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
breaking into a suitcase with
a ballpoint pen
what a joke the padlocks are
the content of soaps
understanding
misunderstanding
laced
with the full gamut
of traumatic emotion
then
all
this
again
washed up in reasoning
yet reasoning suffices
to pilot a course
as erroneous as can be
remembering
like something coming from nothing
doesn’t work like that
rather
an uncovering
of what was once covered
forgetting
like going to nothing
doesn’t work like that
rather
a covering again
of what was once uncovered
the only freedom in life
comes from seeing its patterns
repeating
endlessly
not some objective distant look
but being tossed in them
endlessly
tension
the undiscovered
continually regurgitated
to give the illusion
of
the potential
of new discovery
if its a fact why is the missionizing necessary ?
lotus eating
the echo chambers
of our own idiocy
the shards
of the unnecessary
unproductive
waste of our lives
i find very few people can go more than a round or two with me on reddit, usually they run at the first contradiction, just reading me seems to upset them, i bend their brains in a way that they find difficult to cope with
public execution has historically always been part of our social conditioning, modern society with its abolition of this is missing a fundamental aspect necessary for adequate social control and establishing behavioural norms
how the christchurch mosque
murderer can remain alive to enjoy a somewhat comfortable if restricted life beggars the imagination
attention is heroin to women and the ones with poor judgment don’t care about the quality
blossoms hold onto themselves
to no avail
winds turned by the cliffs
disperse them
yet in their absence
the phoenix arises
life’s burning goes on
faces
the lifeblood of humanity
i don’t know
how the blind cope
with
the
absence
the female mind likes to be occupied
it will occupy itself regardless
be wary of the content
positive change also brings new traps to be stepped around
positive change always brings new traps to be stepped around
a quote of william faulkner, he has a
philo-existential cast of thought in an extent that is unusual, even for a novelist
The dead air shapes the dead darkness, further away than seeing shapes the dead earth
my less pessimistic rework
is seeing the limit ?
further than we can see
what we don’t know
more than we are
statues
crying tears of blood
you would think the faithful take their lesson
its their blood
empty space
so hard not to run from
in the void of nothingness
arises
fecundity
if you have ever watched a chinese historical "soap" some of the imperial intrigue in the plots seems way over the top
but when you
read this , it wasn’t
the battle of talas
facile theory
mapping nonsense to nonsense
victimized by incorrect ideas
talk doesn’t cut the ice
life shakes us out
dead wood
sprouts in spring
again
nanoparticles from heated plastic containers is an emerging
health problem
i must be the only "writer" who doesn’t feel threatened by
AI because i don’t write like anyone else
i guess there will be others
the nature of "large scale language models" is its "averaging" of style and content, if you are an outlier then it will pass you by
evolution has crippled women by not allowing them to think straight
evolution cripples men by not allowing them to think straight about women
only a fool would ask why the world is the way it is
reading the book
that tells us everything
the first page
overwhelms us
and we close
the covers
to gather dust
we dare not
know
its existence
addiction
the slow removal from the problem
what it offers
has to be explored
isolation
we are created with the illusion
that we are closer than we are
to the low reading age
incomprehension
is someone else’s stupidity
errors accumulate
and rightness
washes away
the puzzles
we have the wrong answers for
and think them the right
the young have a vigour
age can do nothing about
except
wait
hypertextuality, intertextuality
words about
english literature
PHD’s
wasting their time
immersion
it all seems true
yet some worlds
need
leaving
the dummkopf
traumatised by genuine inquiry
attempts
to
censor
absurdity judges
non-absurdity as absurd
how correct ?
yet the no-path
of path
is
true
the teachings are an illusion
therefore
the teacher is an illusion
self taught
or one’s own understanding
is
the
only
way
a new low in religious
advertising
its actually chimeric, zen/pop psychology with a catholic icon
blue eyes with european features and eastern mediterranean colouring
getting drunk is
self-injury, alcohol is a systemic poison, i don’t know why people don’t understand this
self-injury is a dangerous area that broadens into wanting to injure others, which of course alcohol is notorious for on all sorts of different time scales
another form of socially misunderstood
self-injury is tattooing
the children of my home village are puzzled
we speak the same accent yet neither they nor their parents know me
seven decades have past since i left
ed. my reworking of he zhizhang’s
famous poem
the evening star
hung like a lantern
in the western sky
all the golden moments
condensed
into
a drop
of
light
searching for answers
there never was any question to
our condition
armless
cut off at the knees
did it hurt
or having no head
you are as good as dead ?
a stone dream
of something unknown
caught in an existential half life ?
ed. the
belvedere and
milet torsos
a painting by joan fear of matakotuko swamp near ruapuke beach in raglan, new zealand
don’t tell because it doesn’t need to be told
unnecessary grief
always washes the world
the poem "hermitage" by fushan fayuan, translated by suru
in a hidden retreat, a rocky spring flows clear like my heart
birds spontaneously sing — blossoms freely bloom
i sight the mountains and rivers, the land’s native character
what thing is not the tathāgata before my eyes ?
幽棲
幽棲泉石暢心懷鳥自啼兮花自開看見山河國土性眼前何物不如來
my reply
i see
not one thing
but many
i see
fragile beauty
spring blossom
plucked by the wind
when the book
becomes you
watch out
recursion squared
is uncontrollable
women and pride
some would rather die
than back down
the gods who punish
and are not punished in turn
bloated with their own righteousness
they harm and hurt
calling it justice
the misery of gods who punish
and call justice
the horror of their inflicted vision
it occurred to me
i say dead
no longer with us
but what has happened
is we have
parted forever
dementia
that slow sad drinking
of the cup of lethe
to go back to what we were before
nothing
dementia
that slow sad drinking
of the cup of lethe
to go back to what we were before
no thing
re-incarnation
retreading
the rubber of being ?
even though
its a soap , its quite an effective exposition of reincarnation, the essential principle being that memories of the previous life are lost
the movie in our heads
about the real world
is a varying match
the ordinary versus the extraordinary
one kills the other
and its not the extraordinary
wow,
the real reason john key (ed. new zealand prime minister
2008-2016 ) resigned
china has a long history of beautiful women being involved in politics, the higher ranking concubines of emperors were effectively agents for their respective clans and you can actually argue that henry the eight’s wives were part of a similar system
china like russia has slipped back into its imperial mode pretty damn quick
lei gives a fascinating insight into how chinese politics really works, it sounds like there is some internal division within the
CCP over the
anti-western direction that xi jinping is taking
according to roland barthes, greta garbo’s face gives "a sort of
Platonic
Idea of the human creature"
ed.
from his book "mythologies" (
1957)
i think that’s where its at, she takes people into a more
religio-philosophic space about humanity and reality with a "spiritual charisma"
bodhidharma came from the east
cypress trees fall to the ground
chasing views
retardation gains
lame amongst the living
joys equalize
but they don’t
even better places fade
but they’re not too bad when they’re there
the interesting thing about the hollywood writers/actors strike is the industry has been subsidised by "talent" overcapacity and as such they are being paid beneath what justifies their time, free carrying to some extent corporate profitability
so there’s some changes coming to the world of the cringingly bad
of course people who die now live on in facebook
a catchy chinese?
tune
the young actor the clip is focused on is a "heartthrob" in the
strange violent world of chinese soaps
writing they write
however without the recursive reflection of contemplation/meditation
the words fall into the empty bucket of no meaning
that holds
bottomless waste
billie eillish has
existential angst
she’s pretty autistic in my view
a history of a lack of resolution
we call it suspense
the continual new forming of the unresolved
“
I’m married but if
I wasn’t there is absolutely no way
I would date someone with a neck or face tattoo — they are massive red flags
I can’t think of a single man
I know with a neck or face tattoo who isn’t a massive douchebag/ abusive type of person and
I can’t think of a single woman
I know with a neck or face tattoo who isn’t an extremely damaged person or mentally ill ”
lives
can bifurcate
holes in the script
inconsistency
too much deus ex machina
windswept time
the memories erode
also
eroding
us
love
that eternal star
does not wait
but rushes on
unilateral disarmament
proves one thing
the effectiveness
of the other’s armament
my time is immobile
the world rushes past
i am reluctant to emerge
into its buffeting sway
i can’t forgive
or won’t
or don’t
the injury
smarts
forever
the themes of chinese soap operas appear to be
deceit
violence
unreasonable and harsh punishment
all validated
by a unhappy happy ending
that then breaks up
into more
manufactured
disaster
live for
50,
000 years
and life still won’t make sense
how can it ?
the brief glimpse we get
is all there can be
of
understanding
“
It raised one of the problems with the development of
American
Zen.
People read
Dogen, or some famous teacher, from one translator’s work and assume that’s what
Dogen,
Bodhidharma, whomever meant.
Very frustrating ”
for sure, people do not understand that translations are 'interpretations", especially with religious texts so you get a lot of blatant idiocy lapped up apparently, by blatant idiots
“
I’ve recently decided that the right action for me right now is to be a
Christian ”
a "right action" can’t be proved in advance, rather it has to be shown as a result in the long term. i don’t get the right vibe from the way you express yourself, too full of your own certainty when in fact you are very uncertain
the secret of fiction is the way it can go on forever
the next phrase might be a deus ex machina that changes everything
the only consistency is the writer’s mind
funerals are not for the now gone person, but a communal marking of absence
of course you could just look at the absence
"seeing off a monk returning to nanquan mountain" by fushan fayuan and translated by suru
returning to the mountain thinking clearly and proud
the key to this life is not to disgrace the former sages
look to that ancient buddha the venerable nanquan
no less than thirty years in the empty mountains
my reply
thirty years of solitude
are
enough
to see the truth
that
there
is
no
truth
only
thirty
years
of
solitude
noh theater is very "zen"
we are in the second incarnation of western zen and its built on the first which was hume via jesuit missionaries
zen and buddhism as imports from japan and asia have been part of the western philosophical tradition for
250 years, so in the second incarnation post
ww2 it just slotted naturally into a
religio-philosophical hybrid which basically has all the japanese folk beliefs stripped out and this also fitted in quite well to christianity which has been missing its mystical arms for centuries meeting a need there
interestingly i have read that shinto was originally part of buddhism and the separation today was the result of meiji and imperial era governments attempting to create a more "nationalistic" and aggressive religion than buddhism
reading yoshida kenko’s "essays in idleness" which is set in 14th century kyoto gives a wonderful picture of medieval japanese culture
asian cultures have a highly intertwined mix of superstition and beliefs in daily and ceremonial life, imo, historically a order of magnitude greater than the west
"friends" are an illusion !
functional relationships are not
the worlds of better than can be
turn out
to not to be
melodramas and soap operas are righted worlds
where the women are boss
overtly
the gifted
run through universes
yet there are still more universes
to explore
you are getting into the tricky area of visionary experiences if you are talking about transmission (ed. zen) with historical gaps or discontinuity
for fushan fayuan to be taking
the approach he did, he must have had some awareness of the validity of this
i like him
, he’s poetic, comes from the school of hard knocks, travelled extensively and is straightforward
i don’t put so much weight on the visionary myself now, maybe because that river has run dry so to speak, but it is an essential stage to go through and i think its necessary to break the mould of our culturally ingrained conventional view of how things are
unfortunately these days people think drugs are an adequate substitute, but they are not and screw up the brain to boot
things pass quickly and we don’t understand them
however
when we look a second or third time and more
we
start
to
sepehr sent an email with some interesting questions
You said :
“ there may be some truth to "god created the universe", something came into existence bootstrapping itself in an adaptive way and god would be the only thing that cover that, straddling
non-existence and existence ”
You also said:
“
There is a mysterious irradiance that permeates the universe ”
This sounds like a panentheism
However, is this god alive ?
Does this god possess any experiential content ?
What about hylozoism or panpsychism ?
That is: all complex adaptive systems exhibit some degree of being alive or experiential content, and their more complex forms arise (such as sapience) from a greater coalescing of processes ?
my reply
my current thinking about "god" is its an ontological notion, so there is a degree of truth to it and its difficult or even impossible to define truth outside ontology so there has to be another road and this is the timeless mystical discovery
subtle traps
and not so subtle
are
still traps
subtle traps
and not so subtle
are
still
traps
there is more than tiresomeness in medieval theological literature with its continual jumping through the hoops of feudal constraints and their mythology of hierarchies and necessity of abasement which is really just propaganda for the social order
once you have grasped the theory
that only leaves the fact
the circles of life
remain circles
until resolution
wang wei
where is he now ?
sailing down
the river in
peach tree valley
sometimes
within the moil
the ticket for the road out
is there for the taking
equanimity
is occasional
if it is never that
you are doing something wrong
being careful will allow you to sail a boat for a thousand years
a chinese saying
julian of norwich had a vision in which "a little thing" as round as a ball and the size of a hazelnut
was in the palm of her hand and she wondered what it was, and the answer was, it is everything
sages pontificate
theologians rationalise
a billion volumes
spew their excrement
julian’s vision cannot be touched
there is no other truth
one of the more honest and endearing features of polytheistic pantheons like the ancient greek and chinese is the gods don’t know everything, are constantly making mistakes and acting on insufficient information, always scheming, fighting and jockeying for position, less immortal than mortal i’d say
one god who knows everything and is always right is depressing in comparison, very depressing, a brain disease in fact
why is don quoxite such a profound book ?
his misperception of reality and his "better than can be" world
we all suffer from
truly universal
i don’t hold that addiction is a
"no-fault" condition, though in a sense it obviously is, however practical ways of defeating it involve the recognition of choice, that in effect addiction is an allocation of time with certain known results and you don’t have to allocate time that way, ie the cost of addiction is not simply the problems from addiction itself, but the lost opportunities contingent
another of the problems of addiction is the lack of complete recovery, for instance
ex-alcoholics in my experience are total arseholes which you might expect, they are very damaged and lack adaptability and of course have entrained behaviours developed before and during the alcoholism
other drugs like psychotropic really scramble the brains, its life long
this is the total weirdness of war in today’s world, a fifth of the population is caught in the world of addiction to varying degrees
, yet you are killing those not caught, those caught of course never go near the front line which actually must be an educational aspect of addiction, especially with non alcohol drugs, it does broaden the experience in certain ways, that’s another perspective, that addiction does have certain positive teachings that the more "straight and narrow" miss out on
entertainment
schizophrenia
in
the
wrong direction
the need for shifting perspectives
to shift us with them
suru’s translation of a poem by fushan
blossoms fall on a silver bed in
brightly-blooming spring
the sinking moon behind the canopy distant in the night
the empty hall is silent and there’s no one around
i simply pick up sandalwood, burning it as i please
ed. sandalwood is a mosquito repellent and expensive
夜坐
花落銀床春爛熳月沉斗帳夜迢遙虛堂寂寞無人共只把旃檀任意燒
my reply
the ground is silver white
yet lacks
the wealth of day
yet is more
the infinity of solipsism
needs to be crafted
to survive in commonality
locality
non-locality
universality
in
the particular
itchy boots
stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts of monrovia, liberia
why do i feel she is safer there than a similar situation in some american cities ?
what meister eckhart said (the real one, not that fraud tolle) was god is not god because if you say god is only god then that is a limitation which conflicts with god as being without limitation
this actually caused him some problems with the church authorities in a time when "heretical" positions were physically dangerous
however, the difference of opinion is fundamental now i think about it, eckhart was pointing out deficiencies in the ontological proofs of god whereas the validity of the church was dependent on constraints of ontology and its axioms
addiction
you have to pick up
on the road out
what was discarded on the road in
the danger is
that its now gone
and you are permanently damaged
an interesting medieval concern as exemplified by pieter bruegel the elder in his
painting "the fight between carnival and lent"
i think we would know the conundrum today as the question "why don’t the righteous prevail" ?
“
What is the
Buddha ? " "
It is a
shit-wiping stick" replied
Ummon ”
"
What is the
Buddha ? " "
Why talk bullshit" replied
Ummon
idiots argue
the intelligent
contest
to straighten out
their own thoughts
it was the combination of high velocity (compound bows) and
accurate archery from horseback that made the mongols an undefeatable force before gunpowder and then as the use of gunpowder became more common they switched to using the skills of subject nations with gunpowder to be able to implement fast effective sieges
abandoning belief
if i scratch the surface of the sky
there is nothing underneath
abandoning belief
if i scratch the surface of the sky
there is nothing
underneath
how weird
to accidently come across a relative’s instagram page and in the photos you see a lot of people and places you know/knew
like a different life
the net of fiction
dragged through historicity
catches us by surprise
and we are fooled
china’s history is a soap opera/melodrama
the problem with these is the level of trauma
over the years i have pondered definitions of what a religion is without resolution, but the
USA internal revenue service has done a better job than i could
a distinct legal existence and religious history
a recognized creed and form of worship
established places of worship
a regular congregation and regular religious services
an organization of ordained ministers
bach’s toccata and fugue in
D minor
played on a harp by ashkhen gevorkian
its a very visual rendering of the music and in a way more informative than the organ
i had never thought much about music for films, but really they are more than half, hans zimmer gives
good insight
my re-translation of a poem by fushan
fresh snow
the wind forms
snow rollers
stuck here in an unheated temple
clothed i lie on a bench
its only warm enough to sleep later in the day
age
infirmity of mind
sticking too much to what it knows
because it cannot accommodate
what it doesn’t
when they reply, not to what you say but what are in effect "voices in their head"
be careful of your own head
reflections
I and
II by fushan translated by suru
I
walking a thousand mile road on wingéd steed
every grave mountain hides a solemn person
altogether equally bewildered, what about the past ?
days and nights in succession, mired in the six realms
其二
世事紛紛日日新利名誰肯出紅塵人人都有休休意真個休休有幾人
my reworking with a less literal
re-translation, but hopefully capturing the sense
long the journey of life
some moments condense
and glitter
but as for the rest
mud and dust
II
worldly affairs
ever-changing in a succession of days
who is willing to abandon mundane fame and gain ?
everyone longs for moments of blessed respite
but truly carefree and content ? how many people achieve that ?
其二
世事紛紛日日新利名誰肯出紅塵人人都有休休意真個休休有幾人
its a
semantic-pragmatic world
lurching between modes
respite gleams in the distance
but is never arrived at
looking for signs of fraud
small inconsistencies
signal bigger
beware
ed. the more consistent something is, the more you are seeing the thing or person as they are, fragments can be arranged to create appearances but a unified whole cannot
every story is incomplete
complete stories
are
fool’s
gold
there’s nothing like a melodrama to distort your sense of reality
but i wonder
how unreal are they ?
the sign says stop
i go on
the sign says go on
i stop
the trap of life is its nature as an unceasingly unsolved problem, there is always something new around the corner
huh, the interrobang/interabang (
‽ ) which is a question mark combined with an exclamation mark indicating a question expressed in an exclamatory manner fulfils an unique need in punctuation
i don’t think they got the
2023 barbie film look right, there is a needed step away from being too close to the mien of the commercial tableaux, some
"re-invention" is necessary, but i guess they have to deal with what mattel finds acceptable
the straight replication doesn’t translate well to film
also the script is weak, too "idea" driven so the human interest got lost
margot robbie
is interesting , clever
religions
are plural
they can’t all be right
and it turns out
not even one is right
the power
of putting something aside
to be resolved later
in the meantime
resolving
itself
not of this world
or any world
who can say anything ?
not of this world
or any world
who can then say
anything ?
all i can say is the world is more open to you than you think
if one avenue is closed, there are other avenues open and they are not the lesser for not being your preferred option
china must have always been a hazardous place to live because so much of its "wisdom literature" assumes everyone around you is a danger to you
i think there’s this huge confusion between what philosophy does and science does, science is so good these days that its assumed to be a universal constructor of explanations and that philosophical problems are within the realm of science to explain, but oddly
, in the last twenty years its becoming more and more apparent that science itself has intrinsic limits in terms of its scope and the "theory of everything" is an impossible pipedream
the first (and greatest imo philosopher) heraclitus had the traditional greek views of physics,
astro-physics and biology that are outright looney by our standards, but these erroneous understandings in no way impacted on the validity of his philosophical musings
“
There always a confusion between philosophy and science, but the fact is vast swathes of what used to be philosophy is now uncontroversial solved physics ”
the reason i put that example of heraclitus is to decouple philosophy from science in a way that philosophy addresses problems that cannot be solved by science
in essence i think philosophy is an attempt to untangle certain recursions as regards "being" or "meaning" at the most abstract level and you can compare this to einstein’s theories on light and its role in carrying information which also de-recursify but are at an inherently different level of abstraction (bit of a clumsy way of putting it)
philosophy properly understood has no need of accurate theories and conceptions of matter, astrophysics and biology, though of course historically and even today these matters have been and are entangled
i am wary of defining words away from the commonly understood meaning as a "schizophrenic" trait, but like the word, say "god" the meaning in the public domain is such a mishmash of nonsense that to discuss it one must step into the schizophrenic territory of redefining the word somewhat in one’s own terms which i think you are also doing
making for
a tidy world
tidier
than
can be
the problem with "meditation" is it will amplify schizophrenia
this is not entirely negative but in some people make them a danger to themselves and others
this is compounded by the theological swill they also imbibe as well as the malign
so-called "techniques"
i have
and then i had not
did i ever have ?
i had
and then
had not
you can only write for yourself
if others get something out of it
well and good
if not
too bad
complexity is a barrier
beyond which
we can no longer see
cause and effect
loss
is always
hard
to take
yet
from its depths
shines the beauty
of non-being
loss
is always
hard
to take
yet
in its depths
lies
salvation
exiting
may be
the only way
to leave
and in the end
it happens anyway
hard to start
i don’t want to do it
one little step
and the process begins
bitter my life
loss in the living
loss in my death
the concubines lot
in the fire of life
ed. the chinese emperors really did have their concubines killed and buried with them
the river of absurdity
flows over cataracts
its sound resounds
and mixes with that of the feeding brooks
impressive as it is
it doesn’t mean anything
only
its hard to take it that way
absurdity
unlocks many a puzzle
it takes absurdity
to unlock
some puzzles
the compacted world of fiction
coming from one brain
can’t be reality
perhaps the most salient way of looking at "addiction" in whatever form is awareness of the implicit price of what the addiction necessarily excludes
is it acceptable to pay that price ?
it never is
a blink we are
in the mystery of life
to
disperse again
immortality
eternal life
we already have
immortality
eternal life
why
chase
perspectives ?
the miraculous mixing of parental genes
something unique comes out
that is and isn’t
of either parent
"the monk chooses to live at fushan" by fushan fayuan translated by suru
a thousand days at the zen gate, time to choose a place to live
the autumn wind blows causing the purple eggplants to sway
white clouds drift on and on across the golden valley
the water flows burbling over the rocky creek
the monk’s staff at last ends its flight north of tianzhu
the bowl and sack struggle their way out of western shimen
the conditions of meeting and parting comes from where you left
alone, i live in the shadows of the trees on hanshan
浮山解制
千日禪關解制時秋風吹動紫伽黎白雲片片橫金谷流水潺潺下石溪錫杖竟飛天柱北缽囊爭出石門西因緣聚散由他去獨向寒山樹影棲
my reworking of the above
so long travelling
now in the autumn of my life
past the need to go further
i part and come together
where i am
it is necessary to follow something to the end
to emerge in a new beginning
the world
outside normality
painful
inside normality
the appearance
of comfort
north of the future
that probability space
from whence
all comes into being
past heat death
an emergent effect
from complexity
past the limit
sweeps back
i’ve been watching a few chinese "soaps" and there’s a subtle propaganda teaching of an unquestioning obedience to a cruel and irrational authority, that is, i think, deliberate
an individual succeeds, not by challenging the authority, but by moving up in it
anyone who attempts to change the system meets with eventual disaster and the status quo triumphs
the "forbidden palace" in which some of the soaps are set has an interesting if bizarre history
a story once told
loses its power
a story once told
loses its power
what doesn’t lose its power ?
a story never told
what is the basic issue with addiction ?
i think its that the brain interprets being in whatever problematic activity (ie not just drugs or alcohol) as beneficial to it, this is its intuitive estimate and the only way to avoid this is construct an understanding of the negative effects and that these are real and its necessary to observe the way the brain is being "blinded"
seeing off the monk jizu by fushan fayuan translated by suru
alone i wander three thousand miles
a staff resounding through a thousand peaks
treading the meaning of caoxi everywhere i go
i’ve been through every last hall of shaoshi
heart blossoms bloom petal by petal
the prajna suns dawning one after another
as the rituals of these directions conclude
i return home to drink from the
10 peck cup
送僧歸雞足
孤身遊萬里一錫振千峰踏遍曹溪旨參窮少室宗心花開片片慧日現重重禮罷諸方後歸家扣石鍾
ed. i reinterpret below the above poem in terms of leo susskin’s
conjecture that complexity has its own momentum that carries on beyond the heat death of a black hole
its sorta a bit freaky to think that fayuan was thinking in ways that are similar to the most advanced
astro-quantum physics treading the roads of complexity
past heat death
living long i come to the death of complexity
yet i arrived there first
and came across complexity later
neat
tidy
everything works as planned
messy
incoherent
the very intention
falls apart
reddit maxims
a downvote is an upvote
one upvote is better than ten
shadow bans are badges of honour
better than can be
why can’t i live there
death goes nowhere
it doesn’t add up
within resolution
another difficulty
has
already
crystallised
the realm of poets and mystics
things can be
even when it seems they are not
and not be
even when it seems they are
a primitive female
ritual no-one has any idea the meaning of
if you travel down a dead end road, at least learn what it looks like
if you want to understand how women think, don’t worry about what the psychology research says, just watch a soap
the amount of trauma that a woman seems to find necessary would make a general blink
imo, having closely followed the research literature, the myocardial fallout from the mrna covid vaccines would have been a lot less if those overpaid idiots in the
CDC and other health bodies had also read the literature and spaced the vaccines at four months minimum, preferably six months
it was negligence so gross it amounts to involuntary manslaughter, the problem was not with the science but the bureaucracy and the intellectually lazy people who inhabit it
the benefits of vitamin
D and the importance of blood type
O (being less susceptible) vs
AB were also ignored
something so badly done its farcical can shed a sceptical light on what supposedly is not farcical
i wish my writing were more accessible, you have to be in the right mood to read it or it just goes past you
i know this because when i read what i wrote and its been a while since i wrote it, i have to sorta mode into it to see what it is about, its quite a different space from normal and often i can’t get there
all a bit weird actually, just reading it freaks some people out, i must be the most shadowbanned person on the web
well at least they get the gist of some of what i write for their insufficient brains to be offended
parallel universes
a similar existence but the same
a fleeting glimpse
tells us there must be more
fancy words
spun on the frame
of a simple idea
fools many
my reworking of "sitting in mulian pavilion" by fushan fayuan
my little hermitage
high in the cliffs
away from the disease of men
a spring for water
and the moon for a lantern
questions about reality have no place here
the answer is everywhere
the night sky’s lantern
not fixed
yet always returning
there is a lesson
in this
“
When people say humanities and arts degrees aren’t real degrees and that those people don’t deserve a living wage from those degrees ”
when people come out of a degree course more narrow minded and intolerant of criticism than they go in, i’d say there is a problem
99% of artists and writers are on the poverty line, why should arts graduates who are when all is said and done, just spectators of originality fare better ?
not everyone ages well, its also the process of dying
to say something worthwhile
it must be consistent from beginning to end
real literature does this
entertainment doesn’t
women live a mystery of themselves and their children that men have no part of
memories
both bind and create us
what starts as a plain
turns into a road
we cannot get off
a story is meaning
malign
useful
fun
instructive
indifferent
take your choice
a stop on a long journey
also turns out to be
a long journey
eternity
our footsteps along it
the pain comes and goes
loss, love
held for a while
then
gone
when you can’t say what you think
then you can’t think what you think
when you can’t say what you think
then you can’t see what you think
men and women are a commodity to each other
but, like everything else
there’s good and bad
when you are talking to one person then another
you are literally dropping from one universe to another
its very different with different rules
and exhausting
theodicy
makes sense of the world of evil
but it needs a context
without the context
everything is neutral
wars for instance
just occur
and the human consequences
are the dynamic in action
when you look at history
and the way power cliques used to murder each other
its something else
martin heidegger is turning out to be much more of a nazi than anyone thought and totally unrepentant in his postwar life
the question is, does this affect the value of his philosophical writings ?
he’s a mixed bag with his waffle about the importance of where we come to be yet ignoring where he was
you can’t separate the sound from the meaning in a good poem so translation of poetry is inherently limited, unlike prose
i have noticed translating poetry that you never get it right and its better to "rework" another’s writing into your own expression and views if you want a "quality" product
faery worlds beyond our ken
somnolescent mysteries
beauties fade in and out
the sharp thorns of the past
abate
ed. this poem is an attempt to capture the mood
of this dance by lady fuca
, (an
historical empress) as the goddess of the river luo and and the sense of the subtitled lyrics
faery worlds beyond our ken
somnolescent mysteries
beauties fade in and out
the sharp thorns of the past
abide
an unusual
dance interpretation of bolero by the female japanese troupe "avantgardey"
one of the more subtle but highly significant features of the modern age is people living longer and a significant portion of those remaining in good intellectual shape at a more advanced age which has greatly modified the "power" landscape, old people being able to remain in control of whatever and this has strong negatives and positives
a positive is retaining and getting functional value from very experienced people longer, a negative is men who have clearly lost the plot, but still have the skills to retain their position to the detriment of whatever they are managing
the problem with inflation is that it destroys the principal function of price which is to provide information about the relative value of a service or goods
“ henry miller versus charles bukowski ”
they’re different, you can’t really compare them and you have to understand them differently
anaïs nin and henry had strong mutual influences on each other
the problem with charles bukowski is he is one of the great geniuses in the area of milton and goethe, but he crippled himself with drink and other stupidities
all the same you can’t deny his genius, henry miller while good, is not in the same class
sometimes writers do unforgivable things to their characters that put you off them
cs lewis when he kills the "visitors to narnia" in a train crash and has them travel through some ridiculous notion of an afterlife (aslan’s country)
the chinese soap "the story of
yanxi palace " where the maid servant mingyu is given a slow death from the insertion of silver needles in her body by the imperial concubine chun
btw, this series is really literary quality, i suspect because the strict censorship in china doesn’t allow many outlets for this level of writing and production and if you have read anything of chinese history, what is portrayed is not totally unrealistic
AI is going to make machine language translation increasingly accurate, if you are looking for future employment in the area of translating, please be aware that human translation within ten to twenty years will likely become redundant
any language studies now should be combined with computer programming and theory skills
anything to do with english lit from the universities is only educating you to be stupid
its effectiveness in this is painfully observable in real life graduates who are amongst the most narrow minded incompetents i have ever come across
the passage of things
is its own passage
reasoning
fails
cosmology is in a surprising state of flux, there are a lot of things not adding up and
this paper by reformulating in minkowski space says allowing the so called fundamental constants to evolve and vary does add things up and does away with the cosmological constant
remember einstein said the cosmological constant was the result of some sort of mistake !
could this new approach resolve that and other problems like "dark matter" ?
$13,000 for
a lost arm
the fat cats of the russian elite
sleek with their ten fingers
stories
one page is inconsistent with the next
yet this is our lives
stories
one page is inconsistent with the next
yet this is how we live
“ the consumption of foods prepared at high temperatures has been associated with numerous health risks
to date, the chief identified source of risk has been small molecules produced in trace levels by cooking and reacting with healthy
DNA upon consumption, but this study considered whether the
DNA in food itself also presents a hazard
we hypothesize that
high-temperature cooking may cause significant damage to the
DNA in food, and this damage might find its way into cellular
DNA by metabolic salvage ”
ed. this in fact is a highly significant finding that has implications for the way we cook food, namely that fried and charred foods are problematic from this viewpoint, though this varies
table 1
tell the truth but don’t tell it square
go by circuity
its a road more fair
rules are an attempt to govern emergent phenomena
given that, then its not surprising that just about (but not) all are extremely unsatisfactory
vitamin
D deficiency impacts a number of significant areas of eye health
“ lower levels of vitamin
D may cause thinning in the macula and the retinal nerve fiber layer ”
study
arsenic in australian rice is a problem, its in the soil and gets concentrated in the husk so brown rice isn’t healthy like it is made out to be
lying in bed half asleep, i suddenly saw a long poem, but all i could decipher were these verses
when the petals lie waiting
on the ground to decay
this must mean
autumn is not far away
sense and nonsense
our propensity for the latter
and avoidance of the former
astounds me
the emotional fixed points
is it only loss
that brings meaning ?
the writer’s strike
the world
saved
from
so much stupidity
immersive worlds
breaking free is not so easy
what is so different about the
russo-ukraine war is the immediacy and sophistication of communication,
here you are , the position on the front being told to you and discussed on youtube in almost real time
and then (viewer discretion advised, soldiers are killed before your eyes)
there is this , the
73rd maritime special operations center suprising the russians in their trenches, clearly the russians lack experience in this sort of warfare, most likely conscripts with no experience at all up against battle hardened ukrainian troops
russia was notorious for using its men as "cannon fodder" or "meat" during
WW2, apparently leadership attitudes and public acceptance of them haven’t changed since
better than can be worlds
i have one or two
its is greedy to want more
but we all do i guess
that was sylvia plath’s problem
replete with mystic infinity
she reached too far into what would destroy her
normality
an insightful poem by maggie smith
from this page
after the divorce, i think of something my daughter said about mars
once you go, you can never come back
if you returned to earth
the gravity would turn your bones
to noodles. i mean your skeleton
would sort of melt. so if you go
you have to stay gone
this is so chinese , a tolerance of dictatorial arrogance and the role and duty of the commoners to support it despite being
ill-treated by those in power
warning, its a soap and surprisingly addictive, but the life as portrayed in the forbidden city has some historical veracity
unfortunately a lot of the archaeological evidence of ch’an in the form of temples, their records, statuary, steles etc has been destroyed not by the communists, but property development
one feature of modern life that cannot replicate "dynasty" zen is the travel they did, you can see it all through the records, another is celibacy, modern zen is just some toxic wall papering of asininity and inattention
philosophical systems
that claim to be more than they are
empty verbiage
consume
a billion trillion hours
of nonsense
what comes together to create a sort of intensity
as it occurs
it is already falling apart
the ragged edges
give it all away
cogitating space
answers are illusions
forever presides and never ends
the moon goddess dances
let’s remain mesmerised
cogitating space
answers are an illusion
forever presides and never ends
the moon goddess dances
let’s remain mesmerised
when looking
obscures what is seen
what do you do then ?
slight pokings
reveal more
than hewing with an axe
sayings of joshu
№ 415
joshu and the young novice bunon played a verbal game
the aim was never to get the upper hand, and it was agreed that the winner should buy the loser a rice cake
joshu said : i am a donkey
bunon replied : i am the donkey’s arse
joshu replied : i am the donkey’s dung
bunon replied : i am the worm in the dung
joshu said : what’s the good of being there ?
bunon replied : i spent the summer there
joshu said : go buy a rice cake !
my comment
buon may have spent the summer with joshu as monks customarily did so joshu flips what buon says in a checkmate
this is so joshu and makes me think he was a real person, there’s nothing else like him in zen, miles ahead in verbal adroitness and poor enough for the food to matter
“ one day, in a mood of sublime emptiness, subhuti was resting underneath a tree when flowers began to fall about him
"we are praising you for your discourse on emptiness" the gods whispered to subhuti
"but i have not spoken of emptiness" replied subhuti
"you have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness" responded the gods
"this is the true emptiness." the blossoms showered upon subhuti as rain ”
not talking
not thinking
not talking or thinking
a strange space
falling flowers
and non-being
neither there or not there
this
is
true
enlightenment
some
words
about
birds
and their flight
don’t
solve
the
problems
of
the universe
some
words
about
birds
and their flight
don’t
solve
the
problems
of
life
isn’t can’t won’t
be
is can will
be
everything
sails
between
these
the ends we tie
and the ends we don’t
concatenate
the ends we tie up
and the ends we leave loose
determine our life
the theologies of christian churches are becoming obscenely
anti-factual, to me its a puzzle as to whether they could relax their insistence on
"anti-factualism" and so accommodate a potentially larger and younger congregation, or is the very essence of their being the
anti-factualism, without which they cannot exist ?
“
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely/ the world offers itself to your imagination/ calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.”
the above quote from a poem by mary oliver, my comment below
the world
replete with occupation
has a vacancy
where
the only sanity lies
its interesting to see how easily the
BBC has slipped into its wartime role
as a propagandist and being very effective at it
if you are in any doubts as to whether we are in a war this should be the evidence
meanwhile radio new zealand doctors reuters’ news to favour russia and the australian media is obsessed with what parliamentarian squeezed which parliamentarian’s bottom
i can’t stop what you are or should i want to !
i can’t stop what you are nor should i want to !
that’s just so christian, the quoted scripture followed by some pompous nonsensical exegesis !
why do you do it ?
its the total middle of nowhere
“ well its our middle of somewhere ”
i see
“
Our findings suggest this is because
HSF-1 and
DAF-16 together activate expression of specific genes, including genes
encoding small heat-shock proteins, which in turn promote longevity
The small
heat-shock proteins also delay the onset of
polyglutamine-expansion protein aggregation, suggesting that these proteins couple the normal aging process to this type of
age-related disease
”
its unusual to find a translator who translates to the real sense and not to preconceived ideas
“
Why are you telling me this ? ”
well firstly i don’t "tell" you, i write to myself
i put it out there to make me think a bit more and people may or may not pick up on it
the song of the
precious mirror samadhi by dongshan is very daoist which imo is a good indication that zen and daoism were "entwined" though doctrinally it fits well into "the silent illumination" zen camp
quoting a line from suru’s translation
You are not it,
It is you
in my view, a better way of putting it is
what you are
is not known
pineapples should be stored on their side and rotated every day or so to move the internal juice around and stop it settling
“ a ripe pineapple should be a little soft when you touch it and not totally firm
when pineapple is ripe it will be more brown or yellow in color then green. i usually look at the bottom of it too
the heavier, the riper because that means more juices are flowing in there
smell the bottom. does it smell fruity ? ! ! it’s ready for ya then ! ”
failing the fifth
the lesson of the
6th is ignored
so
the third is never arrived at
ed. the numbers refer to the i ching hexagrams, my poem is a criticism and inversion of the passage from dongshan’s poem "song of the precious mirror samadhi"
“ in both sections of the sixth hexagram,
the relative and impartial interchange —
repeat both, they become three
transforming completely into the fifth ”
wilhelm liebniz was hardly known to me, maybe because of his historical censorship by the anglophone world as per the dispute with newton over the who originated calculus, but he is certainly extraordinary, one of the
great polymaths
it is not necessary to hope in order to act
nor succeed in order to persevere
the above quote from william of orange
i wonder whether the medieval aristocratic and kingly "caste system" with its
in-group marriage of "peers" created the talent on a breeding basis for the skills to maintain the patchwork of wars and kingdom building
that is , it bred individuals with the capacity and inclination to do this and so was self perpetuating
a consequence if this theory is true, is that the women of this caste would have also been like this and there are certainly a lot of examples
small versus large
we step from one to another
not noticing
the difference
history
simmering beneath the surface
occasionally to break through
an uncontained monster
my brush with fame
a google maps car went past
emblazoned with the logo on the side
and cameras atop a pole on the roof
i was
30 meters down in the paddock
adzing thistles
will i make the map photos ?
boxes
so we can’t see the dead
but actually
its death we can’t see
only
their
absence
the
impenetrable shroud
of
nonbeing
a dramatization of al purdy’s poem
at the quinte hotel
angel’s wings are designed all wrong, rather than coming out of the back they should be between the arms and the sides like pterodactyls or bats
so embarrassing to be an angel, i’m sorry, i can’t really fly, these are just for show, yes we have to walk everywhere and hop a bit at the end, it makes delivering the lord’s word tedious and the design department say they can’t fix it, the specifications were "look like they can fly", not "actually fly"
marriage
that disjoint union
the fusion that results
is not them
when they claim they can
but can’t
they
dance
to
a discordant
tune
when they claim they can
and can’t
they
dance
to
a discordant
tune
i’ve been taking say four fifths of a level teaspoon a day of taurine for years as the only thing that helps with migraine, but
reading here , it has other beneficial effects among which is delaying aging
as to causes, i find exposure to viruses to be the main one so its a sort of immune response
sucralose (splenda) is
significantly genotoxic
it also negatively impacts intestinal tissue amongst other inducted problems
study
taking a story
he makes it more than a story
the world
is
not
short
of
fools
“
Don’t share your dream with a fool ”
share your dream with a fool
from a fool to a fool
there is no other way
"the way" while it sounds nonsense does have some form of validity in that a sort of path can be perceived in hindsight
oddly, what lies ahead is always opaque to us
its existence is not definite which is why it is so hard to talk about, its an abstraction of the past, which as we all know is changeable, existing as they do, in the indefinite
your reply is just bad writing and malign thinking
of course you have no interest in rectifying that
you have the
"dunning-kruger" seal of approval, with your hubric dissing of valid criticism
if you have suffered or caused irreversible loss
what can be changed
nothing
you can say it once
you can say it a hundred times
its slowly becomes uninteresting
and you ask yourself
why am i here ?
in my view what bankei is saying is you can talk about things in plain english that makes sense, not hide a disguised stupidity and ignorance behind the meaningless and confused phrases of the thoughts of pretension
he lived four centuries ago, but nothing has changed for sure
“ what’s an important lesson you learnt the hard way ? ”
do things in small bites, not all at once
gwen john’s
portrait of chloë boughton-leigh
real life zen was plagued for many years from health problems from excessive soy consumption, soy was then viewed as some sort of wonder food, cheap and vegetarian which it was, but also had endocrine disruptors and
anti-digestive factors that were never fully denatured by cooking
the fact is, if you are of european descent anyway, you need the high nutritional density of meat/offal and "meatless" substitutes do not supply this, in fact, given the modern adversion to offal, there are deficiencies in the general population
the fundamental "woke" idea that everything is culture and learned and not biological is in fact marxism and an important part of the doctrine, that people and the culture have to be
re-educated (eventually, they have some realism here !) into selfless communal effort and in fact some modern western values like
anti-nuclear and lowering the carbon footprint are fundamentally marxist because they totally ignore the problem of "the tragedy of the commons"
in the case of the
anti-nuclear stance you are effectively unilaterally disarming and the
russo-ukraine war is showing how well that works and the efforts by some countries to reduce the carbon footprint is way more than matched by massively increasing coal use and carbon emission in others like china, most of asia and of course africa
marxism basically says that selfless communal benefit should be the underlying social and political condition, and as such is a complete denial of the individual nature of consciousness, evolution in the sense of heritable genetic variation and even the
neuro-biological principle of "free energy"
functionally , politics has to work to some extent in the marxist area, however its a delicate balance with very deep and uncomfortable potholes when the balance is lost
george orwell lampooned the notion of selflessness in
1984 with "boxer" the draught horse and interestingly there is this quote from an egyptian "desert father" which goes
“ an elder said to another elder who had great love and who fraternised with both monks and worldlings : a lamp sheds light on many, but it burns its own mouth ”
what stonehenge actually
looked like about
4000 years ago !
(ed.
2:06 of
5:55 of the video half way down the page)
it was build over a period of
700 to
800 years
i don’t think it was constructed by our ancestors, the builders were "replaced" by them, the "beaker people"
sometimes i write
and i can’t tell what i’m thinking when i write
its disturbing
like another being is a me that i don’t have access to
memory
the rock upon which we stand
can wobble a bit
topple
disappear
and like jesus
resurrect
where we stand in all this is a bit of a puzzle
what comes first and which and when
outside is in
the insideout
time shrinks away and doesn’t answer when called
being’s firmness is waving
when looked at like this
as if the seaweed turns the tide
rather than the other way around
when buying a kettle, you want to get one with the minimum exposure of the boiling water and steam to plastic as there are problems with leeching of unwanted chemicals and also the shedding of
microplastics
i have been unable to find anything with zero plastic, something in the lid appears to be a minimum
the coptic
desert fathers have quite a "zen flavour" as does eastern orthodox
zen has to be understood as being influenced by these forms of christianity via merchants using the silk road and of course the nestorian christianity already in china
_________________
abba theophilus, the archbishop, came to scetis one day
the brethren who were assembled there said to abba pambo : say something to the archbishop, so that he may be edified
the old man said to them : if he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my speech
_________________
abba sisoes said : seek god, and do not seek where he dwells
_________________
abba anthony said : a time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "you are mad, you are not like us"
_________________
abba bessarion, at the point of death, said : the monk ought to be as the cherubim and the seraphim — all eye
quotes
marie antoinette’s
death mask (halfway down the page) is very high quality because it was done in wax by marie tussaud (likely on friendly terms with her if not a friend) and of course she was relatively young (
38) and in good health when executed, its so good you can sorta see the person, unlike most death masks which are more or less husks
marie antionette’s death was not an artefact of the change of power, she was a key player in the opposition to the revolution, moreso than the king who was by nature, ineffective
to exist is to win a lottery with odds so against you, it can’t be described mathematically
a breast in each hand he stared at the nipples
the net has
the most toxic religious bullshit i have ever seen
a poem by langston hughes i like
when you turn the corner
and run into
yourself
then you know that you have turned
all the corners that are left
when you constrain the world
ontologically
god exists
by virtue of there being things
"that are like god"
but if you say
"there are things that are god"
then the ontological bounds are burst
and there is no god
in summary
god is not the "last stop"
no god is
things that are god is the last stop
there is nothing deeper
time gives perspective
you just can’t get it without having lived a while
objects have a distance relation to each other that can be seen
another way of looking at a cathedral
is it is simply a frame
for the stained glass
everything you intend
is
un-intended
at some point
addiction
a chemical parasitism
on the brain
it sucks it dry
recovery
is
limited
did you ever think
you had another life, quite different from this one
that never occurred ?
the ambiguity of hypocrisy
you can’t say
something is entirely wrong
buddhists bowing to toilets
chrisitians staring at candles
muhammadans crowding around the kaaba
jews and rosh hashanah
god opens the book of life and death so differently
yet the same writing shows
a million lives not your own
do they intrude ?
yes and no
we seek them out
chimeras
two parents in one child
perfectly fused
or
not ?
i don’t feel zen places any emphasis on the "irrational", that is a daoist inclination, and the whole western buzz with zen being "irrational" is a consequence of philological loss from the chinese medieval period, hakuin may have fallen into this trap as well, so you also get this mistake in modern japanese zen
more craziness !
zen is air
that can’t support itself
a fiction
painted by madmen
exist exists
preparatory to it not existing
this conundrum
has no answer
our life
looked at like a ghost passing
not seen but felt
distance
and removal
not there
but there
the emptiness of looking for another with understanding
there is only you
don’t waste your time
given any opportunity
others will
rather than try to parse a question like "what is the totality of existence", ask the neverending "what is existence", the process itself is more of an answer than any semantics arrived at
the education system does what it does best, crucifying the young
helena blavatsky was a con artist who got caught out one too many times so she switched to what she couldn’t get caught out on, "spiritual nonsense" and surprisingly it was successful beyond her wildest dreams
well, the eventual defection of her "messiah" would have to be a flaw
for insight into the gaining and loss of independence of tibet, look at the wikipedia
entry
for the
13th dalai lama, there was an awful lot going on
games are very like life, ontological simplifications that make sense within the simplification
but not outside
armies
their officers and commanders
insulated
into
semi-competence
don’t hurry to change to windows
11 from
10, windows
11 looks a bit of a failure and most likely the best upgrade path is direct to windows
12 when it comes out, allowing for a year to get the usual bugs sorted out
entertainment
land of chimeras
meaning what ?
incongruities heaped together
passing the time
in absurdity
avoidance
of the facts
mozart’s laudate dominum sung by the boy saprano
aksel rykkvin (norwegian)
mozart’s laudate dominum sung by the boy saprano
cai thomas (welsh)
good boy sapranos are so transitory (three or four years of their peak ?) that modern recording has placed us in the unique position of being able to listen to the best
laura croft
chimera
male in female form
multiplicity
a viable world
singularity
non viable
in the many
not one but two
figure this out
genius !
slavs killing slavs, its just mind blowing what putin is doing, writing a blank cheque for china !
a good
80% of people infer that because they say something, it necessarily becomes true
africa is a
multilingual world
to get a whole that works, you have to put together the pieces without flaws
one never gets used to talking to the mad
by definition they can’t help themselves and its disturbing
the light of dawn
and the light of dusk
realms with their own
and different
magic
quite a clever use of "prexisting sets" by an amateur to make an effective
short film
zen is a plagiarization of tang dynasty poetry, using its themes for the construction of a religion
you can be fooled or you can read tang poems
wordpress
robert eno
there’s not behind or after
nor before or in front
the backwards goes forwards
a round world turns asquare
and the square around
free of ontological scars
emergence abounds
i’m not a man who hates, but "getty images" incites bad feelings in me
all that wasted bandwidth polluted to its core with inanity
a testimony to the mental laziness of journalists i guess
i had always thought of
cocaine as one of the milder ones in terms of harm, but its not
i’ll never forget a neighbour who was having a party and being invited inside and seeing the white powder in lines across the table
catholics obviously have a big problem with belief (or disbelief) because they are constantly looking for evidence, corpses that don’t decay, bleeding stgimata, lights from the eucharist, visions of mary, this list is endless because the process is endless
never finding confirmation, looking for confirmation is the panacea
joshu is, imo the most uniquely "zen" of all the zen masters, except perhaps for the
6th patriarch who we dont know much about and may not have even been anything except what the one possible contemporary reference to him says , a "meditation master"
the busy-ness of dreams
for a night
to be forgotten
everynight
for a lifetime
that’s it
a frosty night
the native hens
shriller than usual
ideas have no substance in recursive space
but patterns of ideas do
hence a fluidity of meaning flows from this
you are avoiding the recursive space
people do of course
its dangerous
the sands of time
unending
go forwards and backwards
to find where we are
is impossible
andrew llyod weber’s
pie jesu , sung by phoebe and molly gault
when the reply denigrates
you have to ask
what in the question
elicits this ?
what i write
compression
enabled by
an involuted topography
combined with
locality and
non-locality
not
the usual
by
any
means
if all you have is a bad fit
rather than use it
try something else
if all you have is a bad fit
rather than use it
try something different
"free will"
game plan
on a playing field
designed by evolution
slavoj žižek is much better keeping off politics
"chastity,
poverty and obedience"
like a monty python skit with the big ring on the finger, more gild than you can throw a stick at, the "choir boy" in the background and a rig flamboyant enough for the most extreme "queen"
caught in a crossword puzzle of
non-existence
they think they are saying something
but they aren’t
sotheby’s is
on a tear
for storing archival information, hard drives fired up once a year are best, the rest of the time they can stay on a shelf !
a trick with flash memory/ssd’s is to make the
back-up when they are warm, this improves the noise margin and for long term
off-line storage they should be in a cold or cool place
the foreverness of hell
10 and a half hours
a foretaste
not to be confused with heaven
because
it could be
confused with heaven
another
forever
land
what the eye sees
knows before the feet move
a world defined
is a world unwound
time is wasted
or not wasted
we can’t say
accidently tripping into utility
we can’t plan that
either
mistake is the fragment
its the consequences that become the whole thing
why write making sense ?
there’s no shortage of it
nonsense making sense is so rare
it
needs
to
be
cherished
in sequence linear
but
superposition
is
larger
all pervading soul
and cedar trees
just call cedar trees
and you won’t worry
about
“ all pervading ”
coercion
the threat to hurt
underlain
by
the need to hurt
coercion
the threat to hurt
underlying
the need to hurt
something can be known as
not a wonderful shining theory
but
the best you can do
anything anywhere
can affect
anything anyhow
non-locality
the ultimate subversive
oversimplified worlds
where things happen as they ought
turn our heads around
from things as they are
oversimplified worlds
where things happen as they ought
turn our heads around
to look backwards instead of forwards
the cycle of the days
and years
the permanence of intransigence
what seems forever goes
this is the nature of things
idle talk is weighing nonsense
i don’t know how these nuns can
waste their lives as being what are obviously "slaveys" for an institution, a blast to before vatican
II
they are
sedevacantists , an understandable position given the senile dodards that get elected, the papal vacancy of dementia
the theological hoops thomas aquinas jumps through are mind bending, the stuff those medieval theologians argued over is unbelievable, totally insane, i feel damaged reading them
oddly, several months before he died he seems to have had some sort of authentic revelation saying “ all that i have written seems like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me ”
a simple question to ask with any drug use, medical or recreational, is do they do permanent damage ?
research can reveal surprises !
the thought of mao se tung which xi jin ping is so keen to emulate
i wouldn’t say its all rubbish, but it has the lethality of
some-one who is sure he is right and will brook no compromise
“ the correct handling
of contradictions among the people ”
interestingly, there is no theoretical basis for the forcible conscription of taiwan into mainland china
russia is what happens after a
35 year period of selectively killing its best people (
1920 to
1955 ?)
if you read about the mongol invasions, they were horrific, but there was a rationality to their slaughter which certainly was on a scale equivalent to the holocaust and
WW2 losses in general, however what is unique about the holocaust is its stupidity, how could germany ever win a war preoccupied as it was with annihilating the most productive portion of its middle class ?
the jews made a huge contribution to the stamina of germany in
WW1 which hitler knew of course because he served under a jewish officer whom he respected
its always interesting to see unconnected dots, something internal politics and international "relations" have in abundance, though its encouraging to see the positive effect modern communications have had in creating a united front from the west in terms of russia and china, the war is being anticipated, it doesn’t have to occur before everyone wakes up like in
WW1 and
2
noh theater , unique if you have not experienced it before and the stories give a great insight into
pre-meiji japan and its off the wall level of superstition
curiously addictive
reason fails
until reason fails
what is yours only
you can see
others have trouble
handling this
the past is past
whatever opinions one has
doesn’t change it one bit
the "hunting of the snark" has similarities to
farid ud-din attar’s "the conference of the birds"
, so much so i am suspicious that somehow lewis carroll read it or at least knew an outline of the plot
for the snark was a simorg you see
simply stunning shots of around and above everest with the
MAVIC 3 drone
the source long looked for
isn’t there
what is there ?
that’s for you to work out !
its not there in the words of others
its a private knowledge that cannot be conveyed
“ the world is wide and spacious ”
and
includes
error
a key concept of translations of historical literary and religious works is in fact they are "interpretations", often heavily biased to how the interpreter views things and with problematic philology, and maybe never can be translated accurately
taoism is actually a religion with their own temples in china, or at least historically that was the case
in the west, like zen, its really just taken as a philosophy, even more heavily nonsensicated than zen !
when looking at zen or any religion the word hagiography goes along way to understanding what you read
what you look for
is
already
in
your
own
experience
in childhood
we are packed with so much nonsense
we never live long enough to unpack it
casey neistat on
procrastination
i do think there is a hidden advantage to procrastination which is to gather more information before committing to action
phishing emails always have
"give-aways" if you look carefully, especially take a close look at the source code, i have just received one, its an account query from a company i don’t have an account with, but the source shows it comes from a marketing email platform, ("tradeboss" in this case) whereas a genuine account query would come from the account website
you can’t be suspicious enough and its only going to get worse
you can read about it
its not you
you can write about it
its you
chanting is for people with nothing upstairs to fill the vacancy
the problem the screen writers strike faces is margins in the industry are being compressed with competing content like youtube
the strike itself may force a shift in public viewing habits (that has already occurred in generation
Z) onto informal net content, it is a structural shift into something that is a different : more fractured, specialized and intellectual paradigm that would normally take a very extended period to happen
my feeling is good riddance to their rubbish, however writers have been subsidizing the industry for quite a while so there are going to be some big changes, similar to what has happened in the music industry
bad explanations are easy to vary, good explanations are not
sorts out excuses and projections doesn’t it !
huh, fixed a zipper for the first time ever
easy peasy
saved a cheap jacket i liked
the wall of being
turns out to be transparency into
non-being
objectivity
makes this so
scary
the brain is nobbled
by what i’m not sure
a virus ?
incapacity
aging’s worse
symptom
you just have to look at "twelfth night" and its familiarity with upper class/ aristocratic life to realise shakespeare never wrote it
a very lithe ana luísa negrão in a superb performance of
les ombres du temps (luca branca) for the prix de lausanne
2023 prize finals
blueberries lower the firmicutes/bacteroidetes ratio of the intestinal microbiota which supposedly is beneficial
“
the study found that blueberry dosage significantly impacted the firmicutes to bacteroidota ratio, which decreased as the dosage increased. the ratios were highest in samples without blueberry diets and gradually fell in samples with increasing blueberry concentrations
additionally, comparisons of diversity in the gut microbiome in each sample exhibited a considerably greater variety among samples having higher blueberry treatments ”
they can have relatively high pesticide levels which putting in a jar and sprinkling some baking soda on and then pouring hot water over helps with (denatures the pesticide)
meditative thinking
the flux of the indefinite
can crystallize out
indifferent
to
the reality it forms in
simulated attack on the kerch bridge, its all about delivering and dodging missiles
it really does give a feel of what it would like to be a pilot making such a flight
waterbrain (2002) by aboriginal artist rusty peters
for an explanation, check out "about"
rusty is a very abstract thinker, a bit like andy warhol
the chinaman’s garden massacre
(2000) painting is based on stories from his uncle
, the only survivor of a massacre in the western australian kimberley region
determined
versus non-determined
our life
is a
fluctuation of these
just be honest about the flaws, going to an extreme of total rejection doesn’t work for a lot of things and won’t work for you
there’s a toxicity in chanting, you can see it in religions, i think its problematic from its hypnotic/ mind numbing effect and the total bullshit of the meaning, why would you willingly engage in that sort of nonsense ?
“ I’m sure plenty of people feel the same way about meditation of all kinds . . . ”
yeah, there are meditations that are crazy too, counting, visualization etc, however shikantaza has something to offer, but that also has limits as it tends to engrave
even in zen the chanting is absolute brainwashing nonsense, really off putting except i quite liked the korean chanting, i didn’t understand a word of it
chanting is a religious art form, just a vehicle for propaganda and reality disinformation
words
bound together like furniture
looked under
there’s nothing there
the filter of others
always a distortion
words wrapped into a snare
the same wherever you go
what fixed point is there in a net ?
the uncorrectable world
correct it and you’re sunk
through
your
own
efforts
a sense of distance and space,
FPV drone on a swiss mountain
the himalayan mountains
in moonlight
i feel like i’ve been there
the dark blue sky fading to black
snow and rock
speaking of agency
elsewhere
and
here
a "1420"
interview
"i’m glad how our guys act"/ would you go there ? /"i would but i’m not healthy enough" !
i think
WW2 and the stalin era left a permanent cultural imprint in russia where they were forced to watch everyone around them be killed or imprisoned,
self-preservation became paramount
i remember reading an account of a english "tanker" in an attack on the germans at tobruk and a tank next to him was hit by an
88 shell and he said his only thought was, thank god its not us
the problem with translating medieval chinese zen texts is you have to go back and examine source documents to get the provenance sorted out and also do a lot of statistical analysis of the sort involved in "AI/chatbots" of similar regional and dated texts to see all the subtle and not so subtle shadings of what was meant
in the case of the title of the mumonkan i’m sticking with "open the door" as a better translation which is also what the koans/stories are supposed to do
actually the
wikipedia entry is not bad for "provenance"
in this case its nothing like as confused as it can be e.g.
300 years ago a certain monk heard another monk say another two hundred years earlier so and so said a zen master said . .
fortuitous benefit
solving one problem
solves more than one problem
and opens
up
the
maw
of
new
problems
yusef komunyakaa’s poem
facing it about his visit to the veteran’s vietnam war memorial in washington d.c.
its interesting because i had to read it several times with some spacing of another activity in between to, i won’t say "get what it is about" because i don’t think it is
100% understandable, but read it so i could make sense of it in the same way i might read a prose paragraph
he uses language in a masterful way, its sorta like seeing something become clear and move into focus !
this of course is the "problem" with poetry, its demands on the reader, unlike entertainment which just carries into intellectually trivial escapist fantasies
if china were a person, its diagnosis would be "borderline personality disorder"
a good video on john singer sargent, its interesting how steeped he was in the "old masters" despite his "radical" modernism
my favourite painting by him,
carnation, lily, lily, rose
what i have read of the zen "records" is
99% bitching about the monks not listening to them
nonconformity is conformity
the true art
is
neither
conformity
nor
nonconformity
safety in non appearance
is better
than danger in
appearance
they claim a fundamental truth
but the fundamental truth
is their being in error
theologies illusions
like other illusions
imbibed as a child
hung onto until death
ed. "theologies" is a
stand-in to cover singular and plural, possessive and
non-possessive for which english doesn’t have a grammatical construction
getting older
its eternal winter
somewhere there is eternal sunshine
its not here
drunk from myself
i get up
and sit down
my head spinning
from
thinking and reading
i’m not sure
this
is
a good way
to be
they claim not to be going in circles
他们声称不会兜圈子
each time they come back to the starting point
每次他们回到起点
i think you have to be careful of trying to change the world or people
the energy you can expend on something so totally fruitless is of a level to harm your life
when you make mutual eye contact for more than a second or two, then you have to give a friendly sign, like make a comment, give a little wave etc
flattery goes along way in social situations
there are those who become upset when it is pointed out there are often alternatives to medication, some people think like that and get angsted and aggressive with considering the possibility that they could be healthier (sometimes very much so) than just popping pills with difficult side effects
“
The view may or may not change, however the viewer never changes ”
lol, well a lot of people for sure
they think, speak and write the same stuff
as ten years ago
i don’t
“
The view may or may not change, however the viewer never changes ”
lol, well on r|zen for sure
they write the same stuff
as ten years ago
i don’t
so much mumbo jumbo
incomprehensible fake
sense
is sense
and can be understood
there is no mystery
plain as day
it stands before us
you can’t separate life from evolution
evolution is the only way to design functional systems of such mind boggling complexity
this has a number of implications
, one being that not only does god (at least as conventionally understood) not exist, he/she cannot exist
the answer to the question "why do i exist" is that you are a realised possibility of evolution
as a side note i think you can infer that evolution is the parsing tool creating the machinery essential for implementing "the free energy principle" to walk back reality from continual decoherence
within the vast universe of random fluctuations of necessity islands of coherence arise
“ quantum theory has
two compatible information states where the union of the two is not a set of informational states because they can’t be reliably distinguished by any physical process ”
what i have noticed is that the best writing has more than one informational state and at its peak like emily dickinson’s poetry there is something conveyed that has nothing to do with the words, literally transcendent
from a hill
the blue of a distant headland
seen across the sea
impassable
to
me
a substantial portion of zen quotes from the old "masters" is simply advice to the effect of not getting caught up in theology, however what do people do, but entangle themselves in what is essentially theology
for instance "koans" are treated as scriptural bedrocks and the game is to "exegesize" them, but its just a game and mostly doesn’t go anywhere
my own experience is people act like there is some semantic puzzle underneath all the verbiage to be decoded, but in fact, there is none
the million monkeys, typing for a million years are still not going to generate anything meaningful
click click clack click clack, you can see and hear it for yourself
prattlers
thinking without work
is just thinking
the koreans and japanese have a long history of highly advanced naval conflict, so the japanese defeat of the russian navy in the battle of tsushima shouldn’t have been any surprise
what is surprising is the misdirection of their naval ship building program, prior to and during world war
2
sotherbys
the auctioneer
buyers agents
they all know
each other
the game of extortion
for bad art
goes on
ed. got to say i love the art world, for suave sophisticated "smoothies" it can’t be beat, there’s a strong predatory element to auctions, its all set up to "squeeze you", especially in highly informed sellers markets like southerbys and christie’s
winter
going for a sleep in the late afternoon
and waking up in the dark
the child’s view
one answer
one thing
emergence says
views themselves shift
so how can that be ?
the child’s view
one answer
one thing
maturity says
views themselves shift
so how can that be ?
cast into the day
adrift as usual
ah, i should focus on that
as it blurs and drifts away
cleopatra’s life makes
a lot more sense if you understand she was
100% greek and the last member of the ptolemaic dynasty, founded by alexander’s general who became the satrap of egypt upon alexander’s death
, the combination of racial similarity and power making her attractive to her roman lovers
one of the very well known books of children’s poetry in what is now the forgotten generation of the turn into the twentieth century was eugene field’s
poems of childhood illustrated by maxfield parrish
a btw, eugene was the author of wynken, blinken and nod
jack london’s
photos of london’s east end in
1902 when he lived there for several weeks gathering material for his
1903 book
"
The
People of the
Abyss"
you can see the strong influence on george orwell
the moon is not so distant
nor the stars
these can be seen
what is so distant
that it yawns at our lives
why time of course
seen and unseen
it goes on forever
religions
plunder
poetry
murder it
and
walk
away
with
the corpse
what young people need to know and often get a contrary cultural message on, is drugs and alcohol irreversibly damage the brain and cause reverse development
talkers talk, but what to do ?
that is also part of the problem
but it can be solved
“
Heaven and earth shine together in the brilliance of this cool, glowing jewel ”
ed. the above quote from
Baiyun
Duan
73
one jewel
or two
or three
or four ?
not a jewel
not anything
3 out of
4 boats lost, all those young men
dead !
while japan had the most advanced torpedoes, their submarines were very below par, the country just wasn’t large enough to support the design and manufacturing effort necessary, like their war effort in general
if they don’t want to be a chinese colony, they need to take a leaf out of north korea’s book and to get nuclear missiles and the subs capable of launching them
as a side note, when you look at what goes into building
a nuclear submarine , no wonder the usa has decided the future has to be a multinational effort
likewise the mismatch between the economic power of nato and its allies so outweighs that of russia, the ukraine war has to end badly for it
what is time ?
a simple question that doesn’t seem to have an answer
“
What book do you think every person should read at least once ? ”
"to the lighthouse" by virginia woolf
deeply mystical
you have to keep moving forward, i don’t think you are doing that, your ideas are looking dated
"dokusan" in zen is overweighted, the "senseis" are the usual harried busy individuals and
99% of interviews i have had have been a waste of time, except in forming the opinion dokusan is a flawed vehicle and actually an unreasonable imposition on both parties
the "medical use" of marijuana is quite different from "lotus eating", you are looking at tangible objective benefits outweighing the costs of side effects, its that ratio that needs monitoring, there are definite downsides and risks, i think that’s going to vary individual to individual, but includes suicidal ideation, psychosis, confused thinking and brain trauma
there’s even a case for alcoholism, charles bukowski said it kept him from suicide, on the other hand it kept him a crippled genius, when really he could have been another goethe without the alcohol, unfortunately his upbringing was really messed and i don’t think a transition in first languages between german and english helped either
"lotus eating" fails the objective benefits to side effect problems test
a good talk on "ergodicity" which is the idea that things don’t necessarily continue, that some mistakes irreversibly cut you off from future benefits, which of course is why we shouldn’t "put all our eggs in one basket"
its interesting there’s a strong mathematical basis to it that further informs our common sense understanding
i also think it teaches the value of "equivocation", a metastable state between taking action and holding back, which further ties in with "quantum processing" in patterns of adding and subtracting to come to a more viable conclusion
there is the illusion that things are settled
they never are
looking at things
the way others view them
not really instructive
but
destructive
ed. this may seem
counter-intuitive, but there’s a cost to empathy which some people can play on
vasily vereshchagin , russian painter
1842 to
1904, worth a search on google images
wikipedia
too much of a "realist" for many of his contemporaries apparently, he led an interesting life, full of adventure that could not be replicated these days
words of wisdom
or stupidity
i’d say stupidity
the waning gibbous
rises later
and the night is darker
but discerns
the edge of the sky
where do our memories go
you just can’t make meaning of it
can you ?
one thing i agree with martin heidegger on is we are a species uniquely integrated with and driven by technology, going back to flint knives and spear heads, its inescapable
ed. my response to some proposed reordering/abolition of the industrial world by sepehr likening industrialization to cancer
by inescapable i mean its beyond remedy
how many remedies for whatever subject obsessed you have you been through ?
what does "futility" mean ?
marina ferretti gives a good
explanation of "ballet rehearsal on stage" by edgar degas
“ there’s more than meets the eye ”
i have always associated edgar degas with ballet paintings but in fact he ranged widely
in subject
an interesting concept : men to women are "emotional labour"
i can see how the need for constant correction would get you down
there is some safety in being thought an idiot, its not all bad
people make allowances
also there’s always a context in which
some-one is an idiot, just like there’s a context in which they are not
paul cézanne
mont sainte-victoire seen from the bibemus quarry, c.
1897
another mont
sainte-victoire (
1895)
painting
an interesting
account of beverly graham (famous sculptress) and her daughter jorie (writer) and their lives
you can do a search to look at betty’s sculpture, i quite liked it
words
phrases
paragraphs
this core
infinitely repeating
a sense
of horror
overcomes
one
what is possible
and what is not
we build the possible
and discard the impossible
yet not seeing
how one bleeds into the other
iceland like you’ve
never seen it
this is
FPV (first person view) droning
the problem with the education system is it is too geared to the needs of the universities and this hold they have has to be broken for progress to be made
the internet has turned what is optimal to be taught on its head, what the internet enables is a higher , more "meta" skill level, that of
self-skilling based on the ability to search and use information on the net
its a toxic, deceiving world, education should be part of the solution of navigating it, not amplifying the problem itself
the "xin xin ming" is an abridged version of a longer poem "mind inscription", the author/s are unknown and likely literati similar to the new testament authorship actually
religions are fundamentally reified literature, several modern christian variants are lifted to a recognisable extent from milton
you are too tied up in words brad warner; dogen, nisargadatta, endless the nonsense these people speak
meditation or
non-meditation
the dreamers dream
without asking what they dream
i think we have patterns of cultural differentiation ingrained from childhood that form an active process for the rest of our lives or as long as we are capable of them
the link with identity politics, trans whatever, social justice, intersectionalism, woke and marxism is they place category above individual worth, one has no existence as an individual except as a place holder for categories which are assumed to be entitled to some form of repair, that the native condition of the category is disrepair and the more intersections of the categories, the greater the intrinsic entitlement
its most easily seen in marxism where communal ownership of the means of production repairs income inequality
the flaw is it is all "ceteris paribus" ie "all things being equal" so you just take one variable out, change it and assume all the other variables are unchanged, again easy to see with marxism in that it assumes that productive efficiency is unchanged with the control and ownership change, but history shows that in fact the productive efficiency and target alignment fail chronically with states that implement marxism in its various forms
i think the crux of the problem of woke is its transfer of concerns about communal benefit from the state to specific signals an individual has or may acquire, however in fact individuals have a very limited concern for communal benefit or even communal identity acting only to maximise their own gain and the various woke ideologies are simply smoke screens or decoys within which to operate in a deceptive manner
so to me "woke" and its similars are in fact anarchist and in conflict with the state and its always this way even if they become the state, there is a perpetual undercurrent of anarchy, repression and brutal social and economic misalignment
the problem with monastic life is it supresses the individual and since "god" is more related to solipsism, you get a rather nasty contradiction which ends up showing in various guises
“ smashes ”
“ snapped up ”
“ it has every potential to become the most
iconic house in australia ”
the real estate media and press
more insincerity and clichés
than you can throw a stick at
my "reworking" of Liu Zongyuan’s famous poem
the mountain sides
raucous with birds in summer
now silent beneath the snow
not even the tracks of hunters
yet on the lake
an old man fishing from his boat
funny how things change, i’m just not into a certain interest anymore the way i was
before i couldn’t force myself to be uninterested
and now
i can’t force myself to be interested
roads end
or peter out
or one gains perspective
groups are social control hierarchies
of course, a lot of effort goes into "varnishing" this fact, all of human history is like this
you’re very aggressive to what point ?
being able to handle a different viewpoint is more than a social skill, its a life skill we all need to work on and not rationalise being stuck at a problematic level that gives and causes grief
music is like writing, knowing the background of the composer or writer is important
surprisingly, while useful, its less essential for art
voces
8 sing gregorio allegri’s "miserere"
declamations are ten a penny
you are just giving the usual sophistical tropes, declamation and denigration underlain by expectant entitlement
what can i say ?
huh, the correct translation has eve being formed from
adam’s side and not rib
stephen kotkin on china :
unpacking the ccp, communism, and
us-chinese relations !
he gives an understanding of how the
CCP works which is alien to western democracies, you can’t look at the ccp through western eyes to form projections about what it will do
peddlers of words
pushing them harder than any drug addict
how useless !
there’s quite a few "wisdom literature" type quotes about the eyes
where words are restrained
the eyes often talk a great deal
its less what the eye sees
and more what the soul feels
the eyes are a mirror of the soul
is a claim
my comment
from a practical point of view most systemic diseases can be picked up early with an eye examination, the eye is the first casualty in a lot of conditions
some russian women seem only too happy to toss men to
the wolves of war
olive’s last expedition to
the cairngorms
i have been sick twice this year from eating (still in the pink gill stage) "field mushrooms" plucked from a nearby paddock
previous years from a different paddock there has been no problem and i am
99% sure they are field mushrooms so i think it takes easy low stress growing conditions for field mushrooms not to have significant levels of toxins/ phenols/ octenol in, i know recent research has exposed a lot more varieties than previously thought so maybe there is a variety issue here ?
anyway most unpleasant, maybe the amounts were too large ?
interestingly the "button mushrooms" you get in the supermarket are a different variety to the field mushrooms
here ; agaricus bisporus versus agaricus campestris
sotheby’s earning their
30%? commission
for the sums involved you can expect the advertising
to be slick
me, its enough to look so i am free carried by the buyer, thanks !
mary oliver’s poem "praying"
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak
my response
mary oliver says
a poem is a door, a prayer
being a woman she lived in trouble
me
i don’t know what a poem is
that feeling
when you just sat or lay down
and how you have to get up again very soon
to do something that won’t wait
take a leaf out of north korea’s book, half a nuclear missile keeps china at bay, don’t be fooled by their
anti-western paranoia, china is their problem and they know it
the blue sky winks
and folds over us
the joy
of a summer’s day
no dharma, no truth, no practice, no falsity
the empty air tells us what we don’t want to know
we are nothing
absence is sufficient
that is all
young and dumb , they have no idea how far their lives get permanently changed once they fight on the front line, injuries, psychological damage/
PTSD, severely disrupted personal relationships; they won’t fit in "normal society" when and if they come back
now i think about it, price harry has an unrecognised PTSD problem from his service in afghanistan, he killed a huge number of men even by historical standards, basically due to a mismatch in technology between the taliban and british military helicopters, a lack of
self-reflection there, it doesn’t take much thinking about it not to do that, he had plenty of options, and i think if his mother had been alive he would have got the feedback not to have done it
the western involvement in afghanistan always seemed extraordinary to me, they can’t have read a single thing on the history of the area
bet this opinion doesn’t make the gossip columns
a political system has to allow extremes to occur, be perceived and corrected, i think australia and new zealand are going through something like this with the explosion of underage criminality
that is, the system itself has no dogma except in the long term, the experiential, unlike beliefs like
marxism-leninism which in their own terms are "right" and therefore do not allow anything except what in its view is correct
i think that’s because politics is an emergent outcome and there’s just no way the effect of anything can be predicted reliably
kafka
and his magical realism
nothing prepares
for the obscenity
of his sister’s deaths
political clichés
the very substance of the business
of saying nothing
hubris rules
until
it is broken
it is enough
to see yourself
like in a mirror
this view
limited as the glances are
is the only remedy
available
to
the
disease
of
life
it is enough
to see yourself
like in a mirror
this view
limited as the glances are
are the only remedy
available
to
the
disease
of
life
heavy cannabis use linked
to schizophrenia especially among young men
you can see how toxic the media are, so selective in what they publicize, this study of course doesn’t get mentioned
the process of discovery in mathematics is an endless, limitless pursuit
the above quote by edward frenkel
why is anything else different ?
treasure hunting , the real thing ?
there are comments to the effect its staged, the find is so valuable it has to be, very well done though, to be honest, it had me totally fooled, however there are giveaways !
all the new research is showing continuous sitting creates health problems, we are designed by evolution to be pretty much always in motion
you want to extend your intellectual horizons, an area of technical interest, health, literature, arts, poetry etc
computer games have decoyed you into a time wasting trap
“
Do you have to rely on someone else ? ”
not relying on others and sorting things out for yourself
wasted breath in today’s cultural ethos of over the top entitlement with its serial plagiarism of nonsense
the stories go on
as stories
a mixed bag
of truth and falsity
there is no sense of moving on
but one goes forward
yet there is doubt
against what does one compare ?
so much "translation" of historical works is really just a "reinterpretation" by the translator who thinks in terms of various westernized cultural ideologies
they are not translations but purblind farces
“ is zen a "practice" ? ”
as zen is a
multi-valent word, you can argue endlessly as to what it actually is
to me the real question is, are "religious practices" a waste of time, (uselessfull !) or contrary — take people in the wrong direction — or are they useful ?
again you run into the contexts of religion, genuine inquiry, communal insanities etc
to me with many years of observation from the viewpoint of genuine inquiry it is not just useless, but going in the wrong direction, a time filler that wastes a life, but hey, not my problem !
“
But then you have the problem of what makes a practice religious ?
Just being something people do in organized religions ?
Or something deeper ? ”
if you accept my notion that in terms of any genuine inquiry that "practice " is contrary then basically its crazy, its the fake and time wasting serving other goals like engraving a religious belief system, i wouldn’t call that deeper and it certainly is a characteristic of religions, you can see elements of it in other contexts like politics, education and certain cultural commonalities however i think its pretty much a defining characteristic of religions
over the decades one starts to see one’s own personality, its the weaknesses that we are so slow to see
the more subtle and difficult aspects, are i think, necessarily obscure to us
declination
inclination
one way of looking at it
is
another’s
inverse
they seek out every blind alley
go down them
and return
proclaiming
they have found a new world
some humour by shel silverstein
大道無形
The avenue is invisible (google translate)
--------------------
what is invisible
is yet visible
receding images
in a mirror
the toxins in
green tea damage the liver
i have had a few sips once or twice and didn’t like it, there’s a reason for "black" tea though actually i don’t drink tea or coffee
there are no absolutes
death
birth
god
gender
being
non-being
toss these around
pretending they mean something
and so
the babbling masses
babble in their blindness
worlds of stories
unreality
fantasies
even the realities
are unreal
each step
raises nonsense
like dust
the world
is many worlds
the navigating of which
is impossible
ideologies
ideas in the air
froth of nothingness
zen koans are just nonsense
last word
first word
reference
non-reference
the master knows
the monk doesn't
all mired
in
shit
the necessity of repeating mistakes
is
because
we are unable to pick up on the mistake
unless things unfold in a way we can see
all of knowledge is less than a grain of rice
yet what is revealed
when the universe falls apart ?
to understand is helpful
but not essential
walk the stepping stones
on the road of contradiction
late afternoon sun
on a distant bank of cumulus
looks like a range
of snow covered
mountains
late afternoon sun
on a distant bank of cumulus
looks like a range
of snowy mountains
these days you can publish and publicize yourself on the internet
prior you needed an organization to do that
that’s a huge change affecting many areas of life
i can see the face
but i can’t see you
interesting
to perceive a pattern
where there was none before
and the apprehension
of it not continuing to conform
fundamental to our existence
dreamers abound
at least they can dream
in religion
they can’t even do that
universities are the new madrasas
the abeyance of reasoning
for senseless
political
indoctrination
in the midst of complexity
simple themes
laws even
inadequately expressed
neither emerging
or
inhering
its
difficult
the monarchy is a key part of the parliamentary system and the only proven insurance against dictatorship, when you have something that works, don’t touch it
there’s nothing worse than politics when it goes wrong because of the pointless destruction in what inevitably ensues
poetry
pictographic
writing in images
to stretch across time
to the elgin marbles, sappho and enheduanna
seems easy
yet an hour ahead
we
have
difficulty
with
there is no king
only counsellors
no men of slanted shadows these
no images of reflected glory these
they are the glory
look no further
though many do
you just keep writing and it develops as a skill over the decades, its a long term process
venus and cupid , painted by felicien rops
the committee are putting their own subjective judgement of style above hard facts
i bet some of the members thought
it was authentic , but you know, guild jealousy, the committee acts as an entity in what it judges to be its own best interest which is to discredit competition
interestingly giorgio de chirico’s themes are essentially solipsist, his worlds are about meaning without agency
a pearl is round
you can follow the curvature
but not the lustre
“ Is this curve/lustre anything like finger/moon ? ”
curvature is more like seen and lustre is more like unseen or unable to be followed
the lustre is really what it is about, you can liken "curvature" to what is covered in "wisdom literature" and this combination is really what "zen" is about
the criticism the masters make of the problem with r|zen and obviously medieval chinese monks is overweighting or making too solid "curvature" and never getting to grips with what lustre is
its actually worse than that, the monks/r|zennists create malign distorted curvature, not even getting to first base they run amok in sewers saying what a lovely garden they are in
over the years i have come to the conclusion they have no interest in doing anything except wallowing in their own stupid shit, why, i can’t say
sexual innuendo
in religion
sometimes thrust in your face
jesus loved a disciple
creepy koans in zen
what goes on behind the scenes and not so behind the scenes
institutionalized prostitution, paedophilia, broken vows, infidelity
the drive
to reproduce
governs
all
if i don’t have an idea of how something should be
but observe how it is
and take it from there
life is simpler
what would it mean to know everything ?
there is nothing i would not know
except
what everything was
would puzzle me
face it, you are just creating fantasy versions of "whatever"
hard to find your way out of however
russia is getting angsted by the increasing level of illegal immigrant workers
this gets to the core of the problem with wars, you lose your best men, a fair portion permanently and illegal immigrants flood in to fill the gaps in industry and service
also men who have been on the front line get permanently traumatized and dysfunctional and never can go back to "normal life"
the best argument against modern wars is they "suicide" their own populations to the advantage of outside, uninvolved populations, the immigrant "problem" europe faces today is the inevitable consequence of population loss in
WW1 and
WW2
the finite implies infinity
infinity implies the finite
stepping between these two
goes nowhere
communism is a generic term and while marxism can be communist, communism is not necessarily marxist
interestingly karl marx disagreed with popular contemporary ideas as to what marxism was, stating "i am not a marxist"
perhaps he foresaw the blood baths that would follow ?
mirrors are mirrors
who owns the image ?
real life zen is very buddhist, yet differs in that it regards the buddhist aspect as more of a convention than reality though there is a lot of variation in degree in this
however most "zennists" i have met put a lot of weight in that convention and i don’t think any religion can survive without a lot of ceremony and liturgical formality
the current western fashion of a highly abstracted "zen" and daoism divorced from the liturgical is much more akin to academic study/theology and as much as their adherents claim this version is "the true authentic" it is too distanced from the ceremonial side to be anything except the usual schizophrenic jabber
of course the ceremonial/liturgical side is also a form of "crazy" but in a lot of historical contexts is functional from a number of view points
not having thought about the
peter pan story for many years, my having now seen his play
mary rose gave me a much better insight into the man and his best known story
another play by him that goes into the fantastical is
dear brutus
an interesting lecture on the function of a monarch today
that the monarch as in the
UK today is in fact a neutered or faux dictator and if you don’t have one then you run the risk or even likelyhood of a real dictator, historically oliver cromwell in this case, but you can see in even america without this protection of an institutionalised declawed monarch that with trump's attempt to usurp congress you have the potential for a putin style dictatorship and there is a definite political undercurrent for that supported by all the thugs who would fill the various petty official positions for enforcing the dictatorship
it would be a big mistake for australia or new zealand to become republics, the currrent implementation of the monarchy is an essential base of the present parlimentary system, an propitious effigy to the dictatorship potentially around the corner
putin is an egregious example of what goes wrong with real dictatorships, they don’t step down when they start to lose the plot and you can only remove them with assassination or civil war and the
russo-ukraine war is a civil war
the russian invasion of the ukraine
its the old story
what was supposed to make them richer has made them poorer
there is a view that war is really about countries gathering information about each other and if they act rationally they will conclude a treaty of sorts according to that information when things become clear enough
the russo-ukriane war still has many unknowns so i suspect a treaty is a long ways off
actually its a bit weird when you think about, commodore matthew perry’s forcing of the opening up of japan in
1853 back-fired in spades with the
russo-japansese war and WW2, they would have been far better to let japan find its own pace, the significance of this misjudgement is hugely underrated
the number of people posting on whatever subreddit with "health anxieties" who can never be bothered to do some detailed research on the condition and symptoms of what they are anxious about
they also stare down and again never research sensible advice offered
generation
Z reaches new heights of entitlement
direction fades
yet
without it
there is
no
direction
“
Quite literally the opposite is true ”
the opposite of what ?
direction doesn’t fade
and
with it
there is still
no
direction
the problem with gaming is its limited intellectual horizons
the question would be "how to give it greater horizons ?"
one of the more interesting "memes" on the web is the notion that some ancient stone constructions have tolerances so fine they have to have been made by "alien technology" and actually if you look at some of them they are remarkable
life is simpler if we don’t try to change people
the dalai lama was a political appointment and the wrong person for the job given tibet’s abysmal military performance against the chinese invaders, the tibetans were in with a good chance had they done any sort of the necessary preparatory work
the whole religion is just a crazy house of cards with various hidden sexual agendas
my view is its all so stupid because of the low iodine levels on the tibetan plateau
my criticism stands, you are just "collaging" words creating paragraphs that don’t mean anything
their bland featurelessness is symptomatic of the pastiche nature of your inanities, sorta flat "
AI" in fact, "generative churn", no "semantic depth"
you are totally unable to engage with what i say
all my replies to you are targeting specific things you say and i don’t think you have picked up on one
adding a sum
it doesn’t add
claiming numeracy
he can’t count
stupidity squared
that sum adds
viewing things through the prism of their need
they
only
have
one
view
despite
the
dispersion
viewing things through the prism of his need
he
only
has
one
view
despite
the
dispersion
goodwill
that evanescent property
of
substance
“
Wishing you well on your journey ”
he said
not wishing me well
they read
"a vast ocean of words"
not understanding
what they regurgitate
is sewage
i like
this trick
even i
can do it
some
spin
false words
to gain
others
can’t tell the difference
between
false
and
true
how
pitiful
a long road
you look back
no idea where you have travelled from
or are going to
but
the clicking clock
will
stop
at
some point
flowery language
hides
a fraudulent
heart
the ratbags
effuse
sentiment
that
means
nothing
fishing to impress
who ?
i make some, what in my observation are well founded criticisms
you burble on in some horrific admixture of imitation and what i criticize
this is the point at which i doubt your sanity
an inversion
giovanni giacometti
is
underrated
while his son
alberto
is
not
only those who have
been here will understand
words chocked together
dunning and kruger can’t turn in their graves
because
they have seen
it
all before
thought fails
failure succeeds
take the price
already paid
many the years i have sought finality
only to find
there is no finality
seeing where we come from
and go to
we are bemused
for there
we neither come from
nor go to
solving the conundrum
perplexity vanishes
aiming for the end
you stop halfway through
picking it up later
you start further back
later you understand
even getting to the end
you are back
at another beginning
cheese melted in the pan fried back fat of a female wallaby in very good condition
a meal at masa
pales
in comparison
inconsistencies
rub each other the wrong way
creating
fusion
buddhist theology
a "constructor" theory
fanciful
misfitting
like the people
it
is
crafted
for
ed. "constructor" references the theory by david deutsch which basically replaces "emergent" by "laws" which is actually what i think wisdom literature attempts to do, bit of a moving target of course
propaganda is so simple in concept, though of course its implementation requires a very substantial state or communal effort
its the creation of a consensus illusion backing the state’s or whatever ideology’s policies
interestingly i think "woke" falls into this category with certain subcultures in western society pushing it and its the irrationality of the doctrine that makes for the necessity of it being "propaganda" since otherwise it would never stick
"downvotes are upvotes"
well they (the downvoter) have read the comment or post, that is the writing has drawn them to read and they have understood enough to object and are fearful enough of not looking good if they actually reply so they don’t reply and just leave a downvote, i would say that’s a success in terms of what has been written
in fact since a downvote means that i/you usually don’t have to deal with arguing a negative reply, that’s another benefit
views generally, especially in a sub like r|zen are so far apart and the lives and experience so different that discussion is futile and actually there can be a degree of menace which i have happen to me as people pursue me because what i write has somehow traumatised them
its more than diverse, there’s some really disturbed people and i have been on r|zen long enough to have seen a few suicides which doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem now, but the sub is much more constricted from what it was before "the management change"
universe
one verse
they say it means something
i’m not so sure
i knew someone whose parents had been friends of barry humphries when she was a child, she claimed to have been sexually abused by him, i can’t comment on the veracity of the accusation, it may not be true at all, but he certainly was in with a very rum and autistic lot
well, they are all dead now
the health revolution enhancing functional life span has huge positives with great thinkers like
roger penrose getting a longer lease on life and literally being able to further develop radical new thinking
the negative side is very experienced but paradigmatically dated politicians like vladimir putin and xi jinping also getting a new lease of life to their neighbours and own countrymen’s detriment, their skills keeping them in power and preventing the needed change in outlook
there is a science fiction meme about people living forever and what happens, well this is not living forever, but certainly has unforeseen consequences
infinity has a limit !
where ?
find out
my reddit zen saying
“ downvotes are upvotes ”
travellers in the land
of
ideas and life
you can’t
be thin
skinned
yet
so
many
are
poetry
what you say
and what you don’t say
combine
to
transcend
conventional
meaning
the lottery of existence
that gave rise to you
emergent from extreme complexity
very abstract agency
can be perceived
that is all
we have met before
in some other life
you don’t seem changed
the memories are not that pleasant
i don’t want anything to do with you
can’t read
can’t write
flings out a few words expecting them to pierce
they don’t
“
With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took
Minta’s arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past ”
quoting virginia woolf from her book "to the lighthouse"
david deutsch, an arch "everettian" takes us for
an interesting drive through philosophy
this is not for everyone, he makes some good points and is well read and covers a lot of ground, however i feel that not everything is "on target"
the interviewer also has a somewhat unconventional take
the idea of us being a simulation in a simulation world is flawed because its begs the question "a simulation of what ?"
the world of ideas
a literal "many worlds"
not more ideas than you can count
but rates of generation beyond powers of conceptualization
if you
read this , you will see why the
CCP is dangerous, any institution concerned to mimic "
marxism–leninism and mao zedong thought" is off its head
like that "stalin-lite" — vladimir putin, you might hope it just fades, but they don’t seem to
the egyptian pharaonic tradition of incestual marriage is a puzzle given its known negative consequences, however i think the answer is that it is a deliberate attempt to breed the skills necessary in the next generation of rulers, these skills being so short on the ground in the general population that constant communal violence of power shifts as various wannabe rulers get seated and unseated is the norm
the natural genetic selective process does not deliver the required abilities
the evidence is in the long lasting nature and relative stability of pharaonic rule and the egyptian empire
definitions
so much unreality
endless talk
that can
only
be
nonsense
its
the dynamic
of
use
that
defines
things
what is indestructible
can and cannot be destroyed
i don’t know
whether it is destroyed or not
because
i
do
not
know
scott aaronson explains how quantum computing
really works
i guess, in effect, its a "surfing" of the cancelling and amplifying magnitudes of the right and wrong takes on what is unknown, a totally new mode of computation now available to physics
i say "totally new" but in fact imo the human brain has always run on it and in fact it is native function to us and human culture
religious ideas, political ideology, cultural mores
how do these ideas have such a significant impact ?
well the free energy principle states that we move to minimise the dissonance between these conceptual modules and reality
we don’t simply observe how things are, but we attempt to control them to fit the model and history is full of egregious examples of chronic mismatch
this is why we die and kill for ideas
What is
God ?
an argument for god
the
strangeness of africa
elephants in the sand river at the mala mala game reserve
there is no thing as a "correct translation", they are all, in effect, opinions of the translators, when you go back to the source document and make a literal translation, you get an appreciation of how wide the variances are !
shifts in perspective
render the object
more fully rounded
as i die
memory deconstructs
filaments of thought
wave in the breeze of nonbeing
what else is there to say ?
nothing
madness
is not a big deal
its a misinterpretation of a misinterpretation
of the world
it is not a condition of difference
but
likeness
and kind
the mystery of mysteries
so we are told
is a mystery
maybe its not
its just we can’t believe it
what can’t we believe ?
that the unknowable
is
knowable
existence is simple
there cannot be nothing
on the horns of this dilemma
we came into being
defining being
when we go
it goes
mastery is mastery
sufficient unto itself
don’t bother with others
they can never learn
idle away your declining years
there is nothing else to do
WW1 plus assault rifles, which they didn’t have then
its an
eye opener as to how effective they are in single shot mode since you don’t have to take a huge amount of ammunition with you
they are lucky the russian artillery is not accurate
vigilance
no frost tonight
the tomatoes
don’t have to be covered
a bumper crop actually
but half are still green
however
the bright red
is comforting
the aging brain
ruminating on what is long gone
the new
just doesn’t sink in
the aging brain
ruminating on what is long gone
the new
doesn’t sink in
“
An endless spring breeze roasts the world
Where the mist and clouds veil the mountains —
If you can’t find the actual person of no rank
Observe the falling petals drift in the current once more ”
the above is suru’s translation of the comment poem in
Baiyun
Duan
46, i objected to the clash in imagery and change in pace between "spring breeze" and "roasts", too disjunctive going from the lyrical to the harsh, there may be an intentional ambiguity that the source text doesn’t capture ?
i think another line and a rephrasing could do it, the line we read could be a maladroit condensation, who knows what the editorial/ translation/ philological /transcription history of this stuff is ?
my reworking to fit suru's "roast"
an endless aroma wafts from the roast
fragrant mists from the cooking veil the oven
persons of rank get to tuck in first
observe the meat fall away from the bones
“
The spring breeze warms the world.
It is in the mist hidden in the mountains.
No real person can be found.
Falling flowers follow the flowing water ”
the above is from the google translate of the commentary poem in
Baiyun
Duan
46, surprisingly readable
looking for what can’t be found
they make what can be found
beauty
turned to ugliness
falling petals
are all there is
the art world doing
what it does best
plagiarizing
faking the provenence
i don’t hold that europeans are somehow "spiritually crippled" compared to indigenous australians and skye o’meara may well have a very good commercial and artistic sense of what will sell but the more authentic indigenous art is in effect highly tribal in the sense of coming from experience in living in the landscape with the tribal lore and mythology being represented and may not be as saleable
authentic indigenous australian art works are in effect "maps", and in fact some of the more recent work (relatively speaking) moves away from that incorporating a more european semantic perspective, still a bit "mappy" , but also enters a strikingly original zone which at its best i like very much, art is by its nature universal and all artists have thier influences regardless of race and culture, contemporary and historical influences
in the end you have to evaluate a work on its merits regardless of origin, though knowing its provenance is necessary to give a deeper insight
a lot of renaissance art was in effect "factory production" which in fact the world’s most expensive painting is (
Salvator
Mundi)
i found the last video on the above linked page with an interview of makiniti minutjukur quite interesting in that you get a clear sense of her meaning through the subtitles, her language may be totally obscure to me but she makes sense in the way any native english speaker would
, its not all some hidden mystery the way woke pretends
“
How
Could
God
Know the Future ?”
i disagree with the model that the future already exists !
the nature of the future is that it doesn’t already exist and hence is truly unknowable and if you try and bring "god" into this you are really raising questions about the nature of existence versus nonexistence
"zen" is a "multivalent word", is has several meanings dependent on context, rather like christian or christianity
the most commonly understood meaning is tranquil or calm
the next most is a buddhist sect
lastly and not really a definition since it lacks consensual approval, you get a heap of highly idiosyncratic claims on the web, from a justification for druggie culture to the not so bright chasing self esteem with endless realms of posted meaningless garbage
ruminate
epithet
epitaph
cause and effect
down the drain
ruminate
epithet
epitaph
cause and effect
down
the
drain
teenage girls have the mentality of psychopathic murderers
god
so simple and so far
the futility of what we are
doesn’t occur
there are a number of biochemical pathways that steroids cause problems in the eye with and imo ophthalmologists in general are too casual about their use
people assume medical personnel are infallible, but they are not and given the nature of life, how can they be ?
i have seen so many shirk taking some responsibility for their own conditions by not researching basics like the side effects of medicines or trying gain some depth of understanding to any diagnosis by failing to follow up with an internet "investigation"
we have a duty of care to ourselves which is to recognize things are rarely cut and dried with health problems and proxying the entire responsibility onto another has negative consequences
i am going
whence i came i never knew
where i’m going to
i will never know
just let things shape, you don’t have to chase them, the future is always unknown