Won't explain why i'm where i am .. but i'm back at the crossroads... the other path now opens up... only 10 mins to pen this down
the belief in romantic love is an illusion...
looking into our lovers eyes we are caught in the most beautiful illusion
she find her complete fulfillment in you, and you find your complete fulfillment in her. Normally we are in a state of seeking something in the outer world over which we have precarious control and we need to work to get it... and then when we get it it is ephemeral and we start all over again...
in my lovers eyes i see the end of desire... she is mine forever and in her is my every desire fulfilled and i know that she find her complete fulfillment in me... it means that between us there is no lose thread... a completely inwardly turning self sufficient embrace of desires... everything i need is in her... and everything she needs is in me... i need look no further into the uncertain world around because i have it all right here in this girl before me who is as certain a part of me as my own reflection... no more will i wander this world in need ... in the insecurity of not having power to master my needs... in her lies everything i ever wanted and in me she finds the same... self generating, self sufficient satisfaction.
That is the myth! that swells our hearts and makes us strive for that perfection in this life, which makes us run into the pit of flames that is sexual desire but it is a myth. i didn't see the whole way thru yesterday but i did see that chances are it can't be true. How can anything that is totally self sufficient exist... that is like a perpetual motion machine. Love is conditional that is the truth, and so it is not perfect.
Its also to do with ego. I am the only one of me, i am unique, what happens to me is unique and noone else can replace me. It follows when i look to another that i look for that unique other who is as special and unique as me - i look for THE ONE. Actually we look a bit closer there are lots of ONES and each person seems to find their one from the same pool of humans that everyone else finds their one... and we can change our ones also. It stems from this other illusion of the uniqueness of self, that when we die its more important than when another dies... and when our ONE dies that is as important as our own death... except its all an illusion.
there was one other point i forget... but gotta dash.. 2 b continued! so which path am i walking now? as usual they both open at the same time... still the ghost
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Monday, 19 February 2007
Beauty & stories again
Contemplating the connection i felt to my muse again and in somewhat cooler thoughts I realise that there was something extraordinary and beautiful that we shared, something which does genuinely seem to escape many other people... it is the bliss of beauty.
I must have mentioned in this blog somewhere some of her most enchanting words and letters, in particular one which captured the quintessential nature of her struggle for love, beauty, passion and spirit, and the same for which i too strived. She spoke of a night where she had awoken with the curtains gently swaying in the gentle breeze from the open window above her head. The cool summer vapours carried a heavy mist which filled the air, materialising almost unoticably upon her face and filling her chest with each shallow breath - it was as though she and the caressing moisture where one as she dreamily gave in to the call from beyond the window. I rewrite it very badly and can do no justice to her beautiful words (at this late hour at least, maybe i should chose a better time to write) but i wish to record that here is the goal of that beauty. It is the absorbtion into what is beautiful and entirely captivating about the everyday world around us; that richness which fulfills the heart's longing that lies in all places always; that answer to life's call to which we need only close our eyes and breath in; it is the self-declaring meaning to existence that requires no justification, no words, no answer for it appeals just as it is in complete and unchallenged perfection. This is what she stood for, this is the unparalleled beauty of that girl who seems more than ever to deserve the title Daughter of the Moon. She will be there now dancing in her mother's silvery light, gazing upon the world of mortals with rapture, for in her all places and all times were as one in their spellbinding beauty.
Now this must challenge Buddhism? but i cannot bring myself to abandon what i at least sort for even before meeting my muse, but she so spectacularly held the key to this world of poetry, rhyme and story.
The hero takes the stage within the story and we the audience wait with baited breath to see what unfolds and how he will fashion his destiny. This is not the story of some arbitrary play, but this is the story of each and every life! Actors within our own stories and the audience of gods awaits our every move seeing us unfurl and brandish our destinies.
To the more enlightened it might become apparent that we are authors of our destiny, but to the common man we challenge and battle against this unknown hand, swaying as i do within the pages of this blog, between hardship and times of plenty unknowing of whence all these stories come, and unknowing of how to despatch my future.
I stand today at crossroads again, between two destinies that i have battled for as long as i can remember and it lies upon just one person to take that path, or stand like a hung ghost for the rest of time upon this spot. I have advisors who speak of one way and a heart which speaks of another but beauty will be my loudest protagonist and my muse would welcome that from her lofty seat above this stage.
My heart sings again of this project we embarked upon, i will let no darkened thoughts, or ounces of realism distract its course - she said she was a realist and i the idealist but in beauty these are the same - until every shadow of this world speaks of beauty my heart has no right to call itself by that name. We the writers of our own destinies chose the world in which we live, and the only world that can justify being so called upon is Beauty. Dispell all doubts, all darkness, and be free to love in fullness, that is the eternal call of every destiny.
So Be it!
I must have mentioned in this blog somewhere some of her most enchanting words and letters, in particular one which captured the quintessential nature of her struggle for love, beauty, passion and spirit, and the same for which i too strived. She spoke of a night where she had awoken with the curtains gently swaying in the gentle breeze from the open window above her head. The cool summer vapours carried a heavy mist which filled the air, materialising almost unoticably upon her face and filling her chest with each shallow breath - it was as though she and the caressing moisture where one as she dreamily gave in to the call from beyond the window. I rewrite it very badly and can do no justice to her beautiful words (at this late hour at least, maybe i should chose a better time to write) but i wish to record that here is the goal of that beauty. It is the absorbtion into what is beautiful and entirely captivating about the everyday world around us; that richness which fulfills the heart's longing that lies in all places always; that answer to life's call to which we need only close our eyes and breath in; it is the self-declaring meaning to existence that requires no justification, no words, no answer for it appeals just as it is in complete and unchallenged perfection. This is what she stood for, this is the unparalleled beauty of that girl who seems more than ever to deserve the title Daughter of the Moon. She will be there now dancing in her mother's silvery light, gazing upon the world of mortals with rapture, for in her all places and all times were as one in their spellbinding beauty.
Now this must challenge Buddhism? but i cannot bring myself to abandon what i at least sort for even before meeting my muse, but she so spectacularly held the key to this world of poetry, rhyme and story.
The hero takes the stage within the story and we the audience wait with baited breath to see what unfolds and how he will fashion his destiny. This is not the story of some arbitrary play, but this is the story of each and every life! Actors within our own stories and the audience of gods awaits our every move seeing us unfurl and brandish our destinies.
To the more enlightened it might become apparent that we are authors of our destiny, but to the common man we challenge and battle against this unknown hand, swaying as i do within the pages of this blog, between hardship and times of plenty unknowing of whence all these stories come, and unknowing of how to despatch my future.
I stand today at crossroads again, between two destinies that i have battled for as long as i can remember and it lies upon just one person to take that path, or stand like a hung ghost for the rest of time upon this spot. I have advisors who speak of one way and a heart which speaks of another but beauty will be my loudest protagonist and my muse would welcome that from her lofty seat above this stage.
My heart sings again of this project we embarked upon, i will let no darkened thoughts, or ounces of realism distract its course - she said she was a realist and i the idealist but in beauty these are the same - until every shadow of this world speaks of beauty my heart has no right to call itself by that name. We the writers of our own destinies chose the world in which we live, and the only world that can justify being so called upon is Beauty. Dispell all doubts, all darkness, and be free to love in fullness, that is the eternal call of every destiny.
So Be it!
Monday, 12 February 2007
The Path...
I was watching a BBC documentary on Buddha yesterday.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=185812058748112905&pr=goog-sl
This brings me closer to understanding both my own path and also Buddhism.
They teach Buddhism like it were a fitness/weight loss program. And they have glossy posters of people who have done well through the fitness program, and there are lots of stories of what it is like to lose weight.
Actually I'm beginning to realise this is all rubbish, and that like my opening realisation to start this blog - Buddhism is its own worst enemy.
My own experiences seem much closer to the subject matter of this BBC documentary than actual Buddhism!
When I was a child (like most children I imagine) I was deeply effected by the suffering of the world. Unfortunately seeing people as the cause of all the stupidity I came to hate them for it - so that was a big mistake.
While doing some homework one night I slipped into a meditative trance where i suddenly became aware of the contrast between the pool of light cast by an angle-poise lamp and the darkness of the rest of the room which engulfed me. Seeing that the mind stood between both darkness and light opened an awareness of an infinite awareness of space after which maybe I fell into a Jhana and when I came out was filled with blissful peace. I ran to my father to ask him what it was and I think he thought i was going mad. Somehow I then ignored the experience and pursued enquiry into the world with my new awakened consciousness. A second big mistake.
The enquiry that I was taking though and still take is the answer to a question which cannot be asked. It is like Hitch-Hiker's guide to the galaxy and 42 where the issue is the question not the answer. We cannot frame the question because it is the question of existence and life itself. If we ever did frame it - what would we have to be to do so? not-alive and not-existing?
In the documentary the understanding of the issue which Buddha pursues is not some abstract knowledge of suffering and the wish to help - as though we were left-wing NGO members with some political agenda. It is not an abstract issue of heavens and gods, of mystical practices and esoteric knowledges into which we must be initiated.
It is nothing but the deepest issues that effect our own life and the life of the people around us. We don't need to seek it - we have it already. An interest in being alive is what he pursued. What is this thing called life? and why is it so hard? What is its nature? and armed with that knowledge what am to do with it?
What is "life"? Unfortunately Science has done a lot of damage because in Science each question become focused upon a thing in the world. The issue of life is so vast however that we can't bring it within the scope of any telescope or science faculty. What the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the mathematician, the doctor, the religious studies, philosophy, language, art, psychology, social-sciences, agriculture students are all doing is life itself!
Not just only down the lens of their telescopes, but with their very life they are pursuing this question. But unfortunately the box of scientific though limits their enquiry to what is within the frame of the research - it does not allow them to bring their own lives and relative existence into the equation - because that is considered "unobjective".
But deny it all we might - everything we do, even gazing at the stars lightyears away is all about our own life and the life that all beings share, right here, right now. Space is infinite because it is all here right now with our these very momentary minds that live.
So abstract enquiry is not the point, abstract belief in distant gods, in mystical legends, practices, schools, groups, teachers, places, languages is not the point. As they always do say in Buddhism the issue is one that is with us right now even if we try to escape it. That we REALLY are alive, that the world REALLY is there, and that we REALLY struggle against it.
In that sense everyone is a Buddhist, and for that reason the word is really quite meaningless, misleading and we shouldn't use it.
Better is simply to face life as it REALLY is. To forget about our allegiences and the things we are "supposed" to believe, and the people we are "supposed" to respect and follow. Better to just see things as they REALLy are, for ourselves even in the face of ridicule and rejection by our contemporaries, our teachers and the world itself.
Ridicule is what we will face, because the world has not yet liberated itself, because we have not yet liberated ourself. We are not face-to-face with REALITY and so we will face illusions and distractions all the way. I am learning that a humble boldness and refusal to accept what other people say, no matter how wise they are supposed to be, until I see it for myself is the only way - even unto rejection by the whole world.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=185812058748112905&pr=goog-sl
This brings me closer to understanding both my own path and also Buddhism.
They teach Buddhism like it were a fitness/weight loss program. And they have glossy posters of people who have done well through the fitness program, and there are lots of stories of what it is like to lose weight.
Actually I'm beginning to realise this is all rubbish, and that like my opening realisation to start this blog - Buddhism is its own worst enemy.
My own experiences seem much closer to the subject matter of this BBC documentary than actual Buddhism!
When I was a child (like most children I imagine) I was deeply effected by the suffering of the world. Unfortunately seeing people as the cause of all the stupidity I came to hate them for it - so that was a big mistake.
While doing some homework one night I slipped into a meditative trance where i suddenly became aware of the contrast between the pool of light cast by an angle-poise lamp and the darkness of the rest of the room which engulfed me. Seeing that the mind stood between both darkness and light opened an awareness of an infinite awareness of space after which maybe I fell into a Jhana and when I came out was filled with blissful peace. I ran to my father to ask him what it was and I think he thought i was going mad. Somehow I then ignored the experience and pursued enquiry into the world with my new awakened consciousness. A second big mistake.
The enquiry that I was taking though and still take is the answer to a question which cannot be asked. It is like Hitch-Hiker's guide to the galaxy and 42 where the issue is the question not the answer. We cannot frame the question because it is the question of existence and life itself. If we ever did frame it - what would we have to be to do so? not-alive and not-existing?
In the documentary the understanding of the issue which Buddha pursues is not some abstract knowledge of suffering and the wish to help - as though we were left-wing NGO members with some political agenda. It is not an abstract issue of heavens and gods, of mystical practices and esoteric knowledges into which we must be initiated.
It is nothing but the deepest issues that effect our own life and the life of the people around us. We don't need to seek it - we have it already. An interest in being alive is what he pursued. What is this thing called life? and why is it so hard? What is its nature? and armed with that knowledge what am to do with it?
What is "life"? Unfortunately Science has done a lot of damage because in Science each question become focused upon a thing in the world. The issue of life is so vast however that we can't bring it within the scope of any telescope or science faculty. What the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the mathematician, the doctor, the religious studies, philosophy, language, art, psychology, social-sciences, agriculture students are all doing is life itself!
Not just only down the lens of their telescopes, but with their very life they are pursuing this question. But unfortunately the box of scientific though limits their enquiry to what is within the frame of the research - it does not allow them to bring their own lives and relative existence into the equation - because that is considered "unobjective".
But deny it all we might - everything we do, even gazing at the stars lightyears away is all about our own life and the life that all beings share, right here, right now. Space is infinite because it is all here right now with our these very momentary minds that live.
So abstract enquiry is not the point, abstract belief in distant gods, in mystical legends, practices, schools, groups, teachers, places, languages is not the point. As they always do say in Buddhism the issue is one that is with us right now even if we try to escape it. That we REALLY are alive, that the world REALLY is there, and that we REALLY struggle against it.
In that sense everyone is a Buddhist, and for that reason the word is really quite meaningless, misleading and we shouldn't use it.
Better is simply to face life as it REALLY is. To forget about our allegiences and the things we are "supposed" to believe, and the people we are "supposed" to respect and follow. Better to just see things as they REALLy are, for ourselves even in the face of ridicule and rejection by our contemporaries, our teachers and the world itself.
Ridicule is what we will face, because the world has not yet liberated itself, because we have not yet liberated ourself. We are not face-to-face with REALITY and so we will face illusions and distractions all the way. I am learning that a humble boldness and refusal to accept what other people say, no matter how wise they are supposed to be, until I see it for myself is the only way - even unto rejection by the whole world.
It was never ment to be?
This is a very helpul way of thinking - but used in the wrong place it is rubbish.
It is not an excuse to do nothing thinking everytime things fail that it was never ment to be.
So Ww fail an exam because we didn't revise. On one hand it is easy to see why we failed and we may punish ourselves by wishing we had worked harder. This is true. But why didn't we work harder? Maybe we didn't understand the importants, maybe we had other things on our mind; whichever way we only realise now in the futurewhat we should have done in the past - and in that sense it was never going to be. Time machines do not exist.
However now that we know we have an opportunity to change and work harder. The future is upto us, the past is already laid and cannot be changed.
How we look at the present in the future we also do not know. But it is a feature of the world that the present always plays its part in the future. When the future comes we will look back and understand the part played by the present, even while we can't make sense of it now. This is a logical necessity.
It is not an excuse to do nothing thinking everytime things fail that it was never ment to be.
So Ww fail an exam because we didn't revise. On one hand it is easy to see why we failed and we may punish ourselves by wishing we had worked harder. This is true. But why didn't we work harder? Maybe we didn't understand the importants, maybe we had other things on our mind; whichever way we only realise now in the futurewhat we should have done in the past - and in that sense it was never going to be. Time machines do not exist.
However now that we know we have an opportunity to change and work harder. The future is upto us, the past is already laid and cannot be changed.
How we look at the present in the future we also do not know. But it is a feature of the world that the present always plays its part in the future. When the future comes we will look back and understand the part played by the present, even while we can't make sense of it now. This is a logical necessity.
Thursday, 8 February 2007
Some Buddhism then...
Had a break and got a different mind on now. According to the tapes yesterday and also this great recording from Ven Ajahn Brahm
http://www.bswa.org/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?cid=4&lid=483
Death of course is one of the things which had Buddha so unset too. And we know that he gained realisation of why it was so upsetting - so with Buddha there is hope and joy and happiness - so I ain't despairing, its just my continued ignorance, proof being the pages on this blog.
the thing which struck me yesterday was how completely wrong we have got the world. I've always rallied again the "world order" from a philosophical angle because it seems to completely get it wrong and worse fills our heads with ideas whose only purpose is to play us into the hands of the power-mongers.
Ironically lots of people follow Nietzsche into thinking that religions are ideas that play into the hands of the power-mongers. Kings love most religions because they ask people to be odedient, hard working and non-violent. Great for a King cos it means no rebellion. Irony tho because it is the religions which teach us liberation, and the other ideas work with the very poison that the Kings have given us.
Imagine I'm sitting around a nice middle-class dinner table (viz Bremner, Bird and Fortune if u watch TV in UK) and through the haze of talk about interest rates, holidays and how the kids are doing I suddenly announce that I was created from a cell that budded off my mother and grew within her.
Its almost like a bit of Kafka. We startle at the terrifying reality that Gregor finds himself in - a huge beetle lying on its back. Well its a similar experience to find that actually I was born from a tiny blob that budded like a wildlife documentary on corals from my mother and then grew within her belly. All that water and biological humours, microscopic cell stuff going on. But actually that is the underlying truth behind this man-of-pretence who pretends to be a mature adult sitting at a keyboard with a job and a bank balance and who can do stuff. I'm just a blob, and the rest is as real as the fashion garments that they hang on models.
So in the same way as I began as a microscopic blob pinching off my mother, so its no more bizarre to suppose that I will die also.
These are things that all the tapes I listened to point out - that we are completely hidden from the truth about reality. Hospitals, old peoples homes, mortuaries, funerals, cremations all sanitised - we never have to deal with what is really going on, all the time all over the world.
The vast power of the demon Death has been made clear to me. There is no way to keep him away. We can dodge him, we can even murder people ourselves to spite Him, but in the end he is the one who always catches up with us and takes what belongs to Him. Whole galaxies must succumb to his power, whole universes - he is truely an unmatched force.
Every petty thing we dress our lives in, every pointless belief, dream, hope will be ripped from us brutally and destroyed when the time comes. There is no escaping, and no where to hide from this barbaric force. What little we think we have - we believe so with utter childish vanity because we have failed to see the tide creeping up behind us, which will dash every single sand castle and leave no remain. Such is the power of Death that even Buddha could not escape it. He died like everyone else.
So they way forward and what I have been keeping in the back of my mind today is this.
If every single thing in the whole world is just a weak piece of paper through which Death will burst his head any minute and eradicate completely and unrecoverably then that leaves us only one place to be...
it is right here and now. Death cannot take that from us!
Why can't he take it from us? because it is actually here in actual existence right now. Take it and he takes what was yesterday! Threaten to take it and he takes tomorrows dream. What he can't touch is today.
I have learned through all this that life is too short to spend on dreams and hopes. It must be taken today. I have also learned that each and ever person lives in fear of the Great Demon Death and in that we all share an enormous comradeship. We are to be there for everyone always right here and right now because that is all we have.
The stuff before on believing in yourself before you can help others is relevant. We must believe in ourselves because otherwise we rob others of a good friend.
Ex is on MSN...laterz
http://www.bswa.org/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?cid=4&lid=483
Death of course is one of the things which had Buddha so unset too. And we know that he gained realisation of why it was so upsetting - so with Buddha there is hope and joy and happiness - so I ain't despairing, its just my continued ignorance, proof being the pages on this blog.
the thing which struck me yesterday was how completely wrong we have got the world. I've always rallied again the "world order" from a philosophical angle because it seems to completely get it wrong and worse fills our heads with ideas whose only purpose is to play us into the hands of the power-mongers.
Ironically lots of people follow Nietzsche into thinking that religions are ideas that play into the hands of the power-mongers. Kings love most religions because they ask people to be odedient, hard working and non-violent. Great for a King cos it means no rebellion. Irony tho because it is the religions which teach us liberation, and the other ideas work with the very poison that the Kings have given us.
Imagine I'm sitting around a nice middle-class dinner table (viz Bremner, Bird and Fortune if u watch TV in UK) and through the haze of talk about interest rates, holidays and how the kids are doing I suddenly announce that I was created from a cell that budded off my mother and grew within her.
Its almost like a bit of Kafka. We startle at the terrifying reality that Gregor finds himself in - a huge beetle lying on its back. Well its a similar experience to find that actually I was born from a tiny blob that budded like a wildlife documentary on corals from my mother and then grew within her belly. All that water and biological humours, microscopic cell stuff going on. But actually that is the underlying truth behind this man-of-pretence who pretends to be a mature adult sitting at a keyboard with a job and a bank balance and who can do stuff. I'm just a blob, and the rest is as real as the fashion garments that they hang on models.
So in the same way as I began as a microscopic blob pinching off my mother, so its no more bizarre to suppose that I will die also.
These are things that all the tapes I listened to point out - that we are completely hidden from the truth about reality. Hospitals, old peoples homes, mortuaries, funerals, cremations all sanitised - we never have to deal with what is really going on, all the time all over the world.
The vast power of the demon Death has been made clear to me. There is no way to keep him away. We can dodge him, we can even murder people ourselves to spite Him, but in the end he is the one who always catches up with us and takes what belongs to Him. Whole galaxies must succumb to his power, whole universes - he is truely an unmatched force.
Every petty thing we dress our lives in, every pointless belief, dream, hope will be ripped from us brutally and destroyed when the time comes. There is no escaping, and no where to hide from this barbaric force. What little we think we have - we believe so with utter childish vanity because we have failed to see the tide creeping up behind us, which will dash every single sand castle and leave no remain. Such is the power of Death that even Buddha could not escape it. He died like everyone else.
So they way forward and what I have been keeping in the back of my mind today is this.
If every single thing in the whole world is just a weak piece of paper through which Death will burst his head any minute and eradicate completely and unrecoverably then that leaves us only one place to be...
it is right here and now. Death cannot take that from us!
Why can't he take it from us? because it is actually here in actual existence right now. Take it and he takes what was yesterday! Threaten to take it and he takes tomorrows dream. What he can't touch is today.
I have learned through all this that life is too short to spend on dreams and hopes. It must be taken today. I have also learned that each and ever person lives in fear of the Great Demon Death and in that we all share an enormous comradeship. We are to be there for everyone always right here and right now because that is all we have.
The stuff before on believing in yourself before you can help others is relevant. We must believe in ourselves because otherwise we rob others of a good friend.
Ex is on MSN...laterz
It is true
I just spoke to the sister of "my muse" for the first time. The impossible to grasp thing really is did happen, she truely has passed away, she died in her sleep in early May, peacefully but with no warning and no explanation. It is impossible to comprehend. Far from my interpretations, her sister has a much simpler explanation that following the heartbreak of losing her beloved father 3 years before she finally gave up.
It fills me with deep regret that I was not there for her in those years. No-one gives into death that easily and her fathers death must have been a truely profound loss. I always thought she was happy, i never realised that she would ever be unhappy. I misread the signs, ignored my hearts most empassioned calls to reach out to her, not that it would have made any difference, but i saw everything wrong and did the wrong thing. i need to go very deep to forgive myself that.
I looked back over my photo collection to find that day. I remember it now, my ex and me went to the gardens here at the university to photograph the flowers. It was a wonderful day and the blossoms and flowers filled the air with frangrance and colour. After having forgotten to visit the garden the year before I was determined to make the most of this brief ephemeral display and with the new camera record it. I had timelapse photos of the blossoms coming out on one branch and 11 days before had taken a video of a daffodil which was later to become part of an art work. The introduction read:
"For its intended effect this audio/video should be viewed in the knowledge that in all the universe this daffodil flower no longer exists, and its permanent loss only goes to emphasise what a remarcable beauty it had at 4.11pm on 23rd April 2006."
the poignancy of that brings uncontrollable tears to my eyes. what a remarcable beauty she had...
11 days later she would have departed this world and left her sister and mother to fill the days that followed. Unknowing i filled the day with pictures and videos of flowers and pondered this issue of change and temporariness. A picture from the garden taken by my ex has me strolling through the arboretum of cherry blossoms looking very thoughtful. I remember it, and wish i could remember what I was thinking. It was a dark day for me I remember, heavy with thoughts and with a heavy heart but i can't remember why. I was not happy. Why it seems inportant to go back to that day and relive it I don't understand but it is helping me put all this together.
I have cried properly for the first about all this. The knowing it is true, the ridding of all the fantasies and artifice has left a deep and cold void. I see that all the time we spent together, all the dreams, all the fun and happiness has been washed away by a steely cold hand. Death leaves no explanation, no apology, we are powerless against him and when he takes he takes swiftly and leaves nothing. That nothing is very profound at the moment. It is cold and heartless. My life upto now has been no better than a child playing on a beach, writing stories about being triumphant over death, writing them in the sand, my sand castles, the palaces where the princes will live and win the hands of maidens, the places where things end happily - all of these elaborate artifices destroyed as the waves come crashing in and I am left crying despairingly to the sea as my hard labours are crushed piteously and layed flat. There is no father to run into the arms of here, no father who will tell me we can rebuilt them tomorrow, or who can save the day with a spade and dig a channel to protect the kingdom. As the waves wash around my feet and the walls tumble and disintegrate let me know that this is the true world and everything I have thought to this day has been a lie.
It is unbearably painful to know this. If this is a moment of awareness it is not blissful - it is cold and hard, uncaring and leaves a world in which i cannot imagine there is any joy. Everything I believed in has been washed away, everything around me, everything I am, everything I will believe in is just to be washed away. The brutal waves of time obliterating everything.
My whole life I have held a deep pathos for time. I have few pictures of people because as i child I could not bear to look at time gone by and see the happiness having left me. So much sadness as a child seeing wonderful days crashing away into memory, friends having to go. Someone I hardly knew left school for Holland. I cried myself to sleep because i realised that time had taken him, even tho I never even knew him. It was this poignancy of time, its unavoidable power to rob us of everything which had me so sorrowful. Pictures are of no help, they just remind us of what has gone, they just sweeten the pain of times passing. I have a picture of Exeter on a walk, which was taken while I was in crying very deeply. Again the sadness of a days rest, a day of happiness and relaxation gone, and that "going" that accompanies everything filled my whole being - everything is going. My father has gone, Reena has gone, I will go, the whole world will go - just sand castles on a beach.
i wonder if in past lives I have been tortued by this. Maybe this is why she ment so much to me, maybe this is why i wrote to her of battles with death, maybe the wheel is turning and this loss will live on to other lives. I regret so much not being there for her when she needed it, damn my ignorance and seeing things the wrong way. Self indulgent jealousies, worrying about what I didn't have, the physical when obviously i should have pursued what we had, and had in abundance, proper love and care. How I would have given her anything, I hope she was never wanting.
There is nothing to fill this void I realise today and I was at fauly my whole life in trying to fill it. Everything in this whole stupid world is just a stunt to fill the vast, cold and unavoidable pit of death. Everything from this computer, to my job, to the town in which I live, to the politicians, Tv companies, programs, parents, friends, loves, emotions, thoughts, money, possessions, world, stars, moon, universe it is all just paper and Death will tear through it in seconds when it decides to.
This huge demon Death I f*****g hate it. It is my sworn enemy.
...
I have a headache with crying, and crying is pointless anyway. Yesterday by way of good fortune I listened to these talks on the 4 noble truths - atleast the first 2.
I was reinspired by Buddhism.
I can't get this image of her lying dead on her bed out of my head...dead on her bed out of my head... it so cruel, such a poor girl...
I must stop writing...sorry
It fills me with deep regret that I was not there for her in those years. No-one gives into death that easily and her fathers death must have been a truely profound loss. I always thought she was happy, i never realised that she would ever be unhappy. I misread the signs, ignored my hearts most empassioned calls to reach out to her, not that it would have made any difference, but i saw everything wrong and did the wrong thing. i need to go very deep to forgive myself that.
I looked back over my photo collection to find that day. I remember it now, my ex and me went to the gardens here at the university to photograph the flowers. It was a wonderful day and the blossoms and flowers filled the air with frangrance and colour. After having forgotten to visit the garden the year before I was determined to make the most of this brief ephemeral display and with the new camera record it. I had timelapse photos of the blossoms coming out on one branch and 11 days before had taken a video of a daffodil which was later to become part of an art work. The introduction read:
"For its intended effect this audio/video should be viewed in the knowledge that in all the universe this daffodil flower no longer exists, and its permanent loss only goes to emphasise what a remarcable beauty it had at 4.11pm on 23rd April 2006."
the poignancy of that brings uncontrollable tears to my eyes. what a remarcable beauty she had...
11 days later she would have departed this world and left her sister and mother to fill the days that followed. Unknowing i filled the day with pictures and videos of flowers and pondered this issue of change and temporariness. A picture from the garden taken by my ex has me strolling through the arboretum of cherry blossoms looking very thoughtful. I remember it, and wish i could remember what I was thinking. It was a dark day for me I remember, heavy with thoughts and with a heavy heart but i can't remember why. I was not happy. Why it seems inportant to go back to that day and relive it I don't understand but it is helping me put all this together.
I have cried properly for the first about all this. The knowing it is true, the ridding of all the fantasies and artifice has left a deep and cold void. I see that all the time we spent together, all the dreams, all the fun and happiness has been washed away by a steely cold hand. Death leaves no explanation, no apology, we are powerless against him and when he takes he takes swiftly and leaves nothing. That nothing is very profound at the moment. It is cold and heartless. My life upto now has been no better than a child playing on a beach, writing stories about being triumphant over death, writing them in the sand, my sand castles, the palaces where the princes will live and win the hands of maidens, the places where things end happily - all of these elaborate artifices destroyed as the waves come crashing in and I am left crying despairingly to the sea as my hard labours are crushed piteously and layed flat. There is no father to run into the arms of here, no father who will tell me we can rebuilt them tomorrow, or who can save the day with a spade and dig a channel to protect the kingdom. As the waves wash around my feet and the walls tumble and disintegrate let me know that this is the true world and everything I have thought to this day has been a lie.
It is unbearably painful to know this. If this is a moment of awareness it is not blissful - it is cold and hard, uncaring and leaves a world in which i cannot imagine there is any joy. Everything I believed in has been washed away, everything around me, everything I am, everything I will believe in is just to be washed away. The brutal waves of time obliterating everything.
My whole life I have held a deep pathos for time. I have few pictures of people because as i child I could not bear to look at time gone by and see the happiness having left me. So much sadness as a child seeing wonderful days crashing away into memory, friends having to go. Someone I hardly knew left school for Holland. I cried myself to sleep because i realised that time had taken him, even tho I never even knew him. It was this poignancy of time, its unavoidable power to rob us of everything which had me so sorrowful. Pictures are of no help, they just remind us of what has gone, they just sweeten the pain of times passing. I have a picture of Exeter on a walk, which was taken while I was in crying very deeply. Again the sadness of a days rest, a day of happiness and relaxation gone, and that "going" that accompanies everything filled my whole being - everything is going. My father has gone, Reena has gone, I will go, the whole world will go - just sand castles on a beach.
i wonder if in past lives I have been tortued by this. Maybe this is why she ment so much to me, maybe this is why i wrote to her of battles with death, maybe the wheel is turning and this loss will live on to other lives. I regret so much not being there for her when she needed it, damn my ignorance and seeing things the wrong way. Self indulgent jealousies, worrying about what I didn't have, the physical when obviously i should have pursued what we had, and had in abundance, proper love and care. How I would have given her anything, I hope she was never wanting.
There is nothing to fill this void I realise today and I was at fauly my whole life in trying to fill it. Everything in this whole stupid world is just a stunt to fill the vast, cold and unavoidable pit of death. Everything from this computer, to my job, to the town in which I live, to the politicians, Tv companies, programs, parents, friends, loves, emotions, thoughts, money, possessions, world, stars, moon, universe it is all just paper and Death will tear through it in seconds when it decides to.
This huge demon Death I f*****g hate it. It is my sworn enemy.
...
I have a headache with crying, and crying is pointless anyway. Yesterday by way of good fortune I listened to these talks on the 4 noble truths - atleast the first 2.
I was reinspired by Buddhism.
I can't get this image of her lying dead on her bed out of my head...dead on her bed out of my head... it so cruel, such a poor girl...
I must stop writing...sorry
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Art of Life (the start of main enquiry)
So the two questions posed in this blog are :
1) What is life? - which seeks to determine the special qualities of life and what makes life. Like for example: What is music? These questions I will deal with when the threat of question 2 goes quite for a bit.
2) The Art of Life - which would be the skill to craft a good life. How to be a good musician.
The Art of Life is what they talk about in religions. It is variously: The Logos (pre-Socratic Greeks), Virtue/The Good (Socratic Greeks), The Word - Logos (Christianity), Dharma/Dhamma (Hinduism/Buddhism), Dao (Chinese religions esp. Taoism) etc.
The idea is that a life lived with knowledge of the Art of Life is more living than one which lacks such skill. In its worst case people might be viewed as dead or unawake without such knowledge. Life comes in grades it seems, there is an objective judgement.
Key points of the a well lived Life are that it did not cause suffering to others, and generally treated others with respect and consideration. This is universal. It can be generalised that a well lived life was beneficial and harmonious with the whole world around.
The various teachers of the Art of Life agree that it is very subtle and hard to attain a good skill at Life, and humility in the face of that great difficulty is essential. It would be like learning the violin - to be the best we have to constantly aim higher and not expect it to be easy. What makes a master violin player different from his pupils is impossible to express in any other way than to show them and correct the subtle nuances of play in practice.
Practice is the key point of the Art of Life. It must be learned the hard way through trial and error, rejection and perseverance and hard work. Lectures on the Way are essential to get us started and to correct our practice, but they cannot actually impart the "know how" (connaitre in french) that comes from practice.
Inner contemplation of ones weaknesses combined with a genuine desire to improve ones skill at life is essential also to ensure that grow is fixed and maintained.
Being Alive then is quite like a "test" as many religious people do believe, there is an objective judgement. The test is to find the objective Goodness that separates the fully living and enriched Life from the dead Life and to inspire others to find it too.
There is no ontology (belief in what exists) in this account of the Art of Life beyond the notion that there is an objective Good. Many people would drop the 'o' and call it God, others have other ideas - I'm not going to speculate. The point is that we find the Goodness by any means.
Life by this account is about emmersion in our experiences and our lives with the aim of enriching them by doing what is Good, improving our skill at doing this and aiming for a day when we can play our Life like a violin virtuoso to bring about the best in the world around us.
1) What is life? - which seeks to determine the special qualities of life and what makes life. Like for example: What is music? These questions I will deal with when the threat of question 2 goes quite for a bit.
2) The Art of Life - which would be the skill to craft a good life. How to be a good musician.
The Art of Life is what they talk about in religions. It is variously: The Logos (pre-Socratic Greeks), Virtue/The Good (Socratic Greeks), The Word - Logos (Christianity), Dharma/Dhamma (Hinduism/Buddhism), Dao (Chinese religions esp. Taoism) etc.
The idea is that a life lived with knowledge of the Art of Life is more living than one which lacks such skill. In its worst case people might be viewed as dead or unawake without such knowledge. Life comes in grades it seems, there is an objective judgement.
Key points of the a well lived Life are that it did not cause suffering to others, and generally treated others with respect and consideration. This is universal. It can be generalised that a well lived life was beneficial and harmonious with the whole world around.
The various teachers of the Art of Life agree that it is very subtle and hard to attain a good skill at Life, and humility in the face of that great difficulty is essential. It would be like learning the violin - to be the best we have to constantly aim higher and not expect it to be easy. What makes a master violin player different from his pupils is impossible to express in any other way than to show them and correct the subtle nuances of play in practice.
Practice is the key point of the Art of Life. It must be learned the hard way through trial and error, rejection and perseverance and hard work. Lectures on the Way are essential to get us started and to correct our practice, but they cannot actually impart the "know how" (connaitre in french) that comes from practice.
Inner contemplation of ones weaknesses combined with a genuine desire to improve ones skill at life is essential also to ensure that grow is fixed and maintained.
Being Alive then is quite like a "test" as many religious people do believe, there is an objective judgement. The test is to find the objective Goodness that separates the fully living and enriched Life from the dead Life and to inspire others to find it too.
There is no ontology (belief in what exists) in this account of the Art of Life beyond the notion that there is an objective Good. Many people would drop the 'o' and call it God, others have other ideas - I'm not going to speculate. The point is that we find the Goodness by any means.
Life by this account is about emmersion in our experiences and our lives with the aim of enriching them by doing what is Good, improving our skill at doing this and aiming for a day when we can play our Life like a violin virtuoso to bring about the best in the world around us.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Everything you know is right/wrong
I used to call it irreason. Like irrational/rational but rooted on reason.
It was not irrationality however but rather that grey area between rational and unreasonable. Most of the time what we do in life can't be justifed at all. And yet at the same time it is not in anyway wrong. It seems that we are free to do it, just can't find any provable reason to do it. Well the argument was then do it. It's spontaneous, suprising, passionate, Romantic (in the German sense), breaking expectations and thought patterns: its irreasonable.
Well sober that idea up, chuck a bucket of cold water over it, and its much like the experience of the world as a whole.
Things seem one way for sure, but then can't they be another way also? Its definitely a tree, until someone decides to make a table out of it. I was definitely going to be a Veterinary surgeon, except now I work in a polymer lab. "My muse" was the unquestional, inescapable, centre of my life, but now I realise she is no more and I'm free. I was inconsolably unhappy but now I'm bordering on peaceful and happy. The Iraq war is definitely wrong, except doesn't this give people an opportunity to rebalance power in the Middle East which will be essential for secure oil and eventual peace? It seems all things that were so sure, are no longer so sure.
That said it does not mean the world is a chaos where everything goes. We know clearly - like with irreason - what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. People who wish to harm others are wrong. People who help one another are right. It is not chaos, yet looked at closely nothing seems one sided anymore.
Behave morally and with virtue and the mind and the world need have no boundaries and no tiresome limits, rules or fixed conceptions.
It was not irrationality however but rather that grey area between rational and unreasonable. Most of the time what we do in life can't be justifed at all. And yet at the same time it is not in anyway wrong. It seems that we are free to do it, just can't find any provable reason to do it. Well the argument was then do it. It's spontaneous, suprising, passionate, Romantic (in the German sense), breaking expectations and thought patterns: its irreasonable.
Well sober that idea up, chuck a bucket of cold water over it, and its much like the experience of the world as a whole.
Things seem one way for sure, but then can't they be another way also? Its definitely a tree, until someone decides to make a table out of it. I was definitely going to be a Veterinary surgeon, except now I work in a polymer lab. "My muse" was the unquestional, inescapable, centre of my life, but now I realise she is no more and I'm free. I was inconsolably unhappy but now I'm bordering on peaceful and happy. The Iraq war is definitely wrong, except doesn't this give people an opportunity to rebalance power in the Middle East which will be essential for secure oil and eventual peace? It seems all things that were so sure, are no longer so sure.
That said it does not mean the world is a chaos where everything goes. We know clearly - like with irreason - what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. People who wish to harm others are wrong. People who help one another are right. It is not chaos, yet looked at closely nothing seems one sided anymore.
Behave morally and with virtue and the mind and the world need have no boundaries and no tiresome limits, rules or fixed conceptions.
Sign post for the question of life.
So far in the blog and in my "life" there are 2 competing questions of life.
1) How to live a good life?
2) What is life?
Both seem important. The recent news of the loss of my closest friend brings into stark contrast the life that i am currently possessing and the loss of life that marks the extinction of all those things I rejoiced in being Her. Death is clearly the perfect boundary of what we enjoy as life, but at the same time it informs so much of what we do with our life. I mourn and write a lot stemming from that loss and now that loss is part of my life. Quite unsymettrically my life however is not a part of her death! Death is just the boundary - it is not something in-itself, a new state of mystical existence. That said the belief in other worlds has aided my facing of this painful tragedy. To believe that the Void has simply perished her in one blow is too much to accept all at once. On the other hand I should not despair because out of the Void have come all the days since and even my own Life so it takes in one hand and gives with the other. If i could learn to accept this easy coming and going then life and death would be much easier!
The biological, chemical and physical aspects of life have almost totally been eclipsed by these higher level considerations. Maybe time for them in the future.
The other question of the good life has also dominated. What is the right thing to do with my life? Is even writing a blog a good idea? well in the absence of any other pressing motivations it doesn't seem bad. Certainly ridding myself of unsatisfied desires and accepting those unpleasant things about life would help me along a whole load and that seems to have been done partly by the realisation of the primary importants of "contentment" above happiness and pleasure. With contentment at the moment life is just flowing by no problem.
It raises the prospect of the next phase in that question. What to do with ones time when the pressing notion of suffering has gone. From Buddhism I know the answer is helping others. But as noted that is not a simple matter of supplying them with material or spiritual welfare. That is like giving aid to the 3rd world. It requires somehow helping people to help themselves - and that requires a solid foundation in contentment myself. Which is not there at all yet.
The person in the bank queue was annoying me. I was not content. I have faced the loss of contentment stemming from belief that without the love of my life I could not be content. But, here was a new thing. I believed that were the girl not laughing innanely i would have been more content! So even with unwanted things we should not let them steal our contentment in the belief we will get it back after we have acted to get away.
Much to learn.
There is much more about life also. The growing news of global warming is finally getting people to think about the finite size of the Earth and what we really want from it and from life itself. The problem that has sat in my heart since days of BSc Zoology might be soon to resolve that an animal can't be reduced to its niche and form. Life like the Hindu Gods shows itself in many forms - but they are all one. A bird is a living think like a monkey. Different forms should not distract from the fact that they are part of life and are living organisms in their own right - to be respected as individuals not just as arbitrary kinds and shapes.
1) How to live a good life?
2) What is life?
Both seem important. The recent news of the loss of my closest friend brings into stark contrast the life that i am currently possessing and the loss of life that marks the extinction of all those things I rejoiced in being Her. Death is clearly the perfect boundary of what we enjoy as life, but at the same time it informs so much of what we do with our life. I mourn and write a lot stemming from that loss and now that loss is part of my life. Quite unsymettrically my life however is not a part of her death! Death is just the boundary - it is not something in-itself, a new state of mystical existence. That said the belief in other worlds has aided my facing of this painful tragedy. To believe that the Void has simply perished her in one blow is too much to accept all at once. On the other hand I should not despair because out of the Void have come all the days since and even my own Life so it takes in one hand and gives with the other. If i could learn to accept this easy coming and going then life and death would be much easier!
The biological, chemical and physical aspects of life have almost totally been eclipsed by these higher level considerations. Maybe time for them in the future.
The other question of the good life has also dominated. What is the right thing to do with my life? Is even writing a blog a good idea? well in the absence of any other pressing motivations it doesn't seem bad. Certainly ridding myself of unsatisfied desires and accepting those unpleasant things about life would help me along a whole load and that seems to have been done partly by the realisation of the primary importants of "contentment" above happiness and pleasure. With contentment at the moment life is just flowing by no problem.
It raises the prospect of the next phase in that question. What to do with ones time when the pressing notion of suffering has gone. From Buddhism I know the answer is helping others. But as noted that is not a simple matter of supplying them with material or spiritual welfare. That is like giving aid to the 3rd world. It requires somehow helping people to help themselves - and that requires a solid foundation in contentment myself. Which is not there at all yet.
The person in the bank queue was annoying me. I was not content. I have faced the loss of contentment stemming from belief that without the love of my life I could not be content. But, here was a new thing. I believed that were the girl not laughing innanely i would have been more content! So even with unwanted things we should not let them steal our contentment in the belief we will get it back after we have acted to get away.
Much to learn.
There is much more about life also. The growing news of global warming is finally getting people to think about the finite size of the Earth and what we really want from it and from life itself. The problem that has sat in my heart since days of BSc Zoology might be soon to resolve that an animal can't be reduced to its niche and form. Life like the Hindu Gods shows itself in many forms - but they are all one. A bird is a living think like a monkey. Different forms should not distract from the fact that they are part of life and are living organisms in their own right - to be respected as individuals not just as arbitrary kinds and shapes.
Always be yourself before you go.
Do you think that by getting what you want
You will be more content than you were
Before the start of this new noble quest?
Do you think that by getting what you want
- And by returning to that place of oblivion
Where all the wants of yesterday are forgotten -
We will be more content than yesterday
When the wants of today were yet unborn?
So let that need go! Lest it make a ransom of your contentment.
Believe me! there is not a thing in the world which can make you a drop more than you already are,
But still we insist on spilling themany drops of our contentment - in tears, in blood - in doubting that.
Be sure to know
To always be yourself before you Go,
And never spy a distant beacon
And strive to make what is now begone.
You will be more content than you were
Before the start of this new noble quest?
Do you think that by getting what you want
- And by returning to that place of oblivion
Where all the wants of yesterday are forgotten -
We will be more content than yesterday
When the wants of today were yet unborn?
So let that need go! Lest it make a ransom of your contentment.
Believe me! there is not a thing in the world which can make you a drop more than you already are,
But still we insist on spilling themany drops of our contentment - in tears, in blood - in doubting that.
Be sure to know
To always be yourself before you Go,
And never spy a distant beacon
And strive to make what is now begone.
Sunday, 4 February 2007
Reverse Engineering Contenment
In retrospect why did it take so long to find the bug in my thinking?
What did I expect was going to happen when all my desires and dreasm where met?
The genie pops out of the bottle and grants me the wish that all my other wishes that I would not regret coming true should come true. I'm in a blissful world were my every desire is granted, my every boredom entertained, my every suffering relieved. What would it be?
Peace and contentment!!
So if the greatest achievement is peace and contentment why do I strive for all-the-things instead of peace and contentment?
And how do we attain peace and contentment? There is no genie and there are an infinite number of sufferings, desires and boredoms. It is a hopeless task.
Yet unsatisfied those sufferings, desires and boredoms will be sure to destroy entirely our peace and contenment?
In the hall of mirrors amidst the confusions the answer seems to be quite like what 've read all along - just never made sense of.
As a child we probably had our moments of content, playing with a stone car in the dust, pretending to be an explorer in the woods. The reason is that we forgot to give what we were doing a name, forgot to judge it and proclaim it to the world, forgot to check whether it was cool or adult or fashionable or suited us or whether it was worth it, valuable or even whether we believed it would satisfy us. We broke all the rules because there were none and in the mud and in those endless days we occasionally came across the magical island of contentment. But returning it was never in the same place, the maps of contentment are always wrong because put it on a map and its stops being the island of contentment and becomes an ink stain on the minds page.
Yes the adult modern is world is completely wrong, that is the map that we have spent our lives drawing to find our way around. Everything we believe is probably true, but the islands of contentment are nowhere to be seen. This is the power of myth and fairy tale - if we don't see the enchantment of a often told story then maybe the contentment has gone to.
Reverse engineering i see that the adult they call Alva Gosson has completely missed the point. But better than the child he now knows how not to make the mistake!
What did I expect was going to happen when all my desires and dreasm where met?
The genie pops out of the bottle and grants me the wish that all my other wishes that I would not regret coming true should come true. I'm in a blissful world were my every desire is granted, my every boredom entertained, my every suffering relieved. What would it be?
Peace and contentment!!
So if the greatest achievement is peace and contentment why do I strive for all-the-things instead of peace and contentment?
And how do we attain peace and contentment? There is no genie and there are an infinite number of sufferings, desires and boredoms. It is a hopeless task.
Yet unsatisfied those sufferings, desires and boredoms will be sure to destroy entirely our peace and contenment?
In the hall of mirrors amidst the confusions the answer seems to be quite like what 've read all along - just never made sense of.
As a child we probably had our moments of content, playing with a stone car in the dust, pretending to be an explorer in the woods. The reason is that we forgot to give what we were doing a name, forgot to judge it and proclaim it to the world, forgot to check whether it was cool or adult or fashionable or suited us or whether it was worth it, valuable or even whether we believed it would satisfy us. We broke all the rules because there were none and in the mud and in those endless days we occasionally came across the magical island of contentment. But returning it was never in the same place, the maps of contentment are always wrong because put it on a map and its stops being the island of contentment and becomes an ink stain on the minds page.
Yes the adult modern is world is completely wrong, that is the map that we have spent our lives drawing to find our way around. Everything we believe is probably true, but the islands of contentment are nowhere to be seen. This is the power of myth and fairy tale - if we don't see the enchantment of a often told story then maybe the contentment has gone to.
Reverse engineering i see that the adult they call Alva Gosson has completely missed the point. But better than the child he now knows how not to make the mistake!
The process of discontent (an example)
I remember my sister giving an excellent example of the process of discontent...
My father bought her a Matsui hi-fi stack when we were kids - which to a kid is a brilliant present. It had tape-to-tape high speed dubbing, record player and radio all in one we all thought it excellent.
That was until my sister moved into university and saw her Matsui along side proper stacks that would have cost 10 times as much. It was then that she realised that the stack which had seemed so excellent was really quite cheap. In retrospect the sound quality was not that good, but what were we to know we were kids and knew nothing better.
That is exactly the reason why we are never satisfied in life - the dhukka that Buddah speaks of - the eternal suffering of unenlightened existence - the pain of sin and ignorance.
It is looking at what we "have" in-relation-to-other-things which causes both knowledge of what we have, but at the same time divorce from what we have and the possibility of both happiness and sadness.
i realised once standing on a mountain that when on top of a mountain you can see all the surrounding mountains except the one on which you stand. We always know everything except what we are. Infact what we see is only possible because we are not it, and not being it puts us in a position to see it. The emptiness of the self is the space into which the world we see can flood in. "Knowing" the outside world both at once seems to put us in a place and we can fix on the certainty of knowing what we have. But it is a demon because in the same moment that we know what we have we have lost it. The Masui is no longer ours when we see it a a thing amongst all the others instead of the music player that plays music to us.
Even if the Matsui was a state-of-the-art hi-fi stack, a £1000 Philips or Pioneer, my sister would have gained the apparent "satisfaction" of "knowing" that she "had" a good music player. But she wouldn't really "have" it because it was the knowledge she was now satisfied by, not the player, and knowledge is always for things we don't have which are away from our mountain.
As a child it makes no difference to her whether it is Matsui or Pioneer, it was the player that player her music and objective elements like "how good" actually have no bearing at all on real satisfaction. They are filmic satsfactions of knowledge not real satisfaction.
I have found this very useful in defusing the heart ache that remains after the puzzling relationship with my muse. It is easy to doubt what we went through. I replay the moment a once lover of hers asked me why i don't sleep with her. It is not that I didn't want to, it was my greatest desire, it is just that it never came about because of other things. But the poison in that conversation is that I have taken it to mean that I "should" have left some objective physical movement within the relationship - something I could talk about in a pub rather than diffuse personal emotions, hopes and dreams. I had the Matsui this guy had the Pioneer. I had only my simple pleasures and wonderful daily experience with her when the real world was the most pleasant place amongst all the dream worlds. How do you explain that? In reality it must look like a childs dreaming compared with a full physical relationship - yet the point is that I was satisfied until the Pioneers moved in to "claim" my world. That was my fault. The relationship had 1 rule - no names! Not in 'Last Tango in Paris' sense, but no verbilsation or naming of what we were doing. We never spoke of our real intentions, I never "knew" what she really meant, she never "knew" what I really meant, it was all in the moment and enjoyed for what it was, oblique, inventive and quite possibly perfect. That is mostly why we never negotiated the complexities of our physical needs. Without names how can it be anything but perfect!! There is nothing to compare it to. This is ecstacy in its purest form, it is what i strived for, it is what i believe she was so entertained by, it is what I lost faith in, it is what let the sky come crashing in.
But rediscovering it through the pain, finding out where i went wrong has been the growing bit of the experience. Ironically she has now decayed completely, into a new birth somewhere with new parents and a new world - unless it is the heaven realm she has returned to. Pain is something - when we are ready - we must face square on and stand firm until the storm has blown by. It can't be avoided, if we cower under the force of the onslaught we must build up until we can face it again. It will only go through us, it will not go past us. But faced it will pass away, even the greatest most crippling pain. Mine is not bad but it has still taken 9 years to get on top of. My lifetimes dreams shattered, you really can't see a reason to be alive, but no reason to despair who ever said life was supposed to be happy or successful. These are names, given by others to makes us look big or small and therefore useless to us.
Just accept the Matsui for what it is.
My father bought her a Matsui hi-fi stack when we were kids - which to a kid is a brilliant present. It had tape-to-tape high speed dubbing, record player and radio all in one we all thought it excellent.
That was until my sister moved into university and saw her Matsui along side proper stacks that would have cost 10 times as much. It was then that she realised that the stack which had seemed so excellent was really quite cheap. In retrospect the sound quality was not that good, but what were we to know we were kids and knew nothing better.
That is exactly the reason why we are never satisfied in life - the dhukka that Buddah speaks of - the eternal suffering of unenlightened existence - the pain of sin and ignorance.
It is looking at what we "have" in-relation-to-other-things which causes both knowledge of what we have, but at the same time divorce from what we have and the possibility of both happiness and sadness.
i realised once standing on a mountain that when on top of a mountain you can see all the surrounding mountains except the one on which you stand. We always know everything except what we are. Infact what we see is only possible because we are not it, and not being it puts us in a position to see it. The emptiness of the self is the space into which the world we see can flood in. "Knowing" the outside world both at once seems to put us in a place and we can fix on the certainty of knowing what we have. But it is a demon because in the same moment that we know what we have we have lost it. The Masui is no longer ours when we see it a a thing amongst all the others instead of the music player that plays music to us.
Even if the Matsui was a state-of-the-art hi-fi stack, a £1000 Philips or Pioneer, my sister would have gained the apparent "satisfaction" of "knowing" that she "had" a good music player. But she wouldn't really "have" it because it was the knowledge she was now satisfied by, not the player, and knowledge is always for things we don't have which are away from our mountain.
As a child it makes no difference to her whether it is Matsui or Pioneer, it was the player that player her music and objective elements like "how good" actually have no bearing at all on real satisfaction. They are filmic satsfactions of knowledge not real satisfaction.
I have found this very useful in defusing the heart ache that remains after the puzzling relationship with my muse. It is easy to doubt what we went through. I replay the moment a once lover of hers asked me why i don't sleep with her. It is not that I didn't want to, it was my greatest desire, it is just that it never came about because of other things. But the poison in that conversation is that I have taken it to mean that I "should" have left some objective physical movement within the relationship - something I could talk about in a pub rather than diffuse personal emotions, hopes and dreams. I had the Matsui this guy had the Pioneer. I had only my simple pleasures and wonderful daily experience with her when the real world was the most pleasant place amongst all the dream worlds. How do you explain that? In reality it must look like a childs dreaming compared with a full physical relationship - yet the point is that I was satisfied until the Pioneers moved in to "claim" my world. That was my fault. The relationship had 1 rule - no names! Not in 'Last Tango in Paris' sense, but no verbilsation or naming of what we were doing. We never spoke of our real intentions, I never "knew" what she really meant, she never "knew" what I really meant, it was all in the moment and enjoyed for what it was, oblique, inventive and quite possibly perfect. That is mostly why we never negotiated the complexities of our physical needs. Without names how can it be anything but perfect!! There is nothing to compare it to. This is ecstacy in its purest form, it is what i strived for, it is what i believe she was so entertained by, it is what I lost faith in, it is what let the sky come crashing in.
But rediscovering it through the pain, finding out where i went wrong has been the growing bit of the experience. Ironically she has now decayed completely, into a new birth somewhere with new parents and a new world - unless it is the heaven realm she has returned to. Pain is something - when we are ready - we must face square on and stand firm until the storm has blown by. It can't be avoided, if we cower under the force of the onslaught we must build up until we can face it again. It will only go through us, it will not go past us. But faced it will pass away, even the greatest most crippling pain. Mine is not bad but it has still taken 9 years to get on top of. My lifetimes dreams shattered, you really can't see a reason to be alive, but no reason to despair who ever said life was supposed to be happy or successful. These are names, given by others to makes us look big or small and therefore useless to us.
Just accept the Matsui for what it is.
Saturday, 3 February 2007
Beauty
Just reading some of the Wikipedia on Love I find myself been brought back to the beginning of the project - it has always been the search of Beauty.
A flaw in my understanding of Buddhism would be the reading of Buddhism as being entirely uninterested in Beauty. It is a word used no where in translations - maybe not even in the originals. Yet the purest experience of Beauty is both energising, inspirational and touches deeper than anything.
They say the true mind has 4 qualities - compassion, loving kindness, joy and equanimity yet all of these are Beauty. Experience these and the world is Beautiful.
It is dangerous to romanticise spirituality because attachments can be very strong and confusions very easy - I have been foolish victim of those.
But it is a mistake to do as I have done and therefore deny the experience of Beauty. Under the influence of "my muse" in the purer days it was not just her who was of blinding indescribable beauty but the whole world and the only thing that was ugly was disregard of beauty itself.
Yes I was interpreting all this is a selfish way and without compassion for those who yet did not know profound beauty, and yes I grew confused at this great beauty not realising what she was to me, and how others didn't see her as the sacred sanctuary that I did.
But that is obvious in retrospect. It was only my perception of her beauty, for those who did not have eyes to see there was just a young sexually charged girl.
Previously this was evidence that it was an illusion and I demonised all perception of beauty as trivial, superficial and evil - as Monkey would in the TV series.
But reading a bit of Plato I am reminded that it is possible that just because others don't see something might mean that what they see is the illusion and what you see the truth.
Beauty in its highest forms is not of a particular thing altho we might be initiated into it through a particular form: it is a product of the clear and higher mind. If a girl should open the door to a cathedral of shining splendor then is the cathedral to be dismissed because it was a mere mortal that showed you in? and is she not illuminated through her showing you?
My heart had a door that I could not reach and I knew that somewhere was a girl who would have the key to that door and on the 6th December 1997 in a WHSmiths in Sloane Square that door was opened. My heart and I have been absorbing that experience ever since.
9 years later and after a tragic event - I am remembering and bringing myself back that moment not because I can't excape it, but because it is with me now if I have the eyes to see. That profound beauty lies in all the world always and we should never allow anything or anyone to hide it from us - and those few peculiar to us who may be able to show us the way, they are to be treasured not for themselves but in the name of Beauty.
The quest is Beauty in everything we see, think and do. Always and forever. Eternal and utterly heart felt gratitude to Reena for showing me the way.
A flaw in my understanding of Buddhism would be the reading of Buddhism as being entirely uninterested in Beauty. It is a word used no where in translations - maybe not even in the originals. Yet the purest experience of Beauty is both energising, inspirational and touches deeper than anything.
They say the true mind has 4 qualities - compassion, loving kindness, joy and equanimity yet all of these are Beauty. Experience these and the world is Beautiful.
It is dangerous to romanticise spirituality because attachments can be very strong and confusions very easy - I have been foolish victim of those.
But it is a mistake to do as I have done and therefore deny the experience of Beauty. Under the influence of "my muse" in the purer days it was not just her who was of blinding indescribable beauty but the whole world and the only thing that was ugly was disregard of beauty itself.
Yes I was interpreting all this is a selfish way and without compassion for those who yet did not know profound beauty, and yes I grew confused at this great beauty not realising what she was to me, and how others didn't see her as the sacred sanctuary that I did.
But that is obvious in retrospect. It was only my perception of her beauty, for those who did not have eyes to see there was just a young sexually charged girl.
Previously this was evidence that it was an illusion and I demonised all perception of beauty as trivial, superficial and evil - as Monkey would in the TV series.
But reading a bit of Plato I am reminded that it is possible that just because others don't see something might mean that what they see is the illusion and what you see the truth.
Beauty in its highest forms is not of a particular thing altho we might be initiated into it through a particular form: it is a product of the clear and higher mind. If a girl should open the door to a cathedral of shining splendor then is the cathedral to be dismissed because it was a mere mortal that showed you in? and is she not illuminated through her showing you?
My heart had a door that I could not reach and I knew that somewhere was a girl who would have the key to that door and on the 6th December 1997 in a WHSmiths in Sloane Square that door was opened. My heart and I have been absorbing that experience ever since.
9 years later and after a tragic event - I am remembering and bringing myself back that moment not because I can't excape it, but because it is with me now if I have the eyes to see. That profound beauty lies in all the world always and we should never allow anything or anyone to hide it from us - and those few peculiar to us who may be able to show us the way, they are to be treasured not for themselves but in the name of Beauty.
The quest is Beauty in everything we see, think and do. Always and forever. Eternal and utterly heart felt gratitude to Reena for showing me the way.
Logic
Ever since marvelling at the pure structure of a toilet system a couple of years ago I have been asking myself what is it about shapes - rather than the substance they are made from - which enables so much to happen? A toilet system is just a tube and plunger - there is no mysterious quality to the substance that makes it what it is - just the "arrangement" of the stuff. A different arrangement and suddenly it no longer works - or maybe does a different thing.
The function - and what it is - is purely a mysterious result of the bits and pieces coming together in a particular (and quite visible) way. We can see it all, yet mysteriously a very useful function suddenly comes about!
Well I realised recently that this is what might be called "Logic" - the inner structure of things which if logical is harmonious and creates higher functions.
Clearly this is what delights so much in well written music - not just the emotional impact but the clever logic of the Bachs and Mozarts et al.
In fact "logic" in this sense is a vast part of the world - all relationships both emotional and the building blocks of life.
The function - and what it is - is purely a mysterious result of the bits and pieces coming together in a particular (and quite visible) way. We can see it all, yet mysteriously a very useful function suddenly comes about!
Well I realised recently that this is what might be called "Logic" - the inner structure of things which if logical is harmonious and creates higher functions.
Clearly this is what delights so much in well written music - not just the emotional impact but the clever logic of the Bachs and Mozarts et al.
In fact "logic" in this sense is a vast part of the world - all relationships both emotional and the building blocks of life.
Friday, 2 February 2007
contentment and the past - the wheel of suffering
When we think "I am happy" what is happening is that we are not making a judgement about what we are, rather we are thinking "I was not happy [sometime before], but now I think it worth noting that I am". If we were happy always then what reason to ever declare it!
Likewise if someone ever makes a declaration of suffering - as I have been recently - it is in as many words a declaration of a past happiness which has now changed - or at least a belief that such happiness was possible, but now is not.
So it is with all declarations - we are not saying how it is, but rather how it was not and then comparing the difference.
I am happy is only said by people who experience lots of suffering and then find that it has gone.
Truely happy people never notice that they are happy - because it is normal and unremarkable.
Thus if we ever say that I have something we are noting the change from a time when we didn't have it, and when we say that we do not have something - as I have been - then we are noting the change from a time when we did.
It is not the having, nor the not-having, which is the issue but the change and comparison we make.
Stop making these comparisons and the happiness and sadness both stop and we become content.
A truely content and happy person never says I have this, they never say i do not have this, because they only take what is there and what is theirs. Where is the having then?
Likewise if someone ever makes a declaration of suffering - as I have been recently - it is in as many words a declaration of a past happiness which has now changed - or at least a belief that such happiness was possible, but now is not.
So it is with all declarations - we are not saying how it is, but rather how it was not and then comparing the difference.
I am happy is only said by people who experience lots of suffering and then find that it has gone.
Truely happy people never notice that they are happy - because it is normal and unremarkable.
Thus if we ever say that I have something we are noting the change from a time when we didn't have it, and when we say that we do not have something - as I have been - then we are noting the change from a time when we did.
It is not the having, nor the not-having, which is the issue but the change and comparison we make.
Stop making these comparisons and the happiness and sadness both stop and we become content.
A truely content and happy person never says I have this, they never say i do not have this, because they only take what is there and what is theirs. Where is the having then?
Contentment is the greatest because it isn't!!!!!!!!!
I had it, and now I have it some more - except i don't!!
The master of my old temple used to say that "the wise value peace greater than pleasure" and that was the one thing I knew I didn't understand - I wasn't wise.
The thing is its obvious that the greatest thing we can ever attain is contentment because what are we seeking through all this pleasure, passion or suffering (passio = suffering)? We are seeking the bliss of contentment?
And what is contentment? It is not wanting anything MORE.
We experience this for brief moments after experiences of great pleasure and satisfaction. "My Muse" gave me this feeling, but then it used to go, and now I mourn its complete extinction.
And why does it go? It goes because we start looking for MORE. We may do this for a number of reasons - boredom being my worst, but also because we start to look at what we have got and compare it with others and so we start to see there is MORE.
Happiness only lasts as long as we haven't noticed it. As soon as we notice it we start to look at what made us happy and what we have got and suddenly it doesn't seem so much anymore.
We have a car or computer which does what we want and we feel satisfied, until we have a closer look at what we have. We give it a name and a price and then we see there are other things out there with better names and bigger prices so then we want MORE.
MORE is the driving force of the wheel which keeps us in motion and keeps our lives turning around and around forever. MORE is TIME.
A paradigm shift and suddenly the clock stops and we are content - yet nothing has changed? What was boring is now bliss!
When we accept what we have, when the garden was as fascinating as the whole world is today, and we don't put a name on it, and we don't rank it along side what "everyone else 'HAS'". When all things are like our own mother and father ... then the clock stops.
Emptiness is boring! Emptiness is neither better than other things and neither worse than other things because emptiness only exists when we don't compare it with other things. Differ'a'nce, difference, is what makes the world and it is what makes the wor'l'd unsatisfying. Try to give a name to emptiness and it suddenly seems like "NOTHING" and then we are unsatisfied and bored.
It is not that what we have is bad - it is that we tend to give it a name and a price and so compare it with others. Hugh Heffner is not a bad man, he is a monk, that is if he does not compare himself to others and think he has done well and is satisfied. Likewise the ascetic wandering shaman is not a monk if he looks at Hugh Heffner and thinks he has more or less. Each is content when he has no need of MORE.
It is not what we have, but the existence of the attitude of MORE which is unsatisfaction, which is suffering.
Turning away from what lies outside our life and our reach and turning namelessly into what is within is that path to peace and that we must believe is the true path - for each movement out to check our neighbours lives and wives just to check they have not found something better and are not more happy is the moment of doubt which starts the wheel turning and the work and passion begins.
Very soon when everything we have has no name and no price, when it is just what it is and we care for it only in that it is boring and part of the furniture - that is when we are securely on the path to everlasting happiness and the highest attainment. Every moment of doubt that there is some mystery treasure that you may be missing out on, that is a moment of suffering, ignorance and poverty.
The master of my old temple used to say that "the wise value peace greater than pleasure" and that was the one thing I knew I didn't understand - I wasn't wise.
The thing is its obvious that the greatest thing we can ever attain is contentment because what are we seeking through all this pleasure, passion or suffering (passio = suffering)? We are seeking the bliss of contentment?
And what is contentment? It is not wanting anything MORE.
We experience this for brief moments after experiences of great pleasure and satisfaction. "My Muse" gave me this feeling, but then it used to go, and now I mourn its complete extinction.
And why does it go? It goes because we start looking for MORE. We may do this for a number of reasons - boredom being my worst, but also because we start to look at what we have got and compare it with others and so we start to see there is MORE.
Happiness only lasts as long as we haven't noticed it. As soon as we notice it we start to look at what made us happy and what we have got and suddenly it doesn't seem so much anymore.
We have a car or computer which does what we want and we feel satisfied, until we have a closer look at what we have. We give it a name and a price and then we see there are other things out there with better names and bigger prices so then we want MORE.
MORE is the driving force of the wheel which keeps us in motion and keeps our lives turning around and around forever. MORE is TIME.
A paradigm shift and suddenly the clock stops and we are content - yet nothing has changed? What was boring is now bliss!
When we accept what we have, when the garden was as fascinating as the whole world is today, and we don't put a name on it, and we don't rank it along side what "everyone else 'HAS'". When all things are like our own mother and father ... then the clock stops.
Emptiness is boring! Emptiness is neither better than other things and neither worse than other things because emptiness only exists when we don't compare it with other things. Differ'a'nce, difference, is what makes the world and it is what makes the wor'l'd unsatisfying. Try to give a name to emptiness and it suddenly seems like "NOTHING" and then we are unsatisfied and bored.
It is not that what we have is bad - it is that we tend to give it a name and a price and so compare it with others. Hugh Heffner is not a bad man, he is a monk, that is if he does not compare himself to others and think he has done well and is satisfied. Likewise the ascetic wandering shaman is not a monk if he looks at Hugh Heffner and thinks he has more or less. Each is content when he has no need of MORE.
It is not what we have, but the existence of the attitude of MORE which is unsatisfaction, which is suffering.
Turning away from what lies outside our life and our reach and turning namelessly into what is within is that path to peace and that we must believe is the true path - for each movement out to check our neighbours lives and wives just to check they have not found something better and are not more happy is the moment of doubt which starts the wheel turning and the work and passion begins.
Very soon when everything we have has no name and no price, when it is just what it is and we care for it only in that it is boring and part of the furniture - that is when we are securely on the path to everlasting happiness and the highest attainment. Every moment of doubt that there is some mystery treasure that you may be missing out on, that is a moment of suffering, ignorance and poverty.
Poverty is entirely in the mind!!
I have had not much luck with donations! Everyone I give money to turns out to be lying and I have never been able to help any situation with money (Official charity donations excluded for now).
I realise this week that the reason for this is that there is no such thing as poverty!
I read an article about some homeless people complaining about how sad their lives are. The thing is I was living exactly the same life as them but through choice because it is what I wanted. The only difference was that I had a job and plenty of money, it is just I don't appreciate "higher" standards of living. Shopping is boring and owning things a drag. I am always reminded when I buy something that I had survived upto that point without it, so its presence now means that I must be in greater need. What the homeless people were seeing as bad, I was seeing as good.
In the West even the worst off person is not in poverty. But in reality there are very few people who need die from starvation. If the country falls into war, and the crops fail then maybe - but that is not "poverty" that is just physical reality and necessity. As long as there is some food around, some shelter from severe weather and some means of avoiding the onset of illness then what more do we need? The animals survive!
So if people complain and look in need the vastly more likely chance is that it is their state of mind which is at fault and not their actual circumstance. So talk to them and find out the real problem - do not give them any physical assistance (and that goes for sex as well I have found).
I realise this week that the reason for this is that there is no such thing as poverty!
I read an article about some homeless people complaining about how sad their lives are. The thing is I was living exactly the same life as them but through choice because it is what I wanted. The only difference was that I had a job and plenty of money, it is just I don't appreciate "higher" standards of living. Shopping is boring and owning things a drag. I am always reminded when I buy something that I had survived upto that point without it, so its presence now means that I must be in greater need. What the homeless people were seeing as bad, I was seeing as good.
In the West even the worst off person is not in poverty. But in reality there are very few people who need die from starvation. If the country falls into war, and the crops fail then maybe - but that is not "poverty" that is just physical reality and necessity. As long as there is some food around, some shelter from severe weather and some means of avoiding the onset of illness then what more do we need? The animals survive!
So if people complain and look in need the vastly more likely chance is that it is their state of mind which is at fault and not their actual circumstance. So talk to them and find out the real problem - do not give them any physical assistance (and that goes for sex as well I have found).
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