it fitted so easily into western culture, polytheistic religions like hinduism on the other hand sit uneasily

i have got to say i prefer polytheism to monotheism as more honest and entertaining if as equally crazy, there’s a dreary stupid boredom common to zen and christianity, being so to speak "peas from the same pod"

zen of course has a few great mystics like christianity, only in them can any sense be found

the super entitled

expect the skill

without the work

today’s

generation

a poem

words have to add together

to make a new layer of meaning

on a table

a dried arum lily

brought back

some memories

of stealing flowers from gardens

in the summer past

you can’t defeat a man with no memory

he simply comes back again

having forgotten what happened last time

"belligerent man"

if only he could

be belligerent

instead of

the depressing aggression

of a prisoner of dementia

a billion dollars could not buy the advertising exposure jordan peterson and the "captain america" marque are getting with the conscription of a representation of peterson as "the red skull" into the storyline

the most effective advertising doesn’t come out of the agencies for sure

it grows itself, indistinguishable from whatever other contemporary "babble" around

drug and drink dazed wreckage

expecting to be taken seriously

everywhere

politics is always the same

given long enough the "reformers" become in need of reform

times have  changed

 they are strong looking women !

"the buddha" can say anything because he’s a character in a script, rewrite the script and he can say what you like

the buddha addressed the gathering

he said "i am going to propound the ultimate dharma"

the three beggars who constituted the audience jeered

"you crazy arse give us some money"

buddha replied

"you bozos hurt my feelings"

whereupon the beggars got up , beat him to death and then robbed the body

later the bodhisattva of compassion rolled by and kicked him in the head and he came back to life

you good for nothing stupid she said

"so much for the ultimate truth" he muttered, spitting out some teeth and blood

“ i am still not sure if an afterlife exists or not ”

its the "afterlife" in this life that matters

“ we found that a stress response induced in muscle could impact not only the muscle but also promote  protein quality  control in distant tissues like the brain and retina ”  ed.  prophylactic for dementia

bisphenols cause  brain damage

you are not really listening to me

the relation of the visionary realm to real life is "tenuous" at best and certainly not a guide for anything in real life

the history of anarchist groups is depressing, they never go anywhere and can be bloody with the group bearing the brunt of that

you don’t want to do anything that gets you in trouble with the police and save your cash

there is social unrest in the usa because of covid, but with time it will die away

yeah mainstream media is as dishonest as shit

existence like clouds

can appear and disappear

the buddhists call this emptiness

but i have no words

seeking concepts

they chase concepts

going nowhere

the returning circles

they don’t recognise

praising horseshit

they don’t

know

anything

is wrong

deaf and blinkered

the "brainsick"

plod on

self assured past the point of idiocy

the human species

infinities tabernacle

can we find it ?

it delivers itself

unawares

something shines through

memory

across the bar

a harbour in a different light

the hazard of entry

is worth it

“ what is an  adult problem  that nobody prepared you for ? ”

you are on a one way road to death signposted by declining health, poorer recovery and mental rigidity

intelligence is above stupidity as god is above the devil

emotional intelligence is a real thing, accessible to everyone

eventually

you are a confused thinker, nothing i explain will make any difference, i presume you have no substantial meditation experience and like most here  (ed.  brad’s vlog)  think "zen" is matter of the badly fitting words and concepts they have put together

so where’s the  where’s the  where’s the  where’s the

there’s the  there’s the  there’s the  there’s the

ed.  sounds ok if read aloud

“ a shot not taken misses, guaranteed ”

a shot off target misses guaranteed and runs the risk of hitting something unwanted

lol, i have done a bit of "target practice"

your children

the genetic cloth you are made out of

mixed with

a genetic cloth

you have no control over

brad

you are short of your own content

repeating the blather of the ages does nothing for you

or your audience

the not too bright chasing self-esteem

understanding nonsense they think they go ahead

this is what living with a woman has done to you

well

ziggy is well looked after

its an ill wind    .    .    .

yet another migraine

i never get used to it

well i can pick the signs

feeling "overwell" as the brain starts to flood with its own chemicals

then the dam starts to break and the trouble ahead begins to visit

i stop eating, take some taurine

keeps me off the bottom pits

but to lie with the dead on a regular basis

teaches something

i suppose

guru sex pots

spin a fine line

attracting vaginas

their lust for vaginas

is matched

by vaginas

lust for them

theology

across religions and time

has some consistencies

sprites chasing

solidity

“ your grammar is so poor and sentences unusually constructed ”

or is it you have the usual low reading age of complainers like yourself ?

so proud of your inability to comprehend ?

the universe

a set object

ourselves

not arriving anywhere

come back

from

beyond

ed gepixel replies

within the meandering spiritual woo-woo of "siddharta" by herman hesse i found an idea that felt revolutionary to my understanding :

the absolute is not somewhere beyond things, it is the things themselves

trying to decode your verses, i remembered that. is this what you meant  —  we think and we talk and we struggle to figure things out, while the absolute is already with us

my  reply

is the absolute in "everything", or is everything a manifestation of the absolute ?

there’s quite a big difference

people look for too tangible and direct a connection, but its intangible to the point of saying "not an object" and i guess that was my criticism of the dogen quote  (ed.“The entire universe is one shining pearl.”) ,  that "universe" is "a set object", whereas things are much more of a "flux" ,  you know, leavings and arrivals, it is basically "beyond" but we can visit, the understanding that such a thing is so comes from the contact of the visitation, its not theory, but an actual happening and everything else, especially religion is besides the point

as far as we can see

we cannot see

the sea rolls

uncaring

as far as we can see

we cannot see

the sea roils

uncaring

the universe

a set object

ourselves

not arriving anywhere

come back

from

beyond

the dead

objects gone beyond

beyond

overshoot

undershoot

on target

you are always going to explore

all three

i have done both tai chi and shikantaza and don’t feel they are the same at all, for one thing tai chi is a martial art and needs constant attention to specific aims such as body movement, defensive postures and opponent feedback whereas shikantaza is much more a "drift form" of meditation, you need to let things drift a bit to see what arises

some-one raised the interesting point that full lotus requires a lot of attention and i replied

yeah, anything lotus, but i always did seiza, i can’t understand why people do lotus "the knee wrecker"

peter r. is just the usual self promoting "consciousness" memetic, doesn’t understand his subject, but none of those plagiarizing "teachers" do

a man on the make for an income

well there’s the usual audience

dull, depressed, stupid

i got some acerbic defensive reply

my reply to that

i love to "destroy" the missionaries of nonsense like yourself

the proof of the pudding is you can’t handle it can you ?

a conman caught with your trousers down

why not look at the inadequacy of your response instead of selling frauds ?

“ U. G. Krishnamurti    >    J. Krishnamurti ”

they have different strengths and weaknesses, always in J’s defence is his very impoverished childhood, U. G. was a child of wealth, there’s a lot of freedom in that

my reply to the some-one spinning up J.   Krishnamurti

you are another diseased by transference, you are not krishnamurti and can’t speak for him

also he was a compulsive liar

you can see it in the videos when he sometimes does it

i think brad inadvertently encourages "transference" because he does it all the time with eihei dogen, but its a bad habit and toxic rhetorical technique

a teacher without a name

is a pretend game

the fools wallow in fake

never admitting their mistake

making fiction instead of real

time they wastefully steal

passing in idiocy

the blather of fantasy

ed.  one gets a lot of "narratives" in the comments section of brad warner’s vlog about "my teacher" who is never named and often on inquiry is some weird fiction or they just clam up like liars usually do

the meditation practice of "counting the breath" is only done by idiots wanting to become more crazy

it damages the brain and the evidence is everywhere

that which arises

falls

cycles involute on each other

we think this has meaning

but

the universe drifts past

because we drift with it

“ signals from muscle protect from dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases

we found  that a stress response induced in muscle could impact not only the muscle but also promote protein quality control in distant tissues like the brain and retina

this stress response was actually protecting those tissues during aging"

the basic problem with lasik or any corneal sculpting operation is that you are destroying a "developmental" nerve history designed to finely tune parameters like tear depth and inflammatory response etc

the cornea is literally a "mini-brain" with its nerve density being the highest of any body organ, and with lasik or PRK, you are losing what is effectively "memory" about "how to run the cornea" from a biochemical/ mechanical point of view

some people claim good results, but i think we really need to see what happens over a lifetime, particularly in those last years of extreme eye fragility

religion is full of failed "magical realism" you are supposed to treat as real, but its just waste of time "stories"

when you look at

sentient  vs  insentient  vs  consciousness

it appears all nicely ordered

until you think about it

then it becomes

an

unholy

mess

when you look at

sentient  vs  insentient  vs  consciousness

it appears all nicely ordered

until you think about it

then it becomes

a

mess

jason writes that america is volatile right now as well he might, travelling in support of a "fringe activist"

my  comment

there’s no ideology around now to unite people, in riots they just raid upmarket stores which shows where the value system lies

history teaches that revolution comes from the top, there’s no sign of that

you might be mixing it with some  anarchists  which has a long if unsuccessful history in europe

anarchism  in russia

too many authors

spoil

the

broth

the same thought

translated through different people

wearying

both necessary

and unnecessary

the same thought

translated through different people

wearying

necessary and unnecessary

one day i stopped correcting

and the world continued

unchanged

 did you think i learnt something ?

no

that look women get

when their husband/partner is speaking to others or publicly

the intense processing

of the need for correction

or smoothing of troubled waters

 who is really running the show ?

yet women follow rather than lead

men are disposable

and take the brunt

that’s what they are there for

i suppose

talk  talk  talk

the human world

i don’t talk

i write

all this figuring

endless

what people don’t realise

is it only stops

when we die

history teaches

political

relativity

history

teaches

political

relativity

the nature of philosophy is for it to be composed of partial truths

and for men to mistake the part for the whole

where radical political theorists always go off the rails is they have no sense of history, which when you look at what has happened previously is a denial of static systems and creeds

when i read this verse, i realised how influenced sylvia plath was by  robert lowell

ah boreas, cold and water-ruffling wind

this is no month for love;  no confidence

subsists in the subservient command

of solitude;  your windy airs that dance

sterile on the retirement of the world

turned the cold shoulder on us, snarled

a tattoo

bad art

for a lifetime

why ?

if you want to understand women

they are always looking to future unborn children

at any stage of their life

running ahead

looking behind

holds you back

a very good  dialogue  between byron katie and an audience member

a rose is a rose is a rose

a rose isn’t a rose is a rose isn’t a rose

a rose is a rose isn’t a rose is a rose

a million, a hundred million, a billion, a zillion

people

each with their separate lives

you can’t even encompass one

that’s not your own

“ I’m not a disagnosed schizophrenic,  but I do have a question.  I sometimes have auditory hallucinations where someone is saying my name or telling me to look behind me.  They never say anything else, but it's still really creepy. I also get sleep paralysis almost nightly where I see a shadow figure leading over my bed and whispering in different languages.  Are these things I should look into if I have a history of schizophrenia in my family ? ”

you can distinguish the real from the unreal, but its still dysfunction

you want to pay attention to diet, exercise and circadian rhythm  (lighting, meal and bed times)

the degree of auditory hallucinations and sleep paralysis are in the area of mild dysfunction in a potentially healthy brain

there’s two roads, we make a choice at some point

you really want to keep out of the medical route if you can

there is a sort of modern theology which is "no fault" for everything

scripture for "choosing beggars"

there’s few things in life unambiguously one way or another

we seem in denial about this

however, "a few" is not zero

the rocks of thought

defining some sine qua non of stability

or so we think

an hour glass

trickling away

tells us more

its really disheartening people like you

such toads

you can’t argue

so you takedown

violently

objectivity

the balm of sanity

not wanted

being open to being wrong

“ well i’m not wrong ”

closed

a snarl of convoluted dishonesty

we get caught

in denial

a rose is a rose is a rose

a rose is isn’t a rose isn’t it ?

a rose is a rose isn’t a rose is a rose isn’t it ?

isn’t a rose is a rose isn’t it a rose ?

the linked study says alzheimers is due to the failure of the glucose mechanism in the brain, that it is effectively  diabetes type  III

i supplement  chromium  and find it gives a more even energy

“ Oh man  .    .   .  this thread started out golden. It was like War of the Crazy Gargantuas ! ”

any day, any   comments  section

actually i notice the japanese relive their WW2 experience through these monster clashes, never quite having got to grips with their pitiful loss and the stupidity of their xenophobic, ultra-conformist culture

brad warner is a attempting to create his own version of a buddhist zen with very poor results, one of the problems being the conscription of "zen" by groups like r|zen, but in fact he and every other zen and buddhist group are doing the same thing, trying to conscript something in the public domain for their own use, it doesn’t really work or must always be constrained to limited success

anyway, my advice to him

actually the definition of zen is not the only "plastic one", buddhism itself is also heavily conscripted, spend an hour or two on buddha at the  gas pump ,  they have a backlog of hundreds for interview

they are your peers and have your audience, a "word to the wise" though you appear to be tone deaf to this problem

anything you do to build up a public reputation in buddhism and zen, they harvest not you

zen has failed and the reason is the poor quality of the "transmitted" teachers, so stupid and sex mad only an idiot is taken in

its not the hypocrisy of religion that upsets me, its the fact its a con, quite well crafted in the case of zen and it did take me in for a while

doctrinally its all nonsense, vast edifices of crazy inconsistency and meaninglessness

years ago i stayed at a cistercian monastery for a retreat and it just blew my mind how many women were in the place as cooks, helpers etc, the monks were well looked after and by and large they seemed sexually satisfied heterosexuals, just missing that extra energy celibacy gives

the food was good

this is supposedly one of the most ascetic orders in catholicism

its interesting what the press don’t print, but pope benedict ( a raging queen) was sacked because the vatican had become so obviously a gay sex club they had to do something not to mention huge sums being bled out of treasury, but this was an old problem

the trouble is, when you have communities of men and women together or similarly oriented "gays" then inevitably there’s going be really weird undercurrents of "liaison" etc

even supposedly "celibate" communities are not really celibate at all, one of historiy’s most famous celibates , john of the cross had to keep fighting women off due to his fame

women have a core of "madness" that men can’t touch

women have a certain "madness" that men can’t touch

if there’s one stage of life women live for

its being courted

a point of stasis

in all the chaos that follows

we look for universal rules

there are none

@Lorena  your usual crazy nonsense, please don’t reply to my comments, beats me how you can be so dishonest with yourself, but seen a few like you in this comments section, can’t even be bothered to work through what i have written to understand it, but some switch flips in their brains and they are off with their projections like nothing else matters

onestly lorena, there’s something wrong with you, no respecter of other peoples wishes for start, go away, i do not wish to engage with you in any way, every sentence you write is choked with misinformation, its total disrespect

the japanese have a lot of crazed suppressed aggression, i don’t think WW2 was an accident, but a product of their society

the anime series "beastars" is symptomatic

jimmy carr is in a class of his own when it comes to  interacting  with the audience

a  review  of shundo aoyama’s book "zen seeds"

she and her order were strictly celibate

why do you treat fictions as real ?

the trouble with zen in its modern implementation is as a "sex club" ,  this is the undercurrent to the usual "scandals"

historically it was more in the area of a homosexual and paedophilic "sex club"

like the catholic church, the doctrine is secondary to its "real events" ,  it doesn’t matter that the doctrine is inconsistent nonsense because that is not what it is all about and in medieval times you could add political power, land ownership and money to the mix, these days of course religions are pathetically broke

the academic arts world is a minefield of benefit versus cost

how much do we really have control over ?

a question we should

keep asking

sick with a virus

not the dreaded covid

just another

of the many

walking around

inhabiting human bodies

to their detriment

the inanimate

blurs

with the animate

what comes in waves

goes away in waves

when you look at what "education" does to young minds

it makes you cry

never stretched

always boxed

a way of looking at schizophrenia is an inability to assess and repair predictions for veracity

there’s something missing in brain function and the usual "checking and reorienting process" doesn’t work well

of course its very patchy and a problem with everyone, but don’t be caught thinking you can help or change things when missing brain mechanisms will always defeat you

getting upset over things you can do nothing about

will ensure

getting upset over things you can do something about

you can spend your life

unpacking some-one else’s load of nonsense

or

you can make your own sense

zen

running from bad conceptualisms to bad conceptualisms

calling this non-conceptual

which it is in a way

but non-compos mentis

is more like it

families

little islands of benefit

or not

a good  explanation  of what "gnosticism" is

rather than the codices being buried by pachomian monks in fear of persecution, it is almost certain that they were grave goods for greco-egyptians, however the origins are likely to be monastic which would explain its more solipsist unpalatability

the heart of entertainment is the vicarious experience

instructive or not

there is already a fourth generation covid vaccine in development, it will be interesting to see if the current vaccines give enough "herd immunity" to stop mutations spreading

i’ve been reading the hardcore zen blog for maybe 12 years and this morning i had a surprising inight about it, brad always gets things wrong so if you watch it/him you are locked into correcting what he says by way of a comment for your own sanity so catching you in endless cycles of involvement

previously i have felt this was productive in the sense of making me address things to think about, but now i am feeling its getting in the area of being just a waste of time or even dangerous on a couple of different fronts, one being some outright lunatics i antagonise with my views and a sort of poison that is never fully "antidoted" in what brad says so let’s see if this time i manage to drop reading it like i did r|zen

he, eight or nine months ago moved in with his girlfriend and this has put him in a different more diffracted space and its showing in an increasing incompetence with his subject matter

he’s not an idiot, i think he used me for his own writing material and thinking and he was smart enough to take me at my point of vulnerablity, that is i go in a straight line until stopped by being censored  (it took me a while to figure that the r|zen mods were in fact censoring me, by deleting only my best OP’s  -  subtle huh ! )  and he never censored me, remarkable !

anyway i hope i am a little wiser and now freer to expore new potholes in the road  (unfortunately)

interestingly as he  (ed. brad)  is moving into the non celibate hindu traditon with nisargadatta i am feeling more alienated, whereas i was comfortable with and could relate to the celibate eihei dogen depsite substantative disagreements

there’s a stylistic motif you sometimes see in science articles that i really hate, there’s some new theory or explanation out that supplants the old one, but they deliberately present the "replaced" one first without telling you its the old one, so you read through it so you understand it, then they drop the bomb on you that’s its the supplanted theory so you have spent all that effort and fresh attention taking the wrong information on board which actually can’t really be undone

sign language is a language

its fascinating to see something used this way that is dimensionally different in perception physics, but not brain function

masie sly  auditioning  for "the silent child"

whether its a kiwi or tokoeka

its still a kiwi

whether its mt. egmont or mt. taranaki

its

still

itself

names are just names

don’t get your knickers in a twist n.z.

hallmark isn’t all trash   :    midnight masquerade   2014

the writer is patrica resnick "known for" 9 to 5 (1980), a wedding (1978) and grandpa’s funeral  (1995)  so it has more bite than the usual vapidity

its not really that different from jane austen, what they look for is unconditional acceptance

interestingly, autumn reece  (elyse)  had had a baby boy in 2013 and was divorced at the end of 2014, the same year as the film was made

the male lead looks a bit "flat" in the film, but actually he's more  interesting  irl

anyways, there’s a whole "hallmarkian" culture out there

a much better film   the silent child

well, apparently kapleau made those enlightenment stories up, but all the same, if you understand "enlightenment" as a process rather than ridiculous notions of "state" then like all processes its on-going, first sesshin or not

treating our lives like a work of fiction

we try to rewrite it

it doesn’t rewrite

the sign post on the road ahead

middle age ending, old age approaching

one way, you cannot reverse

road in disrepair

war

throwing objects at each other

it never ceases

“ it didn’t register ”

why didn’t it register ?

“ i don’t know ”

well something to think about

“ i won’t ”

“ it didn’t register ”

why didn’t it register ?

“ i don’t know ”

“ there’s something to know ”

what ?

“ there’s nothing to know ”

evasive

“ yes ”

a world distracted

by its own agenda

flails on

a quiet night

distant car sounds

something flying over

a duck or bat

cats licking their fur

moonlit mist in the distance like a wall

open the stable door

out runs the energy

 like a good horse will it return back ?

"god" is actually a category mismatch

its a mismatch from the very perspective that would encompass it

i noticed reading this "trans" woman whose content and sentence structure is very masculine as you might expect given the original gender, but you can read it the other way as having strong female elements like one of those trick images that alternates when you look at it

good writing has a "flowing element" which is indicative of a high writing age and neither male nor female but chimeric

its one of the great simplifications of life, you cannot change the past, but only learn from it

“  Isn’t it what we’re looking for in zen, to drop conceptual thinking ? ”

"to drop conceptual thinking" no, its to improve and straighten out conceptual thinking, its why taking drugs is the wrong road, insight must be on a road of improving cognitive function

you can never lose "cognitive function", but it can twist and fuck you up

another way of looking at it, is cognitive function can enable you to map into unknown and surprising areas and you can go into those areas and that’s when your views start to radically change and your reading age grows

the difficult thing people have trouble handling is that "ultimate truth" is a psychotic condition, its just cognitively ordered compared to unordered psychosis

if you think about it, if you have angels, you are going to have demons

stalin, hitler and genghis khan fit one category quite well

but one is hard pressed to fill the other

i’m not entirely on board with the notion of trans, especially hormone treatments and surgery which, because they interrupt a sex entrained physiological developmental process cause a lot of health problems downstream

interestingly estradiol is also a signficant hormone for normal function in men and it may have a role as a medication promoting cardiovascular and neural/brain health and reducing homocysteine for some, gotta say i’d take it before  testosterone  but the research in this area is minimal  and murky  as you might expect with sex hormones being such pervasive signalling compounds

the reality is not male or female but a chimera, that is despite being physiologically male, one has strong female traits, which perhaps can be overriding, however you still have the chimeric reality which is not male or female but a combination distinct enough to be its own gender

i think one goes through life like this, though one appears to be conventional and fit whatever categories, in reality one is a very strange being cast outside the normal social boundaries, so strange, one is unique and alone in the universe and this is simply the way it is

spread too thin

we become too thin

of life

a certain amount of reserve and uneveness

is necessary

for happiness

“ goethe betrayed his genius ”

i think the thing about geothe is he never betrayed his genius

he’s not that interesting as a man or person, but when you look at the writing, its something different

god is a limited franchise

“ One time meditating I  came to the conclusion, logically, that I was God. It was scary.  My mind was like “Nope, not ready for this !”  My problem now is trying not to wear that experience like a badge of honor ”

if you are god, its a pretty limited franchise

you still get these people trying to promote "osho" rajneesh seemingly ignorant of the fact he tried to poison a county and basically he was running a sex club, let’s not talk about the 94 rolls royces and his use of "laughing gas"

meditation is basically "recursive", that is, it alters you in uncontrolled ways. everybody gets scathed by it with the degree and presentation varying

however life scathes you as does a lack of self-reflection or understanding how we work as cognitive machines so the context is six of one and half a dozen of the other, some will get better than that and a few worse

so that’s my basic observation of meditation, six of one and half a dozen of the other, and you can go to five or four of one and seven or eight of the other and in a few cases really extreme results like  psychotic breaks  or on the positive side as joko beck put it, seeing the train run through the station a hundred times without stopping, then one day its pulls up in front of you and you get on board

the basic problem is you have to go to a retreat prepared, that is, having read widely of "quality" mystical literature and having done a reasonable degree of meditation before, without this you will lack direction and may go down wrong and dangerous roads depending on the meditators personality and how misguided the teacher is and some of them are really clueless

there are other issues, like most retreats are vegetarian and to go straight from a meat eating diet to vegetarian with the isolation of retreat is not helpful, i did a retreat which served  meat at a cistercian monastery and honestly it was like night and day more sane and pleasant

another issue is the metabolic health problems from doing too much sitting, i don’t feel the sustained periods of sitting in meditation are safe once you are over  45, though this will vary considerably from person to person, but modern cardiovascular health is not good, even amongst the young and i personally knew of a heavy duty meditator who died of stroke when really he was too young to have that happen

the last point that i am sure will be least understood, is you should grow out of meditation over several years from starting it, i think it took me about three or four years and it was a distinct observation that it no longer had anything to offer, and now i just spend time in the evening not doing anything for several hours

people who meditate on lsd, should cease using it, i’ve seen the effect before, they just get "tunneled" into the incoherence of it and get caught on a very bare plateau that they don’t escape from

lsd damages the brain, i’ve never seen any good come of using it

“ what exactly is your objection ? ”

well i can’t say because i haven’t really thought about it

but i object

“ what happens if you think about it ? ”

oh, i won’t do that

indemonstrable truths

the core of existance

because

the inside cannot demonstrate

the outside

indemonstrable truths

the core of existance

because

the outside cannot demonstrate

the inside

my god, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, these  african wildcats  have a almost identical colouration pattern as some of the ferals around here

my writing

like a ball of thread

forever

unraveling

i didn't expect this

unraveling

you sort something out

then it ravels

again

raveling

you sort something out

then it unravels

what women are interested in

small objects

children

dogs

cats

the tide comes in

the tide goes out

before my lifetime

after my lifetime

 is this a cause for despair ?

its always wrong to give wrong advice

but at some point the recipient has to learn that advice can be wrong

this study  claims/says each covid variant is going to need its own vaccine

eihei dogen the missionizer

convinced he has found something

when he

has

found

nothing

there is a type of trap

which is correcting something/people endlessly

it can consume you fully

which is a signal to be out of the situation

but there is a balance between your benefit

and theirs

its not necessarily wrong

but you need to be aware of that balance and the costs to you

people can suck your energy without a thought of gratitude

or more likely

cross over into hostility

a 44% increased risk is huge ,  this study  gives no hint as to the reason why, but i have noticed daily eating of bacon does make me feel "not quite with it"

“ consuming a 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent to one rasher of bacon, is associated with a 44% increased risk of developing dementia

but their findings also show eating some unprocessed red meat, such as beef, pork or veal, could be protective, as people who consumed 50g a day were 19% less likely to develop it ”

“  Islam makes no bones about being continuation of Christianity.  It builds on the Abrahamic tradition ” 

yeah, that’s something not well understood in the west and actually muslims are coy on the subject too, it is arguable that muhammadism is as christian as pauline christianity

posting lies as truth to "sell" a religion or whatever is "missionizing"

islam has its origins as a reaction to "tri-theist" christianity, it is in effect a form of nestorian chrisitianity and got a foothold, then became a religion of "empire" with the collapse of the highly urbanised byzantine empire from various plagues

the legend of muhammad was created after his supposed lifetime to make the religious glue to keep together and promote the muhammadan kingdoms and empires

doctrinally of course its targeted at that which is why it is so associated with brainless violents like isis and al-qaeda who are completely devoid of the rich cultural and artistic mix that historical islam was

religion is the belief in a bunch of cardboard cutout characters being historically real

what little i have read of the koran is just boring tripe, much more interesting are the sufi writers, especially sa'di and ibn 'arabī

“ if it’s so boring why do 1.6 billion people on earth swear by it ? ”

people in islamic cultures don’t have the freedom to express their real opinions

muhammad is like jesus, buddha and moses, just storybook characters in soap operas

the sufi is an attempt to provide some mystical sense within cultural/religious boundaries that must be conformed to, usually on pain of death

interestingly st francis of assisi was a big fan of islam, but that is called islam today is a purblind 19th and 20th century recreation of what historically was more tolerant and wide ranging

the strange stuff that comes from nowhere

like walking into a room which has an ornament you haven’t seen before

you’re unable to tell if it was always there

the strange stuff that comes from nowhere

like walking into a room which has an ornament you haven’t seen before

yet was always there

drone footage of icelands mt. fagradalsfjall   eruption

citizen has designed a new mechanical watch

like the japanese developing a WW1 fleet for WW2 i’d say

ghastly language too

the antikythera mechanism had a point

this  has no point, bizarre, sure to sell well since i don’t like it

women are not about men, they are about their future children

understand this and the whole relationship/romance thing and its vicissitudes will make much more sense

@Belligerent Man, i can’t fully justify it, but i get a "mindsick" vibe from you of intrusion into the lives of others who are really very peripheral to you, unhealthy boundary problems

in addition you have low self-esteem and try to drive those you "intrude on" into the same corner as yourself

lol, your "theology" seems catholic !

the social media fault   :   the over-intrusion into the lives of others

the reddit fault   :   criticising the lives of others like it matters

the sands of time

is a cliché

what else would you say ?

time is a desert we limp from oasis to oasis

one day we get caught between them and that’s it ?

time is a lush tropical garden where we gorge on fruit

time is a forest full of predatory hazards ?

time is a strange mirage of a city that alters as you look at it ?

time is ubiquitous yet there is a place it is not

time is interminable yet we can’t place ourselves in relation to it

time to finish

i think

if we think of vast

we can’t really

if we think of big

there’s bigger

if we think of small

there’s more minute

if we think of thinking

now that’s a stumbler

you’d think all this thinking

would make me humbler

the weight of the world’s misfortunes

if you feel it

you won’t last

the minute detail

leads you

out of the woods

strippers are  business women

the ashtavakra gita

so much tripe

unsaying what can be said

verse  2.13

How wonderful I am !   Glory to me !  There is no one so clever as me !  I who have borne all that is forever, without even touching it with my body !

my reworking of the above

the wonder of myself who knows beyond the ordinary

I who am the alpha and omega

of being

ordinarily covid would be extinguished by the second or third generation of vaccines, the problem is that there are so many "immunocompromised" individuals in the population now, that they will act as  breeding factories  for new mutants, its no accident that the problematic south african one arose in "the republic of  AIDS"

just remember, in the end, you need something for yourself, that nobody else can touch

a bulwark against the onslaught of age

something so that one doesn’t lie with the rest of the spent seed husk

i’m getting this picture of zen as a bunch of idiots reading the most atrocious rubbish and then entrenching that in the putrid jellies they call their brains with meditation

when i am tired and my attention goes to pot

not much can be done

because all that can be done

is get some sleep

when i am tired and my attention goes to pot

not much can be done

because all that can be done

is get some rest

its a characteristic of lyrics they lack complexity and depth and rely on music to create "mood"

lots of things don’t go anywhere

because if they went somewhere

our lives would be overloaded

when the leaves start to go

its autumn

there’s nothing you can do about it

what are the circles of life ?

caught up in the everyday

no wonder we can’t see out of it

because basically

we don’t complain

at this order of things

men think their world is the only one

whereas women know their own world is the only one

for each to perceive the other

is for galaxies to collide

so they don’t

men think their world is the only one

whereas women know their own world is the only one

you have never read dogen, just some transcriber’s and translator’s hash to make your own hash that you then call "dogen"

its a great game that all the fraud "teachers" do, claiming the approval of the dead

justifying their own nonsense

i think things  (ed.  mystical experiences)  can happen in dreams, though rare and the question of durability is interesting, like its a context and incorrect perspective

the question of durability arises because you are not moving forward enough, this work is "a process" and certain events may be signposts, but that is secondary to new events constantly occurring which is a criticism i would make of brad’s "bridge experience" ,  he never moved on

i always find zen’s inconsistency between its "gruntism"   :    don’t read, don’t think, just sit, just be an aggressive stupid and the fact that it is entirely a written construct having its origin as the religion of china’s administrative class during the tang dynasty that seems nowadays to trap those of low reading age

the other problem is reading without writing yourself because you will never develop the necessary scepticism about writing if you have no experience of doing it and its inevitable building of fake realities

like buddhism, christianity , islam and judaism, it is a collection of stories, no more, no less

you would think the vast word bucket known as message boards would give more insight into writing as a skill, but it doesn’t seem to, people only to want to "sell" whatever one tenth worked out idea they have and bluster through any criticism rather than go even the tenth of a way more into working through what they are saying

poetry i think

can be literally psychotic

that is

unreal

but truer

at the cross roads

a million roads traverse outwards

young, you need only have traversed a few to reach the center

older, every one of the million beckons

and requires

sincerity is not a test for a con artist

because the real con artists

con themselves

the golden rule for anything optical or medical is not to proxy it all on the doctor or specialist, but do quite a bit of research yourself

you will be on a much more optimal path and potentially save a lot of money

the other side of the coin is not to "devalue" the doctor’s advice, usually they have a lot of experience and know what they are talking about, but all the same, there can be big holes in it

people can be really blinkered, i have seen it again and again, complaints about horrific conditions and the complainer is on a bevy of psychiatric drugs and they have never researched the side effects

“ today’s  research  reports that recovery of eye dominance alone is not sufficient to promote recovery of acuity, and recovery of acuity can occur even if eye dominance remains impaired ”

“ a pilot  experiment  suggested that physical activity might play an important role for the recovery of visual acuity and stereopsis ”

“ each training session consisted in the occlusion of the amblyopic eye combined with physical exercise  (intermittent cycling on a stationary bike) ”

leonard cohen was clearly mentally ill/brainsick during his time with "sasaki the groper" ,  the lack of attention to the rest of his life cost him dearly as his accountant embezzled all his money and he ended up dead broke, which was why he had to go on tour at age 74 and he was lucky it was such a success

i would go so far as to say the "zen experience" made his depression problems much worse, why would any one put themselves second in judgment to someone like sasaki, himself a refugee from embezzlement and other reputational problems in japan, not to mention an unsupported son

the mind boggles that some-one as talented as leonard should fall under the sway of a such a second rate con artist, like he wanted to combine severe self injury with the depression

post sixty

if you injure yourself

its weeks or months to recover

i’m just not used to that

to talk meaningless nonsense

is the refuge

of an unimaginative scoundrel

there is no god

what is there ?

more or less

what we can bear

to go further out

the mystery solves

steps in infinity

we become enrolled

how much of your experience is conveyable ?

the essence isn’t

because that is you

barrage

artillery

in the trenches

shellshock

its information

what people don’t realise about napoleon and why he was so successful was the way he built up military infrastructure

unfortunately he couldn’t bring the same competence to bear in the  naval area  and they were well outclassed in admiralship and hardware by the british

he could never beat them, why he didn’t make peace with them is beyond me, better to have evacuated spain too, he seems to have this flaw of not getting out of doomed situations, despite his undoubted military brilliance

interestingly a year after trafalgar where  villeneuve  took the fleet to battle despite being told he was about to be replaced, napoleon had him murdered

jason is disturbed by the level of increasing "lawlessness" in new york, you can see that if covid continues at present levels, things will get pretty rough, however i am sure the americans super fast and comprehensive vaccination coverage will be effective

his phrase was "a warzone of protests"

interestingly a breakdown in law and order happened with the historicial plagues, of course covid is not in that area, not even slightly comparable to TB and syphilis

"life will generally be how it will be" ,  a partial truth and lie i feel and unsurprisingly a bedrock of a very militarily aggressive religion, (historically at least) islam

so many people in cities with large dogs who don’t care adequately for them, they need a lot of exercise which they don’t get and nutritionally lacking food to boot

mistreatment of pets is one of today’s paradigms

“  Lovingkindness without wisdom is like painting dirty walls ”

"Lovingkindness" is the dirt, the putridity of pompous asses

the metta sutta is itself a shark, a deliberate memetic device designed to blinker "the faithful" so they don’t question what they are doing which is buying into a false and toxic tableau

religion is full of this, what i call "self-kneecapping", that is, constructs designed to distort the sense of reality so the bozos never leave the cage

i watch a lot of african wildlife videos, you know the world is not a benign place, humans are just as predatory to each other and often is quite subtle ways like children predating parents

there is a modern sort of shark one sees a lot on the net and brad’s vlog comments section called "choosing beggar"

keeping to boundaries doesn’t work

how can it ?

still it pays to move with skill and caution, getting too bruised is wearing

spain is a strange place, racially and culturally hybrid, there’s an energy in that, especially the arts and architecture

georgia o’keeffe   ranchos church

what i notice with "quality" artists is they can express themselves well, van gogh’s writing is an extreme example of this

quotes  by her

church of brad, brad buddhism, solace for choosing beggars

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

you can go further into the painting as a comment about a woman seeing the child as herself, that life is necessarily underpinned by narcissism

part of being a great painter like velázquez is a certain incisive objectivity, that’s what puts him above the endless swathes of "comfortable" and "faux objective" mediocrity the art world is so full of

from the jobbing platen to writing html in my lifetime

the mind boggles

i wonder if i would write at all if not for the ease of publishing over the net ?

to want to re-orient

the lives of others

is wrong

its not how we are

to want to re-orient the lives of others

is wrong

its not how we are

to want to re-orient the lives of others

is wrong

its not how things are

accepting the detail

we quibble

when its the context that is wrong

accepting the detail

we quibble

when its the context

that is wrong

blue boots walking across the lawn

oh, i see

they are mine

blue boots walking across the lawn

oh, they are mine

having spent a lot of time on message boards i have found it helpful to treat the participation as "skill building"

you learn social skills, the ability to pick flaws in an "opponents" argument" ,  how to make cogent replies, not to be distressed by some of the very aggressive and toxic repsonses you may get and that its not a benign world, a lot of people out there want to do nothing but fuck you around

also how selective the net can be for its audience, a literal mental health outpatient clinic

one of the big things is most people make a series of what i call "declamations", that is, statements attempting to create very flawed and quite obnoxious premises and they attempt to move forward from them so you have to break them down by pointing out internal contractions or counter examples

when you do this, some fade like mice back into their holes , but often you get some idiot who can’t understand what you are saying and it just goes back and forth pointlessly

i’d say disillusionment with people is part of the skill development unfortunately

i have had people get quite obsessed with me, it lasts no more than six months, but is disconcerting when it happens, i have a considerable margin of safety not living in the united states, if i lived there i would be more cautious, but some years ago i did have one woman who (i surmise) chelated a young relative with very problematic results try to put the police onto me from the country i live in for my  anti-chelation  stance, i’m not interested in that level of aggravation and backed out pretty quick from her online "sphere of influence"

what i find is whatever i do, i tend to go through real world extremes so as i have got older i have become more cautious about embarking on anything new

the  antikythera mechanism  turns out to be an extraordinarily sophisticated analog computer

not picking up to that level again until the fourteenth century

the mind boggles

but human insanity is more interested in aliens building the pyramids

i have finally figured out that brad warner is trying to create his own religion with the saints of sawaki, nishijima, nisargadattara  (new) ,  kobun and one other i have yet to locate the name of though i think brad is ambiguous about him, the living are always difficult to claim as proponents of your own ideology as they may disagree, something the dead are not necessarily able to do

i guess dogen is the overall god

anyway the point is that when you take your guidance from such a wrong minded circle  ( i would  except eihei dogen, but he is very uneven, you have to be careful)  then you are always going to be chronically in need of correction

my posting on his hardcore zen blog  (past)  and vlog  (now)  is such a bottomless pit of my providing correction that i am bailing out of it

you can be doing something right for decades if not forever before understanding why

life passes too easily in the obscuration of work

the eye, more than most organs doesn’t heal

physiologically its a balance of compromises and difficult technical solutions than can turn into no exit streets under any sort of stress

healing in essence requires "regeneration" and with a couple of exceptions the eye cannot do this being basically nervous tissue and highly complex biomechanics

ed.  having written that, i then came across this very recent  research  on epigentic reprogramming, which in effect does regenerate

how long before it becomes clinical reality is anybody’s guess

joko beck having died first seems to be getting the wrong end of why she rescinded transmission to elizabeth hamilton and ezra bayda with it explicitly being claimed joko only acted when a SDZC board meeting was going to remove her from any role in the center due to her "senility"

elizabeth and ezra were clearly pushing a teaching "understanding" in conflict with joko’s approach, she wasn’t an idiot, she would have stepped aside if she was happy with what they were doing

by way of contrast diane rizzetto is in accordance

joko’s daughter got "seduced" by maezumi so she was sensitive to reports of ezra having affairs with students

in actual fact she felt so burnt by her zen ezperience she distanced herself from it

maezumi only gave her "transmission" because she forced his hand by attracting a large number of students

"transmission" is actually part of the problem of zen’s having very low quality teachers now, as big a collection of idiots as you ever saw, but it was always toxic

no wonder zen has collapsed

the basic problem is, and it has taken me so long to work this out is a denial of the validity of other mystical traditions and in literature, there's diamonds gold and sapphires , but zen makes mud pies, what can you do or say ?

meditation too is not handled well, a subtle schizophrenia appears to be the norm

in absence

the flowers shine

the glittering lake

sighs

death is not what it seems

a very interesting  painting ,  read to discover who is who and what happened to them

you are claiming "good faith" on your part and "one upmanship" on my part

i’m not fooled and i don’t think you are either

in effect , like others on brad’s vlog, having no ability to argue content with me you sink to "ad hominem"

net zen is so thick with "intellectual scoundrelism" you can cut it

"buddha" is just a story, why take a bad fantasy as exemplar ?

being wrong is just as much "discovery" as being right

more and more the news media are imposing their own political narrative, its actually quite dangerous i think, one has to guard against it

​@ Belligerent Man i think you should look at your moniker "belligerant" more, its like the wrong road for brad’s vlog

you have a good, almost "autistic" vocabulary, but are very unskilled at cogent thinking or writing to convey ideas, instead you just "grunt" and honestly , it doesn’t work in the world of writing, however intimidating it might be in real life

my comments here are just the development of these skills and to provide material for my own writing, that’s all, why not look at your commenting as skill development, particularly understanding what is said to you, rather than "belligerant", which i assure you as a reader becomes tiresome you are just fighting to protect an "attitudinal approach", why ?

the net has created huge swaths of "pretend"  daoists, buddhists, islamists/sufi, anything trendy and can be grasped by a little reading so you can expect the real life religionists to take claims to belong to their religion without active real life involvement with a pinch of salt, especially as "net only" claimants generally have some "heretical streak" the religion is not prepared to accommodate

interestingly in the context of brad warner’s vlog, i think his involvement in real life buddhism is so marginal as to be disqualified from being a buddhist and he has a clear agenda of creating his own schism, "bradhism", a non ceremonial theologically more vapid but rational version as if that soap opera of nonsense could ever be rational

the problem with the world

is correcting the endless stream of error

some of it is our own

but a lot of it is not

ezekiel’s vision

the eyes are everywhere

and god

is a creation

of

the tetramorph

i think non-fungible token artwork prices will collapse one day because it doesn’t give any control over reproduction

if i can print the artwork without having the NFT, then i can be said in a sense to own it, yet i have paid nothing for it

there is a very calculated spin up going on at the moment and christies are certainly involved, the usual "art market" operation so slick, its barely perceptible

personally i am not a fan of any "cornea sculpting" technology like lasik because of the extraordinarily high nerve density of the cornea

maybe the heat loss from having a shaved head contributed to dogen getting  TB ?  i wouldn’t be surprised

monasteries and convents historically were notoriously unhealthy places, gathering places of what we would call the chronically fatigued and mentally ill

why has evolution given us hair when most of the rest of the body is hairless

koans never considered in zen

it seems to me  this study  is saying blood group A is significantly more at risk of covid infection and severe disease than blood groups O and B

diana gilliland wright  posted again  in 2020 after a four year absence on her blog, its really one of the best on the web, her writing has an extra dimension most others lack if you read back through it

i really think real life zen experience does give social skills and tempers pointless aggression, you’re always a duck out of water claiming an interest in zen without the real life experience

you have no tolerance for "contradiction" nor any ability to "pick up the ball" and throw it back, just sinking back into some merciless ad hominem attack

all these years on on-line involvement and you have completely avoided the real life side, there is something really wrong there and its not mild

people can say something valid, even if contradicts what you think, this is a basic of life

brad

stitching his system

from disparate sources

calling it buddhism

well it might be

bradhism

in religion words float around

croquet balls to be ricocheted

your problem is you assume no sense in what you can’t make sense of, but its simply you cannot make sense of it

over the top flattery

creates a very bad

impression

forged currency

has

that

effect

choosing beggars let you know when you have them cornered

by their vituperativity

you can’t own

what is not entirely yours

and very little is

we can’t own

what is not ours

and very little is

j. krishnamutri lied a lot, you can sometimes catch it in the videos, knowing now what his life really was

i think "non-self" ,  the supposed aspiration of mysticism is a misunderstanding since there can never be "no-self" but various camouflages, what is actually required is being more objective and discriminating correctly about what is happening

in the objective view, self-esteem and self-confidence don’t really enter into it and if self confidence is not grounded in "skill" then any expression of it is going to be "dunning kruger"

the almost universal mistake is never to engage in the truly objective view, how is a thing really, what is happening, what is it ?

so people just fill the gap with templates called "meditation", "prayer" "the dharma", "masters", "god" "the koran", whatever

if you step back and look objectively, everything starts to look really different, for example in this context "meditation" is objectively in my observation not a universal good, it has a certain role for a limited time period but if you stay stuck to it, you take a lot of damage, the development of a subtle schizophrenia even

poetry is necessarily "transgressive"

why ?

one speaks one’s mind

are one’s thoughts so frightening ?

yes

apparently

children are the poems of women

quality may vary

the weirdest thing i have ever seen on message boards

is a group of women "elected" a health guru

only the guru didn’t want to be a guru

her theory was flawed anyway

and these woman eventually worked that out

but persisted in this jopeless fixation

it took more than year to "peter out"

what was never there

in the first place

an ineptly censored message boord

is a malevolence

distorting reality

for all its participants

ewk

small doses of every insanity possible

a miracle

unless you encounter him

my tomatoes

nourished with fertiliser

and i wouldn’t say too much care

fruiting profusely

unconsciously waiting for that slaughter

called frost

people are very uneven

this fundamental fact of life

escaped me

people are very uneven

this fundamental fact of life

escapes us

what men never have to think about

pregnancy

that is

their own

the weirdness of writing

one day everything opened like a book

i can’t explain it

unless it was the neighbour’s free range eggs ?

those chooks

high on grasshoppers

imparted something

a minor injury

the pain is upsetting

the sleep disturbed

still sore several days later

makes me wonder

what lies ahead

driving at night

is strange

the lights dominate

and not much else

driving at night

is strange

the lights dominate

and not the scenery

"night shift workers face considerable health disparities, ranging from increased risks of metabolic and cardiovascular disease to mental health disorders  and cancer "

i don’t discount anybody, people are uneven

in the end its only your own understanding that matters and progression is hard

from a solipsist point of view, anyone else is a moron except you

they think they exist or something

meditation is limited

all these stupid fucks who don’t understand that

if as lewis tells us

the world is a dream

who is the dreamer

who is the dreamt ?

there's no "snark is a boojum"

to solve that salient

girolamo savanarola, the closest thing to an historical jesus, broke under torture

ignomony rather than "the glory of god", waited for him

in reality he was a schizophrenic following a script and it all imploded on him

well, perhaps that is too harsh, a more  balanced view

the  bonfire of the vanities  really is a thing

its crazy to think

anything except

crazy to think

views shape

is that person right or wrong ?

its not that simple

i take what is useful to me

and move on

views shape

is a person right or wrong ?

its not that simple

i take what is useful to me

in my writing i fold meaning back and forth, if you pay attention you will see that and understand the limitations on "graspability"

alain de botton is variable imo, but on the  topic of love  he is better

“  Hmm, so when you’re calling someone autistic, it's not meant to be demeaning ? ”

you can’t have existence without autism, its a paradigm of reality and that’s the way i use the term

the banquet  of the monarchs

i find renaissance painters, though bound by religious conventions and imagery really try to say something more immediate within the context

this painting i think really conveys the highly sexualised and homoerotic environment  plautilla nelli  lived in, the men are feminised and the air is thick with hypocrisy

this one  is conveys the finality of death and the inability to grasp what has happened by the living, the removal of someone from them

i have a subreddit called zen_mystical which is sorta half a magazine, half discussion, i expect posts and comments to meet a certain quality standard, its not like what goes on in the r|zen subreddit and its inane blatherings by schizophrenics

one of the greatest mystics is sa’di, but he was a medieval writer with a cultural context and paradigms that can seem quite alien or distasteful to us and you have to "translate them" into a way we would look at them

this failure to look out at what other religious mystical traditions have is what keeps "zen" so blinkered

one thing that is an undercurrent of modern life is the ever-present prospect of injury in a motor vehicle accident

we don’t die in battle or childbirth any more but the unwilling violent change in life still pursues us

we are compelled into existance and compelled into its decrements yet so much of life seems up to us ?

old men

who marry young women

have no cognisance

of

their stage of life

tableaux spread forever

and are traversed infinitely

the deceived fools

think

they

are

going

somewhere

journalism today appears to be just one beat up after another, like they are all on amphetamines

perhaps they are ?

i have studied quite a bit of history and it gives a different perspective on  politics

benign follows ruthless

ruthless follows benign

a good  video  on monet’s final water lily work

“  People stumble in circles, but there seems to actually be something to stumble in circles around.  Am I deluded for wanting it  ? ”

my  reply

there is nothing to stumble in circles around

its not that difficult to do the real work, but no-one does it, like you they get caught in bad stories and never question anything

“ So what is the real work ? I’m trying to figure that out ”

my  reply

the real work is

1.  becoming aware of yourself and how your mind works

2.  this work requires longevity so you need to pay attention to diet and health and conventional wisdom here is often quite wrong

3.  you need to converse with the great mystical minds and this requires reading since they are almost all "dead"

4.  this is hard to understand, but basically ten billion people will be wrong and you are the only one that will be right

5.  take walks by yourself in areas of natural senic beauty

6.  there is no end point or final arrival anywhere, yet there is, basically its all about this

what i find interesting about the "followers" of u.g. krishnamurti is despite 20 years or more of listening to him in some cases, they never improved an inch in understanding, just repetitive circles and that is to some extent what ug was saying, you can’t convey it

when understanding escapes them

they resort to ad hominem

if there’s anything disappointing about life, its that we get old

we get robbed basically

from a solipsist point of view we are not born at all, rather we develop existence as memory and intelligence crystallise and neither do we die, memory decoheres, often quite dramatically

the relationship between existential intelligence and age is rather complex, in some respects peaking about five and in other respects peaking much later, right up to death

you just cannot make sense of this stuff, though you can argue that the world is a process of being brought into existence by your development and given the role of memory, you can see the prevalent "being in the moment" meme is unadulterated crap

this indian philosophic "simultaneous arising" is the usual off target madness of trying to lim infinitely receding perspectives, do you see that the original japanese writing of dogen  you couldn’t understand  brad is actually the process, which is why translation doesn't "get" what dogen is about, its like they are taking snapshots, rather than being able to repeat the dynamic process that is the actually of what dogen is saying, ie it is both the description and the process

eihei dogen is basically inaccessible to us because of the lost "philology", instead we are treated to the bizarre and perverse spectacle of idiots reconstructing nonsense pretending there’s something to it, but its just craziness followed by the crazy

sawaki, nishijima, katakgiri are just these crazies, morons caught in bad fiction

philip mould is of the opinion that  this painting  is not by w. greaves, but having examined the signature, imo it is and the fireplace could be in the  1920’s

greaves seems to have a developmental change of "style" with age

he was not an "established artist" and his  biography  is thin

i quite like  this painting

they that go in circles

won’t be distracted from their purpose

the difference between a slur and compliment is interesting

what is perceived as a slur in one quarter

can be perceived as a compliment in another

absence

one of life’s pivots

we need to turn upon

occasionally

though every man in the world said a certain thing

and you disagreed

you would be right

though you said a certain thing

and everyone in the world disagreed

you would be right

what napoleon was up against at  waterloo  was very competent generalmanship and given the great numerical, and as it turned out, positional, superiority of the allies, his loss was almost inevitable despite the duke of wellington’s claims otherwise

a good quote by the duke

“ all the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what i called "guessing what was at the other side of the hill" ”

napoleon and the duke were only three months apart in age, at the time of the battle, napoleon was 45 and the duke of wellington 46

i think what has changed with medicine and related fields compared to even thirty years ago is the improvement in technology and tests has made diagnosis more of a science than an art

diagnosis is very algorithmic now, even a form of artificial intelligence so old notions of "relationship" don’t apply, though heavens knows, some people still think in those terms

claims of "my doctor", "my specialist" or "my surgeon" are an illusion

the hard thing to understand is 99.99% of teachers and people supposedly experienced with zen get it wrong

so your problem  (ed.  he is finding "zazen" "lackluster")  is you aren’t validating your own experience which is no "samadi, jhana, bliss, etc" ie these are just forms of psychosis, that actually you have it right, lacking thse experiences is "correct"

however you are also picking up something important, a sense of inadequacy in what you are doing and you are right in that, what you are not doing is looking outside zen at genuine "quality spiritual literature" eg sa’di and emily dickinson, without this background reading and thinking you can’t go anywhere productive which is the usual experience people have

the only exception to this is people with addiction problems for whom the self observation alone that meditation gives is very helpful

the advantage of polytheism is it is clearly theater whereas monotheism is so boring it has to be taken seriously and then to cap it all is the literalism of the claimed historicity of the various supposed intermediary manifestations

the greeks at least had a sense of fun and the egyptians  tableaux, whereas european history is 1500 years of murderous boredom

the flowering roses

curl time around their petals

the sunlight

has that

unearthly dimension

the garden

vibrates

modes of being

constant interaction

with people

news, problems

solutions

to step back

in the quiet

and our observations

may surprise us

the truth of meditation

annihilation

of

the

meniscus

"teacher"

everything is self-taught

where do you exist ?

poison in his soul

he has to paint it everywhere

time

where neither the scriptures

or human nonsense

exists

god

the nonsense chasers

chasing

nonsense

arthur streeton’s painting  at templestowe  1889

 New research  finds caffeine consumed during pregnancy can change important brain pathways that could lead to behavioral problems later in life

one step of error

a lifetime

of remorse

one step of error

a lifetime of remorse

slow time opens a vast space

what is that space ?

its not "normal" for sure

its more than our existance

all those years of  "study'

brought you senility

not understanding

not discerning fiction

from reality

you fell

into

the

bottomless

pit

some people choose poisoned roads

as to why they do it

i don’t know

with supplements and food, one is one’s own experiment

the skill is in discerning, observing and untangling cause and effect

a very harsh  read

[Serious]  What is it like to have children you don’t want ?

this idea of suicide being  “ evolutionarily adaptive ”  maps quite qulte into young men doing school shooting and blowing themselves and others up with bombs, the destruction of whatever perceived outgroup, a sort of "death in battle"

also the notion of "spoiling" which we see quite a bit on the net, very non-productive time spent tying up what is perceived as "enemy doctrines" ,  in real life, it in part, will translate to suicidal assassination which is a particular feature of some middle eastern cultures and has a very long history, the mongol empires had trouble with it and clamped down severely on various "assassin" sects

my reply to an idiot trying to "take me out" on brad warner’s vlog

you’ll never get "more into it", but if you had, you would understand "enlightenment" is a flawed concept rather like its parallel in chrisitianity, "holiness"

your "list" of "plus versus minus" is just the indictment of "what have you been doing all these years"

you have been sniffing something stronger than incense ?

the flaw with "idealism"   (ed. philosophical term)   is its a construct defined as a native  (irreducible)

“ can you elaborate ? ”

well, one could elaborate forever, that’s the problem

philosophical categories are arbitrary is another way of putting it

all philosophy is in a sense schizophrenic because it is dependent on the development of highly idiosyncratic vocabularies away from "common usage"

often now i ask myself whether a situation is to my advantage or not

it can clarify what you do

but some/a lot of problematic things are best be left to run of their own accord despite their seeming unsatisfactoriness

its actually surprisingly difficult ,  transcription

the battlefield

random death

the skilled died equally

haiku

its not poetry

just syllables

 who cares for number ?

judah maccabeus

so many battles

in the end

he just

got

tired

of

fighting

because

because

such and such a thing

happened

because

dreaming causes

not even

right

the

dream

of

explanation

for

a

start

god

the nonsense chasers

chase

nonsense

injury is a truth

you would never willingly take it

but

it

happens

i was at the hairdresser’s/barber’s the other day, only person getting their hair cut there and the two young women hairdressers were talking to each other like i didn’t exist

a ruthless discussion of why one of one’s friends didn’t like the other hairdresser

and other matters

the poor shell shocked male getting his haircut never blinked

there are pretentious idiots aplenty

that doesn’t mean i will tolerate them

on my watch

ed.  i keep having to ban these people from r/zen_mystical

they are choosing beggars basically

this is not without exceptions

brad reads an  obscure passage  of dogen

my slightly reworked transcription

one sheet of dull stubbornness is three inches thick

three lengths of upside-downness is five feet long

last night, this monk of the mountains, eihei  (ed. dogen) ,  struck the empty sky with a single blow

my fist didn’t hurt but the empty sky knew pain

a number of sesame cakes appeared and rushed to become the faces and eyes of the great earth

suddenly, a person came to me and said  "i want to buy some sesame cakes"

i asked  "who are you ?"

this person replied to me  "i am avilokiteshvara bodhisattva. my family name is jaung lee"

i then asked  "did you bring any money ?"

he replied "i came without any"

i retorted  "if you didn’t bring any money, how can you buy them ?"

he didn’t answer but just said  "i want to buy them, i really do"

do you totally thoroughly understand the meaning of this ?

after a pause , eihei then spoke again and said  "when avilokiteshvara bodhisattva makes an appearance mountains and rivers on the great earth are not dead ashes. you should always remember in the third month, the partridges sing and the flowers open"

my  comment

the empty sky knew pain consequently the bodhisattva of compassion appeared

take the sesame cakes, the pain has paid for them

compassion is tangible

but not as humans know it

this is the final stage of zen

missed by the morons

i was looking at british comedy sketches on youtube from the 1950s and 60s and standards of public acceptability with today’s "wokeness" have changed so much, some of these sketches would excite criticism

there is this vast illusion we are all part of the same continuous world

the reality is that we are all disparate entities remote from each other

“ Everyone has at least one problem ”

everyone has at least ten problems and actually 1 million yet to be discovered

eihei dogen never sat in meditation, he was too busy writing

don’t trust these authors, they live in fantasy

zazen is something you grow out of, if you haven’t, you have a problem

about two or three years i would say

western zen and buddhism

are just reshaped monotheism

walk away from monotheism

and things get more interesting

the problem with brad warner’s vlog is not him, its the choosing beggars/sharks in the comments section who suck my time like no tomorrow

charles bukowski says "set them out to sea" and i can do that by not looking at the vlog anymore

if i read it i’ll just reply, so really given the burden of time its been, i’m just going to have to be absent and see what it shows

eihei dogen varies in honesty imo, and what you are  quoting  is him at his more honest and he is saying, buddhism and buddha and teachers and teaching and practice etc are all a load of crap and its just mist rising from the water and that’s really the way it is and there’s no further to go, that degree of "deconstruction" is sufficient

i feel you ,  (brad)  are reinterpreting him to avoid that nilhism, the way you are "constructing" it, is not something eihei would have agreed with in his "honest" mode and actually you face the same problem as him, "flavourless" or deconstructed just has no prospect of donors or income and in his case probably was dangerous given the various sectarian rivalries and violence of the times

lotus blossoms transmute to shit in the red furnace

that’s the game of "declamation", anybody can do it, the "choosing beggars" commenting on your vlog wade deep in its effluent

when you look at the size of dogen’s complete writings, its obvious he was first and foremost a full time writer, people pare away the fictional to treat as real, what can one say ?

blind, misguided and stupid doesn’t cover the ground

"above the blue sky is a snow covered mountain"

there was no blue sky in the first place and the mountain top has no existence beyond its observation

another way of putting it is "meta" doesn’t cut the ice, only the coherence from varying observation does

the "system" of buddhism is just more of the endlessness of error

ed.  to the usual "belligerents" i get replying to me, why not try to understand what i write before replying and actually ADDRESS WHAT I SAY  !

“  Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re saying this type of deconstruction is counterproductive because the point is this moment observing.  To break what Dogen is saying down is delaying what the point of all of it is, which is this moment here.  The deconstruction is keeping people bound in though.  Am I on point or misconstruing you at all ? ”

you are afloat in a sea of variables, for one thing we don't actually know how good the translation is, we know what the translator thinks dogen said, but not what he actually said and there are questions about the quality of the transcript

however what is said comes across as fairly deconstructive as i describe it, which sorta ends up as "absence", but i don't think brad finds that palatable, so, through his interpretation he re-engineers it away from the blank nihilism of dogen’s "deconstruction"

this "moment" heterodoxy is a western interpolation and comes from greek philosophy rather than zen, its a construction rather than absence

you can't approach absence directly in the manner of say religions with their reams of 'practices" , "supplications" etc, you can only approach it indirectly with probabilistic outcomes and no certainty at all

you can interpret "just sitting " as that actually, i know philip kapleau’s view was koan study was just to pass the time until a probabilistic event occurred in the form of kensho or dia kensho

“  Your points might be valid, however aren’t these points you’re talking about just focusing on the finger and missing the moon ? ”

see you are using the construction "finger pointing at the moon" ,  but i am saying "absence"

the "finger pointing at the moon " analogy is direct and consequently invalid

teaching itself is invalid because it is direct

"absence" is something that emerges in an unknown way

“  My main issue with your critique is your implication of "how things should be." ”

i’m not saying for example buddhism should be such and such a way

rather its incorrect beyond remedy

what interests me in this case ,  (brad’s vlog talk)  is the nature of the incorrectness highlights what must be correct

that "absence " must be borne with for the true fruit to appear

so i'm not seeking to move the world closer to my ideas of what is correct

more than anything

language

is

“ extended 

  mind ”

to say

there

is

or

isn’t

is

stepping

too

far

in

the

wrong

direction

so many people

in this

world

past and future

yet not once

have the roads been the same

everything

quivers

shakes

static

is

an

illusion

a choosing beggar

is some-one despite having nothing to offer

"chooses" benefits to what he is not rationally entitled

greek feet ,  pretty much like mine though i have no known greek ancestry, though its not beyond the realm of possibility

the video is of the acropolis museum and quite interesting

there is a certain strangeness

to things

anything

considered

luck is a perspective

something went your way

but what time shows can be different

cocktail culture

how many ways can you flavour 20% alcohol

why would you bother ?

japan really lost the war well before pearl harbour with the rape of nanking

apart from the humanitarian aspect, it signalled japan’s inability to integrate subject populations into its own war effort

by contrast the roman empire was extremely successful at this, even to the extent of having ethnically non-roman emperors

neither germany nor napoleon need have failed in russia had they also done this

he claims no gender

but the way he lives

shows

gender

so many things

glimpses

that unfold

if we pursue

to surprisingly

little

effect

mother and child

bound together

forever

whether they like it

or not

to complain of boredom

is to admit

alienation from introspection

develop introspection

and you will

never

be

bored

again

people expect to write well without doing any quality reading or contemplation so what they get  (unsurprisingly)  is vacuity

this modern meme of the expectation of skill without the work involved developing it

religions are full of "godesses", mary derives from isis, buddhism has its female "bodhisattvas" and i think the degree of prominence reflects whether a society biases towards the matriarchal or patriarchal and the increasing "matriarchalness" of western society is changing the balance within western culture and christianity in particular is not adapting

i would define "choosing beggar" as some-one so entitled their expectations step outside the bounds of real life rationality

its today’s paradigm with the young and not so young

you can see it with the anti-google and facebook sentiment in australia, yet when facebook reacts by elminating news links, oh, the bitching

there’s a surprisingly large segment of the population that doesn’t like the intellectual power a search engine like google gives, they don’t do that so others can’t have it

god, jesus

good swear words

"taking thy name in vain"

because

you

know

human vanity

even atheism

is in

the image

of

humanity

men dream

of being "supercompetent"

and facing down the mob

in reality

they are muddlers

and the faces in the mob

i feel like jesus

the people that follow me around

are the demented

the mad

the bloodsucking

why ?

everything exists

there are some corners that are not very palatable

be that as they may

i have seen no trap more subtle

than the need for constant correction

the needy

suck your life

forever

those empty years

yet more happy

than the full

you have

no defence

against a man with no memory

next time you meet him

he is the same

the net is the realm of the articulate

grunting

and brooding moodiness

go

nowhere

the world is full of the ineffective sick caring not for being real in improving their health and wasting your time with their claims on your attention

years ago i wrote the short poem

tears

soft

falling

rain

i didn't really know where it came from, but as child i liked the seekers and in  the carnival is over is the line

"my tears are falling rain"

its fascinating that all those years later my brain was processing it to come out with my version

live a bit longer, you will get more sceptical about "the fourth estate"

i think more than they used to be, they are now a distinct "subculture" with a political mission to further its own views

writing on the web favours the articulate and shows the "inarticulate" up, you can’t get around that, try as you might

on the web

i have seen enough of schizophrenia

and borderline personality disorder

to last me forever

they seek to invalidate me as a person

because what i write

invalidates their toxic nonsense

their behaviour

is mostly

black and white

journalists used to be drunkards, now they are entitled "woke" idiots

a post i made on the  choosing beggars  subreddit

Australia’s Prime Minister CB’s facebook and complains to other "world leaders"

The Australian parliament is passing legislation forcing facebook to pay media news companies for links to their material basically on the terms of the media companies

when facebook sensibly decides to stop linking to anything that could be considered "news" under the new legislation   a storm erupts  about how all this is facebook’s fault

the ubiquity of paywalls for news’ sites says in black and white who owns and controls the material and also makes the legislation irrational and harmful

Magic In The Garden by Gael Levin

White butterflies

White butterflies

In their hundreds,

Rising and falling

 over my cat-mint plants,

Heady in the heat

With the cat-mint oils, they swoop and dive, rise and fall,

Like giant paper snowflakes

Making no sound at all.

Each butterfly with a black dot on its side,

Balancing and landing on amethyst spikes

Making the plants move gently

Powered by butterfly wings

young actors

the smooth faced

pretty

without a brain

upstairs

“ we know where we are, we do not know where we are not ”

we know where we are as much as we know where we are not

“ everything is mind ”

not everything is mind

what is mind ?

caught in verbal thickets

the religious meander indefinitely

not understanding

aiming and aimless

ed.  the quoted statement is a buddhist trope

a marvellous  photo portrait  of the author patricia highsmith as a teenager

there’s something  there

its a sort of death to write to the public taste

successful writers rarely live sane lives

how can they ?

what they write becomes a part of them

there are people out there who seem determined to waste your time

they don’t address the important points you make

they quote you out of context to misrepresent what you say to your face

they declaim nonsense as though it is true

its gender neutral, they can be bitches and bastards

they home in on you, you go away and they disappear, you turn up again and not immediately, but soon they make their appearance

its like some bad and bloody science fiction movie

flush with hypocrisy

she speaks the weasel words

"take good care"

when she wants you dead

for showing her up

lorena, you are full of "untruths" playing some sort of a weird game whereby you are validating yourself with claims that thich nhat yoda would not have agreed with ,  like him being "a living buddha" and giving you "transmission"

your abuse of him and yourself in this way is disgusting

one of my small claims to fame is being kicked out of a zen monastery, it was john loori's at mt. tremper

to be fair they treated me well there, but it just wasn’t gelling for me, it was all so much rubbish i had had a belly full of at boarding school, so i moved on to the providence zen center which i liked

an apologist is low

though not as low

as a theologian

for a theologian

 is an apologist + +

an apologist is low

though not as low

as a theologian

for a theologian

 is an apologist +

cults depend on the suppression of criticism

for their continued existance

erin hanson, a young australian woman "instagram" type poetess is interesting, a marvellous command of language, but "semantically" just seems a bit skew, the poem itself manufacturers the target which can be random, but of course she is very young

she appears to have stopped writing or publishing at least

that’s the third young really talented woman poet i have seen stop writing, there’s hardly anything out there now in terms of quality and of course the public and academic world has little taste for it

regrets move on

life has a habit

of

swallowing

them

the trouble is zen is monotheism under another name which figures with its easy fit into western culture

you can argue christianity is polytheistic and there have been polytheistic versions of christianity in the past  (which islam was a reaction to)  and maybe zen is the true bastion of monotheism ?

koans are idiot rhymes for intellectual cripples

because of the dominant influence of shinto in japan, i don’t think monotheism is a subtextual "meme" there like it is in the west

what you give attention to

you and attention become

so be careful of that partner

lest you both become bereft

plain speaking

plain writing

makes convoluted sense

that feeling of running forward

but the ground covered

is never adequate

that feeling of running forward

but the ground covered

is always inadequate

that feeling of running forward

but the ground covered

is never enough

a day lost

isn’t every day lost ?

well some more than others

i feel a presentiment of something

too obscure to say

it bodes of unfathoming

waters far too deep

no doubt the days will show

what i have cause to weep

the landscape that was before

become urbanised

will become

before

again

looking for an original idea

something that has never been expressed before

an unending search

that turns up little

in a way i’m rather enjoying getting older and living quite a while since you pick up things that open up new directions and understanding you didn’t have a clue about when younger

"koans" are an instrumental part of the disease of zen

my reply to "lorena" pushing her imagined "transmission" from thich nhat hanh on brad’s hardcore zen blog

thich nhat yoda is just another misguided religious teacher, he’s just a tableaux to support your basic schizophrenic condition

you can talk till the cows come home, you are only fooling yourself

like brad you are a cult "misfit" not wholehearted about belonging to the cult so you set up your own version

i remember loori, or rather his minions pushing his commentary as the first on what he called "the three hundred koan shobogenzo" with a subtext of how it was all really his discovery, with some ghastly group meme of loori and tanahashi beavering away on this "sacred work" being made more sacred by these two living "saints"

lol, i can see why they kicked me out, a dissident for sure

it took me a while to figure out he was schizophrenic and then much longer to figure out all zen is schiz, dumb arses chasing who knows what

whether its online zen or real life, its some sort of bad meme messing up people’s live’s, perhaps they are deserving ?

this maw of ravening idiocy you need some sort of prep to fall into, in my case it was being brought up in religious schools, most people it doesn’t seem to effect, but it did me

anyway john was very charismatic and convincing to the gullible, the only "teacher" whom i ever came across who really understood what she was on about was anti-charismatic, toni packer who was quite unappealing in that way so ever since i have been very wary of those fucked-in-the-head charismatic types

you can’t tell the insane

they are insane

if they could see they were insane

they wouldn’t be insane

you can’t tell the insane

they are insane

if they could see they are insane

they wouldn’t be insane

i had not thought of emily dickinson as having severe migraine, but when you read the "i heard a fly buzz" poem, it seems to fit the bill

There interposed a Fly –

With Blue  –  uncertain stumbling Buzz  –

Between the light  – and me  –

And then the Windows failed  –  and then

I could not see to see  –

epilepsy has also been posited, but i agree with  this article , severe migraine or perhaps more likely some sort of blurring of migraine and epilepsy as seizures can take many forms and what emily describes seems a little heavy duty for migraine

plus i think epilepsy is so apparent there would have been some sort of record of her being known to have it like her nephew and there was a family history

i was looking at the  handwritten  poem and suddenly, for the first time, i saw her writing it, i think because i have written like that, something significant has happened and one writes down pretty much what happened, it comes out in a stream

this be

the four lined verse

that is

four lines

ed.  a reference to some passages  (nos.  11 and 12 )  in paul harrison’s translation of the diamond sutra

online shopping

the quest for the holy object

down the labyrinthic maze

of choices

supplier, product, cost, variations, delivery time

did i even understand what i needed in the first place ?

hit the paypal button

 is my address right ?

and one day

it turns up

the library of babel

from the inside you can’t get out

it goes on forever in all directions

from the outside you can see where it begins and ends

the story

things are as you discover them

not as you suppose them to be

what always amazes me with buddhism with its vast writings and i mean "library of babel" vast

is how it is entirely nonsense

2,500 years of collected nonsense

i suppose you could say the same for christianity, but 500 years shorter

life

an infinity of rabbit holes

each more tortuous than the last

is there a paradigm of excessive religiosity whereby the state becomes too weak to defend itself as in the case of tibet and possibly the byzantine empire

interestingly, i wonder if that was a deep structure reason for the  english reformation

you can’t unwrapt the past

even if you do

the past doesn’t change

unwrap the past

you can’t

the wrapping persists